Blitzo was fuming. He walked up and down the length of their new 'living room,' scratching at his chin, rubbing his hands together like an irritated little moth. "What do you mean, we'll have to stay?"
He demanded of Moxxie. Millie, seemingly apprehensive about Blitzo's demeanor, crossed her arms and was looking at Moxxie worriedly, though with equal demand in her eyes. "What's goin' on, sugar puff?" She asked, her tone softer and sweeter but pressuring Moxxie way more than anything Blitzo was doing.
Moxxie scratched at the back of his neck, feeling the unfamiliar black hair that was there.
He would have to switch back to his imp form sooner or later, and he was actually looking forward to it since he felt he wasn't fully in his skin, even though he technically was.
Or wasn't he? He couldn't distinguish anymore - the exhaustion and stress were getting to him, making his bones heavy. Between all the reveals he had had to make to his loved ones and the burdensome information Dumbledore had unloaded, he was ready to sink into a hole and putrefy.
What was all the more stressful was that he knew there was more to come. Way more.
He hadn't even scratched the surface of everything he needed to confess to Millie, for instance, and he was in a panic just by the thought of what else Dumbledore and the rest of the wizarding community had in store for him.
Mostly, his head just kept coming back to that name: Voldemort.
It seemed haunted, like one of those paintings whose eyes followed you.
Now that he knew the man's name, it refused to leave him even for a second. Voldemort. Voldemort.
It gnawed at his brain and nibbled at his heart - it wasn't like he was personally offended by the man's existence (or his inexistence, or whatever state he was in right now), he didn't feel like he had any special resentment towards him because of his family, but the very name made him feel watched.
And he didn't like all the attention he was receiving from everyone around him - strangers and loved ones. Voldemort. Voldemort, his brain echoed so much that he nearly forgot to answer the completely justified demands of those around him. "I…" he began. Then, he took a quick look around the room. "Wait, where's Loona?" He asked. "Passed out in one of the rooms.
Poor darling just couldn't stand on her feet anymore," Millie replied. "We are all very stressed, Moxx. And tired. What's going on? When can we go home?"
Moxxie took a deep breath and braced himself for the reaction to come. "I don't know. Not for a while, I think." "Not for a while?" Blitzo exploded. "Is 'a while' a couple of hours or a few decades?!" "Well, how did you expect to go back without Stolas' book? We have to wait for Dumbledore to help us go back.
He said it would take some time." "Dumbledore? First name basis now, huh?" Blitzo wagged an accusatory finger at him. "We should be thankful he's even going to help us!"
Moxxie countered. "That old fart-" Blitzo began, but they were interrupted by Millie. "Shut up! The both of you!
I can't take all this screamin'. My head's pounding like a son of a bitch," Millie rubbed at her temples. "Blitzo, you ain't getting nowhere unless this Dumbledore guy decides to help us, so you should try to be a little nicer. 'Sides, these people could turn us into cockroaches just by thinking about it," she sighed, and that was when Moxxie realized how tired she was - how tired all of them were.
Seeing Millie become weary was enough to make him fall. "I think we've had enough excitement for one day.
Why don't we just go to bed and talk tomorrow?" Moxxie suggested. "I can get behind that," Millie said with a smile.
Only Blitzo seemed reluctant, but that was just because he seemed stuck on the principle of being an annoying pest, but they could see the same tiredness behind his eyes. "Fine," he spat, incredibly reluctant. "But if one of these magic people tries to do some freaky shit to me during the night, I will lose it." Both Millie and Moxxie rolled their eyes, and Millie led Moxxie to the room that the wizards had given them.
Moxxie thought they'd have a falling-off-the-hinges type of room, but it was spacious and lavish, everything with a tidy and un-filthy look that nothing in Hell could ever possess.
Being here was also shocking because of how squeaky clean it all was and how well these people apparently lived.
Millie sat down on the red four-poster bed and sighed, kicking off her heels. Then, after a moment of deliberation and taking off all the things she couldn't sleep with, clacking off her jewelry and setting it aside on the bedside table, she turned to Moxxie with a kind, playful look. "Come here, Moxxie-pie," she said, opening up her arms.
Moxxie was all but too keen to be embraced by her. So he dove head-first into her chest and buried himself there, both of them falling backward onto the bed lovingly.
Wrapped up in the cocoon-ish warmth of Millie's thin, strong arms, it would've been easy to forget everything and simply fall asleep.
He always felt safest and most at peace when they were in a position like this one. But then Millie stroked his hair, her fingers winding up and down his black locks.
It was a simple act, natural - hair was meant to be stroked, and it felt good to have her do that. But it was just as if just for the reason that it was supposed to be simple and natural. It felt oddly complex and unnatural.
It was because it should've been such a thoughtless, random thing that Moxxie felt suddenly like an intruder in his own wife's arms like she was touching something she wasn't supposed to, like a spider or a rat.
It wasn't like touching a stranger or anything. It was more like being a stranger within himself, a stranger to his beloved, a stranger to the mirror.
He was not himself, and yet he was. That was the odd part of it. He didn't want to feel like he was always hiding something. For the most part, he hadn't ever really felt like he was hiding something strange. However, it may seem: being an imp came as naturally for him as breathing did, and he had never looked back to his childhood ever again, assuming this new life, with all its ups and downs, with relish and excitement.
But he never felt like a sore thumb, and he never felt like Hell or his imp family weren't real, like they were just part of some sort of a facade. The only part of himself that didn't feel real that seemed like a joke of sorts, like some far-off fantasy in which he hadn't actually taken part was everything that had happened to him before he was eight.
That felt like the prequel to real life, some lazy joke God had played on him and finally delivered him from. All these years, it had been like some nightmare that he couldn't remember when he woke up, but that left him feeling queasy. Now, he was somehow living the strangest variation of that nightmare, and it was all too real.
That which he considered a fever dream had now seeped into his real life, with the real people that he truly cared about - what could he do with that?
He thought he knew himself, and he was certain that his true nature was that of an imp's, that his place was in Hell, with his dumbass boss and his beautiful wife - how could it be anywhere else? But all that might change for everyone.
He knew he was still the same, that he knew where he belonged and where he would always wish to stay.
But did they? Did Millie? Was he the same Moxxie in her eyes, or had something shifted, and he was now some new, weird person with the oddest second life one could picture? He didn't fear new information about his past, or Blitzo's wrath, or whatever the hell the Triwizard Tournament was so much as he feared for his perception in Millie's eyes, which was everything to him.
And though it'd been her who had automatically run her fingers through his weird human hair, Moxxie tensed up, these new thoughts and fears consuming him, convinced Millie now thought he was a freak of nature, a liar and, worst of all, an oddity not to be involved with. Of course, he had always thought that Millie was a million light-years from his league, and he would always think that - but now?
He was the ground she treads on.
He was infinitely her inferior, lies and thoughtless deception aside. He knew his adoptive family had made him vow never to speak of the reality of who he was to anyone, for fear of what this rarity might mean for his 'regular' unfolding in Hell. Still, Millie wasn't just anyone, and he had decided, when he married her, he would tell her.
But then it never seemed like the appropriate time, and then again, it wasn't often that he thought of that part of himself. And what with pushing it every day that he did, in fact, remember, the months passed, and suddenly he felt like his window of opportunity had passed, and now it was too late Millie wrinkled her nose when he jumped up, as though he was allergic to her touch.
She would've been lying if she said she hadn't felt the smallest, bitter twinge of rejection when he did. "What wrong, Moxx?" She asked, genuinely perplexed.
What Moxxie didn't understand was that, in her mind, although there was a mess of information and a whole lot of confusion, everything was clear.
It was him that had lost sight of what was what. As a result, he was the one that was questioning the entire foundations of his life.
Millie propped herself up on her elbows and looked at him over her large chest, preoccupied.
Moxxie had sat up, his legs still touching her abdomen. He wrung his hands, nervous, twitchy.
Millie always thought it was cute when he got all shaky, like a queasy little chihuahua, but now she was scared of what he might say, of what he could be thinking or be about to confess.
After all, following the events of the evening, what couldn't she expect? Her life seemed to be a rodeo, knocking her off the bull and on her ass consistently. But she was Millie. She'd shoot the bull if she had to. "Do you think…" Moxxie began hesitantly. "Do you think… with all of this, you might… change?
Things, you know, I-" he struggled to find the appropriate words to express his concern and simultaneously not clog Millie with what he considered to be a bunch of sentimental dumb-fuckery. But, really, when he was most vulnerable was when he felt the dumbest by expressing concern. Or any emotion, for that matter.
But Millie immediately understood what he meant and could read the insecurities present on his face as if they'd been written in bright red ink on his forehead. "Oh, Moxxie!" She exclaimed, taking one of his pale, human hands in both of her own red ones.
Moxxie was comically larger than her, and it was a little weird since he was used to being approximately her same size.
Now, he towered over her. Despite his size in the current situation, when he looked down at her with those big, unknown green eyes of his, Millie could still see Moxxie, could still see her husband, and understand everything he was feeling, whether it was in his human form or his imp form.
Moxxie was Moxxie, and it was plain to her what she felt for him and what he must be feeling right now, disregarding if he was some juju-performing wizard or if he suddenly sprouted an extra limb.
It was in those vulnerable green eyes of his that she could almost see the scared eight-year-old child she had imagined when he had told his story, and she could see his frightened expression and his exposure clear as day.
The urge to protect him was stronger in her now more than ever - although this was more his world than it was hers or Blitzo's, Moxxie was as much a stranger in it as the rest of them, and he had even more cause to be frightened because he was in the spotlight because all these wizard people expected many things from him because he was some weird sort of celebrity that Millie didn't grasp the magnitude of, yet. "Moxxie, Moxxie," she repeated, withdrawing one of her hands and stroking his smooth cheek.
He may have been a grown man, but he was still free of hair as though he were a baby.
She held his chin and looked deep into those babyish eyes of his. "Ain't nothing - nothing going to tear me apart from you, you hear? Nothing's changed.
You're still my Moxxie. My sweetie." Moxxie loosened up at her words immediately, but there was still a deep concern in his eyes. "Even like this?" He asked, desperate, "even though I'm technically this?" He questioned, his face showing open contempt for his human form and all that it represented. Millie shook her head. "I love you, Moxxie. All of you.
If this is a part of you, I love it, too. Although, of course, I wish you had told me sooner, I know now. And I know all of you.
You're still the same. You just got some human - wizard, meat to ya," she winked at him. Moxxie smiled a little bit. "That's what I like to see," she purred, moving closer to him.
Millie began guiding his hand up to her lips.
Then, she trailed the length of his forearm, moving up after every gentle, intense kiss she gave him.
She went up to his shoulders, making Moxxie shiver as though he was being tickled.
She worked up to his neck, which she knew always drove him wild, and snuck her hands under his shirt, feeling the rather skinny stomach beneath.
She traveled all through his jawline with her lips. Then, finally, taking her sweet, sweet time with it like she always did, like she knew would put Moxxie at the very edge, she reached his lips. First, she only pressed hers against his, but then it grew deeper.
She pried him open with her tongue and kissed him so hard that he automatically knew what she meant by it. He had been in a brainless state of bliss as Millie was working her magic, but now he was fully conscious, and he wanted her more and more with each second that passed.
Millie had a signature kiss when she wanted to be with him, and he was prepared to give all the signals in the world back so long as she didn't stop.
But he was also aware of the different functions of the body he was in, of the difference in their height, of his difference in… extremities. So, in truth, even kissing and Millie's very lips felt different on his new flesh. Not bad, but different, like he would need some getting used to.
Moving to sit atop his lap, Moxxie let out a soft moan he couldn't control, his hands shooting to Millie's toned waist hungrily, touching every part of her that he could without spoiling the buildup.
He only separated from her for a moment. "Should I change back into-" Millie tugged him by the hair and pulled his head back so that her face was above his, her hot breath on his lips. "I said all of you," she breathed heavily, proceeding to run her tongue down the length of his jaw.
Moxxie trembled. "I think this is a good opportunity for some deep experimentation," she said to him with a devilish smile. Moxxie's eyes flared. He knew she wanted this, but to hear it was all the more torturous and simultaneously pleasurable to him. So he let her have her way with him with relish.