Helluva Boss - After the Party

Bottled Up

Verosika had opened a portal home, not knowing where else to go. Now, she paced her apartment, her hands trembling as she wrung them together, the cold bite of anxiety gnawing at her insides. The meetup with Blitz and that FUK'N coffee had been a disaster—one moment, she was finally getting the answers she deserved, and the next, he was a broken husk, revealing a depth of pain she had never imagined.

For years, she'd thought he was just an asshole who enjoyed breaking hearts, leaving a trail of broken souls like hers in his wake. But now, she saw him in a different light. She had tried to comfort him, but instead, her touch had sent him spiraling into panic. She had heard his words, but she hadn't truly listened. He ran from her, leaving her alone at the coffee shop, stunned and overwhelmed by a flood of conflicting emotions.

She wanted answers. She needed them. Was that so wrong? For years, she had held onto the hurt, the anger, the betrayal of how he had dumped her so coldly. She replayed that moment in her mind countless times, trying to understand why. Why had he left her like that, so brutally, without a hint of the person she thought she knew? She convinced herself that if she could just get him to explain, if she could make him see how much he had hurt her, maybe she could finally move on. She wanted to be heard. It was ironic—she was a pop star with an audience of hundreds of thousands, people who hung on her every word. But in the end, it was clear she only wanted the ear of one person... one imp.

His confession—that he thought he didn't deserve love—kept replaying in her mind. It explained so much. It was the cornerstone of his behavior, the reason he could only have relationships through casual, transactional means. For the first time, she saw him not as the cold, unfeeling bastard she had hated for years, but as a broken man, haunted by demons she had never suspected. And now... now she didn't know what to feel.

Her breath hitched as she stopped pacing, her eyes burning with unshed tears. She pressed her palms against her temples, trying to push away the memory of his haunted face, the raw vulnerability in his eyes. Why did it have to be this way? Why did it hurt so much?

She felt guilty for being so needy, so desperate for answers. She had pushed him too far, and now he was gone. But at the same time, she felt like she deserved those answers. Didn't she have a right to know why he had broken her heart? Didn't she have a right to demand that he acknowledge the pain he had caused her?

And yet, beneath all that anger and hurt, she realized something that shook her to her core: she still wanted him. She wanted him to love her, to prove that he was capable of loving her. She wanted to be the one to save him, to pull him out of whatever hell he was drowning in and make him whole again. Denying it any longer was childish.

A bitter laugh escaped her lips, hollow in the quiet of her apartment. What was wrong with her? Why couldn't she just let him go? Why was she still clinging to this impossible dream, this need to be loved by someone who had proven, time and again, that he wasn't capable of it?

The familiar pull of the bottle beckoned, the urge to drown all these thoughts and feelings in a sea of alcohol. She moved to the cabinet containing spirits and liquors from all corners of Hell, her steps heavy, her heart pounding in her chest.

The perfect bottle sat in front of her, its amber contents glinting in the dim light. She reached for it, her hand trembling as she wrapped her fingers around the cool glass. Just a drink. Just enough to make it all go away. She could almost feel the burn of the liquid sliding down her throat, numbing the pain, quieting the thoughts that wouldn't stop spinning in her head.

But as she lifted the bottle, something inside her snapped. He'd been doing this exact same thing for the past few days. The image of him, sitting alone in some hellish corner, drinking away his memories, erasing everything that had ever mattered—including her—flashed through her mind. The thought of him forgetting her, forgetting everything they had been, made her chest tighten with a fierce, unbearable pain. This wasn't a solution. It wasn't even a crutch.