#*azris thought exercise

i see your sweet lovely beautiful outcome to this scenario and i raise you: eris being the one to initiate this kiss, so long deprived, so overwrought and plagued with what they once had together. azriel’s body knows eris even if his mind doesn’t. azriel limbers into the kiss, parts his lips eagerly, hungrily, molds his musculature to eris’s, licks into him like a flavor he once knew, a flavor he once loved. eris thinks: he remembers. there is only sensation. hands touching where they always have. a tongue that remembers all the places to make him shiver, there beneath his ear, at the curve of his neck, in the dip of his collarbone. teeth grazing and clothes tearing and body parting. sweating panting arching groaning shuddering—he remembers, he remembers, he remembers. but when azriel pulls back, pale, stricken, confused, eris knows.

he doesn’t.

🥺 that is so kind wtf i’m glad you enjoyed it!!! not to be a real life insane person but i did kind of flesh out that one shot beyond the small hurt/comfort moment and in my head the apothecary that emile solicited to poison eris (because poisoning is a lost art in a magic society where a curse is its own manner of poison!) was actually eris’s apothecary mate oc i’ve posted a bit about. as the fic stood, azriel would ostensibly have focused his anger onto emile and interrogated her but not harmed her because she was just a pawn; she would have been exiled from autumn before she and eris could ever meet, and he would have her monitored for the rest of her days. but ! if eris demanded to interrogate her himself :•) or if azriel thought of her—you are both too valuable to squander and too dangerous to let loose, so you must become one of my assets here, or else and eris inevitably met her :•) hell even just make her azriel’s mate instead! the mutual crashouts would be catastrophic truly.

best timeline they become a fraught throuple—if she’s eris’s mate, azriel is a dark quiet wounded puppy about it, always tagging along, always limping behind, always insisting he be left behind but wretchedly glad when it isn’t allowed him; if she’s azriel’s mate, eris is hostile and dismissive about it, callous to drive them both away, to make them see that he is a vicious thing that ought be abandoned as everyone else has, and when his lashing never budges azriel, he hates how much relief he feels to be chosen against the bidding of fate. worst timeline, the love that’s there isn’t enough. neither can handle the pain that comes with choosing the other, too. they sever so that the mated one of them can avoid the guilt and the sorrow of the one who has been left behind by fate.

Can't go without reversing the amnesia trope though. Azriel is the one who remembers. Eris is already pretty stressed about having forgotten years, he has no idea what small alliances might have been formed or broken in that period, he's going over his coded notes, he's extra paranoid, he's almost insane. And then there's Azriel whose shadows tell him all about and it hes so worried this will turn Eris into someone he is not, into Beron.

hahahaha the tags r for the deep cuts and the extraneous ramblings........only the real ones know to check em😤

oh my g o d especially if he has an eidetic memory holy! shit!!! his seamless, unforgotten memories practically from birth and then just The Void. he has no idea who his enemies are, who his enemies masquerading as allies are, who his allies masquerading as enemies are. if beron knows something is fucky with him, beron will punish him at best, maybe even kill him at worst—what use is an heir that might have been hijacked? who has lost time? who could have done anything during it and just not know? yeah he is paranoid and harried and defensive and cruel and scared. so scared. he's never known fear like this before.

however comma! eris is perceptive—and if his mind was trained to understand azriel, i don't think he'd be able to shake himself of the habit. he sees the shadowsinger for the first time since his memories were tampered with, and he looks the same as ever. unforgiving presence. cold face. hard mouth. but something is weird with his eyes, maybe? they're too soft. not soft, mind you, but there's no hatred in them. (azriel can't muster it! not with eris. not anymore.) the shadows, too—they move wrongly. they dance towards eris and expose azriel's face, where they should be sharp as daggers and making azriel difficult to even focus his gaze fully on. eris would never guess that there was love between them. who could ever love him, let alone one who has always hated him and never truly seen him? but eris would guess that azriel knew something about what happened to him. eris would corner azriel in an alcove the first change he got. eris would force him back against the wall, flame in one hand, other forearm barred across azriel's throat. he wouldn't know what to make of the hitch in azriel's breath or the bloom of azriel's pupils or the strange fluttering of ... hope? in azriel's expression. but i don't think azriel would be able to keep what they had a secret beyond that confrontation.