#more self indulgent art but........... them...

[eatsbooks]

even if the enemy is ourselves

characters: azriel yladi, eris vanserra, minor / brief cameos

pairing: azris

rating: explicit

word count: 6.1k / 36.5k

warnings: blackmail, complicated relationship, hate sex, murder, power imbalance, sex as self harm, torture, unhealthy relationship, unhealthy coping mechanisms

summary: an examination of azriel and eris's relationship over the centuries, wherein azriel is the one who tortured morrigan, wherein eris finds out and keeps azriel's secret — for a price.

a/n: this one's a doozy! my endless love and thanks to @buffy-vanserra and @the-darkestminds for beta reading this in my darkest hour. also my firstborn to @plumita-d-la-sangre for letting me use their veiled azriel art as inspo for this chapter & helping me visualize eris's fit<3 find it on ao3 if ur nasty

tag list: @buffy-vanserra @the-darkestminds @olenvasynyt @jules-writes-stories @plumita-d-la-sangre @g00seg1rl @mistandmemories @talibunny30 @pippsmcgee @astro-h0e-4azris @chunkypossum @iftheshoef1tz @ysmtttty @nightsandflamess @nus4y @imma-too-many-fandoms @tartruther @irithiadourden (if u want on / off pls lmk!)

chapter eight: rot spreads from the roots

The drums are a second heartbeat.

They pulse up from underfoot, quivering each broad blade of grass and dewy night-bloom with eager delight. They carry on the air, burrowing deep into every body, bidding them yield, indulge, partake. They bring bejeweled eyelashes to bat and guide hips in their sway and swell the crowd in collective breath.

To know their cadence is to have already submitted to it.

Azriel feels his own body obey as he and his brothers pass through the fiery mouth of the grotto. Beneath the draping of his veil, an undeniable heat rises to his cheeks. The gems dangling from his circlet rustle with renewed weight in the locks of his hair. His bare skin pebbles where the gossamer material whispers against it, suddenly sensitive, suddenly wanting for touch any way he can have it. Blood rushes to heavy his cock between his legs—not fully roused but prepared to be.

The cavern is vast, with small, private alcoves and short tunnels giving its rounded walls further depth. Glowing crystal formations drip down from the ceiling, the radiance they emit as distant as any star dotting the sky. It is instead the pyres blazing up from the ground that cast enough light by which to see, and from them, his shadows are given renewed life to shrithe through the space on his behalf.

Hundreds of creatures lay in wait around fountains of fae wine and pallets of ceremonial furs. High faeries dressed in the intricate headdresses and insubstantial fabrics of their respective courts. All manner of nymphs and satyrs bearing their bodies entirely. Priestesses, too, here to oversee the rite, their blessed forms peeking out from beneath their robes.

None yet succumb to temptation, not with the High Lord still to arrive, but many are already coming as close as they are able. Shadow slips between slick, petted thighs and follows beneath caressing hands, and they sing to him of collective desire that burns so bright it hurts to hold back from. None of the heat they find is that which he monitors for.

The drums beat on.

Cassian, near breathless: “Damn.”

Rhysand, hiding beneath detached amusement: “What did I tell you?”

“If I knew this was how they celebrated in Spring, I’d have snuck over centuries ago.”

Rhysand laughs softly, but he says nothing more.

With both of them similarly enshrouded by their veils, Azriel cannot bring either male’s face into any clear focus when he looks over at them. There are suggestions of where their lips might have parted beneath the gauzy fabric, where their pupils might have blown, but nothing holds in Azriel’s mind when he drops his gaze down their fronts to find them both completely taken by the percussive spell.

Rhysand always has been such a compelling performer.

Azriel knows he is not the only one to feel the dissonance in the heartbeat of the drums. Neither he nor Rhysand have attended a Great Rite that has felt like this—like a choice being taken so quietly, you forget you ever had one at all—since Atrius ruled at home. With Rhysand come into power, these ceremonies in their own court have felt as they ought: communion with the land; joyous consecration; give, take. It should be no different with Tamlin on his throne.

Yet on this night, Calanmai feels little more than a reaping.

The drums beat louder.

Rhysand leans in to purr, “Looked your fill yet?”

Azriel had not realized how his regard had been lingering while they walked deeper into the cave. He suppresses a shiver and returns to his brother’s eye line. “You glamoured everything.”

Rhysand shrugs. At his back, the motion rustles the wings which transform the High Lord of the Night Court into any other Illyrian brute strayed too far from his sty for a taste of cunt.

“Cock like mine isn’t so easily forgettable,” Rhysand says, a sly grin in his voice. “Wouldn’t do to give myself away before I’ve had my fun.”

Azriel dispels the shadow gathering beneath his ear to reveal his brother’s half-truth. He has far better use for his darkness here than relaying information he is already privy to.

“Arrogant prick,” Cassian snorts. “I need a drink.”

The nearest fountain has been carved out of the crystalline stone from the ceiling reaching up instead from the cave floor. A lone, fallen star, isolated from its kindred, never to know their heights. It bleeds with its loneliness, red fae wine pouring from a gash at its peak to pool in a hollow at its base. Stained-mouth fae surround it like a pack of beasts around a felled gazelle.

In he and his brothers’ approach, these fae come alert for fresh meat. They turn hungry stares on each of them in turn.

Cassian fills three goblets to their brims and passes two along. He swallows half of his down in a single tip of his cup, then shifts his attention to a slip of a female eyeing him nearby.

Azriel brings his own beneath his veil and drinks deeply of it, though he suspects Rhysand only does so for show. For the best—this is a heady brew, and even before it settles into his belly, he feels it bloom in his head, warm and pleasantly dizzying, tingling all the way out to the tips of his toes.

The drums beat so loudly now that they could no longer be considered a separate heartbeat. They are the only heartbeat known, one for all to live and die by on this night. Nearly, the inevitability of them feels a threat.

It is then that his shadows lift their voices. His heart quivers in its cage, for emerging from their song, he hears it: seriseriseriseriseriseriseriseriseriseriseriseriseriseriseriser

Azriel attempts to tune this out, to draw the darkness towards more tempting delicacies in this feast of bodies: a pair of winged nymphs quivering with need for one another, or the few humans muzzled like pets for the entertainment of the dark-clad fae nearby, or the satyr taken to stroking himself in his wait and the High fae transfixed by the sight.

He has no interest in seeing Eris here, in this cave, where arousal hangs thick as mist on the air and his own body is slave to it. Their rendezvous since that unquiet eve in Ceres have been stilted, taciturn, little more than order brusquely issued and blade grudgingly dispatched. This setting would shatter whatever spiteful restraint he has kept to.

For he has not forgotten the reminder—not what it was meant to impart, nor the revelation it inspired.

Whatever truth resides beneath Eris Vanserra’s skin is not worth the effort of uncovering.

The heir is a male of too many seamless faces. All of them bleed out and meld together, contorting at the edges so that where one might have once found its end, another is already fitting itself into place.

It matters little that Azriel has seen the collar choking at the neck of each one: gilded and without defect, the leash at its back pulled tight enough that its imprint will remain beneath ever after it has been removed.

If it can be removed.

It matters even less that he jolts into waking in the late hours with the rustling of a wind-swept canopy at his ear and an image of bloodied vines rotting away before his eyes.

Help him, the forest purls on those nights, help him, help him.

None of it matters.

Each of those many faces has the same mouth on it and the same mind behind. Both are prone to a cruelty that poses far too much risk, what with the knowledge Eris keeps and his zeal in making a weapon of it. It is not worth uncovering what goes on beneath—especially with Cassian and Rhysand at his side.

Yet still there is his relentless presence, beckoning, demanding attention: iseriseriseriseriseriseriseriseriseriseriseriseriseriseriseriseriseri

Azriel’s jaw aches as he turns his head to see with his own eyes. The sensation is not unlike the pain of long, slender fingers spurring their tips into the meat and forcing him to yield.

Eris, standing just beside an alcove brimming with shadow. He is surrounded by so many Autumn fae that one might think him holding court. They are of such numbers that Azriel is unable to gain clear vantage of him in their midst. A field of thorny marigolds crowding about a camelia, only the very tips of its petals visible, red as an ember and shifting in the ambient light.

This comes as no surprise. On a night like Calanmai—let alone this Calanmai—it is power above all that spurs couplings, and there is nothing to be done about the godliness he is drenched in.

What does discomfit Azriel is the stirring within him at even this paltry glimpse. A dark and clamant want burns the paths the wine has already worn through his body, urging him to scythe the weak-stemmed blooms in their supplication, to take Eris into the secret dark of that alcove and consume the sight of his divinity so that it can only ever belong to him.

It is the pounding of the drums, he knows. It is the faerie wine he takes down his throat. It is the magic of the rite and the closeness of such power coming over him. This is not of him.

Not after the heel; not after the reminder.

What would that make him? If he knows it is not worth the pain but he wants it all the same?

You are a dog, Eris whispers in his memory, and I am your master.

Cassian says, “Not tonight, Az.”

Azriel tears his gaze away to look at his brother, grateful for the veil in concealing his startle.

“I get it.” Cassian glances towards Eris. His grimace is audible. “Trust me, I do. I want to kill the bastard every time I see him. But tonight is for us to let loose. To relax a little.” A beat. “If Mor were here, she’d tell you the same thing.”

Azriel drinks again from his cup until he finds the bottom—until the spellbind of its warmth veils all else he could feel.

Rhysand waits until Cassian turns away to refill his drink to chime in. He says, “He’s right, you know.”

Azriel nods. 

With his brothers having noticed his interest, he tries to keep his focus on them after this, but it is no use. His resolve has been watered down by the alcohol, and as far from his person as they are, his shadows instinctively draw in closer to Eris in his stead.

They whisper images of females leaning in to display the generous curves of their breasts, batting long lashes and touching at the godling’s elbow—one daring enough to drift her touch to his hip. Males of other courts now, too, creeping in around the outskirts, perhaps having heard rumor of his indiscriminate interests in the bed slaves of Autumn and hoping it will extend out to his conquests tonight. Many of them have taken to fondling one another, hoping the sight will entice him enough to choose them.

Azriel imagines it again: the slaughter and the claiming. This time, he indulges in it.

Spurred by this, the shadows slither in close enough to become the darkness that Eris casts. Azriel can see him in the pulse of their adumbral music, thudding, thudding, thudding out from the heart of the world and into the base of his skull.

Tucked into the spill of Eris’s hair is an aureate crown of laurels to accord with the rest of his gilding, threaded through the points of his ears, glinting at all the catches of his limbs. The burgundy tunic he dons is the same insubstantial fabric as Azriel’s veil, sheer enough to impress the hand-carved silhouette of him beneath. It is open down its front to reveal not only the muscles of his chest but the lines of his abdomen, which is free of the scarring Azriel knows should be there. A silken sort of embroidery offers him the illusion of modesty in the form of limber branches and fluttery leaves reaching up from his waist, and that same glossy fabric swaths the endless length of his legs. At the front of his pants, there is an opening, concealed while he is standing but long enough that there is no misunderstanding its intent. The relief of his soft cock against the material suggests there is nothing beneath. A shadow curls up along his inner thigh, reaching towards the slit, and—

Without breaking conversation, Eris glances down his front, then flicks the cunning of his eyes beyond those encircling him.

Azriel feels the skin on the side of his neck prickle with the weight of a gaze immediately—almost, he thinks, as though Eris already knew where to look. He withdraws his shadows, but not before they sing once more. A tune he has known in the muck of the forest floor, in the drowsy cradle of an inn where a star could have been charmed down from the sky.

But all of that was before the heel, before the reminder—and this is only the wine, the magic, the drums.

The drums.

Azriel focuses instead on the drums, the way they begin to rattle deep into mortal bone, then deep enough to penetrate the web beneath the world. Even his shadows are taken by the nearness of such a force, themselves stirred into a hissing, spitting timbre.

With their heartbeat like a noose around the neck, the High Lord of Spring finally makes his entrance.

Every pair of eyes turns to behold Tamlin before the press of females into his path blocks him from view.

The shuffle of feet and cries of imminent relief echo loudly through the cavern. Azriel and his brothers draw in closer, pressed forth by the folk at their backs, or else guided in by the hanging rope. Eris does as well, positioning himself practically alongside the three of them.

In catches and glimpses, Azriel sees that Tamlin has been made brutal and lovely both. The magic of the rite is already clawing up through his flesh to demand its price, the blood of the white stag vibrant on his skin and the crown of its antlers spearing from his temples. His movements are animalistic, his fangs bared and his fingers tipped in claw, his head cocking this way and that as he scents for worthiness on the air, then closer, snuffling against throats that tip back in their eagerness to be chosen by him.

Lucien enters just after, a herding dog, a shepherd. He is there as a grounding presence for Tamlin in his current state, though gazes follow him, too, hungry and appreciative even as he melts away into the crowd to afford the High Lord his due.

Except for Eris, who tracks his brother with what anyone else would think disdain, and the gathering of Autumn fae around him, who take their cue from his demeanor.

At Tamlin’s back, there is a long processional of pink-cheeked, round-eyed females, ripe for Tamlin’s plucking should those in wait prove unworthy. Flower petals flutter from their hands. The chimes of their delight ought to serve as melody to ease the mounting frenzy they caper into, but the balm of their breeze has no effect on the cavern.

For following behind, separate from the maidens, her own force, her own orbit, Amarantha prowls. She carries herself with the selfsame timidity as a lynx stalking its quarry—with that skin-staining hunger of her ilk at the fountain.

“What the fuck is she doing here?” Cassian hisses.

“Seems she is everywhere, of late,” Rhysand responds noncommittally.

She, Azriel knows, is why the three of them are truly in attendance. So that Rhysand can have covert excuse to be in her orbit, to watch and to learn of her true purpose in Prythian without her aware of his presence at all.

Rhysand did not tell them so. He would never admit to such a thing outright—not before he has collected all the information he needs and formulated his course of action. Perhaps not even until it has been enacted in its entirety. But there is no other reason he would willingly put himself in Tamlin’s proximity, let alone while the male is in such a state.

Because with more haste than any Calanmai prior, the Hunter has chosen his Maiden.

Azriel cannot see who has been selected, but he can feel the decision in the resonance of the drums. His shadows deepen around the female Tamlin has hoisted into his arms, relaying to him the curves and suppleness of her body, which is not unlike a peach: delicate, dewy, soft enough to bruise.

All the things which Amarantha, who stands with a berth around her where she has stopped to watch this claiming, is not.

But this outright rejection cannot fade the vibrance of her flower. She breaks out into a smile—a beatific, whetted white—and lifts both her hands and her eyes to heavens unseen. Her voice rings clear through the cave, then echoes back so that all the attention on Tamlin and his chosen turns instead to her.

“The Hunter, his aim guided by the will of the land, sinks his teeth now into the wanting flesh of the Maiden. His consumption will bear fruit for the year to come, and from it, all shall partake and be sated.”

Lucien stands nearby, simmering with ill-contained disgust over the display. The courtier must carry deep resentment of her if he is unable to keep to his usual pleasantries. Were he not a male of such honor, Azriel thinks he already would have lunged long before the first word could be shaped by her petal-red mouth.

Amarantha lowers her arms and addresses the fomenting crowd directly. Her eyes scan, then stop, predator undeterred, prey chosen with intention.

“Glut yourselves alongside him now.”

She sweeps forth.

“Hunt, that you may never know what it is to go without.”

She reaches for Lucien and draws him close, a long-fingered hand proprietary on the base of his throat—one that he cannot bat away in front of this many watching eyes on such a sacred night, though the tense of his muscles suggests he would like to.

“Hunt, that you may know the power of fulfillment.”

Her gaze slides over Lucien’s shoulder, to where Tamlin has already begun rutting senselessly into the female pinned beneath him, and it steels over.

There, at the corner of Lucien’s jaw, the same tell as his eldest brother: a flicker of the muscle to betray the depths of his anger.

“Hunt,” Amarantha commands, “that you may see the truth of your being on this Calanmai and carry it into all things beyond.”

She turns her sickle-curve smile on Lucien, then wields it against his mouth.

In the same moment, the cosmos collide.

Sunlight females are eclipsed by moonstruck males, glowing bright from what edges of them can be glimpsed. Dawn rises for all of Prythian, spilling carelessly upon the rolling hills of Spring, burying deep into the valleys and crevices of Winter. Spindrifts of faeries melt for the flame they sink onto, wet and dripping, howling like the wind. Summer fae flow along with the ease of the sun-warmed sea, drawing fae under their tide.

So surrounded, Azriel loses sight of his brothers. Both of them have been devoured by the hands of glaze-eyed, wine-drunk fae reaching for them.

There are hands on him, too. There have been since the frenzy overtook.

It occurs to him that he had not noticed sooner as one of the glaze-eyed, wine-drunk fae himself. He takes stock of his feverish body.

A wisp of a female has her dainty, smooth fingers wrapped around his cock, which is fully roused. Another has her palms flat against his abdomen, tongue flicking out to tease at his nipple, coaxing it to a peak—and behind him, there is someone slowly dragging a pointed nail between his wings. All of it brings him pleasure.

But it is the heating of the necklace around his throat that makes his pulse begin to race.

His shadows, from the alcove of slaughter and claiming: eriseriseriseriseriseriseriseriseriseriseriseriseriseriseriseris

With the drums in his heart and the wine in his veins and the magic in his very being, Azriel cannot quite recall why he should resent this summons. He is not sure why he thought he had a choice in the matter—or, if he did, why his choice would have been to fight it.

He wants it.

He wants to eat of the divine. He wants to feel it fill him to bursting. He wants to know it is his and only his.

He wants Eris, Eris, Eris, eriseriseriseriseriseriseriseriseriseriseriseriseriseriser—

The faeries protest when he shrugs them off, but only in the time it takes for them to descend upon one another in his absence.

Azriel lets his shadows guide him through the writhe of creation, trusting them as he always has. They deliver him through without incident, and by the time he is outside of the recess in the rock wall, he is one of them entirely.

When he steps inside, they coalesce at his back, thick and impenetrable. For a sickening moment, there is only sound-swallowing blackness, and he is back in the cell, back in a prison of the mind.

Then, there is Eris.

Teardrops of flame wreath his head, dripping from his circlet of laurels as though living gems. No heat wafts from them, which Azriel is glad of with the crowding of their bodies in so confined a space.

Azriel watches Eris’s mouth, the shape, the motion of it, as he says, “The begonias here have been murmuring. They say that the lord of these lands is not so trusting of the Never-Fading Flower come to root itself in his garden. What do the shadows whisper of yours?”

The press of the walls will pose issue, but Azriel does not mind the rock biting rough into his cheek, not if it means he will be fucked into to the beat of the drums, over, over, over.

Eris plants a palm in the center of his chest with enough force behind it that Azriel realizes he must have been surging forth. He blinks once, again, bringing into focus narrowed eyes and that decadent mouth drawn down into a frown. It tilts to the side, and it takes a moment for Azriel to understand that this is because Eris has canted his head in deliberation—an activity which seems largely unnecessary.

With his free hand, Eris takes hold of the bottom of the veil and draws it up, up and over Azriel’s head.

Azriel shivers at the sensation of the fabric against his skin, the cool of the air on his overwarm cheeks, the weight of amber eyes running over his naked face.

Eris slides his hand up Azriel’s throat to grip at his jaw and leans in close, gaze flicking back and forth.

Almost, Azriel asks, Do you like me best like this? Is that why you place your palm here so often? To see me in the cradle of it? But he dares not displace the touch bestowed on him to hear the answer.

“Your lord allowed you to partake in the wine?”

Azriel drops his eyes back to Eris’s mouth. He nods.

Eris scowls. There is enough time before he speaks again that Azriel, even in his state, notices the wait. Eventually, he asks, “Is he not wary?” A tilt of his head towards the revel beyond. “Of invasive flora creeping into his garden?”

Azriel cannot fathom why there are so many words being exchanged right now—why Eris is not making use of his cock, tellingly hard in Azriel’s presence, so easily accessible through that lewd cut in his pants.

“Damn you,” Eris hisses, rattling at Azriel’s skull. “Focus.”

With tremendous effort, Azriel does as he is told. He focuses beyond the mouth in front of him, beyond the exposed body, beyond the cock he knows the taste of and the hole he has felt tight around him, and he hears the questions being posed.

Amarantha. Kissing Lucien. Stalking behind Tamlin. Back further, and he stumbles on his suspicions surrounding their attendance. He recalls feeling safe with Rhysand here, abstaining from drink to monitor Amarantha, because it meant Rhysand could watch over him as well.

Another jerk of his head, harsh enough to make him snarl out a warning.

“Then use your words—and choose them with care.”

“He is,” Azriel manages. “Wary.”

He hoped this would be the end of the talking, but by the way Eris frowns and searches his eyes again, he knows there is more to come. His entire body hurts. There is no more warmth and pleasant dizziness. Only want. Only need.

“It can be difficult to excise such an infestation,” Eris says. “So often, the roots are left behind, forgotten in their dormancy—and from them sprouts new life, just when you thought it gone. Once the blossoms open again, few are able to see beyond their beauty.”

Eris pauses there to ensure Azriel is following along. Azriel nods into his hand, though the syllables are dripping with tree sap languidness into his mind.

“It would be wise to treat this reemergence down to the roots. One hand to keep them from wriggling, another to scorch them from the earth.” Another pause, as though he is waiting for something. Then, “How would such a proposition be received by your lord?”

The words pool in Azriel with weight enough that their meaning finally registers.

Eris seeks to ally with Rhysand against Amarantha—but Rhysand will never ally with Eris. Not after Morrigan. And Azriel, even in this haze, knows with stark clarity that he does not want to court the risk of discovery after so long living with their lie.

This thought suspends itself, crystallizes, sinks like a stone into his belly, too heavy and too wretched for him to contend with. He lets it fall through him, the deep shame of it slipping so easily away from his unforgiving hold on it. If he were of clearer mind, he would realize it slipped away too easily, but he is not, and by the time he is, there will be nothing for it.

Azriel shakes his head, and Eris shoves him back by the face. The noise he makes is not quite one of protest.

“Of course,” Eris says. “He has displayed tonight that he is just as poorly bred as any of you, no matter the pretense he clings to. Why should he be any less susceptible to fatuity?” His face, flickering under his crown of fire, twists up into a sneer. “You are fast becoming more trouble than you are worth.”

All of this is too convoluted for the drums, the wine, the magic. Rhysand knows what to do. And if he does not, he will after tonight. There is nothing for them to be concerned with beyond fulfilling the demands of the rite.

Azriel says, “He’ll handle it.”

“Is that so?”

“He has a plan.”

Eris laughs, short and barking. There is no humor in it. He replies, “And you expect me to believe you privy to it?”

For some reason, this, of all things said, makes Azriel bristle. He draws up taller, spine lengthening, wings tucking in tight against his back. Eris regards this reaction in that stripping way that makes Azriel feel more exposed than his nudity ever could.

“I could scent the magic on those fountains,” Eris says. “Some manner of spell to lower inhibitions, if I had to guess. Our flower did well to perfume it—but if your lord is as wary as you say, surely he would have noticed as well. Curious, then, that he did nothing to stop you and his other pet bastard from drinking of them.”

Azriel shakes his head again, even as his skin begins to tighten uncomfortably around his neck. If Rhysand knew something like that, he would have intervened. And his abstention from drink was surely a matter of coincidence.

Azriel wills himself to believe this. He says, “I feel fine.”

“Tell me you’ve been able to think beyond your cock since she contrived her little speech,” Eris drawls, “and I might take your word for it.”

Of course he has. He’s thought of pushing it past Eris’s lips, guiding it past the slick of his tongue, down the heat of his throat, feeling him attempt to swallow around its girth, pushing deeper into the kneading sensation of his gag. He’s thought of Eris pulling off of it at the presumption, a lewd pop of suction at his wet mouth, tears of indignation burning hot at the corners of his eyes. He’s thought of Eris fisting his hair, forcing his face into the craggy ground, spreading him wide, wider, splitting him open and—

“My point exactly,” Eris gasps.

Azriel has him pinned against the cave wall. He is laving blindly at the curve of his neck, teeth and tongue, sampling the throb of his hallowed pulse. It beats counter to the drums, and Azriel feels his own begin to gravitate towards its rhythm instead.

With a shudder and a guttural noise from his chest, he seeks relief against Eris: the flat of his thigh, the juncture of his hip, the cock just as rigid as his own.

Eris shoves at Azriel then. He plants both palms on his chest, elbows locked to keep him at bay.

Azriel does not quite recall making the decision to move. He stumbles a step back.

“Look at you,” Eris reproves. “Made no better than a bitch in heat, all so he could keep you in the dark about his noble plan.” He rights the flaming laurels on his head, then smooths at the wrinkles made in his tunic. “Remember that, the next time you seek to blame me for your situation. Remember that you have indebted yourself to me to maintain the favor of a male who reduces you to this on a whim.”

Eris turns and burns his way through the blockade of shadow, silhouette shimmering as does parchment eaten away by flame. He takes the light with him, and the silence to follow. The noise of the debauch just beyond floods the small pocket of space at a thunderous volume. Above the drums: shrieking and moaning, slapping and grunting, all of it drenched through, wet.

It hits the ear no differently than a massacre would. 

As Azriel veils himself in the pitch black, that is what he envisions: a winged beast emerging from a crevice in the bottom of the world and letting all bear witness to the monstrosity of its makings in the moments before it eats down their lives.

But when he lurks through his shadow and into a pool of darkness across the cavern, this is not how he unleashes himself.

Even with hundreds of bodies tangled up in each other, Azriel locates Eris with ease. The shadows trailed him in his egress, all the way to the pallet of furs he claimed as his altar in their short time apart. He reclines against a pile of satiny, jewel-toned cushions with the languid ease of a godling long accustomed to accepting the worship he is due. The mouths of acolytes have latched themselves to the slivers of his body exposed by his clothing, one tending to the expanse of his neck still gleaming with Azriel. Others pleasure one another on either side of him, displaying the talents of their tongues and their fingers in the hopes that he will tire of the female bouncing on his cock soon and reach for one of them in her stead.

Azriel feels it the moment Eris notices him settling in to join the faeries on the pallet opposite his: three females and two males, one of whom hails undoubtedly from Autumn, with his freckled skin and short, rufescent hair. Eris’s gaze is a scorching, substantial thing as Azriel pulls this male against him, intense enough that it brings Azriel greater delight than even the hand that comes to trail up his thigh.

Azriel parts his legs with intention, so that instead of wrapping his long fingers around his cock, this male knows to reach for the flagon of oil and dip them into his hole. They are warm as they press in, and his skin begins to tingle with the stretch—though this, he thinks, could just as well be how Eris has trained his regard on the sight.

Performance of this nature has never come easily to Azriel. He was chosen well by the shadows, himself always content with observing, with catching the little betrayals of self that are offered when others think themselves unheeded—like the way Eris tightens his grip on the hips of the female devoting herself to him when Azriel arches his back, or the flicker of his nostrils when Azriel’s cock begins to weep over the swell of its head, or the flush spreading from his cheeks to his chest when Azriel moans. But as he is prepared by this male, he finds it profoundly simple to show Eris what he can be reduced to on a whim.

Azriel pushes the fae between his legs flat onto his back and straddles him in one fluid motion. There is a voracious glint to the black-chip eyes looking up at him as the male oils himself, but Azriel has no care for it. Beneath the privacy of his veil, he is holding steady to Eris’s gaze.

In perfect time with the female atop Eris, Azriel sinks down onto the cock notched at his loosened entrance. The fill stings even for his preparation, and the fleeting pain draws a moan from him.

Eris shudders.

Taking cue from this reaction, the female begins to grind down on him with ratcheting fervor, desperate to know the power that will flow through her and into the land in his release. Azriel watches as Eris growls out his dissatisfaction with this, then grabs at her waist tight enough to keep her still for his taking. She tips her head back at the new sensation, her round breasts pronounced, her long, fistable hair cascading down her back. Eris has selected only the best of his devotees.

Yet all he can do as he fucks into her is watch Azriel over her shoulder.

Eventually, she snakes her hand down her abdomen and toys with herself, perhaps to ease the unrelenting deepness of his thrusts, perhaps to facilitate her own climax in a way Eris does not care to.

Azriel thinks, If that were me, I wouldn’t let him use me. And he would like it—the way I took my time, the way I guided his pleasure along.

His shadows slither towards Eris, tucking in close enough that Azriel can almost feel what it would be like to have his body beneath him. For the first time since he set foot in this cavern, he begins to move against the beating of the drums. He rolls his hips with more intention, heat pooling low as this novel angle has the cock inside him brushing against where he needs it most.

Eris shudders once more, then closes his eyes against his pleasure. He is close now, Azriel knows.

Rapt and rolling, Azriel watches the strain of the tendons at Eris’s neck as he arches it, the upturn at the inner corners of his brows, the stutter of his pace and the full-body tense of his muscles.

From below, like the scrape of a blade against steel: “I’m—going to—”

Azriel clamps his palm over the faerie’s mouth just in time to see Eris spill within the fae atop him. Heat spurts deep in his own body, and he follows Eris over the edge, coming carelessly onto the smooth chest of the male beneath him.

Once the racks of his frame still, Azriel gathers himself without a word. He bids his shadows far from Eris as he rises to his feet, and this time, they obey.

He does not look to the godling where he lay spent. He does not let himself feel the weight of amber gaze between his wings. He does not slow when he passes a veiled Rhysand arranged like a temptation at the foot of Amarantha’s furs, nor when he passes a veiled Cassian fully immersed in the blonde female on her hands and knees before him some time later.

Feeling his heartbeat fall entirely out of time with the drums, Azriel wends his way out of the cavern and launches himself skyward.

[goyardgoyangi]

It is CANON geto has NO tattoos.

it’s SHOWN in the manga and anime.

you're totally right! canon geto doesn't have tattoos, and that's also very obviously shown in both the manga and anime.

but in my very own imagination, surf instructor! suguru absolutely does have tattoos because i think surfer guys with sleeves are insanely hot. i also think fanmade art of tattooed suguru is insanely hot, so that definitely influenced my vision for the fic too.

fanfiction is fiction after all, and all my works are unapologetically made with my imagination.

just a heads up for any new readers: all of my fics are extremely self-indulgent. i only write what i like, and use tumblr as a means to archive all my selfishly silly little works (because if i keep them in notion, i will accidentally delete them, and that has happened more times than i 'd like to admit).

TLDR; my works will absolutely diverge from canon jjk lore. if that ruffles your feathers, i kindly suggest restricting or blocking my account for your own peace of mind because if you make it through all my fics, you might end up one bald bird 🐣

[mroddmod]

everyone be quiet i'm manifesting

[ninja-knox-ur-sox-off]

Chronic Sonic pt 10

Longest part yet good grief. This was a part i had planned since the first post i made though so that makes sense.

1. Sonic dropped his cuffs on purpose if that wasn’t clear. He views it as better to hurt more and feel like himself than hurt less and not recognize himself in his reflection. (This is bad because if the inhibitors are not only helping with the pain but are also there to prevent his condition from worsening. Without them, his body starts to take the hit again.)

2, Tails knows that Sonic dropped his cuffs on purpose but won’t outright call him out on it. He is, however, upset with him because now Shadow is having to sacrifice himself just to keep him alive and Tails can’t be mad at Shadow because he’s literally just doing what’s necessary to keep Sonic from destroying himself. So it’s scolding for Sonic.

3. Usually Shadow and Sonic would do battle over this but Sonic has just done battle before the start of this comic and his inhibitor cuffs are off which means he is about as physically weak as he can get. So if you’re wondering why Shadow was able to just slap his inhibitors on Sonic without any trouble that’s why.

4. Sonic gets his first taste of watching someone else actively partake in self-destructive behaviour and not listen to him when he tries to talk them out of it. This does snap him out of some of the mental mess he’s in, and he will stop trying to actively damage himself. For now. Old habits die hard though.

[yaolmao]

au; Kid is a bit less orderly than how Death made him to be. Or Kid and Blackstar are mad

Dialogue in Yukio Mishima, Confessions of a Mask (pg.82)

[abisalli]

happy belated Halloween (just something quick bc I wanted to draw some vampire! bats)

[welcometogrouchland]

I have a LOTT of sketches I could post rn but these 2 are recent and I'm fond of them <3 Steph costume ideas and Tim/Damian cringe bickering inspired by Batman: Brave and the Bold #18!

[choccy-milky]

from my new oneshot, 'the vexing village of vellmore' ✨ ao3 / wattpad ((it's about seb & clora visiting a cursed village and trying to figure out how to break the curse, and since it ended up being 50k words i decided to split it into 2 chapters and the next part will be out soon!🙏 also, while it does have spoilers for the raven and the snake, it's a standalone story and can be read blind💖))

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Wrapping up the season with a redraw (Jan 2024)!

Thank you all for these last 6 months, I have loved making so many people laugh from my silly comics B*)

[princema-k]

ha ha ha wheeeee

(individual smaller expressions under the cut!!)

bonus:

if a total of Two (2) people are interested i will ramble abt my hcs abt layton's emotions REQUIREMENTS HAVE BEEN FULFILLED!!! check here for my rambles :)

[kiwichils]

kiss that dwarf

[bunnieswithknives]

The eepers!!!!!! They are so queer platonic to me

Minor note I decided while drawing this that Monty has ichthyosis. He deserves scales and also to shed everywhere

[dammjamboy]

i realize i never posted these doodles here.. i plan to draw dipper mabel and abuelita eventually ! but enjoy these for now :^]

[ecstandsforerraticcowboy]

otp posting otp posting otp posting like it’s 2014

[kyurochurro]

Sonic Beatles! 🎸🎶🎼🌷🍏

Paul is a ram, John is a bear, George is a cat, and Ringo is a toucan! :3c

[treatsformeeko]

Josephine Montilyet? Unmarried for ten years? I think not. Trust and believe that her butch wife locked that down asap