Archive of Our Own

“Are you going back there?” 

The question is soft—soft enough that for a moment Julien mistakes it for the last tattered scrap of conscience in his own head. 

Paranoia makes him glance back anyway, and he finds Azune standing in the doorway to Murray’s dormitory building, having apparently seen fit to follow Julien out after he’d finished offering the dwarf all he could recall of Tanessar. 

Occtis should have done this, he thinks, not for the first time. The arcanists could have talked each other’s ears off about necromantic theory that bypassed both Julien’s interests and capacity. But if Occtis had come here, Julien would have had to confront Thimble, and that would have gone far worse. 

So here he was, fresh out of a debrief with a Penteveral wizard and—apparently—her loyal little lapdog of a lieutenant, with his inscrutable duskglow gaze and unwelcome inquiries about Julien’s intentions.

”What does it matter to you where I go?” He narrowly manages to keep the growl out of his voice.   

“I’ve been back there several times since that night,” Azune replies, not answering the question at all. “Harondus Einfasen placed me in charge of the formal investigation.”  

Despite the frustrating opacity of the man before him, he does manage to make it clear what he thinks of the formality of said investigation. Julien supposes he should be thankful that the fate of his father’s house has fallen into the hands of a tenuous ally, rather than directly into the clutches of the Tachonis.  

Instead he spits on the steps. 

“So, what then?” he sneers. “Are you implying that I now require an escort to visit my own estate?” 

“No.” Azune’s voice is still soft. “Just… that you might want the companionship.” 

“Do I seem like I want companionship, lieutenant?” 

Gallingly, Azune’s brows and shoulders both lift, each as subtly as the other. 

“Well, you seem like you were planning to spend the night at the brothel near the Palazzo when you were done,” he says. 

And oh, Julien should just backhand this brat right down the stairs and into the street. He has just spent weeks under the curse of perpetual night with three of the most sanctimonious souls in Aramán breathing down his neck. The very last thing he needs is to be judged for his evening proclivities by an uptight whelp from the Revolutionary Guard, of all fucking things… 

But then the full picture painted by the lieutenant’s words resolves in his mind.

“Are you… are you implying what I think you are?” he stutters, much to his dismay. “Or is this some sort of ill-advised joke?” 

“Murray would tell you that I am not very good at jokes.” Azune’s brows pinch together in the very portrait of earnestness, and for fuck’s sake, nobody should be able to look so simultaneously hapless and beguiling. The birthmark on his cheek is distinctive and fascinating while also lending him the perpetual look of a man who has already been backhanded down a flight of stairs. He seems content to sway whichever way Julien might shove him, but a glimpse of the biceps between his cloak and cuirass suggest a body more than capable of bullying him back a little, were he so inclined… 

“Well, come on then…” he huffs, finally. “If we keep standing here your dwarf is liable to start charging us tuition.” 

He turns and sweeps down the stairs with renewed intent, just catching Azune mutter she’s not my dwarf as he follows two or three steps behind him. 

“Are you certain of that?” Julien laughs, because it is a twenty minute walk to the Palazzo, and he might as well get to know the man he’s all but agreed to fuck tonight. “She seems very partial to you. Does she know why you followed me out?”

Out of the corner of his eye he sees Azune shrug. “I don’t know. But we’re just friends.” 

Julien snorts. “A friend with the most benefits I have ever seen.” He hefts two handfuls of air in front of his chest. 

“She is more like an aunt to me than anything else,” Azune says, then, and Julien’s mouth, already primed for another lewd remark, suddenly snaps shut, as though a pair of fey-touched fingertips had scoldingly tapped his chin. 

“Ah…” he coughs, suddenly overcome with concern for His Lady—for the Orchard, for his family—and also with a desperate desire to stab his sword through something. “Another topic, then: tell me all you’ve learned of what transpired in the Palazzo.” 

“I think you know much more than I do about what actually happened that night,” Azune replies. He sounds apologetic, of all things, almost as though he wishes he had been there to witness it too. “Most of my work has gone into unraveling the Tachonis’ attempts at a cover-up, and feeding the most convenient version of the story to the Einfasens and Halovars.” 

“I see,” Julien says, idly working his jaw a bit as he realizes how hard he’s been pressing his molars together. “Well, if it’s evidence you seek—”

”It’s not—” 

“—I suppose it would be in my best interest to fill in the gaps for the perennially competent Revolutionary Guard,” he finishes, trampling right over Azune’s protests and quickening his steps. 

Azune stays silent but keeps pace, still lingering just over his shoulder rather than walking at his side. Julien doesn’t know whether to find the deference charming or irksome. That charming even occurs to him raises the hair on the back of his neck. 

He tries not to think about what one of those strong arms would feel like slung around his hips, and doesn’t realize quite how fast he’s walking until the streets run out and he finds himself panting at the Palazzo gate.

It stands closed and locked, though there are no guards on patrol. Julien finds with a pang of unease that he can’t recall whether he pulled the gate shut behind him as Vaelus ushered him away that night, or if, in his adrenaline stupor, he’d left it flung wide to all the world—not that it matters at this point. It doesn’t.

Julien reaches for his belt out of habit—

—and stops.

The unease morphs to a sour, simmering anger as Azune does the same.

And just like that, Julien realizes that he doesn’t have a key to his own gates anymore, but Azune apparently does.

“So I did need an escort after all,” he grits out as the gate swings open, almost too easily. 

“I don’t know what keys you carry,” Azune replies, so unassailably rational that Julien just wants to shut the gate again and slam the lieutenant into it.

Instead he storms inside and begins to weave his way through the gardens.

He doesn’t make it far. Rounding a cluster of flourishing hydrangea and honeysuckle puts Julien in line of sight to the front door of the estate.

You were standing just about here when Primus Tachonis—when he— 

Footsteps approach and then stop a few paces to the right. 

“If you’re having second thoughts, we don’t have to stay.” 

His companion’s voice is surefooted, the tone so similar to Vaelus that it takes Julien a second to remember who is standing beside him right now. Fucking paladins, he thinks, even as he realizes his hand has gone for the hilt of his rapier, while the other has squeezed the demigauntlet into a fist. 

“Stay?” he laughs. “I fucking live here.” 

It’s a strange half-truth that tastes as bitter as his laugh sounded. Not only does he technically live here, he now owns the place. And yet, he hasn’t truly lived here in ages. 

Julien rounds on Azune, one hand sweeping out toward the house with a flourish that’s just shy of mocking.

“The house was full. Preparations for the gala—staff everywhere, guests arriving early, the usual parade of spectacle.” He flicks his fingers, dismissive. “We’d just finished arguing—my father and I, which made it an average day of the week on all counts.”

He is keenly aware of Azune’s gaze on him. He stands at attention like the perfect soldier, shoulders square, hands clasped behind his back as his eyes and ears take in every bit of Julien they can. 

Julien doesn’t return the eye-contact. Can’t. He stares through Azune’s strange irises and dappled skin and directly into the rhododendrons behind him. 

“I came out here with the elf. Everything felt… wrong. Like a groundswell of dread beneath my boots. I thought I simply needed more wine in my veins. 

“Then my father came to the door,” he continues, only vaguely aware that his voice is gaining momentum the same way his steps had on the walk over. “I think he meant to apologize—”

Julien’s mouth twists; his throat aches. 

“He had just enough time to look as if he might say something useful before the Lord Tachonis disconnected his tongue from his teeth.”

Silence rings across the garden.

Julien lets his hand fall, hoping the lieutenant didn’t notice the way it had begun to tremble the longer he’d held it aloft—nor the way he now wipes his sweaty palm against his gambeson. 

Why had he just said so much? 

“Come,” he says. “I’d like to see what a mess they’ve made of the inside.”

He’s already walking toward the house when Azune finally speaks.

“I was taken from my father when I was young,” he confides, suddenly. “I don’t know what became of him. I assume he’s dead. But I don’t know that for certain.”

There’s no blood on the steps. No sign of a struggle, save for the vexing sensation of the man beside him agonizing over his next words. 

“There’s… room, in that uncertainty,” Azune decides on, finally. “For things that never happened.”

Julien’s shoulders pull tight.

“Spare me,” he snaps, wrenching open the door. “If you’re looking for common ground, you’ve chosen the wrong garden.”

”It’s sustained me, in a way—” Azune presses on as they enter the foyer, repaying the disregard Julien had shown him minutes earlier. “—to think about all the things I might still get to say to him. To my mother. My sister…”

Julien lets out a sharp, incredulous breath and drags a hand through his hair hard enough to snag in the curls, but Azune still isn’t done:

“...I’m truly sorry that you had to watch as that possibility was taken away from you.” 

He doesn’t realize his steps have looped back until he has the neck of Azune’s cloak fisted in his demigauntlet. 

“How dare you presume to know the nature of my grief?!” he snarls. “Is this why you came here? To pluck it from my ribs and— and taunt me with it like my father’s bloody skull?!” 

“Julien…” Azune sounds stricken.  

“Bold of you to invoke your father’s memory when you seem to have had no trouble finding a replacement,” he hisses, yanking him closer until the tip of the lieutenant’s nose nearly collides with his own. He bares his teeth. “Thjazi was probably the one who stole you from your family to begin with.” 

Azune doesn’t flinch. A subtle pinch of his brows is the only indication he registered Julien’s words at all. 

“… you can believe that if you need to,” he says. 

“What the fuck is that supposed to mean?”

”Exactly what I said,” Azune insists. “We tell ourselves the tales we need to survive.” 

From this distance, Azune’s words are barely more than warm wisps against Julien’s mouth, and his bangs brush Julien’s brow with every soft exhale. Julien might have the lieutenant by the throat, but he is once again all too aware of his musculature: the way those hammer-hefting arms could so easily shove him off—or pull him even closer. His belly starts to twist with wicked heat at the thought…

He drops Azune so quickly it sends them both staggering. 

“It’s bad enough you followed one Fang, without also sounding like the other,” he sneers. 

“And I guess you think it’s much better just to sound like an asshole,” Azune remarks. His tone is still astoundingly level, but it’s the first thing he’s said that had an ounce of spice to it, and it startles a bark of laughter from Julien’s throat. 

“It got you to bite back, didn’t it?” he chuckles. “And besides, I am an asshole.” 

Of course, the lieutenant has the gall to ruin the moment by adopting the facade of a kicked puppy and saying: 

“I don’t believe that, Julien.” 

“Oh, for fuck’s sake!” He can feel the scowl slamming back down over his face like that freakish curator’s fucked-up mask, and he stalks away toward the main staircase, the heels of his boots echoing across the vast, vacant marble floors. 

Less than a fortnight ago, this hall had been overflowing with flowers and artwork and fey guests in fancy dress. 

He thinks suddenly of Jahar, and Ilondria—and of Mardonus, with his broad, bare shoulders. Less than a fortnight ago, he’d been looking forward to falling into his bed and losing himself in a tangle of skin as golden and glowing as orchard fruit…

But now his friends are all dead, and his only hope of losing himself is currently still standing at the base of the stairs, watching Julien as if he is a puzzle shedding pieces in his wake. 

“You’d better hope I’m an asshole, lieutenant,” he tosses back from halfway up, “Otherwise I’m not sure how you were expecting to spend the rest of the evening.”   

He hesitates at the top, not long enough for Azune to fully catch up, but long enough to be hit with an echo of Lady Aranessa screaming his name. 

Sir Davinos! You are charged with the defense of this house. See it done!

The last time he reached this landing, the hallway was choked in shadow. He can recall his Lady beset on all sides by ghouls but never cowed. He can almost taste the fey high of her Haste spell sweeping through his veins as he raced into the guestroom to aid her…

The hallway is empty now, and he turns the opposite direction. 

His bedroom is just as barren as the hall. Bed, wardrobe, desk? Gone. The carved canopy that used to crowd the ceiling, the woven rugs that swallowed sound, the drapes that spared the recently-drunk from daylight—all of them have been stripped away, leaving only their permanent shadows on the sun-bleached floorboards. 

One chair remains, facing the door like a cuck to catastrophe.

Julien snorts. 

He’s already crouching by the leftmost window by the time Azune appears in the doorway. 

“This was your room, then?” he surmises after a pause. 

Julien grunts in the affirmative as he wedges a small knife into the third floorboard from the wall and pries it up, reaching into the crevice beneath. 

Two bottles of Davinos wine wait undisturbed, as well as a small pouch of gold and gems, and a rather embarrassing assortment of tokens from his teens and twenties. 

So they didn’t manage to clean this place out completely.

He grabs the pouch and one of the bottles and tucks them into the satchel at his hip, then sticks his knife into the cork of the second bottle and twists it out with a pop. There’s a little satin cord wrapped around the neck, strung with green glass beads and golden snapdragons of silk—one of Ilondria’s hair ties. Julien pulls it off, pockets it, and drinks deeply. Lets the sweetness swirl and simmer in his throat. 

“Great,” he says when he swallows, smearing a hand across his upper lip. “We’re done here.”

“We are?”

Julien kicks the floorboard back in place as he rises, but doesn’t bother tamping it down.  

“Of course. We got what we came for.”

But the lieutenant seems to disagree with that assessment. He’s stepped into the room, his attention drifting across the empty floor, the walls, like he’s trying to remember something he’s never seen before.  

“You didn’t come here for wine,” Azune says, as his gaze finally falls on Julien. “You could have gotten that anywhere.”

“Not wine like this.” Julien lifts the bottle slightly with a careless tilt of his head. “Might be one of the last bottles if the Orchard falls. You should feel honored I’m willing to share it with you tonight.”

Azune’s focus sharpens, but not at the offer of alcohol.

“The Orchard won’t fall,” he says, with absurd conviction. “I know they’re trying, but the Tachonis are sloppy, and House Royce won’t be caught off guard again—not without allies.” He pauses, and then ventures forward more carefully: “You may have lost part of your home here, but—”

“You think I’m here to mourn this place?” Julien laughs. “I lost this house long before anyone came through it with ghouls.

“I hid things from my father under those boards,” he says, flicking a glance toward the window. “Until I realized it was easier to just hide myself somewhere else.” He takes another swig from the bottle and smiles mirthlessly at Azune with wine-stained teeth. “I only ever came here when I ran out of alternatives.”

Azune takes that in, eyes wandering around the room again. 

”I get that,” he says.  

“You do, do you?” Julien scoffs. 

“I know what it’s like to be given shelter, and feel like you can’t stand to sleep in it.”  

Julien stares at him.

This bleeding-heart bastard of a charity case has no idea what he’s talking about. No idea how spoiled and rotten Julien’s heart can be. How easily he learned to walk away from things people would kill to keep.

“And now,” Azune adds—and at this point he must want Julien to choke him— “you don’t have an alternative.”

The room narrows. He could close the distance in a step, and drive Azune down onto the discolored stretch of floor where that ridiculous bed once stood. He could crush the breath out of him, reduce him to something small and manageable, something that doesn’t fucking look at him like that, and then tuck him away beneath the floorboards with the rest of his sweetest secrets—

“If you keep standing there like that,” he says, voice low and edged, “My alternative will be throwing you off a balcony.”

He shoulders past Azune on his way back to the door, hard enough to jostle his arm and send his next sip of wine splashing against the roof of his mouth. 

“You can try.” 

The lieutenant’s reply lands almost thoughtfully, like he’s taking the idea seriously, and the heat that suffuses Julien’s spine has nothing to do with anger.

He tightens his grip on the bottle and keeps walking, jaw set, not looking back.

He heads back downstairs and then keeps going, straight through the parlor and the kitchens, and down another level to the basement. 

It’s not that he truly expects the stores to be any more intact than the rest of the house. It would be idiotic for the Tachonis to strip the house and leave the cellar or the armory untouched, but a small part of Julien holds out hope for something. Anything. Even a small fraction of his family’s once formidable arsenal would bolster Vaelus and Thaisha and Occtis on the next leg of the long journey ahead. 

It’s the doors to the armory—heavily re-enforced yet tossed open like ten-foot pages of parchment—that fray Julien’s final nerve. 

He stands motionless in the massive archway, staring into the armory as vacantly as the room stares back, as Azune once again arrives at his shoulder. 

“It’s… violating… what they did to this place,” he says, hushed as though not to wake whatever spectres might still skulk beneath the earth here. “They didn’t just break the wards. They deleted them. And you’d think with that much abjuration there’d be something left, but instead it just leaves… absence… like even the memory of magic is missing from the material of the walls. They smell different—”

Julien smells nothing. Feels nothing. The words of an Arcane Marshall mean about as much to him as the wards ever did—which is to say, very little. It has never been his concern how such sorcery worked, only whether it held. And it clearly fucking hadn’t.

A small weapons rack still hangs haphazardly from the far wall, offering five wooden training blades like a mockery of a consolation prize.

He crosses the room and takes one down, spinning the grip once and testing its balance.

“Do you know how to use one of these?” he asks. “Or do you just swing a hammer and fling spells around?”

There’s a glimmer of something in Azune’s expression—amusement, perhaps.

“I know how to use a sword, Julien.”

“Good.”

Julien pulls a second blade free and tosses it across the room; Azune catches it cleanly.

“Fight me.” He steps back, gesturing to the space between them. “Best of three. No armor. No magic…”

His mouth curves, sharp where his blade is not.

“Stripped down. Just like this fucking house.”

Azune regards him for a moment longer before his head dips in a nod and he crosses to the far wall, shedding armor, shield, and weapon in a series of careful steps. Julien does the same in his corner, faster than necessary, feeling strangely light—almost buoyant—as the demigauntlet and epaulet strike the floor.

He paces while he waits, blade turning idly in his hand, tracking the line of Azune’s shoulders as the last of his plate falls away, the flex of his arms as he tests his sword with a few wide, whipping swings, his brow furrowing slightly at the lack of weight. 

A line of ink circles his right bicep, words too small to read from afar.

Julien doesn’t bother to count down before closing the distance.

He is quick enough that Azune’s first block comes late, the impact cracking sharply through the wood and into Julien’s wrist. He takes the opening immediately: feints high, draws the lift, drops low in the same motion. The strike catches Azune’s thigh, but Julien is already moving again, driving forward into him, turning through the contact as Azune gives half a step, then slipping past his line to snap the blade across his ribs.

“Point,” he declares, already withdrawing.

“I forgot about your famous distaste for the rules of engagement,” Azune remarks as he resets. He sounds less offended than he probably ought to. 

“That’s rich, coming from Thjazi-fucking-Fang’s protégé,” Julien shoots back, more out of curiosity than spite.

“And here I thought you had no idea who I was.”

He is far too pretty when he smirks. 

Julien comes in again with the same opening, but this time finds nothing there. The feint goes unanswered, the low strike glancing wide, and Julien realizes a second too late that he has already stepped too close. He leans into it, forcing the exchange into something tighter, less disciplined, blade and body working in tandem to create pressure where finesse has failed.

Azune meets him. Not cleanly—he overestimates, overcorrects, all the telltale signs of someone accustomed to a heavier weapon—but well enough to deny him anything easy, refusing to yield the clean angle Julien is looking for.

A feint becomes a shove, his shoulder driving into Azune’s chest, and for a moment the contact is too much to ignore: the heat of him, the burst of breath against Julien’s cheek, the startling flare in his eyes like sunlight slicing between buildings—

—and then it recedes, the magic snuffed before it fully manifested. 

Fucking tease. Julien snarls and whirls back in with renewed intensity. But the half-beat of distraction was all Azune needed. The counter catches Julien clean along the ribs, sharp enough to sting.

“Point,” Azune says, his breath rougher now. 

“You’re a cheat,” Julien balks, though it’s his turn to sound less offended than he should.

”It wasn’t intentional,” Azune insists, “but you should remember that Thjazi-fucking-Fang picked up half of his tricks from the House of your liege Lady.”

Julien exhales through his teeth, something like a laugh threading through it. The warmth of the wine lingers at the back of his throat, and his blood runs hotter for it. He feels alive—ignited—but it is not enough. It has never been enough. He wants more.

He wants to see those eyes flash again, and this time fail to fade. He wants to see this man break some rules—or just break.

He moves before the thought fully resolves, the shape of his attacks slipping as precision gives way to adrenaline. He pushes and harries and heckles, refusing Azune the space he would need to fight cleanly. 

Azune holds him off, but Julien can feel the deliberate effort in it— the way his stance absorbs force without returning it, his body shifting like he’s trying to accommodate Julien rather than overcome him. 

And Julien doesn’t want to be fucking managed. He twists away only to lash out in a wide arc, for a moment almost channeling Vaelus before closing back in. 

Azune’s arm sweeps up, bone catching more of the blow than his sword. His eyes flicker again, faint as lightning on a distant horizon, and Julien feels something in him roll like thunder in response.

That’s it. Come on. You know you want to.

It’s curious, he thinks, as he circles, and thrusts, and taunts: Azune keeps his hair tightly bound in a braid, yet his bangs still fall free, tipped in sweat and tumbling across his flushed cheeks. It sets Julien wondering what other loose ends he might find—just where he’d have to tug to get him to unravel… 

Decorum be damned: he grabs his blade with both hands and brings it down ferociously from overhead, putting all his weight into it.

Golden light bursts between them: a radiant spectre, arms crossed, intercepting the blow with a force that rings sharper and brighter than wood ever could—

—and then it is gone, collapsing just as quickly as it formed, leaving nothing but embers in Azune’s eyes.

There you are, gorgeous. 

Julien does not bother to hide his satisfaction, any more than Azune attempts to mask his chagrin. 

“It’s not exactly something I can—”

Julien lunges before an apology can take shape like another golden ghost. He doesn’t want it. He just got what he wanted—didn’t he?

Azune blocks and this time their blades lock, wood grinding as Julien bears down. They’re nose to nose, counting the seconds in jagged bursts of breath. One, two—five—ten—

Then Azune shifts.

The movement is small, but it changes everything; his grip slides, his angle adjusts, and the force Julien is applying suddenly has nowhere to go. 

His wrist turns, his leverage collapses, and before he can recover his blade is gone, knocked free to clatter across the stone behind him.

Julien doesn’t even bother to track it, just gets a hand in Azune’s collar and drives him into the wall hard enough to crush a groan out of him—and oh, gods, Julien needs to hear that again, badly. He needs to—to— 

Azune’s mouth is hot and breathless, and Julien has no sooner captured it than Azune drops his own sword and slides a hand beneath Julien’s shirt. His nails scrape over the base of Julien’s ribs like a blunt blade. 

“Point,” he whispers, and Julien’s whole body detonates with desire.

“Fuck you,” he hisses. 

“I think that’s the—”

”—the plan, yes, I’m aware,” Julien groans, his mouth following the rosy path of Azune’s birthmark down his throat to his collar. “Tansul’s fucking taint you are irritating.” 

“You kinda seem to like it,” Azune observes, almost giggling at the obscenity before gasping as Julien gets a thigh between his legs. His head hits the wall with a thud.

“My tastes are expansive. Don’t overthink it, Nayar.” 

“Okay. I’m not.” 

Dead gods, provoking this man is all but impossible. And Julien can’t even begin to comprehend why, but it’s really, really doing it for him. He’s so hard it hurts, and the chafe of Azune’s beard as he explores the soft spot beneath Julien’s ear is fucking electric… 

He gets a hand in the base of Azune’s braid and rips his mouth back onto his own, hips hitching against the strong muscle of a soldier’s thigh, desperate for friction, for anything Azune will give. And for one glorious, extended moment everything is as it should be: all heat and haste, and he’s pulled some new hot-shot at Castle Torch—except it’s also Mardonus pulling him, caging him in close with those perfect arms—and the Orchard is fine. His family is fine. His home is intact, and his biggest nemeses are the laces of his lover’s fly—

—and then Azune is pushing him back with a hand on his chest, gentle but firm. 

“Wait,” he pants. His mouth is a beautiful kiss-bitten red. “Wait…”

”Dead gods, what now?!” Julien snaps. 

“It’s okay. I just…” Azune’s face scrunches in a way that absolutely should not register as adorable in Julien’s head, but does. “I don’t want to fuck on the floor.” 

“You don’t want t—” Julien starts to echo, then stops and just gapes at him, dumbstruck. A bead of sweat itches on his brow; he smears it away and ends up tearing at his own hair. “Well, in case you haven’t noticed yet, furniture pickings are slim at Palazzo Davinos!” 

I’m trembling, he realizes, his throat tight like it’s holding back a sob, and what’s worse: he knows Azune notices. 

“We can go back to mine,” he offers, and then finds it necessary to clarify: “I have a bed.”

”I should fucking hope so?!” 

Vaelus had told Julien he was cursed, and she must have been right, because he just wants to get off and he’s somehow chosen the most incomprehensible man in Aramán to do the job.  

”I also have a shower?” Azune adds, then, uncertainly. And that…

… that sounds fantastic, actually. As does the bed, if Julien is going to be perfectly honest.  

He smears his hands down his face. 

“Fine.” 

The walk is a blur. Azune is the one leading now, and Julien follows without comment, his pulse still pounding too fast, his body too aware of itself in a way that makes the sights and sounds of a Dol’Makjar evening feel distant and unreal.

The entire apartment could fit inside Julien’s bedroom at the Palazzo in a way that makes even the comparison feel faintly obscene. The space resolves at a glance, centered by a rug woven of richly-dyed wool. There’s a tidy kitchenette and a tiny table pressed against the only window. One of its two chairs is buried beyond rescue under a tower of case files. A well-loved desk sits barely five feet away, similarly overtaken, and beside it an empty armor stand.

The bed dominates the rest of the space: tucked into the opposite corner and made so pristinely it looks almost painful for the linens.

Azune removes his boots and Julien follows suit, his attention catching on the windowsill, which, in sharp contrast, reads as a shrine to sentimentality. There’s a handful of pebbles worn smooth. A bundle of dried flowers. A trio of painted figurines: a lion, a wolf, a falcon. Julien spots a folded flyer for Halandil Fang’s new play. Suspended above it all, an almost invisible thread of gemstones glitter in the last light of dusk, not unlike those that dominated Murray Mag’Nesson’s flat. Red. Gold. Indigo.

So this is where you live. The thought arrives uninvited, and accompanied by something messier and much harder to articulate.

Azune lifts a hand, and the lamps bloom to life.

Warm light spills through the space, catching on the edges of things, softening them, deepening the shadows between. For a fleeting moment, Julien has the distinct impression of stepping into the den of a small, strange dragon—a creature created to hoard and protect that is instead subsisting on scraps.

“I’m not used to guests,” Azune says, rubbing at the back of his neck and staring around the room at nothing in particular.

Julien opens his mouth, ready to dismiss the concern outright, before Azune adds: 

“You’re definitely the nicest thing to ever grace the space.”

Julien stares at him for a beat, something like heartbreak cutting through the haze.

Nice.

A hundred recollections rush through his head at once. The taste of wine in his throat. A paladin’s flower wilting in his pocket. The taste of blood in his throat. Hurling Frons Tachonis off a ledge. The taste of bile in his throat. Spitting on Thjazi Fang’s corpse—

Julien Davinos has been called many things, and will admit to being most of them. 

None of them are nice. 

The fact that Azune seems to believe it, and without irony, does something catastrophic to Julien’s sanity.

“Are you hungry?” Azune asks, crossing toward the small larder. “I don’t have much, but I could throw something together—maybe some meat and cheese to go with the wine—?”

Julien catches Azune by the arm and wrenches him around.

The kiss lands harder than any of his blows in the armory. Julien doesn’t ease him into it, doesn’t test, just takes, desperate and demanding in a way that feels far more honest than anything he’s said since they left the Penteveral.

He pulls back just enough to breathe, to take him in.

“You said you had a shower.”

”Yeah…” Azune says, dazed, and then they’re stripping down for the second time, not stopping at the armor as they stumble across the rug. 

There’s a set of pocket doors built into the near wall, and Azune drags one open and hauls Julien through. 

The shower is miniscule, barely more than an alcove, and not built for two men with any need for personal space. It’s fortunate, then, that space is the very last thing Julien wants right now. He crowds Azune into the oiled-wood paneling, forcing him to fumble around blindly to twist on the water, and as the steam swirls around their bodies and escapes through the ceiling skylight, Julien begins to think he must be dreaming.

Time slows down, and he is all too happy to let it, wanting to map every slick plane of this man’s body, to bite a line of bruises along the edges of his birthmark. It is absurd how beautiful he is—especially as all that red hair falls loose from its braid and flows like a river of wine down the bronze skin of his back—and even more ridiculous how unaware of it he seems. Suddenly it becomes Julien’s mission to make sure he knows, and he sinks to his knees—

—only to nearly crack his brow against Azune’s as he does the same. 

“… what the fuck are you doing?” Julien asks, mystified.

“Going down on you?” The water beading on his ginger lashes makes him look like some pretty fey owl, and Julien is abruptly blindsided by the notion of those eyes blinking up at him while he swallows around Julien’s cock. 

“No, I’m going down on you,” he argues, regardless, and Azune’s brow furrows. 

“Um, look…” he says, and a blush starts to blend his birthmark into the rest of his face. “If you put your mouth on me, I am not going to last long enough to fuck you, and, well… you seem to want that a lot…?”

It’s Julien’s turn to blink. 

Truthfully, until that very moment, Julien had been assuming that he was going to be doing the fucking. He’s not even sure why, exactly; in hindsight, he’s been comparing this man to Mardonus all evening: the one man who could reliably pin Julien down and fuck him out of his mind, even when he was being the most temperamental bitch about it.  

He didn’t expect Azune to realize it, though. 

“Just let me take the edge off,” Azune coaxes, dropping a kiss on the corner of his mouth, and Julien isn’t sure he has enough blood left in his head to make it back to his feet. 

He somehow manages to rise and brace himself in a corner, willing his bones not to immediately liquify as Azune’s hands slide up his thighs and his nose nestles into his groin. 

He kisses the base of Julien’s cock like it’s something rare and precious, then runs his open mouth along the underside until he gets to the tip, tasting, teasing, then swiftly swallowing him down. 

“Dead fucking gods…” Julien moans, the words falling out of him more or less involuntarily. He reaches for Azune’s face, caressing his beard as Azune’s mouth works him over. “How… how are you good at this…?” He really didn’t seem like the sort who would get a lot of practice… 

Azune hollows his cheeks and pulls off slowly, rubbing Julien’s slit with his thumb as he catches his breath. 

“A soldier is a soldier is a soldier,” he says, shrugging as he kisses down Julien’s shaft again and then takes one of his balls into his mouth. 

“Yeah?” Julien manages, barely, as his head hits the wall behind him. “Did you give favors to all your banner buddies?” he goads. “Did that lion man ever shove his big cock down your throat?” 

“No,” Azune laughs, sounding startled at the mere idea, and Julien can feel his breath swirl along his wet skin. “I bet you’d like that, though,” he teases, before sinking all the way back down. 

“Nnnghhh fffuuck offfff…!” 

Azune’s hands wrap around his hips, holding them still as Julien’s whole body begs to buck. He’s grateful that the white noise of the shower masks at least some of his sounds, because otherwise this would be truly mortifying. He’s never come so fast just from head in his entire life, but he’s about to—and it’s okay, he rationalizes, because he has been wound up all evening, and the week before that was the worst of his life, and even if he comes now Azune has promised to fuck him, so it’s okay— 

The tight heat in his belly finally going slack is such a relief he forgets to warn Azune before spilling down his throat. But it’s hard to feel too bad about it when Azune just moans a little around the length of him and squeezes his ass. 

His knees finally give out, and he slides down the wall with a dramatic sigh. 

“Good?” Azune asks, his voice a husk of itself. His lower lip is shiny with come, and he’s pressing the heel of his palm against the root of himself like he’s seconds from his own release, just from sucking Julien’s cock. 

Dead gods, you’re really something else, Julien thinks, and leans in to kiss him. 

“So good,” he whispers, lazily licking the taste of himself off the roof of Azune’s mouth. “Bed?” he suggests, hopefully.   

“In a minute,” Azune replies, kissing Julien’s stubble. “First I want to wash your hair.” 

“You… what?” Julien isn’t sure he heard him correctly at first, but Azune is already reaching for the shelf that holds his soaps. “You get a guy off once and think that makes you mother hen?”

”I think,” Azune says, pouring a generous amount of a tonic into his palm. “That a guy who keeps curly hair this long—without tying it back—is vain enough to be fey, and I don’t particularly feel like dying when you wake up tomorrow morning and regret not conditioning it.” 

There are a lot of assumptions in that answer, not least of all that Julien will be waking up here tomorrow. But orgasms make him docile, and the way Azune is massaging his scalp, working his hair into a lather it hasn’t seen in weeks, has Julien wanting to dissolve into his hands and down the drain. 

The scent is clean and simple at first: a soldier’s soap. But there’s something beneath it that Julien can’t name. Something sun-warmed and spiced that doesn’t entirely belong to this place.

It clings.

At some point he can’t quite recall, they finally drag themselves from the bottom of the shower, and Julien finds himself sprawled in Azune’s bed, watching him hunt through the squeaky drawers of his desk until he finds what he’s looking for.

”You still want this?” he asks, holding up a small bottle of oil.  

“Yeah,” Julien says, grinning, “But it sounds like those drawers need it a lot more.” 

Azune snorts and shoves the last drawer shut before crawling into Julien’s arms and kissing him—gently at first, but swiftly escalating in hunger. His cock is a heavy heat against Julien’s hip, and Julien can’t even fathom how he’s managed to wait for so long. It’s been hours. 

The muscles in his arm ripple in the lamplight as he sits back and guides one of Julien’s knees toward the headboard, and Julien’s brain sputters to life long enough to actually read his tattoo. 

“Have mercy on those I send you…?” 

“What about it?” Azune asks as he unstoppers the oil. 

For the span of a heartbeat he is standing in the Palazzo, surrounded by shades, with his rapier buried to the hilt in Primus Tachonis’ bloodless back. 

Whatever it is you worship, I will send you to an oblivion where you can't even find that.

”Not what I would choose,” he says. 

“I’ll keep that in mind,” Azune replies, and presses a finger into his ass.

There’s a brief moment where the questions threaten to pile up in Julien’s mind. Mercy from who? Why? Who are you, really? And why do you want anything to do with a filthy reprobate like me?

But then Azune’s fingers find that little bundle of nerves that doubles as the kill switch for his brain, and none of it matters anymore.  

Azune is nothing if not true to his word, offering no leniency as he works Julien open. By the time he finally withdraws his fingers and starts to slick his cock, Julien is just as painfully hard as he was in the shower, if not moreso. And when he finally bottoms out with a low, lovely groan, Julien doesn’t take it for granted, arcing his back and luxuriating in the lieutenant’s modest, musky sheets like they’re the silks of the Orchard. 

“You don’t have to wait—just move,” he tries to command, but it comes out a little more breathless than he would have liked as Azune nips kisses up the exposed column of his throat. “Fuckkk…”

Then the heat of his breath washes over the shell of Julien’s ear:

“Don’t tell anyone…” Azune whispers, letting the tip of his nose trace the shapes of curling cartilage before continuing: “… but I kind of love how bossy you are.” 

The sensation zings down Julien’s spine like lightning before deeper comprehension follows like wildfire, and at Azune’s next slow thrust he moans before he can help himself. 

“I’m very good at following directions,” Azune adds, then, his voice straining just a little. “Just tell me how to make it good for you…”  

Somehow it’s only then that Julien really clocks the dynamic he’s fallen into—that he starts to understand the partner he’s bedded: a warm hunk of red clay eager to take whatever pleasing shape Julien might imagine. The sort of fuck you’d pay extra for at the brothel—and dead gods, you’d have to pay three months’ salary for a man as fucking beautiful as Azune Nayar. 

And here he is, offering himself to Julien for free… 

“Julien…?” Azune coaxes, nudging him from his stupor with the bridge of his nose to his cheekbone, like a big sweet animal—and something in Julien suddenly flares to life and fractures at the same time.  

“Flip me over,” he croaks, letting himself all but ragdoll as Azune pulls out and begins to haul him around. “On your knees. Pull my back to your—yes. Now sling your arm—oh, yes, fuck, that’s it…” He loses his train of thought as he feels the hot expanse of Azune’s chest press flush to his spine, and one buff arm curls around his neck and shoulders in the barest intimation of a headlock. It’s just tight enough that Julien can feel the solid bone of his forearm against his carotid, and the plush heat of his bicep against his cheek. 

He swallows thickly and braces one arm against the headboard, wholly unprepared for how the position would make his thighs start to quiver. It’s not him. He’s nothing special. You’re just so pent up…  

No strength of affirmation can keep him from whining as Azune steadies his hip with the other hand and rubs his cock along Julien’s cleft. 

“Fuck me like this…” he pants. Like a stray bitch in heat. The words stick in his throat like they’re soaked in poisoned honey. 

“Like this?” Azune asks, with his nose tucked behind Julien’s ear and his heavy breaths rushing warm down his neck as he presses back into him. Why he feels the need to confirm, Julien doesn’t know. How a man with a body like his could be so cautious in the sheets, Julien also doesn’t know. He’s frankly not sure he knows his own name right now.  

“Yes!” he hisses, scrambling for enough breath to add: “Harder.” 

To his deep chagrin, Mister I Love Following Orders seems to take this as a cue to pause instead of doubling down. But before Julien can muster the vocabulary to complain or even inquire, Azune shuffles slightly on the bedspread, nudging Julien’s knees slightly farther apart, and his next thrust finds his prostate so perfectly that the whole of Illumi’s Blanket bursts across Julien’s vision, dissolving his thoughts and punching them out of his mouth in a single witless bleat.

Then he does it again—and again: the interval of respite steadily decreasing as he works his hips with an earnestness to match the rest of his demeanor. And dead gods, for once Julien is not complaining. He’s not doing much of anything, really, besides clinging to the headboard and moaning like a whore as his head lolls around in the cradle of Azune’s elbow. He thinks maybe he should be trying to reciprocate a little better, but not a lot of oxygen is currently getting to his brain, and nothing has felt so fucking good in weeks—maybe years, so he decides to just let himself be greedy.  

His partner seems to be enjoying himself well enough, besides, if his intermittent little groans are anything to go by. He nuzzles through Julien’s damp curls until he finds skin and kisses his nape—sweet, almost too sweet—and Julien thinks it must be sorcery, the way his body weakens and washes with euphoria at one tiny, tender touch in the midst of getting his guts rearranged.

Azune’s free hand wanders across his torso: teasing his nipples and following the paths of scars across his ribs, smoothing over the planes of his stomach, lower and lower until Julien would be bucking and begging for that hand around his cock if his tongue or any other muscle in his body were still obeying him. 

Instead, the warmth of his palm stops and splays across Julien’s lower belly, fingers sifting through the trail of dark curls, gently pressing and rubbing like he thinks—fuck—like he thinks he might be able to feel himself rutting from the other side—

—but the joke is on him, because Julien has no sides, no skin, no boundaries, no bones or brains or thoughts. He is bliss vaguely shaped like a body. He is nothing but so much molten, golden thread, unspooling and unspooling and—

“Mmcommingain…” he slurs, uselessly, when he’s more accurately one or two aftershocks in and starting to return to himself. 

Azune is still fucking him steadily, chest heaving against Julien’s shuddering shoulders. After a moment he tumbles them down till they’re spooning in the sheets, drawing Julien’s thigh up and tucking a kiss beneath his ear. 

“Sorry. I’m almost—almost there, I promise… fuck… you… you feel so good—” he pants, as though it’s some grave imposition to fuck a man through his afterglow, or to seek pleasure rather than give it. 

Azune’s arm is pinned between his cheek and the pillow, and Julien reaches blindly to tangle their fingers, willing himself not to think too hard about it when Azune squeezes back. Instead he turns his face to kiss the inside of his bicep, gently at first, but then deeper, biting down into baby-soft skin and hard muscle and sucking until he leaves his own mark just beside the word mercy. 

“Give it to me, Nayar,” he urges. “Inside.” 

And Azune comes immediately, like he was only waiting for the command, pulling him close with a ragged growl of a groan against his shoulder as his rhythm stutters and stalls. The flood of warmth inside him is pleasantly familiar. 

The sharper heat suddenly flooding down his face is not. 

It takes him a second to understand what’s happening—and by then it’s too late. The tears are spilling over the bridge of his nose and dripping onto Azune’s arm.

Fuck, Julien Davinos doesn’t cry after sex. Doesn’t cuddle or chat either. He just gets up and leaves, or—if there’s enough wine in him—immediately passes out. The need to bolt seizes him like his own demigauntlet reaching into his stomach, grabbing his spine and trying to drag him from the sheets. 

But his body won’t move, too bludgeoned by endorphins and dread to do anything but lie there and feel it—the suffocating shame. The humiliating lack of control.

He waits for the man behind him to gather his wits well enough to notice the disaster in his arms. 

He waits for much longer than he expects to. 

And then the hand he’d forgotten he was holding tightens, just a little.

Julien forces himself to breathe—in, out, and then again.

“You can stay, if you’d like—or not,” Azune says. His voice is deeper with drowsiness, but there is no pity in it, and Julien’s anxiety begins to loosen its grip. “You don’t have to talk, or sleep—I think I have a few books somewhere. And there’s still food—”

Okay. Too much. 

“I appreciate your permission to execute my own free will,” he snaps, knowing exactly how petulant it sounds, and knowing equally well by now that his partner will simply parry it with all his paladin grace. 

“I only meant that you won’t offend me,” Azune replies. His free hand sends some bit of sorcery sweeping over Julien’s periphery, cleaning his skin, the sheets, and—Julien realizes with a misplaced hint of pride—the headboard of the bed.

“As if I care about causing offense,” Julien scoffs, only to gasp when those same fingers fist in his curls and tug his head back. 

A post-coital haze softens the horizon of those bewitching eyes, but not enough to hide the glint of mischief. 

“Let me rephrase: you will have to try a lot harder if you want to piss me off, Julien.” 

And Hallow, Hearth and Harrow help him if his cock doesn’t try its best to twitch at that.

He rolls over, telling himself it’s only so he doesn’t have to twist his neck to steal a kiss—or three, or five. And that’s what he’s doing: stealing them. Azune definitely isn’t offering. Definitely isn’t holding Julien’s face and indulging just as deeply. 

“What do you want me to do?” he asks, shocked to discover that he genuinely wants to know, and might even want to listen.

Azune’s brows lift, seemingly just as surprised, before he says: “I would probably sleep better if you stayed.” 

“Afraid that I’ll go to the brothel and bed someone better?” he teases. There is something warm in Julien’s ribs, squeezing at his lungs. It’s slightly maddening. 

“I’m afraid that you’d find trouble on the way there, and I’d miss a good fight,” Azune replies, with a lopsided little smile. 

I’ve already found trouble right here, Julien very nearly says, and then freezes. 

And for a moment they are back in the Palazzo, wood blades clashing, and locking, just before Azune doubled down and disarmed him completely… 

Fuck, Julien thinks, cowering behind a smirk as Azune leans back in. A quick curl of his calloused fingers snuffs the lamps just before his lips melt lazily into Julien’s mouth. 

Fuck, fuck, fuck.

Julien wakes in a state of utter disorientation. It is much too early for him to rise without one of his travelling companions dragging him from his bedroll, but nobody is shaking the sense into him, and he is in an actual bed. The linens are too rough and simple for a brothel. They smell of musk and sex and a soldier’s soap. They passed through Castle Torch days ago. He’s not even a little hungover—and he feels so well fucked—?

As his mind reels, there’s a soft sound of rustling paper a few feet away, and then the obnoxious squeal of an unoiled drawer.

Julien winces and blinks his eyes open to find Azune frozen over his desk, staring back at him with phosphorescent eyes, like a raccoon caught thieving in an alleyway. 

“Sorry,” he whispers. “I didn’t mean to wake you.” 

“This is your flat…” Julien says, his voice rough with sleep. He squints at Azune. “You’re trying to sneak out on me… in your own fucking flat?”   

“It’s best if I’m not late,” Azune says, though he sounds a bit sheepish. “I can’t give Einfasen any reason to start scrutinizing me.” 

Julien hums and yawns and scratches idly below his navel, before abruptly remembering the way Azune’s palm had felt against his skin. He wrenches his fingers away and shoves them under the pillow instead, all too aware of the way Azune’s eyes had tracked the movement like a pair of fireflies in the dim light. 

“But you could’ve kicked me out,” he observes, yawning again. 

“Sure, but there’s no reason to.” Azune shrugs. “It’s safe here, and you’ve been on the road for days.” 

He reaches into the drawer and withdraws a comb, beginning to work the knots from his hair, and even though Julien’s eyelids are still heavy with sleep, he finds himself unable to look away. 

Azune hasn’t donned his armor yet, and the Dol-Makjar dawn paints the shapes of his body with an ethereal glow. He watches those arms wield a comb, so different from how they hold a war hammer, yet somehow weaponized against Julien all the same…

He thinks suddenly of all the long afternoons he’d spent following Aranessa through the Orchard as a boy. The way she’d sat with him in the gardens and used daisy stems to teach him how to braid—twists and chains, fishtails and waterfalls— before eventually allowing him to practice in her own hair. 

He remembers the way Ilondria would rise from bedding him and just pile her tangled tresses back atop her head, and how—when he was sober enough—he’d longed to tend to them. To her… 

“Let me,” he says, immediately wincing at the sound of his voice in the hush of the room. Azune glances back at him, hands paused mid downstroke, and Julien swallows, willing himself not to beg for something so stupid. “Yes, I do know how to braid,” he huffs.  

Blessedly, Azune doesn’t inquire, just sits on the edge of the bed and passes Julien the comb. 

“Nothing too elaborate, please,” he says. “I just need it out of my face in case of a confrontation.”

“Skill issue,” Julien teases, and laughs when Azune throws him an unimpressed look over his shoulder. He gathers Azune’s hair at the nape and yanks it to redirect his attention forward, revelling in the tiny gasp that escapes his throat. 

“You know,” he continues, working the comb and his fingers through an endless river of auburn silk, “your hair is long enough that you could probably attach Vaelus’ censer to the end of it and have yourself another offhand.”

It’s Azune’s turn to laugh at that, and Julien has just about given up trying to hate the sound.

“I’ve been wondering about that thing,” he says. “Is it effective in battle? Has she let you try it?”

“Fuck no,” Julien snorts. “I mean—she hasn’t let me near it. But it is quite effective. Particularly against skeletons. And especially after she shoved some sort of ever-burning embers inside it—don’t ask me how they work. I told your dwarf everything I know about the magical shit.”

“She’s not my dwarf,” Azune reminds him, “and I’m more interested in anything else you might have learned about House Einfasen.”

And so Julien tells him everything he can recall—Lord Otto and his daughter, her unfortunate handmaiden, the still-imprisoned bannermen of House Royce. He talks through it with the kind of tactical certainty he’s been missing for weeks, while his hands move through the braid with a confidence that feels almost too easy to trust. 

It’s been a long time since Aranessa—or anyone else—has allowed him this sort of liberty.

Yesterday he shoved Ilondria’s hair tie into his pocket without so much as a second thought. Now he dares to imagine what Azune would look like adorned in green glass and snapdragons—

No. It’s too much. Too soon. Too something.

And it would require him to leave the bed, besides.

Still, if he decides to show off a little with an elegant six-strand chain plait, well—

He has never followed directions as well as the man in front of him.

“This is… really lovely, Julien,” Azune murmurs, as Julien secures the end and drapes it over his shoulder. “Thank you…” 

There is a question in his voice as he turns to look at Julien again—one that lifts Julien’s shoulders into a shrug and sends his gaze to the sheets.

“Yes, well, thanks for a good fuck,” he says. “And for a safe place to sleep for a full eight hours…” 

He makes the mistake of glancing back up, only to find that the question in Azune’s voice has spread to his whole face, burning in his eyes just as the first rays of the sunrise find their way through the cracks in the shutters. 

“Can I—”

I’m so fucking fucked, Julien thinks, despairingly, and wrenches Azune into a kiss before the question can escape his mouth. 

——————————

Bafflingly, Azune accounted for the time it would take for Julien to banter and braid his hair, but did not factor in an extra ten minutes for Julien to get a hand in his breeches again. And so, after a brief flurry of what could only be called foreplay, Julien suddenly finds himself alone in Azune’s bed once again, watching the lieutenant heft his hammer and walk out the door. 

What the actual fuck are you doing, Davinos? He flops onto his back with a groan and presses the heels of his hands over his eyes. Tumbling Thjazi’s whelp is one thing, but letting him drag you over the cliffside with him? Be fucking sensible. 

But nevermind the rest of him: Julien’s libido has never been sensible, and isn’t about to change its tune this morning, no matter how long he lies there lamenting it. Knowing this, he stretches out across the mattress and brings himself off swiftly to thoughts of big biceps and bright eyes, and if some of his seed splashes the sheets, it serves his host right for being such a damned tease.  

With that taken care of, he rises and wipes the rest off on the towel he used last night, then reaches for his clothes—

—only to find a small pouch and neatly folded note nestled in the folds of his shirt. 

J—

Take these to Thaisha and have her make copies, then bring the originals back to me. If I’m not here tonight, you can let yourself in. 

You don’t need an escort to visit your own home. 

—A

He reads the note once, and then again in bewilderment, before fumbling for the pouch and dumping its contents into the palm of his hand. 

Keys. Three of them. Julien immediately recognizes the first two; they open the Palazzo gate and front door. 

The third is much smaller, and far less ornate. 

When Julien finally pulls himself together and leaves the lieutenant’s flat, it slides into the lock and turns with no resistance.