Archive of Our Own

“Can you use that trick of yours to look like… anyone?” 

The question spills from Julien’s mouth before he can think better of it. 

He’s in Azune’s flat, sitting at his miniscule kitchen table and watching as Azune—unprompted—fills and sets a tea kettle on the stove.

Julien told himself he wouldn’t come back here. He’d declared it the first time he’d fallen asleep in Azune’s bed, and again as he asked Thaisha to make him a copy of Azune’s key, and every time thereafter when he's been around to see the sun set over Dol-Makjar. He promised himself he would find his own flat—it’s not as though he doesn’t still have the means—or return to the brothel, or simply an inn. Anything to stop indulging in this seemingly stringless hospitality.

But it’s been over a month, and here he is yet again, and Azune is placing a humble attempt at a charcuterie board in front him: crusty bread and one type each of soft and hard cheese, some cured sausage, and a little bowl of nuts. 

“It’s easier if I’ve had a chance to study them—or at least seen them before,” he says, sinking into the seat across from Julien with a tired sigh. 

The first time Julien had entered this space, the second chair had been relegated to storage, housing all the paperwork that overflowed from the lieutenant’s desk. It hadn’t escaped Julien’s notice when, on his third or fourth appearance, the clutter had been cleared away, creating room for two to sit.

It also hasn’t escaped his notice that their knees knock beneath the table, and that they inevitably seem to twine their ankles together within five minutes of sitting down.  

“Sorry I don’t have any fruit,” Azune continues, as though it’s somehow his fault that Julien ate his last pear for breakfast this morning, and he hasn’t found a moment to go to the market and buy more while orchestrating a godsdamned armed rebellion.

Julien watches him fashion a careful sandwich out of tiles of cheese and meat, frowning as he rearranges the little shapes several times to make them fit, and thinks: you’re so cute it makes me sick, and then immediately: fuck fuck fuck fuck shut up shut up stop. 

“It’s fine,” he says, proud of how he keeps his voice from cracking. He pops a piece of sausage into his mouth and smears cheese onto one of the slices of bread as he chews. “And that makes sense, though it wasn’t exactly what I meant to ask…” 

“So what did you mean to ask, then?” Azune doesn’t sound wary, just curious.

And isn’t that just the question? Julien has been trying to figure out what he wants to say—and how to say it—for the last two hours. Since they were nearly set upon by the Sons of the Dawn somewhere in the Tanners, only for Azune to duck into an alley and transform before Julien’s eyes into the spitting image of Filoneus Halovar. 

He’d sent the mercenaries scurrying with an improvised speech embellished by the impending arrival of his hounds, conveniently portrayed by Kattigan and Wulferic growling around the corner. Julien, meanwhile, hadn’t done much of anything save for hiding his face and preparing his blade for when somebody called their bluff. He’d seen enough illusory disguises fail on account of a single smuggled spell glyph not to fear the worst. 

But there was something different about Azune’s transformation that even a magical neophyte like Julien couldn’t miss. Illusions were … monolithic. Dreamlike. A careful mask pulled on all at once. Even in the depths of the Orchard, he’d never seen an illusion silver a person’s beard in real time, nor repaint a blotchy birthmark into careful, luminous linework, nor carve wrinkles into supple skin. 

Julien had felt those wrinkles against his fingertips when all was said and done, and they hadn’t been a trick of the light. For however brief a time, Azune had become—at least physically—Sir Halovar. 

And ever since, Julien’s tongue has been tying itself in knots trying to articulate what this knowledge does to him…  

“I’m less curious about the means than the ends…” he lands on, finally. “Does it have to be a real person? And can you only turn into one at a time? Or could you… blend them together?” 

“I can blend them,” Azune confirms, “or just make something up. I can be anything roughly my size and shape.” He takes a bite of his sandwich, chews and swallows, then lifts a brow the way Julien has noticed he does when he’s parsed somebody’s exact words and no further implications beyond them. “Why?” 

Dead gods, Julien thinks, desperately. He’s really going to make me come out and say it… 

“Could you—” he starts and then falters, exhaling sharply through his nose and looking away out the window as anxiety surges over him like the river outside. He goes to bounce his leg only to find that, sure enough, his shins have once again been taken captive, consciously or not, by the man across the table. 

“Jules…?” he coaxes. His toes nudge into the arch of Julien’s foot, and something hot and sweet and shameful floods his body until he feels all but feral with panic. 

“If I wanted to fuck a woman, o-or several, could you do that?” he blurts with embarrassing speed and pitch. “I-I mean: could you be them—all of them at once?” He can feel both his pride and his voice fracturing with every syllable, so he quickly appends, as crudely as possible: “Or would I be better off heading to the Tangled Sheet and paying for multiple companions?” 

Azune’s mouth parts into the shape of a tiny ‘oh’ that never emerges, and his other eyebrow floats up to meet the first. For several long, painful seconds he simply stares at Julien, like now that one hand of cards is on the table he’s trying to suss out which ones Julien might still be holding. 

It makes his skin crawl until he can’t cope with it anymore, and he backs the chair away from the table with a screech. 

“Actually, no. Forget I asked. It—”

“I could do that…” Azune says at the same moment. He quickly doubles down: “I can do that, Julien.” 

Julien had been halfway to standing, but the words send him dropping like a stone back into his seat. 

“Okay…?” he croaks, heart hammering. “Is that… I-I mean…” He forces himself to take a breath. “Do you want to do it?” 

Azune’s brow furrows, but he shrugs. “I have no idea. It’s never really occurred to me. But I’m willing to try it out, if it’s what you want.”

And—yeah, Julien knows he should have seen that answer coming leagues and leagues away. Damn you and your insane need to serve people, he thinks, but Azune has already granted Julien’s body permission to continue flirting with the prospect, and his cock, at least, has no qualms expressing how much it wants this.  

The kettle starts to whistle, and Azune rises to move it off the heat, busying himself with mugs and tea tins. 

“Do I know any of these women?” he asks, and Julien’s stomach drops with another realization he should have had long before this moment: 

You’re handing a master manipulator the world’s best blackmail material right now, you idiot. 

But the interest in Azune’s voice doesn’t speak of machinations or ulterior motives. Not exactly. There’s a hidden blade here, but the edge seems to be aimed inward rather than out, and Julien has no idea what to do with that knowledge, save for what he does with most knowledge he comes across—stubbornly ignoring it.

“You’re familiar with two of the three…” he admits, slowly. “But you can… um… I’ll give you veto power if there’s anyone that you’d rather not—you know…” he trails off, less out of embarrassment than a lack of vocabulary for what exactly Azune does.  

He doesn’t register his fingers drumming on the table until Azune pushes a warm mug into them, and he breathes in a swirl of steam that smells of sweet ginger and cloves. 

“Finish eating something first,” Azune says, sitting back down with his own mug. 

“You’re being very fucking calm about this…” Julien complains, even as he goes for another piece of bread.

”I’ve had a lot of practice being very fucking calm in situations much more dire.” 

“Like talking down a band of mercenaries while pretending to be a Halovar?” Julien laughs, still slightly bewildered about the whole thing. 

“For example,” Azune agrees, the corner of his mouth ticking up. “And besides, I have it on good authority that Sir Julien Davinos knows his way around a woman’s body,” he adds, and Julien nearly chokes on his next bite. “Maybe I’d like to see for myself.” 

“Dead Gods, Nayar,” he coughs, reaching for the tea. He briefly wishes it were wine, but then has to admit that wine would do a poor job soothing his stomach at the moment. “Every time I think I have you figured out, you manage to surprise me.” 

Azune doesn’t reply to that, but there’s something in his expression: a flush stealing across his cheeks, the smirk threatening to transform into something bigger and brighter. It’s like Julien has just paid him the greatest compliment he can fathom. 

He files that information away somewhere near wherever that hidden blade went. 

The rest of supper passes quickly but casually, which is almost worse, somehow, because Julien is restless, and halfway hard, and Azune is trying to talk to him about tactics. They need to talk tactics: Julien’s supposed to head out with Teor and Thimble for the Orchard in three days' time, with a planned stop at Castle Klippenblicke to free the Royce bannermen by one means or another. 

Azune wants to send a small contingent of their newly formed mercenary group to serve as backup should things go sideways, which is smart. He also wants to disguise them as emissaries to ensure they get through the gates, which, though it will take some careful coordination, is even smarter. Azune is so quick, Julien thinks—but not in a trivial, academic way. He reads situations instead of books, always seems to know what needs to be done, and then gets it done with calm conviction. 

It’s a cluster of qualities that he shares with Lady Aranessa, which, though Julien is loath to admit it, is probably part of why Azune holds such a sway over him. He doesn’t mind relinquishing a little control in their presence, because he knows they won’t lord it over him. And though they never ask, something about both of them makes Julien want to be a better version of himself—

—even when that means getting up and offering to dry the dishes as Azune washes them. 

“So… Lady Aranessa?” Azune asks, and Julien nearly drops the mug he’s holding, wondering in horror whether he’d been muttering his thoughts aloud, or if maybe Azune can read them, on top of all his other uncanny abilities. Fucking sorcerers.

“… what about her?” 

“I just figured she was probably top of the list,”  Azune shrugs. 

”She—what? No, I—” Julien sets the mug down carefully and smears a damp hand over his face, trying to figure out how to describe just how far his liege lady sits from all the perversions in the back of his mind. 

In this, she and Azune are not at all alike.

“She’s… not my dwarf,” he manages, finally, nodding back to the first night they spent together, and Azune’s patient insistence that Murray Mag’Nesson was nothing more than a friend. 

“Fair enough,” Azune laughs. “But if you’re hoping to fuck Murray, I think you’d be better off just asking her outright. I think she’d at least consider it…”

”No…” Julien mutters, though the thought of Mag’nesson’s cleavage does give him pause for a moment. “She wasn’t on my list either.” 

Azune turns off the tap and dries his hands on a soft rag, then leans his hip against the counter and sways into Julien’s space just enough to be felt. 

“Do you want me to keep guessing?” he murmurs, and the horizon in his eyes shimmers with summer-like heat. “Or do you want to tell me?” 

“Fuck…” Julien breathes, as that same heat spills down his spine and begins to pool in his belly. He reaches for Azune’s waist, not sure whether he’s trying to pull him closer or just steady himself. “You’re sure about this?” 

“I have no issue indulging you within these four walls…” Azune says, and that strange edge is back in his voice. “…so long as it stays here.” 

“Yeah. Of course!” Julien agrees readily. “You know I don’t kiss and tell…” That isn’t completely true, but they have both managed to keep whatever this is a secret from the rest of their compatriots so far. He feels his jaw dangling uselessly as his mind searches for something else to say that isn’t utterly damning. 

Nothing comes, so Julien kisses him. He kisses him and tries not to think about how kissing Azune Nayar feels like falling from a dizzying height, only to be caught mid-air in Araman’s most perfect pair of arms—and how that knowledge makes some sick thing inside of Julien want to seek out catwalks and cliffs like a lemming— 

For now he settles for seeking out the bed, bullying Azune backwards as they shed their clothes in the usual haphazard manner, trying to touch everything within reach like greedy children with grubby fingers. Julien’s hands wander from waist to shoulders, while Azune’s mirror them in the opposite direction, sliding lower and lower until they sneak into Julien’s smallclothes and squeeze his ass—

—which is when he first notices the long, dangerously sharp nails. 

Julien’s eyes fly open with a gasp. 

He’s met with evergreen skin and a cascade of dark curls far tighter than his own. Sunset eyes have yielded to the black of night, set with irises like twin moons. 

“Am I getting warmer?” purrs a perfect facsimile of Thaisha’s voice. 

“Holy shit…” Julien whispers, and the responding laugh is Thaisha’s too, low and laced with a subtle threat that sends all the remaining blood in his head rushing to his cock. “You… you’re…” His hands slide downward again, shaking as they gather and grope at a generous pair of tits that he has spent entirely too much time trying not to stare at lately. 

He drags blunt thumbnails across nipples that have nursed more than one child, and Azune utters a soft, surprised noise.

“Oh…!” His gaze drops to watch Julien’s hands, and though his voice isn’t his, the intonation definitely is. “That—hmmnnh—that feels better than I expected it to—” 

A giddy laugh leaves Julien’s throat. 

“Dead gods, you’re incredible,” he murmurs, and kisses that plush mouth, heedless of the tusks that tease his lower lip. 

“Who else?” Azune asks, all business.

Julien—with some difficulty—manages to let go of him long enough to fall back onto the bed, propping himself up on an elbow as Azune shifts to stand between his legs. 

There’s an unmistakable presence in the way he holds Thaisha’s voluptuous frame: shoulders subtly back, dark eyes fixed on Julien’s face, like he’s waiting for a verdict—or perhaps getting ready to deliver one. 

That alone is enough to make Julien’s pulse stumble.

“The elf,” he says. “Vaelus.”

“Hm.” Dark lips curve around one tusk in a smirk that is somehow all of Thaisha’s judgement and still entirely Azune’s amusement. 

“What?” Julien tries his best not to bristle. 

“Nothing…” Azune replies, in a voice that says the swears opposite. “It must have been hard to be stuck on the road for days with a pair of beautiful women more interested in each other than you…” 

Julien gives him a flat look and gestures to his cock, full and flushed against his belly. 

“Very hard, yes,” he grouses. “Are you going to do something about it?” 

“Maybe eventually,” Azune teases. “Elves have a lot of time on their hands.” But as he speaks, the wild mane of Thaisha’s hair turns as white as bone, and her green skin grows dusky purple. The color crawls across Azune’s body like the shimmer of an ivy leaf under moonlight, beautiful enough that Julien forgets to breathe. 

His birthmark briefly resurfaces, then rearchitects itself into a swirl of arcane scarring, and pointed orcish ears begin to lengthen, only for one of them to curdle abruptly into a ragged edge. 

“I can’t believe how much detail you remember…” Julien says, captivated, and also slightly embarrassed to realize that, but for Azune showing it to him, he wouldn’t have recalled Vaelus’ torn ear at all. 

“… how could I forget?” Azune counters, and Julien suspects no transformation could fully hide the way his brow furrows when he’s puzzled. “If you don’t want the scars, I can make them go away—”

“What? No…” Julien blinks, dazed. He pushes himself up on one arm and reaches out with the other. “Just come here, you crazy delight…”

The way Azune takes his hand feels more like Julien is helping him out of a carriage, rather than into his lap. 

“So who’s the third?” he asks, then gasps as Julien immediately buries his face in his tits, kneading them slowly. “You said three…” he persists—almost a whine—even as Julien sucks a mauvy nipple into his mouth and moans. 

“Are you trying to get a good grade in shapeshifting or something?” Julien snorts, grazing his teeth over spit-slick skin and revelling in the way Azune’s hips start to twitch about it. “Yes, I said three. But it doesn’t matter—this is good. More than good.” 

“… Okay,” Azune says, the same way one might agree to a question in a foreign language, simply to end the exchange, and Julien belatedly registers just how tense he is.  

“Stop thinking so much,” he coaxes, kissing his shoulder and rubbing his hips. “You said you’ve never tried this before…?”

Azune shakes his head minutely. “I didn’t really know I could until a few weeks ago…”

“And…?” Julien laughs. “If I suddenly discovered I could transform into a creature capable of multiple orgasms, the very first thing I’d do is try to set a record, and you’re telling me you didn’t even try for one?”

“I had other things on my mind,” he replies—and it is deeply unsettling to watch Thaisha’s eyes grow even darker with whatever bit of Azune’s trauma he has just touched upon.

“Well, none of that now, alright?” he says, trying for cavalier. “How about we find out how talented you truly are, yes?” 

“Um…okay…?” Azune agrees again, and then yelps as Julien twists to tumble him onto his back in the blankets. 

Julien kisses an enthusiastic path down his body, quickly discovering that every little scrap of sensation—be it from the tip of Julien’s tongue or the sweep of his curls— makes Azune shiver and squirm like he’s never been touched before. His thighs tremor like a virgin’s, threatening to clamp shut when Julien gently eases them apart, and it’s an absolute mindfuck to imagine that this is Thaisha Lloy—or an elf of eight centuries—rendered shy and swooning beneath Julien’s attention. It makes him feel momentarily omnipotent—godly—and then utterly adolescent for even daring to contemplate it, like a dog worrying its way through a locked pantry door.  

“Um… is it alright?” Azune asks, anxiously, and Julien abruptly realizes he’s just been sprawled there staring at his partner’s conjured cunt like a clueless idiot. So much for Sir Julien Davinos knowing his way around a woman’s body. “I had to infer, based on what I’ve seen—which isn’t much, honestly—but if you wanted something different—”

“Shhh. Hush,” Julien tells him, curling his arms deeper around Azune’s legs and kissing the crook of his knee until the shaking subsides a bit, then musters his slyest grin. 

“You tell me if it’s alright,” he says, and sinks down without further preamble to indulge in his wildest godsdamned fantasies made real…

“Ohhh … oh fuck, Julien—!”

It’s the first time he’s heard his name in Thaisha’s voice without the trappings of contempt or exasperation, and it hits like the ballista bolt she nearly fired into his chest in Tannesar. Dead Gods, he’s wanted this—needed it: her clit in his mouth and her thighs wrapped around his ears as he knocks her off her high horse and gives her something else to ride. Long nails rake across his scalp and he moans, nuzzling and licking deeper until the legs on either side of him start to tremble and kick.

That’s it—go a little wild for me, woman. When’s the last time Halandil fucking Fang gave you anything close to this? I bet the real reason you hate that I fucked Alogar is because it wasn’t you—

Thaisha whimpers.

Julien’s eyes flutter open before he can stop himself.

It’s not her now, either.

The body splayed above him still bears Thaisha’s shape: full hips, heavy chest heaving, sharp tusks catching against swollen lips. But the sound that just escaped her was all wrong. Too breathless. Too startled. Too open to be Thaisha or the elf layered on top.

She wouldn’t taste like this either. She’d be earthy and rich to counter all the fire on her tongue. Instead Julien’s mouth fills with the now-familiar flavor of Azune’s pleasure: summer rain striking hot stone; sweet nectar threaded through with the bitter ghost of lightning.

Julien feels the fantasy beginning to slip and lunges after it on instinct, hooking an arm harder around the thigh on his shoulder and replacing his tongue with two fingers, forcing them both back into their roles.

“Fucking—cocky bastard!” comes the immediate response, still breathy but rougher now, and those nails sink into his nape, scraping between his shoulderblades hard enough to sting. Relief roars hot and stupid through Julien’s chest.

There you are, he thinks. The steel-spined Lady Lloy finally fracturing apart for me. That’s all this is.

Then he crooks his fingers upward—

—and she bows violently off the mattress with a strangled cry, promptly kicking Julien in the ribs.

“Fuck—!”

Pain blooms hot through his chest as he nearly gets brained by a knee. For one dizzy second he can do nothing but gape while Thaisha flails like a startled colt tangled in its own legs.

No. Not Thaisha. Nobody has ever looked less like Thaisha Lloy in their entire fucking life.

“Sorrysorrysorry—holy shit, Jules—!” Azune gasps, clutching at the sheets. Another shudder wracks through him hard. “… I think I just came.”

“You think?!” Julien blurts.

Azune blinks foggily down at him.

“It was just so—” He swallows hard. “Different.” His head falls back into the pillows.

Julien presses a hand against his ribs—just to feel the way the echo of the impact throbs beneath his palm like a receding dream—then wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. 

“Good different…?”

“Incredible,” Azune sighs immediately—and there’s no pretense there, no facade or sly flirtation. Just honest amazement, like he stumbled through one of the pocket doors in the wall to reveal an entirely new room in his flat. “I want another…” 

Julien snorts. Look who’s seeing things my way. 

“Greedy thing,” he croons, smiling wickedly. He hooks a thumb back inside Azune’s cunt and revels in the helpless jolt it draws from him. Dead gods, he’s wet. “I suppose you’ll be needing my cock now, yes?”

“Can I—”

The question bursts out of Azune before Julien even finishes speaking, and he arches a brow. 

“Yes?”

Azune blinks, seeming to realize belatedly that he interrupted. 

“Could I try being on top?”

The eagerness in his voice lands hard enough to make the blow to Julien’s ribs feel suddenly incidental. Thaisha would cave his ribs in without apology, then pin him down and peg him; she definitely wouldn’t lie there and beg to bounce on Julien’s cock like she just discovered paradise. 

“... Alright,” he says quickly, before his brain can snag too hard on the dissonance. “But if you’re going to ride me, I think I deserve a few adjustments first.”

“Oh. So I am being graded?” he laughs. 

Julien scowls at him. “Do you want a fucking report card?” 

“I just told you what I want.” Azune sits up and slings an arm around Julien’s shoulders. “What do you want?” He presses a teasing kiss to Julien’s lips, and then another: slower, searching, and Julien suddenly can’t stand the touch of tusks.

“Drop the Thaisha part,” he says. “No offense to her, but I think if you sit on me looking that smug I’ll go soft on the spot.”

“Can’t have that…” murmurs Azune, and his voice is already different, even before his body catches up.

He uses the arm around Julien’s shoulders to guide him down into the sheets, settling astride Julien’s hips as Thaisha’s lush figure narrows by slow degrees. The scars remain, the torn ear remains, but muscle slides and stretches until every curve has been streamlined into a tool of quiet restraint. Julien is captivated by the way the magnitude of Azune’s power never shifts—merely the quality of it; the same strength that Azune wields as a wall manifests in Thaisha as a shillelagh, and in Vaelus as silk rope. 

And speaking of silk, that impossible cloud of curls abruptly loosens and lengthens, washing over one dark shoulder and onto Julien’s chest in a river that somehow retains its icy tones even in the golden warmth of the lamplight. 

It’s a vision so ethereal that he’s almost surprised when the body sinking down on his cock in cautious increments doesn’t just dissolve into the shadows of the room. 

“Good?” Vaelus asks—terse and tender in equal measure. 

Julien’s answering shiver is bone deep and delicious, and for the first time all evening, he thinks he may actually be able to shut his brain off and simply enjoy this.

He sprawls upon the blankets with a groan as she braces a hand beside his shoulder and begins to rock against him. Her motions are awkward at first, exploratory and half-aborted with hitching breaths. He’s still hypersensitive from his first orgasm, Julien thinks, and then shoves the thought away, because this isn’t Azune—it isn’t. It’s Vaelus, and she’s just getting used to the size of him. And that’s fine, because he’s never wanted things rough and rude with her the way he does with Thaisha. What he wants is more elusive. Dreams of long nights and low voices while the others slept beside. The simple certainty that she’d have his back when the blades come out…

He thinks he feels it, as her rhythm finally settles into something steady and self-assured. They fit together like question and answer—like two soldiers that have fought side-by-side for so long that questions are no longer necessary. She arcs above him like a crescent moon, tossing her hair back and twisting her own nipples…

And then she smiles at him. 

It’s the tiniest thing. Fleeting enough that Julien almost convinces himself he imagined it, but the damage is already done, because he abruptly realizes that he has never seen her mouth. 

He has only ever known this woman shrouded in mourning: veil drawn carefully across the lower half of her face, ancient eyes aching with loss. Seeing her lips uncovered is unsettling enough. Seeing them curve with genuine delight feels suddenly sacrilegious.

He bolts upright before he fully realizes what he’s doing, fingers pressing against the seam of Azune’s lips.

“Don’t.” 

Azune slows at once, concerned. “Don’t what?”

“The mouth…” Julien exhales shakily. “I-I want—”

What do you want?! his mind screams at him, even as Azune grants him all the patience in the world. You can’t ask him to become a woman without a mouth, you sick bastard. 

His fingers start to figure it out before the rest of him, stroking that dusky lip, then smearing across it like he’s trying to remove a stain. 

Comprehension seems to dawn on Azune in the span of a single, slow blink, which is a blessing because Julien still doesn’t understand what he is doing. But then he feels it: the way the flesh shifts beneath his thumb like warm clay. 

Azune peers deeply into his eyes, reading every expression as he lets the shape of his mouth obey Julien’s shaking fingers. 

His changes are subtle, he thinks: a little fuller through the lower lip. Softer at the corners. Less severe…

But the moment he withdraws his thumb from the cupid’s bow, Julien’s breath seizes in his chest. It’s better, yes—so much better—but also so much worse. Because the grief is suddenly his. 

“Would you change your hair, too?” he says before he can help it.

“To what?” Azune whispers. 

“Messier,” Julien croaks. “Warmer, too—like mead.” 

Azune indulges him yet again, and now that he’s started, Julien finds himself unable to stop asking for things. Amber eyes framed in lashes that flutter like pixie wings. Narrower shoulders, even, than Vaelus, but broader hips. Skin like an early summer peach—no, softer. Everything needs to be softer.

“And she had these little moles … right… here,” he whispers, stroking the place where neck slopes into shoulder, and watching the tiny constellation bloom beneath his fingertips. “She called it her fairy circle. I liked to leave a bruise right in the middle before I left in the morning.” Why is he saying this? Why is breathing suddenly so hard? “She said when she felt the sting beneath her fingers she could pretend she had summoned me back…” 

Julien closes his eyes, face falling into the shoulder in front of him. He feels like he’s drowning. Like someone dressed him in heavy plate and hurled him into Lake Nahami. 

Fingers slide into his hair, settling against the base of his skull. 

“What was her name?” Azune asks.

“…Ilondria,” he whispers, and his throat pulls painfully tight. “… She died at the Palazzo, and—and I can’t summon her back!” 

The words fall into the sheets like wreckage hitting the lake bed around him—dreamlike, mangled in half-time. In the center, he sits folded into a warm body, utterly still and miserably soft. 

“…Can’t you?”

Coming from anyone else, a question like that could have been a temptation, or a condescension. 

Azune just sounds lost. 

Julien pulls away and stares at him—at the facsimile of a fallen woman he’s just spent the last ten minutes desperately recreating out of his flesh…

Ilondria used to welcome him into her bed at impossible hours of the night, wrapping him in an embrace saturated in the scent of exotic perfume, when all he had to offer in return was blood and booze and a bad temper. He remembers her gentle fingers grazing his cuts and bruises, trying their best to comb knots from his hair while he snapped at her for asking too many questions. She kissed his snarling mouth and let him bury himself inside her, over and over and over, like he could spend enough coin and seed to outrun the shadow of himself for even a fleeting moment—

And now Azune is here offering the same thing: letting Julien pull temporary comfort from his body like silk ribbons from a sleeve. 

But fuck, that’s not what he wants. It’s not. What he wants is—is—

“Change back?” he begs.

“Okay,” Azune says, because of course he does, but he frowns uncertainly. “To what?” he clarifies. “Vaelus? Thaisha…?” 

Julien doesn’t know whether the sound that escapes him is a laugh or a sob, only that it hurts like a knife in his throat. He almost expects blood to bubble past his lips.

“All the way,” he barely breathes, “…please?” 

Azune hesitates for another moment, and then the sorcery begins to recede, revealing a braid and birthmark and broad, familiar frame—and a pair of spellbinding eyes that have never looked so confused, nor so hopeful, in all the weeks Julien has known them. He looks like somebody just offered him a bowl of the finest, most fragrant broth—and then asked him to eat it with a fork. And for some inexplicable reason It makes Julien giddy to the point of goosebumps… 

He grabs Azune’s face with both hands, dragging him into a kiss as messy as it is magnificent. 

”Um—hello?” Azune nearly giggles, baffled and bright-eyed, as Julien finally lets him breathe. His ears are pink and his braid is half-ruined. There’s a stray string of spit in his beard, and desire blows back through Julien’s body like a stormfront. 

“Hello yourself,” Julien growls, and devours him again, because if he doesn’t he’s never been so afraid of what other words might come out of his mouth. “Why aren’t you moving,” he complains, dropping his brow to Azune’s shoulder again and shifting his hips in a vain bid for friction…

“Um… I wasn’t sure if this was—” Azune trails off, then mumbles: “You said you wanted me to change all the way back…?” 

Julien’s eyes blink open and sweep down Azune’s torso to the cradle of his hips, where he finds himself still buried to the hilt inside a cunt, and quickly filling out again. The folds are a deep, dewy pink, dusted at the edges with the same russet hair that trails Azune’s belly, and if Julien hadn’t been fucked by this man’s cock a dozen times by now, he’d have no reason to doubt this was the default— 

”Fuck, that’s so hot…” Julien moans, dragging his mouth back up Azune’s neck to the hinge of his jaw. “Does it feel good?” he whispers. 

Azune nods vehemently, squirming as Julien’s teeth scrape beneath his ear. “I—I really wanna come again like this, if you still—” 

“Keep it, then…” Julien says, suddenly fighting for his life not to come immediately. “Just please fucking move!” 

Azune rarely needs to be told something twice, and definitely never a third time. Their slightly tangled cradle doesn’t give him all that much more leverage than Julien, but he does his best, splaying his thighs wider and rolling his lower back to help Julien rut as deeply as he can. 

They could find a different position, Julien thinks. There are hundreds and hundreds to choose from. But not many of them would feel like this: suffocating, inescapable, divine. Not many would let Julien keep kissing him, until his pretty mouth is raw and tingling, and then more—

Distantly, as his hands roam and his lips wander and pleasure builds and builds, he knows this isn’t how he operates. He has always been focused—some might say hyperfocused—on the end. He’s never felt this ache, this terror in his bones at the thought that it will end, maybe only moments from now, and he will have to leave this bed, with no guarantee of another night, and no proof that this one ever happened—save for whatever bit of his seed might linger within Azune when he’s done… 

Oh… holy fuck… 

“Äz…” he pants, trying desperately to hold on just a little longer. “If I come—”

”Please!” Azune implores, without even waiting for the rest. “Come in me…” His hips snap frantically in Julien’s hands, and when he tightens his grasp, Azune’s body clenches harder on his cock to match. “Wanna feel it… please please please…” 

He looks like he wants to kiss Julien again, but their brows collide instead of their mouths, and his eyes are so dazed and blown and blazing that Julien thinks, helplessly: you’ve fucking ruined brothels for me and now you’re destroying the stars as well…

”—‘m’I gonna knock you up like this…?” He somehow manages to get out the other half of his unhinged thought.

“D’you want to?” Azune whispers, and that is not an answer. Nor is it a question his mind is remotely equipped to parse—especially not when it arrives in that mild, maddening tone that says I want to be whatever you want me to be—

Julien comes like a dam collapsing, ears roaring with the sound of the river outside as he shudders through pulse after pulse of his release. It’s pure instinct that sends his fingers seeking Azune’s swollen little clit, thumbing back the hood and rubbing with blind devotion until Azune’s eyes roll back and his breath stutters. 

“Jules…!” he gasps—a tiny, awestruck thing, like he’s never been properly pleasured before—and then convulses on Julien’s cock with a choked wail: “Juuuliennn!”

And Julien is obsessed with the way this man cries his name. With the way his hair and his birthmark and his sex flush all flood over his skin like spilled wine. With the solid, burning heat of his body and the scrape of his stubble against Julien’s teeth as he steals that plush lower lip. Azune’s beard is threaded with faint flecks of gold, like Orchard tree bark, and Julien wonders if there’s anyone else who knows. 

He wants to be the only one with the same viciousness he reserves for murder. He wants to come again, and for a moment he thinks he might. His balls are so tight, and the promise of more tingles over his skin like a breaking fever, and he really might—

But he can’t. Fuck, he can’t. His breath leaves on a thin whine like it’s been punched from his stomach, but nothing else…

Azune is still quivering from head to toe, and Julien moves to embrace him, engulf him, his mouth mumbling nonsense into his neck without any guidance from his mind: ”That’s it, gorgeous. I’ve got you—mmmm… fuck, you’re amazing. You feel that cock? It’s all yours… I’m all yours… I’ve got you…” 

They sit there for a long, long time: two vacant bodies clinging to each other in place of their wits. Sensations strike Julien like little lightning bugs upon the black canvas of his brain. A bead of sweat tickling the curve of his underarm. Azune’s thumb stroking the pulse in his neck. His breath warming a New Path through the forest of Julien’s curls. He feels a hint of whatever memory rides beneath his lover’s musk: one of green cardamom and sunbaked stepping stones along a verdant riverbank. He feels the growing tack of utterly ruined sheets beneath their thighs…

“You okay?” Azune’s voice is pitched low; his lips warm honey against the shell of Julien’s ear, and Julien thinks: as long as you don’t let go I’ll be fine forever, and then immediately tries to recoil from the thought. 

“Can you do that thing?” he mutters, flapping his hand around in a poor pantomime what he wants. But Azune is clever enough to read context clues—and a moment later the sheets are crisp and clean, and their bodies free of sweat and slick and come. 

“Better?” he asks, and Julien replies by collapsing back into the blankets with a groan, dragging Azune down with him.

“Rauwyn’s rack…” he sighs, swirling his fingers up Azune’s spine and then back down through his wavy locks. “I’ve never met anyone like you…” 

“Me either,” Azune says, so owlishly that Julien kisses him before he can even begin to wonder what he means. 

“Turn of phrase, you ridiculous thing,” he whispers. 

“Oh. Okay?” Azune says, and then, after a pause: “Do we need to talk about this?” 

Julien’s heart stutters. 

“About what? Idiomatic speech?” he snorts. “Probably.” 

“About the sex, Julien. That was… kind of a lot. I just thought you might want—”

”Well I don’t!” Julien cuts him off, nowhere near as harshly as he’s capable of, but still firmly enough to sting anyone without thick skin. 

“Alright,” Azune concedes, and Julien thinks that where thick skin is concerned, this man might have the hide of a dragon. 

He’s still watching him, though, in that wistful way that usually precedes him saying something batshit insane. 

And sure enough, a moment later he opens his mouth again. 

“Just know…” he ventures, quietly. “That if, at some point, you think you might want to talk—not to me, but to someone else? You can let me know your preference.” 

And Azune might have just swung his warhammer down onto Julien’s skull, for the way that idea lands. 

He suddenly imagines Azune shifting into his father, and allowing Julien to say all the shit he should’ve said—and a large number of things he probably shouldn’t say but wants to anyway. He imagines that face becoming Thjazi, delivering himself for a second time into Julien’s hands, so Julien can choke him out instead of gallows rope…

“What the fuck is wrong with you?!” he hisses at the ceiling.

“Um… a lot of things…?” Azune admits, startled, and for perhaps the first time Julien can hear a true hint of insecurity in his voice: just the tiniest weakness in an otherwise impenetrable fortress—

—and fuck, Julien doesn’t want to hurt this man. He really doesn’t. But that little crack is so startlingly real amidst all the too-good-to-be-true that Julien nearly lunges for it, desperate to get his nails in it, to pry it open and peek inside… 

He flips them over, pinning Azune to the bed. 

“I’m serious!” he growls. ”You show up in my life when it’s falling to fucking pieces, bait me into bed with you, then give me the key to your flat after one fuck?! Everyone else in your circle would rather drink their own piss than spend their free time with me, but nothing I say or do seems to faze you at all! Not even when I ask you to wear someone else’s face while I fuck you—what the fuck?!”  

Azune has gone eerily still, eyes wide and guileless, and Julien briefly wonders if he’s about to cry…

But no. Instead of losing composure, his face suddenly loses cohesion. 

Thaisha’s lips, a stranger’s nose, Bolaire’s eerie, will’o’wisp eyes. Silver slashes through his auburn temples before receding just as fast, and his skin washes with every shade of bronze and green and pink and porcelain. It’s like watching waves of nausea build and break as Azune rifles frantically through every shape he knows, scrabbling for one that Julien might be gentler with. 

“Hey, no. Don’t—” One hand leaves the mattress to catch Azune’s jaw. “Hey!”

The shifting slows but doesn’t immediately stop. Julien is briefly met with his own green gaze: half a heartbeat of panicked harshness mirrored back at him. 

The sight turns his stomach. 

“Äz.” Julien forces himself to take a breath and lets his voice drop lower, roughness gathering around the edges and wearing them down into something softer. “Azune, look at me.”

Azune tries. Julien watches the face beneath him drag itself back into coherence piece by piece, like the last edge of a sinking sun clawing back above the horizon against the flow of time. 

“I lied,” he says, when the correct pair of eyes finally manages to focus on him. “We definitely need to talk about this. You definitely need to talk about this. And I’m…” He exhales heavily, bracketing Azune’s face in his hands. “I am listening, okay?” 

Julien watches his throat work through a swallow. Sees his fingers begin to flex and fidget in the sheets. 

“Okay…” Azune whispers. 

And Julien, against the larger sum of his instincts, strokes the scars on Azune’s cheek and waits.  

“I… um… I find people very confusing,” Azune admits after a long stretch of silence, as though Julien hadn’t just watched him avalanche through fifty different faces in as many seconds. “They say one thing and mean something totally different—or don’t even know what they mean—

“But you say what you mean—at least most of the time. And I think that probably scares a lot of people, but I…” He swallows again, and his cheeks glow subtly pink. “The way you move through the world is exhilarating to me. I like watching it. You. I-I know that’s weird—”

“Just a little!” Julien says, all too aware of the way his voice is trembling—how his arms are trembling beneath his weight. Azune’s words make next to no sense; Julien isn’t sure he’s said a single thing he’s really meant all evening… 

“I-I just… it’s so easy to tell when you want something!” Azune continues, like if he just digs a little bit deeper he will finally find his way out of the pit he’s been living in—and fuck, Julien feels that desperation in his bones. “The certainty is—it’s intoxicating. I don’t know who I am, or what I am, but I can be whatever you want in the moment, and that’s—”

“—it’s fucking pathological!” Julien explodes. His arms give out and he collapses into Azune, their brows crashing together as he grabs fistfuls of red hair at the root. “Why do you care what I want—what anyone wants?! These people took you as a child, dragged you into terror and torment, and you serve them like you owe them a debt! You sent those mercenaries chasing their own tails like it was nothing, not because you changed your face, but because you’re quicker with a plan than anyone I’ve ever met. You could do anything, be anything—but instead you’ll follow anybody home if they make you feel useful for five fucking minutes!” 

Julien can’t breathe again. He meant to reach down into the pit—to grab Azune by the scruff and haul him back to the surface, but instead he’s fallen all the way to the bottom and started clawing at the dirt right beside him.

“You followed me through the Palazzo cellars—and you apparently read the labels on the empty boxes, because you went to the market and found the same expensive fucking cheese, just in case I ever came back to your place again! And the block isn’t the same size as the ones you usually buy, so the slices don’t stack on the bread the way you want them to, and you get so frustrated making your little sandwiches—and it’s so fucking adorable—but you never say anything about it! And—”

“You… noticed the cheese…?” 

“Of course I fucking noticed the cheese!” Julien yells. “And of course you find people confusing! How could you not when you see them so clearly you can replicate every freckle—their laughter? You don’t know what you are because you’re everything. And you turned into the woman of my dreams and sat on my cock and I couldn’t even get off because I wanted you. Do you fucking get it yet? I just want you!!”

Azune is staring up at him like Julien has reached into his chest and removed a second Stone of Nightsong—no—like he’s holding a bloody, beating heart in his fist between them and doesn’t know which body he tore it from. He wonders, briefly, hysterically, if this is how it feels to be suspended on the edge of life and death. 

Then calloused fingers find his face, tracing his cheekbones with a tenderness Julien can’t even recall from his own mother. Azune lifts his chin the slightest bit, all the movement he needs to press his lips to Julien’s mouth.

“I want you too,” Azune whispers, with barely a breath behind it—

—and kissing Azune Nayar still feels like falling, still feels like being caught. 

Julien slumps back down into the sheets until they lay side-by-side. They curl into one another like vines on an Orchard trellis, trading kisses like sips of sweet grape juice straight from the press. Even as a child, Julien had always found the taste of it too cloyingly sweet. 

He thinks he could get used to it now. He thinks he could be a sommelier. 

“Do you feel better?” Azune whispers.

“Yeah,” Julien admits, and watches the corner of Azune’s mouth curl like a mischievous tendril. “Fuck you,” he complains. “Do you feel better?” 

“Mmhm…” It’s not an articulate sentiment in the slightest, but it’s an honest one. His eyes are half-lidded, and he has a lock of Julien’s hair coiled around and around his index finger. 

“We are never having sex while you’re shapeshifted ever again,” he declares.

He expected Azune to agree wholeheartedly, but instead, something in his expression falters: that hidden blade sliding just beneath the surface once more.

”Okay,” he says, in that same tone as all the times before, and Julien nearly screams. 

“No!” He shakes Azune by the shoulders. “It’s not okay! I can see it’s not okay, okay?” The word doesn’t sound real anymore. He feels vaguely insane. “Look me in the eyes and tell me you heard anything I just said to you!”  

Azune winces and slides his hands over Julien’s forearms. 

“I heard it, Jules.” He sucks in a breath. “Sorry. I know what you were getting at, just now. And it is okay, mostly.” 

“Mostly?” Julien echoes. He hooks a finger beneath Azune’s chin and peers into his eyes, searching for that damned blade. 

“It’s just…” Azune blinks frantically, and Julien watches a violent blush overwhelm his face. “I-If I wanted to—just down there—would you still…?” 

Julien blinks back, brows floating towards the headboard before—oh…

Oh! 

“Azune Nayar,” Julien says, and the relief pouring through his blood only serves to hasten the wild, winding thing in his gut that has started to rouse again. He grins wickedly and nudges Azune’s crimson cheek with his nose. “I have not fucked my way through brothel and barrowguard to be accused now of bias for what lies below the belt.” 

Azune laughs sheepishly and shifts against him, and it’s only then—as he feels the familiar warmth of a cunt trailing fresh slick against his thigh—that Julien realizes Azune still hasn’t dropped his sorcery. He feels good like this. He’s comfortable.

The beast in his belly wakes and whips fire straight up his spine. 

“I will fuck you with a cock or a cunt or both—or neither!” Julien kisses him fiercely.  “Two assholes! Smooth as a stone slab or twelve sagging tits—I don’t care! As long as they’re yours,” he growls. He works a hand between Azune’s legs and presses two fingers back inside him, thrilling as Azune melts back into the pillows with a beautiful, blissed-out moan. “As long as it’s you.”

”Yes!” Azune cries—and finally it’s not fucking okay. It’s so much more than okay. “It’s me…” he pants, and it sounds like an oath. “It’s me!” 

“Yes—” Julien agrees, gently brushing the bangs from Azune’s brow with his free hand. He doesn’t understand how someone with the sun in his eyes can look at him like he hung the moon, but he does. He doesn’t understand how one can fall, and be caught, and yet still be falling, but Julien is.

“—It’s you.”