Will you do “undone” and Nezriel for the micro fic game 🙏
YEHESSS! Here goes, Azriel fighting for his life, even though he knows it’s a losing battle.
Azriel finds her sitting on the edge of his bed.
“What are you doing in here?”
“I’m tired,” Nesta says, “of going around in circles. Of ignoring this.” She gestures between them.
He closes the door and leans against it. His shadows curl at his ankles, restless. “Nesta—”
“Don’t.” Her voice is quiet but firm. “Don’t do the thing where you look at me like that, like you’re going through every possible option of escape.”
“You do.” She tilts her head. “Every time, you find a reason. A mission, a meeting, Rhys needs something, Cassian needs something—” She stands, and it takes all his effort to hold his ground. “You’re the most perceptive person I know. Gods, you’re the Spymaster, and still you have been deliberately looking away, not acknowledging this for months.”
“It is,” she says. “You’re just afraid.”
He opens his mouth. Closes it. She crosses the room and he doesn’t move, doesn’t breathe, as she takes his face in both hands and kisses him.
He lasts approximately one second.
Something in him gives and he kisses her back with a thoroughness that surprises even him, one hand going to her waist, pulling her in. She makes a soft sound against his mouth that dismantles his defenses entirely.
He walks her back to the bed. She pulls him down with her and he goes willingly. Wrong, this is wrong, and some distant part of him knows is aware of all the reasons, the biggest being his brother, but her hands are in his hair and her body is warm beneath his and the wrongness keeps dissolving every time she breathes his name.
He kisses down her throat and she arches into him, and when he finds her collarbone, she moans. When he nips at her jaw, she makes a sound that bypasses every careful wall he’s ever built. He sees and feels her tremble and thinks, distantly, that he has never in his considerable life witnessed someone come undone so beautifully.
He lifts his head and looks at her, grey eyes dark, lips parted, hair spread across his pillow like she belongs there, which she does, which is exactly the problem, which has always been the problem, and he has nothing left to defend himself with.
She knows he’s done for. He knows she knows. She finds the joint of his wing before he realises her hands have moved.
He goes rigid instantly, involuntary. She traces the mighty arc of his wing slowly, learning the shape of it, and he can’t catch the sound he releases from low in his throat.
“Tell me you don’t want this,” she she whispers.
His jaw tightens. “It’s not—”
“Don’t come up with excuses.” Her fingers move further along his wing’s edge and his breath fractures. “Tell me you don’t want this and I’ll stop.”
She strokes back the other way, unhurried, and he drops his head against her collarbone, shaking from the sensation. She watches him come apart in increments.
“Azriel.” His name and that soft voice of hers combine like it was always meant to be. “Tell me.”
He straightens and she waits, fingers warm and still against his wing.
“I can’t,” he says in a rough, barely-there voice.
“Can’t tell me, or can’t say it because it isn’t true?”
“I want you,” he says and she kisses him before he can take it back. He groans into her mouth, deep and wrecked. “Nesta,” he breathes against her lips.
She holds him there, and his shadows settle for the first time in months.
