Work Text:
Lucien couldn’t sleep.
It wasn’t that his quarters weren’t perfectly comfortable. On the contrary. Rhys had provided him with a large, airy room, with a fireplace and a sofa and a four-poster bed with gauzy blue hangings. He even had his own washroom. It was all lovely, and Lucien had reminded himself again and again of how grateful he should be that he was residing there and not in a cell in the Hewn City.
And yet… it didn’t feel quite right.
Maybe it was because of the quiet.
It was so quiet.
Lucien had noticed it immediately. Despite the children in the street, the pleasant banter of what Rhys called his Inner Circle, it was quiet in the Night Court. Lots of empty halls, devoid of chattering courtiers and bustling servants. Vacant of teasing guards and stern sentries. He’d been there for weeks now, and he’d never pulled aside a curtain to find a pair of blushing ladies, still entangled in each other’s arms; never been spotted by an old acquaintance and whisked away to a thrilling gala.
For all the rumors about the Night Court, nothing lurked in corners but the shadows.
He shouldn’t discount the Inner Circle, of course. Feyre and Rhysand, High Lord and Lady, always hurrying from one place to the next or plotting or else locking themselves in their rooms. Not the most friendly of people, but then, Feyre at least never had been. Amren, the monster of Lucien’s childhood, sequestered in her properly private apartment in the city. Morrigan, flitting in and out like a blonde butterfly, always there with a bright word or teasing smile. Azriel, along with his shadowy spies, constantly startling Lucien and scaring the wits out of him as much as the Bogge ever did. Cassian, joking and teasing and seeming to take up twice as much space as anyone else in whatever room he walked into.
There were Feyre’s sisters, too. Nesta got along with Cassian like oil and fire, and after Mor decided that Nesta wasn’t going to burn her friend, she drew Nesta out of her shell with patience and kindness that frankly astonished Lucien. Amren, too, found a strange camaraderie with the High Fae woman, and Azriel was always there to help her when she couldn’t handle the constant assault on her senses that never seemed to fully integrate into her new body.
Then there was Elain, of course. His mate. His mate, whom he’d barely said a few words to. The last thing she needed right now was his interference. She needed the support of her sisters, and the friendship of the Inner Circle, and the stability of life here in the Night Court.
She was the quietest of them all.
Whatever the reason, Lucien had tossed and turned for hours before deciding he wasn’t going to fall asleep, and he couldn’t stay in bed another moment. He’d sat up, rubbing at his eye, which was aching with weariness. Swung his legs off the too-soft bed. Lit a candle.
And now here he was.
The hallways of Rhysand’s home were long and dimly lit, full of tall marble columns and small, bright paintings and the same gauzy curtain stuff that draped his bed. Silk, Lucien thought, letting his free hand brush one of these drapings.
It was so different from the Spring Court – from Tamlin’s court. Even in the middle of the night, it hadn’t been deserted as this place was. Ironic. This was the Night Court, and here he was, at night, and there was no one up but him.
Lucien wandered the hallways, the light from his candle throwing eerie, flickering patches of light onto the bone-white walls and columns. He could move as softly as a cat when he wished to, and he wished to now. He didn’t want to wake any of the residents of the House of Wind. So he padded from deserted room to deserted room, letting the minutes slip by him like so much sand through his fingers.
Eventually, he reached a wide, airy room – perhaps a sitting room? A library? It had bookshelves and low couches, and across the room, there was a balcony, the doors thrown wide to let in the starlight. Lucien headed towards them and the beckoning breeze. It might be nice, he thought, to feel that breeze on his face. Maybe a breath of fresh air would relax him, lull him enough that he’d be able to return to his room and sleep.
As he thought that, three things happened at once: he stepped out onto the balcony; his candle blew out; and he realized, with a jolt, that there was already someone there.
“Lord Azriel.” The words came out half-stammered. Amren may have been a monster worthy of nightmares, but Azriel was a thing of waking fears. Lucien knew well that had he not passed whatever test he’d been given, had he been thrown into Rhysand’s Court of Nightmares instead of his Court of Dreams, the shadowsinger would have been there as well. And if Lucien had not given up all the information he possessed about Tamlin and the Spring Court and Hybern of his own free will, Azriel would have dragged it out of him with the edge of his knife. “I – I didn’t see you there.”
Azriel turned, the strangely-bright starlight highlighting the stark planes of his face. “Lucien,” he said, and he sounded startled. Lucien hadn’t thought it was possible to startle him.
“I apologize for disturbing you.” Lucien winced internally; he knew he sounded unbearably formal, and knew it was because he was nervous. “I can leave, if you like.” He gestured towards the door with his unlit candle.
Azriel shook his head. “I don’t mind.”
After a moment’s hesitation, Lucien set his candle down and leaned against the balcony railing a few feet away from Azriel. Let the breeze wash over them both. Strangely, Azriel seemed less menacing by moonlight than he did during the day, as if the sun’s light was too harsh, as if it emphasized all the parts of Azriel that were… not quite right.
Lucien had noticed it before. Azriel was the sudden taste of iron in your mouth before you realized you had bitten your tongue; he was seeing your reflection blink in the mirror while you had your eyes wide open. He’d startled Lucien more times than Lucien cared to admit, somehow escaping Lucien’s notice even as he stood in the middle of a room, until he spoke or moved. Here, though, where all was shadow, he both didn’t stand out and didn’t blend in. He just… was.
And he looked it. He wore loose sleeping clothes, and his hair was mussed. His wings, usually tucked in so tightly to his back, drooped behind him, almost as if they were too heavy to keep aloft any longer. He was gazing out at the Night Court spread out beneath them with tired eyes. Here, he didn’t look untouchable; here, he didn’t look like a dark god, painfully beautiful and utterly heartless.
“Couldn’t sleep either?”
Lucien shook his head. “You?”
“Didn’t even try,” Azriel said frankly. His scarred hands rested on the balcony like they were at home there.
Lucien didn’t know what to say to this. He couldn’t stop looking at Azriel, cataloguing the differences from Azriel during the day. It wasn’t just the wings, and the clothes; there was something harder to define. His eyes, maybe. Usually Lucien could barely glance at them. They darted, and their gaze was piercing, sharp – it laid your secrets bare and stripped you to the bone in a moment. That was the Azriel Lucien had seen thus far. This Azriel’s eyes were more brown than hazel, dark under the dark sky, and they were just eyes. Nothing magical about them.
Azriel turned, then, as if he could feel Lucien’s gaze. Lucien’s own eyes snapped back to the horizon, and he could feel his face heating as if he’d been caught doing something illicit, forbidden.
“What is it?” Azriel asked. “I don’t bite. I won’t hurt you.”
Lucien arched an eyebrow in disbelief. “You won’t?”
A hint of a smile touched Azriel’s mouth. “Not unless you give me reason to – and you haven’t. In fact, considering your reputation, you’re surprisingly tame.”
“Oh? And what’s that supposed to mean?” Lucien asked.
Azriel turned back towards the horizon. “Everyone in Prythian’s heard of you. It’s not every day that a prince defects from his own Court and then spends the next two hundred years traveling around the other ones, charming their lords and ladies and negotiating trade agreements. Not to mention everything that happened with this.” Azriel raised a hand and tapped Lucien’s cheekbone, tapped the scar over his eye.
Lucien flinched.
Hard.
All casual warmth went out of Azriel immediately. It was as if the air around them dropped a few degrees, the night becoming a fraction darker.
“I’m sorry,” Lucien said. Cursed himself for reacting like that – it had been decades now since the injury – he should be over it. Cursed himself for letting the injury happen in the first place. Cursed himself for apologizing.
“No. I’m sorry.” Azriel’s eyes were darker than ever, and the edge was back to them – the edge that made Lucien shiver. “I shouldn’t have touched you. And she shouldn’t have done that to you.”
Lucien’s hand came up to cup his eye. He could see the wick of his candle flickering, as if it was about to burst into flames. “It doesn’t matter,” he said. “I was a fool. I got what I deserved.”
“Did you?” Azriel said, and his voice was terrifying and mesmerizing, and Lucien couldn’t walk away. “Who told you that?”
Lucien said nothing.
He remembered staggering into the courtyard, drenched in blood, clutching his face. Tamlin being violently sick at the sight of him. Healers tending to his eye. And then Tamlin asking him what happened – and snarling. Idiot, he’d said. You said that to her? You were a fool. You should’ve known better. The words had hurt, and at the time, Lucien had told himself that they’d come from Tamlin’s lips because he cared, because it hurt him to see Lucien hurting.
He still half-believed that.
Azriel turned to him, his wings lifting from the ground and flaring in towards the both of them before folding to his back. He stepped close. Closer. “Let me,” he said, and put scarred fingers on Lucien’s hand clasped over his eye.
Slowly, Lucien’s hand lowered. He closed his eyes.
It was without sight, then, that he felt the rough trace of Azriel’s fingers over his scar. Felt them brush his cheekbone, lightly cup his face.
Lucien’s heart was anything but quiet.
“You didn’t deserve it,” Azriel said, voice as soft and intense as it was in the sunlight, “any more than I deserved these.” The ridges and whorls of his scars scraped slightly on Lucien’s face.
Soft as silk, Azriel’s lips nudged against Lucien’s. Lucien let himself lean in, spellbound, as Azriel kissed his mouth open with night-smelling breath and a practiced tongue.
Well then, Lucien thought. There’s that.
*****
“I don’t even like jasmine, you know,” Azriel said absently. His head was in Lucien’s lap, and he was letting Lucien stroke his hair. “It’s Rhys’s favorite scent. The whole damn place smells like it all the time.”
Lucien nodded, watching the newly-born flames flicker behind their grate in the fireplace. Azriel had stiffened when he’d lit them. “And I don’t like roses. They make my nose itch.”
Azriel laughed, a short sound over as soon as it began. “That must’ve been hard. Spring’s full of them.”
Lucien rolled his eyes. “You have no idea. Tam was always having the servants arrange them in places around the manor. He didn’t need to – they’d grow in the windows if we didn’t watch out. It was ridiculous. I loved it.” The last sentence slipped out without him meaning to say it.
“Yes. I suspected as much.” Azriel shifted, drawing his wings out from under him. “Even with that fucker as a High Lord.”
“Loved him, too,” Lucien admitted. As long as he was telling secrets to a spy, might as well tell them all.
Azriel whistled, low and almost impressed. Lucien thought it was something he must’ve picked up from Cassian. “You and Tamlin?”
“Pssh. No. Nothing ever happened. I was just in hopeless, desperate love with him for a couple centuries, more or less.” Lucien waved a hand disparagingly, and Azriel caught it, laced their fingers together, and held it against his chest.
“So we are – or were – both in love with beautiful blondes who would never love us back,” Azriel said.
“Sounds about right.” Lucien squeezed Azriel’s hand. “You’re not so bad at all, you know. Why do you act so creepy?”
“I don’t act creepy. I am creepy.” Azriel raised his other hand. Lucien watched as it was shrouded in shadow. “I can speak to shades, lordling. You don’t think that’s creepy?”
“Of course I do. You must’ve seen that I’ve been terrified of you for weeks,” Lucien told him, batting at the shadows, which disappeared. “Cauldron, every time you startled me I was afraid the next heartbeat would be my last. But you don’t seem like that right now.”
“Night’s easier. For… a lot of reasons.”
Lucien made an inquisitive sound, and rubbed his thumb over Azriel’s hand.
“Sometimes everything just gets to be too much during the day. Too much light. Too much sound. Too… much. It hurts. I can’t do it. So I get…”
“…creepy,” Lucien finished, nodding. “I feel like that about night, sometimes. It’s so quiet here. It hurts my ears. There’s no one around. And there’s too many balconies.”
“Your mind’s too loud,” Azriel said. “Isn’t it? When there’s room for thinking like that, it thinks bad shit.”
“About balconies, yes, among other things.” Lucien sighed.
“Mine’s too quiet,” Azriel said after a moment. “I hate going to Rita’s. There’s too much noise, and I… it shuts down. I can’t think. I can’t breathe. There’s no room for it.”
“Why do you go, then?”
“Mor,” Azriel said simply. “It makes her happy.”
“Neither of our blondes like men,” Lucien said. “That’s the problem. Why haven’t you told her you know?”
“I don’t know how. I don’t want her to think I’m spying on her. And I don’t want her to think I think I know her better than she knows herself, because I don’t. And it’s really none of my business.” Azriel brought Lucien’s hand to his mouth and kissed it lightly. “It’s a mess.”
“You think you’re a mess?” Lucien arched an eyebrow. “I’m the one who was dramatically wandering the halls of my worst enemy with a single candle.”
“I was the one leaning dramatically on a balcony railing and gazing at the stars,” Azriel countered.
“I was gazing at the stars to. At least as dramatically as you were.”
“I’m in unrequited love with the Morrigan, Queen of Velaris.”
“At least you weren’t beaten half to death by your unrequited love.”
But that made Azriel sit up straight. “What?”
Lucien sighed and pulled his shirt over his head. “I saved Feyre’s life during the first task, warning her about where the Middengard Wyrm was. Amarantha had him beat me.”
Azriel reached around Lucien and ran his fingers along the ropey scars on his back. Scars against scars. “Fuck,” he said. “I’m sorry.”
Lucien leaned his head against Azriel’s convenient shoulder. “Yeah. It was pretty terrible.”
“Not to be creepy,” Azriel said, “but I wish Amarantha was still alive so I could carve her into a thousand tiny pieces for hurting you.”
“Thanks,” Lucien said, and shifted so he was nestled into Azriel’s arms. “Tam never apologized. I think he forgot about it, honestly. He was more worried about Feyre.”
“You win,” Azriel said softly. “I don’t think I can top that. My situation with Mor may be hopeless, but we’re good friends and she cares about me. Maybe she’ll come around to feeling the same way about you. Just don’t fall in love with her.”
“No chance of that,” Lucien assured him. “I have enough women in my life at the moment.”
“Elain, you mean?” Lucien nodded. “How… is that going?”
“It’s not,” Lucien said. “And I don’t know if it will. I don’t even know if I’m in love with her. We’ve barely exchanged an entire sentence.”
“Well.” Azriel drew one wing lightly around both of them. “As long as it’s not, can this…” He trailed off. “…be? You and me?”
“Yes,” Lucien said, and closed his eyes. “I think I’d like that.”
“As would I.”
Lucien’s second to last thought before at least dropping off to sleep was that this was going to be hard to explain if anyone found them come dawn. His last thought was that, for once – the quiet felt right.
And that in the quiet, all he could hear was Azriel’s heart.