Chapter Text
So clear, like the diamond in your ring
Cut to mirror your intention
Oversized, and overwhelmed
The shine of which has caught my eye
And rendered me so isolated
So motivated
I am certain now that
I am
Vindicated, I am selfish, I am wrong
I am right, I swear I'm right
Swear I knew it all along
And I am flawed
But I am cleaning up so well
I am seeing in me now
the things you swore you saw yourself
-vindicated, dashboard confessional
It’s one in the morning on a Monday, and Azriel’s week is already fucked.
Or not fucked, more accurately, as he listens to his roommates going at it for the third time tonight.
They’ve tried to be respectful. He can’t blame Cass completely, either—Nesta is a fucking smokeshow. Azriel himself had to squash a budding crush the first time he met the eldest Archeron at Rhys and Feyre’s engagement party. Averted his eyes after one look at her manicured nails, knowing just how dangerous they were. And, from the sounds of it, talented.
Anyway.
His best friend got big dumb cartoon heart eyes and who cares because there’s no room in Azriel’s life for another person anyway. He has his work and his non-work, though the latter is shrinking these days. He gets a decent amount of pussy when he tries.
But the relationship stage always evades him, for when it comes to caring about birthday dinners and couples pictures and trading keys he truly can’t be fucked.
He’s not fit for the long-haul. Not everybody is.
He gets enough of it by proxy through the thin walls; enough to make him itchy, like their love is some allergen too small for the HEPA filters to catch.
I love you so much, baby, Azriel hears through the crack below the door, and he stares harder at the code in front of him, willing it to jump out of the screen and strangle him. Nesta makes Cassian come alive, like no one else he’s ever seen. Makes him honest, all the best parts of himself, his swivel head now permanently fixed on her.
It’s not that he’s jealous of them. He’s not. It’s just that, hearing them night after night, the old thoughts are scuttling out of their corners. Fantasies like silverfish, disgusting and many-limbed, unfit for the light of decency.
“Fuck, I’m so horny,” Cassian grouses from the other end of the threadbare couch, surveying Azriel with hooded eyes. The edges of him glow blue, bathed as he is in neon.
“Complain about it to someone who cares.”
Bass pounds through the house, the tang of sweat and raging hormones, the taste of PBR. A taste Az chases with a bong rip to avoid staring at his best friend’s thick thighs splayed wide.
“You don’t care, Azzie?” Cassian winks, and Azriel has to clamp his jaw shut to avoid coughing when a large hand ruffles his hair. “Are you sure?”
“You know you’re welcome to join next time.”
Azriel jumps in the present, nearly upending his long-cold coffee as Cassian pulls back laughing behind him.
His roommate is deeply, unfortunately good-looking. Obscenely good-looking, so much that he should be a dick, should have a line of girls waiting at the door to take their turn. Used to, though he kept his activities far from the apartment for reasons Azriel’s never understood.
Until Nesta, that is.
“Isn’t that why you lurk out here?” Cassian taunts. “Hoping we’ll need another set of hands?”
Azriel stares hard at his laptop as his roommate stretches upward, scratching the trail of black hair on his lower stomach.
“Because I could have no other reason to sit in my living room in my apartment.”
“Our apartment,” Cass corrects, planting a wet kiss on his cheek. Azriel tries not to picture where that mouth was just a moment ago. “For now, anyway.”
“The fuck does that mean?”
Cassian makes a motion to be quiet. Water groans through the pipes, Nesta turning on the shower, and he creeps toward his backpack by the front door. Returns with a tiny black box with a tiny silver clasp that he slides open, like pulling a pin from a grenade.
Azriel doesn’t know enough about diamonds to think anything other than Fuck, that thing is huge.
He doesn’t hear much of what Cass says after that. Something about a hike Nesta will hate. It’s drowned out by the dial-up screeches in his head.
Married. Cassian is getting fucking married. The old thoughts crawl out from their hiding places, greedy for crumbs.
Back under his ceiling fan, Azriel counts the cobwebs in the corners of the room. Tries to keep his spiraling focused on work, away from the ring, the ring, the fucking ring. The flashing light of his life winking out in each facet.
On the other side of the wall, the bed frame creaks.
He tries too not to remember Cass’s hot breath on his neck. Tries to keep his hand from creeping lower across his stomach but it’s no use. He’s too fucking sad and worked up and everything is unfair.
It shouldn’t matter so much. It was always going to work out like this.
And they’d all assumed him in love with Mor.
You’re everything to me, Nes, he hears in Cassian’s low voice, and it pinches somewhere behind his navel, the envy. He imagines the sounds gliding together, rearranging, as if he’s misheard them through the drywall.
You’re everything to me, Az.
That’s it, baby.
Just like that.
His hand is so inadequate but he fists himself anyway, until he’s pent up and panting, until the thumping reaches a peak on the other side of the wall.
Until he comes on his own stomach, a name choked out against his will.
Silence falls next door, in the apartment, across all of Velaris. Azriel’s spent and full of shame, dank like rainwater in the subway rail. Exhaustion makes him creaky and limp all at the same time.
But he missed the sleep train hours ago, and there’s construction on the bridge, and he’ll get no rest tonight.
One thought scuttles back and forth throughout.
He has to break them up.
The engagement party is an accidental rager, what began as a stylish river cruise on Rhys’ boat devolving into a day-drunk bacchanal. Azriel hasn’t heard Rhys laugh this loud in a while, hasn’t seen Mor do this much coke in years. It’s hard to say whether it’s the occasion or what it represents that sends another line up her nose.
For himself, Azriel’s trying his best to look normal. Act normal, be normal, as much as is possible. It’s hard when the person he can’t be normal about is pressed right up against him, smashed together in the galley doing shots of tequila with the bride-to-be.
“Do you want your engagement present?” Nesta asks her fiancé. The e-word makes him want to shrivel.
Cass nods, wincing at the aftertaste as she leans down and whispers in his ear. His chest puffs out and Azriel feels sick, thinking of all he’ll have to hear through the wall later.
Nesta saunters off with a smoky smile, pleased with herself.
“I love you, Az,” Cassian croons as he watches her go. Hazel eyes track the swish of her ass, the glint of her ring. “This doesn’t change that.”
“Why would it?” He should be listening closely but—fuck—there’s a lot of bare chest on display.
“You know, not seeing each other every day and all.”
“What?”
“I mean, we’ll be moving out.”
“What?!”
The boat must’ve hit a huge rock hidden beneath the water. An iceberg, only no one’s playing violins, just shitty trap music now Mor’s gotten hold of the aux.
“Yeah.. did you think we were going to be married with a roommate?” Cass asks, oblivious to the Titanic-level split in Azriel’s mind.
Gone, gone gone gone he’ll be gone, his two pairs of shoes, his dumb blender for his dumb protein shakes sitting dirty in the sink for hours. The sound of him whistling too fucking early in the morning, the black curly hairs threaded into the throw blanket on the sofa. And then the day will come when the apartment doesn’t smell like him.
“You’re doing everything else with a roommate."
“Exactly. We’ve tortured you long enough.” Cass slaps his thighs, a telltale precursor to moving on. “You’ll be glad when you don’t have to hear us anymore, right?”
Azriel can’t forget no matter how hard he tries. The sweetest torture, to be just on the other side.
“Right?” Cassian repeats, his stare heavy-lidded. Those stupid fucking Renaissance painting eyes that are so much more interesting than his own, the dark lashes sweeping him in.
“As if I pay attention,” Azriel scoffs.
“The wall goes both ways, you know.” Gravel’s entered Cassian’s voice, a pulse of something vivid. “If you want to get revenge while you still can.”
Then he smiles, pushing to his feet, and the slip of wanting slithers across Azriel’s brain like a skink.
All the way down to his fucking feet he flushes. It’s the sun and the alcohol and the whole fucking thing, the fucking thin ass walls, the institution of marriage, all conspiring against him. He manages to shake his head.
“No?” his friend asks mildly. “Not leaving with any regrets?”
He surveys the revelry, where Nesta and Gwyn are dancing, before mounting the stairs to the upper deck. When Azriel gathers the courage to follow, Cass is splayed out on a sun lounger, muscled arms flung above his head, eyes closed.
Az chugs his beer as the NPC version of himself splits off and kneels before his friend. Yanks down his zipper in front of everyone, in front of God himself.
“The fuck are you thinking about?”
Cassian’s voice makes him jump out of his fucking skin, beer going down the wrong pipe.
“What do you mean?” he chokes out between coughs. Mor looks up from the lower deck, likely wondering if he has a secret stash they’ve snuck away to hide from her. But Azriel can only stare at where Cass is tipping his head back, watery eyes intent.
“You just got this look on your face like..” he trails off.
“Like what?”
“Like you.. Nothing. I’m fucked up.” Cass laughs, and Azriel wants to bite where it vibrates in his throat. “Forget I said anything. Fuck.”
He wants to say more, but Feyre is standing on a table, demanding to make a toast.
They stagger into the apartment like they’ve been shipwrecked, castaways on a sea of Belvedere and Dom. Azriel collapses onto the sofa while Cassian weaves toward the bathroom, where he pees for what sounds like years. Nesta clatters about in the kitchen throughout, high heels tapping a fitful Morse code.
“I need to drink a big cup,” she slurs, dousing the tile with water as she misses the fridge-front dispenser. “Two big cups. And three Tums.”
Cass takes the Velaris Comets souvenir cup from her hands, having reemerged at last. “Go get in your j’s, slugger. I’ll get your water.”
“Wait, but I want ice! Crushed ice.”
“Of course, baby.”
“And a straw.”
“I know how you like it.”
Azriel hears them murmuring as Cass puts Nesta to bed, dazzly words of hope and promise and future.
“I’m so glad you came today,” his roommate says when he emerges at last. “You don’t get out enough, Azzie.”
“I get out plenty,” Azriel grouses. He lights a half-finished joint from the ashtray on the coffee table, hoping the smoke will disguise his misery.
“C’mon, you’re too hot to rot here every night.”
Cassian gives his mega-watt Colgate commercial smile and God he’s so hot and dumb but he’s not even dumb, that’s the worst part. He sees it all, when he looks down into Azriel’s eyes, knows every grotesque, wriggly thought in his rotting brain.
He must, because why else would Cassian shove his huge body beside Azriel’s on the loveseat? The frame groans with both their weight.
This is it, what he wants, what he thinks about all the time he’s trying not to think about it. Cassian is staring up at the ceiling when the rails come off Azriel’s thoughts, sending him careening into the abyss.
“We’ve had a good run, haven’t we?” Cass sighs fondly. “Can’t say I won’t miss some of it.”
Roommates since they were eleven. It doesn’t get closer than that.
All of it. He’ll miss all of it. So it’s not a lie when Azriel says, “That makes one of us.”
“You gonna replace me, Azzie?” Cassian takes the offered joint, drawing deep.
“Probably not.”
“Hey, what’s—you okay, man?”
His roommate turn his whole stupid Hulk body to face Azriel on the couch. It’s overpowering, tall as he is, to be in Cass’s shadow. To feel underneath him, as he’s only been once before.
He makes himself roll his eyes. “God Cass, not again.”
“What?”
“Don’t get..” Azriel waves a bored hand. “How you get.”
“How do I get?”
“Whenever you’re crossfaded, you get all goopy.”
“I do not," Cass protests. "Tell me one time.”
“Rhys and Feyre’s wedding.”
He can tell Cassian is grasping through fog for the memory, when he bellowed his affection across the streets of Capri.
“Okay, you’ve got me there. What can I say, I love love, I get caught up in it. All I mean is: is this a thing? Are you, like—” Cass pauses, full lips trying to find the word. “Upset?”
Azriel’s derisive laugh is too high, bordering on hysterical. The alcohol is permeating his judgment and he wants to be mean, to crush that soft look on his best friend’s face.
“About what?”
“Us, me and Nesta. Are you jealous?”
“I know you’re full of yourself Cass—”
“She’s incredible, I know, but—
“—but c’mon. You’re hardly my type.”
“Wait, me? You thought I meant upset because of me?”
“What?”
“What?”
Breathing hard through his nose, Azriel clenches his jaw so hard his neck cracks. He desperately wants to pull his sleeves down to cover his hands, but it’s too pathetic, too meek.
“When I asked if you were jealous." Cassian too close to his face and Azriel wants to smother himself like a bedbug. "You thought I meant jealous of Nesta.”
“Yeah, I guess.”
“Why would you be jealous of her, Az?”
“I—”
“Why?”
He can’t say, he won’t. So instead, Azriel hedges.
“Earlier, on the boat, you were going to say that I was looking at you like..”
“Like..”
“Like what?”
“Like.” Cass swallows, his eyes going round and wide. “Like you used to look at Mor.”
“Stop fucking with me.”
“I’m not.”
“What if I was?” God it’s just all coming out of him and he feels contagious, infecting the air with all this audacity growing in him like mold. “If I listen to you.”
Cass shrugs, though his shoulder rolls too slow. “Can’t blame a guy for wanting a free show.”
“I mean you. I listen to you.”
“Why.”
They stare at each other through the smoke. Through the neon blue glow of the Bud Light sign neither of them has ever taken down, the one that hung in Azriel’s bedroom the night that they—
“Let me show you.”
It falls from his lips before he can stop it, splatters to the floor between them. He’s a cockroach trapped in flypaper, sticky, struggling. Desperate to wrench himself free.
“How?” Cassian asks, though from the heat in his eyes, he already knows.
It’s the saddest thing he’s ever done, getting on his knees before a newly-engaged man, literally begging to suck his cock. Cass is glassy-eyed and it’s not the alcohol, though his breath has notes of bourbon and orange when Azriel draws close.
But he doesn’t stop him. Doesn’t even spare a glance back at the closed door to his bedroom, where his diamond-decked fiancee is still passed out. Insanity spins out in the air between them, between their skin, and the itchy crawling wriggly urges pull Azriel’s hand to his best friend’s zipper.
“One more for the road?”
“Fuck.” Cassian draws a thumb across his lip, mouth going slack. “I knew you didn’t forget.”
He’s just as thick as Azriel remembers, hot and throbbing in his hand and he’s going directly to Hell. While it may be the saddest, it’s not the worst thing he’s ever done. Cassian is groaning low in his chest, the rumble of it like thunder, like bass thumping the last time Az cracked like this.
Mouth and hands, lips and tongue and teeth. They’re all he has to say what he can’t, what words spiral through his brain in the lurking hours of the night. The wanting, the wanting, the dirty filthy needy craving every goddamn day, every orgasm he hears through the goddamn wall.
Cass makes him greedy, and he swallows everything he can, tugging against the broad hand threaded in his hair.
His head’s thrown back, eyes closed, baring his throat and the tattoos Az wants to lick, to bite, to beg to have over him. He’s clenching and unclenching his fists, and Azriel remembers this, from last time, that it means he’s close.
“Nesta,” Cassian moans.
Their eyes shoot to each other, shock like a sobering splash of cold water even as Cass’s cock is still twitching in his hand.
“Fuck. Oh my god. I’m sorry. I have to go..” he stands, staggered, not even bothering to tuck himself back into his shorts. “I have to go to bed.”
After several minutes spent staring at an old beer stain on the sofa, Azriel scuttles back to his room.
Now he really has to break them up.