#watercliff part 3

[propshophannah]

Azriel set Elain down on the tiled shower floor, but he didn’t let her go. He reached over and turned the faucet. Warm water rained down on them. They shivered together for a few moments until their bodies warmed. Slowly, he turned up the temperature.

He wasn’t sure how long they stood there, how long he might have listened to the beating of her heart through the sound of the falling water. Her head was pressed against his chest, and he wondered if she were listening to his heart, too.

When they’d both stopped shivering, Elain lifted her head. “Where are we?”

Water dripped from his face and hair as he looked down at her. “My house.”

“Where is your house?”

“Just outside Velaris. In the cliffs by the sea.”

“Thank you.”

Azriel dipped his chin. “You should wash.” He pulled her arms from him and stepped out of the spray of water and into the bathroom.

“Wait.” They stood there for a silent moment. Elain looked unsure. “My dress,” she said. “Could you help me?” She turned her back to him revealing the long line of tiny, silk buttons that held it closed. She pulled her soaking hair out of the way.

Azriel stepped forward and began unfastening the dress. His hands were large and rough, the fabric delicate and thin. In any other situation, just looking at the soft, pale skin of her back, removing her dress, would have made him feel things. Would have made him remember that sometimes when they were alone, when their bodies got too close or their skin touched… her scent would change—his scent would change. And they’d look at one another with more feelings than they had words. But not now, not like this because how he’d found her…

Azriel shook the images from his mind. Elain was his friend, and she needed help. She would always be his friend and that would always come first.

He finished the last of the buttons and stepped away. The heavy dress pulled off her shoulders, beginning to slide down from it’s own weight.

And for a moment, he saw how it would go. He would push his fingers beneath the open back to slide around front and cup her small breasts. She would moan and lean back into him. He’d capture her mouth over her shoulder and push the dress off her hips. Then she’d be utterly bare before him. He’d massage her breasts, pressing his erection into her backside as he rolled her nipples between his fingers. He’d look down, over her shoulder, and see her in his hands, wanting and willing and lonely—so fucking lonely. Just like him.

“Tell me to stop,” he’d say, knowing how it would ruin everything. She’d shake her head.

With one hand she’d reach back to stroke him through his clothes, with the other she’d grab his wrist and slide his hand down her body, between her legs. He’d shudder against her as she stroked him, as she pressed one of his fingers inside her. He’d take over then, working her, feeling her. He’d release her breast long enough to open his pants—then he’d be inside her. He’d bend her against the tile, or over the vanity. It didn’t matter. She’d press her hips back for him, he’d grab them and push into her, taking her. They’d both moan and writhe as their bodies took what little, fleeting comfort they could from the joining.

Then he’d come inside her.

And then they would separate.

And then reality would come crushing down on them.

He’d still be mostly dressed, but she’d be bare, looking for something to cover herself with. For something with which to clean the mess of him from between her legs. He’d hand her a towel, clean himself off in the sink, then leave.

They’d never be the same after that, would never recover from that. Both more lonely than when they’d started.

So he wouldn’t start it. Never.

Azriel inhaled sharply and stepped away from Elain. He pulled the shower curtain and turned away. “I’ll go find you something to wear.”

“Thank you.”

Azriel walked out, closing the door behind him.

[Watercliff part 3 - stay tuned!] part 1, 2, 4

#elriel #elain x azriel #watercliff part 3 #elriel fanfic #elriel fanfiction #elain archeron #azriel #acotar #acomaf #acowar #not meant to be canonical

[propshophannah]

Azriel sat in the shadows high above Velaris, on a cliff overlooking the sea. He was miles away from his house. From the house he’d been sharing with Elain. He couldn’t figure out how to go back. Didn’t know if he could.

A freezing wind cut in hard and brutal off the ocean. He rubbed his hands together—his scarred hands.

He took a deep breath.

The mottled skin was rippled and pocked like a sea sponge. It was disgusting. He told himself it was disgusting. That he was disgusting. He should’ve never put his dirty hands on her—in her. Fuck.

Fuck, fuck, fuck.

Why had he ever brought her to his house? Why hadn’t he just brought her back to the townhouse after he’d saved her from drowning?

Because you couldn’t stay away, he thought.

He wasn’t good for her. The kinds of things he needed… from a female…

Azriel slammed his fist hard into the stone cliff atop which he sat. It hurt, but that was the point. That was the point of all of it wasn’t it? He liked to hurt, like to do the hurting.

He cursed again.

Before he was shadowsinger, he was Illyrian. A stupid, flightless Illyrian who’d never spread his wings farther than the cage hs was kept in would allow. A measly seven feet. Not even enough room to fully spread one wing.

And he’d been weak, tortured for years.

He’d been beaten, bruised, burned. His wings had been broken twice, his fingers numerous times, his knees, his skull… His jaw would never open all the way again. He was a mess. A fucking mess.

He’d known nothing of kindness, of love. Had spent so many years in the darkness that when the shadows came, he’d embraced them. He’d let them in. And now, even years after he’d been free from that hell, years after he’d become more than Illyrian, more than an embarrassment kept in a dungeon cage…that darkness never left him. It was always there.

It was him.

And how could he ever put that on Elain? Ever let her see that?

She was sunshine and light and happiness. He was a stain.

And even if he did show her, and even if she did not flee from his darkness…how could he hurt her? How could he expect her to be hurt by him?

Because it wasn’t just scars his half brother’s had left. Scars would be okay. Scars he could hide or wear. But this. What he needed…  

He shook his head.

What he needed was control. And to be hurt. And to do the hurting. What he needed was to find a way to tell Elain—show—Elain so that she’d be scared. So that she’d never want another thing to do with him ever again.

[Watercliff part 7 - One more part!] part 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8

#Elriel #Watercliff part 7 #Elain x Azriel #Elain Archeron #Azriel #Shadowsinger #not meant to be canonical #This gets a little Blackwood and not I want to write a mashup fic where Az is Garet and Elain is Red. #Kill me! #LOL #Elriel fan fic #Elriel fanfiction

[propshophannah]

Elain Archeron walked the worn path through the tall grass to the back of the property. The day was unseasonably warm, and the wind was blowing in off the ocean making her hair sticky with sea salt. She didn’t mind, just wended through a small copse of trees and found the shed on the other side. She looked through the cracks in the driftwood door.

Azriel sat inside hunched over a potter’s wheel, working. His foot tap, tap, tapping the pedal to keep the plate spinning.

She’d been staying with him for the past three weeks, and hadn’t once worked up the nerve to walk back to the secluded shed he disappeared to each day.

But something about today was different. She felt lighter, happier. More adventurous.

Her sadness wasn’t gone, but it was further somehow. Not so present, so close. She’d always miss her father, always think about what might have been, but she realized that moving on was not a betrayal of him or the life she’d wanted. Moving on was a gift.

And she wanted to move on. Wanted to find her place.

She’d spent the day working the small garden on the side of his house, getting it ready for the coming winter. She’d been in the middle of the pumpkin patch, checking for rot and rabbits, when it’d occurred to her that the clay pots all around the garden were familiar. They were the same ones that had shown up in the townhouse garden shortly after she’d come to Velaris.

In the back of the small vegetable garden, she’d stared at a stack of sea-green pots. Some were lopsided, some cracked, and on some the glaze had been applied too thick or too thin. They were beautiful in their imperfections.

She stared at Azriel’s back. The muscles of his shoulders bent and flexed as he worked to shape the pot between his scarred hands. His wings were tucked in tight and up off the dirty wood floor.

A smile ghosted across Elain’s lips.

On tiptoes, she made her way back to the house, quiet as a doe in spring. She returned to the back of the vegetable garden and hauled a few of the sea-green pots to the side of the house. She filled them with dirt, then went about planting winter blooming flowers in each. When she was done, she quietly arranged them on the front porch of the house.

~

Elain knelt on a sunny patch of grass in the garden digging up lily bulbs. The flowers had bloomed all summer and then disappeared as soon as fall had set in. And while the days were still somewhat warm, the evenings were getting colder and colder. She needed to dig up the bulbs and store them before the ground froze.

She carefully dug into the dirt and had a thought.

Reaching out with her mind, she found Azriel. He was working in the shed at the back of the property. His was bent over the potter’s wheel, streaked in clay up to his elbows. She pushed her mind, deliberately looking into the room. The shadows in the corners and beneath his feet began to jump and swirl, and she knew he could sense her. He sat up, stopping his work, a smile turning the corner of his mouth.

Elain pulled back from the intrusion. A moment later, Azriel appeared through the trees, heading down the small worn path to her.

She took a deep breath, shielded her eyes from the sun and looked at him. “I was hoping you might help me, but not if you’re busy.”

“I’m not.” He wiped his hands on his pants.

Elain smiled and pat the grass next to her. He sat down. “I’ve already moved most of the dirt, now I’m just pulling the bulbs. There are a lot in this patch, and I don’t want to miss any.”

“Tell me what to do.”

She leaned over him slightly, their knees touching, and she showed him how she brushed at the dirt to reveal the pale peach colored bulb beneath. “We want to be careful not to damage the basal plate.” Scooping a bulb, she gently brushed it off and turned it upside down. She sat back on her heels. “That’s the basal plate. If we’re careful not to damage it, we can cut the bulbs just right to make more.”

Azriel leaned in, blowing at some of the dirt. “What’s that?”

“What’s what?”

His fingers brushed hers as he tilted the bulb to her. “Those.”

“The roots?” she giggled. Their faces were close.

“Ah.” He glanced at her, then gently pushed the roots around with the pad of a finger. “They’re not part of the bulb?”

“The plate?” Elain breathed.

Azriel nodded. “That’s right. The plate.” He pulled his hand away, glancing at the sky. Elain swallowed hard and placed the bulb gently in the bucket behind them.

They got to work, moving slowly through the rows at first, then faster. Elain cleared her end of the flowerbed then moved to work across from Azriel. As she leaned forward on her hands and knees, the front of the loose fitting dress she wore pulled away from her skin.

She gathered the next bulb and paused. “This one is so small.” She held it up for him to see—and his eyes went right to the gap between her neck and dress, to the lily-white skin revealed beneath. She watched as his eyes widened then narrowed to focus too hard on the bulb in her hand. He only nodded before looking away, and she sat back quickly.

They stopped when the sun began to set, and carried the bucket of bulbs inside. Then they went to the kitchen to wash up.

Elain walked to the sink, pulling her braid to the side to cool her neck and back. Azriel came up beside her and turned on the water. They wet their hands and shared the bar of soap. Elain leaned in over the large sink, up on her tiptoes, trying to an elbow under the faucet.

Without a word, Azriel cupped some water in his hands and poured it over her arms, smoothing his palms over her skin to rinse the suds. He stood behind her.

“Thank you.” Her voice was barely a whisper, as he gently held one of her arms in a hand, then poured water over it with his other. He bent over her, encasing her. His breath was hot in her ear, his chest heavy with breath as he ran his hands over her skin—up and down, and up and down. Gentle. He was so gentle. She found herself leaning into him, laying her head against his shoulder, pressing her shoulders to his chest, her back to his stomach, her rear to his—

Azriel’s waist pinched backward, and he doubled over, bracing himself with white knuckled hands on the counter.

She turned to face him. “I’m sorry.”

He shook his head. “It’s my fault.” He pushed his hair back with a wet hand, then moved away to adjust his pants before standing straight. “I’m…uh…going to wash up before dinner.” He left.

And Elain was reminded as one season came to an end, another was just beginning.

[Watercliff part 5 - stay tuned!] part 1, 2, 3, 4, 6

#elriel #elain x azriel #watercliff part 5 #elain archeron #azriel #shadowsinger #elriel fanfic #not meant to be canonical #I shouldve edited this one more time

[propshophannah]

“Azriel?” Elain said into the darkness. Her breath was warm on his chest.

“Hmm?”

“You live alone.” It wasn’t a question, but he hummed a yes. “Sometimes I feel as if I live alone.”

She was lying on the floor beside him, tucked into his arm. He’d been ready to let her sleep on his bed, had made himself a place to sleep on the couch, but she’d refused. She’d said the couch would be too small for him and that she wouldn’t feel right taking his bed. He’d allowed it. 

But then he’d gotten to his barren room. The mattress low to the floor on a wooden frame he’d made all those years ago. He’d taken one look at it and had pulled the sheets, dragging them to the living room where he’d decided to sleep on the floor.

He’d told himself it wasn’t because he hated sleeping alone, or because he thought Elain needed a friend, or because there was nowhere he’d rather be than next to her…

They’d laid in silence, both staring at the ceiling. A ray of moonlight illuminated the place where Elain had laid. Her skin—the only thing glowing in the night-dark room. He’d watched her from the shadows, from the floor, from the corner of his eye.

So close, and so far.

He’d not known why, but he’d said, “When I first got to the Illyrian camps, I was a novelty, a rarity. I wasn’t Illyrian enough to be one of them, and as shadowsinger, I was too valuable to be wasted or left to fall into the hands of another court. Rhys’s mom took me in as a favor to my mother. Living with them, my brothers, wasn’t easy. For a long time, I expected them to treat me the way my father’s sons had. I expected their kindness to run out and end with me locked back in the darkness. I’d spent so long believing that I would live and die in my father’s house, that I’d become unable to see my life turning out any differently.”

She’d taken an unsteady breath then.

“When I finally realized that my life would be different… I felt guilty. I didn’t think I deserved to have a real family, or to fly, or live by my own rules—free of the restrictions my previous life had imposed upon me. Sometimes it’s still hard. Sometimes I have to remind myself that I’m not that person anymore, that my life turned out differently.”

She’d reached down then and slipped her hand into his. He’d stilled, only able to stare at their joined hands, then up at her tear stained face. She’d closed her eyes, trying to breathe deeply.

He’d rubbed the back of her hand with his thumb. “You don’t have to pretend, Elain,” he’d said. “You’re my friend, we’re friends.”

A sob had worked it’s way out of her throat, and she’d crawled down to the floor and laid in the shadows next to Azriel.

At first, he hadn’t known what to do. But then he’d felt the wet of her tears on his skin and had just responded, wrapping an arm around her and tucking her in close.

They hadn’t moved since.

Azriel squeezed Elain’s hand, clasped in his over his chest. “For a very long time, I felt as if I lived alone, too.” Part of her shoulder brushed his wing as she shifted, but he didn’t mind. Friend, she was his friend, and he love her.

“This sounds so stupid.” There were tears in her voice. “But when I was eleven, my father took me to see a garden in the city. It was big and fancy, and we had to pay a fee just to see it. We spent the whole day together, and I remember every second. And every year after that, on the same day, I rememberer. And t-today…”

“Today was that day wasn’t it?”

Elain nodded into his shoulder. “And it’s n-not about Graysen,” she said. “I don’t care about him—haven’t thought about him in months and months. But today, when I remembered… all I could think about was how m-my father was dead, and how we’d never get to go to that garden again. And how if things had been different, if I’d still married Graysen, if the war never happened, he’d still be alive. And all day I thought about him. And no one cared because no one knew. I felt invisible and stupid and sentimental.” She wiped her face. “But then Feyre and Rhys left the house, and they’re married, and Feyre never cared for such things, but all I could think was that m-my father would n-never give me away when I married.”

Azriel knew then why he’d brought her to his house and not back to the townhouse. What he’d seen in her eyes and in the movement of her body these past few weeks, what he’d heard in the space between her words and breaths…

“You’re father loved you, Elain.” His voice was a whisper of darkness, but it was unyielding, sturdy. “He loved you so much he raised an army to save you.”

“And he did,” she sobbed.

Azriel nodded. “That he did.”

They lay there in the darkness for hours. Listening to the owls and the night waking creatures in the hillside. To the distant crash of waves against the cliffs. And sometimes Elain talked, and sometimes he did. And sometimes Elain cried, and sometime she was silent.

Azriel held her. They held each other.

Just before they drifted off to sleep, she said, “I think I’m scared of what happens if I move on. Where do I put him, where is his place in my life when he is no longer here?”

“I don’t think the ones we’ve lost ever leave us. Not really. I think we carry them with us, always.”

Elain squeezed his hand and pulled it to her lips, whispering, “Thank you. For listening to me, for seeing me.” She pressed a kiss to the back of his scarred hand just below his siphon. Her lips were soft, full. Her breath warm in the cooling darkness.

He wasn’t sure anyone had ever been that gentle with him.

And no one noticed the blush that bloomed across his cheeks as Elain nestled back into the crook of his arm and fell asleep.

[End Watercliff part 4 - stay tuned] part 1, 2, 3, 5

#elriel #azriel x elain #elriel fanfiction #watercliff part 4 #acowar #acotar #acomaf #elain archeron #Azriel #shadowsinger #minific #fanfiction

[propshophannah]

Azriel didn’t think, just dove into the freezing waters.

He saw her. Ten feet below him—eyes wide and sinking fast. The world was nothing around him. An icy, desolate wasteland. But there she was—Elain.

A spot of light and warmth. No sound but the beating of her heart.

He would not let this woman drown. Not again.

He swam, pumping legs and wings and arms, like an arrow through the water. The shimmering white of the gown fell around her like a halo, golden hair trailing up as she kicked and thrashed to be free. But the weight and layers of the gown pulled her down,

down,

down,

tangled in her legs.

Azriel reached for her with hand and shadow. He’d never called them in water, had never had the need. But as light faded and his lungs began to burn—as he saw her inhale water—he willed himself into them…

And materialized in the icy blackness beneath her feet. With a mighty beat of his wings, he launched himself up. Grabbing Elain around the waist, he shot for the surface.

Brighter and brighter the world around him became—until he broke the surface, hauling Elain with him. He leaned back, pulling her onto his chest, legs and wings propelling them to shore. When his feet hit the shelf, he stood.

Every slice of wind on his body felt like a thousand needles made of ice. But he didn’t care as Elain started coughing, as he laid her out on the shore. This woman—Elain.

Her eyes were cloudy, her movements all too familiar, no reaction to the cold, to the forest.

“Elain.” Her eyes snapped to him, clear, haunted. She blinked as she coughed and vomited up more water. Then she was gasping and wheezing, pushing off the ground as if realizing where she was. She fisted a hand into his leathers, and Azriel pulled her into his lap.

“Elain, Elain, Elain,” he said. And he didn’t know why it felt different, didn’t know what exactly the feeling was. But it was as if his arms had been searching for her, for something shaped exactly like her to fill them—perfectly, she fit perfectly. And he knew he could never let her go.

Elain hooked one arm around his neck, the other under his arm to latch onto his shoulder. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”

“Shh.” Azriel smoothed her hair and pressed his chin atop her head. He needed to hold her, touch her. “You’re my friend. You’ve nothing to apologize for—nothing.”

They were both shaking, freezing. She said, “I don’t know what’s wrong with me. Why I came here. I’m scared—Azriel. I don’t know anymore, I don’t know, I don’t…”

“It’s okay. I know. I know what that’s like. I know.” And he did. He’d grown up in the darkness. Had learned to survive by embracing it, by identifying with it—he was shadowsinger, not Illyrian.

He tightened his hold on her as an icy wind sliced across the lake. He needed to get them both someplace warm. “Let me help you,” he whispered. “Ask me to help you.”

A tiny, cold hand tightened around the back of his neck. “Help me, Azriel. Please.”

A black, icy wind swept them up as he winnowed them away. And he thought he might have felt a thread of warmth and life entwined among the shadows.

[End Watercliff part 2 - stay tuned] part 1, 3

#elriel #elriel fanfic #not meant to be canonical #elain x azriel #watercliff part 2 #cauldron redo #watercliff #elain archeron #Azriel #acowar #acotar #acomaf #shadowsinger