Chapter Text
Six days pass.
When you go out, Astarion doesn’t ask to go with you as he usually did. He lets someone else fill his role. He assumes you’ve found someone else to pick the locks and disarm traps. Maybe even someone better at it. Damn them.
Really though, you’re struggling a little out there, and you’re breaking sets of thieve’s tools left and right. It’s cumbersome and inefficient, but you don’t want to be a bother. And also, a bit selfishly, you just don’t want to face him. So you don’t call on him, and he doesn’t ask to be called on.
Even so, he can't bring himself to turn that page. When it reaches a week since he’s been able to speak to you, Astarion decides he’ll try again. Otherwise… he feels this might never reach a resolution. And good lord, he doesn’t know what he’ll do then. No sooner is a gift like you bestowed upon him, than it’s whisked away again.
Astarion sits in his tent and goes over the most solid points he wants to make to you. If he could, he’d practice in front of a mirror.
He follows your footsteps down the creek where you all bathe. It’s night, he thinks, but you can’t really tell in the Shadowlands.
He walks until sand and gravel mush under his feet, and he sees your discarded clothes on a log nearby. He looks out onto the water to see you nude, waist deep, back to him. You have your hair down, and you’re staring at the vast expanse of black blue water, moon reflecting on it.
You seem to be lost in thought. You’re not washing, just swaying gently in the waves. Astarion sheds his shoes, and speaks lowly, trying not to spook you.
‘Would you terribly mind some company?’
You whip your head around and glance at him just enough to identify him. You turn back around and reply, without emotion.
‘Uh- no. Go ahead.’ You’re scared, but you successfully convey neutrality over top of it.
Well, off to a good start! Astarion thinks. You seem… more receptive, worn down by the march of time. Astarion rests the remainder of his outfit next to yours and wades in. He walks slowly towards you, water rising up his body, until he lands next to you, a foot of space in between you. You stand shoulder to shoulder, both staring ahead.
‘I know you’re angry with me, but I’d like to tell you some things, if you’ll hear them. You don’t have to say anything. Just listen.’
‘Okay.’ You whisper. As much as you feared what he had to say, the not knowing would be worse.
‘When we first met I didn’t much care for you. I thought you and your friends were just another threat to my existence. People who had come to take from me. And… well, you know this sordid tale.’ He shifts on his feet in the silt. ‘I held a knife to you, and for whatever reason, you took me in like a stray cat.’ Astarion reflects. ‘We landed on our feet together, and I found myself… trusting you. How could I help it? You’ve been nothing but a steadfast accomplice to me and my whims.’
‘As I said before, you deserve something real. And that starts with… telling you the truth. No matter how hard it is for me to say.’ He pauses, as the next couple words he has to utter truly are the hardest to say.
‘I lied to you, yes. I slept with you for personal gain.’ You bow your head at this. You don't quite understand why he came out here to reiterate his blow to your ego, but you listen intently, no matter how hard it is to hear.
‘But that was before I knew you, honestly knew you. And now that I do, I don’t want to withhold anymore. Now, don’t let this get to your head, but I think- I think you’re the best of us. You’re strong. You’re honorable and patient. Discerning when need be, personable and flexible when not. You’re a radiant, marble statue of a woman.’ Astarion smiles and talks with his hands at the end when he’s describing your beauty, hands spreading out in front of him like he’s recounting a landscape. Then, he takes a moment to collect his thoughts, and his hands return to his sides, made into fists and thumbs rubbing the side of his index fingers, nervous.
‘And you’re kind; foolishly so, at times. Truly an unforgettable creature.’
‘And you think that I had to grin and bear it.’ He laughs, incredulous. ‘Gods, it was never that. A performance the first time, yes, but I simply… wasn’t there. Lost to the wind as I always was. A survival instinct. It had nothing to do with you, darling.’
‘But the second time… you- you touched me like I haven’t been touched in a long, long time. You made me feel like-‘ He says a long, long time, but he really means never. He’s been grabbed at, pulled at and placed in positions. Never so gentle. He’s exasperated now, like he’s frustrated by the severity of his feelings. He turns his head to you, and you’re still facing ahead, so he descends a bit deeper into the water and turns until he stands in front of you, and you’re made to look at him now. He continues.
‘I felt it too. It was real. I want us to be something real. You would be a fool to think I did not want you.’
You peer at him when he finishes. You have to look up a little since he’s taller than you, the moon backlighting him, illuminating wisps of silver hair. You think he’s sincere. He seems it. And if he’s not, you think it might be worth the risk anyway.
‘I care about you, Astarion. Deeply.’ You speak softly.
‘I’m poorly made.’ He warns you.
‘I want you all the same.’
Electricity crackles between you, but you look up at him with chaste, patient eyes. You slip your hand into his underwater, but make no further move. You’ll wait for him to come to you, to make the jump, to do this for himself.
Astarion slips his hand out of yours, unsatisfied with this sorry show of affection by handholding, and opts to cradle your face with both instead. He seems to float closer, rippling the water around him, and you angle your face up. Your faces are barely an inch apart, he takes one hand and caresses your wet hair and gazes at you, taking his time to take your face in, the vision that you are in his hands. You’ve faced eachother now, and all that’s left to do is reap the benefits. You reach up and grasp one of his wrists. He huffs out a breath and inhales sharply like he’s bracing himself.
‘Let’s rewrite the first time. We can do better.’
You begin to agree, but he's already tilting his head to the side so your noses don’t get in the way, and he leans in. He meets you where you are and molds his lips to yours in a sweet embrace.
It’s closed mouths at first, his straight nose touches your cheek and he breathes in the scent of your skin. His hands slide down to your shoulders and he starts to walk you backwards.
He’s so painfully impatient. But you know this already.
You place your hands on his waist. He’s spurred on by your hands on him and he deepens the kiss, devouring your bottom lip, both of your heads moving up and down, necks craning back and forth as you move lips together, diving back in for more.
Now he’s walked you both back out of the water and onto the damp silt. He keeps going until he feels his soles hit dirt and grass, and then, without breaking from you, he grabs your hands at his waist and puts them around his neck. He leans down a bit and grabs the space just below your ass with both hands and lifts up and apart until your legs are wrapped around his middle. You lock your legs behind him. You’re kissing like you’re trying to eat eachother now, saliva going everywhere.
You’re taller than him now and he supports your weight so well that you feel light as a feather. He’s not done repositioning you both, you realize.
He’ll not have you both scrambling to the ground, so he can shuffle atop you, no. He’s just not self-denying enough to break contact with you. He’ll do things the hard way, and it’ll feel all the more devoted for it.
He kneels down into the grass and bends forward until you’re softly under him, legs and arms still twined around him like roots of a tree. Astarion lowers your butt to the ground first and once he feels you won’t fall, he uses one hand to cradle the back of your head to ensure a soft landing.
At this point, you’re already ready, you’re soaked, but he doesn’t care. He’s going to make up for his shortcomings from last time. Astarion is on a mission.
He tears his lips from you and travels down until he reaches your cleavage and licks a continuous line down, down, down to your bellybutton. Astarion moves his knees backwards with him as he goes down, and you hum at his hot tongue on your skin. He lays his head to the side and looks up at you from his station at your stomach and he trails a hand up the inside of your thigh.
‘Can I? I’m starved.’ He rasps out. His eyes are darker than usual. They reel you in.
You reach down and card your finger through his hair and his eyelashes flutter at the sensation. You hear yourself utter out a rushed, whispered yes.
Astarion gets to work fast. He lifts your thighs and rests them on his shoulders, and he wraps his hands around them so they stay there. He's face to face with your cunt now, and he rolls his tongue out and licks a wide stripe at the bottom all the way up to your clit. You keen at the feeling. Astarion looks up at you, continuing his ministrations, and is rewarded with the sight of you with your mouth open and back arched. He open mouth kisses the most sensitive parts of you as if it were your mouth. He follows back down to your entrance and digs in with his fluctuating tongue, collecting wetness and licking up into your walls.
'Starion...' You utter breathlessly with a lilt, and his ego triumphs and glitters in the wake of your praise. He grabs your hand that rested at your side and rests it on him where his shoulder meets neck. You're other hand has stayed in his hair, but it's obviously not enough for him.
Astarion keeps on with his fluctuating, moving back and fourth from your depths to your clit and wrapping his lips around it and making circles. He's truly putting everything he has into you. Your hums and moans give him direction of where you like his tongue best. He doesn't think there's an afterlife, having been there and back, but if there is, he hopes he'll get to return to the recollection of this every once in a while. There's some tiny modicum of absolution in this.
He bends his hand downwards and reaches for his hard dick, and he grinds against it, not fully stroking yet as he's saving himself for the real thing. It's a strong show of resilience as he's already tumescent, so much so that you could bend metal around him.
'Please. Come in my mouth.' He pulls back barely a centimeter to say it, and it comes out rushed and desperate so he can dive back in.
You feel so buried under the pleasure, and at last, every single muscle bites down, and you release. Your thighs are shaking and your clench down around his head as you come, nails scratching at his shoulder. He watches you the whole while, whimpering at the sight, his hard head being robust enough to withstand your vice grip on him, thankfully. His ears stand at attention at your soft cries and whines and he can't stand it anymore. He wraps around himself hard. He grunts into you, licking you through your orgasm until you come down from your high, panting. Astarion collects your come on his tongue and you jump from the sensitivity, and he swallows it.
Astarion gets no time to bask in it or touch himself as you've already bent at the waist and you're removing your thighs from their perch. You grasp at his biceps and flip the both of you over so you're straddling him. His back is on the grass, settling into the spot you'd laid in moments ago. This all feels eerily similar to the first time, and he thinks he won't be able to think about that moment in time again without connecting it to this. He's rewritten it. You grind yourself down on him, and in a downwards stroke, your lips catch on the tip of his dick.
"Yes. Yes. Inside.' He begs, and he bucks up into you impatiently.
You heed his call and sit up straight a bit and position yourself over him and roll back, his trip breaches your entrance, and the sensation is completely singular. You continue lowering yourself until you’re swallowing him to the hilt. It's so easy. You're both so prepared and craving. You both let out noises at this, yours being a low groan from being stretched a bit, and his a breathy mewl, and a sharp gasp when you start to move. He places his hands on the swell of your hips and squeezes the skin there but doesn't guide you. He lets you speak for yourself.
For his prospects, he usually took on the role of the dominating, powerful vampire giving into the misguided wants of a misguided mortal, pistoning in and out of them. Or, he became an obedient, silent abyss to be filled, face being pressed into the pillow.
Now, you come to him on an even playing field. And with that solid foundation, he starts to relinquish control, because be knows-- he feels-- you have him. Ever since he stopped denying himself of you, every single move you've made on him has felt perfectly curated for him.
And so, prostitution becomes fucking becomes sex becomes... hairs standing at attention on every square in of his body in the wake of your touch. He tries so hard to keep his eyes open, but he so badly aches to screw them shut, overwhelmed but the feeling of you squeezing down on him. He settles for a half lidded, appreciative gaze, eyelashes fluttering as he fights the urge. He fights it so he can look up at you, hair swaying as you fuck him, very thoroughly enjoying yourself, humming and buzzing and eyebrow furrowing. A forearm comes into his field of vision, and you're hovering your wrist over his wanting mouth, ever the giver.
'Drink, baby.'
You press your veiny wrist to him, and he can feel your heartbeat on his lips. He looks up at your face and you're looking right back at him, not a hint of uncertainty to be found. He licks over where he's aiming for, and he sinks his teeth in there in a swift movement. He hears you cry out from the cold pierce of his fangs, but it's not a cry of complaint. Red flows into his mouth and down his throat. He can taste your arousal in the blood, and deeper than that, the note of your deep reverence and concern for him. There's not much to eat out here. You know he's famished in more ways than one, and you're setting out to satiate them all.
You ride him like hell as he drinks from you, never failing in your thrusts against him, letting him slip out a bit and chasing it again. In the hedonistic haze of it all, Astarion starts to fuck up into you in time with your hips, searching for more, more, more. He whimpers and whines into your flesh wantonly, making a mess of your arm and his mouth. Against all the grim of the Shadowlands, your blood and your pussy feels like a shock of warm light flowing through him, a shot of adrenaline straight to the heart and down to where he is most needy. A lone flame in pouring rain.
’You’re so good, Star.’ You mutter.
Oh, gods. He never really stood a chance, did he? Tell me I’m good again.
It's intense and it's hot, but it's not burning. It feels like coming inside after being out in the white winter all day. It's warm.
He detaches from your wrist and springs up to meet you where you are and legs crisscrossing beneath you. You welcome the change and you bend your legs around his middle. You sit now in the lotus position, every part of you touching him as he so desires. One arm curling around your waist to hug you to his torso and support you, while the other bending up behind your back to hold the nape of your neck. Astarion catches your mouth in another feral kiss, gasping and messy and unorganized.
The pleasure is building so fast and so fierce. He breaks away from you and he burrows his face into the crux of your neck and shoulder, muffling his sounds as the grow in volume. He would've stained your shoulder with the blood from his mouth, but you've washed the most of it off with your mouth. You cradle the back of his head and bury your own face into his white curls.
Now, with every lunge of his cock back into you, a yes! falls out of him and into your ears, spurring you on and increasing your need for his sounds. When he's fully saturated in you, you grind down and your clit grazes against his pubic bone. You're close, and judging by Astarion's curses and breaths and the way his cock is twitching inside of you, he is too. Your walls start to flutter around him.
’Hah…’ You breathe out, already satiated by him before your orgasm even breaks.
You call his name just before you clench down on his cock, the call ringing through Astarion’s ears like a hymn. He’s gone. Nothing else will ever be like this. This is it. Adversaries may come and go in the coming years, looking to strike down the Vampire Hero of Baldur’s Gate, to take him from your embrace. It won’t work. He’ll crawl back to you, if he has to.
Your depth contracts and releases and creates a paralyzing pleasure that hits you like huge, tsunami-like waves.
’Good gods…’ He grunts out as your body takes hold of you, you ride him even faster to accomapany your orgasm and it pushes Astarion over the edge.
’Oh!’ He cries right next your ear, and right at the back half of your peak, Astarion comes hard and fast, the feeling unrelenting. His arm around you tightens and your chests are pressed together as you both heave breaths. Astarion shoots pearlescent ropes of spend into you, and it’s a bit cold, but it feels soothing against the soreness that’s coming.
’F-…uck!’ He moans through the beginning of his orgasm, and then is frozen, mouth open, into silence at the biggest flourish of it, lava pooling in his stomach, eyebrows pulled together and towards his hairline.
You’re a sweaty, panting mess as he comes down, and when it’s over, Astarion doesn’t let go of you and falls back into the grass. You stay pressed together, and you lay your head on his chest, ear where his heart would beat.
You don’t make a move to unsheath him from you, and neither does he. On that day many months ago now, when he pulled you into the woods, the cicadas chittered around you and the sun came up to grace you both. This time, there’s no noise except the water hitting the shore, and it’s dark. There’s something comforting in that, as the only source of life and light right now… is eachother. It’s honest, and maybe this was how it was always supposed to happen.
‘Should we get back in? We’ve dirtied ourselves again.’ You say softly, though not completely ready to get up yourself. You know your legs will be like jelly.
At that, Astarion notices all the blood and bodily fluid starting to dry on him. He doesn’t blink at it.
‘Mm, yes. In a moment.’ He closes his eyes and rubs a hand up and down your exposed back.
‘Though, for future reference, I quite like being covered in you.’ He says, and he’s true.
You laugh. He smiles.