Archive of Our Own

It’s early afternoon when we hear the unmistakable sound of flowing water. Shadowheart, who has been looking more and more weary as time stretches on, visibly perks up at the sound. I swear even Lae’zel straightens a little with eagerness. The women quicken their pace and Astarion, Gale, and I follow after them. Our motley little crew seems equally excited about the prospect of finally being clean. All of us save Astarion who, from a quick glance, seems concerned at the prospect.

The last two days have been long. More than once I have been covered with some sort of substance that I would rather not think too long about as well as my own blood and sweat. Sure Gale, as a wizard can magic away the worst of it with a simple Prestidigitation cantrip, but I always feel as though there is a fine layer of invisible grit on me anyway. Despite Gale's magical ability, we as a group still smell.

“Oh running water,” Shadowheart says excitedly, or what I assume is excitement for her. It is slightly less disdainful than normal.

“Yes,” Lae’zel agrees and then looks almost affronted that they have agreed on anything.

Stepping up to the edge with her I peer into the water flowing just beyond the small drop. “It doesn’t look too deep or fast moving. We should be good to cross it, and better yet we should be fine to bathe.” Sure enough the water is clear and flowing slowly enough that I don’t think we will have any trouble keeping our feet in it. I crouch down and dip my fingers in it. It is slightly cool, but nothing that will be too terrible.

Shadowheart and Lae’zel have both begun stripping off their armor and removing some of their under padding. I figure I will just take off my robes and drag them in with me so they can get a good rinse. Maybe we can camp here for a while, bathe and then let ourselves dry in the sun. It sounds like a nice respite given the nightmare of the last forty eight hours. Of course as we prepare to bathe, both Astarion and Gale are standing a few paces from the steam staring at it dubiously.

“I know that people generally cannot help taking their clothing off in my presence but this hardly seems like the place or time,” Astarion quips, waving his hand nonchalantly.

“Tchk. You may enjoy smelling like something foul, but I prefer to be clean,” Lae’zel scoffs.

“I do enjoy being clean as well, but in a stream? Really?” Astarion snaps back. “It just seems so…uncivilized.”

“I hardly see a bath here,” Shadowheart tells him flatley, now down to her underclothing. Without any more preamble, she strides into the water.

“I, uh, I’ll just wait until you all are done,” Gale declares as he turns his back to the stream.

“You istik are all the same,” Lae’zel growls and then storms in her underclothing into the water.

I roll my eyes. Forty eight hours have taught me it is better just to ignore her. Outer clothing in hand, I move to the edge and dip it into the running water. I’ve done more with less, so in short order it is clean.

“Get in here and clean your filth,” Shadowheart orders, looking at Astarion. “You smell like death and I will not be forced to walk near it for one more moment.”

“I will do no such thing! What if there are leeches? I am very particular about what I allow to suck on me. If you want something to affix to you and drain your blood I am certain that can be arranged. As for me, I shall pass,” he declares regally.

She narrows her eyes at him. “Have you never been outside? This isn’t a stagnant pond, it is a running stream with a rocky bottom. There are not any leeches.”

“Actually there could be untold bacteria floating in there,” Gale chimes in, his back still turned.

“Exactly,” Astarion agrees. “There are bits of my body that everyone would much rather remain intact and bacteria free.”

I can almost hear her eyes roll. “Do you never bathe?”

“Oh I bathe. I just prefer to do it in a private location, with the water contained in a tub, warmed and preferably with an equally naked companion,” Astarion answers her. I happen to look up at that exact moment and the suggestive look he sends me, makes my cheeks start to flush.

“Astarion just come take a look,” I tell him, shaking out my clothing and dutifully trying to ignore the comment. “It really is clear and not bad.”

With a dramatic sigh he edges closer. “Just because water is clear doesn’t mean it isn’t dangerous. Are you familiar with this stream and the perils it could contain, I think not.”

“Istik, get in the water and cleanse the smell from your body before I make you,” Lae’zel growls.

I spread my clothes over a rock to dry and roll my eyes. Astarion looks like a child who is just afraid to take that first step in the water. Granted where I come from, you do not just jump in any body of liquid without spending a lot of time making sure it is safe. This stream is not that. Lae’zel will likely break bones if she has to man handle him into the water, bones that I’m not sure Shadowheart would be willing to spend her magic fixing.

“Come on,” I tell Astarion with a sigh and wrap my hand around his bicep as I step down into the stream. He must have been leaning over to get a closer look because my little tug completely upsets his balance. His arms windmill and he releases a shriek of what I swear sounds almost like pure terror. His reactions startles me and I release his arm, contributing to him then splashing face first into the water.

All of us, even Gale I notice, watch in some form of morbid fascination as there is much flailing and screeching for almost a full thirty seconds. I’m just beginning to think I should probably wade in further and save him from drowning when the screaming abruptly stops and Astarion stands up at last.

“It is chilly,” he murmurs into the sudden silence. Water streams from him as he lifts his left hand and stares at it. If I didn’t know better I would say his expression is one of childlike wonder at his wet hand. Then he looks up at me and smiles. It is so different then every expression he has had since we met that I’m taken aback. “It actually feels wonderful.” Then his eyes close and he drops his whole body back into the water.

“Idiot,” Shadowheart scoffs, going back to her own bathing. I just shake my head and wade in to clean myself.

We decide to camp beside the river that night and the ladies take the time to clean their armor as well. Gale, eventually and fully clothed, does wade into the river to clean himself. A few quick cantrips have him dry again and he offers something similar to the rest of us. We all decline. I would rather dry the natural way today I think.

Astarion, despite his earlier protests, is the last one to leave the stream from our initial bath. He returns to it as the evening stretches into night and the others have all found their rest. I catch a glance of him sitting in his evening clothing with the water up to his neck and flowing around him. His eyes are closed and his face is tipped up like he is enjoying the feel of the water and the moonlight on his face. I don’t say anything about it as I keep watch for my shift, it is hardly the weirdest thing I have seen in the last few days. Still, the pieces of him don’t seem to add up and that makes me curious, but not curious enough to interrupt him. If I had to hazard a guess, I will likely have plenty of time to figure him out.

Astarion sighs into my skin where his cheek is pressed against my naked chest. My fingers idly trace the scars on his back and the invisible tattoos atop them. “So I was thinking,” I begin softly.

He chuckles, “Well clearly I did not fully execute my plan if you are still able to be thinking. I shall have to try again.” He turns his head and places a kiss on my chest before mouthing at my nipple. There is just the barest pressure of fang against my skin, which he knows is a guarantee to get me going. My body gives a half hearted attempt to react as it always does but I am well and truly sated at the moment.

“Quit it you,” I tease, swatting his shoulder. “You know damn well that was pretty high up on the orgasm scale and it will be a good while before my body is up to playing.”

His leg is thrown over mine and he uses it to roll half on top of me. “Oh my love you have no idea how blissed out in pleasure I can make you for hours. We really should try that sometime,” he purrs.

I smile and lift my free hand to brush a few wayward strands of hair from his face. Then I run my fingers down his cheek and his neck. It is a tender gesture, one I know that he likes. Sex between us is still very much a complicated work in progress and it may always be. This intimacy though, this we can and often do now. He has told me in the past that he likes being held by me because he knows that even though I could hurt him, I never would. It is a pleasure all its own to know that we can lie here in our tower, on our bed, for as long as we like and no one is coming to snatch me away. Even Halsin, when he comes to visit which is happening more frequently as of late, sees Astarion’s need for these moments and tends to make himself scarce.

“What were you thinking of, my love,” he asks softly. His expression is open, unguarded and full of love.

“It was just a random memory,” I tell him, my fingers returning to tracing the scars on his back. “Of the first time we all found a stream together and how reluctant you were to bathe. You screamed the most I think I have ever heard from you then.”

He is quiet for a moment and then sighs. “Did you ever figure out why I reacted like that?” he asks me.

“To be honest, I had forgotten all about it, given everything,” I tell him.

He nods as if to himself and shifts so that his cheek is pressed to my skin once more, breaking eye contact. “I do not know if it was boredom or genuine curiosity but Cazador one evening, decided that he wanted to see what effect running water had on a vampire.” I try not to tense beneath him at his words.

Astarion has been doing this lately, sharing little truths of his life. I don’t think it is done as a means to shock me or make a point, like he used to. I think he genuinely wants me to know of the things he has lived through. Halsin reasons that him sharing his past with me not only helps him process and reaffirms that he is free of that now, but it also deepens our bond with that trust. Halsin theorized that there is a part of Astarion that needs to tell me all the ways that he has been hurt and that I could hurt him, because that knowledge is safe with me. I’m not a mind healer of any sort, not that Astarion will see one, but I try to ‘hold space’ for him as Halsin calls it. So as he speaks, I don’t say anything, just continue the motion of my fingers on his back.

“We all knew better than to go into running water, could feel that it was a bad thing to do just as instinctively as we avoided the sun. Cazador wanted to know how much worse it was than the sunlight on our skin. So every day for a week, during the day he would hold my right hand in the sun for 60 seconds, or 120 if I fought him. Then that night, he would hold my left hand in running water for the same amount of time. Come dawn, he would heal them both, then do it all over again.”

“You’ve seen what sunlight does to a vampire,” he says casually as if discussing the weather. My mind flashes back to Baldur’s Gate when he held one of his brothers in the sun to get information from him. “Running water does about the same. So when you pulled me into the stream I expected my flesh to start burning from me, my secret to be out, and my death to soon follow.”

I’m horrified by the pain I would have inflicted on him had the tadpole not been protecting him. “Astarion, gods, I’m so sorry. I never would have done that had I known.”

He shifts to look at me once more and offers me a soft smile. “I know you would not have love. You had no way to know, but I highly doubt that the person who not only accepted I was a vampire but offered me blood a few minutes later would have done anything more than pull me right back out of the stream and defend me from the others.”

“I would have you know,” I tell him confidently. “I don’t think I would have killed them, but I would have stopped them.”

We are quiet for a long moment as I remember back to that day and something clicks. “That night you sat in the stream for hours. That’s why. You hadn’t been able to feel running water without pain for 200 years.”

His smile is tinged with sadness. “Correct. It was a wonderful sensation that I wanted to soak up as much as I could before I would never be able to do it again.”

“Never is a very long time,” I tell him gently. Finding the ‘cure’ for his vampirism is an old argument of ours. He doesn’t think it is possible or if we do, that it will cost too much. I, on the other hand, know there is a way. We just haven’t found it yet.

“Whatever you say love,” he murmurs, sliding up my body to kiss my lips. As I kiss him back, tracing the seam of his lips with my tongue, I vow that someday he will feel running water on his skin again.