You joined Ellie in pursuit of the bastards who mutilated Joel, gunning down half of Seattle to find the one woman who orchestrated the entire thing, and bring her to justice. It proves a lot more damning than you both thought it would be, and it’s going to cost even more blood than you expected to spill.
Ellie x Fem!Reader
cw: Angst angst angsty angst, someone give both of ya’ll a hug. Sorry for any mistakes, I’ve been working on this forthe last 6 hours my eyes are TIRED.
Don’t steal, please!
8.6k words
The room is watching you, waiting with its breathing floorboards and smiling–grinning–with its crumbling foundation at your pain, and you know that.
It's empty and decrepit and smells of something inexplicably sour, but you aren’t here for comfort, and it knows that. This damn hallowed husk of stone feels more alive than you do.
You stare at the wall, unmoving and unblinking, your revolver strewn over your raised knee while your fingers loosely curl over the grip, and you listen to the rain fall diagonally against the boarded windows. The mold slithering up the concrete, not unlike a tendril of ivy, peeks from beneath flaying floral patterns to pulse and quiver at you amongst stagnant air, though your flashlight has since begun to dim. You damaged the glass when you dropped it.
You don’t know how long you’ve been here, aren't sure whether it’s been days or minutes or hours, hiding, shivering like an abandoned stray on corroding softwood floors.
Your other hand is in your lap, resting atop the leg folded underneath you, but that is of unimportant detail, because it is empty. It lies there limp, facing towards the ceiling, half-curled and meek, as if waiting for something to grace the dip of its palm; a leaking solution, perhaps, but rainwater it is given because nothing is ever that easy. Not that you thought anything about this little crusade of yours would be simple.
Even if Joel Miller wasn’t the most outwardly affectionate toward others, the man always made sure to offer an open ear, a helping hand, or whatever else he could in classic, Texan altruism. And you noticed how he would hover around Ellie at a distance, reluctant, adhering to her wordless need for space but also never too far away. It was no secret how much he cared for her, and it is also no secret how fucking unfair life could be, because there was this singeing smell—assaulting and metallic and densely warm—that hit you before you even passed through the door.
The sight of his body, mangled and glistening under an ample amount of his own drying blood, would be etched into the back of your eyelids for days to come. It was a terrible thing, purposeful, evil, and the following sight of Ellie lying in a small bit of her own, facing him, was even worse.
For the first few days, she refused to come out of the garage, and the day she was ready to open the door for you, her haggard state was made plainly obvious.
Eating was optional, sleep was elusive, and showering was completely disregarded, and you could see everything, once hidden within the roundness of her face, had come to light in the shadows of her sunken cheeks. The regret and anger and every other emotion she could feel settled at the bridge of her nose all at once. She was swaying on her feet, pale and heavy, even her freckles seemed to have dulled, and your tongue pressed against the roof of your mouth. A wedge of bitterness had furrowed the space between your eyebrows, and the same searing pain, separate from everything else, twitched in the corner of Ellie’s frown. Everything was so unfair.
She didn’t utter a word, barely looked in your direction, but you knew without them that she was grateful for you being there, and it took her a week to finally speak again.
Her voice was so small, so broken, when she parted her lips to ask if you could spend the night quietly, you almost didn’t recognize it as hers. Ellie, who always sounded so witty and strong and just the right amount of awkward, was cracking along the edges of her letters, husky and watery in the way of someone barely hanging on to their last thread of sanity. However, the next morning was different.
“I’m going after them,” she had said, nodding her head. “I…I need to. I'm not going to ask you to come with me,” she continued, “I’m just telling you what I want to do, so...”
She had this tautness slotted between the gaps of her grinding teeth, her usual tough exterior slipping back into place along the stiff line of her shoulders, in stark contrast to the raw emotion you rarely got to see. You could sense it; she had hardened throughout the night, thrown something vulnerable under lock and key and steel chain, and desperately squeezed her hands around the bleeding wound in her chest where Joel had been to provide some haphazard form of self-healing.
You stood in front of her, the coffee table stretching the blanket of silence between you even wider, and drew in a deep breath, toying with the lint inside your pockets while you observed her, watching as her eyes darted from the floor to your face and back to the floor. You knew she was angry, hurting, resigned to her simmering need for vengeance, and you didn’t blame her for it. You had only hoped that what she wanted to do was something that would truly help her cope, because once Ellie had her mind set, there was little anyone could do to change it.
“Are you going by yourself?”
Ellie nodded. “With, um, with Tommy.”
“Then,” you took a few steps forward, and Ellie’s eyes followed your movement, grabbing your hand and swiping her thumb over your knuckles almost instinctively, like she needed to be physically touching you in that moment without her realizing it, “I’m going with you. You go, I go, remember?”
A crack of thunder begins quietly, rumbling through the clouds, low, not unlike a lion’s guttural purr, and it grows and grows until you can feel it grumble beneath the soles of your feet. Your mind snaps back into the present, and you blink, finding yourself back inside this damn building.
Something in the ceiling pops, a loose tile possibly, and it almost feels mocking; a little snort provided by crumbling infrastructure because you dared to reminisce as if saying, “Why bother? You’re dead anyway.” You startle a little at the sound.
…The bite burns.
Unbearably so, beneath your long-sleeved shirt, and no amount of waiting combats this insufferable sensation, but at least it’s stopped bleeding, you suppose.
You pull your sleeve back and stare at the bandage for a moment, shoddy and hastily wrapped in a panic. Your eyes observe your blood and how it’s now seeped into the gauze, soaking it an amaranth pink before pulling that back too.
Your skin is red, raw, and the small indents made by rotten teeth and gnashing jaw feel uncomfortable and dirty. There's a prickling, this scorching unfamiliarity squirming above your bones and making your arm itch, but you don’t scratch because you know you won’t be satisfied until you’ve peeled this gross flesh clean off. You fucking hate stalkers.
But, despite everything going through your mind right now, the only thing you can truly focus on is that you can’t hide here forever. It had taken some convincing on your part to momentarily split up, leaving Ellie at the theatre while you searched the surrounding buildings for supplies, at least, that was the lie you gave her. In truth, you just needed some time to think.
You would have hoped for an older death, dying peacefully in your sleep like that woman at the end of that old, old movie Ellie practically begged you to watch, if only to share the frustration about her dropping that millions-of-dollars-worth necklace off the boat.
“She could have, at least, given it to her granddaughter! What was the point of keeping it for all those years just to do that shit?”
Never mind that Tommy left before the both of you. You’ll never get to hear her complain about stupid, old movies ever again, never get to patrol with Dina and make fun of how Jessie is going to come crawling back a day after they break up for the umpteenth time, and never see home again. It takes two days to turn after you’re bitten.
You won’t be making it back.
A laugh is coming, you realize–bitter and sullen and hidden behind your liver. It burns on its way up past your lungs and sears the back of your tongue, and then you’re giggling. It starts small, quiet, not unlike this annoying rhythmic drip drop drip of rainwater leaking through a hole in the ceiling you can’t seem to fucking find, until it flares louder within the vibration of your shoulders.
It’s spiteful, this laugh of yours. You cover your mouth with your hand, your snicker half veiled behind the cup of your sweaty palm, but your chortles don’t stop; in fact, they tickle you even more. You snort, taking in a pathetic inhale, and this sound, a whiny, perturbed mess of a thing, weaves through the gaps of your teeth and gurgles out more laughter, and it hurts. This is it.
You’re going to die, who knows how many miles away from home.
100? 200?
Maybe more than 500, who’s to say?
A tear slips from the corner of your eye, but you hurriedly wipe it away before it can salt along your cheek, your empty stare hardening into a glower strong enough to put a hole through the roof, and then you’re becoming angry. It simmers in your stomach, slow yet consuming, warming the expanse of your back and fanning the shells of your ears and knitting your eyebrows together. It continues to spread until your giggles begin to dip, and then they’re gone.
“Fuck,” you gasp and double over, gripping a handful of your hair with a tight fist, “fuck, fuck!”
Why is it today?
What do you do?
Where the fuck is that dripping sound coming from!?
Your arm gives a twitch, and it’s only then that you remember the gun in your other hand. Its weight, heavy and molded into your palm since you were thirteen, is suddenly foreign to you as the cylinder rests against your temple, your head seeking asylum within the barricade of your raised arms.
Your gun. Right..
Should you just...do it now?
It would be easy, you think, moving to tap the barrel of your revolver to your bottom lip over and over as if to replace a contemplative index finger. The aluminum is cold, icy, and a crisp contrast in how this damned infection spreads within your blood and sets your skin aflame; it makes you wonder if you’ll even feel the bullet amidst your own body heat.
You almost wish you had a flower in front of you, plucking off petals one by one to decide whether or not to shoot yourself in the head with the childhood naivety of leaving your crush’s feelings down to the last sepal. The simplicity might make this a bit easier.
Should you kill yourself? Should you not? So many options to choose from!
A subtle click of the cylinder moving a fraction of an inch as you press the gun against your temple sends a chill down your spine, and it cements that this is real. You take a sharp inhale.
You point the gun to the ceiling.
You put the gun to your temple, releasing a long exhale.
Then, you point the gun to the ceiling.
Your trigger finger dances, swaying back and forth from a half step up to a half step down, curling and uncurling from the trigger guard as if it's forgotten the next step of the routine.
“No,” you drop the gun, wincing at the sound of it plonking onto the hardwood a little too harshly, “no, no, this isn’t right...”
It’s unfair, you realize, cheap to do it without Ellie knowing, without knowing why you have to do it. She thinks you’re on a supply run; she thinks you’ll come back. You always come back.
You have to tell her.
“Get up,” you murmur, but your limbs only remain still as if cemented under wood, embedded in a layer of concrete beneath the boards like the spiraling roots of a tree, “get up.” But, you don’t. “Getupgetupgetup.”
Maybe you’ve already turned, simply replaying the last few moments of your humanity as you sat there battling yourself. Maybe the infection siphoned you down to your last drop of consciousness and left you there rotting away–a looping memory unseen through convulsing extremities and sharp snaps of the jaw looking for their next victim to infect.
Maybe, maybe, maybe…
Maybe you’re running out of time. No, not maybe.
You are.
You’re running out of time, and you’re sitting here pitying yourself?
Get up.
GET UP!
“No,” you grunt, releasing your hair to smack yourself on the cheek, and promptly shake off the sting. It makes you blink, distracting you from the pain beginning to numb on your arm for a moment, and you’re thankful for it. “No, fuck this.”
There’s no use. You got bit, and you’re going to die by either your own bullet or someone else's after finding you forgotten to waste among the silken curtains and disintegrating playbills of that damn theatre. Being hysterical isn’t going to help you. Nothing can help you now, and you have to get up. You have to go back.
To say goodbye.
And it doesn’t take long to find her once you get back an hour later. You have a feeling about where she is the moment you hear muffled radio static swimming down the hallway, and you follow.
Ellie’s back leans against a desk drawer, and she looms over the map on the floor, a piece of auburn hair falling into her eye as she skims over drawn arrows and messy circles. There are polaroids scattered in front of her, some covered in red X’s to showcase their brutal demise, and some left alone. It’s most likely in consideration of you, since you’re sure all of those faces are burned into Ellie’s psyche. The one in her fingers is tossed onto the map, a quiet curse slipping from her mouth when the radio temporarily loses signal.
You linger, your sleeve you’ve long since pulled back down, brushing the door frame as you peek through the crack in the ajar door to just…watch her for a few moments.
Her jean pullover is thrown onto the desk, momentarily abandoned, and it leaves her in this black t-shirt that clings to her lean frame. Her tattoo, a detailed moth perched on a branch of leaves, catches the light, and the design glistens under a thin sheen of sweat beneath the warm bulb while she gives the radio a rough knock to the side.
She had asked for your help before she had it done, poking your side and groaning about how she couldn't finish the sketch on her own. You knew she was lying, but you decided to throw something out there anyway.
"I don't know," you had rolled your eyes and pushed her arm away from you with a chuckle, "a bunch of leaves or something?"
You also notice the raised scar beneath the ink, the healed lesion Ellie had once tried to tell you the truth behind, but you believed it to be, “absolute horseshit”, and it glares at you, smug, because you found it out to be true.
It was something else watching your girlfriend breathe in spores, unbothered, as if it were second nature. Her shattered mask had fallen to the floor, her hands hurriedly grabbing onto your wrists to stop you from covering her nose in panic before she used the leverage to push you against the wall.
“I’m immune! I’m not coughing, do you see?”
So much happens after that, and the moments don’t come to you clearly. Images flash through your skull in blurry, adrenaline-induced smudges until they come to an abrupt stop at one, and your lips press into a line.
Ellie’s voice, a low, “there we go,” after the person speaking on the radio crackles back to life has you pushing open the door, slightly wincing at the creak its hinges provide. She looks up, the frustration woven into her frown leveling at the sight of you, and she offers a small smile, stretching the small wound cutting the width of her chin.
“Hey,” she says, and it’s only a word.
A word you’ve heard her give you many, many times–sometimes when she’s in too much of a hurry, it comes with a quick peck. Sometimes she would say it when you found yourself waking up to her staring at you, the shining sun kissing her freckled cheeks, and green eyes sparkling with affection and this quiet vulnerability only available to you. It’s only a word, but it sends a wave of emotion down your spine anyway.
Because you know that you won’t get to hear it anymore, and this time is fleeting.
‘Tell her.’
You nod, crossing your arms, and your nose scrunches when the covered bite presses against your middle, heavy in all the ways of a secret you’re about to tell.
“Hi. What’s,” your eyes drift to the map on the floor, and you gesture to it with your chin, avidly avoiding having to look your girlfriend in the face just yet, “what’s next? Where do we go from here?”
‘...'We', huh?’
“Well,” Ellie sighs, glancing down at the map, “I’m going on a guess here since these assholes encode everything, but,” she points to a word in the middle of a pair of lines, one red and the other blue, stretching her torso to reach across the map, “I think this is where Tommy might be.”
You step closer into the room to crouch and squint at the letters printed above Ellie’s index finger, offhandedly noticing that her nails are starting to get a little longer than she’ll usually allow.
“Hillcrest,” you read, “okay,” then you fall silent.
You can’t find anything else to say, and what you need to get out is choking you, knotting at the base of your throat and making your mouth dry. You try to swallow, and it goes down agonizingly slowly. The map in front of you begins to blur, neighborhoods and street names blending into an unintelligible blob of faded brown when your eyes lose focus, and you hear a stuttering, erratic thump in your ears that falls in sync with your heart. Your bottom lip slots between the ends of your teeth.
‘Fucking tell her! Now!’
The voice in your head doesn’t sound like you anymore, and it growls out curses, animalistic and violent. Your teeth pull at a loose piece of skin, and you feel it lift, and maybe it is your voice.
‘Tell her, tell her now! Tellhertellhertellher-’
It pulls and pulls and pulls, and you’re sure it’ll never stop pulling until your entire lip comes off–why doesn’t this hurt?
‘FUCKING SAY IT!’
But it does come off, and when it does, there’s this brief taste of copper, red, and iron-based that dots the roof of your mouth, and you swallow the piece of torn skin. It doesn’t taste of anything. Why infected find the taste of skin so appealing when it has no real flavor, you wonder.
“...Ellie,” you whisper, and her eyes retrace along their shaking trail the moment her name leaves your wobbling lips, but you don’t notice because you refuse to look at her. Still.
She picks up on this.
Ellie notices how uncomfortable you seem to be, your upper body coiled into yourself like a spring bent out of shape, and her brows scrunch at the blood beading from the corner of your mouth. She wants to ask what’s got you so nervous, wants to ask what’s making your nails claw into your biceps through the material of your shirt, so she does.
“What’s up?”
And her eyes study you, because maybe you’re backing out of this, having second thoughts. She wouldn’t blame you.
Joel’s death had shaken Jackson, and the gaping hole left by his murder, clawed to the center with jagged nails, was noticeable to a lot of the community. Even to Buckley, the old boy whining when his wrapped body had been brought back to town. Though none was more inconsolable than Ellie.
She didn’t utter a word, didn’t move, and you didn’t make her. You simply sat beside her and rubbed circles into her back as she blankly stared at her socks, hoping it brought her some comfort, if only slight, and Ellie couldn’t begin to word how grateful she was for it.
Her room, devoid of the light and warmth there had once been, seemed to grow smaller and smaller over the sound of her muffled sniffles as she gripped the back of your sweater, her knuckles turning white with such visceral desperation because everything was so raw and open. You had no choice but to hold her back until you both fell asleep that way, and she welcomed it.
It was unfair, so fucking unfair, because Ellie had just made her peace, just attempted to patch things up with the only father figure she’s ever had, and he was stolen from her. He was stolen in no less than two days after Ellie grew tired of the wasted years of awkward conversations and lingering survivor’s guilt by some random group of assholes out for old blood, and they made sure she watched.
But they made a mistake, a fatal mistake that’s going to cost them.
They let her live.
It took a lot to get where you are now, and neither of you expected to encounter so many WLF soldiers on the way, so Ellie doesn’t blame you if you realized that this is nowhere an easy job for just two people. In all actuality, she didn’t fully think this entire thing through, fully driven by her blossoming desire to see Abby’s head detached from her shoulders. She doesn’t know if she’ll get to kill her or simply die trying, but she’s for damn sure going to aim her hardest for the former.
However, Ellie watches you, observes the way you visibly struggle to say something so obviously weighing on your mind, and thinks that maybe this is becoming too much for you, and you want to stop, to go home to Jackson.
To leave her.
You’ve always been the levelheaded one, the one who never lets it go too far, and you’ve spilled more blood in the last few days than perhaps your entire life. Ellie’s been there before, and she won’t lie, it’s heavy, but she’s gotten used to it. Though it begs a question.
Would she be able to go with you?
“Ellie,” you repeat, clearing your throat, and your voice comes out a bit louder, “I know that you’re immune.”
“..Yeah?”
“Do you think,” you hesitate, “do you think there are…more people like you? More people who can’t get infected?”
“...found her or someone else that’s immune…”
“Uh,” she blinks, “I’ve never met anyone else, but…maybe. I can’t…be the only one in the world, right? Joel would always tell me to never tell anyone, so maybe it was the same thing if there was anyone else. Why?”
Your mouth opens before it closes, then it opens again.
Ellie hears it, a tiny pocket of air that escapes near your tonsils–a dying sentence that reworks and reforms around your gums over and over again the longer you hunch into yourself. Your reluctance, your reasoning for bringing up Ellie’s immunity, could just be chalked up to curiosity if she didn’t know any better, and she wishes she didn't know any better, but she knows you.
You’re nervous, scared even, and Ellie sees it in the twitch of your eyebrows, in how you choose to keep your face pointed toward the floor to avoid her eyes. No, she realizes, you’re terrified, and then she feels it, a creeping coldness rising from the bottom of her gut.
You haven't brought up your supply run.
This is leading up to something.
“I just,” you exhale, picking your head up, and your shoulders sag, a small smile devoid of any true joy spreading across your lips that has that damn chill churning in her stomach uncomfortably, “wanted to know if I had a chance.”
“...Why?”
There’s another crack of thunder, but it only vibrates and fades amidst the rain, a small hum compared to the increase of this weird fucking buzzing in the middle of Ellie’s ears, and she feels like her breathing might stop.
"Why?"
You don’t respond, but she almost knows your answer in the way your smile falls before your jaw clenches. You’re closing up, sharpening around where things were once soft, but there’s also a sadness, a blatant, hopeless need for her to understand this thing you can’t seem to verbalize.
You don’t say anything, and she’s not sure if she doesn’t want to know or if she should just demand that you say it.
For a second, a name flashes through Ellie’s mind, a name and a face she hadn’t thought of in years until just now, and she now knows what this feeling is from having felt it before.
A realization.
And she hopes, prays to whoever might be listening, that she’s really fucking wrong. But, like always, her prayers go ignored.
“Ellie–”
“Let me see,” she interrupts, her voice surprisingly even, though a sense of deja vu tingles across the back of her neck that she wants to hack away with her pocket knife because this shouldn’t remind her of that.
The day she lost Riley.
Tess.
Sam…
“No,” she shakes her head, blinking erratically as if trying to flutter this budding foreboding away with her eyelashes, and runs a hand through her auburn hair to push it away from her face. “No, there isn’t–there’s no fucking–”
“I didn’t mean for it to happen–”
“You,” her mouth twists and her nose scrunches at the bridge, her voice rising in pitch. She whips her head away from you, hiding the swell of emotion swimming in her eyes, but you hear her words pool along the length of her tongue in an unsteady warble, “You’re not going to fucking–no. No.”
Her breath begins to come in shakily, and leaves just as unstable.
“No,” Ellie places a hand to her chest, “no, fuck!”
She doesn't hear you shuffle closer, doesn’t feel your presence filling the space beside her because she’s too busy fighting off that annoying ringing, and only when your hand, so familiar yet so light and entirely too warm, falls to her arm does her gaze snap over to you. Your face is unreadable, blank, and your cheeks shine from sweat, but your eyes say what your expression doesn’t.
‘I’m sorry.’
‘I love you.’
‘I’m so fucking scared.’
And Ellie feels her lower lip tremble.
“Let,” the word retches from the back of her mouth like risen bile, and she stops herself, taking a deep breath. “Let me see it… Please.”
Wordlessly, you present your arm to her, your eyes drifting down to your sleeve, and Ellie wavers in her instinctive reach for you, her fingers flexing over nothing. It’s the only confirmation she needs, your silent acceptance, but she has to see it for herself, she has to know if the bite is truly there or if this is all some sick cosmic joke.
Ellie rolls up your sleeve, her breath hitching at the sight of your bandage, dark from your dried blood, and swallows thickly. She grasps the end of the gauze and slowly begins to unravel, moving languidly, as if it would make any difference. In her mind, the slower she moves might just make everything disappear, but it all comes off eventually, much to her chagrin.
Once the bandage finally falls from your arm after a few torturous minutes, Ellie stops, and a fucked-up symphony of feelings gurgle within her, akin to an overflowing soup—fear, disbelief, and an overwhelming urge to flee the room, but she only tightens her grip on your arm.
“I know it’s not pretty, but you don’t have to make that face.” You attempt a joke, but it falls unbelievably flat, and your voice slips into this somber, guilty tone that quivers out the side of your neck.
Ellie doesn’t laugh.
She doesn’t move.
She might not even be blinking for all she knows, because she’s too busy staring.
She stares at the bite mark, her eyes running over the length of black tendrils beneath your skin already halfway up your arm, and releases a breath. Releasing isn’t the right word; it’s forced out of her, her heart skipping as if she was punched in the chest by a particularly heavyset fit, and she takes in how warm your arm is. It’s unnaturally hot, and it doesn’t make her a genius for being able to discern how your raised skin is trying to fight off the spreading infection.
She draws a deep, deep breath.
“How long has it been?”
“Nine hours or so.”
Ellie licks her lips, frustration tightening the tendons of her jaw. Nine hours…
When you were both leaving the subway tunnels.
Telling you that she’s been immune the whole time, you didn’t have to take your mask off for Ellie to see the look of betrayal and confusion on your face. She didn’t have much time to explain why she hid it from you, didn't have any time to apologize because you, of all people, should have known, because a horde had shown up. It was madness, and with runners and clickers and a bloater or two, just because life loves making things difficult, it makes sense for something to slip through the cracks.
A stalker had cut you off when you were running, crashing into your side and sending you both to the floor in a flurry of flailing limbs. You yelped, and Ellie wasted no time in pulling out her pocket knife to race up behind it to pull it off, stabbing it in the neck.
“Go!”
Was that when it happened? Right in front of her, and she didn’t notice? Was she too slow?
“Hey,” your voice cuts through her thoughts like a knife through glass, and you press a finger to her forehead in a weak jab, “don’t do that thing you do.”
“What thing?”
“That thing where you think everything is all your fault.”
You know how she gets, her bleeding heart, as much as she likes to deny it, making everything fall so hard on her, even if it’s something outside of her control. She had told you about Riley once before, but only that she died, not how, and there was this impersonal tone about it as if there was another half to the story she wasn’t ready to tell. When she finally told you that only Riley had turned, you knew why, aside from keeping her immunity a secret. She thought it was unfair that she was the only one who lived.
Ellie’s hold on your arm slackens, and you use her now-loose grip to pull away. In a shuffling rearrangement of limbs, you sit beside Ellie on the floor, your back leaning against the desk, and pull your knees up. You don’t pull your sleeve back down, feeling no need to anymore, and the cool air gives a nice contrast on your skin. Ellie’s eyes follow your movements, glaring at your arm atop your knees like an animal prepared to attack at the slightest sign of motion. Her unintentional pout almost makes you want to laugh, but you don’t. You just lay your head on her shoulder, ignoring how tense she becomes, and relax into her side.
The rain is much more calming against the theatre windows, light against the glass in consistent muffled thuds instead of harsh, loud smacks. Or, maybe it’s only because you’re here with Ellie, left with nothing else unsaid between you except the final goodbye. The radio falls into static, losing signal again, but you both just leave it be, and it lulls into the background, bleeding into the rain and deep thunder.
Ellie can feel your skin through her shirt, hot and clammy and unequivocally not you because it’s way too much, and she bites down a whimper of devastation. This isn’t how it should have gone.
You should be fine, coming back from the supply run with an expired can of peaches and a bottle of alcohol and all of your skin intact like you always did, but instead you’re both here, biding time until you have to do something you should never have to do. This shouldn’t be how it all ends for you. You deserve better. A lot fucking better, and despite you scolding her for thinking this, it’s all her fault.
She wanted to go after every last one of them, wanted to hurt them in worse ways than they hurt her, and it cost you, since you were worried she would get herself killed, and she probably would have. A few times over. This was never about justice; it’s always been about vengeance, and the thirst of it, that wolfish salivation in the middle of her tongue, delivered you right to death’s door because you’re foolish enough to love her as much as you do. Because of her, you’re going to die in some piece-of-shit, rundown theatre, far away from everything and everyone you’ve ever known, and it kills her.
She should have left without saying anything, should have stuck with her first plan of slipping from Jackson on her own. You might have been mega pissed if she came back, but at least you would be alive.
Ellie’s hand slips over her eyes, a broken, dry sob tumbling from her mouth before the tears truly begin, and the sound tears through your heart like a pair of scissors through paper.
“..I’m sorry,” you exhale, swallowing the pain to finish, “that I have to go—”
“You go, I go, remember?”
“No,” Ellie cries, but you keep going, sucking in a breath that trails off into a short wheeze.
“—but you have to stay, okay? Don’t come with me.”
She cups a hand around your head and brings you closer with a wail, pressing you into her neck with the force of someone trying to spite death, because he can’t take you. Not from her, not you, not yet.
“Please,” Ellie snivels your name, feeble and pathetic and destroyed.
It’s hard, listening to her sob for you like this, someone so used to playing a strong role in life that they’ve forgotten how to talk about the hard parts, and you pick your head off her shoulder. It’s not much better looking at her, a flush staining her running nose and across her tear-streaked face, but you only smile, sad and embracing as you cup your palm over her freckled cheek.
She leans into it, her eyes fluttering closed for a moment before they’re peeled back open just as quickly, almost as if you’ll disappear the very moment she looks away, and she hiccups, “I’m…sorry.”
The anger, the bitterness, and the pain, it’s all gone away, and the only thing left is regret for a past that was and a future that never will be.
“It’s okay,” a tear slips down your cheek, your smile turning wistful, “I’m okay, and you will be too. I can feel it.”
Ellie shakes her head, a few loose pieces of hair swaying at the movement, but you stop her with a kiss. It’s light, probably more a brush of lips at first, but then it becomes harsher and despairing because Ellie is bending into you, holding your face in her hands with all the love she’s ever given and ever will give you, hoping it’ll be enough to save you like those stupid, kid movies where they solved everything with true love’s kiss. It’s electric, intense in how she’s trying to kiss her very own life, her immunity, into you through the enamel of her teeth, and it steals your breath away.
But this isn’t a fairytale, love isn’t enough, and you’re running out of time.
A thin string of saliva stays between you even after you pull back, and when you would once smirk, teasing Ellie about how even her spit can’t be away from you, you only sniff and wipe it away.
“I’m ready,” you say, and Ellie looks at you through her lashes, clumping together in her tears. “I’m ready…”
“Fuck no, I’m not gonna do this—“
“Ellie,” you suddenly snap, the gentle tone of voice you’ve been using this entire conversation sharpening so unexpectedly that it makes her jump. You breathe in through your nose, close your eyes, and lower your voice, “I’m not turning. Please, just…make this a bit easier for me.”
A distant memory flashes through her brain like an uninvited guest once you say those words, and the iron strikes just as fresh now as it had nine years ago.
“Come on, make this easy for me...”
You watch her silently for a while, watch as her face scrunches and relaxes and hardens in that familiar way where she’s placing her own feelings wayside to be buried beneath her ribcage, but it makes you frown. You don’t want to go there, where all the bad and ugly join in this amalgamation of suppressed memories she’s too afraid to talk about. You want her to think about you and be happy, if a little bittersweet, because you were here. You lived, and you loved, and you loved her.
Ellie lets you wipe away the wetness on her face, lets you smooth the wrinkle in between her scrunched, auburn brows, if only to let you touch her a bit longer. Even with the tendrils now moving up your neck, you’re still beautiful. There’s no feeling to fully describe this, that the hands cradling her so gently, worrying more about her in this moment than the dwindling time they have left, will soon be cold. They’ll rot here, eaten away by bugs and time and wandering wildlife, and their bones will stay, binding a beautiful soul somewhere undeserving of its final resting place.
You stand up, and Ellie is only just now realizing how quick your breathing has gotten.
“I don’t need,” you rasp, pausing a moment to catch your breath, and there’s a disgusting, subtle gurgle at the back of your throat that’s never been there before, “you seeing this.”
Ellie almost rebuttals, almost screams with all of the air in her lungs that she needs to be with you, needs to hold you until you’ve gone icy and stiff because you’ve always been together, but she can’t. She knows what you’ll say if she does.
“That’s a little unhealthy, Els.”
“What? I can’t eat the food from your mouth and vice versa, reverse-human-centipede style?”
“If we don’t swallow it, we aren’t really eating, though. We would starve.”
“Maybe, but we would starve together.”
“I…don’t want us dying together?”
“Why not? It would be hella romantic. Some real Romeo and Juliet shit, you know?”
“...You need help.”
“You love me.”
“I love you,” you say, resolution hanging from the corner of your small smile that she fails to reciprocate, and you don’t blame her for it.
“...I love you too,” and Ellie is sure her voice is the same small and broken thing you heard in the garage, quiet in the same sense of exhaustion from losing someone else she cares about to a world that couldn’t give a damn about her, but she doesn’t mind how frail that makes her sound. She’s losing you.
She’s losing you, and she can’t even get off the fucking floor.
Then, you leave, opening and closing the door behind you so softly that the click of the latch is barely audible.
Your hand lingers on the doorknob for a moment, trembling around the brass, until you let it fall to your side. There are so many things going through your mind as you walk down the hall, but it’s all aimless. You don’t know where your feet are taking you as you leave the theatre, don’t know where you’re going to spend your final moments as you’re pelted in rain, don’t know where you’ll end up after you die, don’t know how Ellie will feel when she finds what you left her, but it’s too late to think about any of that now.
You don’t have many regrets to fall back on, but if you had to choose one, it would be that this happened in front of Ellie, of all people. The world has already taken so much from her, yet it still managed to write you into the still-growing list of names stricken from life. No matter how hard you try to prevent it, you know this is just going to break her all over again. It’ll make her angry and sad, but most of all, it’ll make her even more resentful.
Resentful of a life that’s forcing her through so much death.
Only so many times can a heart break and reform before it all eventually collapses, utterly tired and beaten into this cowering ball of resignation that everything is shit and nothing will get better. You can only hope that doesn’t happen after you’re gone.
A sudden pop of tile brings your mind back to the present, and you realize, with a start, that you’re out of the rain.
Your eyes take in the rotted floorboards and peeling, floral wallpaper, and it all strikes a familiar cord with you. An empty chuckle escapes the back of your throat.
“It’s just you and me again, huh? Fine,” you inch your way onto the floor and lean your back against the wall with a long, deep sigh. Everything about you is heavy–not tense, but heavy–like a tightness in your chest you can’t run away from, but you’re ready. You have to be; there’s nowhere else to go.
You take out your revolver from the waistband of your jeans, and smile. Your last, real smile.
“...You win.”
Ellie stares at the door for a long time, bores into the splinting hardwood hoping that her vision will wobble and distort and she’ll shoot up in bed, in Jackson, in the garage, and this will all be some sick nightmare. You’ll be sleeping right next to her, peaceful, hugging her pillow you’ve somehow stolen in the night against your cheek, and she’ll kiss you hard. She’ll kiss your cheeks and lips and nose and eyes that will be tendril free, and she’ll love you even harder.
And Joel will eventually knock, but never come in. Maybe the doorknob makes a sound, one you hear when someone puts their fingers around it and half-turns, hesitating to open the door, but still doesn’t open it. Then he’ll talk, mentioning in his rough, southern drawl behind the wall that it’s her turn for stable duty. She won’t ignore him like she used to, won’t grumble at him to go away because she couldn’t get over herself and took it out on him undeservedly. Instead, she’ll yank the door open with enough strength to rip it off its hinges, and jump, wrapping herself around the old man in a hug delivered five years too late, and she’ll tell him that she loves him and that she’s sorry and that she would punch herself in the fucking face if she could. Except, none of that happens. Because this is all real.
And then, amidst the rain and thunder and radio static, a gunshot rings out, a bit quiet as if a few buildings away, and it tears through Ellie like an arrow to the throat.
None of it–the rage and death and overcompensation to make up for her years worth of regret–was worth it. It would never be.
Joel is gone.
You are gone.
And the ride back to Jackson is completely silent.
Ellie can’t stand to look at anyone when she comes through Jackson’s front gates, alone, when she had not left that way. Jessie and Dina knew you both left, and when they see you aren’t with her and your backpack has been tied to the saddle instead, their faces say enough.
‘I’m sorry.’
She doesn’t speak, doesn’t answer anyone when they ask her where she had been and what she was thinking, and doesn't do anything but press her lips to hide the wobble when asked about what happened to you. About Tommy.
Ellie moves with an almost robot-like precision while getting off of Shimmer, untying your bag, and walking off down the road, a road engraved to the bottom of her canvas sneakers for the last five years.
This particular walk feels a lot more grueling.
A thin sheet of dust settled over everything in the garage while she was gone, including a DVD left on her night stand that neither one of you bothered to put back in the case before you left. Ellie stares at the title.
Sleeping Beauty.
There’s a subtle shift, pulsing through the once still air of the empty garage. Ellie feels it in her upper lip, this vibrating discomfort that hammers in the bridge of her nose, and it takes a moment to realize that the shift is coming from her.
Why is she not surprised that it’s a fucking feel-good movie? One of those movies where everyone wins and evil is vanquished and everything is just so goddamn perfect, right? A movie where no one has to feel this fucking empty and battered by life, huh?
Her mouth curls into a sneer.
“Liar,” she spits, yanking the DVD off the table, “liar,” and in one, quick motion, snaps the movie in half before tossing the pieces against the wall. They clatter to the ground noisily, but otherwise leave everything else undisturbed. This spurs Ellie on more, “Fucking liar!”
There are no happy endings, not anymore.
She sees you in her bed watching a movie, at her desk reading her comics, in the middle of the room telling her that you’ll go find Abby together, but it’s all too fresh.
She doesn’t think, fueled by this incessant need for destruction, and only moves to pick up the lamp from the same bedside table. The power cord makes a light popping sounds as it rips from the wall, but she doesn’t care and throws it to the ground. It shatters instantly, spraying glass all over the floor, but she doesn’t stop. Her blankets hit the floor, then her pillows. She makes it across the room in one great stride towards her couch, and kicks over the coffee table with a shout, knocking it on its side and all of the contents with it.
“Fucking-!”
Everything becomes a haze of flying books and torn posters and shattered dishes. She knows she’s crying, she knows she’s screaming, and she knows this is pointless since she’ll have to clean it all up, but she doesn’t care.
You’re gone. Joel is gone. Tess is gone. Sam is gone. Riley is gone.
How many more people is she going to lose? How many until it’s enough? How many more times is it going to kill her? How many times is it going to be her fault? And, unintentionally, she begins doing exactly what you said she does, and starts blaming herself, and you aren’t around anymore to stop her, and that kills her too.
If she hadn’t snuck out that night, Riley would still be here.
If she didn’t need to find the fireflies to make a vaccine since she seems to be the only immune person in the entire fucking world, Sam and Tess would still be here.
If she had just said ‘sorry, I forgive you’, and traded routes with Joel like she wanted to, you and Joel would still be here.
If she was never immune in the first place, all of you would still be here.
Ellie collapses in a heap of limbs in the middle of the now messy room, her chest heaving with haggard breaths and broken cries as she curls in on herself. She doesn’t care about the glass and debris cutting through the material of her jeans, but welcomes it instead. After all, it’s what she feels she deserves.
“I’m sorry,” she whimpers, “I’m so fucking sorry. I didn’t want this…I didn’t want this.”
Eventually, Ellie will stop crying.
She’ll get up and grab your bag and look through it where she’ll come across a letter. A letter addressed to her, a letter that she can tell is your handwriting in the dumb way you write your e’s just to piss her off, and then she’ll open and read that letter.
And that letter will say:
Dear Ellie,
This was no one’s fault, and I need you to know that, so don’t blame yourself. Please.
I chose this, and I don’t regret going with you. I saved your ass too many times to think you didn’t need me, so I stayed. If I didn’t, you wouldn’t have gotten this far. I’ve made my peace.
I won’t be mad that you have to leave me where I am. I expect it, actually. We’re too far, I’d probably be completely rotten by the time you made it back with my body, anyway. Ew lol.
Get the bitch for me, okay? And even if you don’t, none of that survivor's guilt bullshit. It was always either gonna be this way, starvation, or old age, and this is a LOT more badass.
Don’t join me too soon, and make my grave look pretty.
I love you. ♡
She’ll laugh a little at how casual you are in a letter about your death and cry a lot more, but it will be a different cry. It will be full of love and hate and hurt, but it will also be healing, because you’re helping her even after you’re gone.
Then, she’ll eventually move on.
She’ll get her own place on the other side of Jackson, not to avoid the old house and all of its memories, but for a change of scenery. She’ll make new friends and still hang out with the old ones. She’ll get new tattoos and pierce her eyebrow. She’ll still visit Joel’s grave with a fresh bouquet of flowers every two weeks, and have a second bouquet waiting in her other arm to set on the grave next to it, although the land beneath it will forever remain empty. She’ll even talk to them, telling them how there’s a woman she’s beginning to like, and that she feels really guilty about it.
Eventually, she’ll have moved on. Fully. Then, she’ll live the rest of her life carrying all the people she’s lost in her heart until the day she’ll die in her bed, old and wrinkly like the lady from the end of that old, old movie she used to complain about with you.
However, until all of that happens, before all of the eventually’s, Ellie will be curled on the floor for a bit longer, crying with broken glass cutting into the skin of her legs and a heart too ripped open to keep going.
A night of pleasure where Astarion is the only focus for once.
Astarion X Reader
cw: Astarion with afab anatomy, Cazador mentions, sexual content MDNI, oral (astar!receiving), use of 'cunt', fingering, hungry yearning even though you’re already together, and slight religious imagery? (I want to worship him, respectfully.) No other description other than you being taller and a drow.
Don’t steal, please!
7.2k words
Drows aren't particularly known for being the nicest of races, especially those sworn to the spider goddess with an odd sense of humor, yet the vampire spawn can use himself to prove that people can change, if not for the better. Of course, that's to insinuate this drow in particular was never anything but agreeable since the moment they met each other, even after the rogue pointed a knife at you for some answers fresh from the naultaloid.
That's not to say astarion liked you from the start, no there was an underlying bitterness on the spawn's part from your weirdly infuriating need to play savior wherever you went. The needy didn't stay the needy for long, and something so simple as retrieving a stolen pouch turned into a full-on family rescue mission. The whole heroic, spring-into-action type was someone that tended to get on Astarion's nerves, though he used to see himself the type to once marry someone like that.
Well, when he was about…13.
Regardless, you can only imagine how stupid Astarion felt when he realized that he liked your inherently nice nature, a major contradictory personality to his, and eventually came to terms that those feelings were a given.
Naturally, there were some chaotic times courtesy of Astarion's occasional goading to make a decision for the group's entertainment betterment, but you always took the change of plans in stride. Never angry, perhaps disappointed (expectedly), but forever the friendly hunk of underdark you were.
So, Astarion had to catch his neck from whipping off its swivel the moment your voice dipped off into a low growl at the woman in front of them, your eyes narrowed in irritation.
It would have been easy for Astarion, with the woman's (slightly creepy) persistence even after his third refusal, to simply allow you to give the alright to bite her should you ask. After all, what was one little bite in comparison to a rare, powerful potion? It would have been fine.
…Right?
'Just a small moment of disgust to get myself through,' but, surprisingly, you just stopped the spawn's half step forward and snapped, "he said no."
The tick in your jaw, the way your voice held no room for the usual patience and kindness, and lastly, the way your eyes darted to Astarion's in a flash of concern. You spoke with the authority of someone seasoned, as if your little group of lost souls have always been together, every one of your words carrying a stern weight and finality.
"Where are you?" You murmur, your words gentle and cutting through his mind like a knife through butter. There’s a small, nearly chaste kiss to his bare shoulder, and it nearly startles him.
The hands which were once gripping the spawn's supple backside above the fabric of his pants are now resting against the small of his back, gentle and not pressing, just below his ritual scars.
Astarion, coming back to his mind with you in your shared inn room, relishes in how the arms encircling him hold kindly, unburdened by the tension of restraint should he not want to continue, and he eases a quiet sigh.
'You'll never be like the others…'
"I'm right here, my love," he responds, his voice light and airy, bare from the false seduction dripping from the tips of his fangs.
You plant a kiss to the other's neck, careful to avoid the jagged skin that had healed two centuries ago, and Astarion closes his eyes when he notices that too.
"Are you sure? Because we can stop. I'm fine with just talking, or something."
The spawn slides his hand up your back and it comes to a stop on the back of your head, his slender fingers toying with the shorter hairs. You pull your head back in response to look at the vampire, and Astarion uses the leverage to pull you down toward him. If the awkward angle for your taller frame is uncomfortable, you don't say and only allow Astarion to do as he pleases.
"Or," Astarion exhales, his red eyes darting to your lips, "something," and then he's pulling them to his. Your lips slot together, moving a little out of sync only because of the temporarily different level of desire.
Astarion has always been hungry and hasty when kissing, all tongue and teeth and starving of the safety and affection he so desperately craved for the last two hundred years, like it would be snatched away from him. And, with Cazador around the corner, it could all very well be. The mere idea of it, never being able to see you again, seeing your smile as you walk the familiar path to his tent in the morning to ask him how slept, is detrimental to Astarion's psyche that had only just begun to snap its scattered pieces back into place.
You like to take your time, give slow and tender pecks that gradually press firmer and open wider when you pick up on the vampire's need for more, but there's always a subtle hesitation; a looming question you're unable to truly verbalize.
'Is this really what you want?'
Astarion is aware of this, of your innate sense of overprotection for him, of his trauma from being an alluring plaything for Cazador. He would never forget the look on your face the moment he told you a fraction of the hell he had to endure, all flared nostrils and pupils constricted in anger, and he would never forget the way he felt a subtle throb in between his legs. That called a different problem into question, however.
There was a conversation you had before about Astarion's reluctance for sexual intimacy, and you made sure he knew that you understood and was indeed obeying Astarion's request of going as slow as he needed you to.
The spawn remembers how nervous he was when he told you that he didn't think he was ready to be intimate yet, bated breath between his teeth though the vampire had no need to breathe. Being used for his body for so many centuries essentially defiled Astarion's views on sex, and he severely hoped you would understand his hesitance.
He couldn't deny that everything stirred at certain things you did, the ways in which you looked at him, how quick you moved to protect him whether physically or other, but he (with your steady guidance) grew self-aware. Realizing that, after discovering his decimated self-respect and self-worth, he wasn't ready, and he had the option to say...no.
And he wanted you to know that he came to that conclusion, deciding it would only be fair since you bestowed him the grace for self-discovery.
"Even though I know things between us are different," Astarion provided a forced giggle, his lips wobbling in the corners, the facade beginning to melt away into something unfamiliarly vulnerable, "being with someone still feels…tainted. Still brings up those feelings of disgust and loathing. I don't know how else to be with someone. No matter how I'd like to."
You hadn't said anything for a minute or so, and Astarion still mildly adherent to his ways of self-deprecation had assumed you began to doubt whether or not to continue pursuing...whatever you were moving towards, especially being so soon after your previous conversation of Astarion's 'affection' being self-serving and under a completely false pretense at first, but before he could voice, 'It's fine if you think twice about us', you spoke.
"Astarion," your cadence was deliberate and measured, choosing your words carefully, "I'm not going after you for sex, and if I gave you that impression, I'm sorry. I'm ready when you're ready, I mean it. We can be together without having sex at all, if that would make you happy."
Astarion breathed a laugh, astonished yet still a bit half-hearted. "Now, now," he chided playfully, his voice smooth, effortlessly persuasive, "that almost sounds like a challenge."
But he wanted to believe that. He did.
He does.
But, even Astarion has a breaking point.
It took a while, fuck, there was no doubt about it. Several nights of seduction falling away to mentally drifting off at the beginning and apologizing profusely afterwards when Astarion began to feel uncomfortable and backtracked, but those moments of retraction didn't matter.
You never showed signs of annoyance or frustration, as if you knew that was his way of pacing himself-his starting and stopping-and it would ease the tension weighing the vampire's shoulders when he saw you were only ever concerned. Your face would always be calm, sometimes peaceful, but your hands would hover in the space between your bodies, indecisive and unsure if the man wanted your touch in those moments or not. At times he welcomed it, releasing a little sigh when your warm palms caressed his undead skin, and other times, he needed a bit of space. You never showed disapproval, if you harbored some, whenever he would push away and leave a gap between you. You only waited for him.
You always moved to the rhythm he set; stopping when he told you to stop, going when he told you to go, and Astarion was sure if he asked you to give him your heart, you would carve it out with your bare hands and hold it out to him with a smile on your face. It would surely keep beating in his hands, the love you so clearly shelter for him taking root within your arteries and replacing your frivolous need for blood.
It was an odd thing, foreign, being in control of a situation after centuries of enslavement.
However, Astarion feels a shiver travel up his spine as he drinks in the groan you release into his mouth, not unwelcome.
Without breaking your kiss, the vampire walks forward, pushing you back with a hand on your chest, and you simply follow, allowing Astarion to push and push until your back collides with the cushions of the room's bed. The plain brown blankets ruffle softly, a pillow falls to the ground with a gentle thud, the mattress sinks underneath your weight as your elbows move behind you to prop your upper body, and then there's a moment of pause.
Astarion's lips leave yours with a wet smack, a thin string of saliva curving in the very, very small space created by the separation, but Astarion watches you take one, two, two-and-a-half breaths before he reconnects them with a muffled moan. It's not necessary for him to breathe and he hasn't for the past two centuries, but he tries to be considerate of you.
You, content, take whatever the vampire gives you, filling and all-consuming and your lungs burning in your chest from the lack of oxygen, but you easily conclude that you would happily die here before moving away from him.
Your mind momentarily calls to the revive scroll resting in your pack, and there's a fleeting thought it might certainly come in handy tonight. Hands fumble for clothing, and when it all comes off, Astarion isn't sure where his body heat ends and where yours begin.
Everything is burning, throbbing, aching, and there's a steady pulse between the vampire's legs he can no longer ignore.
His head almost fights the motion to pull away, as if the mere notion is blasphemous, but nevertheless, Astarion pulls back and slowly opens his eyes. Your face beneath him is mildly obscured by a stray, silver curl, illuminated a pale yellow from the candlelight, but Astarion's vision clears the moment your hand delicately pins it behind his ear. Your fingers barely brush the elongated skin, but the vampire figures if his heart was still working, the action would have sent a considerable amount of blood to his cheeks.
"…You're so beautiful," your lips twitch upwards in the corners.
Astarion can't fight the urge to smile back, fangs and all, and his eyes, reminiscent of polished rubies and piercing, sparkle in adoration unbeknownst to him, darting back and forth from one of your eyes to the other. Though there's evident lust present, it becomes overshadowed by an unsure tenderness, your desires restrained in the taut of your neck, and the tips of your splayed fingers flex along the back of Astarion's knees. It's clear you're holding back, anxious to go any further despite Astarion's clear want, and the man knows that if he wanted to stop here even after going so far to be completely bare, you would let him and do so without complaint.
The vampire's thumb strokes your cheek absentmindedly, and your hands are on his chest, tenderly caressing the small indentations as if second nature.
"…So are you, darling,” the vampire kisses the tip of your nose.
The air is soft, your touches kind, and your breaths fan across the other's mouth acting as a heated, wine-scented aphrodisiac. But, as much as you soothe and woo him with cordial romanticism, you seriously need to get on with it.
So, leaning into the shell of your ear, Astarion gives you a nudge to do so. The pulsating is beginning to hurt at this point.
"Touch me," he sighs, and is able to feel the surprisingly violent shudder that racks through your body beneath him. "Please, my love," he adds.
You hum.
"…I am," you respond before pressing a wet, open-mouth kiss to the vampire's shoulder. "I will, fuck," you exhale, "I will."
The kisses start to travel the expanse of his skin, hot and occasionally pausing to suck and bite, up and down and wherever they can touch, trying to gauge his egregious zones, trying to see what's a yes or a no for him.
Pleasure blooms just below his stomach even though you had barely touched him yet, your fingers lightly tracing along the milky skin of his thighs spread across your lap. The pressure of your fingers gradually presses further but never restricting, never painful, only using Astarion's body as a grounding measure against your own raging urge to simply ravish the man on top of you.
'Not too fast,' you remind yourself, tilting your head backwards to reattach your lips to your lover's in a sloppy kiss Astarion happily accepts. 'Not too fast. Slow down, slow...'
You know Astarion can feel your arousal against the back of his thighs, but you stop yourself from grinding up into him, because this is all about him.
Astarion was sure he had never been this wet in his life, the nearly foreign sensation of tackiness between his thighs a bit of a sensational nightmare, and the need for release is essentially screeching in his brain, bouncing around his skull with unrestrained vigor, "touch me, touch me, fucking touch me!"
It's bordering on overwhelming and somehow feels under-stimulating at the same time. Foreplay was never a grace bestowed to Astarion while he entertained Cazador's newest sacrificial rat, them usually opting to put their own pleasure first above all else, so he wasn't entirely sure if the new experience is something he likes or hates. It feels like teasing, in a way, he supposes. Touching everywhere but where he so desperately needs, the pure torture of it all, yet it somehow makes everything better, more.
The buildup isn't bad, it's the waiting after that messes with his head.
You pull back, your half-lidded eyes staring up at Astarion, intense and almost predatory, and tug the spawn's hips forward an inch in a way that causes Astarion's heat to graze the warm skin of your lower stomach. The slight friction calls for a small gasp, a bout of pleasure flashing down the base of his spine, but things still.
"Can I...?" The question hangs off in the air, your hand, palm facing the ceiling, rests below Astarion's belly button and stops.
"Please," the spawn's eyebrows come together, now unafraid to display his frustration, and he begs, his voice tilting into a feral grumble. "Do something."
Astarion, even in the state he's in, doesn't miss the look that settles over your face the longer you stare up at him, your eyes narrow. It's shadowed, dark and hungry and wanting and in over two hundred years of being him, he finds himself unafraid to be at the receiving end of that familiar gaze. So many others sneered at him, licked their lips at the thought of mounting him as if he were nothing but this curly-haired elven beauty to be conquered, and he would let them, for Cazador. Some he would sleep with to possibly gain a sense of satisfaction, a small act of defiance to show that he could still enjoy sex on his own, but it usually ended up with this crushing ton of self-loathing on his sore back.
But, this time, it's different.
The look you're giving him sets him on fire, more scorching than the blistering flare of the goddamn sun, and his bottom lip slots between the front of his teeth in a last dash attempt to smother this pitiful thing of a choke gurgling atop the base of his tongue. He needs you; your touch, your fingers, your mouth, anything and everything he's been deprived of throughout all of this time. He's ready. Gods, he's ready.
And he commends you for your self-control, because Astarion is sure that he can't stop himself from having you now, not when you look at him like that-like you just want to fucking devour him down to the last strand of silver curl.
So, when your hand finally slips between his thighs and presses against his sweltering mound, your fingers gliding along his cunt with careful but firm precision, Astarion’s eyes nearly live up to his namesake. His back arches, his torso pressing into you so much your hand is almost squashed between the both of you, but you manage to keep the pace. There’s a silent determination ruminating from you, your motions; a promise to let him experience every gratification you have to offer and it’s clear that you’re not disappointing him. Your lover’s face falls slack, his mouth parting into a sharp ‘o’, and you resist the urge to lick at the tip of his fangs that peak under the edge of his kiss-bruised lips.
You concede, your eyes fervently follow a bead of sweat floating down the line of Astarion’s pallid neck, that no painting, nor sculpture, nor Gods can compare to your lover’s beauty. It could be a harrowing notion to others, some devout worshipers would probably sputter in indignation if you were to say that outloud, (Gale certainly would be up in arms to defend Mystra) but it remains an undeniable fact to you. His moans, uninhibited by rehearsed parade and uncomfortable deceit, spread across your face reminiscent of a sweetened vineyard swaying in the breeze that you can taste on your back molars.
You decide, right here and now, that you worship only one man, and his name is brighter than any cosmic piece of heaven.
“I,” Astarion suddenly stutters, cutting through your glorifying thoughts, and you only now notice he’s begun to roll his hips against your hand, creating a quicker friction. “Oh, plea...” His plea dies.
“Tell me,” your head lolls to the side to catch Astarion’s eyes, but he’s too lost in chasing whatever he needs to feel, “tell me what you need so I can give it to you.”
Unintentionally, your tone dips off as you get dragged further into the growing rigidity of your lover’s spine, the last part of your sentence dripping with desperate authority, and Astarion whines at the command in your voice that’s always so recognizable, but has him clenching around nothing in this context. This is better than he could have ever imagined, and his past sexual encounters, he gathers, don’t hold a fireball to you. There’s a volcanic simmer beneath his skin, a faint buzzing behind his eyes and the tips of his toes that leaves him both wanting to pull away and longing for more, and it's delicious.
“What do you want, my love? You want me to go faster?”
You gauge his face, searching for any signs of discomfort or dissociation since you both hadn’t truly gotten this far without some form of regression, but you realize, with a swell of pride warming your chest, Astarion is completely enjoying himself.
The vampire’s hips stall for a beat, the candlelight catching the jut of his hip, before he’s nodding, frantically, a few curls falling into his face from their usual sweep. They’re too pretty and frame his angular cheeks too well to brush away, so you leave them be, and instead choose to absorb this rare picture; an unpoised Astarion.
Your wrist pangs, a cramp begins to form along your flexing tendons, but you’ll be damned if you don’t listen to his request and you speed up your fingers, the sound of sloshing wetness ringing beautifully in the middle of your ear like church bells.
You noticed when first getting to know the spawn that he carried this innate air of grace, from his years as an elven magistrate, you assumed, and even when he found himself flustered, there was always something graceful about it. So seeing him like this, keening for your touch and working himself along your fingers to clumsily chase a high he rarely got acquainted to, uncaring about how disheveled he looks…
“Yes,” he whines, “yes, I can,” he moans, “I can feel it..”
You let him do what he wants, what he needs, only keeping the pace of your fingers in their same, quick succession, lest Astarion say otherwise. The buildup is evident in the slow tremble of his thighs, in the hand he uses to instinctively reach out for you as he feels his orgasm steadily approaching, seeking a sense of ground amongst the unfamiliarity, and you promptly lean forward to allow it to snake around the line of your shoulders. Astarion’s head falls to your collarbone and his straight nose is tucking into the junction of skin beneath your earlobe, his other hand settling by his thigh and curling into a fist around the blanket.
Your eyes almost roll into your skull when his pants of ecstasy float into your ear; they’re so much closer, much more clear, and now you can hear a faint crackle, his voice rasping the longer he moans out into the dim room.
“Gods, yes,” your lover whimpers, the sound going straight to your own arousal, “yes, yes!”
Astarion stills and it takes no magic tower mage to know the vampire’s orgasm crashed down unto him, if the sudden creamy texture pearling the tips of your fingers wasn’t indicative enough. His head tosses back, his back curving into a perfect concave ‘c’, and you lean forward to pepper the expanse of his neck with light pecks, your fingers slowing down to a lazy roll as an aid in helping the spawn on the come down. The sides of your thighs pick up the motion of curling toes and twitching kneecaps that are forced to keep themselves open on your naked hips, and a small smile stretches across your face.
Astarion’s chest is still, his vampiric attributes unable to provide him the need to take deep breaths, but his eyes are hazed, trained onto a piece of random ceiling tile. You sit against each other silently, holding him by the waist when his hips eventually stop twitching, and slowly pull your hand back, your wrist screaming in relief from being released of its awkward position. Your lover’s arm spasms, a false release of air hitching when you graze his sensitive clit.
“You okay?” You murmur, keeping your voice low to help Astarion pleasantly adjust.
It seems to help, and your smile widens a bit when the man’s head lowers and his eyes meet yours, red irises little by little clearing from their orgasmic fog to focus on your face. It takes a minute, perhaps two-it could have been an hour for all he knows-but he eventually gets there, and his tongue darts from his mouth to salivate his lips before he simpers, knowing he probably looks extremely satisfied. You certainly notice it.
It’s an expression you’ve seldom seen on Astarion’s face save for when he finishes feeding from a particularly big bear, or you when you eventually gave him permission for your blood.
“I’m,” he pauses, “I’m wonderful, my love. That was…”
Your gaze falls to your hand, Astarion’s juices coating your fingers in a shine bordering hypnotic, and you nod.
Astarion, now able to think in coherent lines of consciousness, is able to get a good look at you. He watches you, notices how your eyelids droop, your facial expression mirroring what he can only describe as melted adoration when your gaze languidly trails over his body before they flick up to his face. He’s seen that look so many times; admiration, but it’s never felt genuine before. There’s a warmth he receives from yours, one that washes over him and melts into his bones, forming his skin and shaping the very flutter of his lashes when you call him beautiful. The gentle touch on his waist pulls him back.
Your lips brush his, “my love,” and then they’re slotting back together.
The kisses start lazy, relaxed and unhurried to simply have his mouth on yours, tongues dancing along each other in an easy rhythm even without music, but then Astarion feels your legs shift beneath him. He’s hiked further in your lap, but he simply lets it happen, assuming you need to adjust to get comfortable. Though, he comes to find that he’s sorely mistaken when you suddenly lean back, subsequently taking him with you. You both fall onto the bed, Astarion letting out an adorable, “umph.”
Neither one of you says anything, but you do lean forward to place a kiss to Astarion’s cheek, just below his faint beauty mark before you pepper his entire face. Your lips touch the bridge of his nose, his chin, above his smoothing eyebrows, essentially anywhere you could reach, and the domesticity of it leaves him speechless for once.
“My sweet,” you whisper, pausing in between every few pecks to speak, “can you do something for me?”
Astarion hums, his eyes closing when your lips find his neck, and you take that as a sign to continue.
"Can you get on top?"
"I already am, my dear-"
"-I mean," you lick your lips, "on top…of my face."
"…Oh."
There's a high-pitched giggle that bubbles in the base Astarion’s throat, involuntary but fleeting.
'Well,' Astarion thinks, his eyes widening, 'this is…also new.'
You, seeing how he pauses at the suggestion, move your finger in small circles on his hip in reassurance, and your eyes soften. "You don't have to, I just thought you might enjoy it."
"I," Astarion clicks his tongue, "I've just…never done that before."
A beat.
"…No one has asked you to sit on their face before?" It's your turn to appear so incredulous, finding something like that so…so disrespectful. "Never?"
Astarion shakes his head, now beginning to shrink a little under your sudden bemused stare. He knows you aren’t mad at him, you’re never mad at him (which is why he tends to get away with minimal consequence), but he sees that your upset is genuine.
And you are upset, because how can anyone deny this epitome of stunning, masculine monarchy, his ivory throne, adorned with anything less than the most lustrous jewels? What absolute madman, blind and deaf, surely, would give Astarion anything but which he truly deserves? Gold, silver, should fall between his slender fingers, molten and only his, the rarest silks and velvets hanging from his pallid limbs not unlike the knots lining a hangman tree; gorgeously morbid as he.
It makes you mad all over again, picturing those rabid animals all over Astarion, taking and mindlessly ravaging with no incentive to offer a modicum of benevolence. Hounds, the lot of them, soulless and only living to harshly breed the unwilling. How, your chest tightens as your anger makes way for a pang of sorrow, how much Astarion has suffered. You don’t want his torment to loom over him any longer, so you’ll just have to remind him; you are his, in his control. His to love, to break, to leave if he wishes it so. If he is to love you for the remainder of your long lifespans together, or if he is to simply use you to remember that he is more than the body that’s grown so foreign to him, so be it.
Your very soul clutches his, fist trembling, taut, and knuckles deathly white like a frightened babe clinging to their mother’s skirt; craving, clenching to prevent the scattered pieces of Astarion from slipping through your fingers. You’ll hold him forever, if he’ll have you.
You will provide all you can, and accept all he’s willing to give in return, if anything. You can only hope that he receives you well and chooses you like you chose him.
Pushing those feelings down, you kiss your teeth before pulling the vampire's hips forward even more until he is basically sitting on your chest, the unexpected drag shooting a shudder of pleasure up his spine, and you smirk. Your strength often comes in handy at times.
"We need to fix that. Now."
Astarion tries to hover at first, a bit too hesitant to allow his full weight to rest on your face even if his fear was a bit irrational; he’s seen you fight for Gods’ sake. And you aren’t having it. The grip on his hips grows unyielding as if they leave no room for further argument, and his puffy, flushed cunt is slowly lowering, taking its rightful place, against your open mouth. A stolen heir reunited with his true birthright, you surmise.
The pleasure that consumes you is almost too powerful, his taste flooding your senses and clouding your mind in an impenetrable smog of bliss, and you instinctively curse, your lips curling around the letters into his slick folds. Astarion releases a low whine, his head already falling towards the ceiling as if the fictional crown upon his head is too substantial, and he bucks his hips, relishing how your nose drags along his swelling bud.
Your tongue explores at first, adagio to measure just where he might need you to be, but you find yourself indulging your thirst too quickly. It’s necessary, requisite, to feel his juices bead the tip of your tongue, his orgasm pooling down your throat essential for you to feel any sense of satisfaction for yourself, slurping and drinking and gulping like a man deprived for too long. Astarion’s body responds in kind; his hands reaching for you in the fray and tangling within your roots unceremoniously. It produces a moan from beneath him, the vibration against him causing a sound so ruined, it reminds you of a wounded sprite, but Astarion has never felt so safe. Even if your jaw practically aches as you attempt to inhale him (you’ll unhinge the damn thing if you have to), the man’s growing sounds spur you further, and Astarion briefly wonders if you’re truly trying to fucking eat him.
“Fuck,” he gasps, one of his hands releasing your hair to hold your forearm as it loops behind him to grip his waist.
Your hold is grounding, scalding, keeping him from getting too lost in himself, and he’s all the more thankful for it the moment your tongue slips further down his wetness to breach his hole, your nose nudging and grinding against his clit. He almost flinches away from the unexpectedness of it, but he gathers, that is what your arm around him is for.
“Fuck!”
Perhaps, Astarion’s eyes roll into his skull, this is the profound ascension Cazador is looking for; this feeling of your tongue splitting him open, lapping him along your tastebuds akin to a thirsting sinner kneeling in front of heaven’s locked gates. To him, this certainly feels no different than ascending to a higher power, and he swears he’s died-again-the moment your hand shifts to use the pad of your thumb to encircle his clit. His hips move on their own, burning from the strain but it feels so good, and rock back and forth, grinding.
You weren’t sure if you'd taken a single breath since he sat down, his thighs tightening on the sides of your face in a vice-like grip, non-verbally screeching at you to move ‘not a goddamn muscle’, not that it matters.
Your view from between your lover’s legs, where you conclude your life was always meant to lead you, makes it easy to ignore the still of your chest, a dull scorch fixing around your stuttering heart as it struggles to handle the lack of oxygen. Astarion’s body glistens delectably, shiny from his sweat and arousal, and your eyes study the muscles in his stomach as they tense and twist and jump along with his keens and hisses of pleasure. Your lover’s movements titter the edge of desperate and feral, his hips rocketing along your face as if you were nothing more than an object to bring him to orgasm at this point.
‘I’m not complaining,’ your eyes flutter closed. ‘Gods, I’m not.’
Astarion chases, following the catalytic pressure building in his stomach, tears forming behind his closed eyelids, and it goes up and up and up and-
His eyes fly open at a finger slipping past his entrance, nimble and thrusting and loudly coated in the slick of him. It’s deafening, how wet he is; it’s rich, nasty, and utterly debauched, but neither of you care. The air around you smells like sex and love and animalistic necessity, and the bed frame meets the wall in response to all of the movement.
“My darling,” Astarion cries, his voice wholly spent, raspy and sobbing. “My love, my sweet,” and he’s babbling. “Don’t stop, don’t-”
‘Wouldn’t dream of it.’
“Don’t-”
Astarion, with his vast vocabulary and overall knowledge from both his time as a spawn and original profession as a magistrate, finds himself unable to describe the sensations running through him. Everything is burning, his hips sting from their motions, his stomach feels tight, but there’s also something else; something deeper. It’s ardent, starting from the bottom of his feet and ending in his chest, and it makes him feel like something is going to happen, something powerful. It buzzes, pulsates, makes his body feel heavy, the pleasure coiling in the pit of his stomach like a spring ready to snap. It’s new and a bit scary, but he knows you’ll be here, knows you’ll protect him, so he lets himself fall.
Your lover goes rigid, silent, a moment passing where every muscle and flex of his limbs comes to a complete halt, before he’s moaning, drawn out and in higher pitch. Your eyebrows draw together in concentration, eyes crossing behind your lids as your own pleasure rains down on you, and the lower half of your face is drenched in your lover’s gushing climax. He’s squirting, and by the grace of the Gods is it succulent. It comes in waves, Astarion’s hips thrusting in time with each flood of his orgasm, and your mouth remains wide open to catch it all, guzzling, taking to him like a kitten to milk.
Astarion convulses atop of your face while you work him through, globs of tears sliding down his cheek, glowing under the slowly dying candlelight, and there’s a ringing in his elongated ears. He can feel his mouth moving, words rolling his tongue and testing syllables on his teeth, but his brain can’t quite register what he’s saying.
You certainly don’t understand him.
It takes a while for him to settle, the swirls and drags of your tongue now pulling the spawn into painful territory, and when Astarion full-on dry sobs at the feeling of your mouth, you pull away from him.
Your inhales are hefty, gasping and panting beneath him to regulate the breathing you so kindly cut off for him, your heart working overtime to accommodate, and your eyes open. Astarion’s body rises and falls with your deep lungfuls of air, his head angled down toward you in the perfect picture of ecstasy; a transcendental creature of delight and satisfaction. His eyes are misty, his waterline flushed a pretty pink beneath a new surge of unshed tears, but there’s a watery smile hanging from his lips; dopey and pointed. For a while, you don’t move, only massaging Astarion’s waist to ease his occasional spasm, and he’s thankful for it.
Astarion has never felt anything so intense, so vigorous and…good.
He didn’t understand you at first, couldn't deduce why on earth you wanted to get to know him beyond the scope of bodily exploration, but at least then you could grant him the protection he needed, however confusing on his part. His mind, still deep within Cazador’s deeply inflicted hell of torture and transactional sex, had made him approach you in the first place, recognizing you as the impromptu leader of your ragtag group of weirdos, with all of his true weaknesses hidden behind a steel wall of falsehoods perfected after two centuries.
“It was natural. Instinctive.”
But, in this moment with you, as you sit up to carefully lay his body down beside you like he’ll splinter and burst, his arousal gleaming on the lower portion of your face, he infers that he, perhaps, wasn’t meant to understand you. He was only meant to feel, let you chip through his walls with your patience, let you blanket him with your understanding serenity, to separate him from Cazador’s self flagellating sack of exhausted bones, and merely be.
Be with you.
“Are you alright, Astarion?” You hum, observing his face, watching him for any signs of being off in any way.
Finally, the heavy weight on his tongue lifts, and he releases a low scoff, free of malice, “Simply amazing.”
His voice is on par with stone gravel, scratchy and sore, and it makes you reach across him, heedful of jostling him too much, to grab a cup of water off the nightstand. It’s lukewarm when you tilt it against Astarion’s lips, but it helps soothe him immensely, and he clears his throat.
“Do you,” he begins, but there’s something nervous, timidly resigned, about his tone that you instantly pick up on, “do you…want me to-”
Your lips find his, and his question trails off into the roof of your mouth, Astarion moaning softly at the taste of himself on your tongue. His shoulders ease, unaware they drew forward in rigidity to begin with. The air around you starts to clear, calm affection radiating from your heated skin and seeping into Astarion’s dead heart, and he swears upon every God he had no luxury to believe that your love may have the power to revive it.
“No,” your lips part with a wet, muted smack. “No, I don’t want you to.”
“But,” Astarion’s words stumble, finding it hard to gather himself when your lips find his jawline, “you didn’t get to-”
“I did,” you cut him off again, smooching the side of his neck and tucking a damp curl behind his ear, “because you did.” And it’s true, “You feeling good makes me feel good, my love. Don’t worry about me.”
The vampire makes a face.
How can Astarion not when you always put him first?
His safety, his hunger, and now his pleasure, you always make sure he’s attended to first, placing yourself on the backburner more often than not, and while it’s beyond sweet, he’s starting to feel a bit guilty; guilty that he’s not giving you more than you deserve. Admittedly, he doesn’t know what he’s doing, how to have a real relationship far beyond sexual exchange, and it shows.
But, he’s learning, and you never rush him.
Astarion holds one of your hands in his, fingers intertwining around the other’s like straw woven through a basket, a perfect interlace of devotion and comfort; destined.
“I want,” the man’s eyes find yours, his words catching the base of his throat at the warm sentiment on your face whenever you look at him, “you to be happy…with me, with us.”
Your palm raises to cup his cheek, the vampire nuzzling into it almost instantly with a quiet sigh, and brings your forehead to press against his, the smile on your lips wobbling in affection. The man in front of you, scarlet eyes exhausted and abused but so in love and willing to trust you, allowing you to douse the flames of his own personal hell and pull him up and out means more to you than Astarion will ever understand.
Or, Astarion’s lips curl into a sheepish grin, his eyes wrinkling in the corners, maybe he does understand you. In his own way.
He’ll never forget the moment he first felt the sun after escaping the naultaloid, the feeling forgotten after having spent so many decades in the dark, traversing the shadows and hugging close to walls like diseased vermin, and how warm it was, almost as if the beams burned brighter just for him to ease the undead chill rooted within his bones; a reunion gift.
He supposes that being with you feels the same way; the sun embracing his skin to drive away the cold, constant and unfaltering. Just…you, your love that leaves him comfortable and unsuspecting, and Astarion half expects to wake up; to find himself still stuck in Cazador’s dungeon so broken he resorted to hallucinations for some semblance of comfort. But the pair of eyes in front of him, twinkling in passion as they surveyed him, are too expressive to be an illusion. Everything feels too real, too raw, to be a dream.
“You have no idea how happy you make me, Astarion,” and your declaration is conclusive, spoken as if the only truth you know.
For once, he completely believes you.
His psych doesn’t wrestle with his irrational belief that you’re being untrue, that he isn’t enough for you, because you choose him. Even after he deceived you, even after all of the emotional back and forth because he is so fearful, so damaged, you still choose him despite his faults and imperfections. He sees you when he closes his eyes, you worry his days when you’re away from him, and sometimes he just wants to crack open his ribcage to make space for you. There’s no need for his heart; it doesn't fucking work, blood no longer flows through his veins yet it’s the very thing he depends on to satiate this damned bestial hunger, so it has no place inside of him where you should be.
But, you’re here. Holding him, loving him and offering your devotion as it thrums between your fingers, sculpting the shape of your lungs around the phonetics of his name like you need him to live, and it makes Astarion want to cry.
So, he does.
Your face doesn’t show panic, but you do bring him closer, cradling the back of his head as he snuggles into your neck and allows his tears to fall. His back is being rubbed in soothing circles, your touch gentle but solid, and Astarion thinks that right here and right now…
Thank you so much! I had a lot of hiccups while writing this because I wanted to capture Astarion’s character accurately, but I’m glad it turned out alright!🩷
It took a lot of progress to get Astarion to where you have. His beauty captivated you when you first met, there’s no denying it, but you could tell there was something else—something deeper than those performative twirls of his—and there was no greater relief than the moment he finally opened up to you. Now, your only job is to make sure he doesn’t regret it.
Astarion X Reader
cw: Astarion with afab anatomy, Cazador mentions, sexual content MDNI, oral (astar!receiving), use of 'cunt', fingering, hungry yearning even though you’re already together, and slight religious imagery? (I want to worship him, respectfully.) No other description other than you being taller and a drow.
Don’t steal, please!
7.2k words
Drows aren't particularly known for being the nicest of races, especially those sworn to the spider goddess with an odd sense of humor, yet the vampire spawn can use himself to prove that people can change, if not for the better. Of course, that's to insinuate this drow in particular was never anything but agreeable since the moment they met each other, even after the rogue pointed a knife at you for some answers fresh from the naultaloid.
That's not to say astarion liked you from the start, no there was an underlying bitterness on the spawn's part from your weirdly infuriating need to play savior wherever you went. The needy didn't stay the needy for long, and something so simple as retrieving a stolen pouch turned into a full-on family rescue mission. The whole heroic, spring-into-action type was someone that tended to get on Astarion's nerves, though he used to see himself the type to once marry someone like that.
Well, when he was about…13.
Regardless, you can only imagine how stupid Astarion felt when he realized that he liked your inherently nice nature, a major contradictory personality to his, and eventually came to terms that those feelings were a given.
Naturally, there were some chaotic times courtesy of Astarion's occasional goading to make a decision for the group's entertainment betterment, but you always took the change of plans in stride. Never angry, perhaps disappointed (expectedly), but forever the friendly hunk of underdark you were.
So, Astarion had to catch his neck from whipping off its swivel the moment your voice dipped off into a low growl at the woman in front of them, your eyes narrowed in irritation.
It would have been easy for Astarion, with the woman's (slightly creepy) persistence even after his third refusal, to simply allow you to give the alright to bite her should you ask. After all, what was one little bite in comparison to a rare, powerful potion? It would have been fine.
…Right?
'Just a small moment of disgust to get myself through,' but, surprisingly, you just stopped the spawn's half step forward and snapped, "he said no."
The tick in your jaw, the way your voice held no room for the usual patience and kindness, and lastly, the way your eyes darted to Astarion's in a flash of concern. You spoke with the authority of someone seasoned, as if your little group of lost souls have always been together, every one of your words carrying a stern weight and finality.
"Where are you?" You murmur, your words gentle and cutting through his mind like a knife through butter. There’s a small, nearly chaste kiss to his bare shoulder, and it nearly startles him.
The hands which were once gripping the spawn's supple backside above the fabric of his pants are now resting against the small of his back, gentle and not pressing, just below his ritual scars.
Astarion, coming back to his mind with you in your shared inn room, relishes in how the arms encircling him hold kindly, unburdened by the tension of restraint should he not want to continue, and he eases a quiet sigh.
'You'll never be like the others…'
"I'm right here, my love," he responds, his voice light and airy, bare from the false seduction dripping from the tips of his fangs.
You plant a kiss to the other's neck, careful to avoid the jagged skin that had healed two centuries ago, and Astarion closes his eyes when he notices that too.
"Are you sure? Because we can stop. I'm fine with just talking, or something."
The spawn slides his hand up your back and it comes to a stop on the back of your head, his slender fingers toying with the shorter hairs. You pull your head back in response to look at the vampire, and Astarion uses the leverage to pull you down toward him. If the awkward angle for your taller frame is uncomfortable, you don't say and only allow Astarion to do as he pleases.
"Or," Astarion exhales, his red eyes darting to your lips, "something," and then he's pulling them to his. Your lips slot together, moving a little out of sync only because of the temporarily different level of desire.
Astarion has always been hungry and hasty when kissing, all tongue and teeth and starving of the safety and affection he so desperately craved for the last two hundred years, like it would be snatched away from him. And, with Cazador around the corner, it could all very well be. The mere idea of it, never being able to see you again, seeing your smile as you walk the familiar path to his tent in the morning to ask him how slept, is detrimental to Astarion's psyche that had only just begun to snap its scattered pieces back into place.
You like to take your time, give slow and tender pecks that gradually press firmer and open wider when you pick up on the vampire's need for more, but there's always a subtle hesitation; a looming question you're unable to truly verbalize.
'Is this really what you want?'
Astarion is aware of this, of your innate sense of overprotection for him, of his trauma from being an alluring plaything for Cazador. He would never forget the look on your face the moment he told you a fraction of the hell he had to endure, all flared nostrils and pupils constricted in anger, and he would never forget the way he felt a subtle throb in between his legs. That called a different problem into question, however.
There was a conversation you had before about Astarion's reluctance for sexual intimacy, and you made sure he knew that you understood and was indeed obeying Astarion's request of going as slow as he needed you to.
The spawn remembers how nervous he was when he told you that he didn't think he was ready to be intimate yet, bated breath between his teeth though the vampire had no need to breathe. Being used for his body for so many centuries essentially defiled Astarion's views on sex, and he severely hoped you would understand his hesitance.
He couldn't deny that everything stirred at certain things you did, the ways in which you looked at him, how quick you moved to protect him whether physically or other, but he (with your steady guidance) grew self-aware. Realizing that, after discovering his decimated self-respect and self-worth, he wasn't ready, and he had the option to say...no.
And he wanted you to know that he came to that conclusion, deciding it would only be fair since you bestowed him the grace for self-discovery.
"Even though I know things between us are different," Astarion provided a forced giggle, his lips wobbling in the corners, the facade beginning to melt away into something unfamiliarly vulnerable, "being with someone still feels…tainted. Still brings up those feelings of disgust and loathing. I don't know how else to be with someone. No matter how I'd like to."
You hadn't said anything for a minute or so, and Astarion still mildly adherent to his ways of self-deprecation had assumed you began to doubt whether or not to continue pursuing...whatever you were moving towards, especially being so soon after your previous conversation of Astarion's 'affection' being self-serving and under a completely false pretense at first, but before he could voice, 'It's fine if you think twice about us', you spoke.
"Astarion," your cadence was deliberate and measured, choosing your words carefully, "I'm not going after you for sex, and if I gave you that impression, I'm sorry. I'm ready when you're ready, I mean it. We can be together without having sex at all, if that would make you happy."
Astarion breathed a laugh, astonished yet still a bit half-hearted. "Now, now," he chided playfully, his voice smooth, effortlessly persuasive, "that almost sounds like a challenge."
But he wanted to believe that. He did.
He does.
But, even Astarion has a breaking point.
It took a while, fuck, there was no doubt about it. Several nights of seduction falling away to mentally drifting off at the beginning and apologizing profusely afterwards when Astarion began to feel uncomfortable and backtracked, but those moments of retraction didn't matter.
You never showed signs of annoyance or frustration, as if you knew that was his way of pacing himself-his starting and stopping-and it would ease the tension weighing the vampire's shoulders when he saw you were only ever concerned. Your face would always be calm, sometimes peaceful, but your hands would hover in the space between your bodies, indecisive and unsure if the man wanted your touch in those moments or not. At times he welcomed it, releasing a little sigh when your warm palms caressed his undead skin, and other times, he needed a bit of space. You never showed disapproval, if you harbored some, whenever he would push away and leave a gap between you. You only waited for him.
You always moved to the rhythm he set; stopping when he told you to stop, going when he told you to go, and Astarion was sure if he asked you to give him your heart, you would carve it out with your bare hands and hold it out to him with a smile on your face. It would surely keep beating in his hands, the love you so clearly shelter for him taking root within your arteries and replacing your frivolous need for blood.
It was an odd thing, foreign, being in control of a situation after centuries of enslavement.
However, Astarion feels a shiver travel up his spine as he drinks in the groan you release into his mouth, not unwelcome.
Without breaking your kiss, the vampire walks forward, pushing you back with a hand on your chest, and you simply follow, allowing Astarion to push and push until your back collides with the cushions of the room's bed. The plain brown blankets ruffle softly, a pillow falls to the ground with a gentle thud, the mattress sinks underneath your weight as your elbows move behind you to prop your upper body, and then there's a moment of pause.
Astarion's lips leave yours with a wet smack, a thin string of saliva curving in the very, very small space created by the separation, but Astarion watches you take one, two, two-and-a-half breaths before he reconnects them with a muffled moan. It's not necessary for him to breathe and he hasn't for the past two centuries, but he tries to be considerate of you.
You, content, take whatever the vampire gives you, filling and all-consuming and your lungs burning in your chest from the lack of oxygen, but you easily conclude that you would happily die here before moving away from him.
Your mind momentarily calls to the revive scroll resting in your pack, and there's a fleeting thought it might certainly come in handy tonight. Hands fumble for clothing, and when it all comes off, Astarion isn't sure where his body heat ends and where yours begin.
Everything is burning, throbbing, aching, and there's a steady pulse between the vampire's legs he can no longer ignore.
His head almost fights the motion to pull away, as if the mere notion is blasphemous, but nevertheless, Astarion pulls back and slowly opens his eyes. Your face beneath him is mildly obscured by a stray, silver curl, illuminated a pale yellow from the candlelight, but Astarion's vision clears the moment your hand delicately pins it behind his ear. Your fingers barely brush the elongated skin, but the vampire figures if his heart was still working, the action would have sent a considerable amount of blood to his cheeks.
"…You're so beautiful," your lips twitch upwards in the corners.
Astarion can't fight the urge to smile back, fangs and all, and his eyes, reminiscent of polished rubies and piercing, sparkle in adoration unbeknownst to him, darting back and forth from one of your eyes to the other. Though there's evident lust present, it becomes overshadowed by an unsure tenderness, your desires restrained in the taut of your neck, and the tips of your splayed fingers flex along the back of Astarion's knees. It's clear you're holding back, anxious to go any further despite Astarion's clear want, and the man knows that if he wanted to stop here even after going so far to be completely bare, you would let him and do so without complaint.
The vampire's thumb strokes your cheek absentmindedly, and your hands are on his chest, tenderly caressing the small indentations as if second nature.
"…So are you, darling,” the vampire kisses the tip of your nose.
The air is soft, your touches kind, and your breaths fan across the other's mouth acting as a heated, wine-scented aphrodisiac. But, as much as you soothe and woo him with cordial romanticism, you seriously need to get on with it.
So, leaning into the shell of your ear, Astarion gives you a nudge to do so. The pulsating is beginning to hurt at this point.
"Touch me," he sighs, and is able to feel the surprisingly violent shudder that racks through your body beneath him. "Please, my love," he adds.
You hum.
"…I am," you respond before pressing a wet, open-mouth kiss to the vampire's shoulder. "I will, fuck," you exhale, "I will."
The kisses start to travel the expanse of his skin, hot and occasionally pausing to suck and bite, up and down and wherever they can touch, trying to gauge his egregious zones, trying to see what's a yes or a no for him.
Pleasure blooms just below his stomach even though you had barely touched him yet, your fingers lightly tracing along the milky skin of his thighs spread across your lap. The pressure of your fingers gradually presses further but never restricting, never painful, only using Astarion's body as a grounding measure against your own raging urge to simply ravish the man on top of you.
'Not too fast,' you remind yourself, tilting your head backwards to reattach your lips to your lover's in a sloppy kiss Astarion happily accepts. 'Not too fast. Slow down, slow...'
You know Astarion can feel your arousal against the back of his thighs, but you stop yourself from grinding up into him, because this is all about him.
Astarion was sure he had never been this wet in his life, the nearly foreign sensation of tackiness between his thighs a bit of a sensational nightmare, and the need for release is essentially screeching in his brain, bouncing around his skull with unrestrained vigor, "touch me, touch me, fucking touch me!"
It's bordering on overwhelming and somehow feels under-stimulating at the same time. Foreplay was never a grace bestowed to Astarion while he entertained Cazador's newest sacrificial rat, them usually opting to put their own pleasure first above all else, so he wasn't entirely sure if the new experience is something he likes or hates. It feels like teasing, in a way, he supposes. Touching everywhere but where he so desperately needs, the pure torture of it all, yet it somehow makes everything better, more.
The buildup isn't bad, it's the waiting after that messes with his head.
You pull back, your half-lidded eyes staring up at Astarion, intense and almost predatory, and tug the spawn's hips forward an inch in a way that causes Astarion's heat to graze the warm skin of your lower stomach. The slight friction calls for a small gasp, a bout of pleasure flashing down the base of his spine, but things still.
"Can I...?" The question hangs off in the air, your hand, palm facing the ceiling, rests below Astarion's belly button and stops.
"Please," the spawn's eyebrows come together, now unafraid to display his frustration, and he begs, his voice tilting into a feral grumble. "Do something."
Astarion, even in the state he's in, doesn't miss the look that settles over your face the longer you stare up at him, your eyes narrow. It's shadowed, dark and hungry and wanting and in over two hundred years of being him, he finds himself unafraid to be at the receiving end of that familiar gaze. So many others sneered at him, licked their lips at the thought of mounting him as if he were nothing but this curly-haired elven beauty to be conquered, and he would let them, for Cazador. Some he would sleep with to possibly gain a sense of satisfaction, a small act of defiance to show that he could still enjoy sex on his own, but it usually ended up with this crushing ton of self-loathing on his sore back.
But, this time, it's different.
The look you're giving him sets him on fire, more scorching than the blistering flare of the goddamn sun, and his bottom lip slots between the front of his teeth in a last dash attempt to smother this pitiful thing of a choke gurgling atop the base of his tongue. He needs you; your touch, your fingers, your mouth, anything and everything he's been deprived of throughout all of this time. He's ready. Gods, he's ready.
And he commends you for your self-control, because Astarion is sure that he can't stop himself from having you now, not when you look at him like that-like you just want to fucking devour him down to the last strand of silver curl.
So, when your hand finally slips between his thighs and presses against his sweltering mound, your fingers gliding along his cunt with careful but firm precision, Astarion’s eyes nearly live up to his namesake. His back arches, his torso pressing into you so much your hand is almost squashed between the both of you, but you manage to keep the pace. There’s a silent determination ruminating from you, your motions; a promise to let him experience every gratification you have to offer and it’s clear that you’re not disappointing him. Your lover’s face falls slack, his mouth parting into a sharp ‘o’, and you resist the urge to lick at the tip of his fangs that peak under the edge of his kiss-bruised lips.
You concede, your eyes fervently follow a bead of sweat floating down the line of Astarion’s pallid neck, that no painting, nor sculpture, nor Gods can compare to your lover’s beauty. It could be a harrowing notion to others, some devout worshipers would probably sputter in indignation if you were to say that outloud, (Gale certainly would be up in arms to defend Mystra) but it remains an undeniable fact to you. His moans, uninhibited by rehearsed parade and uncomfortable deceit, spread across your face reminiscent of a sweetened vineyard swaying in the breeze that you can taste on your back molars.
You decide, right here and now, that you worship only one man, and his name is brighter than any cosmic piece of heaven.
“I,” Astarion suddenly stutters, cutting through your glorifying thoughts, and you only now notice he’s begun to roll his hips against your hand, creating a quicker friction. “Oh, plea...” His plea dies.
“Tell me,” your head lolls to the side to catch Astarion’s eyes, but he’s too lost in chasing whatever he needs to feel, “tell me what you need so I can give it to you.”
Unintentionally, your tone dips off as you get dragged further into the growing rigidity of your lover’s spine, the last part of your sentence dripping with desperate authority, and Astarion whines at the command in your voice that’s always so recognizable, but has him clenching around nothing in this context. This is better than he could have ever imagined, and his past sexual encounters, he gathers, don’t hold a fireball to you. There’s a volcanic simmer beneath his skin, a faint buzzing behind his eyes and the tips of his toes that leaves him both wanting to pull away and longing for more, and it's delicious.
“What do you want, my love? You want me to go faster?”
You gauge his face, searching for any signs of discomfort or dissociation since you both hadn’t truly gotten this far without some form of regression, but you realize, with a swell of pride warming your chest, Astarion is completely enjoying himself.
The vampire’s hips stall for a beat, the candlelight catching the jut of his hip, before he’s nodding, frantically, a few curls falling into his face from their usual sweep. They’re too pretty and frame his angular cheeks too well to brush away, so you leave them be, and instead choose to absorb this rare picture; an unpoised Astarion.
Your wrist pangs, a cramp begins to form along your flexing tendons, but you’ll be damned if you don’t listen to his request and you speed up your fingers, the sound of sloshing wetness ringing beautifully in the middle of your ear like church bells.
You noticed when first getting to know the spawn that he carried this innate air of grace, from his years as an elven magistrate, you assumed, and even when he found himself flustered, there was always something graceful about it. So seeing him like this, keening for your touch and working himself along your fingers to clumsily chase a high he rarely got acquainted to, uncaring about how disheveled he looks…
“Yes,” he whines, “yes, I can,” he moans, “I can feel it..”
You let him do what he wants, what he needs, only keeping the pace of your fingers in their same, quick succession, lest Astarion say otherwise. The buildup is evident in the slow tremble of his thighs, in the hand he uses to instinctively reach out for you as he feels his orgasm steadily approaching, seeking a sense of ground amongst the unfamiliarity, and you promptly lean forward to allow it to snake around the line of your shoulders. Astarion’s head falls to your collarbone and his straight nose is tucking into the junction of skin beneath your earlobe, his other hand settling by his thigh and curling into a fist around the blanket.
Your eyes almost roll into your skull when his pants of ecstasy float into your ear; they’re so much closer, much more clear, and now you can hear a faint crackle, his voice rasping the longer he moans out into the dim room.
“Gods, yes,” your lover whimpers, the sound going straight to your own arousal, “yes, yes!”
Astarion stills and it takes no magic tower mage to know the vampire’s orgasm crashed down unto him, if the sudden creamy texture pearling the tips of your fingers wasn’t indicative enough. His head tosses back, his back curving into a perfect concave ‘c’, and you lean forward to pepper the expanse of his neck with light pecks, your fingers slowing down to a lazy roll as an aid in helping the spawn on the come down. The sides of your thighs pick up the motion of curling toes and twitching kneecaps that are forced to keep themselves open on your naked hips, and a small smile stretches across your face.
Astarion’s chest is still, his vampiric attributes unable to provide him the need to take deep breaths, but his eyes are hazed, trained onto a piece of random ceiling tile. You sit against each other silently, holding him by the waist when his hips eventually stop twitching, and slowly pull your hand back, your wrist screaming in relief from being released of its awkward position. Your lover’s arm spasms, a false release of air hitching when you graze his sensitive clit.
“You okay?” You murmur, keeping your voice low to help Astarion pleasantly adjust.
It seems to help, and your smile widens a bit when the man’s head lowers and his eyes meet yours, red irises little by little clearing from their orgasmic fog to focus on your face. It takes a minute, perhaps two-it could have been an hour for all he knows-but he eventually gets there, and his tongue darts from his mouth to salivate his lips before he simpers, knowing he probably looks extremely satisfied. You certainly notice it.
It’s an expression you’ve seldom seen on Astarion’s face save for when he finishes feeding from a particularly big bear, or you when you eventually gave him permission for your blood.
“I’m,” he pauses, “I’m wonderful, my love. That was…”
Your gaze falls to your hand, Astarion’s juices coating your fingers in a shine bordering hypnotic, and you nod.
Astarion, now able to think in coherent lines of consciousness, is able to get a good look at you. He watches you, notices how your eyelids droop, your facial expression mirroring what he can only describe as melted adoration when your gaze languidly trails over his body before they flick up to his face. He’s seen that look so many times; admiration, but it’s never felt genuine before. There’s a warmth he receives from yours, one that washes over him and melts into his bones, forming his skin and shaping the very flutter of his lashes when you call him beautiful. The gentle touch on his waist pulls him back.
Your lips brush his, “my love,” and then they’re slotting back together.
The kisses start lazy, relaxed and unhurried to simply have his mouth on yours, tongues dancing along each other in an easy rhythm even without music, but then Astarion feels your legs shift beneath him. He’s hiked further in your lap, but he simply lets it happen, assuming you need to adjust to get comfortable. Though, he comes to find that he’s sorely mistaken when you suddenly lean back, subsequently taking him with you. You both fall onto the bed, Astarion letting out an adorable, “umph.”
Neither one of you says anything, but you do lean forward to place a kiss to Astarion’s cheek, just below his faint beauty mark before you pepper his entire face. Your lips touch the bridge of his nose, his chin, above his smoothing eyebrows, essentially anywhere you could reach, and the domesticity of it leaves him speechless for once.
“My sweet,” you whisper, pausing in between every few pecks to speak, “can you do something for me?”
Astarion hums, his eyes closing when your lips find his neck, and you take that as a sign to continue.
"Can you get on top?"
"I already am, my dear-"
"-I mean," you lick your lips, "on top…of my face."
"…Oh."
There's a high-pitched giggle that bubbles in the base Astarion’s throat, involuntary but fleeting.
'Well,' Astarion thinks, his eyes widening, 'this is…also new.'
You, seeing how he pauses at the suggestion, move your finger in small circles on his hip in reassurance, and your eyes soften. "You don't have to, I just thought you might enjoy it."
"I," Astarion clicks his tongue, "I've just…never done that before."
A beat.
"…No one has asked you to sit on their face before?" It's your turn to appear so incredulous, finding something like that so…so disrespectful. "Never?"
Astarion shakes his head, now beginning to shrink a little under your sudden bemused stare. He knows you aren’t mad at him, you’re never mad at him (which is why he tends to get away with minimal consequence), but he sees that your upset is genuine.
And you are upset, because how can anyone deny this epitome of stunning, masculine monarchy, his ivory throne, adorned with anything less than the most lustrous jewels? What absolute madman, blind and deaf, surely, would give Astarion anything but which he truly deserves? Gold, silver, should fall between his slender fingers, molten and only his, the rarest silks and velvets hanging from his pallid limbs not unlike the knots lining a hangman tree; gorgeously morbid as he.
It makes you mad all over again, picturing those rabid animals all over Astarion, taking and mindlessly ravaging with no incentive to offer a modicum of benevolence. Hounds, the lot of them, soulless and only living to harshly breed the unwilling. How, your chest tightens as your anger makes way for a pang of sorrow, how much Astarion has suffered. You don’t want his torment to loom over him any longer, so you’ll just have to remind him; you are his, in his control. His to love, to break, to leave if he wishes it so. If he is to love you for the remainder of your long lifespans together, or if he is to simply use you to remember that he is more than the body that’s grown so foreign to him, so be it.
Your very soul clutches his, fist trembling, taut, and knuckles deathly white like a frightened babe clinging to their mother’s skirt; craving, clenching to prevent the scattered pieces of Astarion from slipping through your fingers. You’ll hold him forever, if he’ll have you.
You will provide all you can, and accept all he’s willing to give in return, if anything. You can only hope that he receives you well and chooses you like you chose him.
Pushing those feelings down, you kiss your teeth before pulling the vampire's hips forward even more until he is basically sitting on your chest, the unexpected drag shooting a shudder of pleasure up his spine, and you smirk. Your strength often comes in handy at times.
"We need to fix that. Now."
Astarion tries to hover at first, a bit too hesitant to allow his full weight to rest on your face even if his fear was a bit irrational; he’s seen you fight for Gods’ sake. And you aren’t having it. The grip on his hips grows unyielding as if they leave no room for further argument, and his puffy, flushed cunt is slowly lowering, taking its rightful place, against your open mouth. A stolen heir reunited with his true birthright, you surmise.
The pleasure that consumes you is almost too powerful, his taste flooding your senses and clouding your mind in an impenetrable smog of bliss, and you instinctively curse, your lips curling around the letters into his slick folds. Astarion releases a low whine, his head already falling towards the ceiling as if the fictional crown upon his head is too substantial, and he bucks his hips, relishing how your nose drags along his swelling bud.
Your tongue explores at first, adagio to measure just where he might need you to be, but you find yourself indulging your thirst too quickly. It’s necessary, requisite, to feel his juices bead the tip of your tongue, his orgasm pooling down your throat essential for you to feel any sense of satisfaction for yourself, slurping and drinking and gulping like a man deprived for too long. Astarion’s body responds in kind; his hands reaching for you in the fray and tangling within your roots unceremoniously. It produces a moan from beneath him, the vibration against him causing a sound so ruined, it reminds you of a wounded sprite, but Astarion has never felt so safe. Even if your jaw practically aches as you attempt to inhale him (you’ll unhinge the damn thing if you have to), the man’s growing sounds spur you further, and Astarion briefly wonders if you’re truly trying to fucking eat him.
“Fuck,” he gasps, one of his hands releasing your hair to hold your forearm as it loops behind him to grip his waist.
Your hold is grounding, scalding, keeping him from getting too lost in himself, and he’s all the more thankful for it the moment your tongue slips further down his wetness to breach his hole, your nose nudging and grinding against his clit. He almost flinches away from the unexpectedness of it, but he gathers, that is what your arm around him is for.
“Fuck!”
Perhaps, Astarion’s eyes roll into his skull, this is the profound ascension Cazador is looking for; this feeling of your tongue splitting him open, lapping him along your tastebuds akin to a thirsting sinner kneeling in front of heaven’s locked gates. To him, this certainly feels no different than ascending to a higher power, and he swears he’s died-again-the moment your hand shifts to use the pad of your thumb to encircle his clit. His hips move on their own, burning from the strain but it feels so good, and rock back and forth, grinding.
You weren’t sure if you'd taken a single breath since he sat down, his thighs tightening on the sides of your face in a vice-like grip, non-verbally screeching at you to move ‘not a goddamn muscle’, not that it matters.
Your view from between your lover’s legs, where you conclude your life was always meant to lead you, makes it easy to ignore the still of your chest, a dull scorch fixing around your stuttering heart as it struggles to handle the lack of oxygen. Astarion’s body glistens delectably, shiny from his sweat and arousal, and your eyes study the muscles in his stomach as they tense and twist and jump along with his keens and hisses of pleasure. Your lover’s movements titter the edge of desperate and feral, his hips rocketing along your face as if you were nothing more than an object to bring him to orgasm at this point.
‘I’m not complaining,’ your eyes flutter closed. ‘Gods, I’m not.’
Astarion chases, following the catalytic pressure building in his stomach, tears forming behind his closed eyelids, and it goes up and up and up and-
His eyes fly open at a finger slipping past his entrance, nimble and thrusting and loudly coated in the slick of him. It’s deafening, how wet he is; it’s rich, nasty, and utterly debauched, but neither of you care. The air around you smells like sex and love and animalistic necessity, and the bed frame meets the wall in response to all of the movement.
“My darling,” Astarion cries, his voice wholly spent, raspy and sobbing. “My love, my sweet,” and he’s babbling. “Don’t stop, don’t-”
‘Wouldn’t dream of it.’
“Don’t-”
Astarion, with his vast vocabulary and overall knowledge from both his time as a spawn and original profession as a magistrate, finds himself unable to describe the sensations running through him. Everything is burning, his hips sting from their motions, his stomach feels tight, but there’s also something else; something deeper. It’s ardent, starting from the bottom of his feet and ending in his chest, and it makes him feel like something is going to happen, something powerful. It buzzes, pulsates, makes his body feel heavy, the pleasure coiling in the pit of his stomach like a spring ready to snap. It’s new and a bit scary, but he knows you’ll be here, knows you’ll protect him, so he lets himself fall.
Your lover goes rigid, silent, a moment passing where every muscle and flex of his limbs comes to a complete halt, before he’s moaning, drawn out and in higher pitch. Your eyebrows draw together in concentration, eyes crossing behind your lids as your own pleasure rains down on you, and the lower half of your face is drenched in your lover’s gushing climax. He’s squirting, and by the grace of the Gods is it succulent. It comes in waves, Astarion’s hips thrusting in time with each flood of his orgasm, and your mouth remains wide open to catch it all, guzzling, taking to him like a kitten to milk.
Astarion convulses atop of your face while you work him through, globs of tears sliding down his cheek, glowing under the slowly dying candlelight, and there’s a ringing in his elongated ears. He can feel his mouth moving, words rolling his tongue and testing syllables on his teeth, but his brain can’t quite register what he’s saying.
You certainly don’t understand him.
It takes a while for him to settle, the swirls and drags of your tongue now pulling the spawn into painful territory, and when Astarion full-on dry sobs at the feeling of your mouth, you pull away from him.
Your inhales are hefty, gasping and panting beneath him to regulate the breathing you so kindly cut off for him, your heart working overtime to accommodate, and your eyes open. Astarion’s body rises and falls with your deep lungfuls of air, his head angled down toward you in the perfect picture of ecstasy; a transcendental creature of delight and satisfaction. His eyes are misty, his waterline flushed a pretty pink beneath a new surge of unshed tears, but there’s a watery smile hanging from his lips; dopey and pointed. For a while, you don’t move, only massaging Astarion’s waist to ease his occasional spasm, and he’s thankful for it.
Astarion has never felt anything so intense, so vigorous and…good.
He didn’t understand you at first, couldn't deduce why on earth you wanted to get to know him beyond the scope of bodily exploration, but at least then you could grant him the protection he needed, however confusing on his part. His mind, still deep within Cazador’s deeply inflicted hell of torture and transactional sex, had made him approach you in the first place, recognizing you as the impromptu leader of your ragtag group of weirdos, with all of his true weaknesses hidden behind a steel wall of falsehoods perfected after two centuries.
“It was natural. Instinctive.”
But, in this moment with you, as you sit up to carefully lay his body down beside you like he’ll splinter and burst, his arousal gleaming on the lower portion of your face, he infers that he, perhaps, wasn’t meant to understand you. He was only meant to feel, let you chip through his walls with your patience, let you blanket him with your understanding serenity, to separate him from Cazador’s self flagellating sack of exhausted bones, and merely be.
Be with you.
“Are you alright, Astarion?” You hum, observing his face, watching him for any signs of being off in any way.
Finally, the heavy weight on his tongue lifts, and he releases a low scoff, free of malice, “Simply amazing.”
His voice is on par with stone gravel, scratchy and sore, and it makes you reach across him, heedful of jostling him too much, to grab a cup of water off the nightstand. It’s lukewarm when you tilt it against Astarion’s lips, but it helps soothe him immensely, and he clears his throat.
“Do you,” he begins, but there’s something nervous, timidly resigned, about his tone that you instantly pick up on, “do you…want me to-”
Your lips find his, and his question trails off into the roof of your mouth, Astarion moaning softly at the taste of himself on your tongue. His shoulders ease, unaware they drew forward in rigidity to begin with. The air around you starts to clear, calm affection radiating from your heated skin and seeping into Astarion’s dead heart, and he swears upon every God he had no luxury to believe that your love may have the power to revive it.
“No,” your lips part with a wet, muted smack. “No, I don’t want you to.”
“But,” Astarion’s words stumble, finding it hard to gather himself when your lips find his jawline, “you didn’t get to-”
“I did,” you cut him off again, smooching the side of his neck and tucking a damp curl behind his ear, “because you did.” And it’s true, “You feeling good makes me feel good, my love. Don’t worry about me.”
The vampire makes a face.
How can Astarion not when you always put him first?
His safety, his hunger, and now his pleasure, you always make sure he’s attended to first, placing yourself on the backburner more often than not, and while it’s beyond sweet, he’s starting to feel a bit guilty; guilty that he’s not giving you more than you deserve. Admittedly, he doesn’t know what he’s doing, how to have a real relationship far beyond sexual exchange, and it shows.
But, he’s learning, and you never rush him.
Astarion holds one of your hands in his, fingers intertwining around the other’s like straw woven through a basket, a perfect interlace of devotion and comfort; destined.
“I want,” the man’s eyes find yours, his words catching the base of his throat at the warm sentiment on your face whenever you look at him, “you to be happy…with me, with us.”
Your palm raises to cup his cheek, the vampire nuzzling into it almost instantly with a quiet sigh, and brings your forehead to press against his, the smile on your lips wobbling in affection. The man in front of you, scarlet eyes exhausted and abused but so in love and willing to trust you, allowing you to douse the flames of his own personal hell and pull him up and out means more to you than Astarion will ever understand.
Or, Astarion’s lips curl into a sheepish grin, his eyes wrinkling in the corners, maybe he does understand you. In his own way.
He’ll never forget the moment he first felt the sun after escaping the naultaloid, the feeling forgotten after having spent so many decades in the dark, traversing the shadows and hugging close to walls like diseased vermin, and how warm it was, almost as if the beams burned brighter just for him to ease the undead chill rooted within his bones; a reunion gift.
He supposes that being with you feels the same way; the sun embracing his skin to drive away the cold, constant and unfaltering. Just…you, your love that leaves him comfortable and unsuspecting, and Astarion half expects to wake up; to find himself still stuck in Cazador’s dungeon so broken he resorted to hallucinations for some semblance of comfort. But the pair of eyes in front of him, twinkling in passion as they surveyed him, are too expressive to be an illusion. Everything feels too real, too raw, to be a dream.
“You have no idea how happy you make me, Astarion,” and your declaration is conclusive, spoken as if the only truth you know.
For once, he completely believes you.
His psych doesn’t wrestle with his irrational belief that you’re being untrue, that he isn’t enough for you, because you choose him. Even after he deceived you, even after all of the emotional back and forth because he is so fearful, so damaged, you still choose him despite his faults and imperfections. He sees you when he closes his eyes, you worry his days when you’re away from him, and sometimes he just wants to crack open his ribcage to make space for you. There’s no need for his heart; it doesn't fucking work, blood no longer flows through his veins yet it’s the very thing he depends on to satiate this damned bestial hunger, so it has no place inside of him where you should be.
But, you’re here. Holding him, loving him and offering your devotion as it thrums between your fingers, sculpting the shape of your lungs around the phonetics of his name like you need him to live, and it makes Astarion want to cry.
So, he does.
Your face doesn’t show panic, but you do bring him closer, cradling the back of his head as he snuggles into your neck and allows his tears to fall. His back is being rubbed in soothing circles, your touch gentle but solid, and Astarion thinks that right here and right now…
dededos
areudirty
vaporwave
romaincrisis
titsay
germansingergirl
snowghoul
blakekathryn