☾ the gold & the rust ☼
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Pairings: Astarion Ancunín/Tav!Reader Warnings: NSFW; angst/comfort smut; yearning; Astarion is not ascended; mentions of past canon-typical trauma/abuse; the struggle of healing; Astarion has racing thoughts and you can't tell me otherwise; canon-typical biting; it's not about the sex it's about the feelings; spoilers for the endgame Word Count: 7,168 words Reader Gender: Female Author: Meg Summary: You’ve told him you will find him some cure for his darkness; you are set on performing a feat no one in history has ever achieved, all for him, but he wonders if it is as futile as the sun laboring to join the moon. Maybe he is destined to forever look upon you with the knowledge that when your bright, beckoning light inevitably burns out, he will be left with only his darkness, alone again... A/N: Look I blame Hozier for making too many Astarion-coded songs that make me sob my eyes out while thinking about the implications of his "good" ending. Astarion has literally changed my brain chemistry.
The sun cusps over the horizon, its soft tendrils spreading over a murky sky. Beckoning the night’s fleeing retreat with a gentle violence as the day demands more territory in each passing second. Sparse hues of blue manage to cling to some lingering clouds that have yet to meet the threateningly beautiful pink and orange sky.
Astarion reaches out from behind the heavy curtain and his darkness, towards the pillar of light that breaks into the privacy of your bedchamber. Pale fingertips dip hesitantly into the light, as if he could believe everything that has occurred over this past week has been only a dream. It takes but a moment for the evidence of his reality to meet him when his skin sparks and dusts under the light of day.
He flinches back, hissing lowly from the burning pain of it. Glaring down at his flexing hand as if the disdain in his eyes could change the fates that have turned the thread of his life into this ever-knotted thing. He’d never imagined he would miss having that damned illithid parasite in his head, yet here he was. Yearning to reach for morning again. Wishing to experience a dawn that may never welcome him again.
He hears the stirring moan, soft and drenched in exhaustion, and dares a glance away from his own skin and stinging regret. Stilling entirely, Astarion hopes he has not awoken you just yet. He does not wish for you to see him like this, in this state of self-pitiful detestation. Though he knows you may yet love him despite having seen it, showing the reality of his mind beyond his comfortable performances is easier said than done. Tension drips from his shoulders, if only a little bit, as he watches your body relax into the cushions with your blissfully ignorant slumber.
The sigh at his lips is shaky. Mournful. He looks back towards the sunlight and remembers how it had felt when it had forgotten how to punish him like this. He doesn’t know which is crueler: to have never felt it at all, or for it to be ripped away from him like this. In the brief time he was granted to finally walk in the sun again after the past two centuries, Astarion can’t help the fresh anger that bubbles up in him at the taking away of it. He didn’t deserve this--- any of it.
Truthfully, he has no clear memory of how the sun had felt to him when he was simply a mortal elf and not a spawn belonging to a master. It had been so long ago; memories fade over time when drenched in horror, he’s discovered well since. Still, something tells Astarion he loved the day even then as he did now. He’s certain he had always loved the heat of it--- the color.
The way it filters through your hair when you stand in the path of daylight, kissing the edges of your skin in a way he forever wished to share with it. It had been warmer and kinder to him than he had ever expected to receive, somewhat like you. You were undeniably beautiful in the light of day.
Even standing within the finality of the sunset of your journey together--- foes vanquished, coated in sweat and victory--- he had thought the same.
But nothing good ever lasts, he’s learned. At least, nothing but you. Astarion wonders if he would still grieve this much if he were to never have known the day at all. Would he know what he was missing? Would a piece of its cosmic heat have whispered of you to him, even then?
He can’t truly comprehend a world in which his fate had not become so intimately entangled with yours. Perhaps that is the worst part, how he knows he would always brave this feeling of loss to gain what he has with you. In the end of it all, he knows he has made the right choice to have this over the temptations of that infernal ritual’s power.
Despite that knowledge, Astarion truly hadn’t expected you to run after him when the lingering illithid protections dissipated from his being and the sun began its remorseless burning again. He had scampered away from the docks in an abject desperation, attempting to flee from the light’s betrayal. Astarion was the objectively faster party, but you had found him eventually--- you always seem to find him--- after he had taken to cowering behind wooden crates that cast a meager shadow of solace. He had been shaking, cradling himself, closed off entirely from the world as that sickeningly familiar taste of how things had been before--- back when he was still Cazador’s--- came flooding back onto his palate. His mind had become drenched in a fear he had thought could never claim him again.
You’d cut through all of it with your worried call of his name. Plunging him into the magical darkness you cast upon the both of you to shield him from the sun’s assault with such a thoroughness that not even you could see through it. His call of your own name sounded far too broken on his tongue for his own liking, but you’d followed the sound towards his outstretched arms all the same.
Dragging him up into yours, only a sliver of the calamity in his soul dissipated when you promised him blindly, “Come, quickly, I’ll get you someplace safe.”
Despite his better efforts, his voice shook as he allowed you to clumsily drape your cloak over his curls in darkness, unable to bring the deflecting humor to his voice that he so achingly wished would return, “Darling, you are a sight for sore eyes; or, you would be, I’m sure, if I could see you.”
“I told you this would come in handy,” you shot back, and he had been grateful for your effort at ignoring the bittersweet grief that so clearly drenched his soul in favor of reminding him of how he had teased you for spending a good amount of your gold on this very cloak when you’d all first arrived in the city.
His breath remained shallow, but his hand tightened over yours in what he hoped you knew was gratefulness when you finished ensuring the fabric had covered any of his exposed skin, “I shall never question any of your purchases again, on my honour.”
“Of course you will, Astarion,” he heard the slight worry in your voice as much as you tried to hide it. He felt the spell waning and with it the returning disorientation that even slight sunlight left him in. You had grasped his arm firmly and spoken with a confident determination that he suspected was as much for your comfort as it was for his, “Now, get ready to move quickly and keep your head down; the dark won’t last much longer.”
You were good for your promises, he’d learned over his time travelling with you, and that had brought some small comfort as the day reemerged before he’d had a chance to respond. Then, you were maneuvering him through the city, towards the darkness of Sharess’ Caress, with such a precision that he might think it more important than any quest you’ve had thus far if he hadn’t known better. Gripping him tightly the whole way, Astarion still has not dared tell you how grateful he was for it--- for you, surprising him against his better judgement every time with how you simply are.
It has been nearly a week now of you coming to his side in the night and yet some part of him still expected the other metaphorical shoe to drop. For you to come to your senses and tell him that you simply cannot carry on like this with him.
He wanted to believe you. Gods, how he wants it. Yet, he still felt like a fool to think he’s earned some love such as yours. He wants to believe he deserves the way you look at him like he can be what you see him to be. It’s too dangerous for his heart to invest in the thought that he maybe can. That maybe he is, already.
For you to look at him and tell him, “We’ll find it together. I promise we’ll find a way for you to walk in the sun again,” with such determination--- for you to be someone who genuinely believed the both of you could achieve it---
Well, you simply must be mad. He doesn’t know how else to explain these little ideas of yours.
Astarion figures you’ll continue to be as much a surprise to him as you’ve made a habit of in the past… and then there was that persistently annoying optimism of yours to contend with.
But this?
He doesn’t think that you understand the truth of the choice you’re making, to stay with him. To love him. How could you know it and still look upon him with such eager hopefulness as you do? He barely understands it at all himself, and he’s had centuries to come to terms with what he’s become. Forgive him if it’s a bit difficult to begin to understand just what “being something better than what Cazador made him” truly means.
He understands how much he wants you, though. He wants it all. The life that was stolen from him, the opportunities, but mostly for you to be there--- here. Where you’ve not wavered an inch from his side; you’ve given him no reason to think you plan on leaving anytime soon.
Why does he still fear it so much, though?
Some part of him had thought--- hoped foolishly, rather--- that killing Cazador would somehow fix two centuries of torment. Fix him. In the brief time after, he discovered that it hadn’t. In his elongated struggle, he worries it never will.
Nightmares still plague him, he still jumps at shadows, he still has thoughtless fear dart through his mind before he remembers again that his former master is well and truly dead. That simply existing in happiness was the rebellious proof of his victory over a man who he hopes will not haunt him forever. When he is with you, Astarion almost believes that Cazador won’t. It is some charm you have bewitched over him surely. Your ability to calm this chaos in him with soft eyes and patient hands that do not seek to own him, yet he eagerly chooses to belong there all the same.
Astarion still has trouble loving you like he knows you deserve to be loved. There are times when he can barely stand physical touch, though craves to want yours. And you understand the duality of the contradiction in him, taking only ever what he is willing to give.
Sometimes he thinks you too understanding, with little concern of how this affects you. He’s always baffled by how selfless you can be sometimes, particularly when you’re taking in strays. He has come to admit, if only to himself, that he does see the irony in his complaints. Moreso, he’s terrified of what will happen when that seemingly endless well of care you hold within you for others inevitably runs out.
What will happen when you can no longer bear his eccentricities? The compromises? The sacrifice that his double-edged love requires of you? Will there come a time when all he offers as part of being in this real love becomes too overwhelming?
Astarion had fallen in love with you in the easy warmth of sunlight. Looking upon you now as the dawn creeps against your sleeping form, his heart aches as he wonders if he can truly doom you to a life in his complicated darkness.
Selfishly, one thought consumes his mind--- he knows he wants to. He would want you, no matter the cost to you both. You have told him over and over again how you want the same but, Gods, he can’t figure out what he has done for this sliver of joy and it eats away at him in the dark. It’s unreasonable what he asks you to give him, but he’ll take it all the same. Bitterly he thinks, if he were a better man--- the man you see him to be--- he might even feel guilty for it.
For now, all he feels is the monstrous need to escape these racing thoughts in his head.
When will you walk away to join the sunlight for good? Hells forbid the answer his weary heart is preparing for ever be spoken from your lips.
Astarion hopes the day never comes when you choose to go where he cannot follow. He wants to spend all his days traipsing after you, wherever you may lead, no matter how much he may complain about it for show.
Astarion wants to spend all of it, whatever it may be, whatever he’s got left, with you. He’s terrified of the day that you change your mind on him. Fearful that you may one day decide these sleepless nights with a vampire spawn who can offer you nothing more than his undying love and sarcastic quips are nothing compared to the full life you could have with someone else. This theoretical, easy life in the sun that he dares to think he is stealing from you by loving you as he does.
Well, he supposes that reclaiming Cazador’s palace is always an option, rather than his other fantasy of burning it to the ground. Spending an eternity draping you in finery and keeping you to himself within a palace feels like something he should want, but he can’t help to think that it would be no better than making his love for you into a somewhat prettier cage.
More than he wants you, he needs you to freely want him. He’d be tempted to take up praying again if he had any faith that it could solidify your love for him forever, but deep down he doesn’t want heavenly intervention. He wants you to want to be with him--- to choose him willingly and without any regret for what the inevitable sacrifice will be. That understanding is, perhaps, what makes his heart swell with this bittersweet glory over all else.
You’ve told him as much and what your lips did not confess to him willingly, your body has whispered to his with an adoration that threatened to scorch him in much the same way of your beloved daylight. You’ve told him you will find him some cure for his darkness; you are set on performing a feat no one in history has ever achieved, all for him, but he wonders if it is as futile as the sun laboring to join the moon. Maybe he is destined to forever look upon you with the knowledge that when your bright, beckoning light inevitably burns out, he will be left with only his darkness, alone again--- this being the most horrible realization of all to have come to him tonight.
Hells, how desperately he wants to believe you, but Astarion has always had difficulty getting his hopes up. He hasn’t been known to bet on losing dogs, and he certainly doesn’t bet on his own odds these days.
But he figures you have more than enough hope for the both of you.
A minute smile quirks his troubled lips at that thought, watching your fingers twitch in your slumber. He shouldn’t doubt you as he does; you’ve given him everything. His freedom, his salvation--- even from himself, when he hadn’t known how much he needed it. Things he can never repay, and yet you’ve never asked him for a repayment. He owes you everything, but you’ve been adamant in tempering his sense of obligation. You’ve reminded him that everything he's done, he’s chosen for himself.
You’ve only ever asked him to love you, and that you have had for far longer than you know--- far before you ever actually plucked up the adorable courage to ask him for it.
He has come to love you more than he’s ever loved anything for as far back as he can remember. The depths of his adoration could scare even him with the raw vulnerability he is left with when it comes to you. How beautifully all his plans and plots for self-preservation have backfired upon him, though. He would not have you destroy his peace of mind in any other way.
Maybe one day, he’ll admit to you exactly when his nice, simple plan truly began to fall apart. The idea dances in his mind, of how you’ll react to that particular information. You’d hang on his every word, he thinks--- it would be rather pathetic of you, if he weren’t in much the same state.
Gripping the curtain, Astarion finally deems it time to push the budding light out of his darkness. If it is to be the only place he may have you for all of your days, he’ll make his darkness a sacred place. He decides he shall worship you in it--- all other gods have forsaken him already. Until the day his little hero saves him once again, he will indulge in this darkness with you.
The patriars nipping at your heels for guidance, the unwashed masses of the Gate clamoring for their glimpse of his hero, even your other traveling companions--- none of them shall invade upon this sanctuary.
He moves towards the bed, returning to you. Exhausted from a late day in the city and an even later night of enjoying his company, you’ve taken to claiming sleep when you can these days. The evidence of your labor rests in the dark circles under your eyes. He doesn’t think he could stop you from your philanthropic efforts assisting the city’s reconstruction even if he tried.
Still, right now, in these hours you are only his.
He dips his weight onto the bed and lays himself alongside you, pulling you tenderly against him as his lips graze your neck. Truly, he knows it is cruel to wake you, but he doesn’t know how he can manage to miss someone like this when you are right before him. It is as if his very soul yearns for you. He melts against the rhythmic flutter of your heart, and it sounds more like his home than the palace he has spent the last two hundred years in ever could.
Teeth graze against your carotid pulse, and you stir slightly. He hums into the soft warmth of your flesh, biting without intent to draw blood--- though the thought of it does cross his mind. He has never recovered from the taste of you. Cold fingers curl into your bare hip, dragging you slightly closer at the feeling of your waking movements.
Your pulse picks up against his lips. Astarion hears the patter of your heart in your ribs as his tongue drags up your throat towards your ear. Your breath hitches when his lips graze your jaw, but your eyes remain closed.
His lips twitch with mirth at your effort to have him do as he pleases.
“Quite the show, my little love, but I know you’re awake,” Astarion murmurs, slurred from the back of his throat like a man lost in thorough indulgence. Drunk with the scent of you on his skin, he leaves another faux bite on your jaw as you squirm beneath his assault.
“Shall you feed again, is that it?” yawning, your hand rubs at your eyes before you blink them open. When his hands run up your sides, your answering shiver reminds him of that first night he’d fed from you. Lit only by the campfire, you had allowed him to take too much before stopping him, even then.
He chuckles breathlessly, shifting the covers to invade your space more completely as you come back to your consciousness piece by piece, “As tempting as it is when you offer oh so nicely to be my treat, I hunger for something more satisfying this morn.”
“Ah,” you gasp from sleep-drenched shock, reacting on a delay as he brings his knee up to strategically push your legs open. Allowing you to feel the growing length of him through the thin linens between you, he levels you with his weight in a slow grind. Blinking up at him, your eyes focus in a darkness lit only by the dim glow of dawn beyond the curtains when he languidly rolls his hips against yours, “A-Astarion---!” He is watching you peculiarly, with a glint of some unreadable darkness in his eye that you can’t quite place. The breathless whimper at your lips sends that warmth of yours straight down his spine, “What’s gotten into you?”
He hasn’t had you since that night he had been so drenched with adoration that he’d taken you on his own grave and truly confessed how he loved you. Ever since then it had been battle and struggle, one after another, in your pursuit to stop the Absolute for good--- constantly ensnared in some new concern that stole any potential moment he could’ve used to steal you away from duty. After the final battle, Astarion had been so dejected by the return of his vampiric limitations, and you had been near constantly pulled away to assist the public---
There was the part of him that enjoyed indulging in the easy-going intimacy you offered him. The lack of pressure to perform was something he had not yet fully become accustomed to; a certain comfortability that has been cultivated between the two of you over the time you’ve been together. The sense of knowing that he is well and truly safe with you. Despite this understanding, he wished to freely want you in every way he was capable of.
And, oh, how he has come to want you over these last few days.
It was so mindlessly simple and immensely complex. He can barely put into words to describe the ways he wants this. Carnally, intimately, wholly, eternally--- nothing is a sufficient descriptor. Maybe in that vast library that your wizard, Gale, insists on boasting about showing him one of these days, Astarion will find an all-encompassing word for how he wants to have you forever.
As it stands currently, he settles on the comfortable seduction that has become second nature to him, “Actually, I was quite hoping to have gotten into you by now, lover.”
He’ll never get over how you melt for him; how you fall for every word. He watches the heat he stokes behind your eyes, the flex of your fingertips where they lay beside your head on the pillow.
Then, he descends upon you.
A practiced mouth parts yours as his cool hand takes the long route from your waist to your throat, indulging in the feeling of everything in-between. He sets your skin on edge in his wake, stirring a familiar feeling that he was entirely too good at urging from you to settle low in your stomach.
Gentle fingers find his hair and he feels the scrape of your nails against his scalp when he finally rests his hand on your throat to hook his thumb beneath your jaw, kissing you deeper. Passionately. As he always does, Astarion excels at unravelling you in every way, but you have no idea how much you manage to rebuild him with your every touch.
Your body welcomes him completely, urging him closer in ways he doubts you are consciously aware of. His hips rock into yours with each passing second that your heat spreads through him, feeling himself grow harder at your soft moans that meet his eager mouth. When you tug slightly at his hair, he lets a cautioning sound fall from his tongue onto yours, but you only nip defiant teeth at him in response.
And then he’s pushing your hands down, captured at the wrists by his. Pinning you to the pillows while he draws back just enough to catch the breath that is coming, labored, from the both of you.
“I’m sorr---” you begin, remorselessly.
“Telling a pretty lie won’t save you from me,” Astarion leans close once more, dragging his skin against your cheek as he kisses a trail towards your ear, feeling you test his grip at your wrists with a half-hearted tug. “I do believe all of this ‘Hero of Baldur’s Gate’ business has kept you from the more important happenings of our bedchamber. It would be a terrible pity if you continued to neglect your baser desires when I am in such a mood to indulge you.”
“Are you sure you’re talking about me?” you tease and he feigns a mild shock at the insinuation that his own behavior is the reason you’ve yet to bed him.
“I’ll have you know I am all indulgence, unlike you, darling hero,” but when he leans away, your eyes capture his. Reading him too easily, you know something is wrong as his carefully constructed mask falters, if only for an instant. It’s all you need, and Astarion regrets losing himself for the moment as he watches your softening gaze survey him.
“Is that so…?” You’re left guessing at what troubles him, “If you missed me, you could’ve just said so. The city can survive a few days.”
“Does the city know that?” it would be so easy to leave it there, to let you think you’ve figured him out once again. The anxiety in his veins won’t allow it, however, and his mouth speaks before his mind can instruct him to shut up, “Tell me, darling, that you won’t regret it someday… Of course, you won’t--- but I would like to hear it all the same.”
He looks down on you with growing vulnerability, confidence cracking. That detestable anxiety that has plagued him all evening coming to the forefront of his mind once more. Crimson irises swirl with a reckless uncertainty and it reminds you of how he had looked upon you when confessing his initial manipulations in those early days of your relationship.
“Regret what?” the confusion on your face nearly has him losing his nerve, but he chokes back the urge to dismiss you so quickly.
“I don’t want you to regret… choosing me,” his voice is clearly pained at the thought, cold hands at your wrists tightening like he is afraid you will run from him should he let you go. “Choosing us, I mean. I am well aware of all you shall endure if you spend each painstaking night of forever with me. It is a price I was willing to pay for my freedom, but you… I--- I know you have said that I am what you want, but I don’t want this to be one of your regrets. I don’t want you to resent me for keeping you here---”
Astarion was constantly preparing himself for the ending of all things; it is a part of his nature that you wish you could soothe with simple words alone. It will be much more difficult to satisfy than that and you know it, but you intend to spend all your years working towards earning his unwavering faith in you. This trust that he has so endearingly placed upon your soul, when every piece of his own screamed at you for doing the same. You doubt he knows how, if you were to someday break him in the way he so fears, you feel it would be as if you were destroying a part of yourself.
You cut off his rambling with a firm, “Astarion!” like it hurts you to hear him talk of himself in this way. His mouth snaps shut as you search him for the cause of this doubt, “Have I done something to make you think I will have these regrets you worry of?”
“Well, no, but---”
When you pull at his grip this time, he wordlessly releases you, only for you to reach up to him to drag him down into a tight embrace, “Then, why is your heart so troubled?”
“I---” he chokes on the word and how shallowly his lungs fill with you holding him so securely in your arms. Maybe it is better that you hold him so closely that you cannot see how he crumbles against you, dissolving into your grasp as if you are the only thing holding him together when he confesses, “I know what it is to live this life of darkness. You are so---! You deserve everything I can’t give you, starting with a life surrounded by the beauties of daylight.” His head turns, misty eyes catching your worried stare. He regrets the distress he’s caused you, but moreso he needs to hear your reassurances that his mind has gotten the better of him in this. He has never hoped so pitifully that he was wrong.
“Astarion,” heart swelling at the loss in his eyes; he looks to be mourning for you. As your thumb smoothes along the lines of his jaw, you come to realize the depth of his lingering sadness, “tell me, what good is the sun? The sun cannot care for me as you do or feel my love in return. A life of pure sunlight is worthless if it means living it without you.” You watch his breath catch in his chest, a stifled sob of his relief that he does not give into so easily.
His voice comes strained and nearly sounds like he’s on the verge of arguing with you, “You so obviously will miss it! You talk of finding a way for me to ‘walk in the sun again,’ but what if it’s impossible? What if we waste our lives searching for something that was never attainable? When you realize it, I wouldn’t have you look differently upon me.”
“Is that it? You think I talk about finding you a cure for my own benefit?” you scoff, before leaning towards him to place a soft kiss against frowning lips. He lingers in the middle ground as you depart just enough to demand he listen, “I only think of you, Astarion. Since the moment I first saw you, you’ve consumed my mind, body and soul. The sun was made for you--- and you’d know it if you ever had the privilege of seeing yourself in it. I only want for you to be happy.”
The arch of his brow tells you he still doesn’t fully believe you, despite his attempt at a half-hearted joke through the tightness in his throat, “I do quite enjoy when you call me beautiful.” It’s more than that, and you both know it, but if he were to ask you right now to name one thing about the light of day that you know you will sorely miss, it would be never seeing him in it again.
Rolling your eyes, you sigh at him with a lopsided smile, “Oh, my silly vampire, I love you much more than the sun. Without you, I would not want any of it. In fact, you can take the moon and stars, too, while you’re at it---”
He cuts you off with the eclipse of his mouth on yours, hands spread along your ribs to dig eager fingertips into your skin as he pulls you in as close as he can manage. The kiss is more languidly meaningful than the last; he intends on burning the feeling of you into his mind to replace the torrid thoughts there. If your words had not been enough to convince him, you hope the way you receive his body with your own can. Every part of you calls to him, blood and sinew, breath and bone, flesh and spirit.
Maybe it’s clear to him now, that you are as intertwined as the earth and sea. Should the tide of your soul ever depart from his shores, he can rest in the knowledge that your reunion is inevitable. As far as you are concerned, you are fated in such a way that not even the gods above or the devils below can alter the course of how your body fits beneath his--- how you shall always welcome him home.
You will have him, for as long as he will have you.
When he finally withdraws, he dares not go far, eyes blinking open slowly in a melancholy acceptance, “How can I be so fortunate?”
Brushing the mess of white curls behind his pointed ear, you hum at the shiver that runs through him when your fingertips graze the skin there, “I don’t know, but it’s about time things start going our way, don’t you think?”
“That it is,” his groaned agreement softens the worry in his eyes and he melts into the stroke of your hand against his temple.
“What you should be worrying about, Astarion, is whether you’ll regret choosing me when I’m all old, wrinkled, and grey,” it’s only half of a tease, and you hope he can’t see through the smile on your lips. The thought has been on your mind for some time after realizing that the two of you were going to somehow survive everything you’ve endured these past months.
“Darling,” he scoffs, nudging his nose with yours, soothing you as much as you do him, “knowing how well trouble finds you, we’ll both be long dead before either of us need worry much about that.” His lips graze yours, when he gives you his earnest answer, “For our sake, I hope to spend every moment we have left with you, watching every sunset and sunrise we are granted until the end takes us both.”
It's more complicated than that, but most real things usually are.
What isn’t complicated is how you feel beneath him, tongue tracing his teeth as he ravishes you. There is a completeness that comes in the way of his body fitting against yours. This reassurance in your touch will never falter. Even if your mind were to eventually escape you, he will know you were always his. If the world were to fall away in this moment and leave nothing but this room, Astarion would happily float out his days with you here forevermore.
He loves you. You love him.
He can scarcely comprehend anything else. Nothing else matters, he decides.
Nothing but your little shivers and whines when his fingers delve down the soft flesh of your stomach--- nothing but the arch of your body into the exploration of his touch. Nothing is worth more than his name whispered from your lips in that scandalous tone you reserve for these moments he sets your skin ablaze with teeth and tongue. You call to him like it were a prayer, but Astarion has hardly done anything so holy to warrant the way you say his name.
His sole inkling of faith is spent on the belief that he could live his whole life, his extended eternity, and never tire of loving you.
Soft and demanding partner within the thrill of his touch, you’ve learned, and his hands part you for him with that comforting understanding. Insistent and hesitant are your finger’s answer to him, digging into the nape of his neck as your head falls back against the pillows. Throat bared, it’s a wonder he doesn’t take another bite of you where he’s done so frequently before, but his attention is too acutely focused on the aching wetness between your thighs and his slender fingers.
Your lips part in an open moan of his name with how expertly he drags pleasure through your veins with each stroke within you, and he drags his teeth against your jaw in a growl, “You sweet, generous thing, always so ready for me.” Finally, he grants you some relief from his constant teasing, pressing the heel of his palm into your most sensitive nub. He allows you to seek your own pleasure with each desperate grind of yourself against the hand that continues to stroke pleasure from within, “Do you have any idea what the sight of you does to me? How dearly I long for us to never leave this bed?” The rasp of his voice has heat rushing up your spine, muddying your thoughts with each continuance of his lascivious tongue, “Leave the Gate to fend for itself, my dear, for I should have you like this always, stripped bare with me between your thighs.”
“Have me then, Astarion,” you really did purr for him in times like these and as much as he enjoys teasing you for it, he truly does relish the tone you get when he has drenched you in lust. His reaction at your words is groaned against your throat; he’s so near, but his hand retreats from you all the same. Never to neglect you for long, your lover is soon tearing at your smallclothes with an impatience that was not wholly unexpected from him.
He pushes his weight onto his forearm beside your head, using his other hand to tug at the laces of his loose breeches while glancing down between you. His eyes, rubies in the darkness, snap to yours and it is as if he has dipped you in firewine and struck a match. You burn for him, from the inside out and in such a way that you know he has thoroughly ruined you for anyone else. You are dripping with it, onto the sheets and the new press of his length against your core. His indulgent rub of himself through your folds is punctuated by him grinding into you, eyes fluttering shut at the feeling for but a moment.
Hair disheveled, you watch the beauty of him as he swallows deeply before capturing you in that piercing gaze once again, “I think I shall have you, now--- how did you just put it?” He crowds you with his arms, and your breath hitches at the feeling of him catching at your entrance when he murmurs lowly, deliberately, “Body and soul? Isn’t that right, my love?”
The way you drag him down into your kiss as he pushes into you is a messy, desperate thing, but it only seems to urge him on. You simply cannot seem to get close enough, though not for lack of trying, as he fills you gloriously. Astarion gasps into your mouth, staggering the push of his hips against yours, devouring you until he is left seated so deeply within you that you can hardly breathe. Then, hands around your thighs push your legs up, and he fits impossibly further.
You sob a moan against sharp fangs, deliriously full of him as he begins a slow fucking that is just enough to drive you into madness. Clambering for something to ground yourself, your nails dig into his back, scraping against the scars that remain there--- his hips snapping faster into you at the feeling of it.
He smears saliva across your jaw and down your throat, understanding your breathless, “Please, please,” for what it is. Permission.
Pain is so fleetingly brief that it may as well not exist at all, because when he bites down hard enough to draw blood from your skin, you are met so suddenly with a lightheaded ecstasy that is compounded by the pleasure he pulses through your body. Only the raw stretch of his every thrust keeps you from dissipating into delirium entirely. You are left keening beneath him as he dissolves into the taste of your blood, feeling his moans against your neck and the way his thrusts begin to match the drum of your heart in your ears. Astarion’s fingers drag in the space between, stopping only when he has found the base of his seat within you.
You feel your heart skip in your chest before he ceases the meal he’s made of you, licking your throat of the sloppy blood that threatens to yet spill. The iron of it meets the smell of sex in the air and he strokes his fingers against where he continuously plunges so deep within you; the wet sounds of your coupling may have been embarrassing if you weren’t so disoriented with the raw need of it. Your every nerve has fiercer concerns than your fickle dignity when he is working to make such a wonderful mess of you as this.
“Delicious,” Astarion groans into your shoulder, nipping and groaning against whatever he may get his mouth on as he feels your increasingly erratic clenching with his harshening pace. Tears prick at the corners of your eyes, feeling him reach to draw tight circles at your clit as his own pace begins to falter. Neither of you will make it much further through this. He is left stained, begging upon your skin, “Come with me--- Hells, darling--- I need you to---"
Finding a grip in his hair allows you to drag his head sharply back to force his open-mouthed gaze to cast upon you once more, desperate to see him as he falls apart with you.
The sight of him is nearly enough for you to lose what little sense you’ve held to; while his complexion has turned slightly rosy with the assistance of your fresh blood, he still looks upon you with a consuming hunger all the same, “I love you.”
“Gods---!” dark eyes slam shut as he gasps out your name before all control leaves him in the mindless oblivion that he drags you down into alongside him. Scorching pleasure burns from the inside out as he loses himself in the trembling heat of your rapture, dissolving into a wild and erratic pace that bursts sparks of euphoria behind your eyes.
You are both left in the sticky aftermath of it, heaving mingling breaths as tension melts into you from where he collapses and lingers atop you. You hold him, content to have his softening length seated within you for all eternity as you let him continue his mindless caressing of your skin.
He has said it before, but it will never be enough, so he says it again in the hoarse aftermath of your lovemaking, “I love you, darling. You have made me so… happy.” Should you ever forget it, he is prepared to remind you for the rest of your days, “Thank you.”
Your own repeated declaration is sighed with a contentment that you hope will last a moment longer as your fingers take to stroking through his hair when he lays his head against your chest. Can he hear it from there, you wonder, how your heart whispers only the sweetest of sentiments for him? You like to think he can.
“Astarion?” you finally croak after some time, and he hums soft acknowledgement without much movement. “We should watch the next one together.”
“The next what, my treasure?”
“The next sunrise.”
There is a smile in his voice when he murmurs, “Always.”