Just thinking about Tavalstarion and how Astarion agrees to the whole ordeal thinking "There is no way this is gonna work. There is no way I'm going to fit in with this, the idea is too good to be true." And then...it works?? And he doesn't know what to do with these emotions becuase he is so happy and it is so foreign so he goes to Halsin and just emotionally vomits on him.
"I love that stupid, little creature more than I feel my heart is capable of bearing and I don’t know what to do with that. Do I even make sense?"
Halsin nods like "Love'll do that to ya."
But Astarion doesn't understand how the older elf isn't also burning alive right now with fury and love. Like "No you do not understand?!"
“I can hardly look at her and not feel a great painful wrenching agony,” He thumps his chest where a heart should beat. “I didn’t think all this was going to work you know.” He waves a hand in the air formlessly. “This grand experiment of hers. Looking at her with you, seeing her smile with you, I expected to feel an insurmountable jealousy. ‘I want that smile, give it to me.’ But I can only think, ‘Is that what she looks like when she looks at me too? How have I, wretched creature, been so blessed?’”
Halsin just nods sagely, doing his best to remember that this elven thing died when he was thirty-fucking-nine, an INFANT. This poor arrested-ass developed ass fucking CHILD. He'd dig up Cazador to kill him again if they didn't throw his body in the Chionthar to wander unrotting until the end of time.
(Halsin, having taken a moment to himself, is high as shit and is therefore unprepared to deal with this properly.)
"How do you deal with this? Death from pleasure, I can understand. Death from pain, also an intimate feeling but death from love? What in the absolute unnatural fuck?"
Halsin offers him his pipe, unable to really do much else.
Pairings: Tav x Halsin x Astarion
Rating: Gen
Summary: One does not fault a rose for needing both earth and sun. Or
Tav passess out after confessing her love to both elves.
“Well, that was dramatic.” Astarion tried to sound light but all the biting sarcasm he meant to deploy had been hollowed out of his words. She scraped all the artifice from him, leaving him without the shield of his dry humor. Now whatever was said had to sink into him, finally forcing him to deal with whatever emotions got stuck.
“Now Astarion,” strangely, though, the levity Astarion could not find had made its way to Halsin. Once again Tav had humbled him. Three hundred and fifty years of wisdom and experience but this fragile, short-lived little thing managed to teach him something wholly new. He felt so absurd it turned a corner into amusing. The smile Astarion could not muster would not leave Halsin’s face. “Surely you, of all people would think declarations of love should be dramatic?”
“Fair point, I do love the theatricality of it all, right down to the timely faint.”
As Tav, slept, the elves sat in silence.
“Well?” Halsin asked.
“Well what?”
Halsin glared.
Astarion rolled his eyes. “Let me guess, you meant to ask, ‘Is there a way?’”
Halsin kept glaring.
“Well, do you think there is? Why am I the one forced to come up with an answer? This better not be your way of designating me 'the one with all the answers' in this little triad of ours.”
Halsin chuffed, amused. "A simple 'yes' would've done."
"Oh darling, you're gonna learn quickly I am nothing simple."
"All the better then. I like a challenge."
Astarion waved an accusatory finger in Halsin's face.
“Don’t you get any ideas, you oaf. I can barely sort out my feelings for this one,” he thrust that finger back at Tav. “Much less my feelings for you.”
Halsin's added his eyebrows to his hairline. “And are there feelings?”
“Of course there are.” He began to list them off his fingers like a mother’s shopping list. “Jealousy, envy, spite, a not inconsiderable amount of lust, more jealousy and…”
Halsin winced, dreading the rest.
“Appreciation. Friendship. Maybe even affection if you squint.”
Halsin blushed. “Astarion.”
“No, I mean it. You were there for her when I couldn’t be." The dry humor bled away again, honesty taking up its place. "I’m not…strong. Not like you or the others. I wanted her to protect me, but when she needed protection it was you that stepped in. I'll never forget that.”
“You are stronger than you look, little star. But should ever that strength fail you, look to me.”
It was Astarion’s turn to blush. “You’re not gonna confess now too are you? I can only handle one confessional per day. You’ll have to wait, or see a priest.”
“Like you, I’ll only confess to lust and affection…for now at least.” Halsin hummed thoughtfully, fixing a serious stare on the paler elf. “She loves you, Astarion. That alone would have been enough for me but it’s more than that. I don't care for you for love of her. I care for you for well... you.”
“You are confessing!” Astarion feigned a scandalized gasp.
“Maybe I am,” he relented. “But I think not yet. My heart hopes though, that we can figure that out together.”
At long last, after this whole whirlwind of a day, a grin as wide and deep as the Chionthar broke across the vampire’s face. It stretched so far it hurt. But it was the good pain though, the kind that’s good for the body.
“Oh, how blessed am I to receive two lovers in a day where most only get one,” he preened, his words wholly and earnestly absent of even a hint of sarcasm. He meant what he said to Tav that day. She made him want everything. And now that included the elf on the other side of her. Starved for love, desperate for it, and now, in the span of minutes he had a surfeit of it. But with him, and his thirst, he could drink it all. And with them, he knew he'd never be thirsty again.
I think it's time for some of my Tav x Halsin x Astarion headcanons.
Halsin
Halsin's not good with words and so feels a bit inadequate with the flattery of his two lovers. He calls Tav "little rose" and Astarion "little star" for exceedingly simple reasons.
Since Astarion cannot see his reflection and nobody in camp is talented in the visual arts, Halsin works on a wood carving, creating e most lifelike figure of Astarion that he can, right down to the little curls that wisp about his head like so much morning fog.
It takes the better part of a year, and it was difficult to work on in secret since elves don't sleep much and vampire elves even less. Halsin's a bit older so the work takes a toll on his eyes and back, spent hunched over the small piece of wood with an assortment of delicate instruments to get the most detail. Tav buys him a little magnifying glass to wear on his head so he can see better.
Astarion is genuinely speechless when he finally receives his gift. But it doesn't last for very long when he realizes how handsome he is.
"This is what I've been working with for all these years? No wonder you both fell in love with me, I'm gorgeous!"
Halsin has a tendency to stay close to Tav in combat. She's a bit fragile and though she has training as a bard and a sorcerer, she's not particularly powerful in either specialization so he feels he must stand between her and threats because it doesn't take much to knock her down.
With Astarion, though, while Halsin will of course intervene when needed, he lets the vampire fight on his own. Astarion, before being freed from Cazador and even after, doesn't have much confidence in his ability to protect himself or others. Halsin wants him to develop the confidence in his own martial prowess so is less likely to keep such a close eye on him, at least not with the idea to intercede. He does however keep an eye on him in combat because he loves Astarion physical competence in combat. He's so deft with his knives and the flourish he puts on his arrow shots. And the way he looks in leather armor doesn't hurt either.
Halsin is all things to both his lovers. Whatever they require he serves. With Tav he has a tendency to take a firmer, rougher hand. Growly, dominant, panting sweating sex. With Astarion he's softer and tends to let him lead. He absolutely delights in the way Astarion takes him. It is not so often that a big bear like him can be made to mewl.
That's not to say he isn't also soft with Tav and there has been more than one occasion where he's let the both of them boss him around while on hands and knees.
He does not like the Underdark for reasons I'm sure you can guess. But he swallows his fear to visit Astarion when he's down there helping with the spawn.
Astarion
This was Not In His Plan. It was tough navigating the shape of this relationship, not the least of which because he's never been in a real, loving relationship let alone one where he has to navigate the emotions of two people and not just one.
They have an agreement that all emotions regarding their arrangement, no matter how petty or inconsequential, would be discussed openly and earnestly (with no jokey deflections!!) which he availed himself of often.
Overcoming jealousy was hard for him. He just felt that Halsin is such a better specimen of partner for Tav than he is and it'd just be better for all involved if he receded to mere friendship. Halsin is the one okay with sexual intimacy, he's more mature, he's stronger, he can protect Tav where he cannot. All he felt he offered was a "project" for Tav to fix because it is in her too-sweet-by-half nature to want to make something better. They just looked so good together, that their love was easy and he offered nothing but difficulty with his mercurial emotions and intimacy issues. The jealousy he felt wasn't because Halsin was taking up too much of Tav, but rather envy that the two do look so effortless together. He felt he didn't fit.
So his lovers made him fit. They spent a lot of one-on-one time with him. Mostly Tav and Astarion but after a while Halsin too. In the early times it was very much that Astarion was in a relationship with Tav and so was Halsin, but it took a moment before Astarion and Halsin developed their own relationship.
As they're both bigger than him, Astarion's a bit physically intimidated by his lovers. If this were The Bad Times, he'd default toto bratty, dominance all purred commands and such. But so much of his personality was cultivated as a survival mechanism that he doesn't know what to do now that there's no need for such artifice anymore. Astarion's never been allowed to just be and because of that it's hard being in a relationship because he simply does not know how to act. With them he's finding out what it is he wants and what he likes.
What he wants: everything. Not hyperbole. Halsin and Tav love him and love on him so much and he sucks it up like a dry sponge tossed in a lake. That was easy to figure out. He's greedy. He'll take 9, 10, 12 helpings of affection and ask for me. He nearly purrs when he's called "little star" by either of them. Adores idle touches, locking of pinky fingers on walks. He appreciates drive-by acts of affection like getting a kiss on the forehead as the other simply walks by him without stopping or asking for acknowledgement of the action. They work like little reassurances. "I am here, you are still loved. All is well."
Sex was difficult to sort out. That's where a lot of his jealousy stemmed. "They have that, I want it too! Why can't I?" When the "why can't I?" part stemmed from his own need to come into his desire at his own pace. Interestingly enough, Astarion's first time wasn't with Tav like he figured it would be (like it almost was before he botched his seduction.) but with Halsin. They were having a moment alone, Astarion went for it and ...kept going for it.
He realized later that it was Tav specifically he was having a hard time being sexual with because he associated sex with her with his botched seduction. He meant to seduce her (away from Halsin no less) as a means to cleave her to him. But because she was so damnably sweet, so eager to please him, so utterly guileless he couldn't go through with it. He associated sex with her with hurting her and was thereby reluctant to pursue it with her. Halsin had no such baggage.
Tav
Tav (not her real name by the way) is a bard who cannot sing. Not that she has no talent for it, but for 10 years she was physically incapable of singing. She was raised in Baldur's Gate along with her sister and the two of them formed a popular singing duo managed by their father. After a while, Tav wanted to strike out on her own and did so under less than ideal circumstances. After she left she just wasn't able to sing anymore, like she had some psychological block preventing it.
Thankfully, whatever was blocking her from singing didn't stop her from using her other musical talents with the lute and lyre. For ten years she wandered, plying her services as an high-profile accompanist. If you wanted high-class music for your performance in some Lord's house, you called Tav. She also ghost wrote songs for performers and is responsible for a couple of big hits in Waterdeep and Athkatla (too bad she didn't negotiate royalties for those contracts.)
Despite being able to muddle along well enough on her own, singing was her true love and so, after 10 years she returned to Baldur's Gate in hopes that writing the wrong she wrought when she left would lift the mental block on her ability to sing, but the Nautiloid sucked her up before she could do that. However, in a weird twist of fate, whatever the tadpole did to her, fixed her and she can sing again finding that 10 years of disuse didn't dim her incredible singing ability.
During her 10 year walkabout, Tav had to learn to protect herself by dipping into sorcery. Because she came to it so late in life with no formal training, it means she's not the strongest magic wielder.
She was smitten with Astarion immediately. He's beautiful and sassy how could she not. That he was a vampire made no difference to her.
She was also smitten with Halsin immediately. It is very rare that someone can make a 5'7" tiefling feel small, but he sure as shit did.
She's very insecure about her body with her two elfin lovers. It's always a toss-up being a tiefling in a relationship with non-tieflings because you'll never know how they'll react to all the infernal bloodline curse stuff. The horns, the skin, the tail, the cartilaginous markings on her body. They love her body of course, but it was still a great source of anxiety before getting to that point.
Early in The Arrangement, it was difficult making the boys understand that this wasn't just a way for her to have wine with her honey or vice versa.
"You two are not gears, Astarion. You can't just swap in and out to make me work like I'm a clock you happen to fit. You two are the very concept of time itself. The clock doesn't make sense without it."
It's not that she'd be happy with one or the other. She wouldn't. It wouldn't work.
She needs both of them.
Tav did not go into this Arrangement with a plan. She didn't even know there could even be an Arragement at all. It was very haphazard. "Welp, I love you both and I'm making it both your problems! We have to figure it out together because I know about as much to make this work as you both do."
Through the events of the story Tav is left with a disability affecting her heart. She has great hangups about this because it means she's unable to protect those she loves the way they deserve.
Because of her condition, sex sometimes has to be a restrained, delicate affair while her lovers tend to approach her with a delicateness she'd rather they not. But because her lovers can't be that rough with her, it means she has to be rough with them and ... sis can wield the strap effectively. After all, while she was out for 10 years, a lot of the relationships she did have were with courtesans who taught her a thing or two.
Finally...
Tav/Halsin/Astarion
The sleeping arrangement was the first and easiest thing to sort. Even though they initially defined the arrangement in relationship to Tav, Halsin immediately became the cucumber in the middle of the sandwich.
The bear cannot fathom his great luck. "A heart for each arm." He says.
For Tav it's more like a necessity. She well and true needs both of them.
Astarion is greedy and selfish in best possible definitions of those words. "Whats better than one lover? Two." Essentially. He would have been fine with just Tav but that great bear of an elf wants to come along too? Ok sure? Oh and he loves me too now? Even fucking better. Everything's coming up Astarion!
"The gods owed me for this you know," He said once. "All the bullshit they put me through, it's only right I get two of you. One wasn't payment enough."
So you have
Halsin: Hmm, this is nice. Isn't this nice guys?
Tav: I will literally die without the both of you.
Astarion: I am no longer accepting anything less I am due so that means I'm taking both of you.
Threesomes don't happen all that often. Not because they don't want to of course, but because they are logistically difficult to execute between three different libidos, ages, and tastes.
More often than not, the way it really happens is because one of them will wake up and catch the other two. (And it's often Tav catching Halsin and Astarion.)
And when they do, they have a tendency to just be really, really sweet about it. It's not professional night at the debauchery den, it's achingly beautiful. Not to say professional night at the debauchery den doesn't happen, it's just not all that common.
All three love to watch the other two. Like that is their favorite way of sexual intimacy. One gets off watching the other two couple. It feels so voyeruistic and naughty...and it is, and that's why it's their favorite.
Astarion though, silver tongue as he is, takes it one step further and will taunt the shit out of whoever is watching.
"Isn't she lovely Halsin," he says, rocking into Tav who might as well be in the Astral Sea for how well she's been fucked.
"See how well she takes me? Watch, watch and listen. As for you, little songbird, do put on a good show for our guest."
To punctuation his point, he snaps his hips forward bringing Tav out of whatever lust filled haze she was floating in right back to the delicious present.
Or.
Astarion lowers himself inch-by-delicious inch onto Halsin's meaty cock to the frustration of both his partners.
Astarion groans, loudly putting on a show for both knowing what his voice does to each of them. Halsin can barely contain himself from fucking up into him, but when the little star is like this, he's in control and any flouting of his authority would be met with punishment.
"He feels amazing inside me," Astarion purrs, tilting his head back to great effect. "So full. Such a delicious burn, darling. Oh."
Tav has been made to sit and watch, bound only by the suggestion she not touch her throbbing pussy. She will face no punishment if she pleasures herself, but if she does, she forfeits the pleasures she could receive for her obedience.
Astarion loves to play with them like this. To show Tav how much he's enjoying what she can't have right now, while making Halsin shiver and shake and beg underneath him. Desperate for even the tiniest bit of friction.
"Watch him fill me darling, keep those pretty eyes on me."
He could, and does, keep this up all night.
The one thing that is a no go for all three of them is talking about the others' ages. It is a sore point especially for Halsin and Astarion that they are involved with a woman who will die long before either of them do.
"She did this on purpose you know," Astarion said, Tav dozing between them as she often does since she's the one who needs 8 hours.
"How do you mean?"
"This. Us." He reached for the bear to tease a lock of hair back into place.
Halsin still didn't seem to understand him, so though it was difficult to voice aloud, Astarion spelled it out for the druid.
"She wanted all three of us together, encouraged us, you and I, so that when she leaves us, we will not be alone. "
Astarion hated the frown that put on Halsin's face. "I bet she doesn't even like you all that much. She just knew I did."
Halsin rewarded Astarion's attempts at levity with a smile. "Are you sure about that, little star? Was it not I who put her to sleep thus?"
Astarion shrugs, uninterested in facts.
It will be a long time yet, though, before she does leave them. Far longer than any of them expect or could even hope for. If you want to find out how, you'll just have to keep watching this blog now won't you? :)
Pairings: F!Tav / Astarion
Tags: Mentions of pet death, blood sucking
Word Count: 2.9K
Summary: Tav assembles the party and will not stop lying to them. Unfortunately for her, a vampire can see right through her.
Her first lie had been her name.
“You may call me Tav,” she answered when asked. Most didn’t notice the important distinction. Karlach, Wyll, Shadowheart, and Gale accepted her evasive bit of wordplay with no problem. Astarion, however, pounced upon it immediately.
“‘You may call me Tav,’” he repeated back to her that day on the beach. His voice dripped with suspicion, disdain, and the barely restrained glee of someone delighted that they had been clever enough to notice something others did not.
“That is what I may call you. Well that just implies there are other things you’re called then, doesn’t it darling?”
She did not clarify, filing the interaction right next to the moment before when he pulled a knife on her. This was someone to watch, to withhold from trust no matter their shared circumstances and entwined fates.
But, her eyes and her heart softened a bit as, even though she did not clarify, he also did not press. I know you have a secret, those red-wine eyes seemed to tell her as the wreckage of the nautiloid smoldered behind them, but I will not do you the dishonor of making you reveal it. So long as you do not make me reveal mine.
Her second lie had been her profession.
She said she was a bard but she wasn’t very good at it. She knew some spells of a bard’s repertoire, but could barely swing simple weapons. Indeed, she even had the talent of a great singer, perhaps one of the best in the Sword Coast, but she hadn’t performed in over a decade, and wasn’t planning on taking the stage any time soon. Instead, she hummed while plucking her lute and strumming her lyre while muddling along flinging the cantrips of a sorcerer with barely enough skill to fend off the average highwayman.
Her third lie, the worst of them, was to herself.
“Are you alright Tav? I think I heard you crying last night.” Gale, the kindly wizard, asked on the morning of their second day as almost-mind flayers.
That first night at camp had been miserable. She found a Githyanki warrior, a Waterdhavian wizard, a swashbuckling warlock, a fiery barbarian, a disreputable rogue, and a cagey cleric – all saddled with the same affliction. Managing to assemble such a motley crew united in the singular purpose of saving all their lives should have given her some measure of comfort. But she felt nothing except the sucking, gasping, yawning void of emptiness.
Tav would give anything to have him back. Wrap up all of the little gifts of her life – her voice, her uncanny talent for lyrics, her prized lute, and equally prized lyre – and return them to their various senders if it meant another lifetime with her beloved dog Kanid. But such things could never be, not even with the talent of necromancy. You’d need a corpse for that and she didn’t have one.
His loss was still so fresh and so utterly disorienting that when she laid down at camp that first night, curling into a little ball, she made space for him to fit in the gap. Like she expected him to suddenly appear and sleep within her arms as he had done every night in his 13 years.
Oh Kanid was a precious little thing. Reaching no higher than her calves and about twice as long. He looked more like a warm loaf of bread with ears than any pet. He often resembled one too, lounging in the sun with his stubby little legs sticking straight out behind him giving his butt the distinct appearance of a heel of bread fresh-cut from the loaf.
He was the only creature alive or even dead who knew all of what she was and loved her anyway. No other being, not her mother, father, sister, or any of her half a handful of former lovers could boast the same.
But Kanid knew her. Seen her at her very worst and her very best and somehow knew those moments were often reversed. Covered in blood or with a song on her tongue he loved her.
And she would never be so wholly loved again.
Even if she somehow survived the parasite making a nest in her brain matter.
The realization crept up her infernally blessed body, sinking deep into her clay-red flesh until everything from the hard, bony tips of her horns or the twitchy rounded point of her tail ached with grief.
That first night she sobbed till sunrise.
“Crying? I don’t remember crying,” she lied to Gale before muddling her falsehood with a bit of truth. “Probably was just having a nightmare.”
**
As the days stretched to weeks and as her new companions fretted over goblins, druid groves, “kreshes”, bog witches, civil war between the adherents of Vlaakith and Shar, and the intangible menace of “ceremorphosis”, Tav thoughts remained firmly with Kanid.
Then a scruffy white mutt crossed their path.
“Tav, darling, I don’t think our camp has the room or the inclination…”
Tav ignored Astarion, fussing over the ragged little four-legged thing. He was dirty and thin, the curve of his ribs not too well concealed underneath his shaggy snow-white coat. He seemed well trained though, not that it would have mattered if he wasn’t. Tav would have taken home a half-rabid owlbear if it meant soothing even a fraction of her wounded heart.
“I bet you haven’t eaten in a tenday. What have I got? What would you like, hm? A sweatmeat perhaps? A hunk of cheese? Whatever you want, name it and it’s yours.”
She went rooting in her backpack searching for an appropriate treat. Finding none she turned to Astarion and stuck out her open hand like an imperious beggar. “You’ve got meat in there.”
It wasn’t a question, more like a command that brooked no protest. Astarion sighed and handed her a sausage as long as his forearm.
“That was dinner!” Complained Gale.
“Yes!” Tav agreed cheerfully. “Just not yours!”
Though it was barely mid-day, Tav called off the search for the goblin encampment and the druid held hostage therein. She scooped up the dog, named Scratch by his collar, and carried him all the way back to camp, cooing and humming as she went.
“My dog, so sweet, your eyes astute. You bark, you bite, I boop your snoot.”
She giggled at her improvised couplet while Scratch permitted her intrusive fussing with blissful incoherence, his tongue lolled out in a happy pant. Tav repeated her ditty the whole way back, each time with different flourishes and flavor, sharps and flats rising and falling in concert with the gentle, rolling hills of the Sword Coast.
Astarion watched her, the very picture of annoyance, his otherwise pristine, alabaster face beset with the soft, shallow wrinkles of his frown. It wasn’t that her blatherings were annoying, it was the fact they were not. Her voice enticed him with an unnameable, ethereal sweetness that made even the birds stop and listen.
“My dog, so sweet, so white, so cute. You eat, you play, your poop, I scoop!”
He listened too.
**
Never one to turn down an easy meal, that night, he went looking for the mongrel, brandishing another limb-length sausage to tempt the creature.
He stalked the camp, “Here Scratch, here Scratchy boy.”
The vampling had to be cautious. He had managed to keep his peculiar, dietary restrictions let’s call them, a secret, and knew upon (or, more likely, off with) his head be it, if anyone, especially that githyanki shrew, found out.
He found the mutt curled contentedly at his new mistress's feet. Wiggling the cured meat in its face, Scratch’s ears perked and he gave Astarion a dopey, trusting look as if to say, “More? For me?”
“Yes, you flea-bitten pile of intestinal worms, for you, now come!” He ground out, careful not to wake Tav.
Scratch unfurled himself and followed happily before black talon tipped hand closed itself around Astarion’s wrist like a vice.
“What are you doing with my dog?”
Astarion had the measure of each member of camp ranked according to how easily he could take them in a fight. At the top of the list was Lae’zel and the barbarian. He’d rather chew his own fingers off than face either of them. In the middle sat Wyll, the charming little warlock, and the Sharran – not easy but not difficult, fights he could win at moderate cost. Near the end of the list was Gale. He could stab that man bloodless before he could get his far-too-nice-to-grace-those-feet boots on.
And at the very bottom was Tav. She was a natural leader, yes, but a capable fighter? Ha! Corpses were more threatening than her since those, at least, could still harm through disease.
But from the way she gripped his wrist, he was considering shuffling the leaderboard a bit.
“I…I was…”
Tav shifted off her bedroll, fire burning in her hell-touched eyes. “You were going to eat him weren’t you?!”
“Wh-what an absurd idea! And quite offensive at that. Do I look like the type to stalk around draining the local fauna bloodless? Really now!” He feigned ignorance, but she didn’t buy it.
Her grip tightened and though he no longer had a blood-pumping heart, he could feel his hand start to throb.
“That boar, near the swamp…that was you!”
Astarion gawped. He had been so careful. How?
Well, the game was the game and this time, at least, he had been outplayed.
Caught out figuratively and literally Astarion relented. “Alright fine, yes I wanted to eat the dog. Well, not literally anyway.”
Tav kept her grip and her gaze tightly on him. The heat of her black-sclerea’d hellfire eyes started to feel distinctly uncomfortable, like the first rays of dawnlight after a long night out hunting for Cazador’s next meal.
“Not him, never him, do you hear me?” Tav’s voice dropped low, not menacing but melancholy. Astarion was mildly shocked that she didn’t seem to mind there was a vampire in their midst, more preoccupied with what he ate and now how.
Astarion relented, giving up the night’s easy meal was an inconsequential price to pay for such uncharacteristic open-mindedness. Had it been Lae’zel who discovered him, Astarion shuddered at the thought.
“Fine, not the mutt.”
“Promise me.” Her voice took on a desperate edge that made Astarion even more uncomfortable.
“I promise, I promise! Now let me go.”
Her gaze lingered on him for a heartbeat before she released him. Astarion shook out his hand, noticing the deep imprint of her fingers in his flesh. “Good gods, all that for a dog?”
She broke her stare, casting it into the dirt. “He’s worth more.”
For a moment he wasn’t sure if she was speaking to him or to something beyond him, something that couldn’t hear her anymore. “Thank you,” she said softly.
Astarion groaned. “Whatever, see you at sunup I guess, now that you’ve ruined a quick dinner.”
“No, wait.”
Tav shuffled her nightshirt undoing the strings at her collar. The loosened fabric revealed a tender, juicy looking neck the color of deep red clay earth kissed by a healthy rainfall. Her flesh was ridged with the tell-tale scarification marks of tieflings, up each wing of her collar bones and down the meridian of her body between the valley of her breasts. He couldn’t see beyond their first initial swell but…gods, he wanted to.
The tadpole granted him many new things, protection from sunlight and Cazdor’s will primary among them. But he wondered if the tadpole cured afflictions psychological as well as physical. He hadn’t yet tested that hypothesis, no time and no participants. She’d be his first, he decided. Not now, he needed a plan first, but…soon.
“Nothing comes for free,” Tav said, craning her neck to reveal a delectable swath of flesh from pointed ear to rounded shoulder. “You gave me a promise, I give you a meal.”
“You’re…offering yourself?”
Revulsion flashed across his face. More than once in his un-life he encountered vampire fetishists who were a bit too enthusiastic about the whole biting business. Cazador kept a few around the house as slaves, eager to do the most menial tasks if it meant immortality. His master never rewarded them though, stringing them bloodlessly along at the point of his canine while Astarion was, of course, never allowed to sample the goods. He was disgusted by the very idea that free mortals debased themselves for a chance at vampirism while he, the vampire, yearned every day for the freedom of his mortal life.
“Nothing more than tit for tat,” Tav answered simply. “If it keeps your fangs out of the dog, I’m more than happy to sub in.”
“Do you mean it?” This felt like a mean-spirited trick, punishment for threatening the animal. She had been so equanimous about all this vampire business already. Surely there was a limit to her tolerance?
“Of course,” she said sincerely. “Everybody eats. We didn’t hunt for our dinner tonight, why should you?”
Astarion pressed his unfathomable good fortune to the point he was sure would break it.
“Do you still mean it if I tell you I’ve never sampled a thinking creature? That I’ve only feasted on animals and then until they were drained dry and dead?”
Tav looked at him with a wide-eyed terror and swallowed thickly.
But still, she nodded.
Astarion knelt in the dirt beside her, doing his best to suppress his drool. She smelled delicious, scented with some kind of sweet vanilla fragrance he could not place. Tav stared nervously into the middle distance, tail twitching anxiously, unwilling to even look at Astarion the way a skittish patient has to look away from the doctor before a shot.
“Will it hurt?”
Something small and precious bled inside his chest. Her question made her seem so small though her actual size engulfed his own by at least a few inches in both directions. He almost felt guilty taking from her like this, like he meant to deceive her, engaged in some artifice that he would later use to break her heart. Worryingly still, he didn’t want to…break her heart, that is. He had no qualms about drinking from her. He was hungry and it was her fault.
“Oh darling, It might sting a bit,” he admitted. “But I promise, it won’t hurt for long. Now, lean back for me.”
He was bone-meltingly tender as he took her in his arms, grave cool hands on each side of her face guiding her.
“Yes, like that,” he murmured just before the bite.
Tav flinched and hissed and swallowed down the rising, panic-tinged urge to fight him off. She promised him. She promised him. She wrenched her eyes shut and balled her fists, breath coming in sporadic gasps until warm bliss flooded her veins.
Gods, she was glorious. Her blood burst into his mouth like a ripe berry split between his teeth at a harvestime feast. He groaned, ruined for all other sustenance. And as he supped, his mind grew cold and calculating. This would not last, her generosity, something so sweet and good never did for him.
He would need to find a way to make it.
Astarion pushed those thoughts away for the moment, lest he get lost and take too much. Every muscle in her body relaxed and she sagged into his embrace, taking on the telltale lethargy of a vampire’s victim. It would be so easy to just keep taking. She was so good, the vanilla of her scent somehow flavored her blood. It was divine.
“P-please,” she called weakly and Astarion pulled away sharply, her sweet blood trickling down the angles of her collarbones, overwhelming him with the urge to lick.
But not the blood.
Sated by her blood, he was surprised to find he desired the taste of the flesh that housed it. He caught himself staring at her, trying to tease her apart to understand just what it was that made him forget himself so.
“All done?” she asked woozily.
“Yes, darling.”
“Get enough?”
He had an answer ready, but something from somewhere long dead beat out the lie before it could leave his mouth.
“If I didn’t, would you let me have more?”
She nodded, laying back down to her bedroll. “Mmhmm, everybody eats.”
He chuckled good-naturedly, a first of that particular flavor since the Nautiloid. “Well, I’ve eaten my fill tonight. Now rest.”
“Mm-not gonna turn am I?”
“That’s not how this works, darling. But if you did,” he felt exposed, betrayed again by errant thoughts slipping out from between the bars of his teeth before he could snap them shut. “Would it be so terrible?”
“No,” she answered sleepily, easily, and his undead heart twisted uncomfortably in his chest. “But only if you promise to show me the ropes.”
“Well, sweetheart," he cooed, biting back the discomfort with charm poisoned with insincerity. "Should you ever find yourself in that lamentable situation, I promise to teach you everything I know.”
“Promise?”
“Of course, darling.”
Her half-lidded eyes suddenly snapped open, fixing him with a fiery gaze that did not burn but warmed. “When you make a promise, you gotta keep it alright?”
Astarion nodded, but only to acknowledge the sentiment not agree to it. Though Tav, bloodless as she was, would not be able to intuit the difference. Pacified, her eyes slipped closed again.
“Not the dog.”
“Not the dog,” he affirmed.
“Good night, Astarion.”
But he was already gone.
END
Author's Note: Hello, starving masses of the Tavalstarion fandom. I have come to feed you. A word of warning: this is a WIP and I do not mean to regularly post this fic until it is done. But! I am a kind and gentle mistress who will, during fits of pique, post a snippet of a chapter here and there in random order.
Fortunately for you, I already have! If you've enjoyed The Old Bear's Still Got It or Confession? Go See A Priest (and I know you have, I can see the notes go up) then hopefully you'll also enjoy the larger context in which those were written. Enjoy!
Pairings: Tav x Halsin x Astarion
Rating: Gen
Summary: The Wed Three have come to an Understanding.
Or
Great, now that we've established we're all in love with each other, what the fuck are we supposed to do about it?
One confession does not three healed hearts make.
However, working with three unassailable truths did make said hearts easier to mend.
Halsin loved Tav.
Astarion loved Tav.
Tav loved them both for different reasons but in equal measure.
Yes they were dealing with three different definitions and intensities and flavors of love. But it was love, and on that simple foundation all other things could be built.
Starting with the first brick.
“Stay, please," Tav asked, one hand in each of theirs.
Pairings: Tav x Halsin x Astarion
Warnings: N/A
Words: 740
Summary: Halsin attempts to bury the hatched. Astarion, committed to being an ass, refuses to accept.
The druid continued deeper into the cursed lands and Astarion…continued to follow. Practically, it’d be far too dangerous to go back to Last Light through miles of Shadow Cursed Lands alone. Their journey so far left them unmolested, but Astarion knew that luck wouldn’t hold for a return trip.
“Why did you apologize?” He asked, churlishness radiating from him.
“I was cruel in my words with you,” Halsin said, stopping to look back. Such things could not be said with his back turned. “And unfairly ascribed malice to your motivations and actions.”
Astarion huffed. “And how exactly did you come to realize you were being unfair?” Halsin had resumed walking. Astarion hadn’t expected an apology and didn’t know what to do with it, so set on pouting. With an apology, he couldn’t remain aggrieved, his natural state. “Everything I do is with malice, don’t you know?”
The vampire heard a soft, gentle laugh. “In most things, I don’t doubt, but…”
“But what?”
Halsin paused, the crunch of dead leaves the only sound between them.
“I’m waiting.”
“Forgive me. I don’t know how to put this delicately so as not to embarass but…with her…There is no malice in you with her.”
Astarion sucked in a sharp breath. “Gods you are insufferable,” he said more to himself. “Anyway, I do not accept your apology.”
Halsin nodded. “I figured you wouldn’t.”
He shuffled closer to catch up to the druid, taking two strides to Halsin’s long-legged one. “And don’t think we’re even or anything. We’re not.”
“Perish the thought,” Halsin answered calmly.
Astarion groaned. His every attempt to goad had been met with a wall of muscle and serenity, aggravating him further. “In fact, I officially declare you my enemy!”
That made him pause. Halsin turned again, fixing Astarion with a puzzled stare. “Enemy?”
“Naturally.”
“Why? I understand that I have spoken to you harshly and that you are not amenable to forgiveness. But ‘enemy’ seems overly harsh doesn’t it?”
Astarion folded his arms. “Honestly, I think I’m being nice. After all, you’re the one who lured me out here alone, telling no one where we’ve gone. It’d be easy to just kill you and blame the shadow curse on your death.”
“Well that seems unfair.”
“All’s fair in love and war darling. Especially murder. In fact, I don’t think there’s anything more appropriate than murder when it comes to love or war.”
Halsin’s face slackened and his eyes widened, touched finally with understanding. “Oh, that’s what you meant.” Then he began to laugh. “Astarion, this isn’t a competition.”
Astarion fumed, thwarted again at getting a rise out of the bear. “Well, I at least appreciate that you’ve dropped the wholesome idiot act. Underneath all that bulk, you’re not as humble as you pretend.”
Halsin lifted his hands. “No…no you misunderstand. I never thought of us in competition like that. You did?”
“Of course I did! Do! Did! Whatever!”
“Then I must beg again your forgiveness. I was dedicated to my duties in the century I tended the Emerald Grove but was liberal in my affections in the centuries before that. I have forgotten that what comes naturally to me does not to others.”
It was Astarion’s turn with confusion. He fixed Halsin with a sidelong glare. “I don’t think I understand you.”
“I have never thought of us in competition Astarion. I never wished for Tav’s affection at the exclusion of yours. The only reason I held any animosity for you at all was because I mistakenly thought you were taking advantage of her. Absent of that…”
Halsin could see the younger elf was ill at ease discussing plainly things like “affection” and “Tav” in the same breath so he hesitated to state the situation plainly. He resumed walking, confident that Astarion was sharp to tease out his meaning.
Astarion followed, face blank, drained of its petulant pout as his mind teleported to the plane of existence where Halsin’s words made sense. He thought the idea would feel foreign, inspiring revulsion, but it felt…he didn’t know. Instead of frightening or disgusting him, the idea Halsin presented felt like a secret prize hidden behind a door. Astarion’s hand was on the knob, anticipation building in his heart for what lay beyond the door if he but had the courage to open it.
“Ahh, we’re here,” Halsin said.
He returned to reality but kept his hand on the door, wrist twisting…just a little bit.
END
Can't believe it's been 15 days since my last update? But when writing is your work, when you're drained, there isn't much left in the tank to write for yourself. Was getting concerned this would join the pile of abandoned fics but I find my zeal for it remains.
I am determined to rewrite the polyamory aspect of this relationship in a way that feels both close to the canon minimizing awkwardness and maximizing fun.
One day I'll collect these snippets into a master post..but it is not this day.
Or: "If these two whippersnappers insist on running up my blood pressure I'ma make sure I give as good as I get."
Or: Tav tries to get a rise out of the bear and he gets a rise right back.
Halsin + Tav
Gen
Part 1
Tav, however, was nowhere to be seen having hobbled away the moment the camp crested on the horizon.
Halsin followed after her, concerned by her stuttering limp. He found her sitting on a stump, struggling to remove a boot.
“‘S nothing, serious,” she resumed trying to remove her boot but Halsin knelt before her.
“Allow me.” Magic flared in his hands and Halsin seemed to glow as bright as sunrise, but Tav shook her head.
“Leave it be, it’s not life threatening.” Most of the blood covering her wasn’t her own, but her robes were gouged with heavy claw marks, some with claws still in them. She favored her right leg, holding it away from her body. It seemed the ankle was the issue.
“Tis no bother nor great effort, besides, you are in pain.”
She smiled through a light grimace. “A little pain does the body good every now and again.”
Halsin sputtered, taken wholly aback. “Oh?”
She delighted in his reaction, but the light smirk that played on his lips suggested he did indeed know a thing or two about what kinds of pain does a body good.
Deft and careful hands worked the laces of her boot. Gently, almost reverently he pulled it from her. He palpated the offending ankle, finding it intact but egregiously swollen. He kneaded his hands from her knees to the ball of her foot, Tav’s pained hiss turned into a low, pleased hum.
“Pain like that?” Halsin asked, voice thick.
“One of them at least.”
As he worked, Tav took the opportunity to nakedly appraise her erstwhile doctor. He had large and practiced hands that touched her with a gentle reverence that seemed ill-fitted to things she had only seen work as a bear’s claws. Concentration was deep set in his face accentuated by wrinkles that suggested middle age for an elf. The scars on his face intrigued her. Emboldened by the courage of their closeness, she reached for them, brushing her fingertips along the furrows etched in his flesh.
“And these, was this good pain?” She asked.
Halsin looked up from his work to see hellfire eyes crackling at him. He met her gaze with his own honeyed stare, equally heavy.
“Not exactly.”
He told the story of the price he paid for spurning a she-bear in heat. He soaked up the sounds of her laughter and the smile on her face, like a rose blooming in sunlight.
“If she bears are not to your taste, what is? Snakes perhaps?”
Halsin nearly choked on air.
“You…you misunderstand…we’re…we are not lovers.”
Tav narrowed her eyes, accosting him with an incredulous glare flavored with a wicked grin.
“Does she know that?”
Halsin felt caught. That night, she clearly saw more than she let on and from that quick glance correctly intuited their decades of complicated romantic history.
“We were once,” he admitted. “And in her mind we will be again.”
“And in yours?” Tav didn’t mean to sound so probing, but she did wonder…
“The little rose’s roots do reach,” Halsin admonished with smirk. “But to be clear, we shall not.”
“What happened?”
“I did love her for a time but rot killed those roots before long.”
“Shame.”
“Yes, but a cleansing fire gives way for new growth.”
Tav laughed. “Do you always speak in nature metaphors?”
“No,” Halsin answered simply and refused to elaborate.
He worked in silence, massaging the tense muscles of her leg. It had been a long time since someone was so close. The courtesans she used to work for paid handsomely, either in coin or introductions, and in a few cases, those partnerships blossomed into inconsequential love affairs – something to occupy the day as her nights were mostly spent with an instrument in her hands. But those affairs felt like they were eons ago, stretching so far back in her history to be distant dream rather than lived experience. She tried to remember the last time someone touched her beyond wanting to hurt or heal her.
Oh.
Astarion.
Just yesterday.
Tav kept her smile to herself, a secret, mischievous thing. Why shouldn’t she soak up all of this attention at what is soon to be the cessation of her free life? Especially if these two elves were so keen to lavish it upon her? No one called the rose greedy for taking nutrients from both the earth and the sky.
To survive, it needed both.
But Tav did not believe she would survive the trials to come. She put on a brave face for her companions but she was a simple bard who could not sing, only casting a few spells here and there with some small measure of talent and force. That would not be enough to stop shadow curses, dread threes, devils, goblins, bog witches, mind flayers or their murder cults. Even her own delusion of self-perseverance wasn’t enough to overcome all of that. Death lurked in every shadow, even in her dreams. Her Guardian was a comfort but not trustworthy at all. What did that cambion call him? The devil she didn’t know?
So this little rose would soak up every comfort she was given from every place that proffered it.
For soon winter would lay waste to it all.
Now who’s speaking only in nature metaphors? She thought grimly.
Halsin pressed too hard on a too tender space drawing a pained yelp from behind a clenched jaw.
“Apologies,” Halsin smoothed his fingers over the spot and the sharp sting blurred into a fuzzy, dull throb. “Before I was Archdruid, I was a healer of some renown in both magical and traditional arts. But, it seems I am out of practice. Here.”
He took her ankle and rolled it gently. “Remember to flex it, lest it stiffen.”
Satisfied with his work, Halsin ended his ministrations. But before he put her foot down, he planted a wet, smacking kiss at the juncture between foot and ankle.
It was Tav’s turn to sputter now, yowling like a startled cat.
“Since you will take no formal pain treatments, I must offer my own. Please do seek me out if ever again you require my traditional arts.”
He left here, sounding an all too pleased chuckle as he went. Serves her right for teasing him earlier.
