18+ Read from the beginning || Durge x Astarion x Raphael AU
Nestled in the empty New Mexican desert, a diabolical and twisted ritual has been completed.
“Cazador Szarr. His contract exchanged the gift of sanguine immortality to one,” he held up a single red claw to emphasize this, “mortal creature. The price? Seven thousand mortal souls.”
But this makes no sense to Astarion. Although he lived his life as a full elf (a rarity in 2023 America), there were limits to the mystic and magical in the real world. Surely, there were not literal devils who stalked between planes, able to be everywhere and no where at once.
Fortunately or not for Astarion, he has been dealt a most sinister hand. A gift and a curse only differ by how he is able to use it.
For those who enjoy: modern au bg3, alternating pov, slow burn, bl**d, edgy depictions, horror, devilish contracts, world building, time dilation, the nine hells
Chapter 1: Once Upon A Night in the Desert
Chapter 2: Once Upon A Night in the Desert II
Chapter 3: No Duress For The Best
Chapter 4: A Sound Proposal
Chapter 5: A Sound Proposal II
Chapter 6: Little Star
Chapter 7: The Call For A Culling
Chapter 8: A Single Poster
Chapter 9: Red-Blooded American Patriots
Chapter 10: Once A Ribbon, Always A Leash
Chapter 11: Dulled
Chapter 12: The 12 Months Of Christmas
Chapter 13: A Gift Pig
Chapter 14: It's A Dad Man's Party
Chapter 15: Family Ties
Chapter 16: The Black Hellfire Ceremony
Chapter 17: Secluded Milieu
Chapter 18: Rightfully His
Chapter 19: Lie To Me
Chapter 20: Spinning the Web
Chapter 21: Consequences of Truth
Chapter 22: Storm Drain
Chapter 23: MAKE IT BORING
Chapter 24: It’s My Party, I Can Die If I Want To
Chapter 25: Curiosity Kills
Chapter 26: A Sensible Shoe
Chapter 27: Haunted
Chapter 28: No Man
Chapter 29: Something Else
Chapter 30: Inside the Vain
Read it all on AO3 ✨🥀
This began as a long-term roleplay that my writing partner and I thoroughly enjoyed. I got the okay to share it online in case we had others who might be interested in such a concept. I will be regularly releasing further chapters and parts while working on standalone bg3 fics! ♥️
18+ BG3 AU Fanfic | Read On AO3 Here | Current Playlist
It was immediately clear that this place was something more than a basement bar. On their right, a pair of women — one with her head shaved to a gleam, the other with jewelry pinning every visible inch — passed between them a vial of dark red liquid, dipping neat glass pipettes into it and licking the drops off their tongues. Near the bar, a boy no older than seventeen was snorting lines of something iridescent off a mirrored coaster. Farther in, a fox-faced man in a three-piece suit watched the room with black eyes, laughing silently when his gaze crossed Lilith’s. She recognized none of them, and yet she felt as if she’d known them all at one point — as if she’d dreamed or invented them in some artifact of her own neuroses.
It was that kind of place.
Astarion lifted a hand and a server appeared — miraculously — within moments, as if summoned by spell. Lilith had forgotten what it was like to be out with him — how lines evaporated, how eyes magnetized.
“Bourbon, and whatever my friend will accept,” he said with such authority that Lilith didn’t even get the chance to refuse.
To her horror, the waiter took one look at Lilith’s face, measured her up and down, and made the call. “For her, something strong and sweet. Vodka, cake syrup, little prick of lemon, no ice.”
Lilith scowled. “What gave you the impression I take anything sweet?”
She nearly missed Astarion’s eyes light with glowing approval.
The waiter raised a single brow, but it was apparent that he had not expected to be corrected in an establishment such as this. His posture stiffened, and he nodded with what might have been mock-apology — only it somehow seemed sincere. “Apologies.”
“A Sangiovese, if you would.”
Astarion’s smirk grew, the points of his teeth almost visible as he snickered up at the bartender. “She’s the only reason I come around anymore.”
The waitperson smiled thinly, then vanished — leaving them alone in the thickening noise of the room. When he returned, it was not with glasses, but with two tiny, square bottles. He set them down with a quiet warning.
“Start slow.”
Lilith picked up the first. The glass was cold, the liquid inside milky with some kind of suspended particulate. The smell coming off it was both chemical and faintly floral, like a plastic-wrapped cadaver in a spilled perfume drawer. She recoiled, pushing the bottle back a half inch. “What the fuck am I supposed to do with this?”
Astarion plucked it up, pinched it between thumb and forefinger, swirled its contents with the elegance of a sommelier. “It’s the house specialty. The Dutch call it melk van de nacht, but I think they do it a bit differently here. Don’t ask what’s in it, and don’t ask how many hours the hangover lasts.” He set it in front of her again, tapping the rim. “It’s tradition to drink it all at once.”
She glared at him. “Absolutely not.”
He shrugged, a slow, delicious roll of the shoulders. “Then don’t. I suppose I could scrounge up a Shirley Temple for you instead.” Every word was sharpened and sweet, a dare and a wheedle spun together. He watched her, head canted, waiting for the meltdown or the compliance.
On any other night she’d have performed her outrage, played the familiar role of the recalcitrant friend…
But something in her was already caving.
Maybe the clove smoke had chiseled a hole in her last defense. Maybe it was the scent coming off the table — marshmallow and ether and something like drowned violets — that made her want to try. Maybe it was that he looked at her the way only someone who’d watched her make horrific life choices before could, expecting her to do the exact wrong thing and fully rooting for it.
Maybe it was because she’d sobbed herself to sleep for countless nights begging any higher power that might possibly exist to gift her just one more night with him. That she would give anything, do anything just to play their favorite old song and dance.
She snatched the bottle and, after a single wary sniff, upended it. The liquid was colder than water, but it burned sweet and sickly down her throat, leaving a numb patch where her palate had once lived. It was a taste engineered for bad ideas: innocent at first, then swerving into disaster so hard it left patches of blank stars in her vision.
She coughed it down, tears stinging her eyes, and barely managed, “Jesus fuck.”
Astarion was beaming. “Well done, darling. I knew you had it in you.” Without ceremony, he followed suit, draining his in one swallow and showing off perfect, unnecessary composure in the aftermath.
For a minute, her entire body prickled. The warmth spread from her core to her fingers, then to her cheeks, then up into her brain, which responded by making everything in the bar spangle with a viscous, radioactive clarity. The music, already too loud, became enormous. So did her sense of her own heartbeat, which throbbed in double time.
She glared across the table at her companion. “You’re fucking with me. What’s in this, really?”
He leaned in, eyes glittering. “Would you believe—”
“—It’s mostly heavy cream and grain alcohol,” the woman with the shaved head called from the next table, never looking up from her own private ritual with the pipette. “But sometimes they add wormwood and anise if they like you.”
Astarion grinned, the points of his canines just visible. “See? Perfectly safe.” He laced his fingers together and rested his chin on them, watching her for the aftershocks. “So. Tell me about school. Are you out for blood, or just sheltering from the real world?”
She considered the question, rage at the drink warring with the sudden, anarchic high racing around her bloodstream. “I still want to be a public defender,” she managed, “despite the overwhelming evidence that it’s a rigged game designed to kill everyone with a conscience.”
“Good girl,” he crooned, with exactly the wrong flavor of approval.
She nearly spat at him, but the next wave of the drink made her jaw slacken and her hands heavy compared to normal. The inside of the bar had gone soft at the seams, people moving as though in sped-up stop-motion. Lilith’s gaze glided along the various characters before landing on the only one she truly cared to look at — and she found that his attention was already squarely on her, too. He sat all too still, unblinking and staring off somewhere down by her mouth. Whatever contact lenses he wore couldn’t hide his dilated pupils, either.
She asked before she could stop herself. “Are you high right now?”
He blinked, slow as a cat. “High is not exactly the word I’d use.”
18+ Read from the beginning || Durge x Astarion x Raphael AU
Nestled in the empty New Mexican desert, a diabolical and twisted ritual has been completed.
“Cazador Szarr. His contract exchanged the gift of sanguine immortality to one,” he held up a single red claw to emphasize this, “mortal creature. The price? Seven thousand mortal souls.”
But this makes no sense to Astarion. Although he lived his life as a full elf (a rarity in 2023 America), there were limits to the mystic and magical in the real world. Surely, there were not literal devils who stalked between planes, able to be everywhere and no where at once.
Fortunately or not for Astarion, he has been dealt a most sinister hand. A gift and a curse only differ by how he is able to use it.
30/? Chapters | 155k words | WIP | Youtube Playlist
For those who enjoy: modern au bg3, alternating pov, slow burn, bl**d, edgy depictions, horror, devilish contracts, world building, time dilation, the nine hells
Chapter 1: Once Upon A Night in the Desert
Chapter 2: Once Upon A Night in the Desert II
Chapter 3: No Duress For The Best
Chapter 4: A Sound Proposal
Chapter 5: A Sound Proposal II
Chapter 6: Little Star
Chapter 7: The Call For A Culling
Chapter 8: A Single Poster
Chapter 9: Red-Blooded American Patriots
Chapter 10: Once A Ribbon, Always A Leash
Chapter 11: Dulled
Chapter 12: The 12 Months Of Christmas
Chapter 13: A Gift Pig
Chapter 14: It's A Dad Man's Party
Chapter 15: Family Ties
Chapter 16: The Black Hellfire Ceremony
Chapter 17: Secluded Milieu
Chapter 18: Rightfully His
Chapter 19: Lie To Me
Chapter 20: Spinning the Web
Chapter 21: Consequences of Truth
Chapter 22: Storm Drain
Chapter 23: MAKE IT BORING
Chapter 24: It’s My Party, I Can Die If I Want To
Chapter 25: Curiosity Kills
Chapter 26: A Sensible Shoe
Chapter 27: Haunted
Chapter 28: No Man
Chapter 29: Something Else
Chapter 30: Inside the Vain
Read it all on AO3 ✨🥀
This began as a long-term roleplay that my writing partner and I thoroughly enjoyed. I got the okay to share it online in case we had others who might be interested in such a concept. I will be regularly releasing further chapters and parts while working on standalone bg3 fics! ♥️
It was immediately clear that this place was something more than a basement bar. On their right, a pair of women — one with her head shaved to a gleam, the other with jewelry pinning every visible inch — passed between them a vial of dark red liquid, dipping neat glass pipettes into it and licking the drops off their tongues. Near the bar, a boy no older than seventeen was snorting lines of something iridescent off a mirrored coaster. Farther in, a fox-faced man in a three-piece suit watched the room with black eyes, laughing silently when his gaze crossed Lilith’s. She recognized none of them, and yet she felt as if she’d known them all at one point — as if she’d dreamed or invented them in some artifact of her own neuroses.
It was that kind of place.
Astarion lifted a hand and a server appeared — miraculously — within moments, as if summoned by spell. Lilith had forgotten what it was like to be out with him — how lines evaporated, how eyes magnetized.
“Bourbon, and whatever my friend will accept,” he said with such authority that Lilith didn’t even get the chance to refuse.
To her horror, the waiter took one look at Lilith’s face, measured her up and down, and made the call. “For her, something strong and sweet. Vodka, cake syrup, little prick of lemon, no ice.”
Lilith scowled. “What gave you the impression I take anything sweet?”
She nearly missed Astarion’s eyes light with glowing approval.
The waiter raised a single brow, but it was apparent that he had not expected to be corrected in an establishment such as this. His posture stiffened, and he nodded with what might have been mock-apology — only it somehow seemed sincere. “Apologies.”
“A Sangiovese, if you would.”
Astarion’s smirk grew, the points of his teeth almost visible as he snickered up at the bartender. “She’s the only reason I come around anymore.”
The waitperson smiled thinly, then vanished — leaving them alone in the thickening noise of the room. When he returned, it was not with glasses, but with two tiny, square bottles. He set them down with a quiet warning.
“Start slow.”
Lilith picked up the first. The glass was cold, the liquid inside milky with some kind of suspended particulate. The smell coming off it was both chemical and faintly floral, like a plastic-wrapped cadaver in a spilled perfume drawer. She recoiled, pushing the bottle back a half inch. “What the fuck am I supposed to do with this?”
Astarion plucked it up, pinched it between thumb and forefinger, swirled its contents with the elegance of a sommelier. “It’s the house specialty. The Dutch call it melk van de nacht, but I think they do it a bit differently here. Don’t ask what’s in it, and don’t ask how many hours the hangover lasts.” He set it in front of her again, tapping the rim. “It’s tradition to drink it all at once.”
She glared at him. “Absolutely not.”
He shrugged, a slow, delicious roll of the shoulders. “Then don’t. I suppose I could scrounge up a Shirley Temple for you instead.” Every word was sharpened and sweet, a dare and a wheedle spun together. He watched her, head canted, waiting for the meltdown or the compliance.
On any other night she’d have performed her outrage, played the familiar role of the recalcitrant friend…
But something in her was already caving.
Maybe the clove smoke had chiseled a hole in her last defense. Maybe it was the scent coming off the table — marshmallow and ether and something like drowned violets — that made her want to try. Maybe it was that he looked at her the way only someone who’d watched her make horrific life choices before could, expecting her to do the exact wrong thing and fully rooting for it.
Maybe it was because she’d sobbed herself to sleep for countless nights begging any higher power that might possibly exist to gift her just one more night with him. That she would give anything, do anything just to play their favorite old song and dance.
She snatched the bottle and, after a single wary sniff, upended it. The liquid was colder than water, but it burned sweet and sickly down her throat, leaving a numb patch where her palate had once lived. It was a taste engineered for bad ideas: innocent at first, then swerving into disaster so hard it left patches of blank stars in her vision.
She coughed it down, tears stinging her eyes, and barely managed, “Jesus fuck.”
Astarion was beaming. “Well done, darling. I knew you had it in you.” Without ceremony, he followed suit, draining his in one swallow and showing off perfect, unnecessary composure in the aftermath.
For a minute, her entire body prickled. The warmth spread from her core to her fingers, then to her cheeks, then up into her brain, which responded by making everything in the bar spangle with a viscous, radioactive clarity. The music, already too loud, became enormous. So did her sense of her own heartbeat, which throbbed in double time.
She glared across the table at her companion. “You’re fucking with me. What’s in this, really?”
He leaned in, eyes glittering. “Would you believe—”
“—It’s mostly heavy cream and grain alcohol,” the woman with the shaved head called from the next table, never looking up from her own private ritual with the pipette. “But sometimes they add wormwood and anise if they like you.”
Astarion grinned, the points of his canines just visible. “See? Perfectly safe.” He laced his fingers together and rested his chin on them, watching her for the aftershocks. “So. Tell me about school. Are you out for blood, or just sheltering from the real world?”
She considered the question, rage at the drink warring with the sudden, anarchic high racing around her bloodstream. “I still want to be a public defender,” she managed, “despite the overwhelming evidence that it’s a rigged game designed to kill everyone with a conscience.”
“Good girl,” he crooned, with exactly the wrong flavor of approval.
She nearly spat at him, but the next wave of the drink made her jaw slacken and her hands heavy compared to normal. The inside of the bar had gone soft at the seams, people moving as though in sped-up stop-motion. Lilith’s gaze glided along the various characters before landing on the only one she truly cared to look at — and she found that his attention was already squarely on her, too. He sat all too still, unblinking and staring off somewhere down by her mouth. Whatever contact lenses he wore couldn’t hide his dilated pupils, either.
She asked before she could stop herself. “Are you high right now?”
He blinked, slow as a cat. “High is not exactly the word I’d use.”
18+ Read from the beginning || Durge x Astarion x Raphael AU
Nestled in the empty New Mexican desert, a diabolical and twisted ritual has been completed.
“Cazador Szarr. His contract exchanged the gift of sanguine immortality to one,” he held up a single red claw to emphasize this, “mortal creature. The price? Seven thousand mortal souls.”
But this makes no sense to Astarion. Although he lived his life as a full elf (a rarity in 2023 America), there were limits to the mystic and magical in the real world. Surely, there were not literal devils who stalked between planes, able to be everywhere and no where at once.
Fortunately or not for Astarion, he has been dealt a most sinister hand. A gift and a curse only differ by how he is able to use it.
30/? Chapters | 155k words | WIP | Youtube Playlist
For those who enjoy: modern au bg3, alternating pov, slow burn, bl**d, edgy depictions, horror, devilish contracts, world building, time dilation, the nine hells
Chapter 1: Once Upon A Night in the Desert
Chapter 2: Once Upon A Night in the Desert II
Chapter 3: No Duress For The Best
Chapter 4: A Sound Proposal
Chapter 5: A Sound Proposal II
Chapter 6: Little Star
Chapter 7: The Call For A Culling
Chapter 8: A Single Poster
Chapter 9: Red-Blooded American Patriots
Chapter 10: Once A Ribbon, Always A Leash
Chapter 11: Dulled
Chapter 12: The 12 Months Of Christmas
Chapter 13: A Gift Pig
Chapter 14: It's A Dad Man's Party
Chapter 15: Family Ties
Chapter 16: The Black Hellfire Ceremony
Chapter 17: Secluded Milieu
Chapter 18: Rightfully His
Chapter 19: Lie To Me
Chapter 20: Spinning the Web
Chapter 21: Consequences of Truth
Chapter 22: Storm Drain
Chapter 23: MAKE IT BORING
Chapter 24: It’s My Party, I Can Die If I Want To
Chapter 25: Curiosity Kills
Chapter 26: A Sensible Shoe
Chapter 27: Haunted
Chapter 28: No Man
Chapter 29: Something Else
Chapter 30: Inside the Vain
Read it all on AO3 ✨🥀
This began as a long-term roleplay that my writing partner and I thoroughly enjoyed. I got the okay to share it online in case we had others who might be interested in such a concept. I will be regularly releasing further chapters and parts while working on standalone bg3 fics! ♥️
18+ Read from the beginning || Astarion x Raphael AU
Nestled in the empty New Mexican desert, a diabolical and twisted ritual has been completed.
“Cazador Szarr. His contract exchanged the gift of sanguine immortality to one,” he held up a single red claw to emphasize this, “mortal creature. The price? Seven thousand mortal souls.”
But this makes no sense to Astarion. Although he lived his life as a full elf (a rarity in 2023 America), there were limits to the mystic and magical in the real world. Surely, there were not literal devils who stalked between planes, able to be everywhere and no where at once.
Fortunately or not for Astarion, he has been dealt a most sinister hand. A gift and a curse only differ by how he is able to use it.
28/? Chapters | 139k words | WIP | Youtube Playlist
For those who enjoy: modern au bg3, alternating pov, slow burn, bl**d, edgy depictions, horror, devilish contracts, world building, time dilation, the nine hells
Chapter 1: Once Upon A Night in the Desert
Chapter 2: Once Upon A Night in the Desert II
Chapter 3: No Duress For The Best
Chapter 4: A Sound Proposal
Chapter 5: A Sound Proposal II
Chapter 6: Little Star
Chapter 7: The Call For A Culling
Chapter 8: A Single Poster
Chapter 9: Red-Blooded American Patriots
Chapter 10: Once A Ribbon, Always A Leash
Chapter 11: Dulled
Chapter 12: The 12 Months Of Christmas
Chapter 13: A Gift Pig
Chapter 14: It's A Dad Man's Party
Chapter 15: Family Ties
Chapter 16: The Black Hellfire Ceremony
Chapter 17: Secluded Milieu
Chapter 18: Rightfully His
Chapter 19: Lie To Me
Chapter 20: Spinning the Web
Chapter 21: Consequences of Truth
Chapter 22: Storm Drain
Chapter 23: MAKE IT BORING
Chapter 24: It’s My Party, I Can Die If I Want To
Chapter 25: Curiosity Kills
Chapter 26: A Sensible Shoe
Chapter 27: Haunted
Chapter 28: No Man
Read it all on AO3 ✨🥀
This began as a long-term roleplay that my writing partner and I thoroughly enjoyed. I got the okay to share it online in case we had others who might be interested in such a concept. I will be regularly releasing further chapters and parts while working on standalone bg3 fics! ♥️
“Did you forget you had a visitor coming?” Shadowheart said, voice tight.
Lilith was at a genuine, sputtering loss. “I—what? Who—?”
“Someone’s here for you.”
Lilith blinked, still holding a strand of hair between thumb and forefinger. “Now? At—” She checked the cheap LCD on her stereo clock: 10:56 PM. “Who…?” There was a cold spike in her gut, a thumbtack pressed to the inner lining of her stomach. “Who is it?”
Shadowheart took a step back, letting the fluorescent kitchen light slant over her face. The sharpness of her cheekbones and the set of her lips made her look suddenly much older — almost disappointed, as if Lilith had broken a shared rule.
“You need to see for yourself,” she said. “But I’m coming with you.”
The edge in her voice made Lilith want to shrink inside her skin, but the alternative — ignoring the summons, cowering behind her door — was impossible. She forced her arms through the sleeves of a hoodie, the fabric twisting around her in clammy panic.
As she crossed the apartment, following Shadowheart’s broad shoulders and fast stride, the whine in her head grew into a roar. What now, what now, what now. She didn’t remember giving out her address, didn’t remember agreeing to see anyone, didn’t remember—
It could be duPont. He had her mailing address. Had he come here himself to beg for forgiveness? Or to humiliate her in front of her roommates? It was the only logical explanation. No one else even knew where she lived, unless they followed her or something. But then why did Shadowheart have that look? Surely she wouldn’t be dragging her down here like it was an emergency for some stranger, right?
She skidded to a halt at the stairwell, momentarily dazed by the staleness of the communal air. It smelled like spilled beer and old feet, and she wanted nothing to do with any of it. But Shadowheart was already pounding down the stairs, making enough noise to rouse the other tenants. Lilith gripped the railing with tingling fingers and propelled herself after her, barely registering her own body.
“Who is it?” she whispered, more to herself than to Shadowheart, but her roommate heard.
“You’ll see. Said it was urgent. He wouldn’t leave.” Shadowheart’s tone curdled with such disgust that Lilith nearly laughed, if not for the shrieking terror inside her chest.
They rounded the first landing. A metal fire door clanged shut, and then Shadowheart paused, turning to look at her with frank, unvarnished worry.
Lilith’s breath caught somewhere behind her tongue. She wanted to dismiss it, but the emerging image in her mind was so bright and so awful that she feared fainting and falling down the stairs
That’d be best for everyone, I assure you. Maybe you’ll split your head open and leak those worthless brains onto the stained carpet. A fitting place for them.
Through the foyer’s security glass, a figure paced: sharp and long-limbed, the color palate of the skin impossibly pale, shoulders swaddled in a finely tailored jacket. Even hunched against the cold, chin tucked to collar, every line of his was familiar.
She’d seen this pacing before. A hand that didn’t belong to her reached out to unfasten the front door, her skin numb to the frigid air blustering into the too-warm room behind her to leach any sense of comfort.
The world blurred as she stared out, everything wrong-footed — gravity, her own heartbeat, the color of the overhead lights. The words she’d meant to say, to demand, all snared on the hook of his presence.
She saw the figure’s head snap up, the ghost-pale planes of his face like a negative image of a memory she’d spent years gouging out of herself. In that first brittle instant, she could not even affix a name to it, could only see the outline — angular, too finely drawn, and backlit by the frosted glow of the outside world. The bones of his face were old as myth, too sharp, too knowing. The glance she received was not human at all.
He’d always been terribly classical, but now very much so in the style of Hieronymous Bosch.
He was not him. That was the most elemental truth. Not as she remembered, not as anyone could be, even in this city of pretenders.
18+ Read from the beginning || Astarion x Raphael AU
Nestled in the empty New Mexican desert, a diabolical and twisted ritual has been completed.
“Cazador Szarr. His contract exchanged the gift of sanguine immortality to one,” he held up a single red claw to emphasize this, “mortal creature. The price? Seven thousand mortal souls.”
But this makes no sense to Astarion. Although he lived his life as a full elf (a rarity in 2023 America), there were limits to the mystic and magical in the real world. Surely, there were not literal devils who stalked between planes, able to be everywhere and no where at once.
Fortunately or not for Astarion, he has been dealt a most sinister hand. A gift and a curse only differ by how he is able to use it.
27/? Chapters | 135k words | WIP | Youtube Playlist
For those who enjoy: modern au bg3, alternating pov, slow burn, bl**d, edgy depictions, horror, devilish contracts, world building, time dilation, the nine hells
Chapter 1: Once Upon A Night in the Desert
Chapter 2: Once Upon A Night in the Desert II
Chapter 3: No Duress For The Best
Chapter 4: A Sound Proposal
Chapter 5: A Sound Proposal II
Chapter 6: Little Star
Chapter 7: The Call For A Culling
Chapter 8: A Single Poster
Chapter 9: Red-Blooded American Patriots
Chapter 10: Once A Ribbon, Always A Leash
Chapter 11: Dulled
Chapter 12: The 12 Months Of Christmas
Chapter 13: A Gift Pig
Chapter 14: It's A Dad Man's Party
Chapter 15: Family Ties
Chapter 16: The Black Hellfire Ceremony
Chapter 17: Secluded Milieu
Chapter 18: Rightfully His
Chapter 19: Lie To Me
Chapter 20: Spinning the Web
Chapter 21: Consequences of Truth
Chapter 22: Storm Drain
Chapter 23: MAKE IT BORING
Chapter 24: It’s My Party, I Can Die If I Want To
Chapter 25: Curiosity Kills
Chapter 26: A Sensible Shoe
Chapter 27: Haunted
Read it all on AO3 ✨🥀
This began as a long-term roleplay that my writing partner and I thoroughly enjoyed. I got the okay to share it online in case we had others who might be interested in such a concept. I will be regularly releasing further chapters and parts while working on standalone bg3 fics! ♥️
Ayooo we got some Astarion x Haarlep smut in the latest chapterrrr just sayinnnnn! (:
Chapter 27: Haunted (AO3) 18+
“Well, don’t pretend to be so glad to see me,” Haarlep huffed sourly with Raphael’s bassy tones vibrating the air between them. Even though the incubus used the Cambion’s form, had the vocal chords and the lips that could imitate affectation, the overall delivery couldn’t be replicated. Astarion was rather embarrassed he was tricked for the few moments he was.
Haarlep could appear exactly like Raphael and still sound nothing like him. The command in the devil’s voice couldn’t be replicated. That growl he got when he scolded, the purr of approval that made Astarion’s hair stand along the back of his neck…
It was a hollowed-out doppelgänger, a bastard mime, and it was a fucking tragedy besides.
“What do you want, Haarlep?” Astarion asked with an edge sharpened in disappointment. He allowed his nakedness to filter into a languid and hostile spread across the coverlet, his sculpted calves pressing a subtle line into the sheets. The suite, the city, the world itself seemed suddenly so much more bleak for the lack of true hellish heat in the bed beside him.
Haarlep, even in Raphael’s skin, had a different way of taking up space: a louche, oscillating energy that made Astarion think of a caged cheetah, or maybe an ill-behaved cat. They curled a long forearm behind their head and stretched deep into the pillow, staring up at the ceiling molding. “You don’t want to know how terribly boring Hell is without you tromping around making everyone’s assignments a mess. I thought you’d be less prissy about the whole breakup, but — no hard feelings?”
“Go to Hell, Haarlep.”
“Too easy.” The incubus rolled over to face him, the uncanny resemblance to Raphael now an irritation and a minor cruelty. “But really, Astarion — do you care to explain why you’ve been running black for three nights in a row? No kills, not so much as a bender in the archives. The whole system was made for you, love, and yet…?”
Astarion rolled on his side, arm curled to cradle his head. “I’m not performing for you. Or him.” He flicked the top of Haarlep’s suit jacket. “And I have no need to explain myself to either of you. If he wishes to chastise me, he can make the trip himself rather than sending his disappointing pet.” Easy venom dripped from every word.
He could sense Haarlep’s shift in mood. The air of hunger that was usually ever-present had faded into something softer, something cool and blue despite the gold that still rang under the skin. “You don’t want him, do you?”
For a moment, Astarion didn’t answer. He considered the lie, constructed its glistening bone structure in the front of his mind, but the words wilted unsaid. He wanted…well, that was harder to admit.
He opened his mouth and let a more tractable sort of honesty spill out. “I need information,” he said. “Not about you. Not about me. About a…past acquaintance.”
Haarlep’s eyes flickered up, sharp with interest. “Your ghost?” Astarion didn’t allow himself to flinch as the incubus correctly guessed who he meant in such a way that still rubbed him wrongly. Haarlep chewed their lower lip, Raphael’s lower lip, and raised a brow. “That little morsel you’ve been tailing?”
Astarion supposed that was one way to describe it. “Yes, and she’s up to something. There’s power in her I’ve never seen — not here in the Mundane plane.”
Haarlep grinned then, the fine line of Raphael’s mouth stretched thin and starved. “Oh, darling. That is juicy indeed.”
Astarion continued carefully. “Her eyes — they went void-black last week. I want to know what that means.”
To their credit, Haarlep actually considered the question. “She’s a human, right?”
“Yes.” Her overwhelming, damned scent was nothing but pure, unadulterated human. It was all Astarion could do not to allow his mouth to water at the sheer memory of breathing it in. He didn’t catch Haarlep’s strange look, the recognition and intrigue that flickered past Raphael’s amber gaze as they watched the vampire suppress such reactions. “As droll and mortal as they come.”
Literally one of 3 authors with a Minthara/Raphael pairing on AO3, and bro ngl it was kinda hard to write! Thanks for the challenge and sorry it took so long
Literally one of 3 authors with a Minthara/Raphael pairing on AO3, and bro ngl it was kinda hard to write! Thanks for the challenge and sorry it took so long
