Work Text:
Alone and not afraid to admit it, he longed for you. You had gone on a journey to a far-off grove to supposedly help them get rid of a Rite of Thorns, and it had been almost four months since he had last seen you. His skin missed the feeling of your own warm flesh, his eyes missed the shape of your form, his fingers missed the feeling of tangling into your hair, his ears missed hearing your voice, and most importantly his lips missed the taste of your own... and your blood, of course. He had become so accustomed to drinking from you, that anything else just tasted wrong. After all, you were the only thinking creature he had drank from, and he had high enough standards to refuse anyone else.
Blinking away the remains of a headache caused by the lack of your delicious crimson ichor, Astarion lay in a bed far too large for only him. Rays of moonlight flood through the barely drawn thick fabric drapes, making his already pale skin even paler. He breathed out a sigh, despite not needing to do so, and his breath turned to mist in the frigid air. His pure white tresses splayed over the silken pillows and his silvery lashes fluttered shut, as his brow furrowed hopelessly.
Hah. Hope. He remembered that word fondly.
He remembered when your little group of adventurers had been briefly teleported to the Hells to speak to Raphael in his home... the House of Hope, he had called it. He remembered how your good deeds in the Grove, in the UnderDark, the Shadowfelled Lands, and in the city itself had at first caused him to scoff. He remembered how you had saved so many lives, including those of your small crew of companions and their loved ones, and how much of that very word it brought him. He remembered how delicate your touches had been, how you had so readily deciphered his scars and so swiftly gathered his burdens into your arms, even though you were carrying the burdens of everyone else as well. Back then he sometimes wondered if you were secretly being paid millions of gold to do such things... but then he had gotten the nerve to ask.
"My dearest traveling companion, why do you insist on helping every poor soul you meet?" Astarion asked, leaning back against his hand as you stoked the campfire, using the nature magic you controlled so easily to cause more sparks to erupt. You turned to face him briefly, your cheeks swelling into a gentle smile.
At that time it was rare for him to see you without your druidic facepaint on. At first, he had thought it was just some odd birthmarks you had gained from your particular circle, but when you took it off in the nighttime it felt as though he had seen a completely different person in the sunlight.
"It's my nature to help those who are suffering worse than I. It's the way of Eldath and her followers, and I wish nothing more than to uphold that way."
His face turned into a frown, and you turned away, back to the fire.
How could you do something so simply and easily without even expecting a single coin? The way your face twisted into surprise when Zevlor had offered you penance for the help you had promised, the way you thanked Arabella's parents so profusely and bowed so deeply for the necklace they had given you in return for ensuring their daughter's safety, and the way you hadn't even raised a hand against Silfy when she had tried to pickpocket you and Astarion had caught her wrist before she even got a clawed finger into your coin purse. You offered every one of your foes kindness... before, of course, they decided to mistake your kindness for weakness and attack you.
"So you think that all of us are suffering?" His tone was accusatory. Your gentle smile faded into a quizzical look, as you placed the stick you had been using into the fire, casting Produce Flame and tossing a small orb of bright yellow light into the arrangement of twigs, leaves, and wood. You turned again, and your gently glowing blue-green eyes pierced his own crimson ones.
Your tone was remarkably flat as you responded. "Yes."
Anger flared in his face, the incredibly soft lines that had formed over 200 or so years becoming pronounced as his frown deepened into a scowl. "And how are you so sure of that? For all you know, half of the people you help could just be swindling you!"
"Yes." Another flat-toned answer.
"Do you ever think about the risks that come with giving yourself and your help away for free?" Astarion pushed himself off of his hand, leaning forward, still extremely accusatory.
"Yes."
A growl of frustration threatened to rise from the man's throat, but he pursed his lips and refused to bear his fangs, opting for a haughty scoff instead. "Are you stupid or just naive?"
"...Hm." For once, you didn't respond.
Astarion felt a confident smirk crawl across his face. Had he perhaps won this little game the two of you were playing?
His grin was almost instantly swept away, your response as flat as the others.
"Yes."
Rising to his feet, the high-elf dusted himself off and looked down his nose at the tiefling in front of him. About to open his mouth to speak, you raised a finger to silence him... then dug your hands into your pack, rustling about in search of something.
He didn't know why he kept quiet then. Perhaps that was the first sign of his somewhat positive feelings for you developing, but then again, perhaps not.
After another minute of silence, you brought out a journal. Bound in leather, the cover seemingly warped long ago by some kind of temperature difference. He recognized this journal. It was one you wrote in almost every night. Typically, you took the first watch, sitting by the fire or shaping yourself into a mountain lion to prowl the perimeter of the camp, and he often spotted you doing the former. Sitting by the fire, listening to the forest and the crackling of the flames, all the while the scratch of your ink pen against the pages lulled Shadowheart, Karlach, and him to sleep around the campfire. For weeks he had wondered what you were writing. You rarely paused or slowed your pace, the gentle loops of your obviously cursive script creating a lullaby, and every sharp lift from the page like the end of a stanza of poetry.
Some nights when he wondered what you were writing, he wished he could cast an invisibility spell and peek over your shoulder without you knowing. Others, he wondered if it was about him.
"What is wrong with you?!" He shouted, Astarion's voice cracking and echoing against the trees that surrounded the camp. "Seriously! Either there has to be something very wrong with you, or you're secretly getting paid in platinum bars!"
Your flat expression and flat voice suddenly lifted, as laughter slowly took you. As you fell backward into the dirt softly, and as giggles shook your shoulders, his lips couldn't help but twitch into a confused smile for a moment. Maybe instead of being stupid or naive, you were a secret third thing.
Insane.
You continued for another couple of minutes, then sighed heavily and wiped tears from your eyes. Sitting up slowly, you looked up at him with a gentle smile, picking your journal up off of your lap where it had been briefly discarded, patting your bedroll, and offering him a clean place to sit.
"Do you want to know? I know quite a bit about you, Wyll, Karlach, Gale - Hells - everyone. It seems as though no one really asks about me, though." There was a melancholic pause. Astarion stood stark still, then came and sat down beside you silently.
"Well, be thankful that I'm asking now." He said, his haughty mask not quite ready to slip. "What do you want me to know, Tav?"
For a moment, he heard your heartbeat speed up, pumping your blood through your veins with more vigor.
"Everything."
The warped journal traded hands carefully. Your gentle yet nature-worn fingers briefly brushed his, sending shivers up his spine as he cautiously opened the front cover of the book. There, in absolute chicken-scratch handwriting, was your name. Three simple letters, with a number next to them. When you started this journal you had been only seven years old. He flipped to the next page, and the scribblings were laughably unreadable. A mix between a scoff and a chuckle left his lips, and you shrugged.
"I was seven, you can't blame me for having gods awful handwriting."
"I absolutely can." He said, toying with you. "But I suppose I'll go easy on you."
Flipping through more pages your handwriting steadily improved, until you were about sixteen years of age. On one page, your script became similar to the familiar cursive you wrote in, and on the very next page, it became shaky and uneven. A furrow crossed his brow, and he glanced at you. A solemn look was on your face. Astarion turned his crimson gaze to the pages once again, looking in the topmost inner corner of the page for the date, and his expression dropped. The month of a difference between the neat and the shaky script alarmed him. Before, it seemed you only missed a day or two... but an entire month? Slowly, he read the text, holding onto a breath he didn't need.
I have not been well. The mountains have betrayed me and my people. My fingers and toes have turned black, as have the tips of my ears and tail. The doctor speak of amputation, but the druid speaks of restoration. I've been told not to trust magic users. Papa said druids only want whats best for their forests, not the thinking creatures in and around them, but I want to be able to use my hands. I want to be able to hear, and to write, and to walk. I need the druids.
I'm scared.
- Tav
His pale and nimble fingers brushed over the leather cover of the book. Warped by frost and snow, instead of heat and flame. Astarion's expression softened into quiet disbelief, then went back to a blank slate, as he turned to you, his eyes sad. You looked up from the pages at him, then looked around to check if anyone was listening. Shadowheart was awake, but she was grunting as she pelted a dummy with her mace, too busy wishing she could do the same to Lae'zel to listen.
"I was stuck underneath the hides of animals my family and my tribe had killed, freezing and surrounded by corpses for weeks. By the time the humans found us - I mean - me, the top layer of the avalanche had been packed down by herds of deer walking over it. I could barely feel anything. The sun hurt my eyes when they finally dug me out. Even the smell of sweating villagefolk was refreshing. They told me I smelled like death."
"Gods. Was it quick for the rest of them?" He queried, quickly regretting it when you took a moment to respond, horrific reminiscence clouding your already misty eyes.
"No."
Time passed all too slowly for a moment. Astarion studied your face as it stayed disturbingly blank, and your mind dove into the thoughts you had fought so hard to bury.
"My siblings were with me. I was the eldest." You looked up at him, slowly blinking away tears, and you pushed through like you always did. "I listened to them die, watched a couple of them too. Taliesin held out as long as he could. The humans were only a few days too late for him. I used to wish that it took me too."
His undead heart ached. You were giving him a look that made him weak, the first of many that would make him feel that way, in fact... yet his face stayed still and only his eyes showed the sadness he felt.
"That sounds absolutely awful, my dear." Astarion finally said, after many moments of silence. "Do you mind if I keep reading?"
You turned your head away to look into the flames, shaking your head. "Not at all. I bear my secrets and my past to you fully." You needed him to understand. You weren't stupid, naive, or insane.
You were hopeful.
As Astarion continued to read, silence permeated between you two, only interrupted by the turning of pages and the soft and shuddering breaths you took. He learned a lot about you by reading your journal. The things you had gone through before the illithid ship swept you up, the thoughts you had but never voiced, the feelings you felt but never acted upon. You had always been the one that was the most closed of the group, despite Shadowheart being a disciple of the Lady of Secrets and Gale being a shut-in and a fool-in-love over the Lady of Mysteries. He felt dirty reading your journal. Not just in the typical way he felt dirty, but mentally dirty as well. He felt as though he was not supposed to be allowed to read such things... but you allowed him to. Was this your way of hoping to gain his favor? How far were you willing to go to earn his trust?
He hadn't realized how thick and heavy the journal was until he got to the final page that had your handwriting on it. It had been written the day before when you persuaded and charmed your way through a village overtaken by goblins. You wrote about being scared for the lives of your friends and companions when you felt like you were failing to get the goblins to see reason. You wrote about the relief you felt, and how you felt approaching the gates of the goblin camp. In that moment, the only emotions that had shown on your face were calmness and appreciation. But now he knew that you were secretly panicking.
Flipping back a handful of pages, he read again about the battle against the first bout of goblins. When he had watched you sling spells and knock Worgs, Goblins, and Bugbears alike off of their feet, you seemed so relaxed... but reading your emotions on the page made you seem completely different. You weren't confident in your abilities. You knew that lives could be at stake. You kept a tight hand on your spells and made sure you knew how many you could perform.
Gods, you weren't confident at all. You were terrified.
In any other situation, Astarion would have called you a coward then and there. He would have berated you for giving up a fight to a handful of goblins... But you didn't. In the face of fear and death, you continued on, beating the snot out of the evil creatures that threatened the people whom you felt deserved to be protected.
You weren't a coward. You were brave.
Shutting the journal softly, he handed it to you, and once again your fingers brushed against each other. He didn't pull away this time, simply giving you a soft and charming smile. "Thank yo-"
Suddenly, the sound of clinking chainmail and a particularly out-of-breath Shadowheart alerted both Astarion and you that it was no longer safe to indulge in weakness and camaraderie.
"What are you two getting up to?" She asked, her mace dangling at her side, a few pieces of straw tangled into the metal head of the weapon.
"I-" You started to say before Astarion stood and brushed himself off, interrupting you with a lie of his own.
"Our dear Tav was just showing me their little spellbook. I've been thinking about trying my hand at things like that anyway." His haughty voice rang out amongst the trees again, and Gale piped up from his own tent.
"I can teach you too, you know!"
"Yes, yes, I know." The pale elf replied with a roll of his eyes. For a moment, Shadowheart narrowed her eyes, looking between you and Astarion suspiciously, before she crossed her arms over his chest.
"Unless you want to become a druid that only does as nature tells them to, maybe you want to go to Gale instead, Astarion."
A smile flickered across your face, and you laughed. Imagining Astarion covered in leaves and vines and controlling animals would be very out of character for him. "Yeah, she's right. Maybe Gale would be a better teacher than I. I can't possibly imagine you getting your hands dirty enough to do the rituals we would need to do to allow you to be a druid like me."
Astarion feigned disgust well, grimacing at the thought of shoving his hands in the dirt to look for spell materials. "Gods, you're right. Well, perhaps I'll think of it while on watch... I'm taking the first, by the way. If you have any protests, don't come to me, because I won't listen to them!"
With that, Astarion was sauntering off into the forest, to patrol the perimeter like always.
He breathed out another sigh, the air misting once more. Astarion rolled over onto his back, and the silk sheets caressed the infernal scars on his back, just like you always did. Tears welled in his eyes, and he shut them tightly, sealing the crimson of his irises behind pale undead flesh... until a familiar golden glow tore him away from his moping.
Rolling over again and scrambling over the bed to the bedside table, he snatched up the palm-sized crimson gemstone with a golden embed of your silhouette and held it close to his ear. The sending stone pair had cost a pretty amount of coin, but after all that Cazador had left him and his siblings, and after all of the redecorating he had planned, he had some to spare. At the point where he made the financial decision to get such an item, he was so in love with you that he never wanted to stop hearing your voice in his ear... so he asked your help in gathering two gemstones of your favorite colors and enough gold coins to melt down and make small silhouettes out of and went to the nearest magical item apothecary to get the sending stones made. Yours, of course, was a leafy green, and his was blood red, as per usual.
As he held the item up to his ear, your angelic voice graced his ears, and he thanked the gods for creating him in the same plane as you.
“Hello, Astarion! Sorry for not sending sooner. Stopped a wildfire in the grove. I’m almost home, okay? I have a gift too. I love you!” Your voice came through the sending stone clearly, with a few breathless huffs and the crunching of gravel and dirt beneath your feet, as well as the chirping of birds in the background.
Like a lovesick teenager, he sighed and let his eyes flutter shut once more. Your words repeated in his head over and over, and then his brow furrowed quizzically. A gift? Typically, he would press you and ask you what exactly the gift was, which took a lot more than twenty-five words, so he simply tucked the promise of a gift into the back of his mind for the time being. He imagined again how you looked while speaking to the sending stone, your beautiful and delicious lips dangerously close to the golden silhouette of him, one hand counting up to five, then restarting over and over again until you reached twenty-five. Sometimes, you helped Gale use his sending spell... for even though the man was a chess genius, he couldn't do any maths to save his life, and he watched you count in front of Gale to help him save his words.
Opening one of his hands himself, he held out five fingers and prepared to count down from five over and over, as his pale lips grazed the cold stone gently, the golden glow coming from the silhouette warming up the room.
"Hello my dearest Tav, I await your arrival home. I miss you, I desire you and your touch desperately. I hope the grove is well.” He said into the stone, and as soon as his fist was balled for the fifth time, the glow dimmed and ceased...
Then he realized he hadn't said 'I love you.'
Flopping backward onto the bed, he sighed heavily and rested one of his arms over his eyes, grasping the sending stone in the other fist. He groaned heavily and whined a little too, pouting at his own insolence. He was so excited to hear your voice and speak to you again, that he completely skipped over one of the most important parts of his message... the part where he tells you that he loves you.
Sitting up once more, he found the timing right to mope again, putting the sending stone back down on the bedside table and standing to leave the bedroom you and he shared. Not bothering to lace up the collar of his shirt or dress fully, he held his head high and walked down the tall hallways of Cazador's old residence, now put in the capable and reliable yet vampiric hands of him and his siblings. Arriving at the grand stairway in the foyer of the house, definitely not the place where you, him, Karlach, and Shadowheart had entered when you had planned to slay him, he looked up at the empty space where a grand portrait of Cazador used to rest. Now that he was gone, he had been debating on what to put there.
Should it be a painting of you and your companions?
Perhaps a painting of just the two of you?
Maybe a painting of him and his siblings?
Or even a painting of everyone, you, him, your companions, and his siblings combined?
He didn't even get the chance to think about the subject further, as light shined against his back as the large doors creaked open, announcing the arrival of someone bold enough to use the front door. Turning his head to peer backward over his shoulder, Astarion's hands were folded behind his back in a slightly intimidating manner. The fading moonlight silhouetted the fur-caped figure against the tiles of the foyer's floor, a tall and swirling wooden staff standing alongside their figure. Quickly, the vampire recognized the love of his life and hurried down the stairs, happiness and relief clear on his face.
"I told you I was almost home, didn't I-" You said, opening your arms before being interrupted by an enormous high-speed hug from Astarion. Almost falling down, you let out a small yelp, and he laughs loudly, the jubilant sound echoing through the halls of the palace. Holding you close, he buried his head into the cape, the fur around your neck warming his face and filling his nose with your scent. He inhaled deeply, sighing as the smell of your blood filled his vampirically enhanced nose, alongside the floral and earthy scent everyone else could smell.
"Gods, I missed you." He muttered into the furs, his arms wrapping around your waist and pulling you closer. Your body heat warmed his own undead flesh, and the feeling was like heaven to him. One of your hands, weathered by nature, wrapped underneath his own arms, while the other stealthily removed the gift you had made for him from your traveling pack. Of course, as a master of stealth and shadows himself, this didn't go unnoticed by Astarion, and he quickly loosened his grip on you, leaning backward slightly. "And what is that you have there, my beloved?"
His face showed all of the silent quizzicality of an absolute master thief observing his next target, all the while portraying innocent curiosity on top of it. You chuckled softly, and his lips curled into a soft smile of pure adoration as you caressed his cheek with one hand, the other holding the strings to a velvet bag that smelled of rosemary, bergamot, and aged brandy. He recognized the scent immediately as his own, causing his head to tilt slightly. "Is that... the gift?"
"Yes, dear, it is. Before I put it on though, I want you to close your eyes and trust me." His crimson gaze tore from the bag to your face, his head still tilted, and his eyes traced every feature. Between his blinks, he noticed a few new scratches and bruises, a handful of new scars tracing your arms and legs, and a small slash across the waist of your armor. His brow furrowed again, and he narrowed his eyes at you, his white lashes framing them beautifully while making his concerns and suspicions known to you.
"Where were you?" His voice comes out quiet and soft, and his arms tighten around you as a gentle smile of adoration crosses your face.
"That doesn't matter right now, alright? I'll tell you everything, I just need you to trust me first, alright love?"
Another moment passed, and he tried to read your expression, not for any sign of betrayal or lies, but for any hint of what the gift could be. He wasn't going to verbally press you for the information, as it was getting dangerously close to sunrise, and the doors being wide open meant that he would begin to burn within a few minutes, so he shut his eyes with a small huff.
The darkness behind his eyelids was agony, as he heard the sound of the bag untying, and he felt you brush his soft wavy hair away from the back of his neck. The feeling of cold metal around his neck was something he wasn't expecting, and his shoulders tensed slightly as the shock came and went and after a moment of getting used to the feeling, he felt your hands trailing down his arms to take his hands in yours. He gave your hands three soft squeezes, and you returned the favor before he heard your footsteps and felt you tug him towards the opened doors.
"Wait, my treasure," He said, his brow furrowing gently with worry. "What are you doing? I-I'll burn up out there, isn't the sun about to rise?" His voice betrays him, as he stutters anxiously, despite still having his full trust in you.
"Yes!" Your voice held excitement and joy, which concerned him for a moment before he reassured himself that you would never hurt him, especially not in a way such as that. "You'll be all right, I promise, Astarion."
When you said his name like that, all of his nerves disappeared, and his grip on your hands tightened. He felt the tiles of the foyer give way to the stones of the front entrance's balcony, and for a moment it was silent. Only the subtle sounds of the city of Baldur's Gate waking up could be heard, alongside the sounds of animals in the garden and the breeze whisking through the trees. After another moment, your hands squeezed his and you whispered your permission for him to open his eyes... and he did.
It was beautiful.
The waters of the Grey Harbor glittered with warmth he hadn't noticed before, and the yellowish-white glow of the sun just barely peeking over the horizon cast rays of radiant light over his skin. It was warm... but not too warm. Tears brimmed in his eyes and his mouth was slightly agape, as the chilly morning breeze caressed his pale skin. For a moment, you didn't notice, taking in the view with him, but as your gaze shifted to Astarion, your heart broke a little.
Tears illuminated by the gilded light of the sun fell down his perfectly sculpted cheeks, and his red eyes seemed to glow orange. The necklace that graced his skin glimmered in the sun, a round opalescent gemstone that matched his eyes surrounded by white gold, fit perfectly.
"What... what is this..?" He asked, his eyes unable to tear from the sunrise over Baldur's Gate.
"The Amulet of the Sunwalker." Your reply was quiet, just audible over the rising noise from the city below. "I had been visiting Gale more to try and find more information on it before following the wild goose chase of a trail that had been left behind by an Archdruid of the Circle of Wildfire."
Finally managing to pull away from the light of the sun, like he had been forced to do for so many years, his eyes looked into your own, soft and vulnerable, his love for you intense and palpable.
"You did this for me..?" Astarion's voice was almost a whisper, as another set of tears fell from his eyes, their rhythm off from one another.
"I would go to undiscovered planes for you if it meant you could walk in the sun by my side, Astarion."
A moment of time passed, and his shocked expression turned into adoration. He blinked slowly, drinking in how you looked in the sunrise with a thirst he hadn't known before. Wrapping an arm around your waist, and tangling his fingers in your hair, he pulled your lips to his as his tears fell once more. For once, his tears weren't freezing cold against your skin. They weren't warm, either, but they felt like rain instead, pleasantly between warm and cold. His lips tasted like brandy and biscuits, and yours tasted just as sweet and savory as he had remembered, with the hint of iron he always craved. Your arms wrapped around his shoulders by instinct, and your embrace was just as pleasant as always, maybe even more with the sun shining on the two of you.
His lips parted from yours first, and he wiped his tears on the billowing sleeve of his shirt, before wiping his tears off of your cheeks gently. After another moment of memorizing the way you looked, he pressed his forehead against yours and hummed happily. Silence enveloped you both for a split second, then he burst into soft laughter, chased by your own fit of giggles.
"Astarion?" You asked, your chuckling finally ceasing.
"Yes, my light?"
"Would you care to go down to the market with me? I need to-"
"Absolutely."
You chuckled again, pulling your forehead away from his to look him in the eyes. "I didn't even finish my sentence!"
"You don't need to. Wherever you go, whatever adventures you embark on, I will be there."
Silence washed between you and Astarion, and your brow furrowed in confusion, but he spoke again before you could even formulate the words to reply.
"I don't ever want to feel that far from you again. My bloodless heart ached for you, Tavares. It ached for you so badly that it shook my very being. You felt a million miles away, and if I wasn't as stubborn about staying alive as I am, I would have followed you to the ends of Faerûn - hells - I would have followed you to other planes just to be with you. When we had Cazador in front of us, on his knees, and I was tempted by the very devils that worm had made deals with to ascend, you pulled me from the ledge I would have dove off of. I would have been just like him, but I'm not. I'm better, because of you." He paused only for a moment to press a kiss against your lips as you parted them to speak, quieting you again.
"You have changed my life for the better, and I only hope I've done the same for you. I do not ever want to let you go. And now, I at least know that I can be with you no matter the time of day. I was hoping that I wouldn't have to keep using the sending stone to hear your voice, I was hoping you would come back to me, I was hoping you were safe a million miles away, and I was hoping that when you returned you would still want to stay... and I see now that you want to stay for as long as possible. Tav, my love, my light, my dearest treasure, I love you. I am madly in love with you, Tav."
A giggle escaped your lips as you looked at Astarion, his sincerity clear on his face.
"I love you too, Astarion." He smiled widely at you, and you smiled back. "Now let's get you ready to go to the market, you're in your nightclothes!"
Looking down at himself, a soft sunlit flush came across his face.
"I suppose I am. I do typically sleep at this time, though, you can't blame me!"
Laughing once more, your fingers intertwined with his as you pulled him back towards the inside of the palace.
"I absolutely can," Your lips curled into a smile. "But I suppose I'll go easy on you!"