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Enoki stumbles onto something wounded and raw and frayed within Astarion as he stumbles into most things in his life: blindly, and by complete, utter accident.
Besides the distant sound of the goblin camp’s riotous laughter and cacophony of general noise, the camp is surprisingly quiet in this current evening; normally, at this hour, when the night is fairly young and the fire is going strong, while Gale lovingly tends to a delightful meal for the group, there’s chatter aplenty to listen in on. Karlach and Enoki, in particular, had made it their own personal tasks to provide entertainment for themselves that just so happened to be entertaining enough for the rest of the group to watch.
But there’s no Karlach tonight, nor Shadowheart or Wyll; there had been a few delightfully full berry bushes Enoki had spotted during their travels earlier that day, and Karlach had eagerly tasked Shadowheart and Wyll with her for the job, given she couldn’t pick them herself (no, she just wanted to go look at the wildflowers that grow in colorful clumps nearby). Enoki, usually ever the opportunist, found himself forcefully camp-locked for the night to nurse the wounds he had suffered earlier that day from an absolute beating he took from a thoroughly pissed off ogre and bugbear couple.
(Doesn’t help the fact that approximately two minutes before that scuffle broke out, Astarion and Enoki had downright fought each other to see who could get to the door first and break it open. Astarion had landed a nasty punch, just between Enoki’s ribs, and sure, a rogue’s not physically strong by any means, but ow. )
“Serves you right, soldier,” Karlach had chided earlier, shaking her head for extra theatrics. “Coulda left that couple to their own business, but you just had’ta be a jackass.”
“Don’t look at me,” Shadowheart had said when Enoki had leveled her with the most pathetic, wet-eyed, pleading look he could muster. “I warned you not to interfere. Actions have consequences.”
The only defense Enoki had been able to muster was a pitiful, “I thought it would be funny.”
And it had been. For him and Astarion.
And now, here he sits sprawled against his bedroll, bored out of his wits and suffering a punishment far too cruel for the minor misdemeanor he had committed earlier. He gnaws absentmindedly at the honeycomb Gale had gifted him earlier to hold Enoki over until dinner’s finale; it’s not like Enoki can even offer to help Gale with his dinner preparation, either. The last time he had tried, he had failed to pick up on the multiple hints Gale had been dropping, and when he ended up knocking over Gale’s lovingly crafted soup straight onto the mucky, dirty ground below, Gale had responded in kind with a well-timed thunderwave that left Enoki flat on his ass and back in his bedroll.
He’s able to take hints better now.
It’s not like Enoki can turn to Lae’zel for means of entertainment, either. She had nearly broken his arm last time they had sparred, and Shadowsight had nearly smited her in return, and that had been a disaster to try and settle by the end of the night.
And that just leaves—
Enoki rolls from his back onto his stomach, propping his elbows up and planting his chin pleasantly in his open palms so he can get a good look at Astarion. His dark brows knit together as a frown pulls like a taut bow string on his face, ruddy eyes squinting at Astarion with a look of absolute perplexed, puzzled confusion.
The man in question is standing proudly before his tent, an ornate hand mirror clutched in his hand as he peers into it. Not even peers, rather studies it, scours it, as if he’s searching for something within the reflective material. Enoki finds his attention caught on his companion for a passing minute, head tilted to the side as he watches, trying to piece together what exactly it is that Astarion is up to. His curiosity wins out easily against the option to just lie on his bedroll and let his body recover, and with a (minorly strained) grunt of effort, Enoki hauls himself to his feet, ignoring the concerned look Gale shoots his way.
“Don’t go straining yourself too much,” Gale begins, only to be interrupted and waved off dismissively by a freckled hand.
“Don’t go fretting over me,” Enoki shoots back, humor lacing his tone, “lest you transform from our camp’s lovely wife at home to a nagging hag.”
Enoki doesn’t need to turn around to catch the scowl Gale sends his way; he can practically feel it scalding against his shoulders, and he can definitely hear it in Gale’s retaliation. “I take great offense to that.” There’s no real bite to his bark, a jaded barrier developing the longer he spends in Enoki’s antagonizing presence.
“Bah,” Enoki dismisses again with another wave, and then he’s off, hobbling towards Astarion’s figure.
He creeps up behind his companion as stealthily as he can manage with a limp that leaves him with an uneven, staggering gait and a wince that catches on every few steps. Still, he likes to think he’s mastering this skill, stalking towards Astarion like a displacer beast prowling towards its next future carcass; he’s about ready to pounce, a snide, smartass quip on the tip of his tongue—
“Looking at something?”
Gods damn the wretch.
Enoki’s about to whinge, about to fussily demand how Astarion was even able to clock him approaching behind without even turning around, when his eyes flit towards the mirror Astarion hoists so casually up in his hand. There, it reflects pieces of the camp, what it can reach within its view, and Enoki’s limping figure, with a notable absence of what should have been blocking Enoki from view: Astarion.
Of course. How could he forget? Vampire spawn.
“Just looking,” Enoki says instead, never one to admit defeat to Astarion of all men. “What are you doing?”
“I’m looking too, but not seeing much,” Astarion answers, back still facing Enoki. His voice drops, and even without the reflection’s image, Enoki can tell Astarion’s face has scrunched into that detestable expression he makes whenever he’s grown frustrated with life’s endeavors. “Another quirk of my affliction.”
Enoki snorts, half out of pure amusement and half out of disbelief; he makes an effort to avoid mirrors, whenever he can. “Do you miss it? Seeing your own face?”
“Preening in the looking glass? Petty vanity?” Astarion spins around on his heels, and a man who had never been privy to Astarion’s fits of misdirection may have braced himself for an emotional outburst. Instead, Enoki’s shoulders soften, his gaze focused intently on Astarion as the other’s countenance softens into disappointment. “Of course I miss it.”
It’s hard to tease Astarion when he looks like a sad puppy that’s been kicked three times over and left to stand in the rain, muddy and miserable. Enoki falls into silence, letting Astarion have the floor as his expression hardens once more, a scowl twisting along those pale features. “I never even seen this face,” he spits between his teeth. “Not since it grew fangs and my eyes turned red.”
Something catches in Enoki’s chest, curious, and he blurts out his next words before he can take the time to think. “What color were they before?”
“I,” Astarion starts again, voice sharp along the edges as if he’s about to snap, but something forces him to pause, hesitation pulling him into silence for a fleeting second. Something soft, old and aching, creases along the edges of his mouth as he glances away from Enoki, somewhere off to the side. “I don’t know. I can’t remember. My face is just some dark shape in my past.”
The admission comes out hollow, worn, tired, until it’s suddenly lively with Astarion’s familiar fire as he flings the mirror to the ground and lets it shatter there, an act jarring enough that Enoki flinches. “Another thing I’ve lost.”
It’s a familiar grief, Enoki realizes distantly. He knows all too well the emptiness that’s left in memory’s wake, the strange grief that lingers over not being able to remember your own self or your own history. Everything from his past is shrouded in mystery and confusion, and the glimpses he does get of it aren’t worth repeating, not to anyone else.
Suddenly, his mouth is all too dry; he falls into a lull, a stupid silence as he struggles pathetically to muster up some kind of words, some thing , to offer some form of encouragement, of companionship, of genuine understanding and connection.
Nothing comes out. All Enoki can manage to do is stare, take in every last piece of Astarion’s features; the individual curls of his hair, the lines against his cheeks and mouth and the weariness that edges around the corners of his eyes and underneath.
“What?”
Astarion’s voice snaps him out of it.
“I,” Enoki starts, fails and falls short. He pauses, shifting his weight between his feet, before he leans forward, his own dark ruby eyes fixated keenly on Astarion’s face. “I see you.”
“Oh?” Astarion perks up almost instantly; Enoki would be hard pressed to miss the way his companion lifts his chin and puffs out his chest, just slightly, as if he’s preening beneath Enoki’s gaze. Like a cat putting on a show, Astarion tilts himself to the best angle he can possibly think of. “And what do you see, exactly?”
There’s that stupid, smarmy grin of his; the tips of his canines sneak out with it, peeking out just slightly, a little tease of his true nature. The lines along his face emphasize, formed from years of laughter—however long ago those used to be—and the way his eyes, striking and crimson, crinkle at the corners.
It stirs something painfully fond in Enoki’s chest; he loves to see Astarion grin. He loves to hear his laugh. Even when it comes at the detriment of his own ego at times.
“Well, for one,” Enoki starts, “the creases when you laugh.”
And all that goes flying out the window in one fell swoop; Astarion’s smile drops, his brows lowering until his face has pinched into that goddamn scowl again. “ Excuse me?” he snips, and Enoki can only roll his eyes to brace for whatever tantrum Astarion’s about to throw his way. “I’m an eternally young vampire, not your doting grandmother. Come on, Enoki. You can do better.”
He straightens once more, prideful to his core, as he poses before Enoki’s peering vision. “Try again,” he demands, as opposed to asking.
A sigh heaves from Enoki in an instant, exasperated and sardonically amused all at once. His gaze roams over Astarion once more, from his face to the hair that frames his features; he’s always been enamored with it, unfortunately. Too many times Enoki has caught himself distracted trying to count each individual curl, or admiring the way that it catches in the light or the way stray strands fall against Astarion’s face and he has to fussily blow them away while he’s trying to lockpick.
Enoki likes to tell himself that’s just because he’s envious, he wishes he had hair that nice. Likes to tell himself that it’s envy that festers in his chest and not admiration.
“The way your hair curls around your ears,” Enoki muses aloud, only to be greeted with a gruff huff of exclamation from Astarion, one that leaves Enoki himself throwing his arms into the air, at the crossroads between his wit’s end and a loss for what to do. “I don’t know what you want from me, Astarion!”
“This is meant to be flattery, not poetry ,” Astarion scolds, as if Enoki can tell the difference between the two. Truly, he’s barking up the wrong tree if he’s trying to tell the crossbreed of a warlock and a bard that flattery and poetry can’t coexist. “Just tell me I’m beautiful and we—”
“I guess I could’ve talked about that gods damned mole on your face,” Enoki mumbles, half beneath his breath, on the cusp of being just loud enough to make Astarion’s skin crawl.
And it works, obviously, because in less than a second, Astarion’s hands are at his face, pawing hysterically over the expanse of pale skin there as he fumbles around blindly for any physical raises or blemishes. A strangled, choked noise lifts from him, akin to a bird being shot out of the sky, or maybe the wrong strings of a violin caterwauling at the unskilled hands of a novice.
Regardless, it’s hysterical; only when Astarion catches the trembling shakes of Enoki’s shoulders and his barely stifled snickering does he finally relax in his efforts, letting his hands drop to his hips.
“ Ha, ha, aren’t you the witty one,” Astarion grits out between his fangs. “I’m practically pissing myself with laughter over here. Perhaps you should take up comedy and get the goblins to laugh themselves to death.”
“Oh, come on,” Enoki retorts once his giggling dies down. “You’re an elf vampire with hundreds of years of experience. If I just sat here and cooed about your striking eyes or that dangerous smile—” he makes sure to add an overly salacious drawl to each description, just to emphasize the absurdity of it all “—then I’d be just like every slick-haired sleazeball trying to test out his newest pickup lines.”
Astarion looks to Enoki with a gleam in his eyes, and truly, they do look like twin pairs of carnelian stones when he looks at Enoki like that. That grin quirks at the corners of his mouth again, and that ridiculous pose from earlier returns, chest puffed out with pride and chin tilted up. A goddamn parody of a statue. “You think my eyes are striking?”
Of course that’s what he takes from everything Enoki just said. “You little twit,” Enoki hisses back, no real malice to his words, “you’re hearing what you want to hear.”
“Is it really such a shame I want to hear that I’m beautiful?” Astarion counters, accusingly, and Enoki can’t help but bristle at the tone.
“I happen to like your laugh lines,” he shoots back. “And your stupid hair.”
“You sound like a child fumbling around with his first crush,” Astarion snips. “Those are just—those little quirks are just—”
“What,” Enoki interjects swiftly. “Not sexy enough for you? Everything you do just has to be so erotic, all the time?”
And there it is.
Astarion’s mouth snaps shut immediately and his jaw goes rigid; his face freezes, his entire body freezes, and it’s in that very moment that Enoki realizes he’s not only found a nerve, not only struck it, but traipsed across it like a blinded bear. It’s raw and frayed and so bitterly exposed, sensitive and aching, and Enoki just trampled it. Because this isn’t the look Astarion hits him with when he wants something; this isn’t the look of puppy-eyed Astarion, all miserable and sopping wet and ‘woe is me, I’m just a hungry little kitten lost in the rain’. This is the look of a feral animal, wounded and cornered, pinned to the wall and about ready to start fighting for its life.
There’s a wound Astarion bears that Enoki just dug his fingers into and ripped open, blood and all, and the daft idiot didn’t even realize he was doing it until it was too late.
“Astarion,” Enoki starts, realizing now his error. He doesn’t need to know why it hits Astarion so hard, he just needs to know that it does, and he’s seen it now. He’s desperate to mend the wound, soothe it over, do something.
He’s cut short by Karlach’s victorious war cry announcing her arrival at camp, Shadowheart and Wyll in tow, with a pouch of berries and other forest goods in each of her companion’s hands.
“Oh, goody, your circus is back,” Astarion observes, dryly. “Perhaps you should stick to practicing your jokes with them instead of rummaging through everyone’s psyches.”
With a bitter flourish oozing in contempt, Astarion turns on his heel and slinks back into his tent, ignoring Enoki’s plea of his name. He stands there, mentally kicking himself for a few seconds, before he relents and returns to Karlach’s side like a miserable dog.
❋ ❀ ❁ ❋ ❀ ❁
Astarion doesn’t even leave his tent once dinner is ready and dished out between the whole camp’s occupants. He doesn’t even peek his head out when Karlach leans by and calls him, reminding him that dinner’s up.
“I’ll have to pass tonight, darling,” he had said, breezily as ever. “Catching up on my beauty sleep before I attempt a hunt tonight, of course.”
When Karlach had caught the absolutely dejected look Enoki sent her way, she had pantomimed locking her mouth shut with a key and strode over to his side, settling down and enjoying dinner with him instead.
When dinner’s said and done, and everyone’s retiring to their tents for the night, Karlach ducks her head by Enoki’s ear and whispers a quick, “ Good luck, soldier, ” before she’s trotting off to her own tent for the night. Enoki can only manage a wince in response.
He sprawls out in his bedroll for a bit, flat on his back and barely ignoring the ache in his shoulders and ribs; his eyes focus on the sky for the time being, counting the stars in mindless loops until he’s certain everyone else has either fallen asleep (judging by the snores) or, at the very least, won’t be reemerging from their tents any time soon. With another sore huff, he rolls himself to his feet and steps towards a certain tent radiating bergamot and rosemary.
“Knock, knock,” he calls out, quietly, before he dares to pull the tent covering. A second pauses, then two, then three.
“Are you waiting for an invitation?” Astarion’s voice from inside is already irritated, but there’s that sense of humor still lacing the corners of it. Like he just can’t help himself.
“Perhaps.”
“I suppose you can come in, if it’s so direly urgent,” comes the yielding call. Enoki ducks in not even a split-second later.
Astarion lounges, propped up on his elbows, on the furs lining his bedroll, his eyes hooded and lax as they follow Enoki’s trajectory once his drow companion scuttles his way inside the tent and makes himself comfortable, awkwardly folding himself onto his knees just before Astarion. There’s a subtle tilt of his head, the pristine curls of his hair bouncing with the movement, and a quirk of one eyebrow. “Since when did you practice common courtesy?”
“Learned my lesson today,” Enoki laughs, a bit sheepish. “Nothing like getting a good pounding to knock a lesson into ya.”
A clipped laugh, cruel and almost mocking, barks from Astarion for reasons Enoki cannot possibly understand. Instead of sitting there, spending who knows how long trying to piece together the enigma that is Astarion’s sense of humor, Enoki gestures vaguely to Astarion as a whole.
“Were you going hunting tonight?”
“I was about to leave,” Astarion agrees plainly. “In a moment.”
Enoki doesn’t answer verbally; instead, he merely thrusts his arm towards Astarion, hand balled into a fist and upturned to expose the vulnerable, readily available veins beneath the amethyst skin of his wrist. Astarion’s eyes flit to the offering immediately and harden with an intensity like that of a dog waiting to snatch a piece of meat. Hungry.
Not a word is breathed between the two of them, and still, after what feels like hours (it’s only a minute and a half of waiting), Astarion finally relents. He lets out an almost annoyed sigh, snatching the hand offered to him and leaning towards the skin of Enoki’s wrist with his teeth bared.
“Isn’t it nicer to be served dinner in bed,” Enoki teases, lightly.
“I prefer to enjoy my meals in silence,” Astarion gripes and bears his fangs into Enoki’s wrist. A grimace twists Enoki’s mouth, his face scrunching up as the first shards of icy pain stab through his wrist and a familiar numbness spreads through his forearm, blossoming from the wound; his body relaxes after the initial flinch, having grown quite accustomed to the sensation after countless nights of building up a personal tolerance.
There’s also the added measure that Enoki would prefer to derive delight from his own pain, rather than the gruesome gore of others, but that’s neither here nor there. The perverse creature within him recoils at the notion.
Enoki indulges in Astarion’s wish at first; a tense silence settles between them, smothering and awkward, as Astarion laves his tongue against the wound on Enoki’s wrist and indulges himself in the thick drops of blood that well up from it. It’s a different silence than their usual comfortable tranquility, and it makes Enoki’s skin positively crawl ; he’s painfully aware of Astarion’s innate ability to hold on to ongoing resentment (justifiably so, considering what little Enoki has heard of what Astarion has been through, and for how long), and he’s not keen on letting himself be the subject of that bitterness.
(“People pleaser,” Astarion had tutted, tsking superiorly at Enoki, a few days prior. He didn’t like to leave people upset with him, yes, but he especially didn’t like to leave those he considered friends upset with him either. The realization that Astarion had wormed his way into Enoki’s ever-growing list of friends had been enough to leave him bedridden for the night.)
“Just so we’re clear,” Enoki begins, ignoring the pointed glare Astarion practically stabs his way without pulling away from Enoki’s wrist. “I do think you’re beautiful.”
Astarion still doesn’t remove himself from his feast, but he does stare up at Enoki through his dark lashes, a silent bid for his meal to continue prattling on about his endless stunning looks. Enoki makes a point to tear his eyes away from pretty carnelian and start tracing the patterns of the fabric of Astarion’s tent ceiling. It’s far more interesting to him now. “In the most annoying, pain-in-my-ass kind of way possible,” Enoki admits through grit teeth. “Sometimes you stand in the sunlight just the right way, and I want to bash my head into the nearest tree trunk. Or you say something stupid and wholly like the smartass you are, and you get that smug expression on your face, and I want to go jump into a river. And yes, that does in fact include piercing eyes and an admittedly very dangerous smile, before you start whinging.”
There’s a huff, a reminiscent echo of an indignant laugh that puffs against Enoki’s wrist and tingles the skin there, but Astarion does not de-latch himself from his meal. Not yet, at least.
Enoki continues. “But you’re also allowed to be ugly.”
That is enough to pull Astarion from Enoki’s wrist; he laps his tongue against the wound one last time, collecting the last few sticky, crimson drops that form, before he levels Enoki once again with a look pointed and sharp enough to break Enoki’s skin again. “This would have been a lovely make up dinner, if only you knew when to shut up.”
“Would you—” Enoki starts, ripping his hand away to rummage behind him, for one of the pouches attached to his belt loops, “—let me—” a hand disappears into the pouch and re-emerges, a mulberry pinched between his fingers, “—finish?”
To punctuate his last word, Enoki flings the mulberry and nails Astarion square between the eyes with it. He only derives a minute amount of satisfaction watching the berry bounce off of Astarion’s head and to the ground below, leaving a notable purple smear against pale, pristine skin in its wake. Astarion continues to level him with hooded, bored eyes, looking thoroughly unimpressed and unamused.
One of Enoki’s hands plants its palm firmly on Astarion’s shoulder; his companion doesn’t withdraw nor shy away from the touch, merely holds Enoki’s gaze with his own and silently demands he get on with it. “What I mean to say is,” there’s a pause as Enoki brings his thumb and wets the pad with his tongue, before leaning forward to wipe away the smear on Astarion’s forehead. “You’re allowed to be messy. You’re allowed to get dirty and mussy and not look like the most put together, pampered housecat all hours of the day. You don’t have to be perfect.”
Astarion, surprisingly, remains silent; his expression is unreadable as ever, placid and almost bored, but still, he does not interrupt Enoki nor shoo him out of his tent with a scowl. Enoki likes to consider that a win (whether it truly is, though, is up to interpretation).
“I don’t keep you around for your looks,” Enoki explains, and something softens in Astarion’s features, just subtly so. It’s not much, but his eyes widen slightly, the lids lifting so that he’s no longer half-hiddenly peering at Enoki through his lashes. Enoki finds himself fidgeting beneath the look Astarion pins him with, instead opting to tear his eyes away and glance nervously, even bashfully, at the tent wall behind Astarion’s head. “It’s not even that I keep you around, more so that I like to have you around, if that makes sense. You’re not an asset, Astarion. You’re a—”
He’s not sure why he hesitates. This is a confession that would be so plain in its normalcy that it ought to be expected , had it been a confession between Enoki and another person instead.
“You’re my friend.”
Astarion still has yet to breathe a word.
“Not to say you don’t help out with teamwork,” Enoki offers, rushing out breathlessly. “Loathe as you are to admit it, you actually do help out quite a bit. For one, you damnable wretch, you know how to make me laugh. And another, you’re—ah, you’re…”
His voice drops into a hidden octave, a low mumble that’s muttered beneath his breath like a pouting child. Instantly, life bleeds itself into Astarion’s features once more; he leans forward, practically perked and alert, as he levels Enoki with another sneering, toothy grin. His eyes gleam, carnivorous and cruel. “What was that, darling? I’m not sure I quite heard you clearly. Speak up for grandmother.”
“I said you’re better at lockpicking and trap disarming than I am,” Enoki snaps, mirroring Astarion’s very own scowl from earlier. Detestable little egomaniac .
Astarion laughs, haughty and satisfied, as he leans back on his heels. “You’re gods-damned right I am. Continue.”
“That’ll be the only time I say it,” Enoki warns. “And the others will not hear of that. I’ll never admit it. They’ll never believe you, either.”
“Oh, please, darling,” Astarion all but purrs, tone dripping with self-righteous victory. “My ears were the only pair that needed to hear you admit such a truth.”
“You choose to make things difficult,” Enoki groans. His features soften after a moment, shoulders loosening as he comes to take in Astarion fully. “I do mean it, though, you know. You’re my friend.”
Astarion watches Enoki in turn, that unreadable nature once again gracing his features. “You truly mean that?”
“I would not have fed your already stuffed ego just now if I didn’t.”
Astarion snorts, amused all the same. He breathes out not another word, simply sits there in the mutual silence he finds with Enoki; it’s with a great relief that Enoki realizes the air has settled, less tense and charged with uneasy, unspoken electricity, now instead warmed by something true and—dare Enoki say it, meaningful. A proper expression of kinship.
Astarion is first to yield from the silence. “Alright, now, out with you,” he orders, bringing his hands up to pat at Enoki’s shoulders and shoo him away like a pesky feline. “I need to go get something substantial to eat, and like hells would I trust the likes of you sniffing around my tent in my absence.”
“Oh, you wound me!” Enoki cries out, laments and wails, before he drops all the tension from his body and goes boneless in Astarion’s arm; he flings the entirety of his weight forward, crushing himself into Astarion’s chest as he falls limp, like a wife discovering her husband’s untimely death at sea after months of absence. “I spill to you my truest, rawest feelings, and you return in kind by stabbing a stake into my ribs! Cruel Astarion, he cares not for the peasant that doth cry his love for him.”
“I do not,” Astarion affirms. “I care only to find something to eat.” He pats his hands against Enoki’s shoulders once again, firmer this time as he pushes his drow companion towards the opening that’ll lead them out of the tent. “Up and out, before I throw all self-control to the wind and drain you dry instead.”
Enoki only further falls limp, head lolling forward and dropping against Astarion’s shoulder. “We have revivify scrolls,” he mumbles, muffled by the fabric of Astarion’s shirt.
“Out,” Astarion commands, and this time, Enoki obeys; he rolls away from Astarion and clammers out of his tent, followed in tow by his elven friend. The pair right themselves in almost unison, Enoki stretching out the tender side of his ribs and Astarion rolling back his shoulders to shake out the relaxing pull they had settled into.
“Stay safe out there.”
“I do not need your luck,” Astarion scoffs, appalled, but Enoki can still hear the traces of a smile beneath his tone.
“I’m well aware,” Enoki hums as he limps back towards his bedroll, strewn beside the campfire. “I still like to offer it, regardless.”
“I’ll be back before dawn arrives, my friend,” Astarion calls as he stalks towards the woods. Enoki allows himself this time to grin as he settles into his bedroll for the night; it’s the closest confirmation he’ll pull from Astarion of their mutual friendship, and it is one he cherishes, heart and soul.