Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

A persistent nudging to Astarion’s side drags him begrudgingly from a comfortable state of unconsciousness.

He flutters his eyes open, wincing at the brightness.

Astarion finds himself lying on an open grassy surface with the sun shining warmly on his cold undead skin. Two figures loom above him, both human women in strange clothing. Being the only others present in this clearing, they’re likely the ones who were nudging him only moments ago. He is about to snap at them for disturbing his rest when realization crashes down on him.

The Sun is shining on him.

Astarion is in the sun.

What follows is a mad scramble to the nearest shaded area, a tree he surmises from the sensation of its bark where he has flattened his back against. Astarion’s lungs heave with unnecessary breaths that do little to calm him.

Patting himself down, he is very surprised to note that he hasn’t burnt to death. Isn’t even a little bit singed.

Astarion eyes the division of shadow and light warily.

This shouldn’t be possible. The last thing he remembers before waking up here is having his eye invaded by some kind of worm, and being trapped in a fleshy tube contraption with the impression of falling from a great height.

He shouldn’t be alive at all, much less surviving a walk through sunlight. Perhaps the mind flayers did more to him than foisting that worm on him.

Astarion raises a shaking hand toward the light, bracing himself just in case he—

“Hey!” someone shouts. Astarion snatches his hand back to his chest, snapping his gaze to the speaker, “I’m talking to you!”

The speaker in question is a short human woman with blonde hair twisted messily around a pair of colourful sticks. Next to her is a slightly taller human woman with reddish hair. Both of them are wearing clothes of a cut and fashion that Astarion is utterly unfamiliar with. The fabrics are thin and of bright hues that could only be achieved with magic. Long-term wearing of any of these garments would be a nightmare if one intends to keep up with their repair and maintenance.

In short, Astarion hasn’t a clue as to where he is or what cultural norms he should be adhering to.

“Well, hello! Apologies for not addressing you sooner, I was merely startled. You see— when one is lucky enough to find such a lovely spot for a nap, best take advantage. I’ll be honest and say I wasn’t expecting to be woken up in such a manner,” Astarion forces a light laugh, “But anyway, what can I do for you now that you have my attention?”

Unfortunately the disarming effect of his usual charming self seems to be only half working. The red-haired woman has lost a bit of tension from what he assumes was meant to be an intimidating stance, but the blonde woman only narrows her eyes at him.

“We’re here to see what that bright light thingy was about. You were laying in the grass all unconscious looking right where it happened so we were wondering if you could tell us about it?” the red haired woman asks, “If you were practicing unsafe magic out here and it got away from you you can tell me, I wont judge. I’m new to magic myself so I understand being out of your depth sometimes is part of the learning curve and stuff.”

Ah, these must be wizard students then.

“Ahh, it’s all rather embarrassing, I’ve never practiced more than cantrips and a few first level spells.” Astarion rakes a hand through his hair in mock sheepishness, “I was trying to cast misty step and well– you can see how that turned out for me.”

There, that should account for the ‘backlash’ of light they saw and his sudden appearance if they were around to witness it.

“Hah, yeah. I’m not sure what a ‘misty step’ is–” How can she be a wizard if she doesn’t know what misty step is? “—but you know the first time I tried to make a–”

“Why don’t you come out here where it’s nice and sunny.” The blonde woman interrupts. Quite rudely, Astarion thinks. She might be onto him. He has been careful not to smile widely enough as to show any fang but he ought to do as she says rather than just kill the pair of them if he doesn’t want to draw attention to himself. This is a new environment. Take no chances.

Trepidation returns at the thought of making himself leave the relative safety of his tree-shade. The surrounding area is unpopulated from what he can see at least. There are only trees with multi-coloured foliage to mark the season as around mid-autumn and short well-kept grass. And Sunlight.

What Astarion would like to say is ‘go away’.

What he actually says is, “Of course! Now that I know I’m among fellow mages, I wouldn’t mind discussing the craft over a nice stroll.”

And then, pushing past his fear he tells himself, ‘if the sun was going to kill you you’d already be dead’ and walks out from the shadows with as much casualty as he can force.

And again he doesn’t burn.

It’s glorious.

Astarion laughs, leaning his head back to feel the warmth of the light on his skin. “Oh it really is a beautiful day!”

Foolishly he thinks of how it might be nice to have one of those afternoon picnics with cakes and tiny sandwiches. He remembers reading about them in a fiction book he managed to finish with what scraps of time he could steal away from–

No. No time for dwelling on such matters

Astarion can’t eat cakes or tiny sandwiches. He sobers some at the reminder of his nature but doesn’t lose his good spirits. The sun smiles on him today and he will not be brought down by his inability to eat childish pastries.

“You’re kind of strange, you know that?” The blonde woman says. She still seems skeptical of him but much less so now that he has seemingly passed her little test.

“Buffy!” the red haired wizard chastises, “No need to be the fun police. I think his costume is very nice,” she defends.

Costume? He surveys his clothing and despite his need for frequent repairs to the garments they are in decent condition and are still commonplace in Baldur’s gate fashion. If one were asking Astarion, he would say that their clothes are the ones that look ‘strange’ but he’ll defer to them in this situation only as he is obviously the odd man out.

“Fine, I’ll bite.” she says, no pun intended hopefully, “what are you supposed to be then, an elf?”

“Yes?” He says this very slowly, “And what are you ‘supposed to be then’ a human?”

“Ha Ha, very funny.” Buffy’s expression as she says this reads as unimpressed but there is a spark of humour around her eyes and in the slight quirk of her lips that told Astarion two things: (1) she thinks he is joking and (2) she is not actually annoyed at him for his ‘joke’. “We’re actually on our way to the dorms to change into our costumes now. Had places to be first. Somehow I feel like fairytale costumes and job fairs are non-mixy things.”

“Are you going to the party at Alpha Delta? I heard it’s going to be super spooky,” the red haired wizard chimes in rather excitedly, and honestly, Astarion is having difficulty parsing what either of these people are speaking of.

“So sorry to disappoint,” he says, “As I am always an improvement to any party I attend, but I do have a prior engagement tonight. Perhaps another time.”

Buffy rolls her eyes “Gimme a break.”

“Hah, I bet. But hey– That’s too bad! Maybe we’ll see you around campus sometime?”

“I would look forward to it,” he says, meeting both of their eyes, “And it is a pleasure to meet you both, I am Astarion.”

“That’s a really nice name, huh Buffy?” the taller wizard student says meaningfully.

“Hm, sure Will.”

“And you both are. . . ?” He trails off. Have they no manners in this place?

“Oh, I’m so sorry, I forgot to introduce us. We’re Willow and Buffy. Um, I’m Willow and she’s Buffy I mean.”

“Willow–” Buffy starts to say.

“Right, yes we really do need to get going now. Sorry– Bye!”

And with that the two students walk off at a brisk pace, leaving Astarion thoroughly befuddled and a bit exhausted at the prospect of learning his new environment.

Chapter Text

After the two women have left for their 'spooky party', whatever that means, Astarion spares a moment to take stock of what he has and what his current goals are.

In terms of possessions, Astarion is lucky to have almost everything to his name currently on his person. Unluckily, he has consistently had very little to his name in many decades. Besides the clothes on his back that have been painstakingly kept in wearable condition, he has only a set of thieves tools and trap disarming materials that were necessary for some of his more illicit 'missions' and a few trinkety things he'd collected over the years. Mainly buttons, feathers and shiny things, useless rubbish that wouldn't be missed, really.

As for goals? That's a bit more difficult.

Obviously the first order of business should be finding lodging or shelter, then hunting down a decent meal.

At the very least he'll be able to eat a live rat, untainted by the rot that has permeated so many of his meals courtesy of Cazador. Maybe if Astarion gets lucky today, there'll be a squirrel or even a rabbit he could catch.

More long-term, Astarion supposes, he should consider looking into whether any other vampire related disadvantages might be nullified along with flaming death by sunlight.

This would include: lack of reflection, chemical burns from running water, and inability to enter a living space without an invitation. The first two would be simpler to test than the latter, and checking for a reflection is the least likely to be painful.

Reluctantly, Astarion decides this should be the first thing he tests, though he is in all honesty somewhat nervous to see his appearance after all these years. He hardly remembers what he looked like before becoming a vampire, all that remains are vague impressions of sharp features, a strong nose, and light hair.
Various people over the years have described him but mostly it is in many variations of the word ‘attractive’, and having red coloured eyes. All other vampires have red eyes as well, so it would make sense that they have this in common, but Astarion assumes from the relative lack of staring and questions compared to his ‘siblings’, that he does not share the same black sclera or glowing pupils that they all have.

Having deemed the time passed sufficient for the strange wizards to have gotten far enough for him to leave the clearing without re-encountering them, Astarion sets off in the same direction they'd left. Very quickly, after less than a minute even he senses signs of civilization. Before he can breach the tree-line, he hears dozens upon dozens of humanoid heartbeats, then, less immediately, the sounds of their accompanying voices.

The ‘civilisation’ he arrives at, upon closer inspection, must be the school that the two wizards he met attend. The tall stone structures surrounded by short grass and strangely shaped but clearly healthy trees, do strike him as very scholarly.

Especially with the way young people, perhaps around twenty, if they are all human as they appear to be, all but pour into and out of the large wooden doors of the various buildings. They carry books and light conversation interspersed with laughter, and all of them are dressed in variations of the same strange fashion as the two women from earlier. It’s all very casual and with much less instances of robes, skirts or dresses as would be expected in a crowd back in Baldur’s gate. Astarion can see why he would come across as a bit overdressed in this setting.

The building in front of him, one among many nearby, appears to be a library. The crowded entryway opens into a wide, high-roofed space with rows and rows of tables and bookshelves. And again, a lot of people.

Astarion decides to wait and see if he can explore the library at a less busy hour but does stride over to a notice board covered in posters, coloured papers and bits of writing. The posters turn out to be either extremely vague or incomprehensible to Astarion with his lack of cultural context but he does gather from what most of the texts have in common that this school is called ‘University of California Sunnydale’ or ‘UC Sunnydale’ and that today is a special event of some kind.

This ‘Halloween’ situation explains the over-crowdedness and hopefully means that it will become less so in the coming days when people are more settled.

Astarion knows that, fortunately for the situation, age wise he reads as being on the younger end of adulthood, with humans in their twenties and thirties both assuming that he is within their age range and elves guessing he is anywhere between forty and one hundred and twenty years of age. Besides the fact that Astarion has yet to see any other elves here yet, he should still blend in quite well.

Having settled that with himself, Astarion begins his search for a suitable living space.

It takes the rest of the day and nearly all night for Astarion to find something half decent to move into. And by now, Astarion somewhat understands what people he overheard and spoke with were meaning when they brought up ‘costumes’ now.

As the night drew nearer, and Astarion grew more frustrated with his lack of success, more and more people could be seen wearing either absurd imitations of creatures and animals or other odd clothing choices that are likely meant to represent professions or people of note that Astarion would not be familiar with. Part of this ‘Halloween’ event no doubt but what the purpose of it is however is yet unclear. He doesn't see much reason to dress up as such unless it were part of a disguise.

At around midnight, Astarion has his first stroke of luck, a very well-fed, healthy looking squirrel scampers lazily across his path. Faster than the squirrel could take another step, Astarion lunges, shooting his arm out; he snatches the creature from the ground and drains it just as quickly. He spares only a moment to savour the relative lack of putrid aftertaste before burying its remains in the soft earth under a tree.

A rather uncharacteristic optimism seems to hang over him and spurs him on until his second stroke of luck, which arrives around half past three bells.

Astarion almost didn’t look past the exterior, as small, ugly, block-shaped shacks covered in ‘keep out’ and ‘do not enter’ signs do not typically inspire thoughts of comfortable living spaces, but Astarion is for once, glad for the nagging feeling at the back of his mind that urged him to find a shelter before sunrise, unnecessary as that instinct is now, or else even with his newly positive outlook, he may have never found this place

This structure he has finally deemed adequate is a square building with a door, entry landing and few storage or maintenance closets at ground level, and then a second larger area set lower, making the building appear much smaller from the outside and likely to be overlooked. Much like Astarion himself had almost done. Best of all though, everything inside is uniformly blanketed by a several week buildup of dust meaning that nobody has been here or will be coming back anytime soon. Once he cleans the place up some, it’ll be perfect for his purposes.

Admittedly, the tidying up will be an undertaking of its own considering how absolutely trashed the interior is. Blood, garbage, broken glass, and strangely, boxes full of multiple different peoples’ abandoned personal effects cover the entire space, but Astarion is still very happy with his acquisition.

Chapter Text

Cleaning has never been a favoured task for Astarion but it has historically been preferable to many others he would otherwise need to be doing. In this instance it is preferable to thinking.

After putting together some makeshift cleaning rags, cut from a blanket moth-eaten beyond saving, and wetting them with spring water drawn from some kind of well-spout that he had discovered on the side of the building’s exterior, Astarion easily loses himself in the mindlessness of dusting and wiping down the surfaces of his new home.

He feels disconnected from himself. Or not from himself really, he feels disconnected from his usual reality, not unpleasantly so.

After an indeterminate amount of time, left ambiguous by the tenday’s continuous sun covering cloudiness visible through the shattered skylight, Astarion comes back to himself fully. He is hungry again, a grievance quickly satisfied by a few of the prolific local squirrel population. He is also satisfied with his progress.

The room is now rid of the worst of its previous dustiness, the air still somewhat musty from all the disturbance, but likely to wear off in the near future. Furniture less stained after furious scrubbing, and floors now smooth with their lack of glass shards. Strings of tiny lamps cover the stair rails and walls unevenly but now are blessedly vacated of spiders.

He had at first wondered at the impracticality of having to light each of the tiny things individually, but soon after finding that the pronged end of the string could be inserted in a corresponding socket on the wall and fully illuminating the room, he greatly appreciated the craftsmanship of whoever created them.

Despite the oddity of the wall’s decorations, dart boards, dozens of copies of the same few paintings, and large colourful metal shapes and signs, he will for now leave them up. They are not a hindrance so they can be relegated to ‘problems for future Astarion’.

All the crumpled things Astarion assumes are meant to serve as boxes, are made from a thick spongy brown paper material rather than wood. He has piled these and the various miscellanea in one corner, and has a second, rather impressive pile of oddly colourful trash packed into a more weathered paper box in another.

Most of the trash is made from a clear filmy substance that crinkles like dry leaves but doesn’t crumble, often having segments of writing on them or small pictures of people, food, or clothing. It gives Astarion pause, why anyone would bother painting or using a stamp to add such adornment to items as unappealing as these.

Regardless of their needless decoration, there is not any use for these items and many are caked with grime. Astarion elects to dispose of them when an opportunity arises, or perhaps leave the box out somewhere where others who are more knowledgeable of their purposes can pick through them, taking what is needed.

For now, Astarion leaves the box and its items in one of the unoccupied ground floor storage rooms. Dusting off his hands, he turns to the corner containing all the potentially useful items.

Even narrowed down as it is, the mountain of abandoned belongings is rather daunting. He winces as one of the boxes tips slightly spilling writing implements that clatter as they fall and a few stark white papers to flutter onto the ground and other boxes.

With a sigh, Astarion runs a hand through his hair.

Spotting the corner of a leather bag, on a whim, he grasps it and begins to pull it from its place near the bottom of the pile. It is wedged between a number of boxes and a cheaply made lamp and he has to brace his foot on the box above it in order to finally yank it out effectively. He holds the awkward position for a moment until the precarious stack resettles itself before withdrawing carefully.

This leather travel bag is of a relatively decent quality, roughly the size and shape of a small crate but much more flexible, it will be a fine receptacle for his future scavenged possessions. There are even sturdy shoulder straps for easy transportation and several pouches distributed around the exterior of the bag. The clasping mechanism is a strip of tiny interlocking metal shapes that are clasped together by a metal tab as it glides from one side of the bag’s opening to the other. It is the perfect bag to store essentials that he would need to retrieve and carry quickly in the event of having to make a hasty escape. Which is, unfortunately, still a very real possibility.

Perhaps today he’ll only go through a few boxes, just enough to find a few clothing items. Maybe some books. Much has already been accomplished towards improving the space. The remaining mess can be addressed some other time.

Astarion will spend the rest of the waning daylight hours, (and isn’t that a strange sentence to be able to say) seeking out ways to integrate himself into this new reality.

Xander can’t believe he thought staying on as an employee after the Cavemen fiasco would be a good idea. After the old owner skipped town and the place was reopened a mere one week ago, the campus bar has been more busy than ever, but with shockingly few bartenders to keep up with them.

At the moment, there’s just Xander. Poor Xander who is all alone to face the hordes of tipsy college attendees waving dollar bills in his face like he’s the world’s worst stripper.

And he can’t even appreciate all of the hot pre-med ladies celebrating some academic success or another because there’s just too goddamn many of them and he actually needs to focus on his job. Wild concept.

Retrospectively, Xander’s first week was pretty embarrassing, so at least he’s gotten a bit better at the whole drink-mixing process. First week Xander would have died if he was up against this kind of crowd.

Having an extra set of hands around here wouldn’t hurt. If his manager was doing his job and finding new hires, this wouldn’t be nearly as bad.

Xander closes the blessedly, non-warlock-enhanced-beer tap and gathers the handful of now full beer mugs onto a tray which he then passes off to the less than thankful hands of a tall sporty looking guy and his friends.

“And, there you go,” he forces his best customer service ‘I’m totally not dying inside’ smile, “Anything else I can get for you?”

“Get us some more peanuts, waiter boy.”

Xander blinks, “Of course. More peanuts, again. Coming right up,” he says, then under his breath as he turns from them, “What is it with these idiots and peanuts?”

As Xander sullenly shoves his way back behind the counter, a rare gap in the crowd opens to show the lanky, mustachioed bar manager, Roger, dragging a shell-shocked looking white-haired man in a turtleneck towards him. And is he wearing elf ears?

“Xaden!” Roger shouts, patting Xander’s shoulder with his hand that is not currently still holding Turtleneck Guy’s arm.

“It’s Xander, actually— “

Roger takes no heed of Xander’s perfectly reasonable assertion of his own name, “Xared, look, this is your new coworker, Alarian! I found him outside looking at the job postings board.”

The man, Alarian apparently, finally frees his arm and glances warily between Xander and Roger, “Yes, pleasure to meet you both. My name though, It’s Astarion, not—” Xander barely has a moment to process that the man has a British accent before he is interrupted.

“Ah, semantics,” Roger waves him off, “show him the ropes will you Xameron? I’m going to go add him to payroll and all that” he calls over his shoulder as he disappears into the crowd, making an exit just as quickly and abruptly as his earlier entrance.

This leaves the two newly official coworkers staring blankly after him.

“Xameron? Really? That’s not even remotely close. Sometimes, I swear he just does that to be a dick,” Xander says.

“Right, is this . . . typical? For local hiring practices?” Astarion asks.

“Oh, God no,” Xander laughs, “if you mean the whole ‘hiring you on the spot’ thing, that’s just a perk of this particular job since no one wants to work here after the Caveman incident. The wrong-name thing I have no idea, that’s just Roger for you.”

When Astarion looks at him like Xander just tried to eat his own arm, he continues, “—but don’t think of quitting just yet okay? The pay is surprisingly decent, and there’s lots of cute girls here, and I really need the backup.”

“Alright,” Astarion says slowly, “show me what I need to know.”

“Yes! Great, so. This is where the peanuts are, when people ask for peanuts, you’re gonna fill one of these little plates and—”

Hours later with the bar the same amount of crazy busy, but now significantly more manageable thanks to having a second employee to divide the work, by all rights Xander should be feeling pretty good.

Tragically, though, life has a way of mocking him at every corner because Xander is seriously reconsidering his earlier suggestion that the new guy give working here a chance.

At first everything was going fine, people were buying beers, Xander and New Guy were giving them to them.

Then, around an hour ago things started to feel a bit shifty, New Guy was getting a lot more attention of the female variety and seemed fully in his element soaking it in.

In any other situation, the now, near perfect divide of men on Xander’s half of the counter, and women on Astarion’s would be funny but seeing as how it is actually happening here, now, to Xander and not some poor nameless cartoon character, it isn’t funny in the slightest.

Stupid Astarion with his stupid turtleneck, looking all tousled and British and hogging all the hot women’s patronage.

Xander can feel his soul leaving his body, he can’t believe he’s surrounded by drunk men demanding peanuts while he’s being upstaged by a man who decided to wear elf ears to a job interview.

After the bar closes and Xander is finished showing Astarion the closing tasks, the two of them are finishing wiping down the last of the tables in not-so companionable silence.

“Hey, Astarion,” Xander says.

“Yes?” he replies, not looking up from shaking some wrappers off a tray into the trash.

Rude.

“What’s with the elf ears?” This finally gets Astarion to look up at him.

“ Excuse me?” and oh, he sounds way too offended than he should for someone who wears a costume for no reason.

“What’s with the ears?” he repeats,

“I’m an elf,” Astarion bites out.

“I can see that, but why? You a Lord of the Rings super fan or something?”

“What do you mean why? And I am not beholden to any such Lord, nor will I ever be. I am Lord of myself, thank you very much,” Astarion drops the tray into the receptacle with a dull clatter, more emphatically than the task merits. He huffs a breath through his nose and turns from Xander to walk up to Roger's office just as the manager opens his door.

Xander watches as Astarion’s body language changes from ‘cat with its hackles up’ to ‘calm and professional’ in the instant that Roger turns his gaze up to him. Shoulders dropping, hands relaxing, other subtle differences that he can’t quite pinpoint but contribute to the overall effect. It’s genuinely eerie.

Maybe Xander can convince the gang that this guy is a demon like Buffy’s roommate and then Xander won’t have to work with him. That'd be nice.

Realistically though, Xander knows that this guy is probably just weird, rude and inexplicably doted on by the fairer sex, and that dealing with difficult people is one of the cruel realities of being a mature adult with a paying job.

As Xander gathers his stuff, he hears the tail end of Astarion and Roger’s conversation.

“When will I be compensated for my day’s employment?” Astarion asks.

“Ah, probably about a week and a half, we do paychecks bimonthly, Speaking of which, here’s your schedule and uh, fill this form out by next week and we can get you properly set.” Roger hands him the same paper that Xander got on his first week.

Astarion squints at it for a moment then smiles genially, “Thanks Redgeleam, I’ll get this back to you as soon as I can. Have a lovely evening!”

The way he swans out of the room like he owns the place shouldn’t be allowed. He’s too smug for his own good.

“Hah,” Roger barks a laugh, “Never heard that one before. You see that? I like this kid, he’s got moxie.”

As Astarion treks back to his shelter under a yellow and orange setting sky peppered by sun warmed clouds and vees of birds calling in the distance, he supposes that the day could have gone a lot worse.

At least he has some form of employment. It’s not nearly as bad as his previous situation, and besides, they're actually going to pay him.

He idly kicks a pinecone as he walks, watching his well-worn leather shoes tap-tapping the smooth grey rock slabs of the pathway with each step.

It’s a real shame his co-worker is so grating and potentially prejudiced against elves. Astarion had been hoping to make some positive connections towards future benefit.

At least the tavern’s patrons seemed amiable enough, though he would rather they didn’t lean so close to him. Alcohol breath is an absolute affront to his heightened vampire senses.

Chapter Text

Astarion Ancunín: 3:44 PM

Astarion wakes in his shelter-building to the uneven smattering of warm afternoon sunlight on his face.

After what has become a typical routine of momentarily panicking in his recently awoken state, then relaxing just as quickly when he remembers the non-fatality of it all, he groans and buries his face into the soft assortment of pillows and blankets to block the light.

The impressive collection of bedding he has amassed to fit onto the ratty beige couch is so comfy. Would it really be so bad if he just tranced for a few more hours? Maybe a week?

It's only been four days since he started his new job and he can already feel his momentum waning.

Perhaps he just needs to find more things to occupy his time, to convince him to get out of bed everyday.

He'll be fine as long as he can keep moving.

Astarion levers himself up off the couch, shuffling towards his travel bag of belongings.

He chooses for himself a pair of blue canvas-like material pants, a soft beige high-necked shirt that he wears under a dark blue knit over-shirt then pulls on his own well-worn leather boots.

For a final touch Astarion dons a light brown jacket that he personally finds quite plain, but knows is a good match for popular styles he has seen worn frequently by patrons and passersby.

He had found a better jacket, in his pilfering of the box pile. A beautiful black leather jacket, lined inside with fabric the colours of dark tea and old paper. Most notably, embroidered on the exterior are dainty, long-finned, orange and white fish, that he traces his hands over longingly, feeling the transition between smooth leather and firm, precise stitching woven tightly into it with colourful threads.

This, Astarion would much rather wear, but tragically, lovely as it is, it's not an ideal clothing item for blending into the local populous. And as Roger the tavern manager claims, it is against the ‘dress-code’.

What exactly the rules of this ‘dress-code’ are, Astarion has no idea and Roger has been less than forthcoming, but from what he has been able to glean from these few interactions, he should aim to look presentable in the most dreadfully boring interpretation of the word possible.

Still, he selfishly keeps the intricately decorated jacket tucked in with the rest of his things, if only to be able to look at it occasionally.

Anyanka “Anya” Jenkins: 7:17 PM

Anya is very displeased with Xander.

Today the two of them were going to pretend to watch a movie but then actually just have sex and she was very much looking forward to it. Xander is good at sex.

This was supposed to be his day off work too so it’s not like he had a reason not to honour their scheduled activity.

Honestly, sometimes Anya wonders why she expects anything from him if he’s going to keep ‘flaking off’ on her as Willow would put it.

Well, if Xander is going to be like that then Anya is at least going to annoy him for it. Her two most promising prospects of current mission ‘find Xander and tell him he’s being rude again’ are 1) his workplace, and 2) wherever Buffy is right now.

Since Buffy is a moving target, and not one of Anya’s favourite people by a long shot, Anya has decided to try the campus bar first.

She pushes the front door of the establishment open to dim lights and a quieter than normal hum of scattered conversations amongst the sparse collection of Tuesday night bar patrons.

Behind the bar stands one lone bartender, polishing already pristine beer mugs from the looks of things. Average height, handsome, white hair, pointed ears. Not Xander.

Anya huffs, dropping herself into a stool on the far end of the bartop.

“Can I get some kind of alcoholic beverage that has the little fruits in the bottom of it? Or with olives if you don’t have the fruits, in which case, put extra olives.” She asks the not-Xander bartender
.
“Of course” the man says smoothly, already setting out the various drink mixing tools, “anything else?”

“No, that’s everything,” she throws a few currency papers onto the bartop, then rests her chin on her fist, “---or actually, yes. Is Xander back there? Hiding or something?”

Looking up at her with a bemused expression, the man says, “No, he has the night off actually,” then after a moment, “Pardon my asking, but what do you need with Xander?”

“So you do know him,” Anya laughs bitterly, “He inspires that reaction from people a lot. We were going to have a sex evening since he’s not working but he never showed up.”

The bartender finishes pouring and hands her the finished drink, some kind of cocktail. It’s more fruit than liquid and has a tiny blue umbrella and a paper straw sticking out of it. Taking a sip, she finds herself perking up a bit. The drink tastes like fruit and flowers but still burns pleasantly the way decent liquor should.

“Yes, This?” she gestures vaguely at the glass with the end of the drink umbrella, “---is actually good. You know most people when I tell them ‘put fruit’ they give me exactly one piece and then the alcohol part is also very gross.”

The white haired man chuckles lightly, the sound reminding her of a small bird’s song, “Well, as always, I live to impress.”

He rests his forearms on the counter and faces her, “Since it is a rather slow night, and somehow, I’m under the impression you didn’t actually expect to find Xander here,” and he still pronounces the name like it tastes bad to say, “what truly brings you here? What troubles you?”

Anyanka “Anya” Jenkins: 8:06 PM

“--- and that’s when Giles and I broke in with a chainsaw to save them.” Anya finishes emphatically, “So it’s not like I’m incapable of helping him and his friends with their adventures, it just doesn’t occur to them that I’m a total asset. They treat me like I’m naive or— or stupid! even though I’m several centuries older than them!”

Anya exhales heavily.

The bartender, who she has learned over the course of their hours of conversation is named Astarion, takes another sip of his matching fruit monstrosity cocktail and nods sympathetically from where he now sits next to her at the counter “Ah, I partly know how that is. I think a lot of people, especially of comparatively short life-spanned species, don’t understand that just because someone looks like they’re only in their third or fourth decade, doesn’t mean they actually are, nor does it mean they should be treated with disrespect—-”

Anyanka “Anya” Jenkins: 10:32 PM

Anya should probably go home.

It’s getting late and despite Anya’s perfectly respectable tolerance, the alcohol might be beginning to get to her.

But then again , Xander’s probably going to be there now because it’s late and it is his house she’d be going back to after all.

Anya should make Xander be the one to look for her for once, she thinks vindictively.

“Anyanka?” Astarion asks her.

“Hmm?”

“Do you know what a Social Security Number is, or where to find one?”

This string of words means nothing to her, especially given her current state.

“No idea.”

Anyanka “Anya” Jenkins: 12:21 AM

About an hour and a half from the bar’s closing time, in walks a woman Anya does not recognize, carrying with her a beat-up canvas duffle bag that she drops to the floor next to her as she slumps into a stool a few seats down.

Her posture looks sullen and there is a distinctive red blotchiness to her under-eye region that tells Anya she has recently been crying.

Despite her ‘retirement’ from Vengeance, Anya feels drawn to the woman’s plight.

“I’ll have one of whatever that is,” the woman tells Astarion, while pointing at the remains of an emptied fruit cocktail glass.

Anyanka “Anya” Jenkins: 1:19 AM

Anya shows very remarkable restraint by engaging in only surface level small talk with the woman, Jocelyn is her name, initially. She waits impatiently, though she doesn’t let it show, for the woman to bring up her troubles first.

Unfortunately for Anya, she doesn't seem at all forthcoming with whatever is upsetting her, choosing instead to drink and talk about her favourite types of sugary cereals in an ironically gloomy tone.

Knowing nothing about children's breakfast food, Anya keeps herself an active participant in the conversation by nodding and humming at what she hopes are the correct moments.

It is only when Jocelyn, likely a little drunk at this point, makes her third self-deprecating comment in the span of five minutes that Anya breaks and decides to strike anyway.

Nobody who is content with their life can make cereal so depressing.

Anya smoothly moves to sit closer to the woman, “It sounds like you really haven’t had the best day.”

Jocelyn laughs wetly, "You can tell that easy, huh?"

"Nothing to be ashamed of darling," Astarion says, sliding the woman's fourth drink to her, "we all have our rough patches."

"That's the thing though, It’s not just a rough patch, I packed my things and left as soon as I could" she lightly kicks the duffel bag at her feet, "I can't go back there now, not after he sold my baby so he could buy that stupid SUV."

Anya rears back in shock and indignation, barely noticing her expression mirrored in Astarion’s, "He sold your infant child!?"

"What–? Oh! No! No, he sold my motorcycle, I don’t have any kids," she pokes a fruit cube with the drink umbrella and eats it, “thank god for that, I never wanted any. Tony did though.”

“And Tony, he was your boyfriend?” Anya prompts.

“Fiance actually, since– maybe two weeks ago?” She is silent for a few moments.

“Wish I’d never said yes,” the sentence begins despondently, then frustration creeping into her tone, she continues more sharply, “because then all he wants to talk about is ‘we’re a grown up couple and should have a grown up car’ and ‘we need to start taking steps to support a family’ never mind that only I’m twenty three and always said I wasn’t interested in that stuff.”

Anya reaches a hand to rest on her shoulder and speaks to her sincerely, “If you ask me, you did the right thing walking out when you did,”

“You really think so?”

“ I do, from my experience, situations where people try to pressure you into things you don’t like never end well for anyone involved.”

Jocelyn huffs before taking another sip from her paper straw, “I usually think of myself as pretty easy going but it’s just that, as if getting an ice cream cake for the engagement party wasn’t bad enough— he knows I’m lactose intolerant— he just had to go and sell mymotorbike, like he had any right to it.” she tips her head, letting her face fall into her hands.

Anya says nothing. She waits for Jocelyn to continue.

“It’s like he doesn’t see me you know? Like I’m just some– accomplishment that he needed to reach the next ‘stage of successful adulthood’,” she says, then quieter, “It’s not fair.”

“No, it’s not,” Anya assures.

Anya lets their words sit heavily in a few moments silence, letting the confession and reassurance rest, sink in.

“Do you ever wish you could make him understand?” Anya asks, leaning in, “Make him feel the pain you do?”

“Yeah,” Jocelyn speaks quietly, reminiscently, “Yeah, I do.”

Jocelyn breathes, she looks more settled now if a bit tired, a bit drunk.

Finally, she says, “I wish that someone would drive his stupid SUV into his stupid house and then he would understand what it’s like to not feel in control of your life.”

Anya smiles.

With no true humour or happiness in the expression, letting a familiar sense of justice settle onto her shoulders like a cloak, “Done.”

Chapter Text

“No, Willow, listen—” He hears Anya huff over something said over the phone. Astarion can vaguely recognize the name referenced, “Well obviously I’m not calling for social reasons, we’re not friends, and you don’t like me for some reason. Whatever. See— there’s a woman at the bar, she’s crying and—” here Anya glances at Jocelyn, ”possibly drunk. So. She needs a place to stay for the night— ”

Astarion half listens to his new acquaintance (friend? ally?) using the corded, oblong shaped communication device to find accommodations for Jocelyn, her apparent charity case who currently still sits at the bar counter.

Although, sitting is putting it generously.

The woman looks half melted into her seat after all her recent bouts of crying and alcohol consumption.

As Astarion gingerly pulls a mostly empty glass from her loose grasp to clean along with the last batch of the night’s washing up, he finds it within himself to grant her the smallest shred of pity for the plague of a headache she is sure to have tomorrow.

The last of his closing up tasks pass quickly and soon, Astarion finds himself begrudgingly helping Anya half-walk, half-carry the woman to the residential area of the University.

Quite Frankly Astarion has no idea why he decided to go along with any of this.

Maybe it’s his ongoing need for allies in this strange new place, or the way Jocelyn’s statement struck a chord in him.

Her wish for her now ex-fiancee to “understand what it’s like to not feel in control of your life” had felt more familiar than Astarion would like to admit. . .

More likely than either of these options though, Astarion will choose to believe he has opted to participate solely for the chaos of it. It has been far too long since he has done anything illegal.

Come to think of it, has even stolen anything bigger than a wallet since landing here?

Yes, this ‘goody two shoes’ streak of his ends now.

Right after they can delegate Jocelyn to be someone else’s problem, that is.

Huffing, he readjusts the woman’s arm higher onto his shoulder from where it began to slide off. It certainly doesn’t help that with his state of inebriation, the ground appears to be doing it’s best impression of a ship’s deck in a storm and he has to step carefully to compensate his uncharacteristic lack of balance.

“Jocelyn, please, work with me here, darling. You can nap when we get to Anya’s friend’s house, hm?” Astarion reasons.

“Not my friend,” Anya mutters.

“Whatever man, I’m going to take such a nap though,” Jocelyn brags, “Just– like, the most sleep to ever be had.”

“Yes, very nice. That sounds lovely,” Astarion hums, “Now, then! Let's pick up the pace, if you fall any more asleep, kobolds are bound to snatch your shoes and sell them as purses.”

The woman who opens the door to the (thankfully) first floor room of the university lodgings is a red-haired human woman wearing brightly coloured overalls and some kind of fluffy tunic, an odd outfit choice considering the time of night.

She is also immediately familiar as the wizard scholar he met on his first day in this new plane.

“You!” she blurts out.

“Me,” Astarion blinks slowly.

“Good, you guys already know each other. Here’s Jocelyn,” Anya cuts in, blunt as ever, all but shoving the semi-conscious woman into Willow's care, “make sure she drinks water,” she intones sternly, already walking back down the corridor they came in from.

“Okay, sure. Um, thanks Anya?” Willow calls after her, before turning her attention back to Astarion. “You know, for Anya, this is actually pretty sweet of her. She doesn’t usually do compassion from what I’ve seen, but anyway— It’s great to see you again! Astarion right?”

She pronounces his name more like A-stare-ion with a long A sound but he is mildly impressed that she remembered his name at all so he only nods, attempting to reflect the woman’s genial smile back at her, “And you are Willow, indeed it is an unexpected but pleasant surprise to make your acquaintance again.”

“It totally is! Nice to make your acquaintance again, I mean. That would be weird if I was saying it’s nice to make my own acquaintance,” she laughs nervously.

“Ha, yes, I’m sure.”

The silence that follows has a thick awkwardness to it only compounded by the way Willow still supports Jocelyn with one arm slung over her shoulder. The woman snuffles quietly, rubbing her cheek on the fluffy material of Willow’s sweater, clearly getting a headstart on that record-breaking nap she was planning.

“Well.” he claps his hands together, “As lovely as this has been catching up and all, I should probably go. I think Anya will just keep walking without me if I don’t leave now.”

“Yes, right,” Willow says lamely, “But! Before you go, —here.” she shuffles through her pockets one handed to come up with a pencil and a scrap of paper to write on. She scribbles something on it that looks like a time and a, he squints at it as she hands it to him, a building number perhaps.

He raises an eyebrow in question.

“For my Wicca group. Cause you’re into the magicks, and community is key!” she says, finally depositing Jocelyn on one of the two beds in the room as gently as her thin arms and waning strength allow for, “Or was it communication. . ? Something like that. Community and communication both happen in group settings though, so either way you’d be covered! So, um, what do you think?”

The woman stares up at him hopefully, hands wringing nervously.

And Astarion— he genuinely considers it.

To his surprise, he senses no ulterior motives from her, romantically or otherwise. Truly a rarity, considering Astarion's– well, everything really.

He feels strangely relieved, and as such, reluctantly curtails his immediate instinct to come up with a suitable excuse to avoid attending.

From the wizard’s absolute mess of an invitation (honestly, do they not teach court manners at this wizard school?) Astarion has gathered that a ‘wicca group’ is likely some sort of coven. Not a bad group of people to endear himself to, wizards are formidable opponents, so having a few on his side could only be beneficial.

He’ll have to meet the people first, of course, he reasons with himself. No use planning around these potential allies only to find out they’re all hostile, or worse, extremely annoying.

Thumbing the torn paper, Astarion settles for something non-committal that isn’t an outright refusal.

“Well, I’ll have to check my availability, busy schedule and all that, but that’s very kind of you to offer, darling. Perhaps we’ll meet again.” he pockets the paper, waving delicately to them as he turns to leave.

“Yes!” Willow pumps her fist “Okay, bye Astarion!”

“Bye ‘Starion,” Jocelyn waves floppily from somewhere in Willow’s living space

Between the two of them and a shoddy paper map that Anya had wheedled Jocelyn into circling their target’s home onto, Astarion and Anya manage to navigate themselves to a very manicured neighbourhood populated with loafish two-story homes built onto flat, uniform squares of short grass.

Not even plants, aside from the grass, are willing to grow here, it seems. A few sad-looking trees can be spotted, though despite being of decent size, they are few and not very impressive.

“This neighbourhood is a blight to the landscape. I can understand why this would be unappealing to Jocelyn,” Astarion wrinkles his nose at the blandness of it all, “My current home is no castle, but I’d sooner drink cursed hagsblood than move into one of these depressing clone houses.”

Anya laughs, the sound light if a bit restrained. “Shhh! Shh– we’re here. Look.”

The house they crouch next to, is differentiated from its neighbors only by the scraggly tree growing large in defiance of its yard and the ‘SUV’ in its paved pathway. Astarion is grateful for its placement relatively out of the main road, making them somewhat less likely to be spotted as they complete their task.

Tragically though, even with Astarion’s excellent thieving skills, he can only get them so far.

He was eventually able to pick the lock on the door of the ‘SUV’, which turned out to be a white car as blocky as the house it sits in front of, but how to get the car to ‘start’, as Anya put it, has been nothing short of impossible.

Well, if she’d like to try getting the gods-damned thing to work then by all means. Astarion has never been overly fond of mechanical constructs anyway, prone to malfunctions and too oily to meddle with without getting covered in that infernal substance. He is no stranger to getting his hands dirty, but the way grease refuses all attempts to wash off never fails to aggravate.

Astarion sits on the ground, his face resting against the cool metal of the car’s side as he watches Anya continue struggling to ‘hot-wire’ the thing.

“How do you know this is even going to work?” he complains, “Why don’t we just snap some branches off the tree and just,” he mimes swinging a branch violently, “and then we steal everything in the house of monetary value and destroy everything of emotional value. Simple.” he huffs, dropping his hands.

“I saw it in one of Xander’s movies,” She says. Astarion scoffs. Xander. “If you touch two wires of the correct colours together, it’s supposed to make sparks and then the car will start. It should not be taking this long.” Anya frowns as she continues unsuccessfully mashing cut wires together.

“And besides, that’s not how Vengeance works,” Anya yanks at the handful of mechanical viscera, “I have to do exactly the request of the wronged individual. It’s poetic justice! Powers, or no powers, this is my vocation and I won’t let this– this, ugh--! Setback, keep me from it.”

This Astarion can understand, most likely some kind of Deity non-specific binding oath. He’s not even going to ask about her apparent loss of ‘Powers’ though, from experience that only makes people angry.

“Very well then, I can respect that” Astarion nods his head to her, “But! We really should find a better way to go about this. Perhaps we can just push the car? If we wedge it with something, get enough force and aim for the massive front windows, maybe we can. . . ” He trails off, inspecting the wheels and front of the car, mumbling to himself.

“What’s all this then? Trying to make off with this car?” Said an entirely new voice from a random, sharp featured, blond man in a weather inappropriate ankle length leather jacket. A person who Astarion could have sworn was definitely not standing there ten seconds ago.

No matter, the man looks less than law-abiding himself and is unlikely to rat them out for some mild mischief. Astarion offhandedly categorizes him as a non-threat to their mission.

Astarion resumes placing his head against the car to listen carefully for signs of life in it.

“Go away unless you know how to hotwire a car,” Anya succinctly points out.

“Hah, well love, it’s your lucky day. I’m somewhat of an expert, but that’s going to cost you. I am having the worst day of my very long lifetime.”

“Okay,” Anya said, half-humouring the man but not looking up from her task, “like what.”

“Like. . .” the man’s pale head peaked into the car above her, opening a couple flaps only to tsk disappointedly, but seems to decide it ‘good enough’ anyway as he says “Hah! This.” He points to a square machine with knobs and dials all over it attached to the center front of the car’s interior, “I’ll let you keep the tires though, I don’t have anywhere to hold them currently.”

Anya doesn’t even know what that box-machine is, but it seems appealing to the man.

“Is it necessary to the function of the car?” she asks.

“Ah, no. Not really,” he says bemused.

“Then sure, you can have it. You have to make the car start first though, or no box for you, we got here first. I already cut most of these wires so it should be easier for you anyway.”

“Already cut the wires for me have you. . . Great, so helpful. You’re lucky I don’t bite lately,” he mutters under his breath.

True to his word, the man does manage to start the car. Astarion leaps up and emerges from around the car at the sound of the engine coming to life.

“Excellent work Anya!” he praises.

“Thank you,” she replies simply.

The blond man throws his hand up in exasperation, “Doesn’t matter,” He yanks the box-like contraption from its socket, “I’ll just be going then, leave you to it.”

When neither of them reply, both already getting into the vehicle and jerkily attempting to drive the thing, the man scoffs, “Good luck” in parting and stalks off into the artificially lit residential streets of Sunnydale, car radio tucked casually under his arm like a wheel of cheese.

“Why do you get to drive,” Astarion pouts.

“Because this is my mission,” Anya snipes back, “You probably have no idea how to even drive one of these things.”

Astarion side-eyes her as he pockets a fragrant paper tree-shaped dangly thing, but says nothing.

She takes his gloomy silence as answer enough, and smiles smugly.

Anya is extremely capable, she assures herself, even at driving, a task which she has never done before, but is sure to be excellent at.

Anya steps on the ‘go’ pedal firmly.

The next instant, she is death gripping the steering wheel with wide eyes as the car shoots forward much faster than she was expecting.

Her deft manipulation of the wheel unintentionally swerves them off her desired straight-line course into the house front, to instead spin around, swerving wildly and smack into the side of the large tree.

A great CRACK signals their impact, and both of them are thrown forward from their seats into spontaneously generated, air-filled pillows.

Anya is thoroughly spooked, heart pounding but otherwise unscathed.

“F-fuck, I think my nose is broken,” Astarion whines, pinching his nosebridge to stem the bleeding, a novel occurrence since he has never had blood enough to lose much to an injury, “I never should have agreed to this. Why do things always happen to me–?”

Ominous creaking sounds from the very large and now very structurally damaged tree interrupt any stray thoughts either of them might have been having.

Anya fumbles her door open, scrambling out onto the grass. She is quickly followed by Astarion, whose side of the car was too damaged to allow for door-opening.
The two of them watch with bated breath as the tree lets out several small popping sounds before making one final drawn-out SNAAAP and toppling directly onto the house, sending splinters flying.

The tree, being quite sizable and clearly very heavy, fully crumples a section of the roof, tearing clear through it and wedges partly into the floor of the second floor. Branches lower on the tree break into the bottom floor window, shattering them with sprinkley sounds of broken glass skittering onto previously pristine wooden flooring.

A moment passes. Nobody moves.

An angered shout sounds from in the house, “What the fuck—?”

Anya needs no more convincing and proceeds to make a run for it. The only sensible response in situations like these.

Behind her, she can hear Astarion doing the same. The two of them sprint a good few streets away from the house and its newly installed tree.

They stop finally, ducking behind a fence near the neighbourhood's edge. Anya begins to cackle, and Astarion joins her with a giggle, somewhat impaired by his potentially broken nose.

“Was that close enough, do you think?” she pants out.

“What–?

“For–” she has to stop to catch her breath a moment, “the. . . poetic justice?”

"Yes. Sure Anya, that was very poetic."

Chapter Text

“Are you sure this is fine, Anya? I can drag myself home if I really must,” Astarion would rather prefer not to though, he’s hoping his protest is only appreciated as the gesture of goodwill that it is.

“Pfff, it’s fine,” she scoffs, “You live on campus, right? That’s like– forever away. You’d have to walk so far. Don’t even worry about it,” Anya reassures.

The living space she drags him into is a concrete basement space re-fitted to be only half-way habitable with various beat up furniture items and a few fluffy throw rugs. Not at all what Astarion had expected based on his interactions with Anya.

Astarion sniffs delicately, crossing his arms to stave off the creeping basement chill he had somehow become unaccustomed to since moving into his shelter-home.
“Here,” Anya throws an armful of pillow and blanket onto one of the throw rugs. She then fluffs the pillow until she deems it adequate, and places it in the middle of the rug to lay down with her head on one side of it,.

“Hm?” Astarion observes her uncertainly. What exactly is she asking him to do here?

Anya huffs, patting the empty side of the pillow, “You put your head here– I only have one pillow, so we’re sharing it– and then you put your feet the other way. Like that,” she gestures vaguely, “the blanket’s mine though, I’m not sharing it.”

Astarion feels himself relax.

Sleeping arrangements, that’s all. Not even directly next to each other.

He mimics Anya, resting his head on the pillow next to her but laying down so that his legs are stretched out in the opposite direction of Anya. The result is that the two of them are laid out like two spokes opposite each other on a wagon’s wheel, taking up the better part of the small living space’s floor area.

“I wish there were more people like you where I’m from,” Astarion confesses, half embarrassed with himself that he even uttered the words.

“What– Vengeance demons?”

Astarion does not correct her assumption. He does not tell her that he meant ‘people who actually keep their promises’, who spin tales of folktale-like rescues, or defending one’s honour from those who would do you wrong, and actually following through. Astarion is not a sentimental fool, who speaks kind words for no reason.

He is surprised to find himself laughing, feeling more than hearing the sound well up from his chest into the still air.

Once he finds air enough to speak with, he says, voice still light with laughter “Yes, Anya. Vengeance demons. I wish every city had at least four of them dropping trees on noble houses left and right.”

“Thanks Astarion. That might be the nicest thing anyone’s said to me this century.”

“Oh, I bet you say that to all the elves you bring on your little adventures.” Something about having this conversation on a basement floor strikes Astarion as extremely funny.

“What?” She says, half laughing as well now. “I’m serious. Nobody else seems to think of Vengeance demons as the harbingers of truth and justice we’re supposed to be.”

“Anya, you told me not two bells ago that you once replaced the vocal cords of an entire choir group with poisonous sea slugs.” He glances sideways skeptically.

“Pff, they deserved it,” she defends, he thinks in what counts as a joking manner, coming from her at least.

“And people thought they were mocking the king! So they got executed for it!” His criticism is only token, though. Were Astarion capable of such magical feats, he might have tried something similar himself. He amuses himself by picturing a certain waste of space Vampire lord trying to seduce someone only to cough up poisonous slime at them when he went to speak. Cazador always prided himself on his propriety and elegance. Seeing him do his best crushed-spider impression all over his guests would make Astarion’s century.

“Whatever, that slug incident was centuries ago, so it’s fine. I’m sleeping now.”

“Goodnight,” he says to no answer. Somehow, Anya has fallen asleep instantly.

Astarion does not expect his stay to be especially restful, but nonetheless, he eventually succumbs to his nightly trance to the sound of even breathing.

A loud slam followed by angry footsteps jolts Astarion awake and has him scrambling backwards until his head hits a table.

He breathes quickly and reaches for a weapon he does not have.

He settles for holding his hands loosely by his sides, ready to strike should anything come too close.

His eyes lock onto the intruder, only to find. . . Xander?

Astarion turns to Anya, who has also woken up now, albeit more gracefully. She has zero of Astarion’s brief panic in her demeanour. She seems annoyed even.

“What the hell, Anya? What is this?” he throws a hand out to point at Astarion.

“It’s Astarion. I thought you knew each other,” she says, “And why are you being so loud? We were trying to be asleep. That was very rude of you!”

“Hah!” Xander barks a laugh, “Sure, we ‘know each other’, forgive me for not expecting to come home from saving Sunnydale to see you singing kumbaya with my asshole coworker!”

“Oh, come on! It’s not like you haven’t let Buffy sleep on this very floor more times than—”

Astarions eyes flick between Anya and Xander several times as they continue their back and forth.

He should probably just sneak out while they’re distracted, maybe jump in a lake while he’s at it. At the very least, it’d be preferable to listening to Xander’s harping.

Before Astarion can carry out any such plans, lake-jumping or otherwise, Xander whips around to point at him, who still awkwardly hunches next to a scratched-up coffee table. “And you!” the man shouts, “Just leave! Or something. And don’t come back trying to steal my girlfriend!”

“Darling, calm down; I was attempting no such thing.” Astarion stands smoothly and walks close enough to be able to count the man’s eyelashes if he were so inclined. “You,” he says, resting a hand on Xander’s shoulder, “Are hardly worth my time or breath, and your insecurity is making you look so foolish.”

At the man’s shell-shocked expression, Astarion pats his shoulder twice before withdrawing to say simply, “I’m not here for Anya like that, darling.”

Xander calms slightly before a half-horrified, half-flustered expression takes over his face, ”You’re not here for me are you?”

Astarion barks a laugh, “Good gods, don’t flatter yourself. I think it says more about you than me that that’s the first place your mind should decide to wander off to.”

“Ugh, no it doesn’t!” at Xander’s outburst, Astarion only raises a single brow. Sputtering, the man continues, “Don’t you have anything better to do than cosplay and ruin my life?” And Xander is staring at his ears again. Really, Astarion is beginning to find how much attention they seem to be garnering annoying. Perhaps he should start wearing hats to circumvent the experience entirely.

In any case, Xander does have somewhat of a point. Well, actually no he doesn’t. But what he said reminded Astarion that perhaps he should start doing more than working part–time and eating squirrels to fill his days.

To Xander though, he says, “Hm, you seem awfully interested in how I spend my time, shall I write you up a schedule? No, no, that wouldn’t do you any good would it? You’re already so terrible at keeping up with your own engagements. If you tattooed your shift schedule on your own hand you'd still find a way to show up late.”

“Shut up!” Xander shouts. To this, Astarion can only laugh, and while the man is distracted, surreptitiously swipe his wallet in continued retribution.

“Oh, come now. I’m only teasing. In any case, I really must be heading home now,” Astarion says, then to Anya, “Bye Anya! I’ll see you for your next night out, hm?”

As Astarion is already stepping outside, Anya, still cobwebbed with remnants of sleep, says to him casually as anything, “Yes, I’ll come find you if anything comes up. We should probably consume less alcohol next time though. Goodbye,” before shutting the door abruptly.

Astarion takes this in stride, stepping around the corner of the building before looking at his prize of the stolen wallet.

Much like the man himself it seems, Xander’s wallet is rather disappointing. There’s a few low-numbered currency papers and several rectangles with pictures on them that he can assume are equivalent to identification papers. He flips through these curiously. This is likely the sort of thing Astarion needs for his job.

Xander Harris, born in 1981, brown hair, brown eyes—

Xander Harris, born in 1981, brown hair, brown eyes—

Xander Harris, string of numbers—

Xander Harris, born in 1979, brown hair, brown eyes—

Xander Harris— Astarion flips back to the previous card. 1979?

That’s different from the others, and here Astarion has to stifle a cackle. In the picture in the top corner, the man sports a truly atrocious and obviously fake mustache.

Clearly, this is a false identification. Astarion pockets it along with half of the currency papers and discards the wallet close to the door as he walks past it.

This way, Xander might believe he dropped it while distracted as he opened his door only to find an unknown visitor sleeping on his floor. Or, more likely, he may guess exactly what happened. But even then, he will be unable to report the missing identification due to its false nature.

Astarion can only hope this will make the man’s life at least 20% more inconvenient.

With the wallet planted and nothing else to do, Astarion begins the long trek back to his shelter building.

The air is pleasantly cool for once, compared to the over-warm heaviness of the daylight hours. In the wake of his eventful day and return to mischief, Astarion resolves that he’ll continue making strides to take a more active role in his day-to-day life.

Chapter Text

The day following his little ‘adventure’, Astarion regrets his vague resolution to ‘get more involved’ when he finds himself poorly hiding a hangover from a room full of wizards.

Uncharacteristically self conscious, he pulls his new hat further onto his head to better cover his ears.

Despite being the best of the hat options he could find among his scavenged clothing options, the hat is still rather unfortunate looking. It’s gray, canvas and resembling what Astarion has observed fishermen in Baldur’s Gate wearing, save for its lack of pockets and fishing lures attached to it. The fishing lures at least provided some colour. Maybe if he had a few of those he’d feel a bit less like a bag of grey sand.

Astarion has never been a hat wearer to begin with and mainly tends to think that anyone who consistently wears a hat that serves no purpose beyond fashion must be lacking sufficient hair styling skills. Astarion has excellent hair but- Well. It is what it is, he supposes. Nearly everyone Astarion has spoken to have made some comment or at least stared at his ears longer than could be considered socially appropriate.

Begrudgingly after weeks of this behaviour directed at him and the obvious lack of any other elves, or any kind of non-human diversity among students at the university, Astarion has to come to the conclusion that this school must be highly prejudiced.

It's sad, really. How many young elves out there wish they could become wizards but are thwarted by the discriminatory practices of academia?

No use thinking on that right now. Astarion will simply have to try passing as human to avoid being singled out so often.

He sighs, pinching the bridge of his nose at a dull flare up of his headache. Willow has not yet arrived at the meeting since he entered the space detailed in her handwritten note. Though, it seems like not many others have either.

A few women can be seen shoving couches and chairs into a circle and others setting up a table with small packaged teas and hot water.

Astarion doesn’t remember particularly liking tea, but he busies himself with preparing a cup anyway.

“Hi! You look lost,” an unfamiliar fake-cheerful voice addresses him, “the poetry club is two doors down if that’s what you’re looking for? This room is reserved for the Wicca group and that tea was really expensive! So it’s like, for members only, you understand?”

Astarion’s teeth itch with annoyance. Nothing about him says poetry enthusiast, thank you very much. He rolls his shoulders to shake off the sympathetic ache that settles on them. “Hm, well I’m here and not two doors down, now aren’t I?” he leisurely stirs some sugar into his drink, “I’m exactly where I intend to be, so don’t you worry your pretty head about it.”

“Well, it totally is my business to ‘worry about it’ considering I’m the coven leader? and you’re telling me you’re actually a witch? Really?” What? Images of hags spring to mind, but he just as quickly pushes them down. It stands to reason that she implies that she herself is a witch so perhaps he has misconstrued the purpose of this meeting.

Tentatively he decides to proceed as if ‘witches’ in this realm are a subcategory of wizards that practice a slightly different class of magic.

“Well, as a matter of fact, yes I am. I was personally invited to join this group along with a. . . colleague of mine. By the name of Willow, if you know her.” The woman narrows her eyes at him and leaves the tea making area to retrieve a clipboard from her earth-toned and bead-covered bag across the room. Astarion takes the opportunity to avail himself of his freshly made tea, and begins sipping the hot beverage casually. It tastes like nothing, as most foods do since being turned, but he relishes the way that drinking it causes the woman no small amount of irritation. The warmth that seeps into his hands, he supposes, is not bad either.

“This,” the woman says as she returns, gesturing with a clipboard, “is the sheet of prospective coven members we have on file for today, and luckily for you, there really is a ‘Willow’ listed, so we’ll give you a chance. But, you’re not what I’d normally expect from new members,” she looks him up and down, “like, at all. So if I find out this is some kind of practical joke, Gaia’s disapproval will shine heavily on you.” Well, that’s awfully rude to point out, but now that more people have begun to file in for the meeting, he can sort of see what she means.

There is not a single other elf or man in this room besides Astarion. Which is- fine? He supposes. But he really does stand out.

“I’ll be on my best behaviour,” Astarion assures silkily.

“Um, I didn’t get your name . . .?”

“And you won’t,” Astarion laughs, “I have need of it, but you can call me whatever you’d like, darling, so long as it’s not ‘lost’ or ‘poetry fan’ again.” The woman calls him a ‘strange one’ but doesn’t press him further, so he considers the interaction a success.

In the next few minutes before the meeting, Astarion does his best to make conversation amongst the small crowd that begins to form. He falls easily into his ‘charming socialite’ persona and makes a few tweaks to better blend in when he realizes that the leadership and veteran members of this group are of the false ‘down to earth’ variety of pretentious scholars. This mainly involves talking slower and agreeing with criticisms of popular activities and conventions.

To his major disappointment, there is exactly zero discussion of cool spells.

He is saved from further conversation by Willow finally gracing the room with her presence. Astarion carefully extricates himself from the discussion of philosophy as it relates to non-traditional deity worship he’d been trying to appear an active participant in, and joins Willow who has migrated to the tea area.

“Willow, darling, I was beginning to think you weren’t coming.”

“Hey! You made it. That’s good. Oh, my last class was on the complete other side of campus, so it just took a while to get myself here. You probably know how that is. It almost seems like the schedule people put the required classes as far away from each other as possible on purpose.”

“Yes, I’m sure,” he laughs. Silence passes between them for a beat. Astarion takes another sip of tea.

“I like your hat,” she says. And he at first feels offended because surely she’s making fun of him, but before he can snip back he notices Willow sports a similar style of hat that is, if anything, even more an eyesore than his own. Not only is it brightly coloured, it is also patchworked, seemingly at random. He can’t completely fault her for the hat’s appearance, since it seems obvious that she really must love that hat given how many times she has repaired it, but it is unfortunate that she couldn’t find the same colour of fabric for the patches. Hats are not an ideal place to hold eighty percent of your outfit’s colour palette.

With this in mind, Astarion manages, “And yours as well! Interesting use of colours,” even though it physically pains him to say.

“Well, great minds think alike, and all that y’know? So- What classes do you have this semester?” she asks. And this is likely meant to be safe, inane small talk but Astarion has to internally scramble to think of an appropriate answer.

“Well, you know, some pretty standard classes, there’s. . . Literature, and History. And I also have-” what subjects did Astarion study when he was actually in school? It’s difficult to recall considering the literal centuries it has been since then, but he manages to come up with, “Constitutional Law, and Contracts.”

“Cool! I’m taking Psych, Bio, Ethno-Musicology, Intro to—” Willow counts the classes she lists on her fingers as she goes, and comes to a grand total of five for the semester. Most of them being subjects he has never heard of, but that is to be expected really. Astarion has never been much of a student of magic, and besides, even if he were they most likely have different names for some of their directions of focus.

“Ah, very nice,” Astarion answers, not allowing any of the unfamiliarity to show in his demeanor, “Full course load. Pretty busy semester then, hm?”

“Yeah,” she laughs, “there were just too many good ones and I—”

Astarion never hears the end of Willow’s sentence because at that moment, the woman he had spoken to earlier, the ‘coven leader’ interrupts the room’s scattered conversations with a grave declaration, “The meeting begins.”

With that, everyone moves to claim seats. The couches and more comfortable chairs go first to the people fortunate enough to be closest, and the rest are left to pretend not to fight like children for the remaining non-hard chairs.

Astarion ends up mildly seething as he is left with a creaky wooden stool, not even sat next to Willow. She smiles at him across the circle, in a way that is likely meant to be encouraging, but all Astarion can think of is that this group may not be worth his time if they can’t even organise decent seating arrangements.

There are even three people who have even been relegated to spaces on the floor, though he suspects two of them have chosen this for themselves on purpose since they came prepared with small mats to sit on. The last of the three, a blonde woman doing her very best not to make eye-contact with anyone present, sits rather morosely a few people over from him.

Were Astarion a kinder man, perhaps he would offer her his seat, but the thought of being below everyone and potentially getting dust on his pants is enough to chase off any charitable ideas.

After a short recitation of blessing from their deity, disappointingly all anyone appears keen on discussing is methods of accruing funding or ‘spreading the blessing to the sisters’ via newsletter.

Astarion should have expected this, really. Typical wizards, all bureaucracy and logistics, no actual practicing of magic. It’s dreadfully boring.

Vaguely, he listens as Willow tries to steer the conversation, “---and all this stuff sounds great and um, fun and all, but aren’t there other things we might show an interest in? As a Wicca group?”

“Like what,” the coven leader blinks at her, a nervous tension furrowing her brow. Clearly, she doesn’t enjoy constructive criticism.

“Um, well, there’s. . . the wacky notion of casting spells?” Willow hedges.

“Oh, is that all?” another of the high-ranking coven members scoffs, “and do you think we should fly around on brooms too then? Turn some people into toads maybe? No?”

The woman on the floor speaks up haltingly as if to defend Willow’s assertion, but she is cut off and spoken to mockingly before she can even get a word in.

“That is so unempowering of you,” the coven leader continues, chastising Willow sternly.

“It’s true. You know, one person’s energy can suck the power from an entire circle.” another member adds.

How useless! They are just like those nepotistic flour weevils that took up space in the Civil Law Ministry when he used to work there. If this is how they conduct their meetings and treat new members, he does not need them.

“What do you mean circle? The only two people interested in useful things here are Willow, and that sad woman you made sit on the floor!” He gestures to each woman in turn, the sad woman starting a bit as he gestures in her direction. “What shape even is that? A line? Maybe a triangle if you include me? Certainly not enough for a circle.”

The crowd is none too pleased. It seemed as if everyone had forgotten about Astarion until he spoke and now a dozen pairs of eyes are narrowed in his direction.

“I knew letting you join was a risk.” The coven leader accuses, as if Astarion personally had been the one to incite any questioning of her leadership. The woman then turns to address the rest of the group, “Is this the kind of aura we need polluting our most sacred meeting?”

Heads shake in disapproval of him.

Someone whispers “I bet he wears that hat because he has bad hair.”

Astarions eye twitches.

He stands suddenly, snatching the case of expensive tea from its station as he stalks past, “I’m giving this to the poetry club, and telling them you sent me.”

As he exits the room, Astarion hisses the incantation for his single available cantrip to set the stool he previously occupied on fire with a superfluous snap of his fingers. It bursts into flames, startling Astarion and eliciting a few screeches from the gathered witches. He snuffs it quickly so it does not overtake the room, but leaves the embers of the stool for the witches to deal with.

It seems that the weave is much more potent here and he will have to keep it in mind.

Chapter Text

It shouldn’t matter to Astarion that the wizard group was a dead end.

If he really needs a wizard, he supposes he can still ask Willow. At least that bridge hasn’t been burnt yet.

It’s just that, well. Things technically have been going quite well for Astarion lately. He has a job, a shelter, actual possessions for once, a steady supply of squirrels to eat, and free reign of Sunnydale and all it has to offer. But still, somehow, Astarion assumed that with freedom to walk in the sun and without . . . other limitations he’d be doing more than just ‘quite well’ by now.

To say Astarion is feeling a bit melancholic is an understatement but somehow he still manages to throw on a bland, beige outfit with one of his recently dug up hats, and drag himself to work by ‘8 PM’ in the evening.

It’s only a half shift though, thankfully, since it’s ‘almost midterm season’, and a ‘monday’ and they’ll only need one person at a time to run the place.

Roger (the tavern manager) greets him as he enters the establishment, “Afternoon, Sumerian. Listen— It’s been over a week now, right? Since I told you to bring in your papers and such?”

“Yes, I suppose it has,” Astarion says carefully.

“Now I’m going to hedge my bet that you’ve got a student visa but it’s not the sort that covers, ah, employment as it were?”

“Be careful with what implications you’re about to make.” Astarion subconsciously runs his tongue along his teeth.

“Nah, no, listen. It’s fine, I’m not going to rat you out to FAFSA. That’d put me down a perfectly good bartender, and that’d do neither of us any good, hm?”

“Wherever you’re going with this, I suggest you get there soon,” Cutting and running is starting to look awfully appealing at this point. Astarion is mildly concerned about this ‘Faffsa’ and what they might do if they caught him.

“I can make you an offer. You get paid in cash, end of every week, no worries about, uh, whatever it is you’re worried about.”

“And?” Astarion crosses his arms.

“And you still get to keep your tips, but you’ll get paid a little less hourly than you would otherwise. But hey, you’re getting paid at all so that’s a good deal if you ever saw one. What do you say?”

Astarion frowns but still shakes the man’s hand.

The whole situation rankles in the back of his mind throughout the rest of an otherwise uneventful shift. Who is this Faffsa? What do they want with him? Are they also racist agianst elves? Do they know he’s a vampire?

The irritation is a sharp persistent presence in the back of his mind, not unlike the feeling of something almost but not quite touching the space between one’s eyes on the nosebridge. Only decades of practice allows him to keep the sourness from his demeanor.

He doesn’t keep himself from throwing peanuts at two obnoxious patrons, though. He deserves as much after the week he’s had.

Afterwards, it takes everything he has just to sulk home and flop face first into his blanket hoard of a sofa.

Astarion pulls himself together enough the morning following, to make an effort at cheering himself some.

He pulls out his clear basket containing his accumulation of trinkets. The few things he brought with him from Baldur’s gate are now joined by:
Scented paper tree from the SUV he had crashed with Anya
Shiny bits of jewelry salvaged from his shelter’s box pile
Pair of sunglasses he had pickpocketed off someone who had sneezed without covering their face
Hair clip with little birds painted on it that he found under a ‘vending machine’
Clicky pen from a school building floor
Leather wallets lifted off a pair of rich old men at a coffee shop who cut in line as if their time was more important than his (watching one sneer at the other for forgetting his wallet only to realise his own was missing was very gratifying)
Xander’s comically fake ID
Single packet of expensive tea from the Wicca meeting
Roger’s name tag

Lining the items up and recalling where he got them from is soothing in a way. As he sets them all back into the container, Astarion decides that attending a few classes seems like a good start to getting back into the swing of things. Astarion had truly thrived at university the first time around.

He was decent enough at the typical memorisation and practice of the taught subjects, but his ability to understand and cater to the professors’ preferences in written works was what made him excel. As much as academics like to think themselves above such pedestrian things as bias, it's fascinating how much implying the same leanings in opinion and artistic preferences can do for your standing in a class.

In any case, Literature seemed like a likely first foray into university here. ‘Learn a people’s reading and history and you learn their present’ and all that. It wasn’t difficult to ask around until someone knew where a class for it was being held.

Some things unfortunately seem to be constants, regardless of realm though, Astarion thinks as he settles himself into a hard, cramped folding-chair with a miniscule attached desk surface.

A bespectacled woman with dark hair pulled into a tidy knot at the nape of her neck arrives. She sweeps through the arriving students to a desk at the front of the room framed by wall to wall chalkboards. Snatching up a white chalk, she crisply writes ‘Novel rating and review’ before underling it all twice clack clack and returning to the desk.

From a brief-case adjacent leather bag, she pulls forth a clipboard and a bright blue writing utensil.

The abrupt sound that is produced when she raps the writing utensil on the clipboard quiets the room and draws the attention of the now mostly seated audience of students.

“Attendance,” The woman announces. Attendance?

Astarion balks. Looking around the room he can see nearly a hundred different faces.

On top of being extremely inconvenient for Astarion who is surely not on this list, it seems like poor time management. Surely there are better ways to use valuable class time than individually confirming the presence of several dozen students?

“Those of you who are here from the waitlist, I’ll get to you at the end. I want to remember your faces,” The professor peers into the audience as if searching for the unfamiliar faces among the familiar. A small chill creeps down Astarion’s spine when her gaze passes over him, stalling for a moment before moving on.

True to her word, the professor really does call nearly every student in the room to either a tired call back of ‘here’ or ‘present’ or in one unique instance, ‘thanks, you too’ where afterwards the poor student does their best to hide beneath their bookbag as a few snickers pepper the room.

“Okay, it’s not that funny, settle down,” the Professor shuts them down.

“Laurie? Is Laurie Ferris here today or has anyone heard from her? No?” When no response from the audience is forthcoming, the professor strikes a clean line through presumably Laurie’s name on the attendance sheet.

The rest of the attendance goes much the same, though with a few absences recorded and alarmingly at least two more names completely crossed out.

“New people now,” she flips the top page back over the clipboard to reveal a second, smaller list, “Jamie?”

“Here.”

“Marsha?”

“Here.”

“Jackson?”

“Here”

“Herbert?”

….

“Herbert Chester? No?” she moves to cross the name out.

“Wait!” Astarion is surprised to realise he is the one to have spoken, “That’s me, Herbert, I’m here,”

The professor’s scrutinizing gaze directed at him so intently all but bores into his forehead and he has to restrain himself from shifting uncomfortably.

“Your name is Herbert Chester?” Though he doesn’t like the skepticism of her tone, part of Astarion appreciates her not thinking he looks like someone named ‘Herbert’.

Still.

“Yes, it’s an old family name, though I’d really prefer Herb instead.”

“Ah, there it is. . .” Astarion pulls off a shelf near the back of the library (bookstore?) a hardcover copy of one of the dozen or so books on his shiny new reading list. Under his other arm rests a rather impressive mismatched stack of volumes he’s already tracked down.

The book itself is a rather bland cloth-bound volume, typical of mass printed school copies. It is only marginally decorated by its red colour and the swooping calligraphy of the title.

“Dracula,” he reads out, absently flipping to the back for it’s description, “A thrilling tale–” likely fiction then, he muses, “-- beginning with a young English lawyer’s meeting with the elusive Count Dracula to discuss a property transaction, as the man slowly begins to uncover the secrets of Dracula’s castle and the Count’s hidden vampiric natu—” Astarion snaps the book shut, “Oh for fucks sake.”

“I have had it with all this godsdamned---” Astarion flicks his eyes up at a quiet shuffling sound, “ Oh, hello Willow.” He hides the book behind his back and falls just short of pulling his expression into a believable closed mouth smile.

“Hi Astarion! Are you um, like are you okay?” She picks at a loose string from her green and pink striped sweater’s sleeve.

“Yes! Yes, fine. I was just. . . Ah, getting my reading list for a class I just started off the waitlist,” He curses the way his voice goes high and thin throughout his explanation.

“Uh huh,” She sounds distinctly unconvinced, abandoning the sweater thread to now hold her own book hugged against her body.

“What did you pick out there?” He gestures to the greenish book currently in Willow’s possession, “Anything interesting?”

“Just some folklore stuff. Uh- Research project with Tara, you know?” And she doesn’t let up her inquisitive stance, for once, not falling for his admittedly weak deflection.

Astarion sighs, dropping his arm. Willow’s eyes immediately zero onto the movement.

“Oh, Dracula huh?”

Asatrion turns his chin up, “I don’t want to talk about it.”

She only raises her eyebrows, falling into step beside him as he purposefully strides towards the checkout desk.

“It just seems like a rather silly topic for a book to be about,” he allows.

She snorts a laugh, “You kind of have a point. I love a good book, even the dry and crispy—”

“Dry and crispy?”

“Yes, wordy, hard to read. ‘Dry and crispy’ y’know?”

“Not really, but okay.”

“Hey Lawrence, See you on Thursday!” A woman he vaguely recognizes from his Contracts class waves to him as she passes. He waves back absently.

“Lawrence?” Willow’s face screws up in confusion.

“It’s ah, a joke between friends. You had to be there,” Astarion assures with a fake laugh.

“Sure. . . So anyway, I love reading, even the dry and crispy kind—” Astarion rolls his eyes at her emphasis on the words, “but I couldn't make myself finish Dracula. Not that Dracula had dry and crispy prose—”

“Please stop saying ‘dry and crispy’, It’s desiccating my brain,” He lets the words lie for a moment amused at the disappointed droop of her shoulders, then continues, “In any case, I believe I understand your meaning. You were attempting to commiserate about required readings?”

“Oh! I mean, yeah? I just found it really unrealistic, you know?”

That makes sense, he considers, as he begins setting his books onto the checkout counter. There are many, even in Baldur’s Gate, that believe vampires to be a myth—

“Like, the wolves?” She interrupts his line of thought, “That’s just not a thing! Vampires and wolves do not get along last I checked, much less have some kind of like, symbiotic alliance involving—”

Astarion just looks at her expressionlessly, pausing with a book held midway to being set down. “And you spend enough time looking into vampiric anthropology to find the discrepancy. . . upsetting?”

“No, just like, figuratively! I mean! Or metaphorically maybe? Something? I don’t spend any time reading vampire stuff at all! Because vampires are not real! And I definitely don’t believe in them or anything like that.” Willow's eyes are wide and bright, paired with excessive nodding. It’s the wrong motion to reaffirm her statement in this case but the vehemence of it is. . . well, not convincing but it is certainly something.

She’s a wizard. This is a wizard school. It makes just as much sense for her to believe in vampires than not, so he’s not sure why she feels the need to be weird about this but he’ll let her figure whatever this is out on her own.

“Ah, sure Willow, I believe you.”

“Is that everything for you today?” The woman behind the checkout asks. She wears a name tag reading ‘Cathy’ and smiles with all her teeth, likely to hide the bored, ‘I want to go home’ expression that lies just beneath.

Astarion pulls out a handful of crumpled currency papers and drops them next to the books. As they land, small plumes of dust are disturbed from them and onto the dark wood of the desk, “Will this cover it?” he asks. He had specifically chosen some of the larger bills, two ‘100s’, a ‘50’ and a few ‘20s’.

‘“Uhh yes? ‘Cover it’ is one way of putting it. . .” she mumbles.

He watches, enraptured, as ‘Cathy’ begins waving a black hand-held object emanating red light at each book in turn to a short chirping sound from the construct.

“Can I get your student card for the textbooks though?”

“Hm?” He tears his gaze away from the red light scanning thing, “Oh, Ah. I haven’t gotten around to having one made yet.”

The woman sighs, retrieving something from a lower shelf.

“Cheese,” she says.

“What— ?.” A bright flash of white light is suddenly blinding him, he cringes throwing an arm in front of his face too late.

When no more flashes seem forthcoming, Astarion slowly lowers his arms. He grasps the edge of the desk for stability as he blinks owlishly to shake loose coloured spots from his retinas.

“Geez, warn a guy!” Willow defends on his behalf, passing her own book selection to be processed warily.

“How was I supposed to know this guy’s allergic to pictures? Hey— buddy, you okay? Need you to fill out some info real quick.”

A pen and paper are handed to him and he squints at the written questions thereupon, quickly filling them out. With the exception of ‘student number’, (he puts a random 8 digit number for that) he answers all question boxes honestly for once. He winces at the thought of keeping up with all his many and varied new aliases racked up in the past couple days.

“Thanks,” Cathy slides the paper over to herself and quickly taps the lettered keys of her heavily modified type-writer. “Oh, haha very funny,” She taps the entry written in next to ‘Date of birth’ with a pink manicured fingernail: “This says ‘the 8th of Winter’s third month, roughly 240 years ago'."

Astarion crosses his arms, mouth downturned slightly. That’s perfectly accurate to the best of his knowledge.

“Why are you like this? I’m just gonna assume you meant 24 years ago. Which means 1975. . . winter’s third month is January. . .” she trails off, mumbling as she types.

Another tap of a key, this time with some finality to it, and another construct next to the typewriter begins to whir, depositing a small white card with a delicate clack onto the lacquered desktop.

All his books are slid into a beige cloth ‘UC Sunnydale’ bag and set onto the counter.
“That’s so nice you give out reusable bags now!” Willow enthuses, then turning to Astarion, “That bag is going to go with all your outfits!”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Nothing,” WIllow says, half-guilty sounding.

“What?” he pushes.

“Well, you um, wear a lot of beige.”

“And?”

“And, I don’t know it’s. . . beige-y?”

Astarion sighs, collecting the bag of books and accepting the small card, receipt and change with the other hand, retreating from the checkout as they are passed to him.

He stops walking abruptly. Willow says something but Astarion can only continue to stare blankly at the card. Beyond the wildly unflattering expression of confused discomfort, the face depicted is angular and pale, red eyes framed by silver eyebrows and stray curls of shock-white hair poking out from under his hat.

“Is this really what I look like?” Astarion barely registers the words he mumbles. His face feels numb.

Willow pulls his arm, the new card with it closer to her own face for a better look, “Aw Astarion. Everyone has at least one bad picture ID experience! And it’s not too bad, y’know? It’s not like you’re going to have to show this to anyone besides the odd librarian. . .” Willow continues talking but Astarion tunes her out.

He looks. . . young, is the word he settles on. Much younger than he feels. Somehow, he’d been implicitly expecting there to be some visible evidence of the many eventful years since his undeath.

“. . . except for Cathy back there, she did seem a little judgy, but I still stand by my statement that most librarians are super un-judgy—” Astarion shakes himself from his reverie at Willow’s continued rambling.

“What are you—? I mean, why should I care anyway when I’m this good looking in person?” He gestures expansively to the entirety of himself, painting on a self-assured smirk.

Willow only huffs a laugh at that, shooting him a look of amused sympathy.

As the two of them exit the library, the TA for Astarion’s ‘20th Century History’ class moves past them through the same door.

He startles Astarion with a pat on the shoulder and a genial, “Take it easy Vincent, don’t forget the readings for next week!”

Chapter Text

TARA’S DORM: Monday, November 22, 11:25 PM

(Tara)

Night has fallen. What few shadows produced by slivers of moonlight through clouds are long and tinted blue. If one were to step outside, their breath would surely fog.

The stark cast of a borrowed single bulb lamp is the sole light source of Tara’s lonely shoe box apartment. Though tonight, in a major break of resigned tradition, lonely might be the wrong word to describe the space’s state.

The artificial white-grey light mainly serves to make visible the convoluted whiteboard diagram that Willow is still adding messy dry-erase marks to. Its unfortunate secondary function seems to be casting the faces of everyone gathered in ‘campfire stories’ lighting and causing a compulsion to speak only at a whisper level.

Tara observes Willow’s studious expression as she erases a mistake with the outer side of her hand and rewrites it more neatly.

She absentmindedly pushes loose strands of auburn hair behind her ear, leaving blue smudges on the soft rise of her cheekbone.

Tara’s gaze skitters away as Willow finally looks up from her work.

“Does this make any more sense than it did?” Willow asks, looking around the table at each person in turn. A very telling silence follows.

The fragile excitement of being the focus of Willow’s attention, unfortunately does nothing to offset the nervous skepticism of Willow’s chosen plan.

Though she’s never been on the ‘Saving Sunnydale’ side of a major disaster, Tara has heard many of Willow’s stories about it and none of them began with this. . . unique combination of theft, arson and temporary tattoos.

Someone sighs theatrically.

“Well, this is not what I had in mind when you said ‘Research Project’, darling,” Astarion, who Tara remembers for lighting a chair on fire at the Wicca meeting, crosses his arms.

“You think the fire part is a bit far? I know it’s um, sort of illegal, but it would be for a good cause - !” Willow's face lights up at the end, as if her optimism alone could will the plan into success.

“No, no, no.” He halts Willow’s justification holding a hand out, “The flames and thievery I have no issue with. I hadn’t any idea you were capable of such things. It makes me see you in a better light, truly. That ghastly lamp notwithstanding.”

“Then what - “

“Your plan is bad,” this time it’s Anya’s turn to interrupt. Tara is still unsure how exactly Willow knows Anya, but her current working theory is that she’s related to Astarion somehow. A cousin maybe? They seem to share a certain bluntness that often runs in families.

“Astonishingly bad,” Astarion agrees.

Willow looks to Tara, clearly for some moral support, but unfortunately her plan really is that bad and Tara can only offer her a shrug and sympathetic glance.

“Just—” Astarion pinches the bridge of his nose, “Take me through your thought process. What are you trying to accomplish here? Start from the beginning.”

“Well, I have to visit some interesting places for my. . . hobby?” Willow pauses, considering her word choice, “I guess you could call it a hobby. Which led me to being on the basement floor of the sixth library, um... after hours this past Saturday,”

“I don’t know if any of you have been to the overflow area where they keep all the books and equipment donations and things they don’t have room for in the regular libraries but it’s… an interesting experience. The carpets are water-damaged and all covered in little stacks of books and trinkets— so you have to step carefully and kind of, like, weave yourself between these massive bookshelves.

“Unless you’re in the really compact area then they’ve got this slider system where all the shelves are pressed up against each other and you have to turn a wheel to separate them enough to squeeze through. It’s basically like that one chair in your room that you throw clothes on until the pile gets too high and you can’t find your favourite sweater? But it’s the basement of a library and not a chair.
So, anyways, I was in the compact slidey-shelf area trying to find—”

A knock at the door halt’s Willow’s telling of events.

Tara herself is not embarrassed to admit she startles at the sudden sound. Feeling a mix of relief and shock that she’d been taken up on her invitation, she pulls her long shirt-sleeves further over her hands before moving to meet the arrivals.

Flashing an apologetic smile to Willow, Tara manages to stutter out “I should just get that, one second.”

“Wait!” Willow whispers, loud enough to negate the purpose of whispering, but Tara finds it endearing. “Are we expecting anyone else?”

“Um yeah. Well, sort of. I didn’t want to say anything in case. . . because people don’t always, when I— but anyway, you said it was all hands on deck and you were going to invite some people you don’t usually, so I just thought—-” Tara gestures behind herself to where the people who knocked are still hopefully waiting behind the closed door, “I invited a few people.”

Willow looks to the door and back to Tara.

“Um, that’s great Tara! The more, the merrier,” she shifts on her feet, “just, do you think they’ll be able to help with this?”

Insecurity bleeds needles into her chest, “Yes? I mean, probably? They do have hands.”

“Okay then,” Willow says simply, “I trust your judgement.”

And Tara can’t help but mirror Willow’s almost-smile at the relief the assurance brings her.

Anya and Astarion for their part are both apparently finding the whiteboard diagram very interesting and contribute nothing to the short exchange.

Tara pulls the door open, letting the new arrivals step in, both are wearing autumn jackets and one carries a tote bag with a very round item in it. A bowling ball, Tara would guess if it didn't look like the bag was easy enough to lift.

“This is Serena, and this is Vivian,” she introduces the two, both of them waving amiably as their names are said, “And um, Serena, Vivian, these are Willow, Astarion and Anya. Some of you might recognize each other from the meeting last week,” Tara is proud that she was able to keep her words mostly in one piece, only struggling on the first few words of each sentence.

A few scattered waves and hellos are expressed, and Vivian takes the brief silence as an opportunity. “So you guys know real magic, right? Your little pyrotechnic routine the other day wasn’t some elaborate David Blaine street magic prank involving like, wires and mirrors or whatever?”

Willow and Astarion share a look in two completely different flavours of confused, but Willow only shrugs.

Astarion clears his throat quietly, “Ah, no.”

“Hell yeah,” Vivian nods. Serena elbows her in the side and hands her a cantaloupe. “Oh, right. Can you fry this cantaloupe?”

Astarion only stares at them flatly. Tara winces. She knows that particular brand of careful expressionlessness; he’s probably trying to figure out if they’re making fun of him.

She almost speaks up to assure him they don’t mean it that way, but can’t get the words to come out.

“We’re asking you to light it on fire. Do you need us to put it on a chair, or will this work anywhere?” Serena clarifies.

“Yes, I understood that part,” Astarion sighs, pulling one arm from its crossed position to gesture impatiently. “Get on with it then.”

Serena and Vivian high-five.

“Ah, let’s do it out the window though. I’d rather not burn down the room I’m standing in.”

Even wedged awkwardly between Anya and Serena, neither of which she knows very well, Tara feels a small thrill of anticipation once the cantaloupe is in position.

Vivian holds it precariously on a metal serving spoon a good arm’s length out the second-story window, and once she manages to balance it mostly steady, she throws a thumbs up with her unoccupied hand.

Astarion eyes up the fruit intently, reaching out a dramatic hand in front of his face, palm up. He winks at Vivian and blows across his hand. A brilliant orange spark shoots out towards the cantaloupe, immediately engulfing it in bright orange flames. The sudden light and heat cause Vivian to drop it, metal spoon and all, laughing at the shock of it. Everyone rushes to the windowsill in time to watch the melon splat on the brickway below, still flaming slightly.

Someone from one of the first-floor apartments shouts “Holy fuck, you guys just see that? A flaming honeydew just fell outta the sky—”

“That’s a cantaloupe, dipshit,” A second voice corrects.

“Whatever man,” the first says, poking a piece with his foot, “do you think we could convince the Chem prof that this is a good enough reason for missing class tomorrow—?”

They all manage to wait only as long as it takes for the group walking below to be out of earshot before dissolving into laughter.

“Oh man, that was amazing,” Willow puts her hand on Tara’s shoulder. Despite herself, Tara leans into the contact just a bit.

Even with the laughter having dissipated, the light, jovial atmosphere remains.

“And there you have it,” Astarion announces with mock annoyance. If I have sufficiently passed your fruit-destroying test, we should get on with the main event, hm?”

“Of course, of course,” Willow says, “now where was I?”

“You were in the sliding shelf area,”

“Right, I’ll recap for the newbies though,” Willow hops up to sit perched on the table next to the lamp, “Okay, so I was in the basement of the sixth library where they keep all the overflow stuff. And I had to go into the compact area with the sliding shelves to track down this compendium of ghost-anchoring diaries,

Which, actually, was pretty easy to find because apparently, even in the overflow shelves, the organizational system is really specific and easy to navigate—”

“I’m sorry, did you just say you were looking for ‘ghost anchoring diaries’?” Serena interrupts.

“Yes she did, moving on,” Anya says.

“Um, yeah. So, I found the compendium, and luckily, it was on a shelf close enough to the ground that I could reach it if I kind of hopped and grabbed it at the same time. I flipped through it without reading any of the pages, but it looked like hand-written old-timey calligraphy with little illustrations here and there. And then, for safety, Oh– and I was wearing gloves too, I put the book in a freezer bag and stashed it in my backpack. But then! A strange sound from deeper into the stacks drew my attention—”

For the second time that night, there is a knock at the door.

“Oh, come on, it was just getting good!” Anya grouses, crossing her arms, “Tell us what the sound was.”

Willow drops her hands and looks to Tara again, but this time she only shakes her head. Tara didn’t invite anyone else.

“Right, that was us,” Vivian speaks up sheepishly, “We preemptively ordered an apology-pizza in case the whole cantaloupe thing burnt your floor or something. Which— we did kind of sacrifice one of your cooking utensils, so. Yeah. Still counts! I hope you guys are fine with plain cheese pizza.”

The whole group of them end up dragging all chair and chair-like furniture around Tara’s small table and temporarily unseating the whiteboard to make space for the cardboard pizza boxes. Fortunately, almost everyone seems to be more than just fine with the promise of pizza, cheese or otherwise.

Astarion somehow though, has never in his life tried pizza, and he is very reluctant to change that.

“I’ve already eaten today,” he justifies, eyeing the slightly floppy triangle piece that Willow holds out to him warily.

“C’mon! At least try it? You don’t even have to finish the piece.”

He huffs, exasperated but finally accepting the slice of pizza, takes one very small bite.

And Tara. . . expected more of a reaction, honestly. No signs of distaste or appreciation that she can see. Most people, when they try a new food, show some kind of expression that gives away their opinion, but he just sort of. Eats it. And then hands off the remaining, nearly untouched piece, to Anya.

“There, I have now partaken in this ‘Pisa’ you all seem so fond of,” Astarion says.

“Pizza,” Vivian corrects, “And what did you think?”

“Well, it’s. . . edible? I don’t know, the texture wasn’t very interesting, I suppose,” Astarion flicks a crumb off his shirt-sleeve, “Can we not move on now?”

Willow laughs a little at his demeanor, wiping her hands on her jeans and then rubbing them together. It reminds Tara of a housefly a bit, though she can’t say she’s ever felt this brand of fondness for an insect, she smiles at the comparison.

Willow steeples her hands, with long fingers pressed together just barely resting under her chin. She leans forward, “So, I had just stashed the compendium safely in my bag, and a strange sound came from deep in the stacks like wings of hundreds of tiny birds, all flapping at the same time. I could have sworn there was a slight breeze, but that might’ve been imagined since at this point, I decided to book it– no pun intended— straight for the exit.

“Right as I was almost to the end of the gap between shelves, I tripped on something. . . slimy. It was black and opaque and dripping from an upper shelf of the bookcase itself. When I looked behind me, I noticed that this wasn’t the only spot covered in the stuff, there were three more spots I could see that had the same bleeding look to them from different levels on the stack. And then—!”

Tara gasps at the dramatic rise in Willow’s voice.

“This is where it gets really weird,” Willow shuffles closer to the edge of the table so that she is quite literally on the very edge of her seat, “The shelves started to close in. I got up as fast as I could, only tripped on the sludge a little bit and ran. I just barely squeezed out from between the shelves when they snapped closed fully. Then the next walkway between the shelves just beside snapped closed, and then the one just after and every one of them down the line kept going like that, snap snap snap,” Here, Willow claps with each imitated ‘impact’ for emphasis, “I turned to look down the path to the other side of me, the side that would lead me deeper into the stacks and away from the stairway and exit. And I remember gasping, the feeling of pulling cold air straight into my chest in shock or surprise, and then—!” Willow pauses dramatically, leaning forward, “Then I was two floors up and out of breath with my hands covered in black ichorous sludge.”

“Woahh, this is better than I expected!” Vivian enthuses, “That, like, sounds so dangerous. I wanna go there so bad. I mean, actual supernatural stuff!”

“Is that why you invited us? Are we going to go confront the murderous ooze?” Serena asks Willow.

“Do you think we can convince the ooze to teach us magic?” Vivian spits out before Willow can make any kind of response.

“Mmm, it's not really that kind of ooze? I mean the way the bookshelves tried to trap me could be considered intelligent, but I didn’t get the sense that it was the ooze that was sentient,” Willow pauses, “And before you ask—! It probably wasn’t the bookshelves either.”

Vivian looks mildly crestfallen at this revelation but recovers admirably, speaking up once more, “Wait, does that mean you think there was someone behind this then? Like maybe a sexy, spooky librarian lurking in the shadows doing magic.”

“Um, yes. Probably something more like that,” Willow says, amending that only a moment later, “Kind of?”

Anya speaks up for the first time in a while, “You said earlier you had some ‘supporting evidence’. I think you should bring it out now.”

“Of course! It’s just—” WIllow turns and grabs her bag from next to the front door. She fights with the zipper for a moment before opening the bag slowly. Reaching a hand in, she pulls at the crumpled corner of the aforementioned freezer bag. “I brought the book back. It still anchored the ghosts well enough, so the original job went fine, but um, I should probably just show you,”

They all watch as she pulls the bag free to reveal a book submerged in black liquid.

“This is it.” She waves it around for emphasis, causing the book to slosh in its watery prison. “All that's left now are blank pages and this— goop. I brought you all here so I could ask for your help getting to the bottom of this.”

“And you couldn’t ask this of your usual group because. . ?” Anya wonders aloud.

“Well, I’m. . . concerned, actually. I tried to bring it up to them but they didn’t seem to really get it, said it was probably ‘a plumbing issue’ or something. I know what I saw though, it was weird, like, really weird, even for Sunnydale. It’s been a few days and nothing, usually like, a creature or evil sorcerer would have shown up to monologue about their evil plan by now. The quiet is well, disquieting.”

“Well, I’d be willing to take a look anyway. I do happen to have a lot of underappreciated expertise with this sort of thing.” Anya adds, tilting her chin up self-assuredly. “I'm surprised more people don’t ask me for help these days.”

“Mmhm, so this is all well and good, but why should I, or any of us really, risk being eaten by bookshelves to help you with this?”

“Um,”

“What would you offer me in exchange?”

“I didn’t really consider that. I don’t really have a lot to um, ‘offer’, but we could say I owe you a favour? Or something?”

“Hm, I haven’t been owed a favour in quite some time. I suppose I could be convinced,” he pronounces loftily examining his nails. He then takes on a more calculating expression, eyes narrowed, “I hope you won’t be too offended when I do take you up on that.”

“O-kayy, I guess it’s a deal then.”

And then. Astarion holds his hand out. Like, as if he’s asking to shake her hand.

Willow does so, if a bit awkwardly.

Tara’s not really sure what to make of that whole exchange honestly. She’d think it was some kind of weird form of joke if Astarion didn’t seem loath to any form of physical contact. He seems likeable enough, if a bit strange. She’ll chalk it up to another personality quirk for now, but keep an eye on him. For their sake or his though, she’s not sure.

“I’ll speak on behalf of Serena and myself to say: we’re in. Like, so in. No need for any conditions or handshakes,” Vivian says.

“Or, hm. Maybe since we’re all asking things we’ll put a soft request in for magic training, but that’s kind of a given right?” Serena adds.

“Sure! We’re all still learning though. I think Astarion and Tara know the most actually, and um, this situation takes precedence, but there will be plenty of time for magic learning lessons after.”

“It's set then. Let's try and fix that damned-awful plan,” Anya concludes.

Chapter Text

After a late night of scheming, Astarion had returned home. The plan to scope out the library would take place in a few days. So, until then, he had classes to attend.

For Astarion’s literature class, they were given a few options for their essay on Dracula. After the initial review assignment, which, needless to say, Astarion rated a generous two stars solely because the professor seemed to have some positive regard for this book, some suggested topics for the next project were the themes, or a focus on a single character and their motivations. In a way, Astarion had chosen neither of the above.

His essay was less of a commentary on a character because none of them were very compelling, in his opinion. They were more flowery prose and inane observations than anything of substance. No, Astarion had chosen mainly to dissect the circumstances surrounding a particular character and, to a lesser extent, point out his many flaws.

“Herb, I would like to have a word with you after class.” Professor Lassiter says. It takes Astarion a moment to remember that she is addressing him, but he nods once in assent.

Astarion harbors mild concern that he has been found out but resolves to stay and smooth over any incongruencies. He remains seated until his fellow students file out laughing and chattering amongst themselves. Once the room has emptied and only quiet remains, he walks up to the podium where the Professor and her things are gathered.

“I gave your essay draft a read, and I must say, it was quite a unique perspective on Jonathan Harker. I really got a sense of both pity and loathing for the character, which is an interesting combination. I’m looking to get your thoughts on it directly.” She smiles lightly, “What inspired you to choose this direction?”

Astarion swallows. He was considered decent at writing during his educational career to become a magistrate, but he didn’t think his rush job of a submission would draw any eyes. He scarcely believes her interest rests solely with his school work but elects to say nothing on that matter, withholding the skeptical expression that wants to show itself.

Astarion feels compelled to explain himself, though. It isn't as if he put a lot of effort into writing it up, but the draft did contain some of his real opinions on the text, “Ah, well. You hear others saying one thing and naturally want to try something completely different. I think people are too sympathetic to dear Harker; he was hardly helpless but decided to do nothing for himself. His circumstances did put him in such a bad position in the first place, though, and that's also important to note. Harker’s employer back in London being the worst offender, really. The man practically sacrificed him. And he wasn’t even subtle about it either, I mean, did you see that ‘letter of recommendation’? But more than any of that, though, Harker trusts too easily.”

“Is that so?” She raises a thin eyebrow above the frame of her spectacles.

“Yes,” Astarion asserts, “Too many times to be excusable. And then he barely tries to find any other avenue of escape. Even betrayed thricefold at a certain point, he still asks a passerby for assistance.”

“And you see this as weakness?” She asks neutrally.

“Well, yes, of course,” Astarion moves to smooth a hand through his hair but aborts the movement, remembering that he is wearing one of his hats, and instead straightens his shirt collar, “That time he comes across Dracula sleeping helplessly? He could have easily killed him there and returned safely to his ‘beloved Mina’, and the rest of the book wouldn’t have been needed. Instead, Mina is nearly turned, and his friend Morris dies due to Harker’s own weakness.”

“Hm,” she nods, “I can see how that would be your takeaway. And what did you think of the ending? I noticed you didn’t discuss it much in your draft.”

“It wasn’t very relevant to my point. I understand that Harker is supposed to be the protagonist, but it seems unrealistic to me that he, after everything, would be the one to kill Dracula successfully and live happily ever after with sweet Mina. He’s a damp paper bag of a man with little agency; it feels unearned, really.”

“Consider adding more of your thoughts on Dracula’s death to the final copy. You have some interesting ideas and, I think, some real potential. Who else would take the time to write out their draft in such neat calligraphy? It shows initiative and creativity beyond your peers.” She smiles again at him.

Astarion pinches the bridge of his nose to stave off a steadily worsening headache. How was he to know that everyone apparently had shitty handwriting? Should he be practicing having messy print?

He smiles back politely, hiking his book bag further up on his shoulder, “If that’s all, then I should really be on my way now. Other classes and commitments await and all that.”

“Of course, Herb. Enjoy the rest of your afternoon.”

It’s nearing midnight, and Astarion’s shift is nearly over when Anya enters the bar.

He’d been wiping down the bar counter for the millionth time that evening just to have something to occupy himself with since the patronage had been really rather sparse and he had thought enough about his self-imposed schoolwork for the day.

The amended library investigation plan is not due for another few days, and he finds himself exceedingly bored. Needless to say, the prospect of doing literally anything else, potentially even some light crime, perks his interest immediately.

“Back with another ‘adventure’ to carry out, are we?” Astarion tries not to look too hopeful.

“Not tonight,” Anya says, “And I’m not here to drink either. Just moping on account of the ‘Vampire hanging out in my basement apartment’ situation,” Anya glumly sinks into one of the barstools.

Had Astarion had any blood circulation, he might have described the cold shock he experienced from these words as his ‘blood running cold’.

“Vampire?” he laughs nervously, “and where did you get that idea?”

“Well, it’s super obvious if you have working eyes,” Anya huffs, “Let’s see— There’s the pale skin, pointy teeth—” Astarion lifts his hand to cover his mouth instinctively. “---and of course, the whole style and outfit choices, nobody of this decade still dresses like that every day . That’s the type of thing people only wear to concerts and stuff.”

Astarion thought he’d been being so careful, wearing only bland clothing like he’d seen on others in the area, and besides, he doesn’t burn in the sun! That should put even the most seasoned vampire hunters off his trail. Nobody should have guessed.

“---It’s not so bad actually, he’s a decent houseguest. Does laundry and dishes more often in two days than Xander has since we’ve lived together. I really just don’t like that him being there is getting in the way of my sex life.” Astarion sighs in relief but covers it by faking a coughing fit, which actually becomes a real coughing fit.

“Astarion? Are you done coughing yet? I wasn’t finished complaining.”

“Yes–” he clears his throat, “yes, but— hm. Who did you say was living in your apartment?” Astarion had certainly not done any laundry or dishes during his very brief stay at Anya’s.

“Oh, I forgot. You probably don’t know Spike.”

“Ah, no. I don’t believe I do?”

“Well, he’s a vampire, obviously, and he’s currently staying with Xander and I because someone kidnapped him and did something to him that makes him unable to bite people. And sheltering him like this is all surprisingly progressive of the group, considering their murderous hatred for all Vampires, actually.”

“He can’t bite people—?”

“Oh! You have met him actually, he was the man in the out-of-season jacket who assisted me with hotwiring the SUV.”

“Ah,” Astarion says eloquently. He can vaguely recall Anya interacting with someone fitting that description.

Anya takes his sullen pause for an opportunity to continue lamenting her temporary lack of sex life.

“So anyway, as I was saying—”

And Anya truly does go on.

It takes until the end of Astarion’s shift and part way through his closing-up tasks for her to finish airing her grievances. He gets the distinct impression, though, that she rarely has the opportunity to talk about herself and her problems at all, so he can’t really blame her for taking her chance. And besides, call it a guilty pleasure, but other people’s personal issues have always been a favourite topic. You can learn so much about a place from what gossip people are willing to share.

For instance, Astarion now knows that dozens of local wildlife species have died out due to the mistreatment of nature and that feeding waterfowl younglings is considered ‘un-manly’ by some people.

Somehow Anya manages to convince Astarion to come by to meet ‘Spike’, despite how poorly his last visit to her home went.

Sure enough, the man is a vampire. When Astarion walks up to the door with Anya, he does not hear the tell-tale sound of a heartbeat for an adult-sized being from inside the apartment.

Dozens of tiny, barely audible tip taps of spindly legs can be heard though, all irregular in their pace, informing Astarion of the spider infestation likely present.

Astarion shudders.

“Oh, Astarion, don't be scared. Vampires are surprisingly reasonable if you don't approach them stake first! And besides, Spike is as harmless as a sea slug at the moment, so either way, you'll be fine,” Anya Informs him with a comforting pat on his shoulder. The irony is not lost on Astarion.

To that completely unnecessary pep talk, he can only stare back at her, deadpan, “I'm fine, darling, just caught a chill.”

“Mhm, sure you did,” she says and finally pulls open the door, “Spike! I'm back.”

Silence is her only reply.

“Stop moping. I’m being very accommodating, all things considered.”

“I’m not moping!” The voice that replies, muffled, like they’re facing a wall, sounds vaguely Baldurian. Astarion notes that without realizing it, he must have gotten used to hearing the short, efficiently choppy quality of the local accent in Sunnydale because the familiar long vowels and dropped ‘t’ catch him off guard.

Astarion follows behind Anya as she walks further into the room. As the two round the gray couch near the back of the room, the man who must be ‘Spike’ is revealed to be lying sprawled out face-first on it. Dramatically, one arm hangs off the side, and the other supports his pale blond head, which is half buried in throw cushions.

Disappointingly, though, despite his potential Baldurian provenance, the man’s fashion sense is atrocious. He wears a short-sleeved button-down shirt, nearly two sizes too large, in a garish orange and blue flowered pattern paired with short, many-pocketed trousers.

Astarion can see what Anya meant by this not being the sort of thing that is acceptable to wear every day. Though, Astarion can’t see how this would be typical vampire or concert-going attire either.

After a few moments of silence, when it seems the poorly dressed vampire will not contribute further to the conversation, Anya addresses him once more. “Well, from over here, it really looks like moping. You haven’t moved except to drink blood and do chores in two days,” she puts her hands on her hips and stares him down.

As if he can feel the gaze boring into the back of his head, Spike finally moves, shifting to sit up all in one motion and replying huffily, “Well, it’s not like there’s anything else to do in this—” Spike’s attention halts on Astarion, eyes narrowing in appraisal “And who is this, then?”

“That’s Astarion; I brought him here to introduce him to you,” Anya says.

“Well, that’s just lovely, isn’t it?” Spike smiles genially, “Nice to meet you, Astarion; your hat looks stupid.”

“Oh, likewise, of course,” Astarion returns the smile sweetly, "And I must say, your clothing makes you look like an impoverished court jester. Very stylish back in whatever pit you climbed out of, I’m sure,”

“Now you are introduced. You guys should go check out a sporting event or some other male bonding activity,” Anya tells them.

“What— “

“Seriously?”

“Yes. Astarion, just please let me have some Spikeless time with Xander, and I will owe you one favour of equal value.”

“Fine,” Astarion crosses his arms.

“Hey now, why don’t I get a ‘favour of equal value’?” Spike gripes.

“Because you already owe me,” she says offhandedly, shaking out a nightgown and retreating to a room at the far end of the space. You guys should go now; I have things to do, and Xander will be back soon.”

“What in the Nine Hells is ‘kitten poker’?” Astarion asks as Spike begrudgingly leads him through a convoluted series of doors and entry passwords.

“Well, it’s like regular poker but—” Spike pauses abruptly, stopping in front of yet another door to look Astarion over, “Fuck, hold on, this isn’t going to work. Reputation at risk as it is, I can’t be caught dragging a human around with me, can I?”

Astarion casually adjusts his hat and stares off into a random direction, shifting on his feet slightly.

“Bloody Hell, seriously?” Spike laughs, “should’ve known since you and Anya seem to get on so well.”

Astarion huffs a nervous laugh, “Ah, no. What do you mean—” he begins, but is cut off.

“You and Anya meet as vengeance demons? No, something else. Fae? Nah, you tried lying, even if it wasn’t very good. Not furry enough to be a werewolf. So,” Spike shoves his hands in his pockets and shrugs, “Vampire then, or what?”

“Close enough,” he sighs tiredly, “I’d appreciate it if you kept it to yourself though, I’d rather not have Faffsa come drag me off.”

“Is that what they’re called? Bastards, snatched me up just minding my business. Can’t let a man drink in peace,” Spike stares at the ground darkly.

Astarion hates to have his worst fears confirmed. Damned Faffsa.

No need for his ever-present hat here then, at least. Small mercies, he supposes, as he tucks the item into his bag and smooths a hand through his hair a few times.

“Well, whatever,” Spike redirects, thankfully not sparing his ears so much as a glance, “This should go fine then. I have some debts to settle and I’d rather do it here than try to come up with payment some other way,” Spike says, finally pushing open the door in front of them.

The interior is a dingy bar-like set up with smoke swirling thick in the tepid air. Various tables and chairs litter the room though none are cohesive or of the same make or style, and in the back corner, a green-topped oblong table sits covered in coloured balls that two men poke at with long wooden sticks. What surprises Astarion the most though is the diversity of the establishment, people who are clearly vampires, demons, fish people, and many other non-human individuals are present and clearly unbothered about it.

Spike leads them to a short, round table close to the bar where about half a dozen others are gathered around some sort of card game.

“Evening gents,” Spike strolls up to the group, resting a hand on the table.

“Got a lotta nerve showing up here without a basket of anything worth my time. You still owe me 3 tabby kittens,” a speckled man with three fingered hands tells him.

“Well, I can hardly control what kittens turn up from a given card game, can I?” Spike drags over an extra chair, and indicates to Astarion that he take up the unoccupied one next to him, “Deal us in, would you?”

“I’d prefer to watch a few rounds,” Astarion crosses his arms, drumming his fingers as he speaks, “Rather get a reminder of how this is played, I’m ashamed to say I’m a bit rusty.” In all truth, Astarion has never seen, much less played ‘poker’, kittens or otherwise. He’d honestly expected a game more similar to the one at the green table with the sticks when he heard the name.

“No funny business, you hear?” another vampire with black hair points a finger at Astarion and Spike both.

Astarion holds his palms out placatingly, “I’ll be on my best behaviour, I assure you.”

A dismissive nod is the only reply before the dealer throws each player five cards, everyone contributes one small cat to a basket in the middle and the game starts.

How to play is a bit hard to parse just watching, but Astarion has managed to gather that when everyone in the circle says ‘call’ or ‘raise’ followed by putting a kitten into the basket in the middle, your answer should always be a repetition of ‘call’ and adding to the requisite number of kittens, or ‘fold’ if your hand is shit. From the first finished round when everyone still in shows their cards, he gathers that a good hand looks like face cards and high numbers or a bunch of the same card in different colours. A bad hand is everything else.

Astarion thinks he understands well enough now, to at least cheat at the game well. Surreptitiously, he pockets a ‘King’ card with red heart-shaped symbols in the corners. Though he may have acted too late, as it seems he won’t be getting any chance to test this out tonight.

Fortunately for Spike though, the third game went to him, and he finishes with a greater number of kittens in hand than he was loaned throughout the game. Three are distributed to the person he borrowed from to start playing, and two to the speckled man that said he was owed.

“Anyone willing to trade me another tabby for any of this lot?” Spike holds up a pair of squirming kittens. When no one speaks up, Spike scoffs, “No one, really? Right then. See you next week, I suppose,” and he places both cats into a smaller straw basket with a tall handle and matching lid. A tilt of his head indicates to Astarion to follow him out.

“Seems a bit strange to bet using live animals,” Astarion muses as the two of them walk back towards Anya’s. It’s been a few hours, surely enough time to be justified in returning Spike by now.

“Yeah, but that’s the norm around here. Started out as a bit of a joke, but it’s taken on a life of its own,” Spike puts his unoccupied hand into his pocket, “Never really know what do do with these after though, so I just have a flock of ‘em in the graveyard that follow me around sometimes. Keeps the crows from getting too bold.”

By the time Spike finishes speaking, one of the little creatures has managed to worm its way out of the basket and lands in the soft grass, chittering imperiously as it stretches its small, fluffy orange body. Industrious little thing, he thinks.

He reaches down to retrieve it without much thought. It nips his finger very bravely, before then contradicting itself by rubbing its face on his hand, making a quiet rumbling sound.

“Oh, you’re a vicious little creature aren’t you?” Astarion remarks, now holding it close to face level, giving it a scritch on the top of its head.

“Ah, well you can keep that one if you want. Current flock’ll keep the crows in check if those birds know what’s good for them.”

Astarion isn’t sure what to say to that so he just tucks the kitten under his arm awkwardly. It could be a useful addition to his shelter building, Astarion reasons to himself. He has been a bit frustrated with trying to hunt down all the rodents that scurry around in there at night by himself.

“And listen, if you know what you’re looking for it’s pretty obvious you’re out of your depth in a lot of things. You been hibernating or something?”

“Ah, not exactly,” Astarion says. He has been fairly cut off from the rest of the world since becoming a spawn though, he thinks. And he’s only just beginning to understand this new realm and its odd conventions.

“I’ll put it this way,” Spike looks up, searching the treeline for words to express his thought, it looks like, “What was the last technology you can remember being invented before waking up?”

“Machines for traversing floors without the need of stairs were the latest and greatest, I believe,” Astarion recalls. Cazador had several of those installed around the castle as soon as they became available. The man could turn into mist so it wasn’t really necessary for him, but it was impressive to the guests he supposes.

“Really? So you took your dirt nap right around when I was turned,” Spike laughs affably, clapping a hand on Astarion’s shoulder, “A fellow Victorian man!”

“This time and place doesn’t often make a lot of sense,” Astarion supplies, noncommittally. He idly strokes the kitten in his arms.

“I could show you a thing or two about making the most of the 20th century, I think you’ll like television,” Spike informs him.

It would be useful to have someone he could speak more honestly with since apparently Spike has no qualms about freely sharing information.

Vague plans to reconvene at some point are passed back and forth and then the two part ways, each with a kitten in their possession.

Astarion returns to his home, dimly lit by a sliver moonlight and his various string lights. Observing the small cat he has brought in, Astarion supposes he ought to accommodate it properly. He consults the box pile, emptying out two of them that should suit his purposes.

The kitten, he momentarily leaves in a high-sided box and takes the second, much shallower one outside to fill half-way with dirt so that his new rat-catcher has an alternative to peeing on any of Astarion’s furniture. This box is left near the base of the stairs in his sunken living space and Astarion puts the kitten in there for a moment so that it knows where it is, and with any luck what it should be used for.

On a cushioned chair in the middle of the room Astarion arranges a place for it to sleep in. Soft clothes, towels and small blankets create a suitable nest for it, not unlike Astarion’s own sleeping area. Satisfied that the creature will not pee on anything and will hopefully be comfortable enough to swear fealty to Astarion and his quest to rid the building of rodents, he gently sets the kitten in its new bed.

“There now, be good,” Astarion points to it. He is rewarded with a small chirp that he chooses to assume is an affirmative sound.

Soon after going to bed himself, Astarion falls into an easy trance. He is not awake to notice the kitten vacating its bed to crawl in next to him, the slow rumble of its contented purring a surrogate heartbeat to Astarion’s own still, undead chest.

Astarion trances peacefully, for once, without half-formed nightmares to disturb his rest.

Chapter Text

SIXTH LIBRARY BASEMENT RECONNAISSANCE: Friday, November 29, 9:45 AM

(Astarion)

“What am I supposed to be looking at here?” the library assistant Astarion has commandeered asks flatly.

“Well, the point is that there’s nothing there,” he tells him. Obviously. The shelf the two of them stare at is positively teeming with books of all colours and thicknesses, packed end to end on every shelf but one, which holds a single conspicuous gap.

“I can see that. I swear to god if this is another riddle thing, you can tell the poetry club—”

“No! I don’t even like poetry, why does everyone—” Astarion makes a noise of frustration. “No, alright. So, do you see how there are faint signs of water damage on the books adjacent to and below the gap?” Astarion indicates the subtle discoloration and distortion of previously damp paper. The colour of the affected spots and blotches is lightly muddied and perhaps blue or violet in undertone.

“Um sure, that’s not great, but it’s only minor cosmetic damage, the books should still be legible.”

“Mn, but not that one,” Astarion once again points to the gap.

A beat of silence passes.

“Because there’s no book there,” the library assistant shifts on his feet.

“Yes, exactly. And now I need you to tell me where there are other places where there is no book.”

The man squints at Astarion, “How about no.”

Astarion stares back at the man neutrally. Clearly a change in tactics is in order.

Casually, Astarion leans into the bookshelf next to him, “Alright, you caught me. I’m not really interested in empty bookcases. . .” He traces up and down the cover of a fabric-bound book. The other man’s gaze follows the way his nail catches on an occasional thread or ridge in the bevelled lettering, “Maybe I just wanted to catch your attention?”

“You—” the library assistant’s face crumples in confusion, “what?”

Astarion straightens the other man’s jacket collar and smooths it flat. Cold fingers ghosting against the warm fabric, “Is it really so hard to believe? I noticed right away, your. . . confident stature, and that adorable way your brow furrows when you’re studying something. . .” Astarion leans towards him subtly, speaking a bit quieter, “very closely.”

The library assistant’s eyebrows do indeed furrow then.

(Tara)

Tara walks between the stacks efficiently, sticking to unpopulated regions as she goes, making a note here and there on a tab of green post-it notes.

(Willow)

“Have you been experiencing any technical difficulties lately? Like the shelves closing by themselves and almost, um, crushing people?” Willow asks a passing library assistant, before realizing how insane that sounds actually, “Or maybe like, a broken vending machine or a wifi connection issue?”

(Anya)

“---give me my money back, you stupid machine! I paid four dollars for that bag of tiny cookies and I demand recompense!” Anya shakes the machine violently—

(Vivian & Serena)

“On a scale from one to ten, how evil do you think your Head Librarian is?” Viivian asks the librarian in front of her. Serena shifts beside her, adjusting a cloth-covered shape to be better hidden where she holds it one-armed behind her back.

“I am the ‘Head Librarian’ of this building,” the woman says simply.

“Oh, I see,” Vivian says, nodding amiably. She looks the older woman over, noticing nothing evil in her short white-grey hair or in her round face, decorated by crows' feet at the corners of kind-looking eyes.

“So, on a scale from one to ten, how evil would you say you are?” Vivian amends.

SIXTH LIBRARY LAWN: Friday, November 29, 11:14 AM

(Tara)

Tara smiles lightly as she sees the rest of the impromptu investigation team make their way towards the predetermined meeting place just outside the Sixth Library. She can’t help but notice a dour mood in their assembled faces and raises her eyebrows in askance.

“Hey Tara,” Willow waves tiredly as she approaches.

“Hi,” she waves back, “How was the search?” and as she speaks, Tara tries to meet everyone’s eyes in turn to include them in the question.

Willow sighs heavily, “Not great, actually. Those library assistants weren’t giving anything up. And I’m ninety percent sure they really don’t know anything, so like, I might just be bad at asking questions,” Willow toes at a dried leaf stuck to the sidewalk.

“Hm, I know that feeling,” Vivian commiserates, “They really told you nothing at all?”

“Well, I guess I did find out that they had a ‘suspected sprinkler malfunction’ recently. Only thing is, we already know it wasn’t a sprinkler thing because I was actually there and just about everything except the sprinkler was acting up. Anyone have any better luck?”

“Serena and I talked to the Head Librarian, and she said on a scale from one to ten for evilness, she would only rank about a two, so I think we can cross her off,” Vivian says.

Serena nods in agreement.

“Why would she say two?” Tara wonders aloud, “Why not zero if she was ranking herself?”

“Maybe she has like, a ton of unpaid parking tickets or something,” Vivian suggests.

“No, but getting a parking ticket isn’t really evil,” Willow refutes, then after a moment’s consideration, “Unless she is parking fully on the sidewalk, or like on somebody’s lawn, I guess.”

“The vending machine ate my money,” Anya supplies sullenly, “I would rate the vending machine a ten on the scale for evilness.”

“That happened to me once,” Astarion muses, “Only it was someone’s luggage case that tried to bite me. I almost lost a hand that day,” Astarion turns his left hand this way and that, examining the unmarred skin. She notices upon closer inspection that in his other hand, he holds several shiny pens with all but the very ends of them hidden in his long sleeve.

“In any case,” Astarion continues, “My efforts were a bit more fruitful than poor Willow’s here. I managed to get this from one of the library assistants.” And then he very proudly brandishes. . . what is obviously someone named Timothy's phone number?

“Uh, congrats? I guess?” Willow laughs a bit, “We are trying to be serious here, though.”

“Well, I thought it could be useful,” Astarion shoves the scrap of paper back in his pocket and crosses his arms. “It’s a code of some sort, perhaps for a safe. There could be important information in a safe.”

“Sure buddy,” Vivian snickers, “I know people are pretty lazy with passwords these days, but I doubt ‘Timothy the library assistant’ is important enough to have a password setting privilege to be lazy with.” She pauses for a second, looking upset. “Damn, I should have tried to get the head librarian’s phone number. Those two points of evilness could have been for bad password setting.”

“Maybe,” Tara shrugs.

“What do you guys make of this sculpture?” Serena speaks up for the first time. She's most likely referring to a cloth-covered object that she had been holding in a football carry since they’d begun speaking. She pulls the item from the moth-eaten fabric and — wow. Excitedly, but with some amount of reverence, Serena reveals a most horrifying clay sculpture of a tree growing potatoes, each with smiling faces.

“It’s very ugly,” Anya points out, crinkling her nose in distaste.

“But, probably haunted, right?” Serena asks.

“Yes,” Anya says, grimacing.

“Oh, definitely. Not necessarily in the ‘spirits and occult’ way but hm,” Astarion takes in the clay figure with an appraising eye, “It is magical.”

“In what way?” Willow moves closer to get a better look.

“That, I can’t know for sure,” he says.

“Well I— I can maybe do a diagnostic spell on it?” Tara offers, “Later, when I get home, I mean.”

“Good idea,” Anya says, “Nobody should be touching that with their bare hands in the meantime, though. It doesn’t look right.”

Serena quickly adjusts her grip so that there is a barrier of ragged cloth between her hands and the sculpture.

“So besides this horrifying potato tree thing— um, did we really come out of this with nothing useful?” Willow asks.

“I can tell you one thing,” Anya says, crossing her arms, “Whoever, or whatever, was causing all of that stuff the other day was not a human. I would guess it was some kind of spirit or otherwise incorporeal being based on the energy in there.”

“The energy?” Vivian asks. In a word, Tara would describe her whole starry-eyed demeanor as ‘fangirling’.

“Yes. If you spend enough time in my line of work, you pick up on these things. Spirits make the air taste like rain a bit, but if the rain was made of blood and electricity.”

“Oh,” Willow’s eyes light up in understanding, drawing attention to the warm green colour of her eyes, “Kind of like chewing on a copper zipper!”

“I’ve never done that,” Anya pulls a face, “Why would I chew on a zipper?”

“It’s just a figure of speech, you know like— ‘Oh man! This, um. . . boat. It reminds me of chewing on a copper zipper!’ Lots of people totally say that,“ Willow defends.

Laughing, Vivian says, “Literally no one says that, that’s actually so funny.”

“I—” Tara pauses when all eyes fall on her at her interjection, “I found some things? That could be useful?”

“Well, someone had to,” Astarion mutters.

“That’s great! What do you have for us?” Willow asks. And Tara has to smile at her enthusiasm. Realistically, half of it is probably for Tara’s potential contribution, and the other half is for not needing to further defend her made-up zipper idiom.

Tara pulls her notepad from her skirt pocket, again thanking a higher power for the recent popularization of pocketed skirts and dresses. “I’ve got the topics that the section codes of the missing books had,” she says, “I think we can make some pretty good guesses as to what the throughline for these is.”

And so Tara lists off the topics of the missing books. It includes such things as ‘Comparative Mythology’, ‘Speculative Occultism’, and ‘Interpretive Paranormal Depictions in Media’.

“It’s all magic and monster type stuff then,” Willow concludes.

“Yes,” Tara says.

“Whoever is doing this to those books might be trying to hide something they all have in common. Maybe a ritual?” Willow speculates, “Oh! Or maybe themself if it’s a witch or a magical being?”

“Good find,” Astarion says, though Tara can’t tell if he’s being genuine given the bland tone of his speech.

“So, where should we go from here? Tara’s got that spell she’s gonna do for— whatever that statue thing is and I’ll hit the books, obviously. I just feel like we’re missing something?”

“We’re all just going to have to think on it then,” Anya says.

Everyone just sort of stands there for a minute, pensively.

Anya huffs, crossing her arms, “Not right now! This is very boring. Let’s all think about it separately from the comfort of our own homes.”

“I concur, see you all another time, ” Astarion sighs tiredly, waving over his shoulder as he stalks away.

As Tara watches the remaining group members each set off in their own directions, she is rather pleased to see that Willow hasn’t moved to leave.

Willow smiles at her, tipping her head towards the dorm building as if it were a given that the two of them should leave together. The easy way they fall into step walking and chatting about what literature they could try first, brings a smile to Tara’s own face.

She doesn’t have to pretend to be anything with Willow; they just fit.

ASTARION’S SHELTER: Friday, November 29, 6:41 PM

(Astarion)

An uneventful afternoon of classes and a squirrel or two later, Astarion is lounging aimlessly around his shelter building.

Contracts class had been interesting. So many of the specifics and names for things are different from what Astarion knows, but people are fundamentally the same so rooting out potential loopholes in contractual obligation is no more difficult than it ever has been. On the other hand though, the instructor does tend to be long winded, which unfortunately undercuts the enjoyment Astarion might have for the class otherwise.

Whatever the case, at least he’s building a proper schedule.

It won’t be until another one or so bells from now that his shift at the bar starts and Astarion would rather be doing something constructive, but there isn’t quite enough time to go anywhere or do anything. So, essentially, Astarion has found himself in some kind of waiting paradox and it’s terrible. Even doing significantly more things to fill his days, it’s just his luck that he’d still manage to feel restless all the time.

Astarion lies on the staircase with his face pressed into the bars of the railing to look out at his living space. The position is somewhat uncomfortable in all truth, with the individual steps digging into his neck and side, but not so much so that he feels overly motivated to move or shift positions.

The cat seems to have taken well to shelter-living at least. It’s smart enough to have figured out using the dirt box and has thankfully not tried to eat any of the string lights.

Currently, it has become quite taken with a random piece of trash.

“What do you do all day?” Astarion asks the creature. It says nothing but continues smacking a piece of crumpled paper around with its tiny paws, “Ah, I see. Practicing for rodent hunting, hm? I suppose that’s a useful endeavor.”

It is a bit sad though, the way the creature is essentially making do with a piece of trash. He’s not going to confiscate it. Obviously not, that’s the cat’s paper scrap now. He does think he should look into better equipping it to live in his dwelling, though. Perhaps he should inquire after its needs. Spike may know a thing or two at least.

Something to consider another time, Astarion muses. He stoops to give the kitten a small scritch on the head as he stands and traverses the room, retrieving his collection of ‘found items’. In it, he deposits a few pens he’d lifted from the library earlier, and after a moment’s hesitation, he also includes the scrap of paper with the numbers on it.

Chapter Text

ASTARION’S SHELTER: Saturday, November 30, 4:25 PM

Astarion makes use of a low to the ground wooden table in a disused corner of his shelter, the likes of which might typically be used to hold tea or reading material while hosting polite company. As it happens, Astarion is not inclined to host any ‘polite company’, so the table currently finds purpose in being a flat surface upon which he can practice having worse handwriting. It’s going quite poorly, actually.

Astarion’s typical handwriting is elegant, though composed of long, pointed shapes; it is a bit narrow and uncommonly slanted to the left. Words are carved into writing as sharply as Astarion prefers to speak. Only the barest amount of flourishes and stylisations are present, and an intentional steadiness and consistency of letter size make it appear much neater than it would otherwise.

The struggle Astarion encounters most harshly is the lattermost observation. It is more difficult than one would reasonably expect to try to write unsteadily if muscle memory already dictates that your hand should only produce neat shapes.

The result is an odd mix of shaky letters and a smoothness uncharacteristic of their elementary form. He had tried using his non-dominant hand, but that had gone straight off into the category of non-viable since he’s aiming for ‘average’ or ‘pedestrian’ handwriting as opposed to ‘a beetle with no opposable thumbs wrote this’.

He begins scratching out a new line of writing, this time precisely copying the font of a random textbook that seems common to all library books and signage in the area. The way that the letters do not touch or attach at all seems counterintuitive, but is replicated easily enough. . .

Several loud slamming sounds cause Astarion to startle, gouging a hole through his page in place of dotting an ‘i’. The cat, similarly surprised, scuttles under the couch faster than mud mephits can descend on a quicksand victim.

Sitting very still, pen still aloft, Astarion determines that the sounds came from the door atop the staircase to ground level. He hasn’t told anyone where he lives, though, so visitors should not remotely be a concern.

Maybe he can just wait it out? Pretend that nobody’s home until whoever it is goes away? For a moment, all remains quiet, and it seems that maybe that was all. Then sure enough, more sounds, more urgent this time. Astarion sighs.

Stepping lightly, he ascends the stairs two at a time. He keeps to the edges of each step so that they shouldn’t creak under pressure. Astarion reaches again for a knife that he does not have and curses himself internally for not seeing to his lack of a weapon as soon as he’d thought of it back in the early days of his arrival. He sizes up the blue pen he still holds, considering its potential merits, but nearly drops it when another bout of knocking starts up again.

All at once, Astarion swings the door open, assuming a subtly defensive stance.

“Oh,” Astarion relaxes a fraction, “Spike. . . what are you doing here?”

“Well I’ll tell you when you stop threatening me with that— what is that? A pen?” Spike crowds closer under the door’s awning but does not drop the lightly smoking blanket draped over his head. How embarrassing. Is that how Astarion used to look trying to scurry home after an unsuccessful ‘hunt’ for so many years?

“No,” Astarion lets the writing implement slide into his sleeve and shows both his now empty palms as proof, “your mind betrays you with false visions.”

“I know what a bloody pen looks like— Okay, listen,” Spike redirects, “I’m sort of. . . between living arrangements at the moment, and I’d be ever so appreciative if you’d let me stay at yours for a little while.”

“Why do you know where I live?” Astarion crosses his arms, intentionally dodging the question.

“I made an educated guess. Now would you seriously—”

“No,” Astarion steps backward into the house, crossing his arms over his chest to prevent himself from doing something embarrassing like hiss at him, “This is my spot, I found it first! It’s hardly my fault that you haven’t the foresight to find alternative arrangements.”

Spike continues to look at him imploringly from under his shoddy blanket.

“The best I can do is give you an opaqued parasol. I happen to have many,” Astarion says because he does in fact have many and actually, it is in his best interest to get rid of some, “Wait here.”

Astarion closes the door in Spike’s face and descends the stairs. He looks over his bucket of parasols, after a moment’s consideration grabbing a random handful that includes some of the more ridiculously patterned ones. When he returns to the upper landing, he opens the door to reveal that Spike did actually wait where he was left.

“Here,” Astarion says, holding out the parasols. With a relieved expression, Spike reaches for the proffered sun protection, but Astarion snatches them out of reach at the last moment.

“What’s this? Thought you said you had a surplus,” Spike grumbles.

“Be that as it may, I’d like something in exchange,” Astarion tilts his head at Spike’s hunched form, “Information,” he elaborates since, yes he did have plans to ask Spike about the care of his new charge.

“Sure, whatever. Just give me a bloody umbrella already!” It’s clear the other vampire is nearing the end of his patience, but is not at risk of running off just yet.

“Hm, very well then,” the parasol Astarion hands him is a checkered navy fabric with an illustration of some kind of humanoid bird creature wearing a sailor’s uniform repeated all over it. Spike opens the parasol immediately and with extreme awkwardness to prevent the sun from landing on him while he trades it to replace the blanket.

The expression of the little character of the parasol is not unlike Spike’s own: deadpan with brows drawn in annoyance.

“So?” Spike breaks the silence, “Are you going to ask your questions then, or are you planning to glean all your precious information from staring holes into my forehead?”

“Where, nearby, can one acquire supplies for kept animals?”

“The cat.” Spike deducts.

“Obviously for the cat.”

“Look, can I just—” Spike begins.

“No, you still can’t come in.” Astarion sort of wishes that vampires were able to claim abodes the way humans so easily take for granted. A magical barrier against annoying would-be undead trespassers would certainly be an asset.

SUNNYDALE MALL: 6:41 PM

The establishment Astarion is led to once the sky has darkened enough for vampires to pass without risk, is called ‘Darren’s Petshop’. It’s a small building by this town’s standards, and is decorated with chipped yellow paint and a door made of windows.

The window-door opens of its own accord at their approach, and Spike passes through like this is a normal occurrence, so Astarion follows suit.

“So, for one thing, there's food to supplement the rodent catching.” Astarion begins.

Spike leans on a shelf, “And a couple of bowls, for the food and water, and some litter and a litter box. Well, if you don’t already have one and you’re keeping the cat inside at least.”

“Alright,” Astarion says, “those things as well, I suppose.”

7:13 PM

Besides his initial advice, Spike really wasn’t a lot of help with the supply acquisition, but Astarion managed fine, of course.

He had discovered that the establishment was host to many varieties of divertissement for cats. He knows the cat is particularly partial to little odds and ends that crinkle when disturbed, so he selects for it a little ball in a motley assortment of warm colours. After a moment’s consideration, he picks up a few other trinkets he thinks the creature would appreciate.

The inexplicably massive collection of cat foods to choose from, all of them boasting some benefit or superiority to the others, had only slowed him briefly. It ultimately made the most sense to offload the decision-making to the kitten by grabbing small packages of five different varieties of food for juvenile felines and letting her sort it out herself, which is best.

He was regretting that only slightly now that he has to carry everything home. The shop didn’t have any bags big enough to contain the litter box, so Astarion had just packed all of his other items inside it to awkwardly carry home.

Arriving back at his shelter building, Astarion leaves Spike just outside in order to briefly step in and arrange the setup of the various cat items. The cat appears most excited about the food now that he has emptied a can into the bowl he purchased for it. Only now does he realise that the food bowl says ‘Fido’ on the side where it wasn’t immediately obvious when he purchased it. Upon inspection, the water bowl is labeled ‘Princess’.

Astarion sighs. It doesn’t matter, the bowls can be called whatever they want, but those are completely unsuitable names for the creature.

He finishes up with the set up and tosses the cat toys onto the ground in the kitten’s near vicinity where it’ll no doubt find them and chase them around later if the way it looks up from its food is any indication.

To no surprise, Spike is still outside when Astarion returns. The man may act aloof, leaning on various walls with intentional casualty but Astarion can tell he’s got some kind of request of him yet.

“Well?” Astarion asks, “Was there something else?”

Spike exhales slowly, “Yeah. I’ve got somewhere to be but you could tag along,” he says, as if Spike would be doing Astarion some kind of favour.

Astarion raises an eyebrow.

“Look, new shipment being dropped off at the blood bank tonight and it’s more of a two person job intercepting it, yeah?” Spike explains.

“Blood bank?” Astarion kind of feels like that isn’t or shouldn't be something that exists, but alright.

“Er, yeah. Humans just produce extra blood sometimes. . . or something. It’s been too long since I was a human so I think this is a new development— the getting it out of them and storing it— but basically, the hospitals take the extra blood and put into people who are missing some due to getting injured or the like. Point is, I can’t bite people but I still want the good blood and this is the best avenue of getting it.”

“I’m listening,” Astarion says, crossing his arms and leaning against the door frame to subtly mirror Spike’s posture. He had been so caught up in everything he hadn’t stopped to consider whether aspects beyond the physical affliction of his vampiric nature might be neutralized as well. To drink human blood after all this time would be—

“I’m betting since you’re so new to the whole. . . twentieth century thing you don’t even know about blood banks or the like,” Spike continues, unintentionally cutting off Astarion’s line of thought “So, bit of local knowledge for you and both of us get some fresh blood out of it. Win win.”

“When you put it like that,” Astarion drums his fingers, “I suppose I could use an outing.”

Spike scoffs, pushing off from the wall, “Blood heist hardly counts as an outing. Neither does visiting the Bronze really, but I’d be a piss poor guide if I didn’t include it in your orientation at least once.”

“And the Bronze is. . ?” Astarion falls into step with Spike, the two of them walking at a leisurely pace. The way Spike has tucked his umbrella under one arm looks distinctly aristocratic, which is interesting, especially in conjunction with some other odd habits of his. Spike wears the clothes and demeanor of a working-class man without work or objection to law-breaking and yet. . . Astarion doesn’t quite believe it. Something to ponder over another time, he supposes.

“Oh, a bar basically. There's music there too that's usually not half bad,” Spike says offhandedly.

“I work at a bar,” Astarion points out.

“Why?”

“Hm?” That’s sort of a strange question, but Astarion supposes it’s inconsequential enough that he doesn’t mind explaining, “I figured it was a decent enough form of employment for now.”

“No, I mean like, why do you have a job to begin with? ‘Far as I know, most vampires don’t really seek gainful employment. There’s other avenues of making a living.” Spike asks. And well, yes. Astarion knows that firsthand, but he has his reasons, most of which he will not be sharing with Spike.

“Well, I do like having money for one,” Astarion says, which is honestly most of the appeal. He hadn’t realized how much currency he was accruing until the cat supplies barely made a dent in his earnings over time. It does help that Astarion doesn’t have to buy food or pay for rent or school fees. “It’s more efficient than pickpocketing, I’ve found. Strangely, people in the area seem to be either quite poor, or prudent enough to leave much of their wealth at home. I would have expected scholars to be both affluent and— well, ‘preoccupied’, shall we say. Usually not the best at keeping track of anything other than their textbooks in my experience.”

Spike shoots him a perturbed look and raises both hands palms out, “Suit yourself.”

SUNNYDALE GENERAL HOSPITAL PARKING LOT: 7:47 PM

Astarion stands near the window-door of the hospital dressed in healer’s garb, which, in this realm, is composed of matching blue pants and shirt, a long white coat and a thin blue cloth hat and lower face mask— All of this he had to change into behind a shrub and he’s still feeling a bit miffed about that. Astarion subtly makes a rude gesture in Spike’s general direction.

Spike stands on the far end of the lot, far too smugly for Astarion’s liking, ready to provide a distraction should the situation merit it.

Two men, both average height and perhaps mid-thirties by human standards, and curiously, also dressed as healers, approach from Astarion’s left.

“Hey, fuck off, this is our month,” one of them whisper-shouts at him.

Astarion glances at Spike, who is vigorously shaking his head no and making slicing gestures with his hand.

A stroke of inspiration hits him, and he says, “ Oh really? Because the hospital requested that I, specifically, should accept the shipment since they’ve been dealing with a lot of thefts recently. You wouldn’t happen to know about that would you?”

“Uh. . .” the two men share a glance and then their faces sort of. . . shift? And suddenly they have ugly fanged grimaces and are lunging at him both at once.

Astarion kicks one away from him and dodges a grapple from the other. Thinking fast, he throws a firebolt into their midst that manages to catch one of them on the side, lighting his white coat on fire.

The man desperately pats out the flames and clutches his now-burnt side. He then raises his unoccupied hand to point at Astarion and shouts, “Witch!”

Astarion can’t help but be offended and considers readying another cantrip, but his would-be attackers are already fleeing, so he redirects his attention to the white horseless carriage pulling up. He gladly accepts the blue and white crate from the delivery man and waves thank you as they drive back out of the lot.

Astarion turns to check on Spike to see that he is standing with his arms up as if to say ‘what the fuck’ but he too now has other priorities it would seem. Willow’s friend Buffy has just walked onto the scene.

The short woman spots Astarion and the crate immediately and moves as if to stop him, but Spike blocks her path.

Astarion just barely notices Spike and Buffy getting into a rather heated argument of some kind as he makes good on his promise to flee with his acquisition as soon as possible.

As he reaches the tree line, he is stopped short by an old man with a crossbow.

“Stop right there!” the man yells. And Astarion for the second time this month is surprised by someone’s accent. He too sounds Baldurian.

Astarion blinks at the man, not moving.

The old man continues to hold the crossbow out at chest height threateningly, “Now, if you just set the cooler down and back away—”

Astarion’s eyes widen involuntarily at a commotion behind the man in the treeline. The old man, noticing his change of attention glances behind himself to see what could easily be described as an angry mob clambering out into the open. They have torches, pitchforks, and a rather furious chant going on. In all there must be at least a dozen people gathered, many of whom have fanged distorted features. Most concerningly though, among the gathered crowd are the two people from earlier who were also disguised as healers.

Of course they would hold a grudge against Astarion but this is ridiculous. From personal experience Astarion would have expected the turnaround from insult to angry mob to at least take an hour.

“That doctor is a witch!” one of them shouts, poking the air with his pitchfork. Upon closer inspection, this is the same man whose jacket had caught fire from Astarion’s cantrip.

“What?” the old man looks back to Astarion with eyebrows raised. Whatever he sees in Astarion’s expression seems to be enough for him to redirect his crossbow at the angry mob and begin backing away towards the parking lot.

“Get him!” Another voice calls out.

Several bodies fling themselves at Astarion, and it’s all he can do to shove the back with the crate before dropping it for better maneuverability.

“Burn the witch!”

He jabs an elbow into an arm carrying a torch and knocks the implement from the other’s grasp

The old man is backing away in earnest now and this seems to trigger something in the crowd, “Get his friend too!”

“They’re both witches!”

“I can assure you, I am most definitely not a witch!” The old man defends.

Astarion throws another kick to an attacker’s knee, quickly following up by kicking down onto the shin with his other leg and by the satisfying crack that sounds out, he has successfully broken the bone.

Whipping around, he just barely dodges a stray swing of a pitchfork from one of the white-coated men with distorted features. Right before the man can make another move, he stops short, clutching at his chest and shatters before Astarion’s eyes into a dust cloud.

“That’s what you get for wearing white after Labour day,” Buffy says, revealing that she too has now arrived at the fight, likely drawn in by the raised voices and burning torches. Spike is conspicuously absent though, and Astarion spares a brief moment to be irritated by that.

Buffy eyes up Astarion warily, eyes catching on his long coat and mask, “You too? Doesn’t anyone read Cosmo?” And then she’s back into the fight with surprising ferocity and strength. The old man seems to be holding his own well enough, with a mix of blows to create distance and shots from his crossbow, but he has nothing on Buffy.

Between Astarion’s own dodges and hits, he notices her manage to send a full-grown man flying several lengths with a spin kick and decides to mull that over when he’s not at risk of imminent death by mob.

Out of the corner of his eye, Astarion spots Spike half-crouched behind a tree some distance from the skirmish. When he sees Astarion has spotted him, he urgently points at the crate and waves him over. Astarion narrows his eyes and, spotting a gap, shoots forward to snatch the crate and make a run for it.

“Damn you,” Astarion says when he catches up to Spike, “This hardly seemed like a ‘two man job’.”

Spike scoffs, “I was distracting Buffy just fine, thank you very much! How was I to know you’d attract an entire angry mob— in this day and age no less!”

“What was wrong with their faces?” Astarion asks, and when Spike looks confused, clarifies, “All of the—” Astarion gestures to his upper face area.

Spike apparently finds this very funny then because it seems like he can barely breathe through his laughter, never mind that he doesn’t need air to live.

“What?” Astarion insists.

“Nobody told—” Spike has to pause to wheeze “I mean, I know you can’t look in the mirror but— Okay, okay. Just watch,” Spike pulls out a bag of blood and bites the top off it. To Astarion’s astonishment and horror, the upper half of Spike’s face warps, his browbone and nosebridge contort into one large shape with deep wrinkles, as his eyes become more recessed. The same terrible grimace he had seen on the faces of the mob is mirrored in Spike's own face as he smiles to reveal his bloodied fangs.