Work Text:
Light Through the Cracks
“See the sunset turning red, let all be quiet in your head
And look about, all the stars are coming out”
Tavyn followed the ashes.
Some still burned: little embers, silver-blue like moonlight, fell to the wood of the ship’s deck and cooled to grey. The trail led down the stairs and into the hull. Tavyn chased them, staggering, for the ship tilted dangerously to one side: its mast had shattered and broken across the deck. An awful, splintered crack ran through the wood where it had fallen.
Something must’ve hit the vessel during the battle. Tavyn very much hoped it was not actually sinking.
He braced himself against the stairs’ threshold, looking down into the dark, where more embers flickered and dimmed. Stumbling footfalls thudded against the steps far below. Tavyn followed their sound, willing his own aching body to hurry.
It was not a large ship. A merchant’s modest vessel, most likely. Someone had come to Baldur’s Gate to peddle their wares and instead found themselves beneath a burning sky.
The stairs led him down and down until he reached the ship’s hold, where Tavyn paused to catch his breath. Part of his armor buckled painfully against his side. A stray blow had hit well and might’ve broken something underneath, but he had no strength left for any healing. No – Tavyn devoted all of the strength left in him to one purpose: finding Astarion.
He caught his breath and peered into the ship’s tilted hold. Barrels and boxes lay piled and pitched against the starboard side. It would’ve been difficult to see much more if not for the crack along the ceiling: the mast’s fall across the ship had nearly shattered it all the way down and sent it reeling.
Sunlight, red and gold, bled through the ship’s wound in a thin jagged line. Rats skittered about below.
Tavyn knew he was here.
“Astarion!”
There was only a moment of silence, but it was enough to nearly stop Tav’s heart in his chest – then he heard a long, belabored sigh, as melodramatic as it was completely useless for an undead vampire spawn. He was thankful for it anyway.
“It’s me,” Tavyn announced, as though it weren’t obvious. “Just me.”
The boat’s old wood creaked beneath Tavyn’s boots. The rats hissed and scattered, but they avoided the far corner of the hold where a few silver embers still glowed in the dark before turning in a blink to ash.
There. He’d found him.
Astarion lay slumped against a mess of barrels. Tavyn hesitated as he approached, his breath catching: embers still burned in his skin, jagged and cruel across his jaw, his ears, beneath the curls of his hair. Like white parchment set to flame, he’d burned.
Tavyn’s voice shook. “Astarion.”
His eyes had turned the color of long-dried blood instead of freshly bled, and Astarion tried to evade Tavyn’s gaze. “It is with – great displeasure – that I must inform you that not a single one of these barrels contains a drop of wine, my dear.”
Tavyn peered at him. He knew that sound in his voice, as though an unseen hand held tight at his throat and strangled the humor he spat as a shield.
Something red gleamed on Astarion’s lips. “Please don’t look at me like that,” he hissed.
Still, Tavyn stared. He caught sight of a lump just beyond Astarion’s fingertips, shoved into the shadows between the barrels.
A dead rat, bleeding.
Tavyn stepped closer to Astarion and slumped to his knees. He began to unbuckle the complex lattice of his armor, glad to be rid of the weight of it. Some of the straps were already cut, broken, or singed enough that they snapped. The pieces fell to the floor in a jarring cascade of metal.
Astarion’s cheek twitched at the racket of it. He opened his mouth, fangs gleaming, to say something else, but he snapped it shut as Tavyn threw aside his breastplate and leaned over him. Braced against a barrel with one hand, he eased Astarion’s head towards his shoulder – and his neck.
“Drink,” he said.
Astarion hissed, stubborn. “Must I?”
“Drink,” Tavyn said again. “It will help.”
“Of course it will help,” Astarion half-snarled in his ear. “But don’t you hear the rats skittering about? I’ve already found a veritable feast for a vampire spawn down here, as luck would have it–”
“Astarion,” Tavyn pleaded, more breath than voice. “Please.”
He felt Astarion’s breath, his hesitation, but he did not pull away. Desperate fingers dug into the fabric of Tavyn’s undershirt at the shoulder, sliding it down his arm and away from his skin.
The bite came hard, insistent, hungry. Tavyn welcomed the pain with a soft inhale, tilting his head back. Astarion drank deep, lapping and pressing into him, losing himself. He needed this. Tavyn let him take. He shut his eyes to keep the world from spinning, his own fingers tangled into pale white curls. Astarion smelled of blood and fire and whatever awful viscera was still smeared across the blades at his sides –
– his ribs spiked with pain, and Tavyn let out a gasp –
– and before he could stop it, Tavyn tipped backwards, his head striking hard against the ship’s floorboards. He blinked, dizzy. Astarion had pushed him away – hard.
Above him, the crack in the ceiling bled sunlight into his eyes.
Tavyn groaned, forcing himself to sit up. Astarion had retreated to the shadows between the barrels. Though the embers in his skin began to fade, Astarion’s bloody lips curled in disgust. The only relief was in the returned glow of his eyes, two vicious red flames in the black of his silhouette. “You’re nearly dead. And you let me—”
“I’m fine.” Tavyn palmed his neck. His head still spun. “But you're–”
“–not some whimpering, desperate husk. Not yet. Thank you for your pity, paladin,” Astarion spat. “Blessings unto Ilmater, but I’d rather you didn't bleed out for my sake.”
Tavyn let Astarion fling his daggers. Shame was a dull whetstone, and the blades did not sting. He met Astarion’s eyes. “I’m sorry. About – this.”
Astarion looked away just as quickly, glowering at the floor. “Don’t. I chose this.”
“I know. We both knew it was coming. But I thought there’d be–”
“More time? That the sun might grant me a gracious ten minute warning? A head start?”
Tavyn couldn’t say what he’d imagined, really. A reprieve, at least. A miracle at best. For a bitter moment he wanted to cut out his own heart and strangle it dry for its naivety. Wishes were for paladins of different oaths, of kinder, cleaner hands. He had never considered himself vulnerable to the seduction of dreams. But for Astarion, he’d hoped…
“I hoped,” he managed, all of him aching, “that we’d face this together, at least.”
Astarion failed to hide a flinch. “It was a romantic idea, wasn’t it.”
“It isn’t an idea. I’m here. Let me stay.”
His shoulders tightened and he pressed his lips together. Then something in him softened, just enough for Astarion to let slip another too-heavy sigh. “But it’s all so very embarrassing. What a sight I must’ve been, stumbling away like that. Burning.” He groaned, tilting his head back. “I don’t think I could show my face again even if the sun would allow it.”
Tavyn let the corner of his mouth twitch with a halfhearted smirk. “Would you have liked it better if we’d all chased you? Made a show of throwing a cloak over your head, patching you up, leading you to safety…?”
“No,” Astarion admitted. “That sounds awful.”
“Good. I do know you.”
The ship groaned. The muffled sounds of Baldur’s Gate, in both its ruin and salvation, broke through what would’ve been another silence. People shouted, wept, called names and cheered and screamed. Tavyn shut them out, all of them. The world outside had burned, half-crumbled, but Tavyn had kept one small piece of it safe and could not bear to see it shatter, too.
For now, this was the whole of everything: the tilted hull of a half-sunken ship, where Astarion had fled the vicious sun and taken Tavyn’s heart with him.
“Well – if you must stay – stop staring at me and rest, damn you,” Astarion murmured after a time. “Come here.”
Tavyn acquiesced. He drew closer, leaning his own shoulder against another barrel at Astarion’s side. They were close enough to touch – Tavyn yearned to reach for him, but he knew better than to move so quickly. Instead, Tavyn asked, “Are you… alright?”
Astarion rolled his sharp red eyes. “You do know me, and still you’d ask me that? While you’re sitting there clutching your broken ribs and thinking I won’t notice?”
Tavyn grunted, shifting his weight. His ribs were only cracked – bruised, maybe – but he did not offer a correction. “It’s not so bad. I’m still here.”
“And I’m not a simmering pile of ash,” Astarion said, the pitch in his voice suddenly higher and strained. “Not quite alive but not truly dead, either. Always been a bit of a silver lining–”
“Astarion–”
“–I’m still here, too. But am I alright?” He stared at his hands and made a sound something like a laugh and something like a sob. “Look at me. How could I be? How could I–? I changed, Tavyn, I saw myself again – figuratively speaking, of course – I stood in the godsdamned sun! And now I’m driven back to this. To the same holes in the wall. To the same rats. To the same shit.”
With a whip of his hand he plunged his blade into the barrel beside him. Tavyn hadn’t even seen him draw it. The curled edge of Rhapsody pierced deep, and when Astarion ripped the dagger free, a whispering hiss of wheat grain spilled to the floor beside him.
No wine at all.
Tavyn leaned forward, unable to stop his fingers from brushing against Astarion’s in the shadows, soft as feathers. “But it isn’t the same.”
“Isn’t it?” Astarion’s hand twitched away and clenched into a fist around Rhapsody’s hilt. "I'm a cold, dead thing in the dark again. I'm weak. I'm..."
“No,” Tavyn shook his head. “You're you. Cazador is dead. You’re free. And — I’m here.”
Astarion clenched his teeth, fangs bright. Trembling, he slipped his hand from the knife and grabbed for Tavyn’s hand instead, clutching at his fingers. “But I’m – afraid, damn it all, I’m still so – I’m still so afraid–”
He cried, the tears spilling before he could hide them. Tavyn lurched forward like one of the ship’s tumbling barrels, as clumsy as he was exhausted, and held him. Astarion stiffened, but a sob wracked him and he slumped instead, stifling the sound of his weeping against Tav’s shoulder. “Hells.”
“I’ve got you. Remember the cemetery,” Tavyn said, his lips at Astarion’s ear. “Remember what you said, what you carved into that stone.”
“I remember. I know. I–”
“You are free. This is new.”
“I wanted this,” Astarion sobbed, teeth clenched. “I — wanted — this! But gods, let me – let me hate it for a moment?”
Tavyn looked at the crack in the hull, dust drifting down through its fading light. Soon, the day would end. “For a moment,” he agreed. “Until the sun sets.”
Astarion curled into him, and Tavyn wrapped his slender shoulders in as tight an embrace as he could manage. He rested his cheek in his hair, caressing the curls behind his ears, as Astarion’s hands dug into his back. With every sob he trembled with anger, with grief, with release. He spat half-broken thoughts into Tav’s shoulder, mourning the sun and cursing it, damning his own choices and reaffirming them, blaming Cazador and himself and Cazador again.
When Astarion’s cries lessened to weeping, his hand found its way to Tavyn’s chest. He’d done it once before: in the cemetery, where they lay tangled and indecent on the dirt and grass, he’d felt for his heartbeat and seemed to take comfort in it. Tavyn held him closer, as though he could fold him into his heart. It beat hard enough for the both of them.
The crack in the hold turned the darkest colors of twilight. Outside, the sun was setting.
Astarion heaved a shaky sigh and cleared his throat, swallowing hard before speaking. “Alright – well. Enough of that. Enough… indignity. Enough.”
Tavyn loosened his arms to let Astarion lay against him, stifling a tiny grunt of pain as the other man’s weight settled against his ribs. With any luck, Astarion would have forgotten about them completely. Together they watched the last of the light fade from the splintered wound above them. For a moment Tavyn could not see the crack in the hull at all: it turned the same dark as the ship’s hold, invisible, as night finally settled over Baldur’s Gate.
“There,” Astarion said. “It’s gone. It’s done.”
Tavyn folded his hands across Astarion’s chest. Astarion wove their fingers together. The perfect dark did not last long: in time, it turned the pale silver of moonlight.
Astarion tilted his head to look sidelong at Tavyn. "You still want this? Want – me?”
“I said I did,” Tavyn told him.
“People spout drivel when they’re feeling romantic, darling. Drivel and terrible poetry. Especially paladins.”
Tavyn groaned. “You know I can’t stand poetry. And paladins keep their oaths. I want this. I want you.”
Astarion moved against him, reaching for his cheek. He pulled him close and kissed him, lips cold and still faintly brushed with blood, and Tavyn savored it. When they parted, Tavyn held his hands and stood, pulling Astarion to his feet. Gently, he led him into the moonlight, where the wet streaks beneath Astarion’s eyes turned silver-blue. Tavyn brushed them away.
“You’re beautiful,” he said. “In sunlight. In moonlight. In darkness–”
“Oh, stop. You hate poetry.”
“I do. Truly. But I love you.”
Astarion’s eyes glistened, but he did not weep. “I love you. Tav, I–”
Tavyn cupped his face and kissed him, held him, treasured him. The sun would not love Astarion Ancunín, but Tavyn Dir’ani saw his smile in the moonlight and thought the sun a fool. They would love in the dark, and shine brighter for it.
Outside, the newborn night awaited.