Work Text:
“Looking at something?”
Ianis started and felt himself instantly flushing pink with embarrassment. He hadn’t even realised that he’d been staring until Astarion had called him out for it. Ianis had just been crossing the camp for something (he couldn’t even remember what it was now) when he had seen the elf, seemingly staring at himself in a hand mirror, and Ianis had just… stopped. He’d thought that vampires didn’t have reflections – maybe it was different for vampire spawn? And of course it didn’t help that, even from behind, Astarion was absolutely someone Ianis could stare at for hours.
And now he’d been caught. Ianis felt like his embarrassed blush was reaching his hairline now, and he tried to cover for it by reaching up and running a hand through his short, raven-black hair. “Ah – just looking,” he replied, his tone apologetic. “What are you doing?”
“I’m looking too, but not seeing very much. Another quirk of my… affliction.” There was something different in Astarion’s tone, Ianis noticed - there was none of the usual disdain, or biting sarcasm, of even playful flirting. No, he actually sounded… regretful? Sad? Ianis took a couple of steps closer. The mirror Astarion was holding, he realised, was cracked and broken, crooked spiderwebs across the glass. But the only thing he could see reflected in the mirror’s many pieces was the night sky.
Oh.
“Do you miss it? Seeing your own face?” Ianis’ voice was soft. He had never been particularly fond of seeing his own reflection in the mirror, but to know that he’d never be able to see himself again, even if he wanted to… It was a sobering and disorienting thought.
“Preening in the looking glass? Petty vanity?” Astarion turned to face Ianis, his tone sharpening for a moment… and then his face softened again. “Of course I miss it! I’ve never even seen this face. Not since it grew fangs and my eyes turned red.”
Ianis’ eyes widened with shock. “Never?” he asked in a near-whisper. “That’s…” Instinctively, he wanted to say that he was sorry, but he managed to stop himself. That would have sounded way too much like pity, whether he meant it to or not, and he knew that the last thing Astarion would want was to feel like people were pitying him. “What colour were they before?” he asked, because he was suddenly, genuinely interested.
“I-” Astarion started, and then his face seemed to drop even more. He seemed shocked, maybe even distressed. “I don’t know. I can’t remember. My face is just some dark shape in my past.” In a fit of sudden anger, he threw the hand mirror to the ground, where it shattered completely. “Another thing I’ve lost."
Well done Yan, you only went and made things fucking worse.
But an idea came to Ianis then. Well, maybe two ideas, but he wasn’t sure if one of them would work, so… He stared at Astarion, studying his face carefully and trying to commit every detail to memory. His eyes were blood-red and piercing, but there was also a sadness to the corners of them at that point. And of course, when he was flirting, they were sharp and enticing and even the thought of them made Ianis start to blush again. His skin was utterly flawless – Ianis had maybe had an idea in his head that vampires, being nocturnal underground dwellers and all, would have been practically transparent and have a visible tracers of veins visible just under the skin, but Astarion wasn’t like that. His skin was pale, yes – maybe even unnaturally so – but it was still… well, perfect.
Ianis had spent a lot of time before this picturing Astarion’s face in his mind, but all of that had been idle fantasising, while this was more like trying to catalogue every detail, in case he suddenly went blind. Eyes, skin, the perfectly coiffed white hair with the slightest of grey highlights that always had those soft waves (and how did he even get his hair that perfect when he couldn’t even see it? Ianis felt like he could spend half the day trying to do something with his own hair and it would still turn out the same way every time – two front bangs in permanent danger of falling into his face and blinding him at the worst possible times), his pale pink lips…
“What?”
Ah. Maybe staring so intently at the other man was a bit strange. But Ianis gave a shy little smile, and replied, “I’ll be your mirror. What do you want to know?”
The offer seemed to throw Astarion off for a second. When he finally did reply, his voice was almost hesitant – almost as though he was afraid to even ask, or maybe he was afraid of what the answer would be? “I want to know what the world sees when it looks at me,” he said. “What you see.”
Ianis knew that, 90% of the time, Astarion was putting on an act. Most of the words that came out of his mouth were carefully pre-planned and thought out in order to get him exactly what he wanted (Of course, knowing this hadn’t exactly stopped Ianis from falling deep into – desire? Infatuation? Confused lust? - with him, but that was a problem for another day). This, however, was genuine. Ianis could hear – could feel – the hesitancy and vulnerability in Astarion’s voice. For just a moment, Astarion was giving the power over to Ianis, in whatever their friendship or growing relationship was, and Ianis knew he had to really be careful not to fumble things here.
“Your eyes,” he said after a moment’s thought. “They’re strong and penetrating and sometimes it feels like you can see right through me, but I-” The words caught in his throat for a second as Ianis realised he was maybe going a little too personal, but he could hardly stop now – “I don’t mind them on me. I like it. The way you watch everything. They way they look.”
Ianis was pretty sure he’d descended a bit too far into useless babble by the end there, but Astarion seemed pleasantly surprised by it all. Some of his self-confidence seemed to re-assert itself, and he gave a small, amused smile. “Oh. Go on…”
“Your smile,” Ianis continued, feeling a little more confident in himself now. “It’s sharp and it’s dangerous and it promises a lot of things, and honestly it used to fluster me a lot and it probably still does, but I also love seeing it. Especially when you’re smiling at me.”
Where the fuck did that come from, Yan?
But Astarion seemed far more interested in enjoying the compliments than in anything else at that point. “Very good,” he purred, and now he was much more like the confident, self-assured and knowing Astarion that Ianis was used to. He smiled, one of those weaponised smiles of his that might have hidden a sword somewhere inside it. “Now, just tell me I’m beautiful and we can call it a day.”
Ianis cocked his head to the side slightly. “Is that really all you wanted?” he asked. “Shallow praise?” Astarion’s defences were back up, Ianis realised. Any and all vulnerabilities were buried deep again.
Astarion laughed. “Hardly. There’s also gold, sex, revenge… Quite the list, really. But failing any of those, I will always settle for shallow praise.”
“Well… you are beautiful, Astarion,” Ianis told him, his voice quieter. “And it’s not shallow praise.” His cheeks were reddening again, and he turned to leave. “Good night, Astarion.”
“Yan?” Astarion’s voice was soft again, and Ianis half-turned back to look at him. “Thank you. For the honesty.”
Ianis shrugged awkwardly. “S’okay,” he said. Astarion was looking at him oddly, and for the life of him Ianis couldn’t quite figure out what it meant. “Are you… okay now?”
“Never better, darling. We should do this again some time.” The careful, controlled Astarion was back now, and Ianis figured that was a good sign in itself, if nothing else. “Oh, and Yan? One other thing.”
“Hmm?”
“You’re very pretty when you blush.”