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From under dark lashes, the vampire spawn looks up from the worn parchment lying in his hands.
To the casual observer, he’s just casting a brief glance around. Visibly absorbed in his own thoughts, flipping through the pages of an ancient book with little care of his surroundings and the companions that inhabit the quiet space around him. He’s simply wrapped up in his own evening routines. Relaxed. Winding down after a long day.
But only someone keen to the subtle mannerisms would notice he wasn’t actually reading at all. They’d notice his forearms tense with every turn of the page, as if remembering to flip through it at all for appearance’s sake. They’d notice his eyes flicking up every so often, gaze settling only on you and remaining there, staring in quiet contemplation at the lines of your body from across camp.
They’d notice the parting of his lips then. Faint heat turning the tips of his ears pink. Apprised to the imperceptible flinch that crosses his face when his own fangs sink into the flesh of his mouth.
He looks away. Blinks, and refocuses on the words before him.
But while the letters themselves manifest quickly in his vision, their meanings don’t translate quite as easily in his mind.
This is ludicrous.
It’s not as if he were unaccustomed to studying you discreetly. He’d done it many times before. A self imposed mission of observing your routines and habits, gauging where your loyalties lay with every word you said, determining whether your kindness was genuine or a thinly veiled façade.
But, now…
Well, he didn’t quite know what it was now.
At present, nothing about the way you sit there should effortlessly sink into his subconscious and seize his mind like a harpy’s song. And, yet…
He looks at you again.
Basking in the heat of the setting sun, you’re sitting comfortably by the coastline. One leg drawn up in the sand, hair swaying in light wind, gaze sweeping back and forth through a bundle of parchment and scrolls on your lap. You’re still donned in your armor, but your gloves sit in the empty space beside you. He finds himself staring at the bare skin the absence of them allows. Your fingers moving through every page, wrists turning, faint veins visible all the way from where he stands.
He tears his eyes away.
For God’s sake, you’re not even doing anything.
Such attentive observation would make sense if he were still analyzing your behavioral patterns for hidden motives, but it feels wrong to use that justification now. It’d been weeks since he’d first met you. In the days that have come and gone, he’d traveled with you, fed from you, laid with you.
No, you’re by no means a stranger to him anymore. But the feeling stirring inside when he looks at you definitely is.
And he can’t help himself from wondering if you feel it, too. You certainly don’t make it easy to tell. As receptive as you’ve always been to his advances, you’d never propositioned him the way he did you. And as much as he wills it aside, he’d be lying if he claimed the indifference didn’t worry him.
After all, the security he’d established in your retinue relied heavily on your attachment to him. He’d cultivated it well. Applied every lesson of seduction he’d learned in his two hundred years.
So, why, in the hours that have passed since you’ve made camp, you haven’t once looked his way?
And why is it that he can’t stop looking at you?
You’re still sitting there in the sand, attention honed in on what you have laying before you. Whatever task you’ve given yourself clearly leaves no room for your attention to wander. It’s only then as he continues to watch you that he supposes you’re just going over plans for what comes next. Strategizing. No reason for him to fret over the lack of attention.
He starts to relax, unaware that he’d even been wound up so tightly.
That is, until that damned dog skips right in front of his tent, bounding without a care in the world toward you.
He’s almost certain you wouldn’t take notice of Scratch’s arrival at all, not with how absorbed you appear. And the likelihood only grows slimmer with what little effort the dog makes in stealing your attention, anyway. Scratch casually circles around you, white paws digging into the ground before he flops onto the ground by your legs.
Astarion exhales lightly. The sight isn’t so bad. For all the hours he’s been looking your way, it comes as a small reassurance that not even Scratch’s direct approach could divert—
You suddenly look up, set the scrolls and parchment down, and reach over to pet the dog.
Astarion’s eyes narrow.
How dare you?
He’s been vying for just a single glance for hours now to no avail, and just the dog’s mere presence managed to break your focus? A vampire spawn having lived two hundred years and the sole companion responsible for giving you the most pleasurable night of your life, and you abandon all impassivity for the dog?
If he weren’t so astounded at the absurdity of it, he would’ve scoffed.
In keeping with the subtly, however, he settles instead with looking away again. All things considered, he’s not even sure why his attention has been so entangled with your presence to begin with. His own continuous lapses in composure annoyed him just as much as it confused him. So, when the urge to glance over returns a short while later, he hardens his resolve.
You can have your fun with the dog. All the better for him. He’s never going to unravel the secrets of this damned necromancy book if he keeps getting distracted.
With some effort, he tunes out the sounds of camp around him. Lae’zel sharpening her greatsword to his right, Shadowheart tinkering with that grisly artifact to his left, the clinking of glass as Wyll rummages for another bottle of wine behind him. It all fades to a distant hum, along with the quiet sounds of Scratch’s whines and playful howls from the coastline.
Astarion slowly reads over the book lying in his hands, and after hours of skimming mindlessly since setting up camp earlier, the words finally begin to bear meaning.
But just as quickly as he falls into the ancient text, he’s pulled right out. This time, by the sound of your voice.
He looks up, uncaring of the determination to resist.
You’re standing closer to the water now, silhouetted in the rays of fading sunlight and glittering waves. The sheets of parchment you’d been so engrossed in lay on the ground where you’d been sitting. Scratch remains where he is, stretched out and relaxed in the sand by your feet.
And beside you, stands the druid.
Your penchant to attract animals has truly become his undoing.
Halsin’s stature easily dwarfs yours. Unsurprising, considering the beast of a man he is. If only his temperament matched the rugged appearance. It would have made the heat that flares inside justifiable at the very least as Astarion watches the two of you.
Instead, the druid’s approach appears warm and welcome. And despite Astarion’s tendency to make enemies of strangers, he’s grown to know Halsin well enough to surmise that when the druid’s head dips toward yours, none of the words that are spoken from his lips are unkind. You even laugh in response to whatever he says, a quiet sound, but the only thing Astarion seems to hear.
He wants to look away.
That feeling from before grows like a Sussur Bloom where his heart used to beat, nulling every bit of rationale that kept him relatively level-headed. He finds it difficult to place a name to it. It’s not possessiveness. Not jealousy, he thinks. Not even a defensive driven compulsion to safeguard the security that comes with your attraction to him.
All he knows is that the longer he looks at you, the heavier it weighs.
He frowns.
He doesn’t like this. Hates it, even.
Only because he’d done everything right. Stuck with the herd. Deemed you the most competent out of everyone in camp. Seduced you in order to keep himself safe from the clutches of his old master. Flirted, bantered, praised you. It was a calculated game only he knew the rules to. But despite the advantage he’d given himself, he can’t shake the feeling that he’s losing.
Scratch rises from his spot beside you amidst the conversation, shaking off the sand from his fur and skipping away. Halsin turns to watch the dog go.
You, however, look the opposite way.
And it’s as you finally meet his eyes, and that familiar, reassuring smile curves the edges of your lips, does the fog finally lift.
The game was over a long time ago.
You’d lost.
But, so did he.