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You’re laying in bed at the inn, in a little town you’ve already forgotten the name of. The inn itself is rundown, a curse of the passing of time— it was a business from a time years ago when far more people traveled through the mountain pass to get to Baldur’s Gate. Now, the rocky coast at the base of the mountain is littered with the remains of crashed ships and most of the villagers have died or moved on, looking for work elsewhere.
When your party had passed through the town, most of the buildings were boarded up, and the few that weren’t were in disrepair. The remaining villagers, with weatherbeaten faces and gnarled hands, looked on suspiciously as you trekked through town just before the sun rose. The inn, a welcome reprieve after cold, wet slops through the muddy mountain pass, was barely any more welcoming. The older innkeeper— a human— hadn’t questioned why you’d needed rooms at six in the morning, to sleep the day away, and you’d been grateful for that, at least.
Astarion shifts in bed beside you, similarly unclothed. His spend is cooling on your thigh, and his graceful fingers are in your hair, twisting it into knots. He catches you watching him, giving you a long gaze with his dark, blood-colored eyes. You almost ask, Ready to go again? but something stops you. You just wait.
“You know,” he says, his skin pressed to yours, his voice sated in the way it is whenever he’s full of your blood, and has spent across your body. “I almost miss being able to look into your mind, sometimes.” And then, “Not that I miss much else about those damned parasites, mind you.”
Except, that, of course you know he does. He misses being outside in the daylight, seeing the full colors of the world, the warm sun on his cool skin. The heavy curtains— the least moth-eaten of all the rooms your party had rented— are barely enough to hide the mid-morning sun, which passes as your evening these days. Still, it’s the best accommodation you’ve had in weeks, truthfully. You’ve grown used to sleeping in caves and alcoves and condemned buildings, far away from that which could kill your lover. Your pack is full of scrolls of Darkness for the times when you can’t quite make it inside. You’ve had to use far too many.
You snort.
“You could always become a warlock,” you tell him, teasingly. “Get Detect Thoughts.”
The idea is laughable. Any patron— the Great Old One, a devil— would have their hands full with Astarion. You know that within weeks they’d be offering him back to you, at a bargain, just so they wouldn’t have to put up with him.
But Astarion stiffens under you.
“I don’t want to be bound to anyone ever again,” he says, like a foul taste in his mouth.
“Ah,” you say, but it falls flat. Your throat is suddenly dry.
The words hit you particularly hard, because you have a ring in your bag meant for Astarion.
The old ruins you’d come to explore are better than you’d hoped. They sit on the side of the mountain, overlooking the rocky coast. Once, a lordling or minor princeling probably lived there, but the structure has been abandoned for at least a century. No one in the village— at least no one who was willing to talk to you— was alive when it was inhabited.
Unlike some of the other places you’ve seen in your years as an adventurer, the structure is largely intact. It seems, from what you’ve seen so far, mostly untouched by other adventurers. You don’t know if it’s because of the supposed curse— or what the villagers think is a curse, you’re not quite sure after all that you’ve seen— or just because of the inaccessibility of the location. The stone bridge that was built over the expansive chasm has long since collapsed, only parts of the piers still exist. You were able to jump between them, the mortar still holding up after all these years.
Dawn was approaching by the time Astarion picked the lock into the basement hatch, so your party set up camp there, with hopes that in the evening when you woke you’d be rested enough to trek through the building, even if parts were exposed to the open air.
You can hear Astarion behind you, fussing with the packs and bedrolls. You’d already started a fire, vented through the open basement hatch, and a stew pot was heating over it for when the rest of your party returns from scouting ahead. “I rather like it here,” he says, absentmindedly. “If it wasn’t miles away from any sort of real civilization, I might suggest we stay.”
He always does like these places, and truthfully, you do too. When once you might have wanted to walk on the misty beach on the coast below, or through the dark paths of the ancient forests you saw trekking up the mountain, you’re growing ever-familiar with the dusty, mildew-y smells of ancient places. You like them, though. The history, the traces of people who used to live there, the baubles that once meant so much to people before they— well, before whatever sort of disaster happened to them that left their bones scattered across the floor.
“Mmm,” you say in acknowledgement. You’re hunched over a map you bought off another adventurer for three gold— crudely drawn by unpracticed hands, based on something she’d heard from another adventurer who’d eventually died in the ruins. You know how it goes— a thousand tales passed from one hand to another, the truth somewhere in the middle.
Your party is better than she was, though— or luckier. You’ve had little trouble so far, Astarion disarming the few still-active traps after these centuries, so that the others could scout ahead.
You glance back to see Astarion settling down on his bedroll— or yours, it’s hard to tell with all your things so intermingled these days— with an ancient tomb he pulled from the library of the last place you investigated. That last ruin had been vastly picked over, but luckily— for Astarion, at least, who loves ancient knowledge just as much as he loves shiny things— most adventurers are not as bright as they are money-hungry, and the library was mostly untouched.
Glancing towards the open basement hatch, with the watery morning sunlight filtering through the ever-present mist, you think it must be sometime near seven or eight in the morning. Your adventuring hours— and those of your party— have had to change, significantly since the tadpoles were removed. You miss the sun, often, but you love Astarion more, so it doesn’t even compare. The others— your friends, those that chose to stay with you after everything that happened— feel the same, in a manner of speaking.
The map isn’t incredibly forthcoming, but it makes note of a secret passage behind a bookcase in a study. The adventurers before hadn’t figured out the mechanism, but you think your party can. You’re already thinking of all the ways you might hide the mechanism, if it were your study— levers hidden within torches, strange hollow books, buttons behind paintings.
“Love,” you call out, absentmindedly, “can you grab my journal?”
“You don’t have arms?” Astarion calls back, in the same absentminded tone. You roll your eyes.
“You’re closer, Astarion,” you tell him, turning around. His eyes flick up from his book, meeting your own.
“Oh alright, but just for you,” he says, stretching across both of your bedrolls, rolling over gracefully. He makes a show of it, not breaking your gaze as he drops his tomb.
You roll your eyes again, leaning your elbows on the dusty crate you were using as a table, the overturned bucket a stool. You cross your ankles, the soft slippers of your camp clothes tapping together. He makes a show of digging through the bag, overturning it when he can’t find the journal. “It’s probably in the Bag of Holding,” you tell him. His eyes flick up, as if to say, you get it, then, but you don’t make a move.
He turns the Bag of Holding inside out, the contents spilling over the floor. It’s mostly empty— you sold most of the contents in the last town over— but what’s left tumbles out. Your journal— a leatherbound book that was a gift from an old friend some years ago— splits open to a water stained page, and half a dozen other items fall atop it.
The items are mostly mundane— a few jugs of water, a rope that’s gotten you out of more places than you can count, a compass— but your eyes settle on a little suede pouch that was neatly tucked in there. You freeze. Astarion catches the movement, and he snatches up the bag.
“What’s this?” he says, a mischievous glint in his eye. Not cruel, but it once might have been. You don’t miss those days much. “Trying to hide spoils from me, darling? Tsk. I never thought you were the type.”
His deft fingers pull open the string while you watch, too startled to move. He pours the contents into his pale hand, the little gold ring shining in the firelight.
You lunge at him.
His eyes widen, his palm quickly closing in over the ring as you wrap your arms around his middle. You’re strong, but he’s wily. He slips from your grasp, twisting away from you, ring held triumphantly in his hand.
You’re at an impasse, a single bedroll between you, both hovering as though you might dive at him again.
The triumphant, teasing look on his face faces quickly when he sees the look on your own. You can’t see your own face, but you imagine you’ve gone ashen.
“Astarion—” you say, and your voice is on the edge of pleading. It makes him hesitate, for just a moment, as he looks down at the ring in the firelight. “Not a spoil,” you say, to the question he asked moments ago. “It’s— mine,” you say, weakly. “I bought it,” you tell him.
It’s the truth. You bought it in the Wide, the vast market in the Upper City, weeks ago. Months, now. He’d scold you if he knew how much you’d paid for it— he’d rather you have slipped the ring in your pocket when the shopkeeper wasn’t looking, but that isn’t your thing. You mostly steal from those who can afford it, or the long-dead who have no use for gold.
He turns the ring in the firelight. It's gold, with three blood-colored rubies, just the color of his eyes. Or of your blood.
You’d been thinking about him, about forever— about what that would mean for a near-immortal, and you, his mortal lover. Marriage means something to you. It always has. And you want it to mean something, with him, but— you don’t need marriage to be together. You’re happy, with him, as he is. And if he would rather you continue like this forever, you’ll do it.
He must catch the neat Elven script on the inside— aeterna amantes — lovers forever, because he stills, holding the ring between two fingers. You’d had the jeweler inscribe them, days later, after staying up three days thinking the ring wasn’t quite right, not yet.
“This is an engagement ring,” he says, without looking up. “You were—” he scoffs, almost unbelieving, looking down at the ring.
“Yes, but I—” you say. “I heard what you said about not wanting to be bound to anyone again. So I haven’t.”
“You would— you would want to marry me?” he says, with a hysterical sort of laugh that’s tinged with self depreciation. “Me?”
You search his eyes. His brows are furrowed, like he doesn’t quite understand. You’ve never discussed marriage with him, but you have discussed other things. Being together. Traveling together. His trauma, and yours.
He’s far too silent. You see him losing himself in his thoughts, the memories and the fears he’d tried so hard to shed. When he speaks, it’s incredulous. “You haven’t— you haven’t hit yourself on your head, have you?” When he looks up, his eyes are wide. “You do recall, well, everything I’ve done, don’t you?” he says. And then you get it.
He’s falling into the rabbit hole of who he was for two hundred years. What Cazador did to him. What Cazador made him do.
The people he fucked, the people he tore from their lives and their homes. How he was little more than a whore to sate his master’s bloodlust. How he could never quite break free from that sort of programming, even when he was no longer under Cazador’s control— the way he seduced you because he thought that was the only way you’d ever want to keep him around.
“Oh, love,” you say, “you don’t think that way about yourself anymore, do you?”
“Well— not most of the time, anyway,” he says, with a wave of his hand, dismissive. But he’s still staring down at the ring. “You bought this? For me?”
You sigh. “Yes.”
“And you intended to propose. To me.”
You roll your eyes. “Yes.”
He looks at you like you’ve grown a second head. “You would want that? To be bound in the eyes of your gods, and our— friends?” He stumbles over the words, even after all this time. The words are like rocks in his mouth. You nod. “You’re already doing so many things for me,” he says, “making so many sacrifices! You can hardly go out in the daylight anymore!”
“Marriage isn’t a sacrifice, Astarion. It’s—” You aren’t even sure how to describe it, really. It’s not about— the taxes, or the title, or the name. You’re hardly in the city, anyway, and even if you were, you’d never have that sort of normal life most people there have. There will never be a little house on the water with little children with blood-red eyes. “Commitment,” you settle on. “More than just— a promise,” you say. It’s a feeling. Knowing the person you love is choosing to be with you, making vows to gods. “Haven’t you ever—” you start, but you stop yourself. Two-hundred years ago, Astarion was thirty-nine. Barely an adult in the eyes of his people. When would he have had the time to consider marriage to anyone at all?
“I have to admit I never thought about it,” he says, pensive. The ring slips between his fingers as he rolls it between his fingers with deft hands. He tosses it in the air, and catches it again in a closed fist.
He reaches for your hand, the cool touch familiar to you. It’s not cold— never cold— but cool.
“Take it back,” he says, pushing the ring into your hand.
“Okay,” you say, taking it from him. The ring is surprisingly warm in your palm. You go to put it in your pocket— you don’t think you’ll get rid of it, not yet anyway— but he stops you.
“No—” he says, with a roll of his eyes. “I said, take it back.”
“I did—”
His hand curls around your own, the ring in your palm. He looks at you, expectantly.
“Oh,” you say, and he looks at you, fondly, like the idiot you are. “Astarion—”
You didn’t have a whole speech planned out, just a couple of things that you wanted to say. You didn’t write them down. You didn’t think your voice would fail you in the moment, but here you are, on your knees, just feet from the fire in a decaying castle. And your words are failing you.
“Don’t you have a few things you want to say to me?” Astarion says, all teeth. “About my beauty, my prowess in bed? Why you want to spend eternity with me—”
“Oh shut up,” you say, but the tears are welling in your eyes already. “I’m so proud of you,” you tell him. “Of the man you’ve become, and all the things you’ve been through—”
“Oh not this again—” he says, but you can see him softening. His wind-swept curls fall on his forehead, a warm white in the orange firelight.
“Astarion,” you say, “I love you.” You take his hand, pressing a kiss into his palm. “You’re so strong, and beautiful, and funny—” He makes you laugh constantly, all the witty remarks he makes whenever you do anything at all. “I want you at my side, always. I’ll never regret picking you. Spending all my nights at your side.”
“You can’t know that,” he says, shaking his head. “Never is such a strong word—”
“Never,” you tell him.
He lunges at you, before you can react. He pins you to the ground, kissing your face fervently. “Gods below, I love you,” he says. “Fuck,” he says. “I never thought about it— I was so young, when I died, and then it was—” he shutters above you, his thighs atop yours. “You want to marry me? Truly?” His red eyes are piercing. Intoxicating. You know why thousands fell at his feet.
“Of course,” you tell him. You’ll assure him as many times as you need to. For the rest of your lives. “And you really want to— be bound to me? Before the gods and our friends?”
You touch his face, your thumb caressing his lip. You feel his teeth through his parted mouth, and he bites down, just barely, teasing—
“I don’t want to wait,” he says, eagerly.
You laugh, a fondness in your eyes. “Afraid I’ll change my mind?”
“Never,” he says, fiercely. “You love me.”
“I do,” you say, fondly.
You right yourself, pulling him up with you. You settle onto your knees on the bedroll, facing him. “Now?” you say.
He nods. “Unless you have any objections—”
You take his hand. With the other, you scrounge around the loose contents of your bag till you find your alchemy pouch, spilling over with vials and dried herbs. You loosen the leather cord tying it. It’s bloodstained, taken off a corpse you looted months ago. It’s fitting, you think.
You struggle, attempting to tie your hands together, but Astarion’s free hand comes to help, far better at tying knots than you are.
“I vow,” you say, the words heavy in your mouth, “to love and support you for all the days and nights we share. To be yours, until the stars burn.”
He takes his cues from you. “I vow,” he says, and there’s a long pause. “I vow,” he starts again, “to do all that I can to be the man you think I am. To love you as you deserve, to love you as you loved me even when I wasn’t deserving of it.” You squeeze his hand.
“With the tying of this knot,” you say, not only to Astarion, but to all those listening— the gods, the rats, and the ghosts, “our lives are now bound, one to another.” It’s been so long since the last time you were at anyone’s handfasting ceremony, but you know it’s less about the words spoken as it is about the intent. “By this cord we’re bound to our vows.”
“May our vows never grow bitter in our mouths,” Astarion says, surprising you. You look up, and he looks solemn. “May this knot remain tied for as long as our love lasts.”
He meets your eyes, and they’re soft. You didn’t think he’d know the words, but he’s always surprising you.
Astarion raises your bound hands to touch your cheek, and he leans it for a kiss, sealing your union. Your hands are meant to stay bound until midnight, but it’s nowhere near midnight. Maybe noon will have to do.
He pushes you over, lacing your fingers together. You laugh as your back hits the bedroll, and think— husband.
“I hope the others take their time,” you say, as he settles over you, his thighs settling atop yours, “because I want to fuck my husband.”
Astarion purrs above you. “I rather like the sound of that,” he says, preening. “But if they do come back early,” he says, leaning over you, his lips brushing the shell of your ear, “they can enjoy the show.”
You yelp, letting out a laugh, as he descends upon you.
When your hands finally come unbound, Astarion slipping the cord from your hands, you feel the magic in the room. Someone out there was listening.