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When they get back to camp, Tav immediately goes to chat with Gale.
Astarion sees them from the corner of his eye, thumbing through an old tome as he forces his body language to be neutral, unbothered. He is unbothered. Why should he care who she spent her time with? They’re not even friends, just two people who’ve tasted each other’s bodies. He’s had more of those than he can count, pretty faces that blur together until he can hardly stand to look at his own hands anymore. They’re not friends, just lovers, and Astarion thinks that’s worse than being strangers.
He was not her friend. He did not care for her. He would not wait for her. He never liked her to begin with. This entire entanglement only came to be because he needed to ensure her protection. If he’d met her on one of those starless nights, prowling the taverns for victims, he’d have turned her to Cazador without any hesitation.
So why does the thought of her cavorting with Gale send ice shooting through his veins? Why does the thought of Gale knowing her like he knows her fill his gut with a dread he can’t describe? Tav doesn’t belong to him, nor he to her. She could sleep with the entirety of Faerun and he would have no right to complain. Astarion knows it logically, but that thought has his fangs itching to tear out the throats of anyone who would dare.
He’s not a violent person. Even when he had been a spawn under Cazador’s control, he had been kind. He’d handheld them through the sewers of Baldur’s Gate, had left each of them with a tender kiss, or as tender as a man like him could muster. He wasn’t like Petras who seemed to bask in the cruelty of what they were doing, who laughed when he dragged his marks kicking and screaming. Astarion had been sweet, had been gentle. He was a well trained dog, bringing back treats for its master. Sure, he’d had a rebellious streak, but what more could you expect from a hound? After all, when a dog is scared enough, it bites.
Astarion shakes his head to clear his mind. He wasn’t a dog. He was a person, a person whose opinions mattered, at least to Tav. She’d given him agency beyond just sex. She valued his input, even when it was violent and ill-tempered. She trusted his judgement in battle, even when it put her life at risk. She’d put her faith in him even when it was objectively stupid and dangerous.
Damn her. Damn her and her insistence on him making his own choices. Damn her kind words and damn the way she tucks a lock of her hair behind her ear whenever she’s thinking, and damn her for taking up space in an unbeating heart he thought no longer stirred for anyone.
Astarion clucks his tongue impatiently, snapping the book he’d been holding shut. He takes one last look at the forest Tav and Gale escaped into, and the soft, vulnerable part of him—the part that got him sentenced to a year of confinement—wills her back. After a beat, he snuffs out the candles and crawls into his tent, bidding Shadowheart and Lae’zel goodnight.
He resigns himself to drinking his problems away. First with alcohol, then whatever he could scrounge up from the surrounding area. A bear, or perhaps an elk. Whatever would fill his belly and keep his mind off of Tav and her neck.
He hasn’t even finished his first glass of wine before he hears Tav and Gale come back. They’re uncharacteristically quiet, especially for someone like Gale. Verbose was a generous term to describe his mouth. Astarion would’ve gone for something simpler, like annoying. He hears Tav bid Gale goodnight, hears her footsteps recede to her tent. He thinks that’s the end of it, then, that her and Gale must’ve shared a disgustingly vanilla kiss and now she was off to dream about him and his fucking books.
“Astarion?” Tav asks, lifting up the flap of his tent. She looks and sounds uncharacteristically meek.
Astarion bites back the bile in his throat at her arrival. He thought he would at least have the night before she broke things off with him. He lazily meets her eyes. “Hello, my sweet. Did things end so horribly with the wizard that you had to come crawling back to me?”
Tav barks out a laugh at that, and the sound is sharp and clear against the night air. The sound warms his cold, unfeeling body, makes him want to find ways and means to elicit that sound from her again.
“Yeah, something like that.” Tav says. She gestures to his bedroll. “Do you mind if I sit?”
Astarion finds himself nodding his head almost unconsciously. He should be embarrassed, should demur, should be more coquettish, but the idea of Tav in his tent, so close has him unwilling to mince words. If he still had blood pumping through his veins, he’d flush. He turns away, busying himself by pouring Tav a drink.
“Do tell, my treat.” Astarion says, handing her a glass. She takes it gratefully, taking a swig before she continues.
“He showed me a magic trick.” Tav says, taking another sip. “It was cool, until he- I…didn’t know he felt that way about me.”
Astarion feels his blood boil. He wants to rip Gale’s throat out, he wants to bash his head in and keep bashing until-
“I don’t feel that way, for the record.” Tav replies, and her face flushes with delicious blood at that.
He composes himself, at that, straightens his back. “Oh? Do tell, my dear.”
Another laugh, this one softer, kinder. “Let’s just say if I were to…want someone, they’d be strong like a panther, with…piercing red eyes and white hair.”
Astarion isn’t used to such honesty, not from his marks. He’s used to coy looks and coquettish smiles, of double entendres that eventually devolve into a teasing mess. When faced with honesty, Astarion’s first instinct is to run far, far away from where these emotions could hurt him. It scares him, this honesty. But nothing worth fighting for doesn’t scare him.
He doesn’t answer fast enough. Tav clears her throat, breaking the gaze. “Astarion, if this is too much for you, I get it. We don’t have to do anything-“
“I can’t promise you anything.” Astarion says, just because he can’t bear the thought of Tav thinking he doesn’t reciprocate. “But if you want…this, I do too.”
Tav smiles, and it’s so entirely breathtaking that Astarion knows he’ll always want to coax more out of her. She takes his hands in hers and tilts his chin so they’re eye to eye.
“I’ll always want you, Astarion.”
Later, when he’s in bed, contemplating Tav and his future, he’ll reminisce. He isn’t a dog. He’s never been. He’s a person, and he always has been.