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A hulking orc of a man hunches over him, grunting rhythmically. Sweat drips from his lover’s forehead onto Astarion’s lithe form. Astarion is dimly aware he’s naked, aware that his legs are in the air and his voice is moaning, but his gaze is pointedly elsewhere. It lingers on the lampshade, the nightstand, the shitty wardrobe he’d shoved his meager belongings into.
He wonders what time it is. He wonders how long they’ve been at it. He wonders if this will be enough to coax this beast of a man into the sewers. He doesn’t know what he’ll do if it isn’t. He’s much larger, much more well fed by the sound of his blood pounding in Astarion’s ears.
Astarion gazes up at him. Upon meeting his gaze, disgust churns through him. What a disgusting, pathetic man. Astarion has to school his expression into something gentler, something softer than the hatred running through his veins. Contempt didn’t get you bedfellows, and it certainly didn’t get you fed. Astarion’s hollow stomach is proof enough of that.
He resigns himself to the plush cotton of the bed, the crinkled satin sheets that pool beneath his pliant body. Not much longer, now.
Astarion awakes with a start. There’s a trail of something wet on his face and for a moment, he thinks he’s been crying. He follows the trail back up to his forehead, is relieved to find it’s just sweat. He checks himself for injuries, a cursory once over he’d developed years ago after one of his marks got a bit too handsy. Once he finishes his check, he breathes a sigh of relief when he sees his tent rather than another dingy inn room.
He’s safe. He’s in the middle of the shadow-cursed lands fighting undead cultists with a parasite in his skull, but he’s safer than he’s been in a very long time.
With a deep, shuddering breath, Astarion reclines back. He runs a hand through his hair, tries to shut his eyes against the onslaught of images.
Sleep evades him. Every time he closes his eyes, he can still see that inn room, can still feel the phantom touches of a dead lover as they coax him apart. Every time he closes his eyes, he can still see Cazador’s cruel and smirking face as he buried him alive. He can still feel the dirt, the pressure, the mind numbing loneliness of it all. After what feels like eternity, Astarion abandons sleep. Perhaps a walk would clear his mind.
His feet lead him to Tav’s tent. She’s sleeping, his preternatural sense of hearing detecting her soft breaths. He pauses at her door. The part of his mind that sounds shockingly like Cazador chides him for being selfish, for being inconsiderate. He should just turn around and walk back to his tent, back to the dreams that plague him. It’s better than imparting his hurt onto someone else.
He doesn’t heed that voice in his head. He deserves to make his own decisions, selfish or not. Slowly, so as to not wake her, he lifts the flap of her tent, takes a couple small steps forward.
He’s not quiet enough, his normally roguish instincts nowhere to be found in the wake of his dreams. Tav stirs, her eyes opening slowly. “Astarion?” she asks.
“Sorry to wake you, darling.” Astarion says after a beat.
Tav looks up at him blearily, wiping the sleep from her eyes. She awakens slowly, leisurely, like she’s waking up to a lover. They are lovers, Astarion realizes, but none of his other lovers have woken up nearly as comfortably as Tav has. They’ve woken up screaming, scared shitless as he gently guided them to their fate. Tav doesn’t wake up to him like a lover, she wakes up to him like a friend.
“You usually don’t wake me when you need to feed.” Tav says lightly, jokingly. When all Astarion responds with is a weak smile and the nervous drumming of his fingertips on her desk, her expression sobers. “Is something wrong?”
“No, I’m fine, I just feel awful.”
Tav sits up fully. She’s beautiful like this, with the moonlight accentuating her collarbones, the trusting expression on her face. Somehow, that makes Astarion feel even worse. How many beautiful fools did he seduce and bring back for Cazador? Hundreds, thousands? How many beautiful fools would no longer see the light of day, all because they had the misfortune of trusting him.
If he had met her in a tavern instead of that field, would that have been her fate as well? Would he have held her hand as he led her down to Cazador’s dungeon instead of that forest clearing? Just another mindless mark, another one night stand he would force himself to forget.
Tav starts a fire while Astarion lingers at her doorway. She’s in one of his shirts, he realizes dimly, and that fact ruins him from the inside out. He doesn’t deserve this, doesn’t deserve her , not after everything he’s done.
She doesn’t say anything, but she makes space for him next to him. It’s an invitation for him to sit, if he’s comfortable, but there’s no expectation. After a moment, Astarion crouches down to take the seat beside her.
“Do you want to talk about it?”
“I…don’t know where to begin, my sweet.” The pet name slips out of him effortlessly, and all of a sudden it feels wrong to call her by the same honorifics as his past lovers. She means more to him than anyone has ever meant, and the thought of Cazador stealing her away from him has bile rushing to his throat.
Tav looks at him thoughtfully. Her lips are pursed, eyes lost in thought. “Start at the beginning.” She says, after a minute of consideration.
Even though he doesn’t have to, Astarion does. The words spill out of him like a broken dam. Softly, at first, before they rush out of him like water through the cracks. He regals Tav with stories of his “conquests”, the ones he can remember that is. He leaves out the ones where he was beaten, drugged, left out in an alleyway to burn and crackle in the sunlight. He tells her every single crime he’s committed, every single face he can scarcely remember. He talks until the saliva in his mouth has dried, until every sin has been absolved in the light that is Tav.
“Being forced to seduce and lead others to their deaths…it’s ruined sex for me, if you can believe that. It was easy. Instinct, almost. Now, I don’t know if I want anyone to see me…like that. I don’t know if I ever will.”
“Okay,” Tav says, as if it’s the easiest thing in the world. As if his entire existence wasn’t centered on sex and how others perceive him. “We don’t have to do anything you’re not comfortable with.”
“Even if that’s forever?”
“Especially if it’s forever, Astarion.”