Work Text:
Frustrations
Setting: camp.
It’s the voices that wake you. Sharp, loud, raised enough that you can hear them over the nearby stream, even through the sleepy fog of evening in your brain after a hard day’s work.
They probably think you’re asleep. Most nights you let Astarion feed on you, because the buff the rogue gets when he’s ‘happy’ is of huge benefit to your team, and the worst effects of the bloodloss are offset by your guidance pendant, so as far as you’re concerned it’s a win/win. But somehow, whenever twilight rolls around and your companions settle to their end-of-day tasks, you find yourself dropping off while everyone else is still awake.
But yesterday Astarion found (and drained) a pair of wild pigs, which meant he didn’t need you at all. You smile to yourself, recalling his swagger into camp, the massive bristly boar draped over his shoulders. You feasted last night to utter repletion, seated around the campfire, and there’s enough sliced and dried in the embers to feed you again tonight. All except Withers. It turns out that he does eat, but he’s a particularly discerning vegetarian. Go figure.
You were wide enough awake today to keep an eye out for herbs along the journey, and dig a patch of young cattail roots from a marsh edge during short break. And since you’re more awake than usual you’re thinking it would be a nice idea to finish with one or two of those carafes of Turmishan dessert wine you picked up in the cellar of an abandoned house last week.
But from the sound of things, no-one else is in a party mood. You lie comfortably wrapped in your bedroll. You must have dozed off earlier, because the last thing you remember is chatting to Halsin. The big man had been sitting with you, talking about this and that. Mostly about your home grove far away on the edge of the mountains. It seems quaint and old-fashioned to you now, by comparison with the civilised comforts of the Emerald Grove circle, but Halsin was fascinated by the details of life in a land often ruled by the harshness of winter, and your tales of growing up in a a disorderly found family, of up to a hundred children at any one time.
He questioned you earnestly about minor differences in daily ritual, and about the books and scrolls held in the grove libraries. Most of all he wanted to know about Shadow. About what books you’d read that might hold any insight at all into Shadow, about any volumes that might be in ancient languages, or under restriction deep in the stacks, not available to ordinary readers. But you’d read everything in every room, many times, before you left to find the knowledge you were sure was waiting for you out there in Faerûn. You don’t understand quite what he's fretting about, but you told him you were sure there was nothing at home that could help him.
Frustrated (you could feel it in his aura, a little ruffled with emotion where usually his powerful psyche is a calming influence on the rest of your mismatched company of oddities), he rose and strode into the stream, switching to bear shape as he went, and ducked his head under a cascade before moving off downstream in the direction of the river, leaving a vague sense of disquiet and dissatisfaction behind him.
Come to think of it, that psychic disturbance might perhaps have triggered the current argument. For argument it definitely is. They’re actually shouting now.
Wyll’s low rumble is there, but far louder are the voices of Gale and Astarion. The discussion is becoming more vociferous by the second, as each raises his voice to outcompete the other. And it turns out they are arguing about – you.
“You think you can satisfy them with your books and your spells and your nice shiny robes? They’ll see right through you.”
“You’re wrong. They have an astonishing gift for magic. They are erudite and learned. Ours is a meeting of minds as much as anything. We are well suited.”
“Meeting of minds? You mean you haven’t actually…? Oh, how delicious.”
Gale's forehead flushes and sparks begin to gather round his fingers, as Astarion pushes back.
“Whereas I have had the pleasure of that sweet neck more times than you’ve had hot dinners.”
The sparks die as Gale eyes the vampire curiously. “Only the neck?” he muses, and it’s Astarion’s turn to look daggers at the wizard.
Wyll attempts to intervene again. “They have the right to sleep with whoever they want,” he says reasonably.
“Of course they do,” says Astarion, “but they should choose me!”
Silence falls, and the three of them, in affronted male solidarity, turn as one to stare at Shadowheart’s tent.
That’s it! You feel your own temper crackling. Red mist edges in across your vision as you feel the wildshape calling itself into being. But an angry polar bear that can’t speak to anyone is not going to help the situation, and you vigorously suppress the change.
Shadowheart is beautiful, and on another day in another forest (or maybe in another life) you would have been delighted to become her special friend. But she’s so young! They all are, really. Even the vampire, frozen at 39, the moment of his turning. So young for a high elf. A perpetual adolescent, by elven (or druid) standards, overshadowed by two hundred years of torment.
That gives you pause. You wonder if any of them has any idea how old you really are. Druids wear their years as lightly as trees do, slowly bowed by experience or weather, but visibly aging almost as imperceptively as the undead.
You sigh, your own anger gone as quickly as it arose, swept aside by this realisation. But you can’t leave things like this. The poisonous jealousies between rogue and wizard have come to a head now, and you have to acknowledge them. You climb out of your warm pit and walk up to confront the offenders.
The three men fall silent and stare at you, shame on at least two of their faces. Astarion lifts his chin, adopting the posture that looks down his nose at the entire universe of inferior beings he is forced to associate with. But he won’t meet your eye.
“What the fuck were you thinking?” Your voice harnesses the beast within, momentarily channelled into a verbal lash.
They shuffle like naughty schoolboys, though you notice Gale and Astarion exchanging glances. In a sense their posturing has gained them what they wanted. Each now knows that you haven’t slept with the other. That (along with your ire) has broken the conflict between them and reformed the companion bond.
“Not that it’s any of your damned business,” you thunder. Up the hill you sense Shadowheart’s ears prick up. Probably even Lae’zel can hear you, wherever the heck she’s got to. Possibly they heard you in Baldur’s Gate.
“I am not sleeping with anybody.” They shuffle, shamefaced, all except the vampire whose face wears an unmistakeable expression of relief. “And when – if – I do, it will be nobody’s concern but my lovers.”
Gale's eyebrow quirks as he registers the critical word – lovers – and the impossibility of knowing whether it is possessive or plural. Of course, wizards are extraordinarily sensitive to the nuances of language. You hope he’s thinking about alternatives to their macho either-me-or-him stance.
But you don’t continue. You turn your back on them and stalk down to the fire, pausing to grab a bottle out of store along the way. Tonight, you decide, you’re going to drink alone.
The first swallow is raw – it’s a harsh, dry red. The grape speaks to you of downland fields, thin with chalk, and hot, dry summers. But a few sips in and it starts to improve. You wonder if anyone in this strange dangerous world will ever know you as you know yourself. But you’re a druid – insight forbids you to keep up such a level of self-deception.
Halsin knows you. The moment you met him – the moment the cave bear retreated after the goblin battle, and he took his human shape, the druid’s aura had flooded over you, powerful as sunlight, deep and sweet as wild honey. In that instant he knew you, body and spirit, and you knew him. Halsin is a fascinating enigma. You recognise him as your elder, the only companion actually older than you in this time, though the vampire comes close.
You were almost overawed by the cave bear’s presence, and the man is even more impressive. He takes charge easily whenever his special skills warrant it, but has no hesitation in handing back the reins of leadership when the situation is over. Perhaps because he is supremely confident in his own abilities, he has no difficulty in standing aside. He has superb control of his skills, in wild shape and human form alike. And yet you aren’t able to penetrate his cloak of reserve.
You grew up in a fairly conservative grove, especially by comparison to the more cosmopolitan outlook you’ve met recently, and yet even at home there was no limit placed on sexuality, no judgement on adults who chose to interact with one another on any level. Sometimes, when tensions run high, you think it would be a relief to take wild form and slink away into the forest with him, to follow your natures as Oakfather and Ashmother intended.
But the big man holds himself back. All his mind is bent on one thing, the Shadow. It’s as if there is no room in his soul for anything else.
A crackle of twigs nearby makes you glance up, to see Astarion making his way to the fireside. It looks as though everyone else has settled down for the night. He meets your eye, and you nod, gesturing with the bottle, as he sinks down onto the fallen log beside you. You hand the bottle to him, and he takes a long swig.
“Gods below, that’s foul.”
He makes to hand it back, but you shake your head. “Go on. The second swill will taste better than the first.”
“Swill is right,” he grumbles, but drinks anyway, draining the bottle before pulling a small hip flask from inside his loosely corded shirt.
“Here. Wash that down with a sip of the good stuff. I wouldn’t waste it on the rest of this ignorant crew.”
The brandy slips down smooth as silk and forms a small, hot bomb in the bottom of your stomach, warming you through and through. He does the same, then puts the flask away. You sit in companionable silence, the fire glowing brightly as you add a fresh log and give it a poke. Then he stirs, and turns to face you.
“I’m sorry.” The aggravating thing is that he’s completely sincere. “I’m an idiot.”
You sigh. “That is not in question.” He looks briefly indignant, then laughs and you can’t help but laugh with him.
“Darling, you know I love you.” His hands are warm as they clasp your cold ones, drawing you to his heat as a moth seeks the candle flame.
“Love my neck,” you say sardonically.
“Of course.” He bends to give you the lightest of nips, not breaking the skin. It could almost be a caress.
He sits back and stretches those long arms over his head, as fully relaxed now as he’d been tight as a bowspring during the standoff. You look at that beautiful face, so familiar to you now, along with his elegant, cat-like charm. You know it’s a cover for a vast toxic pit of self-doubt and self-recrimination. You know too that on some level he is constantly consumed with fear – meeting the Gur taught you that, if you hadn’t already suspected it.
You know that he needs you, for the bounty of your blood, and increasingly for the emotional anchor you provide. And that his overwhelming urge to sleep with you comes not from desire – not yet – but from the drive to take control of the thing he needs most.
It would be so easy to give in – so tempting – and you know he would give you all you desire, not hold back an ounce of his charisma and skill. But you tell yourself he will be a happier person (if all that you both hope comes to pass) if he makes that decision from his own desire and joy, rather than out of fear. You refuse to become the replacement for the abuser who directed and dictated all his thoughts and actions for two tormented centuries as a slave.
He’s giving you that vulnerable look again. You reach out and touch his cheek.
“I thought.” He stops himself, takes your hand, and puts his lips to your palm. He cannot help but seduce. “I thought you’d chosen him.” (No need to mention who.) “After all, you don’t want me.”
“Stari, don’t look at me like that.” You brush a tear from his cheek. Even in the effort of seduction, it’s rare for him to wear his vulnerability so openly.
“You are beautiful.” It’s easy to say, because true, and his eyes light up in relief. “I meant what I said. I’m not in bed with anyone, in camp or out of it.”
He leans in and kisses you lightly, without pressing you, and you touch your foreheads together, enjoying a moment of trust in whatever kind of relationship this currently is.
You go on, “You are my friend. You are not bound to me.” You shake your head as he starts to speak. “You are free to sleep with whomever you choose, as am I.” He's shaking his head now, though he acquiesces to your wordless request not to argue with you.
“But I promise you this, because you are precious to me and I value your friendship. If I ever decide to sleep with someone, you will be the first to know. Perhaps even before they know it themselves.”
He draws himself up straight, arming himself once again in his pride and grace, the mask of hauteur behind which he hides from the world.
“But it could still be me?”
“It could.”
The night is cool now and darkness has fallen. The fire collapses into embers as you roll yourself back into your bedroll. Beside you, Astarion stretches out and falls effortlessly into the meditative trance that passes for sleep amongst the elves. Through the trees the bear comes crashing, changing, and as a very large body crawls into a sleeping bag on your other side the peace of his aura comes stealing back, settling over the whole glade in a wave of calmness and satisfaction. All is right in the bear’s world. And now all is right in yours, too.