Work Text:
"...And then the man has the gall to insinuate I was sizing him up as a meal!"
"But, you were."
"That's entirely besides the point. I was insulted, Shadowheart. Have you no pity?"
Shadowheart gave him a withering look which Astarion didn't shirk away from, though she did seem like she might actually be on the verge of a smile.
Aella wasn't paying attention. Beyond the range of the firelight where they gathered around for dinner, her gaze was set to the shadows.
"Well, the next time I see you sizing me up, am I not to assume it's because you wonder how I might taste?"
"Oh, darling," Astarion said, his voice taking on that predatory edge that he often used when he was about to close in for the kill. "You can assume whatever you'd like of me."
Shadowheart let out a snort.
"I tire of your needless flirting, Astarion," Lae'zel grumbled. She picked at her food, not bothering to hide her continual bafflement at the material plane's cuisine. "What point do you see in sharing words that we are not to understand if you mean?"
"That sounds an awful lot like a fancy way of saying you have no idea how to flirt."
The shadows shifted over on the outskirts of the firelight. A figure was watching, but dully, picking at his food, though not for the same reason that Laezel was. Aella could just barely make out the gleam of one ruby-red eye.
"Chk. I know plenty how to let someone know I am interested in them physically."
"Pft. Prove it. What might you say to me?"
"Nothing. I am not interested in you."
Astarion slapped a hand to his chest in mock offense. "I'm heartbroken. Shattered. Utterly beside myself with woe."
Lae'zel just studied him like she was trying very heard to determine whether his words were serious or not.
"Speaking of interested." Astarion nudged Aella. "Wyll, come join us, would you? Your lurking doesn't go well with the new set of horns."
The figure startled.
"Leave him alone," Aella said. "You're one to talk about lurking."
"Fair enough. But the night is a bit cold. How's about it, Blade?"
The figure then rose, but instead of nearing the fire, he headed away, further down to the water's edge on the very outer limits of their camp.
Astarion shrugged. "To each their own."
"He's going through a lot," Aella said, voice low. "Could you have a bit of sympathy?"
He sneered. "Oh, yes. The grief of turning into a monster. How tragic and completely alienating for him."
She ignored the jab from the vampire. Fair enough. But Wyll seemed less the type to hide his pain with humor than their pale friend was. Perhaps the two had more in common than most of them realized, but she doubted Astarion's general bafflement at Wyll's whole outlook on life clouded any advice they could share.
"I don't blame him," Shadowheart said idly, glancing the way that the Blade had gone, frowning. "I can't imagine how terrible it must be to be forced to change so. No say in the matter, just the reality of knowing you're not who you once were."
Aella stared off that way, and then she surprised herself. She rose, then headed after Wyll.
"You'll fall in if you stare any closer."
"Hm?" Wyll startled, indeed nearly falling into the river. He stood from his crouch. "I--sorry. I'm not, Um..."
Aella came to stand beside him, but stared into the water as well, gazing at their reflections. She crossed her arms and smiled softly. "You know, when I was young, and my horns were just starting to grow in, I wanted bangs to cover them up. My mom let me do it, too. Unfortunately, the tail was harder to hide."
Wyll studied her cautiously, his new red eye shining, his brow furrowed. There was a new edge to his features, new ridges and textures which stood at odds with the warm, soft-hearted man she knew.
Aella looked up at him. Her heart tugged at her ribcage to see the sorrow lined in his eyes. "I don't think you're overreacting, you know. Your appearance is important, it's part of you. It's natural to feel uncomfortable of your skin when you cannot choose it."
The pained look that twisted his features made her want to cry, want to put her arms around him or her hands on his scarred cheek. His shoulders slumped. The sigh he heaved held within it a world of burdens. "I shouldn't be like this. I've only been a devil for a few days. I know I'm among friends. I know you would never-- never judge me." He glanced at her carefully. "I just..."
"Forget should and shouldn't. Tell me what is. What is bothering you, Wyll?"
His lips pressed together. In a moment totally inappropriate for the time, Aella fixed on them. Wyll said, "I am bothered by what I am. I am the thing I have hunted for years. Whenever I look at my reflection, I see the thing I vowed to kill."
She didn't know what possessed her. She hadn't so much as even touched him outside laying a hand on him to heal him after battle. But Aella now reached out and picked up his hand, palm-up. She tapped the callouses that had formed after years of training in sword mastery. "Not to correct you, but I would argue that you are actually bothered by what you look like, not who you are. I could be wrong, though. Who are you?"
Wyll watched their hands, his eyes widened slightly. He said, "I said what, not who. What I am."
"And what are you?"
"A devil."
"Is it?"
He looked at her. Really looked at her, in her eyes, in her soul. Aella resisted the urge to look away, to shirk back, to flee into her tent like she always did when she didn't know what to do with the intimacy of the moment. "What else could I be?"
She could have said his name. She could have said the Blade of Frontiers. She could have said a friend. But instead, she smiled with half her mouth and said, softer than air, "You tell me."
His eyes traveled up to her set of horns. He must have known, after all these years, what was on her mind. Memory after memory of being hated for horns and other things besides haunted her, beat her down until she could not bare to look at herself, some days. There was no looking around the similarities, the mirror positioned between them both. There was no point in explaining it-- it was there, and in each of them they saw a shadow of themselves.
"I asked you what you saw," Wyll said. "When I first-- when she changed me."
"Yes, you did."
"You answered with a joke."
Quite the handsome devil, if I do say so.
"Was it a joke?" She asked, raising an eyebrow and smiling.
"I-- I still do not know."
Her hand moved of its own accord. It lifted, reached up to the curved horns atop his head, felt the ridges there, the smooth texture of bone. Wylls head bowed, shamed maybe, or perhaps humbled. Aella's fingers continued their path up over the braided rows of his hair, around the ridges of his cheekbones, and came to rest on the space between his jaw and neck. His chest rose and fell carefully, in a way that told her he was intentionally trying to steady his breathing.
"If you believe nothing else about yourself, " Aella said, her voice soft but firm, "know this. I have never, and will never, see you as anything less than beautiful. That is who you are, to me at least."
His eyes shuddered, then closed. He leaned into her touch, and it was as though the entire night stilled around them.
Her words continued to flow out from her, like water from a broken dam. It hurt her, to see him like this, so ashamed of himself when he had less than no reason to be. "Surely by now I'd have thought you'd have guessed it. You are beautiful, Wyll. Not just because you look it. Your soul is beautiful."
Wyll's hand came up to clutch the one she had on his neck, squeezed it as though to steel his nerves. Rubbed his thumb over it. When he set his eyes at last on her, she saw his pupil dilated, his lashes fluttering softly.
"I can't believe it."
She frowned. "Believe what?"
"I almost missed it. Missed you." His gaze rooted her to the spot. He smiled faintly, and it arrested her, stole her breath and made her know instantly how dangerously many things she'd do to see it again. "To think, an illithid kidnapping is what brought us together again. Funny, isn't fate?"
"I like to think something greater compels us."
"What, like the gods?"
"Greater than that."
They stood there for a solid moment each of them afraid to move for fear that it would dissipate before them, evaporate like fog in the light of day.
She'd thought of kissing Wyll. Of course she had. Her waking thoughts these days had been more of an effort to keep such desires at bay, keep them on more pressing matters like tadpoles and cults and the end of the world. But when she was with Wyll, those things melted as though they had never really existed at all. As though they didn't matter.
Wyll leaned close enough to her that she could feel his breath on her face. "Can I kiss you?"
A simple question, but one Aella could not answer with words. Words were foreign concepts to her, and all useless besides. So instead, she gave a nod that was little more than a disbelieving dip of her chin.
Wyll took that chin in his hand and pressed his lips to hers, so soft and sweet Aella thought her knees might give out immediately. She found herself leaning into him, anchoring herself to this point in the universe like a sailor to the stars at night. It was more cleansing than any prayer she'd ever uttered, this kiss, more true than any material thing she'd ever held, more charged than any well of magic she'd ever discovered.
Her hands found their way around his neck, his arms embraced her as though she might drift away, and in the frigid night, Aella and Wyll found each other, at long last.
Aella had been in the presence of a goddess, but this. This was truly, inconcievably, precious.
Minutes or hours or millennia might have passed before they remembered the material plane, and that mortals of said plane needed air. Aella thought her cheeks might burst into flame (literally. It wasn't out of the picture for her). She ducked her head at the radiant beam Wyll angled at her, but before she could shirk away, he caught her chin and made her look at him.
"Thank you," he said. His voice was breathless, his eyes locked onto the lips he'd been captivated by for, Aella now suspected, longer than she'd realized.
"For what?" Her cheeks warmed further, the sensation spreading down her neck.
"For believing in me," he said. He rested his forehead against hers. Aella sighed against the contact. "For seeing me as more than my appearance."
"To be clear, I also quite like your appearance."
Wyll had this particular chuckle he gave when he was flustered. Aella had summoned it when she'd asked him for a dance, and again when she'd called him a Handsome Devil, and this third iteration she decided that it might be one of her favorite things to hear.
She couldn't help it. The dam was broken, and so was all restraint for rational thought. She kissed him, half-muffling that embarrassed little chuckle, and Wyll melted, swept in, and returned the favor once more.