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The question comes unexpectedly.
It’s become somewhat of their nightly ritual to convene in Astarion’s tent after a long day of traveling. Tav is splayed out on his bedroll, fingers absently thumbing through one of Gale’s tomes she’d pilfered. She’s in one of his shirts, the top of which has crept up to expose her thighs, the faintest hint of her stomach.
Astarion’s seen stomachs before, has seen hundreds if not thousands. He’s seen thousands of pounds of flesh until most of them coalesce into a conglomeration of limbs and fluid. What he isn’t used to is the pinpricks of possession that seeps into his veins, white hot and intense. The idea that every exposed inch of skin was for his eyes alone. And when she shifts and exposes her neck, the twin pinpricks that prove that she’s his, the feeling only heightens.
Astarion isn’t sure what to do with these feelings. He’s used to feeling lustful (or feigning lust, it was all the same to him), but he’s never been possessive. He’s never gone to bed and woken up with the same person more than once (he’s never had that luxury). This dynamic is new, but not unwelcome.
She catches his wandering eyes, and Tav shifts to move her legs into his lap. He acquiesces, running his hands down her exposed skin. She smells like the outside, like fire and brimstone. The thought crosses his mind that he wouldn’t mind burning himself on her, as long as she promised never to leave.
“What are we?” Tav asks.
Three words shatter the foundation of his carefully crafted pillar of lies. He could reply with a quick quip, something noncommittal and coy, but she deserves something more.
Tav coughs awkwardly in the wake of what must be an uncomfortable silence. She presses on. “I mean, I’m not expecting you to be in love with me or anything. I just—I sleep in your tent more often than mine now. You treat me so much gentler than you did when we first met. I’ve opened up to you, and I hope you feel like you can open up to me.”
“It’s been more than just sex for a while, Astarion.”
She’s right. He hates that she’s right. He hates that she’s looking up at him with those big doe eyes and plush lips that make him want to throw his self-restraint out the window.
When he’d first started this endeavor to seduce her, it had been with the expectation that he would remain detached. He would remain in control. This relationship (or lack thereof) would be entirely on his terms.
He isn’t sure when that started to change. Was it the morning after the tiefling party? She’d looked so resplendent in the rising sun, tucked behind the inlet of trees and shrubbery. Was it when she’d jumped in front of Shadow-Cursed Harper? She’d shielded him with her body, and the blow that was meant for his head had gouged a nasty scar into her forearm.
It was certainly after they’d encountered that wholly unpleasant drow in Moonrise Towers. The way he’d caught the firm set of her mouth as Araj had told her to control her charge, before staunchly deferring to him. He’d never had that kind of autonomy before, and the casual way she had presented it warmed him.
“I—“ Astarion swallows. For once, his silver tongue fails him. “I don’t know what to say. I don’t think I can give you the answer you want.”
Astarion looks at the quiver in Tav’s lip and wishes he could take it back. Wishes he didn’t react with so much venom, so much bite behind his words.
If they had met two hundred years before, back when his eyes had been green and the lines of time not etched so deeply into his skin, would things have been different? When his palms were still soft, when the skin of his neck didn’t have two puckered pustules marring the otherwise flawless skin. Maybe then he could’ve been the kind of man she deserved.
Not now, not in the universe. Those were the kind of thoughts only a besotted fool could spend time pondering.
“I see,” Tav says. She slowly moves her legs off of his thighs, and Astarion immediately misses the contact. He feels cold, a lancet of ice injected into veins that no longer run red. “Well, I’m not going to push the subject but—“ she cuts herself off. “I don’t think we should see each other anymore. It isn’t fair to either one of us.”
Slowly, so slowly as if to not spook a horse, Tav collects her discarded tome. She’s two steps to the opening of his tent before Astarion regains enough sense to cross the expanse that separates them to grip onto her wrist. His hold is loose enough that Tav could twist out of it, but just firm enough for him to stop her in her tracks.
“What do you mean ‘it isn’t fair to either of us?’”
Tav sighs. Her eyebrows are furrowed, and there’s exasperation written plainly across her face. Still, she doesn’t move any closer to the flap of his tent, and for that, Astarion is glad. He doesn’t know if his undead heart could take that.
“Astarion, I don’t want to lose you.” She says, voice small. She isn’t looking at him. “If that means being your friend because you don’t see a relationship between us, then so be it. But I can’t keep waking up in your bedroll. I can’t keep pretending it’s just sex for me. I want to be the kind of friend you can rely on, not the one that has…has some kind of ulterior motive.”
Astarion exhales a breath he didn’t know he’d been holding. He looks down at their hands, still so close. He cautiously takes her hand in his, linking his fingers with hers.
“Darling,” Astarion starts, tilting her face so he can look her in the eyes. There’s tears on her lashline, and Astarion reaches to brush them away. “Thank you. For always thinking of me. It isn’t that I don’t see a relationship with you, I just…I haven’t been able to see a relationship with anyone.”
He swallows. He hasn’t had time or space to think about what he’s wanted in a very long time. Standing here, in his tent, with the object of his affection so close and yet so far, the weight of his emotions threatens to swallow him whole.
“I don’t want to lose you.” Astarion decides upon. “But you’re right, I haven’t been entirely far to you. Give me some time, Tav. So I can figure out how to be a better man for you.”
Tav nods. “I’d wait a hundred years for you, if that’s what it took. If you’ll have me.”