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Astarion thought the darkness had starved him, but it had only changed the shape of his hunger.
It wasn’t the clean ache he remembered from living days—the kind that announced itself at midday and could be satisfied with bread and cheese. It’s an entire palace of need built room by room inside the hollow of him, each chamber tuned to a different flavor of want. The physical hunger is only the foundation: that grinding, relentless demand from a stomach that no longer digests, that exists now only to need. Above it, the mental hunger: obsession, fixation, the way thoughts circle back to blood the way a tongue flits repeatedly across a broken tooth. And highest of all, the hunger that has nothing to do with feeding—starvation for sun, for warmth, for the simple animal comfort of a pulse.
He tries, sometimes, to remember what it was like to be hungry the old way, but the recollection has rotted.
He doesn’t eat anymore, of course. He drinks. The word still catches in his throat, obscene and ritualistic. The others taught him how, or tried to. They’d gathered him in the kennel when he was new and raw, half-mad from thirst, and laughed while he tried to swallow from some poor soul Leon had dragged in. The first mouthful burned. He’d coughed it back up, choking on someone else’s life as it filled him too fast, too hot. The older spawn say the newness fades, that the hunger will settle into something manageable, like thirst after wine. They told him he would learn.
He hasn’t. He’s not sure he wants to.
Today is his first night above ground since Cazador took him—six months in stone and candleless dark, six months measuring time by commands and pain. The first breath of open air makes him dizzy. He thought he remembered what it was to walk beneath the sky, but memory is a liar. The city has changed, or maybe he has.
He stands in the narrow space between two leaning tenements, one hand pressed flat against stone that still holds the day's warmth, and tries to remember how to exist outside the kennel.
He’s forgotten how loud the city is. Perhaps he never knew it could be this loud, not with these ears, this new and terrible acuity that turns Baldur's Gate into a symphony of chaos. Voices layered over voices three streets away. The scrape of a cart wheel on cobblestones. A couple arguing behind a shuttered window. Dogs, cats, rats in the walls. And underneath it all, threading through it, the sound that made his jaw ache and his hands twitch—
Heartbeats. Hundreds of them. Thousands. A city of drums, all beating slightly out of sync, and every single one calling to him like a siren song.
Focus, he tells himself, but the word feels thin and distant compared to the roar of sensation threatening to pull him under.
The night air touches his face, and his mind insists it’s cool—autumn air, carrying the smoke from evening fires, the damp promise of rain—but his skin registers nothing. No temperature, no texture, just the ghost of sensation where sensation used to live. In the kennel the air never moved. Everything smelled of stone and old blood and the sick-sweet rot of fear, and now the world is offering him wind and he can’t even feel it properly.
But he could smell it. Gods, he could smell everything.
Coal smoke and horse dung and fresh pie and human sweat and the river's stagnant edge, and woven through it all like golden thread—blood. So much blood. Moving through so many veins. Warm and alive and near, closer than it had been in months, because tonight the leash is longer. Cazador has finally deemed him trained enough to hunt.
Like all spawn, he was not allowed out at first. Cazador kept him close, starved him until his mind blurred, then fed him until his veins screamed, and starved him again. The breaking was meticulous, like the tempering of steel—heat, pressure, submersion—until obedience set into the marrow and his voice bent automatically toward apology.
"Bring me something sweet," Cazador had said this evening, appearing backlit in the kennel doorway. "Something gentle. You have that face for it—such a beautiful face. Even beasts think you mean them kindness.”
Astarion nodded. Cazador’s hand brushed his jaw, cool as marble. “Do not disappoint me,” he said softly, and Astarion thought, absurdly, that he wouldn't. He bowed. He performed obedience with his whole body because his body was all he had left to bargain with, and even that belonged to his master now. The kennel door opened. The night beckoned with its thousand pulses, its symphony of heartbeats, and he had walked into it like a man walks into water, not sure if he remembers how to swim.
When he left the house, the others watched him go, their expressions mild and incurious. He wondered if they remembered their first hunts—if they were frightened, if they hesitated. None of them look as if they ever had.
Now, the hunger speaks louder than Cazador's instructions. It says: there, there, there—pointing his attention like a dowsing rod toward every living thing that moved through the dark. A rat in the gutter. A cat on a windowsill. A drunk man stumbling past, reeking of cheap wine. But Cazador had said sweet, and Astarion knew better than to return with anything less than what was commanded. He had learned that lesson on his back, screaming.
So he stands in an alley in the city he'd once known—had walked these streets as a magistrate, had drunk in these taverns, had fucked in these shadows when he was still the sort of creature who thought he understood darkness—and it is entirely different. Alien.
He is alien. His body moves wrong, too fast when he forgets to slow it down, perfectly silent when he forgets to scuff his feet. His eyes turn darkness into noon, rendering every shadow transparent, every secret visible. His reflection does not follow in puddles. His shadow bends wrong around corners. He has the uneasy sense that the world is bending away from him, like water refusing to wet oil.
A woman passes the mouth of the alley, and he presses himself against the wall on instinct, watching her go. Watching the way warmth radiates from her in his new vision, not seeing heat, exactly, but sensing it, the way his dead body tracked living things now. She’s carrying something. Bread? He can’t remember what bread smelled like, but his mind supplies the memory anyway: yeast and salt and butter.
What he actually smells is the blood moving beneath her skin.
His tongue moves against his teeth; the new ones. They sit wrong in his mouth, too sharp, too many. Sometimes he feels them pulse, tiny aches where bone has given way to something else as if the hunger is still growing new parts, still building him into the creature he’s meant to be. She isn’t the one tonight, but his jaw aches anyway with pressure that builds and builds and—
He bites his own lip deliberately to suppress the urge. Tastes nothing. The wound closes.
He'd practiced that in the kennel, testing the limits of his new body. How fast he healed (immediately), how much he bled (barely), whether he could still feel pain (yes, gods yes, Cazador made sure of that), what his body could survive, which was, horrifyingly, nearly everything. The other spawn had watched with varying degrees of contempt and pity. Dalyria, who'd been turned decades ago, had finally said: Stop. You'll drive yourself mad trying to make sense of it. You're dead. Accept it.
But he wasn't just dead. That was the horror of it all, wasn’t it? He was something worse than dead—animated, aware, starving in ways the dead shouldn't be able to starve.
Another scent catches him. Stronger. Richer. It pulls his attention like a hook in his chest, and his feet move before his mind gives permission. Out of the alley. Into the lane. Following the invisible thread of warmth and life and—
Stop. Think. You're hunting, not following your nose at random like an animal.
Except he is an animal now. That was what Cazador had made him: a beautiful animal. A specimen. My lovely boy. My perfect thing. The words echo in his head in Cazador's voice, honeyed and poisonous.
He'd been good at this before. Seduction had been sport, entertainment, a way to pass the time between court sessions. As a magistrate, he told men they were right, told women they were heard, told the rich they were merciful. They’d thanked him for it. All those years spent weaving words around guilt and power. What better rehearsal for this?
And it should be easier now. Everything about him was more—more beautiful, more magnetic, more impossible to look away from. Cazador had chosen him for that.
He finds himself smiling, though he isn’t sure why. The pleasure of movement? The illusion of choice? Maybe it’s that he feels almost alive again, doing something unsupervised. For the first time in six months, he’s doing something he’s good at. Something that feels almost like choice, even though he knows it isn’t. The thought is dangerous. He can still feel the command thrumming at the base of his skull.
He turns down a narrow lane that opens into a sliver of the lower market. Most of the stalls are already shuttered, their owners fled home to dinner or sleep. But one window still glows, a narrow band of light spilling onto wet stone.
Steam clouds the glass of a small shop, its windows blurred with warmth. The smell reaches him before he reaches the door: chamomile, bergamot, honey, wax. Pleasant things. Gentle things. Everything filters through the same new logic—blood or not-blood, relevant or irrelevant. And under all of it, he hears it: a heartbeat. Single. Steady. Uncomplicated. Sweet.
The street shortens until he’s standing at the door, hand on the latch though he doesn’t remember choosing to put it there. The hunger has chosen for him, and the hunger is very good at deciding. The bell rings softly when he pushes the door open and he feels the unseen hum of the threshold. The living world draws its line, and he, obedient to it, waits.
"Oh!" The voice is warm, surprised but not alarmed, ringing out from somewhere beyond a mess of open crates. "I'm just closing, but…well, come in, come in, you'll let all the warmth out."
An invitation.
The words loosen the air. Astarion steps over the threshold, and only then looks at where he’s arrived.
The shop is tiny. Shelves line every wall, packed with clay jars and wooden boxes, bundles of dried herbs hanging from the low ceiling like strange fruit. The air is thick enough to taste—if he could taste, which he can’t, which was another small death in a long series of small deaths. But his new senses decode it anyway: Mint. Lavender. Rose hips. Rooibos. And in the center of it all, busy with a broom, is a young man.
In his early twenties, perhaps, or near enough. Dark hair curling damp at his temples and the nape of his neck. Shirt sleeves rolled to his elbows, revealing forearms marked with old burns: little pale marks scattered across tanned skin, the permanent souvenirs of a clumsy apprenticeship. A working man's build, lean but strong. His face is lit in low, flickering light—a generous mouth, a strong nose slightly crooked as if it had been broken once. He’s pretty, in an unpolished sort of way.
And his eyes. Gray-green and open, looking at Astarion with an expression that was already warming into interest.
Oh, Astarion thinks. Something within him stirs, old and reflexive. This will be easy.
He straightens, smooths the tremor out of his hands. When he speaks, the voice that comes isn’t the one that’s been scraping raw in his head all night; it’s lower, steadier, velvet.
"I apologize for the intrusion," Astarion says, hand to his chest. "I hoped you might help me find..."
His gaze flicks across the shelves. Jars. Labels in neat script. Black tea. Green tea. Chamomile. Teacups lined up on a high shelf. A kettle whispering on the back stove. It’s tea. He’s been following warmth like a starving hound and walked into a tea shop.
"...a particular blend.” He recovers quickly, the practiced smile snapping into place. “I know it’s late, but saw your light and thought that, perhaps, fate was being kind to me for once."
The young man looks up from where he'd been arranging jars on a shelf, and his face breaks into an easy smile. "Fate or desperation?" He sets down the jar and wipes his hands on his apron. "I'm just closing up, but I can spare a few minutes if you need something. You're very polite for someone sprinting toward closing time."
“I’m worse than polite,” Astarion says, moving away from the door with a lazy, precise interest that made it look like he belonged there. “I’m determined.”
“At what?”
“At being rescued.” He took in the low beams, the crooked shelves, the careful order that tried and failed to tame abundance. Bundles of mint and lavender, rosehips tied like little hearts, clay jars labeled in a tidy, looping hand. “I’ve been told there’s a cure for everything with the right assortment of leaves.”
The man’s mouth tilted, pleased in spite of himself. “I can’t make miracles, I’m afraid.”
“I’m only in the market for something simpler.” Astarion’s tone softened. “Distraction.”
“That I can do.” The man leans his broom against the wall and wiped his hands on his apron. “What are we distracting you from?”
Astarion smiled faintly. “Conscience. Sleep. A tedious evening. Pick your vice; I’m flexible.”
The man huffed a small laugh. “Flexibility’s a coward’s virtue. People say they’re flexible when they don’t want to admit what they actually want.”
“How fortunate, then,” Astarion says smoothly, “that I can be decisive.” The corner of his mouth lifts. “I’m in need of something to help me sleep. My mind won’t quiet these days.” Truth and lie tangled together. His mind wouldn't quiet. It was screaming.
"Ah, the city disease." The man’s expression shifts from playful to sympathy. "I know that demon well. Long day?"
"You have no idea." Another half truth. Every day was long now. Every day was night, and every night lasted forever.
“Then sit,” the man said, tipping his chin toward two stools tucked beneath the counter. “I’ll inflict my best on you.”
The man moves through the small shop with a kind of worn elegance. He speaks as he goes, voice carrying through the layered shelves. “Valerian’s the strongest—puts most people right to sleep. Passionflower’s gentler, less bitter.” His voice strains briefly as he reaches higher, nabbing a few sprigs from the top shelf. “And then there’s lavender, chamomile, all the things that make you feel like you’re doing something good for yourself, even if they just kind of smell like potpourri.”
He reaches high for a jar, standing on his toes. A line draws tight along his neck; a vein lifts, quicksilver under skin. Astarion swallows too sharply. The sound it made in his throat startled him. He covered it with an agreeable hum, something that could be agreement, or interest—anything but hunger.
Oblivious, the man keeps sorting. “Some people swear by skullcap—awful name, lovely effect. Others like lemon balm. I always say the best tea is the one you’ll actually sit down to drink.”
Astarion isn’t hearing the taxonomy anymore. He takes inventory: single door, narrow windows, candle guttering in its brass holder, dull scissors left open beside a bundle of string. Nothing sharp enough to matter. He could cross the distance between them in a breath. He could have him before he reached the counter again.
Sensing the quiet, the man glances over his shoulder, checking that Astarion is still there. “That’s the trick, really. Getting people to stop long enough to taste anything at all.”
"You seem to know your craft well.” Astarion’s lips curved politely.
"I'd better. It's all I've got," the man replies with a laugh. "My aunt left me this place. Took me a few months to figure out which end of a tea leaf was up, but I'm getting there.” He gestures vaguely toward the walls, broom still in hand. “I spent the first few weeks mixing things that smelled nice but tasted like wet hay. Customers were kind enough not to ask for their money back.”
Astarion smiles despite himself. "A rare mercy."
"Exactly." The man leans against the counter. Up close, he smells faintly of mint and smoke. "I’m Elias, by the way."
No. Don't.
"My aunt’s the one who used to say the city needed more places where people could just stop, you know? Just pause. Everyone's always rushing somewhere, trying to get to the next thing, and she thought—"
Stop.
"—that tea wasn't really about tea, it was about the excuse to be still for a minute. Which sounds silly when you say it out loud, but people seemed to understand. They'd come in and she'd know exactly what they needed before they even asked, and—"
Don't introduce yourself. Don't tell me about your aunt. Don't be a person with a history and a life and—
"—I'm not as good at it as she was, but I'm learning. Or trying to. My friends back home think I'm mad for staying, but I don't know, there's something about the city that—" Elias stopped himself, laughed self-consciously. "Sorry. I'm talking too much. You don't need my life story just to buy tea."
"I don't mind," Astarion says, and the smile he offers is easy, deliberate. He’s nothing if not committed to the role. "In fact, I find it rather charming. There's something refreshing about someone who still believes in—what did you call it? Pausing?"
Elias cocks his head, and his smile shifts into something warmer. "Most people think it's naive. Or impractical."
"Perhaps I'm not most people." Astarion watches color rise under Elias’s skin. "I'm Astarion, by the way. Since we're trading names and philosophies."
"Astarion," Elias repeats, testing the syllables. “That’s a name that wants to be remembered.”
Astarion laughs lightly, inclining his head. “And you seem the sort to remember it.”
For a moment, Elias looks like he might say something reckless in return. Instead, he turns back to the shelves—retreating to the safety of his craft. "So what kind of sleeplessness are we talking about? Can't fall asleep, or can't stay asleep?"
Keep going. Astarion moves closer to the counter.
"Both," Astarion lies, letting a dramatic exhaustion color his voice. "And when I do sleep, well—let's just say the dreams aren't restful."
"That's rough.” Elias’s voice warms, earnest again. “My aunt used to say that the dreams we have after dark are just our minds trying to sort through what we can't face in daylight." He’s measuring leaves into a small pot now. "Which is probably not helpful to hear when you're exhausted, but—well, at least you're not alone in it. Half my customers are buying escape in one form or another."
"And is that what you're selling?" Astarion asks. "Escape?"
"Sometimes." Elias fills a kettle from a basin, sets it on a small stove that still holds a few dying embers. "Other times I'm selling an excuse to sit down for ten minutes. Or a reason to talk to someone. Or just—" He shrugs. "—the smell of something nice. Depends on what people need."
Astarion pushes. "And what do you think I need?"
He studies Astarion for a moment, head tilted. "I think you need the real thing, not a blend. Strong black tea with valerian mixed in. And—" he runs his fingertips over a shelf of ceramic teacups, evaluating. "—you look like someone who should sit down for a minute. You're wound pretty tight."
For a moment Astarion almost laughs. Almost. "You're perceptive.”
"Occupational hazard." Elias starts the kettle. "You spend enough time watching people, you start to notice things. The way they hold themselves. What they look at. What they’re not looking at." He glances up with a knowing smile. "You've been staring at me like I’ll disappear if you look away. I promise I'm not a figment of your sleep-deprived imagination."
The words catch Astarion off-guard. He laughs—too quick, too defensive—and has to work to find his voice again. "Well. Perhaps I'm just enjoying the view."
Elias laughs. “Flattery and deflection. Very well played. You’ll have to forgive the mess, by the way” he said, gesturing toward the jars crowding the shelves. “The roof leaks every winter, and I keep promising myself I’ll fix it properly. But my landlord ran off to Athkatla a year ago, and I don’t exactly have a ladder tall enough to reach heaven.”
Astarion smiles faintly. “So you live surrounded by tea and mild peril.”
“Exactly.” Elias grins, leaning his elbows on the counter. “It adds charm. That, and the cat that used to sleep on the sill. Little bastard found a warmer home last spring. Can’t say I blame him.”
“Do you miss him?” Astarion asks. It was the kind of question that made people open up, and Elias does—effortlessly.
“I do. It’s quieter now.” Elias shrugs, like it was hardly an admission at all. “Quieter than I like, most nights.”
Astarion tilts his head. “You don’t seem the type to crave noise.”
“I don’t,” Elias says quickly, then reconsiders. “Not noise. Just—life. Company. I get old ladies buying chamomile for their nerves, sailors buying mint to hide their drinking, and that’s the extent of my social life. My neighbour brings me pies sometimes. She thinks she’s doing me a kindness.”
“And she’s not?” Astarion asks.
“Oh, she’s lovely,” Elias said. “Just convinced she’s going to find me a nice girl to settle down with.” His mouth twisted wryly. “I haven’t had the heart to tell her that’s not really in the cards.”
Astarion’s mouth quirks. “I find it hard to believe your dance card is empty.”
"I've been known to take a turn or two." Elias meets his eyes, something warm and amused there. He pulls down a pair of cups from the shelf, pushes one across the counter toward Astarion. "Here. We’ll give it about three minutes on the flame to steep."
"Two cups?" Astarion raises an eyebrow.
"I've been on my feet all day. I'm taking a break." Elias comes around the counter, pulls out a stool, and sits—
Close. Very close.
"And you look like trouble. Someone should keep an eye on you. Unless you'd rather be alone with your thoughts?"
The smile that comes is too real. Astarion feels it before he can stop it. Something flutters under his ribs, that small animal thing that never slept. It was awake now, pacing, restless
Careful.
He straightens in his chair, lets his voice slide back into something lighter. “Alone with my thoughts? What a cruel suggestion. I came in precisely to escape them.”
“That makes two of us. Misery loves company, I suppose.” Elias settles beside him, close enough that Astarion can feel the heat radiating off him like standing too near a fire. The sound of his breathing fills the small space—in, out, steady and thoughtless. His heartbeat, impossibly loud now. Thump-thump. Thump-thump.
Astarion's fingers tighten on the edge of the counter.
“So what does someone like you do when you're not haunting tea shops after hours?"
The question hangs in the air. Astarion's mind blanks. What did he do? In his time at the courthouse, he spent his days rendering judgment and his nights pursuing pleasure. Had thought himself sophisticated, untouchable, and now he was dead.
"I'm..." He pauses too long. The silence stretches. Elias is right there, warm and alive and waiting, and Astarion can hear every breath. "...between occupations at the moment." It comes out too honest, and he tries to recover. "Trying to figure out what comes next."
"Ah." Elias nods, and there's not even a slight suspicion to it. The man has the survival instincts of a gnat. "One of those transitional periods where everything feels uncertain and nothing makes sense?"
"Something like that." The words taste like ash.
Elias doesn't seem to notice. He's already moving on, talking about a girl from home named Fenna and his father’s carpentry business and the life he didn't want. His hands move as he speaks, wafting his warm smoke scent closer like a lure.
"—I realized I didn't actually want any of it. The life everyone expected me to have. I wanted—" He shifts on the stool and his knee brushes up against Astarion’s.
Warm. Gods, he's so warm.
"—I don't know. Something that felt like mine."
And suddenly Astarion is aware—too aware—of how alive Elias is.
Not just the heartbeat, though he can hear that, steady and strong. Everything. The small movements of his throat when he swallows. The fidget of his fingers against his shirt collar. Had humans always been this loud? This much motion, this much happening inside one body? Blood moving, lungs expanding, heart pumping, neurons firing, muscles tensing and relaxing, heat generating—all of it at once, all the time, without thought?
When Astarion had been alive, had he been this absolute cacophony of biological processes? This symphony of aliveness?
He can’t remember. Can’t remember what it felt like to just be in a body that did all of this, that existed so urgently. His own body is so quiet now. But Elias is roaring with life, and Astarion hadn't realized how loud life was until he'd been surrounded by death for six months.
The hunger rises like a wave. His gums ache.
"Are you alright?"
Elias's voice cuts through the spiral, concerned and close, and Astarion blinks. Refocuses. Pulls the mask back up with hands that feel like they belong to someone else.
"Yes. Sorry. Just—” His laugh sounds brittle even to his own ears. “Tired. As I said."
Elias studies him for a moment, then stands. "The tea, then, before you fall over.” A pause. “And before it over-steeps."
He stands, the stool legs scraping softly against the floor, and crosses to the stove. Elias pours carefully, and the kettle hisses in reply. The rising steam catches in the candlelight, forming small, translucent ghosts between them.
Do it now. While his back is turned. You’re so much faster than he is. It would be over in seconds.
But Astarion doesn’t move. His hands stay where they are, white-knuckled on the counter’s edge. The scent of steeping leaves hits him—earthy, alive—and something inside him recoils. The hunger flares, bright and demanding, but the man inside him, the one still pretending he has a choice, digs his nails in.
"So what brings someone like you to my humble shop at closing time?" Elias glances over his shoulder, a glint of humor in his eyes. "Besides insomnia and…the view?"
I'm here to kill you.
"Would you believe simple chance?" The smile he reaches for doesn’t quite reach his eyes.
"No." Elias returns with two cups, sets one in front of Astarion. "You don't strike me as someone who does anything by chance. You walked in here looking for something specific."
Yes. You. Your blood. Your life.
Elias sits back down, closer than before, and the warmth of him fills the space between them. His nearness carries all the quiet vitality that Astarion lost—breath, pulse, presence.
"Perhaps I was looking for good conversation," Astarion says, and realizes it's not entirely a lie. "It's been—"
Six months. Six months since I've spoken to anyone who wasn't trying to hurt me.
"—a while since I've had that."
"Well." Elias's smile is soft, genuine. "I'm glad you found your way here, then."
The words settle into Astarion's chest, unexpected and warm. When was the last time someone was glad to see him? He picks up his own cup, raises it to his lips. He can’t taste it. Won’t be able to taste it. But he drinks anyway, letting the hot liquid slide down his throat, feeling his body process it without purpose. It goes nowhere. Does nothing. Just fills space.
But Elias is watching him expectantly, so Astarion says: "It's good. Strong."
"That's the valerian." Elias takes a sip from his own cup, makes a face. "Gods, that is strong. I might have overdone it."
"I don't mind strong."
"No, I don't imagine you do." Elias sets his cup down, and there's something searching in his gaze now. "You're not really here for tea, are you?"
Astarion goes still.
"I mean—" Elias continues, gentler. "You seem like you need more than valerian can fix. Like you're carrying something heavy."
I'm carrying your death, and I can't put it down.
"Everyone carries something," Astarion says, a little too slowly to read as dismissal. He stares down at his cup, watching steam curl into nothing. "The question is whether it's yours, or whether you're just—carrying it for someone else. Playing a role you were handed."
Tell him to run.
The urge rises sharp and desperate—not hunger, not the master's command. Something else. Something that feels almost like him. But he can't. His master's compulsion wraps around his throat like a noose. Instead his voice goes thinner.
“Sometimes you don’t know if you’re making choices, or if choices are making you. You stop remembering who wanted what for you. You wake up and the thing they taught you to be is all you can see.”
He looks up. His eyes are softer now, pleading in a way that feels dangerous. If he stares long enough, maybe Elias will just understand—maybe he won’t have to say it. Maybe that will be enough.
"And the worst part is," Astarion goes on, the leash of silence straining. His grip tightens on the cup and Elias watches him quietly, brow furrowed. "You can't remember anymore. Who you were before. If that person was ever real, or if this is all you've ever been."
Astarion can't look away, even though every instinct screams to hide, to perform, to be anything other than this raw and exposed. His eyes are too bright now, almost wet at the edges.
See me. Please just see what I am. What I'm trying not to do.
Elias is quiet for a long moment, studying him with an expression Astarion can't quite read. Then, slowly, carefully, he says: "I think you're here, though. Right now. That's real."
The words land soft, sincere, and something in Astarion's head just stops. The noise quiets, and suddenly the inside of his skull feels muffled, like it’s suddenly full of cotton instead of glass shards. He feels almost lightheaded with the absence of it.
Elias's voice goes on, soft and certain. "Whatever came before—it's not here in this shop. Right now it's just you, and—” his mouth quirks, “—this terrible tea."
Something in Astarion's chest loosens. The tightness releases all at once. He picks up his cup, takes another sip, and this time the bitterness tethers him to time. Just for a moment.
“It has…character,” he says, raising a brow.
"That's a lie." Elias is grinning now.
“Only a small one.”
“Mm.” Elias took a sip, grimaced. "Then you're either kind, or you have no taste. Which is it?"
"Perhaps a bit of both," Astarion says, and there's something lighter in his voice now, easier, drunk on the silence in his mind.
"Dangerous combination." Elias angles toward him. "Kind men will tell you anything, and tasteless ones don't know when to stop."
"And which am I?"
"I haven't decided yet." Elias leans in slightly, playful. "But you're interesting enough that I'm willing to keep guessing."
The space between them shrinks, and Astarion leans into the game. "How long do you need? For your investigation."
"Depends." Elias's smile turns a little crooked. "How long are you planning to stay?"
"I haven't decided yet," Astarion echoes. Their knees settle against each other. Neither of them moves away.
"You know," Elias says, his voice dropping just slightly, "for someone who came in here desperate for sleep, you don't seem very interested in leaving."
"Maybe I've been persuaded to stay awake a little longer."
"By the tea?"
"Among other things."
Elias laughs, and the sound is warm and unguarded. He's close now—close enough that Astarion can see the way the candlelight puts soft rings of fire in his eyes. "What other things?"
"The ambiance, of course," Astarion says, gesturing vaguely at the cramped, cluttered shop. "The leaky roof. The absent cat. Very compelling."
"You're mocking my shop."
"I'm appreciating it. There's a difference."
"Is there?" Elias is still smiling, but there's something else in his expression now—something warmer, more focused. "What is it you're appreciating, exactly?"
The silence hangs between them like warm breath in the cold, and suddenly the room doesn't feel quite so light anymore. Astarion's gaze drops to Elias's mouth, just for a second, before he catches himself.
"The company," he says quietly.
Elias chooses then to be foolish in a way that is not foolish at all. He leans into the space Astarion offered and—carefully, boldly—lets his mouth skim the angle of Astarion’s jaw. The animal inside him opens its eyes and looks up.
Then the world detonates.
The warmth of Elias's mouth becomes scorching heat, and his hunger surges up from its cage, violent and absolute—yes, now, take him, RIGHT NOW, he's HERE, he's TOUCHING you, just turn your head, just sink your teeth in, just—
He sees it—himself lunging forward, the flash of teeth, Elias’s throat yielding—and in that instant, Astarion screams. It isn’t a word, just a sound dragged raw from his throat. His arms shoot forward to shove himself back and they catch the cup instead, sending it flying.
A thin arc of dark heat, the brief, ridiculous chime of ceramic against stone. He throws his whole weight backward, chair legs screeching, and suddenly he's standing—stumbling—arms locked in front of him like he's physically holding himself back from something Elias can't see. He staggers back, clutching his head as if he can tear the command out by force. Hot tea splashes up his wrist, but he barely feels it. Astarion’s whole body convulses with the effort of disobedience, muscles locking against themselves.
Elias startles to his feet. “Astarion—?”
“Don’t—” Astarion chokes the word out, one hand raised, the other fisted in his hair. His breath comes ragged, too fast. His jaw aches so badly tears spring to his eyes, blurring the candlelight into halos. He can still taste Elias on the air, still feel the phantom heat of his skin. The hunger is screaming, his master's will is screaming, and underneath it all he is screaming—this small, desperate part of him that's still Astarion, still him, fighting with everything he has not to cross that space again.
"Wait—" Elias stood, concern flooding his face. "It's okay, it's just a cup, I didn't mean to—did I misread—?"
Yes. No. I don't know. You didn't misread anything except that I'm a monster, I'm a corpse, I'm going to kill you if I stay here one more second—
"I have to go." Astarion was backing toward the door, and he couldn't make himself stop, couldn't make himself slow down. "I'm sorry. I can't—"
"Astarion," Elias steps forward, instinctive concern. "Let me—"
"Don't touch me."
The words come out feral, desperate. His name on Elias’ lips is too kind, too warm, too human and Astarion hates him for his gentleness. It makes him cruel, the only defense left. "You need to be afraid of me. Right now."
Elias's mouth lifts, one corner, like he thinks this is insecurity talking. "I think I can handle…"
But the words die, his smile faltering.
Something in Astarion's face stops him. Or maybe it's the way he's pressed against the door now, hand with a death grip on the latch. Or the way he won't—can't—look at Elias directly anymore, like eye contact might undo him completely. The human inside Elias is too loud; the human inside himself is too gone.
He stares at the dark stain on the floor where the tea has spread into the shape of a small, lopsided map and knows if he stays another minute he will either kiss this man or kill him, and neither is survivable tonight.
"Please," Elias says, fingers reaching gingerly, and it’s the worst thing he could have said. Astarion hates that his kindness wasn’t a ploy and yet feels like one because there is no version of this where Astarion isn’t lying. He tells himself decisiveness would have saved him—take, drag, deliver, done—but even that imagined cleanliness is filthy. Mercy feels like failure; failure feels like mercy. He can’t tell which he’s practicing.
"Lock your door," he says. His voice comes from somewhere far away, somewhere that doesn't shake. "After I leave. Lock it."
"What—"
"And be more careful." He's halfway through the door now, half in warmth, half in dark. "About who you let in. About who you trust."
But Elias is standing there in the wreckage of the moment—broken cup, spilled tea, the space between them suddenly vast—and something in his expression is changing. Not fear exactly, not yet. But the beginning of it.
Astarion sees it happen. Sees the moment Elias stops trying to understand and starts trying to remember if he locked the cash box, if there's anything he could use as a weapon, how fast he could get to the door if he needed to.
Good. That's what will keep him alive.
The bell chimes as Astarion leaves—a bright, innocent sound—and he doesn’t look back.
He makes it two streets before he stopped, presses himself into an alcove, and tries to breathe even though breathing is optional now. The tea is still clutched in his hand, and he doesn’t remember grabbing the small drawstring bag. Doesn’t remember meaning to keep it.
You fool. You absolute fool. He was perfect. He was EXACTLY what you needed.
He had been, and Astarion had let him go, which meant he had to find something else—someone else—before dawn, before Cazador asked questions, before the kennel door closed again and the punishment began. The hunger is still screaming. His body still needs what it needs.
But for just a moment—one suspended, stolen moment—he stands in the dark and clutches a bag of tea someone had given him freely, and tries to remember what it had felt like to be the sort of creature who deserved that kind of kindness.
Then he opens his hand and lets the bag fall into the gutter.
And goes hunting.