5k And Counting

5k and counting 👀👀

“Darling… I can’t have you afraid of me. That’s not how this night is going to go.” His soft voice makes her shiver and she’s lulled by the sound of it. She raises her head slightly, gaze growing heavier the longer he stares at her.

“How this night is going to go…?” She echoes, slow, the end shaped like a question. His tail swishes back and forth before the spade tip caresses up her calf. With him finally touching her, she gasps, the softest glance magnified like it was earlier. She shudders, pressing her thighs more tightly together, shaking her head, but her body eventually wins out.

“The terms, dear…” He murmurs, leaning forward again. Her skin is feverish when his tail draws away and he crawls over her again. She shrinks back, lying against her pillows, his thighs caging her in as his hands settle on either side of her head.

“Uh…” She stammers, trying to get a coherent thought through. He’s so close she can see the pores of his face and the soft ridges on his horns. She finds herself wanting to caress them, the thought causing her cheeks to burn. “Terms… right. The spell is making me… making my body act like this?” She whispers cautiously and he nods, encouraging her to continue. “It made these… weird tattoos show up on my skin… and you can control them?” He nods again, eyes twinkling in amusement. Her nostrils flare in irritation, but she keeps going, realization finally dawning as she approaches the conclusion.

“I… this lust… oh my god…” He tuts, smirking with satisfaction.

“You finally understand?” The growl in his voice makes her eyes flutter shut. With the answer flaring brightly behind her lids, her body opens up in a way it hadn’t before. Her thighs spread until they’re pushing against his knees, her breath leaving her in a rush. She clenches around nothing, thinking about the shape of him under the loincloth and when her eyes snap open again he laughs, deep and sugared.

“You want my body?” She asks through gritted teeth, the slip hanging over her stomach becoming itchy and unbearable. His lashes fall halfway and when his forked tongue darts across his lower lip she whimpers in response.

“Usually you call an incubus because you need relief, but… your scent is maddening and I've barely even touched you…” He purrs, lips dropping down to her jaw.

WIP Whenever/Wednesday!

Okay, so I'm late to Wednesday, but whatever!

I wanted to share something I'm working on while I'm working on my long fic With Stars to Fill My Dream- since the smut is far off, I have been enabled into indulging in an Astarion Incubus one-shot by my lovely friends, and I've been marinating it for the last couple days. All inspired by this beautiful art by @poofroom

It's going to take some heavy lifting on my part, so it will definitely not be a couple-day endeavor since it's currently sitting at 3,987 words and we've barely passed the summoning. That being said, it'll be a long one-shot in an AU of my fic's universe where Ofelia accidentally summons a... you guessed it, incubus! And it's Astarion!

Please enjoy some of this as a teaser since I'm raking myself over the coals trying to make it my best smut work! XOXO 🖤 (Putting it beneath the cut so I don't go to horny jail 🖤)

The curtain flutters away, revealing the silhouette of a man. Except it isn’t a man… As the light illuminates the hard cut of his torso, bat-like wings stretch and unfurl on either side of him, wicked horns curling up and over his silver hair. Red irises glow in the night, trained on her face, a tail swishing behind him. She doesn’t breathe, doesn’t move- her heart pounds, but her body reacts in a way she hadn’t expected. Her skin breaks out in the same feverish sweat that she’d felt before crawling into bed, her stomach aching and her breathing coming in short pants. She chances a glance in the full body mirror across the room, her cheeks flushing red at the uselessness of her night dress. The marks that had started at her neck circle her wrists and close around her thighs like bands. “Am I dreaming?” She asks softly, unable to resist the pull she feels towards him. He takes a step and she tenses, eyes admiring his broad shoulders, ornamental silver bracers covering each forearm. Most of his body is bare, save for the thin piece of satiny fabric and gilded chains covering his hips. Her eyes trace the trail of hair that disappears beneath, down until her breath chokes out of her. Her thighs press together at the hard outline beneath the loincloth, her imagination filling in the gaps- thick, straining, throbbing. Her mouth floods with saliva and she swallows thickly as the steady pulse from earlier begs for attention, her shame dissolving as his crimson gaze flows down over her exposed breasts. The sudden urge to touch him fills her mind until it’s all she can think about, even as he opens his mouth to expose sharp canines. “I’m afraid not.” His voice, smooth and velvety, covers her body like honey- sticky sweet. She shivers as he takes another step, so close now that she can see the sharp tips of his ears beneath his hair. His lips curl into a fiendish grin and she shakes her head, wanting him closer, god, she can’t take the distance anymore. Her mind roars with a desire hotter than anything she’d ever felt- wanting more than anything she’s ever wanted before. It drowns the real her out, save for a single line of curiosity. “What are you?”

I'm specifically tagging you three first because you're enablers, but I'm tagging the rest, no pressure! 🖤 @preciouslittlebhaalbae @inkymoonbunny @verbenaa @ladyduellist @khywren @bhaalsdeepbat @elinorbard

And if I didn't tag you, know that I love you and I'm the world's most forgetful person!

*chefs kiss* Your work is phenomenal as always 🫂

I may do a wip tomorrow... it's hella sad... does anyone want to cry with me????? 🥹💔

Sunday Snippet

Hello friends! Thank you to the lovely @verbenaa, @khywren, and @xxnashiraxx for tagging me over the last week in WIP posts. I threw all my energy in to Gortash Week, but now that I've finished those pieces, I'm going to try to catch up on tag games and asks! (There, uh, will still be lots of Gortash, though.)

To repeat what I said a week ago: I am working on the third (and final) part of A House, A Home (tumblr version: Parts One and Two). There will be angst, there will be smut, there will be attempts to piece together fragmented memories of angst and smut. I took a break from it this past week, but I'm excited to dive back in.

So here's a snippet:

The memory surfaced unexpectedly. She was laughing in a sunlit room. This room, and this bed, with the sheets rumpled and well-used. Enver was stretched out across them, naked. Beautiful. He was lounging on pillows, ever the spoiled lord, but his arms stretched above his head, bound by a length of black silk that was tied somewhere near the headboard. His jaw was clenched, but he looked at her with a haze of lust and longing in his eyes. She had a dagger in her hand, one of his many gifts, too delicate to be much use in most of her work. But it was perfect for today. She slowly licked the blade and tasted the salt and iron of his blood while he watched every movement of her mouth. “Darling Enver,” she mocked. “Is this worth it, to be able to call me yours? Do you have the pet Bhaalspawn you’ve always desired?”

I honestly don't know when people last posted, so I am going to re-tag @verbenaa, @khywren, and @xxnashiraxx as well as @preciouslittlebhaalbae and @flamemittens! Share your WIPs with the world (if you'd like)!

Flare searches for Astarion

Read on AO3

“Wait!” Flare called as Halsin fell back to the ground on all fours. She sang her Speak Animals charm. 

“The house is charmed, you will be safe if you stay inside,” Halsin told her. 

“I know, but please let me go with you,” Flare replied. Halsin nodded his head and then crouched low to the ground as she had seen him do at the school for the children to climb on his back. Flare had still never touched him, knowing that he was safe but unable to get her body to relax. There was more to what had happened last night than sleepwalking, but Halsin would not betray his friend’s trust; if she wanted to understand, she had to see Astarion. Flare marched forward and buried her hands in Halsin’s thick brown pelt, hauling herself up. 

Natsu during GMG

Epistles of Saints & Sinners

Chapter Summary:

Tensions rise before the unlikely travelers enter the monastery.

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Story Summary:

When Astarion meets the humble bard, Tav, he soon finds out he's the only one between them that knows they are bound as soulmates through their marks. Deciding it's more trouble than its worth, he refuses to tell her along the course of their journey across Faerûn.

But, unbeknownst to him and their companions, Tav is harboring a gruesome secret that she only thought was nothing more than a traumatized period in her life.

As they both come to face to face with their pasts and presents, will they choose to move forward or let it consume them?

Healing isn’t linear—after all.

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Chapter 19: Gods

Ao3

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Main Page & Chapter List

Word count: 5.5k

Pairing: Astarion x female bard Tav

CW: Language, Act 1 Spoilers

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I write this in haste as the githyanki attack. 

Our forces have been exhausted and we will all be dead by day’s light.

The lance has failed and so have our pleas.

Kind stranger, if you find this note, please know I have prayed for you. 

— Novice Monk, last words written on his inner forearm in ink

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Folklores have a knack for possibly foretelling a person’s future, molded with lessons in mind. Sketched orations implanted within the mind’s eye, traditionally passed down. 

But, what lessons—what excuses—were to be instilled after the atrocities the Crèche Y’llek githyanki inflicted on Rosymorn Monastery, especially when there were no survivors left to tell the tale?

Death had abounded and it claimed more than the previous worshiping inhabitants. It came for the wall mosaics whose chipped pigments had fallen into lifeless heaps upon skeletal laps following their demise. Its veil, hushed away lost voices that chanted as lamp wicks were lit. Even toppled over cups of wine, that soaked and stained neglected tables, were unable to escape the vagarious phantom’s euthanizing stroke.

“This place is deader than I am,” Astarion mused, kicking aside what appeared to be a femur bone with the tip of his boot. “Shame, I was looking forward to a livelier welcome.”

He found himself stalking around a statue dedicated to Lathander, situated in front of the old monastic building portico, wondering if this god had been one of the many that didn’t respond to his prayers while he was being psychologically marred and beaten endlessly. Nearly forgotten generations seemed to be lost to another version of himself as he disdainfully stared up at the stoned infant with a gold metal sun orbiting its body affixed in the dawn lord’s grasp, signifying renewed births. His eyes traveled lower, to the end of the god form’s flawless marble tunic folds, noticing a carved skull pressed heroically beneath its foot. He briefly turned his head away, scoffing at the absurdity of such a visual odium.

Even the undead must suffer your ruling that they are unworthy of saving, Astarion thought, frowning. It was pointless to beseech the mute supreme vessel, knowing not even a rebuttal would be granted to his rightful questions over the gods lack of mercy. 

Inferior soul, how do you cry out,

Knowing no one will hear you.

With blurred light and seeping dark, 

Hope dangling on words that do not reach. 

His attention turned to Lae’zel as she maneuvered her body in front of an upright banner she discovered, tracing her sinewy fingers along symbols drawn into its hide. “Tir’su script. Kin is close,” she noted ,”Perhaps further inside this insipid place.”

Shadowheart cast a subdued yellowish light—enough to read the script—on top of the hanging animal skin. “Your language. What does it say?”

“Vlaakith’ka sivim hrath krash’ht. Only in Vlaakith may we find light,” Lae’zel responded with pride, letting her fingers loiter above the scrawlings.

Astarion abandoned his quest cursing the Morninglord, approaching the two women in a sly stride. “So, the gith replaced those doing works for one god, with their own. I suppose our civilizations aren’t totally incomparable in that regard. We all do have a tendency to make everyone acknowledge that in which we worship, don’t we?” he wise cracked.

“Githyanki do not worship any gods nor follow religion. We venerate Vlaakith and to forsake her means we become the blood and meat for which she sates her dragons,” Lae’zel corrected. “The people here didn’t survive because they were weak. Weak minded and weak of brawn. Not because my people meant to ideologize them to our credence.”

His arms folded against his chest, deviously rising a thick brow. “Oh dearest Lae’zel, you don’t have to belong to a religion to be religious. Whatever that you hold in highest faith is your god.”

The gith fighter growled as she fiercely advanced towards Astarion, her cinnamon hair vibrant in the sun’s path. She pointed a single elongated nail at him. “Argh! You know nothing of what you speak anymore than you know about my queen! And you are wasting time by casting your ideas about this world’s ideologies into our conversation!”

Up close, her slitted irises seemed to open wider, like a crack in the earth beckoning him into a citrine mine. It was oddly riveting to the spawn how naïve the githyanki were about the material plane despite them using it to cultivate their crèches. Prematurely in their journey, Lae’zel informed the crew this was because they chose to disengage entirely from other ethnicities due to them possibly “tainting” their society. Everything to the gith became a means to an end, including their propensity to be certifiably evil by most standards.

But for all the destruction the slender astral plane-dwellers committed on the living plane, they proved to be the only race capable of continually decimating illithids, halting their grand design. 

However, a part of him could not—albeit infelicitous—wholly begrudge them for their attitude involving strangers. The gith had only known the claws of enslavement to the mind flayers for generations until their subjugated chains were broken, a situation all too familiar to him. He understood how trust can turn into an abstraction under those conditions, eavesdropping like a floating dandelion seed on its conceptual edge. 

“I think that’s quite enough,” Shadowheart intervened with ambivalence laced in her tone. A dispelled cantrip, that was assuredly prepared for them if they persisted in their bickering, fizzled out in her palm. “In case you’ve both forgotten, we are being hunted by the same people that may also have a cure for these cursed worms in our heads. Time is not on our side, so either we shut up and work together or we might as well do ourselves a favor and kill each other off now.”

He viewed the cleric from his peripherals, scarlet irises aglow in jouissance. “As you wish. Thinking outside the box isn’t for everyone anyways,” he mumbled in a gibe.

Shadowheart disregarded the vampire, refocusing their conversation onto more productive measures. “Lae’zel, what can we expect once inside this crèche?”

Lae’zel herded her concentration sluggishly away from Astarion. “They will be on high alert, probably seeking information about the artifact weapon. Your presence alone is going to cause skepticism, so do not expect them to have mercy if you get out of line.”

The healer nodded, patting the purse containing the icosahedron prism fastened onto her hip. “And how exactly are we to safely enter without them attacking on sight?” 

“They will receive me with no issue, but you three will have to roleplay as my servants if we are to peruse their compound,” Lae’zel decisively advised, gesticulating between Shadowheart, him, and the bard that was in the near distance behind him. 

Now that Astarion pondered it, Tav had remained eerily quiet since they reached the derelict building. His ears perked back, listening for any signs of movement from her.

Ah. There. 

The songtress’s lissome boot soles reverently landed, crunching over the littered ground, likely scrounging about on one of her many humanitarian crusades examining the obvious holy edifice’s monstrosities. Really, he had come to distinguish all his traveling allies' footsteps apart, but he would only find himself drollingly smirking particularly at Tav’s beats. While she held tightly onto her deepest inner thoughts like a hyper judgemental woman clutching her pearls, her mood was always evident through her footfalls. A heavy scuff typically meant she was angered. Soft quick pitterings were often created during her busiest chores in camp. Or, the most curious of them all: the choreo-esque silken soar of her feet as she played the lute. Curious because she rejected the idea of dancing, but it was so prevalent in the way she moved—the way she fought. 

Tav’s familiar heartbeat meandered closer to them, out in that stygian sea upon the unpleasant waters of her thoughts. Those numerous abnormal pulses that led nowhere, on the outskirts from where he was positioned. Sounds that made his mouth a watering delinquent portal to which he almost lacked the discipline to stop himself from placing the flat of his ravening tongue against her chirring arteries.

“Servants?! I am certainly not agog over that,” the vamp spluttered out as he indignantly threw up his arms. 

“‘Star,” Tav greeted him quietly as pewter shaded buckles from her rapier scabbard faintly brushed against his side when she finally appeared.

He rotated his head, studying Tav’s profile carefully. Her skin, still somewhat wan from his earlier feeding, held onto fresh drizzly beads of sweat along her hairline. A sunken seam deepend horizontally on her forehead as her gaze epoxied itself to Lae’zel. Something was on her mind, cysts filled with fluidic profundities that began to gestate as they embarked into the monastery. 

Leftover wafting traces of coppery blackberries from his bite wound on Tav, rose from her flesh like an exorcism, injecting into his nostrils when he inhaled. There was a certain amount of pride he felt as a man, knowing his fang marks were seated into her delicate neck. A consensual hunter and prey dynamic that tickled his nightly creature’s base instincts imagining her running beautifully through a thick forest for him to capture, her sighing and sighing and sighing his name. Perhaps he would ask her one day to—gods, he must still be reeling off the potency from her stimulative blood.

“And where have you been, songbird? Leaving me all on my own to babysit these two bores, tsk,” he teased, inflecting his tone an octave higher.

“You can take it out of your blood tax later,” the bard suggested, struggling to exert a fleeting chuckle. She looked up at him. “Mind if I cut in?”

Grateful for the interruption, he nodded. “Then, how could I say no? By all means.” He held out his gloved hand, palm up, giving her the opportunity to purge her mentations.

Tav sucked in a breath, then gradually released it. “They’re all…dead. Every monk, every pilgrim—deceased. And this was all done for the sake of constructing a crèche?” she steadily broached, wasting no time in getting straight to what was disturbing her. “Lae’zel, what did the people here do to deserve such a sentence?” 

Discovering in person just what the githyanki were capable of, coupled with a drafty air that had coagulated with whistling gusts leading the imagination to believe it was the spirit's moaning screams yet wandering the monastery’s halls, would change the dialogue for anyone—especially Tav. Astarion realized how dangerously stupid it was for her meddlesome lectures to take precedence now when there wasn’t a godsdamned thing they could do about the age-old murderous scene. Repeatedly poking the wasp’s nest—Lae’zel included—meant that a remorseless horde of gith would be released upon them sooner rather than later. 

He leaned down, lips an inch away from the backside of Tav’s ear. “What are you doing?!” he breathed through gritted teeth.

Tav didn’t respond, but instead knocked her hip into his, pushing him aside. He scudded back a couple feet from the force, leaving him at a loss for words. If she is hellbent on being stubborn, then she can deal with her crippling demise on her own, he chided to himself.

Lae’zel’s sight narrowed at the elf. “It had nothing to do with what they deserved, but everything to do with being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Let’s hope your next words are sharper than your mind,” she clucked loudly.

“Insulting me while I’m trying to understand what happened here isn’t going to deter me,” Tav replied, her reddening ears poking out from her messy updo in a curbed anger hidden to everyone except Astarion. “Travelers came here searching for answers to their prayers and the explanation they received was their lives snuffed out by a race that feels as superior as false gods.”

“Tav, you’re—“ Shadowheart cautiously began, stepping forward.

“I’m what?! Going too far?” Tav mocked, shifting her body weight onto another leg. 

Those leaden fissures Tav tried to keep knitted closed, had volleyed the bitter dark within her that had been progressively increasing for weeks. She never treated people this way—patience rarely thinned—and Astarion understood his judgment about the burdens she carried that changed the formulaic taste of her crimson, were correct. Her annoying kindness suited her more than this unseemly behavior. In the aery realm that housed her encumbrances, she paid for his and their companion’s indiscretions to demonic toll-houses without question. A regretful muscle twitched in his cheek, recognizing he played a part in her present suffering. Birds like Tavelle were meant to fly, but everyone took advantage of her tender mercy, devoid of thinking about how shattered her wings would become under their own roods. 

“I know you’re upset—and you should be—but Lae’zel had nothing to do with Y’llek’s aggressions. Your blame is misplaced,” Shadowheart tried again after removing a stray hair that had crept into her mouth. 

Tav turned her head, overcome with embarrassment that flushed the roundest parts of her cheeks. 

The gith puffed out a short breath, rolling her war torn eyes. “What would you have me say? Attaining somewhere on the material plane we deem to be safe for our young and unhatched to develop is completely normal in our culture.“

Dense air sourly blew through the bard’s nose. “But at the cost of our plane’s lives, right? What is normal to your kind is not normal to ours. Have you ever thought about that?” she contended more politely, refacing Lae’zel. “This is wrong to us! If only your people would try seeking help from ours, rather than raiding their homes and murdering innocents immediately, you may be surprised how many would be willing to offer their aid.“

“And should that mean something to me?” Lae’zel bit out emotionless. “Githyanki do what is necessary to survive.” She held a balled up fist tightly against her chest as she drew a path into Tav’s personal space. “When I was still but a welp in training, I had already felled three of my comrades. Was I praised or reprimanded for such feats? No. They died proud, honored to have served Vlaakith and the cause of her people. Can you say in good faith that most of Faerûn would do the same?”

All three companions regarded Lae’zel glumly. Her accusations against their continent’s residents was an uncomfortable realization that nobody in their sane mind could refute. How many other adventurer’s were actually out there at this very second willing to brave their own lives to end the corruption of The Absolute and mind flayers alike? How many would risk confronting that disquieting underbelly of fears that the gods they forfeited everything to, would never intervene, even as a holocaust roared throughout the lands? The hard truth was that most would rather go with the flow in their complacency than try to act out of real conviction.

That kolk whirling behind Tav’s blue-steel eyes from their boiling exchange, began to become little more than a single stir by a divine empress’s gilded spoon in a favorite cup of tea. By the way she sucked in her cheek, Astarion knew she had grabbed a chunk of wetted flesh to gnaw upon, calming herself from making a rash remark. Her mouth unlatched. “I will not disagree with your sentiments about how disunified Faerûn remains, but it’s still our choice to make. Ripping that away from us because the githyanki feel it’s okay, is no different from the control the illithid held over your race, it’s just executed differently.” 

Was she prepared for the aftermath if she kept pushing?

“Hey.” Shadowheart discreetly tapped on the spawn’s shoulder. He turned around, vaguely listening to Tav and Lae’zel resume their argument, mouthing an irritated “what” as voicelessly as he could muster.

“We are about to enter enemy territory and I have a stolen treasure from them in my bag,” the Sharran healer whispered. Her anxiety was evident in the way her glassy blown pupils stared back at him, nearly twitching with fright over what lay in store for them. “If you think for even a second they’re going to allow us to enter their crèche while tensions are high, then prepare to be beheaded for sport.”

He shrugged his shoulders, still mildly irked at Tav. “Then I guess we’ll have to wait until they both stow this fribblish nonsense or one of them incapacitates the other,” Astarion hushed in return. 

Shadowheart shook her head, her perfectly styled ponytail accessories moving in tandem with her movement. “Or you could be their mediator,” she suggested with a crafty smile.

“Have you gone and smacked your moody undersized head on a Selûne statue?!” he snapped louder than intended. A silver curl uncoiled in haste, matching his incredulity. “You saw how Tav reacted when we tried to reason with them.” He instinctually peeked beyond his arm, checking to see if the others overheard them. 

“For god’s sake, would you at least try?! I don’t care if you have to throw Tav over your shoulder like some neanderthal to drag her away, but they need to be separated so they can both cool down!” Shadowheart uncharacteristically begged while the other two women continued their squabble. Her lips pouted together. “And my head isn’t ‘undersized.’ I didn’t ask to be born as a half-elf you know,” she added, self-consciously touching her crown.

Astarion’s fingers rubbed at his temples. This was wholly Tav’s fault! In a moment of weakness, fantasizing about drinking her blood earlier, the cunning vixen snuck in and somehow persuaded him to accompany them to this devil-ridden location. And now, he’s expected to wave a wand like some magical fairy eldmother to make everything cheery bright rainbows again?!

No matter how inconvenient this was, he definitely wasn’t interested in perishing so early on into his attained freedom. He understood that Tav would be the easier of the two lionness’s pouncing on each other to lure away given her affinity towards him. She may be pissed at him afterwards, but it was the lesser risk between that and Lae’zel hanging his head as an ornament above her tent. “Ugh, do I have to do everything around here?” he flung out, feigning a yawn. 

He scratched at his jaw, trying to wrinkle the matter in his brain together from its usual smoothness. Which tactical options did he have? Flirtily suggesting a threesome while a plethora of vacant skeletal crania’s watched, seemed inappropriate for their dilemma. He could pull out a knife and threaten them to cease, but knowing Lae’zel’s temper, she would stake his ribs the moment she saw it. Blackmail? Hmm, no, that was out of the question too. Tav barely offered up anything about her private life and Lae’zel could escape to the astral world whenever she pleased. Fuck he hated details and sticky complicated plans. 

Alright, fine, he’d just go with ole reliable: winging it. 

“I’ll stand by in case things go…amiss,” Shadowheart said placidly. “Good luck.”

He briefly shut his eyes, hand sailing through his waves to refix the stray hair coil tarrying on his forehead, and readied himself as acting liaison to enter the mine field exploding behind him. 

Lae’zel stepped inward near Tav, armor clanking around her midsection. “It’s no wonder Astarion finally decided to leave your bed,” she maliciously taunted, ”With all your unceasing blathering, it leaves little room for warmth.” She slanted further in, speaking directly into her rival’s ear. “Tell me which is true: that you actually duped yourself into believing you gave him gratification or he faked it the entire time because he pitied your loneliness?”

Astarion instantly squinted at Lae’zel, revulsed at her upturned sneer. He despised her obtrusiveness, remembering how she made it clear she only desired his body at one time to satisfy herself. The back of his neck felt clammy imagining how her gropes would have branded his raw flesh like every other person he pressured himself into fucking. 

He dragged his vision to chance peering at Tav, dismissing the muffled constriction that surged through his chest at the sight of her. She stood utterly silent, vocal cords snipped from the seething woman’s comment. Without a tourniquet to halt Lae’zel’s gashes, her lips had heated to a bolder pinkish plum shade, doe eyes rapidly blinking aside a misty haze. Astarion heard her heart chambers clamp tightly, fractured by the usurped recollection of their flawed and failed relationship pricking into her like a pincushion. 

A pleased grin spread across Lae’zel’s mouth as she scanned the bard’s reaction. Her pitch coal grease paint, thumbed onto the scope of her face, appeared glossy from the sunlight beaming on her. “If this ishtik falls apart at the slightest mention of her inadequacies, then she is unfit to lead us,” she snarled.

Despite him refusing to divulge the specifics from his trauma, sex had become a sensitive subject for both him and Tav. Centuries long transgressions that damned him every waking second. They shared a vulnerability—an elegy to pleasurable touch—that connected them in an unexpected and broken manner initiated by different needs. 

Messy flashbacks of his sexual encounters with Tav that had already been fading—as they often did with his lovers—percolated throughout the vampire’s mind. As vehemently as he tried to bury it, one memory resisted against the gravitational pull from the black hole within his soul: her giggles as florets spilled like dove feathers from her hair while they were intimate against a tree. A rare innocent pause that counterbalanced his despair but for a few moments.

In his restless trances, those flowers would sometimes arrive, each hidden in inconspicuous locations within his dreams to find. They were often accompanied by Tav’s sweet laughter that he caused. It dawned on him how often he would chase after that sound until he woke, trying to relive that brief interim of genuine mirth he summoned from her throat. He ignored it until now, but he had never generated that kind of joy from a sole creature in his entire undeath. Regardless if that night in the woods had led to them sleeping together or not, she would have still had the same reaction if he made those trite blooms flounce out of her hair in any other way.

He suddenly found himself wanting to protect those epiphanies and the peculiar agreeable sensation within his life-deserted body that he was aghast to identify. When did his general antipathy towards Tav start to evolve into him not quite disliking her as much anymore?

Astarion pretended to cough into his fist, cutting through their quarrel. “I do believe you and I need to exchange a few unpleasantries,” he firmly stated with a guileful tug at his mouth. 

“Do we? Then speak,” Lae’zel growled in her usual raspy tone, spindly hands landing onto her hips. She squinted her left eye at him.

“I’ll make this quick.” The ground held unwavering paces as he sidled up to the astral soldier. He tilted his head to the side, rubbing his impeccable jawline with his thumb peeking out from his fingerless gauntlets. “Don’t you perhaps think you should be more concerned about why it was I who rejected you that day after our spar when you practically begged me to take you back to my bedroll for a romp?” he blatantly expressed, glaring at her through darkened eyes. “Pity Tav? Ha! No, darling. I pitied you and that’s why I let you down as politely as I did.”

The hammering from behind Shadowheart’s breast clogged his ears. An “ah, shit” drawled off her tongue, shocked and worried. 

Tav's hand covered a gasp as her enlarged eyes sharply turned to gaze at him, exerting no amusement at his smug jab. 

As for Lae’zel’s reaction, she gnashed her teeth so raucously together, she could have broken through a mollusk's shell. Astarion staggered back just as a flurry of words in her native language raced from her voice box, faltering but once to catch her breath. She pointed at the group: cursing, spitting, putting her hand onto the lengthy grip of her sword, removing it, until she angrily threw her arms up in defeat. “After we extract the tadpoles,” she heaved, “I never want to see any of you ever again. Be grateful I will allow you to live yet.” Neglecting to wait for their responses, she tilled her battle sandals into the ground, disappearing into an unventured area adjacent to the portico. 

Frowning, Shadowheart cleared her throat. “Tav, mind if I borrow Astarion for a minute?” 

“Sure,” Tav croaked out. She looked past the cleric at the nondescript foreboding entrance into the monastery, giving the doors a simple head flick to notify them where she planned on retreating. 

He clocked Tav as she weaved a route through scattered rubble, leaving their vicinity. “Who knew I had such natural chops as a peace—”

Shadowheart twisted to meet him, rabidly grabbing at the straps attached to his breastplate and pulled downwards. “You donkey!’

His hands flew up on either side of his head. “Whoa! What exactly is the problem? You should be thanking me. Per your request: they aren't fighting anymore.”

“I didn’t ask you to make it worse!” Shadowheart exclaimed, tightening her hold. “I don’t know if your meal ticket from earlier super infused your bluntness, but with the utmost generosity, would you kindly fuck off for a bit so I can think about how to resolve this? Go check on Tav.” She released the straps, propelling him backwards.

“How rude! You know, all this excitement has made me work up another appetite and I can’t feed on Tav again until she’s rested. What do you have to say for yourself?” Astarion taunted, letting his fangs poke out beneath his weasel’s smile.

“GO!” Shadowheart shouted, balling her fists.

The songstress was leaning against a cool stoned wall, embellished with grayish tiles, when he eventually made his way to her after refitting the crookedness in his chest piece. “The gall of that woman, honestly,” he complained, sending an accusatory glance over his shoulder at a pacing Shadowheart. “You do a favor for someone and when it’s not exactly how they would have done it, they blame you for the outcome.” 

Tav knocked her thumb knuckles together, nails clicking in unison. “Why did you stick up for me with Lae’zel?”

“I wanted to help?” 

“Don’t lie to me,” she said, raising her head to scrutinize him. 

Astarion cocked his hip out, resting his hand on it. He had no intentions disclosing to her what was stroking his dead heart, that palpable echo of flowers and laughter betraying him. “Can’t you just appreciate that I probably saved you from becoming a ‘minced bard pie’? I don’t see why you have to make this more complicated than it already was,” he groused.

She blinked at him. “I’m sorry,” she mumbled, turning her neck. “I do appreciate what you did back there, it just wasn’t…expected, I suppose.”

“I can be generous,” he asserted, crossing his arms. 

Tav gave a snide chuckle. “News to me.”

“See, if you needed further proof that you need some time to release all those built up gremlins inside you, that was it,” he smirked, playfully tapping the tip of her shoe with his boot. 

A simper quivered at the corners of her lips, one she seemed like she was trying to hide by immediately squatting down near the doors next to them, hovering over two pairs of remains. She reached down to pick up an age-tarnished prayer book that was loosely crammed between one of the skeleton’s fingers. 

Tav stood back up, smile replaced with a distant melancholy. She patted the book’s front cover. “May I read something to you?” 

“Are you going to read a prayer for my salvation?” the pale elf mused, indenting his index into the middle of his chin. 

The book opened with her diligent fingers. Pages turned with crisp crackles, frictioning against old endpaper glue, as she read its contents to him. “Glory to you, Bringer of the Dawn! My wife and I have been trying to conceive for nearly two years now with no luck. We’ve long been followers of your blessed creed, and visit Rosymorn every tenday to worship at your altar.” 

She took a breath, then continued. “Please Lord, I know you’ve given us a lot already, but if you hear our prayer, grant us this one wish, and you will find us in your service tenfold. This is all that now stands between ourselves and everlasting joy. We have faith in you, Lathander, and are grateful for the many blessings of your light.”

Astarion hoisted his right eyebrow in disbelief. “Don’t tell me that’s what rattled you? All that drama earlier because you read a flimsy supplication from some dust-covered bones?”

“It wasn’t my intention for things to get out of hand as they did with Lae’zel,” she lamented. Beneath every pronounced word, a shakiness started to emerge in her voice. “But the contents of this book had nothing to do with my disagreement with her.”

He padded closer to her. “Then, what was the purpose of reading that husband and wife’s prayer to me? They’re dead and it’s apparent that the gods couldn’t have cared less about granting that couple their wishes,” Astarion mentioned, glimpsing down at the deteriorating book. “I should know; I prayed to them all.”

“This isn’t about the damned gods!” Tav blurted out in frustration. She let the prayer book slip from her grasp, landing askew onto a bed of pebbles. “Years ago, I had to accept—“ she stalled. 

He inspected her, tilting his head curiously. The visage that took place on her face was similar to when she spoke to Mayrina shortly after they sent Auntie Ethel to the hells: an intense, almost withdrawn, stare. He recognized that expression, how rigid her whole person had become that day. How different she acted after seeing Mayrina’s belly round with child. “‘Had to accept’ what?” he asked.

Clenching her eyes shut, she shook her head. “Nobody knows what happened to me that day. I just want somebody to know,” she managed to whisper, contrite over her verbally collected thoughts.

“Darling, I have to admit, your whole mysterious lady act is going way over my head this time,” he said, perplexed. Respecting their terms to avoid touching each other as minimally as possible, he skimmed just the tips of his fingers along the outer edge of Tav’s shoulder, bidding her to look at him. 

Under his contact, she jerked ever so slightly as if finally noticing his proximity. “S-sorry. Gods, I must sound crazy,” she huffed nervously, lungs stammering as her breathing increased. “Astarion, I want to trust someone so badly that I ache, b-but I can’t. Even now, as I tried, everything still turned to ash on my tongue.”

Her admission stunned him, never being one to divulge the weaknesses she kept at bay. “Hold on. Take a few deep breaths.”

Lash after lash lifted, revealing Tav’s set of bleary dilated vesseling eyes that bore into his. Her sternum rose and fell, respiring their common air. “I wanted somebody—no, not somebody—I wanted you to know.”

“Why?”

Tav’s hand moved in a way like she wanted to grab his hand, but instead let it slink back. “Because you’re the only one I’ve ever felt might understand,” she confessed.

Stricken with a salvelike buzz dawning through his consciousness, Astarion couldn’t resist tucking dark brown hair strands behind her ear. Red eyes traced a  circular outline of her freckles that mesmerized him so. His pitch lowered to a woolly undertone unnatural to him, balmy and wicking her ills. “You really are reckless, aren’t you?”

The upper bow of Tav’s lips parted from the bottom, a blush rushing northward into her cheekbones. He could feel her lukewarm breath exhale into the dip of his clavicle while she examined his face, provoking a tense quake descending his spine. “Is that your way of saying you’re concerned about me?” she crooned. 

“Stupid boy,” Cazador’s taunt resounded in his brain. 

Emotions careened through him as dead leaves being whisked aside by an autumn wind, reluctantly revealing a new growth until being blanketed in death once more. Astarion’s hand quickly retracted, realizing he made a vital mistake. “I—,” he began, flustered, unsuccessfully quelling the contortions in his stomach. Anxiety raged through him, tingling his skin in a domino effect. “Will you just go shove off somewhere for a bit?!” 

Tav backed away. Crestfallen. Betrayed. Shifting her eyes back and forth as her skin pinched between her brows. He dipped his chin, shunning himself for every time he felt a modicum of emotion towards her. 

Her back turned on him, beginning to trudge in the direction of a broken stained-glass pane. “Don’t follow me,” she insisted, tears filling the lower ridge of her eyelids as she pivoted halfway to observe him. “I mean it.” 

As she left, Astarion’s vision floated to the prayer book that lay deserted next to where Tav once stood, unable to shake the thought that whatever she lost, the gods must've forsaken her too.

Happy 1st anniversary BG3 !! aka Best Game 3ver