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pink-petal-lover · 2 days

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i love non-sexual intimacy and astarion having no bloody idea how to handle it, so of course i couldn't resist writing 3000+ words about it. enjoy!

let the pulses run (astarion x gender neutral!reader, baldur's gate 3)

Astarion waits for it. Expects it.

A beseeching glance, a teasing smile, a flirtatious remark. Hells, even an outright proposition - he can’t quite imagine you pulling it off, but at least it would be something familiar.

And yet - nothing.

Well, he amends as you settle beside him before the campfire, perhaps not nothing.

“How is it?” you ask, a solemn slope to your brow as you take in the wound on his arm. A lucky shot from a rather unlucky goblin, who’d received your rapier to the gut for his troubles.

“Oh, this?” He raises his arm, nonchalant. The wound had stopped bleeding, but it wasn’t a pretty sight. “Barely a scratch, darling.”

Your brows furrow. Liar, they say.

“You’ll need blood.” You take a second glance at his arm and grimace. The scent of iron clings to the air. “A lot of it.”

Astarion tilts his head, allows a few silver curls to fall artfully across his brow. You track the movement, though your gaze is quick to dart back to his own. He fights a smirk and loses. “Astute, aren’t you? Yes, I’m afraid I’ll need to do more than my usual share of feeding tonight to fix this mess.”

You say nothing in response, not at first. He wonders if you’ll actually say it, or if you’ll hem and haw yourself to death trying to free the words from your tongue.

“If you truly have need of it,” you begin, reaching up to touch your fingertips to your throat. The mark from his first feeding had long since faded, but you remembered where his fangs had struck.

“How generous!” Astarion exclaims, a little touched despite himself. It took a certain amount of fortitude to offer yourself to a hungry vampire, after all. “If you’re certain - “

You don’t answer with words, merely tilting your head and baring your throat to him. Astarion longs to draw out the suspense, tease you with the anticipation of his bite, but that furrow hasn’t left your brow and he finds himself unwilling to add to your worries. Besides, his body cries out for the meal you’ve so graciously offered, practically rejoicing as he lowers his mouth to your throat.

There’s a certain… intimacy to be had during the act of feeding, he’s learned. Not so much in the bite itself, but in the aftermath: the pull of precious blood, the quickening of a pulse, the flush of warm, living flesh.

Astarion has never felt the like, not until he first drew blood from you. To know that this is what he had been missing for all the centuries he’d spent feeding on vermin makes his hatred for Cazador climb higher, though he pushes thoughts of his former master far from his mind before they can truly take root. He will not think of his tormentor here, not with you.

You draw in a breath; it sticks in your throat, your pulse beating like a drum in the back of Astarion’s brain. He can smell your skin, the sweat and blood from your latest battle mingling with the scent of sweetgrass and rainwater, the scent of you, light and sweet against the back of his tongue.

He can smell more than that. Unease and pain cling to you like a film while he feeds, but beneath that, clinging to your flesh like a limpet, he finds what he’s been searching for - the familiar musk of arousal.

Well, then, he thinks victoriously, feeling a shiver work down his spine as your blood coats the back of his tongue. There’s all the proof I need.

He had wondered if your lack of amorous advances had been due to disinterest, but no. The body doesn’t lie, and yours was basically singing, crying out its need with increasing frequency the longer his fangs remained buried in your throat.

So then why? Why did you flit away from his advances like a rabbit evading a predator? He knew what you wanted and had no qualms about giving it to you. It would cement your trust in him, bolster your growing bond. Your union would be advantageous to you both.

He’s so consumed by his thoughts that he doesn’t notice your hand moving until it’s braced against the back of his neck, your palm warm against his skin. He waits for your signal to move away, hungrily swallowing another mouthful of your sweet blood in case it happens to be his last, but all you do is reach for the riot of curls at his nape and pass your fingers gently through them. Once, twice more, until you’ve built up a steady rhythm.

It feels… well, it feels rather nice, actually. It’s far from the first time someone has ever run their fingers through his hair, and yet your touch feels… lighter in comparison, unweighted by sensual delight or a precursor for greedy lust. You’re not touching him in anticipation for more - you’re just… touching him.

It confuses him so greatly that Astarion finds himself pulling away before he’d truly wished to, feeling more than a little bereft when your fingers slip from his hair and land, half-curled still, in your lap.

“That will do, darling,” he mumbles, pushing himself to his feet. It’s a good thing the blood loss has dazed you somewhat, or else your eagle eyes would have quickly taken notice of the bewildered expression upon his face. “A boar or two will more than suffice for the rest. You should sleep, while you’re able.” His nose wrinkles, and he can’t help himself from adding, “But perhaps bathe first.”

Your eyes narrow at the thinly-veiled insult, but you push yourself clumsily to your feet and head for the river flowing near camp. “Keep your eyes about you while you hunt,” you call to him over your shoulder. “There may still be goblins about.”

He doesn’t know how to tell you that goblins - and hunting, for that matter - are among the last things on his mind. He merely watches you walk away, his fingers creeping to the thatch of curls you had so gently carded through, and wonders what the hell he’s supposed to do with you now.

Your growing affection for him remains more than apparent as the days pass. You’re devoted to finding a cure for the parasites that writhe within your minds and playing savior for everyone you meet along the way, but in the moments between - slivers of time carved out for rest and respite - you gravitate toward Astarion, leaving the vampire torn between petty satisfaction and growing confusion, because you simply refuse to acknowledge his increasingly thinly-veiled offers to fuck you.

It’s ridiculous. Madness, really. The number of conquests under his belt had grown too numerous for Astarion to recall, his expertise in the art of seduction unmatched, and yet you remained unmoved by his every attempt. Oh, you would flush, your eyes would flit about as though you couldn’t bear to meet his gaze, your body itself would sway towards his like a tree bough rocked by the wind, but still you would play at ambivalency.

Astarion might be inclined to believe himself incorrect - a rarity, to be sure, but stranger things have happened; that your reaction to his bite was merely a result of the intimacy of the act rather than any true desire you might hold for him, and yet your behavior afterwards serves to lay that theory quite soundly to rest.

You’ve become quite… tactile, with him, as of late. A bracing hand on his shoulder whenever an enemy’s attack knocks him off his guard, elbows brushing whenever you’re gathered near the campfire, even a rather memorable moment where you’d brushed his curls free of his brow late in the night, your hand hovering in the air between you and a bewildered expression writ across your face, as though shocked that you’d actually done it.

It’s driving Astarion mad, wondering what could possibly be going on inside that skull of yours. The thought of tapping in to the tadpole’s power just to catch a glimpse passes swiftly through his mind, but to his eternal chagrin, knowing somehow feels more daunting.

Besides, he’s… curious. Curious as to what you’ll do next and how he may react to it, and so he doesn’t ask you to stop. You would, if only he were to indicate a dislike of your touch, and yet to do so would prove the vampire a liar, for he finds that he actually quite enjoys the fleeting brush of your fingertips across his brow, or the firm, comforting weight of your shoulder against his.

Gods, what has he gotten himself into?

He ponders his plight late into the night, until his eyes slip closed and he’s confronted by another new pressing issue - nightmares of his former life and dear old master, memories of previous torments and casual cruelties assaulting his mind from every front.

Astarion twists upon his bedroll, fingers spasming atop his chest as Cazador flits through his mind like a phantom. Sweat beads on his temples, leaving his curls damp. Fear bubbles through his blood like some molten creature.

“Astarion.”

He awakens with a shout, his dreams clinging to his mind for another awful moment before their claws finally release him. You’re the first thing he notices as soon as he’s set himself to rights, kneeling by his bedside with a discomfited expression upon your face. It had been your voice, then - yours, not Cazador’s - that had called out to him, broken him free of his agony.

His lips try to twist into their customary smirk, but fall short of the goal and tremble instead. He presses them into a firm line. “Apologies, my love,” he murmurs, grimacing at the drying sweat along his brow. “Did I wake you?”

You shake your head. “I had first watch,” you explain. Your hand twitches at your side. You want to touch him, he realizes. Reassure him. By the gods, with the way he’s feeling right now, Astarion might actually let you do it. “Are you alright?”

“Wonderful,” he bites out, reaching up to push sweaty curls free of his brow only to find that you've beaten him to it, your fingertips callused and blessedly cool against his skin. The urge to swoon like a damned maiden is nearly overwhelming, and yet Astarion resists, only allowing himself the luxury of closing his eyes and indulging in your touch for a few brief moments.

“Nightmare?” Your voice is low, dreadfully soothing. Keep talking, he thinks, pushing his brow into your palm. Don’t make me do it.

He hums in the affirmative. Your fingers drift to the crown of his head, smooth through the flattened curls at the base of his skull, and rest there, holding him.

“Cazador?” The name sounds like a curse on your lips, and might as well be for all the vitriol you spew it with.

Astarion’s lips twitch. It shouldn’t thrill him, the ire you hold for a man you’ve never met, but he knows it’s there simply because its bearer has caused him harm. You’re protective of those you hold dear.

“The one and the same,” he mutters into the curve of your shoulder, having allowed his chin to rest there while your fingers curled around the back of his neck. You smelled of embers from the fire and the sweetness of the cool night air, and Astarion breathed deep, soothed by the scent.

“What do you need?” It’s a gentle query against one pointed ear, and for a moment Astarion stares beyond your shoulder, beyond the camp, all the way to Baldur’s Gate and Cazador’s cold, cruel gaze, waiting for his return. You’re silent, patient for his response, and in that moment Astarion is certain that you would give him anything, if only he would ask.

He could ask for you - for the distraction that your body would provide this night, and you would give it to him. You would trust him with it.

He can see it so clearly, the rapture of it driving the echoes of Cazador’s voice from his head. But he can see the aftermath, too, and your disappointment when you realize that it’s all he can truly give you, and only because he knows of no other way to be.

“I don’t know,” he murmurs into your shoulder, and it’s the truth, for all the good that does him.

He feels you nodding, feels your cheek resting against his hair, feels more than hears you say, “Let me know, whenever you figure it out,” and listens to the faint beat of your pulse until his dreams seem like nothing more than misshapen fragments, unimportant, without teeth.

Something shifts between you then, or perhaps it’s more appropriate to say that something settles. His machinations cease, insomuch as he stops trying to manipulate you into bed, though teasing you with ill-concealed innuendo remains a habit he can’t quite shake.

You’ve promised to help break Cazador’s hold upon him, and judging by the sharpness in your eyes whenever the subject is pressed, you’re determined to uphold it.

You care about him; of that, Astarion is more than certain. He sees it in the way you look at him, feels it in the touches you bestow. He hears it, your pulse as clear to him as the warmth of the blood in your veins. He’s earned your trust, your affection, your protection. And you’ve earned his.

How could he keep it from you, when you’ve not only unearthed his past but vowed to help him escape it? How could he guard himself against you when he’s seen that fire in your eyes, watched you wield it against that vile drow who’d called him a thing and urged you to allow him to bite her?

Astarion shudders at the reminder. If it had been Cazador in your place, he would have taken the offer without thought, without care for Astarion’s comfort. But not you.

It had angered you - not just the drow’s request, but her flippant disregard of Astarion’s autonomy.

“Astarion is his own person,” you had said, practically spitting the words through gritted teeth. “And he said no.”

You were still angry, by the looks of it, if your gritted teeth and flashing eyes were anything to go by.

“Are we going into battle?” he calls out, catching you as you’re about to stomp by.

You jerk to a halt and give him a look, completely confused. He bites back a laugh.

“It certainly seems so, judging by your face.”

“My face?” You reach up as though to check, and this time Astarion does laugh, a soft huff that seems to startle you, but also leave you looking incredibly, undeniably… fond. It’s… well. It’s a nice look on you.

“You’re angry,” he explains, reaching over to rub the furrow from your brows. You go cross-eyed trying to watch him, and another laugh bubbles from his throat before he can stop it.

And ah, there’s that fondness again upon your face. He feels warm beneath that look, full, as if he’s freshly fed.

“I am angry,” you murmur, drawing closer. “Her ignorance, her arrogance - it infuriated me.”

“Obviously,” Astarion quips, lips twitching as your mouth twists in annoyance. He allows the humor to drain from his tone before he continues, a touch more solemnly, “Thank you. I appreciated that.”

Your head tilts. “What did I do?”

Astarion huffs a breath, astounded by your obliviousness. “I spent two-hundred years using my body to lure pretty things back to my Master. What I wanted, how I felt about what I was doing, it never mattered.” The memories, though old, are fresh, and he does his best to shake them free of his mind. This isn’t about that. This is about you. “You could have asked me to do the same, but you didn’t. And I’m grateful.”

“I never would,” you return, and your words are firm. Resolute. You need him to believe them. “It wouldn’t have been right, forcing you to do something you didn’t want to do.”

“You’re the first to think so,” Astarion murmurs. “The first not to make me feel like something to be used and discarded.” He had still been living as though he was exactly that, he realizes. Still a puppet, a pawn to be ordered about at his master’s whim. But that wasn’t who he was, anymore, and he would never be that way again. You would aid him in making sure of it, and not simply because he’d seduced and manipulated you into doing so. You would do it because you wanted to. Because you cared.

Because you were his friend.

“Thank you,” he repeated, a lightness to his shoulders that he hasn’t felt in centuries.

You stare at him, throat working for a moment as if you don’t know what to say in return, and he smiles. Silly thing.

But then you’re stepping forward, a determined glint to your eye, and Astarion is left with no other recourse than to gawk over your shoulder as you wrap both arms around him. Your cheek comes to rest against his shoulder, your chest settling warmly against his, and Astarion -

Astarion crumbles. His arms come up to wrap around you, gingerly at first, until he hears your sigh - a soft thing, sweet, happy - and then he’s squeezing you against him, brow falling to your shoulder.

Gods, when was the last time someone had embraced him like this? He wracks his mind and still fails to recall a single moment where he was gathered so close without an ulterior motive to facilitate it.

He doesn’t want to let you go. It’s an intimidating thought. A terrifying thought. And yet the terror doesn’t make it any less true. For the first time in centuries, he wants - he actually wants something, just for him, just because.

He wants you.

It would be easy for the fear to consume him, then, fear that this will crumble to dust beneath his hands like so much else, and yet you won’t allow that terror to seep through. It can’t, not with your arms curled so sweetly around his waist, your smile tucked against his shoulder, your pulse a soothing beat in his ears, assuring him without words that he had been right all along.

You want him, too.

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pink-petal-lover · 4 days

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wash it away

tags: astarion x reader, gn!reader, intimacy, hurt/comfort

1.1k word drabble. Read on AO3 🖤 Masterlist

written with the prompt "water" in mind for a server. enjoy! just a tiny lil thing.

He didn’t want anything sexual to taint the night, but he didn’t want to be alone, either.

After seeing his siblings again, he had been deeply troubled by the dreaded reunion– lost his temper, nearly turned Petras to ash in a desperate plea to know more of the Black Mass. His own hand unaffected by the sunlight hitting his skin, he wanted to show his newfound power– the stroke of luck that allowed him the freedom they so desperately craved. He told them he was smarter, too jaded to think Cazador would be truthful about granting them freedom. He twisted the knife like Cazador may have– how could they be foolish enough to believe they’d ever walk in the sun again? He said it as if he didn’t saunter to the Flophouse is broad daylight to no effect.

But now he felt sick– the only people who could possibly understand, who were beaten, bruised and hurt by the very same tormentor– were to be pawns in a ritual for either their captor or their sibling that they pitied, perhaps even trusted.

Unless he didn’t go through with his ambitions, but what then? Returning to a life doomed to shadows and eternity that he couldn’t even extend to you? The notion was more terrifying than the memories of Cazador’s knife painstakingly decorating his back in gore.

He could not believe that mindflayers, of all things, were his miracle. They were also the bringers of a newfound burden– the burden of choice.

He could let you choose… but you would choose wrong, inevitably.

So would he. But it had to be him.

A step into the bathwater warms his body like a balm, muscles in knots from the pain that has ached inside of him for two-hundred years, coming to a decisive end-point after all this time. Whether it be his death, Cazador’s, or his ‘family,’ he could not be sure. The uncertainty creeped into his brain, as if a tadpole of his own making.

He adjusted to make room for you, stripping off dirty garments from today’s adventures beside the tub. He envies you, and how every bruise and scratch on your skin is your own. He will forever be mutilated with reminders of his abuser as long as he lives, supposing he even does.

You take a seat behind him in the bath, something he wouldn’t normally let anyone do. When did he become so vulnerable? To put his back to somebody, to let them care for him? To sincerely care enough to let them in. To bare witness to him, truly and completely.

He was tired of pretending.

You were kind enough to offer to bathe him. He can’t see himself– he doesn’t know if he is getting every spec of dirt and blood or if the parts of himself that he can’t see are messy as the back of his hair, as you so lovingly told him once. Still, he can’t help but lament how despite every soothing, tender bath he had been given by you, he still feels the grime in body and soul, suffocating and all-encompassing. He wonders if you’d really love him like you claim to if you saw the faces of victims, saw how he lured people effortlessly with the perfected act. Gods, one of them had never even been kissed before, but he had–

“You’re doing it again.”

“Doing what, darling?” The vampire says, knowing you may have his back, but you can’t see the torment in his features. He thinks he can deceive, but–

“Shutting down. Spiraling.” The twist in his gut feels like a punch when he realizes how vulnerable he really is. Even his silence reveals truths to you. It was terrifying how you were either incredibly intuitive or he was that easy to read.

No– deception was a perfected skill. It must be the former.

“I worry about you, you know,” you say, cleansing his shoulders with a sponge, focusing on some dirt that had dirtied his skin when he fell and cut his shirt. “You can’t have felt nothing after… all of that earlier.” The vampire sighed.

“I… I told you they don’t matter. I have to usurp the ritual to protect us both.”

“We’ll get through it without that, Astarion… we would find a way.”

“Sure, I condemn myself to the shadows and you die of old age. Fantastic.” You’re silent for a moment.

“You’re thinking that far ahead?” You ask, surprise evident in your tone. Astarion shuts down, an endless silence overtaking the bath as you massage his hair, a soap sudsing in his beautiful silver curls. You gently massage, not wanting to alarm him. To show him gentle love he had been missing for centuries. Beyond sex, beyond transactions. You don’t pry, you let him answer when he’s ready.

“Were you not?” You finally hear in a small voice. It’s quickly evident the hurt in his voice, as he ponders a forever that may not have crossed your mind. You quickly correct yourself.

“No, I have! But…” you think before answering. “I wasn’t sure you were.” The miscommunication festers in awkward silence, before you chime in with something else. “You’re closed off. It seems like you’ve only been thinking of the power you can take. But maybe I’ve misunderstood.”

“I meant it when I said it was for us both.” He looks down, deflated. “You won’t be tied down by someone who has to live in the shadows. I’ll never have to watch you die.” Your heart skips a beat. You thought him selfish, misled. And while he might still be all of those things, he was also something else.

Irreparably hurt and afraid.

But you don’t know how to affirm your love with mere words. He won’t believe it. Not because he doesn’t want to– gods, does he want to– but because he doesn’t dare to hope anymore. Especially not for you, an angel in tattered clothing who literally descended from above and stitched his heart back up. The same one held together by shoddy patchwork from a fatigued, experienced hand.

He would have lost his mind long ago without the effort to hold it together.

You show him– through another miracle of the tadpole’s doing, you convey your love through a tapestry of emotion woven from the feelings you’ve developed for the pale elf in front of you. You cautiously hug his waist from behind, gentle and tender, without any intent for it to go further. It’s love in every raw sense of the word– you would express intimacy like this for as long as he needed you to. “Astarion, you see, right? You don’t need any of that to be loved.”

“Really?” He asks hesitantly, tense in your embrace, uncomfortable in vulnerable nakedness. You nuzzle your lips into the crook of his neck, your warm breathing a soothing sensation on his chilled skin.

“Really. I’ll be here, no matter what.”

“And when you… are gone? What am I meant to do?”

“Whatever you want, love. The world is yours.”

#sobbing my heart out okay?#my little star ⭐

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