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mirabai0821 · 6 months

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WIP: Blood and Honey CH 1

Pairings: F!Tav / Astarion Tags: Mentions of pet death, blood sucking Word Count: 2.9K Summary: Tav assembles the party and will not stop lying to them. Unfortunately for her, a vampire can see right through her.

Her first lie had been her name.

“You may call me Tav,” she answered when asked. Most didn’t notice the important distinction. Karlach, Wyll, Shadowheart, and Gale accepted her evasive bit of wordplay with no problem. Astarion, however, pounced upon it immediately.

“‘You may call me Tav,’” he repeated back to her that day on the beach. His voice dripped with suspicion, disdain, and the barely restrained glee of someone delighted that they had been clever enough to notice something others did not.

“That is what I may call you. Well that just implies there are other things you’re called then, doesn’t it darling?”

She did not clarify, filing the interaction right next to the moment before when he pulled a knife on her. This was someone to watch, to withhold from trust no matter their shared circumstances and entwined fates.

But, her eyes and her heart softened a bit as, even though she did not clarify, he also did not press. I know you have a secret, those red-wine eyes seemed to tell her as the wreckage of the nautiloid smoldered behind them, but I will not do you the dishonor of making you reveal it. So long as you do not make me reveal mine.

Her second lie had been her profession.

She said she was a bard but she wasn’t very good at it. She knew some spells of a bard’s repertoire, but could barely swing simple weapons. Indeed, she even had the talent of a great singer, perhaps one of the best in the Sword Coast, but she hadn’t performed in over a decade, and wasn’t planning on taking the stage any time soon. Instead, she hummed while plucking her lute and strumming her lyre while muddling along flinging the cantrips of a sorcerer with barely enough skill to fend off the average highwayman.

Her third lie, the worst of them, was to herself.

“Are you alright Tav? I think I heard you crying last night.” Gale, the kindly wizard, asked on the morning of their second day as almost-mind flayers.

That first night at camp had been miserable. She found a Githyanki warrior, a Waterdhavian wizard, a swashbuckling warlock, a fiery barbarian, a disreputable rogue, and a cagey cleric – all saddled with the same affliction. Managing to assemble such a motley crew united in the singular purpose of saving all their lives should have given her some measure of comfort. But she felt nothing except the sucking, gasping, yawning void of emptiness.

Tav would give anything to have him back. Wrap up all of the little gifts of her life – her voice, her uncanny talent for lyrics, her prized lute, and equally prized lyre – and return them to their various senders if it meant another lifetime with her beloved dog Kanid. But such things could never be, not even with the talent of necromancy. You’d need a corpse for that and she didn’t have one.

His loss was still so fresh and so utterly disorienting that when she laid down at camp that first night, curling into a little ball, she made space for him to fit in the gap. Like she expected him to suddenly appear and sleep within her arms as he had done every night in his 13 years.

Oh Kanid was a precious little thing. Reaching no higher than her calves and about twice as long. He looked more like a warm loaf of bread with ears than any pet. He often resembled one too, lounging in the sun with his stubby little legs sticking straight out behind him giving his butt the distinct appearance of a heel of bread fresh-cut from the loaf.

He was the only creature alive or even dead who knew all of what she was and loved her anyway. No other being, not her mother, father, sister, or any of her half a handful of former lovers could boast the same.

But Kanid knew her. Seen her at her very worst and her very best and somehow knew those moments were often reversed. Covered in blood or with a song on her tongue he loved her.

And she would never be so wholly loved again.

Even if she somehow survived the parasite making a nest in her brain matter.

The realization crept up her infernally blessed body, sinking deep into her clay-red flesh until everything from the hard, bony tips of her horns or the twitchy rounded point of her tail ached with grief.

That first night she sobbed till sunrise.

“Crying? I don’t remember crying,” she lied to Gale before muddling her falsehood with a bit of truth. “Probably was just having a nightmare.”

As the days stretched to weeks and as her new companions fretted over goblins, druid groves, “kreshes”, bog witches, civil war between the adherents of Vlaakith and Shar, and the intangible menace of “ceremorphosis”, Tav thoughts remained firmly with Kanid.

Then a scruffy white mutt crossed their path.

“Tav, darling, I don’t think our camp has the room or the inclination…”

Tav ignored Astarion, fussing over the ragged little four-legged thing. He was dirty and thin, the curve of his ribs not too well concealed underneath his shaggy snow-white coat. He seemed well trained though, not that it would have mattered if he wasn’t. Tav would have taken home a half-rabid owlbear if it meant soothing even a fraction of her wounded heart.

“I bet you haven’t eaten in a tenday. What have I got? What would you like, hm? A sweatmeat perhaps? A hunk of cheese? Whatever you want, name it and it’s yours.”

She went rooting in her backpack searching for an appropriate treat. Finding none she turned to Astarion and stuck out her open hand like an imperious beggar. “You’ve got meat in there.”

It wasn’t a question, more like a command that brooked no protest. Astarion sighed and handed her a sausage as long as his forearm.

“That was dinner!” Complained Gale.

“Yes!” Tav agreed cheerfully. “Just not yours!”

Though it was barely mid-day, Tav called off the search for the goblin encampment and the druid held hostage therein. She scooped up the dog, named Scratch by his collar, and carried him all the way back to camp, cooing and humming as she went.

“My dog, so sweet, your eyes astute. You bark, you bite, I boop your snoot.”

She giggled at her improvised couplet while Scratch permitted her intrusive fussing with blissful incoherence, his tongue lolled out in a happy pant. Tav repeated her ditty the whole way back, each time with different flourishes and flavor, sharps and flats rising and falling in concert with the gentle, rolling hills of the Sword Coast.

Astarion watched her, the very picture of annoyance, his otherwise pristine, alabaster face beset with the soft, shallow wrinkles of his frown. It wasn’t that her blatherings were annoying, it was the fact they were not. Her voice enticed him with an unnameable, ethereal sweetness that made even the birds stop and listen.

“My dog, so sweet, so white, so cute. You eat, you play, your poop, I scoop!”

He listened too.

Never one to turn down an easy meal, that night, he went looking for the mongrel, brandishing another limb-length sausage to tempt the creature.

He stalked the camp, “Here Scratch, here Scratchy boy.”

The vampling had to be cautious. He had managed to keep his peculiar, dietary restrictions let’s call them, a secret, and knew upon (or, more likely, off with) his head be it, if anyone, especially that githyanki shrew, found out.

He found the mutt curled contentedly at his new mistress's feet. Wiggling the cured meat in its face, Scratch’s ears perked and he gave Astarion a dopey, trusting look as if to say, “More? For me?”

“Yes, you flea-bitten pile of intestinal worms, for you, now come!” He ground out, careful not to wake Tav.

Scratch unfurled himself and followed happily before black talon tipped hand closed itself around Astarion’s wrist like a vice.

“What are you doing with my dog?”

Astarion had the measure of each member of camp ranked according to how easily he could take them in a fight. At the top of the list was Lae’zel and the barbarian. He’d rather chew his own fingers off than face either of them. In the middle sat Wyll, the charming little warlock, and the Sharran – not easy but not difficult, fights he could win at moderate cost. Near the end of the list was Gale. He could stab that man bloodless before he could get his far-too-nice-to-grace-those-feet boots on.

And at the very bottom was Tav. She was a natural leader, yes, but a capable fighter? Ha! Corpses were more threatening than her since those, at least, could still harm through disease.

But from the way she gripped his wrist, he was considering shuffling the leaderboard a bit.

“I…I was…”

Tav shifted off her bedroll, fire burning in her hell-touched eyes. “You were going to eat him weren’t you?!”

“Wh-what an absurd idea! And quite offensive at that. Do I look like the type to stalk around draining the local fauna bloodless? Really now!” He feigned ignorance, but she didn’t buy it.

Her grip tightened and though he no longer had a blood-pumping heart, he could feel his hand start to throb.

“That boar, near the swamp…that was you!”

Astarion gawped. He had been so careful. How?

Well, the game was the game and this time, at least, he had been outplayed.

Caught out figuratively and literally Astarion relented. “Alright fine, yes I wanted to eat the dog. Well, not literally anyway.”

Tav kept her grip and her gaze tightly on him. The heat of her black-sclerea’d hellfire eyes started to feel distinctly uncomfortable, like the first rays of dawnlight after a long night out hunting for Cazador’s next meal.

“Not him, never him, do you hear me?” Tav’s voice dropped low, not menacing but melancholy. Astarion was mildly shocked that she didn’t seem to mind there was a vampire in their midst, more preoccupied with what he ate and now how.

Astarion relented, giving up the night’s easy meal was an inconsequential price to pay for such uncharacteristic open-mindedness. Had it been Lae’zel who discovered him, Astarion shuddered at the thought.

“Fine, not the mutt.”

“Promise me.” Her voice took on a desperate edge that made Astarion even more uncomfortable.

“I promise, I promise! Now let me go.”

Her gaze lingered on him for a heartbeat before she released him. Astarion shook out his hand, noticing the deep imprint of her fingers in his flesh. “Good gods, all that for a dog?”

She broke her stare, casting it into the dirt. “He’s worth more.”

For a moment he wasn’t sure if she was speaking to him or to something beyond him, something that couldn’t hear her anymore. “Thank you,” she said softly.

Astarion groaned. “Whatever, see you at sunup I guess, now that you’ve ruined a quick dinner.”

“No, wait.”

Tav shuffled her nightshirt undoing the strings at her collar. The loosened fabric revealed a tender, juicy looking neck the color of deep red clay earth kissed by a healthy rainfall. Her flesh was ridged with the tell-tale scarification marks of tieflings, up each wing of her collar bones and down the meridian of her body between the valley of her breasts. He couldn’t see beyond their first initial swell but…gods, he wanted to.

The tadpole granted him many new things, protection from sunlight and Cazdor’s will primary among them. But he wondered if the tadpole cured afflictions psychological as well as physical. He hadn’t yet tested that hypothesis, no time and no participants. She’d be his first, he decided. Not now, he needed a plan first, but…soon.

“Nothing comes for free,” Tav said, craning her neck to reveal a delectable swath of flesh from pointed ear to rounded shoulder. “You gave me a promise, I give you a meal.”

“You’re…offering yourself?”

Revulsion flashed across his face. More than once in his un-life he encountered vampire fetishists who were a bit too enthusiastic about the whole biting business. Cazador kept a few around the house as slaves, eager to do the most menial tasks if it meant immortality. His master never rewarded them though, stringing them bloodlessly along at the point of his canine while Astarion was, of course, never allowed to sample the goods. He was disgusted by the very idea that free mortals debased themselves for a chance at vampirism while he, the vampire, yearned every day for the freedom of his mortal life.

“Nothing more than tit for tat,” Tav answered simply. “If it keeps your fangs out of the dog, I’m more than happy to sub in.”

“Do you mean it?” This felt like a mean-spirited trick, punishment for threatening the animal. She had been so equanimous about all this vampire business already. Surely there was a limit to her tolerance?

“Of course,” she said sincerely. “Everybody eats. We didn’t hunt for our dinner tonight, why should you?”

Astarion pressed his unfathomable good fortune to the point he was sure would break it.

“Do you still mean it if I tell you I’ve never sampled a thinking creature? That I’ve only feasted on animals and then until they were drained dry and dead?”

Tav looked at him with a wide-eyed terror and swallowed thickly.

But still, she nodded.

Astarion knelt in the dirt beside her, doing his best to suppress his drool. She smelled delicious, scented with some kind of sweet vanilla fragrance he could not place. Tav stared nervously into the middle distance, tail twitching anxiously, unwilling to even look at Astarion the way a skittish patient has to look away from the doctor before a shot.

“Will it hurt?”

Something small and precious bled inside his chest. Her question made her seem so small though her actual size engulfed his own by at least a few inches in both directions. He almost felt guilty taking from her like this, like he meant to deceive her, engaged in some artifice that he would later use to break her heart. Worryingly still, he didn’t want to…break her heart, that is. He had no qualms about drinking from her. He was hungry and it was her fault.

“Oh darling, It might sting a bit,” he admitted. “But I promise, it won’t hurt for long. Now, lean back for me.”

He was bone-meltingly tender as he took her in his arms, grave cool hands on each side of her face guiding her.

“Yes, like that,” he murmured just before the bite.

Tav flinched and hissed and swallowed down the rising, panic-tinged urge to fight him off. She promised him. She promised him. She wrenched her eyes shut and balled her fists, breath coming in sporadic gasps until warm bliss flooded her veins.

Gods, she was glorious. Her blood burst into his mouth like a ripe berry split between his teeth at a harvestime feast. He groaned, ruined for all other sustenance. And as he supped, his mind grew cold and calculating. This would not last, her generosity, something so sweet and good never did for him.

He would need to find a way to make it.

Astarion pushed those thoughts away for the moment, lest he get lost and take too much. Every muscle in her body relaxed and she sagged into his embrace, taking on the telltale lethargy of a vampire’s victim. It would be so easy to just keep taking. She was so good, the vanilla of her scent somehow flavored her blood. It was divine.

“P-please,” she called weakly and Astarion pulled away sharply, her sweet blood trickling down the angles of her collarbones, overwhelming him with the urge to lick.

But not the blood.

Sated by her blood, he was surprised to find he desired the taste of the flesh that housed it. He caught himself staring at her, trying to tease her apart to understand just what it was that made him forget himself so.

“All done?” she asked woozily.

“Yes, darling.”

“Get enough?”

He had an answer ready, but something from somewhere long dead beat out the lie before it could leave his mouth.

“If I didn’t, would you let me have more?”

She nodded, laying back down to her bedroll. “Mmhmm, everybody eats.”

He chuckled good-naturedly, a first of that particular flavor since the Nautiloid. “Well, I’ve eaten my fill tonight. Now rest.”

“Mm-not gonna turn am I?”

“That’s not how this works, darling. But if you did,” he felt exposed, betrayed again by errant thoughts slipping out from between the bars of his teeth before he could snap them shut. “Would it be so terrible?”

“No,” she answered sleepily, easily, and his undead heart twisted uncomfortably in his chest. “But only if you promise to show me the ropes.” “Well, sweetheart," he cooed, biting back the discomfort with charm poisoned with insincerity. "Should you ever find yourself in that lamentable situation, I promise to teach you everything I know.”

“Promise?”

“Of course, darling.”

Her half-lidded eyes suddenly snapped open, fixing him with a fiery gaze that did not burn but warmed. “When you make a promise, you gotta keep it alright?”

Astarion nodded, but only to acknowledge the sentiment not agree to it. Though Tav, bloodless as she was, would not be able to intuit the difference. Pacified, her eyes slipped closed again.

“Not the dog.”

“Not the dog,” he affirmed.

“Good night, Astarion.”

But he was already gone.

END

Author's Note: Hello, starving masses of the Tavalstarion fandom. I have come to feed you. A word of warning: this is a WIP and I do not mean to regularly post this fic until it is done. But! I am a kind and gentle mistress who will, during fits of pique, post a snippet of a chapter here and there in random order.

Fortunately for you, I already have! If you've enjoyed The Old Bear's Still Got It or Confession? Go See A Priest (and I know you have, I can see the notes go up) then hopefully you'll also enjoy the larger context in which those were written. Enjoy!

#bg3 #astarion x f!tav #eventual halsin x tav x astarion #tavalstarion #bg3 fanfiction #i cannot believe no one's claimed this title on AO3 in the BG3 fandom #it's righ tthere!#caught you lacking it's mine now #its anybodys ofc #who gives a shit #but i get to be the first :D #we are no where close to even half finished with this behemoth ass fic #but i am happy enough with the 20k words to post the first chapter #slow burn

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