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suitetarts · 6 months

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reasons to be honest

Astarion x Original Female Character, Dark Urge Tav (Good) Angst, Comfort, Kissing, Fluff (Link to AO3) After Astarion’s confession, Delilah is conflicted but still very in love–which she hasn’t quite admitted to yet. Unfortunately for sober her, she is a sad drunk on a mission after the celebrations in Moonrise Tower. Angst-fueled barbs and comforting words ensue.

Another one shot with my Tav, Delilah. This one happens to make no reference to her features or gender, just that she's a drow with mommy issues. You can go to the AO3 series for the other fic I have for her, or click here.

“Another… please.”

The red tiefling boy hesitates as Delilah’s head rolls awkwardly to the side, the previous shots of liquor clearly hitting her hard. Her piercing red eyes dart to his unmoving hands and then meet his own in a cold glare. With a squeal, he grabs a new liquor bottle from Ketheric’s stores and begins to pour once more.

Another child, a bluish tiefling with tight curls, collecting bottles from the small goblin hovels hidden throughout the first floor of Moonrise, comes marching over to chastise. “Drow Lady, oi! That’s enough!”

“Mmm? I saved your sorry little hides ‘nd you’re cutting me off?” Delilah exhales out of her nose indignantly, easily swiping the nearly full bottle from the boy’s hands.

“Oi oi oi! But that’s s’posed to be mine to sell on the road,” the blue tiefling cries.

The darkness within her, the other parasite on her psyche that pulls her to violence, begs her to reverse her grip on the bottle and crack it open, spilling red across the floor in a viscous new style of carpet. Delilah lets out a puff of air and pushes the thought away with a spot of effort. As she walks away with a stagger, she raises her free hand to wave the children good night.

The various hallways and great meeting spaces that were host to a battle between her companions and the Absolute cultists only a few hours ago is now just a bloody path of stones, one that she hopes will lead her to her bedroll. These cursed lands had truly been a nightmare in every sense of the word. Delilah is hopeful that being one step closer to their goals will allow her some peace and rest. However, she knows that defeating Myrkul’s Chosen can’t possibly help the matters of the heart that tear her from a good night’s sleep.

As the liquid inside the bottle hits her lips, she winces. Blood red and horrendously strong like it was distilled from pure malice. Whoever had decided to keep this in their stores either had something powerfully flavorful to mix it with or hated themselves. Delilah ponders if there is anything in this tower that would be sweet enough to cover the taste, blushes, and takes a decidedly large and bitter sip.

She curses under her breath as she finds herself walking the ramparts of Moonrise, her mind wandering back to Astarion despite the severity of all their other issues surrounding the tadpoles. Delilah continued to mull over their talk the other night and had been unintentionally distant, even though she knew that there was still so much more to say. The discussion replays in her mind once more. Astarion had, at least initially, lied about it all. He had manipulated her so comprehensively, body and soul. He told her such sweet things, some that she recognized as flirtatious tricks, but others that she had come to actually believe. He laid with her nearly every night not because he wanted to, but to control her. The bastard had admitted to her face that the only part of his plan that failed is, essentially, he harbored guilt about doing it after catching feelings.

And even after hurting her so profoundly, Delilah had reassured him. The typical shrill tone with which he joked or complained or flirted during their adventures was absent, replaced with a lower, more melancholy genuineness that she couldn’t help but comfort. She said that she deeply cared for him, that she would stay by his side as he created boundaries for himself. The two had a productive yet brief discussion and she never lied, not a single sweet word or supportive touch.

All despite her heart cracking down the middle, threatening to shatter.

Delilah staggers, reaching to the cold stony walls of the tower for support. Her fingers grip the edge of one of the stones and she could imagine it was Astarion’s collarbones. Her nails dig into the sandy mortar for a moment as her temper flares, before guilt and sympathy eases the tension in her joints. She feels justified in her frustration, but he doesn’t deserve her anger. His situation is beyond complicated and she truly is trying to understand it from his perspective. She goes through the situation again, as accurately as she can manage:

After being kidnapped and implanted with ticking time bomb mind flayer parasites, a hot and powerful drow sorceress (with a tendency to murder without warning or reason!) prances around in the wilds of the Storm Coast with a group of equally powerful strangers, including a famous monster hunter and a fierce alien warrior. The sorceress comes across a vampire spawn that has done little else besides use his body to ensnare meals for his master and suffer indescribable abuse for multiple mortal lifetimes. It makes perfect sense that he would use the tools at his disposal to secure his safety with a band of questionable characters. It makes sense to deceive one of these powerful fools into a relationship. It makes sense to target her as the leader of the group. It makes sense to manipulate her until she is no longer useful. It makes sense to try his damnedest to not actually feel anything for her, because gods forbid she’s worthy of real love. It makes sense. It makes sense.

Delilah sighs into the darkness. Perhaps this was not the most favorable interpretation to Astarion’s reasons for pursuing her the way he did. He had admitted that he’d fallen for her, that he wanted them to be real. It was her who felt an implication in his words that he wanted them to be real moving forward and that everything before was never real.

A chill runs through her as she takes another sip of liquor and she decides to focus on finding her way to camp. She rounds the same door twice before going the correct path and finding a host of friendly faces. Lae’zel, Aylin, and Isobel are near the door, with the former two animatedly discussing fighting techniques while the cleric takes the opportunity to rest and enjoy the peaceful evening with her lover. Delilah stops for a moment to listen in before moving further into camp, where Wyll and Karlach speak in a more somber tone around the fire. She almost goes to join them, but Karlach’s heat and ire at the Chosen of Bane the group had seen right before the battle with Ketheric is palpable in the air. Perhaps it's selfish, but she doesn’t want to be angry for Karlach's sake. Not when she’s already feeling so anxious and irritated about her own stupid problems.

Owlbert barrels past Delilah with Scratch hot on his feathered tail, passing close enough to her that she dodges clumsily and begins to trip. Her hands are sent to break her fall but instead catch on the bleached white linen of Astarion’s shirt.

He clicks his tongue against the roof of his mouth before speaking with a coy grin. “Darling, I knew you’d fallen for me but I didn’t realize you were going to take it literally.”

A fierce blush overtakes her, bringing a pink tint to her gray complexion. Her tongue rolls awkwardly in her mouth as she tries to cover herself, “I– I didn’t mean to fall. But thank you.”

“You’re completely trashed,” Astarion observes with amused surprise as he attempts to help restore Delilah’s balance. He steadies her forearms before tentatively letting go. Her red eyes, so similar to his own, beam up at him as she only slightly wobbles. His lips pull into one of those sweet half smiles that he only gives to her. “Adorable.”

“Y’think I’m adorable?”

“We’ve been over this. You’re very attractive.”

Delilah narrows her eyes and snickers, doing her best to rub her hands together like a villain in a street play while still holding onto the bottle of liquor. “Again.” He rolls his eyes and begins to lead her towards her tent.

“This–” Astarion emphasizes as he easily snatches the liquor from her loose grip. “–is for not returning the compliment.”

While Astarion has it hoisted in the air, he inches his nose closer before reeling at the strong vapors of the alcohol. She does not opt to carry herself with the typical pride of a female drow, instead choosing to whine and reach for the bottle. The two are evenly matched on height, but he's a master at using his tricks to keep any item just barely too far away.

“Tut tut tut. You know how this works dear.”

She stamps her foot down playfully. “I’ve told you a million times, ‘Starion. You’re–”

He cuts her off with a press of his index finger to her lips. “Ah-starion. If you please,” he asks with a shiteating grin. “Do continue.”

Delilah pulls her mouth to a straight line as she groans in her throat, but her eyes betray the annoyed facade she’s trying to convince him of. They’re smiling. She starts again, “I’ve told you a million times, Ahhh-starion. You’re perfectly gorgeous.”

He preens with satisfaction, tossing his hand through his hair for dramatic flair. “Thank you love, you’re quite perfect yourself.”

Delilah hums and turns away, in part to watch her feet as they approach her tent and also to avoid him seeing her as she repeats his words in her head. Her? Perfect? After all the nasty and selfish thoughts she’s had tonight, and every other night since he finally opened up to her? Hardly. Not to mention that falling for some charlatan with a pretty face and a sad life who tells her what she wants to hear is all far too unbecoming for a drow of her nobility and breeding. Her mother would literally kill her three times over for even an ounce of this behavior. It's frankly a miracle that a mistake like her made it to adulthood. And then there’s the whole thing with nearly uncontrollable murderous urges that, only a few weeks prior, had almost cost him his life?! Perfect.

Astarion notices Delilah’s withdrawal and leans forward to see her chin quivering and her eyes brimming with tears.

“Hey, hey, wait.” His voice drops its usual mirthful cadence. She stops, still facing away from him. “What’s wrong? Did I say something to upset you?”

“I’m not perfect,” she whispers just loud enough for him to hear. Delilah kneels at the rugs outside her tent, clumsily reaching behind her ass to take off her shoes. “Also, I think I’m mad… but I dunno.”

“Mad at what?”

“At you.”

Astarion freezes for a split second before nodding his head in begrudged acceptance. He sets the bottle down and kneels next to her, leaning forward to make eye contact. “Better to be mad than leaving me, which frankly, is what I expected when I confessed what I had done to you. I deserve your anger.”

“No, you don’t,” she says, doing her best to maintain eye contact as the liquor and tears threaten to make her crumble. “Everything you did makes sense.”

He clears his throat, giving himself a moment to gather his response. “I had my reasons, but that doesn’t mean the things I did were right .”

Delilah’s throat contorts as she tries to suppress a sob. All at once, the proximity of the others makes her panic and she quickly retreats into the darkness of her tent. When Astarion doesn’t immediately follow her, she kicks the flap. He peeks in to find her sitting cross legged at the far end, her eyes darting between him and a pillow just out of arm's reach of her.

Nervously drumming against the stiff canvas tent flap as he holds it open, Astarion sighs. “Darling, I’m not sure you’ll be pleased that we’ve had this conversation when you’re so drunk. Maybe this should wait.”

She wipes her eyes with the collar of her shirt. “I don’ care, sit.”

As he crawls in on his hands and knees, his fingers splaying out as his palm leans into the plush of her bedding, she closes her eyes to steel herself. Of their many encounters prior to Astarion’s confession, most of those had been spent here. She was no stranger to the ways of pleasure, but he had brought her to rapture in ways she had never imagined were possible. She had thought of those nightly trysts as an escape from reality, an easy and fun passion to help them both get away from the looming despair of the tadpoles. Just the thought of how Astarion must recollect those evenings makes her own memories turn sour and rotten.

He mirrors her cross legged sit from across the tent, laying the pillow in his lap so that he can fidget with the tassels and flange. He is uncharacteristically quiet.

Was he expecting a scolding, for her to hit him, or some other form of anger, even cruelty? Delilah looks down at her feet. “D’you think I’m gonna yell at you?”

“No,” Astarion says quickly. He plucks at the silver threads of her pillow. “Maybe.”

“I’d never–” she starts, before seeing a fang poke out of his smile and one of his eyebrows shoot up questioningly. “Well, not never, but not about this. ‘Nd I’m not really mad at you. I dunno. You just hurt me–a lot–when y’said you lied to me.” The words seem innocent and childish as she speaks them to her toes. After a pause, she adds, “For months.”

Astarion draws his shoulders forward until his nose almost touches his knees, almost as if he’s trying to make his body as uncomfortable as he feels. “I know, I’m sorry my love.” He looks up at her through his white lashes, a move that could fit right into his flirtatious fop routine if not for the sincerity dripping from his words. “You have every right to be mad.”

“Stop that,” Delilah begs, a smile breaking across her face as she lets out a short sad whimper.

He pulls his back straight once more, looking down before looking back up at her. “Stop what?”

“Stop apologizing and being so nice to me,” she sighs around a smile. But the smile quickly fades. She continues, “And complicated. I dunno.”

“I’m supposed to cut back on the complaints about the niceties you give to me, but you tell me to stop? I thought you wanted me to be all empathetic and sweet to every body,” he says with an air of their usual banter. The pair sit in silence for a moment as the tension once again rises, like a taut bow string waiting for the call to loose.

“What do you mean… ‘complicated’?” Astarion asks, without hardly using any air to carry his words, staring at the pillow flange’s thread between his fingertips as he unweaves it. She knows that he knows what she’s talking about, in general terms. Delilah huffs as she lays down on her side facing away from him, unable to explain this with even the possibility of eye contact.

“I had a lot of fun when we did, y’know, horizontal stuff. I thought you did too,” she starts nervously, holding onto her shoulders as she curls in on herself. “But now… Gods, I’m so gross. I took advantage of you. And you–”

“Stop. You didn’t take advantage of me.” His voice sounds strangled behind her. She can hear him padding closer to her, slowly. “Please, look at me.”

She curls further into herself. “But you didn’t want to fuck me.”

“Stop it, Del. Stop,” Astarion says sternly, pulling her back flush to the ground. He reaches over to hold both of her shoulders in place as he steadies himself on his knees to her side. His eyes unintentionally drift towards her neck, and she recalls this position, with him leaning his chest over hers, is much like that first night when he fed from her neck. His throat bobs, swallowing his sanguine hunger, and returns his eyes to watch hers. “I tried to explain the other night, but– Please understand me when I tell you that everything I did was what I wanted. My intentions weren’t, uh, always the most proper. But! I did want to fuck you. I want to fuck you now. It's just… not that simple.”

Delilah’s skin is hot underneath Astarion’s intense gaze and salacious words, especially the way his hands grip tighter at the idea of taking her at this very moment. She could almost be satisfied with this explanation if sex was truly all that mattered to her. Luckily for them both, it was not.

“Did you ever want to kiss me?” She breathes the question, her eyes softening under the heat of his presence.

He scoffs, releasing her shoulders to kneel beside her. He snakes a hand along both sides of her jaw and tenderly pulls her head up as he leans down to kiss her. Her hands fly up to his ears, her fingertips dragging through his curls. He brings her in closer, their teeth just barely feeling the pressure of the kiss, before he pulls away to hover over her face. He lets out a breath as he answers simply, “Yes. Any time you ask.”

“Even at first?”

“Even the most cold-hearted bastard wouldn’t look at a pretty thing like you and not want to kiss her,” Astarion says honestly, although a hint of his flirtatious tone seeps through.

Delilah tucks her chin into her shoulder, the blush creeping down from her cheeks to her neck and threatening to envelop her whole. She deflects to save herself from burning up. “That better not be a canned line.”

“Well…” His voice cracks and the smile on his lips falters, before he searches her face for some evidence of forgiveness. She still looks like putty in his hands, flushed and pliable. His eyebrows pull together, from pity or guilt or a combination of, as he answers her. “It doesn’t matter, da– Del. It’s true.” He leans back down for a chaste kiss before pulling his hands away from her and returning to a comfortable sitting position.

As he pulled away from the kisses, she did her best to give him a sweet smile but it didn’t quite make it to her eyes. He sighs, laying within reach of her onto his side with his head propped up by his arm. “I’m sure you’re not having an easy time trusting me lately, but… Honestly, it's true.”

She sympathized with his mild frustration. He was saying and doing all of the right things, and they were true, so why was she still upset?

Rhetorical question: she knew.

“Astarion?” She turned to face him with her elbows together and hands gripped at her chest.

“Yeah?”

“I… I think I love you,” she whispers. By the tension between them and the blank look on his face, she feels that the air has been sucked out of the tent. She feels light and breathless, floaty even, at finally putting words to her inner turmoil, and so she continues. “Even though you’re a liar. And I think I’ve loved you for a while now.”

Astarion lets out a large breath, rolling onto his back. As he fearfully studies the roof of the tent, Delilah wonders if he’s reliving some terribly sad memories of others who told him the same thing, others that were doomed to fall prey to Cazador. She wonders if it's the opposite, that he’s never been allowed to keep anyone long enough for them to love him. Or simply that he doesn’t feel the same and doesn’t want to hurt her even more. No matter what his reason is, she reaches a hand out to lay in the empty space between their bodies. An offering that she allows him to take or refuse, regardless of how much she wants to pull him closer.

“Del, I– I’m not sure what to say, but I–”

“If you don’t love me back, or you don’t know how, or whatever…” As she continues, the words trip and catch on the emotion pouring through and threatens to burst from her very soul. “Don’t tell me the truth. I can’t, I’ll… But please, don’t lie either. No more lies.”

Astarion rolls back onto his side to look at her, to look at what he’s done to her. One of his hands finds hers in the no-man’s land between them, as the other snakes through to hold the other against her sternum. “No more lies,” he repeats, earning a nod from his crying lover. “I’m so sorry. I’m going to work on, well, me, and as I do, I will become better. Stronger. For the both of us.”

Delilah curls inwards around their conjoined hands, breathing warm but fading sobs onto the cool skin of his arm. “Are we… Are we going to be okay?”

“Unless you or the tadpoles have other plans.”

“Is that a ‘yes’?”

He pauses, uncomfortable still with the concept of optimism. Promises of good tidings she made to him were generally met with a bitter snap from a man who over centuries had the ability to feel hope beaten out of him. But, in this moment, he softens at her, as he always has, and says, “Yes.”

They lay in silence for a few too many moments, just holding each other's hands and sharing a peaceful moment of mutual understanding. Delilah begins to lose the fight against her heavy eyelids. The anger, embarrassment, and heartache all seemed so trivial as she laid there with him on the brink of consciousness. He was right; they would be okay.

The last thing Delilah remembers is her grip loosening on his hand at her chest, but the lingering sensation of his cool skin on hers. When her trance breaks, she finds herself parched under a haphazard pile of blankets with a certain elf still resting at her side. She gently lays some of the warmest ones on top of Astarion before she leaves to nurse her hangover, just barely missing the way his eyes peek open mischievously. She misses the way he hesitates to follow her, instead choosing to snuggle into her warmth like a reptile to a sunny rock, trying to keep her heat to himself as the stones beneath the bedding already begin to sap it cold and dry.

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