#lora mctavish
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I couldn't help wanting to write something ridiculous with spawn!Astarion learning to turn into a bat. And then I got thinking about how the tadpole nerfs spawn powers. AU, post-canon, Tav/Astarion. About 1.3k?
Lora's feeling out a new riff, trying to work out if there's enough of a solid foundation for it to become a song, when there's a thunk and tinkle from the kitchen.
Shit.
She sneaks through, knowing that Astarion's probably doing the same, if he's all right. If he's not… best to take in the situation.
A vase rolls past her through the doorway. There's a small flappy sound, like someone's just pulled a sheet of leather taut. What -? An undead, perhaps? She pokes her head round the corner.
There, sprawled on the kitchen countertop where she normally chops vegetables she'll be the only one eating, next to a fallen jar of herbs, is a bat. Big, albeit not as gigantic as some she's fought who turned out to be vampires in disguise; still, it's got an impressive wingspan, one of them hanging off the counter like a curtain. Or, she thinks, absurdly, the way Astarion likes to dramatically hang an arm off a fainting couch, while he's reading a book. He'll not be impressed by that comparison.
Her unexpected visitor is albino, and… fluffy. Really fluffy, chest like the world's smallest thick fur rug, or like it's got a little proud collar. Small, clawed feet are sticking inelegantly in the air, not quite spread-eagled (spread-batted?), as if it's going to try and jump back onto them. But who's heard of bats standing?
…Unless it's a vampire lord. But there aren't any of those after them - well, not anymore. And they're usually better at the whole bat thing. Less of crashing into Astarion's favourite vase.
How in the hells did it get in? It's not like she left a window open; both she and Astarion are a tad too paranoid for that.
It's not dead, at least: its chest is moving furiously. Makes sense. Bats are smaller, probably with a faster heartbeat. If it's in pain - well, she hopes it's not in pain.
She's got no idea how to escort it off the premises. It's not that she's got a problem with bats - more that she's certain neither she, nor the bat, signed up for this. An angry wild animal? She has visions of it hanging from her finger by its teeth. Though honestly, she had a similar vision with Astarion, and things turned out pretty well there. But they're only borrowing this place for a while - she called in a favour. That favour probably didn't include bat tenants.
Edging closer, she notes that it doesn't seem to be moving. Knocked itself out? Oh, that's not ideal. Though maybe she can sneak it out before it wakes up… No, from what she can see - one red eye - it's just staring at the ceiling. Almost glumly, if a bat can be glum.
And then it spots her, and… lifts its wings to hide its face. In embarrassment.
White fur. Red eyes. The way he looks when he's caught between trying to brazen it out or stalking off to hide his cringing.
“...Astarion?”
Its - his ears twitch, and he raises a wing, holds it there. The way he'll raise a hand in acknowledgement and Don't even say it.
She blinks, and whistles a few notes, hits a high C - there. Speak with animals. That should do it. “Are you hurt?” she tries; it’s been a while since she’s done this spell without a lute.
“Only my pride,” he mutters, mulish and with the slightest nasality - makes sense, between a flat snout and fangs. “I think your basil came off worse than I did.”
She stares. Definitely strange, hearing that familiar wry voice come out of a bat. “What happened?” He’s normally so pretty - the kind of pretty he endlessly preens about. The pinkness of his nose is oddly adorable against white fur, but she suspects he’s ended up as a vampire bat. Apparently, vampire bats look like they’ve crashed face-first into a wall. Which he most likely has, but she suspects that’s no explanation for the horseshoe-shaped nose and his little squinting eyes. It's sort of cute. If you're very, very drunk. Or if you're overly fond of a grumpy vampire.
“Nothing we need talk about,” he says hastily. He rubs a thumb over his face. “I’m sure I’ll work out how to change back in a moment.”
“You’re not stuck like this, are you?”
He casts a narrow look at her with those blood-red eyes - different, and yet so very familiar. “Darling, are you saying you wouldn’t love me if I were a rodent?”
“Astarion.”
He stretches a wing experimentally: pale, thin skin and white fingers. “I don’t… think so. There’s already a sort of - itch under my skin, like I just have to yawn hard enough and, pop. But first, I need to brood.”
“I thought only Cazador could turn into a bat.”
“Into a cloud of bats, my dear.” He gestures at himself with a folded wing, more stiffly than his usual - difficult, when your arm doesn’t bend the same way. “Do I look like a cloud?”
She can’t help her grin at that. “I don’t know. You are all white and fluffy.”
He sighs, loudly. When she reaches out a slow, careful hand, however, he doesn’t move - even in this form, he’d dodge. Or she’d get an annoyed warning nip for her trouble, she’s sure of it. Fangs are second nature to him. As is how to be gentle with them, by now.
She says, “I love your ears.” She strokes a fingertip carefully over them; they twitch underneath it. “Look at the size of them!”
“Ugh. If you’re about to make an elf joke, I have one word of advice for you: don’t.” It’s deeply surreal watching a bat roll its eyes.
“I wasn’t! Is your hearing better like this?”
“Much.” He makes an expression that’s probably meant to be a grimace, but on a slightly squashed bat-face, it’s not so different. “I can hear the tavern three doors away. Their bard isn’t nearly so good as you.”
She strokes between his ridiculous rabbity ears, just with a finger, lightly; big as he is for a bat, he’s so tiny. Even tinier than usual. She'd hate to hurt him. “Have I mentioned I love you?”
“Yes, yes, I know you’re weak to flattery.” But there’s warmth in his voice.
“Do you want to hop up? I feel like you won’t want to turn back into yourself on the counter.”
“Please. That test flight - flights, really - was exhausting. No-one warned me there would be so much flapping. I thought creatures of the night would be fonder of a smooth glide, but no.”
She holds out an arm - and then there’s a bat clinging to her woollen shirt with thumbs and little claws. Clinging being the operative word. He climbs up her a little uncertainly, holding tight while she stays as still as she can, until he arrives on her shoulder, flopping there with a dramatic sigh.
She heads through to the lounge, and beside her ear, a small voice says, “I’ve been able to do… more, since our wriggling little unwelcome passengers were removed. I don’t know if it’s that or simply not starving. Honestly, I thought the bat thing was a myth. For spawn, anyway - we get the rather inferior part of the ‘vampire powers’ arrangement. But the claws have come back, and the agility. I’ve never felt so strong. It’s… strange. And a little intoxicating.” She can’t quite raise a brow at him when he’s so close to her, but he clearly gets the idea, because he adds hastily, “As in, I’m rather happy. Not as in ‘I’m about to become a cackling vampire lord.’ We’ve... covered that one already. It’s more - is this what it’s meant to be like? Being a spawn? Not a starved slave?” His voice is soft, with a genuine, non-snarling curiosity to it. A little amazement. She feels him shuffle just a bit closer to her, wing curling a little around her back.
Sometimes he doesn’t like to be touched when he’s thinking about the bad old days, but this clearly isn’t one of those times. At that, she has to sit in an armchair, and reach up, offering a hand to her shoulder. He clambers onto it, with the kind of instant trust that makes her chest ache - though he does give her a puzzled look while he shuffles about to get comfortable and sits on her knuckles. He folds his wings neatly, primly, in a way that’s so him she’d laugh in any other circumstance. She sneaks over her other hand and strokes his pointy pale head, runs a soothing couple of fingers over his back. She feels sad for him, but also, Lathander, he’s so fluffy. She could happily do this for a while.
The flap of wings startles her. What - ?
Being hugged by a bat is more like having a very strange necklace. One that hooks its thumbs into the back of her shirt collar, accidentally tugging it wider, ears twitching against her neck in a way that’s almost ticklish, tiny heart fluttering against her collarbone. She holds him there with a hand, thumb stroking through his fur. He murmurs, “I just wished, and this time…”
The smallest cloud of mist blooms. She blinks, and the world is suddenly rather heavier. It could be the rogue sitting side-saddle in her lap, his arms around her neck, grinning at her. He blinks in a little surprise.
“...there I was. Hello, darling.” Leaning in, he brushes a swift, smiling kiss to her cheek.
She reaches up and runs a hand through his hair, the way she knows he likes even if it ruins his pomade. “You were very cute.”
“Of course I was. I was adorable.” He winces. “Aside from looking like I’d run face-first into a carriage.”
“You were cute!”
“Hm. Good for scouting tucked-away places that the owners don’t want us to be, however.” His happiness takes on a fiendish edge.
“You’re going to pick locks with your little thumbs?”
The idea seems to delight him rather than offend. “Once I learn how? Absolutely.” He swoons dramatically, leaning back over the chair arm. “Now, darling, I find I’ve utterly run out of energy.” He darts her a look from under his hand. “It must have been the transformation. I don’t know if I can even find it in me to stagger to bed.”
She raises a brow. “Really?”
“Really. I’m just… utterly drained. It’s a mystery.” He holds his arms out. “Would you mind?”
While she’s carrying him through to her room, she says, “I know what you’re doing.”
“Oh?” he asks smugly, arms still wound around her neck. “And what’s that?”
“You’re going to pull me in with you.”
Pouting, he says, “How dare you. I’ll have you know I’m an honourable man. Well. I'm a man.”
“You’re going to pull me in with you and make me cuddle you to sleep.”
“When you put it like that, it sounds disgustingly juvenile. True, but juvenile.”
“This was easier when you were less than a kilogram of fur.” Not that she minds him being a bit heavier. It’s a relief, compared to how bird-boned he sometimes felt under all the muscle in the early, hungry days.
“I can fix that.” There’s a tiny poof! and then… a self-satisfied bat fluttering awkwardly to sit on top of her head.
She reminds him, “Watch the hair while you’re surveying your kingdom.”
“I could get used to this.”
“I’m never getting used to this.”
#batstarion#astarion x tav#astarion ancunin#Astarion#BG3 spoilers#bg3 epilogue spoilers#My fic#lora mctavish#Stupid ridiculous fluff (and I don't just mean how fluffy he is)#baldur's gate 3
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Blech
Karlach guesses she shouldn't be surprised when she's popping off to the river for a quick dip, and halfway into the woods, finds Fangs and their mighty leader snogging furiously.
In which Astarion gets his groove back... and is deeply obnoxious in the process. Based on the arse-grab in the Patch 5 kiss, that banter with Lae'zel about he and Tav barely being able to keep their hands off each other, and the fact that even if Halsin's not involved with them, he's noticed Astarion and Tav having sex again. Because they're clearly That Damn Couple.
Tav/Astarion, background Karlach/Wyll. 2.6k. SFW - some mild accidental voyeurism and mentions of Astarion's canon sexual trauma, but all the bedroom business is implied.
Ao3 link
Something's different, after Lora and Astarion sneak out of camp to do... whatever they did. Karlach probably doesn't want to know. Honestly, she thinks it's got more to do with the fact that his old bastard of a master is dead. Finally being able to take a proper breath for the first time in two hundred years... or the dead-guy equivalent, anyway. Must be a hell of a feeling. Invigorating.
Sure, Astarion still has times when you reach out to touch him and he gets that face, the one that says he'd flinch but he's too well-trained. And sometimes he gets that haunted look in his eyes, the one that makes Karlach think of blood and fire and something getting shoved into her chest; she's only been able to see the edges of his nightmares, but she guesses for him they're probably torture and sex he doesn't want to have and being so. damn. hungry all the time. (Like being lonely, like wanting to be touched so much it aches, and suddenly being awash in a wealth of it. Wyll must've spent most of the journey since her engine got fixed up hugging her - and that's after they spent what felt like three days in her tent. For Astarion, she guesses that it's blood and not getting staked. Sudden scary kindness, all the same.)
But he doesn't snap anymore - not unless he thinks you're doing something really stupid. She offered him a fist and he actually bumped it the other day, while Wyll cackled in surprise (and then coughed when he realised he was doing it). Miracles never cease.
Astarion and Lora have always been, well, weirdly soppy, once you got past the sniping. They'll tell jokes about blowing up hags, disagree on everything, call each other idiots with fancy words while laughing at each other's annoyed faces... and then you'll find them by the campfire, Astarion sewing some frilly thing with his ankle absentmindedly wrapped round Lora's. They hold hands, when they're at the back of the group and think they're being sneaky about it and can pretend it’s just their shoulders bumping; Wyll gave her the eyebrow-nudge the first time he noticed it, and it's been hard not to see ever since. And if you're looking for one of them, it's usually best to knock on Lora's tent so they've at least got time to spring apart and pretend they weren't cuddling.
But something's new. Something obnoxious and... kind of hilarious, if Karlach's being honest.
Lora eats stew in the Elfsong while trying to keep a straight face, but Karlach spots Astarion smirking into his wine glass in that way he gets when he's being a little shit. On impulse, she checks under the table and... she recognises that fancy gold-embellished shoe. And the fact it's sneaking up Lora's shin. Sure enough, there's a far less fancy boot hooked round Astarion's knee.
Karlach snorts when she comes back up. "Footsie? Really?"
Lora seems like she might be blushing, if it was dark enough to show up; Astarion just looks innocent, but his eyes are gleeful, crinkling at the corners.
Gale sighs, "Do you mind?"
He just gets an even louder, more dramatic sigh in response from Astarion, who says, "All perfectly innocent, I assure you. I hadn't even managed to get above the knee." He mutters into his wine, "Spoilsport." Swallowing, he adds, "And no-one's saying anything to Karlach, considering she's had her tail on Wyll's arse for the past half-hour."
Wyll jumps.
Karlach says, "Snitch."
"Coming from you, darling? Really?" But he's smiling into his cup.
Karlach guesses she shouldn't be surprised when she's popping off to the river for a quick dip, and halfway into the woods, finds Fangs and their mighty leader snogging furiously. Except Lora's paused to laugh and go, "Really? Really?" Probably referring to his hands on Lora's arse, unabashedly getting a good grip. (Karlach can't especially blame him. That's a whole lot of woman.)
Astarion's voice is cheerfully haughty. "What, I can't appreciate art?"
"You're ridiculous."
He rubs his nose against hers. "And you're beautiful." Karlach waits for the punchline or the sting in the tail, but it doesn’t come. His voice is soft and silly, like he’s just been hit round the head with something heavy. Fuck. Is that what Fangs in love sounds like? Sure seems like it. At least he’s put his hands somewhere less enthusiastic.
"Sweet-talker." Lora's voice is low, that soppy teasing way that lovers get with each other.
"...Yes, so I've been told. Except this time I get to mean it.”
Yeah, much as a formerly-pent-up part of her would really like to see this, Karlach also isn't paid enough for this shit. Even if she's not a merc anymore. She stares up at the trees and whistles a tune, pointedly.
Lora actually jumps.
Astarion turns his head and says, “Karlach? I thought that might be you.”
Karlach rolls her eyes. “Just looking for a bath. Not… this. Cute, though.”
Astarion gives a tiny half-grimace, and Karlach realises it’s the closest he gets to embarrassment. “Yes, well. I’d thought I was decent at finding a secluded spot.” He raises an eyebrow.
“Oh, I bet you are. But there’s a whole camp trying to do the same.”
Lora tugs at his hand. “Come on. Let Karlach spend some quality time with the river.”
Astarion throws a jaunty wave Karlach's way as he saunters off. “Later, darling."
So yeah. That's... either not been a thing before, or they're being way more obvious about it. Which gives everyone full licence to tease, in Karlach's opinion. Especially later, when Astarion won't lace up his stupid frilly shirt, and he has like... wow, are those three lovebites on his neck? Pretty impressive ones. Even Wyll and Gale are staring.
Shadowheart says, "I thought you were meant to be the vampire here."
Lora suddenly pokes the rabbit on the fire with a lot more force; Astarion takes his nose out of his book to give Shadowheart a sharp look, but his mouth's twitching when he gets back to it.
Karlach's even less surprised, somehow, when she goes to answer a call of nature and finds him pinned against a tree with his legs around Lora's waist, mouthing at her neck like he's about to try for another snack.
Karlach says, "Nice," cause it is, and cause it'll annoy them enough to let them know she's there.
Lora freezes; Astarion seems totally unsurprised. And makes no move to get himself on the ground, just opens an eye and says cheerfully over Lora's shoulder, "Why hello, Karlach. I always had you down more as the 'getting stuck in' type than liking to watch." And then the bastard winks. Astarion's always acted like a massive perv. A massive perv and happy? He might be even more of a pain.
Karlach says, "I wasn't watching. Some of us poor fuckers are trying to find a place to piss. You don't own the woods, you know."
Lora puts her face in Astarion's neck like she wants to die a little, but somehow still doesn't drop him. It's kind of impressive.
"I'm gonna find a good hedge. And take a different path back." Karlach gives them a nod. "Soldier. Fangs."
Lora mumbles, still muffled by smug vampire neck, "Thanks, Karlach."
Astarion, being Astarion and tactful as a very pointy brick, cackles so hard it follows Karlach out into the woods.
Not that whatever they have going on isn't hot; neither of them's exactly ugly. But she's not actually trying to know about that much of it. Especially not the big stuff, the real stuff.
Sometimes you don’t manage to dodge the real stuff fast enough.
She hears one night, as she's heading back to camp, "You've gone somewhere else." Lora. Sounding worried.
"Don't be ridiculous, darling. There's nowhere I'd rather be than - all right. No, I can't do it. Don't - We don't have to stop."
"Sure we do. My thigh's killing me, anyway. Oof. Move over." That fidgety sound you get when someone’s shifting bedrolls and a vampire’s stupid-huge pile of cushions around, now Lora’s finally got him to sleep on more than a damn board. (Karlach doesn’t care if he says it helps his back. She’s got enough problems of her own to know that’s a load of shit.)
His voice is fainter. "My sweet, I..."
"Astarion, what's my name?"
Karlach’s trying to head fast to her own tent. Really, she is. But hers is next to his and it’s… hard, when you’re worried for a friend.
"I…" A pause, and he swallows through such a dry throat you can hear it click. "Lora? What - For a moment I thought you were someone else."
"There you are."
"I'm so sorry, I..."
“Why?” Lora asks – gently, but she’s never good at being bullshitted.
“Because it shouldn’t be like this.”
Karlach heads over to her own tent, sits and tries not to listen; strokes a hand over Clive’s fuzzy head. Wyll’s still sleeping in there, bedroll carefully a ways from hers but close enough to hold her hand – she can hear him. She’ll head in given a sec, as subtly as a seven-foot flaming tiefling can.
Astarion says, unsteadily, “He’s dead. They’re all… they’re all dead, or down there in the dark. I’m free. I’m with you. I want to be with you, not… every ghost I’ve ever lain down for. You deserve better.”
Teddy bear fuzz. She can touch fuzz now, and Wyll, without the singeing. She’s here. She’s here, and there are owls and trees and Wyll making those little snoozy breaths behind her and no flames other than a damn campfire. Fuck. She knows Astarion would bite her if she even suggested it, but sometimes she really wishes he had a Clive. Something. She’s seen that ratty old blanket he insists on carrying round and tucking ashamedly into his tent; maybe that’s something similar for him.
Lora says easily, “You’ve got that one wrong.”
Astarion mumbles, fancy cut-glass syllables muffled by a bedroll, “Why didn’t you pick someone easy?” He laughs bitterly. “Well, I’ve always been extremely easy. Isn’t that just the problem. Why didn’t you pick someone normal? Someone boring, with a cottage and a dog and – someone who could fuck you without losing himself.”
Lora says, “Because that’s not my type. I want you. The fucking is secondary.”
He snaps, “It’s never secondary. It’s all there is. It’s all people want me for.”
“Hm. I want you for your sewing, and the way you grin with all your fangs, and your shit taste in books.”
“It’s better than yours.” Astarion sniffs – the haughty kind. Better than the kind he was verging on before.
“I want you for the way you hold me when I’m afraid, and you get so damn angry when someone hurts me.”
“That’s just common sense. You’re our leader.”
“Hmm. Tactical cuddling’s a new one. …I want you for your gold thread and your sunrises and your little presents you sneak me when you think I’m not looking, and the way you pretend to hate puns but you laugh at them. All the tiny things in life you hoard like treasure. I’ve been free all my life, but I’ve never enjoyed it as hard as you.” There’s a pause, and a shuffle of fabric and bodies. “…I like the way you hold my hand, too.”
“Thank you,” Astarion says, very quietly.
Karlach manages to sneak into her tent without setting Wyll on fire. And she gives him, and Clive, a quick squeeze.
Karlach manages three days before she gets done by a bunch of sneaky-bastard nettles in the woods, and hobbles back to camp. She keeps setting the fucking dock leaves on fire.
“Lora!” she whines, because Shadowheart’s deep in scary intense prayer – she’s switched it to a moon goddess now, sure, but she still looks like she’d stab you in the kneecaps if you interrupted.
“Karlach!” Lora says brightly, even if it’s all muffled, from her tent.
There’s a very posh sigh from the same tent.
Oh. Well. Right. Karlach tries, “You decent in there?”
Astarion drawls, “I was trying very hard to get her indecent, actually.”
Lora groans, “Ignore him.”
“Oh yes, please do. As usual. It’s not as if a man can find any privacy in his lover’s tent.”
Karlach says, “It’s a tent, mate. Privacy and tents aren’t a thing in the same sentence. You can keep it in your trousers ‘til we hit an inn tomorrow, right?”
Astarion mumbles something that sounds like it’s into a pillow. Karlach makes out something about “two hundred years” and “freedom.”
She says, “Yeah, yeah, I get that, but my arse is stinging something fierce.”
Astarion sits bolt upright so obviously the tent moves. “Wait, wait, I’ve changed my mind! Now this I have to see.” The tent flaps swiftly get undone by hands that are obviously way too good with knots, and then he crawls out into the camp, still shirtless and wild-haired, shit-eating cat’s grin all over his face. “What happened, darling?”
A dark brown foot follows him out, and gently prods at the side of his thigh ‘til he moves over.
“Nettles happened,” Karlach says, miserably.
Lora says, “Ouch. Let me see what I can do.” She stands and heads over to Karlach.
Astarion, still outside the tent but now sitting cross-legged, squints at Karlach’s leathers; he’s about knee-height, after all. Not that he ever gets much taller, when he's standing next to Karlach. “Are those brambles? Here I thought they’d all just burn away.” He looks up at her, and the smile in his eyes is less sharp-edged, now; he's trying for comfort. “Do you want to keep them? They really do add something. Like the studding.”
Yeah, the brambles were what she was trying to avoid when she landed in the nettles. “I want to forget all this ever happened,” Karlach moans.
Which is how she ends up sitting on a few borrowed foofy plum cushions outside Lora’s tent in her pants – look, it’s a camp and modesty is a distant memory – while Lora heals her thighs and the side of her glutes (and her shoulders, and that bit under her chin from when she tripped), and Astarion sits with her trous in his lap, picking out bramble after bramble with some fancy little tweezers he’d got stashed away. “Is that better?” Lora says, checking her over.
“It really, really is. Thank fuck. Thank you, soldier.”
Lora beams at her, all sweet and pretty, the way that makes you get how Astarion fell for her – he does have a weakness for sunshine.
Astarion neatly folds Karlach’s battered leather trousers and hands them back to her without a word, even a snide one.
“Thanks, Fangs.”
All right, so they make her a little sick. But they seem like they’re getting better at subtlety, lately. And times like this, she’s glad that her friends are a weird little couple. Seems like they're good for each other.
Astarion claps her on the shoulder – a rare thing, for him – and gives her a broad grin full of fang. “Marvellous. Always glad to help a friend in need. Now, would you mind being elsewhere, so we can ravage each other?”
No, Karlach takes it all back. She’s gonna feed them both to a beholder.
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Blankets
In which the shadow-cursed lands are freezing, Lora's undead boyfriend is shivering, and she decides there's only one solution: hug that vampire. And bring blankets. Meanwhile, Astarion gets to further discover the joys of non-sexual intimacy.
Sappy fluff on those lines Astarion has about cuddling, and about missing his partner's body heat. Act 2, after his big "I like you" confession. 3.1k. Ao3
The shadow-cursed lands have a certain character. It's a menacing, get-the-fuck-out-of-here character, but it's definitely a character. The dark and the weather - or lack of it - have a feel all their own.
"Who gave this place permission to be so damned freezing?" Astarion's trying to keep his usual stiff-necked poise, even slouched by the fire, but the cold's starting to defeat him. Hunting helped for a while, it was obvious, and it'd probably be a lot worse if he hadn't fed, but nothing seems to keep the cold at bay for long. His mouth is working as he tries not to let his teeth chatter - probably a lot worse with fangs.
"Blame Shar," Gale mutters, daring to without Shadowheart close by, and Lae’zel snorts. “But tonight is frigid even for this cursed place.”
Astarion pulls the blanket tighter round himself - worn but thick wool, with a little embellished, almost fleur-de-lys border in delicate gold thread. Somehow that hasn't unravelled. The rest is drabber than his usual style, though needs must, Lora supposes. But there's a pink patch, one she swears she sewed more haphazardly...
Wait. Lora knows that blanket. It used to be one of hers. It's the worn one she dropped outside his tent the first night they camped together - when he'd spent the journey muttering about the mud and the lack of baths, she'd spent it letting his snotty insults roll off her back, and she'd woken up the next morning to find said blanket had... mysteriously disappeared. That was months ago.
The thread's new.
“Damn this,” Astarion mutters, before she can muck everything up by saying something. “I'm turning in. Wake me up if we're all eaten by shadow undead.” And then he stalks to his tent, blanket thrown over his shoulders like a stereotypical vampire's cape; she watches him go in concern.
“Goodnight?” Gale manages.
Silence falls, even more than usual in the Shadowlands. Gale coughs. Wyll stirs the fire with a stick. Lae’zel sharpens her sword just a little more pointedly.
Lora lasts perhaps two minutes before she's grabbing a fur and an extra blanket from her tent - firmly ignoring the curious amusement she can feel from the other side of the fire - and sidling into Astarion's vaguely hedonistic lair, stepping past blood jars and haphazard books.
Astarion’s already reclining on an elbow, of course; he heard her coming. “Oh? Didn't know you were feeling frisky. At least it might warm us both up.”
Even though it's a joke, any coquettish effect is mostly ruined by the three layers he's wearing - undershirt peeking out from under his collar, another shirt, and some kind of robe he must have stolen along the way - and his miserable little nest of blankets. And the subtle redness to his nose, the tension in his shoulders to stop the shakes. Gods, there’s barely anything here, for all the treasure trove outside his tent. He’s all but slee – trancing on the ground. Elf or not, he’s got to be freezing.
Lora shakes her head, sliding to her knees next to him. “You're shivering.”
“Of course I'm not. Am I?” Astarion looks down at himself and sighs. “I suppose I am.” He is. Vigorously. “How are you not?” he adds, in confused disgust.
Lora throws the extra covers over him. And then she wriggles half out of his tent, ignoring the fact that Wyll is now leaning round Gale to watch, and returns with half of Astarion’s cushion stash.
“Is that why you're here? To make a delivery?” That arch voice is muffled through wool, until a pale hand pulls it away from his face and Astarion blinks at her owlishly. Well, half owl, half very disgruntled sheep. The pomade’s starting to lose the fight against blanket friction, flyaway curls sneaking back into shape. It’s... sweet.
“If you want. But I thought I'd ask if we could share,” she says, gesturing to his bedroll.
He blinks at her, sobering. “I thought we'd spoken about, ah…”
Is it patronising to be proud of him? Probably. It doesn't change the fact she is, terribly, even while guilt for how they started is trying to squeeze the breath out of her.
A hand to her heart, Lora says, “No funny business. On my mother's life.”
Astarion squints at her, amused but with the tiniest hint of wariness underneath. “You don't have a mother.”
Sombrely now, eyes steady on his, she says, “On my lyre.”
Those little lines start around his brows - he's frowning, trying to work her out. And then, like so many small moments over this journey, she sees the second he decides to trust her. With an incline of his head, Astarion says, “Accepted.” He blinks, and snorts. “But darling, it's not as if I have an excess of body heat to give. If anything, quite the opposite. I'll, ah, leech from you.” He tries to grin fangily through the shivers, and then it occurs to him. “...Ah. You were trying to save my dignity, weren't you?” He sighs, and untucks a corner of his blanket pile, dragging a cushion or two under his head and turning away from her. It's the nearest to an invitation she's likely to get.
Unable to watch him in his misery any more, Lora swiftly ties the tent flaps, tries not to bolt into his absurd nest of cushions, and tucks herself in. “Oh. These are soft,” she says, plumping one. Silk. Shouldn't even ruin her hair too badly.
Astarion huffs a laugh at that - mostly silent, but she spots the movement of his shoulders.
Slowly, loudly, she shuffles closer and puts an arm round him; Hells, below wool and linen, he's absolute ice. He makes the smallest noise and stiffens, shoulder blades like shelves against her.
Lora lets go, instantly - but there's a hand snaking to her hip before she can shuffle backwards, pulling her to him.
Astarion murmurs, “I was just startled, that's all. You're so warm.” His tone is wondering - and then embarrassment at himself catches up with him. He goes tense all over again, but Lora just re-wraps an arm round him; curls the rest of herself round him too, knees against his knees, hips against his hips, chest to back.
It's the softest breath he lets out, almost inaudible. He tries, “This is ridiculous. It's not as if we're in some snowy wasteland.”
She says, “No light. No heat.”
“Hm. You know, once I would have said something like, ‘You're all the light I need. A lone star in the darkness.’”
With a laugh, she puts her nose against his shoulder. “Isn't that meant to be you? Considering the name, and all.”
“Shh. Don't ruin my metaphor. It took me a whole five seconds to think of it.” It's a slow thaw, the way he's melting against her as he speaks: bit by bit, inch by inch.
Lora sniggers against his robe.
Where her hand rests on his chest, she feels slim, strong, freezing fingers join it. Astarion says, softly, “I won't say I don't miss the sun. But you… help. You're so - ugh - colourful. And warm.” His head ducks, and then her hand’s being lifted to cool, gentle lips. He lays a kiss to her knuckles.
Lora’s chest fills with something that makes her realise she's a terrible bard, because she's uncertain how to describe so very much. She kisses a pointed ear - it twitches the tiniest bit in his surprise, barely there and in a way that would likely irritate him if he knew.
“It's probably the big glowing mace,” Astarion grumbles, carefully ruining the compliment - belied by how gently his hand’s still holding hers. That first time is still fresh and new: the way he took her hand like it was a precious thing. How pleased he was just to hold and be held. His grousing is relaxed, half swallowed by his pillow.
Many wouldn't say he's an ideal partner for cuddling: he's all sharp angles and sharper elbows, albeit ones dulled by his clothing. He's freezing marble except for where his hair tickles her nose. But his toes twitch against her shins and his voice is a low rumble where she rests, and he fits in her arms like they were made for it. Lora knew these strong shoulders and these long limbs would be good for something, and apparently that something was holding a short, slowly warming undead elf.
For all he's not tall, he's long, somehow: elegant limbs with a deceptive amount of strength hidden underneath. She'd thought the first time they slept together he was all lean muscle and sinew; now she realises he was starving. It just takes longer in a vampire. There's a solidity to him now under her hands: his shoulders are the slightest bit broader, his thighs a little less skinny. Lora wants, all over again, to tell the man she met in that clearing not to do this: to go hunting with her instead. To ask for a bit of her blood. To take her hand. Not that he would have listened.
“You've gone all tense,” Astarion remarks. “Have I done something?” His voice is on the knife-edge of casual.
Yes. No.
She swallows. “It's so quiet here. The birds don't sing. I feel exposed when I do. The silence leaves you with your thoughts - not always the good ones.”
“Mm.” All at once there's a small hurricane of movement next to her - before she quite knows what's happening, he's eeled out of her grasp and turned to face her. “Luminis,” he says, softly, all cut-glass enunciation; close to where they've bedded down, a jar - empty, thankfully - illuminates. He takes his fingers away from it.
Scarlet eyes search her face. It felt easier to hide in the half-dark, even though he could see her perfectly well… Oh. The light isn't for him, is it? His fragile mortal lover, so small in the grand scheme of things.
The words spill from her mouth unbidden, and she wonders, for far from the first time, how she ever became a bard. “I, ah, I get on edge, in this place. You said I was… colourful.”
“It's a bard thing, I'm sure.” Astarion’s voice is wry, but there's a crease of what looks like concern between his brows; he’d be appalled if it was pointed out.
“Here, that feels like I'm a target. I feel watched all the time.”
Grimacing, he says, “Ugh. Awful, isn't it? It's not just you.” But it's less theatrical than it would be with the others. More honest.
Astarion eases closer to her, hair falling over his forehead but eyes still dark and curious on hers - and something like realisation is dawning on his face. He always knows someone's soft spots. Lora wants to crawl away, to make some pleasant joke to distract them both; she makes herself be brave and stay, instead.
He places a hand on her arm, lightly, uncertainly, as if real tenderness is a song he's heard so many times but he isn't sure how to play by ear - and then he cups her face, still with a tentative hand. There's no laughter in his voice when he speaks. “Lora, darling, are you scared?”
“Aren't you?” she says, sounding small and helpless and hating every second of it.
Astarion barks a laugh, seeming to startle them both. “Love, we're all terrified of this place. Karlach’s spent half the journey quaking in her fiery little boots. Gale seems to be reading so he doesn't scream. But you're always so… cheerful.” He strokes his thumb over her cheek, again with a slow lightness to it, as if he's ready to move away the moment she says something, as if he might be overstaying his welcome. As if it isn't keeping her grounded. Sadness is in the tight lines around his eyes, his mouth. “I thought you'd sublimated it all into jokes and anger. Or perhaps that's just me.” He gives her a grin that's almost sheepish, by his pointedly-confident standards. Sobering, he says, “I should have seen through a fellow liar.” That's too gentle, too worried to have any sting to it.
The words are so hard to find. “Having someone with me helps. To watch this place back. You've got the fastest eye of any of us.”
Amusement flits over his face, his eyes skating to her throat. “I didn't think you'd want these fangs so close to your neck.” Double-edged, with the barest hint of real fear under there, the way so many of his offhand jokes are.
“They have been enough times before. You” - she clears her throat, and tries not to feel ridiculous - “you look after me?”
Astarion blinks a moment, eyes widening. “I do, do I?” He's trying for wryness, but his voice has something else to it. Something raw, but she can't tell if it's good or bad.
Lora says, hastily, with a demented kind of mildness, “Usually by stabbing things that are trying to kill me. And you can see in the dark, and I can't. And you slee - trance less.” And the shadows are less frightening when met with a wry voice and flamboyant arm-waving. And she's learned to feel him at her back, even when she can't see him.
She wants to squirm, but he's leaning to catch her eye. He says, with a disbelieving half-smile, “My dear, are you saying you feel safe with me?”
Lora sighs explosively, ready to be laughed at -
“Gods, I really have taken up with a madwoman.” But the words are softer than they should be, and he… tugs her into his arms, and holds her tightly.
Oh.
Lora freezes - he does, too, as if scared he might have overstepped his bounds. She wraps an arm round his waist before he can decide that she must hate this and he should run away again, her head settling onto his shoulder. He's warmer, she's glad to note, the shivers gone entirely. Still not as warm as someone alive, but getting closer to his normal.
Astarion says, “I'll keep the shadows at bay. You just focus on keeping me warm.”
“I can do that,” she says, faintly.
“Can I take away the light?”
“Sure. It's not the dark that worries me. It's… being alone, in the silence.”
Astarion throws the tent back into darkness with a whispered word - and then stays there: chest against hers and legs tangled, breathing every so often out of habit instead of necessity. A hundred little sounds even in a man as consummately quiet as him, from that to the brush of his clothes against pillows. Lora feels him start to stroke her hair with that careful touch, uncertain of his welcome; she hums happily, and he keeps it up. It's worth a little extra work in the morning for this.
A memory winds slowly back into her head: a man who'd give her florid nicknames and yet all but flee after sex, their arrangement going mostly unspoken. The second time, and that touch on her hair, so oddly uncertain for a man that confident in bed. She hadn't understood it at the time.
All I had to do was not fall for you.
Astarion turns his head, breath cool on her ear. “Lora?”
“Mm?”
“Thank you.”
“Mmhm." It's vague, said into his hair.
She feels him laugh faintly against her.
When Lora wakes to the morning light, she's somehow spooning him again; his forearm is wrapped around hers, holding her there, but he’s contorted himself to lean a book next to him so he can read.
Wait. That wasn’t in his tent last night. Lora tries to get her mind around the image of him sneaking out of bed, getting a book, and sneaking himself back in under her arm. Somehow, it makes a worrying amount of sense.
Astarion lets go of her the moment he senses she's awake, saying idly, “Have you ever considered a second career as a backpack?”
“How long have you been thinking of that one?” she mumbles, only realising she's nuzzling her nose into his hair when she gets tickled.
The book snaps shut, and Astarion pushes it aside with three fingers. “Is your pillow talk always so cynical? What's wrong with a good sweet nothing?” But he turns to her, a glint of amusement in his eyes.
For a moment Lora just lies there in some sort of disbelief, because she knows how nights with Astarion end. She wakes up alone, with only a bite mark to say anything happened at all, or there’s some convenient excuse he pulls out to sneak away.
But there’s a man in her arms, now, running a little cool for a mortal but not the block of ice he was – his hair wildly curly, his movements soft and slow and easy, the tiniest satisfied hum running through him as he eases into her embrace. “Gale is skulking about, making breakfast,” he says into her shoulder.
“Sounds good.”
“No, it sounds terrible. You’re better than a furnace. The bastard can show off to everyone else, but I’m keeping you.”
“Just for warmth,” Lora says.
“Obviously.”
“Are you warmer?”
His voice is a wry drawl, but something content is sneaking in around the edges. “Toasty, darling.”
Lora strokes a hand over Astarion’s back, over the layers of nightshirts and robes. For the barest moment he tenses – whether it’s because of his scars, or whether he thinks she’ll touch him somewhere less innocent, try to push his limits. She doesn’t, and he makes that faint content sound under his breath and goes loose again, his nose against her neck, curls tickling her cheek. It all feels like an impossibility that’s half a dream, like capturing the moon in a bucket of water, or...
A throat’s cleared outside the tent.
“Gale?” Lora says.
Through the tent, a wizardish shadow gazes awkwardly up at the sky. “I see. I shan’t ask if you’re decent in there. I somehow doubt I wish to know.”
Astarion mumbles, mouth still half against her skin, “If you untie that tent flap, I will kill you.”
“Ahem. It occurs to me that only one of you needs food – well, until I perfect that Waterdhavian blood pudding recipe. All the same, I’ve made a porridge with honey and almonds. Whenever you’re ready.”
Lora’s stomach growls just at the sound of that; she tries not to be embarrassed.
Astarion says, with the faintest fond undertone to it, “Ugh, mortals.” Rolling away from her, he adds, “Go, darling. It’s best never to deny your hunger.” He grins at her, and it’s full of teeth – but it softens as he adds, “And if you need further protection from the night’s shadows, you know where I am.”
She does. But it’s Astarion who sneaks into her tent the next night, a couple of ragged blankets tossed round his shoulders. She shifts to make room, opens her arms, and he fits himself between them like it was where he was always meant to be. Perhaps it was.
#tav x astarion#astarion x tav#astarion ancunin#Tav#gale of waterdeep#Lora mctavish#baldur's gate 3#My fic
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i'll be your mirror
In which Astarion receives a gift of a portrait. Developing Tav/Astarion. 2k words.
Astarion forgets that little conversation entirely - he's wondered what he looks like now so many times in two centuries that one more occasion, albeit one where he was rather less solitary in his vanity, hardly stands out.
He forgets it until he ducks out of his tent into the morning light, and... Interesting. There's a sheet of paper tucked under his jar of - ugh - slightly congealed blood. He can't help the dread rising at the back of his throat. Some note left to toy with him? (He can almost see it: that hideously neat, tight little handwriting. I know where you are, boy. He focuses on the sun's warmth on his skin, and takes a breath he doesn't need. No. It'll at least be a damn sight harder for the bastard now.)
Shaking off his paralysis, he unfolds it, and finds... a portrait. Hm. He squints, smoothing it and trying not to smear charcoal all over his fingers.
A handsome fellow, certainly - straddling the line between that and pretty. High cheekbones and long eyelashes and an elegant, straight nose. A bit of a wry glint in the eyes. (Impressive, capturing that. For all his talents with a dagger or a body, he's never been that kind of artist.) Crow's-feet around them, too, and lines around the mouth; a man, not a boy. Delicately pointed ears. A head of soft, pale curls.
The realisation drops onto him something like a very large rock.
...Ah.
He touches his own hair, absentmindedly, feeling a texture he'd know like the back of his hand but hasn't seen from that angle in two hundred years. If his hand is shaking a little, no-one else has to know.
He stares at cheekbones he must have traced over a thousand times, trying to rebuild a faint, shadowed picture that was fading in his head by the year. At the bow of this strange, handsome elf's lips. He maps it on his own face, finger tracing over another familiar shape that he could never quite envision. Besides, he'd been preoccupied with the newer, unwelcome shape of fangs.
But it doesn't feel wrong. The picture in his head was more of a featureless shadow with fantastic hair than anything else, but this… this has the ring of familiarity. They've even bothered to capture his moles; he puts a fingertip to his cheek, where one had been forgotten, not raised enough for him to know.
Someone who sees him often, then, who knows his face. Someone -
I'll be your mirror. Those hazel eyes tracing carefully over his face, when a night or two ago she caught him craning for a reflection that would never come.
Lora.
He's seen her scribbling away enough times; he just assumed she kept a journal. He saw the odd drawing - plants, mainly, things she'd bring to the tree-hugging bores at the Grove and ask about, or discuss with Gale...
Like she's doing now. They're off in the woods with Gale trying to teach her some spell, and the worst thing? That's not even a euphemism. Even now, they're probably deep in debate. Ugh.
But it does mean that the little journal she keeps is sitting on a log, temptingly unoccupied. He puts the drawing carefully aside, and then it's a matter of moments to wander over and close his hands on the book. If she didn't want anyone to look, she shouldn't have put it with the communal supplies.
Making himself at home on the log, he flicks through it. Gods, she hasn't even used a cipher. To-do lists that seem to involve far too much saving helpless idiots, half-scribbled song lyrics and roughly dotted notes - even he can't somehow make those his business, and swiftly moves on - and… there.
He recognises those roughly-drawn lines, the way they soften out to the curves of the cheeks. Gale, sketching out some mnemonic absentmindedly with three fingers, a faint swirl of magic drawn in a couple of lines. Karlach, beaming and dimpling quite becomingly. Wyll, practising his forms with a rapier. Shadowheart, deep in meditation while Lae'zel scowls at her.
And on the other page… Ah. Hello.
If he'd wondered, truly wondered, whether the other portrait was him, this one confirms it: he's caught in laughter, a wineglass in hand, and... He stares at his own fangs. She hasn't shied away from drawing them, but there's been more attention paid in rendering the firelight on his hair, the crinkling around his eyes. Neither fear nor fetishism. He... honestly, he has no idea what to do with that. Another, in profile view, and something must have rather pissed him off, from the look of it. Little notes cluster around the drawings on what herbs she needs to find, on infernal iron for Karlach, on drow poison for Astarion.
He turns the page, and is greeted by a drawing of the day they were caught in an impressive downpour and took shelter in a cave. Well, they were all caught, but the subject is him, specifically. He looks at half-flattened, sopping hair and his truly unimpressed expression. Is that what it looks like when he glares? He catches his brows pulling tight, in mimicry. This should be mocking, but it feels more… It's not as unflattering as it should be. Almost fond, which is odd, considering the sheer amount of time he and Lora spend arguing.
Perhaps… hmm. One doesn't draw a face that much without being a little enamoured of it, surely. That's probably all she wants, the look of him. She still grimaces at his goblin jokes, still stops to help every fool going and sighs when he complains. He'd thought perhaps they'd had a little breakthrough when she let him bite her, when she speculated on the taste of their companions - she has a streak of dark humour that he rather enjoys, when she's not too uptight to let it out. But then she put them all at risk and wasted time they didn't have to rescue that idiot bard from the goblins, and when Astarion glared at her, she glared back even more fiercely. Sometimes a glimpse of the sunrise is just a lantern, or some other foolish metaphor she'd use. So, seeing as his sparkling personality certainly isn't the draw here, it must be his looks. He can work with that. Hardly the first time. He thought he'd have to try his luck again with the terrifying gith or gods forbid, the wizard, but perhaps all isn't lost with the leader of their merry little band.
There's another drawing that makes him pause: him caught examining his own hand, in the sun. The look on his face - he's smiling, just slightly. He looks… happy. He doesn't look that soft, does he? The kind of soft that he can't afford to be. It's dangerous, it's stupidly complacent, it's… Annoyed, wary embarrassment prickles up his spine - has he been that obvious? When did she see that? How did he not catch her staring?
He flips back to the more general (safer) drawings. "Karlach," he says to his erstwhile red companion, who's currently keeping watch.
"Yeah?" She heads over to his makeshift seat, axe still slung over her shoulder. Her eyebrows raise. "Huh, those are good. Look at me!" She reaches out a finger - Astarion draws back the book protectively, and she remembers, face falling. The sight shouldn't bother him as much as it does.
"Yes, yes, but are they… accurate?"
She sits next to him, axe resting by her knee, and her eyes widen. She squints at him. "Oh shit, mirrors. How much do you remember?"
He shrugs, and if she looks any more pitying he may have to bite her, so he focuses on the book instead.
"These are… yeah, these are definitely you. Ha, look, this one's got the way your hair goes all curly round your ears! Aww, look at your little fangs!"
"'Little'?" he says, offended. He peers at her.
She grins at him, pointedly, with a mouth full of many.
"Hmph. Not all of us can be a hellspawn."
She's nudging the page carefully with a nail before he can protest. Her eyes widen. "Wow, these are really sweet…" Pausing, she looks up at him. "Astarion, where did you get this?"
"It was… communal," he tries, vaguely.
"Please tell me this isn't Lora's."
"She checks it around us all the time! She showed me her list of herbs just yesterday! It's not as if I'm reading her diary." But there's a reason he didn't just ask. They both know it.
"Astarion, sometimes you can be a real shit."
He knows. He stares at the drawings and reassembles his usual lack of care. "Hm? Sorry, I was busy being distracted by how pretty I am."
"I swear -"
He hears the steady footsteps and a creak of leather even under Karlach's words - he's always been a hard man to sneak up on - and looking up, resigns himself.
Lora says, "How come no-one invited me to this party?" Her footsteps stop abruptly when she sees what he's holding. There's the faintest flicker in her eyes, and then she pastes on a resigned, tired sort of smile. "I guess this is what I get for giving you gifts."
That… itches. He's had far worse said to him - had knives under his ribs - so it's not as if it really hurts, but she so clearly means it. She's not trying to posture, or hurt him. Her disappointment simply is.
Karlach and Gale seem to be having some kind of mouthed conversation, with hand gestures. Astarion distinctly catches the words Not getting involved on Gale's side. "Tell me if you need his arse kicking, mate," Karlach says, and stands, ushering Gale away with a hand on his elbow.
"I was looking for soup recipes?" he tries, not even aiming to be convincing.
"Sure." Lora takes her lyre from her back and leans it against the log, then sits to untie her boots. She doesn't look at him once. It's almost impressive.
It should be a relief: a break from her incessant brightness that felt too much like unwelcome sun, back in the pre-tadpole days. Finally not having to listen to how there are kind people, you'll see, now rescue that bunny from under a cart. Gods, somehow even her hair is wilting. It's pitiful. He'd be angry at the manipulation, but this seems too exhausted to be a manipulation. It's… real, he thinks.
Leaning on pity should work - and besides, it's the truth. "Can you blame me, after two hundred years? I just wanted to see if you had any more." He smooths a hand over the corner of the page. "I asked you what you saw when you looked at me. This is it, isn't it?"
She nods, and that's all. A silent bard - somehow almost as ominous as a loud crypt.
He takes one last look, drinking in the familiar unfamiliarity of his face, and then carefully puts the book onto her lap. "Here. I think this is yours." His voice is quieting before he can help it - too damn soft, he thinks again, though perhaps softness will get her to let down her defences where simple seduction won't. "I can promise you, there won't be any repeats of my little endeavour today." Her eyes slowly raise to his, and he says, "It answered my question." He clears his throat, crosses one leg over another, and tries to look elegant rather than self-pitying. "You've… given me back my face. It was always just one more thing Cazador stole from me. Thank you." The words are far, far too real. He didn't quite mean to say it that bluntly.
She blinks, seeming taken aback by his little display - and then she nods. The beginnings of forgiveness are in her slackening shoulders, the way she takes the briefest glimpse at him before it's gone again. It won't be a problem, travelling together today, even if she'll be quietly licking her wounds. Good.
The broken mirror is still lying in his tent when he returns. He sighs at the sight of it. And then he shifts old wine bottles and blood jars out of the way. It doesn't need much room, a small charcoal drawing - it certainly doesn't need him to clear a whole corner of his tent. Even so, he does, propping it up and looking at the life in his own eyes for longer than he'd want to admit.
#astarion x tav#Astarion#astarion ancunin#baldur's gate 3#That Damn Mirror Scene#lora mctavish#Chaotic good punk slight disaster at love bard#My fic#This might become part of something bigger eventually#Still working it out
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This will probably become part of something bigger eventually. My Chaotic Good bard, Astarion, and Act 1 pre-romance reluctant hairwashing. Basically: that stage when they're both sniping at each other, but it's becoming oddly fond. 2.4k.
Lora’s heading to the river with a change of clothes when there's a quiet, finely-enunciated murmur of an invisibility spell, the air tugging and changing. She knows that voice, and she's in no mood for an argument, even if it’s often one that makes her laugh.
Turning away sharply, she says, "Sorry. I'll come back later."
"Oh. It's you," Astarion mutters. There's a feeling in the air like an exhale, the spell dispersing. Then a quiet scrape of metal on rock - a knife being put aside. "Since you're here, will you do me a favour?" That's mulish, and far more genuine-sounding than when he adds, "You can look, darling. We're all friends here."
She turns, and tries not to regret it. He's to his shoulders in the water, so oddly pale against its darkness, against the bright green of the willows and the lily pads. Like someone's misplaced a marble statue. The sopping wet hair in his face is a little less classical, though.
He gestures to said hair. "I can tell it's not all out. Where's the last of it?"
She frowns, and then sees the streaks of red in his hair amongst the white - well, grey, now it's wet. "You've got some…" She touches just behind her ear.
He attacks his hair with a wet comb, but still…
Of course it's a little different, when you've got longer ears. "No, more like…" She's stepping closer, and only realises at the sudden tension in his shoulders. She tries to brazen it out before she's snapped at. "Here," she says, and tries to show him again on her own scalp.
He gets it this time, holding the hair and picking at it with the comb - the look of it, of the frustrated snarl on his normally sharp-pretty face and the elegant little bone-handled thing being wielded like it'll save him that's the monster from his hair, makes her want to laugh. It should make him less handsome. It does… exactly the opposite, somehow, and she shoves that thought aside. Definitely not one to have when she's intruded on his bath and he's very, very naked.
He says, "And the rest?" He turns in the water, a few splashes and a series of ripples following his progress.
"You've got a little at the back of your neck. Nearly the nape."
He touches what's almost - almost - the right place.
"Nearly," she says.
He pats and it's somehow further away.
"Not… quite."
"I feel rather like I'm being patronised," he snaps.
"Can I just get it for you?" she responds, with a sigh and equal terseness.
She knows that was a bad idea the moment it comes out of her mouth. He tenses, instantly, like a string pulled taut. He looks at her over his shoulder, eyes narrow, and there's a moment she can see him considering. And then he says, "...Fine. But you're not styling it." He sinks lower into the water, carefully.
She meanders over, slowly, and those sharp rogue's eyes watch her the entire way. She says, "How do you know it's there? I understand when it's dry, it goes all… crunchy, but wet?"
He looks away from her a moment, at the weeping willows - and then he finally turns to her, with the faintest sigh of something like resignation. "Probably something to do with the fact I can smell it."
"Really?"
He peers at her through the now-greyish mop of hair all over his forehead - like a sheep in the rain. That shouldn’t somehow still be good-looking. "You can't? Is this a human thing?"
"I suspect it's a not-vampire thing," she says, taking a seat on a good rock by the deeper water.
"Hmm." He raises his chin obstinately. "But at least you can see it." And then, to what must be both their surprise, he wades closer to the bank, and to her. "I could do this myself. I usually do. But at least you might save me some time."
The water falls and she tries not to look at the wings of his collarbones, the old scarred bite mark. The tree-shadows fade and he's in a ray of sun, the blazing gold kind that lends the faintest warm colour to his skin. Makes him look… alive. She can almost imagine it, the sharp-eyed magistrate in all his robes and finery, making people's lives a misery. She asked about his eyes, but… "Has your hair always been white?"
His eyes narrow again. "You mean before I became a soulless stalker of the night?"
She grimaces at herself, and lets him see it.
The corner of his mouth raises, the way it often does when he's amused at her expense, and then he barks a laugh, fangs a swift bright gleam. "I think so. Though it used to be longer, in the past. I could see it a little more easily. I've tried a few fashions, it comes with the territory - there was a time when you had to wear a horrendous amount of bows - but I prefer this." He turns away from her, sinking deeper into the river, trying not to let his shoulders tense and failing. The barest start of old scars on his back - they look like parallel knife slashes, or something like it - disappear beneath the water; none of her business.
She had a friend who was glassed once over the back of the head, after a particularly rough gig. He never did like anyone behind him after that. She’s not too dissimilar herself.
"This might need a bit of…" she starts, but he's already passing her back a bar of soap from… somewhere. It's scented with some kinds of oils - jasmine, perhaps, and… She sniffs. "Is this bergamot?"
"Good nose, considering what we were talking about before." He gives her a grin over his shoulder - lopsided and rakish, the mockery not having much sting to it. His hair's flattened to his forehead in waves, his eyelashes wet and seeming five miles long. He looks realer this way, younger than his talk of eras and ages past. He passes her his comb, too: bone, with little flowers engraved into it. She suspects it’s only been his comb since that last fight.
She memorises the blood at the nape of his neck, and then says, “You have some in the front. Think I’ll start there.” Damned if she knows whether it’s true. But while talking’s helped, his shoulders are still round his ears, even if he’s doing his best to hide it behind his usual carefully-lax poise. It’s just the smallest tension, the way she can tell from ripples that his hands are working in the water idly. It’s the same thing that precedes him going for his daggers, but this isn’t a threat - just discomfort.
He heaves a melodramatic sigh. “Really? Can you stop pontificating and just fix this already?” But in his annoyance, he’s turned to her, even if it’s just for a good glare. That’ll do. He's relaxing minutely now he can see her.
“Ooh,” she says, drily, “definitely a magistrate.” She receives a narrow-eyed look in response. "Astarion," she adds, putting the comb aside for now and getting the soap wet.
"Hm?"
She rubs the soap between her palms, for a good lather. "I thought you were somewhere in your thirties, when we met."
He snorts. "You're not wrong. Well, in a manner of speaking."
There is at least some blood here, too, so it isn’t all an excuse. His mouth tightens when she reaches to work a few bloodied locks at his forehead, but he doesn’t flinch; he’s like stone, albeit sun-warmed stone compared to the cold, careful silence of before. Sharp red eyes follow her movements as she gets the soap through and coaxes out blood, trying to be gentle.
She asks, "How old are you?"
"Thirty-nine. …Two hundred and thirty-nine," he adds, with that terrible false airiness that comes from talk of Cazador. Time to tread carefully. "Now I know that must seem like a lifetime to you, but in all fairness, your kind are mayflies."
"I'm thirty-six. And at least I don't get blood stuck behind my pointy ears."
He somehow manages to give her an unimpressed sneer even through her hands. It’s probably meant to be disgusted, but there’s a wryness in his eyes. And he doesn’t look frightened anymore. “I’ve seen the state of you after a battle, darling. Mud in all sorts of places the sun doesn’t shine.”
“I’d say something like ‘And you’ve been paying attention to those places?’ but of course you have.”
He gives her a half-smile, but there’s the faintest dullness to his eyes, as if he’s had a conversation like this a few times before. “I’d hate to disappoint, darling.”
She pauses theatrically as she works soap through locks already fighting to curl again. Beautifully combed, of course, even after a day of fights and blood and mud. He’s already rinsed out whatever grease he uses – she caught the scent of pomade that first day, and no-one has a quiff like that naturally. “I’m just imagining you with all those bows. The image I have is..." She waves her hands with a flourish. "...A poodle in a gown.”
He sighs – but he’s back again, mischief in his eyes. “As if I should have expected you to understand ageless beauty. Thirty-six. What is that in human years, ancient cronehood?”
She squints in return. “You grew up in Baldur’s Gate too. So you know perfectly well I’m middle-aged at best.”
He rests his chin on a hand, nearly dislodging her. “And magic does have such odd effects on your species. Bards probably live to about a hundred and twelve. Adorable.” He meets her unimpressed look with a half-lidded, assessing look. “Still. Ageless you are not, but I’ve seen worse. I’ve always been rather glad I can’t get freckles, but you wear them well. They add a… hm, a salt-of-the-earth charm.”
“Shut up,” she mutters, face heating, while he laughs. “Head under the water.”
He’s still cackling when he ducks under, and seems utterly unbothered by that – though of course, he doesn’t have to breathe. He emerges from a little cloud of lather and bubbles, eyes closed, still laughing under his breath. “I feel like you’re blushing, but I can’t tell.” He sniffs. “Oh, no, there we go.”
“Please tell me you can’t smell the blood in my cheeks.”
He says, smugly, “Then I won’t.”
Getting more soap on her hands, she draws a little closer, and warns him, “In for a second go, now. I think I got most of it out.”
“Mm.”
He opens his eyes, and they stray to her neck, over her face, never far from her hands – but his eyes close again when her fingers are in his hair. She works the last of the blood at the front between two fingers, dips them in the water and does it again.
She says, “Turn around for me?” Easier if it’s his choice, somehow.
He barely more than grunts, and does.
She grabs some more soap, gathers it in her hands. “Thanks,” she says, and she’s oddly glad for his weird blood talents meaning that he can smell her coming – she doesn’t feel like touching him without warning. Good way to get a knife in the eye.
She lathers soap through until the bubbles are pink, trying not to tug. It’s the worst when you get someone who’s got no idea how to deal with thicker hair, though hers makes his look mild. His shoulders have relaxed the slightest bit.
He says, after a moment, “It’s sort of… Hmm. You were very light, and fruity. Sweet.” His voice is soft, thoughtful.
Looking up from where she’s gathering more soap in her hands, she says, “If you bite me, I’m leaving.”
His voice winds, an easy meander when he says, “No, it’s more… someone opening a rather lovely dessert wine when you’re already full. You don’t necessarily want any, but it smells good. A… nice ambience.” He waves a hand, but it’s vaguer than his usual flourishes.
Something occurs to her, as she’s working blood out of the strands. “…‘My sweet.’”
“Hm?”
“Just sometimes, you call me ‘my sweet.’ I thought it was just to annoy me, but is that why?”
There’s a long, caught-out pause. And then he says, without a hint of remorse or embarrassment, “Whoops.”
She snorts, but lets the silence rest. It lengthens, and for once, between them, not in the tense way. She sneaks a glimpse over his shoulder, and finds his eyes still closed. It’s a strange sight: a man who’s never still, so at rest he’s forgotten to breathe. She finds herself taking longer than she should, because he looked… well. Like someone who hasn’t had a gentle touch in a long, long time. She knows a little of what that feels like. The last time someone touched her, other than him drinking her blood, was a drunk decking her in the Mermaid. That split lip took ages to heal. And a slave, he said – torture, he said. That’s too much to examine while she’s here. All she can do is get out the last stubborn remnants of the fight.
The slightest pressure against her fingertips: they both realise at the same time that he’s leaning into her touch. He freezes like a cat that’s been petted the wrong way, and she’s sure that only the fact she’s got her hands in his hair stops him yanking back from her.
“There,” she says, and extracts herself. “See if the water gets it.”
He ducks under, and when he comes back up, he’s facing her again - and there’s the faintest stiffness under his posing. Lifting a dripping arm, he pats at the soaked remnants of his coif, and raises a brow. “Back to perfection?”
She looks him over. “Flawless. Bloodless, at least.” It’s true, and definitely also not an excuse to back away.
“Marvellous.”
Nodding, she turns to head back to camp.
She’s taken a couple of steps when she hears, “Lora?” She looks over her shoulder, and spots him looking… almost sincere. The words are quiet, and sound a little reluctantly tugged out of him: “Thank you.”
She nods, and flees before they remember they’re meant to insult each other again.
#astarion x tav#tavstarion#astarion#astarion ancunin#lora mctavish#baldur's gate 3#my fic#on vampires having 'no mirror and you're too annoyed with gale to ask for prestidigitation' problems
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OK, so I adore tieflings and they may be my favourite. However... I may have rolled a very normal human as my Astarionmancer because he'd be so annoyed at himself for falling for someone so boring. And I find that really funny.
*vampire gesticulating wildly, practically ballet-dancing about how gorgeous blood is, slightly unhinged vibes and amazing outfit*
*very down-to-earth never worn anything posh in her life girlfriend in scuffed boots, nodding helpfully while trailing along behind him and doing good acts that make him seethe*
*they fight commit crime. and to their horror, accidentally end up in a mutually fulfilling healthy relationship*
#Tru plays BG3#Lora mctavish#astarion ancunin#Astarion#baldur's gate 3#'tru you can't troll him he's fictional'#'can. Will.'
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Tedium
A study of early game Lora and Astarion, and the absolute mess that was. Developing mostly-good bard Tav/Astarion, with so much arguing. 1.6k.
Lora has always found small, petty bastards boring - the kinds who tried to make her and so many others' lives a misery in the city. They've just got so little imagination. Their excuses are all the same, it's just a matter of scale. Even if they pretend to be misguidedly noble, the self-interest slips through eventually. Evil in stories is grand, elegant, tragic. It has really good tailoring. Evil in real life? It's banal, grey or mud-soaked, and seems to take place in offices half the time, for some reason. Good, that cheap, trite thing in too many stories? In reality, it's a sudden sparkling surprise every time it happens; Baldur's Gate is not a place known for being gentle. People are more beautiful when they do a good thing. The sky is brighter, the grass just a little bit greener.
Astarion is small, in the sense of both generosity of spirit and actual stature - it's not her fault that she's six foot two and that he gets so irritated when she sees something over the top of his head. She's not doing it on purpose. Mostly.
He's incredibly petty. (“Oh, I'm sure she's just a delight at parties,” he says of the druid guard who's stopped them at least twice, thinking they might be refugees. “Refugee? Me? Have they seen this thread? Have I a pair of horns and an air of pathetic desperation? Just because I didn't know that dirt-encrusted branches were apparently ‘in’ this week...” Finger-quotes and everything. Lora might have snorted at that. He catches her; he raises an eyebrow in response, but with the tiniest pleased tilt to his mouth.)
And he's definitely a bastard. He's happy to leave the tieflings to die - happy to leave anyone to, it seems. She has to take a deep breath at that, but there are the pressing time constraints of soon turning into a mindflayer; no wonder he wants to get straight to healers and the creche. Good intentions won't mean much if you turn into a squid mid-fight and end up killing or kidnapping all the refugees anyway. She tries hard to bear that in mind while he sighs melodramatically, as if helping people is an inconvenience that might lead to his breaking a nail, and she glares at him. He delights in a holy relic being stolen - but with something like genuine approval of the tiefling child's bravery, somewhere under all that. And he's not wrong that all this self-righteousness about not interfering in nature is a bit rich when you're very intentionally turning people out to the mercy of raiders. But that's all he's right about.
A small, petty bastard. All that's true, and real. So why does she keep talking to him? Why isn't she bored? Angry, most of the time, and amused, sometimes, but not bored.
If Lora knows one thing, it's a narrative. Retellings wear grooves in the dirt for a reason; it feels like there's a way some stories have to wrap up. She knows exactly how it would have ended if she'd met Astarion before the tadpole. A cruel vampire too well-oiled by half, who seemed to delight in death and blood? One of them would have ended up dead, the other with a twist of satisfaction - his at having survived another day and, as a bonus, shut up a pompous hero type; hers at having taken someone that dangerous out of the world, even if she'd have completely missed the master pulling the strings.
Later, when she realises she's been imagining completely the wrong backstory for him, she thinks of the Grove again. Of being free for the first time in two hundred years, finally able to walk in the sun, and losing it in minutes because your leader ran headfirst into a battle.
Hells, she hates when he almost makes sense. It makes her dust off her moral compass for a quick check.
Still, he meanders up to her - to poke her, to tease and taunt, but sometimes just… to ask questions. Feeling for her weak spots, probably, but there's a cheerful curiosity in his eyes that seems genuine when he asks her how she learned to play the lyre, what her other instruments are. It's a rare moment of peace in between their mutual arguments. He plays it off soon enough with some comment about her being good with her hands and an eyebrow-waggle, but the questions were real. He prods her to see what falls out and she… lets him. If anything, she does the same. And she still isn't bored.
He delights in bloodshed and mayhem; he drinks deeply of death just the way he does of life. She’s caught him laughing under his breath when someone falls to the floor, caught him licking the blood off his daggers when he thought she wasn’t looking - that just got her a red-stained grin and an obscene widening of his arms like he was inviting her to look. He makes jokes about killing gnomes. He makes jokes about killing her, though those are actually funny, and he's right about having to face what will happen if they change; it's best to do it with a laugh. It's also oddly forthright, oddly brave, for a man who's never been forthright in his life. He beams at her when she plays along, like she’s just given him a gift, morbidly pleased at speaking of his own beheading. Death and bloodshed and mayhem, yes.
Except.
Except when she’s watching a young tiefling girl about to be bitten by a snake, or pretending to offer the goblins’ general the tiefling camp on a platter. His eyes harden, in that moment, even while his mouth twitches and he makes amused, contemptuous quips: like he’s waiting for her to make the obvious choice. And even as he makes approving noises at the thought of the goblins’ victory, even as he castigates her for her soppy kindness…
Cruelty would be the obvious, the easy choice. It would be exactly what he expects. It would also be, she’s certain more and more when she feels those red eyes on her, the boring choice. To him, too. Even if he doesn't want to admit it.
She's always had a good instinct for people, so her mentor used to say. It got taught to her early, taught her when a glassing was coming or she was about to get stiffed on payment at a tavern or just how to work a crowd.
Stories in well-worn grooves. Two hundred years of death and desperate self-service and making sure everyone's expendable but you, over and over again. The same narrative shoved down your throat for two hundred years.
The shape of it is there in her mind, sketched out but not detailed yet: he knows cruelty like the back of his hand, partaking and receiving. He can sleepwalk his way through it. There’s a delight when he speaks of it, an amusement in his eyes, but it’s the same as when he spoke of being a magistrate back in the city, it’s all very tedious, lording his power over her, pointed and urbane and far, far too well-rehearsed. The same way she looks over her shoulder and catches him flirting with their companions, incorrigible, a lazy, leering lean closer in his tone even as he keeps walking beside them. There’s real amusement there at getting to play with words, at making them uncomfortable, and yet... I saw you mouthing that one to yourself in the mirror earlier, Shadowheart points out, when he tries a particularly trite line on her. And Lora thinks, Exactly.
He bristles and shouts at her and makes drawled comments about how much of a drip she is. She agrees to find an elderly woman’s missing daughter; behind her, she hears him sigh and not even bother to hide it, the rolling of his eyes entirely audible. They get back to camp and he asks her, “This will take us closer to understanding the tadpole how, exactly?” He hates every minute of it, hates her - but there’s a wildfire in him, searing bright and unrehearsed and fascinatingly real, when he snarls at her and melodramatically turns his back to her and calls her tedious.
She bought it at first, the way he called her that. She was boring, certainly, and he was a self-serving shallow ass - that part was true, even if he was lying through his teeth about so many things. He got to stay because they dearly needed a lockpicker and archer as good as him, and because she was too reluctantly herself to let him turn into a mindflayer alone, even if she should have. As he said that second night: you need someone to put you out of your misery.
And then she realised precisely what it was, behind all the bared teeth and callous suggestions: he’s waiting.
He waits for her to slip and kill someone because it’s easier, or say that he deserved his master’s treatment. She laughs sometimes at his sense of humour - less dark, more Underdark - and takes precisely none of his suggestions. He waits for her to be a humourless paladin type who crushes him underfoot or turns out to be a stiff fraud wearing mail, and she cackles at his muttered observations, happily humiliates the little tyrants they see on the road along with him. The moments their eyes meet and she sees the silent vicious glee in his, too, the both of them knowing pride comes before a very long fall, they almost understand each other. She lies and cheats the false servants of Tyr before killing them anyway, because they were going to drag an innocent tiefling back to the Hells, and sees his reluctantly impressed eyebrows out of the corner of her eye - and then she gives the money to refugees while he sighs. He snarls, I was a slave and waits for her to order him about or step over him; the best she can tell, she treats him just the same. As they keep to the road and he realises that the mask he’s been trying to pry away is just her face, the easy, dulled cynicism in his eyes is starting to be replaced by something else: a confused, furious surprise. Maybe the first surprise he’s had in two centuries.
She’s learned to read him a little better, over these weeks on the road. She’s driving him mad. He’s incandescently angry with and baffled by her in turns. But she doesn’t believe him when he says he finds her tedious.
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Raspberries
This actually takes place sometime after the Underdark. Don't even ask how weird my playthrough order was. Tav/Astarion, about 700 words.
They're a quarter-mile out from the monastery when the call goes up. "Raspberries!" Karlach says, and barrels towards the unsuspecting bush.
Lora lands more in a rapid saunter. She'd like to say she keeps her dignity intact, but by the end, she and Karlach are both red-fingered - more than usual, in Karlach's case - with any of the paint Lora put on her lips this morning long gone, the two of them giggling about flambéd raspberries. ("How do they still taste good after I've got to 'em?" Karlach says, licking heat-exploded fruit off her thumb.) Well, Karlach's giggling. Lora's is more of a cackle. A couple of raspberries quietly pluck themselves from the bush and float through the air to Gale, who gives her a wry, you-caught-me look as he bites into his finds. And Astarion... she expected complaint, and there is a mutter of "I refuse. A passing Death Shepherd might see us," but he seems too glad of a rest to get into full flow. He leans against the trunk of a tree, watching, in a way that invites trite panther metaphors.
Lora's the last to leave, relieved for a moment of quiet, easy joy. Karlach can seem to keep on going forever, can seem to find the hope in anything - might be the engine, but more likely it's just how she is - and Gale is often wry, as relaxed as Lora is but in that way where you're hiding pain. She knows it too well. After a day avoiding traps and lying with her life on the line, something little and stupid and joyous like raspberries might just, for a second, have been the answer to her prayers.
And there's a vampire loitering next to her, a brow raised in a way that's not his usual idle I'm above all this and could be at home enjoying a nice glass of vintage blood, I mean wine. Amusement is creeping in round the edges, the genuine kind rather than the teeth-bared one he so often resorts to. The little creases around his eyes are appearing - the ones that almost make him look like less of an insufferable toff.
"What?" Lora says, and then realises. "Shit. I've missed some, haven't I?" She raises a vague hand to her face, probably without much luck.
"You almost look like one of mine." But there's no sharp edge or hidden dagger in it, just amused... she'd almost call it fondness, if they weren't them. Perhaps a little melancholy mixed in, somewhere deep.
And then there's a pale, half-gloved hand under her chin, tilting her face gently down to him. Astarion's thumb strokes at the corner of her mouth, runs over her lower lip - a moment, soft as a feather, his eyes lingering on her mouth just a little longer than necessary. Her breath catches, stupidly; at that his eyes flick to hers, and a smile tugs at his lips. With the arrogant victory of their first bad decision, and their second, a predatory flash - but she swears for a second there's something... gentler. Truer, maybe, though she's not sure if he does that. And the arrogance is all him, too. But this... It's the thing she sees when he saves her from a dagger in the back, just for the barest moment, or when she lays down to sleep close to him by the fire and there's his confused half-second's hesitation at such ignorant trust. It makes him, somehow, for a half-breath under a shadowed oak tree, handsomer than she's ever seen him.
...Probably just Lora trying to give him more credit than he's due. He'd say as much. She's always had a good imagination.
"There," Astarion says airily, and rubs dark pink between his fingers. He makes a vague gesture to her mouth. "Though I assume you know - whatever paint you wear fled at the beginning of your little diversion."
Just over the rise, Karlach is guffawing, and Gale is saying, "No, I did not mean that Netherese wizards set their trousers aflame, though honestly, that whole regrettable chapter of history might have been much shorter if they had."
"Oh, damn," Lora says, and wipes at her mouth absentmindedly. "Come on."
Just like that, whatever softness was in him is gone, shut behind that idle-toff self-assuredness. They jog to join the others, and she tries to look less like they've been doing... something they absolutely haven't been doing. And that would be a terrible idea, anyway. Astarion's smug enough as it is. He probably doesn't even want -
A very fun bad idea. A one-off. Well, two-off. Absolutely.
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So they finally fixed Astarion's kiss animation if you're playing a large Tav. And it's delightful. But also oh my god he's so tiny. Ugh, adorable. Look at them!
(I like that he still pulls Tav in. That man has 8 Strength. Lora is delightedly letting herself be moved.)
(Screw it, I've got what seems like flu, I'm allowed to pause in coughing miserably to post sap at 2 AM.)
#tru plays bg3#lora mctavish#astarion ancunin#god they're ridiculous. i'm so utterly charmed. their first meeting was her headbutting him and now they're like this#ugh#baldur's gate 3
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Favours
Act 2 Tav/Astarion. In which the Shadow-Cursed Lands don't leave much to hunt, Astarion is not having a great time, and Lora proposes a solution. And neither of them have Feelings. No sir. 3.1k.
Read on Ao3
"You're not well,” Lora says, when she finds Astarion at the edge of camp, sitting on a dead log and considering the shadow-rotted corpse of a bird.
That battle was like something out of a tragedy about curses and overconfidence. She ended up flat on her arse in the mud three times, and her clawed-up arm’s been hastily bandaged rather than healed because she and Shadowheart both ended up so drained. Still, that doesn’t explain this malaise of his. Though prying a straight answer out of him was as impossible as ever, best she can tell, he wasn’t injured. Sometimes he goes somewhere else when he’s lost in memory, or working out how to phrase something deeply unpleasant, or scheming - it’s often scheming - and you just have to wait for him to return. This isn’t that. It didn’t just look like distraction on his face when they headed back to camp; it was more resigned misery, like he’d been hoping for something and not found it.
"I'm fine," he says, staring fixedly at where old flesh is starting to pull away from the cursed raven's bones. It looks like despair. That’s the word she’s been searching for: despair.
"You're pale, even for you." She sits next to him, uncorking her healing potion. "And you're -"
"Don't," he says, a hand raised, and hops up from the log like she's burned him, putting space between them. He still won't look at her.
"Have I done something, or are you just going to be evasive and then snap at me?" Not that it would be any different from usual. They’ve come to understand each other a lot more, these days, but still sometimes end up squinting at each other sometimes. He’s a two-steps-forwards, one-step-back sort of friend. She glares at where the bandages on her forearm are starting to stain, and unpeels them. Not a gash anymore, but the last of it is still -
"Don't be cruel." His voice is quiet, the way it only gets when something is very, very wrong; his shoulders are tense as a lutestring about to break.
At first she thinks it's her words, and then... then she looks at the blood staining her arm, and thinks like a vampire. "...Ah."
"Don't - sound like that." He sighs.
Frowning at him, she pokes, "I just want to know you're all right."
"I'm fine, just trying not to tear your throat out," he snaps - and his fangs are a sharp, intentional gleam of ferality in the moonlight. The briefest hint of regret crosses his face, and he exhales, sagging. "Just... I'll find something tonight, all right?"
If she told him how open he leaves his vulnerabilities sometimes, he’d recoil and snap at her. No, he’d snarl like a cornered warg and then flee camp. She knows he's trying to scare her off; he only does that when he's terrified. "What have you been feeding from?"
If it’s possible, he sags even further, all the indignant stuffing taken out of him. "I had a few supplies. Blood banks, bits and pieces. Then I doubled back, at first - back to around the monastery. Then, when we got too far for that, the land around the inn was... helpful. Squirrel has always been, and continues to be, foul. I did just about leave that ox alive, though honestly, it was on its last legs, it's not as if anyone would have missed it -"
"Since we came out here?" she asks, gently.
Now he looks at her, eyes wild and scarlet. He waves a desperate hand at the land around them. "Look at it. Everything here is dead. Decayed. There's nothing to -" He puts a hand to his face, and grits out, "I've got two miles to cover if I want to hunt, and it doesn't - it shouldn't matter. But I am very, very tired."
"And starving." She thinks of his oldest doublet, gold thread fraying just a little at the edges; she watches all those carefully chosen words, that spine-upright, darling, I don’t give a damn toff’s poise, do the same.
"Yes,” he says, through gritted teeth, “thank you for reminding me."
"You could always…" She gestures to her neck.
He stares at her, follows the gesture; he seems to have trouble dragging his eyes away from her pulse, even as his words are carefully level. "You did me a favour, and believe me, it was appreciated, but... I always assumed that was a one-off." His voice is getting vaguer by the second. More hopeful.
She shrugs. "You're my friend."
Lathander knows how. It’s also one of the worst decisions she’s ever stumbled into. But things happen, and then you have a vampire unerringly watching your back and politely taking your “don’t you dare kill them” for an answer, and snorting at your jokes before carefully rearranging his face because he thinks you catching him will make you smug. Hm. Run-on sentences. She’ll have to watch those if she ever writes any of this down. At which point everyone will decry the protagonist for being an idiot, because He’s a vampire. Oh, and an insufferable bastard of a toff who toys with the little people like you for amusement. Also for breakfast.
His eyes snap to her face, as if horror at her naiveté is strong enough to knock him away from the hunger. "It's that simple, is it?"
All right, so he might agree with her readers.
She says, easily, "It can be."
"How are you still alive?" he demands, but he's already stalking back to the log and sitting next to her.
"Some rogue with really good aim keeps watching my back."
He snorts. "Look at that, idle flattery. You really have been around me for too long. Now, not to be gauche, but would you prefer me from behind, or -?"
She's damn lucky she's not one to blush, and that it’s hard to see on her. She offers up her arm, and the two bleeding lines from a shadow’s handiwork.
He swallows audibly, visibly; she watches it in the graceful line of his throat. "That has to heal. If you can't play your lyre because of me, then, well..." He's hiding it, but hunger has put the hint of a glaze in his eyes. "The same reason I'm not asking for your wrist. And the back of your neck would be easier to hide, if you're not in the mood for awkward questions." His eyes skate over her face, her jaw, her neck. For a moment he seems to lose his train of thought again. "You really are unfathomably tall," he manages, with some effort.
Six foot two is far from unfathomable. Still, it doesn’t stop his not infrequent comments on it, or her retorting, every time, "No, you're just short."
Another snort. "On the ground with you, then. If you sit in front of me, I could manage this." Uncertainty blooms in his face. "If you're willing, that is."
That decides it. She downs the healing potion, puts it aside while the warmth of it starting to work spreads through her, and slides off the log. She catches the hint of surprise and something deeper in his eyes as she goes, and does him the favour of looking away.
He never makes as much noise as he should. Maybe it’s the lack of breathing from exertion; maybe it’s a vampire thing; maybe it’s just that preternatural grace, combined with his years of working in the shadows. More and more, as they camp together, she’s growing certain that sometimes he’ll let slip a creak of leather or a sigh just so he doesn’t startle her - or it might just be habit, from back when he was alive.
One moment she could almost be alone in a moonlit clearing save for the feel of a wiry, dense leg against her back - then there’s a whisper of fabric, and leather-clad knees are either side of her. "Just pretend we're swapping secrets and braiding each other's hair," he says, his breath soft on her neck. He brushes said hair away from her skin carefully, in the way of a man who spends far too much time on his own and knows that some things are sacred. "Not that it needs the help; it's rather lovely. High praise, coming from me."
She can’t eye him from here, but she tries anyway. "You're only saying that because I'm doing you a favour."
"Maybe. Or maybe I'm just feeling truthful." He inhales deeply, and she's certain he didn't mean to say it when he murmurs, "You smell amazing."
Hells, they've had sex more than once - he's given her so many easy, florid lines - but that, rough and unpractised in a way she's almost never heard him, threatens to bring heat to her cheeks.
And then he bites down, and it's a little difficult to think of anything at all. Sharp pain, not the worst she's had but not pleasant, either. She makes the smallest undignified noise before she can stop herself - a squeak of pain - and at that, feels the softest pressure against her upper arm.
His hand. She looks down and sees elegant fingers almost white against the dark purple of her shirt, his thumb stroking over her arm soothingly, gently. More gently than she would have thought him capable of.
Pain makes her stupid. She's reaching up, closing her hand over his, before she quite knows what's happening. The air between them tightens a moment with his silent surprise, enough for her to think she's made an utter mistake, that he's about to laugh at her - but he doesn't pull away. His fingers relax against hers.
Because she's doing him a favour, that's all, and because he doesn't want to tear a hole in her throat. She sits there, chest somehow aching because of him even as the pain in her neck has subsided to numbness.
That's the problem: without pain, it's all terribly intimate, in a way she tried very hard to forget last time. She sits here, encircled by him - one of his hands at her waist and the other against hers; his chest a line of wiry, deceptive strength at her back, curved close; that coiffed hair like a feather where it brushes her. His face is warming against her neck with her blood -
Hells. He didn't ask for this intimacy. This is a thing of necessity, not like when they've, well. She's not going to make something of this that it's definitely not. Everyone has to eat. He'll never ask again if she comes over like some sort of pervert.
Right. Lyrics to Over the Mountaintop. The first and second verses she has down by heart, the third needs a little work.
Twixt lands they came upon the sea...
It doesn't feel so bad, is all. It should, and yet. And yet. It has to be a vampire thing, some way to lure their victims into complacency - she doesn't even think he knows he's doing it. He's not used to feeding on people, judging from what he said and the dazed way he looked at her afterwards. Dazed and delighted - really delighted rather than the sneering defensive half-smile she's seen so often, eyes soft and startled... ("I feel... happy.") No, that's not helpful either.
By Helm's balls. Over the well-trod path they roam, with rising mists and seas of -
She almost doesn't catch the softest vibration against her throat - a pleased, approving little sound. A moan. And if she thought she was mistaken, they're so close that she can feel the exact way he tenses the tiniest fraction afterwards, as if he didn't mean to do that...
He might actually kill her. She feels her ears burn.
He carefully takes his teeth from her neck, panting a little - for show or just from habit, surely, but his chest is heaving against her back. "They should bottle you. Especially when you blush. Forgive me, I..." The gentlest, swiftest slip of wetness against her skin; she realises a moment late that it was his tongue, and her few remaining thoughts that were trying to cling on are blown clean away. "You must know, surely. I barely remember not wanting blood, but even you have to have an idea of how you taste."
"I, er... It's never come up?" She should have words. Words. Yes. Bards have those. "Except for the time you tried to bite me."
"That was once. Well, twice now." He still sounds a little uneven. The tickle of his eyelashes, the rapidly warming heat of his breath; she feels him duck his head and take another swift drink from her. And then it becomes something lingering, his lips pursing against her skin. He rests there a moment and says, very quietly, “Thank you.”
She's still realising that was a kiss when he's on his knees in front of her, squinting at her. Damn stupidly fast rogues. He says cheerfully, "Feeling all right? Not about to faint on me, are you?"
"I'm fine."
He raises a finger. Unimpressed, she follows it, side to side, and then gives him a Look. A glare is easier than seeing the new colour in his skin, or the way his eyes have darkened to the colour of, well, blood.
Still, there’s a line between his brows, his mouth a little tight, and there’s something in his eyes that wasn’t there the first time, when he was busy being relieved after two hundred years of starvation: she’s pretty sure that what she sees now is… concern, though he’s hiding it behind a raised brow and a flat look. She tries not to be surprised. Instead, she sighs, and hums a set of notes, the Weave resonating around her - she blinks, and then the hint of lightheadedness is gone. She’s sharp as a dagger. It’s subtle, but she sees him breathe out, just slightly. Feeling at her neck, she finds nothing, not even a mark.
She says, "And you? Feeling better?"
"Oh, much." He runs a thumb over the corner of his mouth, catching a little excess, seeming too distracted to be embarrassed. He gives it a lick, and she contemplates the trees and the dirt and anything else. All that contemplation does is make her realise that maybe it's not him being distracted, but that he's comfortable with her. That's just as frightening in its own way, if gratifying.
He says, "You know, it's oddly... freeing." Catching her curious look, he explains, "I told you, didn't I? Cazador never allowed us to have thinking creatures. I've never... Someone has never willingly..." He waves a hand. "Offered. You know." He blinks, and looks away from her. "I appreciate the reminder I'm not back in his damned palace."
She nods, because she thinks he needs to say this.
"Thank you. For that, and for a rather enjoyable midnight snack." He's already looking away from her, carefully reassembling his mask.
"Astarion?"
"Hm?" He says it with the kind of airiness that means he cares far too much.
"You only have to ask."
"I know. And that's why I don't want to."
She frowns down at him, and he sits back on his haunches with a huff. "The first day I met you, you forgave me for putting a blade to your throat and then gave me blankets. I tried to steal your blood and you offered it to me instead. You... stop and give your time, your money, potentially your damned life to any wretched fool you come across! I refuse to be yet another poor sap you have to rescue."
She stares at him. "That's not - you're not - did I make you feel like that?"
"No, I did. And see, this is exactly what I mean! You're already trying to fix this."
"You're my friend. I don't want to hurt you."
"That - You're just making it worse. This world will eat you alive and instead you're offering it your - your..."
"My neck?" she asks, quietly.
He just looks at her, all frustrated resignation and embarrassment. "Yes, let's just pretend I didn't stumble right into that."
"The second day we met, a goblin caught me unawares. Gale and Lae'zel were at the other side of the field. The person who found it before it could reach me, who saved my life? That was you. You stay up on watches with me, pretending not to be helpful. You've unlocked doors that helped me avoid a head-on fight. You got me the antidote when I was poisoned and stayed to make sure it worked. You stopped me dropping off cliffs in the Underdark. You've helped bandage me up, even though it must have been... difficult, sometimes. I gave you my neck and you didn't kill me."
He squints like he's just smelled something awful. "You're saying I'm rewarding all your naive do-gooding?"
"I'm saying you rescue me constantly. And that you're an idiot."
"Now that -" He waves a finger. "The insults are what I'm used to. That's much better. Now just call me an 'arrogant self-serving toff,' and we can almost be out of this awkwardly complimentary phase of the proceedings."
"That was once," she mutters. "Usually I'm more creative."
"It was a memorable once," he says, casting a look of fond reminiscence to the sky. "I think it might have been your idea of a seduction technique." His eyes settle on her, dark and shrewd. "Well, it worked." He spreads his hands. "Here I am."
She wants to kiss that smug, grinning mouth. She wants to do many deeply stupid things. But... "Astarion, you need to eat."
With a sigh, he says, "You really do like to spoil a mood, don't you? Fine." He climbs easily, swiftly to his feet. "I'll just brave the undead wilds. I'll bring you back the rest?"
"Please. I can only survive on jerky for so long."
"Hmph. One bloodless deer, coming right up. For my bloodless dear." He grins at her, all fangs and twinkling eyes.
"And you say mine are bad," she groans, instead of kissing him, and fucking him, and falling asleep with that soft hair and that pale, half-warmed skin against hers. He's always gone by morning, but those drowsy moments... It's oddly comfortable. Not a bad way to spend a night.
He winks at her and then sidles back off to camp to get his bow; she watches him longer than she should, an elegant moonlit-white shape in the trees until it's swallowed by the darkness.
This story had a shape, a good simple shape; since she met him, she's had to rewrite so much. She wonders what in the hells she's gotten herself into.
#astarion x tav#astarion#astarion ancunin#baldur's gate 3#blood drinking and pining and whatnot#chaotic good kind of a disaster at love bard tav#lora mctavish#my fic#i think this might've been the first thing i ever wrote with them#back in... september? august?
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A slightly post-canon mer AU in which Astarion is still flirting desperately, trying to escape his master, and good with a blade. He just happens to have a tail. And a sea-devil sniffing around him for a deal. Tav/Astarion, pissed-off siren x baffled bard, three chapters? I think? This chapter is 10.1k.
Merfolk tend to be terribly offended if you call them “sirens” - how dare you. No, they protest, they’ve never drowned an idiot landwalker in their lives. They’re perfectly upswimming, reasonable citizens who only eat fish and perhaps the odd whelk, if it’s been a slow day.
Astarion isn’t one of those good citizens. The difference between a merman and a siren is sharp fangs, the distinct lack of a heartbeat, and a taste for blood. That and the whole singing thing. Astarion’s never been much good at it. Almost deaf to a good tune, as Cazador delighted in reminding him. Idiot boy. Tuneless, useless – no wonder you have to debase yourself for them.
Astarion wants to be numb to it, after centuries – that and the salt stinging in his wounds: the perfectly picked-off scales, blood trailing after him in the water as he swims. (Blood he can’t afford to lose. And the last thing he needs is a damn shark. Or, for that matter, a trail anyone can follow. Swimaway slaves are so very out of fashion.)
The wounds are low enough to hide beneath the surface; to pretend to be a pretty little legged thing, just a tad lost, in need of rescue. It doesn’t stop them burning as he twists to get between a couple of walls of rock, to take a shortcut to that one particular cove he likes.
Soon this won’t be a problem. Soon, land. Land, where Cazador won’t be able to touch him. He’ll crawl for miles if he must. He has enough pearls of transformation that he can run – run and run and run. Legs can’t be that hard, can they? Even the harbour drunks can just about use them.
Astarion breaks the surface, almost dizzy with the idea of it all; he inhales air sharply, even as his gills sting. He’ll have to get used to that, air. It will be all he can use, no water flowing through him, while he runs. He has some time yet: almost half a night before his master will expect him to return. All he has to do is get to his cache…
In his cove, someone is singing.
#tav x astarion#astarion x tav#Astarion#Tav#gale of waterdeep#Karlach#Mer AU#My fic#Lora mctavish#Moonlight to the sand#baldur's gate 3
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So, my big sweet tiefling romanced Wyll and it was a lovely, good4good arc about freedom vs. duty and she'd never been lovingly courted before and fell head over tail.
Just rolled my tired punk bard who's very tired of toffs after playing taverns like the Elfsong. Who may have just met Astarion and refused to fall for his bullshit, he tried to intimidate her with a knife to her neck and she rolled a nat 20 on headbutting him. And that was their first meeting.
...Horrible feeling I know who she now has to romance.
#tru plays bg3#tav x astarion#*headdesk*#baldur's gate 3#i'll tag any spoilers. i just needed to share my suffering.#Lora Mctavish
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Was writing some Lora/Astarion with them teasing each other about their height and a friend said, "OK, but is he actually short?"
I said, "Well, he's canonically five-nine, so a little but not much. However, Lora's a six-two brick shithouse. So it ends up being The Adventures of A Ridonkulously Tall Bard and Her Obnoxious Fun-Size Boyfriend."
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Finally remembered to post this portrait of my Tav! I might do a shippier version sometime, but for now I'm calling it done.
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I've been trying to explain this bodyswap Lora/Astarion mess I'm working on, and so far it's been:
"A direct line into the issues of someone you've slept with maybe twice"
"Bodily autonomy freakouts from Astarion, but even moreso than usual"
"'Oh, so that's what I look like. Damn, I'm hot. Wait, do I normally look this scarred and stressed? Can you actually see the past two hundred years on my face? I need to sit down and have a moment about that. In private. Maybe with a silk handkerchief.'"
"Lora squinting at her own chin going, 'I cannot actually be this tall. How much of the past five months has he just spent staring up my nose?'"
"Astarion discovers he has a massive blood-drinking kink, just not in the direction one might expect"
"'How do you get anything done in this body when you're so slow and loud? ...Why are you glaring at me?'"
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So, sometimes Lora has problems related to wielding the Blood of Lathander. Or, as I said to a couple of friends: "Is it weird to write your bard realising she's in love with the horrible vampire when she accidentally vaporises him?"
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