#not entirely sure how to tag this post | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

lotsofthinkythoughts · 4 months

Text

tell me (sweet little) lies

Summary: Astarion thinks over the things he's said to Tav, the lies, and comes to a realization. Maybe they weren't lies at all.

AO3 Link

----

“You can trust me.”

The words echoed around his head, louder and louder as if amplified. That night, the terror of waking from the reverie with Cazador’s voice still in his ears, sat like a knot in his gut. It was the beginning of everything.

It was only a test.

For himself. To see if he’d truly slipped the leash.

The heady warmth of her blood thumping in her veins had sung to him like a siren on the shore, and weak and hungry and desperate for safe harbor he’d followed the call. When Tav opened her eyes, it had been a shock, the kind that rang a death knell over his head, but she’d only stared at him. She hadn't moved, hadn't reached for a stake or blade as he scrabbled backwards like a beast in flight.

And then had let him drink, had protested firmly but gently when it was too much for her, had agreed with his plans of feasting on the blood of their enemies all while offering herself up as a backup.

It was too kind. Too much. No one could give so much and not want recompense. But he simply couldn’t afford to lose the shield she was. Her damned too soft heart led them into too much trouble to simply trust she could be pragmatic.

And while it was damned convenient when she was helping him specifically it made things all the more complicated that she wished to help everyone. Too often she’d give him a disappointed look when he suggested cutting from all this nonsense with the tieflings - it wasn’t as if they mattered. What mattered was making the most of these tadpoles. What mattered was that he would never go back to Cazador. He refused to be owned ever again.

But Tav - Tav had taken him at his word - that she could trust him. More fool her. But she was providing him a service, even if she didn’t realize it.

And a service, well, a service he could earn. A service he could repay.

“What do any of us want? Pleasure. Yours. Mine. Our mutual ecstasy.”

But she’d seen - eyes too keen by half, and he’d had to try harder. To push aside the disgust at bartering himself again, and yet, it’d been easier than any time in memory.

“You know we don’t have to do this, don’t you?” She said, fingers in his hair, as he kissed his way down her belly, her skin warm and soft and smelling of flowers from the soap she’d so proudly showed off from pocketing in the wreckage of Waukeen’s Rest earlier.

He looked up at her, chin resting just below her navel. Her eyes were shrouded in shadow, but that couldn’t hide the soft concerned look from him. It made a part of his heart ache, and for a moment resentment sparked in his gut. She’d said yes. She’d agreed. And she was trying to pull away his only method to insure she’d stay on his side now?

Pasting a charming smile onto his mouth, he pushed himself up, hovering over her naked body. “Whatever do you mean, darling?”

“Only what I said. You don’t have to pretend, you know. If you don’t actually want this - it’s fine. I don’t… it’s fine.” She glanced away, eyes trailing over to the side, to the tree he’d pressed her against only moments before.

He frowned. The spark of anger faded into confusion. This wasn’t how it was meant to go, he needed her present, needed her invested, needed her to care. But she was pulling away, going somewhere else, and he needed her to come back.

He lowered himself down to one elbow, raising a hand to cup her face, and turned it so she was facing up at him once more. She blinked twice, her eyes filmed over with tears. “What’s this?” He said, running a thumb under her eye as they spilled over.

“Just… You wouldn’t be the first. To … change their mind.”

That momentary ache surged once more, a strange understanding and kinship that he hadn’t expected. It made his gut twist. He had to keep her on his side, had to keep her close. Tether her to him.

He leaned in, running his nose over the apple of her cheek, smelling the perfume of her skin, and the distant iron and wine flavor of her blood underneath it.

“I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else, darling. Don’t you worry about that.” He whispered, sucking against her neck without biting.

It was enough to make her gasp softly, tension ebbing out of her as she tilted her neck to the side. “Astarion,” she whispered.

He ghosted a hand along the curve of her hip, fingers trailing along the crease of her thigh, until he reached her centre, dipping a finger inside.

She gasped his name again, her fingers wrapping around his hair, arm slung over his shoulder. Her hips bucked up against his hand, and her blood thumped even louder in her veins. His fangs scraped against her skin and she inhaled raggedly.

“You can - it’s okay. You can bite if you want, ‘starion.” Her fingers carded through her curls, gripping tight when he pulled his mouth from her skin again. She whimpered and clung.

“That’s right, pet. Trust me,” he said, before biting down, drinking that precious nectar, taste blooming over his tongue.

And yet, he couldn’t appreciate it, because a knot of guilt was building in his gut. Trust.

It was the last thing he deserved. But oh he wanted it.

The weeks passed, days in the endless twilight of the Underdark, where he was forced to rely on her even more than before. She never complained, never resented his need for blood. And still the knot of guilt grew.

She swore to protect him from Cazador. But he could take no pleasure in it, couldn’t revel in the triumph when she looked at him with those sad earnest eyes.

What was it about her?

There was nothing special about her, she was NOTHING. No one. A girl with a good eye and too much kindness, flitting between all of the weirdos they’d picked up, looking at them all with the same concern, wanting to know what they wanted, needed, how to help.

Even the druid - a foot and a half taller than her and prone to turn into a bear - but she’d invade the elf’s space and try to draw him out into conversation.

And every time Astarion saw it a part of him burned, deeply aware of how easy would it be for any of them to take her away.

The one thing he relied on.

The one person he could trust.

He closed his eyes and shoved the thought down ruthlessly. He didn’t trust her. Couldn’t rely on anything he didn’t trade for. And hells how he’d traded for her goodwill. Never mind that he’d been more present during sex than he’d been in a more than a century's worth of memory - never mind that when he’d enticed her out to the woods after the tieflings’ party she’d spent more time simply curled against him, sharing a bottle of wine, hand curled against his saying they had time.

It had been… nice.

He didn’t know what to do with nice.

Then suddenly, when he’d gotten used to the knot in his gut and the feeling of guilt for taking her desire to be loved and known and using it for his own gain, she tilted the entire plane on its axis.

“He’s his own person.”

The drow had scoffed, irritably waving them all away as if they were no more use to her. And perhaps it was true. She’d gotten Tav’s blood, red rusting on her fingertips where the blood merchant had drawn it. He wanted to take her hand, not to lap away the last remnants that lingered there, just to feel her there, warm and alive.

“Astarion?” She whispered, giving him a queer look as they approached the door to the basement.

“Hmmm?”

“Are you alright?”

“Of course! Why would I be anything else?” He said, panic welling inside him. It was too soon to talk about this. He’d not made sense of it yet.

“Are you sure you don’t want to talk about…” she gestured to the passageway they’d just exited.

“No. Not… No.”

Her eyes turned sad, and he could feel his dead heart seize. No, she wasn’t supposed to be sad. But he couldn’t give her anything but sadness. What did he have?

Bloodlust? Pain? A deft hand with a knife and a needle?

That was why he’d come up with the plan in the first place. He didn’t have anything to offer. Nothing she would want. All he had to do was project someone worth caring about. Someone worth protecting.

And fall into the web she had, sweet and soft and trusting, leaned against him by the fire, keeping him alive with her very blood in this place where nothing lived to sustain him. It was easy to hold her close.

He’d never realized he was slipping down the same slope.

It hammered in his mind as he watched her talk her way out of a fight with the jailor. It was the litany that whispered in his ears as they’d snuck through the prison to free the gnomes and tieflings.

I trust her. I love her.

The thoughts echoed over and over as the water sloshed against the prow of the boat they used to make their escape.

I love her.

But none of it had been real.

If he’d been alive, the knot of guilt would have made him vomit up bile into the lake. Instead, he sat, turning it all over in his mind.

That was where she found him later, sitting on the beach behind the Inn.

“Astarion?”

Her voice was questioning, but undemanding as her toes scraped softly in the sand behind him. He sighed, fingers clinched tight so he didn't reach out as he turned to face her.

“We need to talk.”

#Astarion x Tav #my fic #I'm not entirely sure how the fandom tags because I haven't posted my other things on tumblr lol #Anyway #Have a vampire boy having emotions #Baldur's Gate 3

45 notes · View notes

compacflt · 6 months

Note

sorry if youve already talked about this but do you have any views on Goose's christianity? I assume with the cross he wears and Carole referencing him going to church that he is christian, im fascinated by how that might affect his character but im not religious at all, i was raised atheist in a mostly atheist country, so the fact that the tg characters might be caught me by surprise, i know thats not statistically correct but i just assume people arent religious until proven otherwise. feel free to speak on this topic in regerds to fhe other tg characters as well or to disregard this ask completely if it doesnt interest u

yeah. Americans were more religious in the 1980s than they are today. By like some order of magnitude. 90% of Americans were Christian in 1986. And the military tends to be more religiously conservative than the general population. So, I don’t mean to correct you, but the more statistically accurate assumption would be to assume that [X American character] is Christian until proven otherwise.

On the other hand. Characters’ relationships with religion is one of those things that is so personal, it’s completely useless to headcanon. it’s like music taste in that way. Goose outwardly presents himself as a Christian & also makes passing references to cheating on his wife. That’s like one of the 10 main things God told you NOT to do. (check out a little thing called “exodus 20:14.”) So it’s pretty useless to infer any relationship with religion because everyone treats religion differently, and goose doesn’t sit us the audience down and explain the exact kind of Christian he is.

Whatever. He’s a dude in the Navy of the 1980s. Religion comes secondary to dudehood. People can be (and frequently are) hypocrites. That’s what makes people so interesting.

There’s this great military line: “There are no atheists in foxholes.” Your moral code gets a little screwy when you’re constantly facing death or the prospect of death.

I think it’s okay not to shy away from the complexity of these characters. You can let Goose be a complex person who is statistically likely to be a conservative Christian who cheats on his wife sometimes and/or lies to her about it. That was, like, a commonly accepted male archetype in the middle of the 20th century. Those guys existed. Top Gun is a military movie. It confers complexity! That’s what military movies do! It’s okay to let bad people be bad people. Their emotional beats can still hit just as hard.

#idk if you’re the person who put the goose stuff in the tags of one of my previous posts about this #but if you are—it’s okay for goose & Carole to have a complicated relationship.#many people in military marriages—hell marriages in general—do.#she can still love him #he can still love her.#he can still be a good dad (again also he is forward deployed from his family so not entirely sure how good of a dad he is from afar)#how much of rooster's life was goose (deployed navy pilot) actually THERE for?#good dad in absentia?#anyway #people are complicated #& often hypocrites and often willfully ignorant #and yes goose is still a 'good character' whom we are supposed to mourn when he dies #it was the 80s.#nick goose bradshaw #top gun #Carole bradshaw

25 notes · View notes