#also if you're interested in betaing or just kickin around ideas lmk

[roguegrove]

halstarion wip

okay so i have been writing this for a little while, my first ever actual fanfic. annnnnd i have the beginning "done" and i was wondering if y'all would be so kind as to give it a little read and feedback, let me know if i am heading anywhere interesting?

ETA: i left half the fic out for like three minutes lololol sorry

astarion/halsin, pg at this juncture, definitely won't be at one point. very first draft, inspired by hozier's "first time"

summary: Canon-led look at a relationship between Astarion and Halsin, exploring further, following the arcs in the Hozier song, “First Time.”

Astarion learns about life, death, love, and freedom in his relationship with Halsin.

“Little star,” slipped from scarred lips that first time, sounding easy as a summer’s breeze. 

The words instead dunked Astarion into a frigid river, startling awake parts of him long since laid to rest. Terrifying, encompassing, heart stopping. It settled into a little shiver and something else. Oddly…refreshing? It made his skin feel like it fit funnily, worming its way underneath every dead layer and making a home within him, not unlike the tadpole, changing him irrevocably.

He, of course, was aware of the different possible meanings of his name. An old mark once waxed poetic about it to him, assuming the vampire had chosen it himself as most elves his age did. Being as it was one of the few remnants from his past, Astarion was a bit protective of his name. It was one of the only vulnerable spots he knew himself to still have. Someone, somewhere gave him that name. Someone looked at the baby he once was and deemed him sweet enough for his name and its meaning. 

Maybe at one point he was someone’s little star, something bright and twinkling in the darkness. He was out of the habit of imagining who gave him the title, though this wasn’t an unexplored dream. There was a time when he imagined the soft arms, soft eyes, soft words of his nomenclator whispering to him in a language he barely remembered, cradling him in the darkest depths of Cazador’s cruelty. He was once held with the kind of reverence reserved for a long hoped-for child, and that thought had sustained him for nearly half a century at one point, pulling his mind from the experience of his body and taking him into that parental embrace. 

Spoken so boldly, so nonchalantly in the open air of the camp left him emotionally naked where he stood. Astarion imagined the last time he heard it might’ve also been the last time he stood in the sun as he did now. Fitting, he supposed, as his current life experience felt as foreign and unreal as the memories he made up in his dissociations. It didn’t escape him that the gentle way the druid Halsin spoke his name was as close to the way it was always supposed to sound as anything he could imagine. 

Halsin’s voice sounded like the smell of campfire as it went out, like the ground shaking from thunder far away, like the way rough bark feels on a smooth palm. Practically everything he said sounded beautiful, and Astarion’s name was no different. Halsin’s lips didn’t just form the words, but cradled them, placing them lovingly into the world as if they were worthy of care. 

The sound of his name had never sounded so sweet, not after centuries of morphing into a curse. More than spoken with care, his name was treated as a command, as a tug on a leash or a noose. Cazador’s voice poisoned Astarion’s name with his venom, whether delivered within a puncture or a masked sweetness. He began regarding it as a scourge, the sound of it acting as a warning for what awful things followed. A necessary distance from his name formed, leaving it behind with his suffering body most days. At camp, he tentatively allowed ‘Astarion’ to settle back into him as his companions spoke it without malice, without inflicting pain. It was with more indifference, informality than anything else, but maybe that was the casual way most people regarded their own name when they had anything else besides it. 

Halsin turned his curse of a name back into a prayer, but his kindness was such a practiced part of him that Astarion wondered if it was even intentional. Maybe it was a druid thing or just a Halsin thing, but the natural respect and care he gave to all living creatures was difficult for the younger elf to understand. He could understand if it was a rouse, hiding an ulterior motive, sure, but he wasn’t sure Halsin even had the capacity to lie let alone manipulate him. 

A hand reached for him as the words did, Halsin’s big paw tentative as it came toward Astarion like he was some injured small creature or something. It was clear that the older man was trying to find the best way to get him to feel comfortable, and the thought stirred something in his belly. Annoyance, trepidation, butterflies? The hand came with a request, not just to offer Astarion the sweet version of his name.

"Little star,” he’d called, as if his request was simple, as if it didn’t shake Astarion to his core.

  Blinking himself out of the momentary reverie, Astarion turned on his heel to take in the scene. Halsin was seated at one corner of his little camp, on the bare ground, large legs folded beneath him. It was only then that Astarion noticed the curls of wood scattered around him, the knife in his hand, the mangled bit of twig resting on his thigh. Was he whittling? How...quaint. Feigning casual, Astarion cocked a hip and an eyebrow, drawling. 

“What was that, dear druid?” 

“I was wondering if you would do a lazy bear a favor and hand me that bit of basswood just out of reach,” Halsin answered, a chuckle below the surface of the sound. “If it’s not too much trouble, of course.”

There was a glint to his eye that made Astarion feel like he’d been caught doing something more nefarious than simply walking past. The request was innocent, if not a possible ploy to just get his attention, and yet the vampire felt like he must tread carefully. Those hazel eyes saw more than most, Astarion knew. Beyond the wizened age of the former First Druid, Halsin had the unique ability to see what many others overlooked, and Astarion’s carefully crafted masks did nothing to deter him. He often wondered if in that sweet nature hid a schemer who kept tabs as weapons; after all, that would be what he’d do, what he did do. 

With careful, graceful movements that did little to hide the truth of the disarmament he just experienced, Astarion plucked the wood from the ground and offered it to Halsin with a flick of his wrist. 

“Is this what you’re after?” 

“Ah, yes,” Halsin beamed when he got the frightened animal to eat from his palm. “Many thanks, my friend.” 

Friend? Astarion barely grasped the concept let alone considered this lumbering teddybear of a man one of his. He could scarcely bring himself to trust Halsin, so warm affection was definitely not on the table yet. 

Still, being in Halsin’s good graces could be nothing more than an asset. 

On went the charm, an enticing smile tugging at Astarion’s lips as he peered down his nose curiously at the older man’s project. 

“And what, pray tell, are you doing? Not carving stakes, I hope?” 

At that, the laugh that burst from Halsin both startled Astarion and warmed something in his bones, his smile slipping into something less practiced without his knowledge or permission.

“Gods, no,” the bear replied, holding up the wood to show how easily it would fit in his palm. “Not unless we’re going to chase down your kin in bat form.” It was Astarion’s turn to laugh, the image of the large Halsin chasing after his master as a tiny vampire bat with his hand-carved toothpick delighting him. Gesturing to the space beside him with his carving knife, Halsin invited, “come, join me if you are not busy. I’d be happy to keep your company a while longer.” 

Astarion couldn’t say why he sat down beside him, or even what they wound up talking about until Halsin left to join the rest of the omnivores in camp for supper. The sun had shifted across the sky without his noticing for the first time since he’d been able to see it again, the passage of time seeming to rush by. This, too, was a new experience. For nearly two centuries, Astarion had felt time trickle past him like molasses. His existence was pain, isolation, and forced servitude, and anything beyond that had been a rouse. Time passing quickly would have been a blessing any moment of his life except for today. Today, when he allowed himself for a moment to believe in the sweetness of another, the world moved faster around him than it ever had before. Typical.