#bg3 fic writer

[littlelovelyra]

I Could Love You

Tav teaches Astarion that there are things way better than sexual intimacy and that he does not owe her his body <3

Astarions POV

AO3 if you prefer

Lil one shot to get me back into the swing of things - please note this was a quick idea so there may be a few errors and may not be my best work :)

For ease all my work is 18+ - MINORS DNI

TW: Fluff, mentions of sex, mature themes, strongish language, angsty

It all happened so fast, one minute she was there beside you fighting the bulette, and the next she was hanging off the ledge. The beast had swung its claws in her direction and she expertly dodged out of the way, however, when its massive claw returned on the backhand it caught her by surprise and sent her rolling down the hill struggling to get a grip. 

The fear in her eyes as she toppled off the edge would have stopped your heart if it could still beat but you felt the nauseating sensation squeeze through your gut when you lost sight of her. Your legs were moving before your mind comprehended the events unfolding. As you slid your way down to the edge desperately peering over, you see she has managed to lodge the dagger you gifted her into the crevice wall. 

“Your hand. Give me your hand!” You reach out to her knowing time is of the essence, that dagger will not hold her long. The dagger slides down in one jolt moving her down only a few inches and you watch as her wide eyes twinkle in fear, fighting back her tears and her bottom lip trembles slightly causing your chest to tighten in panic. “You need to give me your hand! Now!” A crack of desperation resonates in your voice as you plunge your hand down gripping her arm just as the dagger gives way and falls into the dark void beneath her. 

“Listen to me. I’m going to pull you up but you need to hold on. Okay? Can you do that for me?” Your eyes search hers as you try to remain calm, she nods quickly in response as she tightens her grip and you begin to pull. It takes all your strength to bring her back up but as you expend the last of your energy she finally topples over to safety and knocks the two of you away from the ledge. Her arms tangle around your neck and her panicked breaths start to slow as your hand circles her back in comfort. 

“I lost my fucking tent.” She breathes out, her voice filled with irritation and her brows pinch together in anger.

“I’m sorry?? You almost died and all you can say is you lost your tent?” A laugh escapes your lips and she turns to you steaming with rage. “A thank you would have been nice. Don’t worry about the tent, I’m sure Gale would offer you some space in his.” The minute the words leave your mouth regret washes over you. Whatever this thing was between you and her confused you. This was meant to be a strategic alliance and you did what you knew best, that being sex. To your knowledge, the fastest way to build an alliance with someone is to fuck them and fuck them so good that they wouldn’t want anything else. Simple. So why in the nine hells does your stomach twist every time she’s in danger? Why does the thought of her in someone else’s tent fill you with disgust and rage? 

“Well, thank you, Astarion! Of course I would ask Gale; there is nobody else here that I would want to share a tent with. So thanks for saving me.” Pink stains her cheeks with rage as she dusts herself off and storms towards the group, leaving you staring after her like some love-sick puppy. Standing to your feet, you stroll towards the group with your usual nonchalant swagger, trying to ignore the heavy feeling in your chest as you watch her approach Gale. The wizard is practically beaming as she asks to share his tent for the evening, and you wonder to yourself if all this excitement would set off that orb in his chest… what a tragedy that would be…

“It would be my honour, Tav.” Your daydreams of a self-destructing Gale are interrupted by his ridiculous, chirpy voice as he bows slightly at the waist. What an idiot. You think to yourself.

It doesn’t take the group long until you find a suitable spot to set up for the evening, and you can’t help but notice that she has avoided you the entire time. At this point in the night, she is setting up inside Gale’s tent, and the melody of her laughter drifts through the air, cutting through your chest. It stings knowing that another male can bring out a sound that beautiful from her lips and with clenched fists you stalk off away from camp. Maybe hunting for your next feed would help take your mind off her. 

“It wOuLd bE mY hOnOuR TaV”, you mock Gale’s voice as you scan your surroundings, looking for a suitable option to feed on. “If she chooses that gods damn wizard over me, then I’m waltzing straight into the sunlight once I get this tadpole out. How humiliating would that be? Though… I suppose I don’t help myself by practically pushing her into a tent with him. GODS Astarion. Use your brain. You’ve been around long enough!” You throw your hands in the air as you converse with yourself, thankfully the under dark doesn’t have many people around… if anyone heard you, they may label you insane. 

After about an hour of walking, you notice a single beast wandering around in a clearing. It’s rather large, but you feel up for the challenge as you tread lightly towards it. Carefully, you unsheathe your dagger, preparing to leap once you find the right angle. As you bolt forward, the beast whips around, snapping its mouth over your arm, and you feel its teeth sink in. Fuck. That’s sharp. In a desperate attempt, you swiftly pull free and feel a white-hot pain shoot across your arm as its teeth tear your flesh. Expertly, you twist around its body and plunge the dagger into its throat, and the beast releases a gurgled cry. Just before you can sink your teeth into it, you hear several screeches in response.

“Oh, COME ON!!” You push the animal away in frustration and sprint from the clearing; you are not foolish enough to try to take on multiple beasts, as you’ve felt the damage their teeth are capable of. Walking to camp, you open a lesser healing potion and drink its contents. It won’t heal your wounds completely, but it will be enough until you can feed again, and since you’ve been gone for a couple of hours, you assume everyone will be asleep in their tents, which means no one will fuss over you. 

The walk back is becoming increasingly difficult, and you find yourself stumbling, your head begins to swirl, and the world seems to be spinning. When last did you feed? Was there something in the bite of the creature? The dull flame of fire comes into vision as you quicken your pace and stumble into camp.

“Astarion?” Her voice is soft and cautious as she closes her book, shifting her attention to you. 

“Oh, hello, pet. Yes. I am fine, just went for a little bite to eat. Though… I was not the one doing the biting… HAH.” You take a few wobbly steps forward and plant yourself next to her. “Enjoying a little late-night read, hmm?” You give your best smile despite feeling like you’re about to faint at any given moment.

“Yes, I told Gale I would be in later… I couldn’t sleep, so I decided to read… but… that’s not important right now. You look awful. You need to feed.” Her brow furrows in concern as she holds up her wrist to your lips. 

“Darling, I appreciate the offer but-.” 

Her voice cuts off your refusal as her eyes lock in with yours. “Just feed Astarion… Please.” Her features soften as she presses her wrist to your lips once more. 

You delicately hold her arm as you slowly lower your head and sink your teeth in, the sweet, warm taste of her blood coats your mouth, and you groan as you drink her in. Nothing tastes as sweet as her, and nothing ever will, no one could compare to her. Your mind begins to clear, your strength slowly returns, and you begin to pull away, but her free hand weaves itself through your curls and holds you in place. Your gaze meets hers with curiosity as you raise your brow, silently questioning her.

“I said drink Astarion. I will tell you when I can’t handle it. It’s okay.” A soft smile spreads across her lips as she frees her hand from your curls and places it against your cheek.

After a few languid pulls, you feel her thumb stroke your cheek. “That’s enough now; I can’t give anymore.” Her smile never falls as you release her wrist, and as if your lips had a mind of their own, you place a soft kiss against the puncture wound and you watch her cheeks flush ever so slightly. 

“Thank you, Tav.” Your voice is a whisper as you notice her hand is still on your cheek, and you bring yours up, locking her fingers with yours. “You should stay in my tent tonight; you wouldn’t want to wake Gale since you’ve stayed up so late reading.” Still holding her hand you stand up and she follows. 

“I suppose it would be quite rude of me…” she purses her lips together in thought and gives a quick nod. “Okay, let’s get you to bed so you can recover.” 

Once you’ve both changed, you notice she has laid out a spare bedroll on the opposite side of the tent. Nope. That just won’t do. You slowly crawl your way over and her brows rise in suspicion. 

“Pet… why are you all the way over there? How am I supposed to repay you for your kindness tonight?” You lower your voice seductively as you trace your thumb along her bottom lip.

“Astarion. You don’t need to repay me. I helped you because I care. My actions are MY actions. You are not indebted to me. You don’t owe me your protection… you don’t owe me a place in your tent, and you certainly do NOT owe me your body.” She shifts out of your grasp and faces you, her brows creased with concern. “Besides, there are better things to do with someone that doesn’t involve sex.” 

“I find that hard to believe.” You scoff out, feeling slightly rejected as you inch your way back to your bedroll. 

“Is that a challenge?” She raises her brow and smirks, her eyes sparkling with amusement. “Alright then, lie on your back and close your eyes.”

“I thought you said no sex.” Your voice is light as you follow her orders.

“Shut up.” She scoffs. “Are your eyes closed? Good.” The warmth of her body settles beside you, and you fight the urge to open your eyes. “There are many things that are more enjoyable than sexual intimacy, for example, having someone run their fingers through your hair…” Her palm moves up your cheek until her fingers comb through your hair. With slow, long rakes, she delicately moves her hands through the waves of your curls, and a shiver runs down your spine at the gentle sensation. The storm within your mind calms and for the first time you feel the warmth of peace settle over you. 

Her hand moves from your hair, and you feel the featherlight touch of the back of her hand against yours before she brings it back up to softly trace the features of your face. “The electricity from a subtle brush of hands as you pass each other in a dimly lit hallway… or a soft caress to the skin…” She shifts beside you and lightly skims her lips against yours. “Or the feel of an almost shared kiss. A promise of something to come… there is magic in the anticipation.” As she lays back down, she gently guides your head to her chest, and once again, you fight to keep your eyes shut. 

“… but my favourite thing… is this. The feel of your loved one’s chest as it rises and falls with each breath, hearing the steady beat of their heart, knowing that it beats for you… and the best part? You could mix all these things together.” As you lay there on her chest, listening to the thrum of her heart and feeling the rise and fall of her chest as she breathes, she begins to run her hands through your hair again. If heaven existed… this was it, you were sure of it. 

“This Astarion… this feeling is better than sex.” Her words are barely above a whisper. She was right; you have taken many people to bed, but nothing compares to this. Right here at this moment, you have never felt more secure than you do now, and you wish you could stay here forever. She was brilliant, and you would be a complete fool to let this slip through your fingers. 

“Tav?” You open your eyes now and move to your side to face her. 

“Yes?” She whispers back as her eyes meet yours.

“Can I try? I mean… do you want to… uhm…” You fumble your words, and your brow creases in frustration. She takes your hand and smiles sweetly, nodding only once as she rests her head on your chest, and you begin delicately combing your fingers through her hair. "When you went off that cliff earlier... I don't think I have ever been that scared, Tav." The words are hard to get out but you know it needs to be said.

"I wasn't angry about the tent..." she whispers back. "I lost the dagger you gave me. I was angry about that but... I dont know why I couldn't just say it." her head shakes subtly on your chest.

"Probably the same reason why I suggested you staying in Gale's tent... pride? Denial? Maybe both." You keep your voice low as you continue to run your fingers through her hair.

"Denial?" She asks.

"Yes... that perhaps this... perhaps we are in denial of what we mean to each other." You release a soft sigh.

She pauses a moment and you feel her breath still. "What do we mean to each other?" the words are barely above a whisper as it leaves her lips.

"I... I don't know. But its not something casual. Its a little more than that. Just promise me you wont go falling off cliffs before we can figure it out, alright?" a strained laugh escapes your mouth.

"As long as you promise to not hunt things that are clearly too big to handle." She quips back lightly.

A soft chuckle rolls through the both of you and then you are met with a comfortable silence.

It’s not long before she falls asleep on your chest with her arm draped around you, but you continue to run your hand through her hair. A warmth swells within your chest, and you realise that, for the first time in a long time, you feel alive, and you never wanted to let her go. You may have lied earlier... not to her but more to yourself. You knew what this was but you were afraid to admit it to her... you were afraid to admit it to yourself.

But as you lay there in the silence of the night while she sleeps on your chest, you bring your lips to the crown of her head and a soft confession escapes from your trembling lips:

“I could love you.” 

[thecampjuicebox]

Hi friends! Just wanted to give a little update, as I've been pretty silent with my writing lately. My motivation has taken a major dip (again) so I'm sorry that pieces are going to be coming out super slowly. I am working on a couple of shorter requests first and foremost so I can have some content to post. I'm rather backed up on requests so my requests are closed for now. (Huge thank you to everyone that has requested stuff, you all are so creative 💖)

I've run into some pretty significant financial issues so my mental health has taken a major blow from the stress. If you've sent in a request or just have the means to contribute, I do have a ko-fi account. Absolutely no obligation to tip, of course.

Thank you guys for your patience and constant support, I'm so happy to have met so many lovely people through my writing!

Oak Father's Blessings 🌿

[cowboygenesis]

18+ knuckle up | astarion x reader

summary: after a drunken night and a dumb bet you're left in an emotional (and physical) chokehold by your favourite vampire companion.

pairing: astarion ancunin x afab!bard!reader tags: 18+, smut, fluff, switch dynamics, m/f, fingering, unprotected sex, resolved tension, playfighting, sex after training session. word count: 7.8k notes: this fic was SO fun to write even if im a gale girlie myself. this is my first attempt at writing ANY bg3 character, so i really hope i did okay. if not, let me know! comments help me improve my writing (and warm my heart, seriously, thanks to anyone taking the time out of their day to comment). anyways gang, no beta as ALWAYS, you know how we roll. ENJOY! masterlist.

It still made little sense to you.

You had honed your skills at the most prestigious music schools in Faerûn for years, pouring your heart into every note, every chord, only to find yourself shamelessly ridiculed for an entirely different kind of performance. And by a man you’d grown to like, no less.

"Get up, darling," Astarion’s voice drips with amusement, the self-satisfied smirk tugging at his lips with infuriating smugness. His crimson eyes watch you with a predatory glint, locking onto your vulnerable form sprawled in the dirt—a definitive result of his frustratingly agile moves.

You groan lowly, propping yourself up on bruised elbows, wincing as a dull ache pulses through your body. A stray lock of hair falls in front of your face, and you blow it away in frustration.

"I’m starting to think this isn’t educational at all." You glare at him with all the venom you can muster, eyebrows furrowed as his arms cross.

Your eyes absentmindedly scan down his body, taking note of his slightly disheveled shirt and tousled hair. He looks… good. Beautiful, even. Basking in the soft moonlight seeping through the vast greenery above, he stands there like he’s in his element.

He chuckles, seemingly unbothered by your vapid tone. "Oh, but it is, my dear. Think of it as a new, humbling experience. Valuable in its own right."

You bite back a retort as he offers you a hand, his expression making your eye twitch. You never thought you’d fall for arrogance, yet ironically it’s your own conceit that might have brewed your upcoming downfall.

After a particularly boisterous night of drinking in camp—brought on by the recent victory over a pack of gnolls—you foolishly accepted Astarion’s challenge to best him in hand-to-hand combat. Your alcohol-addled brain had been more confident than your body, and now, after a series of harsh jabs and sidesteps, you were being taught the harsh reality of “real” combat.

Defeated, you eventually obliged a quick lesson from the master himself, which he had (admittedly suspiciously) made you take after losing your bet.

At the very least, the bruising would rid you of your lingering hangover once you were done taking the thrashing. Plus, you hoped it would bring you two closer. Figuratively and physically.

He raises an eyebrow, clearly enjoying your hesitation. "Come now, my dear, don’t be so stubborn. You seemed so eager at first,"

"You told me you’d teach me to fight, not fall on my damn face," you lament, but begrudgingly accept his help, allowing him to pull you to your feet.

His grip is firm, and the coolness of his skin sends a small jolt of electricity down your spine. You had often imagined what holding his hand would feel like during the colder nights alone in your tent, and while the circumstances ended up being less than ideal, it was good enough for you. For now.

You rub at your sore arm with a frown and catch that Astarion, unmistakably, stands completely unscathed, his pale complexion almost glowing in the ambient light.

"I’m thinking…” he muses, glancing at the weathered lyre resting peacefully by the roots of a tree. His lips curl into a smirk, and you can feel the teasing jab sting your pride. “Perhaps you’re better suited to the more... delicate aspects of life,"

Your jaw clenches. While bards famously went underestimated— a fact you were reminded of frequently— it hurt more coming from someone you so badly wanted to fuck.

"Oh, I don’t know," you say with a saccharine tone, brushing the residual dirt from your pants; your favorite pair, yet you’d probably end up having to toss them out after your poor performance today. "I think a harp string could make a fine garrote in the right hands."

Astarion’s laughter rings out clearly, and your heart skips a beat unbeknownst to you. "Dully noted. Fortunately for the both of us, we’re stripped of any weaponry in our current pinnacle."

Your eyes roll, running a hand through your disheveled, sweat-slick hair and adjusting your posture to the one he had taught you: one foot forward, back straight.

"Again," you demand, squaring your shoulders. If he wanted to mock you, fine— but you wouldn’t go down without a proper fight.

Astarion’s eyes widen, but his smirk never falters. He sighs in faux exasperation but quickly matches your posture. "So eager to be tossed into the dirt again, darling."

Your face flashes with heat at his painfully languid remark, your mind going places it probably shouldn’t. You knew the pet names were simply an inherent part of his vocabulary and that he used them generously, with everyone, yet a part of you liked to imagine they were reserved for you, and you only.

“Try me again,” you reply curtly, lowering your gaze as you feel the tension sprawling through your aching body.

He shoots you an arrogant smirk, his gaze penetrating your soul with an intensity you didn’t think possible. He bares his fangs, licking over his bottom lip lazily. “Let’s see it, then.”

Astarion approaches, but this time, you’re ready. As he moves to close the distance, you anticipate the first jab, ducking low before he can catch you off-guard. You dart to the side, aiming a swift thrust toward his midsection. It’s clumsy and unpracticed, but it seems to work.

Your fist connects with his toned stomach. He topples off-balance, but only for a fleeting second. His reflexes are too sharp, too honed through his century-long life for you to overcome with your pitiful attempt.

He catches himself with a graceful pivot, turning the stumble into a curt spin that has him facing you once more.

"Fast learner, are we?" he muses, watching you closely through his fists. "I might actually have to try now."

"Don’t flatter yourself," you shoot back, heart racing. At that moment, you recognize you can’t win. Not this time, probably not the next. But you don’t want to forfeit, even if it means enduring a day or two of terrible muscle soreness.

Every sidestep, every deflected blow, brings you closer, the air between you growing heavy with static. You aren’t sure if it’s the heat of the fight or the dangerous proximity, but you can feel it—an irresistible, undeniable pull.

"Careful now," Astarion purrs as you barely miss his face with a rugged swing. He catches your wrist, holding it tight as he leans in, breath ghosting over your ear. "You wouldn’t want to harm me, would you?"

You swallow hard, your body tensing under his tight grip. The closeness is intoxicating, but you force yourself to stay focused, pushing back against the growing heat in your chest.

"Maybe I would." You don’t.

For a moment, neither of you move. The world seems to narrow, the charged atmosphere thick with tacit suspense. You can feel your pulse hammering in your throat, senses sharp, attuned to every breath he takes as they intermingle with yours.

"Darling," a dramatic pout creeps onto his lips, only to be replaced by a sly grin seconds later. You feel his grip on your wrist loosening just enough for you to slip free. It’s a calculated move, once he grants you himself. "You wound me with your words."

You take a step back, breathless. This isn’t over, not by a long shot, yet your muscles fight against that thought. They scream at you with pain, worn and stretched by what feels like hours of sparring.

“Sounds like you’re the one trying to wound me,” you taunt, shooting him a lowered gaze. “Why’d you take me out here? Trying to make your next kill less obvious?”

The vampire had insisted you two train away from the bustle of camp, even if it meant missing out on tonight’s feast. While the rest of your companions enjoyed the finest ale Baldur’s Gate could offer, you were stuck trying to prove something to your crush.

Astarion's grin widens, his eyes flashing with amusement as he takes a slow, calculated step forward. “Now, now,” he purrs, voice dripping with mock innocence. “If I wanted you dead, you wouldn’t have seen it coming— no need for childish theatrics.”

You hold his gaze, refusing to let him see the slight tremble in your legs from the strain of the sparring—or maybe it’s from something else entirely, you can’t be sure. You know he’s dangerous, that this game you’ve been playing with him has always had its sharp edges. But there’s something about that edge, about the way he dances so easily between teasing and threatening, that weakens your knees and makes you breathless every damn time.

"Then why are we here?" you challenge, taking a step back to match his forward one. Your voice is steady, but your pulse is hammering in your throat. The woods feel like a world apart from camp, the sounds of chatter distant as you sit in your isolated little bubble of the world. “It’s a little… intimate, don’t you think?”

Astarion tilts his head, studying you with a curious twinkle in his crimson eyes. “That sharp tongue again,” he says quietly, “Do you truly believe I’d go through all the trouble of bringing you out here just to end you? If I wanted your death, I’d make it enjoyable for both of us.”

Your breath catches at his words. His words drip with venom, but somewhere deep down, in the depths of his blackened heart, you swear you feel an instance of temptation.

“What’s the game then?” you ask, holding his gaze despite the anxiety twisting in your chest. “Because by the Gods, I know you love those.”

Astarion’s smirk softens, but the intensity in his eyes never falters. He steps closer again, until there’s barely any space between you, his presence intoxicating. “Maybe I just wanted to see what you’re capable of,” he murmurs, his voice low and velvety. “Maybe I wanted to see how far you’d let me push you before you push back.”

His hand hovers near yours, fingers brushing lightly against your skin, but he doesn’t make full contact.

“And maybe,” he continues, leaning in just enough that his breath grazes your cheek, “I’m curious what could happen once we both stop playing.”

Your heart is racing now, and you’re not sure if it’s the adrenaline from the sparring or the charged air between you that’s making your head spin a hundred miles an hour.

“You’ll never know,” you murmur, meeting his gaze with a boldness you don’t quite feel. “Because I’m not backing down from this.”

His grin widens at your rebellion, and with a swift, fluid motion, the man’s playful smirk turns into a vicious one. Before you can react, he spins you around, movements smooth and practiced, making you lose your balance.

Your back hits his chest, and within seconds he wraps one arm around your neck in a tight headlock— his grip is firm, but not painful. Your mind strays to his other arm, feeling it press against your waist to keep you securely against him.

“Such a feisty little thing,” he purrs into your ear, his breath warm against your sweat-slick skin.

You struggle against his hold, trying to twist free, but his grip is relentless. “Fuck you,” you manage to scowl, though the words are strained by the pressure on your throat.

Astarion chuckles softly, and you feel it reverberate through your body. “Oh, she bites back,” he teases, his voice a dark, seductive buzz. “Are you taunting me, darling?”

You try to shift your weight, to find a way out of the headlock, but his grip doesn’t waver. “You’re projecting,” you growl breathlessly.

“And you’re persistent,” he replies, “Suits you well.”

You feel a warmth spread through your belly, tickling your nerve endings and making your thighs squeeze. You thank the Gods he can’t see your flustered face right now.

And suddenly, he releases. Not fully, but his grip weakens enough to allow you a moment to slip out again, stumbling over your own feet as you face him.

“Here’s your second freebie,” he chuckles, getting into position again. “Careful, next one might come at a price.”

“Like I need a third one,”

You recalibrate, then in the spur of the moment, pounce. Your arms extend as they barrel toward him. His eyes widen, but he manages to catch them mid-air; his hands clasping into yours and pushing against you.

“Fair strategy,” he commends, and you sense it might at least be partially earnest. “Desperate, but fair.”

You strain against him, breath hitching when he periodically pushes back. Whenever he does, you feel his gaze boring into you with a crazed intensity.

Then, you try not to think about the fact your digits fit together really damn well— and fail. Take what you can get, right?

“What’s wrong, my dear?” he sneers, slender fingers tightening around your palm. He leans in, your chests threatening to collide. “Getting distracted?”

You grit your teeth, leaning in with your full body weight, but he barely budges. “You wish,” you shoot back breathlessly.

“I feel it,” he corrects in a whisper, leaning in just enough that his lips hover dangerously close to your ear. “It’s in your eyes. You’re not even thinking about our little lesson anymore, are you?”

Your breath hitches at his words, the undoubted truth in them cutting through the haze in your mind. He’s right. The bet, your lesson —somewhere along the lines, your sparring posture went lax. All that matters to you now is the palpable closeness, your hands in his, and his hot, idle breath on your neck. Your throat threatens to cast a strained groan, but you withhold.

“I—” you start to protest, but your voice falters. His chest is now pressed flush against yours, pushing you forward.

“Admit it,” he murmurs, his voice low, seductive. “And I’ll let you win.”

Your hands tremble in the small space they lock with his, the smoldering red of his gaze telling you he knows exactly what he’s doing—how his actions leave you a mess in body and soul.

“I won’t, I— I can’t,” you manage to stutter, but the words sound weak and unconvincing even to your own weary ears.

He chuckles softly, the sound reverberating through you like a slow current. “Liar,” he whispers, and you catch a glimpse of his pearly fangs in your hazed peripherals. “Not a good one, either. Another thing I should school you on.”

Your eyes roll, but the implication accelerates the growing tension within your guts. “Just how generous you are.”

His head tilts gradually, and you go pale as you catch his tongue running along the length of his bottom lip.

“No, darling,” he purrs, “I haven’t shown you generous just yet.”

And then, you catch his eyes darkening. There’s a certain mania to them when they widen, pupils blown out like a cat’s when he suddenly pushes firmly against you. Your feet stumble backward, staring into him as a wild grin plasters on his face.

You yelp when you lose balance, lips ajar and eyes closed shut as you feel your back crash into something soft, or at least, soft enough to leave you un-bruised.

When your eyes flutter open, he’s on top of you. You study his broad shoulders, the pale neck between them, and finally let your half-lidded gazes connect in a silent, tension-filled juncture.

The ambiance of dusk quiets down to a soft murmur, crickets chirping in the distance as his strong body hovers inches above you, hands placed firmly around your wrists to successfully lock you in place.

“Seems to me you’ve lost our little bet,” he purrs out, and your breath hitches as one of his legs slides between yours, slowly inching to put a distance between your knees.

All you can do is stare up at him hungrily, desperately, drinking in his weathered features and pray he’d let you run your fingers through his flaxen locks at some point in the night.

“No clever retort? That’s not the little bard I know and love,” he teases, and your hips almost buck into him at that one word. You know he doesn’t mean it, yet your teeth still clench when your body jolts in response to his familiar lilt.

“You’re playing dirty,” you finally breathe out, cringing at how strained your voice sounds as you lie under his weight.

“No one ever said this would be a clean game,” he retorts, his crimson gaze boring into you before gradually disappearing into your neck.

His lips hover over your skin, hot breath tickling the soft spot near your pulse point as you gasp quietly. You feel him hesitate, arms tensing and releasing over your own as if soaked in apprehension. You strain your muscles, eyes shutting in preparation for the inevitable, sharp bite coming onto your poor vein. Gods, was this his plan all along?

But then, you feel the grip on your wrists loosen.

Your eyes flutter open, and you quickly catch the tousled white locks in your neck as the vampire looms over you.

“Here’s your chance to run,” he hitches, and somehow he sounds just as out of breath as you do.

You lie on the blanket of moss, chest heaving and gaze tracing languidly over the treeline as you feel your body go limp. He’s giving you one last opt-out before… before something happens, be it a bloody massacre or... Or?

Your mind shrieks at you: take advantage, prove yourself on top in this stupid bet— but the little voice in your heart urges you to stay under his firm body; find out if your instincts rang true after all.

You stay. Not only that, but you let your hands slip out of his, one of them snaking down his shoulder while the other runs through his waves. They’re silky, and soft, and when you catch a whiff of rosemary in the air, your grip tightens.

“Astarion,” you whisper, voice surprisingly steady as your heart beats a constant rhythm into the space between you.

His body jerks abruptly, albeit subtly, and you feel him smirking— smiling— into the soft flesh of your neck. “So I was right, after all.”

His face withdraws from you slightly, the residual condensation of his warm breath leaving you shivering. You catch his gaze, half-lidded and scanning your expression with apt concentration.

“Feisty, spirited little thing,” he continues, inching towards you again.

Your stiff body jerks, grazing against him as your shaky hand snakes to his cheek. You cradle it gently but with urgency, and there’s a beat of silence before you finally understand what to do.

You inhale softly, catch his questioning gaze, and crash your lips onto his.

He groans softly when you meet in the middle, lowering himself with his arms. Your chest thrums with the beat of your heart, shooting waves of dopamine down your worn spine.

When you feel his nimble hand on your jaw, your lips part with a sigh. He matches your buzz with his own self-satisfied murmur, stroking your cheek with the pad of his thumb.

You smile. He’s sweet and bitter, and you whine gently into the kiss when you recognize brandy on his tongue.

This is what you’ve been waiting for all these lonesome months.

The culmination dawns on you like a powerful current, making your eyes squeeze and your hands tremble in his waves.

He seems to notice your tremor, but instead of slowing down or (Gods forbid) stopping, he dives deeper. You moan into his mouth as he wriggles a hand around your waist, holding you close to his hips and suddenly, you feel a steady pressure grinding into your crotch.

The movement is slow, precise, practiced. His hips buff into yours in a controlled rhythm, making you sense his already taut erection through the thick material of his linen pants.

“Do you get it now, darling?” he murmurs, breaking the kiss to stare lazily into your glassy eyes. “Look what you do to me.”

His hand snakes to your blouse, and before you can register what’s happening, you hear three ivory buttons pop off followed by the cool, evening breeze tickling your heated skin. You don’t need to open your eyes to know your nipples are standing taut in the chilly air, yet the image makes you redden.

“How— how unceremonious,” you croak out, moaning softly when his large hand begins palming at your right breast.

His thumb and forefinger squeeze at your erect nipple, toying with it in smooth, tactile movements and relishing the way his name sounds coming out of your kiss-swollen lips.

“Mm, forgive me,” he chuckles darkly, planting a quick, ardent kiss on your lips before lowering his face to your chest. His tongue licks a slow, tender strip up your sternum before he looks up to smile at you; it’s a genuine look of satisfaction, untouched by the plague that is his faux arrogance. “I’ll make sure to be good next time.”

’Next time?’

You look at him lazily, gaze puzzled and lips ajar to ask but he doesn’t even offer you the chance. His hand dips from your tits to the band of your pants, sliding underneath it with his finger, the coolness of his skin making you gasp.

His mouth assaults your other nipple with sucks, nibbles, and gentle bites, making you mewl under him as his hand continues to travel down the soft flesh of your thigh. He rubs it gently, lovingly, starting under your hip and slowly stroking his way toward the inner region, where you’re most sensitive.

“Divine,” he mumbles against your chest, pressing a kiss to your rib. “So divine.”

His free palm moves to your exposed belly, massaging it gently. You sigh at the slow, consistent pressure, moving your trembling hand to the back of his neck.

When your one eye pops open in curiosity, you see him snug against your body, face contorted with empathic fixation as he labors down your body. It’s intimate, yes, but also… loving. His tongue is warm against your breast, and his palms caress your skin with slow, delicate strokes; the same hands you’ve seen wield blood-soaked daggers and longbows.

He runs two digits along the stretchy fabric of your bottoms, lip caught between his teeth. He catches you staring and smirks up at you.

“Enjoying yourself?” he husks out, and you’re desperate enough to nod wordlessly.

He chuckles at your enthusiasm, hand smoothing down the waistband of your panties that peers from behind your bottoms. Not even your cutest pair, but oh well. He doesn’t even seem to notice, as his digits play with the elastic.

You’re already so exposed, but nothing can prepare you for what he does next.

With a few more kisses to your breasts, he tugs at the two waistbands, pulling down your pants and panties in one go.

The material slides off your legs and you hiss out, feeling the coolness caress your slick core. Your hands instinctively reach to cover up, but you’re stopped in your tracks by a strong grasp around your wrist.

“Oh no, no,” He looks up at you with an arched eyebrow, and somehow, despite his collected mien, you catch a soft dusting of pink across his cheekbones. “Don’t you dare deny me this view. Not after I’ve waited for so long.”

Your face heats up at the brazen comment, but that only seems to draw him closer. Your eyes flicker down to his lips, and he takes the hint immediately.

You connect in a heated kiss, and this time, Astarion is the one groaning against you. You work in tandem, like a gentle, effortless dance, heavy breaths intermingling in a sweet symphony of hums and sighs when…

You feel a touch against your heat. The contact is almost impalpable, yet your eyes flutter open in shock as the man’s fingers trace over your slit.

He withdraws from your kiss, hovering inches from your lips with a soft smile.

“S’unfair,” you slur, gazing up at him with a pleasure-drunken gaze. He exhales loudly, and you gasp. His fingers dip in, rubbing slow circles around your clit. “You— Gods—”

“Yeah? Tell me,” he taunts lowly, continuing his torturously languid movements with a devious smirk plastered on his perfect face. “What’s got you so bothered, my sweet?”

He dips down, teasing your entrance with his index. You pant softly at the prolonged stimulation, trying your damn best to stay focused on furrowing your eyebrows in mock anger.

“Got me so exposed and—” you trail tensely as his finger probes your entrance. “—And you’re still in your damn clothes.”

He hums in acknowledgment, but you doubt he’s even listening to you by how he surveys your body, bottom lip caught between his fangs. “I’m about to show you ‘generous’, like I promised.”

And then, he bottoms out. You moan, feeling two of his digits sliding into you, the slickness of your opening making it an easy feat.

You squeeze around him, and he pumps into you once, then twice for good measure. The sound of his movements is unbelievably and utterly obscene, making your stomach knot in delight.

“So wet already,” he purrs through a smirk, watching you writhe under him, “Don’t tell me our little sparring session got you this bothered.”

You roll your eyes, thighs squeezed tight around his wrist as you move your hips in tandem with his rhythm.

“Come on, talk to me,” he taunts again, pressing a gentle kiss to your cheek and letting his fingers fuck you in a steady, purposeful rhythm. “Now’s not the time to get coy.”

He switches gears, stopping his movement so he can curl his fingers inside you. He presses against the sweet spot, his thumb reaching to simultaneously rub slow circles against your swollen clit.

You cry out at the newfound pressure, the warmth in your belly twisting into a vortex of fiery delight.

“I—” you mewl against him, wrapping your fingers into the soft fabric of his shirt. “I’m gonna— c-cum—”

His movements quicken at your desperate words, digits working hard against your favorite spot.

“Cum then, my darling,” he taunts firmly, his free hand roaming under your jaw and holding it in place. “Cum for me. Let me— let me look at you, sweet thing.”

Your glassy eyes struggle to focus on his face, but once they do, he hits something white-hot inside you.

His lips crash desperately onto yours, but you struggle to kiss him back through the blinding pleasure of your climax. It thunders down your legs, up your belly, making you cry out against his mouth as everything melts away into a wonderful oblivion.

The last thing you see before your muscles go lax is red.

He rubs your clit methodically through your high, letting you ride it out peacefully as he burrows into your neck again.

When your breath steadies, you feel his fingers slowly withdraw. The emptiness that follows makes you cry out softly, helplessly watching as the man runs his palms up and down your sides.

He presses a soft, soothing kiss against your swollen lips, and you can’t help but glare when you see that he’s still fully dressed, even after your heated orgasm.

He catches your pouting and raises an eyebrow.

“Yes, darling?” he purrs, pulling away to take you all in. You’re caught speechless when his hungry gaze scans down your nude body; starting at your smitten face and ending with a lingering glimpse at your spent pussy.

“Please,” you mewl out, raking your hands down his clothed abs. “Gods— Please take these off, I can’t—”

He does.

His hands momentarily withdraw from around you, and with a swift, deft move, he tosses his shirt off.

The silken cloth comes flying into the night like a phantasmal figure, and you watch it catch onto a stray branch to your right.

Your gaze skims hungrily down his sculpted body, watching his muscles tense and release with every little movement. Yes, you’ve seen him shirtless before, yet the context of your current predicament somehow makes it feel like it’s the first time all over again.

Unbeknownst to you, his hands work at his bottoms, swiftly unbuttoning the waistband and letting it sit loose against his hips. You catch a soft, white trail against the edge of his undergarments, leading down to a straining, tented mess below.

Your hand reaches out absent-mindedly, still drunk off the high of your climax and so, so desperate to finally feel him for yourself.

“Not so fast, darling,” he scolds, gently slapping your hand away and letting it wither at your side.

“Let me touch you,” you retort desperately, but he only chuckles as his fingers begin working at his waistband.

“You lost our bet,” he explains, sliding a thumb under the elastic and letting it lower. You catch the very base of his straining erection, and that taunting alone makes you gasp. “Gives me the upper hand.”

“Says who?” you hiss under your breath, failing to give him the glare he deserves as your eyes bore into his.

He gives you a once over, gaze drawing languidly over your exposed body, and only then does the extent of your nudity finally dawn on you.

“Don’t make me laugh.”

You shift under him, shimmying within the small space he allows, and he takes your brief distraction as a moment to unravel his pants completely. They drop to the ground behind you, leaving him in his undergarments, and you bite your lip at how dangerously lax they sit around his hips.

“I think I’ve left you waiting long enough,” he mutters, and your lips go ajar.

The thumb hooked into his briefs starts sliding down his waist, lower and lower until you’re finally even in terms of undress— and you’re ever so starstruck by the sight of his bulging cock hovering over your belly. It stands thick and taut within arm’s reach and you find the fact makes your mouth water.

Then, before you can think of touching him, you feel him place either hand below your knees. He looks up at you with a sly smirk, and you gasp softly when he pushes your thighs flat against your torso, feet in the air and scandalously exposed in front of him.

“You’re playing with me,” you mutter breathlessly, hissing as you feel his length stroking against your inner thigh.

His arms compress you tighter as you feel him lowering, the underside of his cock slapping against your tummy. The gasp that leaves your throat at the sudden contact widens your eyes, and he catches your gaze with his self-satisfied one.

“Do you like that I’m playing with you?” he follows up without a beat, his hips rutting forward. The movement is gentle, yet the pressure is enough to make you whine out in desperation— it’s also the only answer you manage to choke up for him before his cock slides between your wet folds.

“A-Ah— you fucking— fucking prick,” you hiss at the vampire, and so he bears his fangs at you through a wide grin. You find that it makes your breath hitch even amidst your despair.

“Now, now,” he reprimands, words syrupy, “bold words coming from someone so vulnerable.”

His nails dig into the soft flesh of your legs as he slides back and forth, taking meticulous care so that the head of his cock butts against your clit with every dip. The stimulation feels electric, and soon enough, you feel your still-sensitive body ramp up with heated energy for a second time this night.

A minute passes, yet it feels like an eternity. The air between you is thick with tension and the soft, repetitive harmony of your strained moans and his little gasps. You watch his eyes close in concentration, and despite his otherwise relaxed facade, you can tell he’s struggling to resist you by the way his eyebrows knit in the middle.

“Fuck me,” you breathe out, one of your hands extending to claw at his withholding forearm.

When your gazes meet, he looks surprisingly spent; eyes glassed-over, mouth ajar, and the slightest hint of sweat glazing his pale forehead. You realize that his domineering act seemed to come at the expense of his stamina: a resource you had slowly replenished in your comfortable position.

“Not— not yet, darling,” he hitches out, but the words appear tender and helpless to your trained ears. “I— I want to enjoy this— enjoy you—”

Your grip on his forearm tightens, making the bucking of his hips stutter. His eyebrow raises at your touch, but before he can shoot you a witty comment, you’re pushing him forward.

It happens within seconds.

Your knees straighten, feet slamming into his abdomen. He coughs at the sudden, unexpected impact, and you take the opportunity to grab tight onto his forearms. He falls backward, and just before his spine hits the soil beneath, you use the momentum to push yourself onto him.

When his eyes flutter open, you’re straddling his waist.

He blinks in brief confusion, surveying his surroundings before the crimson gaze finally turns to you.

He surveys your face, and you let him. The moment is like a silent meditation, heavy breaths intermingling as he takes your raw beauty in; the longing in your eyes, the soft dusting of pink across your nose, and ultimately, the plush of your lips he had ravaged mere moments ago.

Next, he moves to your body. His eyes scan down your taut nipples, down your tummy, and to the softness of your thighs squeezing his midriff to the ground. When he reaches the junction between your bodies, your hips buck as if on instinct.

“My, just how courageous we are,” he purrs under you, hands reaching to rub down the outside of your thighs. “I wouldn’t be so nice about your dirty tricks if I didn’t find this view thoroughly delectable.”

You shiver at his honeyed words, yet your gaze stays determined on him. Your palms go to rest atop his, marveling at the eccentric softness of his knuckles and the polarizing edge of the nails.

“No one ever said this would be a clean game,” you grin playfully, rocking your hips back to feel his hard length against the curve of your ass. When a soft hiss escapes his lips, you feel your ego inflate. “Sound familiar?”

His eyes roll, but the grin creeping onto his lips deceives him immediately.

His head tilts at you, fangs bearing in the soft moonlight. “You’re trouble.”

The mischief of your smile spins into a warm fondness. Your cheeks warm, and your heart swells, but you don’t quite understand why. “Oh how rich that is coming from you.”

And then you’re rising on your knees, hips hovering over his throbbing erection. Your palms connect, digits intertwining with his as you lower yourself onto him.

You test the waters first, letting his tip brush over your slit with feather-like touches. You hum gently at the teasing pleasure, and so does Astarion.

When you feel your tummy tightening with anticipation, you dive in. With a light shimmy, you line your hips with his, and with more desperation than you planned, you slide down.

You both hiss as the head of his cock penetrates you, the stretch making your palm tighten against his. You bend at the knees, eyes rolling into the back of your head at the delicious sensation of being filled to the brim after such a long, lonesome time.

Finally, you let your hips slam against his. The sudden, harsh movement makes you gasp out into the tantric air as his tip pokes against your womb. The dull pain quickly shifts into a flat, resonant pleasure, and you waste no time.

Your hips begin to buck against his, building a slow, steady rhythm until you’re confidently riding your vampire lover with a self-satisfied smirk on your lips.

Each thrust makes you mewl, moan, and cry out into the night, that pleasant angle of his cock hitting that same spot his fingers did just minutes ago.

His head rolls back into the ground, and with the remnants of his energy, he issues an occasional, quick rut into you. As it’s rare, you decide to savor it. You squeeze around him with the thrusts, and soon, you feel yourself running out of breath.

“I— I could let you do this for—hells— forever,” he hisses out, and suddenly, you feel his hands unclasp from yours and snake around your waist. “Where have you been all these centuries?”

Your upper body is dragged forward, your tits colliding with his toned chest when he pulls you into a tight, possessive embrace.

You gasp at the warmth between you, and your eyebrows soon furrow when you realize the position limits your hip movement. As you’re forced into a pause from your delirious riding, his lips crash onto yours.

Your tongues share a private, slack dance, heads tilting to adjust as you both hum and groan into the fiery kiss. You attempt to rut into him, and soon enough he gets the hint.

Keeping you immobilized against his chest, his hips pound up into you. The first few smacks are scandalously loud, and you revel in the newfound angle.

You’re lost in him, completely and utterly. When he moans, you respond with a hum— when his embrace tightens around you, you kiss him harder.

The familiar, fiery heat in your tummy bubbles up again. You feel it amp up, grow, and send jolts up your spine when suddenly, you’re being pushed up. When your eyes flutter open, you catch his still closed.

His chest stays firm against yours as he positions you upright, letting you straddle his hips as you’re both left sitting in the soft patch of grass and wildflowers.

With your body regaining its mobility, you start grinding against him again. The position allows for a deliciously intimate closeness, his cock burrowing deep into you as you resume riding him.

The pressure within you grows, emerging as a knot— threatening to unravel with every other thrust. Your clit rubs against the base of his groin, amplifying the pleasure into a sensation you’ve long forgotten about.

“A-Astarion—” you mewl out between kisses, and his hot breath tickles your face when he chuckles.

“Cum for me,” he sighs out, and the assertion comes off soft and pleading as it settles into the groves of your heart.

“O-Okay— I… I—”

He tightens his hold on your waist with one hand, as the other moves to cradle your cheek. His touch is unbelievably delicate and affectionate, and out of all the stimulation he had so graciously provided you this night, it’s that soft touch that sends you over the edge.

Your lips connect in one last kiss, and you moan throatily into his mouth. Your hips still, thighs squeezing as your pussy tightens around his cock in a moment of pure bliss. The steadily rising pressure in your belly finally tips over, sending a wave of bliss down your entire being.

Still, he keeps moving. You almost want to scream against him as his hips begin pounding into you again, the soft slaps quickening as he slowly peaks with you.

Withdrawing from the kiss to lean against your neck, he cums. Hard.

Your slowly declining climax seems to slam the gas pedal as you feel him release deep into you, the warmth spreading through your body like a genial embrace, a fact that makes him groan loudly against your mouth. Your breath stills in your throat, before finally releasing into a long, guttural moan— it echoes into the night, and your vision blurs.

White-hot bliss envelops your body, and you melt into Astarion’s for solace. You feel him grip you, caress your face, kiss away your adrenaline-fueled tears, and pant softly against your lips as your pussy spasms again.

Your orgasm envelops you in slow, pulsating waves as it withdraws, and you’re soon left huffing into the vampire’s flaxen locks. You think you hear him speak, but the ringing in your ears is too potent to know for certain.

Then, as the ringing finally retires, you hear him whisper your name. It’s a soft, patient call against the burning skin of your neck, one you commit to memory as you’re finally awarded your senses back— if only partially.

The forest feels exceptionally silent as you fall into his arms. You recognize the soft chirp of crickets in the distance, perhaps a distant hoot of owls, but it all seems to blend into an indecipherable blur as exhaustion floods your system.

Your head falls into the crook of his neck, and your mind sinks into the soft, languid thumps of his heart. His hand caresses your back, and you sigh deeply.

You sit there for what feels like hours, drinking each other in. You’ve waited so long, and finally, you’re at ease— it’s a feeling you wish to cherish, and if it wasn’t for the pesky passage of time, you’d choose to stay in this damned forest for eons; with him.

You feel him shift against you. His hands withdraw from your waist, and he whispers softly against you. “Come, my love.”

You hum in disagreement, face burrowing deeper into him. Yes, rosemary and brandy— now it’s clear to you.

He exhales sharply, and you smile into his neck. He waits for a beat, before placing a soft kiss to your temple. “Wait here.”

You nod gently and finally allow him to withdraw. The separation makes you sigh, your body shivering in the newfound cold of the night, but you persevere. In the longing to hold on to the moment for a little longer, you keep your eyes closed and hope he’ll return before you open them again.

You hear him shuffle around, walking from left to right, before finally returning to face you. “Hands up,” he mutters softly, and you do as you’re told in your pleasure-drunken stupor.

You feel him drape something silken over your sweat-slick body, the soft material draping your hips before coming to a stop at your thighs. When you breathe in, you immediately realize it’s not your shirt, so you grin.

When you’re comfortably wrapped up, he leans in. Once you finally sense the familiar warmth of his chest, you lean against his shoulder and breathe in his scent.

You’re surprised he does this for you. Tenderness is not exactly something you’d connect with a man of his past, of his skill. Yet, when his hands move to rest under your knees and back, you don’t resist.

He lifts you off the ground, letting your fatigued frame rest against him. He takes it upon himself to get you back to camp, safe and sound, and only slightly perturbed.

You drink in everything you can, letting yourself be greedy for once. The steadiness of his breath, his warm chest, the crinkling of leaves under his feet— it’s an image you swear to place, no matter what difficulties might threaten to befall you in the future.

And he’s silent up until you reach the campgrounds. The chatter of dinnertime has long died down, and when you open your eyes, you spot the crackling embers of firelight flickering away among a circle of stones. The flames cast a soft, warm light onto the closed tents, and you revel in the intimacy of the moment.

“Everyone met their bedtime while we’ve been naughty sneaking out,” he murmurs with a chuckle, and you close your eyes hurriedly in hopes of feigning slumber. Still, you can’t help the smile that creeps onto your face at his brazen comment.

You reach the outskirts and finally spot his tent just below an old, sturdy oak tree. You recall the talks you had out front so many times before, back when your feelings were just sparks of something much stronger and much, much warmer.

He crouches down and with an unsurprising agility climbs into the little shelter with you still in his arms. You lie slack against him, letting his arms lay you gently onto his woolen mat. You melt into the warmth almost immediately, sighing out dreamily when you feel his presence beside you.

It’s silent for a moment, and when your eyes finally flutter open, you catch him staring at you. His gaze is thoughtful but warm, lingering over your form with a certain glimmer.

“I guess it’s official, then,” you sigh out, closing your eyes again and letting a lazy smile drift over your features.

He pauses for a moment, then clears his throat. “What… what is?”

You chuckle softly at his awkward tone, shifting to the side and letting one of your eyes pop open to glance at him.

“My victory,” you state matter-of-factly before quickly shifting to your other side, facing away from him just to let a satisfied grin creep onto your face.

You don’t witness it, but his expression goes from tense, to disconcerted, to irritated in a matter of seconds. His eyes roll, and you suddenly feel a flat slap against your ass.

“Woah there, hey!” you gasp, followed by a cheeky giggle. Your head turns to face him from your comfortable position, and you catch him mirroring your grin.

“Quiet, now,” he commands softly, pivoting to lie beside you. His arm comes over your waist, pulling you into his chest. “Bet’s over, darling. I’m sorry to say, but you’ve not proven yourself capable. Shame, really.”

You blow a raspberry through your smile and shimmy closer to him, your body melting perfectly into his— a fact that has you near to falling asleep.

“Shame indeed. The look on your face was priceless when you ate dirt,” you shrug nonchalantly, “At least that’s the version I’ll be telling everyone come morning.”

He scoffs, the low rumble of it vibrating against your back, but his arm only tightens around you. You feel his face in your hair, breathing in your scent.

“If you do that, I might just have to kill you,” he mutters, but despite the intensity of the words, his voice is soft and loving against your head. His hand drifts to your belly, fingers tracing lazy circles against the soft skin there.

“You would never.”

He’s silent for a beat. Your lips open to build on your clever retort before you feel his sharp exhale on your neck.

“Sleep, darling,” he reprimands, squeezing your midriff gently.

You sigh contentedly, your lips brushing against the pillow as you settle deeper into his embrace. The tent is cocooned in warmth, but you feel the cool kiss of the evening breeze filtering in through the small opening at the entrance. Outside, the campfire crackles faintly, the last embers glowing like distant stars before fading into fine ash.

As you drift closer to sleep, wrapped in the steady rise and fall of his breathing, the world around you blurs into the peaceful haze of near-dreams.

Just as the veil of slumber begins to pull you under, you feel his lips press against your hair, a soft whisper brushing against your skin.

“As long as I'll live, I never could.”

[amandacanwrite]

The Bear and the Fox - A Halsin x Reader One Shot

Word Count || About 6,000 Words

Scenario || You are a druid adept that has been imprisoned by Kagha for trying to stop the Rite of Thorns in Halsin's absence. He returns to find you and is none to happy to see it, especially after all you have been through.

POV || 2nd Person, ungendered tav/reader.

CW || mentions of entrapment, trafficking, self-deprecation, trauma. (Please let me know if I forgot anything.)

A/n || I have been a little stressed out and have been using this as a distraction/escape. I would appreciate so much if you all let me know what you think! Requested by the lovely @drabblesandimagines, thank you for the idea and I hope you enjoy it!! Thank you for your patience in waiting for this one!

You’re almost certain Archdruid Halsin doesn’t know you exist, but it doesn’t stop you from being devastated when he doesn’t return to the Emerald Grove from his travels to the nearby goblin camp. Even if he doesn’t remember you, you certainly have never forgotten him. Nor have you been able to wrench your heart from the grip of the merciless pining that has plagued you ever since you woke up on a pile of soft hides on the floor of his vault beneath the temple.. 

The truth is, Archdruid Halsin had saved you. 

You’d been captured, at the time, by a troupe of traveling drow with the intention of taking you deep into the underdark to be used for whatever nefarious purposes they deigned. You were one of many captured, but the only druid in the lot. 

They’d entrapped you in a cage, preventing you from even taking your wildshape to flee. They’d gone between distressing you in both forms, though. They’d seemed to have a particular talent for making you miserable, and in time you’d lost a bit of your humanity to the shape of the russet and auburn fox you often favored. 

When he’d reached in to coax you out with a gentle hand, you pounced on the appendage–far too entrapped in the fear-addled mind of an animal that would sooner gnaw its own foot off than let a hunter find it caught in his leghold trap. 

But he hadn’t flinched; hadn’t even grimaced as you sank your sharpened teeth into the thick flesh of his muscled forearm and tore at it. He’d simply watched calmly as you got it out of your system. When you’d realized he was an unyielding mass of man, you’d backed into the farthest corner of your kennel and cowered. 

“Fear not, little one,” he’d cooed with that gentle, gravelly tone. “You are among friends now. I only wish to ensure you’re uninjured, and you can be on your way to find your mate or your burrow.”

You’d only blinked and he swapped his bleeding arm for his other one. You’d sniffed cautiously before dropping your head and your ears. He’d not needed any other sign, he’d known the way animals communicate; with gestures and body language rather than sounds.

He’d smoothed a hand over your ratty coat; it was the first kind touch you’d felt in months. You’d leaned yourself into it and he’d used the opportunity to scoop you up into his arms. 

Perhaps it was at that moment that you’d fallen for him. Because as soon as you’d registered the strong and tender support of his warm, cradling arms, you’d suddenly realized how exhausted you’d been. You lost hold on your wildshape and changed back to your humanoid form, unclothed and skinny. 

He’d started, adjusted his grip a little clumsily as you’d spilled out of the space he’d allotted in his arms for you; but he didn’t drop you.

“You surprised me, child,” he’d said as you’d started to drift into unconsciousness. “I’d certainly thought it was strange to go through such stringent measures for a single fox, but I see now why they’d made such efforts to keep you entrapped.”

He’d reached up to brush your tangled hair away from your face. “I can see you’re exhausted. Rest now; when you wake, you’ll be safe and warm with a meal and a warm bath awaiting you.”

He hadn’t lied, and the Emerald Grove had quickly become your home in the months and years that had passed since then. You’d seen Halsin around, of course. And he always seemed to have a smile to spare for you as you passed like swans floating in a pond. But you’d never quite been able to find a way to speak to him in private. 

Perhaps it was your fault, you think, as you find yourself in a new cage, heart broken and aching as it seems less and less likely that he will ever be coming back. 

You know Halsin to be strong. He’s a seven foot elf and built like the cave bear he so often likes to take the shape of. But there is only so much a single druid can do on his own, even one as competent as Halsin. 

It hurts to be facing the possibility of rotting in the cells below the grove–below the place that had so much begun to feel like home for you, finally. It hurts to realize you may die here having never told Halsin how you feel about him. 

But perhaps it’s better this way. Perhaps it is better to die having never faced the awkward acknowledgement of feeling that could never be returned. 

Halsin has always been effusive, warm, welcoming…brave. 

But there is a reason you chose the fox for your wildshape. 

You have always been furtive, timid, too reliant on a single person. It has always been your nature, but you can’t deny the fundamental absurdity of the fox falling for the bear. At best, you could only be an inconvenient pest to him. You’re sure of that much. 

Still…you miss the sun…you wish you could see it one more time. You’d always wanted to die bathed in the sunlight, not cold and damp in a stone chamber flooded with three inches of water. You curl into yourself, hugging your knees close, trying to remember the feeling of those warm arms around you as the Rite of Thorns continues somewhere above ground, heedless of your pleas for stalling, uncaring of the courage you’d had to summon to stand up to Kagha at all. 

Kagha had never cared much for you; found you weak and miserable. 

Pathetic. That was the word you’d heard bandied around when she didn’t know you were within earshot or when you were cozily cloaked by your shadows. 

“You should have just kept your mouth shut,” you tell yourself. 

But even you don’t really believe that. Not truly. You found kindred spirits in the Teiflings who had come to find refuge in the grove. You’d even played with the children in their little hiding spot beneath the old stone structures. 

When the goblins came screaming the name of the Absolute, when Halsin left to learn more about the parasites, you’d been shocked and frightened by the sudden turn of sentiments against them and gotten swept away in your own outrage over it. As far as you’d been concerned, everyone in the grove should have been well aware of what Halsin would have tolerated. They should have known that he’d want any living being to be safe and fed–especially the children. 

But it’d seemed that even the Emerald Grove druids were merely people; they were just as vulnerable to intimidation, coercion and power hunger as anyone else in Faerun. 

You shiver in the cold and the dank, wishing you could get some rest so that you could take your wildshape and find warmth in the silken texture of your auburn coat. 

You think of the nights curled up by the fire in Halsin’s secret cache while he allowed you a smaller space to acclimate to when you’d first arrive. You remember the feeling of large, gentle hands cradling your small, vulpine body in comfort as you slept. 

It’s at that moment that you hear the scuff of loud, fast foot fall on the decrepit stairs that lead down to this sodden prison. It’s followed by heavy, hurried sloshing before, as if out of thin air, Halsin stands before you. His hands are wrapped around the thick, stone bars of your enclosure so tightly that they are white at the knuckles. His broad chest rises and falls with exertion; or is that emotion? It is hard to know. 

He looks…utterly stricken. So much so that you wonder what happened to devastate him. Did he get back to The Grove to find all of the tieflings slaughtered? Did the tieflings rise up and destroy the grove before the Rite of Thorns could be finished? 

He opens his mouth and you expect terrible news–expect the worst. 

“A-are you alright?” is what he chokes out instead. 

You’re quiet for a moment; the question not making sense to you. Why in the world would he care if you were alright? You were…nobody. A druidic adept that found much more comfort tucked into a nest of blankets than anything else. You’d failed to stop the Rite. You’d failed at almost everything in your life so far. 

Has he…is it too dark down here? Does he think he’s talking to someone else? 

He grits his teeth and starts to wrestle with the door to your cell. 

Its mechanism is like the others in the temple; controlled by a stone tablet which should be placed in the proper slot and then activated with druidic magic. But he’s trying to use his own raw strength to open it. 

“Forgive me,” he grunts as the stone actually begins to give way, heeding his command. “I should have never left you here while The Grove was tangled in so much unrest. Had I thought the Kagha…had I known–”

“Archdruid,” you stammer. “You’re going to hurt yourself–”

“I care not,” he says, his tone taking on an almost ferocious quality that has you lifting your shoulders and shrinking into yourself. “It is you I am most concerned for. You had only just begun to smile and I– because of my negligence I find you entrapped all over again.”

Your mouth drops open as you realize that he actually came down here looking for you. Specifically to find you. To save you again. 

You are small; practically half the size of the archdruid. Yet, you suddenly recognize that he is trying to free you and you are just sitting there like some kind of dead fish. You stand to your feet and hurry over to the bars, grasping two of the other juts of stone and pulling it as he pushes. 

You’re not sure, but for a moment you think you see the barest ghost of a smile before his teeth clench again with effort. 

When the door is finally forced open a few inches, you release the stone. You roll your shoulders, shake out the tension in your hands. You will yourself to become smaller, to become lithe. You will your mouth to grow sharp, unforgiving teeth. You become vulpine. 

You slosh through the water on four padded feet and dash through the opening. 

For a moment, you almost flee up the stairs, ready to retreat to the fresh salty air outside. Ready to resign yourself to life as a fox. 

But Halsin drops to his knees and you look at him as he looks at you. 

He reaches a hand out to you, and you see the faint, silvery scars on his forearm from where you tore into him on the day you met. You sniff at him for a moment, then you shift back to your human form, carefully cradling his arm in your hands. 

“Did it get infected?” you ask. “After I gnawed at you?”

His brow is low and lips turn down at the corners. 

“No,” he says. 

“I don’t understand,” you say. “You shouldn’t have scarred…you should have been able to simply heal yourself.”

“I was able,” he says. “But I was unwilling. I…I didn’t want to forget.”

You look up at him. “Why?” you ask. 

There is the sound of chaos from up the stairs. You turn your head, letting your ears tune into the finer details of it as the quiet ambience of the water dripping and sloshing around you obscures it. As your focus narrows, you hear her. 

“She’s back,” Halsin sneers. “Kagha has finally returned.”

You look at him, your eyes wide as if you’re seeing him for the first time. The expression on his face is nothing short of raw, wild fury. He is the snarl of a wolf, he is the crackle of wildfire, he is the dark promise of death in a row of pointed teeth. 

He draws his arm back, stopping to take both of your small hands in his. His expression softens. “I will tell all,” he says. “But not before I punish the one who did this to you. Not before I see justice properly served for all of the disarray and cruelty enacted in my absence.”

You try to find a way to answer, but you can’t, settling instead for a dumbfounded nod. 

He stands and, once at his full height, shifts the position of his hand to cradle yours; offering you help, but also offering you the chance to help yourself. You grasp that hand and he tightens the muscles of his arms as you use his strength and stability to get yourself back up to your feet. 

“I am loathe to leave you down in this terrible place…but if you’re too frightened to face her…” he offers. 

“I’m not…” you say. “O-or at least I won’t be…not with you there.”

He graces you with the first real smile he’s given you since he suddenly appeared before you and you think you may no longer need the sun if he can continue looking at you just like that. 

“Come,” he says. “I want you to be part of this discussion.”

You follow Halsin, dwarfed in his shadow as you ascend the craggy steps, your soft leather shoes uncomfortably soggy and embarrassingly loud as you go. It feels almost surreal to be acknowledged by Halsin. Even more strange that he remembers you–that he seemed to have come to seek you out before anything else. 

There are more questions than answers immediately available, and you’re not sure you’ll have the nerve to ask those questions when all is said and done. 

When Halsin reaches the top of the stairs, he stops and looks back at you, giving you a calm smile as you quicken the pace of your last few steps to catch up with you. 

Now that you’re in better light, his brow faintly tenses and he reaches out for you. You go utterly still as he places two of his fingertips under the very tip of your chin, using the most minute bit of pressure to turn your face. 

“You’re hurt,” he says. “I didn’t see it in the darkness of the cells.”

You’d forgotten about the injury on your face–it’s not one you’d actually gotten to see before you were imprisoned, but you’d felt it throbbing for the entire day you were there. 

“It’s just a bruise,” you say. 

He removes his hand from beneath your chin and draws those same finger tips carefully over the curve of your brow. You wince slightly as he touches the most tender part and shakes his head. 

“There’s a split in your brow,” he says. “It will scar…”

You heave a little breathy chuckle. “Perhaps it will make me look more distinguished,” you say as you meet his hazel eyes. “You certainly wear them well.”

His heartbroken expression eases up and he shakes his head, hesitant amusement on his face. “If I wear them well, then you’ll be exquisite as ever with your own,” he says. “Still–that you were hurt because of my absence–”

“The fox was caught sticking it’s nose where it didn’t belong and was appropriately punished for it,” A familiar, haughty voice interrupts. “Don’t let the little bandit fill your head with untruths.”

Halsin takes your hand in his and pulls you slightly behind him as he also moves to block you from Kagha’s sight. It’s a protective measure, but he doesn’t force you to hide. Instead, it feels like he’s asserting his position as your protector–as the protector of any who are weaker than him–while allowing your agency to remain intact should you wish to take the lead.

“I don’t want to hear about your paranoia Kagha–I’ve heard enough of it to turn my stomach,” he says, that gravelly voice gaining an almost abrasive quality. “Tell me why I shouldn’t turn you out–or hand you over the shadow druids you’ve been cavorting with?” 

You watch as Kagha goes pale and your stomach churns with a dizzying mixture of nausea and fear. 

The shadow druids. The order of druidic magic that lay closest to the dark. The drow, the deep gnomes, Shar. Everything that represents the terror you’d once experienced crammed into a too-small cage. 

How could she? How could she want to work with them?! And then to have a nerve to call you a fox in the hen house. 

“I didn’t do anything,” you say, your voice quiet but steady. “I was only looking for a way to convince you that we needn’t go through with the ritee…”

“By snooping in places you DON'T belong,” Kagha says. 

“Perhaps it is you who does not belong here,” you snap. 

“I couldn’t have said it better myself,” Halsin growls. “You do not deserve to remain here, yet it is Nature who will determine what becomes of you. One thing is certain: my teachings have clearly not made the difference here. You are to start anew—be made a novice once again.”

“You can’t do that—“ Kagha starts. 

“I am the First Druid in this Grove and I will do whatever I see fit to protect the people who call this place their home!” Halsin booms. “Kagha, you failed me. You failed everyone who relied on you!”

“That fox is an outsider. Ever since you pulled it in by its scruff it has done nothing but consume priceless resources and shrink into the corner like a frightened rodent. If you so crave balance—“

“Enough!” Halsin barks. “I will hear no more of this.”

“But—“ Kagha says. 

“I said enough. Get out of my sight before I lose hold of my humanity and tear you to shreds,” Halsin snarled. 

He says it loudly and deeply enough that it echoes in the stone chamber. Even you flinch a bit at the sudden fury coming off of him. You can almost smell it coming off of him–the adrenaline, the willingness to fight and gnash at Kagha. 

Kagha has the good sense to dip her head in deference. 

“Understood, First Druid Halsin,” she says. 

“Good,” he says, his voice a low rumble in his chest. “Now. Apologize.”

Her head snaps up again and her gaze slides over to you, sharp as an arrowhead. The silence between you carries the same anticipatory nausea of waiting for a cobra to strike. You can sense quite well that Kagha may be properly chastened for her actions in the grove, but her opinion of you seems to remain the same. 

Pathetic, you remember. That’s what you are to her. 

“It’s fine,” you say. “I’m just happy to be free again.”

“No,” he commands. “It is not fine. You did what was right and were punished for it. Kagha. Will. Apologize.”

Your heart stutters and pounds in your ears. You know Halsin means well. You know he is angry on your behalf, and that he wants to see you treated kindly, but you don’t like confrontation.You think that ferocity is meant to be directed to Kagha, but you’re not entirely sure. Flashes of terror and confusion climb out of the burial ground of your mind. Memories of a cramped cage, the smell of blood, the sound of pained mewling, angry shouting in a language you don’t understand and the pain of punishment when a command you didn’t understand was not followed.

You don’t want this display; you do not want to be the vehicle of this lesson. You don’t want to rock the boat unless the situation is absolutely dire; especially now that you’ve proven just how little efficacy you have when you insert yourself into the matters of people who do not like you or simply have more investment in their own interests than in the interests of the collective. It feels like a leg snare waiting to lock down on you and you’re not sure you can escape it this time.

The tension between Halsin and Kagha sings at a tenor that pierces your ears. Or is that your adrenaline? You’re not sure. Whatever it is, your muscles are sore and aching; wound tightly and ready to spring at the first sight of danger; the first sign of movement toward you.

Halsin spares a glance your way, perhaps sensing that growing tension. Your eyes dart up to his as your body starts to tremble, not with fear, but with the urge to act. You are a small, scrappy creature locked in a stand-off with a larger predator. 

His expression softens, looking almost apologetic. 

“Easy, little one,” he says as he reaches his hand out to touch you. 

Your mind is more feral than human by then. Just before he can actually touch you, you drop into a crouch and dart away from him, your heart hammering painfully against your sternum like an animal backed in a cage. You feel that wild urge to scratch, to gnaw, to snarl. 

His expression drops into one of worry, his guilt clear in his expression and in the way he bends at the knees, lowering himself and making himself small like one might when trying to calm an injured animal. 

“You are safe, dear one,” he says. “You are safe.”

You don’t believe him. It doesn’t feel safe here, not anymore. Perhaps never again. 

A sound comes from behind you and you lurch forward, losing your footing on your slick, damp boots, falling hard onto the palms of your hands before you get back up to your feet and fly through the old temple and scrambling out of the door. 

You simply run, your mind a blur of colors and raw, terrible fear. You can’t even register and savor the feeling of the sun on your skin or the sweet, salty breeze coming off of the lower cove. You run, and run, and run until familiar sights bleed into unfamiliar ones; until the wound up tension in your muscles gives way to trembling exhaustion. 

You don’t immediately recognize where you are, but you find a little alcove tucked into a glen of oak trees, their trunks fat with age and their canopies heavy with acorns and boughs full of leaves. 

The sun shines through the eaves, coloring the long grasses in deep emeralds and dappled yellow light. You sit against one of the trees, feeling the steady presence of Sylvanus as you gulp in desperate, exhausted breaths, your heart still hammering loudly in your ears. You rest your head back against the tree and close your eyes for just a moment. You breathe, and then you breathe again. Distance from the grove gives you a moment to realize just what being in that place was doing to you. 

The politics, the prejudice, the precarious balance between the available resources and the people who needed them most. You always do better on your own. There’s a reason the form of a fox comes to you most naturally; they aren’t pack animals. As it so happens, apparently, neither are you. 

So why had you stayed so long? 

The fear of being captured again, perhaps. 

Or maybe it was the Teiflings–you’d found a little group of friends among them; enjoyed sharing a drink with Dammon once in a while. 

But neither of those seem to ring true for you, in reality. 

No, what really seems to be the reason is the other part of foxes that makes the most sense to you. 

That they tend to find a mate, have a family, and remain with them for life. 

A reality you’d spent the last several years trying to avoid. Because there was only really one person keeping you at the grove. And that person was Halsin. 

He’s just…

He’s everything you wish you could be. 

He’s everything you wish you could have.

But you can’t. Because at the end of the day you’re just some animal, fleeing the first offer of help and biting down on the hand that feeds you. There’s regret in this moment. Regret that you will never get to inquire about the expressions on Halsin’s face; about the reasons he came to free you so quickly. 

But the regret gives way to exhaustion and as you soak in the speckled rays of sunlight, feeling truly warmed for the first time in days–perhaps even weeks–you drift into a dreamless sleep. 

It’s the quiet sound of metal against wood that wakes you. 

The manner in which you wake is not a lurch; not an abrupt burst of movement that feels like you’re gasping for air. It’s the slow, soft blinking of an afternoon nap becoming an evening laze. In breathe in through your nose, slow and deep, faintly aware of the feeling of soft fur against your bare feet. 

You feel swaddled by warmth. Wrapped in the familiar scents of clove, moss and tobacco. 

You finally open your eyes and find a fire crackling before you, hemmed in by stones half-darkened by clay, as if someone collected them recently to guard the oaks from the danger of an unkempt flame. 

You don’t put it together at first that you’ve been moved; specifically that you’ve been laid down within a comfortable bedroll. That the smell infused into the furs is comforting because of the man sitting not even a few feet away; the source of the sound of metal against wood. 

You crane your head up to find him. Halsin Silverbough quietly focused on a block of soft wood, whittling away at it. You just watch him for a few seconds, almost dazed that he’s here with you. 

“Is this a dream?” You ask. 

His knife slips a little clumsily, he hadn’t noticed you were awake. He drops his hands into his lap and turns his head to smile down at you. 

“Do I often visit you in your dreams, dear heart?” he asks. 

Hearing that gravelly timbre and that tender pet name sets your blood on fire. You feel a flush rising to your face and you can’t keep from bringing the covers up to hide the evidence. His eyes crinkle with mirth and he lets out a pleasant, easy laugh. The easiest you’ve heard him laugh in…well, ever. 

“Forgive me for laughing,” he says, setting his little project aside. “You gave me quite a scare when you ran off like that. But I suppose I can’t blame you for reacting that way…I know how hard it is for you when tension is high. Forgive me for being inconsiderate of those feelings by making you the instrument of Kagha’s repentance.”

You’re quiet for a long time, unsure what to say. You finally settle for, “How far did I run?”

His brows rise a bit and he heaves out a bit of a grumbling breath as he thinks about it. “Hard for me to ever tell how long a distance is, but we’re somewhere near the goblin camp at that old temple of Selune,” he says. “Lucky for us that I cleared it with a group of adventurers today. Otherwise, I fear I would have made things much worse for you by tackling you down before you could get too close to their camp.”

You bite the inside of your lip, trying not to imagine your body tangling with his. Your face is red enough. 

“I’m glad you’re okay,” you say, still beneath the covers. “I was so devastated when you didn’t come back from the goblin camp.”

“I’ve been worrying about you since I left,” he says. “I was…I wasn’t behaving calmly when I found you. I wasn’t acting in a way befitting a First Druid.”

“No one is above their own natural drives,” you say. “Anger is a natural reaction to disobedience.”

He looks at you, his brow creasing. “You think I was angry because Kagha disobeyed me?” he says. 

“It’s as good a reason as any,” you say. 

He inhales. Hesitates. Then inhales again before saying, “You asked me about the scars on my arm. Why I didn’t want to forget them.”

“Yes,” you say. “But then Kagha came back…”

“I know,” he says. “But I’d like to answer that question now. Now that I’m calm.”

There’s something in his gaze that feels heavy and significant. You slowly rise from your position tucked away in the bedroll, letting the furs fall away from you. You notice, now, that your damp boots have been placed on the other side of the fire to dry, along with your socks. A small act of care a lesser man may have never thought to do for you. 

You turn to face Halsin and he turns to face you. 

“When we found you…that day with the drow,” he says. “You…reminded me of something I went through as a young adept. A time in which I was kept as an unwilling guest in a drow lord’s estate. As time goes on, it’s easy to forget those things that have happened to me, or to minimize what I went through. 

“In truth, I admired you. I admired how you snarled and gnashed at my hand when you were barely the size of my forearm. I admired the way you reached out for care when I housed you while you got back on your feet…for a while I feared that you were never going to heal. But then I realized that you were strong in a different way…in a way that I was not.”

“I’m not strong,” you say, shaking your head. 

“You are,” he insists. “Strength is not only measured in brute force. It’s not measured in violence and demands and power. It’s in how you wake up every day, how you rise out of your bed and try to be better than the day before. What I experienced…I shoved it deep down inside of me until the pain was forgotten, but I watched you facing yours every day.”

You’re shocked to hear this, because in your recollection you struggled each day. In the beginning, you were frightened of everyone and everything, and the only thing that allowed you to function at all was the desire to be worth the effort Halsin made in saving you. 

“Then…then I learned of you trying to stop the Rite of Thorns, and of you winding up imprisoned again in the very place you should have been safest,” he says, his anger a quiet undercurrent as he remembers newly. “I was so terrified that you would fully retreat back inside yourself, but then you stood and put your small hands on the stone door, snarling at your entrapments just as you were that day I met you.”

You remember his smile, a brief flash when you came to help. 

“Am I still strong if I run away from the grove?” you ask. 

“You wish to leave?” he asks. 

“...I’ve realized, Halsin,” you say, your voice quivering. “I’m not well suited for the social hurdles involved with remaining with the druids…and that the only reason I’ve stayed is because…”

You swallow tightly, words lodging in your throat. Halsin is silent, ever patient as he waits for you to speak. 

“Halsin, I have loved you for some time now, I think,” you say. “I know that I am young and that I can’t hope to compete with your past lovers or even the braver druids back at the grove. I know that you hardly have the time for romance, and that even if you did, you likely wouldn’t spend that precious time with me–”

“Hah…you sound so certain,” he says, his voice quiet and contemplative. 

It’s your turn to be silent, now. You bring your gaze up to meet his again and he is smiling so gently at you. “The only reason,” he says finally, “the only reason that I have not invited you to my bed is that I didn’t want to cause you inadvertent harm by placing pressure on you that you wouldn’t have the resolve to deflect. I didn’t want to risk my position as the first druid making you feel as if you couldn’t say no to me.”

You blink, the world coming to a screeching halt around you. 

Halsin…wants you? You?

You shake your head, feeling your face begin to blaze like you’ve come down with a fever. 

“Well, I suppose it’s moot,” you say. “I can’t expect you to leave the Emerald Grove with me.”

“You don’t have to,” he says. “I’ve already left.”

“What?” you say. 

“Did you think I packed a bedroll and a pack just to come retrieve you?” he says through a chuckle before he heaves out a rough sigh. “No, truth be told, my heart, I have long become disillusioned with my place among the druids in the grove and with you and the ache of old pains, I can no longer say that my heart is fully in it. The adventurers who released me…they are making their way to the shadowlands and I hope that if I join them, I can undo an old failure from a century ago. Finally heal the ache instead of simply avoiding it. I’m hoping that I can be more like you.”

You feel breathless for a moment, even more so when his eyes lock on yours. 

“It will be frightening, my love,” he says. “The shadow curse makes the underdark look like a stroll after midnight. But if you still feel the way you’ve told me you do and if you can trust me to continue protecting you, I would have you in my tent with me greeting each day together.”

You don’t speak, not because you’re uncertain, but because you want to savor this moment. 

Halsin loves you.

The bear has fallen for the fox. 

And he wants you by his side. 

It is the purest bliss you have ever felt. You think you could die happily in the shadow cursed lands if it is a sacrifice you make for him. 

You will protect him. 

And he will protect you. 

“Dear heart,” Halsin says, his nerves coming through his voice. “You torture me by keeping me in suspense. Please know if you don’t wish for this you needn’t agree. I know what I ask of you is–”

“I’m going with you,” you say freeing him from the discomfort you’ve resided in for years. “Of course I’m going with you, Halsin.”

The smile he gives you is nothing short of miraculous. 

“Nature blesses me with you,” he says. “Now come here, I need to enjoy you before I take you to meet the others. I have waited so very long for the opportunity, and I have until nightfall to make good on it, if you will have me.”

The image of your body tangled with his appears in your mind’s eye again. You rise to your feet and stride over to him, slipping your fingers into his wild hair. He cups the back of your thigh with a large hand before coaxing you to sit on his lap. 

Where he kisses you for the very first time.

May the oak father bless you with countless others. 

Taglist|| @itty-bitty-dancer @thoughts-of-bear @tryingtowritestuff24 @drabblesandimagines @soupaisu @ladyoakenshield157 @ladytesla @incrediblethirst @baldurs-gate-simp @themidnighttiger @rayskittles33 @hippiewrites @whisperingwillowxox @ethereal-sk1es @cosywinterevenings @themartiansdaughter @brain-has-left @any59 @madwomansapologist @midnightmoonytales @unaliveoni @im-just-a-simp-le-whore @kellerybird @tiedyedghoulette @jenn-duncan @thelittledoe @esotericeribos @robingreysantos @erwinmybeloved @itdobe-foggy @witchywannabe3263 @kaimxri @cryingoverpixelsetc @theoriginalannoyingbird

[malsorie]

i was waiting for a ship in BG3 to sweep me off my feet until i read @optiwashere’s Minthara x Lae’zel propaganda (their fics) and fell VICTIM. so i drew a little scene from this fic 🤕🤕

[scourgiez]

shadowheart! you can’t just ask dead people why they don’t smell like roadkill!

(loosely based on the party banter outside of philgrave’s mansion bc my jaw dropped lol)

my commissions

[brokebonewritings]

Moonlight Lovers

Gale Dekarios x Fem! Reader

Tags: 18+, Fluff, Smut, Domestic Bliss

Summary: You and Gale spend a lust filled evening together. One of the many shortly after returning to Waterdeep and getting married.

Word Count: 1.9K

Navigation || Masterlist

"The moon is a beautiful sight tonight, isn't it."

You jump as the husky voice appears to suddenly, but you turn around knowing that it's your husband. Gale leans in the doorway of the balcony as you stand at the rail looking up at the stars. You smile as you watch him walk to you, placing a kiss at the temple of your head.

As the cool breeze ruffled your hair, you closed your eyes and leaned into Gale's touch. His presence was a comforting anchor amidst the vastness of the night sky. Together, you both gazed at the luminous moon, its ethereal glow casting a soft radiance over the world below.

It seemed as if time stood still in that moment. The worries and troubles that had plagued you throughout the day melted away. You often sought solace in the late hours of the night, finding solace in the gentle dance between darkness and light.

Lost in your own thoughts, you whispered, "Sometimes I wonder what it would be like to touch the moon."

Gale chuckled softly, his warm breath tickling your ear. "Oh darling, if only we could reach out and grasp it. But sometimes, it's the beauty of things just beyond our reach that enthralls us the most."

You turned to look at Gale, his eyes shimmering with a mixture of longing and wonder. There was a distant look in his gaze, as if he were envisioning making it a reality. It was one of the many reasons you fell in love with him - his ability to see the extraordinary in the ordinary.

Lost in the allure of the night, you both continued to stand there. One of his hands holding your waist, as the other grips the rail. The world around you fell away as you found yourselves drifting into a shared reverie.

Suddenly a shooting star streaked across the sky, drawing a gasp of wonder from you. It was as if the universe was responding to your unspoken desires, affirming that there was indeed still magic left in this world.

"You've bewitched me, truly, you are even more stunning than the moon." Gale whispered, his voice barely audible over the gentle rustling of the wind. "I would give anything to make your dreams come true."

You turned to face him, your heart swelling with love for this man who cherished every ounce of your being. "And I, you," you replied, a tender smile gracing your lips.

He leans in and nuzzles your jawline with his nose. Peppering your skin with light kisses. As Goosebumps prickle your skin, you feel an electric current surge through your veins.

In that moment, you both knew that the moon was not the only thing that held irresistible allure in the night sky. The depth of your love for each other seemed to transcend the earthly realm, reaching heights that only the stars could fathom.

Gale's lips find yours, and the world around you dissolves into a sea of passion and desire. In each kiss, there is an unspoken promise of forever, a pledge to explore the wonders of life together.

"Do you ever regret what we have done?" You ask, the question comes suddenly and without warning. This causes him to stop his shower of his kisses.

Gale pulls back slightly, his eyes searching yours for any sign of doubt or hesitation. His hand gently brushes against your cheek as he speaks, his voice filled with sincerity.

"Regret? Never," he murmurs, his gaze unwavering. "Every step we've taken, every choice we've made, has led us to this moment. And in this moment, I am the happiest man alive."

"I don't regret it either," you reply softly, your fingers intertwining with Gale's. "All those risks we took, all those obstacles we overcame, they were worth it to be here—to be with you."

His face softens, his eyes reflecting a profound sense of gratitude. "To be with you," he echoes, his voice filled with an overwhelming tenderness. "There is nothing in this world I would trade for the love we share."

You're quick to turn and jump in his arms. You wrap your legs around his waist as he holds you against the railing. Kissing him with full passion, you let your love and desire consume you both.

"You really are going to be the death of me, aren't you?"

"I might be but I think you've got me in a bind here, Mr. Dekarios."

"How so?"

Biting at his lower lip, and pulling ever so lightly. You hear him groan at the sensation. "Because my body, and soul are forever yours."

Gale's eyes darken with desire as he holds you tighter, his hands roaming over your body. "And mine, my love, belongs to you," he whispers huskily, his voice filled with an intoxicating mix of passion and adoration.

Without breaking eye contact, Gale carries you across the threshold into the bedroom. You had forgotten just how strong your husband was. When he approached the bed, he laid you down gently before climbing above you.

His eyes burn with a hunger that matches your own, igniting a fire within your veins. As he hovers above you, you feel the weight of his desire pressing against your body, a tantalizing promise of the passion to come.

With a feather-light touch, his fingertips trace the contours of your face, leaving a trail of fiery sensations in their wake. His lips meet yours in a searing kiss, an explosion of longing and need.

Clothing becomes an unnecessary barrier as he undresses you with gentle urgency. After freeing your breasts from the night shirt you were wearing, he gently kisses around your nipple before taking it into his mouth.

You arch your back, your chest rising and falling with each labored breath. The sensation is exquisite. Gale's hands continue to explore every inch of your body, leaving you panting with need.

"I need you," you whisper, your voice barely above a whisper.

Gale's eyes lock onto yours, the desire within them burning hotter than any flame. He leans down, his lips finding yours once more. This kiss is more intense, more desperate than any you've shared before.

His hands continue to roam over your body, his fingers tracing the curves of your hips, the dip of your waist. You feel yourself melting into him, your body responding to his touch with a yearning that threatens to consume you both.

As he presses you into the mattress, he lowers his head, his lips finding the sensitive skin of your neck. You can't help but moan, your body trembling with pleasure.

His fingers trail along your inner thigh, the anticipation building with every stroke. You let out a soft whimper, your body begging for more.

Finally, he reaches the apex of your desire, his fingers lightly caressing your most sensitive spot. You cry out, your hips bucking against his hand in a desperate attempt to find release.

Gale smiles, his eyes filled with lust. "You're mine, always." he growls, his voice low.

And with that promise, he slides two fingers inside you. You gasp as your body adjusts to the overwhelming invasion. Your hand grips his forearm, nails digging into his flash as he begins to pump his digits into you.

Your body trembles, and your mind is hazy with desire. You can feel him watching you, his gaze makes your heart race even faster.

His fingers continue pushing deeper, stretching you wide as he adds a third.

"Please," you whimper. "Please, I need more."

Gale responds by replacing his fingers with his mouth, his tongue lapping at the delicate folds of your core. The need for release consumes you completely. He knows just what to do, just how to make you come undone.

His tongue keeps searching, delving deeper, threatening to pull you into the abyss of ecstasy. Your body is aflame, your heart pounding against your ribs.

"Gale, I swear to you, if you do not take me right this instant, you will become a widower." You pant through your moans.

At the sound of your plea, Gale removes his mouth from your core and positions himself between your legs. "Come now, we can't have that now can we?"

You feel the swollen head of his erection brush against your entrance. As he pushes in, you gasp, your body stretching to accommodate him. You feel his warmth enveloping you, and you can't help but whimper at the sensation.

He begins to move, his hips swaying in a rhythm that matches the pounding of your heart. Each thrust sends waves of pleasure coursing through you, and your nails digging into his back.

He pulls almost all the way out, leaving only the head of his erection inside you, and then thrusts in deep once more. Your eyes meet, and he leans down, his lips brushing against yours as he continues to move inside you.

You wrap your legs around his waist, pulling him closer and the sensation becomes exhilarating. You feel yourself getting closer and closer to the edge, the pleasure building with every thrust.

"I need you to tell me where to come." He says, his voice hoarse with desire.

Moaning loudly, you respond "Please, Inside me. Come inside me."

"You want me to fill you?" He grunts, as he thrusts in you. "Want to feel my seed spill inside of you." 

"Yes! Gale, fuck yes!" You scream.

His eyes glint with hunger, and he obliges, increasing the pace and depth of his thrusts. You gasp, your head thrown back in pleasure as he continues to fuck you relentlessly.

"So fucking tight," he growls in your ear, his breath hot against your skin. "You're going to make me come"

You reach up, your nails raking across his back, and grimace as you feel his hand cup one of your breasts. His fingers toy with your sensitive nipple, his thumb brushing against it in circles that send shivers down your spine.

Body screaming for release, you know it's close. You arch your back and beg him to keep going. With each thrust you feel his hips hitting against your clit. Your walls begin to clench around him, and you feel yourself tightening, ready to release.

Just when you think you can't take any more, Gale groans and thrusts deeper, harder, driving you over the edge. With a loud cry, you explode around him. Body shaking with pleasure.

His own seed begins to spill into you, filling you completely. As you continue to pant, your body still trembling with the aftershocks of your orgasm, Gale's thrusts slow and then stop.

He collapses onto you, his weight heavy but comforting, as his heart beats wildly against your chest in sync with yours. 

You both lie there, spent and breathless, your bodies melded together as one. The sweat from the exertion mingles with the remnants of your passion, leaving your skin glistening in the dim light of the room.

Gently, Gale lifts himself off you, his gaze never leaving yours. He kisses you tenderly, his lips soft and warm against yours, and you can taste the remnants of your lovemaking on his tongue.

As he pulls away, he looks down at your now-swollen lips, a satisfied grin spreading across his face. "That was incredible," he whispers, "You are incredible."

"As are you." You say, gently caressing his face.

Gale pulls up the covers and wraps you in his arms, his body still warm from the passion that just ensued. As he holds you close, your bodies still panting heavily from the exertion, you can help but marvel at the connection you share.

You close your eyes, feeling Gale's heartbeat against your cheek. "I love you more than anything,"

Gale responds with a sigh, "And I, you."

The words linger in the air as you both drift off, your bodies still entwined, and the promise of more passion to come.

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Die For You (Chapter 5)

summary: astarion takes care of you following the events at the ball.

rating: E (smut chapter!)

word count: 4.5k

pairing: astarion x you (fem!reader)

cw: 18+. smut, hurt/comfort, soft!ascended astarion, flashbacks of traumatic events (from previous chapter), consent is hot, soft dom!reader, porn with feelings, power play (if you squint), passionate lovemaking, light teasing, p in v, blood/vampire bites, creampie, aftercare. full list on ao3

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But if I touch you, would you feel it there?

Could I trust love even if I'm scared?

Oh, I wish I could give like I'm longing to give

Oh, I wish I could live like I'm longing to live

-

The ride back to the palace is dreadfully quiet, with nothing but the sound of the wheels against the ground as the carriage is being moved around. The night is cold, but you still have Astarion’s coat covering your shivering form and his arm wrapped around you protectively, providing you with a reassuring warmth. You’re still shaken by what happened and how helpless you were in that moment. Hells, you were strong – maybe not as strong as Karlach – but you were able to hold your own on the battlefield and yet you got overpowered by this poor excuse of a man? How could this happen? How did you let yourself get in that situation? Despite not wanting to think back on it, you remember what Astarion had told you that first night spent in the cells. Was it true then, that his spying on you assured your security during all those months spent apart? Were you truly as hopeless as he envisioned you? Were you not as strong as you believed yourself to be? And gods damn, how did he manage to capture you so easily back then, and why had you not confronted him about that too?

You’re taken out of your rumination as you reach the crimson palace, and he brings you to your bathroom where he calls for Amedee to prepare a bath for you before dismissing her to take care of you himself. He opens a drawer filled with the best essential oils the market can offer, taking the time to pick the right one. He approaches you and tugs at the lace down your waist, which makes you turn abruptly, still anxious from your earlier confrontation. He softly asks, “May I?” and waits until you give him a few nods, unable yet to speak, to undress you with the utmost care. With your outfit now disposed of on the floor, he takes care of removing your jewellery, placing them aside on the nearest table, before letting your hair cascading down your back. You stand in your most vulnerable state in front of him, with your crossed arms barely covering your chest. 

He moves between you and the bath, holding out his hand to help you in, his eyes never leaving yours. “Come now, love.” You stare for a few moments at his inviting hand before taking it to help lower yourself in. The relief is almost instant; all the tension in your muscles leaves as you make contact with the warm bath water and the scent of lotus flower hits you all at once, allowing you to relax. He reaches for a sponge that he dips in the bath before pushing your hair aside and lightly scrubs your back and shoulders. With the silence shared between the two of you, your mind goes back to what happened earlier, replaying the scene in your head over and over again, wondering: what could you have done differently? In another reality, was there any way for you to avoid what had happened? Deep down, wasn’t this your own fault for voicing an opinion at the wrong time? You could’ve avoided that encounter and that dance outside altogether if you hadn’t spoken just at this moment, you could’ve avoided it if you just kept to yourself for once, Gods dammit, why did you always have to open your damned mouth?!

The emotions overflow you and soon, a sob escapes you; you hate how all of it is making you feel powerless, how this single experience is making you question your whole identity. You hate how it happened so fast, how preventable it all was, but most of all, you hate yourself–

“Shhh, it's okay, you’re alright dear.”

You had almost forgotten about Astarion up until now, his voice yet again grounding you back in the present, bringing you back to safety. You sniffle, trying to calm the tears enough to speak up. Your voice is tainted with a roughness from your previous cries, “Why didn’t you kill him?” You don’t really wanna talk about what happened, but it was unlike him to let someone like this go unharmed.

“There is a time and a place for such things; a ball with the most influential figures of Baldur’s Gate was not it.” He says, dipping the sponge back in the water and squeezing it over your shivering shoulders to bring them some warmth. “Then again, it didn’t stop him from attacking you,” he grunts, “but believe me, I won’t let this bastard get away with this. All in due time.” He takes a deep breath, bringing your hair back to soak it with the help of a small bucket. The anger in his voice created a strange contrast with the attentive care he offered you.

“How did you know I was hurt?”

“Your blood, dear. I could recognize it from miles away.” You bring your hand to your neck where the knife has been; it had completely slipped your mind that you had been cut. “The second I smelled it I… I expected the worst. I came as quickly as I could.”

A sudden guilt washes over you, thinking back to the previous month. “I don’t understand why you’re doing all of this… I’ve been horrible to you ever since you brought me here.”

“A little, but wouldn’t you say I deserve it?” You hum quietly through your tears and a smile appears on his lips for a just moment. “I wasn’t exactly… gentle, in my approach, but I stand by what I said about wanting what’s best for you. I don’t see why I would go back on my word, now of all time.” He continues, now soaping your hair.

“Even after knowing I would leave eventually?”

“My feelings for you remain the same no matter where you go, darling.”

You nod thoughtfully; he might’ve been terrible in his approach, but he’s also shown countless times how much he cared for you, even after many months apart. It makes you think back to the first discussion you had with him, in the dungeons. “I still can’t believe you had me kidnapped.”

“Can you really blame me?”

You turn around abruptly, almost offended by his question, “Yes? What prevented you from just coming up to me to talk, y’know, like a normal person?”

“Well, to be fair, you had been avoiding me like the sun at the reunion, I wasn’t expecting you to willingly talk to me. You have to understand my side darling; it felt necessary.”

You sigh heavily, leaning back against the wall of the bath, “All of this because you couldn’t move on.”

Your tenacity makes him smile again. There you were: the fighter that he loved, the woman who stood up for herself. “I did really try, if you must know. I wanted to respect your choice to part ways, move on and build my empire with someone who matched my ideals!... And never have to see you again.” His extravagant tone suddenly changes to a serious one, “But I couldn’t bring myself to commit to anyone else. Every time I tried, I would look at them and I could only see… you. You were never afraid to stand up to me, unlike the others.” He chuckles, “You still do.”

You stay silent, taking in his confession, as he washes out your hair before standing up with a clean towel.

“Let’s get you ready for bed, hm?”

You look at him with tired eyes before raising yourself from the water and linking your arms around his neck as he picks you up. You find yourself observing his face for any sign of malice, anything that would tell you that his intentions weren’t pure, and you can’t find any. You’re not sure if it reassures you or terrifies you the most; to know he has been truthful all along and that you outright refused to see it. He lays you down on your bed and moves away to search your wardrobe, looking to find you clothes for the night. As he makes his way towards you with a dark blue satin night robe, you find your voice again.

“I know you said all those things, but you could have anyone else so easily… Someone who doesn’t argue with you constantly…”

He lays the dress at your feet and sits on the edge of the bed. “My sweet, if I wanted someone who blindly agrees to everything I say, I could have anyone. Turn another spawn and choose them as my obedient little puppet. I could have a thousand like them. You, on the other hand, challenge me everyday. No one could ever come close to you, my love.” He sees your eyes looking away, and he reaches for your cheek, stroking it softly. “When I saw you at the reunion for the first time in what felt like an eternity, I wanted nothing but to have you back. I crave you like I crave the sun’s embrace, Gods, I was alive again after hundreds of years and yet, I’ve never felt more alive than by your side.” He drops his hand to take yours, holding it firmly, and you look back at him. “If I could have anyone, I would still want you and only you. If you just let me take care of you, we could be so good together.” His voice is low and deep, it resonates through you, draws you to him. “Isn’t this what you want?”

Your gaze falls down to his hand with yours, avoiding his eyes, and you groan, those conflicting feelings frustrating you. “I don’t know what I want, alright? I–” You trail off, your words escaping you. “When I left you, it’s because I felt you had changed. I thought I had lost you to that ritual, that the man I loved was gone, but now…” Your eyes find his again, and he looks at you with a kindness you missed. When you speak again, your voice is but a whisper. “I don’t know anymore… I spent so long regretting helping you through the rite of ascension, I really thought it had turned you into a monster, I–” You close your eyes and a silent tear streaks down your cheek. “I thought I had lost you.”

He reaches out to wipe it away and you open your eyes to look back at him. “Oh darling, I never left. It was always me, simply better.” His voice is the softest you've ever heard. If you weren’t looking at him when he spoke, you wouldn’t believe the words came from him. “What I did, I did for us. With my powers, I can assure both of us security, forever, and that’s all thanks to you.” He pauses, drawing you closer to him. “You gave me everything. I will spend every day of my eternal life thanking you for it, in every imaginable way. Whatever your heart desires will be yours.”

You hold his stare as much as you can through your stressful blinking. He’s gotten incredibly close to you and you feel your chest rise higher as your breathing quickens, the tension between you two becoming unbearable. 

You look into his eyes, and you see it then: there he is, your Astarion. The same vulnerable pale elf you had ventured and shared nights with all these months ago. Under these layers of newly acquired powers was hiding the man you fell in love with, and tonight you had found him, at long last. You let go of a breath you didn’t realise you were holding in and your eyes quickly dart to his mouth, lips still parted from speaking up, and in an instant, your lips meet in a passionate and rough embrace. All the tension, the longing and lusting leaves your chest, pouring into this kiss. Your hands get lost in his hair, pulling him in as he pushes you down against your bed, his hands landing next to your head. 

You’re gonna regret that.

Panic settles back into you, the memories flashing back into your mind and you push Astarion away, breaking the kiss suddenly as your breathing quickens and your eyes get lost elsewhere. You’re back in the garden, with the nobleman from the party.

“Darling?”

His weight upon you, the dagger against your throat, his hand sliding up your thighs.

“Love, look at me,” he tilts your head upwards, and you snap out of the flashback, finally back to Astarion. “Hey, it’s me. You’re here. You’re safe.”

You sigh heavily, your breathing coming back to you gradually. The emotions within you are overwhelming; you’re terrified and enraged, yet, with Astarion you’re reassured, you’re content, you’re… in love. 

Look at how much he cares for you, you think to yourself. He wishes for nothing but your wellbeing. He wants to be yours, and only wishes for you to be his. Isn’t this what you’ve always wanted?

“Do you want to stop?” he asks, worried by your lack of words. “Just say the word and we can end it there.”

You blink quickly, briefly not trusting your vision following the last seconds that happened and your hands sneak their way over his face, caressing his cheeks. The softness of his skin, the surprising warmth emanating from him…

You shake your head; you need this. You need him. “Stay with me…” you whisper, your voice trembling. “I don’t want to be alone… please.”

His hand covers yours, and when you look in his eyes, you see what he's trying to say with unspoken words: anything for you, you have nothing to fear with me, I've got you my love.

As the tears overflow you, you bring him back into you, crashing your lips together. Your kiss is messy, with your tongues dancing with each other, both of you wanting more of the other, your teeth biting and pulling, with his fangs grazing your lips everlightly, drawing out the slightest drops of blood just to have a taste. He groans in your mouth at the taste of your crimson and his hips grind against your leg, pressing his growing erection on you as his carnal lust awakens. 

“Gods, I’ve missed you,” he says, with a ragged breath.

You feel as if you were possessed, your arms flying to the helm of his shirt, pulling to free him from this cage that his clothes provided, yearning for his touch that you couldn’t wait any longer to feel. Without breaking contact, he quickly removes the rest of his own clothes and discards the wet towel you were previously wrapped in, revealing your delicate skin underneath. The second both of your clothings are off, you push Astarion down on the bed, climbing over him and pinning him down by his wrists. 

“There you are, my little spitfire,” he purrs.

When you see a grin forming over his lips, you can’t help the smile forming on your own lips. You pause to admire him, taking in the sight of his dishevelled hair, the lust in his eyes; you missed this, missed him.

You close the gap between your bodies, laying your forehead against his, and say your next words through a ragged breath, “You have no idea how much I want to ravish you.”

“Take what you need, darling. I want you to have control, to feel like you’re in charge of your own body again. I might not have been able to stop what happened tonight, but I want to be the one who empowers you once again. I want to help you like nobody could for me. Tonight, your word is my command; I am yours.”

To have him at your fingertips, following your every word… His words stir something within you, to see how utterly devoted he is to you makes you want to truly make him yours. You can barely believe the opportunity he’s giving you, given the last time you spoke about the subject was after your visit at moonrise towers. You never had the chance to have another talk about his boundaries, but that was also before he became the vampire ascendant. You take his hands to guide them over your thighs, intending on taking up on his offer, “Touch me.”

“How,” his hands remain still on your thighs. “Don’t be shy now, little love. Tell me exactly what you want.”

You lean over him again, your lips barely apart, and you whisper your next command, “I want your hands to caress my skin.”

His hands start moving over your strong thighs, touching every inch there is to discover.

“Guide me,” he whispers. “I’ll only do what you instruct me to do.”

“Move over to my waist.”

His hands travel higher, sneaking over your hips ever so slightly.

“Where to next?” He hums.

“Up and down my back…” He reaches for the highest point of your back, down to the frontier of your ass, only grazing your cheeks. 

“I want to feel your nails on my skin.”

His grip on you changes, with his nails now softly scratching over your skin, “Like this?”

You close your eyes, focusing on the sensation. “Mh, harder.” His nails sink into you and you throw your head back as your back arches. “Ah– Just like this…” 

Your breasts are now hovering near his face and with each breath you take, they draw closer to his mouth. He could easily cave into his desires and devour you right then and there, but as promised, he waits until you give him his next instruction. Luckily for him, you needed this as much as he did, and neither of you were patient people.

“Now your mouth… over my breast,” you reach out to grab onto his hand scratching your back to put it over your boob. “And squeeze this one.”

As he lifts himself up, his mouth latches on your nipple that he relentlessly sucks on, while his hand massages the one you had guided him to. His fangs lightly scrape over the soft skin of your breast and you softly cry out before giving him your next command.

“Lick your way to my neck,” your voice is but a whisper by now.

Slowly, his mouth leaves your boob and he leaves a faint trail of saliva over your chest as he makes his way to your precious neck. Your hips rock back and forth, only slightly, relishing in the delicious friction you get from his length between your wet folds. Astarion wasn’t going to complain, but he felt like you could take it further, should you desire it.

“If you want something else, you can take it,” he purrs against your neck. “What's mine is yours.”

The temptation to simply take him in was too good to resist, but it’s not something you would allow yourself just yet. The friction it provided over your clit was almost better than having him inside you, and his reaction was even better. Teasing him brought you more satisfaction than you expected and you intended on drawing it out as long as you could. He growled against your neck, only nibbling on your skin there and you could feel how his hips jerked in reaction to your teasing. With your next order on the tip of your tongue, you’re taken aback from the realisation that you wanted this from him. There’s a part of you that’s terrified of what might come out of this, but the rest of your being desires nothing more.

“Bite me.”

He leaves your neck to look into your eyes, not believing the words you had just said. He needed you to say it again, to confirm he didn’t imagine it out of pure madness. That you, the woman he desired most, desired him just as much; just like you used to. Then, when you see the way he looks at you with devilish want, you allow yourself to take what you’ve been wanting for days. You lift yourself up and you position him over your entrance before slamming your hips down, crying out as you take him fully in one thrust. He groans loudly when he enters you, throwing his head back at the feeling and you take this chance to grab his luscious hair and pull back, hard. When he looks back at you, his eyes have gone dark with lust and the thread of control holding him back has gone so thin that it threatens to break at any moment. You repeat your command between two breaths, reasserting your dominance over him.

“Bite… me.”

You guide him towards the spot in your neck where you missed him most before releasing your grip on him. He kisses the spot in the crook of your neck that he knew all too well one last time, finding your pulse and sinking his fangs into your soft skin. As he drinks you in, your mind blanks out, completely lost in the euphoria his bites provided you, and all of a sudden, you’re back at your days spent camping, when this was moreso about necessity, when you gave yourself to him, when you would’ve given him everything. He’s still drinking when the next words slip past your lips between two breaths, completely unaware of the effect they would have.

“Tell me… tell me you love me.”

His teeth leave your skin and he pulls back to look at you, as if he was looking for something you weren’t saying out loud, and if he wasn’t looking at you then, he wouldn’t believe what you had asked of him. Nevertheless, he complies; as he is yours forever more, and you were his for tonight.

“I love you.”

Your half lidded eyes are completely lost in the sight of him with your blood on his mouth, and before you can think about it, your lips are on his, tasting him, tasting yourself, taking everything he has to offer, but also offering yourself to him. You didn’t want to let go, to break the proximity you had longed to share for so long, but the lack of air forces you to pull away. When he looks at you again, you’re stained from your blood, and two fine lines drop from where he bit you. 

“I'll take down the moon and stars for you.”

He grabs onto your hips as he begins to thrust upwards, and you let him, too dizzy to think of taking back that control or giving him a new command. He could have the reigns now, you had proved to yourself that you were whole, and this experience brought you even closer to him, the closest you had ever been. 

“I'll love you until the world burns down.”

Closer than this and your bodies would fuse together, your minds would meld as one, losing yourself into the other. Ultimately, love, no matter how twisted it had become, had brought you back together against all odds.

“I would burn it down for you if you just asked.”

And you loved him, gods, you hated how much you loved him despite all he had done, despite capturing you to bring you here. You promise yourself that you will bring it up again, make him right his wrongs, force him to–

“I love you.”

“I love you.”

“I love you.”

One of his hands finds its way to the back of your neck, cradling you closer to kiss your skin between each declaration, and it pushes aside any thoughts you previously had. He repeats himself with a ragged breath, and each time he tells you he loves you, it's with more and more conviction. His pace gets more frantic as he lets himself come undone for you.

“Love… I’m close…” He says, panting.

You pull him into another kiss, knowing you’re nearing the edge of ecstasy too and you’re reaching for any more contact you could have. You couldn’t care for words anymore, but you knew what you wanted, and you would take it, regardless of what he had done in the past. For tonight, you forgave him, and you accepted this form of apology from him.

“Fuck, ah–”

Feeling him shooting his hot seed inside of you is your unbecoming. With a few more strokes, along with his cock twitching inside of you, you finally go over the edge. As the world becomes silent, you scream in pleasure, finally letting go of all those feelings you had bottled up over the last days. The build up in your belly reaches your heart, and there’s something of an explosion in your chest, fireworks in your head, and you see stars for a mere moment. When you come down from your high, you let yourself fall over him, completely spent, with your head hiding in the crook of his neck.

You stay like this for a while, with him still inside you and you resting on top of him, allowing yourself to catch your breath, and he holds you close as if you were but a fleeting image that was going to vanish, but by now, you had no intention of leaving.

The way he strokes your hair aside so casually makes you yearn for more of it. It feels so intimate, the tenderness of it all making you feel as if you had never been apart, not for an instant. 

“So much for getting you clean earlier, mh?” You laugh quietly in the crook of his neck; had you known the night was going to take such a turn, maybe you would’ve waited before taking that bath. “Now, let me take care of you, the way you deserve it.”

You groan, too tired to care about getting clean, and when he sees that you had no intention of getting up, he lifts you up himself to carry you to your bath. He calls on Amedee once again to get new warm water, and this time he hops in the bath with you to clean you up. You hum, content with the way he cared for you so dearly, and once you’re both clean, he takes you out of your bath to dry you up. He carries you back to bed where he tucks you in and the moment he turns to leave you stop him.

“Stay with me tonight.”

“Eager for more, are we?”

“My word is your command – remember? Stay.”

Your words are direct, but your voice is soft and your eyes are almost pleading with him; he can’t find it in himself to refuse you. As he joins you in bed, you hold him close, resting your head over his chest once again, and you let yourself be lulled to sleep by the unfamiliar sound of his calm heartbeat, along with the crackling of the fireplace.

-

Can I move you? Can I soothe your fear?

Could you trust love, if I prove it's there?

Thank you for reading! Comments, reblogs, and likes are very much appreciated <3

tag list (comment or message me if you want to be added!): @grimistheangerinmystares @silverfangmarks @roguishcat @nyx-knox @anacdoce @jwera

[starshinegazer]

Shoutout Sunday

I just wanted to collect some of the most memorable Astarion fanfics I've read so far and to give them and their authors a big ol' shoutout. These are some of the fics I strongly suggest others to check out, if you haven't yet.

Also, please feel free to comment and recommend your favorites as well! And, if you know of some of these authors on tumblr, lemme know, so I can add them too :) I'm not too good with words, so I'll be slapping some of the authors own words as descriptions (for now). Oh, and do be mindful of tags etc etc... Here goes, in no particular order:

Pieces Still Stuck In Your Teeth by howlsmovinglibrary (@wetcatspellcaster) "The Vampire Ascendent has crossed a line. Eleven years after making the biggest mistake of her life and losing the man she loved, tiefling wizard (now Archmage) Rosalie decides it’s time to put this Astarion in the ground for good. Hopefully, both her head and her heart are strong enough to see this awful task through to its end."

An Honest Lie by howlsmovinglibrary (@wetcatspellcaster) "Astarion and Rosalie think they understand each other perfectly, but they have each fallen prey to the other’s mask. As they both go forward with their adventure, will either of them dare to be honest?"

A Crooked Touch by eyes_of_the_lamb "If you want to read a story where Astarion is sweet from the start and Tav is here to fix him, this isn't the one. If you want to read about two terribly broken men spending a good long while making each other worse before they make each other better, this might be for you. If you thought the in-game romance was a little too easy and it should have been ten times more painful and difficult to convince Astarion he's worthy of love, this is definitely for you."

Perfect Slaughter by Imagineitdear (@imagineitdearies ) "Tyrus, a low-born drow with aspirations for necromantic wizardry, finds none of the hospitality he expected from his new noble patron, Cazador Szarr. Quickly he loses his life and future, his hopes and dreams—only to find something new to fight for in the unlikely arms of Cazador’s least favorite spawn."

A Novel Experience by meanboss (@meanbossart ) "Initially just an epilogue for my own game campaign with my big meaty dark urge drow, turned whole story which I accidentally deleted and am now reuploading, my bad LOL

Hope you enjoy!"

Carving Through The Dark by skitter "The realm is safe and the story is over.

Wren and Astarion descend into the Underdark in search of a new purpose, and learn a few things along the way. Namely, that healing isn't linear and sometimes love takes the long way round."

Blood In The Weave by gingealish "There is no need to breathe, but I miss it all the same. The suffocating silence, the desperate darkness have encapsulated me for I don’t even know how long; It could have been tendays or years. I’ve long since accepted my punishment, stopped trying in vain to crack the seal of my tomb against the onslaught of panic and hunger. Now I lay here, thinking of the friends I’ve lost, the lover who turned on me, and how to finally get even.

Astarion is the new Big Bad Evil Guy. Spawn Tav is rescued by a familiar face. "

When He’s all but Forgotten How to Love Again by bg_brainrot "You saved Baldur’s Gate almost 300 years ago. You died 150 years ago. On a new life now, you find that memories from your past lead you to a specific silver-haired man. Who was he, and why won't he leave you be? tldr; An Elf-Tav reincarnation story where Tav dreams about Astarion in their nightly reveries and eventually seeks him out once they reach maturity. Things definitely totally go well."

More Than Any Words by mataglap "They have saved the city and possibly the world. All is great and everyone is happy... except Astarion has been banished back into the shadows, and Tav is stuck in an uneven battle with his own oath. He's losing the fight. He knew he would from the moment he fell for Astarion. But he can't lose yet, not before they find a way for Astarion to walk in the sun again."

Inexhaustible Oil by homeward_bound "This is the absolute opposite of a redemption fic. A post-canon, fall-from-grace, "I can make you infinitely worse" kind of story, in which there is no simple happy ending. But there's mystery on the way. And dragons. True love, even. So if you're fine with that, come aboard. It's going to be a wild ride."

[killerpancakeburger]

Just reblogged art of Astarion covering Tav's mouth to shut them up and now I have a mighty need to write about Astarion and Tav in Baldur's Gate, separated from the rest of the party for a reason or another, in a romantic relationship, coming across one of those person Astarion do NOT want to come across because of shit he did in the past, so he drags Tav into a nearby alley, pins them against the closest wall, covers their mouth with his hand and whispers, firmly: "Not. A sound."

And he's busy checking they don't get caught but Tav is just standing there, having no idea what's happening, but letting Astarion doing what he wants because they trusts him, and thinking to themselves: "Hm. That's hot actually."

[littlelovelyra]

I got diagnosed with ADHD ->

YUP, after 28 years of struggling to understand why I was so different to others we finally found the answer. Much to my parents disgust. I've taken a bit of a break from writing because its been a heavy process as well as ya girl has started Ritalin and that has significantly impacted me and I am currently learning ways to do things healthily.

Ritalin has been a huge help for me to focus on my day to day tasks and I feel calmer and in control, however, one slight little hiccup is that I don't get distracted with writing out daydreams anymore... I do miss the creativity of it so I want to pick it back up in a healthier way.

So really I guess this is an update for that in a way but also maybe a little vent to throw out to the void. I am glad I finally have some questions answered and that I am finally getting the appropriate help.

I promise (for those very few who read my work) I will be writing more <3

[nivasichakano]

Fallen — A Bloodweave Short Story

A quick and angsty Bloodweave hurt/comfort one-shot inspired by @calolily's beautiful drawing for @ym523 * Gale doesn’t see Astarion fall. Nor does he hear him. So it’s a shock when he notices red-streaked white curls scattered across the Grymforge floor, blood pooling thick and glossy, running in rivulets through the cracked stone. 

“Astarion!” Gale is surprised by the pain in his own voice. The cry is pulled out of him like someone reaching down his throat and tearing out his heart. “No!”

An anguished search for Shadowheart finds the cleric crouched behind a stone pillar, trying to shield herself against the Mind Mastery spells being flung her way. Wyll is on the other side of the cavernous space, locked in combat with two heavy-set Duergar at once. Astarion lies dangerously close to the shattered edge of the floor and the roiling lava beyond. 

If Gale were thinking logically, he would remember that Shadowheart has an Amulet of Misty Step. He would call to her to heal the vampire, then return to his own duel with the charming Sergeant Thrinn, who’s currently trying to spray him with poison. 

If the past few weeks are anything to go by, however, Gale Dekarios’ world-renowned sense of reasoning goes out of the window when it comes to Astarion Ancunin.  Read the rest on AO3!

[ladylarynn]

Alleyway Affairs

Summary: The last you heard from Astarion, he told you to "die screaming." Months later, you find each other again. Only this time, deep in the city, in an alley under nightfall. Perhaps, he will bleed you dry. Or perhaps, he has other plans for you.

Rating: E

Word Count: 7.2k

Pairing: Astarion x you (fem!reader)

cw: 18+ REVIEW THE TAGS! established relationship pre breakup, post ending for BG3, blood drinking, exhibitionism, p in v, creampie, explicit consent, angst, additional tags posted on ao3

read on ao3

or keep reading below <3

It is in the end— after the blood had been shed, the world nearly ended. When you are once more alone, companions returning to their new obligations or new plights, when you are left with kind consolation and heavy goodbyes.

The city sleeps, yet often you do not. Residing at differing inns from night to night, you attempt to lead a life nameless once more. A lack of sleep, a predilection for forgetting. Perhaps that is also what led you here, entering a tavern prevalent in profound impropriety and bottomless drink.

The ale is a warm rush of current down your throat, a haze settling inside your mind. The scintillating fireplace of licking flames cast rhythms of shadow across unfamiliar faces.

You’re here on business… or rather, pursuing a whisper of opportunity. It isn’t unnatural to be stood up in this line of inquiry. Not many mages boast of wish spells, and even fewer know how to get their hands on one.

You had managed to not resort to needing Gale this long… so. Other avenues became necessary.

At least that is what you keep telling yourself as you keenly monitor the door.

One door close, and you pick lock it open, but your years in this line of work were hells bent on survival. Not miracles.

Yet, your miracles are not here. At least, one of them doesn’t show. The other you hope won’t.

You groan, cradling your head with your hands, then kneading balled fists against your eyes. The man eyeing you from across the bar coughs to conceal his sudden disinterest. Who can blame him? You’re pathetic.

“The deal is still on the table. You play your part just like you used to, and I help. The hero act wasn’t going to last, you know. Coming here is a testament to the matter.”

You grip the handle of your mug, your drink swishing to and fro. It all but topples over onto the front of your undershirt as you raise it to your lips. You take deep gulps, liquid dribbling down your chin. You smear it away.

You cannot get drunk quickly enough.

However, as the hour plays on, you begin to curse your tolerance of drink, as well as everything else gone wrong in the past months.

Fuck.

Gods, surely there is no use to this anymore—

A honeyed voice pollutes your buzz. It is a suave soliloquy, with syllables like rose petals. It wafts in the air, laughter silk soft with an undercut of severity. It prickles up your posture, and you are shrouded in thorns.

Fuck.

As sly as you may, you cast a glance over your shoulder, and there he is.

Without the tadpole's defiance of the sun, Astarion was thrust into the night once more, cavalierly caviling at the young man draped under his arm. The man is of noble build, with embroidered robes adorned in maroon and amethyst gems. The noble’s cheeks are a flush delight fueled by the splendor of Astarion’s charm.

The sight is the sea collapsing into you, wave after wave. Breath sealed in sinking lungs. You will drown if you don’t look away.

There are two awful realities to unfold before you.

One, how dismayingly odd the noble is for someone of Astarion’s taste. Just met his prime, early twenties, broad shoulders, and bright-eyed. These types were the kind Astarion would toy with until they bristled and cried. Not the kind he’d be involved with.

You swiftly shift to stare into your half-empty glass. A shiver stills your sigh.

Unless of course, the context of taste meant something entirely different.

Then it was most certainly his type.

You take a swig.

Second.

Astarion is philandering.

With your intended mark.

You shouldn’t look again. But you must be sure. On first inspection, the noble fits the bill all right; medium height, thin build, pale eyes, hair, and skin. The description checks out, everything but the—

A cacophony of swooning laughter manages to reach your side of the tavern.

“He laughs like a hyena.”

You turn, slow as if that will help conceal your gaze. It doesn’t.

Crimson eyes meet yours, and dread pollutes your surroundings, your thoughts, and your breath. Your stomach drops, the skin of your arms pebbling as a chill slinks its lips down your spine.

This is not how you planned the night to go.

There it is again, the clutch of your gut, the crater burrowing itself into the trenches of you.

You had not died— screaming, as he had last proclaimed. The reminder of those words, dripping in contempt, brazen in believed betrayal. They had marred your thoughts and sought to spoil the solace of your soul. The severance of your last encounter had sunk its teeth into you, chewed sinew, and spit out the scraps.

Astarion.

He whom you had given everything— anything— for. Gone. Never to be seen again.

But he is here— and you… you realize you really shouldn’t be.

You can’t be.

The mark can wait. There will be other nights.

Within a fluid movement, you set your mug aside, reach into your pouch, and spill gold coins across the counter. You make haste from the bar to the entrance. You slide behind shoulders and wade through strangers cackling and clinking cups unaware.

Even so, you feel him watching you.

The tavern bell chimes. You cringe with the acknowledgment it calls forth to you. The breath in your lungs constricts, the agony in the urgency to flee from his line of sight too much to endure.

Why is he here? Shouldn’t he be in the Underdark?

Did recognition pass across his countenance? He could have seen you but not see you.

This is the only comfort you can indulge in as you quicken your pace, the city lamp yellow hues sluicing and splaying across the street.

You’ve sobered up. Yet, everything is spinning. Swaying. Turning inside out.

You’re panicking.

A bell chimes and footfalls patter behind you. You don’t even need to look. The thought is nauseating. How well-versed you are in the sound of his steps.

“I hope you die screaming.”

It resounds in your mind just as he calls your name. It sounds foreign. It sounds like a memory. Like a dream, you never wake from.

You have half a mind to keep walking, roaming further into the city and into the surrounding, comforting dark.

He could want to make his past proclamation true.

Perhaps you’d let him if only to be rid of this ache.

This burden you bury beneath your smiles and behind your eyes, the loss of him you carry in your voice.

How it is known by all who know you.

“I didn’t think I would find you alone, in my time of the night. Where are your companions, darling?” His tone tinged in disdain; his darling laced with ridicule. There is a slow decline in breath. It staggers still in your lungs, like tangled strands caught in dragging dingers. Is it dread? Is it grief? Perhaps it is a touch of mourning.

You know now what you knew the last you spoke— you are the bearer for all that did not come to fruition. You are the reason he won’t say our companions. Our friends.

And though you loathe yourself for losing him, though you blame yourself for all the things you previously thought you were sheltering him from. You cannot endure this in silence any longer. Not when the chance to confront him is here.

Who are you to run away? You have spent your whole life running.

This isn’t imprisonment. This isn’t a life sentence.

Yet… isn’t it?

You can’t go on like this. You haven’t been.

You whip around, and Astarion stumbles into you. As you collide— his scarlet eyes widen, and a flash of recollection startling your pulse. The effect of being this close isn’t lost on you. You can see, even under the dim lanterns glow the crease of his brow, the wrinkle in his nose, the dip of his cupid’s bow. But just as sudden, he steels himself, stepping back and straightening, a glint in his glare, wrath warping his mouth and brandished on his tongue.

You muster the will to speak before he can.

“They were your companions as much as they were mine,” you bite back, though the spite of it makes you hesitate. Whatever you feel doesn’t matter.

“But…” you sigh, then start again, “that matters not…” you offer.

Your companions who watched you wither away the moment he left. Companions who offered you condolences yet spoke in passing of how things may have been different— for Astarion’s fate. It was blameless yet… how could they have not blamed you? And maybe that is why when it was over, you pushed them all away.

That is why you offered goodbyes in place of being a part of the next journey.

Karlach’s hand on your back, Shadowheart’s curt smile, La’zel’s tense jaw, Gale’s exasperation, Wyll’s sorry nod.

You’d never known family—let alone friends. So why grieve yourself over it?

Even if you gave all you could, even though you had killed yourself to keep the world.

It means nothing now.

All you can do is make him see sense. All you can do is convince him to listen, to hear you. You just didn’t think it would happen this soon when you are unready. When you are still angry— at yourself, at him, at everything.

“What matters is that I am sorry,” you plead, and Astarion teeters on his heel, bombarded by your insistence. But you can’t stop. Even if he thinks you are pathetic—distasteful or blunt.

Your hurt is too deep. You remember the vitriol in your supposed lover’s voice. You remember scrubbing your skin raw after the battle with Cazador. You remember numbly thinking if that was all you always were to him. A plot for protection. A ploy for power.

Hadn’t he said as much?

“I’m sorry how things ended. Now if that is all you wanted, let us be on our way,” you bitterly retort. You mean to turn your back on him, on all of this.

But just as sudden, the verses of carved intent burn at the inside of your wrist.

Dammit.

A contract is a contract.

Even if you walk away. Your past self has condemned you.

Abruptly, his cold, nimble fingers curl around your forearm. His filed nails nip into your skin— though the pain doesn’t end there. His touch burns through you fields of forlorn faith of anything different than the vile sure to leave his tongue.

He is incredulous.

“You’re sorry? You’re sorry? That’s all you have to say to me? Are you sorry to be reminded of how you refused to help me despite stating you would? How you ruin any chance of me ascending, of being more than my captor? You’re sorry?!” He bellows out, the way he does when things are far too outrageous to constrain within a reasonable decibel.

The words stick like tar and taste of arsenic. He must have rehearsed a version of these lines before, as he always made sure to hone his skill of slights. They puncture the air with each consonant, every vowel, as he draws you in closer.

His presence encircles you, a predator playing with its prey. He could end you here and now, drain you of all you are.

As if he hadn’t already.

You yank your arm away and vociferate back.

“I ruined your chance at becoming Cazador. You couldn’t see it. You wouldn’t. The spawn aside, you would have been damned. I love—” a near concession you barely manage to conceal, “I loved you,” you finish.

Dammit! You love him. His mean proclivity. His budding vulnerability. His gentle rebuffs. The sly quips, the grandiose turn of phrase, the sharp smiles, the soft uncertainty of palms alleviating parts of you that were left derelict. When the others slept, you’d glide your fingers through his strands of hair, humming quiet, close, gentle. You never knew if he truly saw you in the same way— as if you were precious as if you were his new comprehension of eternity.

It is why you’d been willing to risk your reputation to pay repentance. To earn some semblance of forgiveness.

Even if you had to become what you once were…

He wouldn’t have to.

And that is enough. Yet—

Yet, you blink and blink it back.

You can’t cry- not like this. Not now.

“I was trying to…” it almost tumbles from your tongue. Save you. That is what you mean to say. But it feels wrong to say it— it felt wrong even then, even if that is what you meant to do, even if it was done with intent rife with compassion, with desperation to help him. You know, deep down, he will despise you further if you admit it. You hadn’t wanted to fix him, but in that moment, you knew love would never heal him. Nor power. Not vengeance.

It was through choice— a choice you seemingly made for him.

So, you halt yourself. Shake your head, and turn away.

“Love?!” He sputters at your confession in disbelief. You hadn’t told him that before. It was never the right moment, or perhaps you feared rejection. Even if you had said it countless times, like the mantra pounding in your heart, would he have ever believed you?

He grips your wrist this time, preventing you from even daring to leave.

“I needed you. And you went back on your promise.” He says indignant. “I should kill you for what you took from me.” He gestures towards the blade sheathed at his hip and for an instant you… you wouldn’t mind if he did.

You’ve been beaten, bloodied, beguiled, spurned. What is left of you after the fight for the city? Victories wrought with death, a closure that did not fulfill. All of it was done with a broken heart.

Deep within, you cave.

How did we become this?

Your features crumble, brows pinching together and tears beginning to burn, threatening to descend your cheeks. You’d never let him see you cry. He’d heard you before… held you as you shook beside him. But never would you show your face. It was too much. For anyone.

Except… the night he left. In front of the others— you wept.

You cannot retreat into the night, for he knows the dark better than you. You had thought he’d known you better.

In the thralls of morality, you finally had the chance to do right by the world. So, you tried. Always.

It’s why he disliked you once. It’s why he cared for you later. It’s why he detests you now.

“Then go ahead Astarion, kill me if you must. But I… I love you with all of me. I promised I’d help you defeat Cazador. I never said I’d aid you in ascending. And you know— you had known I wouldn’t.”

It is a dagger through your heart, the tears have come, yet you cannot hide.

You’d said it.

Love. Not loved. Not the past tense, but the current, the now, the always, the evermore.

For a moment you think he didn’t hear you, didn’t believe you, or thought it a lie. With his proficiency in deceit, shouldn’t he recognize the absence of it?

Astarion’s resolve begins to crack. His lips twitched downward, his jaw tense. The watery remorse seeping into your voice makes him shutter, makes him step back. He clenches his fists, his eyes shutting tight. It’s as though he’s fighting— against what you say— against what has become of you both.

He opens his eyes, on the verge of tears.

“You had no right to refuse me,” he jabs his finger toward your chest, his words are crumpled, falling apart, “you said you would do what I needed.”

“I thought I was doing what you needed,” you insist, hands puncturing your wavering intonation, “That I— I couldn’t do what you wanted. And for that— I am sorry… I am sorry.”

You begin to cradle yourself, backing up, treading away from this… demise of you.

You mutter while meeting his eyes again.

“I know what you want now. I promise you will never see me again.”

Just as the others.

As soon as it leaves your lips, his hands are on your arm, at your wrist. He drags you down the dim alleyway between the tavern and the inn. He seizes you against the opposing wall, your body caged by his, your spine straightening to the cool press of brick.

He is all-consuming, a tidal wave. The moonlight combs through the waves of his hair and coruscates in the gleam of crimson irises. You inhale the aroma of his skin, and it riddles you speechless, the notes of rosemary, the undercurrent of bergamot and cinnamon intoxicating.

Anchoring you to the spot, Astarion is seething.

“No,” he pauses, squeezes his eyes closed, and shakes his head in contention before clenching your wrists tighter, pale red ringlets sure to form. “You don’t get to cry… you betrayed me. Maybe I didn’t become Cazador, but that doesn’t mean I didn’t become much worse.” A mirthless smile snags at the corner of his lips. He scrunches his nose, as if in disgust.

“Don’t look at me like I’m the one who did that to you. Don’t tell me you love me now.”

You steel yourself. You know the game he is playing all too well. You can’t let him see the wound he’s prying wide open, even if your heart is plummeting to the abyss inside your chest, even if your stomach churns.

You step into his space, causing him to flinch, his sneer slipping from his smug face. You murmur quiet, kind.

“You were afraid. I know. But power would not have quilled your fear. No one would hurt you more than you would have hurt yourself. You would have become everything you despise, and I couldn’t watch it happen.”

His grip has lessened. He looks at you with timid uncertainty.

Your voice hardens.

“You can hate me for it. You can kill me for it. But I never wanted to hurt you.”

What you say lingers in the air for a long moment. He regards you with an inscrutable expression.

But it shifts. It morphs. It becomes impenetrable, unknowable. Astarion does what he does best. He withdraws within himself. He counters with defiance.

“The path to the hells is paved with good intentions, my dear.”

You gasp as he releases your wrist, then bring his deft fingers to glide over the underside of your jaw. You shiver, ensnared by the sensation of his sharp nails, his thumb pressing against the seam of your lips, parting them ever so slightly. He drags his thumb over the plush of your bottom lip, and the breath strangled in your lungs releases in a broken sigh, his touch igniting a memory, only known by your skin.

He surveys you with a raised brow, with prowling eyes. His eyes peruse your body as his other hand descends your forearm, nails tracing an aimless motif. Fingers flow from there to the bend of your waist, featherlight over the fabric of your blouse. He curls his palm snugly on your side, thumb positioned beneath the underside of your breast. He can feel your inhale beneath his splaying fingertips. You exhale shakily slow, clinging to the façade of indifference. He tilts his head with a tsk of disapproval, then gently grips your chin.

He flattens his palm over part of your cheek and jaw, slanting your head. He brushes your hair aside, unveiling your neck, then skims his lips over the shell of your ear. He is so close, so familiar. The sanctuary of this nostalgia overcomes you. His cashmere voice is a susurration for surrender.

“Say you’ll let me,” he coos, and the sweet redolence of his presence pervades your senses. Yet, you must try to resist, even when his fingers at your side wade up and down, soothing, and — tempting. When his lips press beneath your ear, then over your pulse, warmth cascades down inside your core, and your knees buckle. You feel the heat bloom between your thighs, your sanity yielding from this all-encompassing yearning.

He drags his fangs over the nape of your neck yet does not bite. Instead, he hallows his cheeks and begins to suck, a violet blossom blooming into your skin beneath his mouth.

You tremble against him, another gasp fumbling from your lips.

“Oh.”

You feel him smile as he hums against the hollow of your throat in approval. Your hips jolt toward his, and you inhale brokenly as his arousal presses to your stomach. It is straining against the fabric of his trousers, firm and full.

Your lust threatens to unravel all sense. Your mind is in the mist.

Latching onto your heavy gaze with his own, he repeats himself.

“Say you’ll let me.”

He says it with resolute intonation, yet an inkling of doubt tinges the end of his sentence. It is not a command, though not a question either. Perchance, he is not sure for which he implies. If he is struggling with who he has created himself to be, or if he is still the Astarion you knew.

Never treading too far, too close, without reassurance. Yet, here, and now, he treads the line of persistence in proving to you the error of your ways. The error in endeavoring to see him, to know him for all the beautiful, the soft, and the gentle. For forgetting who he was made to be. For thinking ascension would be the thing that would break him when he, himself, is too far gone.

You ache with the love you have for him.

“Show me the kind of man you’ve become,” you reply, calm, “Why ask for permission?”

He hesitates for a moment, doe-eyed and dazed.

Then, he decides.

He tilts his head, looking at your lips.

“I wasn’t.” Astarion states, with a cadence of wavering insistence, and with it, you sink lower into the surrounding night.

Your body tensing, your pulse quickening.

His fingers leave your side and weave into the strands of your hair. He pulls your head into a slant once again, causing the nape of your neck to become completely and utterly exposed. The markings of his kisses are scattered along the skin, like that of his own design.

The moonlight swims in his half-hooded gaze, glints off his fangs, and fills you to the brim with trepidation.

There is a sudden, stark stillness in your body.

He mutters, insouciant, “I’ll bleed you dry.”

His breath is a warm flush on your skin, and then his fangs delve deep.

“Ahh!” you hiss, sagging into the adjacent wall. His lips enclose, as he begins to suck a stream of your blood into his voracious mouth. He is harsh in his thirst, his Adam’s apple bobbing with every thick swallow of your blood he takes, the tug of your hair eliciting a dull pain.

Despite this— a sinful sense of pleasure saturates the pain, as it always does when he feeds. Your pulse, heightened, like an orchid in full bloom, beating a deafening rhythm. It is reverberating in your ears, in your temples. Your fear once formidable now fleeting, flowing away with each draw of your blood to his lips.

The euphoria of feeding envelops you in a lukewarm embrace, milky mind a mirage. His grip eases on your hair, and he steadies your jaw with caressing fingers, the rush of your blood now a slow, steady pull from your veins. The effect of drinking entrances him, and you feel the hum of his moan, the lulling of his languorous lips.

It is as though you are being anointed, touched by phantom palms in all the places you yearn— the heat building beneath your skin like a fever that will burn you alive. Your voice, a lilt of his name, shivery and silver. He hmmms against your neck, and your fingers find their way into his curls, trailing your nails through his strands and over his scalp.

He groans, deep in his throat. It is just like the way he used to, those many months ago.

It is like your head is floating, the fever a flavor you sought to forget— but there is no forgetting, not when it is etched into the marrow, into your soul. You want him. So much, you are distraught with want, the heat coalescing at your core, seeping down your inner thighs.

He unlatches his mouth, just to mutter, voice drenched in desire, “I can taste it. You’re so eager for me.”

“I— I don’t—” you whimper in response, biting your lip. But as you try to deny—

Astarion holsters your wilting body up and shifts his knee, pushing it between your thighs. The friction is not nearly enough, yet all too much. You try to resist, yet all sense has vanished. You succumb to him, rolling your hips against his knee, aching for relief. Astarion’s breath catches in his lungs, and though your eyes have fallen shut, you don’t know if it’s to solely focus on the chase of a teetering high or to escape the city’s midnight mussitations. Maybe it is to memorize the motion of hips, the silk of his sigh, the bend of his fingers clenching and unclenching on your waist. It’s building and building, a relentless sea in the mellow meringue of his dipping vowels, the thrumming of this heat enough to drown in.

His knee drops, and despite yourself, you let out a faint whine. You think it is on purpose, a cruel way to deter your relief, yet he grips your hips and pulls you flush against him.

He feels so good, heavy, and thick, snug against where you need him most.

He grinds into you with every sashaying sigh, his head drooping into the crook of your neck. His dulcet exhales tremor through you, showering your head from toe. Your toes curl inside your boots, and your hands clench in fistfuls of his hair.

You don’t know how far this will go— especially here, only concealed by nightfall.

If it remained like this, insatiable, yet… safe. Not crossing the line…

Just as the thought nips at you, Astarion is wedging down the sides of your trousers inch by inch, your mound of curls peeking out from your underwear. He means to feel you, to know the wetness between your thighs. You clench them together, suddenly shy, sheepish at him having evidence of how eager you truly are, how completely he’s undone you with only this continual grazing of his hips, a brush of his lips to the shell of your ear.

You part your thighs, just barely enough for him to flatten his palm and curl his knuckles around your cunt, fingers a touch away from delving between your folds. Yet— he doesn’t. He hovers his fingers there. He is waiting for something yet can’t quite admit.

You know.

You nod, ever so slightly, and give in, letting him set the pace, letting him ascertain what he needs from you.

“Please,” you say, trying to withstand shifting into his touch.

His chest rises and falls. His ring finger slides over the seam of your lower lips, thumb a featherlight swirl around your clit. He teases his middle finger between your folds, sinking slowly until he is knuckle-deep. Your hands leave his hair and find purchase on his shoulders. Your head sways and you bite your bottom lip, stifling a moan.

“Mmmn—“

“You like this?” He says, not unkind. He gently pumps his finger in and out, in and out. A leisurely tempo of sweet torture.

“Yes.”

He lifts his head to look at you, crimson irises a thin ring, his pupils blown wide.

“You want more, don’t you darling,” he encourages you in a sly teasing tone, with a lilt of consideration.

“Yes—“

His ring finger pushes in, and you adjust to the width of them both. Your heartbeat is like a crescendo, as his fingers glide, soaked in your arousal. Again, and again, they pump into you, increasing in pressure, in pace. His thumb twirls over your clit, lazy circles compared to his fingers.

Your nose scrunches, your nails dig into his shoulders. He coos into your ear, praises of you sound so insatiable, such a good girl.

It’s coming, you know it when your hips begin to jut forward sporadically, the coil tightening in your core about to snap. Sizzles of stars pepper behind your eyelids, and stream down your spine.

But can you be quiet enough? What if someone hears you? Sees you?

The inkling of worry must show on your face.

“Just focus on my fingers,” he soothes, “on my voice.”

His thumb massages over your clit, and you gasp out a fragmented version of Ah—starion.

“Let me make you cum, sweetheart,” he susurrates, “you’re so beautiful like this. Clenching on my fingers, whimpering my name.”

His reassurances are relentless, and you tip over the edge of oblivion, rashly muffling your moans into his shoulder, into the fabric of his shirt. Waves of white wash over you, pulse thrumming in your chest.

It is pooling in your core, soaking his fingers, and dripping down his wrist.

You hear him give a shaky breath, wrought with longing and saccharine anguish by your release.

“I want you… I… I can’t— I need you,” he admits on impulse, his fingers sliding out from you, drenched. You tremble at the loss of them, nearly delirious in your post-high. His words make your core clench, make you feverish once more.

Does he mean to take you? Right here? Right now?

A concoction of concern looms over you, and you lift your head from his shoulder. You glance at him, then dart your gaze from one side of the alley, a dead-end brick wall, to the other side. The street before you is devoid of life, no Flaming Fist patrollers, no drunkards huddled in dusk. The lanterns give a dim glow, swaying in the cool breeze. Nevertheless, the light cannot reach you here. Though, surely someone will leave the tavern once the hour’s shade dissipates, to flee home from a brawl, or to sluggishly crawl into bed.

You look to him once more, and again it is as though he reads your mind.

“I know,” he sounds pained, head drooping. By the tension of his trousers, the shut of his eyes, perhaps he is.

“I won’t… we don’t have to,” he quietly assures, and it is so unlike the bravado of before. It is delicate.

You see him, the Astarion you had once been devoted to. Ready to fight for, to die for. And although it may lead to disaster, to the unraveling of your very being, you have never been surer.

This evidently wasn’t only about lust. If it had been, he’d have left you by now for your mark in the tavern. He wouldn’t have followed; he wouldn’t have touched. To be this close had always been a rarity done out of a need to be cared for, adored, to be cherished. Though he may never love you, though he may be planning to hurt you in a way worse than death, you… if only for tonight…

Your palm caresses his cheek, and you meet his eyes.

“I want you,” you murmur, “I’ll be quiet.”

A breath and his eyelashes fall over his eyes as they watch your lips. He leans in close.

“Let me hear you,” he states, then his lips are on yours. The seal of his lips eases the weight of hesitation from your skin, his honeyed mouth in harmony against yours. His tongue slides over the seam and you part your lips, tangling your tongue with his. His needy palms are at your waist, gripping and pulling you nearer as he angles his head, deepening the kiss. You nip at his bottom lip, and he groans in his throat.

You briefly come up for air, panting with the metallic aftertaste of your blood lingering on your tongue. A chill hits your exposed skin as he anchors his fingers at your pants once more, tugging them down until they fall to your knees. You step out of them, a flourish of fear amalgamating with shameful escalating arousal. He pulls you in for another kiss, as his fingers begin to fumble with his waistband. You aid in his endeavor, dragging his pants down until his cock can spring free.

You taste his steadying inhale. He breaks the kiss, then hooks one of your legs over his arm, pushing your back further into the wall, deeper into the cocooning shadow.

You are vibrating with anticipation, dripping onto the floor. He presses the head of his cock to you, and you quiver. He nuzzles it over your folds, then glides it back and forth, until it’s slick, until it’s ready.

You look at him, and the array of emotions passing over his countenance is like deciphering a blur of seasons changing. Your chest is heaving. You are fully bare, fully vulnerable, in more ways than one.

You need him so fucking bad, your hips push forward instinctively, the head of his cock nearly dipping inside you. He responds in a low, guttural grunt, hiking your leg a bit higher, bumping the tip of his cock against your sex once more.

“Say it again,” he murmurs, half delirious, half desperate, rolling his hips into you.

His brows are furrowed, white lashes cast over closed eyes. The damask rose of his flushed cheeks, the pink tips of his pointed ears, pale skin incandescent under the moonlight.

He feels so good, so heavy, and thick sliding over your sex.

He looks so beautiful, the corner of his lips smudged with your blood, the scarlet trail disappearing down his jaw.

But it matters not— his body, his beauty. It is all of him, in every way. The meadows of his mind, the lilies of his laugh. The valleys of his voice, the lavenders of his language. The willows of his worries, the serene of sunrise in his smiles—

Your heart could burst outside your chest. Your vision is a stretch of liquid silhouette.

“I love you,” you say, as if it is as natural as breathing, as simple as the sun rising at dawn.

He reacts in a tremulous exhale, nostrils a flare and the arm anchoring your leg falling a little.

A flush of embarrassment flames in your cheeks.

He probably didn’t mean for you to say that again.

An apology is on the tip of your tongue when he repositions himself at your entrance and sinks in.

Inch by inch.

“Ah—!” You gasp, yet his palm is quick to soften the sound as he encloses it over your mouth. You whine into his hand; your eyes rolling back as he sheathes himself inside your wet, hot heat. You squirm slightly to adjust to the girth of him. He doesn’t stop pressing forward until you are full to the brim.

Astarion pulls out almost completely, before slamming back inside. His hand falls a bit from your lips, and as if by instinct you part your lips, sucking his index and middle finger into your mouth. You peek at him with low-lidded eyes, and he curses the gods beneath his breath.

You hum around his fingers as he sets a sinful rhythm of a gradual outward pull, a heavy plunge in. The slapping of skin echoes softly in the alleyway, and it is downright disgraceful, yet you become lost in its soliloquy. He is undoing the tethers of your mind, diluting all sense.

There is no doubt he feels it too, his agonizingly slow pace increasing in intensity, his quiet pants becoming drawn-out moans.

“Gods, you feel so fucking good,” he mutters, pumping himself in and out, over, and over. You think you may go insane. His fingers pop from your mouth, and he takes hold of your chin.

“Look at me,” he instructs, and you comply, though it makes you blush, makes you boil hot in your blood.

“Say it again,” Astarion commands, and you clench around him in astonishment, in a flare of pleasure. You whimper unintelligibly, glancing away, embarrassment steeping in your face as a surge of wetness coats his cock.

He nearly loses control.

“Say it,” he growls out as he slams deep into you again. His hand clasps your jaw, fingers a curve over part of your neck, urging you to look at him once more.

“I love you,” you confess. You feel tears beginning to prick your eyes, as an impending orgasm sears within you something fierce. Your cunt tightens over his cock, you feel him throb.

“Again.” He orders through clenched teeth, thrusts now sloppy, uneven.

“I love… I—” You try to speak, yet the words are a jumble from your mouth. It’s coming, oh fuck… it’s…

“I love you,” you profess, just as your orgasm consumes you in licks of flame, in rivers of euphoric relief, just as—

Fangs. Fangs delve deep into your neck, the shivery silk of your orgasmic high becoming static fuzz, as Astarion begins to drink your blood like he’d gone centuries without it.

You try to speak, but you are left speechless, as with each draw of your blood, you feel his cock pulse inside of you, his body shuttering, his groans vibrating into the hallow of your throat.

Astarion sucks hard, his hips slamming into yours as he reaches his climax. His cock spasms as he releases his seed inside you, droplets of his cum dripping to your feet. The rush of your blood being drained renders you weightless.

He is devouring you, mouthful, after mouthful.

“Astarion—” you plead, fingers clenching in his hair, tugging at his head. He won’t budge, won’t stop.

“Please,” you beg, tears beginning to cascade down your cheeks.

It is as though he can’t listen, as if set in a trance. Your heartbeat starts to slow, your sight fading.

Your grip loosens on his hair. You don’t pull— instead, you graze your fingernails over his scalp, like an ocean wave meeting the shore, trying to remind him, trying to—

BANG.

A door swings open, the sound emitting from the tavern. Astarion jolts, fangs yanking out of your flesh, blood spilling down his chin. His cock slips from you, and you sigh at the loss of him. Your consciousness ebbs in and out. You slump against the wall, almost unable to stand as he drops your leg to the floor.

You feel his frenzied hands at your ankles, yanking up your trousers. You numbly watch his flustered movements as he pries up his own pants.

Foreign voices ring out, an argument of sorts. You aren’t sure.

You aren’t sure of anything.

Astarion is mouthing words at you. His hair in disarray. His eyes glistening in the moonlight. He attempts to keep you standing, while scouring the floor for something.

“Please,” he suddenly sounds so frantic, so afraid. You feel something bump against your lips.

“Please drink. Darling, please,” he implores.

He tips the bottle and something familiar hits your tongue. You begin to gulp it down, the bottle trembling in his hold as you do.

A cool nourishment floods your body, and your senses and your surroundings return to you once more.

A potion of healing.

You drink until the bottle is empty. Though you feel rejuvenated, it is not enough to wholly quell the effects of blood loss. The skirmish down the street seizes your bones in realization, a welcome distraction from what just occurred.

You cannot get caught like this.

You hand the bottle back to Astarion wordlessly, avoiding his eyes. You double-check your body and find at least you are fully clothed. The sticky mess between your thighs and in the crook of your neck, however, brings anything but relief.

“We need to go.” You mutter emotionless, attempting to brush past him.

Could you still scale the wall in this state? It’s a miracle you’re even breathing right now.

Astarion grabs your wrist and says your name.

“You can’t,” he states, and again, he knows your thoughts. It does anything but endear you.

He continues, “Not like this. We need to wait for them to leave.”

“Why?” You bite back in a whisper. “So you can finish me off?”

He recoils with the stab of your words.

Good.

You yank your hand away.

It would have been one thing if he’d just had his meal, but instead, he made sure he had all of you.

You don’t know if it’s him you’re more upset with, or yourself. A sob claws at your throat. You turn away from him, approaching the wall. You begin to scope out a path for your hands and feet.

“It’s your fault.” He declares, and you stiffen, unmoving. You peer back at him.

“Yes. All my fault,” you move towards him, finger jabbing into his chest.

You take your wrist, and without forethought, smear it over the blood still wet at your neck.

You extend it out for him to see. A contract, made in blood, visible only in blood, illuminates in a yellow scrawl of initials on your skin.

“And I have done everything to make up for it.”

His eyes widen in shock. He grips your wrists, inspecting the golden glow of letters.

“Why—”

“A wish scroll,” you don’t let him finish, “I complete the contract, and I get a wish scroll. It could… it could cure you… or at least allow you to live in the sun.”

He drops your wrist, shaking his head in disbelief.

“How many?”

“Seventeen.”

He lets out a breath.

“Only seventeen?”

“Of noble birth,” you state, “though still far better than seven thousand.”

He pinches the bridge of his nose in frustration.

A voice rings out from down the street. Someone is calling the nightly patrollers.

You tense and then turn away once more.

“You’ll need me alive if you want that scroll. So, let’s part from here. I’m sure I can find you once I get it.”

“This isn’t you,” he argues, “the hero of the grove, the savior of Baldur’s gate, of the world. You can’t tell me your feelings for me are enough to inspire this.”

“Astarion.” You slide a palm down your face. This conversation is going nowhere, and you’re running out of time.

“There are things about me I never spoke of. That our friends could never know. I wanted to be something different, and I was. But this is more to me than that. You are more to me than that.”

He is silent. Your voice softens. You’re about to cry.

“I’ll see you when it’s over.”

Before he can respond, a CLANG clatters from the street. A rustle of feet, and voices rising. Someone is being arrested.

You don’t waste time to find out. You begin to scale the wall, ignoring the throb of your neck, and the exhaustion of your limbs. You force yourself to climb until you’ve reached the top.

You don’t look back at him. You slide over the other side, then hit the ground running.

You hear him call after you, yet you don’t stop. You won’t.

You run as far as you can, bitterly knowing that when morning comes, at least then you’ll be safe from him.

[amandacanwrite]

A Plain Stack of Parchment - Gale x Tav/reader

Pairing || Urchin Backstory Tav/Reader (unspecified gender) x Professor Gale

POV || Second Person

Length || 3,200 words

Scenario || Gale has tasked you with writing your wedding invites so that he can finally take them to the courier. The only problem is, you don't have anyone to send invites to. In hopes of smoothing over the conversation in which you finally tell him that you really don't have any family, you attempt to make dinner....and destroy his beautiful kitchen in the process.

A/n || This is my first piece of fanfic I've ever shared publicly, please be kind to me about it. I don't really know what the rules are. This has been brewing in my head for days, though and I must get it OUT.

“Are you asking me to marry you?” you’d asked. 

“Hah…I suppose I am,” he’d responded.

He’d carried on about how much Tara would love it, and of course his mother. Words to fill the silence while you’d found yourself bound in stunned silence; words to cover his nerves while you’d worked through the shock of having been asked to join his family. 

Family…a real family. You’d never had one before. It had been an easy answer to give, a joyful one to give. 

“I accept. I’ll marry you, Gale Dekarios.”

He’d begun to prattle on again in that way that you’d loved and it’d been impossible not to smile as he spoke about arrangements. That was until he’d said it. 

“--And you’ll have invites of your own to send out, I’m sure…but that’s all to come.”

You’d not had much time to worry about it, though. Moments later he was kissing you, his fingers curled into the hair at the nape of your neck in that way that always made you melt. You could worry about this conversation another time, you’d told yourself. 

But that time never came around. Gale had accepted his position as professor at Blackstaff, and you both had spent so many long nights on repairing the crown of Karsus so that he could finally be free of netherese magic inhabiting the space so dangerously close to his heart. The day Mystra cured him was one you’d remember forever, because you were both finally free of not only the danger looming over your love for one another, but from the ghost of the past Mystra had been since you’d met him. 

But now? Now you felt regret. 

Gale was working late–a problem student he took on as a project needed his help. He implored you for the umpteenth time to please finish your invitations. They really must be sent out, dearest, if our families are to have time to travel for the wedding. 

How could you tell him you had nothing to send out? How could you explain that you didn’t come with a family; didn’t come with any kind of support system? 

His mother had accepted you as one of her own so quickly. Tara had become just as doting and fussy over you as over the wizard himself. But you couldn’t give him that in return–with your there would be no inlaws, no great aunts, no distant cousins…no grandparents should you decide to have a family of your own one day…

You looked at the optimistic stack of parchment he’d left for you, the quills, two pots of ink. He’d even left you his very own signet ring to press the Dekarios clan crest into your sealing wax, so ready for you to join his family that he would let you claim his name prematurely. 

You wondered if that would change once he knew…once he knew that you’d always been scrappy and alone before the tadpoles and nautiloid brought you and the others together. That was why you’d done everything that you did. It was why you helped Astarion destroy Cazador, why you did everything you could to figure out how to fix Karlach’s infernal engine, even now. It’s why you lifted the shadowcurse for Halsin and helped Wyll rescue his father. It’s why you’d urged Shadowheart to endure the pain of her curse…

Because they all had family, and with time they’d become your family. You’d wanted so long to have one, to have a reason to be good. No one had ever asked after you–where you’d come from, how you became who you were. And you were relieved to not have to tell the truth of the matter. 

You were unloved. 

Thrown away by a mother who couldn’t care for you and living off of scraps you could find in the streets or coin you could slip out of the pockets of strangers. 

So all you could do was stare at that pile of parchment and try to scrape every recess of your memory for anyone; any single godsdamned person to send a wedding invitation to. Damn Gale Dekarios for sending off the ones for your old companions. At least you would have had something to show when he got home today. 

In the end, you gave up. You took the time to put the fine linen parchment away and place the ink pots back on the shelf with the others. You placed the sharpened quills back in the glass goblet he kept dozens of others and…and simply placed the signet ring in the middle of his writing desk where he’d left you hours before. 

And then you decided you would make dinner. 

Gale always cooked, even after his longest of days. You’d offered to do it many times but he always insisted that he liked to cook. That he liked to feed you. 

But the sun was setting lazily behind the Waterdhavian horizon, and Gale was certain to be exhausted after dealing with his problem student all evening. Dinner was the least you could do. Sure, you were never much of a cook, but it couldn’t be that hard to roast a chicken and some vegetables, right? There was certainly no shortage of recipe books in the tower. You were the savior of Baldur’s Gate, you’d taken down an elder brain! Certainly you could figure out cooking a bird. 

You got to work. 

Things seemed to be going pretty alright at the start of it, too. Coat the skin in butter and herbs; check. Scallop the potatoes; check? At least you thought that’s what a scalloped potato looked like. Blanch the asparagus…what did blanching mean?    

 Okay. No asparagus then. Gale could be a meat and potatoes man for one night, couldn’t he?

When you put the chicken and potatoes in the oven to roast and started working on reducing some red wine and spices for a sauce that things started to go south. Things started to go south very, very fast.

First, you realized the red you grabbed was not a Waterdhavian red as you’d thought, but a bottle of fire wine. Fire wine was already heavily spiced, so the the spices you added would be too much. Okay, okay–so, you would try again. 

But when you lifted the saucepan to…hide the evidence somewhere, you also spilled that fire wine directly onto the stove, directly into the flame. You eyes landed on the quickly spilling liquid just as the puddle ignited.

“Oh, for fuc–”

The explosion was nothing less than spectacular; it sent you sprawling across the room, smashing into the brick wall on the other end of the kitchen. The room filled up with black smoke as you tried and failed to get back up to your feet. Your head was spinning and you could barely get a breath in your lungs. 

Shit, shit, shit. You needed to get up. You needed to get up and figure out how to clean this up before Gale got home. He was no stranger to explosions, sure. But gods help the man or woman that prevented him from making his morning cup of tea and enjoying it at the kitchen table. 

You steeled yourself. “Come on. Savior of Baldur’s gate. Come on, get up,” you said. 

But as you slowly got up onto shaky legs you heard a familiar voice booming through the room. A second later, a great storm cloud formed above you and then doused the room in torrential rain. Your soft-soled boots caught on the wet tile floor and you slipped, falling to the ground again. Gale had casted Create Water. 

“Nine hells,” he shouted as he ran over to you, cupping your sooty face in his rough hewn hands. “Are you alright, my love?”

His hands patted over your body, then. Your arms, your hands, bending and extending your legs, checking your ribs. “Is anything broken?”

“I’m fine,” you coughed out. “Just…wet. And embarrassed.”

“Better than being incinerated. Did I leave something out–we’re working on disarming traps in class and–”

“No, no,” you said. “I–I was just trying to make dinner.”

His face contorted into an expression that looked almost affronted. “Make dinner?” he said, sounding confused. 

He looked back at the smouldering wreckage of his kitchen. “Oh no,” he said as he slumped onto his knees and slipped his hands into his wavy, brown hair. “What have you done?”

He must not have fully registered the room he’d doused, which you supposed was very sweet in it’s own way. He’d only hurried to make sure you were okay, he didn’t think for a moment on the damage. At least not at first. 

“I just…I thought that you would like to come home to dinner prepared for you, for once. I was trying to surprise you,” you said. 

“Well you most certainly succeeded in that, didn’t you?” he asked, his tone biting. “This is just what I needed after dealing with Jeremi all day. To leave a destroyed classroom to come home to a destroyed kitchen. Just–fantastic.”

“I’m sorry,” you said. “I just–”

“Tell me that you at least got your invitations done,” he snapped. “That this wasn’t some sorry excuse for a distraction from planning our wedding? That you didn’t destroy my kitchen and almost kill yourself and potentially Tara so that you could claim you forgot again?”

He looked at you, his brown eyes tired and a little sad. You almost wished you had been incinerated. You knew he didn’t need to use Detect Thoughts to read your mind. You were certain your expression said it all. 

“Your silence speaks volumes,” he said as he stood up and started cataloging the extent of the damage. 

You knew he’d just had a bad day, that the vitriol was more because of the late hours and the unpleasant surprise. The sharpness of his tone still cut like a knife. It was all you could do to sit there and watch him clean up after you. 

You usually loved to watch him do little mundane tasks with his magic. You found the delicate flourishes of his hands so charming, loved the spark of joy in his eyes as the weave spun to meet him. But watching him now, watching his sharp, staccato movements as he zipped recipe books back into place and disappeared broken glass into some pocket dimension…you felt like an utter failure of a partner to him. 

You just sat there while he worked, wanting to get up and help, but afraid that another sharp comment would eviscerate you. You’d had disagreements with him before, of course. And he had been sharp with you about a few of your more adventurous choices (he still brought up the time you licked a dead spider once in a while.) But he had never been truly, truly angry with you. Not like this. 

He opened the demolished stove and took out the raw bird sitting on the bed of potatoes. He hissed out a tight breath and brought a hand up to pinch the bridge of his nose. 

“I have a feeling I am not ready to hear the answer to this question, but have you changed your mind?” he asked. 

The question took you by surprise. “Changed my mind?” you asked. “About what?”

“What do you think?” he snapped, looking at you. “About the wedding. About…about marrying me.”

“What?” you asked. “Of course I haven’t changed my mind, why would you ever think something like that? I’m more excited than I’ve ever been to be a part of your family.”

“Then why?” he asked. “Why have you been avoiding writing your invitations. I have asked you to do them at least half a dozen times now, and every time you have some excuse to tell me. ‘Oh, I just got caught up in this book.’ ‘Sorry, dearest–the tadpole headache strikes again.’ And now? Now dinner?”

“Is it a crime for me to want to make dinner for my intended?” you said. 

“My love. My flawless, exquisite, darling,” he said. “You are many things. A gifted fighter, an astonishing leader, an excellent dancer, and none too shabby beneath the sheets. But you. Are not. A cook. I allowed you to cook ONE time. A singular time in our travels together and do you remember what happened?”

You pouted. “Everyone got sick,” you grumbled in a low voice. 

“YES! Everyone GOT SICK,” he shouted. “Everyone got so sick that we had to spend THREE DAYS in camp. And do you remember what you swore to me that day?”

“That I would never cook for people again,” you said. 

“THAT YOU WOULD NEVER COOK FOR PEOPLE AGAIN!” he shouted triumphantly. “So then, why, my love. Why would you be cooking now if not to avoid sending your wedding invitations? And why would you want to avoid sending your invitations unless you had changed your mind about spending the remainder of your days with me?”

You nibbled on your lip and exhaled, looking down at your soot-covered hands. 

“I don’t…” you said, almost choking on the words, almost looking for a lie. “Gale, I don’t have anyone to send invitations to. And every time I think to tell you that, I get terrified that you’ll realize the mistake you made in proposing to someone who brings nothing to the table.”

“No one to send invitations to?” he asked, seeming surprised. He looked at you with a quirked eyebrow.  “No, I’m sure that isn’t true. We’ve talked about your family before, haven’t we?”

“Not that I remember,” you said. 

“During our travels, you…we…we shared stories,” he said. “All of those times around the campfire. The nights alone between us.”

You watched as his eyes became distant, as if he’s searching his memory for some cache of data he’s stored about you. He smoothed his hand over his chin before covering his mouth with his hand. His brow furrowed and his expression saddened before he dropped his hand and crossed his arms. 

“Gods,” he said. “Every story you told us, everything you shared…tales of treachery, of bar fights and street brawls, the times you told us you almost lost a hand. All the times you told us about those…strange meals you would scrounge up with that glimmer of warm nostalgia in your eyes.”

He walked slowly over to you and kneeled in front of where you sat, still soaked to the bone and covered in soot. He took your hand in his and squeezed your fingers. 

“I may be an impressive scholar, but I am a fool, my love,” he said. “All of this time together and I was always so caught up in how lovely it felt to be truly accepted and understood. All the times you told me that I was enough for you as I am and I couldn’t even spare the proper courtesy of asking you about your family. You must think me an ogre of a man.”

You forced a little airy laugh from your lungs and shrugged. “Not much to tell about,” you said weakly, swallowing as your throat became uncomfortably tight. “Nothing really at all.”

You bit the inside of your lip and looked down at your hands again, willing yourself not to cry. You promised yourself a long time ago not to cry over this anymore. No one got to pick their hand in life, it was useless to cry over it. 

Gale cupped your cheek in his hand, angling your chin up again so you’d meet his eyes again. “I asked you to write invites to a family you didn’t have. Then you tried to make dinner for me when you couldn’t do it, and I shouted at you for ruining my kitchen. Please forgive me, my love. I have been a miserable, self-centered ass.”

“I’ll forgive you if you forgive me for ruining your kitchen?” you offered.

“You have yourself a bargain,” he said.

He leaned in, pressing his lips to yours. The kiss was soft at first; chaste, even. It reminded you of your first kiss with the girl who sold papers in the lower city. But then it changed. He scooped the hand cupping your chin back into your hair, curling the locks around his fingers before smoothing his free hand up your thigh, gripping your leg and pulling you closer. 

He hitched you up onto his hips and stood, still surprisingly strong despite the more sedentary life you both were living these days. You draped your arms over his shoulders, loosely hooking your fingers together as you tilted your head, parting your lips to breathe in that ever present scent of cinnamon and warm tea. 

He let out a low hum, the sound of his buzzing against your mouth. 

He parted from the kiss and pressed his forehead against yours as he sat you down on the charred countertop. “You are lovely,” he said. “Your beauty, your generosity? As intoxicating as any glass of wine.”

You let out a little huff and are surprised when you feel a few drops of wetness fall onto your cheeks. Gale tuts, backing up just far enough to swipe that wetness away with the rough pad of his thumb. “I’m so sorry,” you said. “I…I never cry.”

“Don’t you dare apologize,” he said. “Don’t you even think about it.”

You gave a sheepish smile and exhaled, nodding once. 

“You know what?” he said. “The kitchen can wait.”

“But your morning tea…” you said. 

“Tomorrow, you and I will get tea together at that little bakery I haven’t had a chance to show you, yet. And tonight? Tonight we’ll walk to the vendor down the road, we’ll get some delicious Waterdhavian street food and we won’t think at all about the origin of said food, trust me, it’s not worth it,” he said. “And then we will cuddle up on the balcony and I will ask you extensively and exhaustively about your life before you met me.”

“What if you don’t like what you hear?” you asked. “What if I was never honest, or smart? What if I didn’t have a wholesome youth like you did?”

“My love,” he said. “When you met me I was a man with a tadpole in my brain and an orb in my chest that would level the whole of Waterdeep if I didn’t eat your precious magic artefacts. I was a man who tried to become a god, and when I thought of making the same mistake a second time, you’re the one who talked sense back into me. You’re the one who showed me that I was worthy of love, just like this.”

You smiled and nodded as he kissed your forehead. “You’re a remarkable wizard of great renown,” you teased. 

“I’m just a man, and a teacher with a student who seems intent on torturing me,” he said. “I’m also remarkably humble.”

“And?” you said. 

“And nothing you do or say could make me stop loving you,” he said, “Not even you…destroying my beautiful, wonderful kitchen.”

“I thought I was forgiven,” you said with a look. 

“I have most certainly forgiven, but I have not yet forgotten, my love,” he said. 

“Perhaps I could remedy that tonight, after your questions,” you suggested, wrapping your legs around his waist. “Give you a bit of a distraction.”

“It wouldn’t be the first time you made me forget something with your diversions,” he said. “That sounds like the perfect way to end the night.”

“Well, then, let’s get cleaned up and go buy some of that questionable food,” you said. 

“With pleasure.”

[hua-liansimp]

Ok but I need him I need more content of him he's the best murder lizard ever