Chapter Text
First there was light.
The rest of his senses come to him slowly. The smell of salt and nearby violence. The unfamiliar and unmistakably earthen ground beneath shoes accustomed to cobblestones. The sound of other survivors not far off.
These things come to him in time.
But first there is the light.
After two hundred years without its grace, you’d think he’d have forgotten how it felt. But no –even with his eyes closed he can see the pink touch of sunlight on his lids, can feel the warm on his skin.
And then he opens his eyes, and for the first time in so long, daylight greets him.
First there was light.
*
And then there was Tav.
These things don’t happen simultaneously. But in his memory, they will. Later, these moments will run together, blur on the edges. But he will insist there is no mistake, grinning wickedly.
There was the light, and then there was Tav.
*
None of them know why Tav’s face remains hidden, and he doesn’t much care.
Pale eyes and an unkempt braid the color of wheat, the rest of them neatly hidden in worth leather armor dyed a faded, sun-stained blue. A headwrap scarf tucked neatly across the bridge of their nose and pinned shut.
Their neck like a wrapped gift.
Those first moments, unkind and panicked they were, were still marked in his mind. His teeth so close to a jugular and for the very first time, able to bite down.
The smell of elvish blood like sunlight on a breezy day.
He lasts much longer than he would have wagered in a fair bet, he tells himself. Late nights stalking from camp to try a hand at honest hunting. But it’s not like cornering rats in the sewers and crypts of the Gate. Out here the wild splits in all directions.
Crunching leaves and unkind footfalls give him away and it takes so long to subdue and drain the boar that he’s too exhausted to move its carcass, too unfulfilled to quiet the raw nerve of hunger.
When night falls again, there is little of the man left to stop the monster.
*
He chooses Tav.
Of course, he does.
He tells himself later that he didn’t mean to. That his decision to loom over them in their vulnerable trance had nothing to do with who Tav was and everything to do with how close their bedroll was to his.
It isn’t true.
He’d already marked Tav as the best target for his cautious manipulations. Had already begun ingratiating himself to their leader the only way he knew how: being moderately useful while being exceptionally charming, taking gentle ribbing to its natural, nearly annoying conclusion.
It was clear the other companions deferred to Tav, even the brutishly stubborn Lae’zel listened to them. Tav was thoughtful and careful, and seemed to consider every option before pressing forward.
That their face remained hidden all these days seemed to matter little to the rest of them, though Astarion burned to know what secrets lay hidden beneath that mask. The wrapping was meticulous, pinned closed at the shoulder with a little beetle pin. He ached to see it come loose and found himself watching in battle for a glimpse of the slope of their nose, though the chance never came.
He’d long noticed that the party never left without them, even on the smallest of excursions. Nothing seemed to slow them down, nothing seemed to escape their attention.
Perhaps he wanted to be caught.
But.
Thou shall not drink the blood of thinking creatures.
Still.
He can’t stop his hand from reaching for the bottom of their neckwrap. He’s just begun to slide the fabric up to reveal their fragile skin when their eyes snap open.
“—Shit”
They don’t even have the decency to look confused, despite waking from deep reverie to Astarion bowed over their neck, teeth extended.
“Ah,” they say shortly, sitting up while Astarion scrambles backwards as if burned. “I see.”
“I wasn’t going to hurt you,” he says quickly, the panic evident in his voice, despite himself. It wasn’t supposed to go like this.
“You would have already done that nights ago,” they agree, readjusting the little pin keeping their headwrap closed.
Astarion is losing his mind, surely.
“You need more than animals, don’t you?” Tav asks, before he can open his mouth again. Their voice is soft, and he realizes it’s to avoid waking the others. They shift forward, looking at him intently. There’s a wrinkle between their eyes, a furrowed brow. Concern. Pity, maybe. “It hasn’t been enough.”
The moment narrows to a knife-edge.
He can feel the dark circles beneath his eyes and the waxy, sallow look to his skin. A hunger, familiar and terrible, surges through him.
It’s all he can do not to lunge for their throat.
“Beg pardon?” He’s leaning towards them incredulously, instead. The moment is not funny, but a laugh escapes him, that same manic thing from the beach. “You knew you harbored a monster? That you slept beside a parasite?”
Tav doesn’t seem to be listening.
Instead, Astarion watches with approaching horror as Tav deftly removes one glove and shoves their sleeve up. The night is dark, but he can see the little nicks and scars that mark their fingers and hand. Their forearm looks strong, he thinks in an unhinged moment.
And then Tav shoves their arm under his nose.
And Astarion doesn’t move.
His eyes, deep and nearly black with the force of his thirst, flit up to Tav’s. That little wrinkle is gone, and their eyes look clear.
“We’ll need you stronger than this,” they say, in that simple, obvious way they talk about where to camp next or who takes first watch. “I’ll provide when needed.”
“Are you mad or just incredibly stupid?” he asks, but he’s already grasping at their hand and forearm.
And they are warm under his fingers. Beneath pale skin, their pulse thrums.
The veins in his body are dry.
Empty and screaming for relief.
He bites down before they can answer. Before he has even decided to do so.
It is like biting into nothing at all. Like carving a hot knife through warm butter.
The effect is instant.
He hadn’t needed to breathe for the last two centuries, but the first flood of their blood into his mouth was like finally, finally coming up for air. Heady and metallic with iron, their life left them and entered him.
He feels it inflate his atrophied veins. He feels it wrap around his still heart. It tastes like warmth. It tastes like the open sky.
When he swallows, it feels like his body is trying to stutter back to life, glorious and riveting like no wine could hope to achieve. He takes without thought—how much blood did an elf need—excess spilling over the corner of his mouth and it feels almost like velvet on his skin. The moments blur together, smear like blood on the back of his hand, on the inside of his mouth.
There is a soft touch on the side of his face, curious and warm—for a horrible, unkempt moment, he leans into it, like a dog.
He rips himself away only a moment later, face wet with Tav’s blood.
It wasn’t enough.
It was everything.
He doesn’t know if Tav speaks, wouldn’t have been able to hear them over the thundering of their blood rushing through him. It’s intimate in a way no other blood had ever been. It’s erotic in a way that makes him feel shaky and stupidly, falsely alive.
Would they call this feeling happiness?
He isn’t sure.
“I’m afraid you’re far too rich to indulge in further,” he says quickly, and he’s sure he sounds just as debauched as he feels. He licks his lips without thinking and catches the way Tav watches him do it. He isn’t sure if he’s praising them or thanking them. “Nothing short of invigorating.”
Tav is looking at him, their arm still partially extended towards him, blood already clotting on the meat of their wrist.
“I won’t make you say anything to them,” Tav says, tipping their head towards the companions Astarion had not thought of in several minutes. “But it would do us well for you to fight with all you can.”
He raises an eyebrow, already standing to melt into the forest.
“My dear, you are full of surprises,” he says, his voice back to its familiar charm. “If you can keep our travelling companions from staking me, I would be happy to fight with all my weapons, teeth included.”
“Astarion,” Tav says, and he will steadfastly refuse to think about how it feels to hear them say his name. “No harm will come to you in this camp.”
It’s just their blood, pulsing through him, he thinks. Nothing more.
He inclines his head; a silver curl falls into his eyes.
“Thank you,” he whispers. “This is a gift, you know.”
Later, after he’s had his fill of the local fauna, he finds that he meant it.
He still means it.
*
In the morning, they learn he is a vampire.
“Ah, not to worry dears,” he clarifies, before anyone can speak. His hands are up, placating. “Not a full vampire—just a spawn. There’s no need to fear being turned in the dead of night.”
“You are wise to have approached Tav,” Lae’zel says, securing her greatsword to her back. “I would have shorn your head from your useless body.”
Tav is silent, but has not moved from their position, just in front of him.
Would he even need to seduce them? Their protection seemed absurdly easy to achieve. Astarion wonders, not for the first time, if he is the only one among them playing at something.
“I don’t taste good,” Gale adds, grinning.
“I would sooner starve,” Astarion says with none of the bite he intended. It sounds relieved, even to his own ears.
They move on, the day arriving too fast to linger on the eating habits of their undead companion. But before they leave, Tav slips a palm-sized bottle into his hand. He can smell their blood through the cork seal. It drives deep into his brain and makes a home there.
“For later,” Tav says, in the same way they passed out extra healing potions. He thinks there might be a little smile playing at the corners of their eyes.
He takes it.
He thinks he might be smiling too.
*
Today is about walking.
Most of their days are.
If Astarion has any say in it, he’ll get to kill something before nightfall, even if only a boar. But for now, there is just the walking.
It’s taken more than half the day for Tav to make their rounds. He is last. Of course, he is last. Each of their tadpoled companions eating away at their time with useless, trite conversation. At least the gith kept her words firmly on their collective wriggling problem—though he couldn’t help but notice the way her amber eyes linger on Tav’s shoulders. He has his suspicions he’s not the only one after their little leader, though with centuries of practice, Astarion can tell the lust in Lae’zel’s eyes is entirely pure.
And maybe it was—maybe all the gith wanted was to have Tav pliant and wanting beneath her for a single evening.
But any of them would bend Tav to their will if they could.
All of them are trying, surely, in their own ways, to pull Tav in their direction. To the creche, for Shar, for Mystra’s crown, for blood, for protection.
It was all the same.
And Tav was either temperate or brainless enough to listen to all their many tired little sob stories with that crinkle between their clear eyes.
But finally, it was his turn, and Tav’s steps slowed deliberately until they fell in line with his own at the back of their merry band. And Tav looks at him, and it’s as if they see nothing but him. Their attention is complete and rapt in a way that makes him feel underdressed and exposed.
Saved the best for last, have we, darling? Is what he means to say. Is what he should say.
“How did you know?” He asks before he can stop himself.
He wonders if this will become a trend around Tav.
“I had thought there was Drow in your lineage at first,” Tav admits, shrugging. “But then the nightly walks, then the boar.”
It seems simple enough, and they could have left it there.
But they didn’t.
“And sometimes…” They pause, as if looking for the right words. He raises a brow, prompting them on. “Sometimes I catch you looking at the sun.”
He doesn’t know what to say to that.
“It’s not…not like you’ve never seen it before,” Tav continues. “But like you’ve missed it.”
He has no idea what to say to that.
A breeze sweeps through the woods, and it ruffles his hair, and his skin feels warmer beneath the sun than it has in two hundred years and yes--
“I have missed it,” he says, so softly that he’s not even sure if Tav hears him over that gentle wind.
Maybe they don’t.
“You were my first, you know,” Astarion says, even though he shouldn’t. It will further endear Tav to him, he tells himself. It will cement their protection.
Tav makes a surprised sound.
He nearly preens to have managed to catch them out. They don’t know everything. They don’t see everything.
“Spawn are less than slaves,” he says, brightly. “They are a puppet for their masters, compelled to obey every command. Cazador ensured I knew only the fetid blood of rats and bloated bugs.”
“I see,” Tav says, slowly. “And the tadpole means the leash is off?”
Astarion nods, cutting his eyes up to the sun briefly, as if to make sure it’s still there.
“For now.”
Tav hums, clearly thinking, but doesn’t speak again.
They continue in silence, and it takes Astarion several moments before he realizes that with all the walking they have left to do, Tav is beside him. Their other companions send glances back, but as the minutes drag on, Tav makes no change in their stride.
And with Tav’s blood still deliciously thrumming through him, he thinks he may have already won.
The creche was not their immediate destination no matter how much Lae’zel pushed. Gale was being kept from exploding into a pile of fetid meat and ugly purple robes by the most useless of magic artifacts, leagues away from convincing anyone that he’d even really slept with his goddess. Shadowheart was no closer to convincing Tav of Lae’zel’s inherent wickedness than she was to converting them to Shar.
The only one among them all to get what they’d actually wanted from Tav was him.
Blood. Protection.
In time, he would take the rest, too.
*
Beginning is easy.
The start of seduction is second only to breathing – things that only belong to the assuredly alive, but that he can imitate without thought.
He could lean this way, smile like that, lower his voice to that rough whisper. He could trail his fingers across a lacquered bar top or along the rim of a glass or across his own jaw and lower his lashes just so.
Because beginning is easy.
At the beginning, his marks still had the chance, however fleeting, of escape.
Rejection was rare, of course, but possible. Despite the inevitable punishment it promised, a piece of him always hoped they would.
But something is different this time.
Tav will not be a victim, and he will not return to Cazador with them on his arm. If he can help it, he will only return to finally free his master’s head from his wretched neck.
He simply cannot remember a time when he pursued someone for more than a single evening. A time when he could promise them tomorrow and mean it.
So, it makes sense, he tells himself, that it might feel different to begin.
He doesn’t have the language to name the feeling, and if he once did, it died with his mortal soul. It never came crawling out of his grave, and if it had, Cazador would have crushed it beneath a fine heel.
So, it feels different.
Okay.
He begins, though. Because he must.
He orients his body towards Tav, open and willing, when they walk. He shoots them his softest smile when the others are busy. He passes them a healing potion when they pass him a bottle of their blood. He winks and consciously stops calling anyone else darling – reserving the affection he thinks Tav likes the most just for them.
And it feels different.
Maybe because the days change; they come and go and Tav is still there, and he is still free. Maybe because he has time enough now to come to know Tav at all, beyond a body. Maybe because all he has to go on are those clear, bright eyes to know if anything he’s doing is having its desired effect.
No matter the cause, this stubbornly insistent feeling persists whenever he catches them looking at him. It climbs up his spine when he sees Tav pull back their bow. It stalls his breath without his permission when they look up at him from small tasks, sliding their eyes up to him like a physical touch.
He wonders, with a note of mounting desperation, if it might get worse before it goes away.
If this unkind, feeble-fingered feeling will broaden and spread and deepen into something consuming.
But he has already begun.
And while Cazador still lives, he must continue.
*
It is his turn again.
Tav spends their evenings with them one by one, if they can. If they’re not roped into a sparring session or helping procure dinner, they’re approaching each of them with that ever-calm stare and patient tilt of their head.
He’s come to see the pattern—and he’s noticed that they all give Tav a little more of themselves each time. As their leader, none of them can seem to stop themselves from answering them, from divulging their goals and secrets. And Tav hasn’t asked them to, keeps showing up to pull more from them with their little check-ins.
So, now that it’s his turn, and he’s ready.
“Beautiful,” he says, leaning back elegantly on his forearms. “The stars, I mean. I don’t have much to go on towards your chin.”
“A positive side effect of anonymity,” Tav replies flatly, the ghost of a smile around their eyes. They fold themselves inelegantly into sitting by the fire, a leg flung out in a mirror to his own carefully curated posture. “Am I bothering your star gazing?”
He gives them an amused grin, as if he isn’t perfectly aware that Tav wants something from him.
“I prefer a certain kind of interruption, every now and again,” he says, letting his gaze go back to the stars. “I could see them from Baldur’s Gate of course, but not with such clarity.”
It’s true – out here, the world feels much smaller, like just a speck among the greater world of stars. When he’s on watch, he can’t help but get lost in them.
“I’ve found that the further from civilization you get, the brighter they become,” Tav says softly. “Hundreds that you can’t see at all, suddenly there for mapmaking and guidance.”
“It’s got me thinking,” he says carefully. “About what will happen when this adventure ends. Will we all go our separate ways?”
Tav shrugs, tipping their head.
“You have asked me to lead you,” they say carefully. “Yet all of you have different ends in mind. I have chosen to lead anyway. If your goals are all unfinished when the tadpole is gone, I will continue to travel with you until they are.”
A comforting thought, though he’d wager if they found a cure the rest of their party would dissolve like smoke on the breeze. Tav included.
“Good, I don’t want to see you running off just yet,” he says softly, lowering his lashes carefully. It isn’t the first time he wonders what he must look like, sprawled out so deliberately for their gaze. He feels cheap. It isn’t the first time. “Though I wonder what you get out of it at this point…do you not yearn for the company of carrion birds or a pack of rabid wolves?”
Tav laughs, a sound like bells that rings through him and brings a grin to his mouth without his permission.
“You think rangers are just mangier druids, don’t you?”
“I’ve seen the way you eat,” he teases, leaning forward. It seemed then that, despite their pointed ears and graceful movements Tav had no problem cramming a spoon through that little seam. Though they at least had the decency to use their other hand to widen the opening in their mask. And it was then that he could catch little flashes of them: teeth and warm, red tongue.
He’d have been appalled at the sight of them that first night over dinner if he hadn’t spent the previous night picking squirrel fur out of his teeth. He found himself admitting that he couldn’t really judge anyone’s eating habits.
“You’re one to talk,” they reply swiftly.
The silence between them feels warmer than before.
“You’re right though,” Tav says quietly. “It’s been at least a decade since I’ve travelled with others.”
“And what’s changed?” Astarion asks, before carding a hand through his perfect curls. “Aside from my presence in your company, obviously.”
Tav gives them a look that he can’t decipher. He imagines the edges of their mouth turned down, their forehead wrinkling in concern—but no face forms in his mind. And for a moment he is jealous of their anonymity. And he thinks this may be why they wear their mask at all.
It makes his put-upon smile fade.
What’s left is something almost kind.
He didn’t know he could still make this expression.
The wind picks up, and it’s still warm this close to the coast. It ruffles his hair and makes him pause to breathe deep, despite having no need of the air.
“Something is different this time,” Tav agrees finally, looking back up at the stars. “Though there is no distance I travel that seems to provide any clarity or guidance. Certainly not from the stars.”
They stand slowly, like the motion takes effort.
“Besides,” Tav says, looking down at him. “The company of carrion birds is never far.”
*
Of course he had considered following them to the river.
It had been their first and only commandment upon being thrust into the position of leader: if you try to unmask me, I will leave you behind. I will injure you. I will leave you. We will leave you. All of them took their bathing time alone. And without common acknowledgement had begun to treat the time as sacred for the silence and solitude it promised. Now that the river wasn’t a death sentence to him, Astarion had spent plenty of time enjoying the complete solitude to reacclimate his body with the concept of floating.
So, each of them took their time very seriously, himself included.
And despite being a lecherous flirt, he wasn’t a monster.
He really had no intention of seeing anything.
Certainly, no intention of it being Tav that he stumbled across after an enriching hunt. The stag’s blood is flooding his senses, and he feels like if you touched him, he’d crackle with some kind of manic energy. And maybe that’s why it feels like time slows down the moment he comes across them.
The river is alive with their body, he can just see the water-warped outline of their shape, pale and light-catching in the dark. Tall, long in the water but strong instead of lithe and ethereal. The shape alone is enticing – so different from what he’d grown used to chasing in Baldur’s Gate.
The water tension at the surface swells, and for a moment, he can even make out the spun gold of their usually hidden hair, and wonders if they might be a sun elf.
How long had they been under?
What would they look like when they broke free, dripping and heaving with the weight of water?
A thrill rips through his chest like catching fire. And in a moment so unlike him, so strange and foreign that he’s grateful it happens when he’s alone, so he doesn’t have to justify it to anyone, he turns away, shielding his eyes with a hand.
Behind him, he can hear the night air can greet Tav’s vulnerable body, the soft splash of river against skin.
And his instincts. They beg him to turn around.
The temptation tastes like iron in his mouth – but recently fed and nightly nourished by Tav’s blood, he can’t bring himself to pretend to be overwhelmed by his instincts and desires. He’s more than this.
Tav had made him more than this.
His first – yes, but elven and decadent, it was their blood that helped him think clearer, run faster, fight harder.
And still, as he walks further from the river, he can make out the steady thrum of them in his body. Like it aches to return to Tav, he can feel it sing and sigh inside him, and wants to turn back.
Just the sight of them, blurry and warped beneath the Chionthar, ‘vulnerable’ something whispers, feral and drooling at the sight. But he turned away, and he thinks it’s Tav’s blood that lets him do that, too.
The predator in him is sharper, but so is the man.
If it takes another hunt to banish the thought, no one need know.
*
“I’ve every intention of getting to see beneath that mask,” Shadowheart says, her voice dreamy and thoughtful. They are waiting for Tav to return, as they often are when Tav isn’t around to lead them. “I bet they’re beautiful.”
He needs to stake a claim.
He’s watched them all, of course. He’d gotten close enough during their nightly check ins to hear the way they fawn over Tav. He’d seen their charming smiles and beguiled eyes.
“And what makes you think you’ll be our little leader’s paramour?” he asks, a wicked grin gracing his mouth. “When I’ve already tasted them?”
He lays his bravado languidly over himself—lets it coat his skeleton and muscles until any trace of tension is banished from his elegant body.
“Maybe they want a lover and not a leech,” Shadowheart bites, her eyes withering. But when her gaze turns down a moment later, he knows his point is already made.
“Maybe they want a healing potion,” Tav’s voice startles them out of bickering, stepping back into camp with a nearly unconscious Gale on their arm. He has to stop himself from wincing, sees Shadowheart wrinkle her nose in his peripheral.
“Now that I can provide,” he grins, swiping one from Shadowheart’s newly brewed stash. “Did our little wizard meet some trouble? And I see you’re empty-handed? You must start bringing me on these excursions if you want anything to get done, darling.”
He feels the cleric’s eyes on him the rest of the afternoon.
Good.
*
In the early mornings, he lets the sun take him.
The first light laying still-cold hands on his brow, along his cheek. And he warms with it, almost an alive heat as the sun rises over the trees.
It’s beautiful in this light, he thinks.
A smaller, more gentle part of himself thinks he might be beautiful in this light, too.
*
When he returns to camp again, Tav is there.
Tav always seems to be there.
They catch his gaze immediately, their eyes dancing across his face like a physical touch. How uniquely cruel of them, to show him any care while hiding their face.
But he has been touched by many hands, touched by the weight of many eyes.
And Tav's gaze feels light along the planes of his face.
Like a breeze.
“I'll wake the others," they say softly, as if they had been waiting for him.
Maybe they had.
*
They make camp early today, despite Lae’zel’s protests.
Supply is low, and they naturally separate to start setting up their newly acquired (stolen) tents, gathering firewood, and starting to brew healing potions to restock. Shadowheart rests, flat on her back and exhausted from restoring Gale after he met the business end of a goblin’s mace hours earlier.
The wizard himself is next to Tav now, sitting in the dirt while they compare herbs and gathered foliage from the day and start a small fire. His garish robes are still blood-stained and dirty. In comparison, Tav looks nearly pristine, despite the clear weathering and age of their gear.
Gale says something softly, and it causes Tav to chuckle in a way that makes him bristle.
“I have a query for you, if you’ll indulge me, darling,” Astarion says, cutting through their conversation with the disinterested ease beautiful people like him can get away with.
Tav looks at him, and that stubborn feeling he can’t name wriggles in his chest like the tadpole in his brain.
“If it is in my power to answer,” Tav says mildly, but their eyes have that little crinkle again.
Gale makes to stand, but Astarion pushes on. He wants the wizard to hear this. If a claim is established early, it will be easier to secure Tav down the line. The last thing he wants is the resident useful-item-eater to take his place.
“Inquiring minds want to know,” he says, haughtily, bending down at the waist to bring himself closer to their seated height. “Exactly how you manage to cover nearly every inch of your body and still remain so utterly tempting?”
He learned long ago that the way to lie was by telling as much of the truth as you could.
Tav had a body like forged steel, and their faded blue gear molded to it perfectly. He’d only seen their hand and forearm bare, all ropey muscle and scattered scars, but from their mostly flat chest to their thick, soft thighs, Astarion felt for sure that all of it would make his mouth water with want. If only he could just see.
If only he were alive enough to want, at all.
Gale’s eyebrows are up in his hairline.
“Inquiring minds,” Tav repeats, that little smile leaking into their voice. “How interesting. I’d thought our company to be rather full of occupied minds.”
“Was that almost a joke, dove?” He chuckles, preening at their full attention when Gale sighs and starts grinding herbs. “I’d thought you as incapable as the gith, though I’m sure you’re just rusty from all that time living in the dirt and talking to birds or whatever it is rangers do. It’s a pleasure to be amongst equals.”
He grins, showing his teeth.
Something about his reply seems to catch Tav short—he can see the fractional widening of their eyes before it’s cast aside for their regular coolness.
“A pleasure,” Tav says, again repeating him like they’re tasting his words on their tongue. They make the word sound warm, lived in. “Amongst equals.”
They make it sound salacious—honeyed like a promise.
A righteous, feral pulse of victory floods through him when he sees Gale’s shoulders tense. The wizard’s mouth falls into a grim line, his eyes flitting between Tav and Astarion.
That’s right.
He would be blind to not see that the hunt for Tav’s affections had already begun among their companions. And he’s sure that they are playing a losing game against a master at his craft.
Tav passes their foraged herbs to Gale and stands, stretching languidly.
He lets Tav see his appraisal, the undressing eye he drags across their shoulders, chest, and lower.
“I’m going to hunt for tonight’s dinner—hopefully you haven’t scared away all the rabbits,” they say. With precision, they don their quiver and bow, and head towards the tree line. He watches their long, frazzled-looking braid sway.
Tav turns back to him.
“It’s all in the hips, by the way,” they say coyly.
As if to demonstrate, they shift their weight, drawing his eyes down from their gaze to the curve of their waist.
They’re right, he thinks. The little shift takes the modest, but tight leather and cloth armor to something nearly scandalous, accentuating deceptively full hips and thighs. The headwrap does nothing to dim the sudden smoldering look Tav is wearing, but it’s beaten out a moment later for that surprising mirth he’s only beginning to recognize. The one that makes the corners of their eyes crease and their irises gleam with caught afternoon light.
“Just for the inquiring minds that want to know,” Tav says, chuckling to themselves as they step into the trees.
*
By early evening, when Tav returns with their hunt, he can tell they want to ask him something.
Despite only their eyes being visible, there is something in their posture when he comes close that begged his attention. Something about the way their eyes dart between his and the slowly warming sky above.
“You look adorable when you’re thinking, darling,” he says, laying charm thick onto his voice.
“You don’t know what I look like,” Tav replies immediately.
“Come now,” Astarion says, ignoring them. “Out with it.”
Tav sighs, and points somewhere off over Astarion’s shoulder.
“Watch the sunset with me.”
Astarion huffs a laugh. “If you wanted to get me alone for something salacious, you only need to ask,” he says, grinning. Showing his teeth. “I promise I won’t bite.”
They roll their eyes before making for the river nearby.
He follows them.
When they walk, their pale braid swings across their back. Astarion watches the way their hips move, the way their thighs flex. When they finally sit on a rock at the water’s edge, their bangs are falling in their eyes.
He’s ready.
Astarion will kiss them here, while the sun falls behind them.
He’s sure of it.
When the sky has turned vibrant and orange, firey and aglow, Tav finally speaks again.
“How old were you?”
It isn’t what he expected.
He swallows.
He is beginning to think it never will be what he expects, with them.
“39.”
Tav gasps, and this time he isn’t proud of himself. It sounds pained. A ragged, sudden thing he’s only heard from them once, when they were prying a dagger out of their own calf.
“A child,” they say, though they still haven’t turned to face him. “Astarion is still your given name, isn’t it?”
He nods, numb.
The silence is back. It isn’t comfortable. It scratches against his skin and wriggles alongside his tadpole.
“Don’t fear for my virtue, darling,” he says, trying to jest. Anything to fill the silence between them. “I have a good two centuries of practice; you’d be no cradle robber.”
Instead of rising to his flirtation, Tav only watches the sun bow off stage for the evening, before standing to head back to camp.
They turn to look at him finally, and their eyes are intent and focused in the same way they are when they draw a bow.
And then Tav says the single most insane, confusing thing he’s ever heard.
It digs into his chest and lives there. It shatters through him, rocketing off of every dead nerve and useless vein in his body.
“When this is over,” they say. “You will see the sun again.”