#I keep thinking of how I could’ve had sex with lae’zel but forgot that you can like

[nellyofthevalley]

truths, ch.8

astarion x fem!tav rating: explicit

content: piv sex, fingering, biting/blood drinking, emotionally repressed losers who can't communicate, angst, hurt/comfort, extended sickfic?

summary: this fic started as an excuse to write a bunch of dialogue bouncing around in my head. astarion is a sad little idiot who never learned how to love. tav is kind of emotionally repressed and a bad communicator too, and he has to learn how to deal with this. with her, and her … affliction.

He can’t even remember the last time someone asked him what he wanted. In centuries of service, even the warmest victims were there for nothing more than midnight fun, unknowingly biting off far more than they could chew. It’s better that way, though. It’s always easier when he can’t remember their names or faces after, and he only ever remembered the ones that were sweet.

chapters: ch.1 | ch.2 | ch.3 | ch.4 | ch.5 | ch.6 | ch.7 | ch.8

read it on ao3 or below the cut I totally posted this on ao3 forever ago and forgot to post it here

His mind swims while his fingers mend her clothes, re-stitching torn seams and mending rips he’d been staring at for weeks wanting to fix but refusing to be caught doing it. Astarion ponders over everything he said and did yesterday and how he could’ve done it all better; he thinks if he had another chance, he could’ve said something better than ‘I don’t know’, but it’s a foolish thought—even as he actively tries to convince himself, no other words bubble up and he knows damn well that’s the best he has.

He’s floundering thinking of what he’d say to her, but his mind just keeps fucking swimming and he’s so, so sure that if he’d had one more moment with her, he’d somehow manage to finish sentences cut short or have difficult conversations with her he hadn’t yet learned how to have with himself.

As he watches her body rise and fall with her breaths, it’s all he can think about.

Maybe he should’ve said the truth, he thinks: that he had it beaten into him to never care for another, that he’s bitter with her for saving everyone except him when the Gods never answered any of his prayers, and that he doesn’t know how to dig out of this grave of resentment he’s buried himself in despite how hopelessly charmed by her he is.

Every conversation they ever had starts to feel like it wasn’t enough, going all the way back to the night in the Underdark when he’d given her his coat. Though the truth of it is that he had plenty of time every time, and he chose to squander it.

It hurts to see her like this, with her body battered and bruised and too exhausted to wake…

It’s his own fault, he’s decided. He accepted an offer from Raphael and now she pays the price for it. Oddly, that’s all he ever thought he wanted: for someone to suffer in his stead, but he didn’t mean it like this! Not her. 

Even worse, he pushed her into this—he questioned her when she tried to talk their way out of the fight (if only he’d ever learned how to have trust or faith in anyone) and he felt so off-balance during the fight he picked, allowing his mind to be clouded by a daft eagerness to get the shit over with and reap his reward.

Merregons got the better of her, crowding her and beating her bloody. He shouted when he noticed, calling for Karlach, Lae’zel, Gale, anyone—but they were all surrounded and by the time anyone made it to her, she was already down and out. None of them came out the other side entirely unscathed, but she was the only one who couldn’t carry themselves back to camp.

They remained settled at the Last Light Inn, trapped with nowhere else to go, and he fucking hates it here. Despite their efforts to clean up, every direction held some reminder of what used to be: blood stains they couldn’t get out, strewn about possessions, and an eerie emptiness that forced you to picture how it’d been when it was bustling and happy. Astarion doesn’t grieve for their lives, but he can’t push out the image of how distraught she was that night it all happened; how she wept and begged him to give her purpose will be burned into his brain for eternity.

Already, two full days have passed with her in this bed and Shadowheart and Halsin taking turns caring for her and breathing life back into her body little by little, while Astarion sits in his chair and simply waits.

Raphael came and went, fulfilling his end of the deal promptly. He paid Astarion a visit the same evening the orthon appeared in his humble abode and told him everything he’d asked for: details of Cazador’s deal with Mephistopheles and the tale of how poems carved into their backs bound them to a vile ritual that would sacrifice their souls for a higher power never seen by his kind before.

Ascension. 

Astarion received his reward, but he couldn’t find any satisfaction in it. Not like this—not standing outside the inn alone, and even though only a thin wall sat between him and the room Tav lay unconscious in, he felt halfway across the world from her. Raphael left him there and it all felt like a cruel mockery: the price to be paid for his deal wasn’t even paid by him. He dragged Tav along for this and forced her hand and he never thought twice about it.

Until she couldn’t walk anymore. 

He remembers it so clearly, hauntingly vivid—how he tore apart his foe and ran to her bloodied body, how he held her and shook her and she didn't wake, how he was nothing more than a useless bystander, watching hopelessly while Karlach carried her and Halsin tended to her…

He needs to be by her side, he needs to be in that chair when she wakes, and he hasn’t moved since Raphael left him here. 

He’s deep in trance when she wakes, startled into consciousness by her tugging weakly at the fabric of his shirt; he jumps in his chair and looks over to her, pausing for a moment as he fully comes back to the present and processes it.

“Gods, you’re awake,” he says, relief washing over him as he sits up and starts to stand. “Let me get—”

“No!” she protests in a low mumble, slowly sitting up and leaning against the headboard. “Tell me what happened first.”

Astarion stops in his seat and starts to speak, “You—you were surrounded…”

“Not that,” she scoffs. “The deal!”

“Oh, don’t talk to me in that voice of yours,” he retorts. “You should be mad at me, you should chastise me! I took the devil’s deal all on my own, without even giving you a choice in the matter.”

“You’re wrong,” she says. “Just tell me what Raphael said.”

Astarion hesitates, taken by surprise; even after being bloodied and bruised and bedridden, she insists on hearing about his deal, first thing…

But he tells her everything, powerless to resist her demands.

“What do you think?” he asks. 

“I think it’s time for you to get Shadowheart,” she says with a cheeky smile.

He’s obviously miffed by her dodge but he does it regardless, returning Tav’s grin with an annoyed sigh as he gets up from his seat and fetches Shadowheart.

When he walks out, Tav eyes her clothes by his chair, neatly folded and washed clean.

The door creaks as Shadowheart enters, carrying a tray of food; stew and bread, the standard fare lately. The shadowlands have so little to offer for fresh food, but Tav feels her mouth watering the moment she lays eyes on it, stomach growling, and lights up as Shadowheart takes Astarion’s chair.

“How are you faring?”

“Sore, but well enough for poking the fire,” Tav answers.

“You know,” Shadowheart starts once Tav’s stuffed her mouth, “outside of talking with Raphael, he hasn’t left this room for a moment.”

Tav swallows hard. 

Shadowheart picks up the mended shirt by the chair and turns it in her hands, looking it over. “Skilled with his hands,” she notes with a hearty laugh. 

“Gods, stop it,” Tav chokes out, quickly swallowing the last of her food and laughing, too, and it aches her body but hells, a real laugh is what she needs right now. “I don’t know what’s happening with us.”

“You’re softening his cold heart, and dare I say he needs it.”

“No,” she replies. “His heart’s already soft… in some places, anyway. He just doesn’t know it. Or maybe he doesn’t want to believe it.”

When Shadowheart opens the door and leaves, it’s made very clear to both of them that Astarion was standing right outside, arms crossed and waiting to trade places. He picks her shirt back up when he sits, feeling a bit antsy and in dire need of something to occupy his hands, but he’s already mended every hole; now, he’s started carefully stitching her name in curved script into it, much like he did for his own shirts on long days and nights spent in the Szarr palace.

“So—”

“I think walking in the sun is very important to you.”

“And the power!” Astarion’s face livens instantly as he talks, giddy at the prospect of seizing the Ascension for himself. “I’d never have to fear anyone… and��I could walk in the sun without fear of turning into a mind flayer.”

She can relate to that more than he knows. She chased power once too, and it cost her a sibling. The worst part of it all is that she’d do it all over again given the choice. Her patron bestowed her with great, elder powers after living as a street urchin, spit on and ignored by society for so long—and even with an illithid tadpole shoved into her brain, even after being surrounded and taken down in battle, even after questioning it that night in the cemetery, she remembers what it was like before and she wouldn’t give it up for nearly anything. 

Besides, if she hadn’t chased the deal, it would’ve been something else. He would’ve left either way, whether it be the stealing or the pact or the souls she slaughtered in the name of revenge. He’d always been too gentle-hearted, and every time Astarion spits on her for being ‘too generous’, she thinks of how much she always hated her brother for the very same.

But even Raphael called the ritual diabolical, and he’d have to kill his brothers and sisters to do it… the brothers and sisters who endured the same punishments and torture as he had. Astarion pretends to care only for himself, but when he told her he pitied them with him gone, it was beyond evident how much he cares—he just wishes he doesn’t.

Astarion seems to be well-trained in confidently presenting himself as how he wishes he feels. 

Tav would support him in completing the ritual himself in a heartbeat if she wasn’t so certain he does care and that he would regret it later. It would change him, she thinks, and not for the better. 

But now’s not the time to dwell on that. They don’t even know what the ritual entails. Not yet. 

She shifts over to the very edge of the bed and rests her palm on his forearm, prompting him to drop the needle and thread and set her shirt back aside. As he does, she spots the start of her name on it, in lovely gold thread on navy fabric.

“Will you kiss me?” she asks, hopeful to drag him away from dwelling on the ritual now. “It’ll make me feel better.”

“Oh, will it now?” Astarion gives her a half-smile and holds her face in one palm with a gentle—thoughtful—touch. “Then who am I to deny you?”

Tav lightly grasps at his upper arm as he closes his eyes and captures her mouth in his; this time, his kiss is sweet and tender and deliberate, not wary, not heated, not anything but what feels like a true labor of…

…love?

“The other night when you asked me what’s between us,” Astarion starts as they part, eyes fixated on her mouth as he speaks, “What would you like it to be?” 

“What do you want it to be, Astarion?”

“I-I don’t know,” he says, taken aback. “It’s never mattered what I want. No one ’s ever asked.”

He can’t even remember the last time someone asked him what he wanted. In centuries of service, even the warmest victims were there for nothing more than midnight fun, unknowingly biting off far more than they could chew.

It’s better that way, though. It’s always easier when he can’t remember their names or faces after, and he only ever remembered the ones that were sweet.

“I’m asking you now,” she replies.

“It’s complicated.”

“Well, it appears I have plenty of time to sit and listen. So please, go on.”

Astarion brushes off her hand as he folds his arms, turning his gaze away from her and towards the ceiling, and they sit in silence for a moment as he considers what to say. Part of him hopes she’ll say something else and move on, but the rest of him knows that it’s finally time to have this conversation that he’s been neglecting.

Especially after spending the days and nights in this same fucking chair thinking about how he should’ve said it all months ago.

“I wasn’t just a slave to Cazador,” he says with a notable lack of confidence. He shuffles nervously and takes a long pause, inhaling deeply before continuing. “For two centuries, my purpose”—he practically hisses as he begins to recount it—“was to bring back pretty things for the master. Seduce them, lure them to the palace and leave them for Cazador to dine on… It never mattered what I wanted. if I didn’t obey, he’d have me beaten, impaled, or worse.”

His eyes pace around the room, gnawing for anywhere else he can look and digging for what to say. He doesn’t feel like himself, he almost feels sick. It’s too much, but he has to say it all now or he’ll never say it and it’ll loom over his head and the next time she takes so much as a single scrape in battle he’ll be distracted by it all over again.

“It was instinctual for me… to fall back into old habits and charm you, gain your trust, manipulate your feelings and ensure your loyalty. I needed you on my side to fight him, and I did that the only way I—”

“I am on your side. No matter what.”

“Don’t be ridiculous.”

“I’ll be as ridiculous as I like.”

“Gods, you’re stubborn. Look,” he continues, “I must’ve gotten on my back ten thousand times or more, and none of them meant anything at all; most didn’t even grant me a temporary bliss. But you…

“It was different with you. I’ll never forget the time I spent with you. I want—fuck, what I want is for this to be something real.”

Manipulating someone, getting them in bed, using them for his own benefit—all things he can do, things he is very well-versed in doing, at that. Losing himself in her was a complication. He is not so well-versed in complications. 

“I do, too,” she says quietly.

“Truth is, you make me feel alive again,” he admits, anxiously wiping his brow. “But I don’t know what real looks like, and I can’t give you what you deserve,” Astarion says, turning to face her; and whatever she may have expected to see, it wasn’t this—this awful, gloomy look he wears, like he’s in pain just thinking about this and admitting to it all. “Even though I know things between us are different, it still brings up all these feelings of hatred and self-loathing…”

“We don’t have to sleep together, for as long as you need. For forever, if thats what you’d prefer,” she says. “You’re important to me—however you are, whatever you’re dealing with.”

A small relief, but Astarion hopes for it to somehow come and fix it all like magic, and it never happens. Relief doesn’t make it any easier to get through this this. Relief doesn’t organize his thoughts or teach him how make someone happy. Without sex, what does he have left to offer? He never did figure that one out.

“I never learned how to care for anyone but myself. Cazador always made sure I knew that,” Astarion rebuts, as if he’s searching for any reason to send her away—get her to set her sights elsewhere, maybe back on Gale…

He can’t help but do it; much as he’d like this to be something real with her, he’s certain it’ll end in nothing but disappointment and he knows that’ll hurt worse than not having her at all.

“Oh, fuck Cazador! It’s not true, you know,” Tav protests. “If it were, you wouldn’t be in this room right now. Gods know I don’t know what the fuck real looks like, either, but it doesn’t matter. We—we can figure it out together, can’t we?”

Astarion’s brows lower and he looks at her in disbelief for a moment; ‘figure it out together’ is… beyond what he could’ve anticipated coming from her mouth.

Oh, she is stubborn, but perhaps that’s what he needs in a partner. Maybe he’s not even ready for this, he doesn’t know, but he does know that he’s in it too deep to back out. Not having her at all is a path impossible to take now, no matter how hard he could keep trying to shove her out.

“We—we can try?” he questions with an indecisive tone, though it’s really more of a surprised agreement. “If that’s truly what you want.”

The freedom to choose your own path is a foreign concept—fuck, is that really what he’s doing? Choosing his own path? He always thought it would feel different from this, that it would be more controlled and comprehensible; like he’d have a plan, some sort of routine to reference for his life, as with how he’d memorized and carried out the plans for his conquests, just… a little different.

“It’s what I want. More than anything,” she says, sniffling. “Fuck, sorry.”

“What’s…” Astarion’s voice trails off as he considers what to say next. Navigating this is beyond any of his expertise, and he almost feels like he did in the early days of Cazador sending him out to find victims when he was still learning how to just—just be fucking normal. It was decades before the master let him out, and after so many years stuck inside and subjected to punishment after punishment, he’d nearly forgotten how to speak. “What’s troubling you?”

“I’m fine. Gods, I’m more than fine,” she says, giggling as she wipes the tears from her cheek. “Will you lay with me? I understand if—”

“Move over,” he orders with a shooing hand gesture. 

His heart would beat out of his chest if it could; there’s something about lying together in a bed in an inn, however decrepit and dreadful to reside in, that’s far more intimate than the nights she slept in his tent. Trepidation pumps through his body like blood.

And then, after he lifts the covers and settles in beside her, it simply dries up. 

Tav starts to reach out for his hand, but stops short of it. “Can I touch you?”

“You don’t have to ask,” he answers, though truthfully, he loves that she does. It’s sweet. It’s unusual. 

“I want to,” she says, prying apart his fingers with hers and interlocking them.

He could live in this moment forever. When she looks at him, there’s a special, heavenly look in her eyes that he never wants to lose. A pity for the lives lived without ever experiencing it. No one would ever look at someone like Cazador the way she’s looking at him now.

It’s hypnotizing and makes him want to give her the fucking world—and ascend, for more than himself, because this is so, so much bigger than him.