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have-a-treato · 7 months

Text

Alurlssrin

Astarion x drow!Tav, gn!Tav

Tags/Content: Soft, angst, allusions to past trauma, SFW, no sex, one-shot, short

Context: Spoilers for Act 2 Astarion confession. I dreamed about softly touching Astarion’s face and it snowballed into a ton of drow background, not much BG3-specific context outside of Astarion’s story.

Word count: 2k

Your fingers lead his eyelids closed, trailing softly down his cheeks, tracing his laugh lines, and skirting by his lips. Oh, those lips and that toothy smile that has you grinning at everything he says.

Fic List AO3

This one is for all you drow Tav enjoyers.

On a rare calm evening, you and Astarion are up with the ever-present darkness in the shadowlands, set up in his tent together. He watches as you work on patching a hole beginning in your armor from a close call with a fire bolt spell.

“Need a midnight snack?” you quip, not looking up from your task.

“Cheeky. I don’t need it, but if you're offering...” he says with a lilt.

A thoughtful hum is your response as you finish buffing your repair and place your armor aside. Finally looking up at him, your eyes roam his face, settled in a newly uncharacteristic calm and openness. He lounges on his side in his bedroll, head propped up in his hand, a book on the floor before him. You've given him time and space since your conversation, orbiting him like a moon and offering safe, chaste touches. ‘Practice’, you call it. Neither of you meditate much here in the shadowlands, so the nights give ample time to be in each other’s company. And you do just that – be. Sitting together in silence, bantering through the night, and yes, the usual bloodletting. With that open expression tonight, he might be up for more practice. And when he looks at you like that, with the hint of challenge in those red eyes, it raises your dark blood.

“Want to practice?”

His eyes search your face, that open expression holding steady. He sits up and sets his book aside, his mouth slanting up into a tiny grin, “What do you have in mind?”

Another pause follows, and you begin to shuffle toward him on your knees. Tilting your chin toward his lap, you ask the silent question. He picks up your meaning and gives a subtle nod, opening his legs to allow you to kneel between them. You sit quietly, mapping his face with your eyes, letting the closeness settle between you.

You reach up slowly, giving him time to pull away, but his eyes are locked on yours, still with that open, slightly challenging, curiosity. Your fingers retrace the steps your eyes took, ghosting over his brows, and you catch his pupils dilating ever so slightly. Sweeping up to his hairline, you trace the lines down to the hinge of his jaw and slowly follow the muscles to his chin. A furrow forms between his brows and you reach up to smooth it away.

“Ok?” you murmur.

“It’s… different. Familiar and yet altogether new,” he mutters.

“Yeah,” you whisper, entirely enraptured by the feel of him, “Can I…?”

“Hm,” he replies softly, with a barely perceptible lowering of his chin.

You properly take his face between your hands now, marveling at how his eyes flutter and become half-lidded and how his downy skin feels against your palms. Your awe is reflected at you through his red eyes, and a warmth is spreading through your chest. His thick tresses thread through the tips of your fingers. You hold him there, brushing your thumbs across his cheeks, watching his minute reactions and pondering on that warmth you feel.

Once, back when you first set foot on the surface, a young human couple inexplicably allowed you to stay the night in their barn despite your dark skin and red eyes. When the sky reshaped itself into that blanket of stars that mesmerizes you to this day, the couple stood out on their porch and embraced in this way before retiring for the night. The man held his wife's face in his hands, and the look between them has forever haunted your memory. You could not identify it then, as this was your first witnessing of open affection, and as you absconded early that morning with their only horse, your thoughts constantly wandered back to the strange look in their eyes. Your experiences on the surface have been multitude since then, yet you never forgot the small moment you witnessed and never spoke of. Never have you felt safe enough to touch a partner in this way. The others were simply a means to an end, scratching an itch. Astarion was as well, at first. The game you both played offered familiar ground in unfamiliar territory. But now… this moment, this tenderness that is wholly removed from those games... You aren’t quite sure what to make of it.

It seems that neither of you can speak. His eyes flicker between yours as you are momentarily lost in your memory. Is it instinct that has you retracing his features as if to memorize them? As your finger follows down the bridge of his nose, his eyes slowly close. He leans into your touch slightly, and that warmth in your chest begins to bloom and burn, stealing your breath. Your hands start to tremble, and his eyes flit open again, searching your face.

“What is it?” he asks quietly, taking your hands.

Your gaze lowers to his neck, to the two small scars there. You borrow his own words, “’Familiar yet altogether new.’” Adding under your breath, “And terrifying.”

“It is, isn’t it? But also exhilarating.” He lifts your chin gently, redirecting your eyes back to his. “What happened to that confidence from earlier?”

Sighing through your nose, you duck your head. “I’ve been on the surface a long while now. But I still hear the ringing of swords, the clinking of chains, and the chanting of priestesses in the back of my mind. I am still learning that what is weakness there can be something else here…” you give a humorless chuckle, “Sometimes I need the practice.”

“I hadn’t realized how similar we are. How regrettably, terribly, similar. The whole lot of us are, I suppose. Clawing tooth and nail out of one hell and falling into another.”

You raise your head, looking into his downturned crimson eyes, “But I’d much rather wallow in this hell with you than the one I escaped.”

You aren’t sure where the courage has come from – is it courage? – but you let that warmth in your chest guide you now. Your fingers lead his eyelids closed, trailing softly down his cheeks, tracing his laugh lines, and skirting by his lips. Oh, those lips and that toothy smile that has you grinning at everything he says. It’s a sin ever to see him frown.

“Can I kiss you?” you breathe. A humorous huff is his initial response, a smile spreading across those lips and you catch them with yours as he parts starts to actually answer you. Whatever he was about to say dies with this kiss, and indeed, what a kiss it is. It is so slow, tender, his lips petal soft. It starts with that first catching, brush of skin, then delicate slow sips. He tastes like a luscious red vintage with a bitter note, all decadence. It sets your head spinning. That warm thing inside your chest burns again, but rather than smother it, you decide to kindle it with this kiss. You are sure that it is full of things you don’t have words for yet, things that you could only say now with your lips on his. Maybe, one day, you both could say those things out loud. But for now, you wade out into these unknown waters together.

As you pull away, you murmur onto his lips, “I have an idea.”

“Quite inspired this evening, are we?”

You grin, “I have an ethereal muse. Will you indulge me yet again?”

“How can I say no when you say things like that, darling?”

With that, you jump – as much as one can in one’s lover’s lap – into action and pull him down into his bedroll with you. Quickly pulling his blankets over you both, you nudge him onto his side and curl up behind him, around his head.

“If you wanted a cuddle, you could have asked,” he chuckled.

You pause, and as a lead weight drops into your stomach, you remember that this has been a lot of contact all at once, far more than usual. You sit up suddenly, “Light, is this too much? I should’ve asked-”

He silences you with a hasty reply, “This is fine, I’m fine. I think. As I said, it’s different... but not unwelcome. I could get used to this.” He trails off for a moment, and then quietly adds, “But perhaps we go no further than this tonight.” He runs a hand down your arm in reassurance.

You smile softly in response, curling back up beside him, “Of course. Toss me out anytime if I tire you.”

“As if I could toss you out of anywhere,” he scoffs. “You have a way of ferreting yourself back in, anyway.”

“Me!? Ferreting!? That is most unbecoming; I slither, thank you!”

Now you have him in a proper laugh, and you admire the way his whole face changes. The creases at the corners of his eyes, the crinkle in his nose, and the glint of his teeth. Most of all, the sound of it. You adore his real laugh; time seems to stand still every time you hear it.

“’Light’, eh?" He posits, turning onto his side, "I don’t think you’ve ever cursed like that before.”

“I don’t think I’ve said it in several decades,” you muse, Light upon you! being a very common curse. You've since adopted surface phrases to avoid standing out so much. “How did you know it was a curse?”

“I have my sources,” he quips, glancing over at a few of his books.

With a private grin you hum acknowledgement, letting the conversation lapse into comfortable silence. You both lie still next to each other, not touching but very close, content to be together in the time before your companions rise.

In the quiet of the early morning, with only the sigh of your breaths between you, your finger coiling a lock of his hair over and over, you recall a word once whispered in a safehouse from your past. You took refuge there, tucked away in the Mantle on the outskirts of Menzoberranzan. It was depths better than the constant vigilance you were accustomed to in the streets of the slum, fighting off goblins and runaway slaves for any scrap of food. Those days before your trek through the Dark Dominion were the lowest of your shadowy life, but that small, impossible band of drow, goblins, and even a human brought a little light with them when they offered you shelter. You learned their music, accepted their alms, and heard the teachings of Lolth’s wayward daughter. You had little choice but to do so, your other options all leading back to the Stenchstreets, and you were constantly vigilant of the day they would turn on you, kill you, sell you to a pleasure house, use you for some gain. But that day never came. It flummoxed you; and on the eve of the day the group sent you off with a contact through the tunnels to the surface you backed one of them in a corner and demanded to know, to understand.

“Why do you do this?”

“Out of love for our people, and a desire to see them flourish among our brethren above,” was their simple answer. They offered no more, and stood stoic against your blade.

With a ghost of breath, you test the word around your lips, your tongue now unfamiliar with its mother language, and this word too. It is not known in deep drow – only those who dance under the Dark Maiden truly knew it.

“Alurlssrin...”

It is sweet and so unfamiliar but sends a thrill through you. You are sure Astarion hears it, as he is not in trance, but he does not react, does not say anything. He’ll not know what it means anyway, and frankly neither do you, not yet. But with time – with time and this warmth between you, maybe you’ll find out. Maybe you’ll teach him what it means one day.

Love.

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Thank you for reading! I hope you enjoyed it.

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