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dhampling · 1 year ago

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sylvan gn!reader, 2.8k

THIS IS IT! THE UNICORN FIC! ALSO COINCIDENTALLY A 300 FOLLOWER CELEBRATION PIECE! THANK YOU!!! based on THIS ask, where a chance series of encounters in youth come together on one night, where everything just clicks for Astarion and his unicorn. this has plagued my brain. this is all i know now. i hope you enjoy it as much as i enjoyed writing it. wc: 2.8k c/w: descriptions of mutilation. fluff. reader WAS a unicorn. yippee.

A bed of burning coals. Belly on a smooth stone slab.

Low candlelight as Cazador works, each measured smite into the milky flesh of Astarion’s back feels akin to a dull goring; blood a balm of cooling as it spills.

A mouldering steak.

With each biting shovel of the gouging blade he knows this is a horribly permanent form of disfigurement.

The pale face in the very periphery of his waning vision, flickering often to look at some tome of reference before conferring with Dufay in frequent sharp whispers.

He wipes the skin to clear his canvas after each twist of his tool. A searing rag. He can feel the fluff, the grit, as it settles deep into the exposed sticky blazing valleys between his shoulder blades. He feels the birth of rancid infection. The prickle of each and every prick along his tendons that the debris sets alight.

He knows little else in this moment.

He knows his limbs are useless in tight leather binds, but that this isn’t a case of reprimand as a flaying or a visit to the kennels may be. He’s been good this month. He hasn’t pushed his luck, nor toed the line. He hasn’t even seen Godey in a four tenday.

He knows that the gods can’t hear him down here, wherever here is. He was mercifully sedated at one point, but now all that remained were the paralytic properties of whatever was in the chalice presented oh-so-mightily to him at dinner. That his foetid, mortified carcass won’t allow him to howl, or whine, or scream.

He thinks that he had a similar tool to this when he was young.

He remembers the cool blunt edge in the kitchens and running the tip of his small thumb along it. Feeling it in his pocket, warmed by the heat of his still-breathing body. Sitting in the forest just the other side of the fence with a small wicker basket of apples beside him. Woven blanket underneath linen tunic, woollen overcoat despite the early Kythorn sun; juices running down his little chin as he looked up at the birds singing through the canopy of trees.

He then remembers his mother’s beckon call, leaving the cores to rot on the peaty floor; seeing the yellowing flesh dotted with twigs and brown leaves, glistening still.

“Are you coming?” He whispers sharply, head peering around the yawning mouth of your tent.

You stretch and roll your wrists, freeing your eyes of sleep with a soft rub.

“Hm?”

Astarion clicks his tongue and rolls his eyes. You look at him in a daze.

He bristles in the post-gloaming purple dusk, your amber candlelight bringing his face warmth as his eyes scan your face. Behind him you can see a tapestry of stars starting to form in the sky.

His head shakes a little. Claps once. Incredulous.

Oh.

“Overslept.” You mumble. He sighs.

“Gods.’

Pinches the bridge of his nose in exasperation.

‘You have five minutes before I pull you out of this foetid little pit, whatever state you’re in.”

He turns on his heel.

“Is that a threat?” You shout after him.

His head ducks quickly back in.

“A promise. Just so we’re clear.”

A nap in the thulsun heat. A day of rest. Astarion ‘knock, knock’-ing on your tent flap as you read and slinking in like a cat, perching precariously on the chair you use to throw your unwashed armour onto after battle. Several quips about the smell. You threw a pillow at him. Hard. He repostured and continued on breezily.

He’d ‘gotten wind’ of a gathering happening on the beach twenty minutes from camp. Scavengers finishing up at the Nautiloid wreckage throwing some debauched farewell to the Ravaged Beach before some bastardised mercenary force comes in to begin clean up. All the good stuff now gone, but plenty of wine; and, obviously, an opportunity for ‘a little bit of fun’.

He’d blinked at you coquettishly, leaning on the back of the chair, daring you to ask just how he’d gotten wind of such an event.

It’s rare you’ve bounced off another with such ease since your change. You’re too intelligent for his seduction techniques - the ones you hear him rehearsing quietly to himself from his tent each evening - to work the simple way he intends. That doesn’t mean the pale elf has had no effect on you, however.

You take comfort in knowing exactly how you’ll find him every time you look, and he’ll always be ever so pleased to hear that you have been looking.

A wink. A flash of those porcelain white fangs.

An invite to your bedroll for the most sordid of midnight snacks.

Chatter between friends, an ever-present whiff of flirtation; the quirk of a moonlit lip and the pleasure of mutual relief in the dead of night.

You fumble around the darkened tent in underwear searching for your discarded camp clothes as his fire-lit silhouette lingers outside.

Astarion thinks about the apples from time to time.

Tough, yet yielding. Biting. Sweet flesh bursting in season, ripe and white. Scraps of red skin stuck between hungry teeth. Seeds in their hard little hollows, stalks with small dry leaves. The way the juice ran so freely down his chin in the light of the sun and dampened the back of his hand as he’d wiped it away.

His full wicker basket empty by afternoon.

Highsun courtyard feasts. He remembers the animals; his mother joking with beaming eyes and a wine-dipped cheer about his ‘druidic potential’ as she held him close, hand on his head, the other on his chest, he stood against her legs as she wittered. Time spent watching for an opportunity to slip through the gate and sit in silence with the birds.

Cazador trenches into his back deeper this time. What Astarion assumes must be blood spatters into his hair with the force of flying blue jay shit, and he’d know.

He remembers the first time he saw the unicorns in the forest, how bewildered he felt. Startling white in such vivid contrast to the surrounding browns and greens.

They weren’t skittish like the deer were, nor could they have been ‘lost property’ like the horses who often roamed by. The kobolds were mean to him on more than one occasion and the boars who passed were simple creatures.

As a decisive yank is made and the gouging tool changes direction, fully embedded in the flesh it tears, he thinks about the smallest one.

Despite being fraught with innuendo and obvious peacocking, Astarion’s company is a reassuring distraction from your current tadpole predicament. A parody of traditional pursuit wrapped in genuine affection. He knows he doesn’t have to bring the bravado, because you’ll play along regardless.

And this eventide, alongside the fallen Nautiloid; he glows.

Skin soaked in the deep gloaming ambers and yellows of the campfire. Laugh of treacle, like a dozing highsun; a dawn chant on Lathander’s day - he tips his head back in a cotton lull and the quiet threat of his smile brimming through his sharp incisors devastates you.

You watch on from the open mouth of a scavenger tent astride a pile of pillows and blankets, surrounded in distant light and pilfered goods. A warm breeze carries the firesmoke and to your side is a newfound silver chalice full to the brim with heady Arabellan Dry.

He looks every part the favourite of the gods.

Sways gently in his seat. Imbibes generously. Lifts his arms wide in gesticulation with oft-rotating conversational partners and tells stories in hushed tones with the most salacious quirk threatening his brow.

Occasionally throughout your jaunt, you’ll wonder if he should be holding your mind like this.

Then his eyes meet yours.

Gods.

It feels like they all watch as he moves to you. Adonis in the flesh; effusive as his fingers circle the rim of his glass and he sinks to crossed legs beside you. Face by face.

“I am so fucking bored.” He mutters. Smiles widely at a passing new acquaintance before sighing a grumble.

“Which one was ‘bored’ again?” You peer mockingly into the crowds, searching with a hand resting atop your tired brow.

He elbows you. Hard.

“You sound remarkably sour, pet.”

“I’m not sour. I’ve had a beautiful evening” You sip. A gentle breeze rolls over you.

Astarion lolls his head back a little.

“Beautiful wasn’t really the plan though, was it?”

You turn to him. Narrow your eyes just the smallest bit.

Astarion tilts back and looks to the sky. He opens his mouth as if to speak. Closes it just as fast.

“What?”

You picture him falling in love with every single one he’d spoken to on the beach this evening; lifting locks of hair around nimbly twirling fingers and pulling another warm body closer. Tilting his head downwards, eyes remaining forward; struggling for words in covetous gasps. Seduction.

A small laugh. Gods.

“Beautiful. Fucking a stranger in a beach cove isn’t necessarily what I’d call beautiful, dearest.”

“That was your plan?”

“Wasn’t it yours?”

You stop for a good moment. Astarion clicks his tongue in thought. Blinks with the urgency of dripping treacle.

Gods. The memory alone would be enough to bring a smile to his face, and he remembers it so very vividly.

The apples. A baby unicorn.

One late Elient afternoon, the first time any of them had approached. His fingers stickied with juice. It didn’t appear to be cautious by any discernible means, refusing the peel he’d hesitantly offered far out on the flat of his palm.

Little thing. Just about his size, he thinks; and he was always small.

He remembers sniffing with a cold and haphazardly wiping his sticky fingers on the front of his coat. Reaching out so it could smell him.

Chewing open-mouthed, eyes closed, smoothing his face with the back of his hand.

They’d fall about together on feeble legs, his flailing arms and gentle nudges. Days on days spent venturing into the forest where it’d be waiting for him in the same clearing as always.

He remembers easing into the apple flesh with the tool edge and gently wiggling it into the crisp white to ensure a deep enough pit. Skimming imperfect rounds of the skin. Bouncing the resulting red spiral between his thumb and forefinger.

Cazador reaches for the dagger. A hundred-thousand molten pins.

The moon overhead. Unwavering in clarity. It almost feels like you’re on the precipice of a different world.

“You’re weird, you know.’ Astarion breaks his silence. The revellers continue to drink, to dance and talk clumsily around you.

Your eyes meet his. He wavers on the edge of certainty, but the performative lowering of his lids shows you he isn’t too sure. There’s a front to the nonchalance.

‘What are you?”

“Hm?”

“Fun. I said there’d be fun. You aren’t partaking.’ He takes a sip and swills it around his mouth whilst collecting his thoughts. The dossier. Racking through pages in his brain.

‘I can’t be completely sure, but I’ve met a lot of humans in my life. Seduced them. Given and taken like a market teller.’

His hands move as he speaks, a considered pattern of gesticulation.

‘And you simply… you’re above it all. You don’t even smell human. What are you?”

There it is. If you weren’t inebriated you’d be tempted to laugh him off.

Tonight, however; your bones are thoroughly wine-sodden.

Your companion has a twinkle in his eye. A beach of prospective lovers and he has collapsed at your side in respite. If he persecutes you as they would then you’ll die with his face the last thing you see. It doesn’t feel like a bad compromise.

“Not human.” You confirm, looking at your fingernails with a pert nod.

He laughs in a slight of vindication.

“Try me.”

“Sylvan.”

You can’t be sure if it’s from embarrassment or underlying fear that your head falls into your sweaty hands. Astarion’s snide streak plays at the fray of your mind.

“What? Half wood-elf or something?”

He sips.

“Unicorn.” You lift your fingers and flutter them around the sides of your head meekly.

Splutters.

“Explains why there are none roaming the actual woods anymore, I suppose.”

He’s taken it surprisingly well, all things considered. You aren’t sure what you’d expected. A minute of silence. The lazy roll of waves along the shore.

“What do I smell like?”

Maybe he’s wary of the driftwood stake near your hand.

“Apples. People don’t smell like apples. Usually sweat. Or perfume.’ He runs his tongue over his teeth and sniffs.

‘Not apples. I should’ve -”

Apples. A softness in the way he says it, you note. Favoured fruit in the allotments running the edge of the forests.

‘I’ve not had an apple in so long.”

He finishes with a wistful smile, topping off the wine in hand and refilling it with a swift glug.

“Do you miss them?”

“Apples? I-’

The cogs turn slowly - he wets his bottom lip and looks to the sky once more. His brow furrows as you watch him think.

‘I used to sit in the forest, just around the back of the garden wall. I was about- I’d have been about up to here?’ He lifts his arm to just above where his sitting head rests.

‘I was tiny. All day long. Peeling the skin, gnawing away. Ironic.”

Pauses as if in remembrance of something. Grimaces.

You smile fondly and reach for his arm. You’re willing to entertain the line of dialogue. It distracts from the situation and he seems open to indulging in it.

“Funny.”

He scoffs and taps your hand softly before taking it in his. Cool fingers lock around yours.

“How so?”

“Gods, a long time ago now - there was a boy I met who did the same thing. Fascinated by them. Would sit and peel them with a little tool. Strange thing.”

You take a sip as you imitate the focus of the young thing, pretending to work tunnels into the cooling air with your near-empty chalice.

Astarion whips his head to face yours.

“Two hundred years ago?”

“Why?’

He’s watching you as if you’re holding something very fragile in your faux-gouging fingers.

‘I suppose so? Round about then. Bit longer, maybe two hundred and th-”

“Me. It was me.”

Your eyes meet.

It’s the kind of moment you’ve read about in your downtime, the way the clock stops. Everything feels silent. The sea stops rolling soft on the shore, the voices around you are naught above a whisper; the glass in the hand not clutching yours set firmly on the sand as he shuffles to face you head on.

Apples.

You watch his eyes soften wholly. Not a single ounce of guard; no sense of hesitation. Two glimmering rubies in the moonlight.

“His eyes weren’t red.” You smile.

It takes a moment for him to react. He’s studying your face reverently, with newfound interest; mapping each of the lines and blemishes with a hand hovering over your cheek.

And then he laughs. The most beautiful sound in all the realms, melodic.

“They weren’t.’

He points to the scarred fang marks above his sagging collar.

‘I was also alive at that point.’

Astarion takes a few comfortable minutes to look at you as he strokes over your hand with his thumb. You’ve spent enough of the past few weeks looking over him to know him almost by heart but you’ll indulge with the context of the revelation before you.

“Look at us now, then.”

Your voice cracks. You didn’t realise the sheer size of the lump in your throat.

“I -’

He presses his free hand to your cheek as he did when you were both young. Soft. Jowls ablaze at his wine-sticky touch.

The sincerity in his gaze is brutal. If you weren’t so deeply enamoured you might just vomit.

‘The longest night of my life, I thought of you. The apples. How -’

Astarion takes a moment to survey you. You obviously look nothing like you did back then, aside from the brightest eyes he’s ever seen in all two hundred and thirty nine years of life and the same softness in how they revere him.

‘How you never came back. I waited.’

It’s then that you crumble.

‘How happy I knew I’d be when you did return.”

It’s cataclysmic, the way he talks. The last person who was kind to you and he thought you’d left him by choice this whole time. Remembering you in his darkest moments. All you’ve both suffered and here you are, on this rancid beach in the middle of nowhere; your hand safe in his.

“It wasn’t by choice. Never.”

The look on his face suggests he’s toying with the idea of playing the fair maiden, but he sees the way you crack and almost takes to tears himself.

“Well. You’re here now, and we have a lot of lost time to make up for. It helps that I was already fond of you, of course.”

He brushes the hair from your face and plants a deep kiss on your forehead as you bring your arms around his waist, hesitantly.

It’s a start.

One you’d never have seen coming when waking aboard the crashed nautiloid in front of you; but glorious nonetheless.

#astarion x reader #astarion #bg3 #astarion ancunin #my writing #unicorn stuff

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