Gummy Dummy

The Last Light Inn was in danger of its stained glass windows rattling in their frames and the walls threatening to tip over and fall whichever way they deemed fit, but it hardly seemed as though its occupants cared in the slightest. Beings from across the Shadow-Cursed Lands had crawled from their wrecked homes and barricaded hiding places to watch as Moonrise Towers had nearly imploded with the force of the curse being lifted, daylight that seemed blinding after so many years absent flooding the canvas of the sky to chase away the swirling, snarling shadows back where they had once emerged from. Word certainly spread fast here despite the lands being next to empty; there was a celebration to be held at the inn, where the shields had finally come down and the monsters had been banished.

It seemed as though everyone here in the little inn wore wide, cracking smiles and danced to the music the bards strummed and forgot about their worries for the first time in decades.

Nearly everyone.

You were not versed in celebration. You had once, long ago, been accustomed to taking guard near the doors and watching the windows, keeping vigil late into the night while people more deserving, better suited, sang and drank and cheered. It was a hard habit to shake, even when you sat here at the bar nursing a small glass between clammy hands. Your eyes flitted above bobbing heads in order to scope out the balconies, the cracks and crevices, the weak points - anywhere and everywhere a shadow could leak in, a hidden foe could be lurking.

You were a soldier of war, bred for battle. You simply didn’t know how to be the opposite.

Your gaze flickered to where Karlach and Wyll danced before the bards, each a bit tipsy in their own, but still afflicted with smiles she envied and interlocked hands that made you bite at your tongue until it bled and mixed with the liquor permeating your tongue. The pair had been getting on well as of late; who would have thought? Certainly not you. A valiant, double edged servant of the needy and a flaming devil from the Hells - you could not have fathomed a pair more opposite, so charmingly drawn to one another in such a terrible, unassuming place.

Well.

You could - you simply didn’t want to.

Exhaling a small, silent breath, you turned your gaze back down to your drink and the polished wood of the bar underneath. How frustratingly irksome this all had been; traveling with a vampire, sleeping just a handful of tents away from him at night when you were at your most vulnerable. Allowing him to take his fill of your dark, staining blood late in the evenings when no one else was there to hear your gasps. Letting him catch sight of your tears and hear your ravaged cries. Murmuring long-buried secrets and insecurities to one another through the dark.

Astarion was a riddle you could not solve for the life of you, and as the evenings wore on into months, you grew increasingly more agitated, because you had never really been all that good at riddles, anyhow. He had once sneered and snapped at you, batted away your attempts to forcibly tear down his walls and find out just for yourself why. Why he did what he did, why he was the way that he was. And now, some confusing months along, he’d allowed you to run the tips of your fingers along the scars across his back, murmur to him of your waking nightmares, keep hold of the back of his overcoat so that you did not lose sight of him when you traversed the dark.

You had tried to convince yourself at first that it was because you hated him. You were luring him in close enough to snag him before he could sense the danger, allowing him to confuse friendship for what it was not.

But that was not the truth, and you hated it. You’d come to care for Astarion, as horrific the thought was. Care for him beyond what he’d once done, who he’d once been. You wanted him safe, and fed, and warm, sheltered from his old master and what you both knew was awaiting him at Cazador’s palace, and you had come to the conclusion that - even if it meant letting yourself fall - you would see to it that he was all those things and more.

You had known, he had known, everyone in your damnable little party had known - that today had been the turning point.

That drow woman - Araj had been her name - had struck a licking, searing fire within you that ate at you until you felt as though you had been going to erupt then and there. She had offered them potions and trinkets infused with magic - all for a price, of course. Just not one their party had been expecting.

“Is he a real vampire?” Araj had lilted while Gale had sifted through the items she had to offer. Her head had tilted to the side, hair tumbling over her shoulder as her dark gaze flitted across the pale elf where he stood murmuring with Lae’zel.

Your attention had been pulled from the dagger you’d been examining upon the mat of wares, ears pricked with a kind of caution that still lay within her since her days soldiering. You’d glanced back toward Astarion, who regarded the drow with a bout of uncertainty. His lips had been parted for an answer, no doubt cheeky and dripping with his regular facade of sarcasm, but you’d beat him to it.

“Pardon my bluntness,” you had said as you went back to holding the small, curved knife up to the light. The steel glinted a sharp, accented light across one of your eyes as you spoke. “But I’m inclined to say it isn’t much of your business.”

Araj had hummed with a gentle, coy smile that was perhaps a bit too wide for her face and rounded her table, brushing past Gale as she swayed her way toward the vampire where he stood. Any member of the party who knew the inner workings of his mind was able to see the way he tensed ever so gently in the way his chin tilted up and his stance corrected itself. Despite his true, underlying emotions he’d so long ago manipulated into hiding away, he gave a short little sound and smirked at the drow.

“You’ll have to forgive our little soldier,” he’d said. “She tends to think with her blade before her head.”

You had let your eyes roll back into your head before turning again and setting down the blade back where you’d found it. So served you for attempting to bestow him a bit of misplaced kindness, unneeded protection.

“You know,” said Araj as she wandered even closer, “I’ve been researching vampires and their ways for years. I would be lying if I claimed not to wonder…” Her eyes had flicked down to Astarion’s lips - or rather, what lay behind them. She thought for a moment, then hummed with a sick, sadistic kind of smile and turned. “I must extend a proposition. Allow me a potent, transforming bite from your vampire, and you may take what you wish from my wares, free of charge.”

There had been a long, still moment of silence in which the party followed Araj’s gaze toward where you stood at the table, now reading the scrawling label upon a potion. Gale had brushed his hand against your arm, catching your attention, and you had tossed a glance over your shoulder before realizing the question had been directed at you. All eyes of the party and the trader had been affixed to you, all scuffed and burned armor, healing tears across your skin that would turn to scars by the end of the month. Your grasp had tightened around the glass containing the potion.

“You’re asking me?” you had said, brows furrowing together.

“Yes,” answered Araj. “He belongs to you, does he not?”

“No,” had been your immediate answer, flashes of the white-haired elf in chains at the hand of a cruel, torturing master searing the forefront of your mind. You had set down the potion, suddenly unwilling to buy from a trader so harsh in her assumptions. “He belongs to no one. He makes his own decisions.”

There had been a thickening, a strengthening, of the bond between you and Astarion then, one each of you felt like a tug deep in their chests where no one, not even themselves, knew existed. It was a mutual understanding, a mutual appreciation. An affection, perhaps?

Astarion cleared his throat, eyes burning holes in your back from beneath hooded lids, before at last sweeping his gaze back to Araj. “I’m afraid my answer will have to be a no, dear,” he’d said with a wane smile. “Prideful as I am, it’s not exactly in my nature to be running around creating more creatures of bloodlust about the lands.”

Araj clearly had not liked this answer, as she had painted herself with an expression obviously meant to be seductive and lifted a hand to rest upon his upper arm. “Are you quite certain you wouldn’t spare me even the smallest nip, vampire?”

“Ah - no. My… sincerest apologies.”

“I wouldn’t want to -”

She had been interrupted when, from the inky darkness that had surrounded them there in Moonrise Towers, there came the glint of a blade in the dim light, visible only for a moment before it came to a still, unwavering halt just a handful of inches from Araj’s throat - thus severing her from approaching Astarion any further, lest she did and slit her own jugular. At the hilt end of the longsword stood you, brows low over your eyes and the corner of your mouth tilted downward. It was obvious to the party you were fighting yourself attempting to keep your features neutral, expressionless, unreadable. Yet try as you might, an inkling of what sweltering rage lay beneath seeped through the cracks.

“I believe he said his answer was no,” you stated, your voice like a spear through the otherwise still chamber. “Unless you wish to step forward and seal your own fate, I suggest it would be in your best interest to let him and us alone. We do not wish to trade in blood.”

The clanking of glasses and a startling chorus of cheers brought you back to the present, where you blinked a number of times in an attempt to clear the stale memories from your head. Araj was long gone; the curse had been lifted. So why did you still feel this hideous, lurching feeling in your chest, nestled deep between your ribs like a dull knife?

You turned her head a fraction of an inch when you felt the weight of a presence behind you, beside you, with you. You didn’t have to move any further to know who it was, and if it was possible, that sensation in your chest worsened and eased all at once.

“You know, I have attended my fair share of parties,” mused Astarion as he came to rest against the bar beside you, elbow braced dangerously close to your own. “And if my impeccable memory is serving me correctly, celebrations are usually spent with others, not curled up by oneself looking as though they’re miserably stuck in their heads.”

You hummed as you brought your small glass to your lips despite not wanting any more. “Obviously you have never attended a party with me,” you said over the rim. “I do hate to spoil your fun, but parties are not in my interest.”

“Oh, that was apparent the first time we met, little soldier.”

Oh, how you hated it and loved it all at the same time when he called you that. And oh, how he knew it.

“Which time?” you said and finally turned her head to face him. “When you left me behind on the nautiloid, or when you held a blade to my throat upon our first meeting?”

Astarion’s scarlet gaze sharpened a touch, the memories practically playing themselves behind his eyes, and he twisted his head around on his neck in an almost unsettling manner. “What is the matter, dear?” he asked, leaning himself in a bit further to be heard over the boisterous cacophony of laughter and music. “We’ve had a rather exciting day. This is… well, I suppose this is cause for celebration. Look, even Lae’zel is enjoying herself, and she’s far less agreeable than you.”

You followed his gesture across the inn, where, indeed, Lae’zel was barking for another refill of her tankard and regaling a few young tieflings with her bloody tales of her people’s empire.

You thumbed around the rim of your glass for a moment before you answered, “By all means, don’t let my mood sour your fun. Go and ask some pretty young thing to dance before they’re wooed by Gale’s charms.”

Astarion’s tall, pointed ears twitched and he tipped back his head to release a short bark of a laugh - the kind he let out when he found something wildly amusing. “Aha!” he yipped. “I do think that’s the funniest thing you’ve said to me. No…” He straightened himself and placed one arm behind his back in a formal manner, then extended the other toward you where you sat slumped at the bar. “I would much rather dance with you, darling.”

“Me?” You shook your head, attempting to force down the hint of a jesting smirk upon your lips. “I don’t think so. I haven’t…” You swallowed and cleared your throat. “I don’t know how to dance.”

“Oh, it isn’t much of a difficult thing.” Astarion stretched out his hand a bit further, urging you to take his palm, but never touching. Never touching without your permission, your nod, your familiar gleam that told him here is my neck, here is my hand - take however much you’d like. “Come along, little soldier. Perhaps you’ll even learn to have fun, for once.”

You let his words pang around in your chest for a long, stifling moment, your mouth twisted into a crooked line before, at last, you exhaled and slipped your warm, clammy palm into his cold one. His grin was toothy and mischievous as he pulled you to your feet and guided you toward a corner that was not nearly as crowded as the rest of the inn, but still held enough room for the pair of you to wind around one another while you learned to dance, live, exist in one another’s presence.

Astarion took each of your hands into his own, his touch sending a shiver racing down your spine that you tried with everything you were made of to suppress, and used his boot to nudge apart your own. “On the balls of your feet, dear. None of those stiff elbows and locked knees. Perfect. Good girl.”

Gods, this stupid, handsome, utterly maddening bloodsucker was going to be the death of you.

Gingerly, once he’d corrected your footing, you wound about each other in a loose circle, lively enough to match the music but slow to the point that you did not stutter and end up taking the both of you to the ground if you lost your balance. Your heart was thundering like a storm in your ears and you were sure he could hear it, based on that cheeky, smackable smirk playing his lips while he watched you, but you chose to ignore the telltale signs of your nerves and let yourself dance to the music and the floppy, bouncing lyrics the bards cried.

Was this what it was like, you wondered while you danced, hand in hand and chests just inches apart? Was this what you had been missing out on while guarding doors and watching windows, keeping a hand upon the hilt of your sword and blocking out the music, the allure, the need to feel free? If so, you believed that, just perhaps, you had been cheated out of far too much when you had been reigned into the life and liberties of a soldier.

“You know,” said Astarion, breaking your momentary distraction. He held your hands tightly as you danced, keeping you steady, always keeping you steady. “I never properly thanked you for… for earlier. Today. In the towers. It was very…” He almost seemed to struggle to say the words. “It was very… kind. Of you.”

Your hair flounced with your movements as you stared back into pools of scarlet that threatened to snap you up whole and leave not a trace of you behind. Normally you would give him shit for struggling with a simple thanks, a genuine one, at that, but you couldn’t find the heart nor tongue from it here, now, tonight. You could only feel that stabbing, twisting sensation deep in your gut that warmed you from the inside out as you gazed back at him. “You would have done the same,” you said, wanted to believe, tried so desperately to tell yourself, was the truth.

His lips parted ever so slightly, eyes softening just a touch, and it was not from the dance holding you captive that stole your breath and twisted your feet. He lurched just a fraction of a touch, almost like he’d been struck with an arrow between his shoulder blades, and he blinked a few times. “I… I would have.”

Oh, how few people, if any at all, could do this to him. Rob him of his facade, his vicious craft, his so-carefully fine tuned persona, muddle him down to this - to a softened shell of who he tried to be, was taught to be. His hands tightened around yours just a touch, and not but a moment later, yours did the same.

You gazed at one another, wanting, needing, so badly to come together and prove to each other and the rest of the world that, yes, this could happen. This could work. You could pick one another without masters to tell you to or orders forbidding such a thing to blossom. You could love one another without baring teeth or brandishing blades, need each other with only the thrumming, beating, screaming of your hearts and the aching of your souls, and nothing more.

You needed to have one another, because if either fell, by blade, or chain, or sunlight, the other could lie beside their corpse and have known their devotion.

Blinking against the firelight of the inn, Astarion began to crane his head down toward you, toward your lips - when the bards yipped out a final few chords and the song came to a halting, screeching end. The inn erupted with applause and cheers. Your dance slowed until you were still, faces still inclined toward one another, before slowly, reluctantly, you pulled away. Took a step apart.

“Well,” sighed Astarion, forcing himself to plaster a smile across his lips as he cocked his head in your direction. “That wasn’t nearly as bad as you were thinking it to be, was it?”

You held his gaze for just a moment too long before glancing down at your boots. “No. I suppose not.” You sniffed, feeling the burning, knowing gaze of more than a few party members upon them, before you took another step backward. “Thank you, Astarion… for the dance.” You nodded your head to him, suddenly far too shy, desperate, hesitant, to meet his eyes. “I’ll see you tomorrow.” Then you turned and disappeared into the still-celebrating crowd.