#echoechowhiskey

I think a lot about the fact that Astarion biting you would eventually leave a mark and what HE might think about that.

With a Lesser Restoration spell it would take repeatedly injuring the area for it to start leaving obvious scars, which would take a decent amount of time. Unless you're offering it up nightly(which is fine), but I see it being more common HC, mine included, that not only is it better for him (autonomy wise) to feed off baddies more regularly but also you since, you know, that's bound to tally up against your health if he's feeding on you daily, spells or no.

So how would Astarion feel the first time he catches a look at your neck and sees faint traces of his mark?

Those scars becoming more obvious over time.

The other companions noticing.

Your varied possible reactions changing but not lessening the wide range of thoughts and emotions he could have on the matter.

You could flaunt it, playing up the "hot" Vampire stigma in his mind and making those marks remind him of that everytime..

You could hide it.. making him feel sort of ashamed but also resentful. Why help him if you're ashamed to do so? Maybe you are simply helping to keep someone you need healthy in a fight fit.

Or maybe it just doesn't bother you.

It's part of the help you give. You aren't proud, not embarrassed. It's just not worth worrying about considering all the other scars you're probably accumulating.

Does he feel a sense of claim when he sees it? Possessive in a way he isn't accustomed to feeling towards... anything.

A sense of fondness at the reminder that you were his first tatse of happiness? The first to help him simply because he needed it and you could.

The first aching pulls of affection when he leans into you, the scars catching his eye as he dips his head, lining his fangs up to the mark. HIS mark.

The ways you could handle the scars appearing and he could then respond are endless.

But then..

What would happen if say, Shadowheart happens to want to practice the Heal spell she's just learned? So she takes healing up your bite and bloodless as an opportunity.

But Heal is more powerful then lesser restoration and is known to remove scars, so that mark is erased entirely.

You go about your morning, but the first thing he notices the moment he's joined you is that there isn't a trace of the scars.

Where his fangs had been just hours before.

His mark is gone.

They have the ability to carry the gold and can use (some) stuff if it's left in their inventory. So why not?

I'd pay for a dlc or mod that added that function so fast... just to see what these dopes would spend their gold on if given free reign.

Just finding the most random shit in their inventory/tents when you go back to long rest.

Like imagine you come back from the lower cities on the first day and everyone's broke.

Gale's encumbered by every book he could find plus he bought a bunch of fancy tea/coffee and a very nice silver percolator.

Astarion's digging through all the shiny stuff he bought/swipped while sipping expensive wine in his new threads and smelling like 1k cause he hit the perfume joint.

Wyll's sneaking away with his latest monster romance novel and a BIG bag of the most fried, salty junk food type snacks faerun has to offer.

Shadowhearts got 17 boxes of hair dye, the latest gossip mags and her own 6 bottles of expensive wine.

Karlach keeps buying fireworks and accidentally seeting em off at inappropriate times and has almost set her own giant bag of snacks on fire several times already.

I love the "unless YOU wanna offer????" Look you get at the end after he tells you he needs to go hunt.

I'm trying real hard to get back in the game.

Until then have a gif or two of my favorite Astarion graveyard scene awkwardness. That little leg clap he does when he's prepping to show you his grave and steadinging himself to share something clearly so meaningful is just the sweetest.

Bonus facial expressions cause I just love how he's zoned then like "Oh Yeah I'm not alone! ALRIGHT let's do this."

You can see his little mental pep talk playing out.

Dhampires in the 5e dnd lore (from my understanding) do not inherently have red eyes. They might have flecks of red, and they generally have the pallid complexions and sharper features and things like that of the vampire parent, but they don't have to have the red eyes.

So what if he and say, his brown-eyed partner pop out a kid with golden eyes? or green?

Maybe your character knows they're lineage and maybe they don't, so maybe they can say "hey that eye color doesn't exist in any of my relatives" or maybe it's more speculative.

But wouldn't that be cool?

In my own personal headspace and from what I've seen with most of you guys doing the dadstarion thing, he isn't exactly thrilled to be a parent.

At least not till the baby gets there.

He's anxious, afraid, entirely doubtful of himself and probably the entire situation, it's an absolute shock and surprise almost every single time I've seen it written, and he doesn't really handle it that great, which totally, in my opinion, makes sense.

So he spent the whole nine months freaking out, flipping between chaotic emotions, probably not really excited for this to happen, and if you go off of actual Dhampire info that's out there, the pregnancies are usually pretty dangerous or at least difficult, so he's probably been terrified for his partner the entire time too.

But then there's this little baby.

Maybe it's got his white hair and his skin tone and some features, like maybe his ears. But they've also got beautiful eyes that are not anything like his or his partners.

It might take him a minute to figure it out, to realize that they actually DO have his eyes as well.

They're just not the one's he remembers.

They don't just have his Vampiric traits, they have HIS traits. The one's outside of the things he can remember or have been described. Yet another part he'd lost and given up to time.

So have a gif of the first subtle one and a clip of the second (cause I like his line work). I caught it twice in the very first interaction with him lol.

Bonus clip of him giving you kitty blinks