#spawn reader

Astarion clung to your arm the entire walk back to your house. You leaned into him, at first surprised by the lack of body heat but seeming to enjoy his grip on you nonetheless. Instinctively, you put your arm through his and rested your head against his shoulder. He hesitantly placed a soft kiss on the top of your head and you hummed happily. 

“I’ve missed you,” you whispered to him. 

Astarion hesitated, wanting to return the sentiment but unsure if he should; he had spent the past two hundred years—or most of them, at least—not remembering you. But when you looked up at him with a soft smile, the words tumbled out, an absolute necessity to say, “I missed you, too. Even if I didn’t know it, I…I did.”

You smiled at him, soft and gentle, like you knew exactly what he was referring to, like you knew he had felt a hollow absence for all these years he hadn’t realized was there until you filled it again. 

There was a glint in your eye that Astarion was pleased to recognize. He bent just enough to let you kiss his cheek. The two of you both smiled the minute your lips touched his skin. 

You gave directions as the two of you walked, telling him when to turn and which way, until you came to a stop at a door. It was illuminated by a golden lamp, spilling over its lovely emerald green paint. The color was like a burst of life against Astarion’s eyes, vibrant against the blacks and greys of his Darkvision. 

The door did not hold the same familiarity as you did. He glanced at you as you unlooped your arms and slid a key into the lock. “Is this…where we lived?”

“No,” you said, glancing back at him. “Your parents still live in that house. Our bedroom’s untouched, though. The bed still unmade, curtains still closed… It’s as it was when you left for work that morning.”

Pain split through his heart. “My parents are still alive?” You stopped, almost shocked, and turned to him with your mouth slightly open. Before you could speak, he barreled on, “They still live in the same house?”

You glanced up at the sky, likely trying to gauge how much time you had left. You pushed the door open and gently guided him inside as you answered, “Yes. They found it too painful to leave. Your… Your mother said leaving it would feel like selling all that was left of you to a stranger.” You were quiet for a moment. You began lighting the wicks of candles, revealing a kitchen. “I still go back sometimes. To sit in our room. Every so often I sit on the roof like we used to. And, uh…your parents don’t know this, but I’ve been slowly sneaking away pieces of your clothes. It’s…comforting to have them near me, even if I’m terrified that by wearing them too long I’ll lose your scent.”

Astarion felt like he’d been struck by lightning. His family was alive. His family was alive, had been these past two hundred years, and they still loved him. “My mother…” he whispered, tears gathering in his eyes.

You paused in your lighting. “Asty? Are you alright?”

His lower lip trembled. “I… I don’t know. I didn’t know they were still… Do they miss me?”

You came over to him and wrapped your arms around him. “They miss you very much, darling. There hasn’t been a day when your mother has not spoken of you, or a day that your father has not stared at your painting.” You looked up at him. “There has not been a day where any of us do not wish to change what happened that day. To prevent you from going to work. To get you home faster. To convince you to take a different route home. Anything to keep you alive and with us.”

I’m still loved. They love me.

He bit his lower lip. “I wish I could see them again.”

“Perhaps one day you will,” you said. “Perhaps we’ll find a way out.”

Astarion smiled bitterly. “Cazador will take that optimism from you.”

You studied him for a moment, clearly wanting to argue. But instead you just gave him your hand and whispered to him, “Come with me, love.”

A nervousness filled his chest. “I don’t want to do this to you… I don’t want to lose you.”

You cupped his cheeks and pressed your forehead together. Your thumbs smoothing over his cheeks comforted him in a way he never remembered feeling before—but surely you must have done this a thousand times, with the practiced way you touched him. “You aren’t losing me. And you aren’t the one hurting me, darling. It’s your master who has done this to us both.”

Astarion shuddered. “Don’t speak of him. Not here. Not when we’re about to…” He bit his lip. “Not when I can have you again.”

You nodded and kissed his forehead. He leaned into it, some of the tension in his shoulders draining away. “I won’t.” You began walking him out of the kitchen, leading him up a set of stairs. “This way, love.”

Nervous in a way he didn’t ever remember being, Astarion followed you up the stairs. He glanced around the humble dwelling you had made your home—covered in paintings and tapestries and knickknacks that made it homey and welcoming—safe. It felt lived in, contrary to many of the homes of nobility he had found himself in time and time again. It wasn’t something he would have ever designed himself, at least not as he was now, but he liked it anyway. 

The door to your bedroom was open. It was a cozy, open room that felt familiar enough for him to pause at the threshold.

You noticed. “I may have designed it to be similar to our old bedroom. It was comforting.”

Astarion’s eyes scanned the room: a large bed in the middle, covered in soft blankets and piled with pillows, a circular rug underneath it, a mirror on the wall next to your wardrobe. Your desk was covered with paints and powders and pieces of jewelry similar to what you wore now. 

“I like it,” he said quietly. “I… We lived in a place like this?”

You nodded, sitting in the chair at your desk. He watched you take off your jewelry and take your hair down. “Our bedroom had a different color scheme and it was a little bit bigger. We had a washroom connected to it and two wardrobes—yours was bigger than mine. And we had a balcony we used to sit on late at night. But we shared a desk and I wore your clothes more often than I wore mine.” You smiled at him. “You used to tease me that if you couldn’t find one of your shirts, it was either in my wardrobe or on my body.”

You stood and closed the curtains of the two windows that let moonlight stream into the room. Darkness fell for a moment and Astarion watched your dim figure move to one side of the bed. You struck a match and an oil lamp flared to life. 

“Simpler than magic,” you explained. Then the two of you stared at each other. 

Astarion didn’t know where to start. He knew how to manipulate his victims into bed with him nearly every night. He knew what to say, how to move, when to smile, when to make the approach. But with you in front of him, suddenly all his best tricks seemed useless. 

You cocked your head to the side, noticing his hesitation. “Astarion?”

“I don’t know where to start,” he whispered. 

“Then let me?” you suggested. He nodded. 

You removed your apron and draped it over the back of the chair. You reached around behind you and loosened the strings of your corset, slipping it off after a moment. It wasn’t exactly graceful, but the movement still made Astarion’s throat tighten. Somehow, your movements—unpracticed for two hundred years—were more alluring than the nobles Cazador made him bed or the unfortunate virgins tripping over themselves to have him. 

It’s because it’s you, he knew. You weren’t just alluring—you were comforting. His body was strangely present, strangely here, as you undressed for him. 

You pulled off your skirt and left yourself in a poet shirt similar to the one Astarion himself had worn until it fell apart and then sewn back together time and time again. You glanced up at him for a moment, your breath catching in your throat. Astarion nodded eagerly, taking a step closer to you. So you pulled the shirt up over your head and stood before him.

Your undergarments were made of delicate lace. Automatically, Astarion reached out to touch them—touch you—then hesitated, looking into your eyes, suddenly afraid his instinct had been wrong.

But you only stepped forward and guided his hand to the fabric covering your chest. His touch seemed to arrest you for a moment before you stuttered out, “You gave them to me. The set was an anniversary gift. Somehow I knew when I dressed this morning I wanted this piece of you close to me.”

Warmth bloomed in the pit of his stomach—arousal, actual arousal, not the response he had forced himself to have when his victims got naked. He felt himself stir in his leathers.

Astarion let his fingers trail over the edge of the lace. Your eyes fluttered closed, your breaths coming in heaves. “Well, I…had good taste.”

You touched his chest, fingers trailing over the gold embroidery of his doublet. “You still do, darling.” You let out a heavy, pleased sigh. “Oh, gods, Astarion, please. Can I kiss you?”

“Yes,” he breathed desperately, leaning into you. “Yes.”

You stood on your tiptoes; he bent down. As your lips touched, his arms looped around your waist and settled there, holding you against him. Your lips were soft, gentle, welcoming. You let him take the next step instead of forcing it. It was a kindness he wasn’t sure you knew was a kindness. 

He sucked your lower lip between his. You whined softly and then tried to pull away, clearly embarrassed by your need for him, but it brought a smile to his face. He chased your lips and brought one hand to rest between your shoulder blades, guiding you back to him. He kissed you again, softly at first, then licked your lip, asking for more. You obliged him with a slight smile of your own. 

Your tongues slid together, both of you careful of his fangs. After all these years, Astarion had gotten good at hiding them, even during a kiss—but he didn’t feel the need to hide them from you, only keep your tongue away from them.

One of your hands slid into his hair. He tensed momentarily, bracing for an unrelenting tug, but you only scratched his scalp with your nails. He relaxed against you, falling deeper into the kiss. 

When you parted, it was slow, both of you reluctant to part from each other. Your chest was heaving, your breasts straining pleasantly against the delicate lace. Astarion’s eyes dropped to the sight, mesmerized for several moments. Then he looked back up at you with a smile on your face. 

“I missed you,” you breathed. “I’ve missed that.” You toyed with his collar absentmindedly. But your eyes were fixed on his, clear and resolute, some concern clouding your blown pupils. “Are you alright?”

He nodded. “More than alright. You… You’re so gentle with me.”

“Is that what you want?” 

Quickly, he nodded again, almost desperate this time. He didn’t really want to explain the sudden tears that rushed to his eyes, but judging from the heartbreak he saw in yours, you had guessed his reasoning. 

“Then gentle we will be,” you promised. “Soft. Sweet. Slow. Like our old mornings.” Your fingers found the clasps of his doublet. “May I…?”

“You may,” he said, unbearably happy that you had asked. The feeling grew stronger as you carefully undid each clasp, rather than ripping them apart so fast and so hard that he had to fix them when the night was over. He reached up to help you undress him. 

You took the time to ask him before you removed any clothes. You took the time to admire him as skin was revealed. You took the time to kiss him when he hesitantly asked for it. You took the time to wait when you saw his uncertainty, holding him and stroking his hair. 

Is this what it feels like to be loved? 

When Astarion was left standing in only his boxers, you gently led him to the bed. You hooked your fingers into his waistband and met his eyes. Before you could even ask, he whispered, “Pull them off.”

You smiled at him and did so, your touch still light. You spared his half-hard cock only a glance as you stood back up and met his gaze. Astarion could still see the want in your eyes. But instead of doing what you wanted with him, you turned and said over your shoulder, “Would you like to take mine off?”

“Yes,” he whispered, lifting his hands to undo the clasps of your bra. He slipped the straps off your shoulders after you turned back around to him. He let himself admire your breasts as they were exposed before he dropped his hands to your hips and removed your panties in one graceful move that seemed to surprise you. 

“You were always good, but you’re better at this than I remembered,” you said by way of explanation, your cheeks turning pink. “You were always so shy when you undressed me, no matter how many times you had been inside me.”

For some reason, he felt guilty. “I’m sorry I changed.”

You shook your head, cupping his cheek. “Don’t apologize. Not for that. We’ve all changed. We would have changed whether you had died or not.” Your gaze drifted back down his body appreciatively, then to his cock. 

Skin crawling with self-consciousness, familiar from times having to improvise to explain away the struggle to get hard (especially without being able to explain how little blood he actually had in his body), but stronger now that it was you looking at the weakness that took away from the one thing he was good for, Astarion explained, truthfully for the first time, “I can’t get hard right away, not without blood and…and he starves us. Once we actually start, I can do more, but—”

You put your finger to his lips and lay on the bed. “Will it hurt?”

Astarion blinked at you. “What?”

“Your bite. Will it hurt?”

For a moment, it didn’t process what you meant. Then— “You want me to feed from you?”

You nodded. “I’m more than willing to work you up myself if you’d prefer, but…I’ll admit I’m curious. Besides…you finally have someone who knows what you are and loves you anyway. Bite me. Feed the only time you can.”

Astarion stepped closer to the bed, his hunger rearing its head. “Are you sure you want me to?”

You nodded and gestured him closer to you and, after a single moment’s deliberation that ended with the sole thought of, Fuck it!, Astarion crawled over you. You smiled up at him with a fond amazement. He grinned. “You’ve seen this view before, haven’t you?”

“Often,” you said. “I dreamt of this nearly every night. It’s almost hard to believe you’re right here… I half-suspect I’ll wake up in the morning and none of this will have happened.”

Astarion bent and began peppering your neck with soft kisses. Your blood smelled sweet, pumping through your veins with strength. “Believe me, darling, this is very, very real…”

You craned your neck, exposing the column of your throat to him. Astarion pressed his nose to your pulse point and breathed in deeply. He moaned, his whole body shuddering. You put your hand back in his hair, scratching softly. “Please…” you whispered, and all of Astarion’s restraint snapped.

He drew back enough to bare his fangs and sink them into your throat. You gasped sharply. He would have asked if you were alright if your blood did not suddenly fill his mouth, sweet and tangy and heavy all at once. He swallowed and instantly felt the difference. Bugs and rats were enough to keep him functional, surviving—this was enough to let him live. 

The next few pulls of blood had you whimpering pleasantly and warmth filling his body. Strength returned to his muscles with every mouthful and his chest began to move with the illusion of breathing. He became aware of the throbbing need in his cock and began grinding on your thigh. Your responding gasp quickly became a moan and your arms tightened around him.

Somehow, Astarion knew the exact moment that you had become equals again; he had taken half your blood and any more would kill you. In fact, any more and he would be too drunk on it to stop himself from killing you. 

Drain her. Drink her dry and go back to Cazador with enough strength to escape him.

The thought terrified him. He pulled away from you quickly, your blood dripping down his chin and onto your chest. He licked the open wounds of your neck clean of blood before he sat back and stared down at you.

You were paler than you had been when he started, but your eyes fluttered open and you reached up weakly to wipe the thin trail of blood away from the corner of his mouth. You offered him your thumb and he sucked it into his mouth without thinking, licking the blood from your skin. 

“Are you okay?” he asked, brushing a hand through your hair.

You nodded. “A little woozy, but I’ll live.”

Astarion decided not to tell you how close you had come to not living. “What did it feel like?”

You paused, thinking. Eventually, you said, “Like nothing I’ve ever felt before. It was…intimate. Magical. It was ecstasy in a form I’ve never felt before. Pain that turned into pleasure. I felt…connected with you more wholly than ever before. We always said we were one when we had sex, but that…that was being one.” You met his gaze again and breathed out one word: “Wonderful.”

Astarion couldn’t help it; he kissed you needily, pressing his entire body to yours. You responded willingly, even when the kiss turned into a tight hug that allowed him to hide his face in your shoulder so you wouldn’t see his tears. 

Eventually, you tapped his shoulder. “Sit on the edge of the bed, darling.”

A tingle of anticipation raced up Astarion’s spine—clearly his body remembered what you were going to do, even if he did not. You slid to your knees and spread his legs apart far enough to get between them. He tried to hide his shock; you wanted to pleasure him? Time and time he had been forced onto his knees and made to take a cock in his mouth, but he couldn’t remember the last time someone had done it for him… In fact, you were probably the last person to have done it, years and years ago.

“Darling, you don’t have to—”

You looked up at him. “Do you want me to?”

His chest tightened. “Yes,” he whispered.

You smiled slightly. “Then let me pleasure you, Asty.”

“Okay,” he breathed, his chest heaving with phantom breaths as he watched you lean in. You kissed the base of his cock and a quiet whine escaped him. You dragged your tongue up his length and kissed his tip before you took him into your mouth. He threw his head back, groaning. His eyes fluttered as you sucked gently, licking the underside of his cock every so often. Occasionally you popped off of him to kiss up and down his length and the sensitive area around it.

“Look at me,” you breathed. He did as you asked and you went back down on him, holding eye contact with him. He whimpered and bit his lower lip, muffling the sound. You made a face. “Let me hear you, Astarion.”

His answer was a whine as you licked a stripe along the underside of him. He brought his hand to your head and held you as you licked and kissed him. It didn’t take long for him to give into the pleasure; he began to mumble in Elvish to you until the words couldn’t roll off his tongue anymore and began coming out as moans, both low- and high-pitched. Some part of Astarion was deeply embarrassed by his sounds—but he knew now if he tried to hide them, you’d stop, and, gods above, that was the last thing he wanted. But you didn’t let up again and before he could stop himself or even warn you, he was cumming down your throat. 

And you let him. You pulled off of him only when you were sure he was spent. He flopped onto his back, panting heavily. A thrill went up his spine as he watched you swallow his spend, crawling up on his body to join him on the bed.

“That was… Hells, that was good,” he groaned as you laid next to him, getting perfectly cozy against his blood-warmed body. “How did you…?”

“You taught me,” you reminded him with a laugh. “How else did you think I knew exactly what you liked?”

“You could just have really good instincts,” he said, rolling onto his side to kiss you. He cradled you in his arms, holding you as tightly against his body as he could. You melted into his hug readily.

You pulled away for a moment and just stared at him, your eyes peering into his like you could see his soul. A little nervous, Astarion just watched you, taking in the way your eyes roamed over his face and how your lips easily came up into a happy, satisfied smile.

“What?” he whispered when the love on your face was almost too much to bear.

“Nothing,” you said. Then you shook your head. “Well, it’s not nothing. I…never thought I’d see your face again. Not really, not outside of my dreams. So I’m just… I’m glad to have you back.” You reached up and trailed your fingers across his cheekbone. He leaned into your touch. 

Slowly, Astarion began to return the favor, running his fingers across your body. He watched the way you shuddered beneath his touch, paid attention to when you giggled, noticed when your eyes fluttered shut and your body relaxed. He felt like he was learning how you ticked, but there was something about every movement you made that was almost painfully familiar. He had done this to you before, likely thousands of times, and had enjoyed squeezing your hips in his hands and groping your breasts and kissing every available inch of your skin.

“How many times?” he breathed against your sternum, pausing as he kissed down your body. You hummed and he clarified: “How many times did we do this?”

Your eyes were closed, your face the picture of contentment. “You mean the sex or the touching?”

“Touching.”

“Every night,” you answered. “Every night before we went to bed, whether we were naked or not, whether we had sex or not, we would do this. We’d cuddle and kiss and caress each other until one of us fell into trance or sleep, whatever we decided to do that night.”

“Gods,” he whispered. “I… I didn’t realize it, but I missed it. I think.”

You hesitated for a moment. Then you whispered, “I thought you did this every night.”

“Almost every night,” he corrected. “And…never like this. Never soft. Never gentle. Never…loving. It’s always rough and demanding, brutal.” He glanced at you, expecting criticism, but your face was open. There wasn’t a hint of jealousy that he slept with other people, nor anger that he was complaining about getting laid nightly when you had spent the years alone. So he continued. “I wake up sore and sometimes bleeding in places I didn’t know I could bleed from.”

You curled your arms around him protectively. “Oh, Asty… Love, I’m so sorry.”

“It’s not your fault,” he said quickly.

“That doesn’t mean I can’t feel bad for you,” you insisted. 

Disagreement coiled in Astarion’s belly, but he didn’t voice it, instead laying his head against your chest. He sighed happily when you began to scratch your fingers through his scalp. He remained like that for a few minutes before the words began to tumble out of him, slowly at first, then gaining momentum and—to his surprise—anger.

“It’s not always…random people from taverns. Sometimes he’ll…assign me victims. I’ll be sent to them. Nobles, mostly, who he wants for his thralls. Sometimes he sends them back out into the world to do his bidding, not keeping them the way he keeps me or my siblings, or draining them into dry, mummified corpses like most of the people I bring back for him. But if I don’t bring them back in the single night he gives me— Well. I’d be scarred horribly if vampires didn’t heal quickly, and even then, I don’t heal as quickly as I should so sometimes I go out the next night still wrapped in dirty cloth for bandages, bleeding through them, expected to bring home yet another meal.” 

Astarion paused long enough for you to have a quick interjection. “You have siblings?” 

“Of a sort. There are six others. Six spawn he made to do his bidding.”

“And are you all expected to…fetch your victims the same way?”

Astarion shook his head. “No. Yousen’s a gnome, for gods’ sake, who’s going to sleep with a gnome and not a handsome creature such as myself?”

You rolled your eyes. “There are plenty of people who find gnomes attractive, even if you don’t,” you chastised. 

He sighed. “But you get my point. He made his spawn from people with…different talents, so to speak, to bring in his meals. But if we fail, we all get treated the same way. Beaten. Bitten. Used. He…he does it to me more than the others. I’m his favorite to torture.”

“You mentioned that,” you murmured, touching his ear gently. His cock twitched with pleasure and he gasped. You froze. “Do you want me to stop?”

Hesitantly, he nodded. “Just— Just for a moment…please.”

Immediately, before he had even finished speaking, you removed your hand from his ear. “Alright.”

Surprise flooded his body. No one had ever listened to him before. No one had ever taken his ‘no’ to be a no. They always kept doing what hurt him, what he hated, what made his skin crawl with disgust and hate and fear. 

But you…listened. You more than listened, you stopped.

“Thank you,” he breathed. “It’s just— I…I’m not quite ready to do anything else yet. There’s so much I want to say because I’ve never been able to before and I don’t… I don’t want to ruin the moment, but…”

“But trying to push through will ruin it anyway for you,” you said, understanding him immediately. “That’s alright. Just keep talking, my love, and I will listen to everything.”

Oh, gods above, you understood him. Astarion felt the strong urge to cry until he had no tears left, all out of relief. Instead, he kept talking.

“He hosts grand, lavish parties from time to time. On those nights, we spawn are forced to pose as his…servants. It’s almost a relief to have a break, but then…then there’s the afterparties. And I’m his entertainment at the afterparties. They’re more…orgies than parties by then and I’m at the center of it all, dressed however he wants me for the night, which is sometimes nothing. He lets the partygoers use me however they wish. He orders them to, in fact. It hurts and hurts and hurts until it suddenly doesn’t because I can’t feel anything anymore.” His tears dripped onto your skin. You cooed softly, trying to comfort him, but you said nothing to stop him, so he kept going. “It’s not just the parties, either. It’s… Well, it’s like this. I’m his favorite to torture, and I’m his favorite to…to use.” 

You made a sound of both sympathy and rage. “Asty…”

Your whisper was lost in his continued tirade. “Whenever he wants, I’m there and I’m meant to do whatever he wants me to do and let him do everything he can to me. The others all know. They know I’m Cazador’s plaything and they think I get…special treatment for it. They don’t see how much it hurts, they don’t see that I suffer every night, because I don’t suffer like they do. No, no, I get to have sex! I get one of life’s simple pleasures while he beats them! So how is it fair that I complain?” Astarion looked up at you, his eyes shining with tears. “How is it fair that I complain?”

“It’s not your fault,” you said firmly. “It’s not. Darling, none of this is on you. Your master is…a leech. Yes, he’s a leech, taking what does not belong to him, forcing misery upon you. Astarion, please listen to me, honey. I mean it. This is not your fault. He is sowing dissent amongst all of you on purpose because it is the only way he can control you. If you all were to band together—”

“We’re his thralls, he can control us anyway,” Astarion snapped. “Anything he wants us to do, we do. It’s why I haven’t been able to stop him from—” He fell silent and buried his face in your chest, an unreasonable shame burrowing in his chest. He knew it was unreasonable; he knew you were at least somewhat right. He had no control over his life, and yet… The shame was there anyway. “Poetry. That’s what he said he carved into me. That’s the scar on my back.”

Automatically, your hand drifted from his hair to his shoulder. Before touching the scar you asked, “Does it hurt?”

“Sometimes. It hurt then, when he had to correct his mistakes because I couldn’t keep still enough.”

“Can I touch it?”

He nodded slowly and braced himself. But your touch was gentle and soothing. Your fingers ghosted across the raised marks and you peeked over his shoulder at it.

“It’s written in Infernal,” you murmured. “Last I checked, that’s not exactly the language of poets.”

Astarion raised his head. “Really? I…I didn’t know. What does it say?”

You shrugged. “I can recognize it, but I can’t read it.”

Astarion sighed and fell back against your chest. 

“What do you want to do?” you whispered to him.

“Hold me,” he breathed.

So you wrapped your arms around him and held him tightly to your body, his head against your chest, his own arms coming around your waist. You held each other in silence for quite a while. Your hand began to scratch his scalp and a gentle sound that was close to a purr escaped him. After a few moments, your hand went back to his ear. When he didn’t protest, you began rubbing his ear lightly.

A soft moan escaped Astarion’s lips. He looked up at you, his hips already beginning to grind into the mattress. 

“We don’t have to do this if you don’t want to,” you reminded him. “You are more than just sex.”

“I want to,” he whispered, the statement true for the first time in nearly two centuries. “It’s… It’s you, of course I want to.”

You whimpered quietly at the words and pressed a tiny kiss to his forehead. “Only if you’re sure, honey.”

“I’m sure,” he promised. 

It didn’t take long for the heat in his body to rebuild. You caressed every sensitive spot on his body with care and intimate knowledge of who he was: his ears, the nape of his neck, his Adonis belt, his nipples. You touched him with a reverence that felt almost like worship and made his entire body tremble with need. You suckled on his nipples until he moaned loudly and ripped himself away from you to do the same to you. 

Very quickly you learned to give him control. He hovered above you, sucking hickies into your neck and chest, happily leaving little bites on your tits as he went.

“You can draw blood,” you whispered to him in the middle of a bite and he moaned delightedly, letting his fangs scratch your skin until you bled and licking up the crimson droplets. He met your gaze as he let his tongue linger on a deeper cut and found you looking down at him fondly, toying with one of his curls between your fingers. 

Astarion adjusted to slip a hand between your bodies. He cupped your exposed cunt and grinned at the sight of your head going back, exposing the column of your throat to him.

“I’ve barely touched you, darling,” he teased. 

“And I’ve waited two hundred years for this,” you reminded him. “Any touch is enough, but, hells, please put your fingers inside of me.”

“Needy,” he joked, but did as you asked, spreading your pussy to drag his fingers up your slit. He placed his slick fingers on your clit and began to rub gentle circles. You gasped, your body arching up into his. He chuckled and moved up to kiss you sweetly. His tongue against yours was a balm to the both of you; you calmed down enough to wrap your arms around his shoulders and he felt any lingering doubts slip away. 

You were his. You had always been his. You were not just another victim, you were the woman he loved, the woman he had been so devoted to that he was going to marry you. You were not using him like the others.

You seemed to read his thoughts and filled in the last possibility, murmuring against his soft lips, “I love you, Astarion.”

He moaned into your mouth. A single tear slipped past his closed eyelid and fell on your cheek. 

“I love you,” you whispered again. “You don’t have to say it back. I just want you to know.”

Astarion slipped two fingers into you, curling them deep inside you. You arched into him again, moaning obscenely. He giggled again; if just two fingers could make you this happy, what would you do when you felt his cock inside you again?

He pumped his fingers slowly until your hips bucked into his hand, wordlessly asking for more. He picked up the pace until you began panting. He watched you grow closer and closer to the edge, your body writhing, your eyebrows pinching together, your mouth falling open to let out delicious moans. He was almost tempted to just let you finish on his fingers, but… 

Gods, he wanted to taste you.

He pulled his fingers out of you. You whined his name, pitifully, already begging, already asking, “Why did you stop?”

Astarion’s answer was not verbal. Grinning, he dropped to his knees quickly and shuffled closer to the edge of the bed. He yanked you to the edge, letting your legs dangle over his shoulders, and leaned in. You held eye contact as he pressed a kiss to your clit. Then a second. Then a third. By the time he got to the fourth kiss and latched his lips around your sensitive nub, your eyes were rolling into the back of your head.

“Astarion,” you moaned, your hand twisting into his hair but not pulling.

He began to suck gently, letting the pressure drive you wild. He licked your clit slowly, lavishing attention on it with his tongue, feeling you grow very, very wet against his chin. He dropped a little lower to tongue at your entrance, the taste of your arousal pulling a moan from deep in his chest. You gasped at the vibration, your hips rutting against his face. He chuckled into you and slid his tongue inside you, lapping at your cunt. You were delicious in ways he hadn’t thought possible. He knew that his heightened senses meant that he could smell every bit of your arousal, every emotion inside of you, every liquid in your body—but he had not expected your lust to be infused with your love for him. 

It was a new feeling, a new taste. He liked it. 

Astarion reached up and coated his hand in your dripping arousal. Then he wrapped his hand around his cock and began stroking slowly, allowing himself to enjoy it, feeling the heady rush of blood to completely harden his cock. His hips rocked gently, the pace increasing when he glanced up at you and found you smiling as you panted, your breasts heaving. 

He released himself to bring his hand back up to your cunt. He sunk his fingers into your wet entrance and returned to sucking on your clit. You cried out, your hips bucking, and he grinned against your slick skin. 

“Cum for me,” he whispered against you, loud enough for you to hear his command. “Let me taste you. Cum on my face, darling.”

You clenched around his fingers, moaning the loudest you had all night. There was a fresh rush of wetness and the lewd sounds of his fingers pumping in and out of you grew louder. Astarion slipped his fingers out of you and his tongue back into your cunt to taste you as your orgasm ripped through you. He put his thumb on your clit and started rubbing.

Astarion’s eyes fluttered shut as he tasted your cum. You were sweet, absolutely divine, your ecstasy meant entirely for him. He groaned into your pussy and your legs wrapped around his head, helping to bury him in your slick entrance. He giggled, more than happy to stay there longer and keep licking your cum out of you.

He tapped your thigh when he was done and you put your shaking legs back to the floor. He got to his feet and crawled over you, capturing your mouth in a bruising kiss. You moaned into his mouth, then made a sound of surprise.

“Do you taste yourself on my tongue?” he whispered, looking at you with hooded eyes.

“Yes,” you breathed.

“Good.” He kissed you again, grinding on your thigh to ease the throbbing in his cock. You groaned at the feeling, your arms tightening around his neck. You broke away from his mouth to pepper his face in tiny, loving kisses.

An overwhelming fondness filled him and he pulled away from you enough to meet your gaze. You trailed your fingertips over his cheekbone and then to his ear, rubbing gently again. He hummed happily and opened his eyes to see your face as he whispered, “I love you, too.”

You stopped, your eyes widening, your lips parting. Gods, you were beautiful. “Do you really mean—?”

“Yes,” he breathed quickly and bent down to kiss you again. You hummed into his mouth, pulling his body down onto yours. He paused in his grinding, wanting to be against you more than he wanted the friction.

“I love you,” both of you said at the same time, then burst into little giggles. You nuzzled into each other, Astarion’s cheeks hurting from the smile he couldn’t seem to drop. Then you kissed him and pulled his lower lip between your teeth. You tugged slightly.

Astarion pulled back and then glanced down your body to where his cock rested on your stomach. “Are you ready for me, darling?”

You nodded. “Yes.”

He grinned. “Spread your legs a little wider for me, sweet girl.”

You did as he asked without a second thought and he settled between your legs. He guided himself against your entrance, notching the head of his cock there. He looked up at you again and you nodded. He smiled softly, kissed you once, and then looked back down to watch himself sink into you.

Astarion moved slowly, careful not to hurt you, well aware that you hadn’t been fucked in two hundred years. You sucked in a deep breath, keeping your eyes on him as he pushed into you. Astarion let out a low groan as you squeezed around him, already a tight fit, your warmth and wetness enveloping him. When he bottomed out, you released your breath, your head falling back against the pillows. 

“Are you alright?” he whispered. 

“Yes,” you breathed. “Yes, I’m alright. Gods… You feel…right. It’s…it’s almost as if it were yesterday you made love to me for the last time.”

He bent down enough to kiss your forehead. “Is that what you want? Do you want me to make love to you?”

“Please,” you whispered. 

Astarion began to move. He started with shallow thrusts, trying to allow you time to adjust and get used to the feeling, watching the pleasure on your face as he did. He held himself up with one hand and let the other slide up and down your side comfortingly.

Eventually, you turned your head to kiss his wrist. “More,” you said quietly. When he raised his eyebrow, prompting you, your already flushed cheeks turned scarlet and you amended, “Deeper.”

“Good girl,” he said and let his next thrust bring his pelvis to yours. Both of you moaned into each other. Your breaths came faster as he began to hit that spot deep inside of you over and over again, sure to never go too hard. Then you whispered, “Harder, Asty,” and all restraint left his limbs. 

Astarion lifted your leg to get a better angle and began pounding into you relentlessly, grunting with every thrust. Your moans became punctuated and he slowed down briefly to let you get some air.

Your response was to throw both legs around his hips, tug him down to you, and breathe into his ear, “Don’t stop. Don’t stop doing what you’re doing, darling.”

Astarion moaned happily and hurried back into his fast pace. You pulled him into a bruising kiss and wrapped your arms around his shoulders.

“Can I touch your back?” you whispered and he nodded quickly. 

“Scratch at me all you want, sweetness,” he replied and your blush darkened.

You settled your hands on his upper back, your nails digging in just slightly as you held onto him. You crossed your ankles at the small of his back and let him drill into you.

Lips, teeth, and tongues clashed into each other as you made out messily, the sound of your spit-slicked kisses drowned out by the rhythmic smacking of your hips into each other. You felt a soreness begin to build, pleasant and familiar and distinctly Astarion.

For his part, Astarion was pleasantly surprised at how present he was. He found himself electing to keep his eyes open to see the ecstasy wash over your face when he wasn’t kissing you and he smiled at every moan, every “Oh gods” you let out, every cry of his name that left your lips. His whole body buzzed with pleasure and his cock throbbed inside of you. He nuzzled into your neck, kissing softly and nipping gently, not taking blood from you this time. He tongued over the bite he left earlier, licking the dried residue of your blood, but the wound had since closed. 

“I love you,” he murmured against your skin. “And I am so sorry that I have been gone.”

You kissed his cheek briefly. “I love you, too.”

Astarion groaned into your neck, then pushed himself back up, fucking into your pussy wildly. “You feel so godsdamn good,” he panted, grinning down at you. “I haven’t felt this way in…a very long time.”

You gently squeezed his hips with your legs and reached up to cup his face. “I’ve missed how perfect you feel,” you said. “How you always hit the right spots.” You moaned as he did exactly that, your entire body tensing, preparing for your orgasm.

“Are you close?” he asked.

“Very,” you breathed. 

He brushed your hair from your face. “Cum whenever you’re ready, darling. I want to feel you spasm around me.”

You whimpered. “Oh, Asty,” you moaned. You relaxed into the mattress. “Go a little harder and I’ll be there.”

He did as you asked, pounding into you fast and hard and just a little bit rough. He reached down to put his fingers on your clit and you let out a shriek, clenching tightly around him. He gasped, his cock twitching at the stimulation. You threw your head back, nearly screaming as you came around him, his name lost somewhere in your shrieks of pleasure. The fresh slickness of your cum surrounded him and he glanced down to find a ring of white on his cock, getting thicker and brighter by the second.

The grunts that fell from Astarion’s mouth were rougher, louder. He squeezed his eyes shut and then forced them open again.

“Darling—” he gasped, his entire body trembling with exertion as he tried to stave off his impending orgasm. “I’m— I’m gonna cum, oh gods, where do you— Where do you want it?”

There was a soft look on your face as you whispered, “Inside. Inside like the last time you ever fucked me.”

Astarion groaned, the reveal bringing tears to his eyes. He squeezed his eyes shut, feeling the tear drop from his lashes. Your thumb came up to his face and wiped gently at his eye. He whimpered, leaning into your touch.

“Cum for me, honey,” you whispered, softly cupping his cheek.

Astarion whined and kissed your palm, burying himself to the hilt. He moaned loudly, tilting his head back, and it quickly became a series of high-pitched whimpers as ecstasy washed through his body. He trembled, holding himself up until he was spent. Then he collapsed on top of you, panting harshly.

You held him close, soothing him with quiet hushes and soft whispers of how wonderful he had done for you. You kissed the top of his head, running your hand through his curls, murmuring your love to him with a smile on your face. 

Eventually, Astarion pulled out of you. You whimpered and he whispered a soft apology. He sat back to watch his seed drip out of you. Fascinated, he gently swiped his fingers through your mixed releases. You shuddered. He held his fingers up to your mouth. You quirked an eyebrow at him at first, then opened your mouth and let him slide his fingers between your lips. Dutifully, you licked them clean.

“I guess we’ve never done that before, huh?” he joked, laying back down on you. He kissed you sweetly, enjoying the taste of you and him together on his tongue. 

You shook your head. “Nope. You only came inside me for one night.” He raised an eyebrow and you explained carefully, “I’d been tracking my cycle so I knew you could cum inside me without us getting pregnant too early. We wanted to wait until after our wedding to start trying for a baby.”

Astarion’s heart nearly broke. “We…we wanted a family.”

You nodded, smiling in a way that made Astarion feel like you knew the pain twisting in his chest at the moment. “We’d told your parents we wanted one the night before you died. They were…ecstatic. You know, I’m almost surprised they didn’t push us to move the wedding up so we could start faster.”

He laughed, more a huff than anything with how exhausted he was. “I take it they didn’t know about us taking the risk of finishing inside you?”

You grinned. “Well… We didn’t tell them, exactly, but I’m guessing they figured it out with how loud you made me scream that night.”

Astarion smirked. “Was it louder than you just were?”

“Oh, much louder,” you said, somehow teasing and serious at the same time. “I thought the entire neighborhood could hear you making me scream.”

“So I’ve always been good at sex, then?”

You shrugged. “Not…exactly. The first few times were a little…subpar in comparison to what our sex life became, the sex we just had. But because it was you, because it was so new…we still enjoyed it.”

The two of you shuffled to lay on your sides, facing each other. You snuggled against his chest and Astarion held you tightly, pressing soft, lingering kisses to every inch of your face. 

“I love you,” he murmured. “And I see why I loved you then. You are…perfect. Considerate. Gentle. You don’t…push for things I don’t want to do. You just know what I like, even after all this time… I had thought I had changed, but…”

“You did change,” you said. “But not so much that I don’t recognize the man underneath all your disguises, all your layers. You are, deep down, still my Astarion.”

He curled more tightly around you. “I like being yours.”

You kissed his nose. “I like it, too.”

The pair of you lapsed into comfortable silence. Astarion listened to your breathing and your steady heartbeat, watching your chest rise and fall against his, moving as if he was also breathing. 

You were so comfortable with him… So vulnerable. You trusted him with your exposed neck, with your bare body, with your love. Hells, how he wished he could remember what he had done to earn that trust. How he wished he could keep your trust.

Some time later, you mumbled into his skin, “It’s two hours until dawn, my love.”

Fear crept back into Astarion’s mind. “I know.”

“We should get going soon.”

He held you just a little tighter. “Not— Not quite yet, darling. Let me hold you for a few minutes more.”

You smiled knowingly against his chest and Astarion wondered how many mornings he had refused to get up, electing instead for a few more minutes in bed with you, your limbs tangled and the sheets just barely covering your lower halves. “Alright.”

Astarion pressed a grateful kiss to the top of your head. His mind began to spin with the beginnings of half-baked plans. The two of you could run, leave now and get as far away as possible. He could simply not go back, he could hide here with you until night fell again and then the two of you could leave. He could bring you back to Cazador with a plan, with a way to kill him or escape him or both in mind.

Every plan fell short. Nothing would work. Cazador had too many eyes in the city to disappear this quickly. 

We’d never escape alive. And while Astarion was certain that death—true death—would be a relief in comparison to the past two hundred years, he wasn’t willing to force that on you.

He glanced at you, still tucked into his arm, a peaceful look on your face. He tried to capture the image in his mind for a few moments, then stirred and gently slipped out from underneath you. He stood and slowly put his clothes back on.

You watched him do so, sitting up on your arms to grin at him. “Now that’s a sight that never gets old.”

Astarion frowned. “Me putting clothes back on?”

You nodded, reaching for your dress. Astarion helped you get it over your head. “It reminds me of our early mornings when you’d get ready for work and I’d watch you primp and preen until you were perfect.” You adjusted your dress, then looked up at him. “Here—let me fix your hair, I messed it up when I put my hands in it.”

Astarion watched your face, your expression twisted into concentration, your tongue poking out just slightly, as you carded your fingers through his curls and arranged them. When you were satisfied, you stepped back.

“There, good as new,” you said and he pressed a soft kiss to your forehead.

“Thank you,” he whispered.

You wrapped your arms around him and gave him a reassuring squeeze. “Are you ready?”

Astarion clenched his jaw. “Are you? Are you sure you want to do this? I…I really shouldn’t do this, darling, I should just take the punishment—”

“No,” you said firmly. “I will never forgive myself if I know you’re out there, getting hurt, because I wouldn’t go with you.”

“Darling—”

“Take me to him,” you insisted. “Don’t get yourself hurt for me.”

Still, Astarion bit his lip so hard he tasted his blood. “But isn’t that what we should do? I’d be protecting you—”

“I would be putting you in danger, Asty,” you insisted, cupping his cheek. “Please. Please do this and we will find a way out of this, alright? Even if it’s a last-ditch, desperate attempt to run—we’ll do something. I promise you, love.”

It won’t be enough. It will never be enough. But Astarion didn’t want to dash your hopes; naive as it was, it was relieving to see hope after two hundred years without it. It almost convinced him that you would be the lucky soul to escape Cazador’s bite, his eternal punishment. 

Astarion offered you his hand. “Are you ready, darling?”

You nodded, slipping your hand into his. “Ready.”

Before you left, you extinguished the lamps like normal and locked your door behind you like it was any other outing. You slipped the key into a hidden pocket in your dress Astarion hadn’t realized was even there. He admired the stitchwork as you walked hand-in-hand down the street. Despite the anxiety wriggling away in his stomach, Astarion let himself enjoy the feeling of walking with you, touching you, enjoying the last few moments of the night air with you. 

The Szarr residence loomed ahead far too quickly, the palace towers casting a horrible shadow across the road leading up to it. Astarion glanced at you as the pair of you passed into the shadows.

“Last chance to back out, darling,” he said quietly. “I can always circle back to an alleyway and drag some poor soul out—”

“No, Asty,” you said gently. “If that was a real option, you would have already done it.”

He sighed and nodded. “Alright. But—darling?”

“Yes?”

“I’m sorry for what might happen in there, what he’ll do to you.”

You smiled at him. “You don’t have to be sorry, honey, it’s not your fault. Nothing he does to me is your fault.”

“I brought you here,” he insisted. “I brought you here knowing what you’ll have to go through. I could just take the beating, but… I don’t want to, so I’m letting you suffer like I should.”

For the first time, Astarion saw a glimmer of doubt in your eyes. Your steps faltered and he felt the shudder that passed through your body. You licked your dry lips.

“What’s he going to do?”

A painful first bite. Drink you dry. Bury you. Make you dig your way out of your coffin. Trap you in chains the minute you’re free of the dirt. Whip you until you bleed and then lick your wounds. Astarion’s experience flashed through his head. But the fear on your face… He couldn’t tell you any of that, could he?

“Terrible things,” Astarion said gravely. It came out far darker than he intended and he knew what a terrifying sight he was: weak light in his hair, his red eyes glowing in the shadows, his fangs flashing in the dark with every word. You shrank away from him, stopping in your tracks, and inched out of the shadows. 

“Astarion, I—”

Fear gripped his undead heart, tainted his vision, thrummed in his veins. Astarion hissed and lunged, grabbing your arm with a vice-like grip. “Come on,” he insisted, just slightly aware of the growl in his voice. You resisted for just a moment, but Astarion was stronger than you were; it only took a tug to pull you back into the shadow of the tower. 

Servants of Cazador’s opened the doors for Astarion when they recognized him. They couldn’t hide their shock that he was dragging a victim in, his facade of the perfect lover dropped, and something clicked inside him.

It’s not Cazador who scares her; it’s me.

Astarion nearly let go of you. Then he felt the eyes of his siblings boring into him, all six waiting in a clustered group, and he knew Cazador was near. There was no escape for you now.

Astarion tightened his grip on you and dragged you into the palace’s shadows. He watched your feet cross the threshold, damning you eternally. The door slammed shut.

☞ ❊ ☜

[Image Caption: I do not give permission to repost, translate, or publish my work on any other site or app by anyone except myself. I do not give permission for my work to be fed into AI (for audio, art, or writing).]

Baldur's Gate 3 // Astarion Ancunin

Rough hands grabbed you from the comforting darkness surrounding you, ripping you violently from deep sleep. As your eyes fluttered open, you became aware of a constant, throbbing ache throughout your body. You were quite certain, without apparent reason, that your rest had not been all that restful.

He was nothing but a shadowed figure above you, his white hair a glowing halo around his head, outlined by the sun, as he shook you awake. He hovered above you and you couldn’t see his face, but you could tell he was afraid—he gripped your shoulders with a tightness that suggested he was afraid you’d disintegrate if he let you go. In fact, the fear radiated so strongly from him you were certain you could smell it. 

Your name. He was saying it, calling to you, begging you to wake up. The moment he realized your eyes had cracked open, he relaxed, his head dropping to your chest and a sob of relief escaping him. Without thinking about it, you put your hand in his hair; the move felt natural and practiced, like you’d been doing it all your life.

But who the hell was this man and why was he crying on your chest?

“What—” You coughed; your lungs felt heavy and full of…something. Your voice was rough as you asked, “What happened?” The words had barely gotten out when you started to wheeze. Suddenly very certain you were going to throw up, you sat up quickly, throwing him off and rolling onto your side. At first you dry-heaved, aware of his hand on your back.

“Let it out,” he told you, patting your back. “Trust me, you’ll feel better once you do.”

His words were magic. Perhaps it was simply how familiar he suddenly was or how silky smooth that voice was, but your body listened to him. You hacked up everything: slime and black dirt and congealed blood. He held you as you heaved. When you finally stopped coughing, you leaned back into his chest.

“Astarion,” you breathed, his name and his person once again firmly in your mind. You knew him, you trusted him, and by gods, you loved him.

“I’m right here,” he soothed. “Oh, darling.” He leaned his head into your shoulder. “Are you alright?”

“I’m not sure,” you panted. “Gods, what happened to me? Where the hells are we?”

You looked around, taking in the dirt path the two of you were sitting on, tall plants and trees casting some shadows across the path. You sat in the blaring sun, both of you dusty. And you recognized absolutely none of it.

“I wish I knew,” Astarion said. “We were on that ship—”

You practically choked. You turned in his lap to stare at him. “A ship?”

Astarion brushed your hair out of your face, nodding as he did, and you got your first good look at him. His silver hair was covered in a fine layer of dust and he squinted his crimson eyes to stare at you. He was paler than the Astarion you remembered, the skin around his eyes darker than they were on the face that had smiled at you in your childhood. 

Your eyes dipped to his neck out of wary instinct. You saw the twin puncture wounds and your memory seemed to play catch-up. Your Astarion, your elf—now a vampire. You reached out one hand to touch his scars and he flinched. Unfazed, you brought your hand to your own neck and found with your fingers the same marks on your neck.

“You don’t remember very much, do you?” he said.

“I… I don’t know.” Your chest seemed very tight. “Astarion, I don’t know what I don’t remember, everything’s all…all jumbled!”

Astarion seemed to catch on to your panicking before even you did. “Hey, hey, hey. Darling, look at me. It’s alright. We’ll figure it out together. What’s the last thing you remember?”

You wracked your brain. “Well…I remember drinking together last night. I remember you taking me to bed. And then…nothing. Just waking up right here, right now.”

He looked disappointed. “Is that all you remember of me?”

“What? Oh, no! That’s just the last thing I remember. We…we grew up together, didn’t we? We’ve been together since we were little.”

Relief crossed his face. It was a strange sight; some of it seemed genuine, and some of it seemed very forced. You chalked it up to your spotty memory as he hugged you tightly to his chest. You wrapped your arms around him as one of his arms curled around your waist, melting into his hold. Despite the building panic in your chest over the gaps in your memory, you felt yourself relax the longer he held you.

“Oh, thank gods,” he breathed. “I’d hate to have to start from scratch again. It would be a little bit difficult to catch up on two hundred some-odd years, eh?”

You cuddled into him. “Astarion?”

“Yes, dear?”

“How are we in the sun?”

He froze. After a moment, he pulled away from you and cupped your face. “Darling?”

You touched the marks on your neck again. “We’re vampires, aren’t we?” He nodded, biting his lip a bit guiltily; the sight of his fangs led you to run your tongue across your own, confirming your suspicion. “So how the hell are we in the sun? How is this possible?”

He hesitated, a frown forming on his beautiful face. “Well, I—I don’t know, but I suppose it has something to do with what happened on the ship.”

You sighed. “I don’t remember a ship, Astarion, what the hells are you talking about?”

Astarion pulled you to your feet. “We should find you some water—it might help you remember what happened—”

You stopped, not letting him drag you down the dirt path. “Astarion, please!” He froze, glancing back at you. It took only a few seconds before your lower lip started to wobble and for tears to start to spill over. He immediately pulled you into his arms. “I don’t remember anything. I don’t remember being turned into a vampire, I don’t remember what we’ve been doing for two hundred fucking years, my body aches and I have no clue why, and I certainly don’t remember a ship, so please, for the love of every god I couldn’t possibly name, tell me what happened last night and tell me why I don’t remember anything.”

He kissed the crown of your head, pulling you in and keeping you close to his chest. “Oh, darling. We went out last night. We were drinking. We were…” He huffed out an embarrassed laugh. “We were very drunk, love. I suppose that’s why we…went out again last night. After we…made love. Gods, if we had just stayed in…”

You looked up and searched his face; regret had overwhelmed his features and his eyes had filled with tears. “Asty?” The nickname came naturally and seemed to bring him out of his memories and back to you.

“They stole us from the street,” he said thickly. “We’d gone out for a…a walk. Like we always do, in the last few hours of night. And then those—those Mind Flayers took us and put parasites in our eyes. I…I don’t know what they do, but it can’t be good.”

“Can’t it?” you asked. “We can walk in the sun again. Isn’t that good?”

“Well, yes, but we know nothing else about it,” he said, biting his lip. “I don’t trust it.”

Some part of you wanted to argue, but you could sense his agitation and dropped it. “So what happened to the ship? How’d we get to the dirt?”

“It crashed,” he said simply. “Someone—or something—must have found a way to force us to crash land. We were thrown a ways away, and then I dragged you out of the rubble to try and wake you.” Astarion cupped your face in his hands and pressed your foreheads together. “Gods, I was so scared I was going to lose you.”

You held his wrists and kissed the tips of his fingers. “There are others, then? Other people from the ship?”

“If any of them survived, yes.”

“We should find them,” you said firmly. “Maybe they can help us figure out if these…parasites, or whatever they are, are good or bad.”

“You want to find other people? As vampires walking around in the full light of day?”

You considered his fear for a moment, then tugged his collar up to hide the punctures better. You did the same for yourself. “If we’re careful, no one will suspect us. If we don’t tell them we’re vampires, how will they know? We’re out and about in the sun. Perhaps we’re just really, really pale elves.” You rubbed your neck cautiously. The wound, though closed, was tender. “I can’t believe I don’t remember being turned. That’s the sort of thing someone would remember, right?”

Astarion shrugged. “Those Mind Flayers may have messed with your mind. They certainly poked around in my head too much for my liking.”

You rubbed your arms and leaned into his chest again. He hummed softly and wrapped you in a cool embrace. “Even if I don’t remember much, I’m glad you’re here with me. I don’t know what I’d do without you.”

He kissed your cheek. “I’m glad—” He frowned. “Did you hear that?”

“Hear what?”

“Shouting.”

The two of you listened, bodies pressed close together, until the sound came again: a man’s voice, shouting for help. You spared a quick glance at Astarion and chose to ignore the apprehension on his face before dragging him in the direction of the shouting.

Just over the crest of a steep hill, you found yourself staring straight into a hole in the stone mountainside, glowing and pulsing with a deep purple magic—and a hand sticking out of it.

“Hello? Hello! A little help here!”

You and Astarion exchanged a glance. He shrugged. You rolled your eyes and took the man’s hand. You grit your teeth as you tugged. It was only when you slid toward the portal that Astarion grabbed on, too, and yanked you back—and the man out with you.

He dusted off his deep purple robes and stood up straight, smiling at you and Astarion. His smile wavered when he realized the two of you were little more than distressed vagabonds. But he brought it back up to his face and waved. “Hello! I’m Gale of Waterdeep. Who might you be?”

You blinked at him, then gave your name and stated that you were a barkeep in Baldur’s Gate, pleased that you had remembered even something about yourself, and introduced Astarion as your partner and husband. You noted how pleased he looked and wondered if you were exaggerating the truth a little bit—after all, Astarion claimed you had spent over two hundred years together, but you didn’t remember a wedding.

“Pleased to meet you!” Gale said, cheery. “Now how did you two come to be, well, here?”

You glanced at Astarion. “I, um, don’t remember much, but it’s got something to do with Mind Flayers and parasites.”

~❊~

In all your adventuring, with all your gaps in your memory, you hadn’t felt such an innate fear until the moment you stepped into the Szarr Palace. The feeling worsened as you followed Astarion deeper into its walls, feeling very certain you’d done this before, despite Astarion’s promise that he had kept you as far away from your vampiric master as he could, taking the brunt of Cazador’s rage. Such was why your back did not bear the same scars as your lover’s, scars you had painstakingly translated and attempted to soothe with balms and creams. 

As for Astarion, he was faring no better. In fact, he was much worse than you, his fingers trembling viciously and his eyes darting from shadow to shadow as if he expected Cazador himself to leap out of them. For all you knew, perhaps he would. 

The sickness in your stomach reached its peak as soon as you saw the cages. They bore other spawn and you knew that you and your lover had once been behind those bars, hard as it was to picture. Seeing the filth and hatred and despair that hung like a cloud over the spawn, accompanied by the thick smell of decay and rot, you were suddenly glad the Mind Flayers had decided to relieve you of much of your memory. You knew they had not been so kind to your lover; Astarion woke often from nightmares of this place and everything Cazador had done to him—putrid blood, physical torture, claustrophobic stone walls. The very same thing Astarion had protected you from.

“Astarion, what is this?” you whispered, moving closer to his side.

“I don’t know,” he said. “Cazador hid this from me. And the others. I never saw this while I was his…”

“He didn’t do this to us, then?” 

Astarion shook his head. “No. They…must be part of his ritual. But how did they get here?”

As soon as the spawn saw you and your little group, the shrieking started, so at odds with their blank, hollow faces. In amongst the screams of fear, of anticipation, of sick and twisted delight, you heard your own name and Astarion’s passed around. Spawn pressed themselves against the bars to get a closer look. One in particular, clad in a destroyed red frock, his dirty face half-hidden by matted, dirty grey hair, seemed to recognize Astarion. He pushed to the front and you caught sight of a rune carved into him—matching some of the ones on Astarion’s back. 

“You. I know you.”

You glanced at Astarion. He was staring at the spawn with a mixture of disgust and confusion. 

“You’re the one from the tavern. You smiled and joked and…got me drunk.”

Your stomach twisted. You looked between the two of them; Astarion’s confusion was melting away into horror, and the spawn stared at him with such bitter hatred that you knew he wasn’t wrong. He knew Astarion. 

“You— No. You’re dead,” Astarion insisted. Guilt crossed his face. A weight like lead sunk from your chest to your stomach. Astarion had talked, in fits and starts, about what Cazador had made him do, explaining why you remembered so few nights spent with him. Was it possible this spawn was one of his many conquests? One of the victims Cazador had forced him to bring back?

Had Cazador really kept them alive for this long? 

“You called me so many sweet things,” the spawn continued, his voice broken. “My name sounded like a lyric on your tongue.”

Astarion squeezed his eyes shut. “Sebastian.” Gods above, it really was beautiful to hear him say it. And you, better than anyone, knew just how sweet Astarion could be.

“You remember me,” the spawn—Sebastian—whispered, amazed.

“You were handsome,” Astarion remembered. “Shy. You’d never been kissed.”

Sebastian was almost nodding. “You taught me how.” Your heart shattered in your chest. “And then you destroyed me.” The spawn screamed, lunging, his hand reaching through the bars to grab at Astarion. But he was just out of reach. In his despair, Sebastian fell to his knees.

“It can’t be,” Astarion whispered, his face falling. “He kept them. He kept them all. My conquests. He told us he was feeding on them, not that he was turning them!” His eyes scanned the locked up spawn. “I know so many of these faces. I don’t… Gods.”

“How long?” Sebastian demanded.

“What?” Astarion asked, startled.

“How long have I been down here?” Sebastian asked, getting back to his feet. 

Astarion looked at his feet, then back up at him. “One hundred and seventy years,” he said, his voice heavy. You released a slow breath, feeling the weight of every one of those years harshly, even if you remembered very little of them. “You were one of my first.”

“My family,” Sebastian whimpered. “My friends… They’re gone. You took them from me. You took everything from me!”

“We can help them, can’t we?” you asked, looking at Astarion. His lower lip trembled. “Can’t we?”

“Help? Help? There’s no helping us while that monster lives,” Sebastian spat. 

“That’s why we’re here—to destroy Cazador,” Astarion explained.

“You can’t. It’s not possible.” Sebastian’s eyes landed on you. “You tried it once. And look what came of it.”

Your skin crawled. “What? Astarion, what does he mean?”

Astarion wouldn’t meet your eyes.

Sebastian barked out a terrible laugh, roughened by years of intermittent screams and silence. “He hasn’t told you? Of course not. And you don’t remember. Most of us don’t. It’s like he breaks us, ruins us and our minds when he turns us, feeds on us.”

“Astarion!” Your voice was rising with alarm. “What the hells is he talking about?”

“We thought you might be the answer,” Sebastian whispered, his glowing red eyes fixed firmly on you now. “You were so strong. So brave. You faced him with a smile, even though you were crying. None of us were like that. We all screamed as we went to our graves. So we…hoped. It was a mistake to hope that you could change things.”

You took a step back, swallowing harshly. You were trembling. “Sebastian, please… We’ll free you from this nightmare. We just need to know where Cazador is so we can kill him.”

“Kill him?” he questioned, almost scoffing. “It’s not possible. You of all people should know that. You tried to run. And Cazador took you anyway. Because of him.”

His last growl was directed at Astarion. 

Your heart dropped to your feet. Every gnawing feeling you’d ever had that Astarion wasn’t being completely honest with you rushed back, hitting you so heavily it was hard to believe you’d ever ignored your doubts. You kept your eyes glued to Sebastian, not sure you wanted to see your lover’s face. “Astarion. What is he talking about?”

Please. You had no idea who you were praying to, but you knew you were. Please, let me be wrong. Let Sebastian be wrong. 

“Why do they know me, Astarion?” you asked. “Why do they remember me, when I don’t remember them?”

At last, you looked at him. His eyes were fixed on you, shining with tears, his guilt even more obvious than it had ever been. It felt as if your body was collapsing in on itself. A steady ringing built in your ears as he whispered your name, the first of his tears falling, and it was lost in Sebastian’s terrible, terrible laugh.

☞ ❊ ☜

[Image Caption: I do not give permission to repost, translate, or publish my work on any other site or app by anyone except myself. I do not give permission for my work to be fed into AI (for audio, art, or writing).]

Baldur's Gate 3 // Astarion Ancunin

As soon as the door to the tavern opened the following night, a few hours into the night, somehow you knew it was Astarion before you even saw his head of silver hair. You were relieved that you didn’t have to wait a few days to see him again, but your relief shriveled up the moment you realized he was wearing the same doublet as last night. It was still slightly dirty and more than a little rumpled.

You waved him over to the bar before he could spot an empty table. Something akin to relief crossed his face and he came over.

“Someone’s eager to see me,” he teased as he took a seat on one of the bar stools.

You shrugged. “Just glad you’re not being a stranger,” you said. “That’s no life for an elf such as yourself.”

His eyes flashed. “I suppose not,” he said, almost too quietly. 

“Same as yesterday?” you asked, already reaching for the bottle you had put in ice in the hopes that he would come back today.

Astarion nodded. “What the hells, why not?”

You grinned and poured him a glass. You pushed it to him and watched him sip daintily. He turned slightly, passing his gaze over the filling tavern, and you caught a glimpse of his fangs through the glass. Even though you’d been expecting them, it still made your stomach turn. 

A vampire. Your beloved was a vampire and had been these past two hundred years. It hadn’t been the Gur who had desecrated his grave; it had been himself, hadn’t it? Him and the bastard that turned him, whoever it was. 

Was it painful? you wanted to ask. Did it hurt to claw your way out? Did you come up out of the ground and know I had been there only seconds before? Did you want me to be there still?

But you kept your mouth shut. Astarion hadn’t let on that he knew who you were, so you figured he probably didn’t remember you, as painful as that realization had been last night. Two hundred years and he was all you thought of every day and yet—

“Was she fun last night?” you asked, then cursed yourself. You weren’t sure you even wanted to know the answer to that question, so why were you asking?

Astarion flinched and turned back to you, shocked out of a reverie. “Hmm?”

“The elf you left with last night.” You wiped down your already clean bartop, reluctant to make eye contact with him. “Did you have fun?”

He pursed his lips in thought. The action was so familiar for a moment you were certain you had asked him to explain a new law he’d passed that he was finding difficult to put into common tongue instead of magistrate jargon. “Yes, I suppose she was,” he said after a long moment. A teasing grin slipped onto his face. “Jealous?”

“No,” you said, though you knew you were lying through your teeth; you would have given anything to be with him again. 

The smirk on his face suggested he didn’t quite believe you. You kept yourself from looking too long at that smirk and admitting everything you felt by refilling his glass. He thanked you quietly.

“She’s not here tonight,” you mused, looking out across the tavern and spotting her nowhere.

He tensed. “Should she be?”

You shrugged. “I don’t know. I’d never seen her before last night. I never caught her name.” You glanced up at him and he looked away quickly. It was your turn to smirk. “I take it you didn’t, either?”

If he weren’t undead, you figured he would be blushing. “I had other things on my mind,” he muttered into his wine glass. 

You giggled. “Of course you did.”

“But why don’t you know?” he asked. “I thought bartenders usually kept that information stored away in case customers come back?”

“I don’t press for information people don’t willingly give me,” you explained. “She didn’t give me her name, so I didn’t ask. Besides, she had the look of someone who was just passing through.”

Astarion raised one delicate brow. “You don’t press?” he scoffed. 

You gave him the same look. “I haven’t asked you anything personal yet, have I?” 

He sighed. “I supposed not.”

Biting back a smile, you leaned on your bar. “You almost sound disappointed that I haven’t asked anything.”

He shrugged idly. “Well…you haven’t even asked me my name,” he said and put a dramatic hand to his chest. “I’m hurt, darling.”

Darling. The nickname shot through you like an arrow or a hefty dosage of poison. You hadn’t heard that name from his lips in two hundred years, and the first time you heard it again, it was being used as a moniker for who he thought was a random bartender. How many other men and women had he called darling since he crawled out of his coffin?

You recovered as quickly as you could and he didn’t seem to notice. “Like I said, I don’t ask. Some people wish to remain anonymous until they become regulars—which, I might add, you seem to be doing.”

He rolled his eyes. “I’m a regular at every tavern I come across. I move between them all looking for the best wine there is and moving on when I grow tired of it.”

You hummed. “Ah, I see. You’re an alcoholic rather than a…a people-person, shall I say?” And yet you weren’t surprised. The Astarion of your memories had also had a taste for quality (and expensive) wines, including the vintage you had just poured into his glass. 

“It’s easy to get along with wine,” he said quietly and you weren’t sure if he intended for you to hear it. You decided not to comment on it and went back to cleaning up your bartop, taking two glasses that had been left by patrons earlier in the night and washing them. You counted the coins they left for their tab and smiled at the hefty tip they’d left you. 

You felt Astarion’s eyes on you as you dried the glasses and put them back on the shelf behind you. 

“Astarion,” he said and you almost didn’t catch it.

“I’m sorry?” you asked, turning back around. 

“My name’s Astarion,” he said.

Your chest felt suddenly very tight. You looked at him and for a moment he was alive in front of you, his skin flush with blood and life, his eyes honey colored. You blinked and the memory was gone. “Little star,” you translated. 

Astarion looked away, suddenly very shy. “Yes,” he admitted softly.

“It suits you,” you said. 

He looked up. “Does it?”

You nodded. “Silver hair like that, sharp cheekbones, nice jawline, pale skin… Yes. Yes, you are quite the star.” As you spoke, you leaned forward, propping your head up with one arm. The two of you locked eyes and there was something akin to desperation in his.

His eyelashes fluttered the way they once had when you flustered him. He cast his gaze down slightly, murmuring a soft, “Thank you.”

Tightness grew in your chest. Of course he’d changed, you had anticipated that; but for some reason, seeing the man you had complimented grow quiet and embarrassed under lesser praise instead of grinning and preening, seeking more like the Astarion you had been engaged to, hurt more than the fact that he didn’t remember you.

You let him sit with it for a few more moments before you teased, “You don’t get complimented much, do you?”

His charming smile and snark—a mask, you were sure of it—came back quickly. “Oh, every day, darling. But, ah… Rarely before I’ve taken my clothes off.”

Your heart sank. Some part of you wanted to be hurt that the love of your life had broken his vow of loyalty to you, but you saw the look in his eyes that he was trying to hide and knew it hadn’t been of his own accord—at least not entirely. 

So you refilled his glass and said, “Seems a shame. You strike me as the kind of man who deserves better than that.” You emptied the bottle and set it down, turning back to the wine rack behind you. You pulled a second bottle out and found Astarion gazing at you when you turned back around.

His expression was one you had seen plenty of times before, gazing lovingly at you before he left for work or when he watched you dress in the morning from the comfort of your shared bed. Pure, loving admiration—and this time it seemed almost instinctual, for he seemed puzzled when he realized what his face was doing when you mimicked the look.

Astarion lifted his glass to his lips and drank deeply before he said, “You know, you’re oddly, painfully familiar.” 

You raised a brow. “Really?”

“Like…like a face out of a dream,” he said. “Like I knew you once, but I just…can’t place you. Odd, isn’t it?”

“Not really, I get that a lot,” you said, brushing it off on instinct. “Though I must admit, you do strike me as the kind of person I’d want to know.”

He grinned, sitting up straighter in his stool. “Oh, really? Do you say this to all the devilishly handsome elves that sit at your bar, or just to me?”

“Just you,” you admitted, though it sounded more like a promise. “It’s been… Well, it’s been a few centuries since I really had interest in anyone. Not since…” You.

“Ahhh.” Astarion nodded sagely. “Your lover. Your…friend. Your best friend.”

You nodded. “Yes,” you said quietly. 

“What was his name?” he asked.

Shit. Unfortunately for you, you couldn’t think of a name other than his fast enough. His name formed on your lips for a moment and you stopped yourself quickly. “It doesn’t matter.” Astarion raised his brows in a way you could only describe as judgemental. You sighed and backtracked. “It’s not that he doesn’t matter. He does. He’s all I think about, every day. Hells, I even see him out of the corner of my eye when I shouldn’t because he— He’s been gone for years. But…right now…my problems aren’t the ones that matter. Yours do.” 

Astarion scoffed and made to get out of the stool. Panicking, you grabbed his arm. He froze and looked at your hand on his wrist. You softened your touch.

“Please, don’t leave,” you said, your voice trembling a little. You had just gotten him back; you’d be damned if you were going to let him slink off so soon. “I mean it. I want to hear your story. You look like a man with plenty of interesting tales.”

After a moment, he relaxed. You let go of his wrist and he caught your hand before you could pull it away. He blinked again at the instinctual movement and let go of your hand. You didn’t move away. 

“Is this how you entertain yourself? Trading alcohol for stories?” he asked, attempting to tease, but his voice was shaking a little too much to be suave. 

You shrugged. “Not exactly. Only the best stories warrant a free bottle of alcohol, and only at the end of the night.”

He laughed sardonically. “I doubt my stories would fit that bill.”

“They might,” you prompted. You covered his hand briefly, rubbing your thumb over his knuckles. “Talk, I’ll listen.”

~❊~

So he talked. Over the course of the night, between other patrons and your busy hours, Astarion told you stories. Some of them, most of them, were lies and exaggerations of what had actually happened to him, which were stories he’d never tell anyone. He watched you make cocktails, pour wine and mead, and serve your customers with a smile; each drink, whether it was for him or not, got him to open up more. There was something about you, the way that you worked while also paying attention almost solely to him, that comforted him.

Halfway through the night, just after a midnight rush, he sat alone at the bar again. You served him yet another glass of wine with a smile and a hint of adoration in your eye and something in him cracked. 

“It’s been like this for two hundred years,” he said quietly. He could feel the liquor in his veins instead of blood; it felt like honesty. “Night after night in taverns, searching for people. Random people, mostly. Sometimes looking for…specific people. People he wanted me t…to bring back to him.” 

You paused midway through wiping down the bar, noticing his change of tone. “He? Who’s he?”

“My master,” he whispered. Slowly, he met your eyes. “Cazador. He…he’s a… A vampire.” He watched you, expecting your face to fall in fear as he added, “I’m one of his spawn.”

You just nodded and poured him more wine. He gulped it down. You refilled it just as quickly.

“You’re not afraid?” he whispered. “You’re not going to kick me out?”

You shook your head. “I know you won’t hurt me.”

Astarion scoffed. “You don’t know that, you don’t know anything about—”

You put the bottle down a little harder than he had been expecting and he flinched. He looked up at you, silent.

“I know you won’t hurt me,” you repeated, meeting his gaze. “Trust me on that.”

He wanted to protest. He wanted to argue that he was a dangerous creature of the night, that you were just a bartender, that you wouldn’t be so quick to trust him if you knew what he’d done to two of your patrons and would do to a third tonight, but for some reason, he couldn’t make himself say it. He looked you in the eye and suddenly felt very strongly like you were right. He wouldn’t hurt you. Something about you made it impossible to even consider hurting you.

The gears in his head began to turn.

“So,” you said. “Cazador, this master of yours… What does he make you do?”

“I…” His throat seemed to close up, his mouth dry. “I bring back…food. People for him to drink from. Sometimes it’s random people I deem…worthy enough of my time that also meet his standards. Other times he sends me after specific people. And if I don’t bring them back, he—” Astarion looked down at the bartop as another patron walked in and took a seat at the far end, eyeing him conspicuously. “It’s not a pleasant thing he does to me.”

You pushed yourself off the bar. “I would think not.” You glanced at your new customer. “Let me handle him, and I’ll be right back.”

Astarion nodded and slowly sipped from his glass. He watched you closely as you took the other man’s order with a smile and got to work on what looked like a complicated cocktail. 

You weren’t afraid of him. Why? Why didn’t you kick him out? Why didn’t you see his red eyes and his fangs and realize that he was a danger to you and everyone else in this establishment? Why didn’t you fear the things he could do to you?

Why did he look at you and know with absolute certainty that he would never hurt you, that he couldn’t hurt you even if he tried? 

While you worked on his drink, the other man turned to Astarion, leaning on the bar in a way that made Astarion stifle a scoff. This man was a caricature of the sultry grace Astarion oozed—and he was faking it most of the time. 

“So,” the man drawled to Astarion, “what brings you here?”

You looked up from the cocktail, frowning at the man, who somehow didn’t notice your glower. You glanced at Astarion.

“Sorrow,” Astarion said dryly. 

“Oh, really? Perhaps I could…help you with that,” he said, his tone lacking subtlety. 

You cleared your throat, getting the man’s attention. “Not at my bar,” you said waspishly. “If you’re going to continue to accost other customers, you can pay for the drink and get out.”

The man sneered at you, and for some reason it started a fire in Astarion’s gut. “Look here, little miss, I’m a paying customer looking for paying customers of my own and I will not be—”

So quick Astarion could barely keep track of it, you grabbed the man’s wrist, flipped his hand, and pushed back his sleeve. There was a tattoo there. You scoffed. “Just as I thought, you’re one of Niess’s harlots? I’ve told your master that none of his workers are allowed on the premises. Get out before I force you into another line of work by removing your anatomy.”

The man’s face drained of blood. Astarion could hear his pulse quicken and a tense hunger curled through him. “You wouldn’t dare—”

“Out,” you ordered. You held out your palm.

Grumbling, he slapped what he owed into your hand, threw back the drink, and sashayed out the door. Into Astarion’s ear, he whispered, “Catch you outside, handsome.” He trailed a finger over Astarion’s shoulders and he shuddered with disgust. 

“I’m sorry about him,” you said, taking away the empty glass and cleaning it. “If I’d known what he does, I wouldn’t have let him sit in the first place.”

“Not a fan of prostitutes then, huh?” Astarion asked, voice grim and dry. His skin was still crawling from the man’s touch—and, he realized, from the prospect that you might order him out once you found out exactly what it was he did.

“Just those kinds,” you said. “You know—the ones who won’t take no for an answer? Niess has always been a problem. His flophouse is just down the street and he’s constantly sending his workers out to taverns and on the streets. It wouldn’t bother me so much if they weren’t known to— Well, there’s no delicate way to phrase this, actually. If they weren’t known to rape patrons who tried to say no. Niess himself does it more often than his workers, but…I won’t take that chance here.” 

Astarion shuddered violently. He felt like he might be sick, which he wasn’t even sure was possible.

Your shoulders slumped and understanding dawned on your face. “That’s what Cazador has you doing, isn’t it?”

Hands trembling, Astarion nodded slowly. “Y…yes.”

“I’m guessing you haven’t got much choice in the matter?” you asked gently. You reached over and offered your hand. Astarion took it and immediately felt comforted when you squeezed gently. 

“No,” he said. “I… I seduce the people he wants me to bring back. Seduce them, sleep with them, promise them wonderful luxuries and…deliver them to his fangs. That’s only when he wants me to bring people back. Sometimes my siblings bring back enough so he…he hosts a party where I am the entertainment.”

He could see your heartbreak on your face. “Oh, Astarion… Honey, I’m so sorry.”

A tear slipped down his cheek. Gods, he could still cry? He thought he’d shed the last of his tears over this ages ago. At least, the tears that weren’t coaxed out of him during the rougher parties where he was used until there wasn’t anything left and he was aching and numb at the same time, or when a whip split open his skin in the same spot just one too many times. 

You reached up and wiped his tears away. He sniffled and looked up at you through his watery gaze. “Thank you,” he muttered. 

For a few moments, it was just the two of you in your own little world. Astarion felt strangely…comforted. He wanted to collapse into your arms and stay there for a fortnight or longer and tell you absolutely everything. The thought of it, of finally feeling arms around him that didn’t want anything from him, made his whole body shudder with a sob. You cooed softly, cupping his cheek and catching his tears with your thumb. 

“I’m sorry,” he whispered. “The wine’s making me emotional, I— I’m sorry.”

“Don’t apologize,” you said. “Please don’t apologize. Not for this. You’ve been through so much and…you don’t deserve any of it.”

“You don’t know that,” he said.

“I do,” you said with such certainty that he paused in his protest, the list of his wrongdoings on his tongue fading into nothing. He looked at you and found sympathy in your eyes. Sympathy and love, genuine love, not the manufactured version he so often found in his victims’ eyes. If he had possessed a working heart, it would have stopped beating at that moment.

“I know you,” he whispered. Hope washed over your features. “Who are you to me?”

You opened your mouth but were interrupted by a server calling your name. You let go of his hand after one final squeeze and went over to her, taking a list of drink orders from her. You made them in your corner and Astarion watched, taking in your familiarity. 

He could see himself running his hands through your hair, taking the braids out and scratching your scalp with his nails. He could picture you laying in a soft bed with him, your bodies tangled together and with damp sheets. He could imagine you sitting across from him at a dinner table, two other shadowy figures in his mind between you both. He could feel your hand clasped in his as you sat next to each other, both dressed in matching finery, your face turned away from him but your thumb stroking his skin reassuringly. 

You were a part of his life. Or you had been, once. He was sure of it now. You had to have been someone special. Perhaps…

His stomach seemed to lurch. Oh, gods. Here he had been, flirting with your patrons, talking about his nightly sexual conquests, while you had been gazing at him so lovingly because he…

No, it couldn’t be! He’d remember you, wouldn’t he? If he’d had a best friend, a lover, he would remember them. 

You don’t remember your own parents, he reminded himself. 

Astarion looked at you while you worked, keeping your eyes down and trying very hard not to meet his gaze but sneaking little glances at his figure whenever you could.

His body tingled at the remembrance of lips on his neck, gentle and loving and wanted, kissing all the way down his stomach. It was you. It was you.

~❊~

He knew. He’d figured it out, you were certain of it. You could see him out of the corner of your eye and you watched the realization take over his face and body. 

How much does he remember? you wondered as you worked, slammed with yet another rush hour and too busy to even stop and think, much less talk to your undead lover. 

A tiny, unbearable flame of hope had started in your chest. He was here, sitting right in front of you, and he remembered you now. You were so close to having him back for good—and yet it was impossible. He was a vampire, cursed to the shadows and owned by a master worse than Niess. Even if you spent the rest of your long life working the night shift, Astarion would always have to return to his master with a victim in tow. How could you keep him at your side like that?

A thousand ideas popped into your head over the course of the night: kill his master. Run away from Baldur’s Gate. Continue as you were and let him leave you every night and every day to serve Cazador. No. You couldn’t do any of those things, and you certainly would not let Astarion keep slaving for a man who quite clearly abused him, even if Astarion hadn’t said it himself. 

You kept track of time as best you could. It was nearly closing time when the flow of drink orders stopped, accompanied by groups of people leaving the tavern, calling their drunken goodbyes to you as they swayed toward the door. 

Eventually, you returned to Astarion, who was still looking at you with that expression of dumbfounded realization as he had been the whole night. His last question was still bouncing around in your head: Who are you to me? 

You folded your arms and leaned on the bar. You met his gaze, looking into eyes that had once been a beautiful honeyed gold, and said, “I was your fiancée, once.”

A choked sob came from his throat. He reached out and you let him take your hand. “I know,” he whispered. “I… I remembered you.” He kissed your hand and you sucked in a sharp breath. “My darling. My love. My wife, oh gods, you were going to be my wife.”

You squeezed his hand. “Honey… I missed you. I missed you so much. I saw you everywhere, I thought you were just a figment of my imagination but maybe—maybe sometimes it was you.”

“Two hundred years,” he whispered. “Two hundred years without you. How did I… How did we manage it?”

“I didn’t,” you answered honestly. “I kept going only because I had to. I pretended I was fine so your parents could take the time to grieve and I mourned only when I was alone. Everyone was always telling me how strong I was but all the while I…I was shattering like glass every night because you weren’t there to hold me together.” 

Astarion squeezed his eyes shut. A few tears leaked out. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry I wasn’t there, I’m sorry I forgot you. I’m so sorry I didn’t try to escape him before I…before I forgot everything.”

“I’m sure you did try, Asty, you just don’t remember it,” you said quietly. “Or at least, I’d like to think you tried.”

“Asty,” he whispered. “I’d forgotten you called me that.” 

The last of the tavern’s patrons shuffled out, watching you out of the corner of their eyes. You were certain they thought you were trying to coax a very drunk and emotional patron out the door, if they even had a thought behind those eyes made glassy with liquor. 

The last server of the night began cleaning up. You squeezed Astarion’s hand.

“We’ve just closed, darling,” you said quietly.

“Closed?” he asked, a flash of panic in his eyes. “But I—I don’t have anyone to bring back to him! He— He’ll be furious.” The fear in his entire body made your heart break into two pieces. 

“Astarion, honey, I need you to calm down for a second—”

“You don’t understand,” Astarion moaned lowly. “You don’t understand the things he’ll do to me!”

“Darling—”

“You don’t understand,” he gasped again. 

“So help me understand,” you said quietly. “Come on, hun, talk to me. What will he do if you don’t go back?”

Astarion took several big gulps of air. While he calmed down, you told the last server to go home and began cleaning up yourself. You were nearly done when he began talking again from the bar, suddenly strangely calm, his voice dry and devoid of all emotion.

“He’ll starve me. He already does, but…he’ll take away all of it. The rats, the bugs… And he’ll beat me. No, no, he’ll watch while he has Godey beat me. Or he—” His voice caught in his throat. “Or he’ll…use me.”

You stopped and immediately went over to him. You opened your arms before you even got to his stool and enveloped him in a warm hug, holding his head close to your chest. Like a dam, everything broke. He sobbed into you.

“Hells, I’m going to be in so much trouble,” he whispered.

“No, you’re not,” you said firmly. “We’ll leave. We’ll run as fast as we can and never come back.”

He was shaking his head before you even finished your sentence. “No, no, we can’t, he’ll send someone after me.”

“Surely he has other spawn to torment—”

“I’m his favorite,” Astarion bit out, voice trembling. “He…he likes my screams, my suffering, the best.”

You fought down bile. “Oh, gods…” You hugged him tighter. “I wish I could—” 

You had a terrible idea that stopped you cold. An idea that would save him from his master and keep you together for the rest of your very long lives. 

“Come home with me,” you whispered. He began to protest, but you continued, “Come home with me and we can spend one last night together as we are. And then when the time comes…take me to him.”

Astarion went stiff in your arms. He pushed away from you enough to stare into your eyes. “What?” He sounded as horrified as he looked. “You want me to give you to him? No, absolutely not. I can’t! I can’t subject you to the same torture I go through night after night, I can’t do that to you! I love you, gods damn it all, even if I didn’t remember it for so long. The man I was when you loved me would never have brought you to Cazador.”

You cupped his cheek. “I still love you, Asty, I’ve loved you every day since you died. You might be changed, but deep down you are still my Astarion.” You showed him your hand, on which there was still a ring—delicate and beautiful and oh so lonely on your finger. “You are still the man I dreamed of marrying.” 

“You kept it,” he whispered, touching the ring. “All these years even though— What, you never wanted to start over with someone new?”

You shook your head. “Never. It was always you, Astarion. And it always will be. So just take me to him. Give him to me, keep yourself safe for the night. And I can stay with you this way. I will always be there to soothe your suffering if you bring me to him.”

He shook his head. “No. No, I can’t, darling, I—” His voice broke. 

“Please, Asty,” you whispered. “I cannot bear the thought of you being hurt because of me.”

“It’s not because of you,” he protested.

But you shook your head. “I kept you talking all night, love. I kept you at my bartop when you had a job to do. Please, darling.” You brushed his hair behind his ear. “Let’s go home.”

For several long moments, Astarion just stared at you. Then, in the quietest whisper you had ever heard, he said, “Alright.”

☞ ❊ ☜

[Image Caption: I do not give permission to repost, translate, or publish my work on any other site or app by anyone except myself. I do not give permission for my work to be fed into AI (for audio, art, or writing).]

Baldur's Gate 3 // Astarion Ancunin

“You screamed well into the morning. None of us slept. My siblings, they…offered me their blankets. It was the first time they had been kind to me in…a very long time.” Astarion fidgeted with his fingers, his voice thick with tears as he wrapped up his story. The spawn in the cage stayed quiet, listening intently, some wearing wicked, wicked smiles. “And we planned. They helped me sneak out when night fell so I could— So I could go to my grave.” He looked up at you for the first time in a very long time. “He buried you there. In my coffin.”

Bits and pieces of your memory came back to you. “Yes… Yes, he did, I remember— I remember so much. It was… Dark. Cold. Dirty. But I smelled…you.”

~❊~

The air was musty. It reeked of death, more strongly than the sickhouses during a plague. Your eyes burned when you opened them. You tried not to breathe, then realized after several moments of holding your breath, you didn’t need to. There was no pain in your lungs. You weren’t lightheaded from trying to hold your breath.

“What?” you whispered to yourself. Your lips tugged around two identical objects in your mouth, teeth that you knew had not been there all your life. 

Your eyes adjusted to the space slowly, but you knew from just a few experimental wiggles the place was cramped and tiny. It didn’t take long for you to recognize the smell of your lover or the appearance of your surroundings, lined in soft red velvet; you’d help pick the coffin yourself, all those years ago. It was Astarion’s.

You whimpered, the panic starting to set in. “Asty? Where are you?” You could smell him, all around you, even under the terrible scent of earth and bodily fluids and death and embalming fluids. 

You had no heartbeat, but you were sure you could hear it pounding in your ears, screaming, Out, out, out! You began scratching at the coffin lid and realized there were already claw marks there, ripping the velvet and gouging the wood beneath. You were not the first to have crawled out of here.

If Asty could do it, so can I, you told yourself and began kicking the lid. It didn’t take long for it to crack open, the latch already broken. You wedged it open slowly, clawing handfuls of dirt out of the way until you could make way for yourself. 

It was slow going, digging your way out of grave dirt. It was fresh and not packed down yet, which was your only advantage to get yourself out. It clung to you like summer heat, worming its way into your clothes, your ears, your mouth. You worked through the panic that built up inside you, getting worse the longer it took.

After what felt like hours—what probably was hours—your hand broke the surface. You nearly cried with relief and forced the hole to widen until you could pull yourself out, grappling with more loose dirt and very little for leverage. 

Your head came up through the hole and you took your first deep breath in ages, only to start coughing. You hacked up blood and dirt, your entire body heaving with the effort. You trembled more terribly than you had on the day you’d learned Astarion had died as you finally freed yourself from the grave. You turned to face the stone as you dry-heaved. Sure enough, Astarion’s name was carved into it. 

“You got out faster than he did,” a nasty voice said and you surged your feet, whirling and reaching for your knife. It wasn’t there. You stumbled forward, your body catching up to your exhaustion before your mind did. A black-haired elf stood before you and smiled sardonically. Cazador. “The only weapons you have now are in your mouth, dear child.”

Instinctively, you ran your tongue across your teeth and hissed as your new fangs sliced your tongue open. The tang of your own blood did nothing but make you aware of the pulsing, needy hunger curling in your gut. 

Memories came flooding back. Astarion, in your tavern, a vampire. Sleeping with him. Going back to Cazador with him. The pain of the bite that turned you. Attempting to run—being snatched up by Cazador and brought into the pit of the palace. Thousands upon thousands of spawn kept inside cages, jeering at you, watching you, giving you enough strength to try to fight back. Smiling defiantly at the vampire who promised you pain, even as you cried at the sound of Astarion’s sobs from so far above you. Darkness finally overtaking you as your body gave into the bite, the blood drained from your veins, your bones rearranging themselves, knitting together your new vampiric body.

“Get away from me,” you spat, stumbling away from him.

Cazador laughed. “Where will you go, little one? No one can save you now. Not now that you are this. You are mine.”

You heard a shout. Cazador stopped, turning to search for its origin. Another shout, this time your name, this time clearly Astarion’s voice.

“Do not meddle, boy,” Cazador warned, raising his voice in the direction of the shout.

A hand touched your shoulder. You looked, knowing you would see Astarion the moment you felt his touch. Cazador remained blissfully unaware that his spawn had already reached you. 

Astarion offered you his hand. You glanced back at your maker once, then slipped your hand into his. The two of you took off running. 

Cazador let out a shout, but neither of you heeded. You left the cemetery behind and began running through the streets of Baldur’s Gate.

“Where do we go?” you demanded, impressed by how much faster you were now, even without blood. 

“Anywhere,” Astarion said, glancing at you. “You wanted to run? Now we are. Just don’t stop until the city’s behind us.”

“How did you find me?” you asked.

He flashed you a fangy grin. “Dalyria. She helped me sneak past Godey.”

“She helped? Why?”

He shrugged. “She didn’t say, and I didn’t ask.”

The sky above you opened up. You both stopped short, staring up at the massive ship that had come through the rip in the world. 

“Come back here!” Cazador’s shout rang through the street. He was still some distance away, but he was gaining on you.

You tugged on Astarion’s arm. “Honey, we have to go.”

Astarion was staring at something just ahead of you. “What in the gods’ names is that?”

You turned and something with tentacles for a face grabbed your head. You screamed as, once again, the world went dark.

~❊~

The rest was a blank, until you woke up on the beach with Astarion leaning over you, but the rest of your companions had filled you in. After you’d blacked out, you’d been put in a pod and a tadpole was forced into your head. Some part of you had always been glad you’d had no memory of that—but if you had remembered it, would you have also remembered everything else?

You looked up at Astarion, who was nervously chewing his lower lip, his fang peeking out. You felt your own fang with your tongue. He did this to me.

You took a step backward, putting distance between him and yourself. You saw his heart break in the way his eyes began to water. 

“It was you? You brought me to Cazador? You’re why I’m like this?” You felt short of breath, your chest tight, your head spinning: the beginnings of a panic attack your body remembered from its time alive—which was much more recent than Astarion had been telling you.

“Darling, I had to,” he whispered. “You told me to. You begged me to bring you to him so I wouldn’t get hurt!”

“Why didn’t you tell me?” you hissed. “You didn’t have to tell the others, you could have fed them the same story you told me about keeping me safe from Cazador for two hundred years. But why me? Why did you lie to me about how I was turned?”

Hurt flashed in his eyes. But there was more to it than that. He was afraid, afraid because he was vulnerable in front of too many people, afraid because you were slowly backing away from him. 

“I couldn’t tell you, darling, you wouldn’t have believed me—”

“No more lies, Astarion,” you snapped. “Tell me the truth! Why did you lie?”

His lower lip trembled. “Because I was scared, alright? I saw the fear on your face on the beach and it—it looked like the fear in your eyes when I brought you to Cazador. You were already afraid. Of me! I… I didn’t want to make it worse. I didn’t want you to hate me when you were all I had. I was—” His eyes dropped briefly to the floor. Then he looked back up at you, tears rolling down his cheeks. You knew they were real. “I was scared you’d stake me for what I did to you the first chance you got. Worse, I was scared you’d leave me.”

You studied his face. As you looked at him, your anger began to fade. Death scares him less than losing me. “Astarion…”

He dropped to his knees, clearly expecting more rage. He trembled as he kept explaining, “I had already been without you for long enough. I didn’t want to do it again, I was scared that you’d forget me the way I—the way I forgot you. I was selfish, darling, I was so selfish because I didn’t want to do what you had to do for two hundred years and remember and love and ache when it wasn’t returned. So I lied. And I lied well. I made up story after story and you believed them so much they were becoming your memories. Anything else was just a bad dream to you and I let you believe that! It was easier to dismiss your real memories as nightmares than confess what really happened. That’s why I did it. Because it was easy.” He sniffled and roughly wiped away his tears with his wrist. “You can hate me all you want, but I am going to be selfish even more and I am going to beg you to stay. Hate me for the next two hundred years but please, please don’t leave me.”

And Astarion remained kneeling on the ground, shaking, waiting for you to speak. No one—not the other spawn or your companions—dared speak or move.

Then you knelt in front of him and gently cupped his cheek in your hand, coaxing his head up. “Astarion… I don’t hate you, honey. I don’t. I…I understand. I’m not upset that you did what I asked you to do, I just…I wish you had told me the truth about it. I don’t like it, but I understand it. And I forgive you.”

The tension in the room shifted. Astarion stared at you with those wide, wet eyes of his, clearly caught off guard as much as, if not more than, your companions.

“Why?” he asked at last. “I let him turn you into a spawn! I let him make you the same abomination as me, as my siblings, as all these poor souls that had the misfortune of meeting me!”

You kissed the top of his head. “Meeting you was never misfortune,” you said to him. “Not in our lives. Not in your undeath. Not in mine.”

Astarion gripped your hand desperately. “Why?” he pleaded.

“Two hundred years are not easily shaken in six months,” you said softly, reminding him of a conversation you had already had about his instinctive need to seduce and manipulate you when he already had you. “I cannot blame you for any of your lies when I know why you have said them. You told me yourself, it’s instinctive. That you wanted protection. You couldn’t have known how I would have reacted if you told me the truth when I woke up, I’m not even sure of that. There was no promise that I would protect you then.” I squeezed his hand gently. “But I’m going to protect you now. I swear it.”

He shook his head, but he held your hand tightly as if he was still afraid of you leaving him, the bones in your fingers grinding from the pressure. “I’m… I’m not sure I’m worth protecting—”

“You are,” you said, cutting him off without a second thought. 

“Why protect me after what I did to you?”

Your heart broke. “Can’t you see? Oh, honey, it’s because I love you! I knew what I was getting myself into then, even if I didn’t remember it for so long. It’s not your fault I insisted, you even gave me several ways out.” You stood and pulled him up with you. “Come on, up you get. We’ve still got work to do, remember?”

Astarion dusted himself off as he got off the ground. He looked at you tenderly, his eyes soft. “Thank you,” he whispered. 

From the cage, Sebastian cleared his throat petulantly. The bubble that had kept your focus on Astarion popped. 

“Tender,” he drawled, “but foolish, trusting him again.”

“Speak for yourself,” you said, shrugging. “You’ll see, when we free you all.”

Astarion pulled a face. “Are you sure we can?”

You glanced back at Sebastian. “You said I fought back, right? And that was without a tadpole, when I was still a thrall.” You turned back to Astarion. “He can’t control either of us anymore. If anyone can kill him, it’s us.”

Slowly, Astarion nodded. “I… Yes. We can. Together.”

Sebastian drew closer to the cage’s bars. He held them as he murmured, “Maybe you will do it. Gods help us if you don’t, though.”

Astarion rolled his eyes. “Haven’t you learned the gods don’t listen to the likes of us?”

“Boys,” you chided, before Sebastian could snap back. You glanced at your other companions. “Is everybody ready?” They nodded and, at last, Astarion nodded, too.

You offered him your hand. “Now, let’s go kill our maker, shall we?”

☞ ❊ ☜

[Image Caption: I do not give permission to repost, translate, or publish my work on any other site or app by anyone except myself. I do not give permission for my work to be fed into AI (for audio, art, or writing).]

Baldur's Gate 3 // Astarion Ancunin

Astarion drummed his fingers against the rough wood of the table he sat at, a hardly-touched glass of wine in front of him. He was stretched languidly across two seats and garnering plenty of attention for it—but most of his onlookers were below his standards. If Cazador was going to demand to be fed nightly, and for Astarion to fetch his meals with his body, the elf was at least going to choose people worthy of his person. 

He was, however, getting antsy. He’d already been in the tavern for too long. Several hours, at least, without moving much and dismissing anyone who looked at him for too long with his eyes when they didn’t suit his purposes.

Tonight was one of his “picky nights,” as he thought of them: nights when people he might normally go for to bring home to his master seemed…less, somehow. Astarion had always had standards for who he let touch his body, but on nights like this, the thought of anyone touching him (no matter how attractive, no matter how perfect) made his skin crawl even more than normal. 

But he was running out of time. This was the second tavern he’d visited tonight. Dawn was approaching quickly. He still had enough time to bed someone and bring them back, but only if he chose someone soon. 

It didn’t help that the longer he waited to choose his victim, the harder it got for him to, well, bite the bullet and just choose someone. He started to panic the closer to dawn it got while he remained alone, and it always stopped him from making a choice, despite—or perhaps because of—the building pressure and the growing fear of what Cazador would do to him if he came back empty-handed.

Why is it always me? The thought came to Astarion’s mind unbidden. Why is it always my victims he wants? My siblings bring back their own prey every night. Why does he need each of us to feed him?

Astarion shut out the anger. It never helped. He already knew the answers: Cazador was a glutton, Cazador taunted them with food they could never have, Cazador liked to feed in excess, Cazador lived in opulence and that opulence included the blood of his victims (that he never caught) everywhere. Or at least, these were the answers he and his siblings had speculated on, back before Cazador had turned them on each other. That was years ago—from the very beginning, when Astarion was new and there were just a few of them—

The memory fades into thin air. At this point, Astarion wasn’t sure if he was doing it to himself, forcing himself not to remember, or if two hundred years spent crushed under Cazador’s heel was wearing away at his memory. He wasn’t sure if he even cared to know the answer. 

Very suddenly, Astarion was aware of eyes on him—piercing and amazed. He made a show of leaning back in his seat, taking a long gulp from his wine goblet, and found his watcher. A young man, a human, little more than a boy compared to Astarion. He was tall, possibly taller than Astarion, and very lean, his body covered in tight brown leather. There was a broadsword at his side and a tall mug in front of him. He was surrounded by friends, all laughing and joking, but his gaze was fixed on Astarion. 

Gods, he was handsome. A little more rugged than the type Astarion usually lured in, but he couldn’t complain. Astarion hadn’t even acknowledged him and this boy was already in his web. 

Astarion let his eye linger on the young man, taking in his body and well-kept sandy hair before meeting deep brown eyes and smirking. A blush appeared on the man’s face, helped by the liquor in his veins. 

Astarion’s fingers itched. He took another sip of wine and licked his lips, watching the way the boy’s eyes practically rolled into the back of his head. The boy shifted in his seat and Astarion couldn’t contain his smirk; this one would be easy to drag away with the promise of hot kisses and a quick romp. And he was healthy, too, which would only please Cazador more.

But he paused. If the boy was as healthy as he smelled, and if he could really use that broadsword, he would be strong—much stronger than Astarion. If there were any faults of his own that Astarion was willing to acknowledge, it was that he was…fragile, to put it nicely. This man could easily overpower him if he realized what Astarion was doing. He could be dangerous.

And his current company—the friends he was with looked just as strong, just as deadly. If they were sober enough to keep tabs on their drunk friend, or even just enough to remember Astarion’s face the next morning, they could come after him.

He was an option, Astarion decided, but not quite what he was looking for. Still, he adjusted in his seat, gently eased his hips forward, and glanced at the boy out of the corner of his eye. Astarion was a master at this; he could easily keep the boy entertained while he looked for other contenders for the night. 

The tiefling standing at the bar was an option—she was tiny and lithe and looked out of place, almost nervous, but she looked like she promised a good fuck at the very least. She, too, was with friends, except her group paid little attention to her. They were beyond drunk and several of them were getting handsy with each other. But she was still sipping on the same glass she’d originally been handed by the bartender, who was a tiefling who looked very similar to her. Siblings, perhaps. It was never a safe bet to go after anyone who would be missed. Yet another option, but not a promise. 

The door to the tavern opened once more. Astarion looked toward it, hoping for easy prey to be walking in, and his eyes were blessed by perhaps the most beautiful creature he’d ever seen—although he was certainly biased, because it was another elf. And elves were always breathtaking to Astarion.

But you…you were exquisite anyway. Though he couldn’t put his finger on what about you made you such a darling, something about you set you apart from other elves. Even the ones he had charmed into his pants time and time again.

You seemed to glow with an innate, foreign happiness that felt, to Astarion, like an old friend he’d been blindsided by glimpsing in a crowded street. 

Astarion watched you switch places with the tiefling bartender behind the bar, exchanging a cheery “Hello!” loud enough to be heard over the din of the tavern. Your hair swished alongside your back, half of it down and half in braids, and when it fell across your face you gently blew it out of your eyes. Gods, you were like the heroine of a romance novel out of his mostly-forgotten past. 

Your tiefling coworker left, taking the nervous one Astarion had been eyeing with them. You waved them goodbye and turned your attention to the others sitting on the barstools, leaning over conspiratorially and offering them drinks and refills.

Astarion smirked. He knew a fellow performer when he saw one. You were doing everything you could for coin. You didn’t need makeup, but you’d done some, enough to highlight your eyes and your cheekbones. Your shirt was low and open just enough to expose some of your chest, but not all of it, keeping some of the mystery. You wore a corset to plump up your chest, and the way you moved helped you keep it in the view of your clients. Even your hair was styled to make you even more attractive than you naturally were. You might have been a different type of servicing performer, but you were one nonetheless.

Astarion’s gaze slid back to the young man. He had gone back to talking with his friends, but kept glancing over at Astarion. He caught the man’s eye and dropped one hand below his table, adjusting his pants in one of the most obvious ways he knew. He could feel the stretch of his pants against his cock and knew that its outline was visible. The young man’s eyes went wide and another deep, involuntary blush appeared on his cheeks. 

With his prey still invested in the possibility of a good night, Astarion turned his gaze back to you and was startled to find you looking in his direction, your face fixed in soft concentration. When you saw him looking, you offered him the kind smile of a bartender who knew her job was to listen to the woes of her patrons, and went back to mixing a sparkling pink cocktail. But Astarion’s eyes remained on you.

Somehow, you were familiar. The details of your face seemed natural, calming, someone he could trust. He felt a very sudden, very strong urge to go sit at your bar and talk. He wanted to put his head down and drink a glass of something you concocted for him and tell you everything while you nodded sympathetically with that soft smile of pure understanding on your face. 

You were the kind of person he avoided going after as victims, usually. It was people like you that he saw and tried and failed to seduce. It wasn’t just that you were a woman, either, though Astarion knew there were certainly times when he was rubbish at talking to women he found genuinely attractive. But it would be your kindness that made it that much harder to manipulate you.

Still…

Astarion considered it. Gods damn him, he considered sidling up to your bar, taking a seat, flirting with you, bedding you, bringing you back to Cazador. The thought of Cazador brought a sour taste to his mouth. Even if he was pleased with Astarion for bringing you back, Cazador would tease him endlessly about bringing back a pretty elf. “Have you brought me the one you wish for your wife, boy?” he might say, before he bit you and made Astarion listen to you scream. 

He barely kept back his shudder, trying to banish the thought from his mind. But the plan still formed. He knew exactly what he’d do and say. He’d start with a cheesy pickup line you’d probably heard a dozen times as a bartender, he’d ask you to make you a drink of your choice for him, he’d compliment the drink you made, regardless of how it tasted to his dead senses. Then, as he drank, he’d let his lips loosen. He’d tell you just enough truth to tug on your heartstrings and believe him. And as he talked to you about his sob story past, he’d talk to you with honeyed words and look at you with sad, sad eyes. 

And you’d be hooked. He’d make sure there was something about him that stood out from the usual sob stories that found themselves washed up at your bar. With any luck, he would be just the type of elf you found yourself mooning over, and, one way or another, one of you would end up on your back for the other. Honestly, Astarion wasn’t sure which sounded better. 

It was strange, he realized very suddenly, that a high elf such as yourself would be a bartender. It was a strange, monotonous job for creatures like you and him, with such long lifespans. Why did you do it? There had to be something in it for you. 

Astarion grimaced. There was yet another reason he should avoid you. If he was invested in you, asking questions about you, he could easily be dissuaded from taking you back to Cazador. In fact, he was quite certain—for no particular reason—that you could dissuade him from many things. Enough to end up locked in tight walls of stone once again.

No. Never again. He’d leave you alone, admire you from afar, and let you live your life. The boy would do for the night. 

Astarion made eye contact with the young man. The boy jumped and his eyes grew wide. Astarion smiled at him, swirling his wine in his glass, and let his tongue touch and caress the rim of the glass before he took a sip. The boy whimpered and shifted in his seat. Astarion spread his legs a little more, thrust his hips up a little, and then cocked his head to the side: a clear offer for the young man to take.

Me? the boy mouthed. Astarion nodded, confirming with a salaciously whispered, You.

He glanced at his friends and shot Astarion a look that could only mean “give me one moment.” Astarion tilted his head back and drained his glass while the boy took care of his companions. A moment later, a shadow loomed over Astarion. He glanced up from his empty glass to see the young man. 

Astarion grinned. “Hello, darling,” he said, voice smooth. He reveled in the way the young man blushed at just the sound of it. “Pleasure to see you.” He stood and found himself nearly eye-level with the young man. He was just slightly taller than Astarion, but not enough to give himself an advantage, should the night go terribly wrong. 

“Where do you want to go?” the young man breathed, clearly excited. How long is it since this man last got laid? Astarion wondered. But he knew it didn’t matter; this would be the boy’s last night alive. 

“Wherever we can,” Astarion answered. “Perhaps…your place?”

The man nodded eagerly. “I— Yes. I’d like that.”

Astarion let the man take his hand. “Lead the way,” he purred, giving the man a quick once-over. 

He was quick to drag Astarion out of the tavern. When the door closed behind them, Astarion caught sight of you watching, both eyebrows raised, before you shook your head and returned to polishing a glass. 

It was a short walk to the man’s house. Within seconds of the door closing behind them, after Astarion had made a show of teasing the boy into letting him in, Astarion found himself pressed against the door with a pair of warm, soft lips on his own. 

For a moment, he enjoyed it. The boy was clearly inexperienced and nervous—his kiss was incredibly light and he seemed hesitant to put his hands on Astarion. Perhaps it would be a bearable night. 

Astarion cupped the boy’s face to deepen the kiss. The whimper he let out was meek—and the complete opposite of the hand that slid to the front of Astarion’s pants. All hope that tonight would be gentle disappeared from Astarion’s mind as the man’s hand squeezed around Astarion. He hissed and forced himself to buck into the hand that held him.

You want rough? I can do rough.

Everything in Astarion’s body seemed to switch. The gentility he’d been hoping for became rough and harsh, and his body was preparing for it, even as his mind began to turn off. 

One thing led to another. It passed by in a blur in Astarion’s mind: tripping up the stairs, laughing as they fell onto a bed covered in animal furs, tearing off clothes and leaving them in heaps on the floor. It was only when Astarion was naked on his back that he briefly came to again, the man grunting and groaning above him.

“My name,” he was saying. “Say my name.”

Shit. I hate it when they tell me their names.

Astarion bit back a harsh laugh. “Sorry—didn’t catch it.” Hell, he wasn’t even sure what moniker he’d taken to calling the man. It could have been anything. Lover, darling, sweet, pet, there were so many sweet things he’d learned to use. Half the time, he had no idea what he’d even said to his victims while they used him.

The man leaned down and both their bodies shuddered as he hit a spot within Astarion’s body that made him cry out. “Rahul,” he whispered in Astarion’s ear. “My name is Rahul.”

Astarion draped his arm over his shoulders. “Alright,” he whispered. “Come on, Rahul. Give me more. I can take it.”

It was harder to get out of it after that. There was a name to put to this man’s face and now, without wanting to, Astarion was memorizing it. He was committing Rahul to memory, allowing him to become another face in a very long roster of people who came to torment him in his dreams. 

Somehow, Astarion forced his mind to shut off. The night passed in a blur, Rahul’s shout of ecstasy combining with his shout of pain as Cazador drained him dry when Astarion returned, several hours before dawn, with his prize. 

“Cutting it close, boy,” Cazador said, looking down at Astarion when Rahul had been drained enough to stop struggling. “But this one will do.”

Cazador dismissed Astarion and his siblings from the room with a flick of his fingers. They bowed themselves out and as the door closed behind them, Astarion watched Cazador sink his teeth back into Rahul’s neck. 

~❊~

Dawn was blooming on the horizon by the time you managed to kick out the last of your patrons. As you shut the door behind the last of them—a group of drunk, rowdy warriors—you took a long look at the lightening horizon. It looked almost like a bruise, blacks fading into blues and purples. 

The silence in the tavern was deafening. This was always your least favorite part of working in it: closing up in the morning, sweeping up the remnants of the night for an hour, feeling terribly alone all the while.

It was the bartender’s burden, you liked to think, to be everyone’s friend and the person who kept the loneliness at bay for everyone else. You listened to their lives and their problems, offered them a drink and sometimes advice, and waved them away with their hearts lighter and yours much heavier with their troubles. It was a bit like therapy—though possibly a tad unhealthier, given all the alcohol you plied your clients. 

But your mind was elsewhere tonight. Lingering in the back of your mind, behind the annoyance of cleaning up sticky, spilled liquor, behind Tani’s complaints about her husband’s lost job, behind Nanorian’s despair over his accidentally broken oath, was the pale elf you’d seen loitering in the shadows of your tavern.

Most people didn’t make that much of an impression on you. You had your regulars, that was for sure, but travelers came through all the time, each more wild than the last. This elf was hardly the most outlandish person you’d ever seen. In fact, he was probably one of the more subdued ones. But you remembered him—and everything he’d done throughout the night as you watched, your eyes drawn again and again to his figure—more clearly than the conversation you’d had with one of your regulars: Nethyis, a tiefling with whom you had the same conversation nearly every single night.

You knew him. Or you thought you did. If you didn’t so frequently imagine you saw the elf you’d grown to love in just thirty-nine short years (so much so that you’d seen him nearly every day of your life for two hundred years), you would have believed he’d suddenly come back from the dead. 

That had been your first thought the first time you’d seen him, several weeks after his death. It was just a glimpse—a flash of his white hair and the flutter of his magisterial robes—in a very crowded street. Your shout of “Astarion!” hadn’t reached him, but it had certainly made the crowd around you whisper their sympathies. He was there one minute, gone the next, just as it had happened the day two officials had told you he’d been killed. 

Absent-mindedly, you wandered over to the table the elf had been sitting at. You stared at it as if you expected your long-dead friend to materialize once more, tell you to sit down and have a drink with him, and launch into a tirade about his terrible day at work in the courts. Such nights had once been frequent—although never in a tavern, always in the house you shared. 

You had only noticed him when you’d arrived at work because he was staring at you first. You’d gotten very good at noticing when faces were turned toward the bar—though usually a hand was also raised to signify they wanted another drink—and had looked on pure instinct to see if he needed something from you.

The minute you locked eyes with him, you’d felt your heart fall straight through the floor beneath your feet. With his face turned toward you, so open and almost peaceful, it felt like looking into the face of the man you loved once again, a feeling you had missed these many, many years. 

It only lasted a second, that feeling of love. Where Astarion would have given you that dashing, cavalier smile you had grown so fond of as a child, this elf just stared as if he was trying to place you in his memory. You’d gotten ahold of yourself then, offering him the same bland smile you offered all your customers, and went back to work.

But just for a moment…you’d had your beloved back.

You practically fell into the chair across from the one he’d occupied just hours before, your knees giving out without warning. A strangled sob made its way out of your throat. And even though you were alone, you covered your mouth with a hand to stifle your cries. 

“Oh, gods,” you gasped when you finally had enough breath to do so. Your hot tears rolled down your cheeks and splattered against the table’s scorched and stabbed surface. You rested your head against it and imagined you felt Astarion’s gentle hand covering your own.

Two-hundred years of this. And you’d been doing so well! You still saw him every day, usually sitting and reading in a corner or smiling at you from a window while you worked or making snide comments about your clients, but you knew he was just in your head. You knew you were coping with losing him by envisioning he was still by your side. It didn’t impede your work; in fact, it comforted you, like his ghost was lingering to keep you safe. You’d stopped sobbing about losing him so suddenly. (Mostly. There were still days where your body ached from the heartbreak and your soul screamed with the pain. But those were few and far between now.)

Yet all it took was a single, handsome stranger who looked something like your Astarion, and you lost it.

Well, you had to give yourself some credit—at least you hadn’t burst into tears the moment you saw him from your bar, even though you had really wanted to. 

You took deep breaths until the sobs and shudders passed you by. You picked up the goblet he’d been drinking from and wiped down the table. Honestly, you should have done this the minute he’d left, but the people in the tavern had already been dwindling by that time, and you’d suspected something like this might happen when you walked over.

“I was due for a breakdown,” you mumbled to yourself. 

The elf had certainly looked like Astarion. He almost perfectly matched the memory you had of the sun elf you had known in his very, very short lifetime. A lithe figure, high cheekbones, deep smile lines from his years spent laughing, perfectly styled silver hair. You hadn’t gotten a good look at his eyes, but you’d already pictured them to be a honeyed yellow, perfectly golden when the sun hit them just right—just like Astarion’s eyes. 

You sighed and shook your head. How could you be so sure that the pale elf looked anything like Astarion? Maybe you’d seen the hair and close-enough facial features and had, in your mind’s eye, made him into your Astarion. It wouldn’t have been the first time it had happened.

Gods, you wouldn’t be going into an easy trance today. Even if you did, it wouldn’t be restful; you’d lay awake, cursed to picture Astarion every time you closed your eyes, and he would be the only memory you re-lived. 

You cleaned up the rest of the tavern only half-aware of what you were doing. You were lost in your head, feeling stuck both inside and outside of your body. 

The memories you had been trancing to save since he died crowded your thoughts: the two of you as children, chasing each other through crowded streets while both of your parents shouted for you to slow down; Astarion bandaging your hands after you’d burned them; staying up for hours to help him study for law school; drunkenly kissing each other at an elvish festival; sharing a bed on a trip you’d joined him on and cuddling through the night, talking through your complicated feelings for each other; screaming his name at his graduation; watching him get dressed for his first court case; going out to dinner together and holding hands across the table; Astarion drinking away his sorrows in your tavern after a particularly rough case; covering the little love bites you left on him before he left for work, both of you giggling as you did.

Tears spilled over the next time you blinked. You wiped them off your cheeks and closed up the tavern, extinguishing candles and lamps, locking the door behind you when you left. 

You walked in silence, veering off your path home to enter the cemetery. You found his grave with the ease of someone who had walked the path a thousand times. You’d probably walked it more than that, in fact.

It was heartbreakingly beautiful. You’d always thought that. His stone was simple but elegant, just as the man himself had been. You crouched before it and kissed his name, a tear somehow still escaping your closed eyes. You rubbed the top of the stone like you had once rubbed his back. 

“I miss you,” you whispered to the stone. “Rest easy, my love, for me. I’ll be with you one day.” You kissed the stone again, then pressed your forehead to it, as if you were pressing your forehead to his. “Sleep well, Astarion.”

☞ ❊ ☜

[Image Caption: I do not give permission to repost, translate, or publish my work on any other site or app by anyone except myself. I do not give permission for my work to be fed into AI (for audio, art, or writing).]

Baldur's Gate 3 // Astarion Ancunin

As usual, Cazador was waiting on his throne. 

Dread had curled in Astarion’s stomach again and tears waited to fall from his eyes, but he kept pulling you along, his fingers digging into your arm hard enough to make you whimper. You desperately pawed at his hand, but you couldn’t loosen his grip. Yet when he stopped before Cazador’s throne, his head down and his eyes fixed firmly on his feet, you knew to stop thrashing. You stood still beside him, trembling slightly in his grip. 

“Cutting it close, boy,” Cazador snapped. His voice slid down Astarion’s spine, his anger all too audible. A tear slipped down Astarion’s cheek and fell to the floor. “Yet look what you’ve brought me tonight…”

Moving stiffly, Astarion shoved your forward. You yelped and fell to your knees. The shape of his fingers remained imprinted on your skin. You looked back at him, your pain and heartbreak on your face—and yet also determination. 

She’s scared, the most scared she’s ever been, and she’s still trying to stay strong for me so I won’t break. She doesn’t deserve this. I should be on my knees in her place.

But it was too late for that. Cazador was standing with his staff in hand, making his way over to inspect his new prize. Astarion felt his siblings’ presence the moment they entered the throne room, forming a line in front of the door. Did they expect him to try and fight this time?

“You’ve brought me your lover,” Cazador purred, grinning wickedly. “Your one true love, your fiancée, I see.”

Astarion’s head snapped up immediately, horror on his face. If Cazador knew who you were, his internal pain would not go unnoticed—or unpunished. Astarion began to tremble.

“Yes, boy. I know who she is. I knew everything about you the moment I decided you would be mine,” Cazador taunted. “Your little wife. I never saw her for myself, but I’d heard rumors she was pretty. I can see why you liked her.”

You looked up at Cazador with narrowed eyes, two hundred years of rage on your face. “You staged it. You staged Astarion’s murder!”

If Astarion’s heart had still been beating, it would have stopped then. All these years, Cazador had told him he’d simply walked across his dying body, left brutalized by the Gur he’d angered with his ruling. But it hadn’t been anything like that—Astarion’s vampirism had been intentional. 

His master snickered. “Oh, child, of course I did! I took your lover from your arms and brought him into mine. A handsome thing like him, I couldn’t help myself.” He sneered at the pain in your eyes. “If I had known more about you, I would have taken you then, too…”

A shudder passed through your body. “You’re disgusting,” you spat, your voice full of a venom Astarion was sure he had never heard before, not even two hundred years earlier. 

Cazador tutted. “You’ll change your tone soon enough, little one.” He put two fingers under your chin and tilted your head up. You threw yourself back, protesting his touch with a grunt. Glowing red chains encircled you instantly and brought you onto your knees, your arms restrained behind you. You thrashed against them but could do nothing as Cazador repeated the motion, the chains tightening around you, and gripped your head in his hand.

Astarion didn’t dare move or speak as he inspected you. Your eyes flicked between Cazador and Astarion, your desperation clear. Astarion shook his head subtly.

“He won’t help you,” Cazador said, noticing immediately. “He obeys me. Do not convince yourself that he is yours anymore; he has been mine these past two centuries and will be mine for another two!”

Yet Astarion caught your eye. I can’t help, he mouthed. Thrall.

You understood immediately and hissed to his master, “Not by choice.”

Cazador smirked. “Control is control, one way or another. You’ll understand his loyalty soon enough.”

Astarion heard a quiet murmur of surprise from his siblings. Cazador glanced at them, then at him, and then back down at you.

“You won’t be food,” he said to you. “You will join your lover and his siblings in eternal undeath. You will feel his two hundred years of turmoil and then some. You will join them in belonging to me forever.”

The malice in his voice made you shiver. Astarion admired your courage as you looked Cazador dead in the eye and spat in his face, even as his body tensed in preparation for the punishment his master would dole out for your actions. Cazador reared back and gasps filled the room. Into the deadly silence that fell, as Cazador wiped your spit from his face, you said, “I think I’d rather be food, if it’s all the same to you.”

To Astarion’s surprise, Cazador didn’t backhand you; instead, he began to laugh. It was a shrill, mocking sound that made him and the six other spawn cringe. The longer it went on, the more worried you became. You glanced at Astarion, who met your confused gaze with a look of terror. Slowly, your confusion became a matching fear. 

“You have a fire in you!” Cazador said when he could finally speak through his laughter. “Such rebellion in your blood. It shall taste divine. And it is all the more reason to keep you for my personal…entertainment.” The darkness in his voice made Astarion shudder; yet some small part of him felt a kernel of relief. Was this the end of his own torment? Was it a reprieve at the very least?

Astarion felt Cazador’s eyes on him and looked up. There was disappointment in his face. Astarion shrank back, curling into himself, whispering, “Master, please…”

“Don’t look so excited, boy,” he spat. “I’m not done with you yet. You and your bride will make a lovely couple during nights of debauchery.”

“No,” Astarion croaked before he could stop himself, his tone pleading. “Please, not her. Don’t do this to her. She doesn’t… This isn’t… Please, Master, don’t hurt her! Do whatever you want to me but not to her, please!”

Cazador sneered. “A single night with her and you think you can argue with me? You think to make bargains? Two hundred years of teaching, erased in a single night! All you are is the sniveling fool I watched crawl from his coffin, mewling and pleading and crying, begging for your little wife to save you!”

He raised his hand as if to strike Astarion and he whimpered, dropping to his knees immediately, curling up on himself. He shivered where he sat, waiting for the strike. But it didn’t come. Astarion looked up despite the small voice telling him not to, searching for the cause of his master’s mercy.

Thwack! Thwack!

The staff smacked into Astarion’s head twice. His vision blurred and he cried out, keeling back over. He had just barely shaken the pain from his skull when the staff slammed down on his back. The force of the hit sent him sprawling to the floor. 

You let out a strangled cry, straining against the magical chains to reach Astarion. When your efforts proved futile, you turned your face back to Cazador, your fury burning in your gaze. 

“Don’t touch him,” you spat. “He hasn’t done anything—”

The staff slammed into your ribcage and you wheezed as the air was knocked from your lungs. Astarion whimpered softly. 

“Insolent girl,” Cazador said, perfectly composed. “Trying to protect him is foolish.”

You panted heavily as you regained your breath. You gathered yourself enough to look back up at him. “Beat me all you wish, but leave him alone. He brought me to you. He brought you what you wanted so just let him be!”

“A logical one, aren’t you?” Cazador yanked you to your feet. You stared him down, lifting your chin defiantly. “I’ll whip that out of you.” His gaze slid to Astarion. “Or should I fuck it out of her like I fucked it out of you?”

Astarion whined, curling in on himself. Despite his hints at how far Cazador had taken using his body, he hadn’t exactly told you what happened. Shame settled in his gut and he was terrified to meet your eyes as you whispered his name.

“He didn’t tell you?” Cazador asked, his voice nearly a coo. He was obviously enjoying Astarion’s mortification—just as he always did after the deed was done.

“Astarion,” you whispered again.

When he chanced a look in your direction, he found you looking at him with sympathy in your gaze as you completely ignored Cazador’s finger stroking your cheek. Astarion shuddered, knowing that cold touch all too well. 

“It’s not your fault, Asty,” you whispered. “None of what this monster did to you is your fault.”

Cazador ignored the insult for the time being, electing instead to laugh. “Asty,” he repeated through his high-pitched giggles. He glanced at the other spawn. “They have pet names for each other!”

You snarled, turning your gaze back to the vampire still holding you close to his body. “You, on the other hand… You can go to hell.” Without warning, you lunged, throwing yourself at him. The movement caught Cazador by surprise; he stumbled backward and fell hard onto the marble floor. You had no use of your hands or feet, but your mouth was weapon enough; you bit Cazador’s neck hard enough to draw blood, ripping the skin above his jugular open. 

Cazador yelled in pain and threw you off. A chunk of his flesh came with you and you spat it on the ground, his blood dripping from your mouth. 

For a moment, the two of you stared at each other, both panting on the floor. Cazador groaned, a hand attempting to cover the sizable wound you’d left in his neck.

You glared at him. “I know I don’t have your refined vampiric palate, but your blood tastes disgusting. I pity the vampire who sired you.”

The smell of blood filled the air. It was tart and old, older than Astarion had ever imagined, but it was heady. His ever-present hunger tightened in his gut and pulled a whine from his chest. Behind him, his siblings all inched forward, spreading out into something of a hunting formation.

Through the fog of his hunger and the pain pulsing in his body, a few coherent thoughts formed. Was this her plan all along? Spilling Cazador’s blood to send the rest of us into a frenzy so we’d rip him apart with our teeth? Does she mean to free us all? Something akin to hope filled his abdomen.

Cazador recovered far too quickly for Astarion’s liking. He snarled at you as blood oozed from the wound and poured down his pale skin. “This is the game you’ve chosen to play? Practicing for the rest of eternity, eh?” His grin was wicked and every vain hope stirring in Astarion’s heart was dashed. “See how you like this!” He lunged for you, moving too quickly for you to get to your feet. It took only a second for him to have you pinned beneath him.

“No!” Astarion yelled, but his shout was very nearly drowned out by your scream of pain; Cazador had sunk his teeth into your neck.

You twitched and thrashed beneath him, desperately trying to throw him off. The scent of your blood joined Cazador’s in the air. You were sweeter, lively, and Astarion could still smell the arousal and the sex in your blood—a scent so distinctly him even though it was your scent. He glanced away from you for just a moment to see the other vampires hesitate despite their bloodlust. They could smell him, too, they could smell the permanent mark he had left on you. Even the impulse to obey Cazador faltered against vampiric instincts—never take what belonged to another vampire. 

Possessiveness curled through Astarion, nestling deep in his gut. You were his, the first thing that was his in two centuries, the woman who had always been his. And Cazador dared to take you from him? Yet still, Astarion remained frozen where he knelt on the floor.

Your scream rose in pitch before dropping off completely. The sound became pitiful whimpers, pained cries, and gentle pleas for help. No one dared move to help you and Cazador was too lost in your blood to hear you.

Astarion took advantage of Cazador’s distractedness to drag himself to his feet and stumble closer to you, his body still shaking with either terror or rage, he couldn’t tell anymore. You watched him through dazed, glassy eyes. You were getting terribly pale. Despite himself, Astarion began to salivate as he neared you, the scent of your blood nearly overpowering his desire to escape.

You met his eyes and whispered, with the last of your strength, “Astarion, please…”

Every ounce of self-restraint snapped. Two hundred years of conditioning drained away. Mustering strength he hadn’t felt in years, Astarion wrenched Cazador away from you. You cried out as his fangs tore your neck but Astarion didn’t slow down to check and see if you were alright. He grabbed your hand and hauled you to your feet while Cazador was distracted. Before his siblings could react, Astarion whispered to you, “Don’t stop running.”

He took off like a shot, pulling you along with him. You followed dutifully, but your blood loss slowed you down. As the pair of you ran through the doors and past servants that were thankfully human and too shocked to react, Astarion realized you’d never make it to the door in time. He wouldn’t either, unless he left you here and escaped alone. 

Leave her. Hide in the shadows until you can come back and steal her away tomorrow night when she has her strength back. Astarion glanced back at you, already hating the idea. No. She’d never leave me. I can’t leave her. I’ll carry her.

 Astarion stopped running. Confusion danced across your dazed face until he scooped you up in his arms. Moving sluggishly, you wrapped your arms around his neck, clinging to him. The smell of your blood was stronger now and Astarion groaned in need, but he forced himself to keep running. 

Despite the adrenaline coursing through his body, pushing him onward, Astarion knew he was slowing down. He’d been starved for too long to keep up a fast enough pace to outrun Cazador, who fed until he burst every night, and now he carried your precious body in his arms. 

A sense of doom fell on Astarion’s shoulders as a clawed hand dug into his shoulder. His legs were kicked out from underneath him. He moaned, falling to his knees. You fell from his grasp, your prone body spilling onto the floor like you were made only of liquid. The door was just feet away from you, but you were unmoving, aside from the shakes induced by your blood loss. Astarion thought two words as soon as his master spoke them.

“It’s over,” Cazador hissed in his ear. He shoved Astarion to the ground and stared down at him. Astarion had never hated that beady red stare more. “Just so you don’t get any ideas…” Cazador stepped on Astarion’s calf and he whined as he added more and more pressure until— 

Astarion screamed as the bones snapped. 

Satisfied that Astarion was immobile, Cazador scooped you up. He latched onto your neck once more and drank deeply. You wriggled, fighting until your last breath, when your body went limp in his arms, your skin pale. Astarion heard the death rattle escape your lips and whined pitifully.

Cazador tutted at him. “Patience, boy. She’ll be with you again come tomorrow morning.”

Slowly, reverently, the vampire master carried you away, down a set of dark stairs the spawn were never permitted to use. Getting down the stairs with a broken leg would be a trial, but Astarion’s fear of the pain diminished the farther away from him Cazador took you. When he was certain his master would not hear or see, Astarion began dragging himself across the floor. 

He was healing quickly due to his vampirism, but it still wasn’t fast enough. Every movement coaxed a whimper out of his lips.

A gentle hand on his shoulder stopped him. Astarion looked up and found Dalyria standing next to him, her face half-obscured by her hair. Nevertheless, he could see the disappointment on her face.

“Dal,” he rasped, desperate and tired. “Help me get to her.”

“I’d hoped she would escape, too,” she said, her voice hollow. “But it’s too late for her now. Come on, Astarion. There’s nothing you can do. She is his.”

Those last three words broke the dam in his chest. He propped himself up, leaning as much as he dared on Dalyria’s leg, and let himself sob. She put her hand on his head, the only comfort she could provide.

Deep within the palace’s dungeon, you began to scream.

☞ ❊ ☜

[Image Caption: I do not give permission to repost, translate, or publish my work on any other site or app by anyone except myself. I do not give permission for my work to be fed into AI (for audio, art, or writing).]

Baldur's Gate 3 // Astarion Ancunin

Astarion never went back to the same tavern twice. Not for many years, at least. But, against his better judgment, he went back to yours, three nights later.

He wasn’t sure what was drawing him back, not really. It wasn’t as if this particular tavern seemed very promising. Its patrons were, well, regular people. Nothing about them seemed particularly special. In fact, it was probably more dangerous to be going back so soon—for all Astarion knew, Rahul’s friends were still loitering there and would kill him the moment they saw the man Rahul had left the tavern with. The last man who ever saw Rahul alive. 

His other victims from the past two nights were inconsequential. They hadn’t insisted on telling him their names, the male druid and female elf who had each been a little more than an hour’s worth of his time combined. They had been easy targets, lonely people who were all too easy to seduce. He almost felt bad for them. But not as bad as he felt about Rahul. Both nights, Astarion had jolted out of his trances with a shout upon hearing Rahul’s screams in his dreams again. Both times, he’d been rewarded by Godey with a whipping. 

Even as he walked into the tavern, Astarion wasn’t sure what he was doing. It was only after the door had swung shut behind him, hitting a little bell as it did, and you looked over from the bar and raised a hand in greeting did he realize why he’d come back.

He locked eyes with you as he made his way toward a small table in the corner. He paused, watching you. There was something in your eyes that made the tension in his shoulders disappear. 

You’d done your hair differently today. It was braided back, a couple strands of it loose around your face, clearly having escaped during your work. Your beautiful face had morphed into an expression of surprise, like you were shocked to see him here again.

But there was something else in it—the slightest bit of repressed hope, an expression Astarion had seen all too often on the faces of his victims just before they died, when they still thought he might save them from his master. 

On your face, though, hope was comforting. You looked almost…relieved to see him. 

Before he realized what he was doing, Astarion turned toward the bar and sat directly in front of you. He heard your breath catch in your throat and your pulse speed up and for a moment he felt a twinge of regret. You, too, would make an easy target. 

You recovered quickly, however. You finished wiping down the bartop and dropped the rag into the sink. You leaned on the bartop. “What can I get you tonight, sir?”

“A glass of your finest red wine,” he says after a moment of thought. 

Something minute in your face changed. You blinked too fast and hid the look in your eyes, but for a moment the façade of a bartender serving a patron disappeared. It was only a second, but was enough for the gears in Astarion’s head to start turning.

You laughed with a smile on your face. “You’re going to have to be more specific, hun. The ‘finest red wine’ changes from person to person. What kind of flavor are you going for?”

Hun. The moniker stood out in Astarion’s mind, dominating every other word you’d said. Hun, short for honey, and for some reason, he could hear the complete word in your voice: softer, gentler, loving. Not at all the way a bartender speaks to her patrons. 

Only after you raised your brow did Astarion remember you’d asked him a question. He shook himself out of his head. “Oh, something full-bodied,” he said. 

“Now that I can work with,” you said. You turned to search your shelves and Astarion watched you release a long breath very slowly. You wiped your palms on your pants before reaching up and sliding a bottle from its place. You presented the bottle to him. “How about this?”

Astarion studied the label and vintage. “I’ll admit, I’ve never heard of it,” he said, shrugging idly. “But if you think I’ll like it, I’m inclined to trust you.”

He watched you cut off the wax seal and uncork the bottle. You poured enough for a tasting into the glass and slid it across the bartop to him. 

“How does that taste?”

Astarion sniffed the wine before swallowing it down. Pleasantly, it didn’t taste like vinegar, like most wines he’d had the bad luck to drink in tavern after tavern. He could taste the alcohol and the grapes and the blackberry undertones easily, all melding together wonderfully.

“This,” he said, passing back the glass, “is absolutely what I am looking for.”

You grinned and filled up the glass. “I thought it might be.”

Astarion swirled his glass while you re-corked the bottle and set it in ice. He watched as you helped another patron sitting at the bar, a middle-aged woman complaining about her husband being out of work and asking if there was perhaps a job for him at the tavern.

You calmed her as you made her cocktail, talking soothingly and nodding in sympathy as she complained about trying to feed their infant. It was your sympathy that made Astarion feel pity for the woman. 

Something about you was achingly familiar. There were times when you spoke, certain words that you said, that struck a chord in him, simply because they sounded familiar. The way you moved behind the bar, so graceful in a space that was unbearably small, seemed comfortable to Astarion, as if he would be able to anticipate your movements and react accordingly if he were to join you behind the bar. 

It was almost painful, this feeling of familiarity and alienation combining in one person. It was like the nights when Astarion first realized he was forgetting his life before being a vampire where he would sit in the dark and grasp at straws for pieces of his life, only for his mother’s face to fade into nothingness and his father’s voice to be lost in the shadows forever and—

A twinge of pain split through Astarion. It was nothing compared to the pain Cazador or Godey regularly inflicted on him, but it was enough to make him flinch anyway. He rubbed his temple as if he could will the building migraine away.

Your eyes flicked over to him, watching the motion with concern, but it just confused Astarion further. You reacted to him so readily, so easily. If it hadn’t been for how innately close and familiar you felt, Astarion would simply have chalked it up to your attraction for him. It wasn’t unlike his prey to keep a close eye on him. But he hadn’t even picked you as his victim for the night, he hadn’t even attempted to seduce you yet. This was entirely of your own accord. 

You gave the woman her drink and pulled your braid over your shoulder as you helped the female tiefling Astarion had seen and considered taking back to Cazador the other day. Suddenly he was very glad he hadn’t; the disappearance of a regular might have been enough to force him out of this part of town for several months at least. 

Astarion glanced over his shoulder at the rest of the tavern. He didn’t see the group Rahul had been with anywhere; perhaps they had already moved on, without a care in the world for their lost friend or comrade or what have you.

Perhaps they thought Rahul had settled into a happy life with a nice young man and would be staying here to live out his days, enjoying nights of passion and drinks at a nice tavern and playing the protector of the pretty boy elf he’d left with. 

Astarion wasn’t sure if it was for his own sake or Rahul’s that he wished that such a fantasy was what they believed. 

As you gave the tiefling a glass of champagne, your eyes strayed back to Astarion. He caught your glance and grinned.

“Surprised to see me still sitting here?” he teased.

You shrugged. “You were here three days ago and vanished without a trace. Forgive me if I feel like you might blow away in the wind.”

“Sometimes it feels like I might.” The words slipped out without any thought behind them. For a moment, Astarion wondered what the hell was wrong with him to dare say such a thing, but your sympathetic smile soothed him.

The talent of a well-practiced bartender, he thought. Get your patrons to loosen up, ply them for more liquor, take home more money—all by smiling and charming and flirting. From one actor to another, I must hand it to her. She’s quite good at this kind of thing.

“Wanna talk about it?” you asked, propping your head up on your hand. The movement exposed more of your cleavage, but judging from the look in your eyes, Astarion guessed that wasn’t your purpose in the movement. You genuinely wanted him to open up.

Your gaze stopped him from speaking. Your eyes were clear and focused entirely on him. You weren’t like the other bartenders he’d chatted up in the past, with their shifting eyes betraying how they were never really focused on him but instead on their tavern and the other patrons they could squeeze more coin out of. 

And, what’s more, your lips formed a soft smile. Joy and love and the sun itself seemed to radiate from you and your expressive face. You looked at him the way a young woman ought to look at her betrothed, with the purity of young love, much more genuine than the pseudo-love and lust he so often saw in his victims. 

“Why are you looking at me like that?” Astarion whispered, unable to stop himself from asking. 

You realized yourself quite suddenly. Your face dropped and Astarion wanted to beg you to look at him like that again, to apologize and say he never wanted you to stop looking at him like that—he just wanted to know why? Why had you chosen him to be the object of your affections?

Your eyes dipped to the bartop, where his fingers still held the stem of his glass. “I’m sorry,” you said softly. “You— You remind me of someone I know. Someone I miss.”

“A lover?” Astarion guessed, attempting to make it into a tease.

“More than that,” you said, your voice impossibly soft and serious. You fiddled with the strings on your corset. “He was my best friend.”

Astarion’s heart sank in his chest. “Was?”

You nodded slowly. “He died. A long, long time ago.” You shake yourself out of the sorrow that settled on you like a blanket. “You just so happen to look a lot like him. Hells, you even sound like him, just a little bit. I’m sorry if that made…this…strange. You just…sort of brought him back to me, for a moment.”

“Not at all,” Astarion said quietly. “I’m…happy to have brought you that.”

You nodded, lost in your thoughts, your eyes fixated on his. Your lower lip trembled. You sought words, but came up empty handed. All you said was, again, “You remind me of him.”

~❊~

It’s him. By the gods, it’s really him.

You kept busy for the rest of the night, watching Astarion out of the corner of your eye. For he was Astarion, you were certain of that now. Hearing his voice, smooth and suave and the same as you remembered had confirmed it for you. The moment he’d requested your finest red wine, you could hear him calling you darling, could hear your name rolling off his tongue. 

He didn’t remember you, that much was obvious. Some part of you was glad he didn’t, because you weren’t sure what you would have done if he had remembered who you were. You had to focus on that gladness, or else you were going to focus on the disappointment, which made you want to sit on the floor and cry like you had when you’d first received word that he was dead—the kind of crying that left you shaking and never seemed to stop and sounded more like screams than anything else. 

You were also quite certain he would not be flirting with the young elf sitting next to him if he remembered you, his best friend since birth and lover of nearly two decades. 

Perhaps even more obvious than his lack of memory was how he was alive—or rather, undead, for it was quite clear he was a vampire. He was careful to hide his fangs, but the red eyes were enough for you to know, combined with the paleness of his skin and the color of the skin around his eyes. It might have been two hundred years, but you knew your lover well-enough to know he had not been quite so pale in his life. 

The realization of what he was answered a question that had lingered in your mind for years, ever since you’d paid a visit to his desecrated grave. The city had explained the dug-up earth to be the vandalism of the gang that had first attacked and killed him and had assured you and the Ancunins that Astarion’s coffin had not been touched; his body remained inside.

Clearly, they had been wrong. 

You glanced at Astarion. The smug, seductive, confident look on his face was that of a practiced lover, nothing like the goofy and slightly shy boy you had made love to. You wondered what happened, but knew a lot could happen in the two hundred years between now and that terrible night. 

~❊~

The Ancunins walked hand-in-hand. You were just ahead of them, leading the way to their son’s grave, a plot you had chosen to keep their beautiful boy in the sun at high noon. It was far from high noon now; they had chosen to visit the grave in the night, certain they would be attacked by the Gur who had killed their boy if they were seen mourning. 

It was a beautiful night, the kind of night you and Astarion would have loved. He would have held your hand and helped you to climb up to the roof, and you would have sat there for hours, cuddling and talking and admiring the stars he’d been named after. He would have told you about his day at work and played with your bracelets and rings when talking about the difficult rulings he’d made that day made him anxious all over again. He would have wrapped his cloak around your shoulders when you got cold. He would have kissed your nose when you asked to go back to the safety of the bed you shared. He would have helped you climb down and would have put you to bed, only to go stand on the balcony to stare up at the sky for a few moments more. 

He loved the night, and this was the kind of night he would have wanted to have lasted forever: not so cold that you shivered instantly, but cold enough to have a chill bite in the air. Bats danced in the air and wisps of clouds moved across the moon and stars. Pale light illuminated the world in a hauntingly beautiful way. It seemed particularly cruel. 

His mother trembled terribly. Already, silver tear tracks stained her cheeks. You had never seen Selwynn so frail, so scared. Even when she’d found out her son had been murdered, she hadn’t been the skeleton she was now. No, then she had been a fire, screaming and raging and demanding answers until the tears started coming. Now she was a ghost, silent and pale, her veins stark against her skin. All the life and color had drained from her in the past few days. 

His father fared better, but not by much. Thesan’s eyes were sunken, his hair matted and limp, the whites of his eyes bloodshot, though he had not cried at all since he heard the news, unlike his wife. He hadn’t been resting, but then again, none of you had. More than once, your mother had stumbled across you in the night to find you in the kitchen, staring sightlessly into the dark, a glass of water held limply in your hand.

You were glad you hadn’t let them see the body. Looking at them now, you were certain it would have broken them to see their golden boy without life. It had been enough to break you; let them, at least, live out their long lives with their last memories of their son being of him alive and smiling and kissing them goodbye as he left for work. 

Somewhere in the graveyard, an owl called. Another answered. Mice squeaked and scattered nearby, scurrying for shelter amongst the fallen leaves and in the shadows of tall graves. 

“Where is he?” Astarion’s mother asked. Her voice was little more than a faint whisper, lost easily in the slightest breeze. Gone was the strong, operatic voice that had once sung her son to sleep when he was little. “Where’s my son?”

“Patience, darling,” Thesan said, sounding just as—if not more—tired as she. 

“He’s just ahead,” you promised. You looked forward to where you knew his grave to be. Through the grey dark, you read his name on the stone and it felt wrong, like it went against the grain of your life to see him like this—a stone instead of a young man. 

The three of you came to a rest before the headstone. You took a step back and let them crouch before their son. Silence fell heavily over them and the cemetery. Tears pricked at the corners of your eyes; you looked down so they couldn’t see you cry. They’d seen enough of your tears. 

“Astarion,” Selwynn whispered, her voice wavering. She reached out to touch the stone, tracing her son’s name carved into it with care. For a moment, she seemed to be at peace, looking at his name. It didn’t last. In moments, she crumbled with a cry that was a cross between a sob and a scream. 

She keeled forward, grabbing the stone and pressing her forehead to it. She inhaled sharply and coughed on her own tears. When she finally cleared her throat, helped by her husband rubbing her back, her cries became wails that shook her entire body. The freshly turned dirt beneath her began to stain her pale grey dress. 

Thesan puts an arm around his wife’s back, comforting her the only way he could, and he put his palm on the top of the stone. He began murmuring in Elvish, too low for you to hear clearly, but you caught a few words and understood he was whispering for his son to find safety in the afterlife, until he was reborn. After a moment, his broad shoulders began to shake and your heart cracked in half as you realized he was crying for the first time. His tears interrupted his speech every so often.

You wiped your tears from your eyelashes and sat on the ground. You hugged your legs to your chest, biting your lip so hard you drew blood to keep yourself from crying again. 

His father looked up at the starry sky, a fist raised in anger. “He’s still a child!” he shouted. “A child! And he’s in the godsdamned ground!”

A sharp cry came from Astarion’s mother and she got to her feet so quickly she knocked her husband to the ground. She looked at you and you rose from where you sat.

“I can’t stay here,” she gasped through tears. “He’s beneath me. I can’t— He— He shouldn’t be… He should be in my arms! In your arms! But he’s beneath me!” 

She looked at the ground like she might start digging it up to see her little boy again. You took her hands in hers, holding her tightly. 

“It’s okay, you don’t have to stay. You can go. It’s okay. He’ll understand. He knows, I promise you he knows,” you whispered. A tear rolled down your cheek. 

Selwynn squeezed her eyes shut. “I just want him to be okay…”

“He is okay,” you promised. “He is with the gods. They’ll send him back to us, one day, in a new body.”

Her lower lip trembled. “But he won’t be my son anymore.”

“There can always be more children,” Thesan started, speaking hesitantly.

“No!” she snapped, almost screamed, at him. She drew in a deep breath and shook her head. Calmer, she repeated, “No.”

He nodded. “I thought not.” He wrapped her in his arms and she cried into his chest. He opened his arm to you and you joined them in their hug. “You are still our daughter, even if you are not marrying our son. You are…the only family we have left.”

A small sob escaped you. Your body trembled as you looked up at him; you had always thought Astarion resembled his mother more, but now all you could see was the man Astarion would never get to be in his father’s face. “Thank you.”

He kissed his wife’s hair. “Come, darling. We should get home. You need to rest.”

You led them out of the cemetery. It was only after you were closing the gate leading into it that Selwynn stopped short, gasping loudly.

“Flowers! I— I forgot to put flowers on his grave,” she moaned, folding her hands above her heart. She glanced at the flowers outside the gate door. “I have to go back—”

“I’ll do it,” you said. “Get some rest. You need it. You deserve it, after all of this.”

“He deserves flowers from his mother,” she said weakly.

“In the morning,” Thesan said. “When all of this has died down, we can come back and pay him our respects.”

You shared a look of understanding with him; even if it took weeks, months, years for Baldur’s Gate to stop reeling from this crime and for the Gur to calm down from the ruling—which was being reversed later in the week, much to the relief of everyone else who the Gur had believed complicit in Astarion’s actions and who had feared for their own lives—the Ancunins would visit their son again to say farewell when they could finally do so in peace.

You watched them go. Several long, silent minutes passed, but you waited until they were out of your sight and you were alone before you bent to pick flowers for your lover. You chose them carefully, plucking only the most vibrant and tallest and fullest for him. Once you had a sizable bouquet of wildflowers in your hand, you headed back through the cemetery and search out Astarion’s headstone again. You found it easily, but your heart stopped beating when you saw it.

Something was wrong. You knew it instantly. The already chill air seemed to turn frigid as you looked at the plot. It was too dark, too big, spilling into the spaces next to it. It looked nothing like it did only minutes ago. 

An iron tang filled your nose, distinct and wrong and laced with something you could only describe as evil. 

You ran, dodging around headstones to get to the grave—to get to Astarion—as fast as possible.

I couldn’t protect him that night. I have to protect him now!

Mud squelched beneath your feet, smelling strongly of blood and death. You looked at it in horror; it was a mix of dirt and gravel and clay from deep in the earth, all of it soaked in blood. All of it in piles, coming from the center of Astarion’s grave. 

The smell was worse than the sight: chemicals of entombment, the body’s natural gasses, blood, vomit, sweat, urine. Something about it seemed alcoholic and heady, making you sway on your feet, though you knew that could easily just be from your disgust. 

But worst of all, his stone was splattered with the terrible mixture. 

Your stomach dropped to your feet and then rose to your throat. You cupped a hand over your mouth to keep back your bile. Tears streamed down your face.

A moment. You had been gone only a moment. And in that time, someone—or multiple someones—had come and desecrated your lover’s grave, as if killing him had been enough. 

You fell to your knees with a gut-wrenching scream. You bent in half, clutching the flowers to your chest, clenching your teeth tightly. You bit down on your hand to keep from screaming again.

Muffled sobs ripped themselves from your chest. “Astarion,” you gasped. “Astarion, I’m sorry! I’m so fucking sorry! I— I— I’ll fix this! I promise! I’ll…I’ll speak to the town’s jury, I’ll get them to punish whoever did it— Gods, your grave. Your beautiful stone…”

Mindlessly, you put the flowers aside. You stepped around the muddy mess of chopped up dirt and pulled out your handkerchief. You cleaned the stone with it as best as you could, using your fingers and spit when the cloth was too dirty to do anything else but push the gunk around. 

“There,” you said when it was as clean as you could get it. “Clean. Clean like you.”

You looked at the turned grave dirt. “I have to fix this, too. Your parents—I can’t let them see you like this, can I? They’ll be devastated.” 

You got back on your knees and began shoving the dirt back over the grave, patting it back down and drenching your hands and arms with bloody dirt. As you worked, you spoke to him: “I’ll get this all sorted out in the morning, love, I promise. I’ll get you justice. I won’t stand for this, Astarion. I’ll talk to someone first thing tomorrow morning. They’ve already killed you, can’t they just leave you be? Is dying not enough for—for a simple ruling? Yes, I admit, it wasn’t the best decision you could have made, but there had to be a better solution than…than mugging you in a godsdamned alleyway and then desecrating your grave! At the very least, if they can’t respect you, can’t they have some respect for your parents? For me? Your mother doesn’t deserve this endless pain!” You sighed, leaning back and wiping your forehead. Some part of you, the rational part, was aware that you had streaked blood and dirt all over yourself, but the part of you working didn’t care very much. “Of course, I can’t make you too pretty yet, Astarion. I’m sorry, but no one will believe me if I fix you up perfectly. But I can at least make it look like you haven’t been graverobbed.”

You worked for several more minutes. At last, you staggered to your feet, a wave of exhaustion passing through you. 

“You know what?” you said to the headstone. “I’m not waiting until morning. I’m going to go talk to someone right now. I can’t let you stay like this all night. Not when your stars are shining down on you.” Dimly, you were aware that you looked like a graverobber and that you looked insane—but that would probably help your case. “I’ll be back soon, Astarion. I promise I won’t leave you alone like this.”

You began to walk away from his stone. Only a few paces away, you paused and turned around. You stared up at the sky and pointed up at it as if you could command it to watch over your dead lover while you were gone. 

Once more, you knelt to kiss his name. 

☞ ❊ ☜

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Baldur's Gate 3 // Astarion Ancunin