take me back to eden

When he found room four, his assumptions were confirmed. Penny was in line with the rest of her kindergarten class, speaking animatedly with a boy beside her while firmly rooted on the numbers painted on the floor. She was excited, but Jack could tell she was putting considerable effort into staying right where she was supposed to be. He had to fight the smile that crept up on his face. 

“Your daddy’s a manager?” Penny asked, tugging on the straps of her backpack. “Wow! What does that mean?” 

The boy next to her raised a brow. “I don’t know. I think he tells people what to do. He has a computer.” 

“What does he tell them to do?” 

“Work more! He always says everyone is a lazy piece of—” 

The teacher in the hall clapped her hands, drawing the class's attention. “Let’s make sure we are using kind words while we wait to go home.” 

A long drone of “Yes, Miss Cindy” reset each conversation in the line, but Penny clearly wasn’t done. Jack took a few steps closer and nodded at Miss Cindy in greeting, content to wait until Penny turned and noticed the surprise. You hadn’t told her Jack was picking her up, and Jack loved how Penny got when she was surprised. 

“Well, want to know what my daddy does?” Penny posed, bouncing up on her toes. 

Jack paused. 

You never talked about Penny’s birth father. You’d offered a simple explanation the first time Jack skirted around the topic: he was there for the birth, and then he never was again. You never tried to fight for child support, not wanting to drag Penny through messy custody battles or inconsistent relationships. Penny knew she had a dad, just like everyone had a dad, but you tried hard to make that hole feel small. Jack thought you did a damn good job. 

And he hoped he played a role in that, as well. 

Jack held his breath as the boy nodded excitedly, and then he felt like he was free-falling as she answered. “He’s a doctor for emergencies! He works when everyone is asleep so he can help people during the nighttime.” 

“But how are there emergencies if everyone is asleep?”

Penny puckered her lips as she thought. “I don’t know. I guess if they wake up, maybe.” 

Jack tried and failed to settle the grin that had taken over his face. Penny had never called him anything but Jack. He hadn’t wanted to ask you for more when it came to your daughter, and he wanted Penny to be comfortable, but Jack felt like Penny’s dad. Penny was his girl. You’d been engaged for a few months, and he couldn’t ask for more than he had, even if he only had the feeling, not the title. He couldn’t be greedy. 

Hearing Penny call him dad made Jack feel greedy. 

He leaned over behind Penny and tugged on her sleeve, raising his brows as she spun and let out a gasp. It was only a tick of a second before she launched herself at him, exclaiming a loud “Jack!” that now held a different meaning for him. He wondered how many times she’d talked about him and called him something different. 

Jack grunted as he lifted her to his hip, trying to find her eyes with her arms clutched tight around his neck. “Hey, Penny girl. Is it alright if I take you home today?” 

Penny squealed and nodded against him, but then became serious as she leaned up. “Does mommy know? She told me to never go home with strangers.” 

Jack raised a brow, both of his girls overcautious and full of rules, as always. “Am I a stranger now?” 

Penny threw her head back in a giggle. “No! But no one else has ever picked me up from school before.” 

“First time for everything. It’s exciting. We can get something up for mommy on the way home.” 

“Like flowers?” 

“How’d you know?” 

“You always get mommy flowers.” 

“You want some too?

Penny blew a raspberry as they finally made it to his truck. “What am I gonna do with flowers? They just sit there. That’s so silly, Jack.” 

“How about a toy, then?” Jack offered, tapping Penny’s nose after buckling her in. He rested a hand on the door and shifted the car seat around to make sure it was locked in place. You were rubbing off on him, clearly. “What do you think?” 

Penny tapped her chin. “I’ll consider it.” 

~~

When you finally got home that night, looking frazzled and far too apologetic for Jack’s liking, Jack had a towel on his shoulder and a pot simmering on the stove. He’d stayed at your place despite you insisting that the neighbor could watch her for an hour, so he figured starting dinner was the next course of action. 

You hadn’t moved in together just yet. For Penny’s sake. 

You sighed when you spotted him, putting your bags down with a defeated sound. “You really didn’t have to stay,” you almost whined. Jack was already on you, hands on your hips and gaze locked on the furrow of your brow. “The lady next door loves Penny. She could have watched her.” 

“Yeah? Well, what if I love Penny?” Jack countered, pressing his lips to yours. He saw another argument brewing, so he squeezed your cheeks and kissed you again. “Seriously. I’m gonna be the one picking her up on my days off soon. Let me practice.” 

You shook your head. “You do not have to do that. You work all the time, Jack. I wouldn’t make you take care of Penny when you finally have time to rest.” 

“Make me take care of her?” 

“Yeah. You have enough on your plate and—”

“Hey,” Jack softly called, tugging you in closer. “When I asked you to marry me, I meant that I wanted both of you. You aren’t making me take care of her. I want to.” 

You looked up at him, hands resting on his chest, and Jack saw the conflict raging in you, the fear that this would be too much. You didn’t talk about Penny’s birth father, but Jack could pick apart the damage that was done by him. He could see it in every anxiety-fueled phone call about Penny and in all the things you tried to take on alone. You wouldn’t accept help, not fully, but Jack was ready to fight you on that. For the rest of his life, if he needed to. 

“Was she okay for you?” you asked, because Jack was pretty sure you knew he would fight you on that. 

“She was perfect,” he answered, his hands holding your head steady as he leaned down to look at you. “Like her mom.” 

You scoffed out a laugh. “Don’t try too hard, Dr. Abbot. The ladies like mystery.” 

“Yeah? Well ignore the flowers in the kitchen then. I want to be mysterious about them.” 

Your smile was soft and vulnerable as you leaned up to kiss him, and Jack backed away only because the noodles in the pot were going to stick together if he didn’t stir them, and Penny was entering a picky eating phase. He could handle a picky eating phase, along with everything that came after. 

And later in the night, when Penny fell asleep over Jack’s legs and Mulan played softly in the background, he thought to bring it up. Casually. More as a curious pondering than a request, because he didn’t want to ask for too much. You played with Penny’s hair as the Huns fought to invade China, and Jack threw his thoughts into the air. 

“Does Penny—” he paused. You lifted your head from his shoulder, and Jack caught your engagement ring glinting under the dim living room light. “Does she ever… call me anything when I’m not around? To other people?” 

You became still, gaze falling to Jack’s chest. “I’ve talked to her about that. I didn’t want you to feel like you had to… be anything you didn’t want to be. Like if you wanted things to be more separated. But sometimes—you know, she’s just a kid—so sometimes—” 

Jack gently shushed you, taking your hand in his because that was the closest thing he could read. “What’d I say earlier, huh? I was asking because I don’t want things to be separated. And she always just calls me Jack, so I was wondering—” 

“She calls you dad all the time,” you revealed, looking down at Penny’s face smushed against Jack’s thigh. “To her friends, her teachers, a random guy in the grocery store.” 

Jack huffed out a breathy laugh. “Seriously?” 

“Yeah. She loves talking about you.” You looked back up at him. “Are you okay with her calling you that?” 

And for some reason—Jack would blame it on the sentimental music in the movie—tears welled in his eyes at the question. At the gentle way you looked at him. Jack cleared his throat of the sticky emotion and nodded, his brow twitching. 

“Yeah,” he almost whispered, voice sounding hoarse. “Yeah, if she wants to.” 

“I think she was waiting for permission. To make sure it was okay.” 

“You two and your rule following,” Jack gruffed, tugging you closer and kissing your temple to hide his misty eyes. 

Jack had a talk with Penny a few days later, after she slipped up and the echo of the word dad bounced around in Jack’s truck. He’d had to pull over to ease the tension that wound up Penny’s expression, sitting her on the tailgate in some gas station parking lot as you stayed in the passenger seat. 

Jack watched as Penny wound her small fingers into a knot on her lap, and he covered them with one of his hands, tipping her chin up with the other. 

“I’m not mad at you,” Jack assured, paying attention to each grimace she tried to hide.

“But I’m really sorry,” Penny edged out. “Because I know my daddy isn’t here anymore, and my mommy says that’s okay, and that you are kind of like a daddy but that sometimes people—” 

“Penny girl,” Jack softly interrupted. “It’s okay, alright? You know how your mom and I are getting married?” 

Penny nodded. 

“Well that means that we’re family. You, me, and your mom. All of us. And I know your daddy isn’t around, and I know you’re too smart for your own good, but sometimes mommys and daddys can be new people.” 

“I was gonna say that next,” Penny mumbled.

“I know you were.” Jack smiled in the empty parking lot and brought Penny’s gaze back up to him. “I love you, kid. You can call me anything you want. And before you ask, yes, your mom is okay with it. I asked her myself.” 

“You asked mommy if it was okay to be my daddy?” 

“Of course I did. Gotta make sure I check all the boxes with you two.” 

You can picture Astarion from the clear tone of his voice: fresh and preened and dapper-dressed, ivory locks arranged in effortless curls, shrouded in that scent of ripe citrus, heady liquor and evergreen that makes your mouth water. The mattress dips where he sits and your body reclines in his direction, pulled in by gravity. Belly down, you rest with one knee folded up for balance, and you're growling again, your face twisting away into the plumpness of the pillow that your arms hug close.

“I'll get up, I swear,” you mutter.

“You've never sounded more persuasive,” he mocks.

You don't rebut or respond and he thinks you've boarded the ship to dreams again. As much as he'd like to join you in aestivation, loll in the sun together like cats on a roof without a care in the world, there's still that heap of awful, responsible, urgent things to do, and companions to do it with waiting downstairs. He huffs and air slaps your shoulder. Oh, to think you're forcing him to act as the responsible one—that's the real offense.

Astarion's fingers play with the light—gold arrowheads, soft as feathers—skewed, unbalanced and all smudged up in the curves of your legs, snuggling a piece of your waist. Often, he wonders about what it'll be like to lose the sun again, to have this recently reacquired companion backstab him, and meditations on the matter are as swiftly discarded as they come. He wants to think about the future, just not that future—at least not yet. Instead, he looks at you in your bath of bright linen, and he thinks of fruits displayed on merchant stalls in Rivington, fuzzy peaches, pearls of dew scuttling down the skin of violet grapes, tangerines waiting for fingers to peel them naked.

Since defeating Cazador, he finds himself wanting things differently, as in, the outlines of his own desires curve rounder now, more vivid, graspable without that barbed edge that threatened to bloody him like before. He aligns his desires with care, sprawls them and dissects them longly before he decides whether they're something he wants or something he thinks he wants. Sometimes it's easy, sometimes it isn't.

This is an easy one.

His palm muddles the sun-glossed rectangle on your ribs. The gown you wear to sleep is pale, gossamer thin—you might as well be wearing nothing at all—and it creases under his touch, unveils your skin all slashed from the imprints of bedsheets. You cast him a perplexed glance from over your shoulder. His eyes meet yours, ruby bleeding into amber from the incandescent morning. It's one of Astarion's favorite hours, when the sun is still congenial, not yet aggressive and molten. It's one of your favorites too, for different reasons—any hour in which he exists is your favorite, whether it's to follow echoes of the moon or the infallible sun.

His hand trails up the hillock of your hip, curves to the back of your thigh, his fingers crafting five notches in your flesh. With pinched eyebrows, you murmur his name—a question, a warning, an invitation.

On his fourth finger, he carries a signet ring. It isn't brand new, the silver band scuffed, oxidized to a midnight blue. He found it while rummaging around an antiques shop. It rested in a velvet-padded box amongst a bevy of exhaustedly battered specimens, that one the first and only which caught his eye. The seal was carved on a nail-sized setting of lapis lazuli, bearing a water lily, heart-shaped leaves, tired yet beautiful. Not at all the sort of thing he'd wear. “You ever seen a water lily at night?” you had asked him, pushing a cheek against his shoulder to look. “They close right up.” You imitated a bud with your cupped hands, telling him they opened up again in the morning. Flowers that started anew each passing day. Rebirth. He thought there was a metaphor in there somewhere, and he was going to pocket the seal, but you gave him a sour look and he retaliated with another to mean you're not fun. You smiled, shrugged. Said it was a nice ring. He purchased it for five pieces of gold—which was five pieces too expensive, if you were to ask him.

Now the metal glints when Astarion dips his hand inwards. His thumbnail hooks under your underwear, nudges it aside, and with sunlight braided in his touch, he presses his fingerpad into you. Soft flesh, he'd kiss it if he had the time, eat you right up. He grins at your mixture of purr and sigh—devious, devious smile; it suits him tenderly.

“Shall I stop?” he ponders. There's malice to his voice, but even with that, you know he'd back away in an instant if you said so.

You shake your head no.

His finger parts you then, curious, seeking your arousal and the physical mark of it, gathering it until it seeps and clings all sweet and syrupy to his hand. He turns his palm up, precise as a cut, spreading middle and ring fingers to scissor your clit, and the signet he wears rocks into you like a drop of cool rain. You're grabbing your pillow in a fist now, biting down obscene words. His touch is a merciless flare; your hips snap, spine arched, writhing to meet his touch.

You kiss his hands often—before bed, checking them for cuts—you know them from the jutting bone of his wrist to the trimmed curve of his nails, you know where his calluses are set on his palm and which fingers he likes to use whenever he plays with you. He has two of them crooked inside you and he carves your pleasure like he's coring an apple, forcing you into an almost painful awareness of the placement of your guts and your sinews and the skin that wraps it all together, just so he can unravel the whole thing in one smooth swerve.

“Come back to bed,” you heave, desperate, hating yourself for how whiny you sound.

Astarion snickers. “Look at you, all bossy.”

He clutches your kneecap and capsizes you onto your back. The sheets curl and knot around your legs; you struggle to kick them off. He has to help you, disentangle you with claws, with hooks, as if to rip the whole thing apart. The sun drips on your belly and trickles down the veins of his forearms before he robs you of it for good. He covers you like a dark cloud and light crashes onto his shoulders, his knees planted between yours, his hair a crown of fire.

“You're not asleep anymore, are you?”

“No,” you buzz half-heartedly.

“What if I told you to get up and get dressed now?” he muses.

“Please don't do that,” you groan.

Astarion laughs. It's a delightful chime to wake up to, bouncy like the insides of a pomegranate, sweet and fun and sticking to the teeth. He laughs more now, you've noticed, a bit less in that scornful manner he used to ring as a soughing menace—he can be sweet, he can be acidic, so many flavors bundled up in one man. You go chase his laugh with your lips, some sleep-stunned, sloppy kiss, teeth clunking his, a little too much tongue. He doesn't mind it.

Something rises in him from deep, an abyssal current of desire, carried by bloodrush and the warm lick of lights and the wetness that's coating his fingers like he just crushed a pear. He palms your breast, your pulse, nips your nipple, all the while wondering what to do with that godsdamned flimsy gown that's still clinging to you tight enough to bother him (should he waste the time to strip you of it or simply rip it apart?).

You're dry humping him at this point, fingers clenching at his collar to steady yourself, the back of your thighs scrabbling his lap. He moans something you can't quite catch. You ask an unfocused what? to which he responds with his hand raking into your panties again. His knuckles warp and stretch the fabric while he rubs quick circles that drench his hand for good and make your teeth come down his lower lip. You're not asleep anymore, sure, but he's not thinking about walking you through the threshold of the room either.

Someone raps on the door. A voice beats through the ornate panels. Though you fail to decipher the words, impatience sluices them.

Astarion clamors, irritated, “I'm getting her dressed!”, even if the exact opposite is in fact happening.

Your fingers finish popping the buttons of his shirt and the material finally gapes over his skin, a revelation of clavicles, sturdy chest, the dip down to his navel. His body is gilt in light and the sight makes your mind trip. You're dying to put your tongue on inappropriate slabs and asperities, wet him all over just to see how the sun makes him glow.

You keep moaning his name and it's getting to his head, your body pulsating and compressed by the generous bark of sun, the mattress, him, as if fighting against getting pinned down, the struggle of an insect in a fountain. Between your thighs, you withhold what he craves.

“Hells with it,” he hisses.

His ring leaves a streak on your skin while he plies your panties off you, tossing them heedlessly to the foot of the bed. The sun is in your eyes, harsh, blazing. You shut them to make dark but your brain's still stunted by the blinding shard. He picks that moment to color your pussy the cherry red of his tongue and something shorts and sizzles in your brain. Deft fingers coupled to the sacred swirl of his tongue, the low rumble of his voice piercing you from below. He kisses softly, then not so softly—so mean, actually—sucks all of you in his mouth and drops it, then waits for you to squirm before he does it again, with shattering intensity, tonguing your clit like it's a seed to nurture and nudge around in wet soil. You tremor like your body isn't yours anymore, made into something mellow with a pit and flesh and a stem all for him to split open and savor. Your shirt rides up, your tits bare; you play with the nipple he pinched before.

“Astarion,” you breathe, “Astarion, come on.”

There's a smack, wet and curt, a mouth noisily parting from a kiss.

“What is it, love?” he sighs, his voice raspy, like he just drank from a bottle of Amnian liquor and couldn't stop at the first glass.

“Come here,” you whisper, and when he does, you sample the tang of yourself on his lips.

You crash the heel of your hand on his clothed erection, up, down, bringing your fingers in a tight nest. All his brittle sense of duty cracks for good—he never had much of it in the first place.

“Gods, you little minx.”

He breaks away, stumbles up to rush what remains of clothing and decency off his lithesome shape.

“We'll never get out of this room on time,” he comments, falsely chagrined, like it'll piss someone off and he's giddy just imagining it.

“Hey,” you shift on your side to offer a reminder, “you started touching me.”

“Oh, I'd say the blame is very much collective.”

You're wriggling out of your sleeping attire, throwing it on top of the pants he's bunched on the carpet, singeing him with your stare, breathless. He catches your hands when you reach for him, slips into your arms with the ease of habit. Your leg is hooked around his waist, a shiver of joy simmers up your backbone from feeling him, naked and slotted against you.

“Wish I could put you in my mouth,” you confess in a low tone. The length of him is pressed hard against your pubic bone, denting your logic, his arousal smearing your skin. You glide a finger across his tip, up the sides of him, taut and lilac-veined.

“Hold that thought for tonight,” he murmurs.

His knuckles graze your chin, lugging your gaze back to him. He needs those eyes, most trusted of mirrors; needs them on him in fight, in leisure, in exploration, in life.

With a hitch of his hips and your hand as a rudder, he bends into you. It hurts like a needleprick, a quick pulse, pain yielding to complicated, thick pleasure, a slow rub that breaks your senses like twigs. You heave, flushed in strange places, uncertain if it's from the heat of the sun or the raw scrubbing of his cock. He curves up into a devious spiral that sweeps every sensitive spot in you, pelvis kissing your clit, so purposeful, the composition of such a trick a complete mystery to you—you like it, that's all that matters; he knows it well enough to try every time. You're soaked between the thighs, his pelvis webbed slick too, and it's worsening with each drag, the crude light making everything so obvious, a messy evidence of attraction.

The gap between your mouths is filled with slurred speech, phrases like you like that?, yes, a lot, and bleary nothings so candid and desperately turned on that it'd be hauntingly embarrassing to listen to in your normal state, the whole of this only making sense with your bodies tangled together, blabbering about harder, do that again, kiss me. After a while, it's daunting to speak at all, to be articulate. Excess light makes you dizzy, sluggish, stupid. The weight at your center, his unrelenting grip down the small of your back, the drip that's warm when he moves, the right kind of stretch, slowing you in your rocking pattern. You stop moving altogether. You let him do his thing, his hands all over you, the recurrent tempo of his hips.

He doesn't tell you stow your claws away, kitten, though he does think it when he's stung by the small marks you engrave on his ribs, his shoulders, whichever part of him you barnacle on.

Through the slit of your eyelids, you contemplate gold, ivory, pink, and touch is juxtaposed to sight in a messy spread of him, the perfect burn, the curve of his cupid's bow, his attention like a ray of flame, and next thing you can piece together is, you're falling apart around him, shaking on his cock like cristal on the verge of breaking, and he treats you like you're precious but not fragile, keeps that throb between your aching legs that makes your insides pleat and your mind hallucinate stars in broad daylight. He's not slowing down or halting and you think, good, you want him undone in your arms—no better way to start the day—Astarion spent and loved and safe and satiated.

There's another knock on the door. You sob against his carotid, still riding out the tail end of your orgasm, “Can't—fuck, just make them leave.” He's not in a much better state than you are. “Go away!” he exclaims balefully. He doesn't bother with a lie or an excuse, and you shouldn't laugh, but you do, bursting into some nervous hiccup that spreads to him.

“Great, now they know.”

“Oh, love, I think they knew before that.”

He waits for the ripple of your muscles to recede into sore quiet, before he gingerly pushes on your shoulders, rolls you back so he's on top. Your legs are butterflied for better access and he's inside you again, dragging in and out. It doesn't hurt at all, there's just pleasure now, the full, tight expanse of it, and the sounds wet, cloying. You think of orchards, blood orange pulp, ripe, bursting out of membranes.

The headboard thuds into the wall, once, twice, more. A lock of hair darts across his eye; you sit it back behind his ear for him. Vampires don't sweat but his skin is damp, you touch it on his nape, skittering to his chest. You asked him discreetly about it once. He called it condensation, like breath on glass. Now there's the heat of day darted on him and the steady quiver of pleasure, and it's a startling, eerie chemistry, because like this, his honey eyes, skin glistening, it'd almost feel like he's living.

He holds his thumb to your swollen clit, still hot from your release and whispers, “Sweet thing… My darling. How about seconds?”

“I don't know if I can,” you temper, shivering from overstimulation.

“Let it build. It's fine if you can't.”

You're struck by the tenderness in his voice.

“Astarion.”

“Mmh?”

“You're really something.”

There it is again, his pretty laugh, bubbling to your belly. You hold the sides of his neck to look at him, him in the sun, him making love to you, him with disarranged hair he'll whine about later because you tousled it, him with scratched shoulders and his clever mouth and the dangerous glitter in his pupils.

The room isn't silent. The city purrs, bashful, tippy toeing under the window. Smiths hammering scorched-red iron. Far off, the brackish backwash of the ebbing sea. A square of perfect blue encased in the sill.

Astarion, warm between your legs, melting you away. The headboard keeps a stuttering, unclear cadence, sometimes rough, sometimes muffled, like your lover isn't sure what he wants.

You trace his lips with your thumb and he kisses your fingertip. He'd like you to come a second time, and you know it, he wouldn't fuck you like that otherwise, with such focus, such care. And you worry a little because he does this sometimes, forgetting his own pleasure like it's inaccessible or something he isn't allowed to have. He already got you up the crest once. You don't mind the attention—far from it—but this is overkill.

You pick up his hand, set it on your hip. Eyes in his, framing his face, you rub under his ears, you whisper comfort and praise, “I love you, I love you, do I tell you that enough?”. He asks, eyelids heavy, “Really, you do?”, and maybe he's jesting, maybe he's not, the intent's a little lost, but you go on anyway, all the things you like about him, things that make him him, not just that he's pretty, but witty and unruly and reckless, and you're not eloquent but that's why he listens, why he knows you're being truthful. The ball of your foot caresses his leg; you make him slow down. Feel you. Feel it. Take the time. His elbow digs the pillow for balance, you nudge at his fingers, tangle them with yours. The back of your hand presses into the soft casing and floats up the surface with each of his thrusts.

He's so close to toppling you can feel it beat in your core. Your voice breaks every few steps into your sentences, your thoughts begin to jumble—all his fault, truly; he rouses out slippery moans out of you. Your heart knocks with fury, prodding his breast bone.

“Come when you want,” you murmur. “Take all you like, I'm yours. Whatever you want, however you want it. All yours.”

His fingers tighten their grip. He makes a noise, feral, his mouth diving to yours. The weight of his tongue. The skip of his midriff against yours. Sweat, slick, water.

You don't even mean to but he really does make you come a second time. It catches you off guard, and you're gulping down, teary-eyed, your breath off-beat and turbulent.

And with the sun in his back, your body reaching heights against his, mute, undone, exquisitely clenching him, Astarion falls into ecstatic bliss too.

“They're not knocking anymore.”

You make that observation several minutes into the panting half-silence. He's softening against your inner thigh while your hand cuddles his back, smoothing the scars, counting the knuckles of his spine from top to bottom, then the other way around.

“They might send Lae'zel up next.” Astarion grunts, nuzzling the curve of your neck one last time. “We better hurry if we want to keep the door on its hinges.”

A few seconds flutter by before he gathers the courage to tear away from your embrace. Your arms clutch your chest, emptied, disappointed. It's like stepping out of the sea in summer after playing in waves too long, and the air outside hitting sharp and brisk despite being warmer than the water. Astarion switches to look at you.

“Are we getting up now?”

“We're getting up.”

Your back cracks straight. You push your legs forth, roll your ankles, try to fit back into your body. You watch him fish his clothes off the floor and make a ruffled expression.

“You could just try bringing breakfast next time,” you tease.

Something hits you across the face.

“I don't like bread crumbs in bed.”

You realize he just hurled your underwear at you. You grimace, slip it back on, stare at your knees, trying to organize your thoughts. Wash up—that'll take a moment. Water, drink, your throat begs for it. And something to eat. What to wear.

Astarion takes pity on you, on that silly, lost fawn air you exude. He thinks it's stupid, how scattered some people are in the morning. How helpless you look. What would you do, if he weren't around? He strides over, leans in, offers his full mouth, a real tonic of a kiss, wet and sparkling. It makes you perk up like a sugar-rush.

“Clean up,” he says. “I'll pick your outfit.”