CONTENT WARNING
This story includes explicit depictions of sex between two male characters. It is intended for adult audiences only.
Tav wakes cramped and disoriented to the sound of rushing water. It takes him a few bleary moments to remember they finally moved camp from the woodlands by the river to the ruins near the monastery. Disconnected memories, nightmarish, rifle through his thoughts. Lae’zel and Shadowheart at each other’s throats. The Weave pulsing around Gale like a blister about to burst. Karlach, breathless, clutching her chest.
The only good one, where Astarion fell asleep on his shoulder, was sadly just a dream.
He sits up with a groan. Gods. He thought sleeping on packed dirt was bad? Try cold stone!
He rubs his face and marshals his dignity. It’s been a tenday since the tiefling party and Astarion came to his bed twice more after it. Both times, it was Tav to suggest it, offering his neck in exchange for the pale elf’s company, as if Tav’s the one starving. And everyone seems appraised of it. Coping with the impression that the entire camp, the damn dog included, is looking at him with unveiled pity has become a daily routine.
Poor baby, Talice drawls from the recesses of his diseased mind. Look at you. Fawning over the bloodsucker, when all you should be thinking about is the mission. Why am I not surprised?
I am thinking about the mission.
The mission is to get to Moonrise Towers. You’re here looking for the creche. It’s a waste of time and an unnecessary risk. The gith can’t cure your affliction.
Says a symptom of the affliction.
Is that all I—
He cuts her off, stepping out of the tent, and immediately regrets it. The rising sun hits him like a hammer.
“Rough night?” says Shadowheart, seeing him squint and frown on the way to the fire, limping as he tries to shake the knots out of his stiff legs.
He gives her a smile as genuine as her concern.
They sip coffee from tin mugs in silence and watch the others amble around, gathering their things and their wits for the day to come.
“I remembered a spell that might counteract blood loss,” she says.
“I’m fine.”
She snorts. “If you say so.”
But the morning doesn’t end there. Next to the constant taunts and derision from Talice, he’s now apparently obliged to suffer the same from Lae’zel. She did not take kindly to his rejection and hasn’t spoken to him, outside the strictures of necessity and duty, since that night. When he approaches her to ask if she would join the away party, she somehow reads propositioning into it and proclaims she’s not interested in him anymore, now that he’s been “poked and prodded”—all within easy earshot of Astarion. And sure enough, he snorts and giggles while Tav withers in mortification.
The incident seems to put Astarion in high spirits directly proportional to Tav’s own foul mood. As they set out along the Risen Road, following the trail of the githyanki, Tav argues with himself for—and against—opening his veins for Astarion again. Things have changed between them since they lay together. And not for the better. The delicate thread of intimacy that Tav had nursed with all his charm and tact has become entangled in something he doesn’t understand. He’s starting to suspect Astarion just wanted to carve another notch in his bedpost, and that he only agreed to carry on with it after the party because Tav was so willing to bleed for him. If he could be reasonably sure that Astarion would eventually come to him on his own, perhaps he could muster some dignity and patience. But he’s not sure. What if someone else agrees to be bitten? Halsin might. Lae’zel. Karlach, who makes no effort to hide her pent-up desires. Even Wyll could be talked into it, if Astarion were to bring his deadly charm to bear. And Tav isn’t sure he could take it. Loathe as he may be to admit it, Talice was right. He craves the touch of those long fingers and the kisses of those cold lips more than food or rest or even the resolution of their strange situation. That’s all secondary, as far as Tav’s deprived heart is concerned. On the nights when Astarion sneaked out of camp and returned bathed in blood, Tav envied his victims.
And now he envies Lae’zel, as Astarion falls in step with her, ignoring Tav entirely, perhaps on account of his sullen silence. Their arms brush. Tav fixates on Astarion’s fingers, terrified beyond reason that they’d reach for her hand.
The presence in his mind stirs, full of devilry. He likes her.
Yes, well, Tav thinks back darkly. Good thing she doesn’t like him.
Are you certain? They’re two of a kind. Merciless killers with no thought spared for anything that doesn’t align with their goals.
Bile rises up his chest. Will you, please, leave me alone?
Talice scoffs.
As if on cue, Lae’zel says, “You’re too close for your own good, nightwalker.”
“Still salty, I see,” Astarion says with an audible smirk. “Should I worry you might chop my head off by accident?”
“Joke all you like. But if I catch you even looking at my neck, it will be no accident.”
“Mmh. I do so love spicy food.”
Tav bristles. He’s heard that moan before. When he held Astarion in his arms.
Gale bumps into him from behind. “Are you all right? You look a little pale.” And there it is, the knowing grin of one well-aware of Tav’s recent blood donations.
“I’m fine,” Tav grits through his teeth and hurries on to spare himself further humiliation.
Did he mean it?
Talice snorts. The question is too idiotic to warrant an answer. Of course he did. Tav’s nothing to him. A tasty morsel at best. A plaything.
By the time they run into the undead, he has made himself so angry, his fire turns the boulders around the path to magma.
Emptied of power, too sickened by jealousy and self-loathing to eat or talk, he sulks by the campfire. The others occasionally exchange confused looks and shrugs, but otherwise give him a wide berth, going about their own business. Eventually the camp quiets down, but he remains, staring at the embers, feeding the flames within.
He jumps when someone sits next to him. It’s Astarion. He bears a plate piled with cold meat cuts, cheese, and hard bread.
“You haven’t eaten,” he says, putting it in front of Tav.
“I’m not hungry.”
“Enviable. But you need your strength. Else the others will blame me if something happens to you. Believe it or not, I’ve come to know you a little, and I could tell you overexerted yourself today. It was quite the spectacle, if you ask me. You were glorious.”
Tav shuts his eyes. He knows Astarion doesn’t mean it. Flattery flows from his mouth like so much water under a bridge. But the praise still gets to him. He swallows hard, not trusting himself to say anything.
“Aww,” Astarion drawls. “What’s the matter?” The next moment, his icy finger is on Tav’s chin and with this, the lightest of touches, he turns Tav’s face to him. “Is it something I’ve done? It is, isn’t it? Pray tell, while my patience holds. I won’t ask twice, you know.” His handsome features shift from playful to neutral to annoyed as Tav fails to reply to one of his utterances after another.
Then at last, he speaks. “You wouldn’t… try to bite… one of our companions, would you?”
Astarion arches his eyebrows in a rare moment of genuine surprise. Whatever he expected, it wasn’t this, and now Tav wonders what else Astarion had done that might’ve upset him.
“Why should I?” Astarion says. “I have you, do I not? You said so yourself, that night by the river. Or have you already forgotten?”
Tav tosses his head back. “Perhaps you crave spicier food.”
Astarion blinks a few times before comprehension strikes, and then he laughs. “You can not be serious,” he says. “I’d rather suck on a cactus than touch Lae’zel. Unless she offered, of course, but we all know that’s never going to happen. I only said it to provoke her, because she was so rude to you this morning. Could you truly not tell?”
Tav glances away, the burn of anger he nurtured all day starting to morph into nauseating embarrassment.
“Oh, dear,” Astarion says. “Apparently not.” For a moment, he’s silent, and Tav hopes that he’d leave it at that. But he doesn’t. “Clearly you’re not stupid, but sometimes it certainly looks like it. How can you be so fierce in battle and so childish otherwise? It boggles the mind. If I didn’t know better, I’d mistake you for a brooding teenager.”
Tav swallows again, terrified to find his throat has gone all tight and aching, and some sound comes out of it, like choking, and he wishes for the ground to open and devour him.
“Surely you don’t expect me to apologize,” Astarion goes on after a minute. “It was only a joke, but even if it wasn’t. Having a few romps—as pleasurable as they were—hardly makes you entitled. And jealousy is such an unattractive trait.” He huffs through his nose. “I regret I asked. Nothing good ever comes from trying to be nice.”
“Nice?” Tav laughs despite the lump in his throat. “You just called me stupid and unattractive.”
“Don’t twist my words, darling. You’re not very good at it. And I did bring you food, didn’t I?”
Looking at the plate, Tav salivates, and his stomach, the traitor, lets out a long-suffering gurgle. He’s famished. “I suppose,” he utters. “Thank you.”
“That’s better.” Astarion’s gaze rests on Tav a while longer, perhaps waiting for him to accept the offering, but Tav’s freshly bruised pride still smarts too much for it. With a quiet sigh, Astarion rolls a slice of meat and brings it to Tav’s mouth.
Tav finally allows himself to meet Astarion’s eyes. They’re focused on his mouth, while Astarion’s own lips stand ajar, glistening wetly. At last, Tav does as he was bid, and makes a point of brushing Astarion’s fingers with the tip of his tongue.
“Much better,” Astarion whispers, the corners of his lips curling into a satisfied smirk.
A slice of cheese comes next, then a morsel of bread. Tav chews slowly, in no hurry to end the moment, and takes the opportunity to stare at Astarion’s face up close.
“Can you… eat?” he asks between the bites. “Food like this, I mean.”
A shadow passes over Astarion’s features. “I can. But neither food nor wine have any taste. I only ever hunger for blood. And yours, my dear—” he raises his eyes to look into Tav’s with sudden intensity—“is the finest delicacy I’ve ever had.”
Tav pauses his chewing to let the hot lump sink from his chest into his gut. Good thing his mouth is full or he’d tell Astarion that yes, of course he could feed on him tonight if he wished to, please. His stupid and unattractive anger gone like a whiff of smoke in the wind, he’s right where he started: desperate for more of the pale elf, no matter the price.
He hurries to swallow, but Astarion’s deft hands have already prepared another morsel, the last of the meat rolled around the last of the cheese and bread. He lifts it, but doesn’t feed it to Tav at once, searching his eyes instead. “Will you let me taste you again?”
Tav exhales a ragged breath, melting. “You know it.”
Astarion gives him a wicked grin. “I do. But I promised I’d always ask first.” He feeds Tav the final bit, but as his fingers linger on Tav’s lips, Tav sucks his thumb in and bites on it lightly, swirling his tongue around it.
“I take it back,” Astarion murmurs. “Sometimes being nice doesn’t end badly after all.”
They sneak out of camp with a blanket draped over both their heads, giggling like a pair of maids. Astarion worms a hand inside Tav’s breeches and keeps it there, squeezing his buttock and whispering antiquated obscenities into his ear, while Tav, wound up by the campfire conversation, trembles in anticipation. With his arm around Astarion’s waist, he can feel every little twist and turn of his cool, lithe body, and yearns for it as if it had been months since they last enjoyed each other, not mere days.
A narrow, overgrown path leads deeper into the ruins. Following it, they find the remnants of a chamber that once upon a time must have commanded a majestic view over the canyon. The sky is still pink in the west, strewn with cobalt clouds, and the stars shimmer eagerly above.
The rubble checked for vipers and vermin and the blanket haphazardly spread, they claw the garments from one another, kissing sloppily and breathing hard.
“What would it take?” Tav whispers. He takes hold of Astarion’s hair and bends his head back, ravishing his taut throat with tongue and teeth.
Astarion moans. “For what?”
“To make me entitled.” He groans as Astarion unlaces his breeches and palms his cock. “My life’s blood apparently isn’t enough.”
“Isn’t it obvious, darling?” Astarion laughs. “Lavish me with gifts and compliments. Bathe me in silks and shower me with gold! Failing that—” his breath catches as Tav slides a hand between his buttocks—“a violent show of power might just do the trick. Oh. Oh, gods.”
Tav feels the shivers of excitement crawl up Astarion’s legs as he massages the pucker of his entrance. “You were saying…?”
“What you did today… ah… it had me… all hot and bothered.” To demonstrate, he presses the swell of his erection against Tav’s hip. “In a manner of speaking.”
Tav leans back so he can look in Astarion’s eyes, and solemnly shakes his head. “I’ve come to know you a little too. And I don’t believe a word you just said.”
“You know nothing, son of House Vrinn.” His voice is ragged with sighs.
Tav squeezes him into a tight embrace, but stops just short of kissing him. The air between them is moist with their panting. There’s an almost pleading look in Astarion’s eyes as he hesitates, resisting, but Tav stubbornly keeps his distance till Astarion succumbs and closes the gap. The thirst in his kiss sets Tav’s soul ablaze.
They get lost in it, the way they had that distant night in the city, before the Nautiloid, before the tadpoles, when each knew nothing of the other except that kissing him was not just a pleasure, but a necessity. Tav realizes that much of his insecurity was born from the feeling that something was missing from their kisses since: this was it. The passion of that night hadn’t been a dream, and it wasn’t lost forever.
Feeling faint, he pulls away for a breath of air. There’s something raw, terrible and beautiful in the way Astarion looks at him, almost resentful, and it makes Tav think that he took more than was being offered. But he’s not sorry.
He kisses his way down Astarion’s chest and belly, getting on his knees, and then kisses up his heavy erection, oddly odorless and cold. Would he ever get used to the touch of this lifeless flesh that has given new life to his own? He hopes not. The strangeness of it excites him all the more.
Astarion slides a hand from Tav’s cheek onto his neck, feeling the scabs over the punctures that have not yet fully healed. “Let’s try something different tonight, shall we?”
Tav’s head lolls back drunkenly. He was just about to take Astarion in his mouth. “Hm?”
“Lie down, love.”
Love. Tav knows he doesn’t mean it, but it makes his stomach flutter anyway. He does as he was told and watches Astarion kneel, then lie by him with his head at Tav’s feet. Only when he maneuvers toward the middle of the blanket, nudging Tav to mimic his movements, does Tav understand, and his arousal sharpens to an ache. With Astarion’s hips before Tav’s face, and Tav’s before his, the angles are perfect.
They exchange a glance: Tav’s starved, and Astarion’s, as ever, lightly mocking. And then they lean in.
It’s so good Tav can’t get over himself. The warm, wet pleasure of having his mouth full of Astarion’s cock twists and twines with the intense, heart-stopping pleasure of feeling Astarion’s mouth wrap around his cock in turn. Leaning on an elbow, Tav has a hand free to cup Astarion’s balls and grip him around the base while he sucks on the tip. And Astarion mirrors these attentions, twirling his tongue along the circumference before pulling Tav’s cock in, just as Tav did to him a moment ago. It’s a kind of communication, whereby he can show Astarion what he likes by doing it to him.
And the other way around. Astarion pulls gently on Tav’s sack, ringing his cold fingers around it, and when Tav does the same to him, he feels Astarion’s breath come out in a loud huff. He tightens his lips, sucking harder, and moans around Astarion’s cock as the action is mirrored on him.
The pleasure builds up in him, looming huge over his shrinking control. He feels Astarion’s cock strain in his mouth, his hips thrusting, and knows he too is close. Of the three times they lay together, twice only one, and once neither of them finished. The idea that they might both do now, and at once, sparks fireworks in Tav’s chest, but he wants this delight to last longer. He’s just about to pull away and ask for a break, when Astarion pulls away instead—and bites Tav’s inner thigh.
The sudden pain, sharp and deep and incredibly intimate, shoots through Tav like lightning. He cries out as Astarion strokes him into an obliterating orgasm. His seed spurts in spasm after spasm and for a few delirious moments, he’s blinded by the lights popping in front of his closed eyes.
Then he hears Astarion’s muffled groans and takes him back into his mouth. Astarion’s cock pulses, already warm from his feast on Tav’s blood. All it takes is a few firm strokes. He spills into Tav’s throat, moaning sweetly in time with his thrusts.
Tav sucks him clean, running his tongue around the tip one last time for that lovely shudder of painful sensitivity. Taking the cue, Astarion lifts his head and diligently licks Tav’s new wounds till the bleeding slows to a trickle.
Steeped in wordless bliss, Tav watches him, resting his head on Astarion’s knee, but it’s a long time before their eyes meet. Tav understands. One doesn’t always wish to be seen in the aftermath of ecstasy. His heart aches a little, but it is a sweet ache, and hopeful, because Astarion doesn’t quite manage to hide the drunken haze when he finally looks up: the same drunken haze Tav is feeling too. Thank gods. The thread hasn’t broken.
“Finest delicacy,” Astarion murmurs, kissing the wounds once more.
Tav smiles.
“Did I… hurt you?” Astarion casts another furtive glance at him. “More than usual, I mean.”
It’s a good question. Probably? Tav knows he should take time to think about it; about how much of himself he would be wise to reveal. But he’s tired of hiding. “I loved it.”
“Oh?” Astarion looks at him in earnest now, brows raised. “So… that thing with the priest of Loviatar… wasn’t all just an act?”
Tav laughs. “I indulged him. But no, it wasn’t all just an act.”
Astarion’s expression turns pensive. He idly smears a drop of Tav’s seed—then licks it off his finger, shooting Tav a look so hot his cock twitches right back to life. “Spicy.”
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