A Wayward Blade - Aeona (2024)

Chapter 1: Easy Target

Chapter Text

He takes Wyll’s body down with a thud, whisking the air from him in one swift impact upon the hard earth. Cold iron flashes against dark skin and Wyll summons his focus, regains his breath, siphons air swiftly through his pursed lips as he focuses on the icy chill of death pressed against his jugular.

“Shhhh, shh, shh,” the waif-like elf hisses as he cradles an arm behind the surprised Blade’s neck. In his wispy frame hides a surprising strength. “Not a sound.” Hushed tones slither against Wyll’s ears. If it weren’t for the iron grip of his assailant’s harsh hand upon his shoulder, rooting him in place so that he can hold the knife to his throat, Wyll could have mistaken it for a compassionate embrace. “Not if you want to keep that darling neck of yours.”

Wyll’s good eye eases slowly closed as he rolls it back to focus. He gathers himself as his attacker advises his companions to stay back. He fights to control his breathing.

It is not the first time he has found himself at the end of a suspicious character’s blade, and it will not be the last. He only regrets being too addled by the harrowing experience upon the nautiloid to anticipate such an old, easy trick. A rookie mistake, unfitting of the Blade of Frontiers.

“Now,” the elf coos, “I saw you on the ship, didn’t I?” And then, with a touch of sweet permission: “Nod.”

Wyll holds his breath, deathly still as not to let the blade nick him before his captor eases it back slightly to permit him to follow instructions. Now. Wyll focuses on the stagnating air locked within his breast and lets it froth and roil with tension. A dark, eldritch lightning whispers across his fingertips in erratic sparks of energy, beneath the others’ sightlines.

He drifts his delicately down below the others’ waistline, as not to notify Astarion of the touch until the final moment before he nods his head. But he uses the benign motion to rock his body against his assailant’s. The force of his focused Eldritch Blast channels through his palm and straight into the others’ gut. The pale stranger’s eyes throw open wide in shock as his body is thrown back into the dust with an “oof!”

Wyll scrambles to his feet, and notes the way that the other flows back upright into an animalistic crouch with a hiss. But the tension between them shatters at a sharp wrench behind both of their eyes. Visions of dark streets flash in the reel of Wyll’s thoughts -- familiar streets, that of his beloved Gate, recognizable even through the dredges of time since his expulsion. But where Wyll would have felt pride in the way the light cascaded between the bustling parapets of the city, in the span of the tadpole that bridges their thoughts, he only feels fear.

The Hells lurk on the edges of Wyll’s nightmares, visions of demonic claws and gnashing fangs poised to strike. Mizora’s laughter rises in the background of his dreams. His head turns slowly to the side, lids fluttering softly open. With a blink, his eye focuses hazily in on--

On the seeking demonic jaws of his dreams in the flesh. Sharp, glistening fangs, pale points flashing against the moonlight. He startles awake, hands scrabbling in the dust for his rapier by his bedroll, only to find it moved intentionally out of reach. He rolls to the balls of his feet even as Astarion curses: “sh*t.”

Indignation bursts within him. Wyll immediately regrets his response on the beach: I might have done the same were the roles reversed. Apparently his guest had taken it as permission, permission to try to spill his guts upon the sand a second time. And for what, the coins in his purse? As if his companions will not wake and split him in two in response?

Or, so Wyll hopes they would. They have not traveled together long, but he hopes the trials on the Nautiloid mean that at least of them would rise in his defense. He’d saved some of them once, and felt the weight of responsibility over his band already building within him. Of course, just like he and Astarion’s last scuffle, the Blade of Frontiers didn’t plan on needing their help.

“No, no, it’s not what it looks like, I swear,” comes the babbling explanation. Wyll blinks slowly, listens while his singular dark brown eye remains trained suspiciously upon Astarion. And in the uneven cast of the flickering flames, contrasted against the bright reflection of the moonlight, he sees the signs even as Astarion lays them bare.

Wyll’s expression briefly softens in revelation, only to draw taut once more in consideration. His thoughts race -- the signs seem obvious in retrospect, but his mind lodges on the sticking point: the light, the fear, and yet the way that Astarion’s flesh has not crumbled in the scorching rays of the sun during their travels. Surely he would have noticed the signs of a true vampire fighting at their side in battle. A spawn, immune to the sun?

He folds his arms across his chest and eyes the spawn warily. Astarion speaks of his diet, of beasts and vermin, and a picture of quite a different side of the Gate begins to unfurl in his thoughts.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” It is an easy question for Wyll to ask even as he knows the answer, posed with a raise of his chin and a severe set of his brows. It is merely to buy him time as his mind races. Within, he gently cradles the wounded trust that had nearly been stamped out, recalculating its state in the wake of the misunderstanding.

“--more likely, you’d ram a stake through my ribs.” There’s an underlying resignation there, a somberness. And with a hesitant smile, Astarion steps forward to push his luck. To proposition him for blood. Just a drink, so that he can handle his own again. So that he can fight.

Wyll lingers on the sharp flashes of fear and the frenzy shared through these things inside of their heads. He dwells on the Gates’ landscape seen through a haze of terror. Astarion could very well have been turned in the same streets that Wyll has sold his very soul to protect.

Astarion knows already that Wyll hails from a much different life in the Gate. He’d seen Astarion’s furtive sidelong glance as the children of the Grove had rallied at the Blades’ naive tales. There is a sharp dissonance there in their conflicting experiences of the Gate that rattles unsteadily at Wyll’s mind. A quiet part of him chimes in: perhaps it’s no surprise that the same Gate that had expelled the Duke’s son had turned Astarion into this. He shakes the thought away.

Astarion’s hunger still lingers on Wyll’s lips as if it is his own. Absently, he raises his calloused fingers to trail along his own mouth. The vampire’s dark eyes following the movement, spots the spawn wet his lips discreetly. Wyll catches himself.

“Very well,” Wyll relents, though his eye remains set hard upon the others’ features. “But not a drop more.” Astarion’s eyes flash momentarily wide with a flicker of pleasant surprise, but the vampire wastes no time recovering and beginning to move, suggesting they get comfortable.

He settles onto his bedroll and steels his resolve as the thin spawnling steps quickly near. Astarion moves as if he anticipates that any hesitation will cause the Ravengard noble to lose his nerve. Nervous apprehension sweeps over him when Astarion stoops down to him. Wyll’s fingers trail down to fiddle with the fabric of his pants to suppress that apprehension as Astarion plants one knee next to Wyll’s side.

Astarion hesitates. He turns his head and his eyes search for Wyll’s hands, not having forgotten the burst of magic that had forced him off in their initial encounter. A perfectly good ambush ruined by a warlock’s pact. Tutting, Astarion wipes any remaining hesitation from his features and curls his lips into a coy little smile as he meets Wyll’s eye.

“Ah, and no more of your little tricks? Like the one from the last time I had you laid out under me on your back, hmm?” he purrs, voice thick with a sultry implication that makes Wyll suppress a blush. He opts instead for a derisive snort to detract from the twitch of heat.

“I trust it won’t come to that.” Wyll lowers his voice in quiet warning, casting back Astarion’s own reassurance that he could trust him. This would be a critical decider in that trust, whether the wounded sapling had the potential to still bound back and grow.

The wicked smile on the elf’s moonlit features broadens. “Of course.” It is hushed with an earnesty so thick it verges on facsimile. Astarion leans delicately over him.

Wyll watches the vampire’s every muscle with rapt attention. His very instincts demand it -- something deep within his human breast twinges, an innate anxiety of prey in the grasp of a predator. Astarion seems to forget for a moment that Wyll is watching: he sees Astarion’s reassuring smile fall away into a gentle parting of lips, into a soft inhale of Wyll’s scent across his palette as if to taste him. Suddenly, Wyll feels hyper-aware of the way that predators can scent prey and the enhanced animalistic senses he’d felt when connected to Astarion’s memories. Astarion’s throat tenses as he swallows down Wyll’s scent, hard.

His eyes break away from Astarion’s face in a slow, forced blink of resignation and acceptance, even as his fists clench into the fabric of his own clothes with anticipation. He raises his head gently to the side to expose where his pulse beats beneath the tender flesh of his neck.

There’s a whisper of wind upon his throat the moment it is exposed, instant and eager. The grace and litheness he’d seen in the man’s sinewy form snaps away to a brutal, hungry impatience and force. Teeth sink into the dark flesh of Wyll’s neck with a sting so sharp and cold that he nearly mistakes it for the dagger from the shore. A gasp tears from his lips, but he bites it with a click of gritting teeth at the focused pain that chases the pointed cold. His fists release the fabric of his smallclothes to tangle instead into the linens of Astarions shirt, grasping at the vampire’s side in shock.

The vampire loses himself. Wyll’s blood is rich, intoxicating, nothing like he’s ever tasted before. His tongue laps eagerly forward with each swallow, tracing where his teeth disappear as not to miss a single drop. He is enthralled. It is as if he has never eaten before this very moment, as if he cannot bear to feast upon anything else for the rest of his life. No rodent, no deer, no boar, no bear, can ever amount to the taste, the body, the richness. He has to gain Wyll’s trust. He has to find a way to weasel his way into the man’s good graces every night, even just for the smallest of tastes. Wyll had been so trusting, so empathetic with the tadpoles connecting them. The hero’s bleeding heart will make for easy, soft flesh to sink his claws into, to find security in the shelter of.

Wyll breathes erratically. A soft static spreads from where the fangs immerse into his flesh. A dizzying, heady numbness. The feeling is gentle in comparison to the way Astarion roughly scoops his upper body from the ground, pulling their broad chests flush against one another, drinking desperately from the vibrant well of Wyll’s vitality.

Ah, comes the thought from the hazy part of Wyll’s brain, the part numbed by the spawn’s saliva, as Astarion cradles him desperately closer. He feels a sense of deja vu, back to the moment on the beach, with those long fingers anchored bruisingly into his shoulder, holding him in place to impress the urgency of the knife against his throat. There it is -- the lover’s embrace. It is an ironic, bemused thought, almost sweet, with the slightest of fleeting smiles pulling at the corner of his lips as his expression relaxes, the pain fading. Astarion, with his teeth sunken deep and his nose buried into the hot musk of copper and sweat at the crook of Wyll’s neck, doesn’t notice.

What a deranged thought, Wyll thinks. Whatever is in that numbing saliva must have already scrambled his brain. If he didn't known any better, he’d think he’d been Charmed.

The terrifying thought pushes a surge of urgency to the forefront of his fading consciousness. sh*t. He’d started holding his breath at some point, and now it erupts from his lips. The rush of air and blood to his head dizzies him. His eye rolls up to the blurry moon dangling in the sky above. He tugs at Astarion’s shirt with the fist he still has tangled in it, weakly at first, but then with more insistence. The elf swallows down another greedy gulp of him, his grip on Wyll growing more urgent rather than loosening.

Wyll rolls his chin against the vampire’s cheekbone, lashes fluttering as he tries to keep control. “Astarion,” he exhales in a choked and disoriented groan, breath hot against the top of the man’s pointed ear.

Astarion makes a strangled sound in his throat and gasps for air even as he drinks deeper. Wyll would scoff if he had the energy. Astarion hears him, knows that he wants him to stop. Maybe Astarion had even felt his resistance the first time. He just doesn’t care. A familiar touch of indignation burns in Wyll’s chest, and a tense static crackles in his fists where he grips the man’s clothing.

The electric touch of the magic building, setting the hairs along his spine upright, seems to bring Astarion out of his frenzy for a fleeting moment. Wyll says his name again, mustering a more fierce sternness this time, and the combination of the two and a reminder of his last forceful repulsion finally forces him to break away.

In the moonlight, Astarion staggers back away from his volunteer, breathing labored, red eyes suddenly alight with a vivid fire. He chuckles with a pure, unrestrained glee. He sloppily wipes a smear of crimson away with the back of his hand, and a giddy grin envelopes his features. “Oh, that-- that was positively delightful.”

Feline-like, he swipes his tongue across the back of his hand so as not to waste a single drop of what he’d wiped away. Scorching red eyes dart between Wyll’s face and neck, pupils dilating as they latch again onto the yawning, rough punctures opened raw to the air and lewdly gasping blood with each beat of Wyll’s heart.

Wyll breathes heavily as he props himself up on a forearm, raising his hand to lightly touch the punctures left behind. He feels a messy slick of cooling crimson. Astarion isn’t meeting his eyes -- instead, the vampire seems more focused on the delicate trickle of blood that begins to pool at his collarbone. Wyll regards Astarion with a deep wariness burning in his good eye. But already, he can see a healthy flush blossoming across Astarion’s cheeks. The spawnlings hunched figure rises up taller already, and his hands flex with newfound strength.

Hopefully, that’s a good sign -- a sign that the vampire meant it when he said he only needed enough to enable him to fight, to hunt.

Still, though, it rankles Wyll that he’d had to wield the impending threat of magic once more in order to get him to stop after the promise of not a drop more. But he is too tired to fight about it. “You owe me more than a drop,” he scolds, the most he can manage given the dizziness whirling around him.

He remembers the others’ hunger, how frantic it had been through their pulsing connection through the tadpoles. Wyll hopes that Astarion nearly going too far had merely been a lapse in judgment, though he wonders how many of those he should allow before he needs to reassert that he won’t be taken advantage of. Or, stop trusting him entirely.

Wyll collapses back heavily on the plush of his bedroll, panting and fighting the throbbing lightness in his head. He swallows and clenches his eyes shut, grits his teeth against the quivering flow of nausea threatening him while his vision spins. He grasps for the cloth of one of his discarded garments to press it firmly against his bleeding neck. It’s still numb, for now -- thankfully.

“I simply got caught up in the moment, is all,” he hears Astarion drawl, and Wyll hopes there’s a touch of bashfulness somewhere on his face, even though he can’t bear to raise his head or open his eye to see it. “Trust me.”

They both fade quickly -- Astarion fades from the camp as he goes to hunt, and Wyll fades away from what is left of his fickle consciousness. His body urges him into sleep, desperate to replenish what his body had lost. His last thought is that something about Astarion’s trust me might end up making Wyll trust him less.

Chapter 2: Calculated Regret

Chapter Text

If Wyll dreams during the second half of the night, he does not remember it. His body falls into a deep and unmoving slumber, practically mired into the earth by leaden weights. Wyll could not have stayed awake to maintain a wary guard even if he’d wanted to.

He comes to with the sun already fairly high from the horizon, much later than he’s accustomed to waking. So late that he can smell the burnt scent of a skillet beginning to warm over the fire, a telltale sign of Gale beginning to work on the prep for lunch. Embarrassment flushes through him; he’s never slept this late before. By now, they’d normally have been on the move for a couple of hours. The whole camp knows something is wrong, undoubtedly.

The sun on his eyelid threatens to make his head ache, but he ignores it for a second to take stock of himself. He feels like absolute sh*t, that’s for sure. But he supposes that’s to be expected. Wyll isn’t sure how much blood Astarion siphoned from him, but from the speed at which he’d become lethargic, he can assume that it was more than a moderate serving.

The cloth he’d used to suppress the bleeding crunches, sticky and stiff against his neck. He experimentally tilts his head to the side and immediately sucks a muted hiss of breath in through gritted teeth. Oh, that is bruised. For all of Astarion’s delicate mannerisms and reassuring words when they had been settling in, there had been no touch of gentleness in the man’s feed. He’d seen the shift when the hunger had taken over. And he remembers Astarion roughly scooping him close with an arm behind his shoulders, clutching him close in his desperation to feed.

Wyll frankly wishes he could lay here for a few more hours. But he knows he needs to get moving before Lae’zel convinces herself that he’s sick and about to turn and needs to be eliminated.

Brown eye drifts drowsily open, and with a soft grunt he props himself up. He reaches for the soiled cloth, grimacing as it clings to his dried wound and crackles as it peels painfully away. He examines it discreetly. It hadn’t bled fully through, so at least his companions are likely none the wiser about the puncture wounds on his neck. Hopefully they just assume he has the world’s worst hangover. Gale’s back is turned to him, crouched in front of the fire, and across the camp, Lae’zel looks up from polishing the hilt of her weapon and notices he’s awake with an unreadable narrowing of her eyes. Shadowheart seems occupied with a book.

Astarion is nowhere to be seen.

Wyll summons his strength and rolls fully to his feet, and turns swiftly away from the camp and toward the nearby stream before anyone can pin him down for questions or concerns. He needs to wash the caked blood from his neck before showing his face to the others.

Dappled light casts unevenly across the clear brook. Trees shade the pebbly bank generously. He unsteadily approaches the shallows, shedding his shirt so that he can clean the wound without getting it absolutely drenched. He finds a dry spot where he can kneel and settles to scoop handfuls of cool water against the bite.

Every brush of it aches with an irritated complaint. But he has to tend to it. Wyll massages it gently, cleansing away the blood. He experimentally touches his fingertips to each puncture. He explores the jagged edges, gauging the intensity of the swelling with gentle presses on the angry flesh. Astarion had absolutely savaged his neck with the force of his feed.

Wyll sighs, closes his eyes. Just sits there for a little while, kneeling by the water, and lets the spotted sunlight warm his back and the stream go by. Light cascades down the planes of dark skin, drawn taut over corded muscle, broken only by scattered knotted ropes of pale scar tissue. A few beads of water from washing his neck path their way down his back, catching the light in a brief but brilliant glimmer.

He’s frustrated, light-headed, and in pain. But as much as the ache in his neck makes him loathe to admit it, he hesitantly decides that he… believes Astarion. This time. Believes that it was a mistake from being swept up in the moment, as the elf had said. Wyll’s sleep had been so deep after urging him off that he’s fairly certain the vampire could have descended back upon him and Wyll would have been powerless to stop him. If Astarion had wanted to, he could have. It would have been so easy.

It doesn’t take away the wariness or the frustration, however. How much more simple this could have been if the spawnling had just released him when he’d urged him to. Intent on investigating how much of a problem this will really be, he stiffly turns toward where the shallows thread between a series of flat rocks to create a more still pool. He does some adjusting, lets the water settle from his nearby movement, and arcs his neck to try to get a blurry glimpse of it.

He doesn’t need the sharp clarity of a mirror to see that it’s bad. The edges of the punctures are jagged, and already a blossoming rose of purple and yellow spreads from them. He’d have better luck hiding a ballroom hickey from his father than he’d have concealing this for a second -- from Shadowheart and Lae’zel in particular.

The exsanguinated boar on the path -- another grim reminder of the signs he had missed, some monster hunter he was -- had been savaged less than this.

Wyll huffs crossly, props himself to the balls of his feet and rises, grabbing his discarded shirt. He whirls, fists held tensely against his hip, only for his eye to land on a very obviously-positioned-along-his-path Astarion, leaning nonchalantly against a nearby tree. The elf sees him and feigns surprise, beckoning him softly.

Great. Wyll wonders how long Astarion has been there. More than likely since he’d arrived, which means that he’d probably been staring at his bare back like a juicy-- Hells, no, that’s not fair to Astarion, and he knows it. Irritable as he feels, he can’t just characterize the man down to his hunger.

Wyll takes a second to work his shirt over his shoulders as he steps idly toward Astarion. He moves stiffly, carefully not to aggravate his neck any more than he needs to. A few feet from him, he stops and folds bare arms across his chest and regards the other with an expectant look, but no words.

“Good morning,” Astarion says, short and quaint. “How do you feel?”

Wyll blinks at him plaintively. The others’ tone placates him slightly, but he still wants to make his displeasure clear enough.

“Like I’ve let three vampires have at my neck, rather than just one,” he muses in return, and Astarion at least has the self-awareness to look a little sheepish for a breath before that same assured smirk returns to his features.

“That can be arranged,” he’s quick to quip with a cheery lilt. Wyll shakes his head with a soft scoff, and Astarion raises his hands in a defensive beckon, yielding. “Look, as I said, I simply got a little carried away, hmm? I didn’t anticipate that you’d taste so… exquisite.”

The strange and unexpected… compliment forces Wyll to avert his eyes, but he brushes quickly past the flattery. “I’ll be fine.” His tone is stalwart. “I presume you drank the rest of your fill off in the forest, then? Assuming you were even still hungry.” A light, prodding accusation.

Astarion raises a hand to run through his wispy curls with an unbothered laugh. “Oh, trust me, dear. I could have drunk you twice over and still have been hungry with a taste like that.” The sun catches on a glimmer of fangs. “But, to answer your question -- yes, thanks to your lent strength, a few beasts in the forest and whatnot rounded out the meal quite nicely. They are more my… usual fare.”

There’s no doubt that the man stands taller. Even in rest, there’s a liveliness to him that Wyll cannot deny. He is silent for a moment as he considers him carefully. Beasts as his usual fare. There’s an implication there that if he wasn’t still half-drained of blood, he’d be able to pinpoint without it being spelled out for him.

“For what it’s worth, I am sorry about that beautiful neck of yours.” And truly, he does look disappointed, though Wyll isn’t sure it’s for the right reasons. “But it will pass. Just be glad I am not a ‘true’ vampire.”

The Blade of the Frontier, famed hunter of devils and monsters, doesn’t need more of an explanation than that. He is well aware of the capabilities of Astarion’s condition, and its drawbacks. His eyes trail across the shafts of light cascading easily from the canopy and onto Astarion’s delicate features. That was the reason he had not seen it earlier. But he remembers the visions from him. The light, the fear. Astarion has not always been immune to the sun.

Sharp eyes track Wyll’s gaze, and Astarion reaches up to stroke the warming spots upon the mauve collar of his doublet thoughtfully. “I should be cinders in this light,” he muses, eyes distant. “I hadn’t seen the sun for two hundred years before we crashed here.”

The words register slowly with Wyll. His lips part ever-so-softly with shock, his brows raising his lids away from his one good orb and its mirrored prosthetic stone. Two hundred years. He stands before a man well over twenty times his own age -- not unusual for elves, but something that puts the vampire’s condition into context nonetheless. And Astarion looks young, even for an elf. Two hundred years in Baldur’s Gate, slipping through dark alleyways and skirting around curtain-drawn windows. It is no wonder why their memories of it are so different.

Two hundred years of being driven by hunger. Two hundred years of never seeing the sun.

Astarion seems to note his reaction but continues brusquely past it, concluding with a curt: “Someone, or something, wants me alive. They’ve changed the rules.”

Wyll’s eye darkens, casts away once more as he’s reminded solemnly of his pact. No change in the rules has ever benefited him. With the same uneasy anticipation of not knowing when the worms in their head would turn them into tentacled monsters, he wonders if there will come a time when the rules will change and Astarion will burn in the sun before his very eyes. It is a dark thought. Wyll hopes that Astarion can make the best of it -- just in case.

“All the better for us, then. I hope to see the fruits of our efforts soon,” Wyll rolls his shoulders to ease the stiffness from them, tender about his neck, and takes a step past Astarion to head back to camp, to address the other set of problems he has on his hands.

“Wyll,” comes the soft call behind him, nearly just a breath carried to him on the wind. There’s a gentleness to it. It makes him hesitate and gently turn his head so that he can catch the man’s expression in his peripherals. The vampire fixes a sidelong look after him, his distant look replaced with intentional sincerity.

“This is a gift, you know.” A beat of silence. “I won’t forget it.”

The Blade of Frontiers turns his head to consider the vampire’s features more deeply. Then, after a quiet pause, the warlock nods. “Of course.” And he continues back to camp.

After a furtive, hushed gathering around Wyll and his newly bandaged neck at the opening of Shadowheart’s tent, the party treks up the river, once again on the move. He still feels woozy, sluggish, but pushes through. He can’t help but feel Astarion’s eyes on him as they travel, and if he didn’t know any better, he’d think the man was a touch concerned with his level of exertion.

When they encounter the gnolls, he sees the difference in the way that Astarion fights. The grim, silent shift from target to target is no more. Astarion bounds from one hyaenidae to the next with an almost giddy energy. A gnoll towers before him, and Wyll watches the elf lunge to sink his dagger into one side of its neck. The beast screams as the knife is used as a handle to drag it down to his level, only to tear out its throat with his fangs in a grotesque spray of viscera and gore.

Astarion’s reflexes are sharp, unrivaled. His eyes are bright, missing nothing as they lash from one target to the next. A fierce and impressive predator in his prime. Wyll finds himself strangely grateful he is not on the hunting end of the vampire -- not this time, at least, and not in that way. He doesn’t miss how often the thin elf’s eyes return to him, fangs glimmering in a knowing grin, as if to say: Here are those drops of blood I owe you. Consider the debt paid.

The late afternoon sun begins to wane. Wyll lowers his hands, the haunting chill of necrotic energy pulsing from them waning as the hyena that had charged him slumps lifelessly to the earth. He tires, but he snaps to alert attention when he catches a familiar scent.

Fire and ash and the harsh grate of sulfur in his throat. A bloodied trail up the path, pockmarked by smears of destructive scorching. “Hold,” he commands to the group, demanding their attention as he stalks forward. He places his boots carefully, holds his body light as if he is prepared to dodge at a moment’s notice. The first corpse he arrives at is nearly twain in two, scorched where the greataxe had cleaved her body.

Finally, he has caught up with her. The devil Karlach and her path of destruction.

Wyll is exhausted when they return to camp. His spine is cold with dread. He has not broken a promise of his pact before, and knows not what lies in wait for him. That Mizora has not shown her face yet makes him hope beyond hope that it is his turn for the rules to be changed in his favor.

Yet again, the tadpole had laid bare another’s pain to him, another’s truth. He’d seen the very woman he’d been hunting scrambling desperately from Zariel’s clutches, cleaving down every devil in her path to escape. And if caught in the same circ*mstances as Karlach, he could only hope that another would have the same strength to do what was right.

Any hope dies when a black smoke whirls into an inky portal before him, devouring the firelight. No, the rules are not so kind to Wyll. They will not change for him. Not now, not ever. But he bears it with gritted teeth and silent resolve.

He must. It had been his choice, the same as the day he’d forged his pact with his fiendish patron to save the city he loved. Let him bear the burden, let him bear the cost. At least Wyll knows that he can handle it, even where may not.

The force of Mizora’s psychic pull brings him to his knees, lacking the strength after the day’s trials to resist it. But even then, the righteous rage still flares within him as Mizora taunts the woman he’d chosen not to kill.

The accusation erupts harshly from his lips, voice strained with frustration and fatigue: “You told me devils only. She’s a tiefling, not a monster!” In the corner of his eye, he catches the scowling features of Astarion turn away at the word.

The fires of Hell consume him. The blasting scorch upon his soul threatens to melt away his flesh. The wounds upon his neck crack open underneath the strain of suppressing his pained cries down to choked groans, seeping his bandages red with fresh blood. Horns rupture from his skull, his flesh raised grotesquely around their base. And through the agony, he steels his resolve.

Let him bear it.

Astarion avoids him. Wyll takes the much-needed time to recover, clear his head. With every night that drags by without the Blade having confronted him, the pale man seems to only grow more frustrated.

Wyll rises from a sleepless night and searches for solitude. His horns make it difficult to rest comfortably -- at least, beyond the first night of pure exhaustion spent doubled up upon himself in the tangle of his bedroll, still recovering from the dizziness and disorientation of pushing himself after offering his blood. No amount of tossing and turning yields a position that lets him rest comfortably with the unwieldy things, not to mention the sharp bite of scales upon his hips against the earth.

He briefly finds solitude, sitting quietly once more by the river, but solitude does not find him. Astarion does.

“I simply cannot believe you,” he practically spits, voice hushed into a harsh hiss. They are some distance from camp but he obviously does not want an audience, or else this would have happened sooner.

Crimson eye rolls over to the seething elf. The venom in the man’s voice shocks him. Astarion had been cross, avoidant, but he’d not expected the vitriol. “Astarion?”

Astarion fumes. Wyll is the only thing holding this merry little band together at the end of the day, and he could have been gone, snapped away at the cambion’s whim -- and Astarion’s best bet against Cazador would have vanished with him in a wisp of smoke.

He can’t depend on the rest to be soft enough to rely on. Lae’zel has her oh-so-superior race of silver-sword-wielding, dragon-riding warrior kin to return to; Shadowheart has her crew of culty darkness worshippers waiting for her in the Gate; Gale was… well, Gale. He’s sure that with Wyll gone, the wizard would try to cling to one of them like some kind of kicked puppy, and Astarion sure as hell wouldn’t stick around and pull the short stick on that one. And Karlach--

Well, ironically, the boisterously jolly tiefling that Wyll stuck his neck out for is Astarion’s best bet should the group go up in flames. That being called a monster insecurity and all, he’d be able to play into that one easy. But while he could travel with her, he can’t feed on her -- unless he wants to be smithereens along with them.

No, Wyll is his best bet in this ragtag bunch. Both to keep it together in order to bolster his defenses, and to feed from. Should he try to feed on any of the others, one wrong step or misunderstood flash of the fangs, and Wyll’s protectiveness may activate against him rather than in his favor. But Wyll? Well, he’s almost certain he could ask to feed from him now and wriggle his way into a meal tonight.

But that doesn’t matter if the little martyr gets himself killed sacrificing himself for every poor sob story he comes across. He seethes at how close they’d come to ruining it all.

“Have you considered that your little heroic prince act will get you killed one day?” He paces tersely before him. “Are you insane? You barely even knew her. You could have done the deed and continued on your merry way!”

Wyll blinks. Lowers his gaze, tightens his jaw into a hard set. Whether Astarion’s tirade is born from concern or contempt, he isn’t yet sure. Both could be true. “I simply did what was right, Astarion. I made my choice, and I paid my price for it.” A pause. “It was nothing I could not handle.” His hand drifts idly up to the base of a horn.

“Your price?” He scoffs. “I am no expert on devils, but even I know that she could have taken more from you than just your dashing good looks.”

The reminder of his gnarled features stings, even though it shouldn’t. Wyll’s face twitches with hurt before he can catch it. It is not his ego over his looks that is wounded -- it is Mizora’s words: Let’s see how the Frontiers fare without their precious Blade. Astarion hesitates.

In that moment of hesitation, their tadpoles burst with resonance, ringing through them both. Visions pass between them unbidden. To Astarion: the fire of the Hells, the storms of Dis, the rending of his very soul passing through the layers -- Wyll’s penance more than just his looks, more than just his pride, a rending of the soul more than just mortal pain. It brings Astarion to his knees not far from him, clutching his forehead.

And to Wyll: the inescapable blade of hunger; the sear of pale flesh crisping away at the mere stroke of the sunlight; a pair of ruby eyes set beneath narrowed brows that sends a bolt of absolute terror rattling through every bone. The words echo in his mind: First, thou shalt not drink the blood of thinking creatures.

He sees himself through Astarion’s eyes, but not as they are now. As they were that night. He sees his bared throat, can see down to the minute detail the delicate flutter of his own heartbeat beneath his skin, feels the aching water of his mouth and then the cool relief of his hunger finally, finally slaked for the first time in two hundred years, spiced with the taste of freedom so intense that it brings tears to his eyes. Fully, wholly. Finally. Finally.

Wyll does not regret his choices. Wyll trusts him. Gods, why does he trust him?

Astarion shifts his weight not far from him, wearily finding his own seat to stare out across the river with him. Another thing that should he choose to, Astarion can enjoy. These damned tadpoles. Another guarded layer of himself peeled away and laid bare. But he supposes it is in his favor, this time. It works to set himself up as just another charity case for Wyll to swoop in and save. Ghastly little thing he is, it’s the closest Astarion will probably ever feel to being cared for. Not that he’s in the market for such a thing anyway.

The cacophony of crickets gusts along on the river’s breeze. The half moon watches them in the silence that draws long between them.

Cazador may come for him someday. Astarion needs to make sure that Wyll’s heroism extends to him when that time arrives. He needs his trust, and needs to ensure that the other night is water beneath the bridge. He begins quietly: “In all these years--” His voice is wistful. Part performance, part a bitterness more true than he’ll ever care to admit. “--I’ve only ever fed on beasts.”

Wyll trawls his red eye carefully over to watch him as he speaks. The pale light illuminates the elf’s delicate features, statuesque as if formed by the most gentle stroke of clay in an artist’s palm. Since feeding properly, he has lost the gauntness of hunger, lost the recession of sunken eyes. Tousled hair frames his countenance in wispy locks.

Wyll holds his breath. But as he does, he feels the tightness of his own jagged scars, the severe wrench of his cheekbones warped by his new features. The moment lost, he forces the thoughts away.

Astarion notices, but is careful not to show it. He carries on with what he needs to do. The words pour from him, steady and somber: “Drinking the blood of… a thinking creature was a different thing entirely.”

A pause. Wyll interjects softly into it: “Astarion.” He captures his sidelong gaze with his own. “You don’t have to apologize.” He had seen it through both of their eyes. They both knew.

It’s exactly what Astarion wants to hear.

The vampire scoffs and gives a sultry little pout. “Oh, but I do, don’t I?” His pupils trail across Wyll’s features, lingering on his lips. Those half-lidded eyes drift down to where the developed bruises on his dark skin flaunt a menagerie of pale chartreuse and vibrant indigo, coalesced around two points guarded by healing scabs. He is a little sorry for savaging that beautiful neck of his. But he is more sorrowful that his momentary loss of control may make it more difficult to convince Wyll to let him feed in the future. “I’m sorry.” This time, he is careful that there are no dueling words or clever lilts, as aid to help drive his point home.

Astarion looks back up to meet Wyll’s gaze, and the Blade sees the sincerity writ clear within his eyes in the moonlight. But within it, he also sees a set of growing twin hungers -- one he expects, and one he does not.

The warlock is suddenly aware of the dryness of his lips and his heartbeat in his throat. He knows that Astarion can probably hear the quickening from a mile away. A soft heat smolders in his belly, stoked to awakening by what he sees in Astarion’s eyes. Wyll can’t remember the last time he’s been looked at like that. The breeze has died and left the air stagnant between them, swollen with potential. Astarion gives a deliberate, cat-like blink -- a soft, knowing beckon with pale lashes.

Wyll burns. “Ah, I--” He tears his gaze away, lest the fire of the Hells consume him on the spot. “Yes, very good.” He stumbles over the words and briskly rises to his feet. Right -- that was an apology and he needs to respond, what does one say after an apology? “Of course.” No, not that. He turns away and dusts off his trousers in an attempt to not seem too hurried. He fails, utterly.

“Goodnight, Astarion.” His goodbye is swift, rushed, and only when the Warlock has gone does Astarion let himself chuckle softly, let himself lean back against where well-traveled paths have worn the grass unevenly from the bank.

“Sweet Wyll,” he muses in a soft scoff, a touch of pity in his tone. He closes his eyes and ignores the fact that somewhere amidst all of that, he’d stopped his habit of pretending to breathe.

The little hero of the Coast nearly makes it too easy for him. Perhaps in a different time, the charismatic man is the kind of sweet fairytale prince he’d have once fallen in love with. But Astarion is not that mortal anymore.

Astarion reminds himself to see this for what it is: an inroad into Wyll’s tender naivety, so that when it comes time for all paths to lead to Baldur’s Gate, the Ravengard prince will play his role exactly how Astarion needs him to.

Nothing more, nothing less.

Chapter 3: Fondness

Chapter Text

Careful reconnaissance among the Camp’s leaders in the morning begins the day off well. They slip out of needing a branding from a certain priestess, and at the anxious shudder of the artefact in the back of their thoughts, Wyll pivots easily to mislead the Nightwarden as to the camp’s whereabouts, and in doing so, throwing her off their scent about their level of knowledge.

The call with Dror Ragzlin and the mind flayer is closer. He is hesitant to draw immediately upon the authority of the tadpole for such strict control, yet uncertain of the price that may accompany it. So when the mind flayer’s flashing psychic testimony sends Dror’s eyes flashing accusingly in their direction, Wyll maintains an aloof and noble nonchalance at the mind flayer’s flashing psychic testimony. As the hobgoblin’s voice rises, the handsome Warlock simply co*cks his head and gives a deliberate blink.

“Come now,” he soothes coolly, “you would trust a corpse’s delusions over your own senses, your own reality? We are True Souls -- you felt it.” His tone is smooth but there’s an edge to it, an unspoken obviously, an irrefutable assuredness that is difficult to contest. And though Dror rages as the corpse falls before he is ready to formally end his interrogation, the creature’s rage does not fall upon them, allowing them to walk free from scrutiny.

Astarion scoffs as they turn away from the rite, and sidles up to Wyll with a quiet drawl as they pass beneath the great doors back toward the front. “Well, well.” He gives a sly smirk. “Color me surprised. Our precious, noble hero seems to have no problem lying where it suits him. It seems like he’s a downright natural!” Wyll is content to continue on and ignore him, but the vampire shoulders his way pointedly into his path. “Dare I say it, he may even be quite practiced at it.”

“That’s because I am,” Wyll responds easily, not missing a beat. He casts his good eye over, allowing himself a little self-satisfaction at the flicker of surprise on Astarion’s features. He takes the opportunity to indulge in a playful retort, dancing around the truth with the easiest diversion: “Come, now. Among the many talents of a hunter of monsters, surely you expected 'targeted manipulation' to be one of them?”

It's an easier joke to make than the truth, which is that it is not monster hunter that taught him an underhanded and efficient way to protect his own, but the noble courts.

The vampire recovers quickly -- while Wyll admitting it outright is surprising, the fact itself is not. “Oh, no,” Astarion gasps coyly. His salacious whisper of feigned shock comes quickly after: “Careful, Wyll. Speak to me like that, and you may yet convince me to like your ilk.”

Wyll grins, shedding the barb of the comment easily, and nudges gently past him, and Astarion readily makes way with a cheeky half-bow. Karlach steps carefully around them, but chuckles heartily, and Lae’zel passes with a slightly narrowed look at Astarion, which he pointedly ignores.

Hope for further diplomacy evaporates, however, in the Worg Pens. Wyll sees the children terrorizing the caged beast and wards them off, but Lae’zel’s sharp eyes spot what he does not.

“Careful. That is no normal bear,” she informs Wyll lowly, suspicion furrowing her brow. The warlock gazes at the beast for a moment, whose ears twitch at her words, and whose eyes track all-too-accurately over to meet his.

Once he puts two and two together -- a druid gone missing in the adventurer’s expedition, an imprisoned bear the goblins say to have seized from the same venture -- things begin to move rather quickly.

The goblin children break toward the door, ducking past Karlach and Lae’zel. Wyll skirts lithely around the two warriors, who are engaged with the beastmaster and his worgs. An eldritch blast crackles on his fingers, but his break away catches the hunting beasts’ attention and one barrels into him, sending it firing into the ceiling with a rattle of stone and a shower of dust.

Snarling, frothing, the maned beast gnashes sharp teeth through the clothed surface of Wyll’s armor as he tries to push it off of him. But when met with leather resistance, it snaps its head to the arm trying to battle it away and crunches onto the inside of Wyll’s elbow. Searing hot pain races through him with a strangled cry.

Knives wet with blood as he lingers above the dispatched goblin children in front of the door, Astarion’s head snaps up from his fallen quarry and to Wyll’s voice. sh*t. He devours the distance with long strides and gives a vicious shout as he plunges his dagger straight into the snarling monstrosity’s eye. It releases Wyll and turns with snapping jaws to Astarion, but a massive shadow descends upon its back. With a wet crunch, the wildshaped cave bear’s jaws clamp into Worg’s nape and swiftly snuff it out, tearing it off of Wyll and tossing it aside like a child’s doll.

Wyll sends a hasty, grateful nod in the bear’s direction, then takes the hand up that Astarion offers him. Breathing heavy, he clutches his maimed arm. “Thanks,” he manages in a ragged gasp. Eyes wide, pale elf ghosts a tentative hand over Wyll’s shoulder, his nostrils flaring as he breathes in the rich scent of his blood. It only takes a second for him to break from the shock of the smell, though -- he turns his sights upon his next goblin target and pulls out his bow.

When it is all said and done, they barricade the door to ensure that nobody stumbles unknowingly in while they take a moment to recuperate. Rage satiated, a golden shimmer burns the bear’s bulk away to leave a rugged wood elf reeling in its place. After a few quick words of thanks, the druid dutifully begins to tend to their wounds. He guides Wyll to one of the rickety chairs and kneels at his feet to gently take stock of his arm.

Astarion haunts after them, throat tight, standing off to the side but craning his neck to pointedly watch what they’re doing. Another setback for his next feed -- how irritating. But he can’t deny the momentary surge of fear he’d felt when Wyll’s body had disappeared beneath the bulk of the Worg.

Despite his strength, Halsin’s touch is gentle. His eyes are eager, concern and consideration threading wrinkles into his scarred brow. With soft hands, he peels away the ruined fabric that sticks wetly to the wound. Wyll’s head rolls back as he sucks in a harsh breath of pain. He easily redirects his body’s natural urge to recoil into a tight throat and set jaw, but the discipline to not interfere with the Druid’s examination doesn’t lessen the agony.

He notices Astarion’s protective hover, though, and tries to allocate his focus to soothing him. “Thank you, Astarion, for dealing with the stragglers.” His voice is thick with pain, but soon enough, Halsin’s hand glows over the wound with a gentle blue warmth and relief washes visibly over him. “Had they gotten away, we would have found ourselves in a much more serious predicament. A camp full of goblins bearing down upon us, with my arm like this? You bought us valuable time.”

Astarion gives a shrug and a sheepish scratch at the back of his neck, but doesn’t respond. Only averts his eyes.

Halsin’s magic slowly knits the flesh of Wyll’s arm back together, and he watches with mild fascination as it does its work.

“You are fortunate,” the elf notes. “The muscles are intact. Sylvanus’ blessing will guide them whole.” Even as the druid pulls away, Wyll’s body guides the energy the rest of the way to close up his skin, leaving not even a scar. He flexes his hand experimentally, watching the shift of newly-formed tissue gleam pristinely in the firelight. Halsin moves on to the others.

A slender shadow casts over Wyll as Astarion leans in to appraise the druid’s work. The Warlock sits patiently, brow raised as he watches the other with interest.

“Hmph,” comes the brisque dismissal. Without hesitation, he reaches out and brushes his fingertips over where the wound had been. “I don’t like him,” Astarion grumbles beneath the crackling of the torches, face twisted into a displeased pout. “He acts like a big teddy bear, but looks at you like a piece of meat.”

Despite himself, Wyll gives a soft snort of laughter and pulls his arm away, easing himself out of the chair. “I’m afraid you’re projecting, Astarion.”

Astarion fixes him with a coy smirk and a smoldering gaze. “Oh, darling, I’m glad you care enough to notice.” He holds Wyll’s eye for a moment too long, then breaks away with a parting wink, heading to keep watch at the blocked door.

For the rest of the day, there is little peace.

With Halsin freed, they must deal with the goblin leaders, then return him to the Grove to stop the Rite. They cleave their way through: first Gut, then Dror. With the head cut off, the rest of the snake thrashes helplessly -- or would have, if Minthara had not rallied the goblins into the amphitheater room with Dror and the mindflayer, and blocked the great doors. But they all fall eventually, especially with Astarion and Wyll sniping stealthily from the rafters.

They are exhausted. Halsin thanks them and leaves for the Grove, and the rest of the party shelters in of the less-bloodied rooms of the Selunite halls to rest for the night, uncertain if they can afford another encounter with goblins on the way out yet.

Wyll takes first watch. With his back to a pillar, his good eye on the door, and arms folded over raised knees, he contemplates the day. There is a clatter of his horns on the stone behind him as he tries to lean his head back against the column. He adjusts around them with a sigh. A hand trails thoughtlessly up to the base of those wicked horns, raised and ragged. All hard edges, not a soft thing about him any longer.

He hasn’t looked in a mirror since it happened. The last he’d seen of his own face had been examining his bruised neck in the river’s pools, before they’d met Karlach, and Wyll keeps it that way. He doesn’t need a reflection to show him what he can feel. The harsh ridges grate uncomfortably against his side when he tries to sleep, and every time he undresses to change garments, he seems to find another bony outcropping of scales he hadn’t managed to glimpse before.

But he thinks of the way Karlach’s hearty laugh lights up the camp when they settle around the fire. Of her playful bickering with Lae’zel, of her hauling a boar back to camp for Astarion, of Shadowheart venting quietly to her in the dark, of Gale waving his hands with expressive flickers of illusion as he tells her an embellished story. Of the way she greets Wyll with a chipper “soldier” when he catches her eye. And he knows that even if given the chance, he would never choose differently. Mizora could have done worse to him and still not invoked an ounce of regret.

A comfortable peace nestles within at the thought of his companions. He wants to see each of them be well. The tadpole in his own brain might as well not even be a concern to him -- at least not compared to how often he occupies himself searching for solutions to their problems: the orb, the creche, the engine, the artefact. His tadpole and his pact are less of a problem to be solved for him and more of just another thing he accepts having to live with while he continues on as usual.

And then, there was Astarion. A spawn freshly unbound, spooking at the shadows around him in the same breath that he shies into them for comfort. As irritated as Astarion seems with Wyll when the Blade extends help to another person in need, Astarion still remains with them. Though tolerant, Wyll is not naive -- there is strength in numbers, and it’s likely why Astarion stays, rather than out of any particular fondness.

No, he corrects. There may be fondness to be found yet. Back in the Pens, should the entire camp have come down upon their heads, Astarion likely would have been able to save his own hide. But instead, he had lunged to stop the goblins scuttling toward the door to alert the others, and dispatched them swiftly. He had played the role the party had needed for him to in that moment -- without hesitation, without complaint, and without even needing to be told.

And though it’s a bit fuzzy, a dizzying rush in his memory, he remembers how Astarion had been there nigh-instantly when he’d realized that the Worg had him pinned. His enraged cry as he’d plunged the knife into the beast’s eye in a spray of blood above him still echoes in Wyll’s ears.

So, convenience and perhaps a little fondness. But beyond that, Wyll isn’t sure what Astarion wants, or how to solve whatever problems root around behind that enigmatic pale mask of his. But for now, it is enough for Wyll to guard Astarion from the feelings he remembers through their tadpoles’ connection -- the light, the fear, the hunger. To let Astarion find himself at his own pace, on his own terms.

There’s a flicker of movement in the shadows near him and he stiffens, but quickly recognizes the wispy figure that prowls from them. Think of the devil and he shall come.

“Well, that was quite the bloodbath, wasn’t it?” Astarion sighs as he eases himself down next to Wyll, boldly inviting himself to share the pillar at his back with him. The closeness is intentional for Astarion. Wyll tries to ignore it nonchalantly.

“Far from the first,” Wyll sighs, “And as long as the gods seek to grasp and turn the wheels of fate in their favor, I am afraid it won’t be the last.”

“No rest for the wicked, I suppose.”

A somber and somewhat… expectant silence stretches between them. Astarion patiently waits for Wyll to fill it. He can hear the man’s gradually accelerating heartbeat beneath his padded armor, the nervous parting of the man’s lips as he forms words, but then bites them down as he thinks better of them.

“You’ve certainly been fighting well, Astarion,” comes the words, finally.

Astarion waits for him to continue, and nearly prompts him to go on. But Wyll remains contemplatively silent, so he waves the conversation forward. “Thank you, darling,” he purrs with a wicked smile, elfen ear twitching with acknowledgement. “Simply making up for the drops I owe you, hmm?” He glances over, eager and expectant.

Wyll gives a soft chuckle. “I suppose so.” A pause, more intentional this time. “How often do you need to feed?”

Oh, it would be so deliciously delightful to lie here. Why, every day, dear, he wishes he could say. If that’s what it takes for you to feel responsible for me. But Wyll’s eyes are too sharp to not notice when he returns to camp in the morning more lively, or the trickle of blood from the corners of his lips when a humanoid falls at his feet in battle. He is naive, but not stupid. Wyll surely knows that he is not hungry.

A flicker of heat flashes across his gaze as he seeks Wyll’s crimson eye. “How often do I need to feed from you, you mean?” And he practically hears the rushing blood that drives the flush of Wyll’s cheeks at the question.

Wyll’s mouth feels unbearably dry all of the sudden. The very air chafes across his lips. He swallows, once again distinctly aware of how close they are. He can nearly feel the cool of Astarion’s skin against his own.

“Yes.”

He sweetly bats his eyelashes at Wyll. “Why, dear, however often you’d like.” Ever-so-slightly, he tilts his head toward him to murmur: “I’m certainly strong enough now to hunt for myself, thanks to you. But I will never turn down a helping of a dessert so divine.”

Wyll goes hot. Astarion can smell his flush now, as well as the tender fluttering of his blood in his throat. It’s delightful. Poor Wyll. How long has it been since the man treated himself to a bit of intimacy? A bit of release? Just a simple press against him, a gentle crane of his neck, and he could tuck his fangs delicately into that pulsing vein -- on the opposite side this time, though the old wound has healed nicely. It would be so painfully easy to drift a hand down between those beautiful, lithe legs while he feeds and coax some much-needed relief from him.

“Depends,” Wyll responds, managing a facade of nonchalance despite the nervousness wound up tight in his chest. How foolish he is for even entertaining such a thing. Good sense should drive him to reject a sacrifice no longer absolutely necessary for one of his own. But the closeness of the feed, no matter how bruising, has scarcely left his thoughts. And with his features twisted by the Hells, he can’t even begin to imagine who would look at him in that way now if not Astarion. He pushes past the twinge of sadness at the thought, and dares a bit of playfulness: “Does that entail a fine dine, or another savaging of my neck beyond recognition?”

Astarion rolls deftly into a crouch, pivoting to face Wyll. He plants a hand onto the column above Wyll’s horns and languidly sprawls his lower arm along the stone. His other forearm presses his weight into Wyll’s raised knee, and Astarion leans over him to draw their faces dangerously close. Wyll snaps to deathly stillness. He holds his breath there, trapped gently against the rock by the pale elf.

“I can take you however you’d prefer, dear prince,” comes the husky, low whisper. “But if you’re wondering if I can control myself, you have no need to worry. I know what I’m in for this time.”

Heat lashes fiercely in Wyll’s core. He sucks in a breath and wilts shamefully back against the stone at the flaring intensity of his desire, ignoring the scrape of his horns against the rock. The cold of the column helps to tether a strenuous thread back to his good senses, but he fears it will not hold for long. Simply the closeness, the knowledge of the elf’s eyes hot and intense upon him is absolutely unbearable. With their companions asleep, they could do more than just feed here in the privacy offered by the dark temple. The thought of roaming hands and heated mouths against one another strikes a heady match that catches fiercely on the silken desperation within.

But the damp halls still smell of humid blood. Hardly romantic, hardly right, and -- most critically -- Wyll is on watch. It is an important duty that he will not shirk. He takes a deep, shaking breath and tempers the heat. He opens his good eye and finds Astarion still close, still gazing expectantly at him with a glimmer of pale fangs.

With monumental willpower, he crosses his other wrist over to the knee occupied by the vampire’s tempting weight, and turns it upward to bare its veins to him. The back of his hand rests softly on Astarion’s fingers. “Just a taste, then.” And no more. They are likely in for a long day in the Grove tomorrow. Quietly: “Gently.”

The pale elf blinks, dumbfounded for a long second at the proffered wrist in front of him. Wyll expects an accusation of being no fun. Astarion pouts a little, though there’s an amused smile underneath. “You’re certainly full of surprises, darling,” he murmurs, his voice brushed with a dry wistfulness that Wyll doesn’t miss.

It isn’t the outcome that Astarion expects -- he’s played his cards so well that he’d wholly anticipated the needy little devil to be his tonight. No matter. Progress is progress, and this is certainly a promising development.

Astarion delicately grasps the man’s wrist, recognizing the clean and unmarred skin repaired by Halsin’s magic just above, sharp in contrast to the other scattered scars that seem to speckle the rest of Wyll’s body. His hands are gentle and eerily cool in a way that makes the vulnerable warlock suppress a shiver. The vampire’s mouth lowers to the dark skin and deliberately draws in a stream of his volunteer’s scent across his palate. The seconds drag on as the hunter seems to search for the precisely perfect spot to feed. Bashfully, Wyll considers asking him to get on with it -- but in the moment before he starts to gather the courage to, Astarion’s crimson eyes lock with his and he presses a whispering kiss against Wyll’s flesh.

The fangs follow sharply, though they sting more needle-like than blade, this time. The icy flash, focused into two points that blend into one frigid haze, fades quickly and painlessly away. Astarion’s eyes roll back and fall shut with a satisfied shudder, a suppressed groan. Golden and warm and hot like the Hells, even more so than last time. He feels it flush through his limbs as it enters him, flows through his body in a wave of singing elation. His grip on Wyll’s wrist tightens, then swiftly eases, mindful and in control.

Wyll swallows hard and leans his head back into the rock again. Closes his eyes. Despite himself, the closeness is comforting. Through the thin stream of connection through the tadpoles, he feels the rush of Astarion’s satisfaction, warm and delightful, so stark in contrast to the tang of bitter fear he’d felt before. A fleeting impression of copper ghosts in the confines of his mouth, so real he can almost taste it. The drain is subtle, gradual, soothing. Like the comforts of a bath slowly smoothing out the tension in his muscles. He could fall asleep like this, though he knows the risks of that.

Astarion stops himself a mere moment before Wyll begins to consider asking him to. Fangs unsheathe themselves neatly, but he lets his mouth linger warmly for a long moment. A caress of the tongue, soft and yielding around the punctures, giving the wound a brief chance to clot before easing back. He pulls his lips away, but lingers near, and Wyll can see the rose wash already blooming across Astarion’s cheeks.

They are still so close. Wyll’s thumb, still so near to Astarion’s features, drifts to gently trail across the underside of the elf’s chin. A soft, fleeting touch, painfully tender. The thumb gingerly retraces its path in an enduring, lightly affectionate brush.

Whatever calculated, sultry quip Astarion had prepared and been about to offer dies abruptly on his lips. His chest tightens, and without thinking, he pulls sharply away and onto his feet as if stung. Bile and scorn rises unexpectedly in his throat. “I-- Thanks,” he manages, flustered, and strides away.

Wyll watches after him with a stunned blink. And then the lowest of chuckles. His fingers ghost across where Astarion’s lips had been, still numb. Much better than last time. Perhaps he can trust the spawn with his neck again. Ah, Hells. Surely that’s the vampire saliva in his system talking again.

He sighs and raises his fingers to massage his temple, and becomes terribly aware of the result of the heat at his core. Arousal -- another thing he’s sure Astarion can scent on him. Embarrassing. How long has it been, since he…? He supposes he is only human, after all.

The warlock keeps quiet watch, idly tracing his fingers along gently broken skin, until Karlach wakes to relieve him.

Chapter 4: Scent

Chapter Text

Wyll’s heart races. His skin crawls. The dissonance of his discomfort rings with a volume that prompts his tadpole to squirm within his skull, as if to writhe away from it. There’s a reason why when the party ventures to the Grove for supplies nowadays, Wyll always has a convenient excuse to stay back at camp -- weapons that need sharpening, armor that needs oiling, meals that need preparing.

The gate of the Grove looms before him now and he feels, frankly, faint.

They were so kind to him. When he had stumbled from the wreckage of the ship, the refugees had welcomed him with open arms and boundless generosity -- a people who had lost everything to Avernus so willing to share the little they have left..

And now, he returns to them, freshly twisted by a devil’s touch where he had not been before. A gift one can only gain from a patron of the Hells.

Horns, scales -- on their own, they are morally neutral features, and on others, ones he can idly appreciate. Wyll feels no disgust or animosity when he looks upon the handsome sharp features that define Zevlor, or Alfira’s radiant-sparked eyes, or Rolan’s elegantly twisting horns. They are born with them, they are a part of them as much as the shape of their ears and the bridges of their nose. Tiefling parents coo over every ridge and horn and tail tip with adoration and love, searching for the parts of themselves in their beloved little ones. But Wyll’s are a ghastly, unsettling facsimile, undeserving of such admiration. Something not quite human or tiefling, but undeniably fiendish.

While he does not regret an ounce of the decision that let him save the Gate, Wyll has always avoided openly discussing the specific nature of his patron. It is easy enough to let others assume that the power that crackles through him derives from a being more fitting of his virtues. The tiefling refugees surely assume as much.

But now, it is laid bare. They will know the moment they look at him that his pact is with none other than a fiend. The very same devils of Avernus that dragged Elturel into the depths and took everything, everything from them. Just imagining their hurt, their betrayal, sears his very soul with shame and dread.

“You doing alright there, soldier?” Karlach’s voice breaks him out of his doe-eyed freeze. Wyll swallows and nods mutely at her, and musters the courage to hail the gate to be raised. He bites down the second surge of dread that shreds through his throat when he sees the refugees gathering their convoy behind the raising gate.

They stride within and Zevlor glances up from his work and up to them. His face lights up, but it only takes a moment for his eyes to land on Wyll and falter. The Blade wishes he could sink into the floor, but instead manages a steady greeting, though it takes monumental effort to do so: “Zevlor.”

The shock finishes its bloom of concern and uncertainty on Zevlor’s features.“By Dhelt's virtue, the Blade of Frontiers?” The name makes Wyll’s throat close up tight. A reverence lingers in his tone that lingers on the precipice of breaking. “What's happened, Wyll?” A strain of anguish brushes his question.

He swallows hard, averts his gaze. Catches Astarion’s eyes fixed upon him in his peripherals and forces himself to look back with his gleaming red eye. “I paid the price of angering the wrong devil.”

Zevlor pulls in a wistful sigh. “Believe me -- I understand better than most.” His voice softens with a tender understanding. A gift, all things considered. It takes the edge off of Wyll’s pain, but the Warlock sees the way that Zevlor’s eyes linger upon him. He maintains the willpower to not wilt beneath the scrutiny.

The Hellrider moves on, thankfully. And he thanks them; a forward scout had notified the refugees of the goblins’ defeat. Words of hope and celebration follow, but Wyll isn’t quite there.

A muted blanket settles over the world around him. His gaze scrapes up from the ground and everywhere it lands, he feels uneasy eyes sharp upon him. Zevlor has shown him a mercy, but it is not that easy to cleanse it all away for the others. His heart thunders in his chest, a rabbit-like beat. Blood pounds in his ears. His conscience threatens to turn to ash within his skin and leave a husk behind in his stead. Somewhere, he thinks he hears the harsh peal of Mizora’s laughter. He winces around the Stone of his false eye.

Something cool brushes his hand. He blinks, pulled from his reverie, and looks up to watch Astarion stepping past him. The pale elf’s voice cuts through the din. A light tone, a faux chuckle. “No, dear, I think we’ll be quite alright until then. We have some business to take care of further in the Grove, after all.” Responding to a question that Wyll missed.

One could almost assume the brush of their hands had been an accident. But no, almost nothing is an accident with Astarion. He’d come to Wyll’s rescue, and he feels a hint of relief, though tension still holds his body tight. His thoughts rattle and echo skittishly around in his skull.

“Many thanks, Zevlor,” Wyll says with a warm smile as he steps back into his body. And he blinks down dumbfounded at the pouch offered to him, jingling with gold and what little they have to reward them with. Aghast, he looks back up. Shakes his head and forces it back into the tiefling’s hands. “No. Take care of your people.” Then he shuffles the group away, eager to move on from the prying eyes.

Astarion drops back by his side with a wistful sigh. Wyll expects him to acknowledge the stupor Astarion had saved him from, perhaps mock him for it, but it’s as if it’d never happened. “We worked hard for that, you know,” Astarion complains. “What’s the harm in accepting a little gift here and there? A little payment, even?”

Well, things may change constantly around them, but one thing never does. Incredulous, Wyll shakes his head. “From refugees, Astarion? Really?” The warlock is disappointed, and it adds one more dizzying feeling to the spinning thoughts in his head. He’s not himself.

Astarion rolls his eyes. “From anyone, darling. People don’t normally work for free, you know. Even they knew that.” The rogue scoffs, kicks his foot idly at the dirt on his next step. The condescension grates at Wyll fiercely, but not more than what comes next.

“Take that little pact of yours for example...”

Wyll stops abruptly. From behind him, Astarion can’t see the twitch of the snarl that threatens to rend Wyll’s features, and can't see the warning sign flashing in alarm to tell him that he needs to stop.

“To wield her power, you do her dirty work. And if you don’t, you pay. Everything has its price. Funny how that works, hm?”

It is the wrong thing to say. With uncanny reflexes, with a near-monstrous speed and accuracy, Wyll turns on him. He takes a swift and challenging step into Astarion’s space, the veins of his neck twitching with hot anger and restraint. “Do not presume to lecture me about price, Astarion--” he begins, but the words die on his lips when he sees.

Astarion’s red eyes fly wide in the moment before he winces and recoils. Pale arms float in front of himself, flinching up defensively, the co*cky composure lost in an instant. A strenuous headache throbs in their skulls and Wyll gets a taste of the man’s fear: a vision of himself looming with a flashing crimson eye and unbridled fury, and to Astarion poised as if he were about to strike. It’s all he gets before Astarion wrestles control of his tadpole and shuts Wyll fiercely out.

The anger and rage fizzle to smoke. Wyll’s look softens, and he steps back. “Astarion,” he breathes, but the elf is already retreating, eyes distant, biting back his terror with a swallow. Wyll sees him shut down, bringing up the mask.

Hard, dry: “Have fun with the Druid.” The vampire turns and strides away back toward camp.

Wyll heaves a heavy, broken sigh, his hand cradling his forehead. “Gods,” he utters weakly, guilt washing up his throat like bile.

Lae’zel’s voice sounds beside him. “Tch. The hyena provokes the lion, yet flees at its first snarl.” She looks to Wyll. “The leechling deserved it.” He knows that coming from Lae’zel, it’s an attempt at comfort, but it doesn’t make him feel any better. He shakes his head.

“It is more than just that. I was angry, but he thought I was going to-- Hells, but I would never--”

“Hey, soldier,” Karlach soothes from his other side. “Look, we know. And I’m sure Fangs will know that, too. Just give him a bit.” She pauses. “I know things are running a bit hot. We know it’s… hard, for you, coming back around here when... Y’know.” Karlach hadn’t missed Wyll’s drifting, either. It makes him feel worse, because he doesn’t want her to think that it’s a reflection on her, or the way he sees her, or anything else.

Wyll, more than anything right now, just wants to be alone. He wants to snap his fingers and disappear into smoke like Mizora. But he presses them on, distant but solemnly fulfilling his duties until they’re slated to return to camp to prepare for the festivities of the night.

Of course, there’s no sign of Astarion when they return. A few tieflings accompany them to help set things up, and Wyll helps where he can. He swallows down his uncertainty and tries to chat with them as they work, but even without his own guilt, their glances at him are still uneasy, furtive.

He takes an offered bottle of wine and heads out into the woods on his own. More than anything, he just needs time to himself.

Lae’zel is right, in some ways. Astarion had been needlessly cruel. He’d provoked him at the wrong moment about the wrong thing, and stumbled his way into the path of Wyll’s lost control. He feels awful for it.

Normally, Wyll would be able to deflect the bite of Astarion’s criticisms with an easy shrug or a crafted retort. It’s fun, sometimes, to whet his wit and sharpen the more subtle weapons he’d been brought up to use when needed in a noble’s court. Their banter is stimulating, and though Astarion projects aloofness in every off-handed bite, each one reveals something about him anyway, oftentimes things he will never admit himself outright. The elf shreds up his emotions behind a ceramic mask and lets loose the scattered slivers of the things he cares about whenever he opens up to speak. It’s fascinating, a puzzle that Wyll dances around to try to figure out as he collects the discarded clues.

But this is not the way he’d wanted these pieces to fit together. The easy bravado on those delicate features had withered into terror and in that moment, Astarion had seemed so small. Like a tormented pet, he’d winced away from the first sign of explosive aggression, fearing a strike. It makes more sense now -- the fear in the flickers of their connection is not borne of the light. It is borne instead of the dark shadow that dragged him kicking and screaming away from it. A figure haunts him -- no doubt his prior master -- porcelain features, raven hair, sharp scarlett eyes. It is the last thing he wants to remind Astarion of. Heavy with guilt, Wyll drearily sips at the dry red from camp.

As the sun begins to blaze in its steady descent from the sky, he hauls himself to his feet. The gentle buzz and solitude soothes his nerves enough to head back. And he wants to make sure Astarion is at least there. Maybe with Wyll gone, he’ll actually enjoy himself.

The cheerful mood filters through the trees as he gets closer. The camp bubbles with firelight and laughter. He hears the telltale notes of one of Alfira’s tunes and the excited chatter of the crowd. As he steps into the clearing, he instinctively draws his shoulders back and raises his chin, holds an arm in stately poise across his midriff, drawing attention away from the bottle of wine still grasped in the other.

The alcohol buzzes low and warm at the bottom of his thoughts, a good blanket to stifle the doubt. He makes easy, gentle rounds. He can still… detect the unease, the flicker of uncertainty when he approaches a tiefling, but they hide it well enough for his sake after the first slip. Wyll could… almost enjoy himself, perhaps with a little more wine. But after slipping control once today, he doesn’t want to loosen his grip on his senses just yet.

And he doesn’t see Astarion, which worries him. He paces the missing vampire’s tent for a moment, trying to decide what to do. In old hunter habit, he stops trodding on the dirt and instead looks to it, scouting the surrounds of the strewn-together pitch for…

He spots Astarion’s footsteps -- the vampire had strode past his small encampment and into the undergrowth.

Wyll folds his arms behind him and steps carefully after the impressions in the dirt. He picks after them quaintly, and with a touch of inebriated amusem*nt, curious to see if the famed monster hunter can follow the tracks of a vampire spawn. He shoulders easily through the underbrush, trailing after bits of disturbed underbrush and soil.

A thrum of self-assuredness flows through him. Even with a little bit of alcohol, he’s able to follow a track that others by this point may have lost. He comes to a clearing dimly aglow with the half-moon’s light. Astarion leans against a tree at the clearing’s edge, eyes closed peacefully, with a deep serenity that Wyll isn’t used to seeing spread gently across his features. Were he closer, maybe he’d take a bit to admire the scenery, but the last thing he wants is Astarion to wake from his trance and find Wyll staring.

“Astarion?” he queries, voice quiet to try not to surprise him. Of course, it doesn’t work as well as he’d like -- the vampire startles out of his elven meditation and jumps to his feet, a hard scowl cleaving away the serenity on his face. It softens a little, though, when he realizes who it is. Wyll is touched by that.

“Oh, well, look who it is.” Softening or not, Astarion’s lips are still drawn tight and he folds his arms, tense, and looks away. “Come to, oh, I don’t know, lecture me? Fetch me for your little party?”

“No.” Wyll stops his easy approach a few feet away to give him ample room. He noted the “your little party” bit, as if the party wasn’t for Astarion too, but allows that one slide for now. “I came to check on you. In truth, I was worried about you.”

Astarion glances back over, gaze thick with scrutiny, trying to decide if Wyll is playing some kind of joke on him. Usually, people only go looking for him when they want something from him. A lock to pick, a favor to ask, a body to use.

After a pause, he gives a short bark of a laugh, incredulous. But his tone is low, still a bit uncertain, and maybe a bit incredulous when he says: “Oh, you’re serious, aren’t you?” He turns to properly face him. An opening, a chance.

“Of course.” What a strange thing to ask. What… a sad thing to ask, really. It makes the guilt weigh all the heavier. “I--” Wyll lowers the sight of his good eye. “I wanted to apologize.”

His companion blinks at him. “Really, Wyll? You’re here to apologize to me?” Another sharp, short bark of laughter. “And, what, my dear, do you have to apologize for? Growing a spine, for once in your life?”

The insult reflects off of him, oil on water. There’s the Astarion that he’s used to. But he won’t let the vampire rile him again. He steps a little closer, and doesn’t miss the wary flicker in red eyes. Wyll stops short and raises his palms in a gesture of peace. “For raising my voice, approaching you like that -- it was unacceptable. I am sorry.”

Astarion can hardly believe his ears, and it shows in the confusion that furrows his brow and narrows his eyes. Wyll, the Blade of Frontiers, apologizing for… shouting. Shouting at him for the first time after weeks of trying to get a rise out of him! Incredible. He pushes down the memory -- of the way his throat had seized at Wyll’s sudden approach, the way the world had fallen away and instead of Wyll, for a moment, it’d been Cazador, with blazing red eyes and a raised hand, ready to strike. It doesn’t matter. He’d deserved it.

“I can… take some yelling, darling. I’ll live.” His voice is quiet, contemplative. His eyes pull away again.

Wyll takes note -- another scrap, another opening, another little thing revealed even though he’s not sure Astarion means to. Beneath the bravado, beneath the bite, there’s a wounded creature huddled in the shelter of the brambles. He complains when Wyll offers to help someone, but when it comes down to it, he lends his blade and his expertise all the same. Astarion hadn’t hesitated in the Pens, when the party’s wellbeing and Wyll’s life had been on the line. Wyll hasn’t forgotten that.

He wants to know what’s beneath all of that armor, beneath the prickly spines he’s grown to keep people out. He wants to draw out that kindness he knows is there, the kindness he catches fleeting glimpses and glimmers of but never fully gets to take in.

He quietly bridges the remaining distance between them and seeks to rest his fingertips on the back of Astarion’s forearm. The elf’s head snaps back to him as Astarion suppresses a flinch, but doesn’t pull away -- simply meets Wyll’s eyes.

Wyll swallows, lets his buzz fuel a somber courage that drives his words. “I know you can. And I presume you’ve lived worse. But you shouldn’t have to, here,” he whispers, all softness, no edges. He’s prepared for the scowl when it comes, anticipates the reel in the moment before he’s about to snap back at him and jerk away, and Wyll intervenes swiftly to stop it. “You don’t have to deny that. I felt it through the tadpole.” He pauses, and is glad that Astarion hesitates before doing anything brash. So he hastily adds: “You don’t need to disclose it, either. Or anything about it. I just wanted to apologize.”

Astarion might as well be a statue for how still he’s fallen, for how he’s stopped his facade of breathing and simply stares. His thoughts turn in his brain, and all he can think is -- he doesn’t mean that, does he? Who would say something like that? What the f*ck is wrong with this man? Anyone else would be prying for more or pressing his buttons to figure out how that weakness could be exploited. The world turns in the same way that it has for as long as he’s known it, but somehow, Wyll seems immune to its spin. Immune to the way the world works even as he bears the weight of its costs on his shoulders.

Wyll waits, but after a few long seconds, worries that he’s overstepped. He slowly drops his touch away from the sleeve of Astarion’s shirt. The movement seems to pull the vampire from his stasis and the pale elf reaches hurriedly to grasp his falling wrist to halt the withdrawal. There’s a glimpse of something wild and desperate in his eyes that quickly corrects itself back into a smooth mask. Wyll catches it, though.

Astarion feels the healing punctures underneath his fingers. Mindfully, he readjusts his careful grip to turn the wrist upwards, examining them. Wyll watches his face, admires it in the caress of the moonlight now that he’s closer. Butterfly lashes, vaulting cheekbones, faded ruby eyes. The soft incredulity Astarion wears looks good on him. Wyll holds his breath, suppressing the content warmth he feels, cautious not to disturb the moment of vulnerability.

His touch is refreshingly cool, as always. Like a lovely night breeze. Sharp in contrast to the warm bubble of wine in Wyll’s blood. Mm. Neither of them say anything, but the silence is comfortable.

Almost reverently, Astarion fingertips ghost across the wound, still lost in thought, and Wyll gives a shudder. He smiles, a bit giddy. Ticklish. He goes to reach his other hand for Astarion -- for no good reason at all, he’s sure -- and remembers the bottle in it again.

“Care for a drink?” he asks lightly. In truth, Wyll won’t drink too much more. He likes where he’s at. He mostly wants to give Astarion the chance to celebrate and unwind a little. Wyll doesn’t want to push him too hard to talk about it. Like a stray, he will make his own decision in time.

The elf seems to return to his body, blinking up at him. He finally recovers and slips that sly smirk of a mask back on his features. It’s too soon, Wyll thinks, and the hazy part of his brain that swells with unrepressed courage wants that soft look back on Astarion’s face again. He wasn’t done basking in it.

“Don’t you have a party to go back to, darling? Someone will surely notice you’re gone.”

A troubled edge returns to Wyll’s expression. With the wine, he can insulate his own feelings, but he still can’t justify enjoying himself at the expense of the rest. About to set out into whatever perils await them, the tieflings deserved this last peaceful night. They didn’t need a devil lingering in their shadows, a reminder of what they were escaping from. He shakes his head.

“I love the people from the grove,” he says, “but I unsettle them deep down.” A pause. “As I seem to unsettle everyone, these days.”

Astarion’s grip on his wrist tightens slightly -- it’s subtle, almost imperceptible to Wyll were it not for Astarion’s thumb pressing against the scab of his prior feed. The healing punctures whine, but it is a mild discomfort, without sting or risk. He can’t tell if the shift is warning or comforting.

“Well, I suppose I know how that feels,” the vampire muses dryly. Wyll blinks at him, feeling quite foolish, and opens his mouth to express just that. Astarion interjects sharply: “If you’re about to apologize, don’t.” The warlock promptly shuts his mouth.

Astarion huffs an amused breath through his nostrils. “I swear, is there anything you don’t apologize for?” But follows it up with another hasty cut-in when he sees the look on Wyll’s face: “Don’t, that one’s rhetorical.” Astarion reaches for the bottle, jerks his head curtly toward the tree he’d been meditating against when Wyll had found him.

They settle down next to one another against the great oak. Astarion takes a sip of the wine, then mimics an awful retch. “You brought me vinegar. To kill me,” he accuses dramatically.

“You don’t like it?” Wyll queries, swiping it playfully back from him. He lowers his nose to its opening and rhythmically swirls it in the confines of its bottle to scent it. “I quite like a good, dry red. And this one…” He draws in another slow, calculated sniff, closing his eyes to focus on the profile of it. “Good notes. Black currant, a touch of spiced plum.” His nose twitches. “Anise, I think, too. A touch of woodsmoke from the barrel.” Wyll takes a sip now that he’s let it saturate his palate. “It has an edge, but it goes down smoothly enough.” He hums contentedly at the warmth of it as it washes through him. The heat of it pools in his gut.

Astarion shakes his head with a smirk. “I’ll admit, wine’s not really… my thing.” He purses his lips, a grimness flickering over him. The taste of wine, especially cheap red wine, reminds him too much.

Reminds him too much of faux smiles, eyes crinkling with boisterous laughter. Raised glasses, clinking goblets. Revelries that for some would be their last. Fleeting touches, soft and light, and then hands cloying for too long on the cool skin of his arm. The scent of it on their breath, the seepage of its scent from their skin, as he leads them away.

There’s a whisper of something that implies he may have liked wine when he was mortal, a magistrate, but those memories are so distant now that he’s not sure if they’re real. Things are… hazy. What’s his own and what was warped beyond recognition by Cazador is hard to tell, oftentimes.

Wyll watches him quietly. The distance eventually fades from Astarion’s eyes, shed with a blink, to meet Wyll’s gaze directly. Astarion expects the warlock to bashfully look away, but he doesn’t. So he lets the corners of his lips tug up again, eyes half-lidded as he stares at him from behind thick lashes.

“But maybe there’s something there that I’m missing. After all, you talk about wine like I talk about blood, darling.” A sultry warmth simmers in his tone.

Wyll tilts his head and hums thoughtfully. “Hm. I’ve never considered that, but I suppose it makes sense.” Entire professions of craft have been constructed around the decadence of sating typical humanoid hunger in unique and pleasurable ways. The pursuit of taste occupies much of human existence. It is comforting, strangely, to know that even vampires are still connected to their humanity in that way.

But the subject also invokes a different and dangerous curiosity. He considers what he must taste like. Divine -- his thoughts have lingered on those words in the past week more than he cares to admit. As he thinks about it, his fingers trace the punctures on his wrist -- an entirely unconscious motion. Wyll doesn’t notice that he’s doing it, but Astarion does. The pact-bound man brushes the marks in a way that’s almost… fond.

It does something strange to Astarion. He’s not hungry, but it provokes a kind of hunger all the same.

And though a bit tipsy, Wyll still notices the expectation in the silence that stretches between them. Astarion expects him to ask the obvious question that’s on his mind. Because who wouldn’t? “Alright then, I’ll bite,” he says, the pun completely unintended, but it gets a broadening smile from them both anyway. “Describe my taste like I would describe a fine vintage, then. Spare me no ruddy detail.”

An absolute predatory look consumes Astarion’s features, one that makes Wyll wonder for a moment what he’s gotten himself into. Like the night before, they are close, the space between them narrow and warm and electric with potential.

Astarion props himself up and away from the tree at their backs, eagerly angling more towards him. Red eyes flash with a sudden spark of energy, as if he relives the delight as he speaks about it. “Like fire, darling.” Breathless, reverent, but fiercely eager in its whisper. It makes Wyll’s heart skip a beat. “Molten gold complimented with the bite of copper. Thick, vibrant, and with an edge of smoke and ash.” Astarion scents the rush of blood to Wyll’s cheeks before he sees the flustered flush on his lovely scarred skin.

“And of course, as with any vintage, scent plays as great of a role as taste.” His nostrils flare and he closes his eyes, leans dangerously toward the crook of Wyll’s neck. He indulges himself shamelessly in the flourish of his smell as Wyll’s heart quickens further -- not with fear, but with arousal. “Petrichor -- the smell of earth after the rain.”

Astarion’s hand drifts down to bare Wyll’s healing wrist to the moonlight. He brushes feather-light along the veins, upward from the punctures and torturously up toward his shoulder. His touch leaves a trail of electric fire in its wake. Wyll drops his head back with a scrape of his horns on the bark at the unexpected shudder that tears through him, unintentionally bearing his throat for the vampire at his collarbone.

The wandering touch crosses and Astarion splays his hand more firmly across Wyll’s broad chest, paving the path for a whispering exhale across his collar. Wyll’s breath comes in more ragged heaves, now. “A mesquite hint of the arcane.” His growl rumbles deeply up from his throat, saturated with unhidden lust. “Salt, and smoke.”

“Astarion--” Wyll manages, and whatever composed interjection he intends instead comes out as a whine, the most painfully desperate sound he’s ever made, coaxed from him by the closeness and the breath on his skin. Astarion’s touch burns straight to his core. He needs-- Gods, what has he gotten himself into? “I--” He chokes on his own words.

“You said to spare no ruddy detail, darling.” His hand roams down Wyll’s chest and curls slyly about his waist, reeling himself in closer, drawing his nose delicately up from the ridges of his collarbone to tuck against his delightfully bared neck. He tastes the man’s arousal, siphoned in through another deep, indulgent breath, and Wyll groans, reaches for Astarion’s sleeve with his other hand without even thinking.

“My, what a needy little thing.” He clutches him closer and raises his mouth to breathe hotly into Wyll’s ear. “Surely the famed Blade of Frontiers, monster hunter extraordinaire, knows how good a vampire’s sense of smell is, hmm?” He nuzzles back down again into the delightful ridges of Wyll’s neck to inhale him in a way that he can tell drives the man mad. Wyll’s fist twists a desperate ball into Astarion’s sleeve. Astarion doesn’t give him time to respond.

“I can smell your arousal any time I come near, darling. Every drop of it,” he murmurs into Wyll’s neck, and lets his lips brush down Wyll’s bared throat. He is pleased when Wyll trembles but doesn’t resist. Astarion draws back so that he can flash Wyll a co*cky, sultry smirk. Wyll’s eyes are clamped shut, those beautiful lips gasping quietly for air, restraint and desire and bashfulness written all across his features. “And not just now. Both of the times I’ve fed from you. You don’t just tolerate it. You like it, don’t you?”

Wyll groans and seems to notice only now the fierce grip he’s anchored into Astarion’s shirt. He finally opens his eyes, pupils dilated with want, and drops his hand back to his lap, partially to cover where he is achingly hard and partially to keep himself from doing something stupid with it again. He can’t hide from Astarion with him mere inches from his face like this, watching his reaction expectantly, with that maddening smirk on his face. He can’t wriggle out of a response.

And so he musters all of his self-control and tries to wrangle and wield that same easy bravado with a breathless smile. “Liking a gorgeous man pressed against me? I am only human, Astarion.” His fingers idly tense and release in the empty space above his lap, physically restraining himself from reaching back up to him. It’s hard to just sit there with Astarion holding him like this, that arm anchored around his waist and that delicate but strong hand still splayed into the small of his back. It’s been years since he’s been this close to someone, and with Mizora’s curse upon him, he’d assumed it’d be another several before he would ever find someone else that would look at him that way. “It’s been -- a while, since…” He struggles with the words.

“Since you did something good for yourself?” Astarion prompts with a coy and plaintive tilt of his head. Well, at least he’s glad that it’s been a while, rather than never. At least there’s something akin to the idea of a hot-blooded mortal as he knows them to be in there somewhere. “Come, now. When’s the last time you let yourself go? Treated yourself to a bit of pleasure?”

He can’t believe he’s about to talk about this with a hard-on, practically cradled in the embrace of the most enigmatically gorgeous mythical creature he’s ever seen, with those lips mere inches from his own. Wyll feels faint from the rush of his blood to his head and down to his core.

“Years.” The admittance comes with a hard swallow. “I am nothing if not a man fixated on his pursuits.” He gives a sheepish huff of a chuckle, stealing a moment to look away and try to cool the heat, a moment of relief. “And it has never been my highest priority.”

“Then let me take care of you,” Astarion purrs easily, sliding that hand on his back temptingly lower to brush the band of his trousers. He won’t let him get away that easily. Wyll blushes, licks his lips. “You’ve been good to me, after all. I think you quite deserve a reward.”

That stops Wyll. That echoes in his brain, unsteady, a ring that doesn’t fit quite right. It pulls him from the dizzying desire and back to occupying the forefront of his thoughts. He teeters on the precipice of clarity and finds it just out of his reach. Wyll’s brow furrows as he tries to decipher it. Astarion is quick to mirror his confusion with a frown.

“Wyll?” he queries, uncertain, his grip around him loosening, suddenly unsure. The abrupt detached distance in Wyll’s eyes -- it reminds him too much of his own.

Wyll lets his hand drift free again, bringing it over Astarion’s cradling arm to rest on his shoulder. “You’re alright.” He grasps for what it is, feeling like he’s on the cusp of something important. And-- Oh. His eye focuses back on Astarion’s. “You don’t have to do this. You… don’t have to sleep with me or reward me--” He searches for how to say it. “--just because I let you feed.”

His thumb strokes Astarion’s shoulder soothingly. “I’ve handled my own desires for well near a decade now. And I can continue to do so.” Astarion simply stares at him as he continues. “The party is for you, too, you know. We can drink more terrible wine and just enjoy each others’ good company. You can feed from me, if you’d like. And then we can return to our own tents. Nothing has to change.”

So much of it makes sense to Wyll, now. For Astarion, it’s all transactional. It all has a price. He feels an immense sense of relief that he’d realized it in time, and curses himself for not seeing it sooner. He doesn’t want someone to be interested in him as… a price, an obligation to kindness. It’s something that Wyll gives freely, without strings attached. And Wyll wants… something real. Something warm and affectionate and someone interested in him, not only interested what he can provide or offer as a service. He stifles the lonely and mournful echo that sounds within as he realizes that this… wasn’t the start of that. But who was he kidding, thinking it was?

Astarion simply stares, mouth parted with silent hesitation, his expression still twinged with confusion. His mind stutters on repeat, a record that skips over itself again and again. He expects the axe to drop any second now, expects that kind look on Wyll’s handsome face to twist into a terrible sneer to mock him, expects cruel words to poison that gentle smile. And it's the first time he realizes -- truly, fully realizes -- that the freedom of his own decisions has landed him… right. Back. Here. It’s a sinister thing, cold and horrifying as it seeps in.

His grip on Wyll’s waist loosens, and Astarion pulls away. He rolls back to sit beside Wyll’s legs, staring down at his hands in his lap, his eyes glazed with distance once more. Wyll drops his hand and watches him attentively, not wanting to miss anything else. Astarion thinks he should say something, so that his silence doesn’t come across as an admission of guilt, doesn’t lend any credence to the truth lest it be used against him. But every word he reaches for slips through his fingers in a wisp of dark smoke.

“You really mean that, don’t you?” Astarion asks in a small, resigned voice. “This, and all of those things before, you meant that.” A whisper of incredulity.

“Of course.” Wyll thinks back to Astarion’s anger at how readily he’d saved Karlach, and realizes there’s something he should have said that he didn’t at the time. He reaches his hand out to gently back out to rest on Astarion’s knee to prompt the pale man to look up at him. “What I did for Karlach, what I did for the tieflings, what I did for the grove; I did because it was right to help them. And I’d do it again, ten times over, for any of them -- Gale, Shadowheart, Lae’zel.” He lets that sink in. “And I’d do it for you.”

There’s hesitation, and then Astarion screws his eyes shut and brings a hand up to knead his temples with a sigh. “You’re-- you’re a self-sacrificing fool, you know that?” he grumbles, trying to ignore the relief in his chest that unwinds as he realizes: he doesn’t need to do anything else to get Wyll to protect him. Perhaps he never needed to do anything at all. But a nagging voice in his thoughts reminds him there’s still time for that to change.

“I do.” Wyll’s response is annoyingly chipper and self-assured. He feels in control again, and lets out a sigh to dispel the tension in his chest. “So, what will it be? More vinegar?” Wyll allows himself a little cheekiness. “Or are you more in the mood for a wine-and-dine?”

That one pulls a laugh. “You’re insufferable. No, thank you. I’m still quite full from yesterday.” Astarion feels like he should regret it as soon as he says it. A spawn turning down human blood? What in the Hells is wrong with him? But the bitterness of regret doesn’t come. “I’ll let that lovely wrist of yours heal.”

Wyll fights with every fiber of his being to stifle and ignore the disappointment that wells within him. He hadn’t been offering the wrist. Gods, he can’t believe himself -- at the thought, and at the surge of arousal that threatens to rise back up. He desperately hopes that Astarion doesn’t notice.

Astarion continues. “And as for the wine… Eugh, no. I’d rather drink poison.” He shifts lithely to his feet and offers a hand for Wyll to help himself up with. “Come, then. There’s a party waiting for us, isn’t there? I can hear that awful bard from here.”

He’s pleasantly surprised at the offer. Going back is a bit daunting, but maybe with Astarion enduring it with him, he’ll be alright. “Very well.” He takes the offered hand with a grin and drags himself up with a grunt. “Perhaps we’ll find a nice rosé that better suits your… delicate palette.”

“Delicate!” The bark of clearly feigned outrage comes without a single edge of bite.

Their voices raise into the cool night as they return to camp. And when Wyll stumbles off to his tent as the camp falls quiet, the upward turn of his lips doesn’t quite go away even as sleep takes him.

Chapter 5: Eternity

Chapter Text

Wyll wakes at an ungodly hour, when the morning is still dark and the camp still deathly quiet. Between the wine and the water he’d downed to prevent a hangover, he badly needs to take a piss. He groggily drags himself out of his bedroll and into the treeline, keeping his steps careful as not to disturb anyone else.

Ensconced in the privacy of the underbrush, he begins to relieve himself. And that’s when the scent comes -- a burst of fire and brimstone and gritty sulfur.

In a blink, a thick void of oil yawns near him, and the figure of his patron emerges from it, her wings unfurling nightmarishly behind her as she arrives in the Plane.

Wyll curses the devil through his teeth, shame burning hot on his neck as he scrambles briefly to tuck himself away. Mizora is intentional with all things, and he knows that it was no accident that she sought him out in a compromising position. Her sultry little giggle confirms as much.

“Well, well, what a precious little night that was,” she purrs sarcastically, razor-sharp nails clicking thoughtfully on the gold of her amulet. “For a second there, I thought that the little pupster had finally found his bite.” She steps toward him, and Wyll holds his composure, stock still, though scowling nonetheless as she drags her claws across his back as she circles around him. “But no, the precious pet can’t bear the thought of upsetting someone. Well, at least not someone that gets his blood running hot like that pretty little vampire does.”

“Mizora,” Wyll warns, dangerously quiet, muscles of his jaw held impossibly tight. This damned stone. It weighs leaden in his socket. There’s a moment of familiar anguish, of despair, a grim reminder why intimacy has never been a priority for him. Because he always has a guest, and she’s always watching.

“Truly, Wyll, what are you even thinking?” she laughs, dripping with condescending malice. “That the hunter, the Blade of Frontiers, will get a happy ending with the first handsome beastie he finds?” Her fleeting touch across his back rounds up to trail down his arm -- the one that heals easily from Astarion’s last feed. He jerks it away. “That you’ll run off into the sunset together? Or, oops! Maybe not if the spawnling gets that thing out of his head. Then he’ll never see the sun again!”

Him pulling away does nothing to stop her from reaching out again. She raises wicked talons up to whisper across the scars on the right side of his face, the ones from the cultists, the wound that had taken his eye. “If I’d known you were in the market for a monster again, pupster, then maybe I would have dropped by sooner. I do so miss seeing you on your knees where you belong.”

Wyll steps sharply away, his first instinct being to twist his features into a snarl. But as her words lodge thorn-like into his skull, he feels a part of himself break away to escape them. Time slows to a dull crawl. The tense anger fades from the surface. Red eye glazes over, dulled by ragged resignation. His face falls. He stares at an unfixed point in the brush behind her.

Wyll falls into line. The fight has left him. “What do you want, Mizora?” His voice cracks, barely above a whisper. He knows he needs to tend to whatever she has for him. The sooner he does it, the sooner she’ll leave. She smiles, pleased.

“Oh, just to throw a bone to my little pet. Because you certainly won’t figure it out on your own. Your precious spawn is using you.”

His attention snaps back a little. Before last night, before what he and Astarion had talked about, the accusation would have worried him. Now, it just seems like a way for her to try to get a rise out of him, more than she already has. He stays silent, expectant.

“More than just for a meal, of course. But I know you won’t believe me, no matter how much I try my best to always look out for you.” Her words sing coyly. “So you should hear it from him yourself. Ask him about his master, and what his master used to have him do.”

There’s a natural twinge of dread. It eats away at the already-fraying edges. But stronger than it, than the fraying edges of his thoughts, is an urge to defend Astarion. “I know how vampires operate, Mizora. Whatever it is that he has done under the command of his master is not him.”

She giggles with fiendish mischief. “Well, then, you’d best ask him why he’s still doing it, hmm? To you, of all people!” And with a shrug of her shoulders, she folds her wings, and flames flicker at her feet. “Ta ta!” In a rush of smoke, she’s gone.

A frigid shudder shakes him in her wake. Damn it all. Gone is the peaceful content that he’d dared to enjoy, scooped out by Mizora’s claws, leaving a hollow cavern in his chest where the warmth once was. He makes his way back to his tent, despondent.

He lays in his bedroll, but cannot sleep. He stares at the wall and clutches his arms around himself, as if he can somehow curl tightly enough to warm the empty, cold space left behind. It’s been years since she’s dared to mention it. She’s done it on purpose, because she knows what it does to him. A part of himself separates and doesn’t return for a long while -- usually not until it’s coaxed back to safety. After hours, days, weeks. It puts him back in line.

The monster hunter is familiar with the mannerisms of a wounded animal -- on the hunt, and in a mirror. It is why he’d recognized it so easily in Astarion.

In the lonely confines of his bed, he hides the emptiness away from view.

That the camp sleeps in after the long night is a blessing. Wyll doesn’t get a single blink of rest in after he returns. When he hears the rest of the crew finally stirring in the late morning, he wearily drags himself from his tent.

He feels Astarion’s eyes upon him the second that he emerges, and he pointedly avoids the heavy weight of his gaze. In the privacy away from Wyll’s notice, Astarion easy smile falls to a troubled frown. He glances around the camp, but nobody else seems to be looking. They’re all grappling with their own hangovers and slow awakenings.

Wyll hears Astarion approaching and dread spears his chest with a cold blade.

“Wyll.” His cool touch graces the man’s arm. The warlock tries to muster himself to normalcy when he looks up, but it’s obviously not very convincing. “Wyll, are you alright?” Astarion asks, startled. A tremble of fear lingers at the edges of his voice.

Astarion had gone to trance for the night feeling like things… were okay. For the first time in a long time. Snug in the security, in the safety of a tentative hope. But Wyll emerges from his tent with a haunted look on his features so horrific that Astarion wonders if he’d dreamed the smile on his face the night before.

“You need not worry about me,” he musters, trying to channel his usual easy bravado with a weak smile and a swallow. “I’m quite alri--”

“Alright?” Astarion interrupts in an incredulous whisper. “You look like absolute mephit sh*t, and not just from a hangover. Are you--” His nose twitches, and he catches it then. Those soft eyes harden into fierce, enraged rubies and the vampire bares his fangs.

“That damned devil,” Astarion hisses, his grip tightening harshly on Wyll’s wrist, making him flinch. “What did she do?” He doesn’t wait for an answer. The venom flows. “I’ll f*cking flay her. She’ll limp back to Zariel carrying her own skin sewed up into a nice, cambion coat.”

Wyll blinks, bewildered. But he realizes that he’s a damned fool -- the sulfuric stench of the Hells is thick across his back and face where Mizora had touched him. If he’d wanted to hide it from Astarion’s sharp nose, he needed to wash it off before going back to his tent. But there’s no way he could have, really -- Wyll can scarcely remember it now, but by that point, he’d practically been a walking corpse shambling back to his bunk.

Oh, Gods. Wyll can’t do this right now, especially not in front of everyone. He can’t talk about this here and come out of the other side still intact. He hears Karlach striking up a conversation with a bed-headded Shadowheart. The camp is awake, and they’ll draw attention that he can’t hold himself up under, not if it’s attention all on him.

“It’s not--” He bites his way through the words as he tries to find the right ones. “She just came to berate me, her usual fare.” He tries to put forward a bit of humor, but it’s hollow. “The worst she did was catch me taking a piss. I couldn’t get back to sleep after. I’m fine, Astarion.”

Astarion scrutinizes him. He is not convinced, not by a mile, but it’s enough for him to release his grip on Wyll’s arm and give a relenting huff. He doesn’t believe him, but the others are starting to look to their unofficial leader so that they can get the rundown on Moonrise from Halsin. They’ll have to sort this out later.

Shadowheart is already on their scent, however. She wanders up as they head toward the druid and gives a wry smile. “Oh, no, have I stumbled into a lover’s quarrel?”

The look that Astarion whirls upon her with is absolutely venomous, alight with such vitriol that it makes even fearless Shadowheart pause and reconsider, though it’s far too late.

Astarion snaps. “Why, no, you haven’t--” Wyll winces at his tone, lilting with poisonous sarcasm. “--but you’d best stumble your way into your own f*cking business, before--”

“Whoa, whoa, alright. Let’s seeettttttle down now, fellas,” comes Karlach’s nervous laugh, seeking to step between them. The threat of her scorching touch is enough to immediately diffuse the potential of a violent advance from either of them. Shadowheart bristles. Wyll thinks it’d be a nice time to vanish into a gaseous form and drift back to his tent, but instead opts to avoid all of their eyes and heads toward Halsin.

Lae’zel’s insistence presses them towards the Mountain Pass. A selfish part of Wyll prefers the Underdark -- he’s always conscious of the possibility that the rules may change, as they have for Astarion once already, and would prefer it be in a place without sun should they shift once more -- but Halsin’s theory that Moonrise holds the cure is just that. A theory, with no certain solution. And Lae’zel seems certain that the creche contains their cure.

But Wyll tempers her insistence they go now -- there are still obligations to tie up. The goblins were not the only problem plaguing these parts. Wyll intends to scout the rest of the area, eager to proactively root out any threats before the Tieflings fully get on the road. Wyll is relieved at the chance to throw himself into his work after the way the morning shook him.

Their probe takes them south of the village raided by the goblins, and the neat thread he’s been following unfurls quickly into chaos from there. The elderly woman from the Grove turns out to be a hag, one that may have a prisoner, and a focused channel of his arcana breaks the illusion of the cheery wetlands down into a dreadful bog. They carefully pick their way to the hag’s cottage, skirting around the jagged silhouettes of traps in the water.

And it is there that Wyll smells blood on the wind. No, not quite, but something close -- a thick, syrupy clash of iron in his nostrils. He glances over to Astarion, whose eyes have narrowed with a particularly sharp look away from the cabin. Wyll follows his eyes and spots him. A Gur, a monster hunter.

Wyll is, frankly, ready to steer clear. He knows what his kind means for Astarion, having been that kind, and isn’t interested in engaging. But the vampire strides straight toward him. The warlock lets out a chiding hiss and hurriedly follows after him.

Astarion’s disgusted look as he approaches has already drawn the stranger’s attention, but Wyll has a feeling that the venom in Astarion’s face is not borne from the smell. “Powdered iron-vine. An old hunter’s trick -- most monsters will think twice before making a meal of me.”

“You’re a monster hunter? I’m surprised -- I thought all Gur were vagrant cut-throats.”

Wyll shoots him a one-eyed glare. They cannot be provoking this man. By some merciful grace, however, the hunter -- Gandrel -- seems to take it in stride. But Wyll doesn’t like that Astarion has brought the attention of the threat onto himself, and so Wyll positions his own body forward as the one to be addressed, changing the subject.

“And so what quarry brings you to this place?” Wyll asks pointedly, nodding his head to their grim surroundings. He’s not sure if the hunter knows what it truly is, and so he doesn’t specify.

Astarion can’t help himself. “Something terrifying, no doubt. Dragon? Cyclops? Kobold?” The vampire revels in his immunity to the sun, flaunting the same trait that had thrown Wyll off of his trail to poke and prod a monster hunter.

Wyll is tired.

“Nothing so dramatic. I’m hunting for a vampire spawn.”

They freeze.

The easy confidence in Astarion’s features falters. Wyll catches it in his peripherals, and has to restrain himself from moving more obviously in front of the elf. Careful not to arouse suspicion, he simply raises his brow with feigned interest as Gandrel continues to speak.

Hearing Astarion’s name on the hunter’s lips only makes things worse. He has orders to capture the spawn, bring him back to the Gate.

Wyll’s blood pounds in his ears. A Gur searches for Astarion by name. Requesting the help of a hag to find him, no less. His mind races. Whatever he did can’t have been recent, or they would be looking for a spawn immune to the sun. No, whatever he did had to have been before the mindflayers abducted him.

That fact almost makes it worse. They are days away from the Gate, across the barrier of the shadowlands, and yet this hunter is here, searching for him. Mizora’s words sneer in the back of his thoughts, at odds with the fierce protectiveness that surges through Wyll at the thought of this hunter searching for Astarion.

What did he do? What did he do?

“A formidable foe,” Wyll responds easily, as if he speaks about the weather. “We must be going, but good luck with your quest.” Fortunately, Gandrel lets them go, none the wiser.

Wyll doesn’t take any chances. He leads them straight back to camp.

Exhaustion tears at every fiber of his thoughts, but he beckons Astarion into the privacy of the woods with him anyway. He doesn’t want to do this, not now, but he has to, or the seed of doubt that Mizora planted in his thoughts will devour him whole.

Astarion follows him, silent and grim.

“You know what I’m going to ask,” Wyll starts as soon as the babble of the stream disguises their voices from any listeners.

The vampire fixes him with a hard look. “Spell it out for me, why don’t you?”

“He’s not looking for just any spawn -- he’s looking for you. What did you do, Astarion?”

Astarion bristles fiercely. “I didn’t do anything!” He deflects: “Do you really not trust me, Wyll?”

Wyll sets his features to stone. “Believe me, I want to. More than anything,” he responds, wistful, but honest. “But it’s difficult to nurture and maintain that trust when you don’t tell me anything, Astarion.” A current of frustration undercuts his words. “If it weren’t for these damned things in our heads, I don’t think I’d know a single thing about you.” The most he’s gotten from Astarion has been at the whims of the tadpoles, and he is certain that every single time, it’s been an accident. Something the vampire didn’t want him to know, and wouldn’t have told him otherwise.

He continues. “But even then, I saw in my mind’s eye only flashes, fleeting impressions. I tasted your hunger, your fear, Astarion, as if it were my own. But never have you spoken of any of it to me.” As much as he’s tempted to, he doesn’t reach out to the pale elf. He needs Astarion to come to him on his own accord, not be soothed into it. “Something has to give.”

The vampire pointedly does not meet his eye. He simmers in silence, and Wyll gives him time to gather his thoughts, uncertain if he is burning down a fuse to an explosion, or waiting out the stubbornness right before the give.

“You’ve seen him, then. Through the tadpoles.” Astarion glances pointedly up at him. “Cazador.” He spits the name.

Wyll nods. Solemnly puts the name to the shadowy face in Astarion’s memories.

“A vampire lord in the Gate,” he explains slowly, quietly. “The patriarch of his coven. A monster, obsessed with power. Not political or military power, but power over people -- the power to control them completely.” A fierce disdain drenches his words.

The word monster sticks out at Wyll, sharp and glaring. For Astarion to use the word -- not in jest or snark, but entirely serious -- is telling. Two hundred years at the whims of such a beast. The ten years with Mizora as his patron dragged by slowly enough. Two hundred is simply so far out of his imagination that he cannot even comprehend it. A scale of unfathomable proportions, completely unknown to him.

A righteous anger rises in his gut. A monster prowls the Gate beneath his very nose. Does his father know? Does anybody? There’s a sudden urgency, panic, at the thought.

Mizora’s words itch at the back of Wyll’s mind. Ask him about his master, and what his master used to have him do. He knows about one, now, but not the other. But how do you ask about someone’s centuries of being at the whim of a man like that?

The answer is simple. You don’t

“It was the Gur that attacked me, the night I was turned.” Astarion scowls. “They didn’t take well to a ruling that I’d handed down to one of their own, as magistrate.” The animosity makes more sense. While he can’t blame him, he hopes that beneath the fear, Astarion knows that those men are long gone. “They beat me to death’s door when Cazador appeared. He chased them off and offered to save me. To give me eternal life.”

He nods. And Astarion doesn’t even need to say it for Wyll to know why he chose the way he did. Part of him wonders -- what did Astarion know, when he made the choice? Did he realize what he was signing up for? But they’re meaningless questions, ones he’d never ask. No amount of knowing prepares you for anything when you’re on the precipice of death.

“It was only afterwards I realized just how long ‘eternity’ could be.”

A chilly silence stretches in the space between them. There’s nothing that Wyll can say, really. He imagines it, and it’s the best he can do. Day, after day, after day. Without your own will, without seeing the sun, without being able to cross a river or a threshold of your own volition.

“A lord commands, and the body of a spawn reacts,” Wyll muses quietly. He wants him to know that he’s not new to the nature of vampires and their spawn. That he doesn’t have to drag himself through explaining the mechanics of it to some layman.

Astarion looks up. Considers him for a moment, and then nods.

“Sometimes he’d order us to submit to torture.” Low, mirthful. And then slow, mournful: “Sometimes he’d… have us torture ourselves.” A pause. “Whatever his weathervane mood settled on.”

More quiet. What does one say? There are no words that can amount to anything, that can do anything.

Wyll’s lips purse. Underneath all of it, he still hasn’t answered the question that’d started the whole thing. “And… the Gur?”

Red eyes snap back over to him, and Wyll sees the anger on his face, the wall that slams back down to block him out. “Why, was that not enough for you?” Astarion asks bitterly.

Wyll feels anguish, frustration. It is a harsh wound next to the emptiness dug out inside of him this morning. Did Astarion think that he would just forget? Wyll had been ready to draw his blade on the hunter if Gandrel recognized his target. He’d have taken a life, if it’d been necessary. For him. Wyll can’t just move on from that.

“Astarion, he’s not here looking for Cazador. He’s not here miles away from the Gate searching for just some random spawn on the prowl. He’s looking for you. By name.” Wyll fixes him with a hard look. “There has to be a reason.”

“Cazador is the reason. He’s the only one who would know to send the Gur after me.” Astarion’s stare burns defiantly back at him. “It’s a warning. A reminder of that night, and that even in the middle of nowhere, he can reach me.” His eyes drop. “So, is that all?”

The explanation is as good as any. And though a million more questions whirl in his head -- what else did Cazador have him do? Why does Cazador want him captured, and not killed? -- he knows that none of them will be productive.

“Yes.” Wyll wants to apologize for having to dig, but worries it might exasperate Astarion more. “Just remember that I meant what I said last night. That what I did for Karlach, I’d do for any of you.”

He wants badly to reach out again. To take Astarion’s hands in his and make him look at him while he says it, to make sure he understands and believes him. But they dangle uselessly by his side, afraid that he’s made things too fragile to risk it.

Astarion gives a sad, wistful scoff. “What you did for Karlach, you won’t be able to do for me. Not against a vampire lord.” He turns on his heel and heads back toward camp, leaving Wyll alone to contemplate that thought alongside his weariness.

Wyll should rest. He does not. He files the neglected partition of his conscience to a tidy compartment away from view and presses on, his mood decidedly grim. He can’t afford to linger at camp. If Gandrel is truly about to seek the hag’s help, then they have two options: to deter him before he asks for it, or to eliminate the hag.

When they arrive, Gandrel is nowhere to be found, and Wyll simply hopes they aren’t too late.

Ethel drops her disguise, disappears deeper into her lair. Every instinct screams in protest at following such a creature into her own den. Wyll knows better. But he’s not hunting alone, and they have to do this.

Emotionally, it is absolutely grueling. The path into the lair parades them past victims of the hag, and while it steels his resolve in his decision to eliminate her, the stress of ensuring his friends make it out of this alive eats at him. By the time they get to a cavernous room with Mayrina suspended in a cage, he feels entirely separated from his body. He doesn’t even negotiate with the hag -- he just feels his body pull on the frothing, crackling power of his patron. Mizora will surely have something to say about it later, but he is frankly beyond the point of caring.

Wyll has never fought a hag firsthand, only researched them in case he should ever meet one. And he immediately understands that he’s made a grave error, coming into its lair with his mind in this condition.

The first time a sickly ray of energy blasts past him and he hears Astarion’s choked cry of nausea, Wyll makes the mistake of whirling to help him. The vampire waves him off, but the hag notices the immediacy of his concern with sharp, beady eyes.

“Oooh!” she cackles. “Sweet on that one, are you? Why, let me take care of him properly, then!”

Wyll’s blood runs cold. The hag splits off into an array of smoky illusions, and he can do nothing but watch as every one of them turns their necrotic magic onto Astarion. Wyll’s only recourse is to blast his own back at them as Karlach and Lae’zel bear down on the true hag he reveals. When the witch finally falls, he rushes back to where his companion had taken shelter against the rocks.

Astarion doesn’t move. Necrotic burns eat away at his flesh faster than his vampiric regeneration can knit them. A potion barely stabilizes him.

Wyll ignores Mayrina’s cries of anger when Karlach hits the switch to let her down. Lae’zel scoops up Astarion and without hesitation, they head back to camp. When they get there, Shadowheart swoops in to take a look, eventually shooing away those that crowd them -- Wyll included.

A million miles away, Wyll paces silently on the edge of the camp. What a foolish thing he’s done. He thought that by not letting Mizora get the best of him, by pushing on and not letting her affect him in that way. In pushing himself, Wyll has endangered everyone else. This is his fault.

Movement on the other side of the clearing catches his attention. Shadowheart emerges from the tent. Wyll is there in an instant. Astarion is stable, but the hag’s magic is not easily shaken. The rot still clings to his flesh. A mortal man would be dead, unable to stop the progression of the flesh sloughing away, but Astarion’s body manages to keep it barely at bay. They will have to see how he fares through the rest of the evening and the night.

Trembling, Wyll sits next to Astarion’s bedroll, huddling small with legs crossed and shoulders slumped.

Astarion looks worse than Wyll has ever seen him. His resting eyes recess back into hollow sockets, bony and gaunt, his body sapping away the vibrancy that he’d earned over the past couple of weeks in an attempt to heal him. The porcelain pale of his skin, once flushed with pink underneath, takes on a dreary, lifeless gray. Unconscious, the elf doesn’t habitually mimic breathing as he normally does. Wyll isn’t even quite sure how to tell if he’s alive or not, if it weren’t for Shadowheart reassuring him that he is.

Wyll wipes away the tears threatening his eyes as the entire day comes bearing down on him. f*cking Mizora. He’d let her get to him, and in turn, he’d let the hag get to Astarion. The cavern in his chest rings more hollow than ever. His hand raises to clutch at the fabric at his breast, as if he can reach in and soothe the hurt and coax the part of himself back that fled this morning. It is an agonizing, lonely thing.

He’d still been young when Mizora became bored of simply sending him after targets. He’d been nineteen, still nurturing the heartbreak of his expulsion from the Gate. Wyll had been completely and utterly alone, severed from his family, his home, and everything he’d ever known. All that remained had been his powers, and the way they let him keep others from falling beneath the tides of fate. The price he’d paid felt worth it, as long as his father was safe, and as long as he had that agency, that ability to extend his hand and pull someone else out of the dark.

It was all-too-easy leverage for a cambion looking for new and novel ways to use him. She commanded his body as a weapon, so why not as a tool for her own pleasure?

Of course, she’d stopped after a few years, when he’d teetered on the edge -- on the edge of ceasing to use his blade for others and instead contemplating using it on himself, a dark void threatening to consume everything. Mizora still had too much use to still derive from him as a weapon to let him resign himself to the fate of a lemure in the Hells.

Much like Astarion, he didn’t realize how long eternity could really be. And to think he’d been ready to leave it after not even a decade, even when he still had other options. He bites back the revulsion, the disgust he feels with himself just thinking about it. Hells, at least he had the leverage to stop Mizora from using him in that way, even if wielding it had been unintentional. As a spawn, it isn’t even something Astarion could reach for, before. What a pitiful, sad thing Wyll is.

Two hundred years. It still makes him reel thinking about it.

“Darling,” comes the croak, snapping Wyll from his puffy-eyed stare down into his lap. “I fear you look worse than I probably do.”

Wyll’s eyes sting as he looks up at Astarion. The vampire’s eyes are half-lidded, as if keeping them open takes monumental energy. The warlock reaches out to gently rest his hand on his shoulder. “I’m sorry, Astarion,” he whispers, and it takes everything for his voice to not come undone into a tearful babble.

The elf rolls his eyes back up to the ceiling and closes them. “Always apologizing,” he says tiredly, though there’s a hint of amusem*nt to it. A bandaged hand crosses over to rest on Wyll’s. “What’s the damage? I feel like…” Astarion winces. “...how did you so gracefully put it? Like I’ve had three vampires have at me, rather than just one.”

Wyll gives a wry, embarrassed smile, despite himself. But it falters as he tries to explain. “Your body refuses to heal the way it should -- the hag’s magic eats into your wounds, like a powerful infection.”

“Mm.” His lids crack back open. Wyll sees the dazed disorientation in muddy red orbs, even as Astarion twitches with a suppressed thrash of discomfort. He isn’t well. Whatever the vampire equivalent of being feverish is, he’s almost certain that’s what Astarion is.

The injured elf’s grip on his hand tightens, then loosens and moves up his wrist. His touch is cold, not just cool. Like a corpse proper. Wyll flinches.

His hand releases once more, and moves further up again in the same manner, and Wyll realizes he’s chasing the warmth of Wyll’s body heat. The warlock leans back to crane his free hand to the pile of blankets at the foot of Astarion’s bedroll, hastily bundling him up.

“So polite,” Astarion murmurs, words slightly slurred with delirium. He tugs at Wyll’s arm. “C’mere.” Wyll furrows his brow down at him, trying to figure out what he wants, and then he realizes -- oh. Blankets retain body heat, and don’t work all that well if there isn’t any to retain in the first place. Blushing, he lowers himself next to Astarion, and sidles delicately next to him beneath the covers, lending his body heat to the air, but being agonizingly careful to not make contact, really.

Gods, he thinks, do not let Karlach walk in right now. The whole camp will know about this in five seconds flat if she waltzes in and sees them like this. The threat of the gossip already burns at the tip of his ears. Though, honestly, Karlach is probably slightly better suited for this job. Or, she would be, if there wasn’t risk of further injury on a slip-up.

The vampire shudders and carefully curls near him. He keeps to himself, despite the overall closeness, not reaching for him really in any other way. Wyll assumes that if his wounds didn’t inhibit him, he’d be in a fetal ball on the other side of the bedding. For now, the elf simply suffices with a huddle on his side, though he’s tender about his wounds. And as much as Wyll’s tempted to return his hand to rest comfortingly on him, he keeps them to himself. The vampire’s in no state to let him know if it’d be unwanted, and so he doesn’t take any chances.

The slow leech of warmth seems to soothe Astarion’s restlessness. Wyll closes his eyes and slows his breathing, folds his own arm beneath his head as a makeshift cushion. Nothing about this is particularly comfortable for him -- he lays half-on, half-off the roll, ramrod straight, just letting his body warm the air beneath the blankets. But Wyll doesn’t mind.

His breath shakes as he exhales, trying to let the darkness wipe away the ghastly vision of Astarion’s pallid face from his thoughts. Hearing him speak relieves him immensely, easing the tension he couldn’t unwind at seeing him that way. He wonders how long the hag’s magic will last, and if Astarion’s body will be able to keep up in the meantime, or if he’ll slowly wither away.

He’s not sure how long he’s been lying there -- minutes, half an hour, maybe -- when a somewhat obvious question hits him.

How long has it been since Astarion has fed?

He said last night that he hadn’t been hungry, but that doesn’t necessarily mean he’d been full. After today, he can only imagine he’s running on fumes, maybe without realizing it. “Astarion,” he whispers, and he feels the man stir slightly from his trance. “Do you feel like eating?” Given the state of him, he very well might not be up to it.

Astarion blinks up at him, groggy and wide-eyed. He wrinkles his brow as his thoughts reach to take stock of his aching body. The hunger hides beneath the pain and fatigue, but his attention brings it burning to the surface, even through the dizzy haze of the infection. It burns hotly through him, suddenly ravenous. He looks back up at him with a slow nod and a hesitant lick of his lips.

Wyll swallows hard. He carefully wriggles closer and upward to give Astarion easier access to his neck, still careful not to make more contact than they’ll need.

Astarion is surprised -- at most, he’d expected the offer of a wrist. But the sight of the infernal ridges of Wyll’s neck, bared so neatly to him, keeps him from asking any further questions. His mouth hangs slack, unbearably dry. His hand trembles with both weakness and anticipation as he gently snakes his arm underneath Wyll’s and drapes his hand down to just beneath his shoulders. Wyll makes room, holding his own arm up awkwardly for a few moments, and then finally bringing it to rest on Astarion’s shoulder to invite him closer.

The vampire is breathing again, though perhaps only so that he can inhale his scent as he tucks his face against his neck. Wyll resists the urge to flinch away from the elf’s freezing touch. His heart thunders in his chest unbidden, and he controls his own breath, mindful.

Icy lips latch onto the healed point where Astarion fed the very first time, all of those nights ago. The bite follows soon after. Sharp and cold, his fangs sheathe themselves cleanly into the hot flesh of his neck.

It is nothing like the first time -- it is more like the last, surgically precise and terribly considerate. There is nothing at first, and then there’s that sensation that spiderwebs out from the point of contact on his neck. Without pain to roar above its whisper, he realizes: Gods, it’s like a high. A spreading euphoria, a tingling weightlessness. His breath hitches, and without realizing it, he pants softly above him. His hand on Astarion’s shoulder moves upward to spread his fingers into pale white curls, cradling the vampire’s nape in his warm palm.

There’s a groan against his neck, bordering on a whine. It’s drowned out by the almost lewd sounds of Astarion drinking deeply of him, lapping hungrily. Wyll clenches his eyes shut and tries to control his breathing, tries to control what those sounds that Astarion makes do to him. Now is not the time to lose himself.

He forces himself to focus on drawing his fingers in soothing strokes through Astarion’s hair until the frenzied gulps at his lifeblood begin to slow. That’s it, he nearly whispers, but his lips feel too heavy to form the words, the day’s exhaustion racing back up to greet him.

Astarion unlatches from him, a choked gasp bubbling from his throat as he does so. The grip of his hand into the back of Wyll’s shirt loosens as he gathers himself. He can already feel the energy blooming back through him, a sharp arrow of clarity cleansing away the feverish haze. Wyll doesn’t move yet, reactions dizzyingly slow. The pale elf takes the opportunity to dip back in to groom the oozing punctures softly with his lips until they clot. He is painfully aware of the tenderness with which Wyll’s thumb traces through his curls.

The touch slows as Wyll gradually begins to fade above him, and Astarion stiffens, but only for a moment. He uses his borrowed strength to tug the warlock the rest of the way into the bedroll, and disentangles himself from the handsome man, who’s already out like a light. Astarion rolls over, careful about his wounds, but he can already feel the flesh beginning to stitch itself back beneath the bandages.

He’d turned over, but Wyll’s hand still slumps upon his neck. Experimentally, Astarion leans his cheek into the clammy warmth in his palm. Closes his eyes and breathes in Wyll’s scent for a long while. But eventually, he delicately reaches up and returns Wyll’s hand to his side of the bedroll.

Astarion closes his eyes. Maybe it’s not so bad, to be cared for. Even if by a hopeless fool.

Chapter 6: Fire

Chapter Text

Astarion stirs from his trance that night before Wyll even turns over for the first time, needing far less rest than his mortal counterpart. He delicately extricates himself from under the blankets, ever-careful not to disturb him. But he doesn’t leave just yet. He simply watches Wyll and thinks.

The pall of sickness has left him. The hag’s waning magic proved no match for the fresh wave of strength from sating his hunger -- he’d provided, and his body had done the rest.

If Wyll hadn’t offered, he’d have had a long and miserable night. It’s embarrassing, really, that he didn’t think of it first. But there’s sense to be had in it; for centuries, he has existed on putrid rats and meager game, and that has always reflected in the pace of his body’s mend. He remembers plenty of times when even a human's healing far outpaced his own.

Leading up to the poem carved into his back, Cazador had starved him. And he had starved him for weeks after, guaranteeing it scarred so deeply that he can feel the ragged marks when he turns over.

He’s not used to the speed in which his vampiric form can mend him now, when he’s fed. With a bit of patience, he can watch it in real time. Astarion reaches and unwinds the bandages where his skin had been practically sloughing off before. The cloth falls away to reveal immaculate porcelain.

He flexes the hand experimentally. Perfect. As if the fight with the hag had never happened. Wyll, though, still bears a scrape across his temple, where debris from one of the explosions caught him. He squints at it. Did Wyll even tend that?

Vibrant red eyes trail down the handsome ridged cheekbones, across the knotted scars that mar them. A deep peace cradles Wyll’s countenance. The warlock always sports a bravado that he makes seem relaxed, but this is different. For once, he’s not looking at the mask of the Blade, but at the man beneath it. Wyll.

The infuriating fool. Astarion stifles a soft scoff and forces his eyes stubbornly away. It was that bleeding heart that had gotten Astarion into the position with the hag in the first place. And yet, simultaneously, that same self-sacrificing courage -- the deranged kind that offers to let a vampire feed from them -- saved him. There’s a warmth in his chest when he thinks about it that is downright uncomfortable.

He has him for Cazador, should the lord come. Hell, he’s certain that the moment they step into the Gate, he can ask Wyll to march straight to the palace to take him out, and the damned idiot will do it. But the idea of Wyll stepping into those halls makes his skin crawl with sickening dread. And realizing that makes him grit his teeth with frustration. Isn’t that the entire point of doing any of this?

It’s inconvenient, all of it. He hates it. He hates the earnest smile on Wyll’s face, and he hates the way his own body shivers beneath the gentle touch of those calloused hands on him. Every comforting brush, every mournful look creased between knitted brows; they make him feel warm and hopeful like he hasn’t in… decades, centuries. It’s infuriating.

Wyll stirs, and Astarion freezes, furtively glancing away in case the man opens his eyes and catches him staring. Luckily, the warlock settles back in, seemingly just readjusting around his horns in his sleep. Astarion rises to his feet and carefully navigates his way out of the tent and into the embrace of the cool night.

Shadowheart is awake, keeping watch, and her attention draws up from the fire when he steps out. She seems surprised when she realizes it’s him and not Wyll.

Whatever contagious brain rot Wyll’s sappy goodness must have infected him with thinks: Maybe I should apologize for earlier. He shuts that one down quickly. No, she deserved that one, and he’ll do it again if she doesn’t mind her own business.

“Well, look who’s out and about,” she comments with a curious tilt of her head and an untrusting squint of her eyes. She glances back to the tent, and doesn’t bother hiding the sudden burst of suspicion on her face. It doesn’t take a genius: healthy man walks into sickly vampire’s tent, sickly vampire walks out healthy, the man does not.

Astarion sighs irritably. “He’s sleeping, not dead. I promise.”

“I hope so,” Shadowheart chimes, in a tone she has to know grates his nerves. It’s probably why she uses it. “And whose idea was that one?” A slight accusation, one he doesn’t appreciate.

“His, thank you very much.” The reply is sharp, snappy, but he plops himself down by the fire and grumbles about it more leniently. “He’s an idiot. He’s going to get himself killed. Who offers themselves up to feed a vampire, and then practically falls asleep in the middle of it?

In the middle of it isn’t exactly truthful, though. He remembers his own flush of heat at the caress at his nape and the breathless pants above his crown, and he feels hot without any help from the campfire. But Wyll dropped off practically the second he had unlatched. Whatever that she-devil had done to him earlier that morning, it must have taken quite a toll.

Another thing he has to wrangle him down on. He knows when Wyll is lying, and there’s something more to whatever that was.

“Hells, I could have killed him!” he finishes. Shadowheart seems mildly amused that Astarion admits it outright.

“There’s one thing we can agree on.” Shadowheart stares into the fire for a moment, then casts back to Astarion. “Do I need to take a look at him?”

Astarion laughs. “Why yes, darling, please do. And tell me if you figure out what’s wrong with that naive little brain of his while you’re in there.”

Shadowheart rolls her eyes. “Shut up. I mean, do I need to take a look at his neck. After what you did to him last time, I’m surprised he trusts you with it at all. If it weren’t for him insisting I not, I’d have come for your head for that one.”

“I’d love to have seen you try.” Indignation rises hotly in his gut, but he tempers it, trying to do that thing that Wyll does when he assumes someone means well. “But for your information--” His voice rises light and chiding. “--that instance hasn’t been the ‘last’ time for a little while, now.”

“Oh.” Shadowheart blinks at the information, then frowns in a way that suggests that she’s unhappy she didn’t notice it. But the wrist is deliciously discreet, and Wyll is so very good at pretending like nothing is wrong so that he can worry about his campmates without them worrying about him. There’s a swell of pride in Astarion at them outmaneuvering the camp’s nosiest little interloper together.

“Well.” The cleric brushes a fleeting spark from the fire from her doublet. “Too easily or not, he trusts you, you know. Just don’t make him regret it.”

Astarion rises swiftly back to his feet with a groan. “Is that all you people do? Lecture?” he complains into the night air with a stretch. “Mortals.” He heads back toward the tent, escaping from the healer’s scrutiny before she can pick up on him being inexplicably flustered. He knows Wyll trusts him. That’d been his whole schtick, to get Wyll to trust him. So why does having it acknowledged irritate him so much?

He settles back to sit cross-legged on his vacant spot in the bedroll, and though he’s intentional about hardly even disturbing the air around him when he does so, some eerie monster hunter intuition or another -- or luck, maybe -- wakes Wyll as Astarion sits.

Red eye squints confusedly up at him, like Astarion isn’t supposed to be there. “Astarion?” he asks, dreary for a blink before he startles awake, propping himself up on his forearm and jerking his hand to idly feel the punctures on his neck. Remembering. “Oh -- you’re feeling better?” His eyes light up with a delirious hope and a giddy grin that makes Astarion’s insides turn out. With disgust, of course. Ugh. Why is he like this?

“Thanks to your generous donation,” he drawls coyly, “it seems so.”

Wyll blushes. “I’m relieved.” Then he fully takes in the tent that is decidedly not his. “And-- ah, Hells, I definitely didn’t mean to--” His eyes fall down to the bedroll he’s practically fully in and he wilts with embarrassment. He drags his hand wearily down over his eyes. “I passed right out, didn’t I? Like a housecat drowsing near the warmth of a hearth?” comes the muffled question through his palm. Astarion tilts his head at the metaphor, endlessly amused by the roles he’s assigned, given the circ*mstances of their prior predicament. “Right next to a vampire I just let feed from me?”

Hearing him say it outright sparks something hot in his belly. He decidedly ignores it. “I’m flattered, darling, that I’m the warm, comforting presence in that analogy, and not the witty feline napping with a full belly,” he purrs with a wicked smile. “Is there something I should know?” It’s too fun -- and far too easy -- to make the man squirm.

The warlock gives a flustered series of blinks, and then shakes his head into his palm with a groan. He drags himself to his feet. Astarion stifles a twinge of disappointment. And then mocks himself for it. What, did he expect Wyll to just go back to sleep, to make good on his analogy and curl cozily at his feet like a stray?

Maybe. It’d be a nice change of pace, all things considered.

With his bearings gathered, Wyll stands tall in preparation to leave, partially in order to avoid embarrassing himself further, and glances over to Astarion in the bedroll below. Astarion notes the way that he averts his eye quickly, markedly uncomfortable with looming over him, with looking down upon him. “Your space is your own, Astarion, and I apologize for overstaying in it. I’m just glad you’re well.”

Sweet Wyll. Always the gentleman. Before Astarion can think of something clever to say in response, the man lowers his head to duck his horns politely out, with a parting: “Goodnight.”

The vampire just nods, for once coming up short on a witty retort. He watches his shadow, flickering in the cast of the firelight, disappear off the edge of his tent.

He shrugs away the acute, cold loneliness that threatens him then, opting instead to light a candle and reach for one of his books, to read-but-not-really so he can pass the time until dawn.

The next day, when they’re getting ready to head out to the Mountain Pass, they see smoke rising to the sky above the Risen Road. Wyll rallies them to it immediately.

A sign clatters to the ground as they push through the gate -- Waukeen’s Rest -- and he recognizes it as the name of the village the goblins had raided for their supplies. They’d assumed it abandoned, and hadn’t yet headed that way. It still could be deserted, with any old thing catching and starting the blaze. They are blissfully unaware that it had not been abandoned -- that up until today, it held hostages preparing to be hastily evacuated in the wake of the Goblin Camp’s fall.

Smoke billows, embers bloom, and Wyll recognizes the uniforms on the bodies on the ground. Wyll’s throat constricts with a surge of panic. He lunges forward to where a row of Flaming Fists struggle against a broad door urgently.

“Keep pushing - Duke Ravengard could be inside!” The world spins at those words, all dizzying disbelief and hope and dread and everything in-between.

Mouth impossibly dry: “Ravengard? He’s here?” But he’s already moving forward before the Fist can even beckon him, hands raising and ignoring the heat that leaches out of the building around them.

“Step aside, soldier,” is all the warning Karlach gives before she puts herself between him and the door. The other guards all-too-eagerly make space for the massive tiefling as she steps in, a living battering ram that barrels forward in a bull’s charge. The door heaves, and the debris that blocking it goes flying as it splinters.

Astarion opens his mouth to say something about how he’s already had enough skin scorched off for the next tenday, but Wyll vaults deftly over the remains without a second’s hesitation. The vampire gives a hiss and curses as he skirts after him. “You idiot!” he barks, and his arm flies up in front of his mouth as he nearly chokes on a swallow of smoke.

Wyll hears a voice upstairs -- one that is familiar, but not the one he’s looking for. With the Fists in tow, he ascends the stairs, boots pounding and heart racing. The hallway’s doors are all blocked, and there’s pounding on the other side of the one to the left. He recognizes the voice now, a voice he has not heard in years. The heat presses in on all sides, sweat beginning to already bead on his forehead.

But just as he’s about to descend upon the door, an iron grip cinches into his shoulder, and he’s pulled roughly back by the banister.

“Wyll, look at me,” Astarion hisses, close to his face to be heard over the din. There’s anger writ all over him, but also a wild fear at the blazing scorch that threatens them. He doesn’t want to be here, but he is, to make sure the idiot doesn’t kill himself. “Whoever you’re trying to help, you’re not going to be able to if you rush in, or it’ll end up just like the hag. What has gotten into you?”

There is no guard up to deflect that barb, no shield -- it strikes true and wounds Wyll, shocking him out of his panic. The hurt in his eyes is unmistakable, but Wyll knows he’s right.

He searches the vampire’s face for a long moment, gathering his bearings in the planes of his features. Then, he guides Astarion out of the way to hail someone else. “Karlach!” he calls, gesturing at the blockade, and the woman steps up, her seriousness augmented by a grin of primal glee at a bit of heroic destruction. The fire is nothing to her compared to the heat of Hells and the engine burning fiercely in her heart.

But while Karlach works on that door, he hears another cry for help across the hall. Wyll steps toward it, urgent but markedly less frantic, controlling his breathing so that he can assess the situation proper. Astarion squints against the acrid air and reluctantly follows, every muscle in his body on edge at the way the building groans.

He reaches for the handle with the back of his hand. It’s warm, but not hot. He turns the knob without resistance, but there’s no give when he pushes. A vacuum. A fireball waiting to bloom at the first rush of air if they aren’t careful. There’s a clatter behind him that makes him jump, but it’s Karlach bursting through the other door. Florrick rushes down the stairs.

The distress call rises again. It’s not his father, but it is still someone who needs help. His tiefling companion approaches the door.

“Wait,” he coughs. “Open this thing, and it’ll blow. We have to find a way around.”

He darts over to the broken window, leaning out of it to see that this balcony connects to the one that goes to the other room. Wyll moves to hike a leg over the frame, and Astarion is there again with a hand tight on his arm.

“Did you not hear a word I said?” His voice pitches high in a strange way. Wyll looks at him and sees it now: the panic and the desperation writ on the vampire’s features. Fire, the next closest feeling a spawn has to the scorch of the sun. What a callous idiot he’s been, spiriting after ghosts of his past rather than looking after the man still in front of him.

Adrenaline courses through him, slowing the world and enabling his calm. He puts his hand on Astarion’s. “I’m in control, now, thanks to you,” he soothes, his voice patiently measured. The words come more quickly as he continues: “They need my help. You get out of here -- Karlach will be here to aid me if I need it.” He pauses and meets her eyes over Astarion’s shoulder. She nods a solemn promise.

Pale face glows orange in the firelight. He grits his teeth behind a distressed frown, but Astarion finally lets him go and moves hastily back downstairs.

Wyll doesn’t hesitate. “I’ll call if I need help, Karlach.” He slides through the frame and then jumps over to the adjacent balcony. The debris leaves only a narrow gap for entry, pouring smoke, but it’s enough for Wyll’s slender form to slide through. Through the thick haze, he sees the blaze burning hot in the adjacent room, searching for kindling and more air as it crowds the other door.

Beneath the debris of the fallen rafters, a man struggles, and relief draws a cry from him as he sees Wyll. “Thank you, thank you! Get me out! Get me out, please!” he babbles.

Wyll coughs hard and blinks tearfully against the fire’s belch. He searches for something for leverage and finds a fireplace tool to wedge underneath the debris. Sweat pours down his face in thick rivulets as he heaves against it. It doesn’t seem to budge at first, and he hisses out a curse. “Come on, come on!”

There’s a give, and he puts everything into it chasing it. The pile rises just enough for the man to scramble desperately out on his knees, holding one leg limp. The crash of the debris back down coincides with the catalyst, the ignition -- the fire in the other room finally rising high enough to burst a glass window and slake its hunger for oxygen.

The inferno billows out with a deep, resounding boom. It blows the very door they’d avoided touching from its hinges, knocks Karlach back behind it. A scorching wave of agony shreds across the right side of Wyll’s retreating leg as both he and the man stumble for the balcony. He sees stars as he crams himself through after him.

“Soldier?!” comes Karlach’s cry over the crackling din, panicked.

“I’m out! Go!” he shouts back.

The repeated thank yous of the man he’d saved ring in his ears, but he gets his bearings quickly, and pushes the stranger forward, into the suite across the open walkway. Wyll gulps down the fresh air, and watches as the man crumples next to the body of a woman. A pang of sympathy rends him. He tentatively places a hand on the man’s shoulders, but is told to leave him with his grief.

Wyll retreats downstairs. He spots Florrick ordering the Fists and rapidly closes the distance between them.

“Counsellor Florrick--” he starts, but stops short as he sees her expression.

“Wyll? By the Maimed God--” The shock annunciating the word borders on revulsion. “--what’s become of you?”

He swallows thickly: “A story left for calmer days.” His companions coalesce back around him, and he looks over -- Karlach is safe, good. Astarion is tense, his eyes hard on the Counsellor. In the moment Wyll pauses to take stock of his own, Florrick is already turning to the Fists again.

The rest is a light-headed blur, frankly. His father has been taken by the drow to Moonrise. Yet another thing waiting for them in those damn towers.

The way Florrick stares at him, however, is worse than any aspect the tieflings of the Grove have turned upon him. He has known her since his boyhood -- as one of his father’s closest confidantes, she had always been near to the family. She’d share tales about his mother with warm eyes and an even warmer smile. But that warmth is gone now, replaced with a wary concern and a repulsed pity.

It isn’t until she leaves with the Fists that he feels where the right leg of his trousers has been scorched away, and much of his flesh with it.

He rests in his tent when Shadowheart is finally done fussing over him, despite his insistence that he’s fine. Her magic begins the process, accelerates it, but the wounds scorch deep -- they will need to carry the Sharran’s energy forward through the night, and hopefully they will land somewhere manageable by the morning.

Wearily, he remains propped up, rather than fully lying down. Tired as he is, he isn’t ready to sleep yet. He rests his eye, ignoring the itch of it from the dust and smoke. He pores over Florrick’s words. Fear beats coldly in his heart.

If they kill the Duke, the damage will be enormous. And if they enthrall him, turn him into a True Soul, it will be catastrophic.

“So,” comes Astarion’s voice from the opening of his tent. “Son of a Duke. What a lovely surprise!”

Wyll keeps his eye shut, not wanting to see whatever co*cky expression roosts on Astarion’s face right now. He offers a sigh in response, but nothing more.

The vampire fills the silence soon enough. “How long were you going to keep that juicy little secret from the camp, hmm?”

This time, he does look. He rolls his head wearily over to regard the lithe creature poised just inside of the entrance, arms crossed and smugness written clearly on his face. He wants to tell him: not now, Astarion, but figures that’s a bad example to set for the man he tries to decipher as practically a second hobby. And so he sucks it up, lets his lids rest down over his sight again, and speaks.

“I can think of few faster ways to end up with a knife to my throat than speaking openly about being the son of a Grand Duke.” Though it didn’t completely prevent it, in his and Astarion’s case. “However, the joke would be on my captors, I suppose -- I would make for a poor ransom. I’m afraid my father considers me his son no longer.” A somber admittance.

“Oh, family drama? How juicy!” He hears the vampire invite himself in as his footsteps come closer, and the spawn plops next to him and leans back against one of Wyll’s storage chests, a healthy distance between them. “Ravengard family drama, no less. How delightful! I didn’t even know he had children!”

Wyll snorts a breath through his nose, though his expression twitches with a bit of hurt. “Just the one. Yours truly.” He gets the feeling this is some twisted retribution on Astarion’s part for the conversation about the Gur.

“How odd, then, that you’re here, and he’s… well, wherever he is.” A bit of retribution, yes. But he also delights in the fact that he might actually have something scandalous on the immaculate prince, for once. It’s bad enough that the dazzling, heroic Blade of Frontiers is charming, good-looking, and unbearably virtuous. But for him to actually be some sort of near-royal nobility? It’s comically too much.

It’s good for Astarion, at least. Whatever power the son of a Duke commands could very well be his. Though that delicious thought edges out of the window quite quickly.

“We were close, once upon a time. Until he disowned me, and cast me out of Baldur's Gate.” He recites the words as if he’s said them a thousand times, as if he’s rehearsed them late into cold and empty nights. That spinning of the tale is the most he can get away with, given that he can’t go into the details of his pact.

He purses his lips. “And all of this happened…?”

“Nearly eight years ago, now.” How small that number seems, after the past weeks spent thinking of Astarion’s servitude, the number echoing in his ears like a mantra wielded to lash himself with: two hundred years. “I was seventeen, then.”

“So, go on, what happened? The way that Florrick woman talked, she thought you might not help.” Which Astarion thinks is rich -- has she ever met Wyll Ravengard? The man would jump in front of a horse-driven cart to save a beetle?

It tears at Wyll, that she thinks that of him. That she thinks he wouldn’t help his own blood, wouldn’t give his all for the good for the Gate. That his father’s judgment wipes away a whole life growing up in the court, dedicated to the Gate and his Duke. He’d grown nearly into manhood alongside them all. But in the end, they’d still not had enough faith in him to know he’s not the monster his father thinks he is.

“The threat to the city with them in his clutches is too great. But even then, I would never let my father suffer at the hands of his captors.” There’s a finality to the pledge. “As for what happened… I’m afraid I can’t say.” Expecting the sudden start of Astarion’s scoff, he cuts in: “The pact forbids me from discussing its terms or its circ*mstances. My lips are quite literally sealed.”

Convenient. Astarion connects the dots easily enough, though: their strained relationship comes from Wyll’s pact. He is so close to saying something he’ll regret -- something snide and haughty about daddy dearest not liking him shacking up with a devil, is that it? -- but he thinks twice about it, remembering the last time he’d brought up Wyll’s pact in that way.

There are some fuses best left where they are, away from the threat of a match until the moment they are needed.

Wyll hears the pluck of Astarion’s lips parting and the telltale inhale that precedes sharp words, but the man seems to think better of it. Nothing comes.

In the silence he allows, Astarion feels a flicker of frustration. That damned devil again. Mizora rears her nasty head everywhere it’s most inconvenient.

Seventeen years old, eight years ago. That makes Wyll even younger than he thought. The dukeling carries himself with such a steady assuredness and resolve that he’d clocked him to be at least thirty, closer to Astarion’s age when he’d been turned. He supposes that the rugged scars and the trained noble poise hadn't helped the accuracy of his estimations.

Either way, his brow furrows. The more he learns about him, the less he understands. “And this famous father of yours, the Grand Duke, exiled you. And you want to rescue him?”

“Of course.” Wyll manages a sad sort of smile. “Every day, my heart yearns for the Gate. My home.” He misses the sight of the city’s docks reaching out into the sea, the smell of salt on the wind. “And while I cannot disclose the details of my pact, it’s important that you know that I do not regret the choice that I made. When I reflect on that night, there is not a single thing I’d do differently.”

Perhaps a couple of years ago, if asked if he had regrets, his answer would have been different. But he’s found the most peace with it this way. “I understand why my father made the choice he did, in the same way that I hope he may one day understand mine.”

“Gods, you’re even more of a bleeding fool than I thought.” He hears the tired scowl in Astarion’s voice. He cracks his eye open, expecting to catch the frown in action, but despite the tone, he finds only a strange and thoughtful melancholy in Astarion’s features. Wyll senses a fleeting opportunity.

“Careful,” he rumbles quietly, managing a soft smile. “You keep a lot of foolish company, by your own admission. We wouldn’t want anyone getting the wrong idea.”

Astarion looks up at him, and when he sees that he’s staring, he exaggerates the roll of his eyes for him to see. “Insufferable. My reputation would never survive.” A fang flashes from behind his small smirk.

But then Wyll jumps suddenly, as if he’s been stung. It makes Astarion jerk with a similar startle.

“Sorry!” Wyll hisses painfully, his hand flashing to the upper edge of the bandages that run the full length of his leg. His fingers contort tensely just above the linen, poised with immeasurable restraint. “Sorry. Gods, it itches something fierce.” But he knows that giving in to the itch will come with more pain than it’s worth. He huffs out a fast breath, and lets his horns lean back against the chest at the head of his bedroll again as he lets it pass with agonizing slowness.

Astarion just watches him quietly, pupils out of focus while Wyll settles carefully back in. He seems a million miles away -- somewhere back in the burning inn, the raging fire, the frantic heat -- as he murmurs: “I don’t get you.”

The warlock blinks. “Pardon?”

The vampire’s eyes sharpen in an instant onto him, gaze narrowing beneath furrowed brows. “I don’t get you, Wyll.” There’s a hot anger underneath those words that softens the wrinkles of Wyll’s temple with a wounded grimace as Astarion goes on. “What were you thinking, running into that place?” His delicate nose wrinkles in a snarl. “I followed you in there, I didn’t want to, but if I didn’t you were going to get yourself killed. Scratch that, you could have gotten everyone killed!”

When Astarion had confronted him about Karlach, it had been all vitriol and low fury. But this time is different. A high strain of anxiety shoots beneath the anger and frustration. There’s fear.

“I’m afraid you're quite right.” A pause. “I’m sorry, Astarion.”

“Sorry!” Pale fists clench in his lap. “Always sorry! But sorry only works after. You only get to apologize if you’re not dead. You--” He glares over, his nails biting further into his palm. “Stop being so gods-damned good! Look after yourself for once in your life, Wyll! Everybody else does it just fine, but you seem completely incapable of it!” The fury escalates, rises in height.

“Hey,” Wyll soothes, gently extending his hand into the space between them. Astarion doesn’t accept the invitation, simply turns his eyes away. “Hey, you’re right. I get it. I--” Wyll’s hand deflates against the earth and he shakes his head, horns scraping against the crate behind him. Seconds pass. When he speaks again, it is low and mournful.

“I thought that--” He forms each word deliberately, slowly, contemplating each one as it emerges. “No, I hoped that my father would be there. All so that I could save him.” The truth is a dreadful thing. “So that I could burst in as the hero, clad in gold and heralded by fanfare, like some fairytale figure of eld.” Wyll stares down at his lap. “And he’d realize that he misjudged me. That I was still the son he’d wanted me to be, after all.” Voice cracks slightly.

“But… maybe it’s for the better. Thinking back about it now…” He squeezes his eye shut. And the visual in his head draws a dark laughter from him, surprising them both. “...no, it’s better that he wasn’t there. The Duke, all he’d have seen is--” He gazes upward across the emptiness of the tent in front of him, distant. “--a paragon of the Hells, wreathed in a halo of fire.”

Astarion’s features swirl with a mixture of confusion, amazement, uncertainty. He’s quiet for a few seconds. Then: “Darling, that’s the most selfish thing I’ve ever heard you say. I didn’t think you had it in you. I’m quite proud. ”

That gets a snort out of Wyll, at least. “I’m afraid you vastly overestimate how good I am.”

Astarion groans. “There’s no way you really think that. That having one selfish thought -- that one thought being that you wish your dad would love you, mind you -- suddenly makes you a bad person?”

Wyll shakes his head. “It’s not just that, Astarion. There’s a lot you don’t know about me. A lot you haven’t seen me do.” There’s one thing in particular that wriggles in his head with its own flavor of psionic discomfort. “Before Karlach, not once did I ever renege on my pact.” The thought rankles him. “Mizora tugged on a string--” He mimes it bitterly with a flourish of the hand in the floor between them. “--and I’d simply dance her lethal samba.” He looks over to Astarion. “You remember, yes? The clause that Karlach fell under?”

He can’t say it himself, and so he relies on Astarion to recall the clause recited by Mizora that night. Expression unreadable, the vampire nods. Targets shall be limited to the infernal, the demonic, the heartless, and the soulless.

Wyll continues. “Were it not for these things in our heads, I’d have simply kept on. Karlach would have fallen by my hand, like all of the others. Who knows how many like her I’ve killed on an unreliable technicality, without realizing they’re innocent?” It makes him sick to think about. “They say the devil is in the details, but in reality, it is far worse than that. The devil, you see, is in the definition.” A definition so broad, that it can span across anything. He wants to say it, but his lips twitch with the compulsion of his pact. It will come too close.

Red eye searches for Astarion’s. “And had the tadpole not bridged our minds in that moment on the beach, then perhaps my next target could have even been you.” The heartless, the soulless, whichever she decides includes a vampire spawn. He doesn’t know the status of a spawn’s soul, but he doesn’t know how much it matters. Figurative or literal, something would fit.

His sending eye itches now and he wishes he could gouge it out. He’s not sure if Mizora is listening at this moment, but he hopes that she’s occupied with some other pressing matter.

“I’d have thought you were a monster,” Wyll finishes. He falls silent, then. He realizes it’s probably the most he’s talked before without the vampire interrupting, and that makes him feel bashful about it. Astarion’s brows pleat with what he thinks at first is pity, but he recognizes quickly to be something sincere. Not a mask, but the man underneath it.

“But you don’t, Wyll,” he says quietly. “Tadpole or not, you knew what I was, and you reached out with your hand, where others have only reached for a stake.” Tone lilts with dark humor. He shakes his head. “In two hundred years, you’re the first person I’ve met who doesn’t think of me as -- doesn’t treat me as -- a monster.” Butterfly lashes drop low as he whispers earnestly. “You’re the only person who has ever cared for me. Or even pretended to. My only… friend, I think.”

A swell of golden warmth washes through Wyll’s chest at that. Such a simple thing, and yet coming from Astarion, it means so much more. His other worries seem small in comparison, all of the sudden. He wants to hold the moment against his breast, cradle it gently in his palms. He stares into those vibrant red eyes and gives a warm little smile, but says nothing, just letting it be.

His undivided attention drives Astarion’s eyes sheepishly away. The spawn shifts his weight uncomfortably. Wyll bites his lip. sh*t. Maybe he should have said something, instead of just staring.

He grasps at that thread of openness, tries to coax it back. “Friennnd,” he says, his tone drawing out in a lazy, sort of goofy way. He leans his weight on the hand extended between them, seeking to give Astarion’s shoulder a playful bump across the gap with his own, careful not to strain his leg in the process. “Annnnd bloodbank?”

In an instant, Astarion turns a bewildered look back upon him, as if he can’t believe his ears, as if it’s the dumbest thing he’s ever heard. And it is, which is why he’s quite mad at himself when it cracks a lopsided smile across his features. “Yes, that too.”

His expression wavers, then. A stray fang protrudes to worry his lips in an uncharacteristically nervous movement as he pauses. “But not just.”

There it is again -- a crackle of something that bridges the yawning void between them, a sudden and sharp awareness of the humidity in the air and the intimacy of the moment. Dry, dry, dry. Why does Wyll’s mouth always go dry when he needs it not to be? Wyll swallows and licks his lips. The movement draws those sharp abyssal pupils to his mouth with the rapt attention of a hunter tracking prey.

It sends a spark, a bolt of heat, straight down below.

Astarion wants to lean against Wyll’s weight against his shoulder. It shouldn’t be like this, he thinks. He can’t think of the last time he’s actually wanted to… touch someone. Be touched. It’s something he’s incapable of. Something that’s been wrung out of him and flayed from his flesh. He pilots a hollow puppet to do what he needs to do to survive, and looks somewhere else while he does it. But it’s not just a puppet, this time -- he’s here, and he’s hyper-aware of the flush of his skin, enabled by the blood of the man before him within.

This man who has fed him. Who welcomes him where he would have never been welcomed otherwise. Who looks at him with the softest eyes and endless concern and doesn’t flinch away at the cool of Astarion’s touch, but leans into it. They’re so close -- all he has to do is press in, and Astarion can know what it’s like to recapture something long-lost to him. To dance without acting, without the pressure of a string and without looming fear.

Tentatively, Astarion leans into Wyll’s shoulder. Raises a delicately-curled hand up to those scarred, handsome features. Wyll watches, breath stagnant in his chest, as Astarion’s knuckles trail deliberately over the rugged tissue of his cheek. The warlock suppresses a shiver, his fingers clawing into the ground beneath them with sudden restraint.

Wyll’s tongue grinds into the back of his teeth, mouth slightly open to draw in the slightest of breaths as he tries to find the words. “Astarion,” he whispers, low like a prayer. Despite the thunder of his heart and the sudden race of his blood, he reaches up with his own hand to grasp the vampire’s wrist in a featherlight grip. “I meant it before, when I said that you don’t have to.”

Astarion exhales shallowly, hushed in a way that’s markedly human. His tongue traces his lips to pave the way for the soft lilt of his words. “I don’t have to.” He strokes Wyll’s cheek with his thumb. Glances skittishly back down to his parted mouth. “I want to.”

Wyll cannot command his muscles to move. They occupy themselves with a feverish tremble even as Astarion leans in to brush their lips together. Soft, chaste, experimental. Pale fingers unfurl across ridged cheek to slowly pull him in. The second is more firm, exploratory, as Astarion chases the breathless feeling.

The burn of the Rest cannot match the blaze that surges through Wyll, all hot brimstone and heat and want and need. But he tempers his response to a wisp of smoke. He seals his lips softly back against Astarion’s. He lets go of his wrist and drifts his hand across to curl behind Astarion’s neck, to cradle his nape and comb his nails into his curls once more, having missed the feel of them in only the brief day gone without.

Astarion makes that sweet sound again, a low whine, and it draws a hungry groan in answer. The grip on his cheek becomes more urgent, more insistent. The scrape of teeth on Wyll’s lower lip bleeds heat into his very bones, leeches fire up to his skin. An ache thrums deep between his legs and he resists the urge to reach down and adjust himself for the tiniest scrap of relief.

Gods, he'd forgotten how good it is to be kissed. Their mouths seal against one another, hungry and insistent. Astarion swipes a searching tongue across his lips and Wyll pants hotly against him to grant it entry. The gentle hand at the back of Astarion’s neck hitches him firmly closer, infernal claws massaging the base of his scalp affectionately, hungrily, eliciting another delicious noise from his throat.

Frantic thoughts drive the vampire’s shaking touch. Every brush sets him aflame like nothing he’s ever felt before. It seems impossible. A fairy tale scribed in a book that had never been written for him, made real in the dim of the tent and the brush of their lips. And at any moment, he fears it will slip away and be lost to him. His urgency rises in a fierce crescendo.

He folds over so that he can twist and face Wyll, no longer side-by-side, scooping his body underneath himself to lavish both hands upon him. The palm on Wyll’s cheek smooths back across the sharp ridge of his cheekbone, following it to thread lithe fingers through corded hair. His other arm drapes across Wyll’s shoulder for support, palm splayed between his shoulder blades.

Wyll can lose himself in this forever. Astarion’s lips go from soft to demanding and the rush of lust is dizzying in his head, the sweet warmth of his words still beating fiercely in his chest, a mournful and adoring ache. He straightens himself so he can free his supporting hand, and Astarion follows him back on his knees like a man dying of thirst and chasing the rain. Wyll coils his arm low around Astarion’s slender waist and moans softly at the flush contact. Wyll is practically leaning out of the bedroll, now, his bandaged leg raised slightly off the ground, though it aches at the strain. He doesn’t care.

They break away. Both pant hard against each other’s lips, finally catching more than just stolen little gasps between frenzied kisses. Wyll carefully leans his forehead against Astarion’s, fitting the narrower man’s temple beneath his horns, careful not to touch him with them. But the pale elf doesn’t seem to mind, crushing away the careful avoidance as he leans fully in against the base of them. There’s trepidation, but then a breathless relief, an acceptance in that motion that reassures Wyll that this is one thing Mizora can’t take from him. He hastily moves his attention away from that commandingly tight swell of golden emotion in his chest, feeling the threatening nausea of tears if he focuses on it for too long.

“Is this alright?” he whispers, his good eye searching Astarion’s features in the dim candlelight. Only the rims of the vampire’s irises still show red, obsidian pupils blown wide with a sort of frantic excitement that he hasn’t seen since the very first night that Astarion fed from him.

A gasping little laugh bubbles from Astarion. He can’t help but think what a silly question it is. It’s one he’s not sure he’s ever been asked before. “Darling, this is divine.” His hand trails back down to cup Wyll’s cheek, and his lips peel back to flash his fangs in a minute smile. Astarion’s voice comes from somewhere low, husky with hunger but light with mischief. “You kiss like you’ve done this before.” The most coy of accusations.

Wyll’s face lights up in a grin that is simultaneously wicked and sheepish. “It’s not my first dance, Astarion,” he rumbles. But the thought strikes a somber chord, reminding him of one of the reasons why there have not been many forays. His brow furrows and he pulls back, and Astarion makes a slight pouting face when Wyll’s hand extricates itself from its gentle tangle in his hair. But the playfulness falls away when he sees the way Wyll covers his stony eye, claws framing the socket with tense frustration, and the way the light in his features falls away to sadness.

“Astarion, I--” He grits his teeth. He can’t just come out and say it, another term of his pact he’s not allowed to warn about. Not directly at least. “You have to know, it doesn’t feel right for you not to.” Every intimate moment is darkened by the potential to be mocked, interrupted, commented on like the morning’s paper. He keeps reaching for words that won’t work, like a fish yawning for water, and his nose wrinkles with disgust.

“Do--” He speaks through gritted teeth, pointedly. “--you ever feel--” He lowers his hand from over his eye and trains it on him. “--like you’re being watched?” Deliberate, painstaking. Desperate to be understood.

Astarion blinks at him with a dumbfoundedness that makes Wyll nearly lose hope. But he gives him time. As Astarion thinks, his thumb traces the ridges of his cheek, and Wyll sees his gaze snap over the sharper edges beneath his fingers. And then he reaches thoughtfully up to the raised base of his horns. Eyes flash with sharp clarity.

“That Gods-damned devil,” he exclaims quietly, looking back at Wyll’s eyes. He isn’t sure how he didn’t notice it before -- the strange texture on the prosthetic eyes is not an aesthetic choice. They’re some kind of rune. He twists his lips irritably.

Wyll worries that… that’s it, then, another thing Mizora gets to take from him. But then the vampire smooths his features. Wraps his slender fingers around the base of his horn and pulls him into a fierce kiss.

Wyll gasps at the sensation -- his horns don’t feel like that when he’s the one touching them. It’s a distant ticklishness, with the impressions of touch faint and fleeting on them directly, but it’s the pressure the tug delivers to the base that tingles in a foreign way. Not to mention the sturdiness, the control.

Unbidden, a vision bursts into his mind of those horns being held, anchored; of his eyes rolling up across porcelain skin and heaving stomach as he forces Astarion deeper down his throat. The thought pulses straight between his legs, and in an instant he’s hard again. He groans into Astarion’s mouth.

Astarion laps wetly at him, and when he finally breaks away, a slender thread of saliva bridges the gap between them, snaps and drops back against Astarion’s chin in a wanton dribble. He withdraws his grip on Wyll’s horn to wipe it messily away with the back of his hand.

“Let. Her. Watch,” he whispers hotly, with a bold determination that makes Wyll feel weak. Before Wyll can process what’s happening, Astarion swoops close, supporting his weight on Wyll’s chest as he swings his leg over his lap to straddle him. “I’ve been told I put on a good show.”

Wyll makes a strangled sound in his chest -- but it’s interrupted by a wince and a bitten-back yelp as Astarion’s heel kicks at the bandages after coming over. “f*cking Hells--” The agony is a white-hot brand, and he finds himself blinking away tears.

“sh*t, sh*t. Sorry,” Astarion blubbers hastily, and props his leg on that side further away, holds himself above Wyll’s lap rather than settling into it. Wyll’s grateful for that, because the pain has done absolutely nothing to how hard he still is, and the thought of Astarion grinding his ass into him is so f*cking filthy that he’s afraid he’ll melt back into the crate behind him. “Sorry,” Astarion repeats breathlessly as he adjusts, walks his hands up Wyll’s chest, “I’ll be careful, I promise.” His words flow in a fast and messy current, a whine almost delirious with want, like he’s pleading with him, and Wyll stares at him in absolute stunned awe. Astarion locks his arms around Wyll’s neck and brings their chests flush so that he can lock their lips together once more.

Oh, gods, they’re still doing this. The moment of reprieve grounds him enough, but with this gorgeous man in his lap, the control he maintains is tenuous at best. He floats his arms carefully, stiffly above Astarion’s waist, holding back with monumental willpower. Because he’s afraid once he lets go, he’ll be lost for good. But he wants so much more from him than just this, than just a messy romp on the floor in his tent. Well, he wants it and more, but deep down, he’s afraid that it’ll only be this. But he can’t possibly ask that of Astarion, not now, when they’re tangled together in the throes of lust.

Wyll can’t do this without falling deeply, hopelessly into the infinite well of his growing affection for Astarion. He wants to bask in the sunlight of these parts of him: the intelligence and the concern; the tenderness and the wonder; the sharp and deadly skill of an apex predator in his own right. He wants to guard him from every thing that makes him shy back and curl small, wants to nurture that part of him that relaxes when he feels safe. Wyll wants to do this right, wants to court him, wants to hold him, wants to--

“Astarion,” he grunts into his mouth. “Astarion.” It’s like the night of the first feed again, like he’s trying to urge him to break away from the most delicious taste he’s ever known. Astarion’s eyes finally come to full focus on him, brows pleated with an almost irritated confusion and concern. “I--” Wyll scrambles for the words. He leans his forehead into Astarion’s again, this time barely even worrying about his horns.

“It’s not just pretend. I care for you, Astarion. A lot.” The vampire stills at the words, practically turning to stone. “I wish--” He swallows. “I just wish… we had more time, is all.” He thinks of the uninvited guests in their heads and knows that as much as he wants to deny him and tell him they should wait, there’s a chance there won’t be time to. One slip-up, one mistake from the mysterious visitor inside of their dreams, and their conscience will be snuffed out and their soul reaped and a monstrosity will walk in their places.

Wyll says the words, but a part of Astarion is still reluctant to believe them. He knows he can’t respond to everything Wyll says with an interrogation on if he actually means it. If he could, he’d have asked it ten times over by now, because every unfathomable thing the man does makes him want to. And so he has to doubt them, because somehow believing them is worse.

They’re the same words he’s sure he’s uttered somewhere at some point, to cement the accompaniment of a target back to the palace, but coming from Wyll they feel terribly, awfully real. And it’s terrifying.

Terrifying, because it means the axe must be about to drop any moment now. There’ll be a yank of his leash and then Cazador will be looming. And he will be furious for having escaped him, for having not come immediately back on his knees. He’ll drag him back into that tomb, and it’ll be more than just a year this time. And what he’ll do to Wyll -- Astarion can’t even think about it or he’ll shred his own cheek in-between his fangs trying to.

He feels cold all of the sudden, the moment lost. The thread of pleasure free from Cazador’s grip disintegrates. He’s left empty and hollow, captive in its icy grip once more.

Wyll notices. Because of course he does. “Hey.” Feathery, soothing, Wyll’s hand cups warmly along his cheek in a painfully gentle touch. Astarion’s eyes come into focus, onto the concern in Wyll’s features, and he becomes aware of the anguish twisting his own. “There you are.”

The sting of tears threatens Astarion’s eyes. His arms fall slack around Wyll’s neck, and his muscles slump. He lowers himself to rest in Wyll’s lap, where there is no longer any heat for either of them.

Wyll wants nothing more than to ask him what’s wrong, but it’s another instance where he has to let Astarion come to him. Astarion has to make that choice for himself, rather than feeling cornered into it, or he’ll shut down. On some level, he can relate to that.

And so he is patient. He lowers his hand to his shoulder instead, giving him comforting support with a less intimate embrace. But he does want him to know one thing: “Whatever it is, you don’t have to talk about it, if you don’t want to.”

A sharp derision bursts up through the dissipating distance in his eyes as Astarion locks back onto him. “I don’t want to say a damned thing.” As sudden as it is, Wyll is prepared for the outburst. When handling a cornered animal, he always wears gloves. “But--” Astarion’s voice hushes again to something more mournful. “--I suppose that won’t do… us any good.” Wyll ignores the giddy little rush that threatens him when he says it like that -- not now.

Astarion feels suddenly weary at the thought of putting words to it all. There’s a sort of indignation with himself that he’s even considering saying anything at all. One little prince swoops in with a few caring touches and kind words fresh to his ears, and that’s all it takes? What a pitiful creature he is, just as naive as the dredges he’d lured to the palace.

“Even being this far from him, I can’t escape him.” He glances to Wyll’s sending stone eye. “All of us have an unexpected visitor rooting around in our skulls, of course. But you and I, we both have another unwanted guest along with it.” Mizora is Wyll’s. “Cazador is mine.” His gaze follows his hands as they drift up, trailing down the fabric of Wyll’s shirt. “For a second, I was able to just enjoy something without noticing his shadow.” The words sting sacrilegious on his tongue, leaving an aftertaste of fear where he wishes there were relief instead. “But I suppose nothing that good ever lasts.”

Helpless. He can walk in the sun and make his own choices like he’s human again, but it’s nothing more than a fickle illusion. He’ll never be free.

Wyll hurts for him, heart thrumming in resonance. It’s the way he’s felt every time he’s started to get close to someone. He gets too comfortable and there she is, tugging at his leash with something else to ruin it all. He thinks about her attempt the night after the party, and with a sense of trepidation similar to Astarion’s, he realizes it could be a mild yank compared to what might be coming.

He can’t help it. He leans forward and pulls Astarion into a hug.

Astarion stiffens in his grip. Wyll freezes, and after a second starts to pull away, but feels Astarion’s arms soften against him awkwardly. Mindful of his horns, he rests his head on a cool, sloped shoulder, and breathes in the fleeting trace of his perfume.

“We’ll figure something out,” Wyll mumbles. “And until then, we will watch each other’s backs.” Astarion gives a hesitant nod against him. He releases him, searches his expression. There’s still worry, but he is at least present again, rescued from the dissociating distance of his shadow.

With the fervent heat drained from them, Wyll starts to feel the exhaustion settle back in. He slumps back against the crate with a weary sigh. And, oh, if they’ll be going their separate ways to sleep soon: “If you need to feed, feel free.” He offers without really thinking about it.

Astarion blinks at him, and then his eyes drop down to the freshly-scabbed punctures on Wyll’s exposed neck with a contemplative darken, a slight lick of his lips.

Unbidden, unexpectedly, that look causes him to twitch to life against Astarion’s ass in his lap. Wyll is absolutely horrified. The embarrassment makes him want to sink into the earth and never emerge, right there, on the spot. “Um,” he intervenes hastily, “the wrist, probably. I don’t--” He sheepishly rubs at his arm. “I probably can’t, um, handle the neck. Right now.”

That elicits a chuckle from Astarion, who grants him the mercy of removing himself from the straddle, careful not to knock his leg on the bandages on the way out. “Ever the gentleman,” he sighs coyly. “I’ll leave you your blood to heal with, this time.” He smirks. “But you should really learn how to capitalize on an easy opportunity, hmm? It might come in handy, sometime.” There’s no bite or bitterness to it. Privately, Astarion is relieved -- it would be difficult, tonight, to go back to it. Not without detaching, drifting somewhere far, far from here. It’s the last thing he wants to do.

However, Wyll catches one of Astarion’s retreating arms in a firm grip, flaunting reflexes that surprise the vampire. That Astarion does not flinch away, but instead holds, mildly curious, speaks to his growing comfort.

A singular sharp red eye burns into his. “I know how, Astarion. And perhaps someday soon, circ*mstances permitting, I will.” A bold threat, backed by an acute surge of courage that leaves him a little dizzy with the weight of the promise. His palm on the elf’s forearm softens. “But not at another’s expense. Not yours, and not mine.” He releases him, but he doesn’t miss the now-alert widen of Astarion’s pupils, the way his nostrils flare.

Astarion hadn’t been sure if he had it in him. It’s more attractive than it should be. He blinks, and that’s all it takes to usher away the surprise. “I look forward to it, darling.” Astarion steps toward the opening of the tent. Casts one long look back at Wyll. “Goodnight.”

“Goodnight, Astarion.”

Chapter 7: Indulgence

Chapter Text

When he reaches beneath the band of his smallclothes, he still finds a smear of slick still lingering upon his tip. Wyll’s thumb spreads it along his slit with a terse exhale. His fingers wrap coolly around his half-hard length.

He’s exhausted, but every time he closes his eyes, he can’t stop seeing the visions of Astarion in his lap, their bodies flush together, their mouths locked in a hot seal. He twitches in his own grasp at the reminder, and takes up a slow, steady rhythm as he strokes himself.

A little further, and he’d have been beyond the point of no return -- no amount of modesty or politeness or wish to do things right would have ground him to a halt. Astarion could have used him however he’d liked and Wyll would have drank greedily of everything he offered, gulped down his touch like a man dying of thirst.

He’s reminded of the hands upon his horns. Imagines his head being wrenched back by those deceptively strong hands and his throat bared to waiting lips, to waiting teeth. Wyll huffs needily at the image, tosses his head back with a low groan. Another heady rush of arousal pulses between his grip and he’s fully hard again already. The loop of his fingers firms around himself, sliding his skin along his length -- slowly, tentatively, experimentally.

He’s gone mostly without his own touch since Mizora turned him. Finding the ridges there for the first time -- it repulsed him. It served as a cold and sickening reminder of her control. Another barrier to repel suitors, to maintain the power she gave him as his first priority. And worst of all, to make him pliant to her advances.

He takes a slow, deep breath and wards those thoughts away. They're the last thing he wants to think about right now. He turns his cheek against the pillow and searches for a lingering scrap of Astarion’s scent on the shoulder of his shirt.

Sensitive skin slides over the first set of foreign ridges, lower near the base, and draws a shudder from him out into the cool night air. Oh. The gliding glance of his fingers over them sparks a bolt of pleasure through him. That’s… He pulls a slow and sensuous rhythm along it again, breath hitching in his throat as his touch drags up over the second set of crests, closer to the head.

A cold pinprick of trepidation tingles the back of his neck, an uncertain suspicion at knowing that Mizora does nothing by accident. And perhaps he should be wary of her giving him something that feels so f*cking good.

But instead he groans into his own grip, too deeply enthralled by the sensation to temper his indulgence in it. He imagines the firm ring of his grasp as something else.

Astarion grinding his lap, this time with ferocity untempered by Wyll’s restraint. Grasping hands like hungry claws. He wants to taste Astarion’s mouth, wants to press into him so deeply that he cuts his tongue on those sharp fangs, wants to watch him frenzy at the smallest of tastes.

He pants hard, drags his thumb through his slit to slick the freshly budding precome around his glans. His palm closes around his swollen head in a warm, velvety embrace, and he labors in a fervent manipulation of his hand to create a stuttering suction around it.

Visions. The contrast of the pale skin of Astarion’s bare thighs so sharp against his, the pink flush of a pretty co*ck leaking onto Wyll’s stomach. Rather than the warmth of his hand, he imagines the heat of Astarion wrapped around him, imagines what little sounds he might make sinking down past the first set of ridges, and then the second.

Would he be… hot, even? Or just warm? Would he warm with the exertion, or only with the fullness of Wyll’s blood saturating him? Should it be as hot as it is to know that it might be Wyll’s own essence flushing through him when he gets hard? To know that he’s an inextricable part of Astarion, even now?

He’s holding his breath now as his pace quickens, focusing only on the molten tension coiling within. f*ck.

His movements grow frenzied, and he hurriedly pulls the band of his trousers down. The shirt is fine, he can wash it in the morning, he just needs-- He chases his relief with clenched teeth.

He thinks of it then. A golden arrow through the haze of frantic lust: he thinks of the way Astarion held him on that first day on the beach, that first feed. His arm looped around Wyll’s back, cradling him up and away from the harshness of the earth. That delirious, ridiculous thought, once ridiculed, now yearned for: the lover’s embrace. The silver spear of teeth in his neck.

Wyll crashes over the edge, strangling out the strained cry of his release in his throat before it can erupt. The muscles in his thighs clenched and his burned leg sears, but it’s nothing compared to the white-hot satisfaction that floods him. He shakes and twitches in his grasp, each pulse sending another string of pearlescent cum onto his clothed stomach. His slit drools spend down over his trembling hand.

He sinks his head back down into the pillow. A dry husk of a relieved sigh tears from his throat. He gathers back the scattered pieces of his conscience into a disoriented bundle and basks in the glow of being free from that pent-up tension, even if only for a little while. His exhaustion surges back up to threaten him and he wearily tugs off his soiled shirt, tosses it aside into a discarded heap. He can take it to the stream in the morning.

Gods, he’s absolutely done for.

While it is still dim, he blinks awake and groggily pulls himself out of his bedroll. He gathers his bearings, then grabs his soiled shirt and goes to wash his face and the garment at the stream next to camp, hoping to make it there before Astarion’s up and about from his trance.

Unfortunately for Wyll, no amount of early rising can evade an elf who doesn’t need to sleep.

Astarion’s eyes open from his sitting trance by the fire practically the moment he raises the flap of his tent. The pale vampire’s head tilts to the side at how early he is up, and then red eyes snap down to his full shirtlessness and the bundle of cloth in his hand.

Even with the distance, Wyll can see the flare of his nostrils. It only takes a moment for a wicked smirk to cross Astarion’s features.

Burning from his toes up to the tips of his ears, Wyll ducks away to the stream. Astarion grants him the mercy of not following him, at least not yet, because he’s able to get there and scrub at the garment without interruption. He hangs it to dry, then scoops cold water onto his face. Wyll glances around to make sure he’s alone before he wipes a damp hand loosely around his privates and inner thighs, though he carefully avoids his bandaged limb. He returns to camp un-accosted.

By the time he makes it back, Gale is up painfully early, and Shadowheart has also finished her late trance. Maybe he can make it through the morning without Astarion eating him alive, after all, thanks to the combined forces of a wizard whose voice is whatever the opposite of an aphrodisiac is for Astarion, and the presence of the last person they want in camp knowing that something is going on between them.

Or. That something went on between them.

The correction stings. There’s no guarantee of going on, only that it happened. Wyll drearily slips back into his tent to hang his drying shirt within, and fishes out a new one.

There’s a presence at the entrance, but it’s not Astarion. Shadowheart tends to his leg -- it’s progressed nicely throughout the night, and with her own energy replenished, she is able to ease it away fully. His skin knits back cleanly beneath the blue glow of her magic.

Astarion looks up at them as they leave the tent. Wyll catches his gaze. The vampire flashes him a winning smile and a raise of his eyebrows, and Wyll’s heart soars in the moment before he forces himself to glance away, not wanting to arouse suspicion from the rest of the group.

As soon as that singular red eye leaves him for good, Astarion lets his face fall, the mask slipping away.

In the dark, away from the golden, infectious light of Wyll Ravengard, Astarion remembers himself. He remembers why he is here, and what he is here to do.

He can still taste the lingering ambrosia of something long-lost to him on his tongue -- of his own body, of his own pleasure, of a life lived out from beneath Cazador’s shadow. He craves it again, teeth aching with the withdrawal from it. Knuckles bloom white with tension.

His first goal, above all else, must remain becoming free from Cazador.

Wyll is simultaneously the perfect tool to complete that goal and also the perfect vice to distract him from it.

The man eases the bite of the chains with soft words and gentle touches. But the glimpses of security are illusions, fleeting and temporal. Astarion has to remind himself that if he wanted to, Cazador could walk into the camp, cloaked in the shadows of night, and gut the monster hunter by barely even raising a finger. Astarion has to remain ready, alert, single-minded on getting them to the Gate.

And he can’t be entertaining this bastardized, foolish dread he feels when he thinks about sending Wyll into the Palace. He curls his lip with forced disgust and a twinge of pain.

Why is it that the qualities of Wyll that make him the perfect target, the perfect lamb sent for slaughter, are the same ones that make Astarion so tender for him?

He knows that tomorrow when they wake, the warlock will give him one of those warm little smiles and a look that means everything while saying nothing. He’ll hear Wyll’s heart race in that lovesick way that makes it all the easier for Astarion to shield himself from harm behind him.

Wyll is the same kind of senseless fool that he lured back to the Palace over and over again, once upon a time. Astarion knows how to play them. It’s second nature, like the way a predator knows innately how to hunt. He can be whatever Wyll wants him to be, sweet and cloying and romantic, or a reliable burst of pleasure at his command. He can sing easy praises and offer easy confessions of love if it gets Wyll within those palace walls and Cazador at the end of his rapier.

These types were always so easy. But he’d only had to suffer them one night at a time. And as the days wear on, Wyll erodes away at Astarion’s long-maintained defenses.

Infuriating. Excruciating. He hates it.

He’ll need to be careful, intentional. Whatever romance Wyll pursues, he must entertain it, lest a rejection break the influence he needs to maintain until the moment he’s free. He’ll continue down the course of his plan, follow the arc of the arrow through to seduce him and keep him close with dalliances of the heart and pleasures of the flesh. When those glimpses of freedom come, sweet and divine, he will sample them -- but only as long as it is safe to do so, as long as it gets him closer to his goal.

And he will not let Wyll Ravengard in any further than he needs to be.

When they spot the Gith patrol, Wyll lets Lae’zel take the lead. These are her people, and he will not undermine her or her pride by trying to conduct business on her half. Though when a spike of anxiety spears through their tadpoles from the artefact, he does offer the warning to her to keep its presence to themselves. To his relief, the artefact goes undetected in their possessions, and the party is able to continue on safely to the Pass. Wyll can’t help but feel like something is… off, about this extraction process, but he knows that a battle of wills with Lae’zel is one he will swiftly lose. Whatever revelations lay within, they must be her own.

The Pass is breathtaking. Greenery cascades down treacherous cliffs with wild and untamed beauty. Even the Monastery seems to belong, blending into the natural landscape that gnaws away at its edges.

Each day comes with challenges, but today is one of the easier ones. The Absolute necromancers fall to their blades and magic quite easily, and they search for a good place to set up camp for however long they’re here for. They settle near the rickety contraption that bridges the gap to the Monastery, preferring the way the sharp drop limits the angle of any approaching threats to one side only

They travel light, not bothering to set up their own tents or storage, simply establishing a perimeter in an open area beneath the cloudless sky. Wyll feels rather glad that they chose this over the Underdark. Astarion seems to enjoy the sunlight.

With setting up camp occupying a good few hours, they pledge to Lae’zel to enter the creche in the morning. All clues point to the Monastery, and they should be able to reach it early, well-rested and with their full strength for whatever may come.

Karlach returns to camp with a boar, ignoring the hungry look that Astarion gives it in favor of preparing it for a hearty stew, albeit with Gale’s help. The woman has brought back game for Astarion before, but this one is for the camp, and meat doesn’t quite taste the same once it’s been exsanguinated.

As the sun sets, the crew sits around the fire to tuck into the meal. Wyll looks up from his bowl to see Astarion preparing to slip off into the night.

It’s normal for them. They eat, Astarion goes to hunt. The vampire doesn’t seem to mind missing the commiserating hours spent in the glow of the campfire, preferring to keep to himself anyway. But Wyll feels a pang seeing him leave, alone. He hastily sets down his bowl and steps after him before he can get too far.

“Hey,” Wyll says as he catches up to him.

Astarion turns a curious look over his shoulder at him, eyes lingering for a long moment before he turns to fully face Wyll. “Yes?”

“Um, well,” Wyll starts, sheepishly shifting his weight. “I was wondering if-- You know, why don’t you come sit with everyone while we eat?”

The blank look on Astarion’s face makes him feel stupid for asking. The vampire raises a brow. “Well, you see, darling,” he starts dryly, with a flourish of his hand, “I have this… condition -- you may have heard of it before -- and the maintenance of that condition involves hunting animals for their--”

Wyll bites back the dumbest grin and interrupts him. “Oh, I’m so sorry, how terrible.” His hand twitches with the suppressed urge to reach out to Astarion, then. It takes monumental restraint. “To help with your… condition, poor thing, I’d like to propose a deal.” To his delight, he sees the interest in Astarion’s features. “If you sit with us while we eat, then afterwards, you may feed on me instead of needing to hunt tonight.”

The proposition has the desired effect. Wyll sees the hungry darkening of Astarion’s eyes, the unbidden flicker of eyes to his neck, and it makes him flash hot with desire.

“You know, when normal people make deals,” Astarion responds bemusedly, “they do it with some benefit to themselves.” It’s so easy to play coy with Wyll, especially when he can smell the soft touch of arousal in his blood already. Astarion stares at him knowingly. “I can’t see where you stand to benefit from that arrangement.”

Wyll blushes something fierce. He rubs his arm bashfully. “Um. Getting to… spend… time… with you?”

Astarion blinks. And then blinks again, caught completely off guard by the innocence in that answer. His sarcastic company isn’t usually the kind to be requested. It’s… cute.

He corrects himself. No, it’s decidedly not cute. It’s annoying. He gives a huff and a reluctant smirk. Rolls his eyes. “Oh, you’re unbearable.” It’s missing a cruel edge that he conveniently forgets to add. “Alright, fine. I’ll be sure to make you regret it.”

Wyll beams. “It’s a deal.”

Astarion truly does try his best to be insufferable. But to his chagrin, the party has already grown accustomed to his antics. No amount of trying to rile Shadowheart or disparage Gale gets a rise out of either of them. Perhaps it’s the wine, or the comforting warmth of the fire, but Karlach and Lae’zel are similarly immune -- Karlach belly-laughs at every quip, and Lae’zel’s “tch” is all the complaint she offers, though some of the more wicked comebacks against him draw a sly smirk to her lips.

And Wyll? Wyll is just happy to be there. He smiles privately into his glass as he watches Astarion chain a second joke off of one of Gale’s, and Shadowheart cuts in with her own burn in response. The vampire lounges lithely against their pile of firewood, somehow making a rough stack of logs look comfortable. Whenever Wyll thinks he isn’t paying attention, he takes in the sensuous splay of Astarion’s legs and the way the firelight dances playfully in those sharp ruby eyes. Every jab from those smirking lips flaunts his intelligence, and betrays how much the rogue actually pays attention, belies the aloofness he wraps around himself like armor. Astarion seems comfortable, more than he’s ever seen him with the rest of the party. Wyll’s glad he asked him to join them.

As for the “price” he pays for his end of the bargain… As if on cue, Astarion’s eyes find him the moment he thinks about it. The hand around his wine glass goes clammy with anticipation. He drops his gaze away down to his drink and takes a sip. Nope. He can’t hold Astarion’s eyes right now, or he’ll run the risk of having to readjust his position to mask the threatening tightness of his trousers.

They stay up later than they probably should for the long day that lays ahead of them, but eventually, Lae’zel is the first to prioritize the maintenance of her body. Without the sound insulation of their full tents, and knowing what the Githyanki does to those who disturb her rest, the group’s lull lowers to a whisper that eventually leads to each of them taking their turn to retire.

To prevent the suspicion of them obviously simultaneously leaving camp together, Wyll volunteers to take the dishes to the stream nearby. Astarion slips out sometime while he’s gone -- as far as anyone else knows, to hunt -- and after bringing back the cutlery, Wyll goes for a “walk” before bed.

The small shrine to the Morninglord is quaint, calm. The moon above hangs dimly, each night ebbing more and more into a solemn sliver of light. Astarion practically materializes next to Wyll as he passes through the treeline near it, his hand brushes coolly against Wyll’s, causing him to jump in a way that fuels Astarion’s ego.

“Hells--” Wyll starts to curse, but suppresses it when he sees who it is. He sees Astarion’s co*cky grin, the kind that says some monster hunter you are, and comes quickly to his own defense. “I’m afraid I’m not much of a fair match right now, a bit of wine and all.” It’s just a comfortable buzz, but it’s a good excuse nonetheless. His digits twitch in a late response to the hand that had brushed them. Without thinking, he reaches out and twines his fingers softly with Astarion’s.

The elf frowns down at the contact, then looks up at him like he’s sprouted three heads. “What do you think you’re doing?”

Wyll winces, recoils with a hurt little grimace. “Ah-- my apologies, I-- I just wanted to know what it felt like.” He rubs at the withdrawn hand nervously with his other one.

Astarion considers him for a long moment while Wyll burns with embarrassment. And then, extends his palm back between them. “Alright, then. Go on.”

The warlock carefully searches Astarion’s face, cautious, but finds mostly sincerity there, peppered only with amusem*nt. He reaches back out to meld their palms back together, his fingers threading tentatively with his. A minute smile curls upon his scarred lips.

It’s unbearably naive, but so much so that even Astarion can’t help but feel a little flutter at it. It’s the kind of fairy-tale, romance-novel drivel that he’s never envisioned happening to him as long as he lived, and maybe that’s what makes him so weak to it. His hunger gnaws at his throat, infused with a touch of something more: an opportunity to indulge in that forbidden thoughtlessness, that taste of golden freedom.

Without hesitation, Astarion’s grip vices on Wyll’s hand and he tugs it far behind him to reel him sharply in. He sweeps a commanding arm around the man’s waist and forces their bodies flush together. Singular red eye goes wide and Wyll lets free a startled gasp. The vampire nestles his temple against the base of impressive horns and Wyll’s mouth is so close to his that just a small press forward and he’d be able to feel Astarion’s wicked grin upon his lips.

“My, aren’t you easy to catch?” the elf teases, and he feels a shiver ripple down the other’s back. Coyly: “Is this what you wanted?”

“Yes,” Wyll groans, practically panting against his mouth already as he needily presses his lips to Astarion’s. Wyll kisses him fiercely, without any of the gentle reservations of the night before, and boldly draws the vampire’s bottom lip to knead gently between his teeth. The hungry hiss that elicits from Astarion makes him swell with eager pride.

“Naughty.” The chide is low and ravenous. Astarion guides Wyll’s held hand to the small of his back and abandons it there so that he can slide a pressuring palm onto the man’s shoulder. He urges him back toward the tree, earning no resistance, only fervent obedience even as Wyll’s horns roughly collide back against the bark when he’s pinned. He doesn’t seem to mind, but the jarring of the bone behind him jerks his head upwards unexpectedly before he can adjust around them.

Astarion practically lunges for his neck, grazing his teeth along the stubble at the base of his throat.

Wyll leaps even further to life against Astarion’s thigh and whines into the top of pale curls. He wishes they were in a place more right, somewhere better the way Astarion deserves, but, hell, if the machinations of Lae’zel’s people work tomorrow, how much longer do they have? And they don’t, who knows how long, even still? So, f*ck it. His claws drag across Astarion’s waist and shoulders, the higher hand sliding up into Astarion’s hair to tangle against his scalp and clutch his mouth closer against him.

“Needy little thing, aren’t you?” Astarion purrs against his neck, trailing practiced kisses down along the deliciously pulsing trail of his jugular. He’s tempted to sink his fangs in there and now, but the power of Wyll shuddering beneath him, completely pliant, makes him perfectly happy to drag things out plenty. “You get something out of this after all, don’t you?”

He grinds his thigh against Wyll’s erection and earns a hiss, but the other man scrambles to drop his lower hand so he can sink his talons into one of Astarion’s ass cheeks in sharp retaliation. Astarion huffs a breath of brief surprise against him, but goes on taunting. “If you were anyone else, I’d think the whole ‘spending time’ thing was a sneaky lie, hmm?”

That gets Wyll’s rapt attention. He drops his head and uses his grip on Astarion to crush him close, nearly lifting him with the way he drags him up against him, his teeth dropping to lay demanding claim to the join of his neck and shoulder. “If I were anyone else.” It is a deep, possessive growl, rumbling out from around the steady pressure of his teeth in Astarion’s flesh, all impulse and heady need and liquid courage and boldness.

Astarion gasps and leans against him, letting Wyll hold his weight, practically folding under the applied pressure -- survival, the instinct of prey to drop slack in a predator’s grip. He puffs out a fast breath through pursed lips, letting the surge of fear that had briefly found him out of his throat. He controls the reflex, tempering it with a silent reassurance in his thoughts. He hides his face away into the upper slopes of Wyll’s neck as he carefully re-collects the pieces of himself that had threatened to bolt.

He’s fine, now. Another deep breath, another fleeting mimicry of living that soothes him. “And here I thought you were all bark,” he murmurs pleasurably against Wyll’s earlobe as the tension fades away. The shift hadn’t been entirely unpleasant, just unexpected in a way that he has to carefully manage.

The switch of control flips back on immediately. Wyll loosens his grip on him, smoothing over the strained flesh with a fleeting kiss. His crown pulls back and he slides his hand from Astarion’s hair and back to his nape, cradling it in his palm with a soothing stroke of his thumb against his scalp. His brow knits with concern as he seeks the vampire’s eyes.

“Hells, I’m sorry, I--” His voice comes out a whisper, apologetic and yielding. “Are you-- Is this okay?” He breathes quickly, his features all flushed and his heart thundering maddeningly in his chest.

Astarion almost wishes he wouldn’t ask that so much. It’s uncomfortable, but only because it’s such a foreign question to him -- and because it makes it harder to just let himself drift away and do what he needs to do to seduce Wyll like all the others. It grounds him and makes him take stock of himself, to actually consider his answer. He doesn’t want to, now, when he’s got his claws deep enough to be on the precipice of binding Wyll to him for as long as he needs him. But it’s a half-hearted complaint, because it’s more than just that. He just doesn’t want to acknowledge it.

And so he closes his eyes and takes a deep breath. Not needing it makes it all the more intentional, something for him to focus every muscle on. “Yes, just…” He swallows hard. There’s an awkward lump in his throat at having to risk asking for anything in this position, held vulnerably in another’s arms, but he reminds himself: It’s Wyll. “Maybe a warning, for next time.”

The realization settles in, and the expression on Wyll’s face is absolutely crestfallen. There’s a deep self-wounding at realizing that he’s hurt him in some way, but he moves to mask it so that Astarion doesn’t think it’s his problem to deal with. He buries his face into Astarion’s neck and seeks to draw him into a fierce, warm hug. “Of course. I’m sorry.”

It takes Astarion a second to ease into the embrace. It’s a comfort still very much new to him, and he’s especially not used to a kind touch being offered after making a request -- the consequences of that are usually severe. He breathes in Wyll’s scent, still laced with lingering arousal and heat. The quiver of his strong heartbeat against his ear reminds him of why they’re here in the first place. After a few long seconds, Astarion turns his head back to press a chaste kiss upon the beautiful swollen vein on Wyll’s neck.

“May I?” Astarion asks, breathlessly, his teeth scraping along that perfect spot.

The question catches Wyll off-guard. “Please,” he can’t help but moan, though he’s quick to add: “We don’t have to do anything else, or even that, if you don’t--” He’s cut sharply short by Astarion’s answering fangs. “f*ck--”

Winter’s touch, icy and cold, sharp in contrast to the flushed warmth of-- of everything. Of the alcohol in his gut and the desire burning in his blood, of the hardness of himself against this gorgeous creature. Astarion sucks eagerly at him with such firm, forceful gulps that he can feel the suction and the siphoning of himself even through the numbing high. His hips twitch and he ruts helplessly and mindlessly against Astarion’s thigh, his eye rolling back into the haze of stars dancing across his vision.

Gods, can he come like this? For a moment he thinks maybe he can, but cinches that thought down -- inappropriate. It’s in the same breath he finally consciously realizes that he’s moving himself desperately against the man he’s feeding, and he stops that too, silencing the motion with a swift wash of restraint. He focuses on his breathing, fast and hurried, and tries to slow it, tries to not think about how f*cking hard he is and how every dizzying, draining gulp only makes him impossibly harder.

Astarion has already passed the amount he usually takes and he knows it. The flush of wine through him as he drinks and the heady taste of Wyll’s arousal makes him greedy. He suppresses the urge to chuckle into Wyll as the man seizes back control of his impulsive rutting. It’s so different from what he’s used to. Wyll takes everything he is given, but claims nothing for himself that he is not explicitly gifted. It gives Astarion more control than he’s used to, than he’s ever had. It’s intoxicating, utterly and wholly.

He’s pushing it, but Wyll doesn’t stop him. For a second he entertains the grim fantasy of continuing, to see how much Wyll really means it when he says that he trusts him, to see if he’ll let him drink him dry. But he unlatches far before that point, leaving him light-headed but safe. He swipes his tongue across the weeping punctures and decides he’ll take the rest of his due elsewhere, since Wyll is too polite to claim it for himself.

Astarion drops to his knees.

Wyll doesn’t notice at first. The world swims slowly around him as he slumps, dizzy, back against the tree. Woozy, but otherwise content. It’s not until he feels the tug of his trousers down his hips that he abruptly stops breathing, that his hand jumps to search for Astarion and finds his hand in his hair and he realizes.

“Oh, Gods,” he breathes, incredulous, the pupil of his good eye blown wide as he chances a look down, and damn near passes out at the sight of his length twitching so close to those beautiful pale features. “Astarion--”

Astarion’s name on his lips is so unbearably sweet. He wants to hear it again. He presses his lips to the upper plane of Wyll’s exposed thigh. He feels Wyll’s co*ck twitch along the wispy edges of his curls in response. He’s done this countless times, but it still feels so deliciously new -- he still tastes Wyll in every corner of his mouth, copper-touched saliva pooling beneath his tongue. He buries his nose in the junction of Wyll’s hip and leg and shamelessly inhales his musk. He slots his tongue into the crease of his skin. Wyll’s grip tightens in his hair.

“Astarion, please.” He’s begging now, the teasing altogether too much with the way his head spins and his limbs feel weak from the feed. In the rush of it all, he completely forgets that he’d wanted the opportunity to warn Astaron about the more unexpected side effects of his transgression against his pact. He’s too busy straining his body back against the rugged bark, fighting fiercely to resist the temptation to seek out his pleasure against Astarion with his hips.

“Shh,” the elf whispers, his mouth drifting across to breathe across the smattering of dark, wiry curls at the base of him. “I’ll take care of you, promise.” The words stream easily out of him, a practiced pledge, but there’s an undercurrent of sincerity to it that makes his throat tight, makes a dampness sting unbidden at his eyes. Not now.

He withdraws only a hair's breadth away from him, his other hand palming smoothly up Wyll’s opposite thigh. His eyes swipe over and he recognizes what Wyll has only mentioned in brief, self-deprecating passing to the rest -- scales and ridges in uncomfortable places. Astarion isn’t bothered, simply intrigued.

His length sports a quad of blooming ridges, mirrored in twin sets, not unlike the gained sharpness of his cheekbones and ripples of his neck. Astarion moves his lips up to the first set, and opens his mouth to drag the flat of his tongue sideways, drawing a wet stripe up along where the ridges taper flush with his bulk at the front.

The electric bolt that Astarion’s tongue sends through him as he laps at those intimate lines sharply reminds him, causes his eyes to fly back down. sh*t--

Astarion knows he’s about to speak, about to apologize for something completely idiotic, and so he kills the words forming on his lips by wrapping a hand around the base of him and readjusting to bring his bulging tip into his waiting mouth. A strangled sound tears from Wyll’s throat and the claws in Astarion’s hair grasp almost painfully into his scalp, but they drop almost completely when he realizes the intensity of the pressure he applies.

“Astarion-- Hells, Astarion, I--” It won’t be long, he won’t last long. His legs tremble with weakness. Astarion’s free hand smooths up along his waist beneath his shirt, anchoring him against the tree.

He doesn’t need to tell Astarion that this will be quick. The man knows. And so he wastes no time in swallowing him whole, down to the base, slicking drool wantonly along every last inch of him. Wyll nearly cries, the sounds fighting their way from him becoming nearly unintelligible. His free hand clasps over his mouth, desperate to stifle his moans lest they travel back and wake everyone--

The hand in Astarion’s hair tightens, tugs urgently as the elf begins to roll his tongue around him, rocking his wet mouth back and forth around him in measured strokes, each one ending with the stinging threat of a gag as he effortlessly takes all of him. Slick, filthy sounds lap from his lips as he uses them to smear his spit down to Wyll’s base.

Wyll moves his hand from his mouth, framing it with tense fingers instead, prepared to clamp back another moan if needed. “Astarion, ‘starion--” He has to say it, has to warn him. He tries to pull away but the man chases him, and his muscles jerk frantically. “I’m going to come, if you don’t--”

At the pleading of his name, Astarion moans thickly around him. His grip on Wyll’s waist tightens reassuringly, and it’s all Wyll needs. He bites down on his own palm to strangle his cry as his org*sm thunders through him, twitching at the back of Astarion’s mouth, his own warm heat flooding around him with every spasm. Every twitch yields more into the velvety embrace of Astarion’s patient mouth. Finally, just as he’s starting to return to occupy his own brain again, he feels himself softening between his lips.

Oversensitive already, the sensation of Astarion swallowing his spend down around him makes him see stars, makes him forget which way is up and which way is down.

He can’t hold himself up -- his back drags harshly down the bark as his legs slip, scraping up his skin with angry marks, but he doesn’t realize, and if even if he did, he wouldn’t care. Astarion jumps to catch him, to cushion his slump and lower him softly to the ground.

Wyll grasps deliriously at him, eyes half-lidded, tears stinging at creased corners. Astarion swoops close to support him, acting on instinct alone -- this isn’t his usual role. He feels awkward, lacking any of his scripted grace and suave as he treads entirely new territory.

Even bloodless, dazed, Wyll cups Astarion’s cheek with shaking hands and draws him into a breathless kiss. Unabashed, unafraid of the taste of his own spend and the iron remnants of his own life’s essence still on Astarion’s tongue. Sloppy, uncoordinated, he reaches down to palm at the back of Astarion’s thighs, moving towards the front, aiming for where Astarion strains against his own trousers. “P’lease, let me--”

Astarion is stunned. “Darling, no, are you out of your mind?” He swats away Wyll’s hand, and with him safely on the ground, he moves to the man’s side, pulling him bodily against his chest to support him. Maybe-- maybe that was too much, considering how late it is, how important tomorrow might be. He’s already taking inventory of the potions and scrolls he’s tucked away as tax for his dexterous services. A restoration one will do, and he knows he has one. He’ll get Wyll cleaned up, then send him to sleep with its effects on him after.

Wyll turns his cheek against Astarion’s chest, nuzzling softly against him in a way that gives the vampire pause. It hollows him out in a golden way, light and wonderful, and he grinds his teeth against the wave of confusion that follows in its wake. It’s frankly all too much for him, but he’s needed, so he bears it. He wraps his arms around Wyll’s shoulders from behind and leans his chin carefully between arcing horns.

Gods, damn it all. He’s in too deep. Wyll Ravengard has him by the teeth.

Chapter 8: Contingency

Chapter Text

Wyll's face practically blazes in his palms as he curls back against the tree, face buried into his hands. His ears burn a deep sienna.

"Look, darling, I frankly found it quite flattering." Astarion's hand gestures sweepingly in front of himself as he leans nonchalantly against Wyll's shoulder. "It's not every day you get to make your partner black out with a literally mind-blowing—"

"Astarion," Wyll whines as he grinds his face impossibly deeper into his hands. "I'm begging you—"

"That you were," he purrs, not missing a beat. The flustering, the shyness; he drinks it in. It's a tangy kind of nectar, a perverse strength that's easy to wield with a flex of his tongue.

Face twisted into an exasperated scowl, Wyll peeks sidelong at him from behind his fingers. Astarion has never seen a more miserable look on his face, and it's comforting to know that even the Blade of Frontiers can wilt into a heap of crippling embarrassment. Of course, Astarion basks in every second of it.

A pink touch of dawn spreads on the horizon, a gentle brightness as the earliest of mornings begins to bloom. Wyll huddles atop his bedroll, which Astarion had found easier to bring here rather than having to drag the equivalent of a dead body back to camp. The Lesser Restoration scroll did its job well, enabling his rest to prevent him from being absolutely destroyed for the day to come. And to Astarion's surprise, he'd woken up quite early on his own, stirring the elf from his watchful trance beside him with a groggy groan.

Wyll folds his arms across his folded knees and huffs crossly against them. "You can't—" He starts, but his throat is too tight. He's devastated, frankly. His first true intimate encounter with Astarion, the shining star of importance and wanting to do things somewhat right, his very first impression, and all he'd amounted to is coming in Astarion's mouth and falling asleep like some spring virgin. "You took more than usual," he accuses in a small voice, with no venom, but plenty of wounded pride.

"I did," Astarion answers with a wicked little smile, his fang poking out into his lower lip. "And all things considered, I think you handled it quite well."

Wyll looks like he's about to cry. Maybe that should worry Astarion more, but he figures it's just sheer, unadulterated shame. It'll pass.

"Astarion, Hells, I didn't want it to be... like that. I wanted to do something for you, too. I didn't— The last thing I wanted to do was disappoint you."

The vampire doesn't hold back his laugh. "Oh, you sweet thing." He leans his face closer to Wyll's, seeking his gaze, intent on not letting him wriggle away from his piercing look. "Darling, I'm the one who drank that much from you. If I wanted you to hold out for longer, to do something for me, I wouldn't have left you half-bloodless against a tree before I got on my knees, hmm?" And he wanted the first encounter to be blindingly good for Wyll. So good that he won't be able to go without it, that future propositions become harder and harder to turn down.

Besides — the longer things drag on, the more Wyll gets to look at him with those inquisitive eyes and ask stupid questions, like what he wants. Which takes him out of the neat compartments he's built for himself and brings him back into his own body — something Cazador did with cruelty, but Wyll does with kindness.

The warlock blushes fiercely, but nods begrudgingly into his arms. He averts his eye, though it remains half-lidded with distress.

Astarion tilts his head at him. There's a flicker of something in him then, surfaced by the thought of Cazador, a slight chill. "It is what you wanted, yes?" His lips purse, brows creasing with a wrinkle of concern.

Wyll's blinks, jerks his head up instantly. His folded arms unfurl so that he can place his hand on Astarion's comfortingly. He doesn't give voice to the small barb of shame that digs a little deeper at the question. Something for him to worry over later, but for now: "Gods, Astarion. I'd be loath to let you think it wasn't. I— that was more than I'd dared to hope for. And at least thrice as good as I imagined."

It soothes the concern. "As you imagined?" Astarion snickers. "Ah, that explains the soiled shirt yesterday morning, then." There's a mischievous glimmer in ruby red eyes.

"Actually, that—" Wyll clamps his mouth shut in an instant. That is most definitely a trap. "No, never mind."

A downright predatory grin grows on Astarion's face, baring his sharp fangs. It's too easy. He's too easy to terrorize. "Ah, well. I suppose we can save whatever filthy fantasy is rolling around in that beautiful skull of yours for next time." Astarion stands up, extends a hand to him to help him up. They need to smuggle Wyll and his bedroll back into camp before everyone gets up, and get him something to eat to restore him fully.

"Yeah, um—" Still embarrassed, Wyll takes the hand, answering without thinking, but catches himself, dark features somehow flushing further. "Astarion, next time?"

"Are we just going to stand here and let that thing kill her?" Astarion's voice wavers with a high, urgent strain.

Wyll labors beneath the splitting pain, beneath the cleaver splitting down his skull. "I'm trying," he whispers hoarsely. And he is. Every part of himself strains desperately, scrambling with every fiber of his conscience for something to help. His body crackles with the static charge of arcane energy, pulling desperately even on Mizora's power for something, anything that will stop this.

Lae'zel is dying. The machine is tearing her apart and every ounce of agony that shreds through her tears down through their thoughts in unison.

Wild, helpless fear races through him. None of his myriad of nightmares about it have prepared him for this, for failing someone in the moment that they need him. Not like this. It's happened before, but never while he can feel it, while he can feel the rending of the woman as if it is his own death cracking him open.

He reaches for the last thing he wants to, for his last resort. For the devil he does not know, for the Dream Visitor.

Help her. Please.

It only takes a moment, and then the pressure eases, a well of monumental relief buoying to the surface. Steel groans and cries out as the Zaith'isk's mechanisms begin to splinter and fold. Lae'zel crumples from it, reeling, and Wyll lunges forward to catch her. She relies on his support for only an instant before she gathers her bearings, realizes, and swats him away with a scowl, her own rage rising to turn upon the other Githyanki woman.

Wyll shakes, but sucks in air and grits his teeth and pushes it down. He deflects away the doctor's suspicion from them, from the tadpoles still squirming in their skulls. Every instinct screams to him that they need to get out, but Lae'zel is convinced that there is foul play, that only tampering would lead to the machine trying to kill one of Vlaakith's faithful.

He manages to talk her down, but only for the moment. They withdraw to a quiet hallway in the crèche where Wyll paces, trying to calm himself, trying to figure out how they're going to do this. His thought race He breaks off from the rest as he gathers his bearings.

Astarion is there, cautious. "We should get going," he says, nostrils flaring as he glances around. All that doctor has to do is decide she didn't believe them after all, and they'll have an untold amount of Githyanki coming down on their heads. Not to mention how suspicious they already look loitering off on the side like this. He aims to be out of here long before all hell breaks loose.

Wyll shakes his head, arms tense at his sides. "I must think, Astarion. I cannot let that happen again." He pauses, words weighed heavy with anguish. "I failed her, and it almost killed her. Whatever comes next, it cannot find us before we are more prepared." He turns it over in his thoughts, wonders fervently if it could have been him to enter the Zaith'isk instead. Would the outcome have been different, if a skeptic had lain in the place of a worshiper?

Astarion steps into him, grabbing his forearm tightly to drive his point home. "Nothing about that was on you, Wyll." His fervent whisper glides beneath the echoes of the high walls around them, careful not to let his voice rise too high as he speaks blasphemy. "She's damn near fanatical — she would have gone into that thing no matter what you did. If she'd died, it would have been because she got herself killed for her Queen. Not because you let her."

"She truly thought that it would save her," he responds. He can't blame her for that. "I felt her faith. She did. But I also felt her pain, Astarion."

"So did the rest of us," he hisses, "but you don't see us blaming ourselves for it." With a tug of his arm, he urges Wyll to face him. He does. "It's going to happen, Wyll. There's a good chance that on any given day, with these things in our heads and these gods playing us like pawns, that one of us won't make it through." He purses his lips. "You have to be ready for that." It's such a simple concept for Astarion — he doesn't understand why it's so hard for Wyll to grasp, why he always has to make someone else's idiocy his own responsibility.

The warlock is silent for a long, impossible moment, pain written across his features. But finally, he yields. "I'm afraid you're right." He raises his eye to Astarion, brow pleated with resignation. It hurts to acknowledge, but it offers him a modicum of peace, for now. Enough to jar him from his stasis. "Thank you."

Against Astarion's protests, they stay. Wyll has to let Lae'zel do this — if they leave her, she loses the protection of the artefact. Between the Zaith'isk and the slates, she stands on the edge of a precipice, a peak between two paths. Wyll hopes beyond hope that when she leaps, or when the rock crumbles beneath her, she will still be with them.

Lae'zel leads them to the Kith'rak. Her accusations fall on deaf ears, and the Githyanki captain senses the artefact in their possession. Lae'zel is reluctant, hesitating for only the briefest of breaths, but Astarion holds no such reservations — as soon as the captain draws her sword, he draws one deadly-accurate arrow, and then another. Wyll doesn't hesitate to follow his lead. They dispatch the chamber before the rest can be alerted.

They pass through the barrier, and into the vaulted room that hosts the Inquisitor. Wyll knows the moment that they step in that in her heat, Lae'zel leads them into a trap. He holds his hand across Astarion and Karlach's path in the doorway, giving them room to maneuver in case things go south, before he steps forward with the Githyanki warrior.

The impossible demand is made to give up the artefact that protects them. He looks to Lae'zel, at the conflict in her eyes and the grit of her teeth. And he trusts that despite her stubbornness, she knows it's the right thing when he denies Ch'r'ai.

The battle that follows is bloody and brutal.

A titanic skeleton twisted in its final throes, colossal jaw gaping around the brilliance of celestial stars. The Astral Plane is cool on Wyll's skin, with a psionic static about it that raises the hairs on his arms.

"Boundless, timeless — like every dream that ever was, stitched together. It is home." Lae'zel's tone echoes soft with infinite reverence as she says it.

No such comfort soothes Wyll. Every time the protector within the artefact drags him here, his senses draw into taut awareness of anticipation of an ambush. And as he steps through the shimmering portal to lay eyes upon their Visitor, that sensation only sharpens, electric. It's the same unease that rankles him in the presence of Mizora, of Raphael. A monster hunter's intuition, as accurate as it is maddeningly vague.

But unlike the rest, the Visitor acts repeatedly in their interest. Wyll remembers the sprawl of the beach racing up towards him; the easing of the Absolute's command thundering through their thoughts and forcing them to their knees; remembers the soothing touch of their energy on the night when he'd struggled against the turning, sweating, his flesh feverish and priming for ceremorphosis.

He remembers Lae'zel's escalating internal screams of agony through their thoughts, clamped behind gritted teeth, in the moment before the Zaith'isk fell apart.

And so the choice of whether to parlay with the Visitor or Vlaakith is obvious, even if the mystery cloaked around the "how" of the Visitor's protection unnerves him.

When he emerges from the portal, the memories flow easily from him and to his companions, crackling live and electric through the psionic-charged air between them. He lets slip the rest of the dreams from the Visitor as well, comparing them silently to the others.

A common thread that runs through them is a suggestion: to not simply endure the tadpoles in their heads, but to embrace them. To not simply purge the True Souls of their guests, but to welcome the squirming abominations to make further nest in their heads. To embrace the power that comes with it.

Wearily, they channel the ritual spell to return to camp, the Blood of Lathander safely in hand.

Wyll digs through his pack for potions. He lets Shadowheart tend to the others wounds first, leaving him with only the dredges of her magic and liquid restoration. Astarion follows him to camp to complain about how terribly self-sacrificing he is, ghosting over Wyll's shoulder to peer into his bag as he rummages.

Red eyes catch a glimpse of the vials and their ghastly, wriggling little inhabitants. They writhe as they're jostled. The sight of them makes the elf particularly twitchy in the fingers, the Visitor's words ringing in his skull. The promise of power squirms in those jars, a siren song. He remembers the glow of the brand, the itch of compulsion, and the salve on his tongue that was scratching it.

And in his mind alone, the voice of the Guardian murmurs thoughtfully, their interest piqued: Yes. You should.

Astarion pulls back before Wyll catches him looming.

"So," he mulls conversationally. "What do you think of our... mysterious Visitor?"

The warlock casts a glance over his shoulder, pausing in his rummage. He fishes out the potion he was looking for and stiffly rises to his feet, suppressing a wince at the ache of his body. "Out of all of the forces vying for our favor, I can definitively say that theirs has aided us the most." The fact that they are not illithid right now is enough of a testimony to that. "But I cannot help a bit of apprehension at not knowing his true motives."

"Strange. I thought you'd think him a nice enough fellow, on account of not letting us turn into brain-eating abominations and all." Usually it takes much less good-deed-wise for Wyll to trust someone.

"I can't shake the feeling that he's keeping something from us." Wyll pauses to see if he senses any apprehension from the artefact, but none comes. "But, I am grateful that his goals align with ours, and not against."

Astarion postures forward with a minute flourish of his hands, leaning into the embrace of the point he's chasing. "And what about the other wriggling little beasties that we've collected, hm?"

A bell of warning peals somewhere within Wyll. A flush of intuition, coiled warily in his chest. He resists the urge to step protectively closer to his pack. He loathes the chill of the distrust, draped over his shoulders like a cloak he'd rather shed.

He trusts Astarion. Something baser within him does not, in that moment.

"What of them?" Wyll queries smoothly back, meticulously managing his expression and metering his breath so that Astarion does not pick up on some spike in his heartbeat, some shift in the chemistry of his blood.

"Well, you're going to take them, aren't you?" A white brow arches, red eyes intent upon him.

Wyll folds his arms, as if protecting the ball of uncertainty that has cropped up in his breast. "I hadn't planned on it, no."

"Come, now," Astarion drawls as he steps languidly closer. Pale eyelashes flutter plaintively, a smirk curled comfortably on his features in a way that flaunts a wicked fang. "They've done nothing but good, as far as I'm concerned. They're certainly helpful for getting what we want from the Absolute — and that seems to be only a mere taste of their power."

Wyll's good eye holds Astarion steadily, taking in the cast of the setting sun on his delicate features. He tries to soothe the rising strain in his gut. It makes sense that Astarion doesn't loathe the presence of the tadpoles in their head — after all, it is what frees him from Cazador's command, what allows him to walk in the sunlight rather than hiding from it. The tadpole offers Astarion more freedom than he's ever had, and it's not something Wyll can even blame him for.

In comparison, Wyll's parasite feels leaden in his skull. A guillotine's phantom blade, hanging heavily above his neck, a twin to Mizora's.

"As helpful as they may be," he ventures, carefully, "each time we draw upon them for aid, I cannot help but sense that they take something in return. Something we may never get back."

Wyll knows better than to trust such a dark hunger, one that is slaked by the exertion of one's will over another.

Derision wrinkles across Astarion's face, accompanied by a hot righteousness that squirms in his throat. He corrects the flicker of discomposure and continues on, smooth as ever, easily shifting into his next argument. "Against the Absolute, against the very gods, should we not take every advantage that we are offered?"

"It is quite sound logic, on the surface, yes?" Wyll softens as he yields that part of the point. "But power always comes with fine print. I know the price that things like this run, and I'm not interested in finding out how high it is."

The vampire's features light up suddenly with disgust, anger. "Oh, how noble of you," Astarion snaps, the careful poise exploding away. "Sacrificing a necessary strength for your lofty principles. I'm sure the next person you let die on you will be so very grateful for it." A pause, teeth grinding. "At least one of us should take them, if you don't have the spine to."

The soft planes on Wyll's expression carve away to harsher edges. He hardens sharply around the wound the words aggravate, red and raw.

So that's what this is about. Wyll turns solemnly away, unwilling to give him the rise he searches for. He releases a measured breath slowly through his nostrils. The long day of strife amplifies gravity's pull on his very bones, and those words sap the rest of his strength from him. He refuses to snap again, like that day at the Grove. He sets his jaw as he speaks.

"Astarion." His lips shape each word very deliberately, each one crafted of a low and quiet steel. "I appreciate what you did for me today, in the crèche." In truth, his heart reaches further back, to the night before. It seems so, so distant, now. A wistful, hurt voice in his head wonders where that Astarion has gone. "But I won't be negotiating the matter."

Wyll kneels to collect his backpack, and clutches it a bit too tightly at the end of his hanging grip as he turns to face back to Astarion. He raises his arm and bares the wrist of his free hand minutely in front of him, counseling his features into something unreadable.

"Feed now, if you'd like," he asserts steadily. "But I will be retiring for the night. The days will only become longer from here, I'm afraid." They may argue, there may be friction, but it is a show of goodwill. He will not withhold a meal as punishment.

A small, hopeful part of himself yearns for even a brush of that tenderness again, that contact. But he mutes that partition of his chest, letting it beat on its lonesome without acknowledgment.

Astarion's eyes narrow suspiciously down at the offering, managing a soft huff of incredulity. His tongue flicks along the confines of his teeth, considering. He is still half-poised as if ready to spring, the tension all tangled up in his muscles, and he knows he has made a miscalculation. He works his jaw for a long, silent moment.

He has a few options — to apologize, to grovel, to buckle down. There's even still a chance that if he lets himself smooth out, he can poke holes in Wyll's memories, in Wyll's doubts, with a few carefully-placed sleights of the tongue. That was a test, of course — why would I want your silly little tadpoles? But Wyll is too resolved for that. He is a fool only in the naive and trusting sense, and unfortunately not where it matters most for Astarion to get his way. Not like that, at least.

In the end, he pursues none of them. He blows an unnecessary breath out through his nostrils and turns away, against the tightness in his teeth that hungers for retribution.

They don't speak for the rest of the night, but the way Wyll sleeps with his sealed pack tucked beneath the crook of his arm says plenty.

Astarion's mood swings in pendulum. Every arc that brings him closer to the light of Wyll Ravengard leaves him feeling inexplicably lighter. But every counter swing plunges him deeper and deeper into the shadows of habit.

The day leaves him ragged, bitter. Lae'zel's pain forced his brain through an agonizing re-death, potent as any branding agony inflicted by Cazador. And Wyll hadn't been the one to relieve him of it; the Visitor had.

The inferno of psionic energy through them and into the Zaith'isk smoldered in his thoughts long after its passing. Potent coals of power, ones that left the writhing thing inside of his head jittery, active, and reaching. Reaching, suddenly, fervently for— Astarion spotted the vials of its kin on the table not far from them, the path of his sight like a live wire into his brain, a siren call, a psychic compulsion. Kill her, take us.

But Wyll smooth-talks their way out of it, even when Astarion wants nothing more than to slit her throat — for Lae'zel, but also for the tadpoles. And yet Wyll still has the gall to be despondent and self-sacrificing about it.

It doesn't hurt, he thinks, to have a backup plan.

For all of his heroism, Wyll is still human, mortal, fallible. One day, Wyll's corpse will rot in the dirt or in the Hells while Astarion still walks above it, and it's always possible that time is sooner rather than later. Their group has managed to best nearly every challenge before this one, and while a part of him knows that what happened today would never happen to him — he would simply not get into the Githyanki death device — it reminds him that it is best to have a contingency plan.

The tadpoles are as good of one as any.

Sharp indignation crackles in his gut as he watches Wyll settle into his bedroll beneath the stars, the rebuff of his reach for the tadpoles stinging harshly. His nails bite into his palms as he paces in the dark, curses through gritted teeth. The very same hero's nature that tucks Astarion beneath the warlock's protective wing now clips his own plumage infuriatingly short.

Astarion has lit a fuse of friction and distrust between them, shown in the way Wyll sleeps with the bag safely under his arm. And as confident as Astarion is in his abilities, the other man sleeps too lightly undrained for him to get away with extracting glass bulbs from the leather beneath his very skin.

But perhaps if he can coax his guard down... Drink from him, race down his pleasure to a shattering finish that removes him from the equation for a bit. A few hours is all he needs, because once they're in — a thought that makes his toes curl just a little, remembering the first time, but he's endured worse and will endure it again for this — no amount of arguing or anger will pull them from his skull. That much is certain.

After that, he can search for the angle that will slide him back into Wyll's good graces. And then he will have the best of both worlds: a knight in shining armor, and sharp enough blade to defend himself in case the knight falls before his duty is done.

The foundations of everything she knows shaken, Lae'zel needs a day, even if she won't admit it. Wyll is the first to make a loud joke about having pulled something, and before Shadowheart can mosey over to look at him, Karlach's eyes light up with mirth and she raucously complains about how hot her engine is running today. Astarion doesn't miss a beat, happy to whine about chafing so dreadful that even his undead healing can't keep up with it.

On cue, Gale is entirely too eager to enthuse verbosely about gastrointestinal issues from last night's stew — Wyll isn't sure if he's in on the unspoken scheme, or if he just really wants to fit in talking about their various degrees of hurts — and it's only then that Shadowheart realizes what they're up to. She wrinkles up her nose and sighs, but there's a touch of a smile on her face as she mentions how exhausted her magic is.

Lae'zel's hiss about their soft istik bodies holds only half the normal bite. She strikes out into the treeline to train. The thunderous sound of her blows against the bark echo through camp.

Wyll takes the time to do laundry.

He grabs his sewing kit and heads with his clothes to the stream. While washing, he always finds some hole or another to patch up, some frayed edge to messily pleat. His education in it isn't formal, but he makes do. He sheds his shirt, and considers stripping down his trousers to wash them, but decides against it in the broad daylight. He'll cycle them out, get these ones next time.

Soap silken in his hands, he gently kneads the foam into his garments, then rinses them beneath the water. He watches the bubbles drift away on the current, carrying his thoughts away with them.

In truth, he's always enjoyed the more rote tasks of domicile life. Dishes are a necessary evil, but the clink of cutlery reminds him of quiet dinners with his father, time rare and stolen in the Duke's busy schedule. He's grown to tolerate the grime of the road and the necessity of durable clothing, but finds himself breaking away from the group in ruins, sometimes, to rummage through collapsing mothball-scented wardrobes, feeling the wearied clothes beneath his fingertips. The feeling of fine fabric on his skin glows with the warm nostalgia of home.

Home, as he knew it seven years ago.

The shadowlands still lie between them still, but he cannot help but wonder how the Gate has changed in his absence.

Laid out on a flat river rock, his shirt dries enough to be workable for him to patch the newest tear on the collar. He hunches low over it, each breath deliberate as he guides each stroke of the needle through. There's a fleeting impression of something amiss, a shift in the pressure of the air as he tilts his head. He pauses and looks behind him just as Astarion opens his mouth to greet him.

Without thinking, Wyll smiles and turns halfway to face him. Then yesterday's unease brushes against him, like wiry fur aggravated the wrong way, and he tempers his enthusiasm.

The vampire blinks, surprised at the timing, but continues anyway. "About yesterday," he begins hurriedly.

Wyll rights himself, drops his eyes back down to his stitching.

Astarion folds his arms, drums his fingers along his forearm. "I'm... sorry." The words hesitate on their way out, which draws a resigned exhale from Wyll. The whisper of exasperation prompts Astarion to get to his excuse out a bit more quickly. "I was stressed, that's all. The whole—" His wrist twirls an emphasizing gesture, one Wyll picks up on in the better peripherals of his good eye. "—giving a sh*t thing is a bit new to me." A wistful sigh leaves him. "And like I said. We could all feel it. Her pain."

A moment of silence, heavy beneath the weight of vivid memory, nestles between them before Astarion continues.

"And whatever hesitations we might host about our... mysterious friend in the Prism, it was their power that saved her."

Wyll scarcely needs to be reminded. It's played in his thoughts over and over since. But Astarion is right, as he often irritatingly is with things such as these. He remains decidedly quiet, grateful for the privacy the river's view offers him, away from Astarion's perceptive eyes.

"And out of all of our band, the presence of our squirming little guests bothers me the least. I've become, admittedly, quite fond of the sun, you see."

The warlock's shoulders ease slightly, and he casts his gaze back to the pale elf. Daylight suits him. The sun reflects softly off of snowy features, highlighting a pink flush of warmth from last night's hunt. A gale rustles high in the trees of the Pass, a whispering forecast of the breeze that trickles down across its scape to tousle pale hair.

The immaculate rings of Astarion's alabaster curls are a novel mystery to the group, the subject of hushed inquiry when Astarion goes off to find his own meal. Astarion is far from above preening, but when it comes to his hair, he scarcely needs it. The wispy locks need no commanding. They simply cooperate.

An idle reminder that at their next merchant, Wyll has to check for oil. He's partial to rosemary, but coconut will do just as well. His own supply runs low, and his scalp protests his rationing with a growing itch.

"And so I just wanted to make it clear that if we need someone to... do that, I wouldn't mind." Astarion's eyes are on him, a brow arched beneath the gentle pressure of Wyll's stare. The corners of the scarred man's eyes crinkle with that unbearable softness of his, the play of a smile hidden below the surface, betraying a whim of pleasantry that hasn't wormed its way up to affect the rest of his muscles on his face yet. Ugh. "I certainly wouldn't mind a couple of backup guests in there as insurance along with the first."

Finally, Wyll seems to notice Astarion's eyes reflecting back on him, and blinks the wandering of his thoughts away, lowering his head with a sheepish grimace that acknowledges his ill manners. He tracks back along the other man's words with a thoughtful hum.

It certainly makes him feel better about it. A twinge of guilt writhes in his gut at not trusting Astarion. Has he not earned it? He's done what the party has asked him to do, needed him to do, time and time again. Wyll feels slightly foolish for second-guessing him.

"I apologize, if I made it seem as if I did not trust you," Wyll responds, sincerely. "You're right — it had been quite a long day, and I think we were all a bit on edge." He looks back down to his sewing, remembering that it sits unnecessarily idle in his hands. "I will keep that in mind, then. Should the need arise, the group can discuss in council, and I will put in a good word for them to go to you." He pauses. "But only if it becomes necessary."

He remembers the blinding, white-hot agony of the first worm. They don't know what will happen when they take a second. Wyll hopes that the Dream Visitor is unlikely to suggest something that will kill them, that will turn them illithid, but he can't help but be wary, nonetheless. And putting anyone in that kind of danger — especially Astarion, a small voice adds unbidden — isn't on the top of his list of priorities. He wants to believe that they can grow stronger, together, to handle any threats that trouble their journey. Their group certainly becomes more powerful each day without the help of the tadpoles sitting idle in his pack. Their... unfortunately necessary slaying of the Inquisitor and his guard of elite Githyanki speaks to that much.

Out of Wyll's view, a sour look twists on Astarion's features. It isn't the yielding, actionable response he'd wanted. The whole point is that they don't know when they will need them. It has to be now, so that they are prepared. He steps forward, preparing his low protest, but sees the work clutched in Wyll's hands and pauses.

"Sewing, Wyll?" he queries, suddenly amused. "I didn't figure you the type to have learned." Wyll's brows furrow, wondering idly if he was implying something absurd, like it being woman's work — one of his most dreaded archetypes in the court — but the reality is much more poignant, sharp. "I thought your servants would have taken care of that for you, dukeling."

Wyll winces. Not at the accusation itself, but at the truth in it. "They did," he answers quietly. The rising Duke himself certainly hadn't been going about mending their own clothes. In court, the boys his age often sported their mother's embroidery on their collars. They'd gather around in clusters to compare and boast about the exquisite handiwork.

Wyll, with his fabrics stitched by the family's nursemaid, always ensured he was conveniently out of view, though within earshot. The older woman's work had been thorough, skilled. In retrospect, it is something he is immensely proud of and grateful for. He could have bragged about it to the rest anyway, deflected the knowing comments from the rest about who didn't make it for him, and gone to bat about how dear the woman was to him anyway. But the cold space left behind, the one where something precious has always been missing, is not so easily or confidently filled. Not at that age, for him.

"But it's been quite a while since that life. And on the road, I'm afraid I learned quite quickly that gear does not maintain itself." He frees a hand to rub the fingers of it together thoughtfully. Mirth glimmers in his lone organic eye. "Swordplay and travel may have worn away my fingertips into callouses, yes, but clumsy pricks of a needle have certainly done their fair part, too." The chuckle bubbles up warmly from his throat alongside the words as he resumes his work once more.

Astarion cannot help but draw close, peering nosily over his shoulder. Wyll feels him hovering, but focuses silently in, lest he add to the ghastly track record that already mars his half-missing fingerprints. He works well under pressure, or so he likes to think. An easing calm steadies his hand, deep breaths filtering through him as he works to gradually seal the linen up to the collar's edge. Some time passes, to the point where he forgets that Astarion is even there.

"Oh, you're quite awful at this, aren't you?"

Wyll jumps at Astarion's voice bursting his peace next to his ear, where the man has swooped into a crouch next to him at some point. Quite predictably, there's the glimmer of metal flashing in the sun, and then a wet bead of blood welling up around it. Wyll hisses, his hand recoiling to his mouth where he instinctively wets the wound with his tongue, lips closing around it to suck at the puncture. He worriedly checks for any blooming red spots near his work, and when he doesn't find any, a relieved huff carries out some of his spring-coiled tension.

It makes way for the little wounded look he gives Astarion, one that the elf can only describe is that of a kicked puppy. The vampire's nostrils flare at the brilliant blossom of sanguine essence, but it quickly fades, stoking that ancient hunger but not igniting it. It'd just been a drop, after all.

"Well, I'm afraid I'm not formally educated in the craft," Wyll mumbles defensively. "I looked to what I had already for what I could mimic, and I'm afraid my options were... limited." Sorely, he wonders if it's really that bad, and frowns down at his nearly-mended garment, wondering if he should start over. But it really does look fine. Great, even, compared to some of the horrific repairs he's made in the past. And so he chooses to playfully challenge Astarion, instead: "If you truly find it that ghastly, I invite you to do better, your majesty." He raises the set from the rock, prepared to offer it threateningly.

Astarion scoffs. "Oh, no, if the rest of them see you tricking me into doing your chores for you, then they'll all get ideas. And we can't have that." But nonetheless, he leans forward in his deft crouch to slide his hand atop Wyll's, his touch leaving raised gooseflesh in a chilling tingle that makes the man suppress a shudder.

The breeze whispers across his back. It reminds him very much of how bare he is and how Astarion hovers close enough to likely feel the warmth of his own body, to bask in the scent of his blood pounding beneath his skin.

For once, Astarion doesn't seem to notice, enthralled completely by the work. Lips pressed into a determined line, pale lashes lowered in a creased squint, he corrects the tightness in Wyll's dominant hand with a pointed squeeze of his own. "I've seen you hold a fork less demandingly than this," he chides lowly.

"Well," he scrambles, a bit flustered. "I did just prick myself. It's not entirely reflective of my usual—" Not to mention the way his grip had tightened fiercely in the wake of Astarion's touch. Wyll stares, suddenly slack-jawed. Has he ever seen Astarion this intent on something before? It's... fiercely endearing, the way that seeing the kit in his hands hooked him in so tightly.

"I had eyes earlier, the same as I do now, darling," Astarion interrupts scoldingly, but somewhat distantly, his attention still entirely eclipsed. "No wonder you hurt yourself so often. I hold a dagger more gently than you vice a needle."

"I'm—" Wyll stumbles over the words. "—also still getting used to these hellish claws." He casts his eye down at them. Silently, he gently releases the needle and tucks the suddenly-ghastly sight of them away into the refuge of his palms and out of view.

That seems to catch Astarion's attention. The elf's eyes turn rapt upon Wyll's features with a blink, as if truly noticing him for the first time in a few minutes. "Hm, I suppose that makes sense," he muses, his thoughts curling comfortably around the fresh revelation. His nose twitches then, his eyes darting to inventory Wyll's expression.

He, too, finally takes in their near-intimate closeness, the accelerated heartbeat crescendoing within the living being beside him.

A jarring twinge of disappointment contorts within, utterly foreign and strange. His plan remains, and this is a perfect segue into progressing it. Like the glee of a predator spotting an opening to the throat, the lack of required effort should elate him. Wyll bares his vulnerability all-too-easily to his prying sense. But instead, there is only disgust in his throat, tinged with a bitterness like bile.

An innocuous moment, warm with the glow of interest, silently thieved by a grim reminder of what he's here for. What Astarion was made to do.

Astarion clears his throat abruptly and snaps his attention back in on their hands. He knows better than to allow frivolous sentimentality to rule him. The mask slides down and he paints the beginning of a knowing smirk upon its porcelain planes.

"Teaching's never really been my thing, I'm afraid," he laments in a wistful sing-song. And he doesn't plan to teach, only to be a devastating distraction, to step closer to what he desires. But there's still sincerity in his delicate fingers gently sliding across Wyll's loosely-formed fist, unearthing the hidden claws in a way that is almost reverent, as if he unwraps something precious. Wyll hold his breath.

Firmly, Astarion guides him to take the needle once more. In a habitual movement, his hand hurriedly trails down to straighten the line of thread looped through the eye, back where it disappears into Wyll's last stitch, taking stock of what remains. As always, his skin is cool in a soothingly familiar way when it returns to cup Wyll's hand. Dark hand adjusts its grip, mindful of his talons, and nervously sets the needle in place for its next trial.

"Better," Astarion breathes across Wyll's shoulder. He finally withdraws his own hand, lays his cold chin on the warm plane of Wyll's muscular shoulder. "Go on, then."

Wyll, frankly, feels like he's about to burn up beneath his skin. But he does as he's told. He takes a slow, deep breath, and pulls the needle through.

Wintry lips ghost across his neck.

He freezes, but Astarion continues nonchalantly, leaving a trail of cool kisses down to his shoulder.

"Astarion..." he manages hoarsely, his fingers clenched around the needle again with vicious restraint.

"Hmm?" comes the returning, innocent hum. Astarion can feel the fluttering beat of Wyll's heart spiking in his throat, mere inches away from his nose, and it heightens further when the vampire slides close enough to bring his chest flush with the man's bare back. He withdraws his guiding hand so that he can slide his arms around Wyll's waist from behind.

"I thought— Um." Wyll blushes fiercely, bashfully and distractedly preparing the next stitch. "I'm afraid it's a bit difficult to learn under these... conditions."

"Well, I did warn that I was quite bad at teaching, darling," he purrs coyly, trailing back up to mischievously scrape his teeth across Wyll's neck to pull a soft breath from him. "Mostly because I can think of much better ways to spend our time."

With monumental willpower, calloused fingers continue their work. As... stimulated as he is by the closeness, the whispering contact and the molten warmth that pools in his lap, a shy hesitance tempers the heat. With everything going on, time to process that night has been scarce.

Guilt clings to him in a volley of tiny barbs, reluctant to relinquish their hold on his conscience. Each one sinks its thorns in deeper when he tries to just brush them away. It'd been terrifyingly easy to let himself crumble into the molten flow of his lust, the heady high of a beautiful creature lapping at his neck, the enchanting solace of a late night and a pleasurable touch. It's so different from how he'd imagined his next... union, his next hopeful foray. There'd been no inviting dance, no sweet nothings, no tender courting nor stolen kisses outside of one's room. Instead, he'd rutted into Astarion's thigh, let the man drop to his knees and take him in his mouth, and in one fell swoop, he'd finished without offering anything in return.

Embarrassing. Completely embarrassing.

Nothing about it had been proper or noble or romantic. When he imagines himself in the future, thinking back to the encounter that started something... real, he'd wanted it to be perfect, something to treasure and hold close to his breast when he and his forever are apart.

Not that there's anything wrong with a casual roll in the hay to start things off with a bang for others. It's not something he'd look down on someone else for, but Wyll has always tried to hold himself to... some higher standard, whatever that may be. He wants to gift someone else something not unlike the tales of love sung by bards and chronicled in reverently-bound pages. Less for himself, and more to lavish and honor the partner he loves in every way he possibly can, offering them only the best: a proper court, a supportive partner, and a soft shelter in his heart that feels like home.

As the terrible, horrible selfish thing he is, a little blood-loss and he'd practically fallen asleep, leaving his partner completely dissatisfied and bearing the burden of the embarrassing fallout. The shame gnaws incessantly at him.

At least Astarion had gotten a meal out of it. That he's at least grateful for.

An unpleasant sneer sounds within him, Mizora's voice clawing back up from the chasm of his memory: Truly, Wyll, what are you even thinking? That the hunter, the Blade of Frontiers, will get a happy ending with the first handsome beastie he finds? Did he really think that this was the start of something real, anyway?

His eyes sting unbidden as he pulls another stitch, and he demandingly blinks the harsh bite of tears away, tries to think of anything else other than the cruel words and his guilt and shame, the great disservice he's likely done to Astarion by letting things go the way they have. The kind of foolish, childish lament his father would have scoffed at him for.

Astarion's movements have long-stilled against him. He feels the tension of his muscles, watches him stiffly piloting the needle with a look that's a million miles away. Astarion draws his chin carefully away from the man's shoulder, then slowly and awkwardly untwines his arms from around Wyll's bare midriff.

The motions seem to jar Wyll from his silent reverie. His words choke out past the lump he fights in his throat. "If it's alright with you," he says distantly, looking over to Astarion to offer a small attempt at a smile. "I'd rather... not." The last word trails quietly into silence.

Astarion battles his confusion far away from the stage of his features, somewhere where Wyll cannot bear witness to it. "Very well, then." He rises, then flounders a bit, standing there behind him, not sure whether to stay or go. There's an oily taste in his mouth, one that slicks his tongue with a leaden weight and sinks it to the bottom of his mouth.

He... can't remember the last time someone rebuffed his advances. A wag of his wit, a few innuendos, some liquid courage, and his targets practically skipped back to the Palace to partake in him. He'd gotten so good at it after a while that a rejection had been nigh unheard of, especially after he's serviced them once already — any extended engagements, always no more than a day or two, only needed one intimate brush and the rest came easy, after that.

Wyll had said it'd been everything he'd imagined, and more, hadn't he? Did the dukeling have it in him to lie?

Or did the tadpole conversation really make things that tenuous? Irritation strikes him. He'd apologized, what more could Wyll want from him?

Astarion begins to turn away, but Wyll's head turns and his eyes chase him.

"However, if you're... amenable to it, I'd still..." He searches for the words. "...be quite open to some company." He recoils back into his small hunch over the rock. "The stitches go more quickly with good conversation." Each member of their bunch is enjoyable and interesting in their own right, but few are able to match Astarion's wit and sharp perception. It's stimulating.

The vampire knows the extension of an olive branch when he sees it. Despite the gnashing and gnawing part of him that tells him he should go brood and hunt and take out the stubborn frustration on something he can sink his teeth into, he's not going to turn down the opportunity to smooth whatever rough patch they're in over.

He sighs and plops down next to Wyll on the rocky bank, folding his legs underneath him. He scratches idly at the dirt between the stones with a pointed nail.

Wyll regards him for a long moment, then looks back down at his garment. He takes the needle up once more, counseling his grip to something more gentle and natural, trying to worry less about his talons and focus more on the connection of his skin to the metal. Extending his conscience through his fingertips and into the steel, like his rapier. It comes easier after that.

"So," he begins, above the babbling water that runs not far from them. "How did you learn to sew?"

The pale elf blinks, then twists his mouth in a puzzled frown. "I suppose that I've just... known, for a long time." He raises his nail from the silt to tap his own set of claws in a clicking ripple upon the stone. "After a certain point, it all starts to blend together." A somber admittance, one that draws Wyll's eyes away from his work to rest empathetically on the vampire as he contemplates his answer. "And I can do more than just sew, darling. I've got a wicked hand for embroidery, if I do say so myself. I've had more than one occasion of trying my hand at cross-stitching, also. Knitting, though... I'd rather carve out my right eye — no offense, darling — with one of those needles than to touch yarn ever again."

That one pulls a chuckle from Wyll as he continues his own work. "None taken. That bad, huh?"

Astarion gives a sagely nod, idly brushing an imaginary mote of dust from his doublet. "Awful, truly."

Cazador would dress them up like immaculate playthings for balls and patriar soirées, but they were scarcely ever allowed to own anything, let alone anything nice. They were offered tantalizing tastes of his vast riches only as rewards for being good. But they were often more of a liability than a true sip of something lasting and sweet. One carelessly rough pawing, or a brutally swift force of his legs too far apart as they backed him into the mattress, and the neatly-tailored trousers bestowed upon him by their Master became a source of his misery.

Bitterly, he realizes that's likely why he became so good at it. Matching every hem, stitch for stitch, and scrounging up threads similar enough to match his repairs to the garment he made them on. Imperfection meant agony, and it's easier to learn quickly when your own hide and maybe a few fingers are at stake.

"But quite like you, I picked it up out of necessity. Perhaps I knew a bit... before. But little things like that, from before..." Another haphazard shrug. The heel of his palm holds his chin while the other goes back to tracing idle circles in the dirt. "...time, among other things, took those first."

The small details were the first to go when every fiber of his being scrambled tooth and claw for the source of his next putrid meal. Necessity shaves off the fat with a precision simultaneously precise and cruel, uncaring of the importance of what else it cuts away with it.

"I'm sorry, Astarion," Wyll murmurs quietly. Once again, his idea of eternity writhes painfully in the back of his mind as it's stretched, again and again. The idea of Astarion's, and his potential own. But he doesn't want to dwell too long on what will only be read as pity. "Do you have anything with you? Something with some of your work? It must be lovely, I'm certain."

Astarion's fangs flash in a cheeky grin. "Why, of course! A good artist goes nowhere without his portfolio. But unfortunately, we agreed to keep the undergarments on for this one, if I remember correctly."

A snort bursts from Wyll, and he puts some distance between his hands to reduce the chance of feeding his bloodthirsty needle while he laughs. "Oh, Hells, Astarion. Are you telling me you embroidered your underwear?" He'd be lying if it didn't viciously pique his curiosity, but he doesn't allow himself to linger on it for too long — the last thing he needs is to be imagining something decidedly floral and delicate and lovely draped over those pale, lithe hips.

"That I am, my dear prince," he croons. Wyll tries to ignore the flutter inflicted by the endearment, knows it likely means little to Astarion while relishing in hearing it all the same. "But, alas. You'll have to find out some other day." There's temptation, on Astarion's part, to inject a touch of bitterness into those words, but the active effort required to dredge back into the meat of that dissonance escapes him. It's easier, right now, to choose levity.

He's unnerved by how terrifyingly easy it is to keep choosing it, with Wyll.

The warlock heaves an immensely-relieved sigh when draws the needle in a loop through the final stitch, finishing his repair. He leans in and cuts the extra thread with a quick tug of his teeth. He holds it up in front of him, turning it around to scrutinize it with an appraising eye.

"Not bad," Astarion chimes in.

Even the sparing bit of implied praise brilliantly lights up Wyll's features, an easy grin blooming across them. He leans as low as he can in his sitting position to offer a playful bow. "Ah, beneath your expert tutelage, I can sense my sewing skills improving already!"

He hauls himself to his feet as Astarion scoffs. "Oh, please, darling. I was more concerned with getting you out of the rest of your clothes far before you'd be able to put that dastardly thing back on."

The banter is easy, familiar. Astarion wears the comforting shadow of it as armor. Wyll grows accustomed to dissecting the threads of it, sorting through them for the slips of truth that illuminate the man beneath the mask. Fleeting glimpses of light, dizzying flashes that tide him over until he's once more privileged enough to cradle the warmth there in the protective cup of his palm.

Life, blinding and brilliant and golden, locked away in the hard case of a seed, endlessly awaiting the conditions in which it can thrive and bloom.

Wyll knows it's in there, somewhere.

Chapter 9: Bargain

Chapter Text

Blackened shadows coalesce like ink around them. A cold, unsettling darkness lays along the land in a stifling, towering fog. It clings to their very bones, swirls in their footsteps like silt disturbed in the shallows of a riverbed. There is no comfort in these shadows, no easy solace — they are heavy with grief untold. Only the Blood's light keeps it at bay.

"Well, this is charming." Astarion's laugh is hollow, plainly unnerved by a darkness that he finds no safety in.

Karlach steps forward, holding the mace as a beacon. She's the first to spot the ox's body. "Gods."

Wyll's hand brushes lightly through the beast's fur, thick with old blood and congealed darkness, its form battered and broken by its struggle. His eyes trail to what lies not far, and his throat constricts with dread.

"No," he breathes. His hands grasp for the tiefling's shirt, hauling the splayed body over to reveal the grisly wound, shadows writhing within like maggots.

Have they sent the tieflings to their death? Just days ago, they'd shared drinks around the fire. Laughed, and unknowingly celebrated their coming march to their demise. The knowledge drapes in an iron cloak around his shoulders. Their journey here has scarcely just begun, and they were already too late for some of them.

His eyes lash up into the darkness, tense. Wyll skirts around the wreckage, around what little supplies the caravan had abandoned to the shadows. But thankfully, no more blood. Thankfully, no more bodies. He seizes back control of the spiral in his thoughts.

Torches flicker, not far ahead. An alcove lit by firelight, sharp against the cool din. Even as the group nears, Wyll spots the telltale signs of goblins, of the Absolute. But they have little option than to engage — the sunlit mace does not lend itself to stealth, and to stifle it means to meet a fate similar to that of the ox.

Still, they hang back for a moment, watching. A goblin wields a bone, one that dances with firelight as it's taunted before a hyena. In his peripherals, Wyll sees Astarion's shoulders stiffen as he throws the bone into the darkness, a tension that mirrors Wyll's own balling fists.

They step forward. They are expected, but for once it is in a way that benefits them. The goblins need no twist of their brands to greet them with welcome. Wyll prepares to turn to the larger hobgoblin to secure their passage to Moonrise, but Astarion steps lithely around him and forward.

"May I?" he drawls to Wyll, and with a tilt of his head, Wyll yields the floor to him. A sharp word and a flash of Astarion's fangs is all it takes for the hyena's master to cower beneath the order Astarion gives. He scuttles into the deadly darkness after the bone.

Astarion glances back to Wyll, expecting to see disapproval writ on his features, but instead catches only a glimmer of satisfaction.

The warlock catches him looking and holds his hands up, decidedly defensive.

"The Blade is not above earned justice."

The whole thing should not be as stimulating for Astarion as it is, especially with the cold, dead barbs of darkness clinging to their heels.

The decision to turn on Kar'niss is easy; the battle that ensues is not.

Astarion, sharp-eyed as ever, spots the lain ambush, nodding to the decrepit structure to warn them. Wyll exchanges looks with Karlach and Lae'zel, taking stock. The caravan would take them straight to Moonrise, presumably, but there will be no option other than to take a side.

"Get the Moonlantern!" comes the shout from the Harpers, and chaos erupts from there.

Karlach and Lae'zel hold the front line. Lae'zel's body flows ribbon-like between their enemies, brutal strength blended with deadly precision. One of the goblins crumbles beneath her sword, paper beneath its cleave. Karlach throws her weight around in a way that reminds Wyll of a blazing bull. Hers is a different kind of poetry, circular and swinging, her greataxe paving a path for her bulk. She engages the hobgoblin head-to-head, smoke pouring from the vents that pockmark her shoulders.

Lithe, catlike, Astarion slips in and out of the shadows. Wyll fears briefly for him, but Astarion is nothing but capable. He knows precisely when to shake off the darkness' grip, skirting out to place a series of well-aimed arrows into his targets before disappearing once more. A dance along the threshold of light and darkness, life and death. Were Wyll not occupied with his own contributions to the battle, he'd be captivated by it.

No, Wyll has his own responsibility to fulfill — and that is commanding his magic to take care of the most threatening target on the field. The drow monstrosity spins a glimmering illusionary orb, one nestled within the Moonlantern's light. Their tadpoles vibrate in resonance, quivering in contact with the fellow True Soul.

Traitors, my Queen! All of them! Disgusting, filthy — I will spin twine from their innards, slick their blood in sacrament upon the earth, I—

Wyll winces against the voice ringing painfully in their skulls. The protective magicks blur his vision, skewing the horrific beast into doubles and triples when he reaches for more targeted spells. And so he weaves his own web from the essence of the Hells: black, thick clouds of sulfur pour from his fingers and race through the shack in a flood, plunging it into magical shadow that not even the Moonlantern can dispel. Kar'niss snarls, screams, as the freezing Hunger of Hadar cakes frost up his myriad of legs. He reels, squinting against the pitch, and despite the chill devouring his limbs, hurls himself straight for Wyll, lashing wildly with outstretched claws.

He strafes backwards with a start, the first strike of talons streaking down empty air where his chest had been only a breath ago. The second set catches his arm before he can fully withdraw it. The pain that erupts, thankfully, is a thunderous ache rather than a raw sharpness. The padded armor serves its purpose, allowing a bloom of stuffing rather than an explosion of gore — it'll need to be repaired, but anything is better than having to find a replacement for the muscles in his arms.

The shimmering shield coating the abomination's body bursts with the force of the hit, allowing Wyll's bruised arm to blast a crackle of eldritch lightning into the drow's features, cleaving the tender flesh of its right eye from its socket with a wet pop. Kar'niss staggers back with a blood-curdling scream.

There's a catch in the sound, right before it's strangled to a twisted gurgle around the arrow lodged in shadowed throat, a sickly dark crimson curtaining down its neck. Wyll snaps his eyes to the arrow's origin, and offers an appreciative nod to Astarion.

Unexpectedly, the rogue bounds forward and into the dark Hunger, wincing against the freezing air.

Alarmed, the warlock snaps the thread of conscience connection that feeds the smoke. But even as it dissipates, the pale elf emerges from its wisps, accompanied by the blinding light of the Moonlantern stolen away in his hands. Flakes of frost shimmer on his eyelids. Blue tinges his lips.

"Halt!" With the caravan felled, the remaining Harpers' weapons turn upon them. "Drop it!" A scout steps forward from among them and barks the furious command. "Drop the lantern, or you won't be walking away from here today!"

Though frozen, Wyll steals a glance at Karlach and Lae'zel. The men of the group are pinned down beneath the hairs of crossbows, but the two warriors begin to stride fearlessly their way.

Wyll reaches out with his conscience, latching onto the thread of connection loaned to them by the tadpoles. Stand down. Astarion's face curls into a displeased snarl, his grip bruising upon the metal staff of the lantern.

"Easy," Wyll murmurs, with the tone one might use to soothe a spooked animal. "Easy, now. It seems that we are on the same side. There's no need for further bloodshed."

"The hell there is!" the Harper hisses. "Talk. Why in the hells would a cultist turn on his own kind?"

Wyll levels his gaze evenly at the man, spotting the Harper's pin on his bodice. He draws in a deep, steadying breath. "We are infected with their parasite, but seeking a cure. We hoped to infiltrate them at Moonrise, but your crew is certainly a sight for sore eyes."

The Harper exchanges looks with his other companions, then back scrutinizingly upon Wyll's features. Whatever he seems to find there eases some of the tension in his shoulders. "Very well." He lowers his weapon in a sign of good faith. "Give me the lantern, and follow. I know a refuge from the darkness. You can rest there."

Wyll tilts his head. "What sort of refuge do you mean?"

"An inn — Last Light, it's called. A place you can sigh without the shadow-beasts hearing." The Harper's eyes are on Astarion, expectant.

"I'll drink to that," Wyll manages with a smooth laugh. He follows the man's gaze. Astarion hasn't budged, a stone statue with a vicegrip on the lantern.

"Astarion," Wyll says.

The vampire twitches an ear, the only acknowledgment for a moment that he's heard Wyll. Then, a low murmur streams into the group's conscience: "We have the damned thing that'll get us to Moonrise, and you want me to just hand it over?"

"I'm certain we'll find another way, Astarion. If there is a refuge to be found in this darkness, we'd best not make enemies with its hosts."

"And what about your father, Wyll? How long does he have in those towers?"

Dark lips twitch into a troubled frown. He looks between the Harpers and Astarion once more. The strangers are beginning to get antsy, hands inching back toward their weapons. The warlock draws a slow and steady breath in through his nostrils.

He knows what Astarion is asking him: will he offer up his father in exchange for the lives of these strangers? His own flesh and blood for people he's only just met? And Wyll knows that his answer will disappoint him.

They cannot slaughter innocent people for inconveniencing them.

Whoever is transporting the Duke had to take a similar route as they, likely while slowed by a prisoner. Maybe more than one. They have to believe that his father will last until they can get there.

"Astarion. Give them the lantern."

The vampire's nostrils flare. A deep scowl furrows his features. Then, the rogue's hand flings open suddenly. The Harpers jump, but their leader scrambles to catch the artifact as it teeters toward them. He catches it, staring after Astarion for a moment as the elf turns sourly away, then nods to Wyll.

"Thank you." He extends a welcoming hand. "Let the lantern's light be your guide. I'll mark your map, should you lose the way."

Astarion's glare bores into the black hair pleated at the back of a certain warlock's head. Wyll feels the silent storm brewing, the same stiff static in the air that crackled between them after he'd saved Karlach, and again in the Grove. Already, he's rehearsing what he'll need to say, but every word adds another heavy stone to the weight in his gut.

Over the silhouettes of the skeleton trees, Wyll sees the first glimpse of the promised refuge. A brilliant sphere of light, nearly a second moon, casts a soft glow into the dark. The Last Light Inn nestles into its embrace — quaint, not unlike the cheery snow globes sold at the Gate's winter markets, were it not for the deathly shadows that scraped and clawed at its glass.

They step near the resplendent barrier, and a flicker of apprehension crosses Astarion's thoughts — a phantom sensation, a memory of flinching away from curtains thrown open or doors flung wide without knowing how long it's been since night fell. When the light does not refuse him, he releases the long-stagnant, unnecessary breath from his still chest. The Last Light's shield welcomes him with all the bright splendor of the sun, though none of its warmth. Moonlight.

The barrier welcomes them, but the wizened older woman that greets them with a stern look and folded arms doesn't seem as accommodating. Karlach gets giddy at the sight of her — "That's the Jaheira!" — but Astarion doesn't see the appeal, famous hero or no. Wyll wears a soft smile, tone respectful as always as they parlay. The dukeling handles his own just fine, but the crone's suspicion runs deep. Ironically, it's Mol that swoops in to vouch for them.

Astarion can scent the relief pouring from Wyll at the sight of the girl, at seeing her safe here.

"Mol!" Wyll exclaims as he moves to greet her. "It is so good to see you! The others have made it safe, then?"

Astarion observes the shift in her features, and knows that Wyll's relief will be short-lived.

The last straw is Wyll taking the wine.

Astarion's sensitive nose catches the tinge of medicine. "Don't." He warns through the tadpole.

Wyll swirls the crimson spirit in its glass beneath his nose, as one would nonchalantly do before sampling a wine. "I know, I smell it." He can't see the exasperated frown that twists on Astarion's features when he raises the chalice to his lips anyway, but it doesn't matter. The derision bleeds through the tadpole. "We don't have anything to hide."

Leather whispers against metal behind them as Lae'zel shifts her weight irritably. "Tch." The "he's going to get himself killed" that follows doesn't require further voicing.

"C'mon, guys!" Karlach chimes. "If it were anyone else, I'd say no, but this is—"

"We know, Karlach," Astarion cuts back, long before she can finish. Karlach's support doesn't count; Astarion's certain she'd plunge herself down into eternal agony in the Hells right with Wyll without him ever needing to ask her to. Wyll's martyrdom earned himself a frustratingly-loyal lapdog, and that lapdog has the added benefit of being built like a (flaming) brick sh*thouse and wields an axe with a blade four times bigger than his skull.

Sometimes, Astarion wonders if he'd chosen wrong on which of the party to seduce. But he's reminded that he can't drink from Karlach without melting his throat, and unbidden the memory of Wyll's taste pools beneath his tongue. He grinds his teeth, a somatic reminder to his body that he's furious and that this isn't the time.

Fortunately, Jaheira sees them as a unique opportunity, rather than a unique threat. Wyll handles himself exceptionally well, as always, navigating the uncertainty of the situation with a diplomatic tact that none of the rest of them here could possibly hope to manage.

With peace brokered, they're directed upstairs, to Isobel. Wyll delays, instead takes the time to comfort the tieflings that remain from the Grove, a somber sympathy settling into his features. Astarion cannot help but feel a little smug when Rolan cuts back at Wyll's kindness, quite liking the flair of the "sanctimonious prick" that he throws the warlock's way. He notes that one down for later.

But Wyll, of course, shrugs it off, a glancing blow. Another step on his coattails, and the way Astarion sees it, he might as well be thanking Rolan for treading all over him, especially with the way he continues to offer his condolences and reassurances that they'll get to the Towers and save them. Astarion glares stiffly at the dusty bottles of spirits on the inn's walls at their lives being volunteered further for others' own.

It hardens his resolve, for what he must do. The Ravengard prince is too soft to do what it takes, but Astarion will not be.

They turn to head upstairs, but as soon as they step beneath the archway to the flight, Wyll stops dead in his tracks, broad shoulders going rigid.

Astarion follows his gaze. He blinks, and then he grins. Perfect.

Wyll's organic eye follows him as the vampire strides up to Raphael and Mol, the two occupied with a game of lanceboard, illuminated by a beam from the windows that dances with moonmotes.

It takes Wyll a solid few seconds for his tongue to unstick from the desolate floor of his mouth. He's already missed what Astarion's said — some piece of guidance or advice for strategy or whatnot — and he watches, seemingly in slow motion, as Raphael's eyes land on Astarion.

A holy fire lights up Wyll's spine, blazing with anger but freezing with dread. His teeth catch on a sliver of his cheek as they snap together, wetting his tongue with a bitter touch of copper as he bites back his snarl. But the words instead surge up in a psionic roar through their connected hosts, booming with the fierce protectiveness that burns in his chest.

"Get your eyes off of him, devil."

The rest of them startle at the intrusion, sudden and powerful and filled with more loathing than any of them thought him capable of. Astarion holds his nerve, pretending it didn't happen as he meets Raphael's gaze again, steady.

"Soldier..." Karlach's eyes are gentle upon Wyll. Her hand extends to try to stop his tense stride toward the trio, but she recoils sharply as she remembers the nature of her affliction. She exchanges a glance with Lae'zel, then they both step silently after him.

"Brava! Lovely work. I see I was right to make you the offer I did." Raphael tilts his head at Mol as she stands up, triumphant. "You will consider it, won't you?"

Mol holds his gaze, wary, and simply gives a little hmph as she strides away. When Raphael looks back, he's intentional in the way brown eyes lock onto Wyll with deadly precision. No wander, no search. Raphael has likely been aware of his exact location ever since he stepped foot into he shadowlands. It's why he placed himself perfectly in their path — the inn, and in front of the stairs.

"What a lovely specimen she is. A blushing apple, begging to be plucked."

There's a smothered click as Wyll grinds his teeth. He's never met a devil that rose above its nature, and Raphael is no exception. If he had the option to, he'd draw his rapier and send him back to the Hells to nurse his wounds on a different Plane. Productive? No. Cathartic? It would be. Especially with the way that Raphael's words echo in his ears, as familiar as if they come from Mizora herself.

"Please let me smack this creep," Karlach hisses, and Wyll is of half of a mind to let her.

But Raphael ignores them, pointedly, and turns back to Astarion. "The Theskan move suggestion was inspired. I had no idea you played."

Astarion shrugs off the remark, and Raphael moves on.

"Now, let's talk about you. I sense there's something you want to ask me."

Wyll makes a move to speak, to tell him to cut the bullsh*t, but Astarion sharply interrupts him.

"I do. I have a proposal for you."

Dread and disbelief brush uncertainly against Astarion's conscience. He swats Wyll away, sending back a psychic snarl. "Stay out of this."

Wyll snaps his mouth shut from where its fallen slightly open, counseling the concern and fear from his features lest the devil sate his hungry eyes on the detail. His heartbeat rings, thunderous as it echoes in his skull.

"My old— well, a long time ago, someone carved some runes into my back. I'd rather like to know what they say."

Whispers of intuition surface within Wyll — his hand on Astarion's nape, the brush of his fingers against a ribbon of raised flesh. They all have scars, and he'd thought nothing of stumbling onto one. The vampire hadn't reacted. Or at least— Wyll curses the soft haze of his memory. He hadn't, right?

"Astarion," he whispers dryly, ignoring the way Astarion's nose wrinkles as he speaks. "What— what do you mean?"

The soft chuckle that bubbles from Raphael gives wicked shape to the trouble he brews, and Wyll finds himself sharply wishing he hadn't said a damn thing.

"You haven't told them? And you've kept your clothes on this whole time? How unlike you."

If it weren't already cemented, it is now — Wyll is going to f*cking kill Raphael. He's going to cleave his devilish head from his shoulders, and he's going to do it before he can rope Astarion into some kind of deal that prevents him from taking Raphael's head himself. He's going to do to Raphael what he was not strong enough to do to Mizora at seventeen.

"Why not let them see? Don't be shy."

A flourish of the hand, and suddenly, Astarion's pale flesh is illuminated by the lit candelabra behind him.

Wyll's reflex is instant, thoughtless — he reaches to shed his cape with a too-harsh snap of its clasps, the buckle straining beneath the force, and swoops toward Astarion with a swiftness powered by the fierce fury building in his gut.

But he stops just short, as he really sees the marks cast in light, a fiery glow flickering on the raised edges.

It is not just one scar. It is not just two. It is a ghoulish tapestry of mauled flesh that traces a slow revolution around the entirety of his back. And worse, Wyll recognizes it. Wyll recognizes the nature of those marks, those runes. They are Infernal.

The despair in his gut yawns wide to swallow him. A cold, icy blackness. Fear. Immense, paralyzing fear. Astarion is marked with an Infernal seal, and this entire time, he hasn't known. He remembers how it'd become quickly apparent that each of the group carried something with them, something that Wyll silently resolved to aid them in setting to peace — the crèche, the orb, the artefact, the heart. But Astarion's had evaded him. His master, of course, but the Gate lays still days or even weeks on the road away from them. It is certainly not a problem he can solve now.

But this was it. This is what Wyll had missed. And he resists the urge to rake his claws over himself for the signs that he assumes had flit right past him. I am no expert on devils, but even I know that she could have taken more from you than just your dashing good looks.

Astarion shoots an icy glare back at him, startling Wyll from his shock. He drapes the cloak across alabaster shoulders, careful not to make contact with any skin. It's only a moment, but the vampire sees the hesitation, the shock. He suppresses a derisive scoff as he looks away.

That's it, then? Some Infernal runes is all it takes for a fiend-pacted Warlock to be disgusted with him, as if he has any right to judge him for it? Astarion suppresses the nausea that slithers up his throat. He supposes the prince act had to drop somewhere. Now is as good of a time as any.

A few days ago, the loss of Wyll's protection might have dragged him screaming into the dread of Cazador's shadow, but now — now, Astarion doesn't need him. Astarion has a plan.

Raphael's sharp eyes pore over the interaction, notes the tension crackling between them in the slight pause. A wicked smile crinkles his expression at the opportunity it poses. A black sheep, expelled from its flock, alone.

"Don't worry—" he drawls, "I'm motivated to help you. Scars often tell such wonderful stories — I think yours might be truly exquisite." Astarion remains silent, sensing the bait and declining to take it. "I'll see you soon."

He vanishes in a wisp of black smoke, and Astarion turns back toward the rest of them. He pointedly avoids Wyll's gaze, instead browsing Lae'zel and Karlach's expressions.

"Well." Without thinking, he pulls the cloak a little more tightly around him. "Now you know."

Wyll's mind still lingers on those scars, racing with the thought of the pain. Gods, it must have been... There are so many marks, gouged so deep. In truth, he didn't realize that spawn could scar like that. But perhaps if they aren't fed. Or... could holy water prevent scarring on regenerating undead? The question pales, pointless in the face of the agony both mean either way. It'll all end the same, with Raphael and Cazador as mere footnotes in it all, smeared stains on the history of Faerun that they'll stamp out.

The ice casing Wyll's muscles finally crack to free him. "Astarion." His voice is hushed, worried, frantic. He restrains his urge to reach out to him. "Astarion, please. Whatever it is, it is not worth dealing with that devil." He scrabbles for something, anything. "It's Infernal — I recognize the shape of the runes from the etchings on my contract, from the circles traced around Mizora."

A long, pale ear twitches, a motion sharp in contrast to the building line of tension along Astarion's jaw.

"We can help you, Astarion. Intimate knowledge of Infernal is not exclusive to the realm of devils — we can find someone else. Will find someone else." He looks to the others for confirmation, and as blindingly obvious as day, sees that Karlach is practically fidgeting for a chance to jump in: "Hells, we might not even have to look beyond our own camp."

"Infernal?" Karlach steps forward. Wyll had swooped in too quickly when Raphael had vanished his armor — she'd caught glimpses of raised flesh in the firelight, but nothing more. "He's right, Astarion, if you'd needed someone to read you Infernal, you could'a just asked me."

But even then, a part of Wyll knows that they are too late. Even a passing scent of desperation and they will never be free of Raphael — devils are bloodhounds for it. Astarion captured his attention, and Raphael won't stop wearing him down on it until there is nothing left. He's already doing it with the tadpoles, and now he'll haunt Astarion's shadow until he catches him in a moment of true desperation.

A moment, Wyll has learned, is all devils need.

"Just— Just don't do this, please. You've caught his eye already, just as Mol has — gods, save her — and he will be on our heels for it. But I swear to you, on my honor as the Blade, we will find—"

Astarion whirls on him. "Shut up, dammit!" He bares ivory fangs at Wyll as he steps close, menacing. "Do you even hear yourself?" The rising anger in his voice draws glances from the far sides of the inn. "A warlock of all people, lecturing me on the dangers of dealing with devils?"

Scarred lip twitches, but Wyll doesn't interrupt him, simply takes the blow, stifling the urge to lash back in protest.

"All of your good intentions in the world don't change the reality of the way it actually works, Wyll." His shout drops to a low hiss. Each word snaps out as a dagger of disdain. "I more or less know what it says." Nights spent tracing the lines of his agony, both in memory and in touch, transcribing the best he can into the dirt. Pilfered books spread open to puzzle out the inaccurate etchings of the runes. "But I don't know what it means. And I doubt Karlach will, either."

"Then we ask around. Someone has to know something, Astarion, I—"

"No, Wyll. I'm not going to run around, counting down the days I still have left to feel the sun, parading the story of the f*cked up scars on my back to any wretch you drag along, just to have them tell me something I already know." Astarion looks away. "I know how to handle myself. I know the pitfalls of a bargain with the devil, darling. But he has the power to tell me not just what they say, but what they're for. Devils have eyes everywhere." Eyes snap meaningfully to Wyll's gray stone, but his voice softens. "I just need to know."

The part of him that had spent so much time crafting the grand plan of Wyll Ravengard will save me from Cazador wails in high protest. He's undoing something here that he's spent weeks constructing. But for all of his lies and illusions, this is something he cannot have the hero destroy for him. And so the hard edges form again, and he tacks on for good measure: "And I don't need you to try to swoop in to save me." Not from this.

Wyll has nothing to say to that.

"So—" Astarion stops, glances back at him. Purses his lips. "—that's that. Now, we talk to this Isobel, get to the damned Towers, and go save the tieflings or the Duke or whoever it is we're risking our hides for. But when — not if — we see Raphael again, I'll be the one doing the talking."

He strides tersely up the stairs. Wyll can only stare up after him.

"Go on, then," Karlach murmurs at his side, close enough to offer a comforting brush of her heat. "We'll be down here, we aren't going anywhere. I'll have a chat with Mol." That dampens one worry, at least — Karlach is the one person he trusts more than anything with that.

Wyll nods. His first steps are slow, heavy, but he's soon up the stairs, the landing above creaking as he catches up to the vampire.

"I was hopeful they would finally come to blows, so we can be done with this infuriating istik dance of theirs," Lae'zel huffs.

A chuckle bubbles from the tiefling at her side. "They still can. Keep an ear out, won't ya'?" She leans briefly to rummage through her pack, and finds a crumpled set of upper armor that is decidedly not her own in it. "I've got your shirt, Fangs." She receives no psionic acknowledgment in return.

Astarion's nails eat furrows into his palms as he walks out onto the moonlit balcony. He hears the groan of the old floorboards as Wyll follows him and wishes that he'd just go find Isobel and leave him to alone. But of course, like some young romantic after his first argument, the warlock can't stand to let things just rest.

He needs him to, because he's not sure he can get through another argument with Wyll without clawing that earnest look straight off of his face. It's the last thing he wants to see right now. Beneath the cloak, his scars itch with the holes that Wyll's hesitating eyes burned into them.

Irritably, as he steps out into the cool air, he realizes that he still has Wyll's cloak about him, and that he has to stop himself from reaching to draw it closer. Instead, he gives a frustrated huff and casts it from his shoulders. It pools carelessly on the worn wood. He hides his back away, turning to cast it out toward the globe of the barrier as he leans against the banister. Folds his arms across his bare chest and fixes Wyll with a venomous glare.

The warlock shuffles anxiously around the turmoil writhing in his gut. He understands, and it's why he also has to make Astarion see. See why the devil isn't the last resort, see why he needs to exhaust his other options. Every day, now, he moves in anticipation of Mizora's next assignment. Another order for another mark.

Potentially another innocent, one that he will again refuse to kill. And then, he'll outlive his purpose to Mizora. The Hells will swallow him, and they won't spit him up next time.

But Astarion's points still stand — they can read his back, but there's no guarantee they'll know what it's for. At least not until it's too late. Time, he bitterly reminds himself, is what they are short on. They can't afford to alienate Astarion over this. He can't convince him not to. He can only convince him not to do it alone.

Wyll stoops to collect his cloak, neatly folding it with gentle hands. He stands solemnly in the moonlight, counting the boards that run beneath his feet. Astarion waits, gargoyle in his statuesque stillness, for the passionate lecture that is to come.

It doesn't.

"I am sorry, my friend." Wyll's hands turn the tidied garment in his hands as he stares down at it. "As much as I am reticent to admit it, the only excuse I have for my outburst is fear." The last word leaves his lips as little more than a soft breath. "You—" He considers the words for a second before deciding that they're acceptable. "Much like the rest of our entourage, you are more than capable, more than most I've had the fortune of meeting during my time as the Blade. I am... deeply sorry, if I made you to feel that I thought otherwise."

The calm words mask the thunder of racing panic. The fear of it all coming down, of not being enough to save those around him from the same Infernal clutches that took him. They'll still... need to talk about how they're going to handle the whole Raphael thing. He and Karlach can make sure he knows what to look out for. But on a calmer day, Wyll decides.

Astarion smooths his features into as impassive of a mask as he can manage, clamping down on the frustration and bafflement. The very thing he'd dreaded, he now wishes for desperately — just shout and scream at me, so we can get this over with. It's easier to deal with rage, easier to go somewhere else and wait for the storm to pass, and then easier to pretend like it didn't happen. But this? What in the Hells is he supposed to do with this?

He gnaws at the interior of his lip with a fang.

"You are insufferable," he bites back. A lone red eye raises back up to him and Astarion loathes the absolute sincerity he sees there. "Of course I can take care of myself." He reaffirms the most important part. "I can handle some damned devil." Another reassurance — and similar to the last, to himself as much as Wyll.

Wyll nods mutely, somewhat distantly. Holds his gaze and scours the mask of Astarion's features for a few seconds before continuing. "Why didn't you tell me earlier?" He's careful to construct his tone as far away from accusatory as possible. The ache of his hurt tinges the words. "Or inquire of Karlach, if you didn't want me to know?" That thought stings, too.

A twitch of tension twists pale features as Astarion looks up and away. Then, solemn resignation. Astarion stares at a distant point past Wyll, near the roof of the inn. "I— perhaps I should have." A pause. "I'm not exactly used to asking for help and being met with, well... help."

The sense of it salves the edges of Wyll's hurt. Soothes the screaming rawness of them down to only a roaring ache. Potent, but more bearable.

It seems obvious, in retrospect. And something about the way he says it—

Hard lines etched into his father's expression, grim and wounded, as he tells Wyll to go.

He bites down on the memory. Wyll understands more than Astarion will probably ever know. The words to express that don't come, though — they tumble in the racing cacophony of his thoughts, as if turning them over and over again will smooth out the edges that Astarion will only see as pity. Wyll suffices instead with a nod.

Astarion glances down to catch the movement, then back to where his sight dwelt before. After a few long seconds, Wyll follows his gaze.

A delicate mote of conjured moonlight floats upward from another balcony, twirling high to join the barrier above.

Right. That must be Isobel. Wyll begins to start back inside, but stops to look back at the brightly-illuminated shoulders of Astarion's snowy form.

He starts to extend the cloak again. "Karlach has your—"

"I know, I heard her." Astarion briskly swipes the garment from him, whisking it back over his cold flesh. "I'll grab it later. Let's just get this over with. I want to check for any spare rooms — for once, it'd be nice to not have to trance in the dirt like a mud mephit."

Wyll chuckles. "On that, we are in accord."

When the conversation moves to their tadpoles, and then to the Curse, Isobel leads them back inside.

Astarion lingers near the doorway. He's not all present, in that moment — he's there instead of near Isobel and Wyll because of the ember of habit smoldering in his brain, the one that dictates that he gravitate toward the closest exit in any given enclosed room.

He thoughtlessly worries the cloak between his fingers. The day has worn him ragged already. Exhaustion curls thickly in his muscles. It doesn't help that here, sunken in the pitch of the shadows, day and night lose all meaning — he's not sure how long it's been since they set foot in the Shadowlands from the Pass. How long has it been since they fought Kar'niss, handed over the lantern? He can scarcely begin to guess, the steps from the battleground to here blurred by his fury.

Wyll yielded to him, in the end. It's good to know that he can apply a little bit of focused pressure to get his way. But Astarion isn't sure that the righteous warlock can help himself when it comes to the matters of devils — it's entirely possible that they get there and the man crumbles beneath the pressure. Shoulders his way in and ruins the one chance Astarion has at knowing.

Knowing the purpose of the agony, the reason that aligns the scattered stars into coherent sense.

Knowing the purpose of his creation, the reason why the death in the alleyway was only the first, rather than the last.

Knowing, so that he can map out the trajectory of the pieces of the board. What had Raphael called it? The Theskan Counter-Gambit, or some nonsense. Attack Cazador's pieces to pressure the king himself. Make him beg, feed his rules back to him as Astarion flays his skin from his flesh, muscles from bone, as he finally gets to direct the bloody theater he's envisioned thousands of time in the confines of his skull — while in the tomb, in the Kennels, in the distant place he went to when Cazador was inside of him.

Astarion glances back up at Wyll and Isobel, still talking. He wants to go downstairs already, check in and see how many rooms are available. Where he'd like to trance had been an easy lie — he in fact would like there to not be any, and he's of half a mind to ensure that there aren't, however he has to. The last thing he needs is a locked door between him and what Wyll has that he wants.

Pointed ear flicks at the sound of— wings? He eases his weight off of the wall he leans on and listens, but he doesn't have to wait long. A heavy thud on the balcony has him flinching back against the wood behind him, and the unexpected figure of a Flaming Fist strides in through the open door.

Except, perhaps it's not a Fist, but merely an impostor dressed as one, because bursting through his uniform is a pair of ghastly skeletal wings, slicked with oil-black feathers against gray bone.

Despite himself, a thrill of delight races through Astarion. A wretched thing on full display, warped in a way that is impossible to ignore. To look upon such a creature is to know their sins, clear as day. It makes Astarion's own monstrosity feel like a footnote in comparison, something easier to ignore. In a lineup of "guess who the monster is!" it's coldly comforting to know that hopefully, his tells are easier to hide — behind closed lips; underneath a shirt; below a high collar. Or so he hopes. He only has everyone else to go off of, after all.

Wyll warily places himself between Marcus and Isobel, hand gliding low across the hilt of his rapier. He sends out a ripple through the tadpoles: Karlach, Lae'zel— But he barely manages to finish before there's another thud on the balcony, claws scrabbling on the roof, and screams bursting from downstairs.

A ghastly thing steps through the door past Astarion, a face scrunched above a mouth bursting with unevenly-cast fangs, flesh knitted together with zippered seams. It doesn't seem to notice him, and he stays deathly still, grateful that he doesn't need to draw breath, lest the whisper of air make its way down the wickedly long cartilage that guides all prey-sound into its waiting ears.

He silently draws his dagger.

Marcus is here for Isobel; he lunges for her, a heavy greatclub smashing down on her shoulder with a sickening pop as he thrusts Wyll out of the way. The warlock staggers, snarls, flames bursting around his hand as he claps his palm down on the Fist's shoulder. His nails plunge into flesh and muscle and dig the fire deep. The winged once-man shouts a curse that ripples through their psychic connection — a True Soul — as he flings Wyll away with a cast of his hand like a paper doll.

Astarion lunges for the Horror before him, blade slashing brutally across the connective tissue at the base of its wing. Its inhuman screech erupts as the limb falls slack. It whirls, horrific claws swinging on reflex to slash across Astarion's exposed chest. Hot, white agony erupts from the raw gashes rent into his flesh, strings of his own gore splattering across the door as the very meat of him is scooped out by wicked undead talons.

Stagnant breath catches in his chest, a hitch of a shout clamped down in his throat, strangled by the shock and the pain. He staggers forward and thrusts his other dagger straight into the beast's chest. It snarls and reels back, scrabbles at its own flesh with its claws as around the blade as Astarion lets it go, and it falls to the floor with a thud as it fades. Astarion's hand flashes to the jagged ribbons of open flesh scored across his chest, blood blackened with age welling slowly but thickly to pour in a dark curtain down his pale midriff.

Wyll's red eye lands on him and goes impossibly wide. But Marcus is still upon Isobel. Past the hallway, the familiar roars of Karlach's rage echo in the form of a name: "Mol! No!" Anguish and fury tremble between Wyll and Karlach's tadpoles.

"We need you up here—" He shouts urgently over the connection to all of them. Not just Karlach and Lae'zel. To Astarion; to Shadowheart and Gale, sent to secure supplies from the merchant at the mouth of the haven; to Halsin, whose wildshaped form shreds the undead flesh of a horror downstairs. "—he's after Isobel. If he takes her, if the protection on the Inn falls—" He doesn't have the chance to finish, but doesn't need to. Everyone will die.

Isobel's hand flashes away from where it cradles the limp swing of her dislocated arm, her remaining one casting upward with a brilliant glow. "Ex textura!" The Weave coalesces into a shaft of radiant moonlight before her, a fiery explosion of energy tearing at Marcus' flesh, buying her time to stumble backwards.

Wyll regains his footing. He channels hot sulfur and cold rot; a sickly emerald miasma curls in his sockets as he blasts Marcus with Blight. The necrotic char eats at the raw flesh burned by the Moonbeam. But the aberration raises his hands and an otherworldly cry keens from his throat.

A death knell, were it not for the way the sound seems to tear their very energy from their chests, siphons their lifeforce into the pool of his own, sends each of them reeling in a momentary stun. Even beneath the burn of the Moonbeam, his wounds begin to salve and with renewed energy. Marcus surges his club straight into Isobel's skull.

She falls limp. The summoned pillar of light flickers to nothing.

In every second, a million moments, dragging by in agonizing slowness.

Astarion's remaining dagger plunges between Marcus's shoulder-blades, a grotesque handle to give him the leverage to sink his teeth into the humanoid's neck from behind. But the traitor's shape and the thick scent of his own blood on his chest hides the rot beneath, and he knows the moment the blood touches his lips that it is fouled, that something is very wrong. He rips the flesh away anyway, but Marcus moves unfazed as he scoops up his prize.

He shakes Astarion off as if he's little more than a fly, a tick to be flicked away, unhooking him with a calculated surge and flinging him with a thud against the wardrobe.

Another Horror bursts into the room and descends upon Wyll.

And yet, in slow motion, Astarion watches as Marcus passes through the doorway and onto the balcony.

He fires his conscience like an arrow after him, after his tadpole — he is a True Soul, they are connected, he sees the barrier flicker outside through Marcus' view, a threatened flame, and he reaches for the force of will that satiates the itch behind his eye to wield it against him. A last, desperate reach.

Marcus' tadpole — we, us, many, multitudes — strikes back with a psionic lash forceful enough to crack his head back against the hardwood behind him.

Astarion hears a soft snort of derision in his head, the voice of the Guardian in the Astral Prism, and a cold resentment settles into the vampire's gut even as his brain falls out of sync with this body. Somewhere, in Wyll's pack, their final defense squirms uselessly in a vial. He sits with them in the dark as his vision goes black and the sound of the inn around him plunges underwater.

Marcus takes one step, and then another.

Wyll slips the grasp of the horror and his mouth shapes an incantation, buoyed by a well of Infernal power. His footsteps thunder as he lunges for the pair. Marcus steps up on the Selunite altar.

There's a burst of violet light, and then Flaming Fist vanishes into thin air.

Isobel's limp form hangs for the briefest of moments, suspended there above the decorated shrine, before Wyll catches her.

Lae'zel's sword cleaves down the Horror at the door, finally catching the reprieve she needed to leap to the second floor and join them.

"Lae'zel!" Wyll's voice is hoarse, strained as he hauls the pale-haired woman back into the room, across the bodies and the blood. "Lae'zel, the balcony, the altar—" The words race from his mouth, stumbling over them. "Banished, he's banished, but he'll be back, we have to—" He stops talking as his eyes fall on the potion on Isobel's belt and he rips it from its leather loop, forces it down her lips.

A dimness seeps up from the floorboards, a creeping malaise that begins to drain the warmth and color from their very marrow as the Shadow Curse begins to coalesce back around them, moving swiftly to begin to reclaim its loss.

Isobel's eyes, shining with moonlight, fly open with a gasp.

The shadows lift in an instant, the shield bursting up back around them and the Inn with a force that leaves their skulls ringing.

"Take her," Wyll pants to Shadowheart as the woman bursts through the door, but the cleric is already stooping down to them both. The warlock scrambles frantically on his hands and knees over to where Astarion lays slumped against the wardrobe where Marcus had thrown him, the strikes across his chest glowing with raw, red flesh so stark against the ivory of his skin.

"Astarion," he breathes, his hands trembling as they hover feather-light just short of the wounds. He fumbles for the clasp of the cloak as the vampire reels, only half-lucid, cold blood dribbling along the back of his neck, down from where his head cracked mercilessly back into the armoire's door. Wyll's hand flies back to support his head, feels the cool slick there, cold as the dread that settles into his bones. He tugs the cloak from under him and bundles it at the weeping gouges.

Dazed, Astarion's hand bats weakly against Wyll's, features contorted in a snarl, eyes unfocused. Wyll turns to look at Shadowheart as Isobel rises on her own feet, expression pleading silently for her help, even though it's difficult to rip his stare away from the horror of the black rivulets pulsing from the ravine-like gashes.

They jump at the crash outside on the balcony, at Lae'zel's furious shout as she cleaves Marcus's wings from his body as he returns from an unknown plane. His head leaves his body next.

Astarion is used to dreaming of the hunger. It never leaves him, not truly. The ache of it rearranged the architecture of his marrow long ago, structured it into vaulted ceilings and guarded transepts, empty cold open hungry space where its singing echoes and amplifies in the void. Recently, its choir softens to a hum, but never goes fully silent. The closest he gets is when he's sated on the blood of a thinking creature, but even then, with every swallow the lyrics still murmur in the spaces behind his jaw.

This dream is slightly different. The shadows hunch and writhe more thickly around him than usual, and when the curtains of darkness shift just right, he sees millions of pairs of red eyes on him as he hunches in a shaft of moonlight, ruby blood splattered across the snow as he drinks.

He shivers away from the encroaching darkness as it threatens him, arms draped possessively around his prize. He has this. This is his. Cazador will not take it from him, not even in his dream. The hard end of a shadowy staff juts out at him and he hisses at it, swipes. But it prompts him to look down at the corpse in his grasp, and—

Pleated crown, arching horns, jagged scars. Listless red eye, unblinking gray, a sincere smile miming words with little sound.

He leans close to hear them.

"Yes, good — that should be enough. Thank you, Halsin."

All of the sudden, the shadows race in, cold and unforgiving, and begin to excavate out the space in his bones.

Astarion comes to at the metallic cold of the goblet pressed to his lips, to a soft steam dampening his nostrils with a scent that makes his mouth water. His pupils blow wide and he blinks, startled, gazing over the rim to see Wyll guiding the chalice to tip against him. He's idly aware of Halsin behind him, the druid's fingers mindlessly tracing over a phantom wound that left him with the dismissal of his wild shape. His eyes are on Astarion, though. The diligent watchfulness of a physician.

The glass is cool, but it is already warming from its contents. Astarion wastes no time in drinking, greedily — Gods, it's still hot. His fangs scrape the surface of the cup. It's not Wylls — he knew as soon as he smelled it that it wasn't — but it's not quite just an animal's either. Earth and sun and sage and bergamot, a warm spring in a cold wasteland. The spice of magic's touch.

Not needing to breathe means he doesn't have to stop until every ounce of the cup is drained. And it's only then that he slumps back against— He expects the floor, but it's a cot instead, and pillows have been thoughtfully piled behind him to prop him up. And above him, the ceiling of his own tent. The inn fell, then, did it? All of those people, dead? The thought shouldn't bother him. It doesn't, he thinks.

"Better?" Wyll queries softly as he pulls away the cup, then hands it to Halsin, who inspects it briefly before ducking out of the opening flap. Astarion catches a glimpse of... nothing he can make out.

He doesn't answer, but his hand instinctively reaches toward his chest, toward the fleeting memories of white-hot pain, then stops short of the bandages binding it. Ah. All of this fuss over a few scrapes. He wants to laugh. Sure, they were deep enough to threaten a flash of his ribs, to the bone, but it's nothing, really, compared to what Cazador compelled him to do to himself when he failed to bring back a mark.

Astarion closes his eyes. Mm. But perhaps there's something to it. He can indulge a little, be waited on hand and foot by a hopeful little fool.

"What happened?" he asks hoarsely, swallowing down around the meal that still coats his throat.

"I'm afraid you hit your head pretty bad when Marcus threw you," Wyll answers. His hands drop softly on top of Astarion's, but when the vampire flinches at the touch, the warlock withdraws sharply, bashful and a touch guilty. "He nearly escaped with Isobel, but I banished him before he could. It gave Lae'zel time to make it upstairs and finish him."

Ugh. The dissonance rings sharply in Astarion's ears. So nobody saw the psychic lash, the thing that had done him in. Part of him is relieved, but another part of him is annoyed — it'd have made a good argument in favor of him taking the tadpoles. The lost souls of the Inn would have been an inconvenient price but nothing worse than what he's paid before. They are useless to him. Or so he's determined to think.

"No rooms in the inn, unfortunately," Wyll continues, "but I requisitioned a cot for you, so that you don't have to... How did you so elegantly put it? 'Trance in the dirt like a mud mephit'?" The smile shines in Wyll's voice. Astarion resists the idle urge to open his eyes just to see it.

"I think that's right, yes." In the end, he's relieved there were none — this idiot would have spent his own gold to get him an inn room all to himself, sinking the cost himself even though he has the charisma and I just saved your lives leverage that would have him one in a heartbeat. He plays out the conversation in his head, a mirror of the one in the Grove. He'd say, "It's the least they can do after you saved them!" and then Wyll would sigh tragically and say something comically selfless and heroic, like "They need my gold more than I do!" And then Wyll would drop onto his bedroll in the dirt and sleep like the dead knowing he's done one more good deed.

Or something like that.

In the darkness of his shuttered vision, he focuses on the world outside of his sparse tent. Water sloshes somewhere nearby, a broad sound extended further by the echo of empty space between stone. They're posted up near the back, then. He cracks one eye open. There's still a soft glow against the crimson fabric of his tent. Ah, the brightness of the bubble is probably why they bothered with the tents at all. The sounds of the inn hum softly, but they're low. A brush with shadow and a kidnapping or two and it settles down into a quiet night. They're no doubt nursing their wounds.

Through his eyelashes, he takes in the fuzzy figure of Wyll, who doesn't notice the peek of a narrowed eye. The man traces the outlines of his devilish nails with a fingertip, finishing the touch of one and moving onto the next. He's nervous. His mouth is tense in that way that forecasts that he's on the cusp of having the courage to say something.

The scars? Or the devil's bargain. Astarion closes his eye and just waits for it.

"Ah, I do hope—" Wyll starts, "—that you're able to forgive me."

Ah. Well. Truly, it's Astarion's fault for thinking that the warlock would say something normal for once. He lets his ear twitch but stays silent. Guessing is a pursuit in folly with this man.

"I was, um, quite prepared to take the blade myself to help you feed." He works his hands together more firmly now, palms rasping, skin on skin. "There were so many injured — not enough magic or potions to go around — and it seemed a waste, when we know of a perfectly good way to let your body do its own healing."

Astarion's neck throbs as he adjusts it against the pillow. The wince from his pounding head does nicely to compliment the puzzlement that grows on his features. "Sorry, darling, I don't think you've gotten to the point of what you're apologizing for." Only then does he allow himself to look at Wyll, hoping it'll give some context as to what the hell he's talking about.

Wyll purses his lips, sheepish. "You—" Astarion hears the little jump in his heartbeat, the flush of his blood to his cheeks. "Halsin volunteered his blood. Wildshaped, closer to that of an animal, where it wouldn't affect his true vitality, but I wasn't sure if— if that was okay. If you wanted to do that." His weight shifts in place where he kneels at the cot's side. "I know you've drank the blood of other thinking creatures on the battlefield and all, but I wasn't sure if you... felt differently, about drinking from others in the camp."

"And so you're apologizing for... feeding me the blood of a different thinking creature, to heal my wounds, without... asking me beforehand?"

"Yes? Something like that." He simmers, gaze pointedly on the floor, rather than on Astarion's face.

Astarion laughs. What else is there to do? It disturbs the slowly-knitting skin patching across his chest, and the ache of the wound on his skull, but he laughs. "Oh, you're something else," he manages, the amused purr breaking up at its end to another fit of chuckles. He's been fed ten-day viscera and sh*t against his will and never gotten an apology for that. It's a marvel to him how every word out of Wyll's lips paints a picture of an entirely different world, a sprawling utopia in that man's head, one he gets glimpses of only when the Ravengard dukeling emerges from it to say something else preposterous.

"It just seemed wrong. But your wounds were so deep, you weren't waking, and—" Wyll pauses. "It seemed—" He's a few words away from burning through the floor.

Intimate, Wyll wants to say. To exist alongside someone — someone living, not just another enemy felled in battle — with their very life's essence coursing through you. To know that a part of them nourishes the whole of you. To sate a deep hunger on another and to make them feel wanted, feel needed, in a cloak of catharsis. To taste their fear, their hurt, their arousal, their hope. The strain of their heart on your tongue.

He feels silly about it. Astarion feeds all the time on what they fell and it's not like that. And— and he wouldn't begrudge him from feeding on someone else in camp or anything, but... It is something small that he's glad to share. Something that's theirs alone.

Gods, he's making no sense.

Even then, under all of that, it does still feel wrong. There'd been something important about "thinking" creatures. A master's order, he knew, but what if there was also something more? What if it did mean something, which is why Wyll is the only one he's drank from in camp before now, when Halsin especially — the other most generous of the group, the one who hasn't threatened him away on his neck, and maybe even... angled for it? Suggested it? The man is an enigma — has been on offer for days now?

"It seemed...?" Astarion queries, not letting Wyll evade the path of his own thoughts.

"Like something you should get to choose, not something that should be chosen for you."

Astarion isn't sure that clears it up. Not fully. But it does settle a strange anxiety in his chest. Hm.

Things happen to Astarion all the time. He gets snatched onto a mind flayer's ship that severs him from his sire; he gets found by a stranger with a rapier and a smile, one who hears him calling piteously for help and allows himself to be pointed to the bushes while Astarion draws a knife; he dreams of a testament that once bound him and he goes to test it and the stranger wakes up.

Things happen to Astarion all the time. He passes a ruling and the Gur happen upon him in the alleyway. Cazador's mouth happens to form a bargain. Cazador's fangs happen into his neck.

Astarion tries to help a sweet thing he couldn't hurt, and he happens into a tomb.

Time happens. Two centuries of sunrise, sunset, happen. It slips away. Sand through fingers. Blood through water. Purpose through pain. Meaning through moments.

The whole world happens around them. Around everyone. Millions upon millions of interlocking decisions, action and reaction to what happens and what is done.

He thinks of his choice that night, after hearing the compulsion of Cazador's voice: First, thou shalt not drink the blood of thinking creatures. The mental narrowing of the candidates in the camp. Kneeling next to Wyll. Tension, but then— sating his hunger. Drinking, despite the orders that have bound him not to for hundreds of years.

And he thinks of it still, that command, every time he tears out a throat or drains a meal in combat dry. He's intentional in the ones he sinks his teeth into, envisions the day he sees the light drain from Cazador's eyes in that same way, imagines the sweetness of it like the ambrosia on his tongue.

He decides that it's nice, to choose.

"I suppose," is all he says. Whatever it is, he appreciates the gesture, but doesn't want to really say it.

Wyll stays, and they talk long into the ambiguous night that stretches outside of the barrier. About frivolous things, meaningless things. What they think everyone else tastes like, what ways they'd prefer to die if they turn into mind flayers tomorrow. Astarion says all sorts of forgettable things that Wyll undoubtedly will hold closer than he intends.

It's only when Astarion's flesh has soothed back over, leaving only faint pink bands that will be gone by morning, that the warlock seems to finally be ready to give in to exhaustion. He starts to get up, but pauses.

"I want you to know," he says, "There's... nothing you have to do alone. Nothing any of us have to do alone, anymore." The tadpoles brought the group together, but there's something more there that keeps them all here. "Ask, and we'll all do our best."

No clever response comes to him. He just nods.

Astarion lays in his cot for a long while after Wyll bids him goodnight, even though the rest is unnecessary. He will trance, keep watch, the normal things, he assumes. But he just lays there, in the lingering warmth of Wyll's scent.

When he finally stirs, he realizes that there's something in his tent that does not belong.

A rucksack, of worn dark leather, still open next to his cot.

The candlelight gleams on the vials inside. A presence behind his eye stirs from its slumber, sings in soft resonance, a siren song.

The Zaith'isk; the lantern; the wine; the tieflings; the deal; the crack of his skull against the wardrobe.

But Wyll had pulled through, hadn't he? Maybe there is something there in that naive little skull of his that has the right of it. That they can take them only when they need them, that they can overcome their obstacles with their own strength.

But they won't know when they need them. The skeletal wings of Marcus, outlined against the pale wreath of moonlight around the Inn, Isobel draped in his clutches. It could have been today. It could be tomorrow.

He thinks of the voice of the Absolute driving them to their knees. The power that had coursed from the artefact and into the Zaith'isk. The force that had struck back at him when he'd reached for Marcus. As sure and powerful and sharp and certain as compulsion. The exertion of one's will over another.

It's the kind of power that he can wield to protect himself. From the Absolute, from Cazador.

The ache in his skull reminds him that it hadn't been himself he'd been protecting when he'd lashed for Marcus. He supposes: sure, if it benefits him, he can use it to protect others. Can Wyll really deny him that? Deny him his own brand of heroism?

Astarion's hand widens the opening to the bag. Ruby eyes stare down onto the slender bodies, writhing at the disturbance, exalting in the thrum of a connection with his own. The artefact's attention is on him again, a buzzing pressure in the back of his head, an enticing static and an approving hum.

Astarion closes the bag abruptly, uncertain when he'd started to pretend to breath again, when he'd started panting. He slings the pack over his shoulder and slips from his tent, pausing to make sure he isn't seen before heading out. Out, behind the barn and beneath an old bridge bisected by the barrier, where the tiefling woman had earlier been mourning the capture of her husband, had been soothed by Wyll that they'll find him.

He opens the bag again and reaches in for the first vial.

A high keen quivers in his thoughts as he removes the cork and empties it into his hand.

A million rows of teeth open in a welcoming mouth, dangling in front of his eyeball.

Astarion lets the first one in.