[Oh yes, they both know what it's like, don't they?]
I knew what he did to me. [First: enslavement. First: the magic trick of making someone beg for their own death with open arms— the word please on their lips. Dying in abused indignity on muddy streets at the hands of humans that Astarion still wonders over on occasion (dread like a knot in his gut when he'd first seen his new master talking to his Gur contacts, the matter forever damned to be a question mark). Too struck by salvation to feel it closing shut around his throat; too enamored to question the rules once he'd been taken home. Can't remember his own name. His old home. His old life or the ones he might've loved, but he remembers that first night so clearly.
Less so the ensuing fall.]
He made it hurt. [So much that so he feels it in his jaw. His throat. Both turned brittle with tension that won't stop, caught in the echo of old places; dry from centuries of thirst unslaked.] There was nothing so cold as the look of disappointment in his eyes when you fell short of whatever it was he wanted, just before he had you taken apart however it pleased him— and that changed, I should note, faster than the weather in midwinter. [And there, a break for weary amusement in recounting:] Someone's set the table wrong, even if he'd never told us his guestlist had shifted. Another spawn— not you— stored his research incorrectly. Dared to drop something while he's speaking, reading, fucking, dining— and those, my love, were the easy ones. At least when something like that happened, you'd see it coming. [On the other hand: smile at the wrong joke? Fail to read between the lines when he went silent and utterly still? Oh, you were done for.]
Maybe that's why the rest felt so damned good.
[For once, he's glad Leto isn't there with him. At least that way he won't have to see Astarion hunching through his shoulders like a coward. Like a thing beaten and called home, too stupid not to wag its own tail while slinking closer on its belly— near enough to freedom to walk away all the while, and yet:] Fresh off the heels of being stripped bare and endlessly humiliated just for existing or sabotaged by your peers in retribution, and there were nights when admittedly I hated how it felt to lie with him. Just one more violation. One more joke at his expense.
[Cazador had so many, after all.]
More often, I wanted nothing but that perfect calm. When all the commands fit just right, and someone else was the fool. The mark. The disappointment. And I knew everything I did pleased him. [It's Leto that he quotes at the very end, his own voice dropped into the bottom of his lungs; kept sheltered by a ribcage that's only ever felt about as resilient as cracked glass. He doesn't expect the elf will remember— that night in Rialto had been long, and gods trust that they drank deep from the well of wine and one another's injured company in the aftermath of sedate conversation, keeping the fire lit well past dawn— but Astarion hasn't forgotten. It stood so far out from the rest:] I drank it in like water offered to a man dying of thirst.
[He could've stayed forever in that praise. But you don't get to keep that part of Cazador Szarr.
no subject
[Oh yes, they both know what it's like, don't they?]
I knew what he did to me. [First: enslavement. First: the magic trick of making someone beg for their own death with open arms— the word please on their lips. Dying in abused indignity on muddy streets at the hands of humans that Astarion still wonders over on occasion (dread like a knot in his gut when he'd first seen his new master talking to his Gur contacts, the matter forever damned to be a question mark). Too struck by salvation to feel it closing shut around his throat; too enamored to question the rules once he'd been taken home. Can't remember his own name. His old home. His old life or the ones he might've loved, but he remembers that first night so clearly.
Less so the ensuing fall.]
He made it hurt. [So much that so he feels it in his jaw. His throat. Both turned brittle with tension that won't stop, caught in the echo of old places; dry from centuries of thirst unslaked.] There was nothing so cold as the look of disappointment in his eyes when you fell short of whatever it was he wanted, just before he had you taken apart however it pleased him— and that changed, I should note, faster than the weather in midwinter. [And there, a break for weary amusement in recounting:] Someone's set the table wrong, even if he'd never told us his guestlist had shifted. Another spawn— not you— stored his research incorrectly. Dared to drop something while he's speaking, reading, fucking, dining— and those, my love, were the easy ones. At least when something like that happened, you'd see it coming. [On the other hand: smile at the wrong joke? Fail to read between the lines when he went silent and utterly still? Oh, you were done for.]
Maybe that's why the rest felt so damned good.
[For once, he's glad Leto isn't there with him. At least that way he won't have to see Astarion hunching through his shoulders like a coward. Like a thing beaten and called home, too stupid not to wag its own tail while slinking closer on its belly— near enough to freedom to walk away all the while, and yet:] Fresh off the heels of being stripped bare and endlessly humiliated just for existing or sabotaged by your peers in retribution, and there were nights when admittedly I hated how it felt to lie with him. Just one more violation. One more joke at his expense.
[Cazador had so many, after all.]
More often, I wanted nothing but that perfect calm. When all the commands fit just right, and someone else was the fool. The mark. The disappointment. And I knew everything I did pleased him. [It's Leto that he quotes at the very end, his own voice dropped into the bottom of his lungs; kept sheltered by a ribcage that's only ever felt about as resilient as cracked glass. He doesn't expect the elf will remember— that night in Rialto had been long, and gods trust that they drank deep from the well of wine and one another's injured company in the aftermath of sedate conversation, keeping the fire lit well past dawn— but Astarion hasn't forgotten. It stood so far out from the rest:] I drank it in like water offered to a man dying of thirst.
[He could've stayed forever in that praise. But you don't get to keep that part of Cazador Szarr.
No one does.]
Everything was simpler like that.
It felt....
[Good.]
Do you—