[He nods, showing he'd heard, but it's a distracted thing, half-formed and barely there. And for a time, there's quiet. Not silence, not when the bass is thumping too loudly and the rising and falling of voices laughing and chattering and shrieking are right outside their booth, but still: muffled. Muted. Separate from this fragile space, where it's just the two of them in this tentative moment.
There's so much he wants to say, and yet in the same breath he doesn't know how to begin to say it. How he can feel revulsion crawling in the back of his throat; how stunning it was that Astarion had bothered to say anything, never mind attack her so viciously. How he has a thousand memories of being fondled and groped and fucked, and all of them underscored with a dulled sort of indifference from both his master and himself, for what use would there be in growing upset?
He twists his hand, gently taking Astarion's between his own. There's still blood smeared beneath the nails, and absently Fenris begins to wipe it away.]
no subject
There's so much he wants to say, and yet in the same breath he doesn't know how to begin to say it. How he can feel revulsion crawling in the back of his throat; how stunning it was that Astarion had bothered to say anything, never mind attack her so viciously. How he has a thousand memories of being fondled and groped and fucked, and all of them underscored with a dulled sort of indifference from both his master and himself, for what use would there be in growing upset?
He twists his hand, gently taking Astarion's between his own. There's still blood smeared beneath the nails, and absently Fenris begins to wipe it away.]
You did well, drawing blood on the first blow.
[Soft.]
Was it jealousy that prompted you?
[It wasn't. He knows it wasn't. But start there.]