[Everything in him hitches. Rucks over himself in a momentary instant. It stills his fingertips. Sobers the darkness in his stare. He hasn't lost his appetite for sex, he's lost his focus for it. The part of him that thinks in terms of teeth on flesh falls silent, and little save for rapt consideration stays behind in his own place.
(Oh, this isn't how things go.
This isn't how they go: gentle and sincere in sips or solely when they're settled in and speaking, making time for all the conversations that prove more difficult to bear— sex is sex. Partitioned off by years of tight-locked jerks of muscle movement in snug spaces, wetted lips merely a mutual means to an end for everyone involved.)
That night, on the other hand, was that night. A different beast completely. An offer made by someone who hardly knew any better— much to his own chagrin looking back, he can see his own childishness clearly— that at the time he'd been someone who had nothing else to give for assurance.
It doesn't matter that the question is rhetorical, and it doesn't matter that the leather seatbacks squeal in vexing protest when he pries up his own to lay his palm across Fenris' cheek: he does it anyway. Answers anyway, through the pressure of that touch and the hooking of his ankle round the back of his bodyguard's own, which has the uncomfortable downside of scraping his knee along the console's edge until it pinches (ask him if he cares). On a night when he'd nearly taken a glass straight to his scalp the theme of tonight remains: his guard drops.
He's too distracted by better things.]
You'd have to have been fun and charming in the first place to warrant stating that those offers have expired. [Carefully— tentatively— with his heart still in his throat and uncertainty a rare sight in his movements, he lifts his chin to bump against Fenris whilst still gently intertwined. Noses first, then foreheads— nearly their mouths, though spent air makes the difference with its coiled warmth.]
You were annoying. [Sets the edge of his short canines against a softer lip.] And stubborn. [Lowers the shadow of his lashes.] And you never let me be to the point that I couldn't tell whether it was for my sake or yours that you were aggravatingly diligent.
[His fingers tighten when he laughs— mostly to himself.]
I suppose it was both.
[It had to have been. He hadn't any choice.
Maybe that's why he lingered on I would be. Maybe that's why it matters that he shifts his phrasing first, and why Astarion leaves it lay, fingers slipping down to hook in Fenris' shirt collar, hanging.]
And I do know you now. In the dark, as you so eloquently put it. In the light, too, when there are so many eyes on you and I and yet you still can't help the glances that you steal or the exhaustion in that stare as you disagree with everything I am. [There's a grin in his voice, if not his lips.] It's why I'm surprised you haven't figured it out yet.
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(Oh, this isn't how things go.
This isn't how they go: gentle and sincere in sips or solely when they're settled in and speaking, making time for all the conversations that prove more difficult to bear— sex is sex. Partitioned off by years of tight-locked jerks of muscle movement in snug spaces, wetted lips merely a mutual means to an end for everyone involved.)
That night, on the other hand, was that night. A different beast completely. An offer made by someone who hardly knew any better— much to his own chagrin looking back, he can see his own childishness clearly— that at the time he'd been someone who had nothing else to give for assurance.
It doesn't matter that the question is rhetorical, and it doesn't matter that the leather seatbacks squeal in vexing protest when he pries up his own to lay his palm across Fenris' cheek: he does it anyway. Answers anyway, through the pressure of that touch and the hooking of his ankle round the back of his bodyguard's own, which has the uncomfortable downside of scraping his knee along the console's edge until it pinches (ask him if he cares). On a night when he'd nearly taken a glass straight to his scalp the theme of tonight remains: his guard drops.
He's too distracted by better things.]
You'd have to have been fun and charming in the first place to warrant stating that those offers have expired. [Carefully— tentatively— with his heart still in his throat and uncertainty a rare sight in his movements, he lifts his chin to bump against Fenris whilst still gently intertwined. Noses first, then foreheads— nearly their mouths, though spent air makes the difference with its coiled warmth.]
You were annoying. [Sets the edge of his short canines against a softer lip.] And stubborn. [Lowers the shadow of his lashes.] And you never let me be to the point that I couldn't tell whether it was for my sake or yours that you were aggravatingly diligent.
[His fingers tighten when he laughs— mostly to himself.]
I suppose it was both.
[It had to have been. He hadn't any choice.
Maybe that's why he lingered on I would be. Maybe that's why it matters that he shifts his phrasing first, and why Astarion leaves it lay, fingers slipping down to hook in Fenris' shirt collar, hanging.]
And I do know you now. In the dark, as you so eloquently put it. In the light, too, when there are so many eyes on you and I and yet you still can't help the glances that you steal or the exhaustion in that stare as you disagree with everything I am. [There's a grin in his voice, if not his lips.] It's why I'm surprised you haven't figured it out yet.
I'm already yours.
[Make it official.]
I have been for a long, long time.