[There are things Astarion does to elicit response, the necessities of what he once was made for. Made into. Two hundred years of servitude coursing through his veins.
And every bit of Astarion is still— even so far away from Faerûn— attuned to it completely: conversational back and forths, brushing contact sweet as poured wine. He’s been to Wycome and fit unfamiliar hands deftly to his waist with a grin; he’s whispered sweetly in a Tevinter merchant’s ear, drawing them in like fish fluttering along a wound line.
Accidental or not, this isn’t any different. Just contact. Just the heady scent of ozone and wine intermingling in a coursing exhale that pools across his lips. Close enough that it’s an inch of negative space between them.
Maybe less.
(So why is his heart in his throat? Why is his eyeline lowered beneath the shade of his own dark lashes? Why is he drifting nearer by the subtlest difference of degrees, swayed as easily as any prey he’s ever caught?)
He could’ve been wrong. All this time, all the assumptions about what Fenris wanted from him, and there’s such unanticipated avarice in that hope: already imagining where tonight might lead— ]
1/100
And every bit of Astarion is still— even so far away from Faerûn— attuned to it completely: conversational back and forths, brushing contact sweet as poured wine. He’s been to Wycome and fit unfamiliar hands deftly to his waist with a grin; he’s whispered sweetly in a Tevinter merchant’s ear, drawing them in like fish fluttering along a wound line.
Accidental or not, this isn’t any different. Just contact. Just the heady scent of ozone and wine intermingling in a coursing exhale that pools across his lips. Close enough that it’s an inch of negative space between them.
Maybe less.
(So why is his heart in his throat? Why is his eyeline lowered beneath the shade of his own dark lashes? Why is he drifting nearer by the subtlest difference of degrees, swayed as easily as any prey he’s ever caught?)
He could’ve been wrong. All this time, all the assumptions about what Fenris wanted from him, and there’s such unanticipated avarice in that hope: already imagining where tonight might lead— ]