[It's quick. Too quick, maybe— but he isn't lying, and he isn't just saying it to assure Astarion. It's just that he can feel the pale elf pushing it away, shoving past it, and if Leto doesn't act quickly, they will. Astarion will sweep them along and that will be that, and he cannot let that thought linger untouched in both their memories, stark and bloody and raw.
So: you do not need to swear, honest and stark, and only in the aftermath does Leto try to understand what he means.]
You will not ever go back, Astarion. Do not undermine it. Not when there are countless slaves who justify their existence over the thought that things would be worse in freedom.
[When so much of enslavement relies upon the enslaved buying into the myth that they're better off beneath someone's heel . . . Orana's voice drifts through his mind. Hadraina's pet maid, her father's throat slit not an hour before and still, still, she'd insisted: everything was fine until today! Confusion and anguish in her voice, her eyes wet as she'd stared uncomprehending up at them, and Fenris had not known how to comfort her then. All he could say helplessly in reply was that it wasn't. You just didn't know better.
He understands more now.
But ah . . . the rest, now. The biggest part of this, ugly and jagged, ill-fitting in any kind of story. Varric, Leto finds himself thinking, wouldn't write about this. It doesn't fit. The heroic slave, a year into freedom, longing for the comfort of his master's control . . . people don't like to hear about such things. They'd rather buy into the illusion that one always strides forward, for it's so much easier than hearing the ugly, discomfiting truth that sometimes, instincts and desires and emotions all tangle together so messily, dragging a person down into the depths of the past no matter how they gasp and strain for the present.
There was a sickening comfort, and that does not surprise him. But . . . even when I realize it's your touch, and oh that, that shocks him. Leto swallows thickly, then rubs his face. He cannot say this information pleases him, but . . . this is not about him. More than ever, this is not about him.]
. . . tell me.
A specific incident, or in general . . . tell me what you mean when you say that.
[Not because he doesn't understand, but because there's too many ways it could be taken.]
I am not angry. I am not upset. I simply . . .
[His mouth is dry.]
I know what it is to long for a master's touch. To— to miss certain things, or feel the, the way he made you feel.
[Ah, don't stutter now.]
Tell me what it is you mean by that.
Are there . . . do you expect it to be him sometimes when we wake?
No, that'd be— Gods, no. [No, he's at least certain he could never want that enough to vie for that mistake. Outside of the occasional hellish dream involving old nightmares and temptations made sweet until he wakes, even Astarion's own subconscious mind rejects the idea right at the bitter root.
This time it isn't raw dread. That quickness in his voice exudes a sense of knifing revulsion felt right to the bone, pressure on his spine spurring him to hiss rather than simper— though trust it's broadly aimed in all its focus: there's nothing at all akin to a needlepoint pinned to Leto's throat for suggesting it. He isn't angry or spitting in disgust, only jolting back the way a horse startles when it notices something secondhand. Peripheral blur inciting a rapid collapse in well-paced hoofbeats—
And then just like that, it's done. Darkened blur just a twig or a rock or a garden hose left out, existing innocuously in its own function.
Leto asked because he needed to. Because— strewth, they're up to their necks already, aren't they? Unable to make out branches, let alone forests for trees. Too far from one another to make this easy; too close to one another to let a single subject lie once it starts to freely bleed. He asks because he doesn't know what to think, not because he does think it (and even then, there's no sign of frantic fear for that possibility. Hesitation isn't cold, leveled horror. 'I am not angry. I am not upset.'
And after his head's back on as straight as it could ever possibly get at a time like this, he trusts in that assurance).
He trusts Leto.]
The sensation of it only.
[Nothing deeper. Nothing so tethered to the past that it cuts right through the meridian of what they have.]
It's you that I want. [Oh, right from the reckless start, that's all.] Your touch, your presence. Just you.
[And if he stops, he'll falter. Choke on his own words or swallow down his tongue, being immortal won't save you from the depths of shame or the need to tuck your tail against your belly and never lift your stare again. He has to keep going, which means he has to ramble, now— dragging Leto down into whatever mire it leads to.]
....but that includes your cruelty, too. The way your gemstone eyes shine with contempt when you aren't getting your way. The sharpness of your teeth when you tire of my harrassments. The look you sometimes get as if you can't tell whether or not you want to stop— [Keep going. Keep going. Think specifics. That's what he'd asked for.] Moments of ordered obedience, like when we fought back in Kirkwall. My chin to your knee, my legs wrapped tight around your shin—
[They've gone over this before a hundred times: played out in assurances from Astarion via his lips or voice or roaming fingers that it's not him in exchanges like that. Oh, darling, it's not Danarius' touch still levered against you. It's not his reach or his hold; you're not his still, even when he's gone— there's no disgrace to be had in lust so long as we're both happy.
But that's just it.
All those times, he'd aimed his sights on Leto and deliberately forgotten his own fear. His own worry. His own neophyte newness in freedom, stuck without permanence in any direction he looked.
He can let his guard drop, now.]
Perhaps it is that. Longing for the way it felt [and he emphasizes that word because] beyond the mindlessness of purpose on its own. Something I can't seem to dig out, no matter how vividly I try.
Taking his curse and relieving it with your fingers
[Tell him, Leto.] Please. [It sounds like lips licked quickly so they don't dry. Like the way wet eyelids stick to each other thanks to the anchor of tangled lashes that hold fast at the midpoint of each blink. Please.] Tell me—
[And there is not a shred of doubt in his mind as he says it.
Now he understands. What was murky and unsure suddenly comes in abrupt focus, and oh, if his heart doesn't ache for understanding. The terror of knowing you are echoing what your master did to you; the fear that you are little more than a broken thing incapable of cherishing anything but that abuse. Remembering all the revulsion and hatred and grief you felt, and here you are now, reenacting it— oh, gods, yes, he does know that feeling.
Inhale, exhale. He will not fumble this in his haste to assure Astarion.]
Astarion, you wish for— for a reflection, not a recreation. You do not beg me to torment you, or use you, or whore you out. But there is a thrill to, to reenacting what we have gone through. I—
[No, this isn't right. He's circling it, and it's not that he's wrong— but this isn't what he means. Leto hesitates, trying to think of his own experiences before Astarion. Not the first night, no, but . . . those nights with Isabela when she would push him to submit. When she would have him worship her, whimpering and begging for her cunt, servicing her and getting nothing in return. Or worse: when they would fight. When she would push him into things, faux-force meeting good-natured rivalry, the two of them eagerly rutting as they tried to assert their respective will. And he got off on it, oh, yes, but . . .
There was always that drop. That fear.
He had never told Isabela. That wasn't the kind of friendship they'd had. She would have been sympathetic, maybe, in her own way— but then again, her way was always to brush past it, ignoring the past in favor of focusing on the future, and he knows he would have lashed out if she had done that to him. So he wrestled with it on his own, and gods help him, for it had taken years to understand. Even now he does not think of it very often if he can help it, an uneasy question in the back of his mind— but everything is so different when it comes to Astarion.]
. . . . I feared the same when I wore a collar the first time.
[Oh, how cautiously they'd approached that, and yet how easily it had come that night. It helped that Astarion had worn it first, of course; it helped that Leto knew that the other man did not think of it as anything save a kinky addition to their evenings. But he'd fretted that night, nonetheless. He'd dreamed of Tevinter and iron locks, a heavy weight around his throat and pressing down on his shoulders, and woken nauseated by his own inclinations.
And yet they'd played with it again. And again. So many times that it became something ordinary, easily added or removed.]
Perhaps our enslavement changed us in some way. I do not know if we would be inclined to the same things if we had been born and grown into freedom. But I know this: I do not long for Danarius when you set a collar around my throat. I do not miss him when you call me catulus, or praise me, or push me into serving you. There are echoes, maybe, but . . .
You do not miss Cazador when we fuck angrily. You do not force me to become him when I turn cold and cruel, and put you in your place. And . . . there is something to be said, I think, for doing something with someone you love.
You put a collar on me, when I swore I would never allow it in all my days. We have spoken of you controlling me like a puppet, when I spent my life freeing myself from that. But I allowed those things because some part of me thrilled in them— and in knowing that this time, I did have the power to make it end.
('It was the days when he praised me I loved the most.')
Just like before, everything rings true— though this time it's cast in the molten shape of that night together in dark halls he dearly misses (lack of funding for candlelight always making everything so sparse at night, though their eyes never needed anything to begin with); all the harsh edges digging hot into one another's skin, all the bruising scuffs of heavy palms that never knew quite where to settle (or ad velorem: where to stop.)]
Mmh. I suppose it did change us.
[It did. It had to have. Experience shapes life, after all, more than anything else. (A theory Astarion keeps only because he can't bear to imagine a younger reflection of himself prior to cuff and chain that was just as mad. Just as broken. Just as intolerably comprised of mismatched splinters with hardly any connective tissue to speak of.) Never mind that the one person who stands a chance at defying that notion is the one Astarion addresses from an overwhelming distance. Stone of farspeech left clutched painfully beneath curled fingers.]
Just not the way either of them imagined.
[Two creatures raised to love the hunt, and yet grown to revile the sound of their master's frigid voices dragging them back from it too soon. Oh, there's not a chance those old ghosts ever banked on that being the summation of their efforts.
Good.
Let them languish in their well-forged obsolescence.]
I don't miss him, Leto. [Astarion adds narrowly. Confession warranting a sudden repetition: I don't.]
And I miss the glory— albeit not the price they bled. [(Let me rest on my knees between your legs. Let me worship you by teaching you where you wear your bruises best— he loves the language of cruelty, and there, with Leto humming in his ear, it all makes perfect sense. Every truth that came bubbling up when they had no filter, shoved away from exhaustion and pain. They've come full circle now.)
It wasn't poison slipped under their skin; they don't chase its dosage in each other's care like a paltry substitute for what's no longer in reach.
Thank you. For trusting me with— everything. Hadriana. What she did. How terribly you suffered. Words are always pitiful rewards for so much anguish. Promises, cheap.
People lie. People leave. And if they don't take from you, the world takes them.
[It's easy to forget, at times, how intimately Astarion knows loss. How cynical it makes him. How gentle. He's already lost the thread of what he'd meant to say, but something tan springs to mind in its place.
All the air runs out of him. Deflating softly.]
You know. [Soft, across the line. Decompression such a gradual process. He needs time, and he takes that in the toothless habit of play that isn't wholly play. Emotion masked as something else.] You always used to say you were afraid you'd run if we played rough.
Now look at you. Chasing handsome elves with their fangs and their complex-but-intensely-attractive problems across entire Realms without a second thought.
[I don't miss him, and Leto hums softly in response: I know. He does, just as he knows that assurance isn't really for his sake. But it helps to hear agreement. It helps to have someone else nod their head and affirm that assertion, so that late at night, when all the wild thoughts run through your mind, you can fall back on that surety. Leto agreed, and gods know Leto does not mind being the rock upon which Astarion builds this particular foundation.
And maybe they'll go back to this topic— no, almost certainly they will. For now the poison is out, the unspoken given words, and yet the issue will not go away just because they've given it form. The next time Astarion slips a collar around his throat, they'll speak of it. Or perhaps next time they fuck angrily, biting and snarling and seething, Astarion's cock fucking cruelly into his throat before the vampire ends up mewling and panting as he begs on his knees for forgiveness . . . in the aftermath, when they're spent and sweating, they'll speak of it. But it will be easier, then.
Just as speaking of Hadriana will be easier. This is not the last time he will bring her up, Leto knows. He doesn't want to talk of her, but he must— just as he must speak of Danarius. Of Cazador. All the pain, all the trauma, all the grief— this is how they manage to deal with it. By slowly but surely speaking of it, one topic at a time.
People lie. People leave.
But not them.
Still: he chuckles softly as Astarion nips gently at him like that, recognizing toothless play for what it is.]
Ah, well. You gave me your token in the aftermath. How could I do anything but chase after you?
[Oh, he misses that bloody cloth, just as he misses his sword. Ataashi. Most of the rest of it was incidental, little things that can be replaced, but ah . . . some of it still smarts. Leto stares out at nothing— and then, more sincerely:]
I am glad you brought this up. And I am glad, too, we could speak of it. All of it. And I will tell you as many times as you wish that your desires are not akin to wanting him back.
Know that there is nothing I don't trust you with. The past. Hadriana. All of it.
And there is nowhere in all the worlds that you could be stolen that I would not find you again, kadan.
A little beat across the line that could easily contain entire oceans full of thought: relief, hope, reluctance, comfort, warmth— more reciprocally bound gratitude, even. The only briefer sound within its bounds that of Astarion's restless fingers twisting nominally as they shift around the stone, and the rest of him following soon enough, judging by the soft rustling of cloth-against-cloth within his coffin. Possibly upright. Possibly rolling onto his side. Audio cues sparse in a space that both feels claustrophobic and too large without Leto there to warm it— and simultaneously too full of his own mind to keep it to himself. Whatever comes next, it'll have weight. Meaning. The whole of his heart on display behind barbed defenses that almost never quit, offered up to the fleeting thing that owns him.
And always will.]
Good.
[ —or it's that.
(Good, he chirps out as if measuring weather patterns, and though there's a bubble of molten adoration wreathing it in his mouth, he's an exceptional master of veering footwork. They could talk about his feelings. How glad he is, too, to be part of their ouroborosian thread of trust. How there isn't anything he'd hoard or anything beyond the concept of sharing. How he longs to see that splash of bloody red drawn tight across Leto's wrist even when the man is naked and sleeping in a heap of what should be shared pillows: his neck craned awkwardly at an angle, his arm dangling loosely from the corner of the bed— having already shoved Astarion with his bare feet once or twice already, not including the efforts of one overgrown wolf. He could tell him that he hates Thedas and longs for it with all his heart— and loves it, in his own embittered way.
He could tell him again, for the thousandth time, that he'll never leave his side come death or age or desolation.
But unless he wants to see Leto's work extended by another day, ensuring that he's kept away from him for longer, there'll be time to talk about all that later, as it comes.)]
Because I'd hate to have to be the one to track you down instead. My legs are tired enough already as it is, trying to keep up with you on all that noble, heroic— irritating mercenary work of yours.
[Says the literal vampire, who could rut him from sunrise to sunset and back again, provided he's well fed.]
[It's a faint chuckle, accompanied by the sound of rustling as Leto gets back to his feet.
He can picture Astarion right now, you know. The way he lays in the coffin, clad in Leto's shirt and lying atop a heap of pillows that by all rights ought to be shared with someone else. How he twists and turns, reaching for a body that isn't there, feeling the lack of warmth in a space that's meant to be theirs. Lonely and a little heartsick over it— and yet what good will giving into it do either of them? Better to chirp out an answer now and save the affectionate longing for a time when they can indulge in it. Whispering adoration and loyalty to one another in wake of the past looming in the shadows; nuzzling as they tangle their limbs together, hands clasped as they murmur words of affirmation and adoration . . .
Soon, Leto thinks. Soon he'll be back in his lover's arms once more. Soon they'll have another version of this conversation, touching back on all the grief and pain of this conversation with all the comfort of protective arms and nuzzling adoration.]
I walk for miles unending to hunt down a vicious murderer all so I can keep a roof over your head, and all you can do is tell me how irritating it would be to follow in my footsteps.
[Footsteps, steady and even. And you know, he thinks about flirting: coyly offering some little remark about stamina and all the ways which Astarion might prove it. But suddenly his thoughts veer in another direction, softer and more sentimental, and he instead murmurs:]
Do you think you can sleep, kadan? Or do you wish to hear me tell you some tale of the past as you settle in?
For the record? I'd much rather have you over my head.
The roof isn't much for conversation. Or seduction.
[He is a lazy thing, thank you very much. One with terrible priorities and possibly even worse opinions when it comes to ideal architecture, considering his preference for strong shelter when sunlight's still his bane.
And as it so happens, the most important rule of thumb for the foundation of his far-off world remains firmly locked in place:]
....but until I can actually hook my claws into those devourable little hips of yours once more, I suppose I could settle for a story instead.
[In other words, beloved heart of hearts: he still can't sleep.
Or more accurately, he can sleep— but he's still struck through with peripheral restlessness in a shirt that smells of life and warm amber, feeling it pinch against his side where it wrinkles between him and the covers with every prolonged shift. Coffin stuffed with a thicker blanket in pursuit of artificial comfort that might satisfy them both in different ways (something to combat the emptiness of the coffin when Leto needs to feel more swaddled than surrounded; an offering of meager warmth when there's no pulse for Astarion's overactive senses to follow— ) and yet somehow all he feels is stuck-in and weighed down in all the wrong places when he leaves himself even a second of silent thought, fussing around while he pacifies his instinct through that precious little stone and its low, incessant noises.
Noises he's not ready to let go of just yet.
It's one last childishly gripping bid at stay with me. And one that makes it easier not to sink into mulling over what-ifs while his amatus chases after prey.]
I want something long. And thrilling. And full of more than just your weekly misadventures in strip Wicked Grace at the Hanged Man.
Lazy and picky. By all rights, Astarion, you ought to tell me a story. One of us is out here working, and it is not you.
[He's smiling. Faintly, admittedly, but all the more irrepressible because of it. His heart still aches from all that they just spoke of; loneliness still gnaws at him, and he knows he'll miss Astarion when night falls and he has only his sleep roll to keep him company. But to have the ability to communicate with his beloved even when they're apart— oh, how can he not be pleased by that?]
I would tell you how I killed a god, but in truth, the actual tale was not so very interesting. Hm . . .
[A beat, and he chuckles.]
I will tell you a story of before I settled in Kirkwall. When I was still on the run . . . I was in the Free Marches at the time. And there was a particularly persistent bounty hunter who thought she was terribly clever, for she aimed to seduce me. Unfortunately, she assumed my memory for face was poor— or that I would be fooled by her tinting her hair. She became an annoyance after the fourth occurrence— but she was very good with knives, and weaponry and fighting were far more her forte than subtlety . . .
[And she had friends, as it turns out. The story goes on, and he does not mind telling it: how gleefully reckless he could get in those early years, paradoxically paranoid and yet giddy with freedom all at once. His glee at toying with his prey; his prey's easy reversal of the dynamic, and how she had tried to revel in his misfortune when her gang attacked en masse. It goes on, on and on and on, and they end up getting side-tracked over and over: one memory sparks another, and another . . .
Until day turns to dusk. Until Astarion's voice has gone sweetly drowsy as he insists he's still awake. Until Leto finally shoos him to sleep, laughing softly as he prepares his supper, knowing that his hunt is soon coming to a close— and that he will be able to head home, ready to settle in his vampire's arms once more.]
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[It's quick. Too quick, maybe— but he isn't lying, and he isn't just saying it to assure Astarion. It's just that he can feel the pale elf pushing it away, shoving past it, and if Leto doesn't act quickly, they will. Astarion will sweep them along and that will be that, and he cannot let that thought linger untouched in both their memories, stark and bloody and raw.
So: you do not need to swear, honest and stark, and only in the aftermath does Leto try to understand what he means.]
You will not ever go back, Astarion. Do not undermine it. Not when there are countless slaves who justify their existence over the thought that things would be worse in freedom.
[When so much of enslavement relies upon the enslaved buying into the myth that they're better off beneath someone's heel . . . Orana's voice drifts through his mind. Hadraina's pet maid, her father's throat slit not an hour before and still, still, she'd insisted: everything was fine until today! Confusion and anguish in her voice, her eyes wet as she'd stared uncomprehending up at them, and Fenris had not known how to comfort her then. All he could say helplessly in reply was that it wasn't. You just didn't know better.
He understands more now.
But ah . . . the rest, now. The biggest part of this, ugly and jagged, ill-fitting in any kind of story. Varric, Leto finds himself thinking, wouldn't write about this. It doesn't fit. The heroic slave, a year into freedom, longing for the comfort of his master's control . . . people don't like to hear about such things. They'd rather buy into the illusion that one always strides forward, for it's so much easier than hearing the ugly, discomfiting truth that sometimes, instincts and desires and emotions all tangle together so messily, dragging a person down into the depths of the past no matter how they gasp and strain for the present.
There was a sickening comfort, and that does not surprise him. But . . . even when I realize it's your touch, and oh that, that shocks him. Leto swallows thickly, then rubs his face. He cannot say this information pleases him, but . . . this is not about him. More than ever, this is not about him.]
. . . tell me.
A specific incident, or in general . . . tell me what you mean when you say that.
[Not because he doesn't understand, but because there's too many ways it could be taken.]
I am not angry. I am not upset. I simply . . .
[His mouth is dry.]
I know what it is to long for a master's touch. To— to miss certain things, or feel the, the way he made you feel.
[Ah, don't stutter now.]
Tell me what it is you mean by that.
Are there . . . do you expect it to be him sometimes when we wake?
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No, that'd be— Gods, no. [No, he's at least certain he could never want that enough to vie for that mistake. Outside of the occasional hellish dream involving old nightmares and temptations made sweet until he wakes, even Astarion's own subconscious mind rejects the idea right at the bitter root.
This time it isn't raw dread. That quickness in his voice exudes a sense of knifing revulsion felt right to the bone, pressure on his spine spurring him to hiss rather than simper— though trust it's broadly aimed in all its focus: there's nothing at all akin to a needlepoint pinned to Leto's throat for suggesting it. He isn't angry or spitting in disgust, only jolting back the way a horse startles when it notices something secondhand. Peripheral blur inciting a rapid collapse in well-paced hoofbeats—
And then just like that, it's done. Darkened blur just a twig or a rock or a garden hose left out, existing innocuously in its own function.
Leto asked because he needed to. Because— strewth, they're up to their necks already, aren't they? Unable to make out branches, let alone forests for trees. Too far from one another to make this easy; too close to one another to let a single subject lie once it starts to freely bleed. He asks because he doesn't know what to think, not because he does think it (and even then, there's no sign of frantic fear for that possibility. Hesitation isn't cold, leveled horror. 'I am not angry. I am not upset.'
And after his head's back on as straight as it could ever possibly get at a time like this, he trusts in that assurance).
He trusts Leto.]
The sensation of it only.
[Nothing deeper. Nothing so tethered to the past that it cuts right through the meridian of what they have.]
It's you that I want. [Oh, right from the reckless start, that's all.] Your touch, your presence. Just you.
[And if he stops, he'll falter. Choke on his own words or swallow down his tongue, being immortal won't save you from the depths of shame or the need to tuck your tail against your belly and never lift your stare again. He has to keep going, which means he has to ramble, now— dragging Leto down into whatever mire it leads to.]
....but that includes your cruelty, too. The way your gemstone eyes shine with contempt when you aren't getting your way. The sharpness of your teeth when you tire of my harrassments. The look you sometimes get as if you can't tell whether or not you want to stop— [Keep going. Keep going. Think specifics. That's what he'd asked for.] Moments of ordered obedience, like when we fought back in Kirkwall. My chin to your knee, my legs wrapped tight around your shin—
[They've gone over this before a hundred times: played out in assurances from Astarion via his lips or voice or roaming fingers that it's not him in exchanges like that. Oh, darling, it's not Danarius' touch still levered against you. It's not his reach or his hold; you're not his still, even when he's gone— there's no disgrace to be had in lust so long as we're both happy.
But that's just it.
All those times, he'd aimed his sights on Leto and deliberately forgotten his own fear. His own worry. His own neophyte newness in freedom, stuck without permanence in any direction he looked.
He can let his guard drop, now.]
Perhaps it is that. Longing for the way it felt [and he emphasizes that word because] beyond the mindlessness of purpose on its own. Something I can't seem to dig out, no matter how vividly I try.
Taking his curse and relieving it with your fingers
2/2
Is that different than missing him, too?
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[And there is not a shred of doubt in his mind as he says it.
Now he understands. What was murky and unsure suddenly comes in abrupt focus, and oh, if his heart doesn't ache for understanding. The terror of knowing you are echoing what your master did to you; the fear that you are little more than a broken thing incapable of cherishing anything but that abuse. Remembering all the revulsion and hatred and grief you felt, and here you are now, reenacting it— oh, gods, yes, he does know that feeling.
Inhale, exhale. He will not fumble this in his haste to assure Astarion.]
Astarion, you wish for— for a reflection, not a recreation. You do not beg me to torment you, or use you, or whore you out. But there is a thrill to, to reenacting what we have gone through. I—
[No, this isn't right. He's circling it, and it's not that he's wrong— but this isn't what he means. Leto hesitates, trying to think of his own experiences before Astarion. Not the first night, no, but . . . those nights with Isabela when she would push him to submit. When she would have him worship her, whimpering and begging for her cunt, servicing her and getting nothing in return. Or worse: when they would fight. When she would push him into things, faux-force meeting good-natured rivalry, the two of them eagerly rutting as they tried to assert their respective will. And he got off on it, oh, yes, but . . .
There was always that drop. That fear.
He had never told Isabela. That wasn't the kind of friendship they'd had. She would have been sympathetic, maybe, in her own way— but then again, her way was always to brush past it, ignoring the past in favor of focusing on the future, and he knows he would have lashed out if she had done that to him. So he wrestled with it on his own, and gods help him, for it had taken years to understand. Even now he does not think of it very often if he can help it, an uneasy question in the back of his mind— but everything is so different when it comes to Astarion.]
. . . . I feared the same when I wore a collar the first time.
[Oh, how cautiously they'd approached that, and yet how easily it had come that night. It helped that Astarion had worn it first, of course; it helped that Leto knew that the other man did not think of it as anything save a kinky addition to their evenings. But he'd fretted that night, nonetheless. He'd dreamed of Tevinter and iron locks, a heavy weight around his throat and pressing down on his shoulders, and woken nauseated by his own inclinations.
And yet they'd played with it again. And again. So many times that it became something ordinary, easily added or removed.]
Perhaps our enslavement changed us in some way. I do not know if we would be inclined to the same things if we had been born and grown into freedom. But I know this: I do not long for Danarius when you set a collar around my throat. I do not miss him when you call me catulus, or praise me, or push me into serving you. There are echoes, maybe, but . . .
You do not miss Cazador when we fuck angrily. You do not force me to become him when I turn cold and cruel, and put you in your place. And . . . there is something to be said, I think, for doing something with someone you love.
You put a collar on me, when I swore I would never allow it in all my days. We have spoken of you controlling me like a puppet, when I spent my life freeing myself from that. But I allowed those things because some part of me thrilled in them— and in knowing that this time, I did have the power to make it end.
It is different. I promise you, it is.
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('It was the days when he praised me I loved the most.')
Just like before, everything rings true— though this time it's cast in the molten shape of that night together in dark halls he dearly misses (lack of funding for candlelight always making everything so sparse at night, though their eyes never needed anything to begin with); all the harsh edges digging hot into one another's skin, all the bruising scuffs of heavy palms that never knew quite where to settle (or ad velorem: where to stop.)]
Mmh. I suppose it did change us.
[It did. It had to have. Experience shapes life, after all, more than anything else. (A theory Astarion keeps only because he can't bear to imagine a younger reflection of himself prior to cuff and chain that was just as mad. Just as broken. Just as intolerably comprised of mismatched splinters with hardly any connective tissue to speak of.) Never mind that the one person who stands a chance at defying that notion is the one Astarion addresses from an overwhelming distance. Stone of farspeech left clutched painfully beneath curled fingers.]
Just not the way either of them imagined.
[Two creatures raised to love the hunt, and yet grown to revile the sound of their master's frigid voices dragging them back from it too soon. Oh, there's not a chance those old ghosts ever banked on that being the summation of their efforts.
Good.
Let them languish in their well-forged obsolescence.]
I don't miss him, Leto. [Astarion adds narrowly. Confession warranting a sudden repetition: I don't.]
And I miss the glory— albeit not the price they bled. [(Let me rest on my knees between your legs. Let me worship you by teaching you where you wear your bruises best— he loves the language of cruelty, and there, with Leto humming in his ear, it all makes perfect sense. Every truth that came bubbling up when they had no filter, shoved away from exhaustion and pain. They've come full circle now.)
It wasn't poison slipped under their skin; they don't chase its dosage in each other's care like a paltry substitute for what's no longer in reach.
It's theirs, now. And they wield it better.]
I'm just relieved I wasn't—
....well. I'm just relieved.
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People lie. People leave. And if they don't take from you, the world takes them.
[It's easy to forget, at times, how intimately Astarion knows loss. How cynical it makes him. How gentle. He's already lost the thread of what he'd meant to say, but something tan springs to mind in its place.
All the air runs out of him. Deflating softly.]
You know. [Soft, across the line. Decompression such a gradual process. He needs time, and he takes that in the toothless habit of play that isn't wholly play. Emotion masked as something else.] You always used to say you were afraid you'd run if we played rough.
Now look at you. Chasing handsome elves with their fangs and their complex-but-intensely-attractive problems across entire Realms without a second thought.
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And maybe they'll go back to this topic— no, almost certainly they will. For now the poison is out, the unspoken given words, and yet the issue will not go away just because they've given it form. The next time Astarion slips a collar around his throat, they'll speak of it. Or perhaps next time they fuck angrily, biting and snarling and seething, Astarion's cock fucking cruelly into his throat before the vampire ends up mewling and panting as he begs on his knees for forgiveness . . . in the aftermath, when they're spent and sweating, they'll speak of it. But it will be easier, then.
Just as speaking of Hadriana will be easier. This is not the last time he will bring her up, Leto knows. He doesn't want to talk of her, but he must— just as he must speak of Danarius. Of Cazador. All the pain, all the trauma, all the grief— this is how they manage to deal with it. By slowly but surely speaking of it, one topic at a time.
People lie. People leave.
But not them.
Still: he chuckles softly as Astarion nips gently at him like that, recognizing toothless play for what it is.]
Ah, well. You gave me your token in the aftermath. How could I do anything but chase after you?
[Oh, he misses that bloody cloth, just as he misses his sword. Ataashi. Most of the rest of it was incidental, little things that can be replaced, but ah . . . some of it still smarts. Leto stares out at nothing— and then, more sincerely:]
I am glad you brought this up. And I am glad, too, we could speak of it. All of it. And I will tell you as many times as you wish that your desires are not akin to wanting him back.
Know that there is nothing I don't trust you with. The past. Hadriana. All of it.
And there is nowhere in all the worlds that you could be stolen that I would not find you again, kadan.
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A little beat across the line that could easily contain entire oceans full of thought: relief, hope, reluctance, comfort, warmth— more reciprocally bound gratitude, even. The only briefer sound within its bounds that of Astarion's restless fingers twisting nominally as they shift around the stone, and the rest of him following soon enough, judging by the soft rustling of cloth-against-cloth within his coffin. Possibly upright. Possibly rolling onto his side. Audio cues sparse in a space that both feels claustrophobic and too large without Leto there to warm it— and simultaneously too full of his own mind to keep it to himself. Whatever comes next, it'll have weight. Meaning. The whole of his heart on display behind barbed defenses that almost never quit, offered up to the fleeting thing that owns him.
And always will.]
Good.
[ —or it's that.
(Good, he chirps out as if measuring weather patterns, and though there's a bubble of molten adoration wreathing it in his mouth, he's an exceptional master of veering footwork. They could talk about his feelings. How glad he is, too, to be part of their ouroborosian thread of trust. How there isn't anything he'd hoard or anything beyond the concept of sharing. How he longs to see that splash of bloody red drawn tight across Leto's wrist even when the man is naked and sleeping in a heap of what should be shared pillows: his neck craned awkwardly at an angle, his arm dangling loosely from the corner of the bed— having already shoved Astarion with his bare feet once or twice already, not including the efforts of one overgrown wolf. He could tell him that he hates Thedas and longs for it with all his heart— and loves it, in his own embittered way.
He could tell him again, for the thousandth time, that he'll never leave his side come death or age or desolation.
But unless he wants to see Leto's work extended by another day, ensuring that he's kept away from him for longer, there'll be time to talk about all that later, as it comes.)]
Because I'd hate to have to be the one to track you down instead. My legs are tired enough already as it is, trying to keep up with you on all that noble, heroic— irritating mercenary work of yours.
[Says the literal vampire, who could rut him from sunrise to sunset and back again, provided he's well fed.]
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[It's a faint chuckle, accompanied by the sound of rustling as Leto gets back to his feet.
He can picture Astarion right now, you know. The way he lays in the coffin, clad in Leto's shirt and lying atop a heap of pillows that by all rights ought to be shared with someone else. How he twists and turns, reaching for a body that isn't there, feeling the lack of warmth in a space that's meant to be theirs. Lonely and a little heartsick over it— and yet what good will giving into it do either of them? Better to chirp out an answer now and save the affectionate longing for a time when they can indulge in it. Whispering adoration and loyalty to one another in wake of the past looming in the shadows; nuzzling as they tangle their limbs together, hands clasped as they murmur words of affirmation and adoration . . .
Soon, Leto thinks. Soon he'll be back in his lover's arms once more. Soon they'll have another version of this conversation, touching back on all the grief and pain of this conversation with all the comfort of protective arms and nuzzling adoration.]
I walk for miles unending to hunt down a vicious murderer all so I can keep a roof over your head, and all you can do is tell me how irritating it would be to follow in my footsteps.
[Footsteps, steady and even. And you know, he thinks about flirting: coyly offering some little remark about stamina and all the ways which Astarion might prove it. But suddenly his thoughts veer in another direction, softer and more sentimental, and he instead murmurs:]
Do you think you can sleep, kadan? Or do you wish to hear me tell you some tale of the past as you settle in?
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The roof isn't much for conversation. Or seduction.
[He is a lazy thing, thank you very much. One with terrible priorities and possibly even worse opinions when it comes to ideal architecture, considering his preference for strong shelter when sunlight's still his bane.
And as it so happens, the most important rule of thumb for the foundation of his far-off world remains firmly locked in place:]
....but until I can actually hook my claws into those devourable little hips of yours once more, I suppose I could settle for a story instead.
[In other words, beloved heart of hearts: he still can't sleep.
Or more accurately, he can sleep— but he's still struck through with peripheral restlessness in a shirt that smells of life and warm amber, feeling it pinch against his side where it wrinkles between him and the covers with every prolonged shift. Coffin stuffed with a thicker blanket in pursuit of artificial comfort that might satisfy them both in different ways (something to combat the emptiness of the coffin when Leto needs to feel more swaddled than surrounded; an offering of meager warmth when there's no pulse for Astarion's overactive senses to follow— ) and yet somehow all he feels is stuck-in and weighed down in all the wrong places when he leaves himself even a second of silent thought, fussing around while he pacifies his instinct through that precious little stone and its low, incessant noises.
Noises he's not ready to let go of just yet.
It's one last childishly gripping bid at stay with me. And one that makes it easier not to sink into mulling over what-ifs while his amatus chases after prey.]
I want something long. And thrilling. And full of more than just your weekly misadventures in strip Wicked Grace at the Hanged Man.
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[He's smiling. Faintly, admittedly, but all the more irrepressible because of it. His heart still aches from all that they just spoke of; loneliness still gnaws at him, and he knows he'll miss Astarion when night falls and he has only his sleep roll to keep him company. But to have the ability to communicate with his beloved even when they're apart— oh, how can he not be pleased by that?]
I would tell you how I killed a god, but in truth, the actual tale was not so very interesting. Hm . . .
[A beat, and he chuckles.]
I will tell you a story of before I settled in Kirkwall. When I was still on the run . . . I was in the Free Marches at the time. And there was a particularly persistent bounty hunter who thought she was terribly clever, for she aimed to seduce me. Unfortunately, she assumed my memory for face was poor— or that I would be fooled by her tinting her hair. She became an annoyance after the fourth occurrence— but she was very good with knives, and weaponry and fighting were far more her forte than subtlety . . .
[And she had friends, as it turns out. The story goes on, and he does not mind telling it: how gleefully reckless he could get in those early years, paradoxically paranoid and yet giddy with freedom all at once. His glee at toying with his prey; his prey's easy reversal of the dynamic, and how she had tried to revel in his misfortune when her gang attacked en masse. It goes on, on and on and on, and they end up getting side-tracked over and over: one memory sparks another, and another . . .
Until day turns to dusk. Until Astarion's voice has gone sweetly drowsy as he insists he's still awake. Until Leto finally shoos him to sleep, laughing softly as he prepares his supper, knowing that his hunt is soon coming to a close— and that he will be able to head home, ready to settle in his vampire's arms once more.]