Chapter Text
Additional a/n: Also, there are certain things I realized I had to/was going to have to add to the TWs in the dropdown every chapter, so I decided to add them to the tags instead. I did this with the self-harm a while back. You might want to go and re-read the tags again from time to time just in case something has cropped up. But also there are some things I won’t put in the tags because they are terrible spoilers!
Also also. I know my authors notes are rather coy and irreverent usually. But I feel a need to take a moment to say, we are starting a section where both Ancunín and Astarion do things which I as a human being very much do not approve of. I know I have said a million times how dark things get. But just know... they really do. This is a portion of this story where [if you'd rather not have the subtext spoiled don't read this next bit] Ancunín uses his mind games and perhaps his magic to really drive home that Mind Break tag. Here we have the Ascendant trying to seduce Astarion, or outright coerce him, into his twisted view of things. Astarion, in his turn, is not a perfect victim. Ancunín takes Astarion's native streak of cruelty and pulls, and sometimes Astarion falls down. But, also, there is hope. I promise. You're just not going to see it yet, and it's going to feel like all is lost. The absolute pitch black darkness only lasts a couple chapters. Please read the tags for this work. I got two hurtful comments last week by people who were angry about things that have been tagged or covered in the archive warning for a very long time.
Anyway, here you go darlings...
Morning. He came up through his sleep like surfacing through clear water. And he did not scream. He felt as good as if he had somehow woken up mortal.
Astarion frowned. The fact that he had woken peacefully somehow didn’t sit well with him. His body felt so refreshed that it was almost like a second exhaustion, and this, too, gave him pause. Was this how it was supposed to feel to rest?
Ancunín had heard him stir in the bed, and wordlessly he invited him into his arms. Astarion was surprised that he was there, and he felt a dark shame about this. A coldness passed briefly over him.
“I know,” Lord Ancunín whispered. “I’m sorry.”
Though their bodies were no different, Astarion always felt small in his arms, his cold, scarred back curled in against Ancunín’s smooth, warm chest as he held him. Astarion had forgotten that neither of them had worn anything to bed, and a small happiness cut through his shame. He realized that at some point they had wordlessly decided they could hold each other like this.
This little happiness immediately stirred him with disquiet. His mind as always working around the edges of things to find the flaw, the danger, the mistake. Ancunín, seeming to sense his thoughts, kissed his hair again, smoothing it. “Thou art troubled,” he said in Elvish.
Astarion didn’t respond. He pressed his body into Ancunín’s arms. He felt something like prickling inside his chest.
“Thy body shakes in my arms.”
Astarion sighed. He turned to face him in the bed, answered him in Common. “Yes, that is because you left me.”
He felt Ancunín stiffen at these words. “Darling,” he said.
Astarion pulled away slightly. This time, he answered in Elvish. “Sayest thou, then, that even the gods may be imprisoned by devils?”
“I risked my life for thine. For thy desire,” he uttered. His eyes were dark in the bed. “I would do it again, if thou wished it.”
Astarion sighed again. For a moment, he said nothing. The intimacy of how he referred to him in Elvish; a familiar address which Common lacked. “I would rather live in death, beloved,” he answered, his voice low, pressing back into his arms.
Ancunín said nothing for a moment, held him close. There was so much unsaid, so much left to explain and do, that it paradoxically left them with nothing to say. “I can never repair what I did,” Ancunín murmured in Common. “Do you wish to leave me, now?” His arms tightened imperceptibly. “I will never be free of you, darling. But that doesn’t obligate you to me.”
“You cannot save me,” Astarion said, as though to himself. “All the gods above and below, and you out of all of them cannot save me.” His absence had been so painful that Astarion was just starting to realize its implications: the vampire lord had bargained for his life, and failed.
“Although I am the Lord of Undeath,” Ancunín whispered, his lips in his hair, “I will simply have to save you the way mortals do.”
“Oh? And what does that mean?”
He murmured into Astarion’s hair, his breath tickling his ear. “It means I love you. I will give you the very earth and everything in it, if I can. And your life, if I can manage it, simply because you asked.”
Astarion opened his mouth, but realized he had nothing to say. A disquiet stirred in his gut.
“As to how we will accomplish that,” Ancunín said, “I have no idea.”
Astarion felt a resigned tiredness. “You can join the long line of gods who have offered me nothing, then,” he said. The words were hard, but his tone was soft. He reached up and touched Ancunín’s face. “However, I have enough madness left in me that sometimes I believe simply your company will be enough.”
Ancunín smiled incredulously, his lips grazing Astarion’s cheek. “Aren’t you a handful, insulting a god?”
“Frankly, darling, at this point I feel entitled to it.”
Ancunín laughed. It was a different laugh this time than his usual low and sarcastic tone. He sounded so innocent and light that it made Astarion feel briefly strange, lightheaded. “Ancunín,” he said. “May I ask you something?”
“Anything.”
“You said that I had surprised you more than anything you had seen in your undeath.”
Something passed over Ancunín’s face. “Yes, that’s true.”
“Why?”
Ancunín sat up. The morning was advancing, and in the light from the windows he looked ethereal. His hair fell down against his chest in the light, his eyelashes shadowing his cheek. He looked away as he spoke. “It was because you had cast aside the Ascension. At first I didn’t understand it. But I do now.”
Astarion sat up, intrigued.
“You did it because you’re… you. It’s how you are.” He looked at him with a softness in his eyes. “I believed this was a flaw. But now, I realize that it was not.”
Astarion had the faint sensation of not believing his ears.
Ancunín shifted his hair to the other side of his shoulders, parting it unevenly with his fingertips. It fell like a cascade of satin. Shadows fell in the hollows of his throat. “It was the gift I was meant to give you, darling. I was to be humbled by you. Made… complete, by you.” He turned, his eyes full of a dark light. “Destroyed by you, darling.” He touched his face more intensely, held it. “No creature in all the planes could complete me like this. Could show me everything I was not, bring me low. Nothing could complete me as you, exactly the way you are and not a hair of difference. And in turn, I will complete you. I will give you everything. We will shape each other. We will become… each other.” He traced his thumb down along the sharpness of Astarion’s cheekbone, thumbing his lips. An intensity had entered his eyes. “We will become one in every conceivable way. You will be flesh of my flesh. I will be blood of thy blood,” he said, lapsing into Elvish. He leaned close, his lips parted, his voice slipping low. “Tell me this is thy desire as well.”
“Yes,” Astarion breathed, half-gasping, half in a whisper. He leaned closer. A sliver of dread pressed into his heart. The flush of excitement, of fear. “Yes, my love.”
Ancunín kissed him, kissed him as though he had fallen into it, his lips soft, his body as yielding as it was firm. Astarion guided him down to the bed, holding him, the scent of his hair as it fell all around him like a gossamer curtain. They did nothing but kiss each other, holding each other, Astarion trying to stay quiet so that he could hear the soft sounds of Ancunín’s breathing, his quiet grunts of satisfaction. His tongue gently in his mouth. He could tell Ancunín was listening to his breathing as well.
Lord Ancunín pressed his lips into Astarion’s throat. “When I realized what you were,” he whispered, tasting his skin, “I longed to devour you. And I wanted you to kill me.”
Astarion pulled away. “What?” His whisper in the bed almost casual with disbelief.
Ancunín kissed the other side of Astarion’s neck. “Because I will never be free of you now, darling. I am confined by you. My desire for you. I am like your slave. And that is how it will be, so long as you live.” He brushed his lips along Astarion’s ear. “Your imperfections. How tired you are, how thinly you have been holding yourself together. All of it…” He took a deep, slow breath, and Astarion felt him taking in the scent of his skin. “All of it, perfect.” He moaned softly under his breath. “Oh, Astarion. I want to be your slave…” Ancunín had begun pressing his hips against him, his cock stiffening as he spoke. He kissed around his ears, breathing heavily. “Oh, you could have killed me, darling.”
Astarion was so tempted to part his legs, ask him for a slow, casual fuck as they talked. Not out of any particular lust, but simply because he was growing used to the feeling of being full. Like an inertia. But his strange words stirred an anxiety in his belly. “How could I have even laid a finger to you?”
“I expected you to. I didn’t wear the Crown, that night you were almost crushed. I wanted you to try.”
“You—” He inhaled sharply. “When the building fell. You actually risked your life for me that night.”
“Of course I did.”
“I…” He felt Lord Ancunín becoming more insistent against him simply because of their conversation. He obliged, rocking his hips gently up into his. His words grew fewer, more strained. “But why did you want me to kill you?”
“Above all, I wanted to be free. You know this feeling. All these thousands of years, and still…” He moaned softly as he felt Astarion, hard now, press their cocks together once, gently, like an afterthought. “I could tell you some sweet nonsense about not wanting to live unless I could have you, but the truth is...” A disquiet entered Ancunín’s voice. “There was something erotic in it for me. There still is. About lying lifeless before you.”
Astarion’s hair stood on end.
“It is a thing of the high death,” he uttered. “When I give you my gift, you will know it. I cannot be truly vulnerable to you. To lay absolutely exposed for you. But, I want to.” A guarded expression came into his eyes, and he whispered: “Would you like to have my life, pet? I’ll give it to you. I’ll cast it off like dross.”
Astarion was caught in an impossible pulling of contradictory desires; a terror had rooted in his heart for the strangeness, the horror of his lover’s mind; and yet. To have the vampire lord before him so full of need, so desperate to be brought low. He found himself moaning softly, bucking his hips gently up. “Oh, Ancunín,” he breathed, feeling himself come to a despicable hardness. “This is sickening.”
The vampire lord’s eyes glinted. “I want to lie before you so that you can have my body as you wish, so that I can’t say no to you. I want to belong to you. I do belong to you.”
Astarion felt Lord Ancunín so rigid against him that it almost stopped him from thinking, from considering the strangeness of his words. The keening precipice of his mind. “You could never belong to me,” he whispered.
Ancunín moaned. It was a soft, veiled sound in his throat. “Command me, Astarion,” he uttered.
And, for some reason, Astarion found the words in his mouth: “On your knees.”
He did it immediately. Astarion sat on the edge of the bed, so hard it hurt, and Ancunín took him so desperately into his mouth that his teeth almost scratched Astarion’s cock. Lord Ancunín grunted, gagging, his cheeks hollowing as he pleasured him. The way he took him was as though he wanted nothing, nothing at all, except to be permitted to swallow. The way he looked up into Astarion’s eyes.
Astarion tried to remain indifferent. It was an act, entirely; looking down, he noticed how much softer, how much more needy, Ancunín’s eyes became if he feigned casualness, if he looked away, if he examined his nails. He looked archly down between his legs. “You like this,” he said, fighting wildly to keep his tone disinterested. He was so hard in Ancunín’s mouth that he must have tasted the wetness beading there; he felt Ancunín lick at it. Momentarily, he lost his composure, whimpering. He had the command of a vampire lord, kneeling between his legs. And he was almost sure he wasn’t adequate to manage this.
“Enough,” Astarion said sharply, needing Ancunín to stop, or he would have spent in his mouth. Ancunín pulled away, his lips wet. His eyes were so vulnerable that it was all Astarion could do not to grab him by the back of the head, so that he could fill his mouth. With no care at all for whatever little game this was, for whatever rules they hadn’t fully discussed. And this, he realized with a sinking in his stomach, felt good—he felt a trace of something then, the echo of what he had felt when Ancunín had first offered his blood. The thread in the heart of life which waited in the wings to be plucked, to be taken and enjoyed. Used.
In a flash of intuition, a flash of unreason, he realized he wanted to disrespect him. Degrade him. Perhaps in a way not entirely agreed to.
Astarion pointed to the pillow. “Kneel.”
If Ancunín had any reservation about this, he didn’t show it. His eyes were hard, coy, his smile malicious. He climbed into bed and went to the pillow delicately, kneeling and then pressing his face into it. His hair tumbled over his back. He looked back at Astarion expectantly.
Astarion took a breath. He was not thinking clearly. But, he didn’t want to think clearly. He wanted to follow the thread of black rot all the way to his bliss. Already he had known the taste of death in the Underdark; everything felt pale now, unreal. Inconsequential. Everything but the vampire lord with his legs open before him.
Astarion knelt behind him, and as though this was enough for him, Ancunín moaned just to feel the bed shift. “Will you take me now, darling?” he asked.
Astarion looked down at him, his beautiful back. His small waist. The sweet, pale entrance to his body, exposed now for him, as Ancunín arched his back.
Astarion slapped him, hard, across the ass.
“Ah—!” Lord Ancunín cried out. And Astarion watched his face. The way his eyes fluttered closed, the way color flushed his cheeks. The way he drew his lips into a line, hissing. He flinched as though to look over his shoulder. It had been unexpected. Some part of his expression was fearful; Astarion watched as he drew up his shoulders, as though to defend himself.
Astarion did it again.
“Ngh—” Ancunín trembled, allowed his mouth to fall open. He arched his back as though to demand more. “Oh, yes,” he moaned, as though he had tried to hold it back.
“What if I don’t fuck you,” Astarion hissed. Not a question. “What if I do it again? Darling.”
He watched Ancunín pretend to want anything other than this. And, briefly, a shame so pronounced it could have been a cry for help passed across his face.
Astarion’s cock twitched in his trousers.
“Another,” Lord Ancunín begged.
Astarion slapped him again.
Ancunín cried out in pain, now, genuine pain.
“You would let me hurt you,” Astarion breathed. A cold, authoritative feeling descending over his heart. This, oh, yes. This. This was it. “I could do anything I wanted.”
Lord Ancunín’s cock was trailing a plentiful wet slick along his inner thigh. “Oh, yes. Oh, please. Take me,” he moaned, with a quiet strain. As though he hadn’t wanted to say it.
And Astarion hit him again.
Ancunín pressed his face into the pillow and screamed.
“Until it hurts,” Astarion seethed. And he hit him again, as hard as he could. His hand smarted, he watched color which would become bruising appear on his lover’s pale flesh.
Shaking, now. Ancunín shook below him on the bed. Little, soft shakes. As though he wanted to conceal them. He gripped the pillow. Still arching, his cock hanging stiff between his legs.
“Fuck me,” Lord Ancunín begged. And when he pulled his face away to speak, Astarion saw that the pillow was wet.
“No,” Astarion said, and slapped him again.
The cry that came from Ancunín’s lips was thin, somehow terrible. A silver thread of guilt snaked in Astarion’s gut. And his cock pressed up miserably against his belly. He sought the guilt again. He hit him.
“Fuck me,” Ancunín begged a second time. His voice strangely thick. “Please—”
“I’d rather hurt you,” Astarion snarled.
“Oh—!” he cried. And his voice was strangely thick.
Astarion hit him. Wanting to bruise him. Watching as Ancunín’s perfect flesh reddened and welted.
“Ahh—” Lord Ancunín wept. The arch in his back becoming more pronounced. He looked up, over his shoulder. His face unreadable. And then, as though he was letting go of something, his face abruptly caught in the taut moue of anticipation. “Oh, fuck me, Astarion,” he pleaded.
Astarion felt a sudden haughtiness, something adjacent to anger. He brushed Ancunín’s hair aside to reveal the catch of his gold chain. He lifted it up gently in one finger. “Take it off, pet,” he whispered.
Ancunín turned to stare at him. “Astarion,” he said.
Astarion felt momentarily dizzy. He blinked, and the irritated feeling flared. He took the chain in his fist and pulled it painfully against Ancunín’s throat. “I won’t argue,” he said.
But, he’d felt something he had to push away when he’d looked into Lord Ancunín’s eyes. Because, for the second time in as many days, something had fallen away; Ancunín’s hair no longer a mantle, his eyes no longer twin glimpses of living night. It was himself Astarion saw; plain, powerless. But shaped by the terrible winnowing of thousands of years, a magic which wore away to sickness. Something frail and terrified exposed beneath his countenance.
Astarion inhaled sharply, looked away. He grit his teeth, clenched his fist. He heard Ancunín hiss in pain as the chain cut at his throat. “Now,” he ordered.
Slowly, Ancunín sat up. A reticent, unreadable look in his eyes. He unclasped the Crown of Karsus from his neck and laid it on the nightstand. He took a breath and then went to the pillow again.
There was a brass penknife on the nightstand, underneath a book; Astarion took it. He could see Ancunín’s surprise, a slight tremor in his voice. “Astarion—”
With hands quick and practiced, Astarion twisted the length of Ancunín’s hair into his fist. The thickness of it gathered in his hand was as sturdy as rope. He didn’t spare his pain, he yanked his head back with a violence. Ancunín cried out in pain.
“Quiet,” Astarion said through his teeth. His cock felt so stiff and heavy between his legs that it almost hurt. He took the penknife into his fist and pressed its dull tip into Ancunín’s throat, just below his Adam’s apple. “You will be quiet. And I will take you like a whore, and you won’t come for me. I won’t allow it.”
“I—”
Astarion pulled his hair again. “Silence.” He murmured the cantrip, slickening himself. “You want me now, don’t you?”
“Astarion—” His voice sounded choked.
“Say yes.”
He felt Lord Ancunín swallow against the dull knife. “Yes.”
Astarion smiled. A black delight curled in his stomach. “That wasn’t so hard, was it?” And without giving him time to answer, he thrust into him viciously, giving him his full length at once, hoping he would cry out. Hoping to hear how difficult it was to take him.
Ancunín cried out as though in pain. Astarion watched his back shudder and clench, watched him try to writhe away. He held the length of Ancunín’s hair in his fist and used it to pin him, used it to turn his head so that he could see the expression of pain on his face.
“Astarion—” he choked, his brows furrowed in agony. “It hurts—”
Astarion’s cock gave a vile twitch. He remembered how to do this—something in him instantly stretched back to a black hour he wished not to remember. A black hour in which Cazador had commanded him to fall to a writhing body below him, and it had been just like this. But his body was already caught in the awful delight of it—to see the face of a vampire lord constricted in pain with his thrusting—
“Astarion, stop,” Lord Ancunín gasped.
His cock twitched a second time, violently. “No.” And with pleasure, with delight, with sickness, he bore down on him, chasing his awful bliss.
He dropped the knife because he knew he didn’t need it. The vacant look on Ancunín’s face. The way his eyes indicated he had gone somewhere else. All of it brough him so low with wretched delight that he felt his orgasm building already. He followed it without thought, thrusting quickly up into Ancunín’s tight slickness. He doesn’t want this, something in his mind said. You’re—
“Oh, Master,” Ancunín suddenly moaned.
Uncontrollably, Astarion spent inside him. His mind emptied almost at the touch of this word. Master. “Oh—you little—” he groaned, feeling Lord Ancunín clench on him, feeling him thrust back up into him. And he felt the twitch of Ancunín’s tight ring of muscle, as he disobeyed Astarion’s command and spent mercilessly onto the sheet.
Astarion could have come a second time. He felt he had somehow been bested, felt that there was more, ever more to take. Instead, he withdrew, petulantly, sweating, panting. Feeling suddenly cold, as though something inside of him had spoiled.
Ancunín, for his part, had turned around, had opened his legs, and was looking up at Astarion with the most malicious, whorish smile Astarion had ever seen. All trace of uncertainty, of the strange careworn fear, vanished. As though the face he wore fit him beautifully again. He touched the underside of Astarion’s chin. “Bravo, my prince,” he uttered.
Astarion felt suddenly dizzy. “What did you say?”
Ancunín took his ear and used it to pull him close. Astarion cried out in pain. “It feels so good, doesn’t it, my sweet thing,” he whispered. “To take someone by force.”
Astarion suddenly felt as though he would vomit. “You—”
Ancunín groaned with delight, as though simply remembering it was pleasure enough. “Oh, you can’t know what you just gave me.” He shuddered with bliss. “Thank you.”
Astarion tried to slow his breathing. He stared down at his lover, his mouth open. Anger of a different kind was rising in his belly.
Ancunín groaned again, closing his eyes. “Do you know how good it feels?” He opened his eyes again, with that same impish smile. “To be owned by you? Used?”
Astarion bared his teeth. “Ancunín, you can’t just—”
The vampire lord sat up, the smile on his face kingly, prideful. He kissed Astarion full on the mouth, a kiss redolent of celebration. “And don’t you see, my darling, how it feels when everything wants to bow to you in sweet submission? How it all waits for you? How it is waiting, still?”
Astarion’s head hurt. His breathing had grown shallow. “Ancunín,” he uttered. “It was… You didn’t want it. I…” But he couldn’t bring himself to say it, to name what he had done.
At this, Ancunín was silent for a beat. And then, he laughed. A full belly-laugh. “Oh, my sweet, precious thing. You’re so kind, really. But…” He squinted, smiling. “I thought you could tell I wanted it. Have you not done this before?”
“Of course not!” Astarion snapped. He felt dizzy. “And with you screaming ‘no, stop,’ and all the pain I thought you were in— and I just—I—” He put his face in his hands and slumped on the bed.
Ancunín immediately gathered Astarion into his arms again. “Pet, I’m sorry,” he said. He brushed Astarion’s hair out of his face. “I thought you could tell.”
Astarion felt far away from himself. His stomach was twisting, a hot nausea rising in him again. He started pulling away. “I feel sick,” he said. “I need to—”
Mistaking him, Ancunín pulled him tighter. “No,” he said, smoothing his hair. “It was my fault. You didn’t do anything wrong.”
Astarion suddenly felt sticky with cold sweat, the unmistakable urge to vomit rising in him. He unceremoniously pushed Ancunín away and ran into the bathroom, where he gripped the edge of the sink and vomited into it. It wasn’t much, owing to the fact that he was dead; he turned on the tap and rinsed it away. The nausea temporarily abated, as it always did, and he leaned heavily on the vanity, looking at his own greenish reflection. He still wasn’t used to it, hadn’t even fully accepted it for the few short days Ancunín’s gift had given it back to him before. The sight of his own face made his gorge rise again. Anxiety twisted in his stomach. He had been experiencing some kind of sickness like this almost every morning since his poisoning.
Ancunín entered the bathroom behind him, wearing a robe and carrying another over his arm. Ancunín paused in the doorway when he saw him, and Astarion turned around, saw him register what had just happened.
The color drained from Ancunín’s face, and his eyes went wide. His shocked gaze travelled briefly to Astarion’s belly. “Oh,” he said. “Oh, my.” Briskly, he walked up to Astarion, his hair swishing at his back. He raised his hands and clapped twice, primly, as though carrying out some task. Then he squeezed Astarion’s shoulder, with a relieved smile. “There. You won’t be having that little problem any longer, darling.”
Astarion looked up at himself in the mirror. He felt better; he looked less green, less sweaty. But, he frowned as he examined his hair and skin. He could have sworn that a moment ago his hair had been softer and more lustrous, his skin nearly glowing although he was dead. He pulled at his cheeks nervously.
“You look fine, dear,” Ancunín said.
“I…” Astarion shivered. “I have been suffering from this for weeks. I think it’s because of the poisoning. But, it wasn’t really getting better.”
Ancunín pursed his lips, looking away. “I’m… Yes. Happy to help.” He bit his lip. “You really gave me quite a scare, you know.”
Astarion sighed. “I’m tired, darling.”
“Well, it’s not as though we have anything to do.”
They spoke as they bathed again, talking of nothing much. Astarion felt nervous, knowing there was so much unsaid. Having the faintest premonition that Ancunín had gone through something unspeakable in Cania, and that this was the cause of the rage, the dreamlike way in which he caught him looking aside, looking inward.
When Ancunín was finished with his shower, he joined Astarion in the bath. “I hope you’re not…” A flicker of unease passed through his eyes. “Entirely put off, love, at my showing you more of my… desires.”
Astarion smiled. “I’m not above a little blood in the sheets. It’s that you’re apparently so poor at communicating.”
He sighed. “Yes. I…” He pushed at his hair in frustration. “I had forgotten what it was like. To need to say anything at all. To… have a body.”
“Oh, you’ll have time to learn how to use it. Likely a few thousand years, at a glance. Assuming neither of us will meet one of the usual ends. Personally, I’ve always thought decapitation sounded rather saucy.”
The vampire lord looked away. “Are you disturbed by it?” he asked.
Astarion sighed theatrically, grinning. “I suppose it was naïve not to suspect the Lord of Undeath for a bit of a corpse-fucker.”
Ancunín groaned, smiling, pinching the bridge of his nose. And, he blushed. Astarion felt something in his heart flutter at the faint trace of it. “Well, there’s no need for such vulgarity, Astarion.”
“What? Do you mean to tell me that your weird little erotic fixation on being dead is the equivalent of a discerning taste in fine wines? Frankly, I’m quite surprised I’m not dead enough for you. And you’re dead too, not to put too fine a point on it.”
Ancunín had taken his hairpin from the vanity and was busy securing his hair so that it wouldn’t get wet. “I am more alive than I was before I was turned. You will be, too.”
Astarion got the sense that he was supposed to press this, that Ancunín wanted to tell him something, wanted to begin talking about their future together. Astarion avoided it. “Well, I’d be happy to fuck with a blade to your neck, if you’d be so kind as to ask. And with a few good healing potions on the bedside table. But, I suppose I will have to be the responsible one here, as I’d rather not see the love of my life with his throat slit because he was thinking with his cock. I’m sure you understand.”
Ancunín had been moving to tuck a strand of hair up into his hairpin, but he paused. His hand lingered, his eyes were wide. “You…” he said. Furtively, he tucked the strand of hair behind his ear, but he missed some, and it hung messily against his cheek. “You… I’m the love of your life?” he asked, softly.
Astarion reached forward, tucked the stray hair behind Ancunín’s ear, the corner of his mouth quirked up. “Yes,” he said. “Whatever else could you be?”
Now, Ancunín was blushing. He looked away, smiling, as if overwhelmed. “You. Oh, I—” He looked up, into Astarion’s eyes. “I love you too.” He murmured these words as though they were inadequate, as though he was embarrassed to say them.
Astarion brushed another stray hair away from Ancunín’s face. He looked at him with his lashes lowered. “I didn’t know I would be…” He allowed his lips to graze Ancunín’s jaw. “Perfect for myself.”
Ancunín moaned softly. “Oh, darling, we just—”
But Astarion positioned himself on the stone bench, and allowed Ancunín to climb on top of him, where he whimpered like a virgin with his eyes closed as Astarion fucked him. Filled him again. Lord Ancunín was so unselfconscious, so full of a need to have his own pleasure taken off his hands. Astarion covered his neck and chest with kisses, stroked him, paid it no mind when the vampire lord spent between them in the bath.
Ancunín covered him in wet kisses, his fine hair a halo about his head with the humidity. “I love you,” he whispered softly, his wet hand tucking Astarion’s hair behind his ear.
Astarion kissed his forehead. “I love you too.”
Ancunín cleaned the water with a wave of his hand, got out of the bath. Astarion followed.
Ancunín was paging through his wardrobe, and when Astarion came into the room, he realized that he hadn’t really noticed before how strange some of Ancunín’s possessions were. Rows of books whose glossy backs looked to have been individually painted by masters, but with subjects that looked strangely cheap and implied vulgarity. In the center of his writing desk sat a strange, slim rectangle of burnished metal with a fruit blazoned on it. A fingerprint-covered piece of flat, dark glass lay carelessly on his nightstand. And furthermore, the stark oddity of Ancunín’s manor, his way of life in the city. Every noble family, even every family with any kind of money, lived in a manse with hallway upon hallway of guest rooms, a dining room for twenty or thirty, and a veritable undercity of servants and their quarters. These palatial houses operated almost as resorts, their doors open to a perpetually rotating cast of guests, wealthy travelers, and nobility from elsewhere. Privacy almost couldn’t be had anywhere but in one’s own rooms.
By contrast, Ancunín’s home, which he got the sense was probably more expensive than several of these manors put together, was intensely, pointedly private. A single bedroom with its huge bed, an intimate little sitting room with its inviting carpet before the fire. He had seen just two servants. The house was quieter than any city home should be, and seemed built against the accommodation of guests. Astarion realized he hadn’t even seen the dining room. It felt slightly like the set of a house for a stage-play, except for how it breathed warmth and comfort, how it invited him into sleep that drew the exhaustion from his bones.
“Penny for your thoughts?” Ancunín asked. He was already in his shirtsleeves, his collar not yet buttoned. Over his arm were a few pieces for Astarion.
Astarion sat on the bed. “Your house. It’s… not normal. Do you ever host guests? Does anyone even know you’re here?”
He laid a few pieces out on the bed, looked at Astarion, considered them. “No, I do not host guests. I made this house for you. For us.”
Astarion frowned. “What?”
The vampire lord looked up. He smiled in the corner of his mouth. “I wanted a residence entirely designed around having you all to myself.”
Astarion raised an eyebrow. “And you’re just admitting this.”
“What, exactly, is there to admit? Don’t tell me you’re surprised.”
He rolled his eyes. “Ancunín, my dear. I love you to pieces, but you can be very intense.”
“Yes, yes.” He clicked his tongue impatiently. “God of Undeath, and all.” He gestured to the clothes. “You’re welcome to my things, until I’ve had all yours laundered.” He looked knowingly at Astarion. “Unless you’d fancy a visit to the tailor’s.”
Astarion smiled bashfully. “I don’t know how you know me so well.”
“It’s as you said, darling. You’re perfect for yourself.”
“And if you continue with these filthy words, we’ll accomplish nothing today. Or tomorrow. Or, frankly, for another decade.”
He looked innocently at Astarion. “And?”
Astarion rolled his eyes and began to dress.
When they were dressed, they walked down the boulevard, Astarion feeling so fresh, so clean in his borrowed clothes, practically drinking the sunlight. Ancunín crooked his elbow and invited Astarion to rest his hand in it, and with Astarion on his arm like this, he looked as though he couldn’t contain his smile. Something in Astarion had shifted, and he realized he didn’t know when. He was not as uncomfortable in his death. He had a flash of thought that he could wear it like a mantle, like a blessing, like some kind of crown only he knew was there.
The tailor Pennygood recognized him immediately, of course. He lit up the room with a wide, accommodating smile. “If it isn’t the savior of the Gate,” he said. “I haven’t seen you in ten years. Why, I’ll have my schedule for the day cleared.”
Astarion assumed Ancunín had glamoured himself, because Pennygood’s gaze wasn’t darting between them. “There’s no need—” he began.
“Thank you,” Ancunín said. He sat down primly in one of the upholstered chairs, crossing one leg over the other. “I will see that you’re handsomely compensated for your professionalism. You see, I’m afraid my husband is in need of an entire winter wardrobe.”
Astarion had to steady himself against a bookcase. Husband. When he looked at Ancunín, he didn’t look back. Ancunín’s gaze was directed at the tailor, but there was the smallest of uneven smiles on his lips.
Pennygood looked between them, smiling happily. “Well, how delightful. I didn’t know the savior of Baldur’s Gate had married.”
“Yes,” Astarion quickly said, before his husband could interject anything. “We eloped.”
“Ah,” Pennygood said. “Eminently stylish, if you’ll permit my comment.”
“Of course,” Ancunín offered, smiling expansively. “A man of your discretion must hear so much of what goes on in this city.”
Pennygood nodded, pleased. He turned to Astarion. “And, what would pique the gentleman’s interest this afternoon? If I may, I have a fine selection of materials for the…” He looked briefly at Astarion’s face, at his hair. “For the very coolest of winter complexions.”
“Yes, I think that will make a wonderful start,” Astarion said. Pennygood nodded and disappeared into the other room.
He turned to Ancunín, who was looking much too pleased with himself, busy pouring himself a glass of champagne from the side table. “Husband!” Astarion stage-whispered.
For a moment, Ancunín’s face grew deadly serious. “Why, yes,” he uttered. He held the champagne flute in his graceful fingers, raised it ever so slightly. The air temporarily darkened, a cold breeze stirred the curtains. “To us, darling,” Ancunín said, and drank.
Astarion had opened his mouth to speak, but Pennygood came back into the room, and the strange coldness evaporated like mist. “Well, now, Master—” He looked at Astarion with a polite expectancy.
Astarion grinned tightly. “Just Astarion, thank you,” he said.
“Master Astarion,” Pennygood continued smoothly. “Here I have a sampling of the latest winterweight brocades.”
Astarion swallowed his own discomfort. Master Astarion. He took the portfolio of materials into his hands. All of them felt exquisite. Something in his head felt strange. But, he realized, a man of Pennygood’s station would never call him by his first name. He had committed a faux pas. He swallowed and temporarily clenched his jaw. “Why don’t we try this lovely dark blue?”
Pennygood smiled, nodded. “Yes. I admit, I’m partial to that one. And I think it will suit you wonderfully. Are you interested a vest? Perhaps a doublet?”
And they continued like this until the sun was low, and Astarion was sure the business should have long been closed. Ancunín consumed a concerning amount of champagne, regaling Pennygood and his assistants with tales of travels Astarion couldn’t be entirely sure had happened. And from time to time Lord Ancunín would stand, examining Astarion with a critical eye, sometimes pressing at his waist, sometimes brushing a stray hair from his collar. He regarded Astarion’s choices with obvious delight. And, when the evening was ending, and Pennygood had gone into the other room momentarily, Ancunín came up behind him and put a hand at his waist. “Would you like an evening gown, darling? Something in midnight blue satin? Perhaps to be paired with diamonds?” He paused, and Astarion sighed as he felt Lord Ancunín’s tongue briefly grace his neck. “Oh, I confess, I’d like you in one.”
Astarion smiled. “And, where would I wear this evening gown?”
He heard Ancunín moan under his breath. “Into my bed,” he whispered, his hand travelling briefly below Astarion’s belt. “Where it would look so good on the floor.” And he withdrew, sitting in his chair as though nothing had happened, just as Pennygood came back into the room.
Astarion drew a breath, sharply. He shifted his weight, hoping this would conceal the tightness in his trousers. Pennygood was consulting a ledger, ticking items off attentively. He listed everything Astarion had ordered, which indeed amounted to a rather sizeable winter wardrobe, everything of the best. “Gentlemen,” he said. “Will that be all?”
“One more thing,” Astarion said. “An evening gown. Midnight blue.”
Pennygood looked between them, smiling conspiratorially. “In fact, I have just the thing.” And he retreated into the other room.
“You devil,” Astarion commented mildly.
Ancunín said nothing, smiled, drank his champagne.