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bardic-inspo · 2 months

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Blood in the Mortar

Pairing: Ascended Astarion x Vampire Bride Tav

Rating: Explicit (Smut!!)

Key Tags: Vampire/Blood Bride Lore, Service Dom Astarion, Sexy Use of Telepathic Bond, Evil Power Couple, Torturing a Captive, Choking, Biting/Blood, Masquerade, PIV, Cunnilingus

Summary:

“I wanted to see you right where you belong,” Astarion whispers, the sound as sheer as the lace he wrecked. “So beautiful on your throne.” It started on Naomi’s knees, this new life of passion and pleasure unbridled. Astarion didn’t know he’d be hers, just as much as she’d be his, when he bit her thrice, bled her dry, and gave her just one drop of his ascended blood.

Cross-posting from my AO3 account. This is my first BG3 smut fic. If you like it, I'd love to know! Click here if you'd prefer to read on AO3.

“To whom can a vampire bare its soul and admit its fears? From whom can it receive consolation for the past, comfort for the present, and hope for the future?...The vampire is drawn emotionally to a mortal and decides, because of the strength of this emotion, to make her his bride…The happiness of the vampire becomes tied up with the prospective bride, and its well-being depends on hers.”

-Van Richten’s Monster Hunter’s Compendium, Vol 1

Astarion twists the stem of his wine glass, idly tilting the contents within. His assorted guests warp in the bulb of it, swaying between rosy red and clear crystal.

A gravelly voice interrupts his game. “Quite the menagerie you’ve gathered here, Lord Ancunín.”

Astarion doesn’t bother to stifle his sigh. There’s no mistaking him as the lord of the house, even masked as he is. Astarion’s ensemble this evening is pitch dark velvet swirled in crimson thread and snaking silver. His mask glimmers in the same shade of scaled metal, set to complement the curve of his cheekbones, with only miniscule, twinkling rubies encrusting the edges. Nothing meant to outshine the searing color of his eyes. The mask might be silver, but it’s a red dragon Astarion embodies for this particular masquerade.

This party’s for more monstrous company, after all.

No expense was spared for the ‘menagerie’. A grand piano, polished to an opalescent white, plays under spectral hands at the heart of the ballroom alongside a string quartet. A starlit Baldur’s Gate glistens outside the windowed east wall, framed in gold drapery to match the shimmering flecks in the white marble floor. Lavish wine and better blood pour freely; his guests have only to lift their empty glasses to have them brimming again.

Even with all the ornate masks, in the shapes of creatures exotic or fierce, none of the fangs in the room are fake. All the titles are, save for his and his consort’s. Astarion’s lip curls with distaste.

This masquerade was meant for nobility of a supernatural stature. Vampires, warlocks, lycanthropes. Those who lead them. But what his doors received were lowly spawn. Servants sent in their masters’ stead to get just a glimpse of the one and only vampire ascendant, and then to scurry back and tell tale of him. Cowards.

There’s only one human here who’s just human.

Astarion offers him a well-practiced shrug of a laugh. “I do hope you don’t feel out of place among us more…colorful sorts. Lord…? Forgive me, what was it again?”

“Isn’t the point of a masquerade not to bother with such trivialities?” The stranger chuckles hastily. “In any case, I am not lord. Only a humble apprentice to the most renowned wizard Waterdeep has to offer.”

Ah, yes. The invitation was sent for the newly named archmage, filling the god-shaped hole Gale left behind in the wake of his own ascension. Astarion’s eyes flit over the lanky, unkempt apprentice who addresses him instead.

His hair hangs in honey blonde waves past his shoulders, like the mane of the beast he seeks to imitate. It’s a lion’s mask the apprentice wears. Perhaps a poor attempt at humor. The effort would’ve been better paid towards penance, and a sheep’s head would’ve suited him far better than the guise of a predator. Anything would’ve been more fitting than the baggy business he calls a shirt.

Astarion clicks his tongue. “That still doesn’t give me a thing to call you.”

“I am Enrik, if it pleases you.”

“No surname?” Astarion asks with an arched brow.

“None of consequence, my lord,” he replies with the uneasy edge Astarion’s entitled to.

“Well, Enrik, I hope you find our masquerade pleasing.”

“It has certainly been enlightening thus far.”

“And how’s that?” Astarion asks brusquely. He never did like wizards.

He doesn’t like the look on this one’s face, either. The lion that should be a sheep surveys the room with a pitying expression, like he’s watching some petty amusement. A zoo. Gods, or a circus. And what would that make him, Astarion the Ascended, if not a clown? Astarion’s fingers tighten on the stem of his glass, an imperceptible change to any eyes not keen enough to catch it.

“Why, it’s been only a year since your ascension,” Enrik says. “You’ve accomplished much in short order. It’s quite remarkable.”

Astarion’s nose twitches. Praise. From cattle. How quaint, and ill-fitting.

His expression abruptly eases. A refined, familiar scent carries to him from across the crowd. A note of lavender, twined with his favored bergamot.

“And you’ve already enthralled some truly magnificent specimens,” Enrik carries on, oblivious. “Take this fine creature, for example. What a pretty thing to have strung along on your leash.”

Astarion feels her before he sees her. She wipes a palm down the sheath of her skirt, smoothing out some infinitesimal wrinkle. The music smooths, too. With that one simple motion, it bends and blends into something deeper, fuller. All of the lesser spawn of Astarion’s making straighten their slouched shoulders.

He feels the tug of her in his head, and then the cool stroke of her hand to his back, the soothing feel of her fingers combing through his hair, and the gentle scrape of her nails against his scalp. It takes a concerted effort to suppress the pleased groan that bubbles in the back of his throat. All this from across the room, without so much as a glance, let alone a touch.

Hello, darling, he thinks, and she hears it just as if he’d spoken aloud. Aren’t you ravishing?

Her skirt is snow-white crepe that clings taut to her shapely hips before fanning out at her feet. It’s the same lovely shade of ivory as her hair, twisted in a braid like a crown around her head, with the rest falling sleek down her back. A black lace bodice sets just off her lilac shoulders, with gloves to match. Floral stitching vees down from her waistline. The same embellishments decorate the skirt’s edges.

His dark consort, his Naomi once-Tavriel-now-Ancunín, weaves leisurely through the partygoers. The thorny prickle of Astarion’s irritation inspires a little lift at the corner of her mouth.

I’ve been called so much worse, she thinks. It sounds suspiciously like a laugh. I think you called me ‘creature’ just yesterday. Should I not have taken it as a compliment?

Astarion’s scowls. He should be grateful to have your name in his mouth. To even set foot in our home. Let alone speak to me like that. Or at all.

But think of how much fun he’s started, she answers, chipper. You were so bored before.

She’s not wrong.

If they’re not the guests you wanted, Naomi continues, cool and calm, then they’re intruders, aren’t they? Whatever should we do with them?

A slow smile steals its way onto his lips. Just when I thought I couldn’t love you more. Miracles never cease.

“Do you know what they call her?” Astarion says aloud, to worse company. “Other than mine, of course.”

“She was the hero of Baldur’s Gate.”

Astarion waves a manicured hand irritably, as if swatting away a stray fly. “One of them, true, but isn’t there another name that comes to mind?”

The man swallows thickly. “The Siren of the Sword Coast.”

"And yet here you are," Astarion sneers, "ready to dash yourself upon the rocks like a little ship blown astray. I can hardly blame you."

His eyes soften, just past the shoulder of Enrik’s gaudy doublet. In the low flutter of candlelight, he spies the sheen of amethysts set among delicate feathers wrought from silver. He'd had the mask made for Naomi with the likeness of a swan in mind.

Still, as pretty as it is, his favorite gleam is those eyes. She still kept the kiss of violet in them, even in death. It mingles with the red in her irises, like a rich, dark wine.

"She is captivating, isn’t she?" Astarion sighs, a faint smile grazing his lips. "My beautiful bride."

“Forgive me my lord, I meant no offense,” Enrik says, eyes down with deference. “I’m merely an admirer of fine things. And a messenger for my fine master.”

“Do your duty, then,” Astarion says tersely, his smile evaporating.

“My master understands that power is the only currency that holds any weight for men of your making. He has much of it to share, if you're likewise inclined.”

Astarion laughs coldly. “And what does your master wish for me to share with him, exactly? I don’t bite just anyone, after all.”

A swallow bobs in Enrik’s throat. “He only means to make mutual use of your shared arsenal. Like you mean to make of his, my lord. He could work wonders with even just one scream. He could bottle it--”

Astarion clenches the wine glass in a chokehold. He could kill this wretched cretin here, now, bare-handed. Or have him drawn and quartered. Or--

No one knows their manners these days, Naomi sighs inside his head. But if you want to play along and see what this archmage would pay, I’ll--

Astarion’s jaw clenches. You won’t be screaming for him, little love.

It earns him an eyeroll. It wouldn’t be like that--

It won’t be at all. Astarions sends his answer with the weight of a stone.

He sips his wine, boring into Enrik with a hard stare. “Don’t you know swans make the most achingly beautiful music?”

Enrik’s eyes dart anxiously over Astarion’s burning ones. “Only just before they die, so the stories go.”

“Before someone does,” Astarion drawls, as the vintage seeps sweetly down his throat. “You see, my beloved, oh, she’s a monster, too. She so does love the taste of blood in her mouth, now that she’s supped of mine.”

Enrik edges back, shoulders hunched small like the prey he is. “I-I’m just a messenger my lord. Killing me after you’ve so graciously offered your hospitality would be the same as breaking a mirror. It would only cast ill luck on you and your house.”

A gloved hand wraps Enrik’s shoulder. He shirks from that delicate grip like it's scalding. At long last, he finds the decency to shut up.

Naomi’s fangs gleam like the bottle in her hand. “More wine?”

The white marble of the ballroom shimmers like freshly fallen snow. All the curtains are drawn back, cinched aside for good measure. Shadow and sunlight slice the floor in slanted strips. Gritty ash piles where the light lies, coils of rope strewn among the gray dust of guests gone for good.

Only one remains.

Sprawled motionless across the floor, Enrik lies nose-to-nose with the knife edge of day and darkness. It’s only a silhouette that keeps him from being swallowed by the glow. Only Astarion’s grace shades him.

The vampire ascendant cuts a sharp shadow before the arched windowpane. Brightness clings, soft as clouds, to his curls, his lean edges, and his jaw. His velvet coat crumples at his heels as if it were nothing more precious than the ash heaped around him. He’s blessedly bare from the waist-up, resplendent in the sunlight while he surveys his domain awash with it.

It calls to mind the man who took Naomi out into the woods all those months and nights ago. What he looked like when she woke and found his back arched, chin tilted skyward. What she’d do, and what little she wouldn’t, to see Astarion slip into bliss every day as easily as slipping out of a coat.

It’s Naomi’s grace that finally rouses their disheveled company. A rolling melody, played on piano, pours from her fingertips and crests with the morning birdsong drifting in. Enrik groans against the grain of it.

At once, the music cuts to quiet. Naomi’s hands hover over the keys, knuckles twitching in faint longing. Then, she turns on the bench and turns her attention towards her restless audience.

“Good morning,” she says brightly.

Enrik squints up at her. His brown eyes leak with the light, even though he’s sheltered from it. They dart across the room, skimming like stones over water, before they sear into Naomi.

“You.”

“Who else were you expecting? You’re in my home.”

Rope binds Enrik’s hands and heels. He tugs at the ties, or tries to. He hasn’t yet figured out it’s all for not.

Naomi stands, her heels clicking staccato to the tile. As she goes, she paints a palm over the piano keys, stroking each octave from root to rise. Music flows freely again all on its own, even when her hand falls away.

She comes to loom over her captive, lips pursed. “I hear you said some very rude things to my husband.”

Enrik folds against the floor, panting for breath.

“You should be so grateful for our hospitality,” she says. “Should have been. That’s all behind us now, isn’t it?”

Feral noise rips from his throat. Like a dog, he lunges, snapping for her ankles. She side-steps into the light, not bothering to flee any farther than an inch. He freezes, ogling the shiny toe of her shoe now parallel to his nose.

“You don’t fear the sun?” he gasps, quivering.

“I need not fear anything.”

Naomi lifts her head, meeting a scarlet stare brimming in equal measures affection and amusement. Sunlights melts over the bare of Astarion’s chest, spurring her tongue to wet her lips. He leans against the glass, head angled back, eyes slitted in satisfaction. A slow smile unfurls on his face.

“You should be grateful, too,” Naomi says with a sneer, “to lay here and not just a little to the left.”

“W-What do you mean? What did you do to me?!” Enrik’s eyes bulge. He squirms in a sudden panic, to no avail.

Naomi tilts her neck to the side and taps at the scar Astarion’s teeth marked her with. Her fingers fan down on her own throat, savoring the shape of that succulent memory. Of the last bite he gave her in life. Of his lips swirling comfort into her skin before sucking her down to the last drop. Of the look on his face, the awe he had, when she next woke.

The faintest leak of breath, soft as down, passes from Astarion’s mouth.

“You--you--! You turned me!” Her hostage sputters. Naomi frowns darkly.

“Oh not me,” Naomi snaps, incredulous. “I’m only a weak little spawn puppet, according to you. According to you, the only good thing I can do is scream. How could I manage to turn you without choking on my own leash?”

She gags for good measure. He doesn’t get the joke. He hasn’t caught on to the other joke yet. Which means she’s safe as can be, even this close. So long as she stands on the other edge of Astarion’s shadow.

Astarion turns. His silhouette twists with his movement. Enrik shrieks like a swine.

“Oh, that wasn’t good at all. You can do better.” Naomi presses out a strained sigh, crouching down to fist a hand in his hair and yank his head upright.

Enrik bares his teeth as if they aren’t dull and flat. “Filthy bitch!”

The insult doesn’t so much as chip Naomi’s serene composure, but it puts a twang in her head, along the invisible string that links her and Astarion. His anger lashes in her mind like a restless tail.

“What a vile little ingrate,” Astarion snarls.

She lets her hostage’s head roll from her palm, cheek smacking the tile. Enrik writhes against his restraints. Naomi clicks her tongue in reproach. I’ve barely even touched you yet.

Green magic threads between her gloved fingers, glittering. She snaps them and says, “Scream.”

And he does. Loud enough to drown out the crescendo coursing from the grand piano. Inside of Enrik’s skull, the song isn’t nearly so sweet. His back jerks up and away from the floor, head bent back, eyes torn wide in terror.

His cries pitch with the slink of Astarion’s shadow stretching nearer. Sunlight clings close behind his heels. Naomi’s fingers flex and the spell recedes.

Her magic leaves Enrik sniveling, inching like a worm away from the slice of light between Astarion’s legs. Astarion huffs softly. With a wave of his hand, a ghostly one apparates behind him and snags the curtains closed.

Astarion’s scent sweeps with his sleeve -- the sweetness of brandy, mingled with the woodsy smell of rosemary. His knuckles gently brush the side of Naomi’s cheek. Instinctively, she leans towards the touch.

“Precious thing,” Astarion chides with a pout. “You’re being far too sweet to him. Here I thought you only had room in your heart for me.”

Naomi inclines her head, eyes narrowing by a hair. “My sire would see me be crueler?”

Astarion’s thumb grazes her lips. At once, she parts for him, teasing the pad of it with her tongue while he toys with the tip of a fang. He presses in, watching his skin bend to near-breaking, as if to test her sharpness. Before any blood’s drawn, he draws his hand down to cradle her chin. His voice is smooth as satin, though his stare is a hardened one.

“Your sire would see you spoken to with the respect you’re owed. And he needs you to kneel, dear one.”

The words are a weight to her shoulder, easing her down. But the heft is a comfort, not a compulsion. He could compel her, if he wanted to.

He hasn’t yet.

One day, she thinks, he will. And he’ll feel the weight of whatever chains he’d wrap her in through the bond that binds them tighter than the tadpole did. He won’t do it without good reason. Naomi doesn’t need a reason to kneel for her lover. That he wishes it is enough.

When her knees meet the ground, she feels the shape of Astarion’s smile pressed against their bond like it’s pressed, wet and wanting, against her mouth. She feels the dainty tug of his teeth coax her lips apart. Tastes the coppery tang of her own blood and the velvet undercurrent of his within her veins. The heat of him, still such a novel thing in his ascended body, bleeds from his skin to hers, fanning the newfound ache between her thighs.

In her mind, and his, his lips pour down her bare shoulders. His fingers fist in the fine fabric of her dress, ripping it to ruin. He leaves none of her untouched. To anyone else’s eye, they’re not even touching.

Naomi’s eyelids flutter. She downs a hard swallow. Good girl, he says, just for her.

To their captive audience, he spares no such kindness. Astarion raises his foot above Enrik’s ankles, letting it dangle for a moment. It drops like a hammer to an anvil. Enrik bucks with a fresh scream and a sickening crack.

“I’d never give a miserable little wretch like you the gift of immortality,” Astarion spits. “You wouldn’t know how to appreciate it.”

Confusion flits between the pain and panic in Enrik’s eyes.

“That’s right,” Astarion seethes. “You’re not a vampire. You aren’t worth my consort’s teeth. Or mine.”

Crunch. Another ankle shatters. Another shriek claws the air. Astarion strolls, leisurely, to Enrik's hands next. He grounds his heel into the pop of fingers breaking beneath his boots. Their hostage heaves a broken sob.

“Sh, sh, sh, oh, it’s all right,” Astarion croons. “I happen to have just the knife for you.”

Astarion crosses back to his coat piled near the window and draws a dagger from its folds. Rhapsody. Cazador’s blade. Naomi hasn’t seen it since they claimed the Crimson Palace for themselves.

Brightness glints off the twined edge, a match for the harsh and singular focus gleaming in Astarion’s gaze.

So that’s what Astarion was smiling about, as he basked by the window. What had him so peacefully quiet and content. Murder was on his mind, even then.

Not the only thing on my mind, little love. She feels the slant of his smirk in her head, as if it ghosted past the hinge of her jaw. There’s no trace of it on Astarion’s stony exterior.

He plucks the crystal wine glass from the sill while he’s there, rotating the stem as he saunters back over. Blood flecks the fine leather of Astarion’s shoes. He plants them on either side of Enrik’s torso. He seizes Enrik’s collar, yanking harshly until he’s kneeling, too.

“Fuck you,” Enrik spits. “Fuck you both! My master will--”

“Darling,” Astarion trills, grip unwavering, “Would you..?”

Magic swirls sticky across Naomi’s tongue. “Ad Lapidē.”

Violet runes blaze to life beneath their captive’s knees, capturing him in perfect stillness. His mouth hangs agape with unspent vitriol. Astarion’s hands recoil, twisting the dagger in one, and the glass in the other.

“Your master,” Astarion sneers with a dark laugh. “Too much of a coward to show his face, so he sends you. His sacrificial lamb, sent to speak to me about sharing my dearest treasure, like he isn’t the scum beneath her shoes. He had to know I wouldn’t hear of it. But he didn’t care enough about you to even taint your blood. That’s right. My lesser spawn sampled you just like they would any cattle. But my beautiful bride hasn’t had one bite, not yet. Not until I was sure you were sweet enough for her palate.”

Astarion strokes Rhapsody down the man’s outstretched neck. The barest streak of blood leaks from the scrape. Astarion’s eyes skate over the ash piles around the room, wistful.

“All it took was a sleeping potion,” he muses. “Just a few drops. Now all of the spawnlings sent by all of my lessers are dust. You’ll wish to join them, before this is done. And you will. When I decide we’re done.”

Naomi’s eyes fasten to the blood beading down Enrik’s pallid throat. Astarion digs in ever-so-gently with Rhapsody’s tip, just enough to start a stream running. He presses the cup beneath it. Slowly, the crystal fills red to the brim. Her mouth waters.

Astarion looks up abruptly, eyes wide and soft as his malice dissolves to fondness. “Darling, you do look famished. Open up for me, dear.”

Naomi’s chin lifts, lips parted. Astarion tilts the glass to meet her with the utmost care.

“I won’t have your grime and sweat on her lips,” Astarion hisses in Enrik’s ear. “Only your blood. You don’t deserve that…” He sucks a sharp breath in. Naomi watches with rapt attention as it stutters through his chest. “...pretty little mouth.”

Blood, rich and smooth as cream, slips across her tongue. Her eyes slip shut with it. With each swallow, syrupy warmth spreads slowly through her chest, down her legs, through arms, to her every inch. Too soon, it’s taken from her. Naomi’s eyes flutter open. She’s taken all of it, already.

“More, my love?” Astarion hums happily. “You only have to ask.”

“More,” she says at once, lips still wet.

Astarion carves. The insolent apprentice bleeds without a sound. Again and again, the cup fills. He tips it to her lips, and Naomi drinks until her eyelids grow heavy.

Her body thrums like it remembers the pulse that used to play through her veins. She’s warmer than a dead woman should be. Even the air itself feels like the kiss of steam tingling against her skin.

It’s then that Naomi feels Astarion’s lips in her head again, sucking little marks down her throat that match the rosy flush heating her cheeks. She pants out of habit, out of instinct, and not of need. Out of want for him to watch what he does to her. As if he doesn’t already know.

One twist of Astarion’s wrist turns the little leak of blood from Enrik’s throat into a fountain. Naomi’s spell dissipates in violet sparks. His body slumps over, lifeless. Blood runs from him in little rivers, rushing to fill the grout lines between the tiles.

Astarion cradles one last glassful in a delicate grip. His face clears of any clouded rage as he gives the glass an experimental swirl. Wordlessly, he tilts the cup to her mouth once more.

Naomi gasps. Wetness paints her chin. It streams down her neck, drips down her sternum and between her breasts, still bound in lace. Astarion drips with it, down to his knees in fluid motion. Somewhere behind him, the wine glass shatters. In her periphery, she sees the shards glitter like frost.

“Oops,” he says, low and shameless.

Barely any blood made it to Naomi’s mouth this time, but she doesn’t mind one bit. Astarion crawls to her, catlike. She’s only spared a moment to admire the lithe muscle flexing through his naked chest before he leans into the hollow of her throat. Silver curls brush soft beneath her chin. And then, she feels the tip of that devilish tongue take a tentative lick of the mess he’s made.

And gods, what a mess she must be. Blood smears from her neck to her navel, near-black on her blue-gray skin. Dark like Astarion’s eyes, with pupils blown wide and hungry. A flare of heat twists low in Naomi’s stomach. Her thighs shift, wet with it.

Thread rips in her ears. Rhapsody drags delicately down her side, scratching faint like a quill. The lace of her gown splits without resistance. There's none to be had against that mouth of his, just as busy as his nimble hands.

Astarion laps, dainty, down the path of her swallow. His coy smile curves with a petal-soft laugh against her collar bone. Naomi laughs, too, breathless as his tongue chases lazily after the spill. Breathless as the day he took the last breath she needed.

Ever since, Astarion’s given her everything she could want, without leaving her wanting for more than a moment. Now, her knees will never grow numb, no matter how long they bend against the marble. The chill of it can’t phase her, either. Even if it could, Astarion’s drawn the curtains wide. When she kneels for him, it’s only ever on sun-soaked stone.

Astarion treasures her. Cherishes her. Lavishes her with love and pleasure and wealth and power. Preserves her like prized silver, polished with such devotion so she’ll never know the tarnish of time. She’s his spawn. His wife.

But above all else, she’s his pride. The very thing that rules him. The only thing that still does.

Naomi wants to be in ruins with him. To be the last pillars of a broken world already so far beyond repair before they were dragged through it. Aeterna amantes. Until the fall of everything.

Until then, this, the low groan he gives her while her fingers stroke red through the plush white of his hair, the heady hum in her blood, the bloom of someone else’s waking color in her cheeks, the way Astarion looks at her like there’s nothing else at all, the way he tears into a dress he paid a fortune for, the hand he knots through her braids to wreck them -- this is everything.

Astarion tosses Rhapsody over his shoulder to join the broken wine glass, just like any other worthless trinket. His deft hands curl into the tears in her bodice and tug. At once, it gives way to his grip. She would, too, were it not so binding. Naomi grounds out a gasp. Her skirt pools at her knees, leaving her bare but for the warmth of Astarion’s roaming hands and the daylight pouring over them both.

“Do you know why I wanted you down here, pet?” He asks softly.

Astarion’s eyes latch to hers while his teeth toy at the curve of her breast. His tongue slicks over to soothe where his fangs grazed her, and then it melts against a pert nipple, taking it in with a lewd suck.

Naomi paws for a coherent thought, but all she finds is a pleading hum. He nips her again, just enough to see her tit tremble from the pull when he draws away. He leaves her nipple glistening and the underside of her breast peppered in pink before moving on to the other.

“To torture me, clearly,” Naomi pants. Her hands still tangle in his hair. Amusement glimmers in his gaze as he plants a chaste kiss to the inside of one of her wrists and sets them both back at her sides.

“Oh no, my sweet. I would never,” he says, chin resting flat against her navel. He looks up at her with wide, doey eyes, full of faux innocence.

He slinks lower, laying a line with his tongue that ends in a kiss just above where her skirts still shield her. He shifts them aside, ripping where he needs, until it’s only one little piece of black lace covering her cunt. Astarion growls against it, nosing at its edges, his back bowed, stomach brushing the floor. His teeth find the waistband and tear that, too.

Hot breath fans across the other mess he made. Naomi wavers on her knees. From that minute motion alone, she can hear how he’s soaked her.

But Astarion doesn’t disprove her theory; he leans back abruptly, straightening up to his knees again. An arm loops slack around her waist as he circles around to her bare back. Naomi’s lips twitch. If this is the game he wants, it’s too soon to beg. The thought inspires another needy flex through her cunt. His other hand slides to cup the heat of it, and Naomi whines. Reflexively, her back arches. Astarion pulls her still.

He catches the side of her jaw, angling her back into a biting kiss. It’s over before she wants it to be, his lips red and glistening with what he stole from her. Without him, her mouth burns from the cut.

“I wanted to see you right where you belong,” he whispers, the sound as sheer as the lace he wrecked. “So beautiful on your throne.”

For a brief moment, he draws away entirely, leaving her with nothing but a lonely chill. And then, his back comes flush to the floor beneath her. His body splays behind her. The heat of his mouth crests against the heat of her cunt, his face fitted between her thighs, his lips hovering so close, but not close enough. His breath alone snags the one halfway through her throat.

“Oh,” her realization comes out quivering.

The tip of his nose nudges, just barely, against her clit, spurring her hips to roll. But all she gets from that mouth is mischief and a quiet snicker. He shifts his cheek, laving a long stroke of his tongue to the tender crux of her inner thigh before sealing it over with a tight suck. When he bites down, he draws out her blood with a rough moan.

Astarion pulls back, his smirk glazed in her, his eyes aflame. “Oh, darling, I’ve barely even touched you yet. And you’re so very wet for me.”

“Touch me, then,” she hisses between her teeth, raking her hands through his perfect curls and fisting them there.

His eyes spear into hers, hard like the way he clenches her ass and pulls her hips down. Even as it sets her on fire, his mouth gives her mercy. Astarion’s tongue melts hot across her cunt, swiping slow and dexterous. Not for the first time, Naomi thinks she might like to die like this.

It’s not so different from how she died. It started on her knees, this new life of passion and pleasure unbridled. Even then, Astarion already knew the shape of her body like he knew his own hands. Every curve, every intimate bend, how to make her speak in noise instead of words. The hidden language behind every whimper she makes, every shiver.

So he knows exactly what he’s doing while his tongue teases gentle circles around her clit. He knows, by the time his timid little laps blend into a needy suck, that she’s so, so sensitive. Astarion’s hungry groan seeps into her slickness. She feels him like a current and clenches again, just as hungry.

Every feeling he gives her gives him an echo back just as strong. Every thought in her head is in his head, too. He eats her cunt and feels fed by her pleasure curling in the tips of his toes. He didn’t know he’d be hers, just as much as she’d be his, when he bit her thrice, bled her dry, and gave her just one drop of blood back.

But Astarion knew her body before she was his bride. Now, he knows her mind. A part of him lives there, as she does in his. As he drags his pale, elegant fingers between her folds, he drags her head through a dozen depravities. Filling her with nothing but thoughts of how he’ll fill her properly.

He could have her against the arched windows lining the east wall, body pressed so pretty to the glass so he can see the imprint of it even after she peels away. She could feel the heat brimming off the sun outside, washing over their empire. He could taste her sunbathed shoulder while he fucks her senseless. His little love, dipped in honey. So what if someone else sees. Later, he’ll see to them not seeing anything ever again.

He could take her here, on the ballroom floor. Pull her down just as she surfaces from the pleasure he’s paid her, and roll her beneath him to bury her in it all over again. Make love on the marble streaked with the blood of their enemies, where hundreds of dignitaries have danced and dined on countless evenings before. But none of them were ever blessed with such a fine feast as he. The stone would be hard and unyielding against her back, and he would be just the same, driving into her, relentless. At least it’s far prettier than the dirt they used to fuck in.

Or--

A new picture snaps from Naomi’s mind to his, with the dip of his tongue to her entrance, a staggering spike of pleasure, and an unbidden whimper.

The piano. Pearly white with jet black keys, so pristine, so gorgeous with blood spilt red down the sides. Naomi poured over the side, ivory hair tinged with crimson, cascading over her bare, bent back. Astarion’s fingers buried in her hips, planting the promise of bruises, his body bucking wildly into her as he finally--

Naomi’s moan hits the high pitch of the ceiling. She grinds, needy, against the pair of fingers he crooks inside of her. His thumb spreads her slickness back and presses to the pucker of her ass.

So eager for me to fill you up. His voice in her head is a caress. Her hips roll with the sound. His thumb dips inside her ass with the motion, and Naomi gasps as she eases into that delicious stretch.

But darling, I haven’t fed all night, Astarion pouts, mouth moving with agonizing slowness as his eyes flutter shut beneath long black lashes. Naomi’s eyelids grow heavy, too, as she’s lost to that lovely, slick click of his lips. A meal like you is meant to be savored.

He fucks her holes leisurely, with the air of someone who knows he’ll be back for more before long. It brings to mind those long, lithe fingers, folded between the pages of a book to mark his place. All it takes is an effortless flex of them to keep her coaxed open like this. Her body draws taut as he leans her over the precipice of her own pleasure.

If you need more, my dear, by all means. Take it.

He growls into their bond like he’s the one devoured. Like he can plead ignorance to how he’s taking her apart with his hands, his mouth. Naomi catches a whine between her teeth. Astarion’s free hand cups her ass, urging her into the thrust her body bends towards. She parts a hand from his hair to brace flat to the floor beside his face, the other knotting anew in his silver curls.

Desperately, she rides against the flat of his tongue, against that long, refined nose, fucking herself back into the curve of his fingers. Every pull of them pulls her under, deeper into her own ecstasy. Her body grips him back like she means to drown him, too. The tip of his tongue flicks her clit in relentless rhythm, starting off a shudder she can’t stop.

“Don’t stop,” she begs within and without, the jerk of her hips growing frantic.

His mouth is mercy. When she comes for him, she’s wreathed in heat, slick with sweat, every nerve in her body alight with the most blissful burn. A strangled cry breaks in her chest. It buries the song now trembling from the piano. Naomi shivers out a sigh, and the keys shiver with her.

Astarion wraps his arms tight to her thighs, anchoring her through the aftershocks. When she stills again, her body throbs with a heady rush of blood, pleasure, want. Every part of her is limp with it, save the pulsing, rigid press in her mind and in his trousers. She’s putty in his hands even as his fingers leave her. Naomi twitches back towards the touch he takes away, body aching with his absence.

Naomi’s knuckles unfurl, stroking soft through the tangles she wrought. What a sight he is, his hair in utter disarray, his mouth a mess of blood and lust and her. An ease settles into his graceful features, not so different from that quiet contentment he wore while leaning into the light by the window. His eyes simmer with it, lips drawn in a soft smile.

“Here?” She purrs to the seal of his mouth.

She lets him feel the way the word alone makes her body tense. Waiting. Wanting. Their bond curls with it, crooked and beckoning in his head. The way his fingers bent a few moments before, buried in the heat of her.

A long breath passes out through his nose, his eyes sliding half shut. A smirk tugs at the corner of her mouth. But his cheek turns by just the barest hair, and Naomi’s attention follows after his.

Music flutters, breathy, off the black and white keys. The piano stays a pretty picture of perfection, among the deaths little and large they’ve littered throughout the ballroom.

His teeth trace the angled edge of her ear. Naomi keens with the sting of it as she’s swept from the floor.

“There.”

She’s caught in his kiss again as he carries her. One swipe of his tongue to where he bit her lip before has her quivering. Has her a world away from the one still around them. Vaguely, she’s aware he’s somehow rid her of her gloves and shoes. She hears a dull, wooden clatter, and then a resounding thud. The piano plays on, but it's muted.

Astarion doesn’t bend her over the way she mused. Instead, he seats her on the polished wood of the piano’s closed lid. His hands leave her back to push her knees apart, scoop beneath them, and pull her spread legs to the strain trapped in his trousers.

Naomi grins, her fangs snagging his lower lip as he tries to part from her. Astarion’s answering groan is rough like a scrape of sandpaper. It leaves her mouth raw, tingling, alive with a pulse that plays to the tune of his pleasure. She wants more of that noise. More of the happy purr it pours into her head from his. One drink of that sloppy, slap happy look on his face sates her more than blood ever could.

You’ve given me everything, he told her, once. But now, all she can think is more. Take more. Take everything.

Astarion grinds his hard length against her in answer. The sweet friction makes sweeter music in their mouths as Naomi moans with the motion, too. Still, there’s far too much fabric for her liking.

Astarion’s fingers make fast work of it. He unlaces his pants only enough to free his cock, parts from her only enough to push her back and clamber up after her. Then, he’s on her again like a second skin. Her cunt throbs with the press of his cock, the tip of it wet and seeping against her thigh. She tries to fit a hand between them, to wrap her palm around his girth and feel with her hands, not just her head, how badly he has to have her. Astarion doesn’t leave her space for it.

It’s not his hands that put her flat on her back, against the body of the piano. It’s the sudden swell of his adoration ballooning from his brain to hers. The weight of his affection pins her there beneath him, utterly paralyzed, as the music flows on under both of them. He’s brimming with it, and it washes over her in a wave, a cup overflowing.

His curls hang down in his eyes, wild with the look of a man starved. “You’re going to scream for me, little love,” he says with the slightest slur. The thought smears from him to her, burning in the back of her mind like a pull of liquor. He brushes her snarled hair back until it tumbles over the piano’s edge, white over white. “I’m going to make you. And I want to see that beautiful face when I do.”

“Please,” she starts to say.

But barely any of it makes it past her lips. Astarion never leaves her wanting for more than a moment.

“O-Oh,” she stammers instead, as her soaked cunt splays to his cock sliding home. Astarion pushes out a moan as he pushes into her. He hooks her legs with his arms, folding them up and back.

“That’s my girl,” he pants, forehead heavy against her own. His thumb circles her cheek, a feather-light counterweight to the thickness he seats inside her. He watches her intently, fixated. Hypnotized. “My good, good girl.”

Kisses and praise tumble from between his teeth, down her cheek, to her throat. Naomi’s head rolls back while she relishes the wet, smacking mantra that’s the mess of them. He’s not tender with his tempo. He doesn’t have to be. You could ruin me. I’d let you ruin me, she thinks again.

And how beautiful he is, in ruins with her. No more composure. No more restraint. Sweat streaks his brow as it bends beneath his focus. All there is is the blend of them, the slow rock of the piano underneath them, and the scattered, stranded pieces of a melody left in their wake.

It could break. The thought cracks through her, through them, with the wooden whine of the piano legs taking the shift of their weight. Astarion crushes her worry beneath the thrust of his hips, any notion of it lost to the head of his cock pressing just where it needs to make her see stars.

Naomi bites down on her own lip, grounding herself in fleeting pain and the tang of blood. He’s not even touching her clit; he doesn’t have to. He floods her with how it felt when he did, when his tongue rolled against the swell of it, just the tip of it teasing that sensitive little bud. How she felt to him, so silky and slick in his mouth. How amazing it feels to finally fuck her, to take what’s his and have her take him so, so tightly.

He could ruin her. Snap her like the creaking legs of this instrument, not long for this world. It would be almost as effortless as the way she spreads for him. But instead, Astarion fills her. Every shift prods the crown of his cock against the sweetest spot inside her cunt.

Naomi’s fingers claw into Astarion’s back as he bucks wildly. Tears sear in her eyes. The tell-tale pressure in her pelvis builds near-blinding.

“Scream for me, darling,” he growls against her neck, out loud this time.

Her cunt throbs with his command. But she doesn’t heed it. Astarion lets out a low, steaming hiss.

“I said scream, dear,” Astarion says, his velvet voice edged in warning. The sparks of his indignation spit flinty in her head alongside a flicker of excitement at her defiance.

He wants to feel the rush of her own power with the spasm of her cunt as she comes undone. He wants her magic to spill into him as he spills his seed inside of her. Wants to taste it with the rest of her. If Naomi was nothing to him, she’d still be the siren; it’s not a power Astarion gifted to her. It was hers without him. It is her. And she’s his.

“I might break the glass,” she whispers, wary of anything louder.

“Oh, my love,” Astarion says tenderly, a husk in his throat as his hand wraps loose around her neck. “You can break everything.”

Astarion kills her hesitation. She’s never felt more whole. She feels holy, feeling her own perfect squeeze around his cock, feeling herself fucked in his body and her own. Feeling what she does to the man who already has everything, but will never have enough of her.

When Naomi screams Astarion's name, it’s everything else in the room that shatters.

Glass crashes from the windows. They burst one after another in quick-fire succession. Astarion buckles against her body with the sudden, decisive snap beneath them. His hips jerk, rutting erratically. Warmth spurts into her with every shudder down his spine, every pulse of his cock.

He cuts her cry with his teeth buried in the crook of her neck. Naomi clings to him as her cunt convulses. It’s the bite that takes her apart, knowing he tastes his own name in her throat and thinks--

Mine, mine, mine.

Naomi’s head drops limp. Astarion’s grip on her neck gives way to soft circles stroked against her cheek again. Mine, she thinks, as his ruby eyes watch her keenly, awash in the soft glow only she knows.

Even after Astarion stills, the room spins dizzy from her upside-down view. She blinks it all back into place, but some pieces won’t fit together again so easily. They’re far closer to the floor than when he slipped inside of her. The piano legs splay at odd, splintered angles. The floor glitters with glass like crystalline teeth, ready to bite the heels of any who dare tread their hall.

Astarion slides out, and she shivers with the fade of his warmth. He sits up, his gaze sweeping the shattered windows, his smirk smug and wet with her. “Perhaps all of the Gate heard you. The gardener did for certain.”

Naomi sits up, too, leaning forward and letting his shoulder take her weight. Her forehead comes to rest against his collarbone. She finds an easy smile while relishing the way his heart still hammers his chest. She did that, in multiple senses. Absently, he tucks the hair sticking to her cheeks back behind her ears.

“I guess I’ll have to kill her,” he adds, chipper. “I suppose, for now, we can spare all the others.”

“She’s already dead enough, dear,” Naomi sighs.

A tiny, discordant note of sadness plucks in her chest, among the pleasant haze settling over her. Astarion stiffens against it, as if she reached out and pinched him. She doubts he’d be so eager to slay one of his spawn for the same crime of hearing her come for him.

The gardener is hers, of a sort. Not a vampire -- Naomi can’t make those. Before Naomi sang her awake again, the gardener was just a sad stack of bones collecting dust in a closet. Now, she rattles along to Naomi’s tune, keeping the flowers trimmed to her liking.

“I suppose you’re right,” Astarion murmurs. His expression softens with fondness, the sort that’s rare to surface unless they’re alone, but never fails to make her chest light and fluttery. “Are you tired now, pet?”

“We stayed up all night,” Naomi laughs faintly.

“Hm,” he nods with a pitying frown. “Let me see to you, my treasure. Don’t you move.” His lips curve, coy, as his eyes flicker back to the wrecked windows. “I wouldn’t want you to strain yourself.”

He saunters back to where his coat lays, now tattered. He returns to settle it around her shoulders, pressing a quick kiss to her forehead.

“You’re such a staunch defender of my honor,” Naomi says dryly, even as the leftovers of their lovemaking start to seep down her thigh.

“Ha,” Astarion shakes with a rolling laugh. “I rather think I’m the thief of it. You were quite the heist. It wouldn’t do to have some debaucherous upstart happen by and think they can make off with what’s mine.”

“I wouldn’t let them live through it.”

“Aw,” he clicks his tongue, “you’re such a romantic.”

Astarion leaves her with her legs strewn over the broken piano, relacing his trousers as he goes. Glass crunches beneath his heels. He stops to ring the bell near the door. A few seconds later, it creaks open a hair. She catches his curt commands to the servant she can’t see on the other side.

“...yes, here, in the ballroom. My consort and I wish to take in the view, and see none of you.”

His lesser spawn are quick to make good on their orders. The door swings open once more a short time later, and in floats a claw-foot tub without another soul to be seen. Magic clings, cloudy, beneath the porcelain belly of it. A pleasant, floral scent curls with the steam from the water within. The tub drifts to the heart of the ballroom and settles with a soft thud before the yawning window panes.

Astarion returns to her as her toes touch the ground again. He frowns tightly, eyes narrowing.

“There’s debris scattered everywhere, my sweet,” he says, saccharine even in reproach. “I wouldn’t want to see you hurt.”

Naomi sniffs a laugh, picking her path carefully. “If I can’t handle a little sharpness here and there, it’s a wonder how I’ve managed to handle you.”

“Oh, it’s simple,” Astarion says, catching her wrist with an effortless flourish. “We were made for each other. By each other, really.”

And Astarion’s made up his stubborn mind that she’s not to take another step, it seems. With a soft huff, he sweeps her off her feet all over again, strides to the tub with her legs dangling over his arm, and delicately deposits her there.

Water laps at the tub’s edges, splashing as she situates herself. She shrugs from Astarion’s coat, shucking it away to join all the other debris they don’t have use for. Heat tingles across her skin, like little, loving nips of Astarion’s teeth. Naomi eases back into the burn of it as the sting settles sweetly.

Astarion rids himself of his shoes and trousers. He dips a foot into the tub, bidding her to make way for him with a gentle nudge. The water ripples as he settles in behind her. With a satisfied sigh, she sinks back against his chest and deeper into the furling warmth.

The ballroom overlooks the well-kept gardens behind the estate. The hedges are high enough, only a spyglass might have hope of spotting them both bare. Under Cazador’s reign, the garden was little more than a sprawl of weeds and webbed ivy. Now, fountains babble between the blooms of pink and blue and violet. If she strains, she can catch the weave of music in the trickling flow, like tinkling wind chimes.

A soft breeze tickles her ears, sending gritty glass and ash scattering over their floor. Astarion clenches a soft sponge in his grip, wrings it out, and starts to scrub her skin in slow, deliberate strokes. Naomi’s head tilts back beneath his tender care, every rub taking the tension from shoulders.

She turns after a time, and he starts to wash blood from her front, while she wets her hands and works the redness from the white of his hair. Her fingers linger along the slants of his ears, rubbing delicately, until she catches that satisfied hum in his throat that leaves her lifted, floating on the buoy of his happiness.

The water never cools or clouds; magic still swirls in the steam, even long after they’re free of blood and grime. Astarion rakes hand through her hair, his fingernails digging pleasantly against her scalp.

“You are divine as ever,” he rumbles. “Rest now, pet.”

And she does, slipping soundly into a trance, soaked in sunlight and lavender oil with her lover wrapped around her. Only Astarion sends her to the sort of rest that reaches her soul. His presence is sanctuary.

It’s his disquiet that wakes her suddenly. He still strokes her hair just as gently, but he levels a hard-cut stare out over the garden, his lips set with the same stoniness.

“No one will ever take you from me,” he murmurs, as if to himself.

“As if they ever could,” Naomi whispers back, reaching up to graze the edge of his jaw.

Heavens help the fool who tries. Any who dare to hatch such plots, to harbor such ill will in their Crimson Palace, will find themselves laid to rest with all the others. Their enemies’ gravestones are just bricks in their empire, every one of them laid with blood in the mortar.

Astarion dips his head down, the hint of a smile curling at the corner of his mouth. “I suppose it might be fun to see them try. In the meantime, my love, I’m of a mind to keep you spread for me for the next tenday.”

Naomi laughs. The sound echoes around the otherwise vacant room.

Astarion’s grin only grows, the tips of his fangs sharpening his smile. “Did I say something funny, dear?”

His lips crush down against hers in a kiss consuming.

#ascended astarion #astarion #astarion ancunin #tav x astarion #astarion x tav #tavstarion #vampire ascendant #vampire lord astarion #bg3 #astarion smut #astarion fanfic #bg3 fanfic #my writing #naomi tavriel

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bardic-inspo · 1 month

Text

Midnight Chimes

Chapter Seven: Morbid Curiosity

Pairing: Astarion x Cursed! Tav

✨Full Chapter List ✨BG3 Fic Masterlist ✨

Series Summary:

It’s easier for Astarion to believe Naomi tastes so sweet because she was his first. Easier to ignore the fact that every undead in vague proximity yearns for the same blood that’s sated him night after night. Easier to pretend her music is arcane as any other bard’s, and not divine enough to wake corpses from the dirt. Easier to pretend Naomi is simply a bard, and not something more akin to a siren. One that's slowly realized she's not just another sailor, after all. Easier to bury the fact that he's already stupidly in love with her. Like she wouldn't just raise that out of the ground, too. A curse rears its head. A devil comes calling. Astarion fights for his freedom from Cazador. He and the rest of their merry little band fight to save Tav from the doom she feels she's fated for.

Chapter Preview:

“Tell me what I taste like, and I’ll show you what you’re missing.” The tadpole twists behind his eye and twists his stomach with it. She really does mean to show him. “All right,” Astarion drawls. He combs his mind for his favorite endearments, pinching the prettiest from its stem and fitting it between his teeth. He leans forward, near enough to catch the slight scent of lavender beneath the staleness of her sweat. “I’ll do my best, darling,” he purrs, “but you should know there’s nothing from my mouth that could do justice to how exquisite you tasted all. Over. Mine.”

Chapter CW: None

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“My friend,” Astarion drawls, patting the earth beside him.

A faint sigh leaks from Naomi’s lips, folded down with the weight of the world. She doesn’t heed his invitation, opting instead to stand there and ogle him. He can’t blame her for being so captivated. He’s a sight to behold, after all.

Astarion’s legs splay in front of him, his back propped by the rough trunk of a tree. Cool air licks the lithe stretch of his bare chest, soaked in starlight. Naomi’s gaze seeps over his skin, down to the white shirt bunched in his lap. He sets his handiwork aside for the moment, tucking his needle away for safekeeping.

“Darling, I’ve been looking for you evvvverywhere,” he says with only a little slur. Enough to put an arch in her brow.

“I wouldn’t have been hard to find if you were,” she mutters skeptically. “Are you drunk?”

She takes a tentative step towards him in someone’s else’s shoes. They’re far too big for her feet. Silly little squirrel lost her own boots, stumbling around in the swamps. Poor thing.

“I have drunk. A bear,” Astarion hums happily, the tip of his tongue swiping languid over his lips. The woodsy, syrupy sweetness of the bear lingers there. Naomi’s eyes do, too.

She’s too slow to bury the bob in her throat, not far from where his fangs sank in. Her feet shuffle beneath her. Caught. Astarion’s smirk curls like a noose.

I know what you’re thinking, he could say. Because I’m thinking it, too.

But it’s too soon. He wouldn’t want his little squirrel to go scuttling away. Not now that he knows how delicious she is.

But soon, he thinks, with a twinge of melancholy. Soon, he’ll say all the right words. Like a spell, she’ll be beneath him all over again. And he’ll have the rest of her to taste, too. Perhaps her body is as sweet as the nectar he drew from her neck.

It doesn’t matter, truly. Whatever petty cost Astarion might have to grit his teeth and endure is already worth it. She dealt with that insufferable Gur hunter handily. Artistically, even. But Gandrel won’t be the last hunter that comes calling. He’ll need Naomi to still feel as generous when Cazador sends more fearsome foes.

For now, at least, he only needs to convince her to be as generous with her presence as she was with her blood.

“Sit, my sweet,” he says, insistent. “See the stars with me. I’ll regale you with the poetry I promised.”

“Poetry?” She scoffs, as if it’s something a bard shouldn’t appreciate.

“For your fine vintage, of course,” Astarion croons.

He lets her see the hunger in his eyes as they trail down her figure. She’s wonderfully pert in the tunic she slipped into for sleeping. Even if the flutter of it by her heels makes her look like a specter.

“Don’t you remember?” He prods. “You wanted to know what you tasted like.”

It’s that promise, or morbid curiosity, that spurs her closer. She looks like a ghost, blanched silver in the moonlight, stark shadows haunting the hollows beneath her eyes. But she moves like the shambling dead. Her shoes drag, floppy on her feet, interrupting the quaint melody of crickets chirping intently in the long grass. Astarion’s nose wrinkles at the noise.

“You look dreadful, you know,” he says flatly.

It doesn’t dissuade her from dropping to a seat beside him with a dull thump. The tree takes her weight, leaving only a thin sliver of space between them. Astarion’s attention snags on her tunic, sliding off her shoulder. Pale blue skin peeks out, peppered in the same purplish freckles that powder her nose.

“Well, I feel dreadful,” she mutters darkly. “So I suppose, for the moment, my matching looks are one of the few things that make sense.”

“I do hope it wasn’t our last evening together that put you out of sorts,” Astarion says with the slightest pout.

Her collar doesn’t cover her souvenirs from their prior late-night liaison. The two perfect punctures have faded almost entirely. Now she wears the new necklace of bruises that the hag traded her for her old amulet.

He did try to be gentle, when he bit her. A bit, at least. It’s not guilt, squirming in his gut, exactly. She gave him permission, after all. Still, his tongue feels weighty with a question he should’ve asked sooner.

“Did it hurt much? I already know you liked it,” he says, smoothing his tone. “I’m more curious how much you like pain. That priest of Loviator certainly painted a pretty, pretty picture. It had all my favorite colors.”

Naomi scoffs. “Has the poetry started yet, or are you just warming up?”

“Warming you up, dear.”

“It was fine, Astarion,” she sighs again, exasperated this time. She props her knees to her chest and loops her arms to hold them there. “My head felt a little fuzzy afterwards, and I might’ve lost my mind along with my shoes. But I don’t think you get to take credit for that. Not everything’s about you, you know.”

Astarion surveys her blankly. His face feels heavy, lips still abuzz with the blood of the bear, his mind awash with it.

“Oh. You mean that business with the hag?” He waves a hand, as if casting a thoughtless cantrip. “You said it yourself, it was just like that debacle with the harpies. Though, they didn’t resort to extortion. I suppose that was some precious trinket of yours, that necklace she took?”

“Nothing worth dying for,” Naomi shrugs, gaze guarded. “They’re a dime a dozen, back home.”

“Mm,” Astarion hums, fingers rapping against a gnarled root. “And what is ‘home’ like for you, darling? I’ve had this drab little cave in my head this whole time, you know. I don’t know much about the Underdark. Never once been.”

Her lips twitch. The start of a smile, maybe. Something for him to tug on, and perhaps something to tug her shoulders down from her ears. Ease that strain holding her taut so he can slip through the cracks in her armor.

Her tone is a teasing one. “Tell me what I taste like, and I’ll show you what you’re missing.”

The tadpole twists behind his eye and twists his stomach with it. She really does mean to show him.

“All right,” Astarion drawls.

He combs his mind for his favorite endearments, pinching the prettiest from its stem and fitting it between his teeth. He leans forward, near enough to catch the slight scent of lavender beneath the staleness of her sweat.

“I’ll do my best, darling,” he purrs, “but you should know there’s nothing from my mouth that could do justice to how exquisite you tasted all. Over. Mine.”

Her smirk blooms wide. “You’re hedging, dear. Shaky way to start. Self-deprecation isn’t what I’m into. But do go on.”

“Hm?” Astarion huffs, cocking his head, indignant. “My bittersweet treat isn’t impressed? Even with her cheeks all warm and flushed? I think your body betrays you, dear.”

“‘Bittersweet’ is the best you can come up with?” She tuts. “Surely you can do better.”

“You were my first, you know,” he blurts. “I don’t have much to compare it to.”

The words leap from his tongue in reflex, without a trace of sweetness. And the aftertaste of his admission lies more bitter on his tongue than Naomi’s fading flavor did. Astarion’s jaw shifts tightly as he watches her amusement melt into sickly sweet pity.

It needles him with a dozen daggers, that look. Astarion rips his gaze away to the indifferent night sky. Naomi’s face still burns behind his eyes, like vivid blots of color staining his sight after staring too long at his favorite star.

He snuffs out any chance she has to say something insufferable.

“I’ve wondered what the others might taste like, now that I’ve had you,” Astarion carries on dryly. “Only theoretically, of course. Take Karlach, for example. Her blood’s been aged in the hells. She’d be potent, like a fiery whiskey. Wyll must be something palatable. Perhaps a sugary cider. And Gale, his blood strikes me as something rich, refined. Like well-aged brandy.”

“Shadowheart has to taste at least a little like red wine,” Naomi muses. “She drinks enough of it.”

“Mm. She’s enigmatic. A vintage port on two legs.”

A smile steals its way back onto his lips. She’s been a good little bard, playing along with his game. Astarion angles a glance her way, letting his voice drop husky.

“And then, there’s the lovely Naomi Tavriel. A bouquet I’d know anywhere for the rest of my days.”

She blinks back at him, wary, but spellbound nonetheless.

“I could say she tastes of soft-crushed lavender and sharp, vibrant citrus. But I’d only be telling a thimble of the truth,” Astarion says in a rough-edged whisper. “Her blood sings. She is a tremble on the tongue. A current with sweetness so consuming, all that’s after can only be bitter.”

It works too well, this poetry in lieu of flattery. The twangy pitter-patter of her heartbeat gives her away, though her expression stays tamed. Her tongue darts out to wet the plump curve of her lower lip while he watches. Their gazes meet, and the daintiest pastel pink melts across her cheeks.

He only told a thimble of the truth, after all; Naomi’s blood in his mouth hardly painted the world in bitterness. On the contrary, it cast everything before in dull monochrome, and everything after in vivid, throbbing flavor. Possibility. Potential. Power. It all roared awake in his veins with only one taste.

His next words are brimming in nothing but honesty.

“I can’t imagine what it must be like,” he says wistfully, “to ever have enough of you.”

“Better,” Naomi says beneath her breath, before her eyes flutter shut.

Unbidden, Astarion’s eyes close, too. His delectable daydreams dissolve into plummeting darkness. Warmth envelopes him. When his eyes tear open again, he sees furling heat instead of misty starlight.

Astarion’s lungs burn in some old instinct for air as he breaks the surface of Naomi’s memory. Gasping, he bobs in water of brilliant, simmering turquoise. Salt burns his eyes. He blinks feverishly. The scent of fresh earth and moss turns in his nose.

His bare toes scrabble against the pebbled lakebed. Panic bubbles up in the back of his throat. He can’t swim. Not really. Not that he’s tried to, in the past two hundred or so years. He finds a solid foothold and stills, eyes sweeping his steam-kissed surroundings.

No reflection shimmers in the shallow water as clear as a mirror. Silver fish as thin as hairs dart past his ankles. A steady tremor ripples across the surface, tingling pleasantly against his submerged legs.

Reeds rustle behind him. Winged bugs flutter between, unbothered by his presence. Butterflies, he thinks, but then he frowns. Their wings are leathery. Bat-like, but beautiful in deep jewel tones of emerald, ruby, and sapphire. And it’s fungus they flit between, not grasses; it grows in narrow, perforated tubes of luminous yellow. The tiniest breeze plays the fronds like flutes.

Far from his safe haven in the shallows, a waterfall veils the cliffs in delicate silver. Astarion’s neck aches as he cranes back, following the stream to a split in the rocky ceiling and up, up, away into infinite darkness. Perhaps it tumbles down from the heavens themselves. Its roar could rival a dragon's.

Past the falls, the faint glimmer of blue torchlight catches his eye. If he squints, he can make out the rough shape of crystalline spires twined with indigo rock and veiny, black stalactites. A standard hangs from the stonework, set with a familiar symbol. Naomi said it was a temple. She used to wear the emblem of the dark dancer strung around her neck, before she gave her amulet of Eilistraee away to the hag.

A softer sound drifts through the pouring percussion of the falls. Music. It emanates from the temple, washing gently over his ears like a slant of sunlight.

Astarion’s eyelids grow heavy. Cool air, damp with mist, caresses his cheeks. He could happily stay here for hours, swirled in warmth, mesmerized by the drumming falls, ears peeled towards the faint tease of a fiddle. But a flurry of splashing on the nearby shore shatters his piece of peace.

Astarion whips his head around to see a storm of children bearing down on the lake. Water sloshes, frothy with their reckless abandon. A scrawny half-dozen drow, none older than a decade, blunder past him. Astarion grates out a bristling groan none of them seem to hear.

His attention latches to a little girl, white hair knotted atop her head, strings of it sticking wet against the angled ears she hasn’t quite grown into. She wades ahead of her comrades, jaw set, her lilac nose scrunched with a warrior’s determination.

He knows her, even without her freckles, or the birds tattooed on her cheek. It’s not so different from the way Naomi looked him over, fangs and all, before she shoved her way into his own memories.

Naomi leaves her friends behind in knee-deep depths. She swims on, striking out towards a splinter of radiance searing the blue water near-white. Sunlight, he realizes with a pinch of surprise. The tiniest, hairline slice of it.

“Touch it!” One of the children calls out, hands cupped to his mouth.

“I dare you!” Another shouts.

Snickers follow. “She’s too scared.”

“She’s not. Look -- look!”

Astarion tenses. Naomi stills, treading water just a few inches from that slash of sun. She reaches out a trembling hand. Light bleeds across her fingertips.

Bat-winged butterflies burst from the reeds. Naomi’s scream bounds off the stone. Astarion’s ears ring raw with it, even after the shriek cuts to crickets.

A sudden chill plunges him back to the present. Astarion shifts around a shiver, scowling. Rough bark rubs between his shoulder blades. The starlit summer evening in the forest feels tepid now. Not nearly so warm as the brilliant waters were.

“That was…breathtaking,” he mutters mournfully. “Until you broke it. What in all the hells was that wailing about?”

Naomi’s laugh is an easy one. “I thought it melted my skin. I’d never seen it that shade. I’d never seen myself in the sun at all.”

“My, my. We are birds of a feather, it seems. Though, your little venture didn’t result in you roasting,” Astarion says, lip curled. “It’s quite different, I promise you.”

“O-Of course,” Naomi stammers hastily. “But it was enough to keep me in the Underdark for some time.”

“How long did you choose to stay in the dark? I wouldn’t know what that luxury is like.”

“Well, I’m nearing a century and a quarter, and I only surfaced about eighteen months ago,” she says, toeing the dirt. “Strictly speaking, it was a choice to stay down there. But we don’t always realize what it is we’re choosing. Especially when we’ve never known any different. Especially when we’re afraid.”

Astarion swallows the sudden lump in his throat, gaze flitting down and away to his own feet. His hands itch, restless, until they find the stowed needle again and take once more to stitching. He barely has to glance at the hole in his shirt sleeve to pull it neatly closed with thread, but he does, anyway, just to have reason to look elsewhere.

“You’re not wrong,” he sighs, irritation relenting to weariness. “And a year and a half isn’t long in the light.”

It would be a mere drop in the bucket in his centuries of torment. Barely a ripple in the grand scheme of things. Nothing that could make up for the rest of it. But what a gift it would be, to have that much sunlight.

He should be so lucky.

“It’s not like there isn’t light down there at all,” she murmurs. “Just not much from the sun.”

“A vampire’s dream, indeed.” Astarion answers, hollow.

“When the freckles came, I thought I was dying, you know,” Naomi laughs again, but it sounds flimsy, like a board bent near breaking. “I wrote home and everything. Said my goodbyes. Felt like a fool once I figured it out.”

Astarion pauses his stitching, the corner of his mouth curving in spite of his envy. If she let out such a shriek from that little leak of light, he can only imagine the kind of caterwauling that came out of her when she was fully bathed in it for the first time.

His tentative smile comes with a strange twist of sympathy. That day, on the beach, with the sand seared white with high noon, and his own skin blessedly unburnt, Astarion had run for the shadows as if Cazador himself hounded his heels. He’d wanted to laugh. To retch. To cower. To dance. All at once.

“It’s a jarring change,” he says, glancing her way again. She’s pensieve. And staring quite intently at the needle poised between his fingers, dipping in and out of his sleeve.

“Lots of drow get sunsick,” she says quietly. “Some never get over it.”

“Some fare just fine, it seems. The sun suits you as well as the stars do, darling.”

Naomi’s eyes flicker to his. He wonders, with a sharp pinch beneath his ribs, what she sees when she says so earnestly, “Likewise, Astarion.”

Dismay sinks in his chest as she peels her eyes away to the trees and a new knot bends her brow. He loathes the weight of the feeling. Loathes, even more, that it struck all the harder for having caught him by surprise.

“You’re having a terrible time up here, aren't you?” he asks gently.

“It’s not a walk in the park down there, either,” she says flatly. “None of those other kids you saw with me ever saw the sun again. They didn’t live long enough to have a chance.”

Astarion’s heard how harsh the Underdark can be. The slice she showed him was brimming with beauty. And he knows well enough the cruelty of pretty things.

“But you thought it would be different,” he says. “That all of this would be different.”

“Ever since--” Naomi stops short, jaw clenching. “Well, something about all the undead, scheming devils, murderous githyanki, and hungry vampires is making it hard to sleep at night.”

“Sleep?” Astarion raises a brow. Something you don’t want to see in a trance? He wonders, but he doesn’t ask.

It’s another aversion they’re both familiar with.

“We’re all having a terrible time, Astarion,” she sighs, voice wrung raw. “We’ve been tadpoled, for fuck’s sake.”

“Speak for yourself. I happen to be flourishing. In no small part thanks to you.”

He shifts, ostensibly to stitch another hole he’s spied in his sleeve. But the motion lets their shoulders brush. Just the barest stroke of skin over skin. Her breath hitches softly enough, keener ears wouldn’t have heard it.

“I’m grateful, you know,” he says just as softly.

Astarion’s needle sinks into the fabric again, pulling the gap closed. Naomi adjusts her seat against the tree. Oh sweet thing, he thinks, as her shoulder settles warm against his and stays that way. How long since you’ve been touched, if all it takes is just the one to have you hooked? He feels an odd strain of sadness alongside his swell of victory.

What a lucky thing she is, to know such sanctuary in her own body. How lucky she is, that he knows just the touch to make her feel holy in it.

Any good spell has three ingredients. She’s already succumbed to the somatic component. One touch started a thirst for more. She’d shared her blood, binding them in something material. All that’s left is to say the magic words.

Astarion toys with them in his mind, shuffling innuendos like a deck of cards. I could show you a much better time. Show you how grateful a hungry vampire can be. Help you sate your own hunger, so to speak. Don’t you think you deserve some fun too, darling? A little treat for my little treat.

Naomi clears her throat pointedly. “I don’t know you half as well as I should, to have been half as helpful as I’ve been.”

Oh, I was thinking we could get to know each other intimately--

“Tell me something about yourself, Astarion.”

Astarion stiffens. The magic of the moment expires, but he doesn’t mourn it.

“I won’t tell you about ‘home’,” he says curtly. “If you want to know about the Gate, ask Wyll, and he’ll recite half its history. But, after what happened with that awful Gur, I suppose you should know about Cazador.”

He tells her, sparsely, of his life when he still knew sunlight. The little he remembers fits in one mouthful. She interrupts to ask if he can still see that life in reverie.

“No, I can’t,” he answers sharply. “And I can’t see any of my prior lives, either. If I do manage to die, I won’t have another life after this. Arvandor doesn’t take souls sullied with undeath.”

That shuts her up for a good while. Arvandor doesn’t take drow, either. Kindred spirits thrice over, he thinks ruefully. Shunned by sunlight, sleep, and salvation.

He tells her of his untimely death at the hands of vagrants. Of Cazador’s Szarr’s too-perfect timing. The only choice he thought he had, and one he never would have made, if he could do it over again.

Most of all, he tells her of his tormentor. Astarion finds that once he’s started the telling, it all spills from his mouth with a feverish momentum. He speaks as if he’s running downhill; it has more to do with gravity, pulling him down from dizzying height, than any of his own volition. It falls out of him with the stony weight of inevitability.

He’s left with a familiar, noxious dread at the bottom of his belly, at the end of it all. He doesn’t look at her, sure he can’t stomach her pity after sloughing through that mountain of shit. She doesn’t say anything he thought she might.

Instead, she says, “You’re very good at that, you know.”

Astarion’s head jerks up to trace her gaze to his own hands, with the needle still fitted between his fingers. “I had to be,” he blurts without meaning to. He scowls darkly. “Hm. I do hope you were paying attention to my words as well as my hands. I won’t be repeating myself.”

Naomi’s expression hardens. He thinks of her as a little girl again, striking fearlessly into the unknown. Shrieking when it bit her. “If Cazador comes calling, he won’t find you alone, Astarion.”

A laugh punches from his lungs. “And what do you think you’re going to do about it, dear? If he wanted to, he’d kill everyone in this camp like that.” He snaps his fingers, teeth clenched.

Naomi studies him carefully. “I guess we’ll have to get creative, then. Or, at the very least, you’ll have good company on your way out. And a good last supper. You can feed from me when you need to, you know. As long as we talk about it first.”

Astarion flounders. “T-That sounds…eminently reasonable. And so very delicious.”

“Mm. I’ve heard from a reputable poet that I taste so good, nothing else does,” she says wryly.

Her eyes drift shut as she leans heavily against the tree they share. His shoulder takes some of the burden of her, too. Astarion allows it.

She’s been such a generous thing. And her warmth is a balm to the disquiet riled by that same generosity. Astarion’s stomach knots. Every sweet thing he’s known has been a bitter one, too. If not during, then after.

He rubs the needle between the pads of his fingers, staring out into the space between the trees while the black of night bleeds into morning blue. Birds take to shrill song and flapping among the branches. Except for the rhythmic thump of her heartbeat, his little bard stays quiet as the grave. Too quiet. He’s acutely aware of her hair, loose from her bun, trailing over his collar. Tickling like a feather to his neck.

She’s too soft. Too pretty to be anything but poison. Too sweet to be anything but bitter in the end. Astarion means to end it here, while it’s still the former. He’ll ply pleasure and loyalty from her another night.

He glances down.

“Oh.” He blinks, dumbfounded. “Oh no. No, no.”

Astarion goes rigid, throat thick. She’s asleep. At long last.

She twitches fitfully. It’s not a good sleep. Elves aren’t usually that good at sleeping at all, unless they’ve practiced like he has. But better she has bad sleep than none at all. Someone has to say things to the druid, Halsin, tomorrow. They’ll need their leader to lead.

And Astarion needs to finish the spell he started. She’ll need to be rested. Ready for him.

Once she settles, he’ll leave. She’ll never know the difference. Easy enough.

So he waits. He watches the wrinkle in her brow. The restless fussing of her legs. Glares at her gods awful shoes, steaked in dried blood and dirt. Glares at her pouty, purple face. Contemplates if her horrible footwear should be fed to fire or to wolves.

Gingerly, he leans forward just enough to rid her feet of said shoes. He throws them to the woods with a vehemence. She doesn’t stir even slightly. But he stays, with his body pulled taut as a bowstring, in case, any second, she might. So he can be gone before she bats her eyes open.

Astarion’s not sure how long he stares at the slow rise and fall of her chest, or the smush of her cheek against his steel-stiff shoulder. But it’s been enough time that when Gale’s shadow washes over him, Astarion has to squint when he looks up. Daylight and a seething wizard glare back.

“What?” Astarion hisses, wincing as stiffness prickles along his neck.

Gale’s eyes burn between Astarion and the still-sleeping Naomi. Gingerly, Astarion shirks free of her at last. He stands, dusting off his breeches. Gale unfurls the blanket he came bearing and tucks it to cover Naomi’s bare toes.

“Oh, let her be,” the vampire chides, as he makes for the cave and Gale stays rooted. “She’ll wake soon enough.”

“Perhaps someone should stay--”

“I can hear her pretty little heartbeat from inside the cave just as well as I heard your snoring from all the way out here.” Astarion sneers. “I’ll know the moment she wakes. Or if she finds her way into trouble again.”

It’s far too easy to pluck on Gale’s nerves. Far too much fun to stop. Reluctantly, the wizard falls into step beside Astarion, leaving their bard to her makeshift rest. As soon as she slips from sight, Gale’s lecture starts in earnest.

“If she chooses to help with your hunger, then so be it,” he fumes. “But after such a trying day as yesterday, I won’t stand idly by while you leech--”

“I kept my teeth to myself, thank you,” Astarion says blithely. “It was our fearless leader who came seeking my calming company, if you must know. Poor thing couldn’t trance all by her lonesome. Something a fellow elf can understand like others can’t.”

Gale isn’t going to have any of his own teeth left if he insists on grinding them so roughly. Astarion grins widely, letting the points of his fangs peek from his lips.

“Maybe,” Astarion croons, “she didn’t seek you out since you won’t shut up about ‘making transcendent love to Mystra’ for more than five minutes. You should really curb that habit, or your goddess will be the last lay you ever have, you know. No one wants to hear about how good your ex was.”

“Naomi’s a good person, Astarion,” Gale answers tersely. “And I'd wager she’s been through more than she’s letting on. If comfort is what she wants and what you’re offering, then by all means, make merry. But if you mean to take more than you give--”

Astarion barks a laugh, bracing a palm against his own chest. “Gods, Gale, really? You’ve come around on my thirst for blood, but it’s my more mundane hungers you have a problem with? Well, fret not. I’m a consummate lover.”

Gale flushes to a perfect, pained pink. Astarion snickers beneath his breath. He brushes past his mortified magician to peruse the loot they’d gathered from the goblins’ fortress.

“And besides,” Astarion drawls devilishly, “all we did was talk. All night long. No wonder she’s so tired.”

“Is there something in particular you’re scavenging for?” Gale grumbles.

Astarion paws through the crates, past crusted chainmail, crude clubs, and flimsy maces. Finally, he finds his prize.

“She needs shoes. These will do nicely.”

They’re sturdy, at least. What the plain leather boots lack in character, they make up for in not falling apart. And they should actually fit her. An improvement for Naomi, to be sure. But Astarion can do better.

He takes them back to his tent and sets them aside while he roots through his stash of thread. Green isn’t her color. Black would blend too close to the dark shade of the shoes. Red, of course, looks lovely on her but--

Astarion stills, turning over a spool of blue. It isn’t the same vivid shade as the lake she showed him. But it’s bright like a sunlit sky. Astarion takes a needle in hand, and takes to stitching sharp-tipped swirls, reminiscent of waves, into the leather.

When he’s done, she’s still asleep. She stiffens, suddenly, at his approach, groaning her displeasure. Astarion freezes.

He’s gone before she bats her eyes open. The grass is still flat where he sat beside her before, and where the boots now rest in his stead.

A/N: I truly do have nothing against Gale, but it’s just too much fun to have Astarion harass him, hehe.

I’ll tease that for those of you chomping at the bit for the ‘eventual smut’ tag to come to fruition. You won’t have to wait much longer ;)

If you want something spicy to keep you sated in the meantime, I did recently post a smutty Ascended Astarion x Vampire Bride evil power couple one-shot called “Blood in the Mortar”. I’ve also got a multichapter in the works for them that I intend to get drafted further ahead on before sharing.

I love each and every one of you who reads, likes, comments, and reblogs. Seriously means so much to know I’m not writing in a vacuum. I appreciate you all, and hope life is being kind to you!

Divider credit to @cafekitsune.

#astarion #astarion ancunin #tavstarion #astarion x tav #tav x astarion #astarion fanfic #astarion romance #bg3 #bg3 fanfic #naomi tavriel #midnight chimes #my writing

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bardic-inspo · 4 months

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MIDNIGHT CHIMES

An Astarion x Cursed!Tav Romance

[READ CHAPTER 6: FRIEND OF THE DEAD]

Chapter WC: 6k | Chapter Summary:

[READ FROM BEGINNING]

Fic Summary:

#astarion #astarion ancunin #tavstarion #bg3 #astarion x tav #tav x astarion #baldur's gate 3 #baldur's gate #astarion romance #bg3 tav #naomi tavriel #my writing #midnight chimes #bg3 fanfiction #bg3 astarion #otp: you were doomed but just enough

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bardic-inspo · 1 month

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Midnight Chimes - Series Masterlist

✨Pairing: Astarion x Cursed! Tav

✨Fic Summary:

✨CW: Eventual smut, canon-typical gore/violence, depiction of Astarion's trauma

✨Key Tags: Angst with a Happy Ending, Hurt/Comfort, Medium Burn, Tav has her own Subplot, Gothic Vibes, Deals with Devils, Some Canon Divergence, The Pale Elf Quest

✨Chapters: 7/?? (Ongoing)

Chapter List

*Chapters that include smut will be listed with pink titles.

✨Chapter One: You Look Different in the Daylight

Read on AO3 // Read on Tumblr

✨Chapter Two: Moths to Flame

Read on AO3 // Read on Tumblr

✨Chapter Three: Restless Bones

Read on AO3 // Read on Tumblr

✨Chapter Four: Dissonant Whispers

Read on AO3 // Read on Tumblr

✨Chapter Five: Supplication

Read on AO3 // Read on Tumblr

✨Chapter Six: Friend of the Dead

Read on AO3 // Read on Tumblr

✨Chapter Seven: Morbid Curiosity

Read on AO3 // Read on Tumblr

Chapter Eight: TBA

#astarion #astarion ancunin #tavstarion #astarion fanfic #astarion x tav #tav x astarion #bg3 fanfic #astarion romance #my writing #bg3 #midnight chimes #naomi tavriel #finally finished cross posting chapters so I could cobble this together! Thanks everyone for the patience <3

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bardic-inspo · 2 months

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Six(ish) Sentence Sunday

Tagged by the wonderful @totally-not-deacon. Thank you!! 💜💜

Tagging back @elinorbard, @bakuliwrites, @vixstarria, @mythrae-writes, and @thedreamlessnights to share as much or as little as you like of something you're working on (no worries if you'd rather not!)

If you want me to tag you to participate in future WIP memes, feel free to give this post over here a like.

Recently posted the Ascended Astarion x Vampire Bride Tav fic (Blood in the Mortar) which was consuming me so now my brain is free to fixate elsewhere.

Aaaand it settled on some post-game Spawn Astarion x Tav angst I don't have a title for just yet 👀 Here's a rough peek (more than six sentences woops):

Astarion whips his head towards the stirring shadows. In one hand, he white-knuckles his dagger. The other is a vice, clutching Naomi to his rib cage. She’s safe. She’s free. She’s… She’s never been so cold, so long as Astarion’s known her. He can’t tell if it’s him or her who’s shaking hard enough to hurt his teeth. It bites him deeper than Godey’s knives ever did. He’d do anything to claw this pain out of his skin like he clawed Naomi from the dirt. To go back and run faster, strike quicker, catch her before she was caught by someone else. But he can’t. And for that abject failure, the first person Astarion ever truly cared for will be a vampire spawn for the rest of her days.

#six sentence sunday #astarion #astarion ancunin #tavstarion #bg3 #my writing #otp: you were doomed but just enough #naomi tavriel

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bardic-inspo · 4 months

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MIDNIGHT CHIMES

An Astarion x Cursed!Tav Romance

[READ CHAPTER 5: SUPPLICATION]

Chapter WC: 3.5k | Chapter Summary:

[READ FROM BEGINNING]

Fic Summary:

#this one has a little spice for you as a treat #midnight chimes #my writing #astarion #astarion ancunin #tavstarion #astarion x tav #tav x astarion #bg3 #baldur's gate 3 #baldur's gate #bg3 tav #bg3 fanfiction #otp: you were doomed but just enough #bg3 astarion #astarion romance #naomi tavriel

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bardic-inspo · 2 months

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Midnight Chimes

Chapter One: You Look Different in the Daylight

Pairing: Astarion x Cursed! Tav

✨Full Chapter List ✨BG3 Fic Masterlist ✨

Series Summary:

Chapter CW: None

A/N: First couple chapters have some time jumps, and then the story falls into a linear progression. (This is a cross-post from my prior (now defunct) sideblog and AO3 account). Dividers by @cafekitsune.

✨ Click here if you prefer to read on AO3 ✨

“Don’t often see your sort on this side of the street.”

The innkeep’s talking about drow. Like the twins. The Flophouse’s most recent newcomer is Seldarine, just like them. Pretty as the pair of them, too. All twilight skin, some pale shade between blue and violet, and moonlight hair that would glow silver with it if he could get her back outside. Astarion could tell her that while he twirled one finger in the strands and wrapped her dwindling life around another.

Darling, you make the stars so pitifully dim. It’s futile, the way they’re shining now. Not like you.

But she’d have to shed some layers to fit in at Mamzell Amira’s establishment. The drow’s armor is light and leather. At least it’s fitted enough to get a figure for her figure.

Astarion catches the flinty edge of her glare as she turns her cheek, ever so slightly, his way. Sharp as a knife. His stage smile echoes back with an edge just as keen. She might be new in town, but she gets the innkeep’s meaning well enough not to like it.

Must’ve been the tip of a blade that cut that scar curling from her cheek across the bridge of her nose. It’s hairline thin, but it interrupts the freckles powdering her face. No one’s paying her to hang over them like drapery at Sharess’ Caress. Not with that trace imperfection.

Astarion could do it. Pay her enough attention to get her loose, dangling, vulnerable. Play the role of the valiant hero. Spring forth to defend her honor. Show her about town, like a gentleman should. It’s a gambit he’s run more times then he can count.

It would go something like this: sweet words about city secrets she hasn’t seen to lure her back into the starlit streets. A pretty view, perhaps of the Chionthar glimmering, to get her eyes wide. A promise of a better one, somewhere secluded. A heated whisper to get her blushing. His breath on her skin, to start a shiver. Promises, promises tumbling out of his pretty mouth. His name, falling out of hers.

And it would end in blood, like it always does. What a night she’d have. Her first in Baldur’s Gate. Her last alive.

Her life flashes before Astarion’s eyes in a glint of golden light. Sudden, vivid, then all at once gone. Someone else spots his prey and takes a swipe before he can.

The prey, it turns out, bites back.

“Argh -- get your hands off me!”

The garbled cry of indignation doesn’t come from the drow. Her grip latches to the arm of the would-be thief and wrenches it around, forcing his hand to open. Her coin falls back, neatly, into her own waiting palm.

She tosses away her hold on her assailant in the same manner as pitching trash. The thief -- a rather burly half-elf -- cowers, cradling his throbbing hand. A hiss leaks out of him, sending a shiver down Astarion’s spine. The noise is too familiar. Too much like vampiric skin simmering in sunlight.

Astarion grimaces, a twist of pity sinking in his gut. Not for the thief, and not for her, either. For their star-crossed evening, or the fleeting notion of it, stolen away by someone else’s sticky fingers fishing into her back pocket. For a measly pair of coins, she’d bought her own life back. With a twist of a wrist, she wrenched her fate from Astarion’s nimble hands.

It’s for the best, really. Thanks to the thief, Astarion knows better. She’s too clever. Too quick. Too cunning. Violet eyes cut across the room to his watchful ones. Maybe she’d have seen through his schemes, too, and made good on the promise in that look of hers. Like she could spear him straight to the paneling behind his head, same as the curled fliers nailed near the door.

But alas, now he has to do horrible things to someone else.

Astarion’s stomach turns as he sets his sights to the Flophouse door. Finding what he needs on the other side of the street, yet again, sounds like the opposite of fun. Someone drunk, naive, unsuspecting. He thought the drow checked those last two boxes. Astarion’s eyes drift to the thieving half-elf, now stooped and sulking in a seat as far from the drow as the room allows.

Someone has to pay. It won’t be Astarion, under Godey’s biting blades. Not again. Not tonight. He’ll take his chances with whatever happens while he’s under someone, anyone else.

Astarion’s fingernails drag into the woodgrain of the table before he shoves from his seat. He lets his chair scrape back loud enough to scrape the thief’s eyes off the floor. By the time Astarion’s sauntered over to the vacant chair at the half-elf’s table, the other man’s eyes have oozed, messy and lustful, all over Astarion’s best assets. Most of them, anyway.

With one click of his tongue, like the tug of a leash, the stranger’s wide, blue eyes snap to Astarion’s. Good boy.

“Tough break,” Astarion nearly purrs, letting the words roll slowly off his tongue, letting his hips drop slower into the seat. “Not as tough as you, I’d wager.”

The other man scoffs, as if without a care. But he wets his lips before speaking, like he needs to test them first. “Shouldn’t be,” he says gruffly. “Should be, if someone’s lived their whole life somewhere, they shouldn’t have to settle for scraps while all these foreigners come rolling in.”

“You’re so right,” Astarion croons, leaning in to prop his chin with his hand. “And you should say it.”

And he does. In excess. Punctuated with chest-puffing, peppered in curse words and vaguely political bleating. Almost like he’s practiced this little diatribe as much as Astarion’s recited his best hooks. His mark seems pent-up, at least, in one sense. Before Astarion can allude to another, his ear catches on the more civilized conversation happening over at the counter.

“I’ll need a name, then,” the innkeep -- a surly dwarf -- prompts.

The drow swallows. “Tav…riel.”

It’s nearly two words, with the amount of hesitation in between. The innkeep asks again.

“Tavriel?” He mutters. She nods. He eyes her warily, scribbling the name down into his book. “You some sort of bard or something?”

“Sure." If you want me to be, the careful lilt of her voice says.

“Never heard a flute I was fond of,” the innkeep prattles irritably. The offending instrument is strapped near the drow’s waist. “Too pitchy.”

“Sounds like you’ve never met someone who knew what to do with it.”

Astarion perks a brow. It’s near enough to one of his usual lines that he stores it away in the back of his brain for later. It needs refinement. Not his fav-

“It’s not my favorite, either, but it’s easier to travel with,” Tavriel says.

“You any good with it? Can’t say I’ve heard of you.”

“Mm, you probably wouldn’t have,” Tavriel says, unperturbed. A clever sort of smile creeps onto her lips. “I’m a killer with a fiddle. Not sure anyone’s lived to tell the tale.”

Well, what a tease. Astarion’s never heard of a bard that didn’t very desperately want to be heard of. What else would she be, could she be, if not a bard? Maybe a rake, if her claws weren’t so cutting. Teeth are far better for that sort of delicate work.

She swipes the brass key from the counter. Astarion watches until her boots disappear up the stairs and she’s gone. His mark never notices Astarion’s attention was anywhere else. Suppressing a tired sigh, Astarion slips back into his shtick like a sword in a sheath.

Time to get to it, before the darkness runs out.

“Oh, yes, darling. Fuck those foreigners. But…wouldn't you rather with a real Baldurian?”

Astarion’s stomach swoops, harder than it bucked on the fall from the nautiloid. It doesn’t matter how hard he runs for the trees, for the sparse and insufficient shade they might cast. Doesn’t matter that his legs pump as fast as his exquisite body allows. He should be burning by now. Should be dead, at least twice over.

If he had a heartbeat, it’d be hammering in his throat. He feels the pressure all the same. Every swallow comes as a choke, even as he staggers to a stop in the meager shadows.

Astarion’s eyes dart towards that scorching orb hanging, searing, and ominous overhead. The light glints back like a damn guillotine. Any moment now, the drop will come. This farce will end. This figment of freedom, the barest wisp of it, will evaporate. Ashes will be all that’s left in the wake of two centuries of pure, utter, shit.

Ashes do fall. They drift in fat flakes from the sky, coating the beach in soot. The acrid tang cloys with the spray of saltwater in the air. But his body’s still whole enough to tremble. Astarion turns his palms over in silent awe, watching his own skin alight. The flames don’t come. Only…

Warmth. Dainty as a first kiss. Across his throat, flooding his cheeks, his chest, his every inch. A smile as faint as a ghost dares to grace Astarion’s lips.

He hears his own shaky, unbidden laugh like it’s that of a stranger. It came from someone else’s body, surely. This is someone else’s body. His would’ve been in cinders, barring some very, very belated divine intervention.

Or, apparently, an illithid invasion. The up close and personal kind.

Astarion rips his gaze away as it begins to water. Scorch marks stain his sight for a full minute after. Inkblots of bright, burning color. It’s as he’s blinking rapidly that he sees her, picking her way up the slope, past the wreckage.

Astarion’s seen her before. He’s sure of it, now that she’s nearer. Now that he can see her in the full, unadulterated light of the sun. (The sun. The sun. The fucking sun!)

Outside of the nautiloid’s bloody glow, her hair’s white as frost. Her complexion’s less rosy, more violet. Out here, she could be a normal drow.

He tenses, picking up the faint prickling of voices in the distance. She’s not alone. Astarion doesn’t recognize the other woman, a half-elf with a black, chained braid dangling down her back like a whip.

But he remembers the drow. She was on board that blasted ship. She knows about the damn worm lodged behind his eye socket. Maybe they both do. His fist clenches on the hilt of his blade, still tucked in its sheath.

As Astarion watches from afar, magic wakes in half-elf’s palm, vivid and blinding. It sears into the bare cerebrum of some crawling creature snapping at the drow’s heels. The creature utters a shrill screech before it slumps over, steaming. His eyes narrow. Seems the pair of them are chummy, at very least, if not co-conspirators. He creeps back further into the brush.

Both of them will pay. They’ll have to. At least half as much as Cazador will make Astarion pay for this…this…impossible escapade.

It can’t last. Astarion’s brow knits in with the stiffness in his jaw. Certain doom surrounds him like the sheer sides of a cliff. One one hand lies the inevitable, excruciating plummet into ceremorphosis. Astarion’s skin crawls with the thought. The final destruction of his body. The devouring of his mind. Someone, something else, stealing his entire self and reshaping him into a tentacled puppet.

On the other hand, Cazador would never settle for being outdone by some squid-faced freak. He’ll get creative for this. More than he ever has before. Astarion’s teeth grate against each other.

This can’t last. Oh, but it has to.

Another glow of magic, dimmer this time, catches his eye. It blinks and fades from the drow’s gloved fingers like a firefly. But it has the same radiance as the earlier spell. The same radiance as the delightful glow seeping over his skin. Though, thankfully, the sunshine has proven far less lethal. A dead trail of intellect devourers lies in their wake.

They’re clerics, then, he thinks with a swell of distaste. Fools, but capable ones. Though, the drow is perhaps less of the latter. Still, she’s hardly a victim. The both of them could very well be villains, emerging from the smoking wreckage of their mothership. They’ve come close enough, he can hear the sand crunch beneath their footsteps. Hear their heartbeats, still quickened from their fight, pumping the blood of thinking creatures through their veins.

Astarion sucks in a steadying breath. Not because he needs it to live. Because he needs to perform.

“Help! Help, I need some help!” He bellows.

Their pace hastens to a jog up the hill. In a matter of moments, their wary eyes latch to his plaintive, pleading ones.

“Hurry!” He gasps, panting for good measure. “I’ve got one of those brain things cornered! There, in the grass. You can kill it, can’t you? Like you killed the others?”

The stronger-looking one -- the half-elf -- hangs back. She might be the smarter one, too. The drow isn’t so bothered by brains or caution. She comes within an arm's length, eyes wide and doey. She scans the brush for danger like she isn’t the prey, one hand wrapping the hilt of her rapier.

“There,” he says, slipping into step behind the drow as her feet tamp down the brittle grass. “Can you see it?”

She doesn’t see the knife drawn in a flash. Not until her back hits the dirt, and the blade bites against the pretty flesh of her throat. Astarion tumbles down with her, keeping a vice-grip on the dagger. Her pulse practically leaps against the knife, smacking in a wet, sumptuous rhythm. The back of his throat burns, raw, ragged. Thirsty.

The urge rips through him, sudden and staggering. Astarion bites back a breath, just to bite something. The drow shifts beneath his blade, grunting in indignation.

“Shh, shh shh. Not a sound,” he hisses, soft as velvet. “Not if you want to keep that darling neck of yours. And you,” he growls, louder for their little audience. “Keep your distance. No need for this to get messy.”

The half-elf isn’t half-convinced. “I need her alive,” she snaps, light flaring at her fingertips as she dares a step closer. “Stow that blade, or I’ll show you just how messy things can get.”

But one step is all she dares. Astarion’s eyes narrow wickedly. His captive has value. Good to know. “Promises, promises. But I have other business, I’m afraid.”

His gaze hardens on the drow, who’s gone so sweetly still for him. “Now, I saw you on the ship, didn’t I? Nod.”

Wordlessly, she complies. Good girl.

“Splendid. And now you’re going to tell me exactly what you and those tentacled freaks did to me!”

Her eyes flash, defiant. “We were prisoners, too!”

Astarion’s lips curl with a snarl. “Don’t lie to me -- AH!”

His own memories burst like blisters in his mind’s eye. Dark streets and darker alleys with darker endings. Unlucky souls, lured away, alone, to their fates. Except he isn’t alone. Astarion doesn’t know how, but he’s certain. She’s in his fucking head.

The connection snaps and shatters as sudden as it came. Astarion recoils, reeling as the remnants sting between his temples. “What was that? What’s going on?!”

“Stalker,” his captive spits scornfully.

“I--what?”

“You were in Baldur’s Gate,” the drow huffs. “Fraygo’s Flophouse.”

Gods, you’ll have to be more specific, he nearly sighs. But the slice of violet eyes cuts him short. Astarion’s brow pinches in thought.

“You sat there and stared at me while I was nearly robbed. Not so helpful then. Kind of acting like the opposite right about now.”

It’s ringing bells, but she doesn’t have her flute. She didn’t have that silver symbol, hanging around her neck, back in the Gate. She said she was a bard back then, and she looked like far less of a cleric when she said it.

And Astarion hadn’t noticed the tattoo curving with her left cheekbone. Little birds in flight. He wonders, fleetingly, what on earth could have possessed her to mark her own pretty little face with such a thing.

“AH-- urgh!”

Her hand grips his wrist and twists harsh enough for his vision to flood with white. His eyes burn. By the time he blinks to clear them, his own knife pokes the hollow of his throat.

Cute trick. The same fate her would-be thief suffered, he remembers ruefully. Before Astarion suffered the thief, and the thief suffered what Astarion baited him for.

She scrambles backwards, gaining as much distance as she grants him. They stagger to stand, dust caking his doublet, and dirt streaking her leathers.

“We’ve been wormed, too,” she says, stance softening. “The tadpoles can connect our thoughts. We’re trying to get rid of them. If you’re done trying to stab me, we might let you tag along for the ride.”

“We will?” Her companion mutters skeptically.

You will? Astarion wonders, equally mystified.

She turns his knife once, twice, thrice between her fingers, like she’s playing a parlor game. When the spinning stops, the blade end rests in her gloved palm.

“I’m Naomi,” she says, offering him the hilt of his own dagger like it’s a handshake. Tentatively, Astarion takes it.

“Tavriel,” he mutters faintly, the name swimming out of the depths of all the others to the forefront of his memory.

She shrugs. “If you’d prefer to stay on a surname basis. ‘Tav’ is fine, too.”

Impossible starlight seeps between the thinning veil of clouds above. Silvered blades of grass glint like so many knives under a shimmer centuries in the making.

Astarion lays beneath the clearing sky, his back cushioned by damp, flattened grass. Warmth radiates across his chest, where another impossibility rests her cheek. His free hand strokes idly, thoughtlessly, through her ivory hair. The motion comes easier than breathing ever could’ve.

This -- the two of them, tangled here -- is centuries in the making, too.

They lay fully clothed and content. His other hand wraps Naomi’s waist, tucking the heat of her against his skin like a blanket. Cuddling, of all things. Something in him still balks at the notion. Yet, here he is, yet again.

It’s something they get to do, now, when he wants to. There’s yet to be a night he hasn’t, in the weeks since he stammered out his confession and Naomi laid her hand in his.

He wanted something else to be real between them, too, tonight, when he discovered his favorite drow had wandered away from their merry band of misfits. He found her doused in the starlight she looks so good in, sat on some rock between the gnarled trees, ever oblivious to the small war she started between Astarion’s mind and body.

If there were more life in the trees, it might’ve been reminiscent of another night spent together, after the tieflings’ celebration simmered down into quiet, sleepy cinders. If it were a night like that, he’d have his hands on the small of her back, where she arched it in a stretch. He’d have the rest of her lilac skin soaking Selune’s evening shine, not just the lovely length of her neck above her collar, and that succulent slice peering from between her breasts. He’d have her pliant. He’d have her gasping.

And he’d be free. Of his trousers, at the very least. A flare of yearning ached so earnestly beneath his ribs. Memory and loathing speared it down, sharp, only moments later.

The sound of frantic scrubbing put that battle to bed, for now, and sparked a new one. She was at it again. After Shadowheart already tried to put an end to it in the camp. So that’s why she snuck away.

Astarion cleared his throat pointedly, eyes drifting to the black stains of spellwork scrawled over Naomi’s arms. The marks didn’t let up. Neither did she, until Astarion stayed her hand, and took it in his.

“Really, darling,” he chided. “At that rate, you’ll rub yourself bloody.”

He expected an eyeroll, at least, if not a snicker. But her throat merely bobbed. “They haven’t faded since our fight at the portal.”

“Oh, that was only, what? A few days ago?”

It’s normal, Gale told her. And Shadowheart, too. Well…some of it is. In a paraphrased sense.

“It’s never hung around this long before,” she said, frowning. “I’m not even sure what spell it’s from. There were so many of them, and they all rushed me at once--”

“They were trying to close the door on Halsin and Thaniel,” Astarion said, matter-of-factly. “And we stopped them like the good little heroes we are.”

Sure, their less-than-living foes seemed to aim in one particular direction, at one particular target, during the whole hold-the-gate ordeal. But they barely clipped her barely half the time. Naomi’s fleet-footed in a fight. And what she couldn’t dodge, she fluted away with that cute little ditty that steers their enemies’ arrows elsewhere. The purpling bruise at her shoulder is an exception. Her cutting words were keener than whatever wounded her.

Besides, none of them came away from the past few days without the marks to show it. But those who survived Ketheric Thorm’s final, bony bout are in far better shape than the general’s dusty remnants. Even after they had to jump down that gods-forsaken pit into rancid hell just to kill him for good. The thought alone stirs a shiver down Astarion’s spine, still.

“Now,” he said, steering her by the shoulder, “come keep your frigid lover warm and look at the good you’ve done.”

So, they set aside the notions either of them had in mind, and settled instead for…this. A piece of peace, resting among the patchy tufts of grass grown over a rooftop in what used to be Reithwin. Naomi stares up at their handiwork. The scatter of stars isn’t so different from the freckles dusted over her nose, nearly hiding the thin scar that angles over the bridge of it.

A muted glow leaks over the so-called shadow-cursed lands from the crescent cut of the moon hanging overhead. The first, hard-won taste of what this place could be now that it’s free from its curse. It’ll be different in the daylight, just like Astarion was when he stumbled into it after two hundred years apart. But they’ll be on the road again before they see it glaze over this place.

On the path, at last, to Baldur’s Gate. And to Cazador. To vengeance, absolution, ascension, and all sorts of fairytale words that were once greater than Astarion’s imagination. Now, they’re bloody nightmares in his own arsenal, two hundred years of them, on the cusp of release. Now, they’re promises. Dreams with teeth.

It brings to mind the first burst of blood on his tongue, from that soft neck that nuzzles so near him, now. With that first taste came color, life, and heat where there was only frailty and feebleness before. What fresh sweetness will Cazador’s blood bring, painting Astarion’s hands, pooling like a cloak at his feet?

A whole new world of it, he’s sure. One that’s his to claim. His to share and shape as he sees fit.

Astarion breathes in, not because he needs to, but because he wants the trace scent of lavender in his nose as Naomi’s hair tickles the tip of it. Her heartbeat flutters down from her earlier anxiousness, pattering into a steady rhythm. He feels its mark against his ribs and thinks, for the first time, he understands what might possess lunatics like her to get tattoos on purpose.

That little rhythm should settle there, at his side. Always. Like the little music boxes she’s so fond of. She didn’t take the one she found in Moonrise Towers, so Astarion did. It’s been by her bedside ever since. He sees the little glimmer of it, every night he slinks into her tent.

A gentle, but insistent tug pulls at the corner of his thoughts. He peers down at his present company with an arched brow. Her eyes are peacefully shut, but the mischievous smile gives her away.

Hesitantly, Astarion lets his head roll back to the earth, and his eyes slide shut, too. All right, love. What is it you want to show me?

The tadpole connection hums, all at once familiar and foreign. Listen, she says back, with the same smile in her thoughts as on her lips. He lets the connection pull him through and stifles a soft sound of awe in the back of his throat.

Quiet. Blessed, blissful quiet. Like none she’s ever known.

Naomi’s ear rests over his heart, but it doesn’t beat for her. Not literally, at least. He’d still heavily negotiate any figurative sense of the matter. But it doesn’t matter that it isn’t beating. It’s not what she wants. Not what she…needs.

He feels the ache of it, as she lifts her cheek, briefly, and music flits, frenetic, though her mind. Spells and stanzas and half-remembered rhymes in mangled cacophony. She lays her head back down, and lets out a long breath. Astarion echoes the sound, unbidden, as the connection withdraws, and he’s left with the pluck of her heartbeat in his head again.

It’s never quiet. Not in her head. But it can be. With him. If he hadn’t prayed so hard to them already, he’d swear the gods gifted him this woman. Astarion knows better. The illithids did.

She shifts with a sigh that echoes in his own ribs. He follows the motion and finds her staring at her palms again. Like she could will away the sooty stains. They might pass for evening gloves, if they didn’t look so veiny. But they don’t hurt. He’s asked her.

Precious thing, what on earth is wrong with you, to think there’s anything wrong with you?

“You--” Astarion stammers, brow furrowing as he begins again, incredulous. “What in all the heavens above and hells below could have ever possessed you of the notion that you’re cursed?”

The softness in his throat, his whispered words on fogged breath, curling quiet into the night air, that’s entirely her doing. Her undoing of so much of what Astarion thought was in his nature.

Naomi looks up at him, with an aged sort of sadness brimming beneath the quiet huff of her laugh. “It was all the dead people, dear.”

Astarion scoffs. “Darling, I’m hurt that you could think of my fine company as anything other than a blessing.”

“You are my silver lining,” she breathes back, as if her words themselves were fragile lace. Astarion feels the delicate brush of them over his neck. It grows suddenly taut, choking the notion of other words right out of him.

When his head rolls back to the ground again, something, perhaps that useless heart of his, is trying to punch its way straight through his chest. He feels winded, like he took a tumble without featherfall. Like she smacked him with a damn brick.

He is as much her unintended consequence as she is his. One that might’ve been impossible if fate was otherwise. Resplendent light, only made possible by ravenous shadows.

Silver linings.

And you are mine, he thinks, only to himself, as his hands find her hair again. Aren’t you?

#thank you all for the patience and support as I cross post from AO3 #astarion #astarion ancunin #tavstarion #astarion x tav #tav x astarion #bg3 fanfic #astarion fanfic #bg3 #naomi tavriel #midnight chimes #my writing

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bardic-inspo · 3 months

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WIP Wednesday

Tagged by the wonderful @deputyash. Thank you so much!

If anyone sees this and wants me to tag them to participate in future WIP memes, feel free to give this post over here a like.

Tagging back @electricshoebox, @locallegume, @bakuliwrites, @calico-heart, @totally-not-deacon, @kharonion, @halkuonn, @grenanigans, and @vixstarria if you'd like to share something you're working on (on whatever day you so choose). No worries if you'd rather not!

More from my ascended Astarion x Vampire Bride Tav smut fic, Blood in the Mortar. A bit NSFW (so be warned). Experimenting with headcanons of service dom Astarion and blood bride lore from some of the supplementary guides/handbooks folks have been discussing. More specifically, the idea of a mental link between vampires and their brides/grooms.

I feel like I've previewed and yammered about so much of this one already, but it is really keeping me motivated. 😶

The writing is rough (but the sex is mostly sweet):

Without warning, his grip tightens. Naomi stifles a huff of surprise as she’s taken down, marble kissing smooth to her spine. A pale hand cradles her head, cushioning her fall. In a blink, he’s hovering over her bare body and dipping down to catch her in a fever of a kiss. It’s a needy, sweltering latch of lips, tangy with her own sweetness as much as his. “Here?” She near-purrs, into his lips still sealed. She lets him feel the way the word alone makes her body tense. Waiting. Wanting. Their bond curls with it, crooked and beckoning in his head. The same way his fingers flexed a few minutes before, buried in the heat of her. A long breath passes out through his nose, his eyes sliding half shut. A smirk tugs at the corner of her mouth. But his head turns by just the barest hair, and Naomi’s attention follows after his. Music flutters, breathy, off the black and white keys. The piano stays a pretty picture of perfection, among the deaths little and large they’ve littered throughout the ballroom. “There.” His teeth swipe the angled edge of her ear. Naomi keens with the sting of it as she’s swept from the floor.

#astarion #ascended astarion #astarion ancunin #tavstarion #wip wednesday #my writing #naomi tavriel #otp: the ascendant and the siren #megh fights the page

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bardic-inspo · 7 months

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Thinking about romancing Astarion as a drow and (I forget what it was exactly) his surprised commentary about how the underdark is beautiful and Tav getting to show spawn Astarion where they're from and that a life without sun doesn't mean a life without color and light and happiness 👀

#i'm not normal about this game or these chatacters #bg3 #astarion #new tentative oc tag #naomi tavriel

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bardic-inspo · 1 month

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I tried to warn you when you were a child I told you not to get lost in the wild I sent omens and all kinds of signs I taught you melodies, poems, and rhymes

Though you've fooled all the rules, I am coming for you (You can run but you can't escape) Darkness brings evil things, oh, the reckoning begins (You will open the yawning grave)

Can't decide if Lord Huron just really fits with the fic I'm writing or if I've listened to certain Lord Huron songs so many times my brain produced a fic that fits them 😂

#it's a chicken or the egg sort of thing I think #midnight chimes #naomi tavriel #meet me in the woods is a big one for this fic too #bardic inspiration #Spotify

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bardic-inspo · 5 months

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MIDNIGHT CHIMES

An Astarion x Cursed!Tav Romance

[READ CHAPTER 4: DISSONANT WHISPERS]

Chapter WC: 4.6k | Chapter Summary:

[READ FROM BEGINNING]

Fic Summary:

#third time is a charm getting this to post and show up in tags #astarion #astarion ancunin #tavstarion #astarion x tav #tav x astarion #bg3 astarion #baldur's gate #bg3 #baldur's gate 3 #baldur's gate iii #bg3 tav #astarion fanfic #astarion romance #otp: you were doomed but just enough #naomi tavriel

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bardic-inspo · 4 months

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I know Tav/Durge doesn't really get their own tent in camp like the other companions do, but say they do have one? What's it like for your Tav/Durge? Color scheme? Messy/tidy? Any knick knacks or belongings around or just spartan and simple?

Naomi's is simple at first, because she's not used to being on the road and having to pack up/move so often. Something in a slate blue/gray or grayish purple to blend in better with rocks.

She starts being gifted collecting little music boxes, though, and eventually sets each one out very meticulously in its spot in her tent at each campsite. Also might find a broken instrument or two she hasn't fixed or replaced yet.

At first she's just got a simple bedroll, and then Astarion becomes more acutely aware that vampires are really cold to the touch and Gale gave her a blanket one time and she said thank you and he starts piling every blanket he finds into her tent when she's not looking because he's getting his cuddles damn it.

#tav #bg3 tav #durge #bg3 durge #the dark urge #Naomi Tavriel #astarion #bg3

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bardic-inspo · 2 months

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Midnight Chimes

Chapter Two: Moths to Flame

Pairing: Astarion x Cursed! Tav

✨Full Chapter List ✨BG3 Fic Masterlist ✨

Series Summary:

Chapter Preview:

“Have I left you speechless?” Astarion laughs like the sound of tinkling chimes. “No need to be shy, darling. It’s stunning. Truly.” “I thought you quite loathed me,” she says coolly. No matter how sweet he sounds, there’s still a sharpness to his stare that warns of claws. Maybe that’s why she hasn't moved an inch since she’s seen him.

Chapter CW: Minor/Supporting character death.

A/N: Cross-posting from AO3. Dividers by @cafekitsune.

✨ Click here if you prefer to read on AO3 ✨

“If I knew you’d be playing the role of dead weight, I would’ve left you for dead on the side of that road!”

If Astarion saved even half his venom for the gnolls tearing down this road, maybe they wouldn’t be in such dire straits.

Nevermind that Naomi and Shadowheart would’ve told Astarion to beat it before he could take another slice with that knife of his. The party’s Most Valuable Cleric isn’t exactly leaping to Naomi’s defense at the moment. As it is, none of them have much of a defense left at all.

Snapping jaws clamp to Shadowheart’s shield and drag, shunting it sideways. Magic flares, bright and scalding, from the half-elf’s hands. A screech shreds the air, the acrid stench of singed fur burning in Naomi’s nose. But the gnolls’ incessant cackling doesn’t falter.

Shadowheart stumbles backward with wet, slapping steps. “A little help, here!” She grunts through gritted teeth.

Karlach heeds her plea, flames leaping to life across her flesh. She swings her axe in a wide arc, but the gnolls jerk backwards and the blade only breezes over air. Their foes slink into a circle around her and Shadowheart, spitting.

Sweat beads across Naomi’s brow. She clutches the silver symbol chained around her neck -- an elven dancer, poised with a sword. Come on. Come on!

Silver flame snaps at the heels of a slavering gnoll. But it snuffs soon after it sparks. Harmless as a sneeze. Slitted eyes lock to hers. Maddening laughter mingles with a low, guttural growl.

“That’s it?!” Astarion’s exasperation hits a new octave. “That’s your contribution?!”

Naomi’s chest heaves. She drops back into cover behind the overturned cart, shoulder brushing Astarion’s bristling one. An arrow hisses past her ear. The ground sizzles where it splatters on impact, bare inches from her feet. Something snaps free beneath her ribs, like a breaking bowstring.

Nevermind all of this cleric shit, actually.

“Fuck it!” She snarls.

“Oh now, you’re throwing in the towel?” Astarion seethes. He nocks another arrow and shifts to shoot. “I was sure you’d set fire to it al--”

For a sparse, sacred second, Astarion’s livid glare gives way to eyes blown wide as moons. They track the quivering mote of magic hanging a breath from his nose as it steers an arrow safely past instead of through him. Even after the flute leaves Naomi’s lips, the hum sticks on her skin like static. His jaw drops slack, anger melted to awe. What started as a shout ends in a whisper only she can hear.

“--ready.”

Noise rushes in again. Karlach rushes the opening and arcs down with her axe. The gnoll cleaves. The weapon wrenches back with a sickening crunch. Blood splatters the dirt in webby strings.

Naomi pivots, forgoing cover and for the flute pressed close. Magic shivers across her lips, like the gentle caress of a lover. She shudders. The tremor builds, barreling down her neck, raising hairs in its wake, running through her ribs, to her feet, until the ground itself is shaking. A storm of claws rains from overhead as the gnolls lunge towards her. Thunder pulses from where she stands, sudden as a snap of fingers.

The gnolls fall, backs slapping sand. Heat lashes near Naomi’s cheek. Karlach swings again and makes a mess of them. The road’s a river of red, vined in viscera.

It’s over. But it isn’t quiet. A chorus of breath that can’t be caught aches in Naomi’s ears. Her heartbeat’s a rampant drum, pounding next to a melody that plays faintly in her mind. She can’t quite grasp the tune. But it lingers all the same, like a bruise she doesn’t remember earning.

She’s earned someone’s ire, apparently. Astarion’s glare comes to life once more with murderous vengeance. “You’re a fucking bard?! This whole time, you-- I fucking knew it!”

By the time they trudge back to camp -- beaten, bloody, but still breathing in spite of it all-- Astarion’s changed his tune.

“Well, well,” he tuts with a devilish gleam in his eye, “someone’s been holding out on us.”

Naomi trains her attention to the task at hand -- dinner. The meat starts to sizzle on its skewer. Not so different from those scarlet eyes searing into the back of her head. But other stares join Astarion’s, morphing into shadows cast long from the firelight. She doesn’t need to turn her cheek to know they’re waiting. All of them, at this point.

One of them isn’t so content to continue doing so.

“So, it seems that while you’re an absolutely abysmal cleric, you’re not a bad bard. I’d say I underestimated you,” Astarion muses dryly, “but given the evidence, I don’t know what other conclusion I could’ve drawn. Whatever else you are, you’re quite a good liar. Aren’t you?”

She spares him a sideways glance to find his arms crossed. Astarion doesn’t wait, he demands. An answer, attention, satisfaction. The rest of their crew beg the same, but they have the decency to do so in blessed silence.

It’s a virtue that eludes her, even as she tries to seek its sanctuary. Naomi rubs her throbbing temples. Still, the ringing in her ears doesn’t stifle. It prickles in the depths of her memory, in a melody both foreign and familiar. Gods, how does it go again?

Astarion clears his throat, expectant.

Naomi sighs tightly. “And I suppose that wounds you, you open, bleeding book.”

His cover hasn’t opened an inch in the weeks since their second meeting. Third, technically, if you count his apparent sighting of her on the nautiloid. But she’s seen enough to be sure it is a cover.

After all, she first saw ‘mister boring magistrate’ fishing in the Flophouse. As far as she could tell from her brief residency there, Fraygo’s housed foreigners, passersby, and people who wanted to rob them. If Astarion’s from the Gate as he says, it leaves little wonder as to what category he’d fall in.

“Ha!” His laughter comes pitchy. “On the contrary, I’m thoroughly entertained. I suppose that’s what a bard’s good for.”

Naomi’s jaw shifts, but before she can parry his backhanded commentary, a gentler voice enters the fray.

“We’ve all got our stories, our secrets, and our reasons for them,” Wyll interjects. “You don’t owe us every one of yours. But we do deserve to know where your loyalties lie.”

Naomi winces. The fire’s spitting, but it somehow stings far less than the warlock with the heart of gold wondering where her heart is at.

Astarion scoffs, hands shifting to his hips. “More importantly, I need to know you’re not holding back when you’re supposed to be watching my back!”

“Why were you?” Shadowheart’s voice cuts in, cool as steel. “Holding back?”

Naomi’s eyes flit to Shadowheart’s scar, so similar to the one Naomi has across her own nose. Her fingers twitch. She buries the urge to reach up to her own face to trace the shape of the scrape. Why were you holding back?

It didn’t end well the last time she played, she could say. Or at least, the last time she sang. She could say, ‘superstition’. But either way, she’d have to say so much more.

“It’s been a while since I played,” she settles on instead. “I grew up in an Eilistraeean temple, in an opening to the Underdark. Before all of this, I hadn’t ventured very far out onto the surface. I was only just starting to. This little adventure has been…strange in so many senses.”

Wyll’s expression softens. “You thought your goddess would protect you.”

Sure. Close enough. Naomi takes the cue, smiles sadly, and nods. Astarion spoils the moment with some strangled sound between a laugh and a snort. Like a dying horse.

A hand cuffs her shoulder. Naomi stiffens for a second before easing again. Gale kneels down beside her, plucking the skewer from between her fingers. An act of mercy, it turns out. She blinks, now noticing the blackened meat that’s been right in front of her and in the flames for far too long.

Oh. Naomi’s lips twitch ruefully. Crispy.

“A bard’s magic is arcane,” Gale says, taking a knife to carve off the worst of the char. “But we’ve all seen you wield divine power. Your goddess must still favor you.”

“Hardly,” Astarion mutters, faint with dwindling interest. He’s drifted halfway back to his tent, though his ears stay perked.

Gale arches a brow. “A great deal, I’d wager. Most deities are not so content to play ‘second fiddle’, so to speak. If a god gifts you powers, they usually expect you’ll use them effectively.”

“I swear I really am better with a fiddle,” Naomi says, sheepish.

“You’d be better at banging pots and pans than with sacred flame,” Shadowheart laughs without malice. “You’re not bad at healing, though.”

“Ouch,” Naomi pans. “I think I might need some.”

The wizard needs a more intellectual peace of mind, it seems. Their banter only deepens Gale’s worry lines.

“Eilistraee is the Dark Dancer,” Naomi tells him. “She’s a goddess of freedom, and music, and, well, dancing. She’d never punish me for this.”

She wouldn’t. Naomi swallows hard. Would she?

“If anything,” she says, shrugging her shoulders back, “she’s probably as relieved as the lot of you look.”

Gale nods, saying nothing, but thinking loud enough for Naomi to hear him without the help of the tadpole. He’s caught on something, like a gear that won’t budge. She teeths her cheek, pondering what has him hung up, when fresh heat prickles her skin.

Her eyes dart to the campfire, but Gale has it neatly tamed. It’s Karlach that’s crackling. The tiefling saunters up behind them.

“So, new you,” Karlach says, eyes alight with mischief, “what other tricks have you got up your sleeve?”

Before she can entertain an answer, Gale gives her one.

“I’m formally usurping you from dinner duties,” he says warmly. “My first command with my newfound authority is for you to regale us with song while I rescue our sustenance.”

Naomi offers an easy smile. “Your wish is my command, oh benevolent one.”

Naomi frees the flute from the fastenings at her belt, lifts the hollowed bone to her lips, and lets her breath flow. Music flows with it, playful and springy. It floods their little clearing in the woods, hushing the sounds of scurrying creatures.

Is this how it goes? No.

It’s not the melody haunting her head, but for a few moments’ time, she doesn’t feel so trapped in there. Vaguely, she feels her comrades watching her again as she plays, but as the music carries through the camp, it carries her mind away from them. Carries her away from tadpoles and gnolls and concerns of certain doom. They’re all fading sparks, drifting into nightfall. To dust, they all return.

Until her wandering, distant gaze meets a vermillion one, and it pins her back to the present. Astarion peers at her over a page he's no longer pretending to read. He’s got that look again, the one he wore when she cast cutting words and cast away the arrow intent on his demise. Such round eyes, softened in surprise. But they narrow, knife-like, a second later, as soon as he sees he’s been seen.

A sly smile curls over Astarion’s lips as her song bends with the smoke from the cookfire. It’s a small victory, maybe, but she’s not sure if it's his or hers.

The song dwindles. Naomi spies another set of glittering eyes that send her stomach plummeting. Lae’zel doesn’t just stare. She’s stabbing Naomi, surely, in some spiritual sense if not a literal one. Must not be keen on bards.

Naomi sets the flute away again. Karlach clears her throat pointedly.

“Erm, don’t take this the wrong way -- not that that wasn’t very lovely! It was! I was just wondering, do you have anymore, you know, fighting tricks?”

Naomi shrugs. “I can cast ‘stab’ as a cantrip.”

“You--”

The bugbear snarls through his teeth.

“--ruined--”

He grips the morningstar like a vice, taking swing to Astarion’s head. Still, snickers spill in a fountain from the elf’s lips. He can’t stem his tide of laughter. Not since they burst into the barn and found the bugbear and the ogre fucking over a haystack.

The flute fucks the bugbear, instead. The morningstar glances, harmless, over and above Astarion’s carefully coiffed curls.

“--my--”

Splinters burst from the board the bugbear breaks instead of the Gale he intended to. The flute screws him again.

“--rutting!”

And again. He’s left panting, winded, and dearly wanting.

“Oh that’s what that was supposed to be?” Naomi huffs. “Sounded like you stubbed a toe.” Her eyes drop to his bare member, still bared for all to see. “It looks like a stubby toe.”

That hit landed. She can see it in the crazed gleam that bulges in his eyes. The morningstar thumps, forgotten, at his furred feet. The bugbear lunges. The flute flies from her fingertips and crunches to ruin between his jaws. He spits out the pieces like loose teeth.

Naomi lets out a deflated groan. “See, this is why I didn’t pack the fucking fiddle.”

“Not so tricksy now!” He laughs darkly, lips parted in a too-wide grin.

Her back smacks boards. Hot, rancid breath clouds her cheek as the bugbear looms, boxing her in. Only for a moment. Naomi spies a tell-tale shimmer behind the bugbear’s back.

“Oh no,” she says with a smirk. “Now I’m much worse.”

Astarion’s knife sinks in. Blood sprays in a warm, wet rain across her neck. The bugbear’s face twists with the blade.

Her lips pucker, and a high, wavering whistle whisks her away. Mist shrouds her shoes as she fades. Naomi emerges again above the fray, poised on the junction of beams crossing beneath the pitched roof. A low woosh chases after her. Astarion unfurls from the fog on the beam’s other end, the soles of his boots glowing briefly blue.

He sets his sights on their larger quarry. Karlach’s kept the ogre at bay, but the beast bears down, relentless with fists and fury. Gale gives them a wide berth, working glittering fractals out of the air with a flourish and a biting incantation. Frost fans from his outstretched palms. His spell paints an ice slick beneath the ogre’s fumbling feet. Down she goes. Naomi braces against the aftershock. Debris patters her shoulders as the whole barn rattles.

Karlach tumbles down, too. The tiefling buckles, hissing as she grips the gash in her arm. Naomi’s whistle keens sweeter. When Karlach draws her hand away again, the wound’s drawn closed.

An arrow flits past her cheek. Naomi turns to see Astarion easing from his stance as the ogre breathes her last. Her one-time lover’s still stubbornly holding onto his, though.

A gargled cry echoes from down below. Naomi watches the wounded bugbear crawling among the scattered straw. Pitiful.

“Hey!” She calls. “Up here!”

His neck cranes, wild eyes burning at the sight of her overhead. Naomi’s tongue lies heavy in her mouth. The words are stones. She casts them with a pair of fingers. Middle ones, raised in turn.

“Up. Yours.”

Green light floods his skull, seeping from his eyes sockets, gushing from his lips. He shudders. And then he wilts, limp and lifeless.

He’s hardly mourned. Astarion’s breathy laughter spurts out of him, unbidden.

“That actually killed him?” He beams, but his eyes are dark and his voice scrapes low. “Oh, you’re an absolute menace.”

The praise rings in her ear. Like temple chimes. Or warning bells. Or, something else. A song, maybe. She can’t pin it down.

Sea spray slaps the cliffside near the coast, but it doesn’t drown the peeling cry of a lute plucked to misery. A shrill chorus comes with it. Naomi grimaces.

“Is that meant to be music?” Lae’zel’s face wrinkles in disgust.

“I didn’t think you knew the meaning,” Naomi mutters, picking her way up the slope.

“Likewise,” Lae’zel grumbles.

“It’s quite agonizing, isn’t it?” Astarion groans.

The culprit comes into view as they crest the hill. She’s a tiefling woman with violet skin and flowing hair decked in motley. A pretty picture of what a bard should be, if she wasn’t wilted over her own instrument.

“It’s-- it’s just stuck,” Naomi sighs, shaking her head.

The tiefling shoots a wary glance her way. “You’re right. But how did you know?”

“Besides the fact that poor lute is crying out for mercy?”

“Ugh. I know I’m butchering it with this stupid song,” the tiefling mutters, burying her head in her hands.

“It’s not stupid. It’s just…stuck,” Naomi says again. Like the sudden lump in Naomi’s throat that thickens, and doesn’t budge. She coughs to clear it, but the pressure remains. “Let’s start with the lyrics.”

But it doesn’t stop there. By sundown, Alfira’s pitched a tent in their camp and taken refuge by the fire. Her music’s mournful, but hopeful. Happy in the sad way of something good that’s happened before. But now, it’s done with.

Gale balks as Naomi reaches to stir the stew. She’s shooed off unceremoniously. Forever banned from dinner duty, it seems.

She paces, purposeless. Fluteless. Fidgeting. Cursed with idle hands. At least a devil’s workshop might put them to use. Sounds productive. This dwelling certainly isn’t.

What use is it, thinking about the Doom again? The tadpole is already in her brain. Doesn’t mean it has to be so incessantly on it.

And of course, their only hope, Halsin the druid, had to find himself in the middle of a goblin fortress. Something, someday should be easy. If it isn’t any of this. Tomorrow, they’ll attempt extraction. Which means tonight, there’s no use being sick about it.

But her ears are still ringing. Someone hands her stew. She sips it halfheartedly, and sets the rest away to cool indefinitely.

“Won’t you share a song of yours?” Alfira says some time later, with a pitying sort of smile.

Naomi sits on the stumps with her, heaving a weighty sigh. “Who’s to say I have any? You said yourself, you haven’t heard of me.”

“You helped me find the words for my music well enough. You’ve got something stuck, too. Don’t you?”

Naomi frowns. Yes, something stuck something awful. A little worm, wreaking havoc in her head. Among other things. Or, maybe the obvious thing is the only thing. Side effects of side-stepping ceremorphosis for too long.

Alfira shifts her lute in her lap. “How about I play, and you sing it if you know it?”

The first chord thrums. Naomi feels it stir beneath her sternum. Feels the shrill ache leave her ears at last. This isn’t what’s stuck. But, maybe it’s part of it. Her eyes slide shut, as if to sleep.

Naomi knows it. She knows the first note catches in her throat before it comes free, but she frees it anyway. She feels the butterfly fear flutter in her gut, and sings, still.

“Bare feet along the coast

Sand swallows the steps we’ve tread before

But you’ve made your mark

Like the silver tide that sunders the shore

Breaking waves and carving cliffs

Yielding to the sweeping sea

In the salt and in the stone

You’ve made your mark on me…”

It’s been a long time, she thinks, as the final verse closes, and silence comes again. It’s been a long time since she sang.

It’s about time. It was all a long time ago. It hasn’t happened since. It doesn’t have to happen again.

And it felt good. She lets out a long breath that drifts like a ghost. Gods, it felt good. She peels her nose to the simmering stars, shoulder blades sinking back and down.

Naomi blinks. She didn’t realize how much time slipped from her, sitting here, as the embers withered down to smoke plumes. She’s the only one that remains to keep the crickets company. Soft snores and sounds of slumber flit across the camp. Naomi stands, stiffness prickling in her legs.

“Quite the view. Isn’t it?”

Not alone, after all. She pivots, pulse kicking only to tumble right back down again.

“Astarion! You’re--”

Lounging. Just a few feet away. He lies with his arms propping his back, head tilted towards the sky, just as hers was. Basking. Moonlight melts in his curls and leaves a sheen on his cheeks. He looks made of marble; sharp edges lining supple muscle and smooth skin.

“I didn’t know you were there,” she finishes lamely.

“My apologies for startling you,” he says, not seeming sorry at all. “You seemed lost in thought. I found myself in much the same state. Reflecting on what tomorrow might bring when we find this druid.” His expression shifts, smirk fading with his brow bending in. “Will he know how to bring the tadpole under control? Will this little adventure of ours be over?”

“Honestly? I…” Naomi trails off, toying with the notion. Honesty hasn’t been her strong suit. So far. She takes a stab at it, anyway. “I doubt there’s a simple solution to something that’s so fucked to begin with.”

Astarion cocks his head. “You’re not one for faith, are you? I suppose that makes us kindred spirits. Perhaps that’s the real reason why you couldn’t keep with the cleric routine.”

The barb doesn’t feel like one, said so gently.

“You have a lovely voice, you know,” he says, soft as silk. “I hope this isn’t the only chance I’ll get to hear it.”

It might be. Naomi swallows, but her throat’s grown dry as a desert.

“Have I left you speechless?” He laughs like the sound of tinkling chimes. “No need to be shy, darling. It’s stunning. Truly.”

“I thought you quite loathed me,” she says coolly.

No matter how sweet he sounds, there’s still a sharpness to his stare that warns of claws. Maybe that’s why she hasn't moved an inch since she’s seen him.

“Not quite,” he says with a shake of his head. “I quite like what little of ‘you’ I’ve gotten to see. Better than whatever you were pretending to be. I’d like to see more of the real you, however tomorrow unfolds.”

So that’s what he means. He doesn’t want this to be an end. Naomi tilts her head. Why?

He stands in a lithe motion, fluid as a brushstroke. “And you’d like to see more of what the surface has to offer, I’m sure. I promise it’s not all illithids and imminent doom. There’s beauty here, if you know where to find it.” He drifts a step closer. And then another. “Art. Poetry. Music.”

Every word is crooned in a low timbre with a rasp at the edge. They sound like songs, the way he says them. Brimming with depths unknown and promises just below the surface. Same as his eyes, alight with an agenda she can’t quite clock.

Same as that night at the Flophouse, where she couldn’t shake his stare. What would’ve happened if something else hadn’t almost happened? What would he have done, if she came as close as they are now?

She should know better, now. He’s nearer than he’s ever been, aside from the times they’ve brushed by each other during their brushes with danger. And he’s pretty to listen to. A red flag all on its own. She should know that, at least.

“Alfira had it right, didn’t she?” Astarion says with a lift at the corner of his mouth. “You were stuck. And now you’re…” He closes his fingers to his palms and opens them again, casting them down to his sides. “...free as a bird.”

“And it suits you,” he says, wetting his lips. His gaze dips down and lingers for a moment before it fixes hers again. “This little transformation of yours.”

Noise rips to life in her ears. Naomi’s palms fly to her temples and press. But it doesn’t drown out. Bile burns the back of her throat. She spies a blur, shifting past Astarion’s shoulder.

“What is that?” She pants. “Alfira?”

Her pulse sprints. Panic pours adrenaline in her veins. Alfira’s tent is torn. Ribbons of it billow in the breeze. The stench of rot rolls with it. Naomi recoils. Not again. No.

There’s a shape, in the dark. Wet, like a puddle. Crumpled. Breaking, under gnashing teeth.

And another figure, hunched over the first. Pale. Spindly. Bony.

Astarion doesn’t budge. His brow wrinkles, annoyance cracking his facade. “I don’t hear--”

But the dead do. The creature’s head rolls upright with a sickening snap. The brush comes alive in sudden cacophonous clatter.

Astarion moves when she makes him. Naomi shoves his shoulders with as much force as she can muster. “Astarion -- look out!”

“Well,” Astarion says, with a hint of a smile and reproach in equal measure. “Looks like someone’s finally decided to rejoin the living.”

Naomi finds him with one knee propped, an arm draped over it, and his other leg dangling over the low stonework on the side of the bridge. A creek babbles beneath their feet. His knife glints by the barest light of the slivered moon, flipping once more before he stows it.

“I slept?” She asks, though she knows the answer.

“Like the dead,” he replies, with a smile that’s grown. It doesn’t match the flicker of worry that darts through his eyes, rabbit-quick, and then gone. Quick as Naomi’s heartbeat, still hammering. “Did you dream?”

“Mhm,” Naomi hums, forlorn. “Spiders again.” She saunters over to sit upon the stone beside him, swinging both legs over the side of the wall and letting them hang.

“Hm. Considering our daily dose of the macabre, perhaps that means it was a pleasant one, compared to what it could’ve been.”

The fire snaps behind them, festering in its final death throes. When she glances back at it, over her shoulder, there’s no flames to be seen. Only a flurry of sparks, bursting to fleeting life on a wayward breeze. The campsite’s quiet as the grave without another soul stirring.

In darkest night, she and Astarion can see better than most others in their camp. It used to irk him, getting voluntold for this shift of watch. He prefers to see the sunrise. But then, he decided, all on his own, he’d rather see the stars with her. So, he’d abandoned Gale’s educational company for finer sorts. His words, not hers.

There isn’t much to see, though. Even the moon’s turned her cheek, showing only a glimpse of it. Naomi scans the cliffs, surveying either end of their chokepoint on the road cutting through them. Not many places to run, should they find themselves surrounded. But there’s not many threats they wouldn’t see coming from up here.

Baldur’s Gate is still three sleeps away. Though, Naomi will take the trance for them, instead. If she has any say in it. She hadn’t meant to sleep at all, let alone into the start of her watch.

“I promise no more corpses came calling,” Astarions says with a searching gaze. “No more curses, and no more hungry shadows.”

Naomi’s attention follows the slope of own arm, to her palm, splayed, on the stone. No more spell stains on her skin, either. For now. Still, her gaze lingers, until a paler hand comes to lie over hers.

“What’s going on in that head of yours?” He murmurs.

Naomi swallows, but finds herself suddenly parched. For water. For words.

“Oh, don’t hurt yourself, dear,” he sighs, but it’s soft. “I think I can hear it well enough without the worm. You don’t think expunging a centuries-old darkness did the trick.”

Naomi dares a glance upwards. He speaks reassurance in the language of skepticism. But she catches a glimpse of anxiety again, passing like a phantom on his face before fading.

“You don’t think saving a cleric of Selune, rescuing the actual divine daughter of Selune, or wrenching Shadowheart from Shar’s grip exorcized any of your own demons.” He clicks his tongue. “Even though you killed a lot of already dead people.”

Astarion leans in, stoking familiar, feather-light anticipation in her gut. He stops as they come nearly nose-to-nose. Farther than her lips would like, but near enough to read her mind. “You need to be sure.”

“If I can be,” she says, weaker than she means to.

Gooseflesh wakes on her skin, brought to life by Astarion raising only a finger. His nail drags, just sharp enough to be sweet, up the column of her throat, sending a shiver down Naomi’s spine. His index presses beneath her chin, and lifts.

“Then sing for me.”

He didn’t ask for a frail whisper, but it’s all she has left to offer. “What do you want to hear?”

Just one finger, one little motion. And she’d offer him anything. He knows it. He has to know it.

“One of your songs,” he says at once. “The one you sang at Last Light.”

He knows exactly what he wants. Naomi’s chin still rests on his fingertip, but barely so, on a barely-there touch. Only her feet hang loose, but the whole of her feels weightless.

“I sang a lot of songs at Last Light,” she says, clearing the husk in her throat.

A pout wrinkles his perfection. “You know the one.”

A wry smile steals across her face. He knows it, too. Even though she hasn’t sung it since. His finger leaves her chin with a flick as the first note leaves her lips.

“When she laid her gaze on me

What I knew of warmth melted

Into honey-covered and sticky-sweet

Incessant, yearning, burning heat…”

And when she laid her gaze on me

I felt myself undone

For whatever I had been before

Was gone to dust forevermore…”

She sings it in elvish, the way she wrote it. She sings about a girl’s first time in the sun. About a silly little drow who confused freckles for death pox. It starts sweet. Hopeful. And then it aches with a swell.

Astarion draws his dagger, and draws watchful eyes over their surroundings.

“But when I stumbled back to shadowed halls

And gazed upon a looking glass

I found not love, but scalding sin

Written on my very skin…”

Whatever I had been before

Whatever I might have lived to be

Was gone to dust forevermore

The sunlight scorched the life from me...”

I drew my fists and damned her name

But still I bore my grief and shame

That I had traded night for light

That I must forsake her to save my life…”

The song ends where it started: hopeful. Like the way Astarion glances at her now. Wide-eyed, like he’s been wind-blown by wonder, wearing her favorite smile. The points of his fangs poke out from his lips by the barest bit.

He stows his dagger in its sheath again. But the pinprick of nerves stays sharp, needling beneath Naomi’s ribs.

“When dawn broke the dark didn’t waver

Nor did my heartbeat slow

I watched the sun rise from safety in shadows

And dared, again, to dance in the glow…”

And still, I lived, and still, I breathed

And still I bore the scars

But no others knew them by that pain

They said my freckles looked like stars…”

She laid her gaze on me again

And I was never the same

I laid to rest what I had been before

And when I end, I’ll be dust, evermore

But the great between is my domain.”

“Hm,” Astarion hums, fingers still rapping the rhythm on the stone. “Perhaps you were right, my dear. I daresay there’s an undead presence nearby that’s simply insurmountable. I don’t think we should trifle with that level of dark power. Best to cater to his whims.” His eyes flash, brimming with mischief, and the lightest nip of hunger. “Keep him sated, so to speak.”

“Don’t I already?” Naomi shoots him a sideways glance, but her wary eyes are quick to return to the darkened edge of her sightline.

“Mm. You are…”

Stuck in his throat, it seems. Seems a fair revenge, for how he’s made everything beneath her ribs feel like mush with just a look. Made her sing with one wag of a finger. Made her dare to sing again, at all.

“...too adorable,” he huffs with an accompanying eyeroll. “There’s nothing to be afraid of, darling. Look around,” he says with a wave of his arms. “It’s only me.”

It is. Just the two of them. But it hurts to look at him, just now. Like staring straight at the sun. She can feel the warmth he doesn’t speak, hear the part he doesn’t say. And you know I’d never hurt you. I love you.

Or, she wants to. Hear it. Maybe more than he wants to say it.

Naomi wavers where she sits. “It took a few hours, with A-Alfira--”

“We’re on watch. We’ve got the time, an arsenal of weapons, and alarm spells. And a cleric. A real one, with Selune on our side instead of Shar. Oh, and dare I forget,” he leans a whisper to her ear, the sound as sheer as a negligee, “a very limber bard. You must’ve heard of her.”

Briefly, his hand cups her cheek, kissing sweet, tingling coolness over the warmth flushed there. Naomi arches a brow, but it’s too late. It’s already over, and he already knows he’s found a new trick. And, it’s at least sort of working to quell the disquiet gnawing at her insides.

“I know you don’t believe it yet,” he says, his smile giving way to seriousness. “But I do. You’ve survived so much else. Why not this, too?”

Naomi gives the slightest shake of her head. “Because there is never a simple solution to something that is so fucked to begin with.”

“Well,” he says, chipper regardless, “then it’s a good thing there was absolutely nothing simple about lifting the shadow curse and shooing off all of those other pesky undead. There’s only room for one in the tent.”

He’s right. No more undead show up before the sun does. But still, some haunted song begs remembrance in the back of Naomi’s brain.

A/N: The fic settles into a more linear progression (less time hoppy) going forward from this chapter. Hope you enjoyed, would love to hear if you did! <3 <3

#astarion #astarion ancunin #astarion fanfic #astarion romance #astarion x tav #tav x astarion #bg3 fanfic #midnight chimes #naomi tavriel #my writing

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