chaos construct
pairing: astarion/tav
wordcount: 4869
content warnings: no in-depth descriptions, but mentions of astarion's life with cazador. no in-depth descriptions, but durge!tav remembers torture by kressa and is haunted by memories of orin (unnamed),
other tags: canon compliant, hurt/comfort, introspection, character study, codependency, blood drinking, gender neutral tav, the dark urge as player character
archiveofourown: here.
kiss prompt: ❛ 28 . a kiss over a scar . — here.
tag list: @azrielshadows1nger, @pandimoostuff, @faevi, @microskies, @foreverthemaraudersera, @queenofthespacesquids, @claryvoyantfray, @6doodlaang14, @anne-isnotokay, @itshimbotime, be added to the taglist here
summary: ‘It will be rotten work,’ you say softly. / ‘Not for me,’ Astarion promises. ‘I will relish in it.’
𝐈. ﹕previous fic 𝐈𝐈. ﹕next
You lean forward and look into the mirror. You take your time analyzing each and every inch of your unfamiliar reflection. Carefully, you trace the tip of your finger along the thousands upon thousands of thin white lines forever painted into your flesh. You follow the carvings from your bruised lips down between your swollen collar bones until you can no longer follow them. You slip your night shirt over your head and drop it aside unceremoniously, bracing yourself. Your eyes burn dangerously.
There.
Unrestricted by the burden of clothing, you can see it all clearly now.
You touch the scars that Kressa Bonedaughter gave you with violent, shaking hands. In truth, you’re not surprised you’ve never noticed them before. They’re practically translucent but they are there, and you can see them now, and no matter how many times you scrub at your skin to remove them, they will never be gone. You try to rub them away but all it does is make your skin irritated and sensitive.
In the sunlight, your scars are easier to find now that you know what you’re looking for. I wanted to keep you for myself, she had said, I opened you up endlessly with my scalpels, and got lost in your insides. Disgust causes your stomach to churn. Your dreams come back to haunt you. The piles of bodies. A flash of red hair and dead eyes. Knowing, somehow, what to do when Sovereign Spaw demanded Nere’s head. You were the butcher of Baldur’s Gate.
You push your fingers against your mouth and sob hysterically. The truth will always be a part of you now: The Urges, the scars, the pounding headaches, the feeling of possession. It’s horrible and bloody and repugnant and worst of all, real.
There is nothing you can do to take away what you’ve done or what you will do.
It frightens you.
You whip around accusatorially. Astarion doesn’t mean to startle you but the look on his face says he’s been trying to get your attention for a while. You snuck away from camp a while ago to sit in front of this old magical mirror, and he must’ve waited as long as he could before the worry over your disappearance overcame him. He joins your side wordlessly, but he doesn’t look at you directly. He watches you through the mirror with muted fascination, torn between sorrow, between mourning . His expression is so twisted that you almost feel like reassuring him that everything is going to be okay. But you don’t know. You don’t know if you’ll be just fine. You can’t find the words.
You feel very silly all of a sudden.
You do your best to wipe your fingers across your face, smudging your tears down your cheeks and across into your hair. You wipe your hands on your pants and try to calm your shuddering breaths but it’s almost impossible. The air around you is too hot and too cold, and you can’t tell if Astarion is looking at you with pity because you disgust him or if he’s looking at you because he thinks he has to comfort you.
You never asked for this. You never desired the truth of what you were. You wanted it to disappear before anything became real. You turn away from him, trying to force your expression into something more neutral. All you can see is imaginary blood on your hands. You put your face in your hands and hiccup.
‘Don’t you dare hide,’ Astarion says. ‘Not from me.’
He’s gotten touchier since the day he confessed to you. Despite how hurt you had felt at some of the truth, you held him throughout the night until you had fallen asleep first, and when you had woken up, Astarion had still been curled in your grip without you ever having to beg him to stay. Now, he’s the one sliding his fingers across your shoulders so that he can hold you ever so gently in his arms. He presses his face into your hair. His grip is loose enough that you could run away if you wanted to, but you don’t — you never want to and you don’t think you ever will. You want to be comforted.
‘Talk to me, please,’ he says, voice strained.
‘What is there to talk about?’ you ask hollowly.
Astarion clicks his tongue against his teeth behind you and presses a tender kiss to the top knob of your spine, his breath warm against your chilled skin. You want to melt back into his touch, but the fear has caused your body to remain rigid. You wait for another headache to overtake you.
‘There is plenty to talk about,’ Astarion insists. He’s trying to not pester you, but patience isn’t a strong suit of his. ‘What are you thinking, my love? What are you feeling?’
You feel sick. ‘I’m a monster.’
‘Ironic,’ he quips.
‘You said it yourself,’ you say thickly. ‘You said that there are more stories about Bhaalspawn in Baldur’s Gate than there are vampires. Who knows what I’ve done, and I can’t even remember it all.’
His thin patience finally snaps. ‘Oh, stop it. If you want to be some terrible and frightening thing, so be it. Be a beast! But remember who you are talking to. You don’t get to sulk and mope and pout.’ He sounds resigned. ‘You don’t get to be worse without me and I don’t get to be better without you. It is our deal. Never one without the other.’
‘I almost killed you that night — ’
Astarion bites you, very gently, on the shoulder. ‘I almost did the same to you,’ he warns. ‘This isn’t a competition, you know. I don’t care about what has happened. I’m more interested in the future.’
You almost feel insulated with how blasé he is being about your recent discoveries. You dig your fingers into your own arms and try to formulate your thoughts carefully, but even you can feel how you’re trembling. Carefully, you lean back into his chest with an overwhelmed sigh and let him pamper you. You don’t have to look to know that he’s watching you in the mirror. Astarion is determined to rub warmth back into your body, and you let his calloused hands roam without complaint. Somehow, you’re relieved he still wants to touch you.
All at once, you feel very tired. You’ve tried hard to not allow yourself to feel overwhelmed ever since the crash but it has been weeks and weeks of nothing but bad news. The more you learn, the more exhausted you feel, and the despair has bundled itself like a painful fracture in your ribcage. It hurts to breathe.
Every day you wonder how much further you’ll be drug down into the undergrowth. Elder brains, Bhaalspawn, avatars of gods and their whims… Astarion presses a sore bruise against your side and catches the side of your head with his mouth, delicately kissing the curve of your ear while you flinch away from his touch. You peer at him anxiously.
‘I still remember what it felt like when I awoke,’ Astarion explains quietly. ‘My fingers ached from the digging, and I had cried myself to the point where I must have looked undesirable when I finally rose above my grave. Snot, tears, mud and gore from my change clinging to my skin. But unlike you, I could not see what I looked like. I had to wonder for years if my hair looked different or if my eyes had changed color. I knew they had, but I wanted to deny it, to deny him what he had made me. I knew I was a monster and I let that fear paralyze me for centuries.
‘I was a toy for when Cazador was bored. I was a weapon for when he needed blood. I was a creature for when he desired humiliation. Being nothing more than a spawn turned me into something almost unrecognizable. As horrible as the nautiloid was, as vile as this parasite is, I can’t help but feel as though it was somehow a blessing. I could have stayed angry. I could have betrayed you, stolen the other tadpoles and ran away into the night with nothing but power on my mind. But the nautiloid gave me something I never thought I would be allowed to have in this world. It gave me you, and I cannot lose you now. Do you understand?
‘You do not have to be a toy. You do not have to be a weapon. You do not have to be a creature. You know who you are now, and that is what matters in this world. I did not betray you then and I will not betray you now, so you must stay with me, my love. You mustn’t go somewhere I cannot follow you. You and I can beat this together so long as you believe in us .
‘I wish it were different for you, of course,’ he continues, and his tone is so anguished your heart squeezes itself into impossible shapes. ‘I wish I could sweep my hand across your belly and these scars would fade, but more than that, I want — I want you to realize you are alive , that these scars are reminders of who you were, but not of who you will be.’ Astarion digs his fingers into your flesh and you watch your skin against his, as he drags his hand across one of the more obvious scars that Kressa had left you. ‘If you wish to tear this world asunder, I am your weapon. If you wish to preserve it, I am its guardian.’
Astarion’s hand leaves your waist to grip your chin, forcing you to look at your own reflection. His thumb cradles your bottom lip and his other fingers splay against your cheek and jaw. He is protecting you from yourself better than your Guardian ever could. What he sees when he looks at you is not the wretched blood you’ve been cursed to bear, but the person you have become since forgetting. Even if your memories were to come in all at once tomorrow, Astarion would not care. If your urges became too much to ignore, he would not care.
You turn your head to force your eyes to meet his. You realize with a frightening hunger that you love him. You love him, and he loves you truly, and this was always meant to happen.
‘If you are to become Death, allow me to be your Dark Consort,’ Astarion whispers.
You swallow. ‘What if I want to be Life and create a new world in my image?’
‘I am your Arbiter of Souls,’ he vows, ‘and I will taste your ripe seed to see your fruit bloom.’
You feel the rush of heat sliding from your stomach into your cheeks before he even finishes. After all, everything you have done has led up to this. Your unyielding devotion. His unwavering faith. Admittedly, it’s an enticing thought. That you, in all your power, could rise to godhood as though it were nothing and slaughter the old pantheon as though they were nothing. Astarion would be there by your side to bask in the glory of your immortality.
You’re so very tempted…
And Astarion only serves to tempt you further. He begins to take in every single one of your scars like you had before, only with his mouth instead of his hands, tracing the pale lines with plentiful kisses and his tongue. He mouths at your flesh as though he has never tasted your skin before, but he has, and you know he has. Even after all this time, he still favors your taste more than anything else.
Are you hungry? You can tell that it’s been a while for him from the way his hands flex with care to avoid bruising you. His hand grabs your throat again, his thumb pressed uncomfortably under your jaw. He shows great restraint with how he handles you. You could offer, but the words are caught in your throat. Are you hungry? Your eyes flutter closed and you imagine what the world would be like if Astarion drank you dry and replaced your blood with his until the curse of you is gone and the curse of him begins. Are you hungry? You try to push the thoughts away.
Ravenous, you think.
There’s something different in the air tonight.
It’s almost soothing the way that Astarion feeds on your agony. It’s as though he means to eat your desperation, to pull it from your muscles until there’s nothing left to eat. He busies himself in your body, drunk on how you’re malleable for him, intoxicated by the way you give into his whims as he twists and turns your body to look at the different scarring in the light of day. He doesn’t seem to care about anything else rather than appraising your body like a priest who intends on making a relic based on your physique.
And, if you’re being painfully honest, his touch is a welcome distraction from how overwhelmed you felt when you were alone. You did the same thing to him once, constantly poking and prodding about his vampirism. You remember his infinite patience. Astarion had tolerated the way you stuck your fingers in his mouth, spurned on only because he let you press your fingers against his teeth without complaint. He savored the way you apologized for pricking your finger on his canine just because you wanted to see what it would take to make that restraint snap.
Astarion runs his hands down your sides and memorizes every single line left in your flesh. You watch as he grinds his teeth to keep from doing anything impulsive. He desires you so distinctively. If you were to look, you would recognize how glazed over his eyes were and what that meant. He’s trying for you.
‘What if you grow tired of taking care of your Messiah?’ you ask to divert his attention from your throat.
‘What kind of Disciple would grow tired of their Purpose?’ Astarion counters easily. He raises his chin defiantly. ‘I would never grow tired of the God I chose.’
You would have been skeptical before, but Astarion seems intent on making you a believer of your own regime. For a brief moment, you think you ought to be concerned that this is another manipulation — an unapologetic grab for power at your expense. You know better.
Astarion is building a shrine between your ribs, in your marrow and in your sinew. With his loving hands, he shapes you into the Temple of Bhaal anew. Your only task is to dethrone your father and take back the autonomy which ought to have been yours from the beginning. Like the Nightsong from Balthazar. Like Isobel from Ketheric. Like a lamb at a slaughter.
Your flesh is the bread and your blood the wine and Astarion is the most devout of your followers. Not because you saved him for perdition or because you tore apart the hells to save him while he rotted in his grave, but because of the life you have given him in the aftermath of his misery. You are the taste of freedom he so eagerly covets. You are the miracle he has yearned for ever since he pressed you into the leaves in the wilds that first night. You were his from the first taste.
‘It will be rotten work,’ you say softly.
‘Not for me,’ Astarion promises. ‘I will relish in it.’
‘For how long?’
‘For however long it takes,’ he says, and he means it. There’s no coy playfulness behind his words, only the intent itself. ‘I can be devout, you know. I will wash your feet and your hair, and write a scripture so beautiful even the Lady of Loss would be jealous of the devotion.’
Before, you might have considered these promises one of Astarion’s wild whims. One of his techniques used to draw in the unsuspecting, but you have always been something more than a rabbit for the fox to chase. The underlying hum in his voice is the power of the covenant he preaches. These might have been words months ago, but not to you, never to you. This is as sincere as Astarion can be. A genuine oath that rivals the words of a paladin’s honor. He lays his lust bare in your chest.
You slide to your knees with Astarion kneeling behind you. He grabs you by the throat again, and though he tries to be as gentle as he can, you can’t help but gasp at the roughness. He forces you to look at yourself, to look beyond the scars and at the future ahead of you.
You lean into his touch. He’ll never fully understand why, and that’s okay with you. For now, this is enough to keep you content. His hand around your neck, his other tracing every scar you’ve ever received, not even pausing over the recent scrapes and bruises from the battle with Ketheric in the very depths of your personal hell. Astarion has a touch that slowly consumes you — that devours you until there is nothing left. You tilt your head back against his shoulder and allow him to witness everything you have to offer.
Damn the hells.
Damn the heavens.
Damn everything beyond.
Astarion does not believe in gods. He does not believe in the kindness of men. If anyone else were to offer him a gentle hand, he would flinch away from the touch in disgust. But it is your hand that is outstretched and he takes it willingly in a marriage of trust. Now your soul rests alongside his, trapped in a cage of your making, as beautiful as a prized canary to be kept in a gilded manse. Together is where you belong.
‘Are we sinning?’ you ask.
He hums in consideration, and strokes your pulse absentmindedly. He bites at your neck again without breaking the skin and inhales. You close your eyes and know the truth.
‘I’m afraid this time we are, my love,’ Astarion confesses. ‘We are passionate heretics, you and I. No other word is as sacred as the one we have to seek to build.’
‘What will become of us?’ you ask.
He laughs against your skin and nuzzles into it. His breath tickles your skin and causes it to rise. Without thinking, he bites down on your shoulder again and groans when you cry softly.
‘What does it matter?’ he murmurs. ‘All we have in the world is us. Let them come.’
‘Are we sinners?’
‘Oh, yes,’ he admits. ‘I’ve been a sinner for quite some time. Did you know — Did you know your blood sings for me?’
‘Drink from me,’ you say. ‘A good consort should be strong at all times. Are you weak, Astarion?’
You feel his grin.
‘I am frail, indisposed, feeble without you,’ he says. ‘I am nothing if you are not by my side.’
‘You should say it again.’
‘Why, you’re being cheeky,’ Astarion laughs. He bites you with intent this time and draws blood. You look at yourself, at the heat in your cheeks. ‘I — am — nothing — without — you.’
There is nothing more you desire than being consumed. It’s different now. You might have sought Astarion’s warmth once before, but now you seek for something else underneath his practiced exterior. You are the illithid parasite on a hunt of sustenance, and you choose the way he mouths at your skin.
‘Now,’ he muses, ‘let me worship at your altar.’
Instead of biting down into your skin to continue to feed, he trails a line of kisses across your back and the edge of your neck. Over and over, he follows a path with his fingers first and followed by his mouth as if kissing the scars will cause them to fade into oblivion. It’s such a contrast to your conversation you don’t know where to begin. This is the intimacy Astarion chooses to show you.
Nothing else matters.
Baldur’s Gate does not matter. The Elder Brain does not matter. There is only one thing that Astarion seeks. Your happiness and comfort, and Astarion hunts for them with every kiss and thoughtful touch that the dedication makes you feel as though you’re fit to burst. No one has ever done that for you, not in this lifetime and the lifetime of whoever you were before . Your hands were calloused and for murder, not for love. You keep reaching for it.
What is love if not these selfish, unholy desires? When you close your eyes to dream, you imagine Astarion and his silver-white hair over you haloed by intense divinity, his cerise gaze unwavering, this intense loyalty, his practiced laughter and the gentle lines of laughter around his eyes. These dreams drown out the nightmares and the fear. Sceleritas Fel cannot take that from you.
You will not let Bhaal win.
Cazador made Astarion with the purpose of creating a lamb for the slaughter. Bhaal created you as the knife to be used in sacrifice. You would make them both pay for this betrayal of innocence. They have twisted you into something unrecognizable. Astarion might have bit out your throat once upon a time, but now he kisses the back of your hand and watches your expression carefully for any sign of discomfort. You have reminded him of the man he could have been.
‘I do not want you to hate yourself like I have hated myself,’ Astarion tells you, eyes troubled. ‘That isn’t to say you cannot grieve, but you mustn’t become lost. I need you here with me.’
‘You’re not afraid of me, are you?’ you ask. ‘Even though I…’
‘I will never be afraid of you,’ he vows, ‘but to be afraid for you, to worry…’
‘There are still things I want to do,’ you tell him.
You think of the red-haired woman who stood next to Gortash and Ketheric, and something about her causes the tadpole to move uncomfortably in your skull. You flinch at it and press your palm against your eye as if that will stop it. You remember something , but it’s hard to think, hard to follow.
Astarion smoothes his hands down your sides and rests them on your hips, peering over your shoulder at something you cannot see. You watch the worry slowly leave his face until there’s nothing left but smooth acceptance, as if he too is coming to terms with what it means now that the truth of what you are has come into play.
Bhaalspawn.
Not just a spawn, but the favored child of Bhaal, inheritor of the throne of murder.
Underneath that mask, you are still you. The person you have created who is kind, who laughs and plays with tiefling children, who steals stuffed animals to give as gifts to Karlach and encourages Lae’zel to find the truth of Orpheus, who stood with Shadowheart before the Nightsong and encouraged her to choose her own fate, who willingly wades through the depravity of a mindflayer den to find Wyll’s father, who does not want to be another mistake for Jaheira to clean up, who wants to mend broken bones with Halsin, who wants to drink wine with Gale and listen to his stories of Tara.
The person you are now knows not the designs your father had in store. You are innocence reborn and safe from his defiled image. You cannot remember the cruelties of your past, and though you know that doesn’t erase them, it does bring a mild relief. The only proof you have of your sickness are the nightmares that plague you on the nights when your love is not enough of a salvation.
Astarion is devoted to you, as you are to him, as you always have been. You lean into his arms and allow him to kiss the back of your wrist before he embraces you once more, tucking his eyes against your neck so that he no longer has to bear the burden of understanding his reflection will never appear next to yours, no matter how hard you both seek it in the magic mirror. Your throat tightens painfully.
‘Thank you,’ you tell him softly.
‘I couldn’t leave you to your despair alone,’ Astarion says with a hopeless shrug. ‘The thought of you suffering the same as I… I brooded over my own existence for two hundred years with no one to comfort me.’ He mourns carefully. ‘I couldn’t let that happen again. Not to you.’
He takes your hand in his and presses on your knuckles, forcing your fingers to flex against their will. He turns your palm over in hand and stares at the callouses. It's as though he’s admiring a cat, your nails now your claws, his thumb massaging the tension in your palm so your fingers tremble slightly.
‘I’d have let it happen to Gale,’ he says off-handedly. You snort. ‘But not to you,’ he clarifies, dropping your hand and kissing your cheek. ‘I love you too much.’
He always says I love you so painstakingly soft as if it’s the first time he’s ever uttered the words. And with the proper meaning, you know it is. Astarion’s love is a slow molten fire that covers everything. It could be destructive if you let it, but you build with it and twist underneath the heat to forge something greater. Everything is so intense between you as if a chord pulled taut. The littlest bump sends it vibrating and you get lost in the sensation. You want him to say it again.
‘I love you,’ Astarion says, voice ravaged. ‘Whether you are pious or irreligious.’
You think of him as a pioneer of a new religion. He distracts you with the gentlest of kisses against the tip of your ear.
‘Are we sinning?’ you ask again.
‘We are sinning deliciously,’ he tells you sincerely.
You would be a liar if you pretended like it didn’t excite you. You have a chance to hold a new world in the palm of your hands with an executioner by your side. You make your decision — If there is to be a God of Creation, you would remake the world in your image. Jergal would rise back from obscurity, no longer embarrassed by his despised successors. You see a flash of red hair and chase it through the darkness, no longer afraid.
‘Drink,’ you whisper to him. ‘I want you to.’
Astarion tilts your chin to the side and bites down onto your neck with great care. It always hurts when he penetrates you for the first time, but by now, he’s learned to not be such a messy eater. These are the new scars that you accept. This is the person you seek to become. You close your eyes and relax into the feeling of sharp teeth and spit, and it’s like he sucks the venom from your veins. You float weightlessly as he seeks his fill.
He plucks your fruit easily with the prettiest of hands. Astarion swipes the goodness of you and brushes it against his lips, tasting it with the tip of his tongue and shivering at the flavor. He treats every time he feeds from you as if it is the first time. He savors your blood, is made man by your blood, until the pale red glow in his eyes fades into something more human . These eyes are the eyes that belong to your angel of death. You welcome it.
There are still battles to come, but you no longer feel as overwhelmed as you had this morning when you awoke with sickness in your stomach and your friends staring at you in a cautious, distant manner. There is now semblance of hope burrowed in your chest where your heart once was.
You say, ‘I want you to be there when I make a new kingdom.’
It means:
At the end of the world, it will be you and me and our memories, our friends and allies, our souls. You twine your fingers with his and let him manipulate you so that you’re facing one another. You no longer seek the mirror for encouragement.
It would not matter if it was this year or in one hundred years. The only certainty in life is that this was what you wanted. Astarion’s honest eyes and searching hands. You could turn into a mindflayer tomorrow and your last thought would not be of your doom and terror, but of this delicate flower you hold in your palms. It has sprouted from nothing with only tears as encouragement, and now it is your turn to be buried, to transform into something beyond your recognition. Only, when you dig your way through layers of dirt and brick, you would not be greeted by nothingness.
Astarion kisses you once, his mouth so tender it’s almost heartbreaking, and then again. He grazes your bottom lip with his teeth and bumps his nose with yours affectionately, murmuring, ‘Yes, my God of Murder.’
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RELEASES | ANAKIN SKYWALKER
Synopsis: After you and Padme lost in the Senate to people with nothing but greed occupying their thoughts, you found yourself in need of a cigarette to push your building anxiety from the day away.
Warnings: gender-neutral reader, smoking, fluff. W/C: 1113
Notes: I believe cigarettes/cigars exist in the star wars universe but correct me if i'm wrong. re-posting this shit
star wars masterlist
A puff of smoke escapes your mouth as you draw the stick to your lips, inhaling the addictive smell of smoke as it enters your lungs. It had been a long day. The Senate was merciless, pushing for the funding of a million more clone troopers. The debate had droned on for hours, heated conversations with inadequate words flying left and right. You were wholeheartedly with Padme on this one, fighting alongside her while the Senate descended into a chaos even the chancellor couldn't even control. Finally, the debate ended with the majority voting for the production of more clones, leaving you utterly defeated.
Madness, it was all madness.
The smoke trailed through the air, dissipating moments later in the busy city of Coruscant. Your balcony provided a grand view only a few got to bear witness, and while you couldn't deny the beauty of the neon lights, speeders flying by, and the faint sound of music with the hint of rushing wind, it all made you feel incredibly alone— a planet full of billions, yet you were smoking alone on a Saturday night.
"I didn't realize you smoked." You didn't need to turn around to know who it was. His footsteps drew nearer before stopping next to you. His arms slid around your waist, folding themselves around your midsection as he laid his head on your shoulder.
"We've all got our releases Ani," you quipped, assisting the half-lit cigarette in your hands, tapping the bit of ash that accumulated in the wind.
"I heard what happened in the Senate."
"I'm sure you did. I would be surprised if you didn't." Exhale. The last thing you wanted to talk about with Anakin was what occurred. The people pushing their agendas made you sick to your stomach. Their unwillingness to aid other systems, their insistence on feeding the war, their closed ears to negotiations- Fuck. You were getting too worked up about this.
Anakin could sense your frustration rolling off of you in waves, and it unnerved him to see you so worked up. You always kept your emotions close to your chest no matter how much Anakin insisted you open up, and oh, how he wished you would open your heart to him. You had let him into your heart when you first declared your love for each other, and with each passing day, he delved deeper into the refuge of it, but now it felt as though you were trying to shut him out. He didn't let that discourage him as he pressed a kiss to your collarbone. You sighed, tilting your head back so he had unrestricted access. You felt Anakin's mouth curl into a smile as he removed his lips, only to press another kiss higher up. He left a trail of kisses up your neck, making sure to elicit a sigh or a shuddering breath each time he found a spot that spiked pleasure down your spine. His lips suckled the skin of your neck, his teeth scraping against it, drawing a whimper from your lips. Your cigarette was long forgotten in your hand as Anakin licked the tender spot to make up for the hickey he drew on your skin.
His hands remained steady while his lips did all the work, and when he finally reached your jawline, he stopped.
"I love you," he whispered on your skin, and all the uncertainty and perturbation you had amassed throughout the day dissolved like smoke in the air. Instead, you felt his strong back, calloused hands from years of labor, and the warmth of his breath against your skin, which sent goosebumps down your arms. You felt entirely at peace.
"I love you too," you breathed, and Anakin's hands squeezed your waist a tad tighter, pressing himself impossibly closer to you, caging you between the rail and him. You felt his eyes linger on the cigarette between your fingers, somehow not burned out yet.
"Do you wanna try?" You offer it to him, and a hand leaves your body, taking the cigarette from you. You twist your figure around so your chest faces him as he brings the stick to his lips. He inhales, and his face twists into a sour expression before he coughs, covering his mouth while you vainly try to suppress a girlish smile pulling tight at your cheeks.
He hands it back to you, and you take a hit, blowing the smoke high into the night sky. Anakin watches with fascination at your gracefulness. How could someone look so alluring? The arch of your neck, the pout of your lips, your eyes shut in bliss— Anakin stopped himself, gulping to suppress his desire and savor the moment of you beside him before you snuff the smoking stick out on the rail.
"That was awful. I don't think Obi-Wan would approve."
A smile breaks across your face at Anakin's response, and you erupt into a fit of laughter, resting your head on Anakin's chest while your body shakes with the force of your giggles. Anakin finds a smile tugging on the corners of his mouth at your jovial expression, something he would never miss seeing. He pulled you into his chest, spinning the both of you around. Your laughter grew in intensity, and Anakin found himself joining you.
It was just you and him, under the cover of the stars, free from every burden and responsibility, laughing with the promise of tomorrow as Anakin ushered you inside. He playfully placed an array of kisses over your face as you squealed, his hands finding the dip of your waist. Anakin tried to hold you still, but you were laughing, attempting to squirm your way out of his grip every time he placed yet another sloppy kiss. Finally, you ducked your head, but Anakin spun you around, plopping even more ecstatic kisses on each inch of your face. Although the action appeared light-hearted, he ensured each press of his lips was filled with every meaningful emotion he harbored for you, pouring every instance and feeling into his affection.
He bestowed a final peck on your lips, his teeth pulling on your bottom lip before letting it go with a wet pop.
"Beautiful," he whispered, and if it was possible, your love for him grew even more profound. "My beautiful."
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