There he is at long last, his sire. Possessed of conviction like none other, limitlessly devoted to the path of his own perserverance— and understand, though Astarion always thrills to feel the essence of command wash over him, this isn't strictly about power: there's so much more to it than that (reducing such a complex balance down to the shiver that occasionally runs up his spine when Vakares goes utterly adamantine would be like calling a garnet an apple just because it's red). In moments like these, he's lucent, his darling. Without daylight. Without moonlight. So steeped in his own indelibility that even a cold cynic like Astarion finds himself hanging on every word. And under the brightness of an ember stare undaunted, suddenly it's not a joke anymore—not a cruel insult spat out at Astarion's feet— but a challenge. one more task set before a firstsired capable enough to leave if he so desired it.
And isn't that the underlying message for a mind as infinitely fixated as Astarion's? You could leave, Fenris could never— ]
I could leave. [Astarion reiterates softly. Breath still in his throat, book already on the floor, entirely unharmed aside from those small, clinging little puncture marks pushed in against its cover— pouring himself deeper into Vakares' touch. Wending against his chest like a thing called home at dusk. Nuzzling at everything in reach.]
Probably should, in fact. Your empire always was a sinking ship.
[(No, he couldn't leave. He won't leave; written in the fault lines of this exchange from the trail of pettier destruction strewn about to the way he draws in close. Someone inclined to run would've just run.
Particularly now, at the end of all sheltered surety.)]
....but then I can't trust my younger counterpart to leave you anything to wake up to, can I?
[Those talons alight with gentleness when they move to catch his chin, wild and yet— not. The tensity of a creature only tame by its own volition, deigning to tolerate the mercy of close comfort.
[How his selfish heart aches to feel Astarion nuzzling against him. Slow relief washes over him, a tension he'd only half-realized he was holding ebbing from his frame as he wraps his arms around his beloved. Here you are, come here, and he knows all isn't suddenly forgiven, but nor does it have to be. It's enough that Astarion at least sees the shape of his plan; it's enough that he knows Vakares did not do this to him to humiliate or hurt, nor acted out of a thoughtless kind of cruelty. It's enough to hold him right now, on the eve of his departure.
There you are. He returns each fierce nuzzle with one of his own: kissing the top of Astarion's head again and again, nosing against silver curls as he soaks up every bit of him. Here you are, his darling. His beloved firstsired. His consort, his Astarion, so loved and so longed for, here you are.
And when clawed fingers catch his chin, he draws back, willingly going where Astarion leads: his concession. A concession, too: he does not correct that teasing little comment. Let Astarion have his biting remarks; Vakares has never demanded complete obedience from either of them.]
And with you leading the way . . . what will I wake to find my empire has become, I wonder.
[He really is quite curious. Every coven is different, just as every vampire is; whatever is to come, their coven will change. Astarion and Fenris will have their own preferences and ways of doing things— and Vakares is eager to see how they flourish when offered that kind of power.
More sincerely, then:]
You could leave, Astarion. You could have for centuries now.
But I am more glad than I can say that you won't.
[Oh, his darling. His precious consort, his little gemstone so very loved . . . gently, he leads Astarion towards one of those overstuffed armchairs. Come here, tugging him into his lap as he has a thousand times before. Come here, precious thing, and he can still remember the very first time he did it. All those years ago, back when it had just been the two of them . . . he does not rue the present, but he does miss the past sometimes.]
Now tell me, my little gem: shall I still step into the sun?
[It's not a rebuke. It really isn't. Rather: it's a gentle nudge, trying to gauge his consort's mood. Are you still angry, are you still upset, and it's all right if he is. It's all right if they work it out in one last rut (for they have done that before, Astarion viciously biting as he fucks him until his anger ebbs) or if Astarion wants to lay out his grievances one by one . . . but he does not want to let such things lie until he's certain they're through with it.]
On those roaming fingers— so mild that it doesn't even begin to break skin, let alone bruise it. Astarion's viperish hastisement so contextually gentle that it lacks teeth of its own beyond the pointed edges of harsh fangs; yes, he's fussy still. Oh yes, he's resentful of necessity, and bitter about what he'll lose in the process of attending it— but even so.]
Don't you dare.
[Wretched sire so cherished beyond measure, how dare he make him consider the possibility of something so unthinkable (never mind that it was Astarion who'd brought it up to begin with); how dare you, precious thing. Outline of my heart. Mooring cage I'll never flee. How dare he even bring that up now, when everything tangible is wading through the gaps of lax entanglement, nested softly under the press of clothed thighs and shifted ankles: chest-to-chest in ways both awkwardly undignified and artistically bewitching— unafraid of how they might look to the outside world. Lax like animals in repose are almost boneless, an arm draped here or a leg there, faces close enough together that false breath pools.]
I ought to bite your pretty tongue out for that glibness.
Keep it as a souvenir. [A kiss as sharp as spiced wine finding its way to the supple center of those lips. He's always been more inclined to physicality than soothing chatter when it comes to all sincerity; keeping hold of Vakares' jaw to press it upright in his grip, tilting only so far as it takes to work a warming little path of bitemarks and bruises down the frontside of that unattended throat. Incandescent seconds involving the satisfying give of vulnerable skin caught between parted lips (and fangs, and the roiling tip of his tongue) passing as if they were weighted minutes.
Oh, never doubt Astarion loves his sire. But despite the hierarchy instilled in their kind by default, he isn't slavishly servile in regards to his maker (there is such merit to being firstsired; the boldness rooted in intimacy that'd once been only theirs decades ago, understood by no one else): while the world bows its head in varied deference— and Astarion does the same— behind closed doors, he can reach with despotic fingertips to grip his master by the reins, knowing that's his right. His luxury.
One that truly can't be shared, given the nature of its origin.]
What did he say to you?
[Asked in a lowered rumble as he climbs to straddle his beloved. Agile spine stretched long (his shirt still open, his legs almost painfully splayed to push snugly against his master's hips across that aging settee), his hand still holding fast.]
Knowing him, Fenris wasn't exactly clamoring for sex after news like that.
[Ergo: they must've talked, those two. The scent is too strong not to have been a recent exchange, though it doesn't reek of rutting. And you know, in Astarion's hawkish estimations, they did always seem the type for quiescent conversation. Gentle reassurance in the face of adversity, and all that.]
[Understand: he does not play favorites, not between his consorts. With them, yes; there is such a delight to elevating the two of them above all others in this coven, pointedly putting them first. But everything that Astarion gets, Fenris does too, and vice-versa, for he will not cheat one to sate the other, no matter how they might beg for it.
But that doesn't mean he treats them uniformly. That would be foolish; the relationship he has with both of them is unique, and so he cannot spoil them both with the same hand, as though there is no difference between them. And within those relationships, there are variances. Privileges afforded to each in turn based on their sired-order, and things that Vakares cannot deny. Fenris is the younger, and so he gets treated with a softer hand, and as for Astarion . . .
Astarion gets this kind of intimacy. This pointed dominance, this reversal of roles . . . oh, yes, this is his right. This is what centuries of intimacy has earned him, and after all this time, Vakares relishes it: the relief that comes from allowing someone else to take control. The joy of letting his eyes flutter closed as the air slowly expels from his lungs, his lips parting as Astarion bites at his throat. Impudent thing, he thinks, and slides his hands around lithe hips, both palms gripping full cheeks and tugging them forward.]
Nosy.
[As gentle as those bites. He'll let Astarion have his way, oh, yes, for that is the least of what he owes him, but he needn't be passive about it. His fingers grope at supple curves, blunted talons digging in as he pulls the other vampire forward, rut, guiding him along a grinding lapdance.]
We spoke of the past. Of my turning, and of yours— though when it came to you, I advised him only to ask of your past.
[No secrets revealed, no details offered. He is not callous.]
He wanted to understand why I made the decision I did— and why I had not simply made you heir instead.
[Astarion pointedly asserts through fangs that've been gritted by the heady grinding of their hips (not angered: incensed), his eyes reduced to lidded sits, brimming with arousal left unchecked.
An exhale thicker than blood sliding from his throat on the next pull forwards, grip fastened by the pricking tips of his claws— counterweight to the way Vakares pulls him in against the arching of his spine; the feeling of exhaustive constriction running rich along his inner thighs, each new burst of sensation more bewitching than the last (settee grousing loudly underneath their shifting balance, too old to endure too much too quickly, making this a languid march towards their own hedonistic effulgence).]
And where those thoughts of yours have been roaming without me nearby to guide them.
[Not to mention his fingers, his hands— his heart. Oh, there's no great unmasked truth involved in revealing that he thinks about Vakares all too often when they aren't together, unable to swallow down the sleepless twitch of paranoia skittering within his skull; unable to stop pining for the maker he's without. And yet in this case?
It's just a bluff.
A predictable, believable lie.
He was thinking of Fenris, actually. His secondary shadow. His purported twin amongst the flock. The only other soul capable of completely consuming that much of his mind— and a rival to their master's claim on his waking thoughts, though Astarion could never in his wildest dreams even begin to see what ire has to do with fond obsession. No, there's nothing there to pick over, he asserts to the emptiness of his own mind in addition to the open air with his breathless denial.
(If one rejects anything long enough, it might well become the truth.)]
I'll never understand what it is you two adore so bloody much about the past, anyway. [That much alone is true, though it comes with a delving slip of pale fingers past the barrier of Vakares' lips— smoothly gliding over the channel of his tongue for a few exploratory beats. A mask for the way he then pushes back against the hold across his hips (oh, but the feeling of those palms rucking against his trousers), slow in sinking down towards his sire's shadowed legs.
Lower. Lower....
Catching lacework in the outline of his teeth.]
It isn't memory that can suck your cock, you know....
[Distantly, Vakares realizes he's grateful for this. It's the most tangential emotion right now, a faint wisp all but buried beneath affection and swiftly-rising arousal, but it's still there. There were so many other ways this might have gone, and he would have happily endured them for Astarion's sake— but gods, this is a far sweeter way for them to part. One last intimacy just for the two of them, just as it had been from the start.
But that's a quiet thought, buried in the next moment beneath the fierce heat that thunders through Vakares' veins. Crimson eyes have gone hooded, his next false inhale a slow and even thing. There you are, my little pet, lust and affection tangling together in one searing moment as he looks down at the figure kneeling between his legs. Not just his Astarion, not anymore, but his consort: slick-mouthed and eager, his eyes bright as ever as he tugs at his master's laces. A pretty thing so eager to settle into his role one last time, oh, he's missed this.
Leaning back in the chair, his legs fall open lazily.]
And yet I've so many memories of you doing just that . . .
[His fingers card gently through silver curls, combing them back before tightening, tugging Astarion closer to his cock.]
So prove your point. Show me how much better it is to linger in the present, Astarion.
[A little smirk as the head of his prick rubs against plush lips, precome smearing against a mouth already swollen from use.]
[Shadows trace across sharp features, cascading underneath the map of Vakares' fingers, their outline almost lost in a sea of moonstone curls. Between them, light plays where it catches glossy traces of saliva pooled across pale lips— or across the occasional little flick of a pink tongue as it darts outwards, its anticipatory habits making Astarion look that much more serpentine in nature— which, given the metaphorical and mythological aspects of all scalebound, covetous beasts, is something of a feat all its own.
And the thing is, it's not an act.
Tomorrow's going to come no matter what he wants; he's done his railing and rattling and vicious ranting, and in the end it brought him this (the sight of spread legs clothed in dark silk, a pair of coalfire eyes glancing down across abyssal distance— as if a dark room is the same thing as an oceanic chasm, endless by design). Fingers pushing along the borders of those open legs while his teeth and tongue do the bulk of cruel unraveling, making a show out of each knot undone without the aid of either hand. The past compared to this is papered faff— even at its most beautiful, there's no comparing dusty recollection to molten ardor. To the electric scrape of friction scratching fiendishly against bare skin, sparking up the start of something grander.
They've had better nights, the two of them; they've certainly had better futures laid out at their feet, too.
So why not here? Why not now? Why choose anything else but the present, when it's always the present that gives so very much.]
Maybe I will....
[Purrs the thing already doing just that: freeing a thickened cock with just enough pressure to let it spring from tighter confines— knocked back against his lips.
There's a soft click when his tongue leaves the roof of his mouth in the next few beats beyond that (effort made to unfurl while he opens wide around the tip of that sweet length, glazing the very crown of it— and forcing those legs wider as he rocks forwards onto his knees), flirting with the idea of claiming what invites him in.]
You do have to admit, if I was ever going to sabotage your hopes of sleeping for an eternity, I'd do it by making sure you couldn't rest—
[Consonant barely kissed before he plunges over rigidity itself, forcing tense heat to the very hilt until it slams against the back of his waiting throat. Muscles working in a coaxing pull akin to the sensation of swallowing—groping at his sire's ensnared prick using only the deftness of his tongue.
And since he doesn't need to breathe....
Well.
Staying there is the only logical choice, isn't it? (How better than to make his maker pant.)]
[It's a roughened noise: a panting exhale that can't decide if it wants to be a moan or a rueful laugh. Both, maybe. A moan for the sight of Astarion on his knees, his eyes so dark as he stares up at his sire; lips stretched pliantly around the base of his prick, suckling eagerly in worshipful devotion even as his darkened gaze promises nothing but mischief. And a moan for how bloody good he is at this— gods, and Vakares ducks his head, his lips thinning as tension wracks through his slender frame. Every eager swallow sends sparks shooting through his veins, heat pulsing through him as his prick sinks so deep into narrow, hot confines. His hips shift experimentally, rolling forward and pulling back by mere centimeters; it's worth it to see slick flesh slowly rock in and out of Astarion's mouth.
And for a moment, the instinct rises in him. Vicious and beastly, a snarling demanding desire that nearly overcomes him for how intense it is. Blackened lust and vampiric arrogance tangle together, and all Vakares wants in that moment is to be mean. The fantasy sears itself in his mind so vividly; without thinking he tightens his grip in Astarion's hair, his gaze gone black as he looks down at him.
He wants to fuck him, you see. Yank him by the hair and keep him on his knees while Vakares fucks his mouth with vicious hunger. He wants to watch as his consort's eyes water and roll back; he wants to see that fierce need for attention finally sated, Astarion moaning thickly as his mouth is taken. He wants to hear sated moans turn into wet whimpers and pleas, his hand shoved between his legs and all of him thrashing and fighting uselessly, caught between desperate desire and an instinctive need to flee. He wants to see Astarion pushed to the brink, to the very limit of lust; he wants to claim him over and over, spilling into his belly until he outright drools come. Until his eyes are hazy and he sways with exhaustion, a little slut neatly broken, compliant and eager only for his master's taste.
And the trouble is: Vakares could have that.
Not just as bedsport. Not just as a playful little game that they can call off whenever they please. He could ruin his consort tonight, and no one would stop him.
Control yourself.
One long, slow breath.]
Good boy.
[He could ruin him, yes. He could enact that fantasy. He could do so many things— but then, he thinks, he would not have this. His doting consort, his immortal beloved . . . his wicked little darling, and Vakares' hand drops, palm cupping his cheek for a few adoring seconds.]
So your plan to stave off my rest is to become my cockwarmer for the next century . . . perhaps you have learned enough patience for such a feat.
[It's low. Rumbled and roughened, his fangs biting at his lip as he settles into this pleasure.]
You were such an eager thing at the start . . . mm, don't touch yourself, [he adds almost absently.] When you come, it will be at my hand, impaled upon my cock, your legs spread and your expression all mine to drink in.
[He's quiet for a little while, then. Content to do nothing more than drink in the sight and sensation of Astarion kneeling before him, fingers stroking slowly through his hair. But then, softly:]
Praise so potent it boils in the pit of his stomach (while his lips run tight around his maker's divine breadth, messily inviting worship) through voiceless pops of slick saliva welling thick against his lips. Posited scenario so inviting he can't help but break into a submerged groan while his head bobs appreciatively up and down (and up and down— ) milking at a cock more perfect than it has any right to be in a rough substitute for fantasy made real; told not to palm himself— behaved enough to abide by it regardless of how his fingers twitch— but desperate enough to fulfill his need another way: noisily suckling at that prick in rhythmic measure that's matched to the bouncing of his unclaimed hips. As if bumping it to the back of his throat over and over again is the same feeling of pressure described in lurid detail.
A whore rutting with spread legs. Eager to please. Eager to open himself to being brought low in every last sense of the word. Used. Fucked. Ridden hard and put away wetter than anyone might have thought possible.
Transitive friction near to palpable if he shuts his eyes (if he focuses long enough for the sluggish drag across his tongue, his lips— down, down into the back of his throat), and it's not hard to think he's already seated atop the sire he covets above all else, taking his conquered pleasure from gilded heighths instead of waiting for it to be offered on a silver platter.
Good boy.
Words lapping distantly at the shores of his own focus, thrumming like the very weight within his mouth (and while it's been a while since he bedded something living, he'd swear his master's just as scalding as he feels: white-hot jolts of reflex warring wildly along his tongue with ruthless patience), unhurried to reach the finish line. In the wreckage of a room (a hall, a wing) sporting the evidence of his countless misdemeanors and well-aimed slights, he is a good boy now. Of that, he's keenly certain.
The world, Vakares says. True both ways, if one feels like being metonymical.
An entire world trapped inside the margins of their merger.]
I know.
[Slick, the outline of those words. Brief interlude fit against the underside of a well-loved cock gone flush with spared attention.]
And could you blame me for being eager? [Asked while his knuckles slide between soft thighs, working slowly at plush curvatures left buried beneath dark trousers and their unwound laces. Methodical and sweet.]
You were a bewitching fascination in those days compared to anything I'd ever known. Willful and isolated both.
[Not strictly Astarion's past, but....oh, it is the past, isn't it? Close to the horizon, like a foothold left exposed.]
And you have always been so deft at drawing me out . . .
[And it suits that they should speak of the past like this, doesn't it? Astarion mouthing them slickly against Vakares' cock, his lips slick with saliva and every word coated in lust and love both . . . how many times have they done this? How many times has Astarion fallen to his knees like this, so hungry to worship his sire that he wouldn't take no for an answer. Deft fingers tugging at laces and crimson eyes glimmering with mischief, you can spare half an hour, can't you? For me?
It isn't that he longs for those times. The past hundred years have been far more good than bad, after all, and he does love both his consorts so very much. But tonight of all nights . . . tonight, Vakares decides, they can allow themselves a bit of nostalgia. They deserve to indulge (even if some small part of him twinges in guilt, there and gone). In wake of so much grief and hurt, misunderstandings and aching hearts that will take so long to repair . . .
Just for now, Vakares thinks, they can pretend it's just the two of them once more. Not a trio, but a duo: a sire and his darling spawn, bound together forever in love and lust both.
He tugs those hands away from his thighs and urges Astarion back up, his hands firm but not cruel. Come here, murmured softly as he draws him into his lap again. There's a faint shiver for how plush curves still clothed press against his cock, but ah, he has far more important things to focus on. His hands slide slowly over the swell of his hips, urging him in close. And heat smolders in his dark gaze as he stares so intently up at his little siren. There you are, his attention suddenly focused and fixated on the only thing that matters. On his first love, so very different than any other. On the very first thing that had ever piercing through the protective cocoon he had built around himself, deadly as a blade and yet soft as starlight.]
And am I still so bewitching, little gem?
[Softer, his tone. Indulgent in a particularly besotted way, even as his hips rock up to grind and rub against him.]
Take off that shirt, now.
[His own hands are already moving: one prying swiftly at the laces on Astarion's trousers; the other lapped at with practical swiftness before it slips down the back, two fingers massaging indulgently at the tight little cinch always so eager to greet him— and ah, how swiftly he opens. How quickly Vakares can pump two fingers into him, middle and ring fingers hooking indulgently as he drinks in every moan and twitch and whine that might occur.]
I told you that you would come only on my cock, and that is true. But I intend to come in you. And now that you've gotten me so slick . . . I want to watch you bounce. I want to see you take all that you are owed, and all that you desire . . . and I want to see you enjoy it.
[His hand tugs those trousers down hard, forcing them just beneath the curve of those supple cheeks: baring him without going to all the trouble of stripping him fully.]
Go on, my darling. My love. My Astarion . . . I am yours.
Well you certainly don't bore me, if that's what you're wondering....
[Awash with blazing vigor coaxed up from keener embers: Vakares' physical response (dilated eyes, bated breath; hands that waver in their focus) the kindling that sparks beneath his words— and every visual it depicts in the lightless pith of his own tack. Shadows pooled around the image of a cock fit snug into its sheathe, with slick glimmers of glistening oil and precome flickering like starlight over vulnerable skin that wrings at its own bridle. His prick tipped skywards as it leaks, bouncing between buckled arms that brace his pistoning hips— neither hand touching— please the only thing on his lips between the constant slap of skin-on-skin. Percussion fit for desperation, when each beat's quicker than the last. Please come— please come so that I can come— touch me, sire— maker— lover—
Oh, love.
One who knows just how to rein him in when he's gone too far. No blunt pressure or cruder force applied through the sort of crass manipulation the other lords employ (it's easy to tell a slave to rut or a thrall to obey— it might even be easy to make them want it by rewarding them like a sotted hound: a couple of treats or a pat on the head the closest thing to careworn coaxing. But Vakares? Oh, no. When he herds them away from their worst instincts it might damned well be through learned knowledge of their needs, but he isn't some mastermind at work plotting moves across a board with a few expendable pawns, just a clever thing in love; easing off the worst of his consorts' pain or ambition. Their wants or their maddened streaks of mouthing lust.
In other words: it's no crime to be canny the way their sire is canny, where even his absent mind runs hot with mastery's keenest breath.)
His thighs sting from the biting pressure of his trousers and their straddled tension, muscles no doubt bruising when he rocks himself forwards into it (cold air cut across his exposed curves, wholly unguarded against clawed fingers or a waiting prick), but— ]
How could I ever resist?
[An answer to all things, that. Laid out sharp through the hollow rumble in his throat, hitching before it stops— (slick like those fingertips, pulled away from in one little roll of movement)— and speared fully on thick ardor in the very next beat.
To the hilt.
To the lurid flush.
Friction just a measure for how deep he runs inside the tightest narrows, bumping hot against malleable walls (no one else to reach between them, dulling down its blistering intensity: each twitch finding a corresponding pulse of entrenched force, left to right, forward and back, digging in as he arches forwards) into— fuck— ]
—you are mine....
[Through the grit of his teeth and the ache in his jaw: his. Through the unnfixed and unanchored movements outside the drag of rigid satisfaction rocked harsh against the figurative grain; his hips rolling before they work up into a steady rhythm evoking the exact images from before.
(Vakares was his from the moment he'd bitten him, and he always will be.)
Pact sealed by thready gasps and shuttling rhythms (writ by snaring snaps of rapid movement rather than trite words), hunched over well-braced palms.]
Don't you dare forget it just for shutting your pretty eyes.
[Oh, never, never. Never, not his Astarion nor the way he belongs to his starlit boy— and it isn't because of this. It isn't because he takes a cock well (so well, and the lurid moan that sounds as tight, slick heat envelops Vakares to the hilt is far too loud as it echoes hoarsely down the hall). It isn't because he's so very clever in bed, coyly proposing new games or showing just how well he can handle a fuck (and it had taken Vakares so very long to realize that his consort thought he needed to be so inventive to keep his sire's attention— oh, darling boy, as if he ever needed to be anything but himself). When he goes to his slumber, he won't dream of all the lewd ways his consort has kept his bed warm, no.
He'll dream of his eyes, just as they right now. Crimson sparkled with darker flecks, narrowed in focus and yet eagerly triumphant, as smug as any kitten who just caught his first mouse. His voice, purring low in satisfaction even as his thighs shake for how much he enjoys this; the curve of his cheek and the scent of him thick in the air, as all the he ruts and grinds and bounces atop his prick, half-sated from being filled alone.
I love you, Vakares thinks and does not say. There's no room for it, not right now— but still, as his hands settle on Astarion's hips and darts his head up to catch his beloved in a swift kiss, he thinks it. I love you, I love you, I love you, so fiercely and so achingly that he has reconsidered his slumber too many times to count. I love you, and it is unlike any love he has ever had before; it is wholly different and separate than what he has with Fenris, and all the stronger for it. I love you, every bit, emphasized over and over the steady pump of his hips upwards, cock daggering in and out of his consort's slick hole. I love you for all that you are and more—]
Ah—
[— and for this, too.
For the goading taunt in Astarion's voice, yes. For the way he ruts so eagerly, his hole cinching so tight with rhythmic glee as his cock bounces between them, thick and swollen and untouched. But most of all: for the way he ignites a blaze unlike any other within his sire, coaxing him past all those centuries of self-control.
Before he realizes what he's doing, there's the sound of fabric shredding and seams ripping apart; in the next moment Astarion's trousers lie in tatters around him, thighs springing free even as he keeps up his bouncing rhythm. His hands lock around his hips, his eyes flicking down to drink in the frankly lurid sight of his cock bouncing between them, thickened hang flushed darkly in desire— and then up to that pretty face again, their eyes locking for one brief bursting second before Vakares surges up.
Mine, he thinks, or maybe it's yours, the two tangling up together in ouroborosian desire as his palms cup plush curves and he stands, yanking Astarion in close. His fingers dig in cruelly, spreading his consort open with vulgar intent (and he wishes he could see it: the sight of Astarion suspended in midair, spread open and speared atop a thick prick, oil dripping around the rim of his swollen hole) as he crosses the room in two strides and slams the elf against the wall.
There. There, his hips bearing Astarion's weight as his hands wrap around slender wrists, pinning him against the wall with cock and fingers and lips— a searing kiss, his tongue thrusting forward as he fucks into him. Hard and hot and fast, and every slap of skin against skin serves as echo for all of those words: I love you, you're mine, I'm yours, I will see you filled with my claim and mewling for my touch all because you said you wished it, I'm yours, I'm yours, I'm yours—]
Vampires are quickened things, even unto themselves; expending precious effort on even registering the scope of their own reflexive movements would be as pointless as it is a total waste— not including the inherent blindness attached to all present depravity (the distraction that'd only drag him away from just how good it feels to be held aloft in his master's claws over the drooling pinion of his prick: sensation melted into immoral weightlessness. Senselessness. Panting like an animal at bay for all the good it does him); loss of control one more ritual steeped in utter trust. Antithetical to sightlessness, the only leap of faith they've ever shared was in the narrow band of seconds just before sharp fangs pierced his living throat.
Well—
That, and whatever comes tomorrow.
But all that matters right now is that awareness is a passing footnote.
One more glimmering little afterthought devoid of reason. Purpose. Power. That it exists as something infinitely more primordial than its clever origins— good only for tracking the differences between cold plaster and kindled skin. The scuffing divide between their bodies once they hit the wall, harsher than before and coarser than the scrape of flint across steel. His own prick pushed against hard borders (like the rest of him), pressure nothing but a vulgar denouement for subsequent violence—
(Insobrietous violence. Decadent lust fed raucous little scraps for so long behind decorum's measured bars that when they give way at last, they snap.
Even behind Vakares' stunning eyes.
His shackled mind. His fettered heart. His soul so damp with discipline that he shines in a room full of fallow wretchings, lesser as they are— even then— he proves what Astarion has always known: no beast is ever tamed. No amount of filing could ever dull sharp fangs or claws. Paperwork does not a mortal make, and whenever he finally wakes, he ruts like the wanton thing he is.)
Oh.
Oh—
There's no time to brace. Before Astarion can stutter out even an acclimating bark, his vision blots with stardust. His lungs are empty. His throat— his mouth— that savaging tempo at his hips having pumped every last drop of air from him before he's fully readied, and he can't tell if he's baying like a beast in heat or silent as the grave for how deaf he is to everything beyond the rapid sound of every thrust— fuck, the dizzying vibration of it, a rhythm so inhuman it might as well be buzzing in ways mortal things could only dream of, shattering like brittle glass beneath his skin. So damned wet with slakeless lechery the floor has to be drenched already while his own claws scrabble wildly for purchase (at the wall. At the borders of his sire. At the barely-caught fringes of dark hair, wrapped in a snapping frenzy against the back of Vakares' neck as he whines or whimpers or wheezes or screams or groans or begs or— or or or)—
No one could fuck him like this.
No one could mount him like this, bruisingly untamed and brutally untempered: a lion mastering his herd or a wolf pinning down its pack until it bows with fierce obedience would whimper just to be caught beneath his gaze. Astarion's body raw and his voice hoarse and still it doesn't stop— faster. Harder. Deeper—
Until his eyes roll back and his belly feels damp, blank slate struck across his mind.
In (blinking against the blurred lines of the ceiling); Out (gasping as he lulls against his sire's shoulders, wracked with split sensation), his lips flecked with gloss and his limbs too limp to bother twitching where they hang. Hips bouncing still atop their wicked transgressor. Cock still jerking harsh against the wall. Neck slung back, profile nosing at— a cheek? A neck? He doesn't know.
He hardly cares. Scent alone tells him who it is he's nuzzling against.
That, and the fullness of his hips.]
Hnn— ngh— [Ah. Ah, catch your breath, Astarion. Inhale before you try to speak, Astarion. Teetering on the panting edge of molten ardor won't make you any more coherent unless you try, licking at your lips first.]
[He doesn't answer at first. Sweet platitudes and clever words, oh, such things belong to the creature who reigns over this coven. The wearied diplomat, the overworked Duke— he'll have his turn soon enough, whispering sweet words of adoration to his darling firstsired.
But he's a creature of instinct now: his fingers still wrapped loosely around one narrow wrist, thumb stroking gently as he returns each of those nuzzles. Mine, their foreheads bumping together as his lips drift over the the curve of a pale cheek. A soft chin. Lips swollen and sore from overuse, and all the while his hips still pump inwards shallowly. Pearl streaks down the length of his prick, viscous droplets slowly drooling down to puddle on ancient wood as Vakares slides his lips down. Mine, the mindless mouthing of a predator finally at ease— though not thoughtlessly so. It's no mistake his mouth settles just atop those twin scars he'd given his beloved so many years ago.
(This will hurt, he had whispered to the wounded thing in his arms, until it won't. I promise you it will ease, little one. Just take a deep breath, his fingers smoothing through curls clotted with dried blood even as his fangs ached with phantom longing. It would take nothing to make him yours, that awful little voice had whispered to him. He's too weak to fight, and no one will dare intervene— take him. Strip him down and rut into him like the mewling prey he is. Fuck him from both ends and listen to him scream around the press of your cock. Flip him over and sink your teeth into his neck; promise him that you'll turn him and make him earn it, and when you've had your fun, drain the last bits of blood out of him and throw the corpse into the canal until he rots beyond recognition—
And the trick has never been that he doesn't desire such things.
The trick is knowing how to store it all up until he needs it.)
They aren't done. Even now, as the focus slowly returns to his ruby gaze, he can feel his hunger gnawing in the pit of his stomach. Astarion feels too good in his arms, lithe limbs and cool skin; he just feels so delicious wrapped so tight around his prick, tight and hot and perfect. Mine, he thinks again, and his gaze is still a blackened thing as he stares up at his consort. His hips still pump in deep, hungry to claim every inch of that tight little cinch, and never mind how many times he's done it before, for it's never enough. It's not enough, that ugly part of him whispers, not when this time tomorrow he'll be in someone else's bed—
Enough. One last lick to those scars before he speaks.]
Mm, I have not forgotten, no. But I tell you this: I have not begun to charm you, little one.
[It's hours before they return. Long enough that night has turned to day, and it's Astarion's laughter that rouses Fenris from his dozing slumber. And then—
And then it begins.
Not the ceremony itself, but oh, there are endless preparations to be made. They're dressed in their finest, silk and satin dyed black and stitched together with the most delicate silver threads. Kohl lines their eyes, eyeshadow and accessories added to their personal tastes. Jewelry adorns their ears and throats (though not their fingers), all of it tastefully placed and obscenely expensive. Witnesses are introduced; outside, the crowds are slowly prodded into gathering. And in that way hours somehow pass, though to Fenris' mind it all goes by far too quickly.
They head into the main hall, standing before Vakares in front of what feels like the entire population of Baldur's Gate. Eyes dart between Astarion and Fenris, whispers filling the hall as people place their final bets, and gods, but Fenris hates it. He has never done well in the spotlight, and today is no different: his eyes go shuttered, his expression turning to stone as he stands next to his—
Well. Not fiancé, not really. And yet perhaps Fenris is still too tied to morality, even a century later, to not think of all this in terms of a wedding.
Thank you for your patience these past three days, Vakares says, and just like that, it's begun. Fenris' stomach pitches, but it's too late to protest. Too late to do anything but fixate on a vantage point in the distance and try not to glance over at Astarion, lest he look too much like an anxious bride. And I hope the celebrations were to your liking. It is not often I have cause to revel for so long, but the announcement of one's heir is cause for celebration, I think.
It goes on. He speaks of his family, his followers, and how loyal they all have been; he speaks of the joy of partnership, and how it was not reclusiveness but unity that made him a stronger politician and better person. He emphasizes community and teamwork over isolation, and Fenris wonders if the brighter ones in the audience have picked up where he's going with this. Certainly they all know this isn't normal; there's whispers here and there, a susurrus that only grows as Vakares sets his hands on both their shoulders.
But I digress. You are all here to see me choose my heir, and I have done so. A pause, and more than anything Fenris wishes he would just get on with it. I have chosen both of them. Both Astarion and Fenris will share command, joining together in a ceremony more ancient than even I.
And there are other words, of course. More introduction, because ceremony is nothing but talking, but Fenris is too busy scanning the crowd. Most are shocked. Some are pleased, though whether that's a good thing or not remains to be seen. The whispers grow louder— and then, just loud enough to be heard, there's a giggle. It's brief and swiftly hushed, but it's there.
Vakares ignores it. So does most of the crowd, to be fair: their whispers settling as Vakares urges them both to face one another. Join hands, he commands, and Fenris extends his own, not daring to tear his gaze away for a single second.
Do you, Fenris, swear your fealty and loyal to Astarion? Vakares' voice is low and rolling, his confidence absolute as he utters the first part of their oaths. Fenris' stomach feels like lead, his tongue numb— and yet the words slip past his lips nonetheless, for all that he stares warily as he utters them.]
The ceremony and the leers. The judgment. Encouraged by every instance of giggling or muttered commentary, their audience is a palpable chasm of shock and indignity and amusement cut through by little pulsework echoes, each one reverberated in someone else's mouth before passing on (and on, and on).... He feels the harshness of firm knuckles pressed against his own once their fingers intertwine, and from the narrow gap between them (sire and sired, all), it feels as if he's being choked by everything he's wanted for so long: the regalia fit for Vakares' shoulders is far too scratchy along its seams and artful hems (it worries at his shoulders; leaves him itching just to touch it or scrub it or rip it free); the attention from established eyes, hawkish and overtly loud (later, it will be worse); the coronating esteem his maker's always carried, stamped down in slow farewells; the brute that is his younger kin, compelled to listen to him— if only so they share.
But he's not a child, for all his frequent whinging.
The ridicule waiting for them in the wings didn't start when their sire opened their mouth to speak. It started long, long before now. (Before his tantrum or their isolation. Before Vakares treated them as equals at his heels. Decades upon decades ago, before the fresher idea of better started to eclipse the notion of is and always has been, razor lips were already peeling back to show off equally jagged fangs.) The other vampires wouldn't have spared them if Vakares uttered I choose Fenris any more than they would've done to hear Astarion: one configuration of voices might differ in isolation, true, but still— if a chorus trills from its left or its right side in equal volume, does that really make it any different a scenario?
No.
Obviously not.
Petty things— like Astarion— will always be petty things. Takes one to know one (or a lot of ones), as they say: he doesn't like it, but there's comfort to be found in the fact that Leto clearly doesn't, either. Their shared grip so stiff and obligatory that it could be a metaphor for its surrounding pomp— and you know, when it comes to a pair that looks only towards their waiting master rather than at one another, it is, actually.
But again, he's not a child. Not a fledgling. Not a spoiled prince whining for a wetted throat to suckle from, rather than standing on his own buckling legs. Eventually, the din feels more like background noise. Rustling wind equal to a drunken baroness teasing her own spawn by tugging at their ears and suggestively whispering it's such a good idea— making favorites breed for life. Literal husbandry, someone mutters back, and Astarion hears it as much as he doesn't, just like a noisy gust of wind. Birds chirruping. Shutters flapping in a breeze. Peripheral distraction warranting little as he tightens his already rigid grip, his kohl-lined eyes narrowed into lightless puddles when he adds:]
I do, of course.
[Temptation part of his own incorrigible existence, consigned to keeping quiet dignity at bay.]
If only because it'll be fun to see how many of our esteemed kin might finally strain their poor fragile little minds to tell us apart, now that they'll have to look up to call us by our names.
[Tsk tsk. So much for graceful vows— though Astarion silently smiles as a clawed thumb is dipped in blood before being brushed across his lips by an attending hand (and vice versa), staining their respective mouths a striking shade of crimson.]
It's not a nice thing. Certainly no one in the waiting audience would mistake it for the radiant smile of a bliss-filled vampire eager to be even closer to his counterpart, starry-eyed and sweet. At best, it's a sardonic thing, there and gone and yet so very vivid now that blood coats his lips.
And you know, Fenris is still such a young thing. Only barely a century old and so terribly disinterested in vampiric politics, but still. He knows how people work. He knows what details they will remember in the coming years, when all the words have faded and all that's left is the stark impressions. No matter that Vakares squeezes both his consorts' shoulders in warning, for Fenris thinks that perhaps this is what will matter most in the coming years.
This exchange. This quiet little moment when Astarion speaks and Fenris responds, the two of them suddenly allied together in a moment of quiet camaraderie.
There is so little they agree on, after all. Vakares has always been their chief point of connection, the two of them setting aside their rivalry to make their beloved happy— but perhaps they can join in on this, too. The two of them unifying not for the sake of peace or love (oh, Vakares is such an earnest thing, so eager to see the future as nothing but good and bright), but sheer bloody spite.]
A hundred golden coins says that they get us mixed up more than half the time—
[What a dedicated thing their sire is, for he doesn't pay his whispering spawn any mind. He doesn't even break his stride, intoning the next part of their oath with all the enthusiasm and muster his position requires. But the sudden squeeze of his fingers against their shoulders speaks volumes, as does the sharp little glance he darts down at both of them. Shut up.]
I do so swear—
[Loyalty. Partnership. The vows settle on their shoulders like mantles, binding them together with more than just spoken words. There's magic woven in these rituals, Fenris realizes. Not the paltry spells that wizards use, their powers torn from the Weave; this is far more ancient. It's a bitter aftertaste beneath the blood slowly dripping down his tongue, so subtle that his lyrium doesn't bother to react. Not a deliberate thing Vakares kept from them, no— simply a pledge. A binding pact, as definitive as the ties that bind they two to their sire. Each promise a lash, each vow a cinching knot, until at last—
Seal your pact before the world, Vakares commands, and Fenris' eyes focus up once more.
And maybe it's nerves. Maybe it's grief for Vakares, sudden and yet all the more painful for it. Maybe it's the wariness of a century's worth of rivalry suddenly flaring its head, sparking old instincts born of a lifetime ago that whisper that nothing is certain. That to trust is to lead oneself to destruction; that everyone, everyone is out only for themselves, and Astarion most of all. And it doesn't matter that they just exchanged a teasing joke; it doesn't matter that they both of them promised Vakares they'd do their best. Emotions don't ever need rational thought, and all Fenris knows in that moment is this:
That whatever comes next, he will have to fight to keep himself from harm.
So he hesitates. It's the briefest thing, a half-breath's balking as wariness and rebelliousness and loathing all tangle together. He doubts anyone in the audience notices, but the two near him surely do.
Act, those instincts insist— and without a moment's thought, Fenris does. His hand darts to the back of Astarion's neck, drawing him in with one quick motion so Fenris can fit his lips to his so pointedly. For if they are to do this— to embark on this partnership, to be a duo instead of a singular ruler— Fenris will not be a passive partner. He will not be the younger brat constantly waiting for his elder to take control, no: Fenris kisses as though he means to take, domineering and rough. Mine, hungry pushes and eager pulls a vulgar rhythm once, twice—
Before he draws back, his tongue flicking out to lap at the blood coating Astarion's lip.
There, now. That's far better, and he does not realize just how self-satisfied he truly looks.]
A lesser creature would snap under its boundless gravity, caught off guard the way Astarion finds himself in those passing seconds while his master's grip still holds him and his wedded consort's fangs settle coolly against his lips (but he's not lesser, is he? Astarion). Softer than it should be. Sweeter than it should be. Oh no, he's not some stumbling cub on buckled legs— (Fenris, that is— ) not with his profile leading before either of their minds have a moment to keep pace. Thoughtlessness begetting thoughtlessness, considering it's Astarion that gives chase in the narrow aftermath, smearing red beyond the border of their mouths.
Then there's wine, and there's drinking, and a shocking number of slighted guests even deftly pretend to be happy for them— and partway through all those necessary overtures involved in such a dizzyingly attended coronation, the old, embattled lion that devised all this knotwork-solemnization slips away.
Small in stature.
Subtle gestures.
Misunderstood in the moment (or not, depending on attentiveness), just a single sweep of passing pressure along his darling's shoulders as they endure a flood of accolades and deferential flattery— capped by a silent kiss to their respective cheeks— their temples. Common as the contact traded each and every night before sleep or during dullest conversation. No more words to shed when everything's already been long uttered between them (and punctuation can hardly overstay its welcome without bleeding into the next chapter).
By twilight's stumbling entrance, when the doors have all been shuttered and the grand hall hushed down to a dispersing din already rife with drowsied calm, Archduke Vakares sleeps.
It's nothing they didn't know was coming.
Inevitability has a habit of kissing their shoulders just as frequently as their sire always— (ah) did.
But they aren't led by his spawn to his bed. Or to their own bedchambers either, for that matter. Call it a belated gift, perhaps, on behalf of an apologetic patron that had one last little card tucked high within an unassuming sleeve:
An atrium.
A former one, converted with blacked out windows where gossamer arches had likely held aloft old skylights— only mosaics now, but the oil-black mirror shine of countless tiles overhead is as fittingly stunning for a pair of heirs that seem as at odds with each other as that selfsame show of vivid stars and swirling void. Less prone to mixing than battling each other for dominating clarity, yet underneath: one bed. One half-study. One storage chest. One grooming table. One to one to one to one, with the bottom line being the same rule their clever maker always tried to impose— share.
Astarion slips in last, through a half-cracked door frame; such a serpent of a beast that he can't suppress his own nature even in a slumbering manor. Winding his coils into empty space, and setting those albinic eyes on the only other figure present.
(And gods, they do look so small in a room this expansive, don't they?)]
Did you mean it?
[He asks dryly between the sounds of (inherently) prowling footsteps. No clarification given, naturally.
That's saying a lot. Vakares has always been a soft hand with his coven no matter their rank, but it was his consorts he adored spoiling the most. Both their rooms had been marvelous things: airy and bright, artwork lining the walls and books stacked on shelves. They'd been allowed to customize them to their liking, and for Fenris, that meant half of it became a place to train: stone overlaid with tile and racks of weapons lining the far wall. You don't need to fight anymore, Vakares had told him, but I can appreciate the need for routine. Simply try not to stab anyone within the household.
(He has to stop thinking of Vakares. He has to stop longing for a past that no longer exists, for lingering there too long is the right way to ruin. And he will. He will, but oh, give him a day's grief, at least).
And understand, Fenris loves that room. He had spent a century marveling over the sizable grandeur, thrilling over ownership and marveling over the privacy it provided.
But it might as well have been a closet for how it compares to this.
It's almost too much. It is too much— certainly it is for Fenris, who even now does not quite know how to handle all the wealth and power at his fingertips (and that's a far different thing than learning to enjoy it). But perhaps, he thinks as he wanders into the room, perhaps it's just enough for an Archduke or two.
His fingers slide almost idly over the oaken desk (where already there is paperwork waiting for them both, Vakares' neat script making his heart pang once more); they drift over the marble inset on their grooming station, taking note of the fact both their personal things have been brought over already. He wanders and he tries so hard to take it all in, but he knows even now that it will take a long while before it feels like anything belonging to him.
Just like this title.
Gods. Archduke Fenris, and in the echochambers of his mind, it sounds like a joke. A cruel jibe slipping off the tongue of his counterpart, perhaps, or a particularly uninspired taunt from Danarius— but ah, he won't say so aloud. Whether or not he feels it fits, the title is still his— and it will be all Fenris can do to hold onto it in the coming years. There is more than just Astarion to fear when it comes to their coven, and perhaps they should talk about that—
Did you mean it? a voice calls, and Fenris turns.
Later.]
I did.
[Their tones match in dryness. And you know, anyone listening in would think it friendly banter and little more— and to an extent, that's true. But Fenris does not imagine Astarion has forgotten that kiss— nor if it comes to it, his vulgar promise from a few days ago. I want to take my new whore out for a ride before I fit him with a bit and bridle, and it's surely only a matter of time before Astarion tries just that.]
You saw them tonight. They barely knew how to look at us both, never mind which to defer to first.
[It was almost funny, honestly: watching all the nobles stumble in their bows, piggish eyes darting back and forth as they still tried to determine who to suck up to.]
But I suppose they will learn, in one way if not another.
[They'll have to.
Fenris steps forward. There's a thousand ways he could coyly approach this topic, but subtle gestures have never suited him, not when he can be blunt. So:]
Have you?
[Another step forward, his eyes bright and tension beginning to form in the lines of his body.]
Or do you still insist on the fantasy that I am here to be your consort and not your partner?
Our maker— [He starts slickly, bile sharpening the blade of a sentiment he— just can't finish. It's like a pill stuck in his throat, you know. The same feeling. There, meant to go somewhere— meant to hammer home with his typical acidic bite that there's a lot more intent than truth on the table— but no amount of pressure or flexing can keep it on its course.
Their master sleeps. He isn't here, gifts or fucking not.
And Astarion doesn't want to think about it.]
—imagined a lot of things.
[Like a sigh, it slips through his teeth alongside a slackening expression. Footfalls far from slowing even as Fenris creeps ever closer. Meaning that it's a simple thing to reach out with one hand in (sort-of) passing, palm pressed against a pair of slender hips crosswise— dragging as he continues on his way (again, like slithering coils before moving behind his companion), still getting a lay of the room for now.]
We both know reality wasn't his strong suit. Not any more than it fits in with all those highborne fangs.
[A beat, his eyes fixed on high glass:] An admirable effort, though.
[Our sire, and for just a moment, there's a moment of camaraderie. For just a moment Astarion's voice sticks and Fenris' heart pangs, and he wonders if they will join together. If the vulnerability will last. If he, himself, can reach out, though in truth he has no real idea how he might do that. And before he can even begin to figure it out—
Ah.
Heat ripples through him at that sliding touch. The ghost of Astarion's fingers lingers on his skin. And what a thing it is to be a vampire, that his teeth ache to bite even as a pulse of arousal courses through him. The lyrium embedded in his palms pulses, his fingers curling as the phantom urge to sink his talons into soft flesh and rip courses through his mind. He knows what's going to happen next. No matter that he refuses to be the one to strike first, there's no way this won't end in blows.
And truth be told, he won't be sorry for it.
It's been a century of enduring Astarion's jealousy. A century of snide remarks and petty revenge; a century of cruelties great and small, humiliations tangling together with rage and grief. Decades of hands yanking at him during parties, shoving him down to his knees and fucking his mouth until he was drooling come; of vicious cruelty that always had the vague excuse of accidental, Fenris writhing in agony as Astarion watched his blood pool on the stone floor.
Years on end of the two of them barking at one another helplessly, impotent dogs collared and leashed by their master, but not anymore.
Fenris' eyes darken as he turns, and oh, but his smile has taken on a mean edge.]
A bold proclamation from a vampire who was taken in front of a thousand witnesses. Do you imagine your posturing will erase that from their minds?
[His head tips.]
Their first impression of our union was you submitting to me . . . and what will you do to remedy that? Tie me to the bed and fuck me? And yet that won't change what happened.
[The smirk fades.]
Try and make me yours, Astarion. You do not have Vakares to hide behind, not anymore— and older you may be, but I am trained for this. And I will not hesitate to finally put you in your place like the rabid dog you are.
A playful snippet of mockery suddenly pushed too far.
It takes so little, is the point. Hairpin triggers set up on eggshells over glass compared to their maker's inexhaustible control, and it never starts out as wanting violence (or the marrow-deep satisfying sound of whimperering cries)— they don't begin their nights by waking and rubbing sleep from crimson eyes only to crow about what sort of cruelty they'll force upon their mate— it just grows in after one of them laughs a little too loudly. Gets flattered with a different word. Drinks too much. Speaks too bluntly. Bites down too hard, too fast.
Now this.
Innocuous discussion won't stay that way if it's flanked by less-than-innocuous stares. Grins that don't quite meet their eyes, and touching that's tantamount to smoking tinder.
Maybe that's the point.
The leash is gone. The collar loose. Unhappiness hardly solidifies a truth that's lasted the better part of one hundred— two hundred years— promising that whenever they showed teeth, he'd be there. (And this room still smells like him, and it's his writing on that desk, and even if it's only the smallest fragment of their minds that hopes this might all just be a test while the rest of their thoughts prepare themselves for war— ) how could they not intrinsically tug just to see if it might give?
One way or another, something will make it real. Something else will grieve for them. Take the blame for them. Be angry or hurt or resentful for them.
(Or afraid for them. That, too.)]
Word to the wise, little one.
Unlike you: a rabid dog doesn't know to submit.
[His back still to Fenris. His arms still loosely at his hips. Little one, not little wolf, for he'd reduce the creature just behind him to a timeline of fresh-abandoned masters just to soothe his paper skin. An artful twist of his neck angled just around his shoulder punctuating one seemingly smug stare.]
But I can't say it's a surprise a formerly kenneled broodbitch still can't tell what acting is even when it's dangled right in front of his stunted little snout. [Half-turning on his heel in that next breath, it's his chin that leads the way. His reddened eyes narrowed into lightless slits. His lips twisted high around long teeth. Sharp teeth. Mean teeth.
Suffer for him, Fenris, and maybe he'll call it even.]
I don't have Vakares to hide behind anymore?
[Oh, catulus.]
I've been waiting centuries for this.
I'm glad he's gone.
[Throw the first stone. Twist the knife. Snap bone. Lap blood. Scrape salt— make it hurt. Make it hurt, even if you're the one bleeding from it, too.
His mouth to Fenris' ear after a handful of silent strides, voice a pitchbound hum.]
It hurts, it hurts, and worse still: Fenris cannot tell why it hurts. He is not so emotionally aware that he knows that some part of him longs for his sire so badly that it aches— oh, young thing. Young, stunted thing, and that's the thing about vampires, isn't it? A century old, but that does not mean he has all the maturity of an elder. Vampires are frozen in time, and in some ways, he is still the same bloody slave he'd been when Vakares had found him. And Fenris had learned to lean on him, to look to him for guidance, to mold himself to him—
Oh, young thing floundering without a master . . . he does not know just why he longs for his sire. He does not realize that perhaps he picks a fight so that Vakares, indeed, might return. He does not know why anger sparks so easily; why his blood boils when it usually takes far longer to rouse him into defensive snappishness. He knows only that his heart hurts— and that in these moments of newfound freedom, his collar cut and his tether released, when they both of them are charting the new way their dynamic might go, he is desperate not to come out the lesser.
I'll be glad when you are, too—
Turn, grab, shove— his forearm braced against Astarion's chest, striding forward until Astarion's back hits the wall with a dull thunk. His fangs are bared in a snarl, though he doesn't realize it; his talons slice through thin silk, his crimson eyes narrowed as he glares at his counterpart.]
Then try it.
[He leans forward, pressing his weight against the vampire's throat. They don't need to breathe, but that won't stop his voice from sounding strained from the pressure he puts on it.]
Go on. Do it. Kill me if you can— or is it that you intend only to gossip and whine until I slink away in shame? But you will have to try harder than that.
[Ah, so it does work well, that pinning pressure: trying to swallow, to speak— to suck in air of any sort or exhale in the slightest— all of it cracks where Fenris has him, keeping him held fast, his own claws planted against skin in a threat that doesn't quite match its catalyst.]
—will I, now....?
[It's better than chatting, isn't it? Better than thinking. Being angry, being nasty, being cruel. When everything's a flaring burst of overwrought emotion (the likes of which no mortal could ever sustain without weeping nigh on end), it's at least a mercy knowing the smallest ripple of fresh sensation can wipe clean the slate of all their scars.
At least for a little while.]
I don't need gossip to make you— look like the bitch you are, dressed up in a silk ruff like a joke.
[His grin twisted high, his fangs leading when he hisses (serpentine— pricked forwards). Cruelty the shine within his stare, and that much brighter by the second.] They'll laugh you out of court by the end of the week.
[Hiss. Hiss.
Death by a thousand little whispers such an appealing prospect, but when in the clutches of a brute—
His claws wrench. In half a blink, he's snapped his arms down into the fault lines of that hold— the whipcrack start to a countering offensive carved from vicious lunges and powerful swipes: elder strength a boon in moments such as these (feel it in every strike, little wolf— ) until the mirror's on its side. The parallel complete. A haggard slam defining shattered seconds when Fenris' own body's rammed against the wall and his throat is savagely pinned to the point of pain.
Hooked talons anchored into stone. Lips brought close enough to kiss, breath pooling in the bow of bloodstained mouths.
The true face of their joining.]
Do you want to know what our master said about you?
[Tongue to his canines, his own blood wrapped around its tip; grin like a wildfire. Like a knife. Like a start.] The things he whispered to me when you weren't around to hear them, riding my cock just to find a little succor....
[It's a crude imitation, his voice. Even so:]
He needs you, Astarion.
If he fled these halls, it would not be a year before he was killed. Such a young thing. Such a hopeless thing, yet I love him all the same.
[Fingers tugging at light lacework, opening the front of Fenris' trousers with probing demand, cool against little glimpses of skin— threatening to take. His every lie stitched in deep.
Come here. Come here.]
I'll shelter you. I'll be your new master. I'll do my duty just like he asked....
And keep you safe by putting a fresh muzzle on that pretty mouth of yours.
(Hopeless, and it slips beneath his skin, embedding itself deep like a barb. It doesn't hurt, not yet, but it will: Vakares' gentle tones taking on the sneering dismay of Danarius, his sire standing in the doorframe of a stone-lined cell: all that lyrium and you still disappoint me. Pain flooding his body with every breath, his eyes wide and red-rimmed, his mind little more than a blank slate— knowing only that his sole purpose in life is to please his master, and he is failing in that task. Hopeless, and though he thinks it a lie, that will not stop that gnawing seed of doubt to embed itself within him and grow like a festering thing).
It isn't the cold fingers wrapped around his neck, nor the ones that so boldly pry open his trousers. It's not the way his own cock twitches in panting anticipation (and yet still some part of him burns in humiliation to feel it, his body betraying him even as he growls low in his throat). It isn't the ghost of chilled breath on his lips, or the crude names that Astarion tries to cast upon him (and yet he does look ridiculous in this ruff, he knows; he does look like a silly little slave caught dressing in his master's robes— or at least, that's how it feels).
But then again, maybe it is. Maybe all of those build up in those precious few seconds as they stare at one another: a swirling whirlpool of resentment and insecurity that pushes him into the past farther than he realizes. Little slave, little one, his own mind betraying him even as he shoves resentfully against it. Did you dare to dream you hadn't traded in one master for another, boy? As if you could ever survive on your own— it won't be a year before you're killed. Stupid thing. Stupid, mindless vampire, only ever good for rutting and fighting, building and building in the back of his mind—
I'll be your new master. I'll keep you safe. Muzzle that pretty mouth—
Fenris bites.
Like the feral dog he'd just been labeled: his throat straining at that tight grip as sharpened teeth slice through pale flesh with bitter precision. His fangs catch at Astarion's lip, his tongue, a vicious parody of a kiss— blood smears over his lips, spilling down his chin, and still he lunges forward again and again, not caring what he bites so long as he does. So long as Astarion hurts, oh, he will earn that muzzle. His hands grab for lithe hips, talons shredding delicate fabric into tatters with one swift motion; his fingers wrap around that thickened prick, his grip so tight.
Fenris cannot pull away, it's true. Astarion has him beat when it comes to sheer strength, and so he'll stay put so long as those fingers are wrapped around his throat. But that goes two ways— and if Fenris is to be trapped here, so will Astarion.]
Don't you dare move.]
You will never be my master.
[Oh, it's too angry. It's too desperate, his seething rage only barely covering his panic— and yet there's no hesitance to the way he keeps a tight hold on that prick. If they're to fight, let them fight— and to Fenris' mind, he has the advantage.]
Try again, old man. Or are you so arrogant when you have your cock caught in the palm of my hand?
[And yet it's a goading stroke he offers: his wrist snapping as he shuttles his hand along his cock with all the familiarity of a doting partner. His grin bloody and mean as he feels the other man swell against his fingers, throbbing in needy eagerness— oh, he is hungry, isn't he? Of course he is.
I can beat you with one hand . . . His thumb smearing over his welling slit. His grip tightening as he picks up the pace, hard tight pullsanyára, pull away now. Dance out of range and see what it gets you.]
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Oh, there he is.
There he is at long last, his sire. Possessed of conviction like none other, limitlessly devoted to the path of his own perserverance— and understand, though Astarion always thrills to feel the essence of command wash over him, this isn't strictly about power: there's so much more to it than that (reducing such a complex balance down to the shiver that occasionally runs up his spine when Vakares goes utterly adamantine would be like calling a garnet an apple just because it's red). In moments like these, he's lucent, his darling. Without daylight. Without moonlight. So steeped in his own indelibility that even a cold cynic like Astarion finds himself hanging on every word. And under the brightness of an ember stare undaunted, suddenly it's not a joke anymore—not a cruel insult spat out at Astarion's feet— but a challenge. one more task set before a firstsired capable enough to leave if he so desired it.
And isn't that the underlying message for a mind as infinitely fixated as Astarion's? You could leave, Fenris could never— ]
I could leave. [Astarion reiterates softly. Breath still in his throat, book already on the floor, entirely unharmed aside from those small, clinging little puncture marks pushed in against its cover— pouring himself deeper into Vakares' touch. Wending against his chest like a thing called home at dusk. Nuzzling at everything in reach.]
Probably should, in fact. Your empire always was a sinking ship.
[(No, he couldn't leave. He won't leave; written in the fault lines of this exchange from the trail of pettier destruction strewn about to the way he draws in close. Someone inclined to run would've just run.
Particularly now, at the end of all sheltered surety.)]
....but then I can't trust my younger counterpart to leave you anything to wake up to, can I?
[Those talons alight with gentleness when they move to catch his chin, wild and yet— not. The tensity of a creature only tame by its own volition, deigning to tolerate the mercy of close comfort.
I want you, yes.]
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There you are. He returns each fierce nuzzle with one of his own: kissing the top of Astarion's head again and again, nosing against silver curls as he soaks up every bit of him. Here you are, his darling. His beloved firstsired. His consort, his Astarion, so loved and so longed for, here you are.
And when clawed fingers catch his chin, he draws back, willingly going where Astarion leads: his concession. A concession, too: he does not correct that teasing little comment. Let Astarion have his biting remarks; Vakares has never demanded complete obedience from either of them.]
And with you leading the way . . . what will I wake to find my empire has become, I wonder.
[He really is quite curious. Every coven is different, just as every vampire is; whatever is to come, their coven will change. Astarion and Fenris will have their own preferences and ways of doing things— and Vakares is eager to see how they flourish when offered that kind of power.
More sincerely, then:]
You could leave, Astarion. You could have for centuries now.
But I am more glad than I can say that you won't.
[Oh, his darling. His precious consort, his little gemstone so very loved . . . gently, he leads Astarion towards one of those overstuffed armchairs. Come here, tugging him into his lap as he has a thousand times before. Come here, precious thing, and he can still remember the very first time he did it. All those years ago, back when it had just been the two of them . . . he does not rue the present, but he does miss the past sometimes.]
Now tell me, my little gem: shall I still step into the sun?
[It's not a rebuke. It really isn't. Rather: it's a gentle nudge, trying to gauge his consort's mood. Are you still angry, are you still upset, and it's all right if he is. It's all right if they work it out in one last rut (for they have done that before, Astarion viciously biting as he fucks him until his anger ebbs) or if Astarion wants to lay out his grievances one by one . . . but he does not want to let such things lie until he's certain they're through with it.]
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On those roaming fingers— so mild that it doesn't even begin to break skin, let alone bruise it. Astarion's viperish hastisement so contextually gentle that it lacks teeth of its own beyond the pointed edges of harsh fangs; yes, he's fussy still. Oh yes, he's resentful of necessity, and bitter about what he'll lose in the process of attending it— but even so.]
Don't you dare.
[Wretched sire so cherished beyond measure, how dare he make him consider the possibility of something so unthinkable (never mind that it was Astarion who'd brought it up to begin with); how dare you, precious thing. Outline of my heart. Mooring cage I'll never flee. How dare he even bring that up now, when everything tangible is wading through the gaps of lax entanglement, nested softly under the press of clothed thighs and shifted ankles: chest-to-chest in ways both awkwardly undignified and artistically bewitching— unafraid of how they might look to the outside world. Lax like animals in repose are almost boneless, an arm draped here or a leg there, faces close enough together that false breath pools.]
I ought to bite your pretty tongue out for that glibness.
Keep it as a souvenir. [A kiss as sharp as spiced wine finding its way to the supple center of those lips. He's always been more inclined to physicality than soothing chatter when it comes to all sincerity; keeping hold of Vakares' jaw to press it upright in his grip, tilting only so far as it takes to work a warming little path of bitemarks and bruises down the frontside of that unattended throat. Incandescent seconds involving the satisfying give of vulnerable skin caught between parted lips (and fangs, and the roiling tip of his tongue) passing as if they were weighted minutes.
Oh, never doubt Astarion loves his sire. But despite the hierarchy instilled in their kind by default, he isn't slavishly servile in regards to his maker (there is such merit to being firstsired; the boldness rooted in intimacy that'd once been only theirs decades ago, understood by no one else): while the world bows its head in varied deference— and Astarion does the same— behind closed doors, he can reach with despotic fingertips to grip his master by the reins, knowing that's his right. His luxury.
One that truly can't be shared, given the nature of its origin.]
What did he say to you?
[Asked in a lowered rumble as he climbs to straddle his beloved. Agile spine stretched long (his shirt still open, his legs almost painfully splayed to push snugly against his master's hips across that aging settee), his hand still holding fast.]
Knowing him, Fenris wasn't exactly clamoring for sex after news like that.
[Ergo: they must've talked, those two. The scent is too strong not to have been a recent exchange, though it doesn't reek of rutting. And you know, in Astarion's hawkish estimations, they did always seem the type for quiescent conversation. Gentle reassurance in the face of adversity, and all that.]
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But that doesn't mean he treats them uniformly. That would be foolish; the relationship he has with both of them is unique, and so he cannot spoil them both with the same hand, as though there is no difference between them. And within those relationships, there are variances. Privileges afforded to each in turn based on their sired-order, and things that Vakares cannot deny. Fenris is the younger, and so he gets treated with a softer hand, and as for Astarion . . .
Astarion gets this kind of intimacy. This pointed dominance, this reversal of roles . . . oh, yes, this is his right. This is what centuries of intimacy has earned him, and after all this time, Vakares relishes it: the relief that comes from allowing someone else to take control. The joy of letting his eyes flutter closed as the air slowly expels from his lungs, his lips parting as Astarion bites at his throat. Impudent thing, he thinks, and slides his hands around lithe hips, both palms gripping full cheeks and tugging them forward.]
Nosy.
[As gentle as those bites. He'll let Astarion have his way, oh, yes, for that is the least of what he owes him, but he needn't be passive about it. His fingers grope at supple curves, blunted talons digging in as he pulls the other vampire forward, rut, guiding him along a grinding lapdance.]
We spoke of the past. Of my turning, and of yours— though when it came to you, I advised him only to ask of your past.
[No secrets revealed, no details offered. He is not callous.]
He wanted to understand why I made the decision I did— and why I had not simply made you heir instead.
So curious about him, after all this . . .?
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[Astarion pointedly asserts through fangs that've been gritted by the heady grinding of their hips (not angered: incensed), his eyes reduced to lidded sits, brimming with arousal left unchecked.
An exhale thicker than blood sliding from his throat on the next pull forwards, grip fastened by the pricking tips of his claws— counterweight to the way Vakares pulls him in against the arching of his spine; the feeling of exhaustive constriction running rich along his inner thighs, each new burst of sensation more bewitching than the last (settee grousing loudly underneath their shifting balance, too old to endure too much too quickly, making this a languid march towards their own hedonistic effulgence).]
And where those thoughts of yours have been roaming without me nearby to guide them.
[Not to mention his fingers, his hands— his heart. Oh, there's no great unmasked truth involved in revealing that he thinks about Vakares all too often when they aren't together, unable to swallow down the sleepless twitch of paranoia skittering within his skull; unable to stop pining for the maker he's without. And yet in this case?
It's just a bluff.
A predictable, believable lie.
He was thinking of Fenris, actually. His secondary shadow. His purported twin amongst the flock. The only other soul capable of completely consuming that much of his mind— and a rival to their master's claim on his waking thoughts, though Astarion could never in his wildest dreams even begin to see what ire has to do with fond obsession. No, there's nothing there to pick over, he asserts to the emptiness of his own mind in addition to the open air with his breathless denial.
(If one rejects anything long enough, it might well become the truth.)]
I'll never understand what it is you two adore so bloody much about the past, anyway. [That much alone is true, though it comes with a delving slip of pale fingers past the barrier of Vakares' lips— smoothly gliding over the channel of his tongue for a few exploratory beats. A mask for the way he then pushes back against the hold across his hips (oh, but the feeling of those palms rucking against his trousers), slow in sinking down towards his sire's shadowed legs.
Lower. Lower....
Catching lacework in the outline of his teeth.]
It isn't memory that can suck your cock, you know....
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But that's a quiet thought, buried in the next moment beneath the fierce heat that thunders through Vakares' veins. Crimson eyes have gone hooded, his next false inhale a slow and even thing. There you are, my little pet, lust and affection tangling together in one searing moment as he looks down at the figure kneeling between his legs. Not just his Astarion, not anymore, but his consort: slick-mouthed and eager, his eyes bright as ever as he tugs at his master's laces. A pretty thing so eager to settle into his role one last time, oh, he's missed this.
Leaning back in the chair, his legs fall open lazily.]
And yet I've so many memories of you doing just that . . .
[His fingers card gently through silver curls, combing them back before tightening, tugging Astarion closer to his cock.]
So prove your point. Show me how much better it is to linger in the present, Astarion.
[A little smirk as the head of his prick rubs against plush lips, precome smearing against a mouth already swollen from use.]
Show me how much you want me, my precious gem.
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And the thing is, it's not an act.
Tomorrow's going to come no matter what he wants; he's done his railing and rattling and vicious ranting, and in the end it brought him this (the sight of spread legs clothed in dark silk, a pair of coalfire eyes glancing down across abyssal distance— as if a dark room is the same thing as an oceanic chasm, endless by design). Fingers pushing along the borders of those open legs while his teeth and tongue do the bulk of cruel unraveling, making a show out of each knot undone without the aid of either hand. The past compared to this is papered faff— even at its most beautiful, there's no comparing dusty recollection to molten ardor. To the electric scrape of friction scratching fiendishly against bare skin, sparking up the start of something grander.
They've had better nights, the two of them; they've certainly had better futures laid out at their feet, too.
So why not here? Why not now? Why choose anything else but the present, when it's always the present that gives so very much.]
Maybe I will....
[Purrs the thing already doing just that: freeing a thickened cock with just enough pressure to let it spring from tighter confines— knocked back against his lips.
There's a soft click when his tongue leaves the roof of his mouth in the next few beats beyond that (effort made to unfurl while he opens wide around the tip of that sweet length, glazing the very crown of it— and forcing those legs wider as he rocks forwards onto his knees), flirting with the idea of claiming what invites him in.]
You do have to admit, if I was ever going to sabotage your hopes of sleeping for an eternity, I'd do it by making sure you couldn't rest—
[Consonant barely kissed before he plunges over rigidity itself, forcing tense heat to the very hilt until it slams against the back of his waiting throat. Muscles working in a coaxing pull akin to the sensation of swallowing—groping at his sire's ensnared prick using only the deftness of his tongue.
And since he doesn't need to breathe....
Well.
Staying there is the only logical choice, isn't it? (How better than to make his maker pant.)]
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[It's a roughened noise: a panting exhale that can't decide if it wants to be a moan or a rueful laugh. Both, maybe. A moan for the sight of Astarion on his knees, his eyes so dark as he stares up at his sire; lips stretched pliantly around the base of his prick, suckling eagerly in worshipful devotion even as his darkened gaze promises nothing but mischief. And a moan for how bloody good he is at this— gods, and Vakares ducks his head, his lips thinning as tension wracks through his slender frame. Every eager swallow sends sparks shooting through his veins, heat pulsing through him as his prick sinks so deep into narrow, hot confines. His hips shift experimentally, rolling forward and pulling back by mere centimeters; it's worth it to see slick flesh slowly rock in and out of Astarion's mouth.
And for a moment, the instinct rises in him. Vicious and beastly, a snarling demanding desire that nearly overcomes him for how intense it is. Blackened lust and vampiric arrogance tangle together, and all Vakares wants in that moment is to be mean. The fantasy sears itself in his mind so vividly; without thinking he tightens his grip in Astarion's hair, his gaze gone black as he looks down at him.
He wants to fuck him, you see. Yank him by the hair and keep him on his knees while Vakares fucks his mouth with vicious hunger. He wants to watch as his consort's eyes water and roll back; he wants to see that fierce need for attention finally sated, Astarion moaning thickly as his mouth is taken. He wants to hear sated moans turn into wet whimpers and pleas, his hand shoved between his legs and all of him thrashing and fighting uselessly, caught between desperate desire and an instinctive need to flee. He wants to see Astarion pushed to the brink, to the very limit of lust; he wants to claim him over and over, spilling into his belly until he outright drools come. Until his eyes are hazy and he sways with exhaustion, a little slut neatly broken, compliant and eager only for his master's taste.
And the trouble is: Vakares could have that.
Not just as bedsport. Not just as a playful little game that they can call off whenever they please. He could ruin his consort tonight, and no one would stop him.
Control yourself.
One long, slow breath.]
Good boy.
[He could ruin him, yes. He could enact that fantasy. He could do so many things— but then, he thinks, he would not have this. His doting consort, his immortal beloved . . . his wicked little darling, and Vakares' hand drops, palm cupping his cheek for a few adoring seconds.]
So your plan to stave off my rest is to become my cockwarmer for the next century . . . perhaps you have learned enough patience for such a feat.
[It's low. Rumbled and roughened, his fangs biting at his lip as he settles into this pleasure.]
You were such an eager thing at the start . . . mm, don't touch yourself, [he adds almost absently.] When you come, it will be at my hand, impaled upon my cock, your legs spread and your expression all mine to drink in.
[He's quiet for a little while, then. Content to do nothing more than drink in the sight and sensation of Astarion kneeling before him, fingers stroking slowly through his hair. But then, softly:]
Precious thing . . . you mean the world to me.
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Praise so potent it boils in the pit of his stomach (while his lips run tight around his maker's divine breadth, messily inviting worship) through voiceless pops of slick saliva welling thick against his lips. Posited scenario so inviting he can't help but break into a submerged groan while his head bobs appreciatively up and down (and up and down— ) milking at a cock more perfect than it has any right to be in a rough substitute for fantasy made real; told not to palm himself— behaved enough to abide by it regardless of how his fingers twitch— but desperate enough to fulfill his need another way: noisily suckling at that prick in rhythmic measure that's matched to the bouncing of his unclaimed hips. As if bumping it to the back of his throat over and over again is the same feeling of pressure described in lurid detail.
A whore rutting with spread legs. Eager to please. Eager to open himself to being brought low in every last sense of the word. Used. Fucked. Ridden hard and put away wetter than anyone might have thought possible.
Transitive friction near to palpable if he shuts his eyes (if he focuses long enough for the sluggish drag across his tongue, his lips— down, down into the back of his throat), and it's not hard to think he's already seated atop the sire he covets above all else, taking his conquered pleasure from gilded heighths instead of waiting for it to be offered on a silver platter.
Good boy.
Words lapping distantly at the shores of his own focus, thrumming like the very weight within his mouth (and while it's been a while since he bedded something living, he'd swear his master's just as scalding as he feels: white-hot jolts of reflex warring wildly along his tongue with ruthless patience), unhurried to reach the finish line. In the wreckage of a room (a hall, a wing) sporting the evidence of his countless misdemeanors and well-aimed slights, he is a good boy now. Of that, he's keenly certain.
The world, Vakares says. True both ways, if one feels like being metonymical.
An entire world trapped inside the margins of their merger.]
I know.
[Slick, the outline of those words. Brief interlude fit against the underside of a well-loved cock gone flush with spared attention.]
And could you blame me for being eager? [Asked while his knuckles slide between soft thighs, working slowly at plush curvatures left buried beneath dark trousers and their unwound laces. Methodical and sweet.]
You were a bewitching fascination in those days compared to anything I'd ever known. Willful and isolated both.
[Not strictly Astarion's past, but....oh, it is the past, isn't it? Close to the horizon, like a foothold left exposed.]
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[And it suits that they should speak of the past like this, doesn't it? Astarion mouthing them slickly against Vakares' cock, his lips slick with saliva and every word coated in lust and love both . . . how many times have they done this? How many times has Astarion fallen to his knees like this, so hungry to worship his sire that he wouldn't take no for an answer. Deft fingers tugging at laces and crimson eyes glimmering with mischief, you can spare half an hour, can't you? For me?
It isn't that he longs for those times. The past hundred years have been far more good than bad, after all, and he does love both his consorts so very much. But tonight of all nights . . . tonight, Vakares decides, they can allow themselves a bit of nostalgia. They deserve to indulge (even if some small part of him twinges in guilt, there and gone). In wake of so much grief and hurt, misunderstandings and aching hearts that will take so long to repair . . .
Just for now, Vakares thinks, they can pretend it's just the two of them once more. Not a trio, but a duo: a sire and his darling spawn, bound together forever in love and lust both.
He tugs those hands away from his thighs and urges Astarion back up, his hands firm but not cruel. Come here, murmured softly as he draws him into his lap again. There's a faint shiver for how plush curves still clothed press against his cock, but ah, he has far more important things to focus on. His hands slide slowly over the swell of his hips, urging him in close. And heat smolders in his dark gaze as he stares so intently up at his little siren. There you are, his attention suddenly focused and fixated on the only thing that matters. On his first love, so very different than any other. On the very first thing that had ever piercing through the protective cocoon he had built around himself, deadly as a blade and yet soft as starlight.]
And am I still so bewitching, little gem?
[Softer, his tone. Indulgent in a particularly besotted way, even as his hips rock up to grind and rub against him.]
Take off that shirt, now.
[His own hands are already moving: one prying swiftly at the laces on Astarion's trousers; the other lapped at with practical swiftness before it slips down the back, two fingers massaging indulgently at the tight little cinch always so eager to greet him— and ah, how swiftly he opens. How quickly Vakares can pump two fingers into him, middle and ring fingers hooking indulgently as he drinks in every moan and twitch and whine that might occur.]
I told you that you would come only on my cock, and that is true. But I intend to come in you. And now that you've gotten me so slick . . . I want to watch you bounce. I want to see you take all that you are owed, and all that you desire . . . and I want to see you enjoy it.
[His hand tugs those trousers down hard, forcing them just beneath the curve of those supple cheeks: baring him without going to all the trouble of stripping him fully.]
Go on, my darling. My love. My Astarion . . . I am yours.
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[Awash with blazing vigor coaxed up from keener embers: Vakares' physical response (dilated eyes, bated breath; hands that waver in their focus) the kindling that sparks beneath his words— and every visual it depicts in the lightless pith of his own tack. Shadows pooled around the image of a cock fit snug into its sheathe, with slick glimmers of glistening oil and precome flickering like starlight over vulnerable skin that wrings at its own bridle. His prick tipped skywards as it leaks, bouncing between buckled arms that brace his pistoning hips— neither hand touching— please the only thing on his lips between the constant slap of skin-on-skin. Percussion fit for desperation, when each beat's quicker than the last. Please come— please come so that I can come— touch me, sire— maker— lover—
Oh, love.
One who knows just how to rein him in when he's gone too far. No blunt pressure or cruder force applied through the sort of crass manipulation the other lords employ (it's easy to tell a slave to rut or a thrall to obey— it might even be easy to make them want it by rewarding them like a sotted hound: a couple of treats or a pat on the head the closest thing to careworn coaxing. But Vakares? Oh, no. When he herds them away from their worst instincts it might damned well be through learned knowledge of their needs, but he isn't some mastermind at work plotting moves across a board with a few expendable pawns, just a clever thing in love; easing off the worst of his consorts' pain or ambition. Their wants or their maddened streaks of mouthing lust.
In other words: it's no crime to be canny the way their sire is canny, where even his absent mind runs hot with mastery's keenest breath.)
His thighs sting from the biting pressure of his trousers and their straddled tension, muscles no doubt bruising when he rocks himself forwards into it (cold air cut across his exposed curves, wholly unguarded against clawed fingers or a waiting prick), but— ]
How could I ever resist?
[An answer to all things, that. Laid out sharp through the hollow rumble in his throat, hitching before it stops— (slick like those fingertips, pulled away from in one little roll of movement)— and speared fully on thick ardor in the very next beat.
To the hilt.
To the lurid flush.
Friction just a measure for how deep he runs inside the tightest narrows, bumping hot against malleable walls (no one else to reach between them, dulling down its blistering intensity: each twitch finding a corresponding pulse of entrenched force, left to right, forward and back, digging in as he arches forwards) into— fuck— ]
—you are mine....
[Through the grit of his teeth and the ache in his jaw: his. Through the unnfixed and unanchored movements outside the drag of rigid satisfaction rocked harsh against the figurative grain; his hips rolling before they work up into a steady rhythm evoking the exact images from before.
(Vakares was his from the moment he'd bitten him, and he always will be.)
Pact sealed by thready gasps and shuttling rhythms (writ by snaring snaps of rapid movement rather than trite words), hunched over well-braced palms.]
Don't you dare forget it just for shutting your pretty eyes.
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[Oh, never, never. Never, not his Astarion nor the way he belongs to his starlit boy— and it isn't because of this. It isn't because he takes a cock well (so well, and the lurid moan that sounds as tight, slick heat envelops Vakares to the hilt is far too loud as it echoes hoarsely down the hall). It isn't because he's so very clever in bed, coyly proposing new games or showing just how well he can handle a fuck (and it had taken Vakares so very long to realize that his consort thought he needed to be so inventive to keep his sire's attention— oh, darling boy, as if he ever needed to be anything but himself). When he goes to his slumber, he won't dream of all the lewd ways his consort has kept his bed warm, no.
He'll dream of his eyes, just as they right now. Crimson sparkled with darker flecks, narrowed in focus and yet eagerly triumphant, as smug as any kitten who just caught his first mouse. His voice, purring low in satisfaction even as his thighs shake for how much he enjoys this; the curve of his cheek and the scent of him thick in the air, as all the he ruts and grinds and bounces atop his prick, half-sated from being filled alone.
I love you, Vakares thinks and does not say. There's no room for it, not right now— but still, as his hands settle on Astarion's hips and darts his head up to catch his beloved in a swift kiss, he thinks it. I love you, I love you, I love you, so fiercely and so achingly that he has reconsidered his slumber too many times to count. I love you, and it is unlike any love he has ever had before; it is wholly different and separate than what he has with Fenris, and all the stronger for it. I love you, every bit, emphasized over and over the steady pump of his hips upwards, cock daggering in and out of his consort's slick hole. I love you for all that you are and more—]
Ah—
[— and for this, too.
For the goading taunt in Astarion's voice, yes. For the way he ruts so eagerly, his hole cinching so tight with rhythmic glee as his cock bounces between them, thick and swollen and untouched. But most of all: for the way he ignites a blaze unlike any other within his sire, coaxing him past all those centuries of self-control.
Before he realizes what he's doing, there's the sound of fabric shredding and seams ripping apart; in the next moment Astarion's trousers lie in tatters around him, thighs springing free even as he keeps up his bouncing rhythm. His hands lock around his hips, his eyes flicking down to drink in the frankly lurid sight of his cock bouncing between them, thickened hang flushed darkly in desire— and then up to that pretty face again, their eyes locking for one brief bursting second before Vakares surges up.
Mine, he thinks, or maybe it's yours, the two tangling up together in ouroborosian desire as his palms cup plush curves and he stands, yanking Astarion in close. His fingers dig in cruelly, spreading his consort open with vulgar intent (and he wishes he could see it: the sight of Astarion suspended in midair, spread open and speared atop a thick prick, oil dripping around the rim of his swollen hole) as he crosses the room in two strides and slams the elf against the wall.
There. There, his hips bearing Astarion's weight as his hands wrap around slender wrists, pinning him against the wall with cock and fingers and lips— a searing kiss, his tongue thrusting forward as he fucks into him. Hard and hot and fast, and every slap of skin against skin serves as echo for all of those words: I love you, you're mine, I'm yours, I will see you filled with my claim and mewling for my touch all because you said you wished it, I'm yours, I'm yours, I'm yours—]
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Vampires are quickened things, even unto themselves; expending precious effort on even registering the scope of their own reflexive movements would be as pointless as it is a total waste— not including the inherent blindness attached to all present depravity (the distraction that'd only drag him away from just how good it feels to be held aloft in his master's claws over the drooling pinion of his prick: sensation melted into immoral weightlessness. Senselessness. Panting like an animal at bay for all the good it does him); loss of control one more ritual steeped in utter trust. Antithetical to sightlessness, the only leap of faith they've ever shared was in the narrow band of seconds just before sharp fangs pierced his living throat.
Well—
That, and whatever comes tomorrow.
But all that matters right now is that awareness is a passing footnote.
One more glimmering little afterthought devoid of reason. Purpose. Power. That it exists as something infinitely more primordial than its clever origins— good only for tracking the differences between cold plaster and kindled skin. The scuffing divide between their bodies once they hit the wall, harsher than before and coarser than the scrape of flint across steel. His own prick pushed against hard borders (like the rest of him), pressure nothing but a vulgar denouement for subsequent violence—
(Insobrietous violence. Decadent lust fed raucous little scraps for so long behind decorum's measured bars that when they give way at last, they snap.
Even behind Vakares' stunning eyes.
His shackled mind. His fettered heart. His soul so damp with discipline that he shines in a room full of fallow wretchings, lesser as they are— even then— he proves what Astarion has always known: no beast is ever tamed. No amount of filing could ever dull sharp fangs or claws. Paperwork does not a mortal make, and whenever he finally wakes, he ruts like the wanton thing he is.)
Oh.
Oh—
There's no time to brace. Before Astarion can stutter out even an acclimating bark, his vision blots with stardust. His lungs are empty. His throat— his mouth— that savaging tempo at his hips having pumped every last drop of air from him before he's fully readied, and he can't tell if he's baying like a beast in heat or silent as the grave for how deaf he is to everything beyond the rapid sound of every thrust— fuck, the dizzying vibration of it, a rhythm so inhuman it might as well be buzzing in ways mortal things could only dream of, shattering like brittle glass beneath his skin. So damned wet with slakeless lechery the floor has to be drenched already while his own claws scrabble wildly for purchase (at the wall. At the borders of his sire. At the barely-caught fringes of dark hair, wrapped in a snapping frenzy against the back of Vakares' neck as he whines or whimpers or wheezes or screams or groans or begs or— or or or)—
No one could fuck him like this.
No one could mount him like this, bruisingly untamed and brutally untempered: a lion mastering his herd or a wolf pinning down its pack until it bows with fierce obedience would whimper just to be caught beneath his gaze. Astarion's body raw and his voice hoarse and still it doesn't stop— faster. Harder. Deeper—
Until his eyes roll back and his belly feels damp, blank slate struck across his mind.
In (blinking against the blurred lines of the ceiling); Out (gasping as he lulls against his sire's shoulders, wracked with split sensation), his lips flecked with gloss and his limbs too limp to bother twitching where they hang. Hips bouncing still atop their wicked transgressor. Cock still jerking harsh against the wall. Neck slung back, profile nosing at— a cheek? A neck? He doesn't know.
He hardly cares. Scent alone tells him who it is he's nuzzling against.
That, and the fullness of his hips.]
Hnn— ngh— [Ah. Ah, catch your breath, Astarion. Inhale before you try to speak, Astarion. Teetering on the panting edge of molten ardor won't make you any more coherent unless you try, licking at your lips first.]
....so you do still....know how to charm....
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But he's a creature of instinct now: his fingers still wrapped loosely around one narrow wrist, thumb stroking gently as he returns each of those nuzzles. Mine, their foreheads bumping together as his lips drift over the the curve of a pale cheek. A soft chin. Lips swollen and sore from overuse, and all the while his hips still pump inwards shallowly. Pearl streaks down the length of his prick, viscous droplets slowly drooling down to puddle on ancient wood as Vakares slides his lips down. Mine, the mindless mouthing of a predator finally at ease— though not thoughtlessly so. It's no mistake his mouth settles just atop those twin scars he'd given his beloved so many years ago.
(This will hurt, he had whispered to the wounded thing in his arms, until it won't. I promise you it will ease, little one. Just take a deep breath, his fingers smoothing through curls clotted with dried blood even as his fangs ached with phantom longing. It would take nothing to make him yours, that awful little voice had whispered to him. He's too weak to fight, and no one will dare intervene— take him. Strip him down and rut into him like the mewling prey he is. Fuck him from both ends and listen to him scream around the press of your cock. Flip him over and sink your teeth into his neck; promise him that you'll turn him and make him earn it, and when you've had your fun, drain the last bits of blood out of him and throw the corpse into the canal until he rots beyond recognition—
And the trick has never been that he doesn't desire such things.
The trick is knowing how to store it all up until he needs it.)
They aren't done. Even now, as the focus slowly returns to his ruby gaze, he can feel his hunger gnawing in the pit of his stomach. Astarion feels too good in his arms, lithe limbs and cool skin; he just feels so delicious wrapped so tight around his prick, tight and hot and perfect. Mine, he thinks again, and his gaze is still a blackened thing as he stares up at his consort. His hips still pump in deep, hungry to claim every inch of that tight little cinch, and never mind how many times he's done it before, for it's never enough. It's not enough, that ugly part of him whispers, not when this time tomorrow he'll be in someone else's bed—
Enough. One last lick to those scars before he speaks.]
Mm, I have not forgotten, no. But I tell you this: I have not begun to charm you, little one.
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And then it begins.
Not the ceremony itself, but oh, there are endless preparations to be made. They're dressed in their finest, silk and satin dyed black and stitched together with the most delicate silver threads. Kohl lines their eyes, eyeshadow and accessories added to their personal tastes. Jewelry adorns their ears and throats (though not their fingers), all of it tastefully placed and obscenely expensive. Witnesses are introduced; outside, the crowds are slowly prodded into gathering. And in that way hours somehow pass, though to Fenris' mind it all goes by far too quickly.
They head into the main hall, standing before Vakares in front of what feels like the entire population of Baldur's Gate. Eyes dart between Astarion and Fenris, whispers filling the hall as people place their final bets, and gods, but Fenris hates it. He has never done well in the spotlight, and today is no different: his eyes go shuttered, his expression turning to stone as he stands next to his—
Well. Not fiancé, not really. And yet perhaps Fenris is still too tied to morality, even a century later, to not think of all this in terms of a wedding.
Thank you for your patience these past three days, Vakares says, and just like that, it's begun. Fenris' stomach pitches, but it's too late to protest. Too late to do anything but fixate on a vantage point in the distance and try not to glance over at Astarion, lest he look too much like an anxious bride. And I hope the celebrations were to your liking. It is not often I have cause to revel for so long, but the announcement of one's heir is cause for celebration, I think.
It goes on. He speaks of his family, his followers, and how loyal they all have been; he speaks of the joy of partnership, and how it was not reclusiveness but unity that made him a stronger politician and better person. He emphasizes community and teamwork over isolation, and Fenris wonders if the brighter ones in the audience have picked up where he's going with this. Certainly they all know this isn't normal; there's whispers here and there, a susurrus that only grows as Vakares sets his hands on both their shoulders.
But I digress. You are all here to see me choose my heir, and I have done so. A pause, and more than anything Fenris wishes he would just get on with it. I have chosen both of them. Both Astarion and Fenris will share command, joining together in a ceremony more ancient than even I.
And there are other words, of course. More introduction, because ceremony is nothing but talking, but Fenris is too busy scanning the crowd. Most are shocked. Some are pleased, though whether that's a good thing or not remains to be seen. The whispers grow louder— and then, just loud enough to be heard, there's a giggle. It's brief and swiftly hushed, but it's there.
Vakares ignores it. So does most of the crowd, to be fair: their whispers settling as Vakares urges them both to face one another. Join hands, he commands, and Fenris extends his own, not daring to tear his gaze away for a single second.
Do you, Fenris, swear your fealty and loyal to Astarion? Vakares' voice is low and rolling, his confidence absolute as he utters the first part of their oaths. Fenris' stomach feels like lead, his tongue numb— and yet the words slip past his lips nonetheless, for all that he stares warily as he utters them.]
I do so swear.
[There's no going back now.]
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The ceremony and the leers. The judgment. Encouraged by every instance of giggling or muttered commentary, their audience is a palpable chasm of shock and indignity and amusement cut through by little pulsework echoes, each one reverberated in someone else's mouth before passing on (and on, and on).... He feels the harshness of firm knuckles pressed against his own once their fingers intertwine, and from the narrow gap between them (sire and sired, all), it feels as if he's being choked by everything he's wanted for so long: the regalia fit for Vakares' shoulders is far too scratchy along its seams and artful hems (it worries at his shoulders; leaves him itching just to touch it or scrub it or rip it free); the attention from established eyes, hawkish and overtly loud (later, it will be worse); the coronating esteem his maker's always carried, stamped down in slow farewells; the brute that is his younger kin, compelled to listen to him— if only so they share.
But he's not a child, for all his frequent whinging.
The ridicule waiting for them in the wings didn't start when their sire opened their mouth to speak. It started long, long before now. (Before his tantrum or their isolation. Before Vakares treated them as equals at his heels. Decades upon decades ago, before the fresher idea of better started to eclipse the notion of is and always has been, razor lips were already peeling back to show off equally jagged fangs.) The other vampires wouldn't have spared them if Vakares uttered I choose Fenris any more than they would've done to hear Astarion: one configuration of voices might differ in isolation, true, but still— if a chorus trills from its left or its right side in equal volume, does that really make it any different a scenario?
No.
Obviously not.
Petty things— like Astarion— will always be petty things. Takes one to know one (or a lot of ones), as they say: he doesn't like it, but there's comfort to be found in the fact that Leto clearly doesn't, either. Their shared grip so stiff and obligatory that it could be a metaphor for its surrounding pomp— and you know, when it comes to a pair that looks only towards their waiting master rather than at one another, it is, actually.
But again, he's not a child. Not a fledgling. Not a spoiled prince whining for a wetted throat to suckle from, rather than standing on his own buckling legs. Eventually, the din feels more like background noise. Rustling wind equal to a drunken baroness teasing her own spawn by tugging at their ears and suggestively whispering it's such a good idea— making favorites breed for life. Literal husbandry, someone mutters back, and Astarion hears it as much as he doesn't, just like a noisy gust of wind. Birds chirruping. Shutters flapping in a breeze. Peripheral distraction warranting little as he tightens his already rigid grip, his kohl-lined eyes narrowed into lightless puddles when he adds:]
I do, of course.
[Temptation part of his own incorrigible existence, consigned to keeping quiet dignity at bay.]
If only because it'll be fun to see how many of our esteemed kin might finally strain their poor fragile little minds to tell us apart, now that they'll have to look up to call us by our names.
[Tsk tsk. So much for graceful vows— though Astarion silently smiles as a clawed thumb is dipped in blood before being brushed across his lips by an attending hand (and vice versa), staining their respective mouths a striking shade of crimson.]
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It's not a nice thing. Certainly no one in the waiting audience would mistake it for the radiant smile of a bliss-filled vampire eager to be even closer to his counterpart, starry-eyed and sweet. At best, it's a sardonic thing, there and gone and yet so very vivid now that blood coats his lips.
And you know, Fenris is still such a young thing. Only barely a century old and so terribly disinterested in vampiric politics, but still. He knows how people work. He knows what details they will remember in the coming years, when all the words have faded and all that's left is the stark impressions. No matter that Vakares squeezes both his consorts' shoulders in warning, for Fenris thinks that perhaps this is what will matter most in the coming years.
This exchange. This quiet little moment when Astarion speaks and Fenris responds, the two of them suddenly allied together in a moment of quiet camaraderie.
There is so little they agree on, after all. Vakares has always been their chief point of connection, the two of them setting aside their rivalry to make their beloved happy— but perhaps they can join in on this, too. The two of them unifying not for the sake of peace or love (oh, Vakares is such an earnest thing, so eager to see the future as nothing but good and bright), but sheer bloody spite.]
A hundred golden coins says that they get us mixed up more than half the time—
[What a dedicated thing their sire is, for he doesn't pay his whispering spawn any mind. He doesn't even break his stride, intoning the next part of their oath with all the enthusiasm and muster his position requires. But the sudden squeeze of his fingers against their shoulders speaks volumes, as does the sharp little glance he darts down at both of them. Shut up.]
I do so swear—
[Loyalty. Partnership. The vows settle on their shoulders like mantles, binding them together with more than just spoken words. There's magic woven in these rituals, Fenris realizes. Not the paltry spells that wizards use, their powers torn from the Weave; this is far more ancient. It's a bitter aftertaste beneath the blood slowly dripping down his tongue, so subtle that his lyrium doesn't bother to react. Not a deliberate thing Vakares kept from them, no— simply a pledge. A binding pact, as definitive as the ties that bind they two to their sire. Each promise a lash, each vow a cinching knot, until at last—
Seal your pact before the world, Vakares commands, and Fenris' eyes focus up once more.
And maybe it's nerves. Maybe it's grief for Vakares, sudden and yet all the more painful for it. Maybe it's the wariness of a century's worth of rivalry suddenly flaring its head, sparking old instincts born of a lifetime ago that whisper that nothing is certain. That to trust is to lead oneself to destruction; that everyone, everyone is out only for themselves, and Astarion most of all. And it doesn't matter that they just exchanged a teasing joke; it doesn't matter that they both of them promised Vakares they'd do their best. Emotions don't ever need rational thought, and all Fenris knows in that moment is this:
That whatever comes next, he will have to fight to keep himself from harm.
So he hesitates. It's the briefest thing, a half-breath's balking as wariness and rebelliousness and loathing all tangle together. He doubts anyone in the audience notices, but the two near him surely do.
Act, those instincts insist— and without a moment's thought, Fenris does. His hand darts to the back of Astarion's neck, drawing him in with one quick motion so Fenris can fit his lips to his so pointedly. For if they are to do this— to embark on this partnership, to be a duo instead of a singular ruler— Fenris will not be a passive partner. He will not be the younger brat constantly waiting for his elder to take control, no: Fenris kisses as though he means to take, domineering and rough. Mine, hungry pushes and eager pulls a vulgar rhythm once, twice—
Before he draws back, his tongue flicking out to lap at the blood coating Astarion's lip.
There, now. That's far better, and he does not realize just how self-satisfied he truly looks.]
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A lesser creature would snap under its boundless gravity, caught off guard the way Astarion finds himself in those passing seconds while his master's grip still holds him and his wedded consort's fangs settle coolly against his lips (but he's not lesser, is he? Astarion). Softer than it should be. Sweeter than it should be. Oh no, he's not some stumbling cub on buckled legs— (Fenris, that is— ) not with his profile leading before either of their minds have a moment to keep pace. Thoughtlessness begetting thoughtlessness, considering it's Astarion that gives chase in the narrow aftermath, smearing red beyond the border of their mouths.
Then there's wine, and there's drinking, and a shocking number of slighted guests even deftly pretend to be happy for them— and partway through all those necessary overtures involved in such a dizzyingly attended coronation, the old, embattled lion that devised all this knotwork-solemnization slips away.
Small in stature.
Subtle gestures.
Misunderstood in the moment (or not, depending on attentiveness), just a single sweep of passing pressure along his darling's shoulders as they endure a flood of accolades and deferential flattery— capped by a silent kiss to their respective cheeks— their temples. Common as the contact traded each and every night before sleep or during dullest conversation. No more words to shed when everything's already been long uttered between them (and punctuation can hardly overstay its welcome without bleeding into the next chapter).
By twilight's stumbling entrance, when the doors have all been shuttered and the grand hall hushed down to a dispersing din already rife with drowsied calm, Archduke Vakares sleeps.
It's nothing they didn't know was coming.
Inevitability has a habit of kissing their shoulders just as frequently as their sire always— (ah) did.
But they aren't led by his spawn to his bed. Or to their own bedchambers either, for that matter. Call it a belated gift, perhaps, on behalf of an apologetic patron that had one last little card tucked high within an unassuming sleeve:
An atrium.
A former one, converted with blacked out windows where gossamer arches had likely held aloft old skylights— only mosaics now, but the oil-black mirror shine of countless tiles overhead is as fittingly stunning for a pair of heirs that seem as at odds with each other as that selfsame show of vivid stars and swirling void. Less prone to mixing than battling each other for dominating clarity, yet underneath: one bed. One half-study. One storage chest. One grooming table. One to one to one to one, with the bottom line being the same rule their clever maker always tried to impose— share.
Astarion slips in last, through a half-cracked door frame; such a serpent of a beast that he can't suppress his own nature even in a slumbering manor. Winding his coils into empty space, and setting those albinic eyes on the only other figure present.
(And gods, they do look so small in a room this expansive, don't they?)]
Did you mean it?
[He asks dryly between the sounds of (inherently) prowling footsteps. No clarification given, naturally.
—well.
At least not without a clever, weighted pause.]
That smart little quip about the coins.
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That's saying a lot. Vakares has always been a soft hand with his coven no matter their rank, but it was his consorts he adored spoiling the most. Both their rooms had been marvelous things: airy and bright, artwork lining the walls and books stacked on shelves. They'd been allowed to customize them to their liking, and for Fenris, that meant half of it became a place to train: stone overlaid with tile and racks of weapons lining the far wall. You don't need to fight anymore, Vakares had told him, but I can appreciate the need for routine. Simply try not to stab anyone within the household.
(He has to stop thinking of Vakares. He has to stop longing for a past that no longer exists, for lingering there too long is the right way to ruin. And he will. He will, but oh, give him a day's grief, at least).
And understand, Fenris loves that room. He had spent a century marveling over the sizable grandeur, thrilling over ownership and marveling over the privacy it provided.
But it might as well have been a closet for how it compares to this.
It's almost too much. It is too much— certainly it is for Fenris, who even now does not quite know how to handle all the wealth and power at his fingertips (and that's a far different thing than learning to enjoy it). But perhaps, he thinks as he wanders into the room, perhaps it's just enough for an Archduke or two.
His fingers slide almost idly over the oaken desk (where already there is paperwork waiting for them both, Vakares' neat script making his heart pang once more); they drift over the marble inset on their grooming station, taking note of the fact both their personal things have been brought over already. He wanders and he tries so hard to take it all in, but he knows even now that it will take a long while before it feels like anything belonging to him.
Just like this title.
Gods. Archduke Fenris, and in the echochambers of his mind, it sounds like a joke. A cruel jibe slipping off the tongue of his counterpart, perhaps, or a particularly uninspired taunt from Danarius— but ah, he won't say so aloud. Whether or not he feels it fits, the title is still his— and it will be all Fenris can do to hold onto it in the coming years. There is more than just Astarion to fear when it comes to their coven, and perhaps they should talk about that—
Did you mean it? a voice calls, and Fenris turns.
Later.]
I did.
[Their tones match in dryness. And you know, anyone listening in would think it friendly banter and little more— and to an extent, that's true. But Fenris does not imagine Astarion has forgotten that kiss— nor if it comes to it, his vulgar promise from a few days ago. I want to take my new whore out for a ride before I fit him with a bit and bridle, and it's surely only a matter of time before Astarion tries just that.]
You saw them tonight. They barely knew how to look at us both, never mind which to defer to first.
[It was almost funny, honestly: watching all the nobles stumble in their bows, piggish eyes darting back and forth as they still tried to determine who to suck up to.]
But I suppose they will learn, in one way if not another.
[They'll have to.
Fenris steps forward. There's a thousand ways he could coyly approach this topic, but subtle gestures have never suited him, not when he can be blunt. So:]
Have you?
[Another step forward, his eyes bright and tension beginning to form in the lines of his body.]
Or do you still insist on the fantasy that I am here to be your consort and not your partner?
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[Consort. Partner.]
Our maker— [He starts slickly, bile sharpening the blade of a sentiment he— just can't finish. It's like a pill stuck in his throat, you know. The same feeling. There, meant to go somewhere— meant to hammer home with his typical acidic bite that there's a lot more intent than truth on the table— but no amount of pressure or flexing can keep it on its course.
Their master sleeps. He isn't here, gifts or fucking not.
And Astarion doesn't want to think about it.]
—imagined a lot of things.
[Like a sigh, it slips through his teeth alongside a slackening expression. Footfalls far from slowing even as Fenris creeps ever closer. Meaning that it's a simple thing to reach out with one hand in (sort-of) passing, palm pressed against a pair of slender hips crosswise— dragging as he continues on his way (again, like slithering coils before moving behind his companion), still getting a lay of the room for now.]
We both know reality wasn't his strong suit. Not any more than it fits in with all those highborne fangs.
[A beat, his eyes fixed on high glass:] An admirable effort, though.
[His sire's gift, their kin....or both?]
Not that it matters, in the end.
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Ah.
Heat ripples through him at that sliding touch. The ghost of Astarion's fingers lingers on his skin. And what a thing it is to be a vampire, that his teeth ache to bite even as a pulse of arousal courses through him. The lyrium embedded in his palms pulses, his fingers curling as the phantom urge to sink his talons into soft flesh and rip courses through his mind. He knows what's going to happen next. No matter that he refuses to be the one to strike first, there's no way this won't end in blows.
And truth be told, he won't be sorry for it.
It's been a century of enduring Astarion's jealousy. A century of snide remarks and petty revenge; a century of cruelties great and small, humiliations tangling together with rage and grief. Decades of hands yanking at him during parties, shoving him down to his knees and fucking his mouth until he was drooling come; of vicious cruelty that always had the vague excuse of accidental, Fenris writhing in agony as Astarion watched his blood pool on the stone floor.
Years on end of the two of them barking at one another helplessly, impotent dogs collared and leashed by their master, but not anymore.
Fenris' eyes darken as he turns, and oh, but his smile has taken on a mean edge.]
A bold proclamation from a vampire who was taken in front of a thousand witnesses. Do you imagine your posturing will erase that from their minds?
[His head tips.]
Their first impression of our union was you submitting to me . . . and what will you do to remedy that? Tie me to the bed and fuck me? And yet that won't change what happened.
[The smirk fades.]
Try and make me yours, Astarion. You do not have Vakares to hide behind, not anymore— and older you may be, but I am trained for this. And I will not hesitate to finally put you in your place like the rabid dog you are.
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A scrape there.
A playful snippet of mockery suddenly pushed too far.
It takes so little, is the point. Hairpin triggers set up on eggshells over glass compared to their maker's inexhaustible control, and it never starts out as wanting violence (or the marrow-deep satisfying sound of whimperering cries)— they don't begin their nights by waking and rubbing sleep from crimson eyes only to crow about what sort of cruelty they'll force upon their mate— it just grows in after one of them laughs a little too loudly. Gets flattered with a different word. Drinks too much. Speaks too bluntly. Bites down too hard, too fast.
Now this.
Innocuous discussion won't stay that way if it's flanked by less-than-innocuous stares. Grins that don't quite meet their eyes, and touching that's tantamount to smoking tinder.
Maybe that's the point.
The leash is gone. The collar loose. Unhappiness hardly solidifies a truth that's lasted the better part of one hundred— two hundred years— promising that whenever they showed teeth, he'd be there. (And this room still smells like him, and it's his writing on that desk, and even if it's only the smallest fragment of their minds that hopes this might all just be a test while the rest of their thoughts prepare themselves for war— ) how could they not intrinsically tug just to see if it might give?
One way or another, something will make it real. Something else will grieve for them. Take the blame for them. Be angry or hurt or resentful for them.
(Or afraid for them. That, too.)]
Word to the wise, little one.
Unlike you: a rabid dog doesn't know to submit.
[His back still to Fenris. His arms still loosely at his hips. Little one, not little wolf, for he'd reduce the creature just behind him to a timeline of fresh-abandoned masters just to soothe his paper skin. An artful twist of his neck angled just around his shoulder punctuating one seemingly smug stare.]
But I can't say it's a surprise a formerly kenneled broodbitch still can't tell what acting is even when it's dangled right in front of his stunted little snout. [Half-turning on his heel in that next breath, it's his chin that leads the way. His reddened eyes narrowed into lightless slits. His lips twisted high around long teeth. Sharp teeth. Mean teeth.
Suffer for him, Fenris, and maybe he'll call it even.]
I don't have Vakares to hide behind anymore?
[Oh, catulus.]
I've been waiting centuries for this.
I'm glad he's gone.
[Throw the first stone. Twist the knife. Snap bone. Lap blood. Scrape salt— make it hurt. Make it hurt, even if you're the one bleeding from it, too.
His mouth to Fenris' ear after a handful of silent strides, voice a pitchbound hum.]
I'll be glad when you are, too.
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It hurts, it hurts, and worse still: Fenris cannot tell why it hurts. He is not so emotionally aware that he knows that some part of him longs for his sire so badly that it aches— oh, young thing. Young, stunted thing, and that's the thing about vampires, isn't it? A century old, but that does not mean he has all the maturity of an elder. Vampires are frozen in time, and in some ways, he is still the same bloody slave he'd been when Vakares had found him. And Fenris had learned to lean on him, to look to him for guidance, to mold himself to him—
Oh, young thing floundering without a master . . . he does not know just why he longs for his sire. He does not realize that perhaps he picks a fight so that Vakares, indeed, might return. He does not know why anger sparks so easily; why his blood boils when it usually takes far longer to rouse him into defensive snappishness. He knows only that his heart hurts— and that in these moments of newfound freedom, his collar cut and his tether released, when they both of them are charting the new way their dynamic might go, he is desperate not to come out the lesser.
I'll be glad when you are, too—
Turn, grab, shove— his forearm braced against Astarion's chest, striding forward until Astarion's back hits the wall with a dull thunk. His fangs are bared in a snarl, though he doesn't realize it; his talons slice through thin silk, his crimson eyes narrowed as he glares at his counterpart.]
Then try it.
[He leans forward, pressing his weight against the vampire's throat. They don't need to breathe, but that won't stop his voice from sounding strained from the pressure he puts on it.]
Go on. Do it. Kill me if you can— or is it that you intend only to gossip and whine until I slink away in shame? But you will have to try harder than that.
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[Ah, so it does work well, that pinning pressure: trying to swallow, to speak— to suck in air of any sort or exhale in the slightest— all of it cracks where Fenris has him, keeping him held fast, his own claws planted against skin in a threat that doesn't quite match its catalyst.]
—will I, now....?
[It's better than chatting, isn't it? Better than thinking. Being angry, being nasty, being cruel. When everything's a flaring burst of overwrought emotion (the likes of which no mortal could ever sustain without weeping nigh on end), it's at least a mercy knowing the smallest ripple of fresh sensation can wipe clean the slate of all their scars.
At least for a little while.]
I don't need gossip to make you— look like the bitch you are, dressed up in a silk ruff like a joke.
[His grin twisted high, his fangs leading when he hisses (serpentine— pricked forwards). Cruelty the shine within his stare, and that much brighter by the second.] They'll laugh you out of court by the end of the week.
[Hiss. Hiss.
Death by a thousand little whispers such an appealing prospect, but when in the clutches of a brute—
His claws wrench. In half a blink, he's snapped his arms down into the fault lines of that hold— the whipcrack start to a countering offensive carved from vicious lunges and powerful swipes: elder strength a boon in moments such as these (feel it in every strike, little wolf— ) until the mirror's on its side. The parallel complete. A haggard slam defining shattered seconds when Fenris' own body's rammed against the wall and his throat is savagely pinned to the point of pain.
Hooked talons anchored into stone. Lips brought close enough to kiss, breath pooling in the bow of bloodstained mouths.
The true face of their joining.]
Do you want to know what our master said about you?
[Tongue to his canines, his own blood wrapped around its tip; grin like a wildfire. Like a knife. Like a start.] The things he whispered to me when you weren't around to hear them, riding my cock just to find a little succor....
[It's a crude imitation, his voice. Even so:]
He needs you, Astarion.
If he fled these halls, it would not be a year before he was killed. Such a young thing. Such a hopeless thing, yet I love him all the same.
[Fingers tugging at light lacework, opening the front of Fenris' trousers with probing demand, cool against little glimpses of skin— threatening to take. His every lie stitched in deep.
Come here. Come here.]
I'll shelter you. I'll be your new master. I'll do my duty just like he asked....
And keep you safe by putting a fresh muzzle on that pretty mouth of yours.
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(Hopeless, and it slips beneath his skin, embedding itself deep like a barb. It doesn't hurt, not yet, but it will: Vakares' gentle tones taking on the sneering dismay of Danarius, his sire standing in the doorframe of a stone-lined cell: all that lyrium and you still disappoint me. Pain flooding his body with every breath, his eyes wide and red-rimmed, his mind little more than a blank slate— knowing only that his sole purpose in life is to please his master, and he is failing in that task. Hopeless, and though he thinks it a lie, that will not stop that gnawing seed of doubt to embed itself within him and grow like a festering thing).
It isn't the cold fingers wrapped around his neck, nor the ones that so boldly pry open his trousers. It's not the way his own cock twitches in panting anticipation (and yet still some part of him burns in humiliation to feel it, his body betraying him even as he growls low in his throat). It isn't the ghost of chilled breath on his lips, or the crude names that Astarion tries to cast upon him (and yet he does look ridiculous in this ruff, he knows; he does look like a silly little slave caught dressing in his master's robes— or at least, that's how it feels).
But then again, maybe it is. Maybe all of those build up in those precious few seconds as they stare at one another: a swirling whirlpool of resentment and insecurity that pushes him into the past farther than he realizes. Little slave, little one, his own mind betraying him even as he shoves resentfully against it. Did you dare to dream you hadn't traded in one master for another, boy? As if you could ever survive on your own— it won't be a year before you're killed. Stupid thing. Stupid, mindless vampire, only ever good for rutting and fighting, building and building in the back of his mind—
I'll be your new master. I'll keep you safe. Muzzle that pretty mouth—
Fenris bites.
Like the feral dog he'd just been labeled: his throat straining at that tight grip as sharpened teeth slice through pale flesh with bitter precision. His fangs catch at Astarion's lip, his tongue, a vicious parody of a kiss— blood smears over his lips, spilling down his chin, and still he lunges forward again and again, not caring what he bites so long as he does. So long as Astarion hurts, oh, he will earn that muzzle. His hands grab for lithe hips, talons shredding delicate fabric into tatters with one swift motion; his fingers wrap around that thickened prick, his grip so tight.
Fenris cannot pull away, it's true. Astarion has him beat when it comes to sheer strength, and so he'll stay put so long as those fingers are wrapped around his throat. But that goes two ways— and if Fenris is to be trapped here, so will Astarion.]
Don't you dare move.]
You will never be my master.
[Oh, it's too angry. It's too desperate, his seething rage only barely covering his panic— and yet there's no hesitance to the way he keeps a tight hold on that prick. If they're to fight, let them fight— and to Fenris' mind, he has the advantage.]
Try again, old man. Or are you so arrogant when you have your cock caught in the palm of my hand?
[And yet it's a goading stroke he offers: his wrist snapping as he shuttles his hand along his cock with all the familiarity of a doting partner. His grin bloody and mean as he feels the other man swell against his fingers, throbbing in needy eagerness— oh, he is hungry, isn't he? Of course he is.
I can beat you with one hand . . . His thumb smearing over his welling slit. His grip tightening as he picks up the pace, hard tight pullsanyára, pull away now. Dance out of range and see what it gets you.]
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iliad XXX: the return to iliadening
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iliad 34534676 forever and ever
ILIAD III: RETURN OF THE KING
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