And is it really any different to start with? Slavery is a chokehold— so archaic that even without abolishment, most to-do houses would never actually admit they keep anything on a chain (oh, but the ones that do, though....Astarion can damn well imagine what it looked like, knowing patriar so well: the man resting across from him dragged along in broad daylight by a literal chain, shoulder-to-shoulder with bustling passersby of all shades and stripes. A novelty to gawk at. A curio. A fancy-fucking-purse, to quote the very night they'd met)— and while Fenris might well be free of that pervasive sense of flaunted ownership, there's not a chance in the bloody Hells themselves that Fenris could ever pay back a sum that large. Not with his body, nor his mind— not even on the most lavish of salaries like the one Astarion's soon fit to inherit. So deep a pit that you'd have to be one of the established few, by definition. Generational.
Because without a hoard of foreborne gold under your heels....
Strewth.
Astarion's father could report him for anything and call it a breach of contract. A theft so insurmountable— ]
Why am I upset?
[It's so incredulous rolling off his tongue, but turning the mirror back towards himself in that selfsame beat to answer it—
Why is he upset?
(And like an response, he blinks with his head turned sharply to one side: all of him watching Fenris from the corner of his eyes before letting his own gaze drop under the lid of tired lashes. His lips pursing and unpursing, thinned out just ahead of how they bunch. Not doeish, he realizes, once that collapsed stare reveals two balled up fists gone red inside his lap, feeling the sudden prickle of pinched brows at the center of his forehead.
—he's angry.
The same anger he'd felt spitting curses while his own cheek stung. Bitter bile and acid sharp, nauseating him from the stomach up.)
It shows the second that he twists his head back towards Fenris. The thinnest sliver of moonlight cutting low and tight over a gritted jaw that growls out:]
no subject
Now another one's again.
And is it really any different to start with? Slavery is a chokehold— so archaic that even without abolishment, most to-do houses would never actually admit they keep anything on a chain (oh, but the ones that do, though....Astarion can damn well imagine what it looked like, knowing patriar so well: the man resting across from him dragged along in broad daylight by a literal chain, shoulder-to-shoulder with bustling passersby of all shades and stripes. A novelty to gawk at. A curio. A fancy-fucking-purse, to quote the very night they'd met)— and while Fenris might well be free of that pervasive sense of flaunted ownership, there's not a chance in the bloody Hells themselves that Fenris could ever pay back a sum that large. Not with his body, nor his mind— not even on the most lavish of salaries like the one Astarion's soon fit to inherit. So deep a pit that you'd have to be one of the established few, by definition. Generational.
Because without a hoard of foreborne gold under your heels....
Strewth.
Astarion's father could report him for anything and call it a breach of contract. A theft so insurmountable— ]
Why am I upset?
[It's so incredulous rolling off his tongue, but turning the mirror back towards himself in that selfsame beat to answer it—
Why is he upset?
(And like an response, he blinks with his head turned sharply to one side: all of him watching Fenris from the corner of his eyes before letting his own gaze drop under the lid of tired lashes. His lips pursing and unpursing, thinned out just ahead of how they bunch. Not doeish, he realizes, once that collapsed stare reveals two balled up fists gone red inside his lap, feeling the sudden prickle of pinched brows at the center of his forehead.
—he's angry.
The same anger he'd felt spitting curses while his own cheek stung. Bitter bile and acid sharp, nauseating him from the stomach up.)
It shows the second that he twists his head back towards Fenris. The thinnest sliver of moonlight cutting low and tight over a gritted jaw that growls out:]
—Why aren't you?