[His mistake, in retrospect, was trusting in the boy's laziness.
He had thought an escape inevitable, but not the first night. Certainly not after he so clearly had fallen asleep, his breath softening and his body stilling beneath the sheer sheets. And be fair to Fenris: he does have to sleep at some point. He can go for so long without it if he must, but sooner or later he has to rest. Better to do it this first night, when lines have been drawn and boundaries set, then the night of some party the whelp is aching to attend.
More fool him.
He doesn't know what rouses him. Perhaps it's the stillness in the room, or the lack of another's presence. Perhaps he just sleeps lightly nowadays, a creature too wary and paranoid to ever let his guard fully down. It doesn't matter.
He wakes and Astarion is gone.
In an instant Fenris is out the window, landing silently on the soft earth below. His heart is hammering too hard in his chest, a thundering rhythm that leaves him nauseous— and for a moment, panic makes him reel. Terror of what might happen tomorrow (Astarion's father coldly dismissing him, a mountain of debt crashing upon his head with no way to pay it back, Danarius lurking in the shadows just waiting for a moment like this) overwhelms him, and he wants to vomit—
And then his training takes over.
Panic won't help. Letting his fear overcome his intelligence will lead to ruin, so best to stop indulging it, lest those fears really do come true. Fenris takes a deep breath once, twice, and then glances around.
And thank the gods, Astarion wasn't subtle. He'd been clever enough in sneaking away, but not so much in covering his tracks. There's the faintest hint of a footprint leading out towards the garden wall, and from there . . . from there, it's just a matter of following the clues. He is a good tracker, and knows his quarry besides: it's not too hard to pick up the trail once he has his mind on right. A few swift questions close in the gap, and he manages to spot the boy just as he slips in through the gate.
Hells.
He tries the guard. He does not have much hope for the guard, but he tries anyway, and is not particularly disappointed when he's refused. The man has a duty to perform, and it's far safer to irritate a bodyguard than it is a noble; Fenris cannot begrudge him that. He simply makes a show of scowling in vexation, glancing around before inevitably wandering off.
It's not ten minutes later that he's infiltrated the party.
(The security here is terrible. Efficient enough for keeping unwanted guests out, maybe, but the haphazard way security patrols the perimeter is pathetic. They're distracted things, their focus aimed towards the lewdity going on within . . . and as for all the cameras and supposed magical wards that no doubt cost a fortune to install, oh, please. Fenris will never credit Danarius with anything, but there had been a man who knew how to ward off intruders. This is just pathetic).
He crosses the lawn, striding towards the lit-up manor. He stands out among all the lewd costumes and delicate masks, but he doesn't care. The point isn't to hide away; merely to find his ward. And to that end . . . a slight figure, silver curls and pointed ears, and it takes him some time. Long enough that Astarion has already settled in with a drink in one hand and a pipe in the other, chattering among a group of companions— no doubt congratulating himself on his cleverness.
Fenris' hand is so heavy as it sets on Astarion's shoulder, gripping tight.]
Get up.
[His voice pitched low, his tone brooking no argument.]
[They brag amongst themselves, the nobles of the city. And it carries, you know— what the eldest members do in their lounges with their smoke and drink, the youngest do too in the gardens: huddling together with (sharper) smiles just to boast about their exploits, diminutive though they may be.
He's partway through boasting about his new bodyguard's odds when—
—thud.
clatter—
—Astarion drops his pipe in a startled jolt.
Laughter erupts from the gathered pack (three young bucks Astarion's age and two girls), all in various states of repose on expensive furniture. All drinking— or drunk. All amused to see something this unexpectedly entertaining in its abrupt irony: schadenfreude bolstering the whole of their already well-fanned elation, where the bottom of a bottle is at most the start of a long, exhausting evening. The air smelling of honey, amber, ambrosia, and now— smoke.
And he does get to his feet, but it doesn't take him long to recover from the shock— or to register the sound of delighted cackling— twisting around to yank his shoulder free and glower at the nuisance he's been shackled to by something so expendable as duty.]
Get your hands off me—
[Incredulous, now that he's recovered. That he's puffed up his own chest like an agitated stoat is subconscious, but the roused authority behind it serves a purpose: insisting that he won't back down.
Which, like the rest of his delayed reaction, finds itself just a half-step off cue in terms of relevance, next shoved from its mark by exasperation:]
What is wrong with you? [Following Astarion this far, actually managing to get inside to chase after him; he could've just stayed home. Covered his own ass. Stood at the doorway insisting the young lord Astarion was resting soundly if anyone came knocking— now, though, now they're both up to their necks in this excursion, and for what? Approval? A pat on the head, a little coin? Selûne's cunt, Astarion could've given him all of the above and saved them both the trouble.
Behind them, one of the boys (a smug thing with dark hair down to his shoulders) whistles low in their direction, clicking the tip of his tongue to a chipped canine while adding 'you never said he was this devourable, Astarion.']
That's because he's more trouble than his face is worth. [He snorts back, reaching out for another pass of wine from over his shoulder. Bringing it to his lips and letting it bring back his own sense of carefree deliquency, swaying just a segue for his forced little grin (mean. Be mean).] ....maybe not the rest of him, though.
[There's another peal of snickering soon to rise up from that dark corner, and like any attention-starved thing, he's clearly encouraged by it.]
If you're going to stay, be useful: you can get down on your knees and entertain us, or go wait with the other wet coats at the exit while we finish having fun.
It's everything he ever fought to escape. It's humiliation and objectification, his entire self tethered on a leash to a goading master, forced to stand there and be reduced to something little more than a toy for these nobles to play with. Devourable, that brat calls him, his mouth curled up into a smug smirk and his eyes glittering with malice. Fuckable, breedable, and Fenris can almost hear it in Tevene. He can almost smell Danarius' magic curling on the edge of his tongue, feel the weight of that collar heavy on his throat—
And it only grows worse as Astarion joins in on it. Silver stare flicking over Fenris' form, his bearing cruel, and it doesn't matter that it's so clearly goading. It doesn't matter that Astarion does it because he's hungry for attention and embarrassed that Fenris chased after him.
It still burns.
Get on your knees, and for a moment such rage flares in his gaze.
Don't indulge it. Don't give these nobles any hint of a reaction, for that way only lies ruin. There's no way to win with people like this, and so Fenris does what he has always done: stoically ignore them in favor of his chosen target.]
You have two options.
[His voice is pitched low. That isn't done out of consideration for Astarion, but rather his job: the whelp won't come to heel if his pride's on the line.]
Walk out with me now, Astarion, or I will carry you out. One affords you dignity, while the other leaves you looking like a squalling child. But do not test me on this, for I have no further patience for your antics tonight.
[He's a pressure pot waiting to explode. Sharp to the tips of his ears, even Astarion can see it—
But he's mad to think the first option is one where Astarion retains his dignity. That's not a choice, that's just holding onto the hammer while it slams nail-after-nail into the coffin of his own reputation: turning tail after his own father's lackey shows up with a glare that could hone knives is as good as telling the others he can't stay to fuck himself senseless, his nanny's been kept waiting and the warm glass of milk and honey made for him's gone cold.
They'll laugh him out of existence.
But rejection's a tall order.
Not the least for their differences in height, where Astarion has to tilt his chin a little higher just to feel the cold ripple of admonitory warning in the air. The comical juxtaposition of a reedy princeling angled towards his armored counterpart, half-dressed and drinking till his lips stain dark around their corners.]
No errand boy dictates where or when I leave.
[A unified coo of scandalous delight erupts from the little audience behind him. Bright eyes flashing with excitement, almost jostling in their seats for a better view of an unexpected declaration of war; where Fenris had been discreet, Astarion's bravado comes out in the way nature dictates anything posturing should: by making itself louder.
Larger.]
But if you don't feel like sharing....
[He's a noble. He's been hunting before, even if only on the back of a saddled mare. Cornering a deer. A fox. A wolf. With enough dogs, anything is prey.]
I'll share with you instead.
[He pulls one more mouthful of wine, holding it to the back of his tongue— and lunging in a devilish flash over that narrow distance to try and fit their lips together.]
Fierce bodyguard trained to defend against every kind of attack under the sun, but not like this. Not something so vulgar, so crude, so mean— Fenris' eyes go wide as their mouths slot together, his shock stalling him out for a precious few seconds. His hands hang loose at his side, his fingers stiff and stricken, as all around him there's the barking laughs of the well-bred masses.
The world narrows itself to sensations. A hot tongue slipping between his lips; soft pressure as delicate fingers wrap around the back of his neck. Wine pouring down his throat, droplets of scarlet staining his lips as spice stings his tongue. Heat flooding through him, and by the time he realizes what's happening and wrenched his mouth away, it's too late. There's already a flush to the tip of his ears, his cock stirring faintly—
His wretched little charge has drugged him.
Not with much— but then again, when it comes to aphrodisiac, it doesn't need to be much. A few drops can twist your senses for hours on end, making you little more than a panting, mewling thing in need of service. How long does Fenris have before it hits him? Minutes? Maybe less. It's hard to tell, for he's only ever used to the things Danarius would sometimes give him, the drugs amplified tenfold by magic and the effects so terribly potent . . .
He can hear the jeers around him. He wishes he couldn't. There's a roaring in his ears, a tinny tone that means his mind is dropping away, and by all rights that ought to drown out the others. But no. No, he hears every goading word, every malicious comment: oh, look, he's feeling it already, how fast do you think he'll get to his knees, I bet he'd be a good rut if you could get him to pin you to the table . . .
His patience snaps.
With an outright growl he grabs Astarion: one hand on the back of his neck, the other viciously tight as he grips his bicep. And they march forward: away from those goading peers (their cries delighted, cat-calling that Astarion's about to have the fuck of his life) and towards the doorway. And maybe his charge wiggles or fights or laughs, but it doesn't matter, for they are moving— and there is so little that escapes Fenris' grasp when he has them in his clutches. They stride past guests (looking astonished, looking delighted, amused at how vicious this orgy has turned so quickly) and security alike (who don't dream of stopping him, not when he's so clearly flushed and aching to rut his squalling prey), not pausing until Fenris kicks open the filigree-decorated doors and they emerge into the cool night air.]
Move.
[He shoves him forward as he releases him.]
Now.
[Never mind that he's flushed. Never mind that his cock is half-hard, stiffened hang straining faintly against his laces. They're going home.]
Instigator that he is, he drank first. He had to for the joke (he would have anyway; that bottle was in his hands the second that the others saw him, and it wasn't as if they didn't all drink, too). His heartbeat thick between his ribs, sloshing with every movement.]
What, nothing— nothing for me?
[Laughing vestigially. Lovesick enough that his eyes shine and his lips are wet; he'd only just gotten to that party— and still his clothes and hair reek of perfumed clove-smoke, his breath immersed in wine. He can't wrench himself free (like a thing hooked), he stumbles on fawnish legs, but with his head ducked downwards in that grip he sees (—carpet, wood, boots, streets—) the loosened hang of leather laces, and his fingers itch just to pull.
They're close enough.
Sloughing chuckle let out when the world spins at first— everything blurring together in ways that only reassure his initial motivation: peripheral amusement, the whip of approving voices, (how many nobles leave those parties in the arms of someone else? How many of them can say their own name, let alone think by then?) the smeared sound of a guard he recognizes letting out a low whistle before making a bet to one of the others on how long he'll last. That harmless jocularity grown rougher the further into darkness that they tread.]
You won't make it home—
[Is he talking to Fenris or himself?]
—it's not made for us to enjoy and then leave— [The aphrodisiac, he means. The kinds laced into the pipes, the bottles— even the cups that they'd all knowingly indulged from when they arrived: strong only by the standards of a young buck who never had a master to come crawling to on wounded knees. The city's stench— a mixture of wet pavement and summer heat— finally registering in his nostrils. Those laces still dangling in his eyeline.
They should've stayed at the party.
(His own cock's already rammed hot against the inseam of his trousers and it howls with thick constriction at the end of every fumbled step; his lips cherry red for being bitten, his eyes glassier by the second. But Fenris won't let him look at him. The grip on his neck's too rough, and he's already dreaming about feeling out the bruises that punishment will leave behind come morning, too greedy not to drool for more than anything he's given past the borders of pretense.
—gods, they should've stayed at the party.)
This would've been easier.]
Let me help you—
[His grip is cupping when it comes. Serpentine and deceptively deft, it folds around the heavy underside of Fenris' prick through leather without warning, pushed hard between his legs under the drag of harsh proximity. Knowing that if his other arm were free, he'd be working at himself with all the same ferocity of an itch he just can't scratch— abstract and needy and insistently consumed. Smelling of smoke. Tasting of wine.
Echoing like laughter.
That he can ignore the fact that there are people watching them (on occasion) as they go, passing faces smoking on side streets or walking through midnight alleyways, it's through virtue of just not giving a damn.]
[Oh, wicked little beast. Impudent little upstart nipping at his heels, a pup so eager to play that he has no idea what he bats at. And yet not so puppyish just yet, is he, for there's a deft experience to the way he fondles at Fenris. His fingers are so clever, slipping between his thighs and stroking along his swollen length.
Fenris won't blame himself for the groan that rumbles low in his throat.
It's a brief thing, yes. Bitten back as green eyes flutter closed, his ardent stride stumbling as they come to a halt just at the mouth of an alley. And yet there's such hunger woven into that noise, Fenris' mouth going dry as his body whimpers that he hasn't felt another's touch in so, so long . . .
Deep breath. Fenris fills his lungs, trying and failing to distract himself from the curling lust warming in his belly. Sensory observations won't do it: the buzz of faded neon signs or the faint scrape of boots against cobblestone is drowned out by his own whining thoughts. He swallows thickly, glancing around. There's the occasional laugh, heads turning as they stumble forward— and all at once, Fenris realizes they're attracting too much attention. That's a stupid thing to do even in the richest parts of Baldur's Gate, never mind at night. Never mind when you're so clearly intoxicated . . .
No, they aren't going anywhere like this. Abruptly Fenris pivots them, steering them into one of the narrower alleyways. It's a forgotten thing, half-torn posters peeling on brick walls and rusted cans at their feet. Shadows conceal them both, and that suits Fenris just fine. Still gripping Astarion's wrist, he shoves him up against the wall, surging forward to shove one hardened thigh between the brat's own. Fine features hit roughened brick as Fenris pins both hands against the wall, not caring for how they might scrape or bleed.]
Get yourself off.
[It's a growl, low and frustrated. No mention is made for the swelling arousal in Fenris' own pants, and that's deliberate.]
Finish, so that we may go home without a scandal. Rut yourself against my thigh and come in your pants like the squalling brat you are, and then I will take you and put you to bed, and we will speak no more of this.
[But he cannot help but glance down just once, his eyes flicking as heat pulses through two layers of thin leather. Even trapped beneath Astarion's pants Fenris can see just how thickly his cock hangs; how big he is, just shy of vulgar and yet perfectly suiting a slender elven frame—
Stop. Bad enough they are doing this at all, but Fenris cannot think, not right now— and he certainly cannot deal with a pent-up, desperate noble who wants to be rut. At least if he spills once, Fenris will have enough of a refractory period to get them home.]
[In a flash, his head swims. His hands hurt. There's a gaussian halo lining his vision like a blotted, vibrant cloud of flourescent streetlight, and it's framing the whole of Fenris' shadowed face where it looms right overhead. This wicked brute spanning every last one of his senses— growling while his eyes (their eyes) fleck with stars in an alleyway that smells like gutter filth. Dark leather bristling around that handsome throat. Sword hilts erect behind his spine— outdated weaponry for a city fond of magic, and all of it saturated. Blinding in the fractal patterns of a living, breathing harbor that never ever sleeps.
He's never seen anything like it.
Never felt anything like this, his heart rabbiting high inside his throat with a mind all its own, desperately clawing its way free with every painful beat. Gods— it might as well be screaming: its measure hot and loud against soft tension. Tongue parched. Neck peppered with sweat. Legs aching. He could swear he'd swallowed a burning splinter of red-hot coal like a pill somewhere in the last few seconds(? minutes?) and everything under his skin seethes just to promise that it's true. Thighs trembling and squeezed tight around his offered perch, unable to fight back.
And not solely because of leverage.
Unbearable, the word that comes to mind. Along with suffocating. Perfect.
The fuck of his life, they'd said.
He wants that.
He wants that more than he wants what's already been afforded (though strewth, he jolts at that wielded knife of a command. 'Come inside your pants like the squalling brat you are— ') so if his eyes roll, if his teeth chatter before they clench around a breathless groan, it's only warranted. Pushing his hips forward in a slow rut that leaves him fractured where he stands— a strangled cry in his throat for that first, unmistakably profane scuff— shaking through his shoulders as the too-tight fabric of his trousers catches under pressure: slow little ripples of tangled pressure, squeezed and knocking at his desperate cock and its drooling, smothered crown. Damp enough (thick enough) that it peeks out past the partway undone measure of his waistband, barely hidden by the sheer hang of his open shirt. Soft white. Dark black. Lurid pink flashes stricken with a glaze of vibrant lust— eager as the pup he's said to be.
But for all that he's tumbling headfirst into ruin, that's not the end of it.
Because truth be told there's a reason why it's bodyguard this time, and not sitter, keeper, servant, aide— a damned good reason why Astarion's parents tracked down a creature wholly without fear save for one. One easily manipulated, malleable, utterly ironclad fear. No family. No ties. Only a single task, with everything leveraged against it: keep their eldest out of trouble; keep him safe— handled with all the excessive care of someone purchasing a livestock guardian....to ward a starving dragon from their flock.
And it's because once Astarion's backed into a corner, there is nothing he won't do to claw his way back out.
(Slender thing with unmarked skin. Cut from pristine porcelain right to the edges of his long-lashed almond eyes, his irises set with inlaid silver. His delicate features lost beneath loose curls. Who grew fast enough to comprehend just how he looks beneath decadent layers of loose-stitched silk and pearl and cream-colored lace. Fit for poetry. Embroidery. Pretty even when he sulks.
Proof enough that a young buck still has horns.)
That's the trouble with power, after all, when even a hollow-boned thing can learn the exact threat it poses. Like the hunting dogs who roam in packs, yes, their jaws always aching for newer despotic thrills— but also like a boy who's had notoriety squirming in his palm already, comprehending what a few gasped breaths can do. And when you've a Duke that brings you chocolates (a Merchant Princess, a Duchess, a Magistrate or ten, even the guards that watch your estate's front gates— ) it's shockingly easy to put together how fucking flimsy the word no really is.
His last attendant got caught on his knees.
The one before that under his sheets.
Before that— fired. For incompetence (see figures two and three).
And they all of them hissed out behave, and they all snapped at one point or another for frustration, and they never— oh, it was never actually like this, he thinks, arching vulgarly from the pain scraped across his knuckles. His wrists. Wriggling down against the angle of an offered leg like an animal scolded. This is good. This is better. This is more fun.
But it doesn't change the fact that he wants more.
And he knows— because he's learned— that he can have his cake and make it whimper his name, too.
His back arches. His knee lifts. He's working his hips like it's his own pleasure that he's chasing while making sure his captive leg drags along the underside of Fenris' cock with each roll of his body. Wriggling them together through the leverage of his pinned-down arms and rhythmically curved spine. Forcing them to grind. Thigh to thigh, hip to hip, cock to— ]
....Come on, then....
[Parted lips shining in the dark. Teeth flashed in a feverishly provocative show of wet-mouthed need.] If this is all we're— going to share....Time to see who gives in first.
And— if you were worth the effort of picking up in the first place....
[The world spins. Neon blurs and the echoes of voices from a street away fade as Fenris' mind reels. He is not so drugged he doesn't have good sense, but somehow that makes it all the worse: his conscious thoughts rise up only to be perverted, twisted, tainted with the seductive allure of that aphrodisiac. His fingers have gone tight against Astarion's wrists, his eyes locked on the lithe little figure beneath him. Home, that's what his mind whispers over and over. Home, home, I must get him home, and he will, he must, there's no choice but ruination otherwise—
And yet his attention is snagged over and over by the smallest of details. A flash of reddened tongue between parted lips slick with drool. The faintest hint of a cock swollen with arousal and flushed with heat straining at laces too paltry to keep it contained, grinding and rutting against Fenris' thigh with wanton desperation. The lines of Astarion's body moving with such vulgar fluidity, his back arching into a perfect point (oh, how Fenris could get him to arch that back, how he would force him back, the brat split open on his cock and forced backwards just so Fenris could buck up into him as he whispered in his ear)—
Breathe.
Redirect. Reroute. Fenris' eyes have long since gone black, his own lips parted as he pants in unconscious echo of his charge. Astarion's thigh grinds up against the underside of his cock, sparks of pleasure bursting behind his eyes. And Fenris—
(bite him. fuck him. spin him around and tear those flimsy pants off him while you leave purple bruises on that delicate skin. teach him what being fucked really means: not the paltry efforts of the patriar, pathetic rutting that falters after a few short minutes, but brutally. fuck him so hard and for so long that he'll end up impaled upon you, gagging on the taste of your cock as you force him against the wall; make his body learn the consequences of taunting a wolf. break him, mind and body both, til he's addicted to the steady slam of your prick against his prostate, his hole dripping with need from the mere memory of how it was forced to accommodate you. keep your fingers wrapped around his pretty prick all the while, and when you've had your fun, refuse to finish him off. have him toddle back to that party with his hand between his legs and realize that there's not a soul that can fuck him the way he wants now. make him addicted to you and watch how he mewls then, compliant and needy, soft-mouthed thing that's so used to getting his way that he can't imagine being denied—)
—shoves himself away.]
Enough.
[It's a growl, low and seething, as he staggers back. His head ducks, his teeth gritting as he tries to get a grip on himself. One hand shoves against his face, pushing through silver strands, in a vain attempt to sober himself up, as he leans back against the opposite wall. Then his head snaps up, his glare savage as he bares his teeth in a silent snarl.
More wolf than elf, aren't you? and gods, but he does not need Danarius' voice whispering in his ear right now. Inelegant thing, so needy, come here, my pet, I'll take the edge off . . .]
Stay there.
[They're both straining at their trousers right now. Two silver-haired elves flush with aphrodisiacs and desperately hungry, with only a narrow space between them, oh, what noble wouldn't thrill to see such a sight?]
I am not one of your dull-eyed noble paramours that think themselves lucky to fall in your bed. Nor am I some servant you can use only to dispose of the next day when you grow bored. Do you understand? I am not playing this game with you, boy.
Now get yourself off.
[Under his watchful eye. Put on a show, little noble, for that is the least of what Fenris is owed tonight.]
[Challenged not once, but twice in the same night—
It's invigorating.
Though sensing courted danger means comprehending it first. And while his mind is screaming here— here here here, stay here— anywhere but home, there's nothing but elation to be found even before momentum catches him off guard: dropped back between cold brick and cool air, but not his captive guard.
Tch.
He really thought he'd had him that time. Something about the blackness in green eyes whenever his tongue would slip out just between the edges of his teeth. The hollow darkness there, just begging for release. There's such a loveliness about it, that hollow-eyed, sleepless, handsomely gaunted face— so unlike any of the Upper City's nobility or guardsmen or merchants, wearing nicks and hunger from real battle, maybe, and smelling of split air before a storm— he wanted to see what it looked like on its knees. Flush. Dizzy. Tanned cheek pushed high over the span of his still clothed thigh for just a taste of what lies inches from his mouth. Led to water; yet to drink.
But he's had too much drink of his own to dwell on that without moving, though.
Smile— drunk and stupid, lost under a heavy curtain of displaced curls— stretched across his lips in the moment he reaches back again with one arm, fingertips splayed wide as if there was still a gloved grip clutching at his wrist. His other hand slipped deep inside his open waistband, tugging slow in masked obscurity. Again. And again. And again. The movement is what kills (and sates); pumped from shoulder to elbow to shuttling forearm, promising that out of sight is nothing close to out of mind right now.]
Whatever you want, Fenris.
[Pronunciation slurred, oh yes, he'd paid attention to how his family first beckoned him by name. Fenris, he repeats, letting his head turn to one side and his focus leave him in heavy rhythms. Fenris....Fenris.... ]
....how old are you....?
[He asks, panting so hard for every stroke that his voice is halting. Head tilted down, attention hung low and harsh between impatient fingers; it's only by virtue of habit that this scene is so compulsively lurid. (He wants to get off just as much as Fenris wants to save face and find closed doors. Desperation pretty in a squalid little alley. )
One stubborn wrench thrown into simple plans deserves another, after all.]
When was— ah— [Ah— and he twists right where he stands, throat raised while his chin lifts skyward, gasping for a dangerous pang of satisfaction.] —when was the last time you even touched yourself....?
It's the drug. It has to be the drug, for he hadn't been this hot and bothered earlier tonight. Gods, the brat had walked naked in front of him and he'd been less distracted— but then again (and the realization is a dreamy thing, dissonantly distant), he had thought such filthy things about him, hadn't he? It's not about a lack of attraction. It's just that this time, those fantasies can't be pushed away, for each time he tries, they return insistently. Again and again and again, battering against his defenses, making him image—
Oh, everything.
(Muffled cries of protest and hunger as Fenris' cock fiercely fucks that slickened mouth, pretty tears filling the brat's eyes as he eagerly swallows down every inch of what his bodyguard has to offer, his hand desperately jerking himself off as he bounces in impatient longing; how good Astarion would look with come glazed on his cheek, over his lips, sated and dazed; the way he'd bend over and spread himself open in vulgar question, come take me— and it goes on).
He's panting, he realizes. Overheated exhales slip past slickened lips as his eyes focus shamelessly on the half-hidden span of Astarion's hand, mesmerized by the vulgar patterns enacted. He can all but feel the echo of them: the rhythmic squeeze of fingers that have never known a hard day's work, soft and yet all the more dexterous for it. The hard, heavy pulls of a hand desperate for release, wrist snapping as the pace picks up—]
Fasta vass.
[It's a harsh whisper as he palms at himself, trying and failing to will the heel of his hand to be enough. His hips rock forward, his cock straining desperately at his laces, and oh, this is stupid. With a frustrated growl he tugs at his own laces, shoving his hand down his pants like the errant adolescent he's trying so hard to mind, his fingers wrapping around his prick and squeezing tight. Fenris, Fenris, and without quite meaning to, he times the heavy tugs of his own hand to the breathy whispers from the other end of the alley. Fenris, his thumb smearing over the velvet head, his ears flushed dark as he feels his body cry out in relief.]
Older than you, no doubt. Three— three hundred.
[More or less. It's a roughened answer. Fenris tips his head back, his eyes fluttering as he settles in.]
And you do— ah— do not need to know how long.
[Oh, ages. Years. He's such a starved thing, but then again, he's never had much chance before now, has he? But ah, best not to linger on that. Best to turn the tables around, and oh, that's easy enough. The mean little smirk that plants itself on his lips is no accident, for oh, he is frustrated with this brat.]
And w-what of you, hm? Fifty? Have you hit a century yet? I need not ask when the last time you had someone between your legs was . . .
[And he means that as a casual insult, slut woven in the space between words, but it backfires. Twists back in on itself, so that the only thing Fenris can think of is that overhot cock shoved up against his thigh, and the mewling, panting brat who wanted nothing more than to get them both off . . . fasta vass, and he grits his teeth as he renews his efforts.]
[Thumb wringing over swollen temptation in a way that scrapes sore knuckles back and forth across the jagged teeth of his open trousers. Halfway to dissolute bliss thanks to the urging of both wine and clinging smoke when the muttered snag of fasta vass (twice— he rasps it twice, his given guardian— and oh, that has to count as an avaricious notch on the scoreboard in Astarion's favor— ) loops around his focus to yank it right back down to earth, with its rainslicked sidestreets and cloying humidity, both mercifully offset by the lateness of the hour.
And just as quick: the dropping of his chin down to his shoulder.
Laughing for the raw, stupefied delight found in how strange a curse like that sounds to ears that've never heard even a shred of Tevene in their short years.]
Seventy-five. [The lithe thing perched on sinful legs abruptly sneers back (with too little air to cross the distance), still fighting the sound of his own unsubsided mirth. Rakishness leading the charge teeth first, grin second, enunciation third, and thought—
Oh, none of that, actually.
Less than a century is the truth: the man was right in guessing. But there's a savage charm in taking posturing little potshots at each other when pumping at the aching base of one's own thickened cock (welling crest to the space deep between his legs, finally hunching forwards at an angle so that he can work himself for pleasure instead of mewling show), particularly when the difference in years between them is centuries to paltry decades.
Astarion lied, you see.
He's forty-five, actually. But even his kin don't pay enough attention to correct him; why should he hold himself to etiquette when talking to a stranger? One that doesn't even beg him for temptation like the others. One who palms freely— angrily— at himself with a glint in narrowed eyes, relying on nothing but his own fingers and a stubborn insistence that jacking off in broad moonlight is a half-step closer to home. (Silver eyes pinned under the edges of his shirt and buckles, wetting his own lips with swift flicks of his tongue, ah)....
And with that attitude, it might well be soon enough.
Another heady ripple, biting at his mouth so hard his senses throb to hunt for flashes of dark skin at a warding distance, like a couple of steps somehow makes this less depraved. (Fenris....Fenris....)]
This morning. [He wasn't asked how long (it was a rhetorical slight); he answers anyway.]
There was a pretty maid beneath....the tablecloth.... [Whether for the story or the urgency instilled through livewire pangs of urgency behind his teeth, he's sped up his pace enough to the point of soft percussion: loose shirt now dragged to one side around the lean stretch of his belly, and followed by a supple slap slap slap— now that his fingers've grown slick from wanton strokes. Only sharing the sight of what slips rapidly between his thumb and crooked-in fingers. Little blurs of glossy movement.] ....she'd been cleaning everything so....diligently. I didn't have the heart to stop her, when she turned herself to me.
[Ah— ah— ]
Could've even been you just now, too, for the answer to that question....if you weren't so afraid of having fun. [Echoing Fenris slyly to add:]
It'd take longer than a night for me to tire of you.
[Seventy-five, and he does not have the brainpower to question it, not when the number sends vulgar sparks scattering through his mind. Not yet a century, and oh, Fenris is sure he's had any number of escapades in the past few decades. Little parties just like the ones they came from, where decadent orgies are common and the filthiest kinks are always on display . . . likely he's watched a thousand vulgarities by now. Sipping wine and chattering among his friends as hirelings rutted and suckled one another, tangling together in absurdly complex displays.
And when the lust took him, oh, Fenris is sure he's tangled with his fair share of partners. Sweet merchant princesses mewling for his mouth between their legs; experienced older men who drew him into their laps and bounced him until he shrieked.
But Fenris doubts very much he's ever truly participated in something obscene.
Not just rutting, but the kind of filth that requires letting go. Drooling and out of his mind with pleasure, his eyes rolling back into his head as he surrenders complete control— no, such a thing would surely be risking too much. Better to watch someone else do it. Better to stay safe among your peers, removed and yet witness still, enjoying all the fruits of someone else's labor.
And whether or not it's true is irrelevant, for now Fenris relishes that fantasy. This boastful little brat still virginal in all the ways that matter, thinking he knows all there is to know about sex just because he's had his share of tumbles and knows how to flirt . . . oh, Fenris would show him. Fenris would teach him so much.
The fantasies crowd through his mind, one after another, and this time he doesn't bother to push them away. Just lets them play out in his mind's eye as he glares as his errant charge, his wrist snapping as he tugs at himself. He'd haul that squalling brat over his knee, his hands bound and his hole plugged with a pretty toy, spanking him until he was wailing his apologies, swearing anything so long as Fenris would stop . . . or better still, teasing him with a vibrator. Tying his ankles to his wrists and watching as he writhed against a vibrator's endless buzz, drooling around a swollen ballgag as his untouched cock spilled messily on those pristine sheets . . . or simpler still: serving as cockwarmer. Mewling and whimpering, not allowed to touch as he's speared atop a thick prick . . .
Please, Fenris, please, I want it, please, and his lilting tones echo in Fenris' ears. His fingers tighten their grip, his pulls growing heavy and hard as he feels his own finish rising in him. It's too sudden, too fast, but oh, he's so pent up, he's so needy . . .
And gods, but that tale of the maid doesn't help.
The thought of Astarion with his mouth reddened and covered in slick, his breath hot as he panted against a swollen cunt and earned squealing cries . . . that could've been you, and he surely intends it as a nasty thing, Fenris on his knees among a crowd of nobles, but that isn't the image that comes to mind. It's Astarion on his knees: Astarion panting up at Fenris with a reddened mouth; Astarion looking so pretty with come glazing his face . . .]
It would take far longer than that for me to teach you how to fuck as though you mean it.
[His voice a leonine growl, his emerald eyes gleaming in the darkness.]
You're so used to fucking servants that wouldn't dare disobey their seductive brat of a master— or your peers, who rut clumsily and act as though they know what they're doing. Have you ever been properly fucked, little brat? Not just watching someone take it and gossiping about it in the aftermath . . . have you ever been driven out of your mind? I doubt it.
[His tongue moves without his say-so, his wary thoughts temporarily drowned under the fierce wave of lust smothering him and burning him to his core.]
Boasting to me of maids and parties . . . what can you really do, beyond wag your tongue and make yourself into an object of worship?
His stare— through the fog obscuring his vision— finding a hard snap of focus owing to the chalky taste of bitter spite. They're like the walls behind them: they reverberate. Lust, animosity, enmity, ire greed. It all bounces back. Harder. Sharper. Louder. Never mind the fact that he's two degrees from his eyes rolling back, unable to breathe without panting open-mouthed like an animal run to its last steps. Never mind the smell of sex that wafts across his senses despite the fact that the air isn't actually rife with it so much as the suggestion of it. Of body heat. Salt tang. Sweat. Vulgar, acrid pearl. His own hand won't stop moving despite his childish rage, and his eyelids flutter before they narrow into slits for an insult that actually sticks.
Not his age, or his wealth, or his station. Not his pretty looks, not the fact that he's figured out he can't walk two steps in certain places without someone drooling along their back teeth for the allure of what he is (who doesn't want a highborne little coinhound in their pocket? Who doesn't imagine a wedding, or a bed, or more power, or the thought of bruises under jewel-lined tunics wearing the shape of their fingers?) and Fenris isn't any different— his eyes had dropped before that mirror, too. His stare lingered while he fiddled with those clasps. He's wild and savage-eyed against the wall pretending that he's better, while he bickers and dreams up something dark that'll soon swallow him up like supper. Oh yes, he's no different. Just more interesting— Astarion will give him that.
But it's the thought that he's useless at this that riles (and feverishly incites).
Used to mounting servants. Spoiled in high halls. Middling compared to anything real, riding on the coattails of everything he's been stitched into and suckled empty praise from. Glowering out of the corner of his eye under the tangle of white bangs that've fallen— sweatsoaked— out of place, his hand shuttling faster while he's taken to imagining this impudent weathered curr on the floor, kept hungry and waiting for hours upon hours at a time, untouched and undressed and left open: taught a lesson about what sort of servant he is, all but wailing to be fucked by the so-called little brat he'd strung along— all while his cock jumps and trickles where it bobs stiffly between spread legs.
(He'll brand him. Tattoo him. Add his own marks to the rest of that blazing artwork strung across tanned skin, permanent and crude as marking up a wall. Hold him spread out and docile while he sucks Astarion's cock like a thing starved so that Petras can etch profane slang on either cheek in the back room of whatever party they next attend, their message drawn around his sated hole. And best of all, have him begging for it by the time he's done with this arrangement. He'll drug his food for fun. He'll mount his own hand in the wretch's obedient eyeline each time they say goodnight. He— ) ]
—nngh!!
[(This isn't how he thinks. That's the drug talking. The alcohol. The smoke. The aprodisiac and sore pride intermingled. If he's going to win this stupid war, then he's going to do it on his terms, in the way he's always done. Seduction first: conquest after.
But— )]
F-fasta vass—
[A rough pantomime, a genuine shiver wracking him where he stands, trying on in earnest that strange little quip for himself.
He's not quite strong enough to prove him wrong, while his knuckles are squeezed white-hot beneath a flaring crest. He wants to be, but—
A thousand lurid images snap through his mind. Inside his boots, his toes curl. He's too dangerously close to the precipice that there's no stopping the steady trickle of what the words 'teach you how to fuck as though you mean it' conjure up a cyclical feedback loop of cruel sensation: his body struggling to make itself feel what it might taste whilst speared atop a truly sating cock, driven out of his mind and wailing with wet tears in his eyes for release that digs in deep— oh, fuck.
He could slow his own touch and last a minute longer, maybe, but the fluttering slip of his muscles and the tightening of his belly swears that's all he might get before he— ]
I—
[That's as far as he goes before his fist locks.
Before his knees buckle and his body snaps with electric rigidity, clamping his jaw shut with a whimpering cry— damp rivulets spurting hot across his knuckles, soaking down the front of his open slacks. His eyes roll back and his own head follows, baring his throat to the crisp night air while a shaking grip keeps pumping madly in tight patterns.
Too succumbed to do anything but keep succumbing.]
Certainly not the savage glare his words earn, for in truth, he had not expected the goad to land so fiercely. He hadn't expected anything, too heady off his own blackened lust to dream of such things as consequences (but oh, he will, he will), but if he had, oh, not such an enraged glare. Deadly and snarling, and if they were beasts, a growl would surely be building low in Astarion's throat. And yet— instead, a panting tongue. Instead, hot breath puffing in the air between them, the brat's hand pumping all the harder. And Fenris wonders what it is, exactly, that had landed: the insinuation that he has not experienced the kind of down-and-dirty, eye-rolling thigh-trembling vigorous rutting that occupies all of Fenris' fantasies . . . or the fact that it's true?
(And he does not slant it sideways. He does not think about how it could be taken as a personal insult, you haven't earned this in anyone else, either, for in truth, all Fenris imagines right now is Astarion as a pretty thing— delicate and arrogant, it's true, but above all else: submissive).
But he doesn't expect, either, the curse that slips past his charge's lips.
Fucking hell, his voice slurred and his accent clumsy, and Fenris does not know why some part of him melts to hear it. It's surely a bit of goading and nothing more, the brat throwing his own language back at him, but gods, something in Fenris howls in response. He wants to hear more. He wants to teach Astarion the filthiest phrases in Tevene, growled in his ear as he mounts him from behind; he wants to hear those words drip off a honeyed tongue, Astarion's expression blissful and his eyes hazy, his impudent brat finally tamed as he's split atop Fenris' prick.
He wants it. He wants him, not just to fuck but to breed. He wants to run his fingers up the inside of pale thighs and watch him shiver; he wants to fill his needy little hole again and again, fucking him until all he can remember is Fenris' name, his face pushed into the mattress and his hips hoisted up, Fenris Fenris Fenris, drooling droplets of come already staining his thighs and yet he still shrieks for more—
Fuck, and the Tevene bursts out of him as he feels himself topple over the edge. His overheated cock throbs, come spilling inelegantly over his fingers as the thought of Astarion gasping his name lingers in his mind, Fenris Fenris please . . . Astarion follows suit not a moment later, and for that, he struggles to open his eyes. He drinks in the sight with a moan, thrilled to the core by the sound of a muffled, mewling cry— oh, pretty thing. Pretty thing so undone, and his own cock throbs feebly in the aftermath, twitching in vain for the sight of him with his throat bared and his body overwhelmed in pleasure . . .
And it's not enough. Not when the aftermath hits all at once: his drugged lust temporarily sated and thus his senses suddenly and swiftly returning to him, almost nauseating in their starkness. The sounds of the city buzz in his ear; the careless scrape of his hand against roughened brickwork fittingly painful. The humid summer air stings beads of sweat dripping down the line of his neck. Hastily he does up his trousers, his fingers fumbling in his haste; across from him, he can hear Astarion's ragged breathing.
And it doesn't matter that somewhere in him there's still that needful lust, for in this moment all Fenris can think of is that he has led them down a foolish path. An inciting one, and what had he been thinking? This will only encourage the brat. This will only teach him that escaping leads to all kinds of filthy escapades—
But the truth is, he wasn't thinking. He barely is now, a low buzzing in his ears and something in the back of his mind whispering filthily. And what's done is done: he will simply have to be sterner around Astarion, as stoic as he used to be to the other slaves.]
Come on.
[Addled as he is, he mutters it in Tevene first— and then, with a short, sharp exhale, corrects himself.]
Come on.
[He crosses the alley. He won't touch Astarion, not now; indeed, he won't even look at him while he's still half-undressed. Resentful shame ripples through him, anger&mdsah; a little at Astarion, mostly at himself— a smothering force to the lust.]
[They don't really talk after that. Least of all about it— not even on the night of.
Astarion, lean and undone where he still half-hunches against cold brickwork, puts his scuffed up knuckles to use in redressing himself: his blouse used to daub away the sweat and streaks of tacky slick, clearing its mess off his stomach, his clothes— bunching it into a ball between his fingers before cleaning them too— and tossing it into the gutter last, with only his slacks and shoes and jewelry left to walk him home. The expense is nothing, not even his kin would bat an eye at it. The budget carefully kept back home won't notice. Even an unraveling cuff's an excuse to toss rare silk into the trash for anyone of the patriar rank, and most people in the Lower City fetch their best wardrobes from the beautiful casualties tossed out of the upper reaches each day.
And from there, stubbornly, with his head still swimming slightly and his mood gone sedate, they walk home.
Astarion goes to sleep. Tends to his studies after that. His meals. In other words: he lives his life as usual, without trying to slip away once the sun's set— though whether that's because there isn't a worthwhile orgy to attend or a naked fountain swim he's been invited to, it's hard to say. No one should discount his nature for a second, after all. Least of all Fenris, who isn't spoken to so much as at— if at all— in the next handful of weeks: I'm going outside. I'm staying in. Stop hovering. Go the fuck away. Get out. Leave me alone.
The routine huffing of a thing with a long shadow, in essence, albeit one that knows its limits (he can't order Fenris around, but he can keep yanking him along to frustrate him. Test him. Rile him. Demand he come in close and then leave him standing watch while he fucks some pretty little treat of a servant in a shut closet. Stare at him from the dinner table whilst broaching every subject that could vex. Little nips at his figurative heels, but that's as far as it ever goes). The little sparks of animosity. The tepid traces of heat that still linger even when everything's cooled off.
They break, at least, whenever Fenris slips away to tend to his own needs.
Coming back's a different story.]
That wretched cunt barely knows the books he writes in, and you take his word over mine? I did you a favor—
['Two years until you take title, Astarion. Barely two years— and this is how you behave?'
Ah. The same argument as always, only it's catalyst different this time judging by what echoes behind shut doors. A so-called useless tutor, a so-called irresponsible student who refuses to behave. Reckless and indiscreet in his endless transgressions.
And like always it doesn't matter what Astarion has to say for himself. It doesn't matter if a blow is struck to his cheek for crude insult, or if the blow itself is the just the word that finally shuts him up; his father leaving without acknowledgment of either, only locking eyes with Fenris once he steps outside the room.
'Until I find another tutor, train him.' The finality of it: this is your role, now. One more addition to the rest, without a drop of concern spared for what a former slave might teach a highborne elf. Even a simple bid at perception would swear the man doesn't really care; it's clearly not about the lessons themselves, but the occupation of time. Odds are, he probably imagines that the less opportunity his son has to make trouble, the less trouble there'll inevitably be.
Although as today proves, that remains to be seen. 'Just make certain he stays indoors, quiet, and out of anyone else— I give you my permission to make that happen however it needs to.'
The sweep of his robes is almost silent when he leaves.
The inside of Astarion's room is fully silent.
A lofty space, still gilded and bright as ever. Those high ceilings, the attached wide balconies overlooking the Lower Reaches. No water, though. It's only the master suites that have the ocean views— and to be fair, it's not as palatial an estate as some of the literal palaces that take up whole portions of the upper city— but still. Beautiful.
And in the center of it all sits Astarion on his bed, nursing along his temper in dull solitude. He looks childish for his sulking (as anyone does), but ironically, not like the child he's been treated to be. Because buckling against the agonies of being a grown thing while handled like an annoying little upstart is—
Painful, maybe.
Like wearing clothing two sizes too small.
Like you can't even sit comfortably without feeling where restriction cuts deep into your own skin, and there's no way to relax but strip it all aside. And there's no one to confide in because there's—
[Until the door clicks. Astarion glowering coldly over his shoulder, his reddened eyes filled with a fresher bout of ire.
It's the first time that he's looked like he did that night in the alleyway.]
I didn't tell you to come in. [He scoffs defensively. Practically palpable how the hairs on the back of his neck are already standing with a bristling sense of hostility.
He wipes at his nose with the back of his fingers, the action quick and frustrated (oh, not soft. Not soft at all).]
Get out. I'm tired of looking at your wretched face.
[The weeks pass, and if you didn't look at them too closely, you might mistake them for blissful.
Certainly they're quiet. Astarion does not try to flee anymore, though whether that's because of Fenris' scolding or otherwise remains to be seen. And thus Fenris' job becomes easy, if not repetitive: silently following Astarion whenever he goes, a shadow that tries and inevitably fails to make himself unseen. It's strange to Fenris' mind, if you want the truth. Danarius was always content to ignore his prized pup unless he wanted him, but Astarion cannot seem to forget him. Little snapped out statements or pointless irritants, his newfound master (though oh, Fenris hates himself whenever he catches himself thinking of him that way) seemingly determined to try and frustrate Fenris into abandoning him.
It doesn't work. Not when Astarion ventures into far more vulgar territory (breathless giggles and a sneeringly derisive tone, don't mind him, darling, I don't think he can even get it up— and it's not the insult that turns his ears red, but the breathless moans that slip past that closed doorway. The breathless whines for more that precede the slickened sounds of that maid getting her cunt eaten out; the rapidfire slap of skin on skin as Astarion takes his prize— and afterwards, the scent of sex filling the air as they both staggered out. A study in contrasts: the maid flushing as she avoided Fenris' eye and scurried off, Astarion boldly catching it). Not when he brings up goading topics at supper, trying to see what earns a flinch or a glare.
Not even the sudden burden of a task he is in no way prepared to handle— nor the fretful barks of a pup too hurt to snarl.
And understand: it isn't pity that fills his heart. Fenris has been through too much hardship to weep over the plight of a rich noble and his petulance. But he has watched the way Astarion's father has spoken around him— not at him, not once, but rather as one might speak about a pet. Ordering around bodyguards and tutors to tend to him, not bothering to meet his gaze when he spits out instructions, only ever paying him mind when he acts out . . .
Perhaps it is not such a shock, then, that Astarion is inclined towards rebellion.
He could be rough, oh yes. He could be spiteful, lording this newfound integration into his young master's life and promising him only hell to come. But as Fenris stares at reddened eyes and hears that fretful sniff, he finds that the only emotion that fills him is just a wearied sort of softness.
And so, quite gently, he ignores Astarion's commands.
And it is gently, for there's such a difference in how he might do it spitefully. He does not shove the door shut and lean up against it smugly. Instead: Fenris is careful to let the latch slip into place near-silently behind him. He meets Astarion's eye, but he does not go to him just yet. Instead: the briefest of detours into his attached bathroom, where he fills a shallow bowl with cold water and grabs a washcloth.
Then to the bed, where he (so very boldly) takes a seat, one leg tucked beneath his knee.]
You will bruise if you do not tend to this.
[It's not pitying. Perhaps it's not even sympathizing. But it's not hostile, either, and there's a gentleness to the way he catches Astarion's chin with one hand, dabbing gently the reddened mark swelling over one pale cheek with the other.
(A kindness, too, for the way he does not mention reddened eyes, for there is no need to draw attention to grief— not especially between them).
It's quiet for a time. And then, his gaze still focused on his task, Fenris murmurs:]
What did he do to earn your ire, this tutor of yours?
[It's a neutral statement, neither dripping with sympathy nor aching with protectiveness. But he is Astarion's bodyguard, at the end of the day. His bodyguard, not his jailer. And if Astarion was not at fault . . .
[The latch clicks as it fixes itself shut— and Astarion's posture stiffens.
Bare soles pad lightly across polished floors towards him, and the angle of sharp ears drop until they pin, tucked in deep against the knotwork of his curls. Wariness that doesn't stop when pathing finally sweeps Fenris past the edge of his bed. It doesn't ease off when he hears the faucet run, or the rippling plink of cold water sloshing in its basin. Against his thighs, slim fingers seem to lock around themselves like the coiling of a snake before it bites, only doubled once Fenris' tall figure sinks down across the corner of that mattress. Imposing with its armor, and buckles, and guarded lacework— and it's the first time that fact has ever lived bright behind silver eyes.
That his bodyguard does fit the role.
And then comes a hand beneath his chin.
Wet relief pushed to his cheek.
A balm he'd never asked for, already turning his skin ice cold beneath his eye (and mercilessly hot along his neck around its nape), dripping as it runs towards his shirt collar, pattering to drip from his jaw— the sloping jut of his throat— down between his legs. His pulse ricocheting through soft tissue, every corded muscle tense enough to snap, and he prays his counterpart can't feel it where he holds his chin. Tongue pushed up to the roof of his mouth like it'll save him petty shame; he's had enough of it already. He can't take more now, too. (What does Astarion expect? Cruel laughter? Snide derision? A look to rival the smugness he'd aimed at Fenris over and over again throughout the last few weeks, let alone the first night they'd met? Oh, everything, maybe. All of the above. Cause and effect come to bear, and here Fenris is: lucky enough to witness its aftermath firsthand. Payback his for the taking, if he wants it.
But—
No, that doesn't make sense.)
The rag isn't laced with anything. The look on dour features hasn't budged since he came in. And for a moment pale eyes flit from mouth, to tsavorite stare, and back again, visibly weighing something just before he licks his lips. Chin bobbing slightly in that rough-edged grasp.
(If this is a trick, it's so deeply buried that it borders on nonsensical. Or genius. Either way, Astarion's too worn down to care.
The bastard was inept. [Comes a muttered response through loosened breaths, his chin left nestled soft against those fingers in a truce that's already stowed its fury in trade for being tended to. Seen.] Barely a waste of flesh, and happy to sit on his perch collecting coin while I penned line after line of whatever drivel came into his skull for months on end.
[Lessons, he called them. But there's no point in learning anything that isn't true. Just another excuse to keep Astarion's fingers moving. His mouth shut, even when he knew better.] There was alcohol on his breath that I didn't even put there for once, and he's never known the difference between Poe and Ardunni to begin with.
He was a fraud. And a liar. And a cheat.
I don't regret chasing him off.
[Light scoff slipping in. Mouth quirking to one side by self-aware degrees, changing the angle of that rag.]
....But then nobody believes me because I'm a liar and a cheat, too. [Sober, his ensuing sigh: he knows fully what he is, and his voice sinks ever so slightly to admit it, shrugging wryly through his shoulders.] So I guess there's that.
[Well, that's the question, isn't it? The trouble is: Fenris doesn't have an answer, not really. He cannot say it's out of pity, for that isn't true and sends the wrong message: poor you, so neglected you need a hired bit of help to be your friend. And he cannot say, too, that Astarion has earned it, for the fact of the matter is that he hasn't. That look of fear before was not wholly unjustified, not really (and Fenris was not wholly sorry to see it, if you want to know the truth). He's nipped at Fenris' heels from the moment they met, delighting in petty bits of vengeance, thrilling to earn any kind of reaction— for gods' sake, the brat had outright drugged him their first night together. You can get down on your knees and entertain us, and dazed though he was, Fenris hasn't forgotten a single moment about that night.
So why, then? He's silent for a time, focusing on his task, letting his mind wander. His thoughts drift towards that tutor, hired solely to shut someone up. Not a terrible man. Not abusive or cruel or vicious, not the way some can get. Simply terribly, horribly inept, and yet paid such a lofty sum because he knew how to keep his student occupied.
No wonder the tiger throws himself against the cage's bars. No wonder he snarls and seethes at yet another keeper's arrival. And yet Fenris does not quite know how to say all that, not really. Not without delving into his own past and revealing far more than he wishes to.]
I am to be your tutor now, in addition to your bodyguard. And unlike that drunken mess, there are things I can teach you— if you are willing to learn. Things like . . .
[For a moment his mind runs blank— but ah, he is skilled. Not learned, but very, very good at what he does.]
How to defend yourself. How to wield a dagger or aim a gun without hurting yourself in the process. How to walk soundlessly if you wish, or learn how to spot an assassin a crowd. How to utilize almost any weapon, and conversely, how to counter it. How to strengthen your muscles, and in that way get rid of the excess energy I assume plagues you.
[Young thing, and mercifully, he doesn't say so, but there's something knowing in his gaze. Setting the cloth down, his fingers linger for just half a moment longer than they should against that soft chin before dropping away.]
Consider this an olive branch. Do not treat me as jailer to be seduced or humiliated out of a position, and in turn, I will . . .
[He cannot ignore his father's orders. But still Fenris hesitates, and then finally settles on:]
We will see how much freedom you are granted as the weeks pass. If nothing else, I do not intend for you to spend all your days and nights locked in your rooms.
[Surely they can go on daytrips. Drinking a pint or two at early evening. Surely his lord father doesn't intend for Astarion to be totally sterile— simply less raucous.]
[Tongue pushed hard against the backline of his teeth in hoarse diffusion.]
Of course he named you next in line. Nice to see his standards haven't risen since the last time he went hunting for a qualified lock and key. [Fenris was there. Fenris was breathing. What else does it take to ensure the heir you've given birth to stays settled on his heels? Particularly when vacancy won't do it, and the prior instructor's already halfway to Cormyr choking on his pride instead of wine, frantically trying to delete a swath of incriminating photos from his own personal accounts.
As for the rest, though....
Honestly?
It sounds like a lie.
A nice one (oh, all the best ones are), stirring up a fresher pulse of hope behind the soreness of his cheek, but— he's had others say things that sounded just as sweet before in the past, only to find out later (caught with their fingers wrapped around stacked coin or supple flesh), that it was never really true. One more thing bought and paid for just to keep him tethered to rote silence.
At least Petras talks to him, annoying prick that he is. At least the others in their group laugh with him. Have fun with him. See him as one of their own, up and coming forces that they are, no matter the trouble they get into.
But the thing is, it also makes sense.
Do not treat me as jailer to be seduced or humiliated out of a position, and Astarion can understand exactly what it is that Fenris wants out of this equation: not niceness or companionship— but security. And for some reason, unlike the others his family's directly taken on, he makes this bargain with Astarion— not his father. It's equal footing.
He can live with that.]
I've had worse tutors.
Worse jailers too. [His eyes following the retreat of that rag— falling on angled features instead: the strength of a face that still looks out of place in this overly extravagant world, and he's tempted to ask after it, you know. Why you. Where did you really come from. What is it you've seen?
None of that matters with an accord hanging in the balance.
The bruise on his cheek red from chill, but not inflamed pain anymore. Shining wetly in diffused sunlight. His thumb flicking at the corner of his index finger, thinking like a cat twitching its own tail.]
Do you really know how to shoot a gun?
[Focusing on the important things here, if he's taking this bargain.]
[It's something. Perhaps not the starry-eyed, overeager agreement some vague part of him might have hoped for— but then again, Fenris thinks, he probably wouldn't trust such a thing. What cause does Astarion have for cheer, after all? And there's something to be said for the fact that the lad offered him an honest reaction instead of a saccharine, overeager agreement.
So: it's something. A foundation to build upon, maybe, and Fenris nods in acknowledgement as Astarion offers that backhanded compliment.
But oh, that question, and internally, Fenris smiles. It's . . . well, it is a bit of a patronizing reaction, but he doesn't mean it that way. His intention isn't to coo over Astarion's age or lack of experience, it's just . . .
What a question to ask a living weapon.
Do you really know how to shoot a gun, and Fenris thinks of Danarius' slaves cowering from him, flinching at his shadow and whispering where they thought he couldn't hear. Of the countless hours his master spent forcibly reconditioning him, rousing him from his slumber so he could be made ever more perfect as a bodyguard and companion. Lessons in how to wield every single weapon in existence: guns and knives, swords and shotguns, and if all else failed, his body itself. Half a dozen martial arts tutors, the tactical lessons that never ended, the tests that he grew so good at passing . . . and that's to say nothing of all the magitech coursing through his veins. Lyrium was the start, not the end; nanobots swarm through his veins, their presence a constant assurance that Danarius' prized bodyguard would never succumb to poisons or sustained injuries.
Do you know how to shoot a gun, and it is the sweetest relief to be asked such an innocuous question.]
[What, now? He almost asks, like it isn't a matter of making the decision and simply going; like the same cocksure elf that'd slipped out into empty streets through an open window can't somehow just walk right through a door his kin pulled shut. But of course he can— of course he can— and more than that: it's his godsdamned right to, so long as his feet are planted on Baldurian soil, let alone his own estate.
Never to forget that disapproval isn't imprisonment, and like Fenris himself said, he isn't his bloody jailer.
So.
Right then.
Take two— this time with a little less shameful fucking naivety.
With the back of his hand, he swipes away the last few vestiges of glassy water from the fringe edge of his jaw, heavy curls carrying a few wayward droplets here and there, and all quickly dispersed. By the time it's done, he's just as straight-backed as ever. Chin resolutely lifted in a haughty show of command: not aimed or leveled at the only living thing in sight, just worn.
In other words, he's himself again.
Still livid, mind. And rife with roiling resentment hotter than the mark upon his cheek, but not a day goes by any differently, really. At least now there's something real to set his sights on. An asset worth having beside him, and a fascinating show ahead— wherever it might lead.]
Immediately.
[He orders, jewelry jangling. Cloth rustling. A light interlude spent straightening his clothes and jacket before departure.
And it's—
Not what he'd expected.
Even in the Upper City, the training range smells stringent and perfumelessly dank, yet there's more magitech inside its walls than what he's seen at the most extravagant of celebrations: from scrolling advertisements to minute readouts, to assistant-familiars meant to help select a weapon from one second to the next. Courses are marked, privacy screens obscured, running tabs for even things like ammunition or refreshments are tallied and paid for with a flick of a wrist. It's nice, but it's not that nice, which is baffling—
Before he realizes that no one here's a patriar.
At least not unless they're so well disguised as to cease existing altogether. Just assassins and servants, bodyguards and mercenaries. Well-paid fighters from the highest illegal rings. Merchant lackeys bearing their allegiance on their skin. All aside from Astarion, that is, who suddenly feels more out of place for the accessories he's sporting than he's ever felt before. Though at least that doesn't last long.
They're led into a private section of the range not much later. Muffled from outside noise. Filtered from outside contact— a thick wall of glasslike smoke the color of gunmetal outlining the borders of their given territory. A little notification bobbing latently in one far corner above a stack of weaponry and ammunition promises they could pay to broaden those boundaries, if they wished. The price for that obscured in favor of a small animated mabari, its wiry tail wagging back and forth awaiting an inquiry— or an order.
Huh.]
Is this where you come to practice?
[Question drifting in while he picks up whichever handgun's closest to him, starting to fiddle with its various fasteners and locks.]
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albinomilksnake2023-07-11 12:43 am
no subject
He had thought an escape inevitable, but not the first night. Certainly not after he so clearly had fallen asleep, his breath softening and his body stilling beneath the sheer sheets. And be fair to Fenris: he does have to sleep at some point. He can go for so long without it if he must, but sooner or later he has to rest. Better to do it this first night, when lines have been drawn and boundaries set, then the night of some party the whelp is aching to attend.
More fool him.
He doesn't know what rouses him. Perhaps it's the stillness in the room, or the lack of another's presence. Perhaps he just sleeps lightly nowadays, a creature too wary and paranoid to ever let his guard fully down. It doesn't matter.
He wakes and Astarion is gone.
In an instant Fenris is out the window, landing silently on the soft earth below. His heart is hammering too hard in his chest, a thundering rhythm that leaves him nauseous— and for a moment, panic makes him reel. Terror of what might happen tomorrow (Astarion's father coldly dismissing him, a mountain of debt crashing upon his head with no way to pay it back, Danarius lurking in the shadows just waiting for a moment like this) overwhelms him, and he wants to vomit—
And then his training takes over.
Panic won't help. Letting his fear overcome his intelligence will lead to ruin, so best to stop indulging it, lest those fears really do come true. Fenris takes a deep breath once, twice, and then glances around.
And thank the gods, Astarion wasn't subtle. He'd been clever enough in sneaking away, but not so much in covering his tracks. There's the faintest hint of a footprint leading out towards the garden wall, and from there . . . from there, it's just a matter of following the clues. He is a good tracker, and knows his quarry besides: it's not too hard to pick up the trail once he has his mind on right. A few swift questions close in the gap, and he manages to spot the boy just as he slips in through the gate.
Hells.
He tries the guard. He does not have much hope for the guard, but he tries anyway, and is not particularly disappointed when he's refused. The man has a duty to perform, and it's far safer to irritate a bodyguard than it is a noble; Fenris cannot begrudge him that. He simply makes a show of scowling in vexation, glancing around before inevitably wandering off.
It's not ten minutes later that he's infiltrated the party.
(The security here is terrible. Efficient enough for keeping unwanted guests out, maybe, but the haphazard way security patrols the perimeter is pathetic. They're distracted things, their focus aimed towards the lewdity going on within . . . and as for all the cameras and supposed magical wards that no doubt cost a fortune to install, oh, please. Fenris will never credit Danarius with anything, but there had been a man who knew how to ward off intruders. This is just pathetic).
He crosses the lawn, striding towards the lit-up manor. He stands out among all the lewd costumes and delicate masks, but he doesn't care. The point isn't to hide away; merely to find his ward. And to that end . . . a slight figure, silver curls and pointed ears, and it takes him some time. Long enough that Astarion has already settled in with a drink in one hand and a pipe in the other, chattering among a group of companions— no doubt congratulating himself on his cleverness.
Fenris' hand is so heavy as it sets on Astarion's shoulder, gripping tight.]
Get up.
[His voice pitched low, his tone brooking no argument.]
no subject
He's partway through boasting about his new bodyguard's odds when—
—thud.
clatter—
—Astarion drops his pipe in a startled jolt.
Laughter erupts from the gathered pack (three young bucks Astarion's age and two girls), all in various states of repose on expensive furniture. All drinking— or drunk. All amused to see something this unexpectedly entertaining in its abrupt irony: schadenfreude bolstering the whole of their already well-fanned elation, where the bottom of a bottle is at most the start of a long, exhausting evening. The air smelling of honey, amber, ambrosia, and now— smoke.
And he does get to his feet, but it doesn't take him long to recover from the shock— or to register the sound of delighted cackling— twisting around to yank his shoulder free and glower at the nuisance he's been shackled to by something so expendable as duty.]
Get your hands off me—
[Incredulous, now that he's recovered. That he's puffed up his own chest like an agitated stoat is subconscious, but the roused authority behind it serves a purpose: insisting that he won't back down.
Which, like the rest of his delayed reaction, finds itself just a half-step off cue in terms of relevance, next shoved from its mark by exasperation:]
What is wrong with you? [Following Astarion this far, actually managing to get inside to chase after him; he could've just stayed home. Covered his own ass. Stood at the doorway insisting the young lord Astarion was resting soundly if anyone came knocking— now, though, now they're both up to their necks in this excursion, and for what? Approval? A pat on the head, a little coin? Selûne's cunt, Astarion could've given him all of the above and saved them both the trouble.
Behind them, one of the boys (a smug thing with dark hair down to his shoulders) whistles low in their direction, clicking the tip of his tongue to a chipped canine while adding 'you never said he was this devourable, Astarion.']
That's because he's more trouble than his face is worth. [He snorts back, reaching out for another pass of wine from over his shoulder. Bringing it to his lips and letting it bring back his own sense of carefree deliquency, swaying just a segue for his forced little grin (mean. Be mean).] ....maybe not the rest of him, though.
[There's another peal of snickering soon to rise up from that dark corner, and like any attention-starved thing, he's clearly encouraged by it.]
If you're going to stay, be useful: you can get down on your knees and entertain us, or go wait with the other wet coats at the exit while we finish having fun.
[One more sip.]
Whatever gets you off more.
no subject
It's everything he ever fought to escape. It's humiliation and objectification, his entire self tethered on a leash to a goading master, forced to stand there and be reduced to something little more than a toy for these nobles to play with. Devourable, that brat calls him, his mouth curled up into a smug smirk and his eyes glittering with malice. Fuckable, breedable, and Fenris can almost hear it in Tevene. He can almost smell Danarius' magic curling on the edge of his tongue, feel the weight of that collar heavy on his throat—
And it only grows worse as Astarion joins in on it. Silver stare flicking over Fenris' form, his bearing cruel, and it doesn't matter that it's so clearly goading. It doesn't matter that Astarion does it because he's hungry for attention and embarrassed that Fenris chased after him.
It still burns.
Get on your knees, and for a moment such rage flares in his gaze.
Don't indulge it. Don't give these nobles any hint of a reaction, for that way only lies ruin. There's no way to win with people like this, and so Fenris does what he has always done: stoically ignore them in favor of his chosen target.]
You have two options.
[His voice is pitched low. That isn't done out of consideration for Astarion, but rather his job: the whelp won't come to heel if his pride's on the line.]
Walk out with me now, Astarion, or I will carry you out. One affords you dignity, while the other leaves you looking like a squalling child. But do not test me on this, for I have no further patience for your antics tonight.
Which is it to be?
no subject
But he's mad to think the first option is one where Astarion retains his dignity. That's not a choice, that's just holding onto the hammer while it slams nail-after-nail into the coffin of his own reputation: turning tail after his own father's lackey shows up with a glare that could hone knives is as good as telling the others he can't stay to fuck himself senseless, his nanny's been kept waiting and the warm glass of milk and honey made for him's gone cold.
They'll laugh him out of existence.
But rejection's a tall order.
Not the least for their differences in height, where Astarion has to tilt his chin a little higher just to feel the cold ripple of admonitory warning in the air. The comical juxtaposition of a reedy princeling angled towards his armored counterpart, half-dressed and drinking till his lips stain dark around their corners.]
No errand boy dictates where or when I leave.
[A unified coo of scandalous delight erupts from the little audience behind him. Bright eyes flashing with excitement, almost jostling in their seats for a better view of an unexpected declaration of war; where Fenris had been discreet, Astarion's bravado comes out in the way nature dictates anything posturing should: by making itself louder.
Larger.]
But if you don't feel like sharing....
[He's a noble. He's been hunting before, even if only on the back of a saddled mare. Cornering a deer. A fox. A wolf. With enough dogs, anything is prey.]
I'll share with you instead.
[He pulls one more mouthful of wine, holding it to the back of his tongue— and lunging in a devilish flash over that narrow distance to try and fit their lips together.]
no subject
Fierce bodyguard trained to defend against every kind of attack under the sun, but not like this. Not something so vulgar, so crude, so mean— Fenris' eyes go wide as their mouths slot together, his shock stalling him out for a precious few seconds. His hands hang loose at his side, his fingers stiff and stricken, as all around him there's the barking laughs of the well-bred masses.
The world narrows itself to sensations. A hot tongue slipping between his lips; soft pressure as delicate fingers wrap around the back of his neck. Wine pouring down his throat, droplets of scarlet staining his lips as spice stings his tongue. Heat flooding through him, and by the time he realizes what's happening and wrenched his mouth away, it's too late. There's already a flush to the tip of his ears, his cock stirring faintly—
His wretched little charge has drugged him.
Not with much— but then again, when it comes to aphrodisiac, it doesn't need to be much. A few drops can twist your senses for hours on end, making you little more than a panting, mewling thing in need of service. How long does Fenris have before it hits him? Minutes? Maybe less. It's hard to tell, for he's only ever used to the things Danarius would sometimes give him, the drugs amplified tenfold by magic and the effects so terribly potent . . .
He can hear the jeers around him. He wishes he couldn't. There's a roaring in his ears, a tinny tone that means his mind is dropping away, and by all rights that ought to drown out the others. But no. No, he hears every goading word, every malicious comment: oh, look, he's feeling it already, how fast do you think he'll get to his knees, I bet he'd be a good rut if you could get him to pin you to the table . . .
His patience snaps.
With an outright growl he grabs Astarion: one hand on the back of his neck, the other viciously tight as he grips his bicep. And they march forward: away from those goading peers (their cries delighted, cat-calling that Astarion's about to have the fuck of his life) and towards the doorway. And maybe his charge wiggles or fights or laughs, but it doesn't matter, for they are moving— and there is so little that escapes Fenris' grasp when he has them in his clutches. They stride past guests (looking astonished, looking delighted, amused at how vicious this orgy has turned so quickly) and security alike (who don't dream of stopping him, not when he's so clearly flushed and aching to rut his squalling prey), not pausing until Fenris kicks open the filigree-decorated doors and they emerge into the cool night air.]
Move.
[He shoves him forward as he releases him.]
Now.
[Never mind that he's flushed. Never mind that his cock is half-hard, stiffened hang straining faintly against his laces. They're going home.]
no subject
Instigator that he is, he drank first. He had to for the joke (he would have anyway; that bottle was in his hands the second that the others saw him, and it wasn't as if they didn't all drink, too). His heartbeat thick between his ribs, sloshing with every movement.]
What, nothing— nothing for me?
[Laughing vestigially. Lovesick enough that his eyes shine and his lips are wet; he'd only just gotten to that party— and still his clothes and hair reek of perfumed clove-smoke, his breath immersed in wine. He can't wrench himself free (like a thing hooked), he stumbles on fawnish legs, but with his head ducked downwards in that grip he sees (—carpet, wood, boots, streets—) the loosened hang of leather laces, and his fingers itch just to pull.
They're close enough.
Sloughing chuckle let out when the world spins at first— everything blurring together in ways that only reassure his initial motivation: peripheral amusement, the whip of approving voices, (how many nobles leave those parties in the arms of someone else? How many of them can say their own name, let alone think by then?) the smeared sound of a guard he recognizes letting out a low whistle before making a bet to one of the others on how long he'll last. That harmless jocularity grown rougher the further into darkness that they tread.]
You won't make it home—
[Is he talking to Fenris or himself?]
—it's not made for us to enjoy and then leave— [The aphrodisiac, he means. The kinds laced into the pipes, the bottles— even the cups that they'd all knowingly indulged from when they arrived: strong only by the standards of a young buck who never had a master to come crawling to on wounded knees. The city's stench— a mixture of wet pavement and summer heat— finally registering in his nostrils. Those laces still dangling in his eyeline.
They should've stayed at the party.
(His own cock's already rammed hot against the inseam of his trousers and it howls with thick constriction at the end of every fumbled step; his lips cherry red for being bitten, his eyes glassier by the second. But Fenris won't let him look at him. The grip on his neck's too rough, and he's already dreaming about feeling out the bruises that punishment will leave behind come morning, too greedy not to drool for more than anything he's given past the borders of pretense.
—gods, they should've stayed at the party.)
This would've been easier.]
Let me help you—
[His grip is cupping when it comes. Serpentine and deceptively deft, it folds around the heavy underside of Fenris' prick through leather without warning, pushed hard between his legs under the drag of harsh proximity. Knowing that if his other arm were free, he'd be working at himself with all the same ferocity of an itch he just can't scratch— abstract and needy and insistently consumed. Smelling of smoke. Tasting of wine.
Echoing like laughter.
That he can ignore the fact that there are people watching them (on occasion) as they go, passing faces smoking on side streets or walking through midnight alleyways, it's through virtue of just not giving a damn.]
no subject
[Oh, wicked little beast. Impudent little upstart nipping at his heels, a pup so eager to play that he has no idea what he bats at. And yet not so puppyish just yet, is he, for there's a deft experience to the way he fondles at Fenris. His fingers are so clever, slipping between his thighs and stroking along his swollen length.
Fenris won't blame himself for the groan that rumbles low in his throat.
It's a brief thing, yes. Bitten back as green eyes flutter closed, his ardent stride stumbling as they come to a halt just at the mouth of an alley. And yet there's such hunger woven into that noise, Fenris' mouth going dry as his body whimpers that he hasn't felt another's touch in so, so long . . .
Deep breath. Fenris fills his lungs, trying and failing to distract himself from the curling lust warming in his belly. Sensory observations won't do it: the buzz of faded neon signs or the faint scrape of boots against cobblestone is drowned out by his own whining thoughts. He swallows thickly, glancing around. There's the occasional laugh, heads turning as they stumble forward— and all at once, Fenris realizes they're attracting too much attention. That's a stupid thing to do even in the richest parts of Baldur's Gate, never mind at night. Never mind when you're so clearly intoxicated . . .
No, they aren't going anywhere like this. Abruptly Fenris pivots them, steering them into one of the narrower alleyways. It's a forgotten thing, half-torn posters peeling on brick walls and rusted cans at their feet. Shadows conceal them both, and that suits Fenris just fine. Still gripping Astarion's wrist, he shoves him up against the wall, surging forward to shove one hardened thigh between the brat's own. Fine features hit roughened brick as Fenris pins both hands against the wall, not caring for how they might scrape or bleed.]
Get yourself off.
[It's a growl, low and frustrated. No mention is made for the swelling arousal in Fenris' own pants, and that's deliberate.]
Finish, so that we may go home without a scandal. Rut yourself against my thigh and come in your pants like the squalling brat you are, and then I will take you and put you to bed, and we will speak no more of this.
[But he cannot help but glance down just once, his eyes flicking as heat pulses through two layers of thin leather. Even trapped beneath Astarion's pants Fenris can see just how thickly his cock hangs; how big he is, just shy of vulgar and yet perfectly suiting a slender elven frame—
Stop. Bad enough they are doing this at all, but Fenris cannot think, not right now— and he certainly cannot deal with a pent-up, desperate noble who wants to be rut. At least if he spills once, Fenris will have enough of a refractory period to get them home.]
iliad XXXI: the iliad and the iliad
He's never seen anything like it.
Never felt anything like this, his heart rabbiting high inside his throat with a mind all its own, desperately clawing its way free with every painful beat. Gods— it might as well be screaming: its measure hot and loud against soft tension. Tongue parched. Neck peppered with sweat. Legs aching. He could swear he'd swallowed a burning splinter of red-hot coal like a pill somewhere in the last few seconds(? minutes?) and everything under his skin seethes just to promise that it's true. Thighs trembling and squeezed tight around his offered perch, unable to fight back.
And not solely because of leverage.
Unbearable, the word that comes to mind. Along with suffocating. Perfect.
The fuck of his life, they'd said.
He wants that.
He wants that more than he wants what's already been afforded (though strewth, he jolts at that wielded knife of a command. 'Come inside your pants like the squalling brat you are— ') so if his eyes roll, if his teeth chatter before they clench around a breathless groan, it's only warranted. Pushing his hips forward in a slow rut that leaves him fractured where he stands— a strangled cry in his throat for that first, unmistakably profane scuff— shaking through his shoulders as the too-tight fabric of his trousers catches under pressure: slow little ripples of tangled pressure, squeezed and knocking at his desperate cock and its drooling, smothered crown. Damp enough (thick enough) that it peeks out past the partway undone measure of his waistband, barely hidden by the sheer hang of his open shirt. Soft white. Dark black. Lurid pink flashes stricken with a glaze of vibrant lust— eager as the pup he's said to be.
But for all that he's tumbling headfirst into ruin, that's not the end of it.
Because truth be told there's a reason why it's bodyguard this time, and not sitter, keeper, servant, aide— a damned good reason why Astarion's parents tracked down a creature wholly without fear save for one. One easily manipulated, malleable, utterly ironclad fear. No family. No ties. Only a single task, with everything leveraged against it: keep their eldest out of trouble; keep him safe— handled with all the excessive care of someone purchasing a livestock guardian....to ward a starving dragon from their flock.
And it's because once Astarion's backed into a corner, there is nothing he won't do to claw his way back out.
(Slender thing with unmarked skin. Cut from pristine porcelain right to the edges of his long-lashed almond eyes, his irises set with inlaid silver. His delicate features lost beneath loose curls. Who grew fast enough to comprehend just how he looks beneath decadent layers of loose-stitched silk and pearl and cream-colored lace. Fit for poetry. Embroidery. Pretty even when he sulks.
Proof enough that a young buck still has horns.)
That's the trouble with power, after all, when even a hollow-boned thing can learn the exact threat it poses. Like the hunting dogs who roam in packs, yes, their jaws always aching for newer despotic thrills— but also like a boy who's had notoriety squirming in his palm already, comprehending what a few gasped breaths can do. And when you've a Duke that brings you chocolates (a Merchant Princess, a Duchess, a Magistrate or ten, even the guards that watch your estate's front gates— ) it's shockingly easy to put together how fucking flimsy the word no really is.
His last attendant got caught on his knees.
The one before that under his sheets.
Before that— fired. For incompetence (see figures two and three).
And they all of them hissed out behave, and they all snapped at one point or another for frustration, and they never— oh, it was never actually like this, he thinks, arching vulgarly from the pain scraped across his knuckles. His wrists. Wriggling down against the angle of an offered leg like an animal scolded. This is good. This is better. This is more fun.
But it doesn't change the fact that he wants more.
And he knows— because he's learned— that he can have his cake and make it whimper his name, too.
His back arches. His knee lifts. He's working his hips like it's his own pleasure that he's chasing while making sure his captive leg drags along the underside of Fenris' cock with each roll of his body. Wriggling them together through the leverage of his pinned-down arms and rhythmically curved spine. Forcing them to grind. Thigh to thigh, hip to hip, cock to— ]
....Come on, then....
[Parted lips shining in the dark. Teeth flashed in a feverishly provocative show of wet-mouthed need.] If this is all we're— going to share....Time to see who gives in first.
And— if you were worth the effort of picking up in the first place....
no subject
And yet his attention is snagged over and over by the smallest of details. A flash of reddened tongue between parted lips slick with drool. The faintest hint of a cock swollen with arousal and flushed with heat straining at laces too paltry to keep it contained, grinding and rutting against Fenris' thigh with wanton desperation. The lines of Astarion's body moving with such vulgar fluidity, his back arching into a perfect point (oh, how Fenris could get him to arch that back, how he would force him back, the brat split open on his cock and forced backwards just so Fenris could buck up into him as he whispered in his ear)—
Breathe.
Redirect. Reroute. Fenris' eyes have long since gone black, his own lips parted as he pants in unconscious echo of his charge. Astarion's thigh grinds up against the underside of his cock, sparks of pleasure bursting behind his eyes. And Fenris—
(bite him. fuck him. spin him around and tear those flimsy pants off him while you leave purple bruises on that delicate skin. teach him what being fucked really means: not the paltry efforts of the patriar, pathetic rutting that falters after a few short minutes, but brutally. fuck him so hard and for so long that he'll end up impaled upon you, gagging on the taste of your cock as you force him against the wall; make his body learn the consequences of taunting a wolf. break him, mind and body both, til he's addicted to the steady slam of your prick against his prostate, his hole dripping with need from the mere memory of how it was forced to accommodate you. keep your fingers wrapped around his pretty prick all the while, and when you've had your fun, refuse to finish him off. have him toddle back to that party with his hand between his legs and realize that there's not a soul that can fuck him the way he wants now. make him addicted to you and watch how he mewls then, compliant and needy, soft-mouthed thing that's so used to getting his way that he can't imagine being denied—)
—shoves himself away.]
Enough.
[It's a growl, low and seething, as he staggers back. His head ducks, his teeth gritting as he tries to get a grip on himself. One hand shoves against his face, pushing through silver strands, in a vain attempt to sober himself up, as he leans back against the opposite wall. Then his head snaps up, his glare savage as he bares his teeth in a silent snarl.
More wolf than elf, aren't you? and gods, but he does not need Danarius' voice whispering in his ear right now. Inelegant thing, so needy, come here, my pet, I'll take the edge off . . .]
Stay there.
[They're both straining at their trousers right now. Two silver-haired elves flush with aphrodisiacs and desperately hungry, with only a narrow space between them, oh, what noble wouldn't thrill to see such a sight?]
I am not one of your dull-eyed noble paramours that think themselves lucky to fall in your bed. Nor am I some servant you can use only to dispose of the next day when you grow bored. Do you understand? I am not playing this game with you, boy.
Now get yourself off.
[Under his watchful eye. Put on a show, little noble, for that is the least of what Fenris is owed tonight.]
And then we are going home.
no subject
It's invigorating.
Though sensing courted danger means comprehending it first. And while his mind is screaming here— here here here, stay here— anywhere but home, there's nothing but elation to be found even before momentum catches him off guard: dropped back between cold brick and cool air, but not his captive guard.
Tch.
He really thought he'd had him that time. Something about the blackness in green eyes whenever his tongue would slip out just between the edges of his teeth. The hollow darkness there, just begging for release. There's such a loveliness about it, that hollow-eyed, sleepless, handsomely gaunted face— so unlike any of the Upper City's nobility or guardsmen or merchants, wearing nicks and hunger from real battle, maybe, and smelling of split air before a storm— he wanted to see what it looked like on its knees. Flush. Dizzy. Tanned cheek pushed high over the span of his still clothed thigh for just a taste of what lies inches from his mouth. Led to water; yet to drink.
But he's had too much drink of his own to dwell on that without moving, though.
Smile— drunk and stupid, lost under a heavy curtain of displaced curls— stretched across his lips in the moment he reaches back again with one arm, fingertips splayed wide as if there was still a gloved grip clutching at his wrist. His other hand slipped deep inside his open waistband, tugging slow in masked obscurity. Again. And again. And again. The movement is what kills (and sates); pumped from shoulder to elbow to shuttling forearm, promising that out of sight is nothing close to out of mind right now.]
Whatever you want, Fenris.
[Pronunciation slurred, oh yes, he'd paid attention to how his family first beckoned him by name. Fenris, he repeats, letting his head turn to one side and his focus leave him in heavy rhythms. Fenris....Fenris.... ]
....how old are you....?
[He asks, panting so hard for every stroke that his voice is halting. Head tilted down, attention hung low and harsh between impatient fingers; it's only by virtue of habit that this scene is so compulsively lurid. (He wants to get off just as much as Fenris wants to save face and find closed doors. Desperation pretty in a squalid little alley. )
One stubborn wrench thrown into simple plans deserves another, after all.]
When was— ah— [Ah— and he twists right where he stands, throat raised while his chin lifts skyward, gasping for a dangerous pang of satisfaction.] —when was the last time you even touched yourself....?
[....or someone else.]
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It's the drug. It has to be the drug, for he hadn't been this hot and bothered earlier tonight. Gods, the brat had walked naked in front of him and he'd been less distracted— but then again (and the realization is a dreamy thing, dissonantly distant), he had thought such filthy things about him, hadn't he? It's not about a lack of attraction. It's just that this time, those fantasies can't be pushed away, for each time he tries, they return insistently. Again and again and again, battering against his defenses, making him image—
Oh, everything.
(Muffled cries of protest and hunger as Fenris' cock fiercely fucks that slickened mouth, pretty tears filling the brat's eyes as he eagerly swallows down every inch of what his bodyguard has to offer, his hand desperately jerking himself off as he bounces in impatient longing; how good Astarion would look with come glazed on his cheek, over his lips, sated and dazed; the way he'd bend over and spread himself open in vulgar question, come take me— and it goes on).
He's panting, he realizes. Overheated exhales slip past slickened lips as his eyes focus shamelessly on the half-hidden span of Astarion's hand, mesmerized by the vulgar patterns enacted. He can all but feel the echo of them: the rhythmic squeeze of fingers that have never known a hard day's work, soft and yet all the more dexterous for it. The hard, heavy pulls of a hand desperate for release, wrist snapping as the pace picks up—]
Fasta vass.
[It's a harsh whisper as he palms at himself, trying and failing to will the heel of his hand to be enough. His hips rock forward, his cock straining desperately at his laces, and oh, this is stupid. With a frustrated growl he tugs at his own laces, shoving his hand down his pants like the errant adolescent he's trying so hard to mind, his fingers wrapping around his prick and squeezing tight. Fenris, Fenris, and without quite meaning to, he times the heavy tugs of his own hand to the breathy whispers from the other end of the alley. Fenris, his thumb smearing over the velvet head, his ears flushed dark as he feels his body cry out in relief.]
Older than you, no doubt. Three— three hundred.
[More or less. It's a roughened answer. Fenris tips his head back, his eyes fluttering as he settles in.]
And you do— ah— do not need to know how long.
[Oh, ages. Years. He's such a starved thing, but then again, he's never had much chance before now, has he? But ah, best not to linger on that. Best to turn the tables around, and oh, that's easy enough. The mean little smirk that plants itself on his lips is no accident, for oh, he is frustrated with this brat.]
And w-what of you, hm? Fifty? Have you hit a century yet? I need not ask when the last time you had someone between your legs was . . .
[And he means that as a casual insult, slut woven in the space between words, but it backfires. Twists back in on itself, so that the only thing Fenris can think of is that overhot cock shoved up against his thigh, and the mewling, panting brat who wanted nothing more than to get them both off . . . fasta vass, and he grits his teeth as he renews his efforts.]
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And just as quick: the dropping of his chin down to his shoulder.
Laughing for the raw, stupefied delight found in how strange a curse like that sounds to ears that've never heard even a shred of Tevene in their short years.]
Seventy-five. [The lithe thing perched on sinful legs abruptly sneers back (with too little air to cross the distance), still fighting the sound of his own unsubsided mirth. Rakishness leading the charge teeth first, grin second, enunciation third, and thought—
Oh, none of that, actually.
Less than a century is the truth: the man was right in guessing. But there's a savage charm in taking posturing little potshots at each other when pumping at the aching base of one's own thickened cock (welling crest to the space deep between his legs, finally hunching forwards at an angle so that he can work himself for pleasure instead of mewling show), particularly when the difference in years between them is centuries to paltry decades.
Astarion lied, you see.
He's forty-five, actually. But even his kin don't pay enough attention to correct him; why should he hold himself to etiquette when talking to a stranger? One that doesn't even beg him for temptation like the others. One who palms freely— angrily— at himself with a glint in narrowed eyes, relying on nothing but his own fingers and a stubborn insistence that jacking off in broad moonlight is a half-step closer to home. (Silver eyes pinned under the edges of his shirt and buckles, wetting his own lips with swift flicks of his tongue, ah)....
And with that attitude, it might well be soon enough.
Another heady ripple, biting at his mouth so hard his senses throb to hunt for flashes of dark skin at a warding distance, like a couple of steps somehow makes this less depraved. (Fenris....Fenris....)]
This morning. [He wasn't asked how long (it was a rhetorical slight); he answers anyway.]
There was a pretty maid beneath....the tablecloth.... [Whether for the story or the urgency instilled through livewire pangs of urgency behind his teeth, he's sped up his pace enough to the point of soft percussion: loose shirt now dragged to one side around the lean stretch of his belly, and followed by a supple slap slap slap— now that his fingers've grown slick from wanton strokes. Only sharing the sight of what slips rapidly between his thumb and crooked-in fingers. Little blurs of glossy movement.] ....she'd been cleaning everything so....diligently. I didn't have the heart to stop her, when she turned herself to me.
[Ah— ah— ]
Could've even been you just now, too, for the answer to that question....if you weren't so afraid of having fun. [Echoing Fenris slyly to add:]
It'd take longer than a night for me to tire of you.
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And when the lust took him, oh, Fenris is sure he's tangled with his fair share of partners. Sweet merchant princesses mewling for his mouth between their legs; experienced older men who drew him into their laps and bounced him until he shrieked.
But Fenris doubts very much he's ever truly participated in something obscene.
Not just rutting, but the kind of filth that requires letting go. Drooling and out of his mind with pleasure, his eyes rolling back into his head as he surrenders complete control— no, such a thing would surely be risking too much. Better to watch someone else do it. Better to stay safe among your peers, removed and yet witness still, enjoying all the fruits of someone else's labor.
And whether or not it's true is irrelevant, for now Fenris relishes that fantasy. This boastful little brat still virginal in all the ways that matter, thinking he knows all there is to know about sex just because he's had his share of tumbles and knows how to flirt . . . oh, Fenris would show him. Fenris would teach him so much.
The fantasies crowd through his mind, one after another, and this time he doesn't bother to push them away. Just lets them play out in his mind's eye as he glares as his errant charge, his wrist snapping as he tugs at himself. He'd haul that squalling brat over his knee, his hands bound and his hole plugged with a pretty toy, spanking him until he was wailing his apologies, swearing anything so long as Fenris would stop . . . or better still, teasing him with a vibrator. Tying his ankles to his wrists and watching as he writhed against a vibrator's endless buzz, drooling around a swollen ballgag as his untouched cock spilled messily on those pristine sheets . . . or simpler still: serving as cockwarmer. Mewling and whimpering, not allowed to touch as he's speared atop a thick prick . . .
Please, Fenris, please, I want it, please, and his lilting tones echo in Fenris' ears. His fingers tighten their grip, his pulls growing heavy and hard as he feels his own finish rising in him. It's too sudden, too fast, but oh, he's so pent up, he's so needy . . .
And gods, but that tale of the maid doesn't help.
The thought of Astarion with his mouth reddened and covered in slick, his breath hot as he panted against a swollen cunt and earned squealing cries . . . that could've been you, and he surely intends it as a nasty thing, Fenris on his knees among a crowd of nobles, but that isn't the image that comes to mind. It's Astarion on his knees: Astarion panting up at Fenris with a reddened mouth; Astarion looking so pretty with come glazing his face . . .]
It would take far longer than that for me to teach you how to fuck as though you mean it.
[His voice a leonine growl, his emerald eyes gleaming in the darkness.]
You're so used to fucking servants that wouldn't dare disobey their seductive brat of a master— or your peers, who rut clumsily and act as though they know what they're doing. Have you ever been properly fucked, little brat? Not just watching someone take it and gossiping about it in the aftermath . . . have you ever been driven out of your mind? I doubt it.
[His tongue moves without his say-so, his wary thoughts temporarily drowned under the fierce wave of lust smothering him and burning him to his core.]
Boasting to me of maids and parties . . . what can you really do, beyond wag your tongue and make yourself into an object of worship?
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His stare— through the fog obscuring his vision— finding a hard snap of focus owing to the chalky taste of bitter spite. They're like the walls behind them: they reverberate. Lust, animosity, enmity, ire greed. It all bounces back. Harder. Sharper. Louder. Never mind the fact that he's two degrees from his eyes rolling back, unable to breathe without panting open-mouthed like an animal run to its last steps. Never mind the smell of sex that wafts across his senses despite the fact that the air isn't actually rife with it so much as the suggestion of it. Of body heat. Salt tang. Sweat. Vulgar, acrid pearl. His own hand won't stop moving despite his childish rage, and his eyelids flutter before they narrow into slits for an insult that actually sticks.
Not his age, or his wealth, or his station. Not his pretty looks, not the fact that he's figured out he can't walk two steps in certain places without someone drooling along their back teeth for the allure of what he is (who doesn't want a highborne little coinhound in their pocket? Who doesn't imagine a wedding, or a bed, or more power, or the thought of bruises under jewel-lined tunics wearing the shape of their fingers?) and Fenris isn't any different— his eyes had dropped before that mirror, too. His stare lingered while he fiddled with those clasps. He's wild and savage-eyed against the wall pretending that he's better, while he bickers and dreams up something dark that'll soon swallow him up like supper. Oh yes, he's no different. Just more interesting— Astarion will give him that.
But it's the thought that he's useless at this that riles (and feverishly incites).
Used to mounting servants. Spoiled in high halls. Middling compared to anything real, riding on the coattails of everything he's been stitched into and suckled empty praise from. Glowering out of the corner of his eye under the tangle of white bangs that've fallen— sweatsoaked— out of place, his hand shuttling faster while he's taken to imagining this impudent weathered curr on the floor, kept hungry and waiting for hours upon hours at a time, untouched and undressed and left open: taught a lesson about what sort of servant he is, all but wailing to be fucked by the so-called little brat he'd strung along— all while his cock jumps and trickles where it bobs stiffly between spread legs.
(He'll brand him. Tattoo him. Add his own marks to the rest of that blazing artwork strung across tanned skin, permanent and crude as marking up a wall. Hold him spread out and docile while he sucks Astarion's cock like a thing starved so that Petras can etch profane slang on either cheek in the back room of whatever party they next attend, their message drawn around his sated hole. And best of all, have him begging for it by the time he's done with this arrangement. He'll drug his food for fun. He'll mount his own hand in the wretch's obedient eyeline each time they say goodnight. He— ) ]
—nngh!!
[(This isn't how he thinks. That's the drug talking. The alcohol. The smoke. The aprodisiac and sore pride intermingled. If he's going to win this stupid war, then he's going to do it on his terms, in the way he's always done. Seduction first: conquest after.
But— )]
F-fasta vass—
[A rough pantomime, a genuine shiver wracking him where he stands, trying on in earnest that strange little quip for himself.
He's not quite strong enough to prove him wrong, while his knuckles are squeezed white-hot beneath a flaring crest. He wants to be, but—
A thousand lurid images snap through his mind. Inside his boots, his toes curl. He's too dangerously close to the precipice that there's no stopping the steady trickle of what the words 'teach you how to fuck as though you mean it' conjure up a cyclical feedback loop of cruel sensation: his body struggling to make itself feel what it might taste whilst speared atop a truly sating cock, driven out of his mind and wailing with wet tears in his eyes for release that digs in deep— oh, fuck.
He could slow his own touch and last a minute longer, maybe, but the fluttering slip of his muscles and the tightening of his belly swears that's all he might get before he— ]
I—
[That's as far as he goes before his fist locks.
Before his knees buckle and his body snaps with electric rigidity, clamping his jaw shut with a whimpering cry— damp rivulets spurting hot across his knuckles, soaking down the front of his open slacks. His eyes roll back and his own head follows, baring his throat to the crisp night air while a shaking grip keeps pumping madly in tight patterns.
Too succumbed to do anything but keep succumbing.]
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Certainly not the savage glare his words earn, for in truth, he had not expected the goad to land so fiercely. He hadn't expected anything, too heady off his own blackened lust to dream of such things as consequences (but oh, he will, he will), but if he had, oh, not such an enraged glare. Deadly and snarling, and if they were beasts, a growl would surely be building low in Astarion's throat. And yet— instead, a panting tongue. Instead, hot breath puffing in the air between them, the brat's hand pumping all the harder. And Fenris wonders what it is, exactly, that had landed: the insinuation that he has not experienced the kind of down-and-dirty, eye-rolling thigh-trembling vigorous rutting that occupies all of Fenris' fantasies . . . or the fact that it's true?
(And he does not slant it sideways. He does not think about how it could be taken as a personal insult, you haven't earned this in anyone else, either, for in truth, all Fenris imagines right now is Astarion as a pretty thing— delicate and arrogant, it's true, but above all else: submissive).
But he doesn't expect, either, the curse that slips past his charge's lips.
Fucking hell, his voice slurred and his accent clumsy, and Fenris does not know why some part of him melts to hear it. It's surely a bit of goading and nothing more, the brat throwing his own language back at him, but gods, something in Fenris howls in response. He wants to hear more. He wants to teach Astarion the filthiest phrases in Tevene, growled in his ear as he mounts him from behind; he wants to hear those words drip off a honeyed tongue, Astarion's expression blissful and his eyes hazy, his impudent brat finally tamed as he's split atop Fenris' prick.
He wants it. He wants him, not just to fuck but to breed. He wants to run his fingers up the inside of pale thighs and watch him shiver; he wants to fill his needy little hole again and again, fucking him until all he can remember is Fenris' name, his face pushed into the mattress and his hips hoisted up, Fenris Fenris Fenris, drooling droplets of come already staining his thighs and yet he still shrieks for more—
Fuck, and the Tevene bursts out of him as he feels himself topple over the edge. His overheated cock throbs, come spilling inelegantly over his fingers as the thought of Astarion gasping his name lingers in his mind, Fenris Fenris please . . . Astarion follows suit not a moment later, and for that, he struggles to open his eyes. He drinks in the sight with a moan, thrilled to the core by the sound of a muffled, mewling cry— oh, pretty thing. Pretty thing so undone, and his own cock throbs feebly in the aftermath, twitching in vain for the sight of him with his throat bared and his body overwhelmed in pleasure . . .
And it's not enough. Not when the aftermath hits all at once: his drugged lust temporarily sated and thus his senses suddenly and swiftly returning to him, almost nauseating in their starkness. The sounds of the city buzz in his ear; the careless scrape of his hand against roughened brickwork fittingly painful. The humid summer air stings beads of sweat dripping down the line of his neck. Hastily he does up his trousers, his fingers fumbling in his haste; across from him, he can hear Astarion's ragged breathing.
And it doesn't matter that somewhere in him there's still that needful lust, for in this moment all Fenris can think of is that he has led them down a foolish path. An inciting one, and what had he been thinking? This will only encourage the brat. This will only teach him that escaping leads to all kinds of filthy escapades—
But the truth is, he wasn't thinking. He barely is now, a low buzzing in his ears and something in the back of his mind whispering filthily. And what's done is done: he will simply have to be sterner around Astarion, as stoic as he used to be to the other slaves.]
Come on.
[Addled as he is, he mutters it in Tevene first— and then, with a short, sharp exhale, corrects himself.]
Come on.
[He crosses the alley. He won't touch Astarion, not now; indeed, he won't even look at him while he's still half-undressed. Resentful shame ripples through him, anger&mdsah; a little at Astarion, mostly at himself— a smothering force to the lust.]
Dress yourself and let us go.
Do not make me drag you.
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Astarion, lean and undone where he still half-hunches against cold brickwork, puts his scuffed up knuckles to use in redressing himself: his blouse used to daub away the sweat and streaks of tacky slick, clearing its mess off his stomach, his clothes— bunching it into a ball between his fingers before cleaning them too— and tossing it into the gutter last, with only his slacks and shoes and jewelry left to walk him home. The expense is nothing, not even his kin would bat an eye at it. The budget carefully kept back home won't notice. Even an unraveling cuff's an excuse to toss rare silk into the trash for anyone of the patriar rank, and most people in the Lower City fetch their best wardrobes from the beautiful casualties tossed out of the upper reaches each day.
And from there, stubbornly, with his head still swimming slightly and his mood gone sedate, they walk home.
Astarion goes to sleep. Tends to his studies after that. His meals. In other words: he lives his life as usual, without trying to slip away once the sun's set— though whether that's because there isn't a worthwhile orgy to attend or a naked fountain swim he's been invited to, it's hard to say. No one should discount his nature for a second, after all. Least of all Fenris, who isn't spoken to so much as at— if at all— in the next handful of weeks: I'm going outside. I'm staying in. Stop hovering. Go the fuck away. Get out. Leave me alone.
The routine huffing of a thing with a long shadow, in essence, albeit one that knows its limits (he can't order Fenris around, but he can keep yanking him along to frustrate him. Test him. Rile him. Demand he come in close and then leave him standing watch while he fucks some pretty little treat of a servant in a shut closet. Stare at him from the dinner table whilst broaching every subject that could vex. Little nips at his figurative heels, but that's as far as it ever goes). The little sparks of animosity. The tepid traces of heat that still linger even when everything's cooled off.
They break, at least, whenever Fenris slips away to tend to his own needs.
Coming back's a different story.]
That wretched cunt barely knows the books he writes in, and you take his word over mine? I did you a favor—
['Two years until you take title, Astarion. Barely two years— and this is how you behave?'
Ah. The same argument as always, only it's catalyst different this time judging by what echoes behind shut doors. A so-called useless tutor, a so-called irresponsible student who refuses to behave. Reckless and indiscreet in his endless transgressions.
And like always it doesn't matter what Astarion has to say for himself. It doesn't matter if a blow is struck to his cheek for crude insult, or if the blow itself is the just the word that finally shuts him up; his father leaving without acknowledgment of either, only locking eyes with Fenris once he steps outside the room.
'Until I find another tutor, train him.' The finality of it: this is your role, now. One more addition to the rest, without a drop of concern spared for what a former slave might teach a highborne elf. Even a simple bid at perception would swear the man doesn't really care; it's clearly not about the lessons themselves, but the occupation of time. Odds are, he probably imagines that the less opportunity his son has to make trouble, the less trouble there'll inevitably be.
Although as today proves, that remains to be seen. 'Just make certain he stays indoors, quiet, and out of anyone else— I give you my permission to make that happen however it needs to.'
The sweep of his robes is almost silent when he leaves.
The inside of Astarion's room is fully silent.
A lofty space, still gilded and bright as ever. Those high ceilings, the attached wide balconies overlooking the Lower Reaches. No water, though. It's only the master suites that have the ocean views— and to be fair, it's not as palatial an estate as some of the literal palaces that take up whole portions of the upper city— but still. Beautiful.
And in the center of it all sits Astarion on his bed, nursing along his temper in dull solitude. He looks childish for his sulking (as anyone does), but ironically, not like the child he's been treated to be. Because buckling against the agonies of being a grown thing while handled like an annoying little upstart is—
Painful, maybe.
Like wearing clothing two sizes too small.
Like you can't even sit comfortably without feeling where restriction cuts deep into your own skin, and there's no way to relax but strip it all aside. And there's no one to confide in because there's—
No one.]
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It's the first time that he's looked like he did that night in the alleyway.]
I didn't tell you to come in. [He scoffs defensively. Practically palpable how the hairs on the back of his neck are already standing with a bristling sense of hostility.
He wipes at his nose with the back of his fingers, the action quick and frustrated (oh, not soft. Not soft at all).]
Get out. I'm tired of looking at your wretched face.
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Certainly they're quiet. Astarion does not try to flee anymore, though whether that's because of Fenris' scolding or otherwise remains to be seen. And thus Fenris' job becomes easy, if not repetitive: silently following Astarion whenever he goes, a shadow that tries and inevitably fails to make himself unseen. It's strange to Fenris' mind, if you want the truth. Danarius was always content to ignore his prized pup unless he wanted him, but Astarion cannot seem to forget him. Little snapped out statements or pointless irritants, his newfound master (though oh, Fenris hates himself whenever he catches himself thinking of him that way) seemingly determined to try and frustrate Fenris into abandoning him.
It doesn't work. Not when Astarion ventures into far more vulgar territory (breathless giggles and a sneeringly derisive tone, don't mind him, darling, I don't think he can even get it up— and it's not the insult that turns his ears red, but the breathless moans that slip past that closed doorway. The breathless whines for more that precede the slickened sounds of that maid getting her cunt eaten out; the rapidfire slap of skin on skin as Astarion takes his prize— and afterwards, the scent of sex filling the air as they both staggered out. A study in contrasts: the maid flushing as she avoided Fenris' eye and scurried off, Astarion boldly catching it). Not when he brings up goading topics at supper, trying to see what earns a flinch or a glare.
Not even the sudden burden of a task he is in no way prepared to handle— nor the fretful barks of a pup too hurt to snarl.
And understand: it isn't pity that fills his heart. Fenris has been through too much hardship to weep over the plight of a rich noble and his petulance. But he has watched the way Astarion's father has spoken around him— not at him, not once, but rather as one might speak about a pet. Ordering around bodyguards and tutors to tend to him, not bothering to meet his gaze when he spits out instructions, only ever paying him mind when he acts out . . .
Perhaps it is not such a shock, then, that Astarion is inclined towards rebellion.
He could be rough, oh yes. He could be spiteful, lording this newfound integration into his young master's life and promising him only hell to come. But as Fenris stares at reddened eyes and hears that fretful sniff, he finds that the only emotion that fills him is just a wearied sort of softness.
And so, quite gently, he ignores Astarion's commands.
And it is gently, for there's such a difference in how he might do it spitefully. He does not shove the door shut and lean up against it smugly. Instead: Fenris is careful to let the latch slip into place near-silently behind him. He meets Astarion's eye, but he does not go to him just yet. Instead: the briefest of detours into his attached bathroom, where he fills a shallow bowl with cold water and grabs a washcloth.
Then to the bed, where he (so very boldly) takes a seat, one leg tucked beneath his knee.]
You will bruise if you do not tend to this.
[It's not pitying. Perhaps it's not even sympathizing. But it's not hostile, either, and there's a gentleness to the way he catches Astarion's chin with one hand, dabbing gently the reddened mark swelling over one pale cheek with the other.
(A kindness, too, for the way he does not mention reddened eyes, for there is no need to draw attention to grief— not especially between them).
It's quiet for a time. And then, his gaze still focused on his task, Fenris murmurs:]
What did he do to earn your ire, this tutor of yours?
[It's a neutral statement, neither dripping with sympathy nor aching with protectiveness. But he is Astarion's bodyguard, at the end of the day. His bodyguard, not his jailer. And if Astarion was not at fault . . .
Well. One thing at a time.]
1/?
Bare soles pad lightly across polished floors towards him, and the angle of sharp ears drop until they pin, tucked in deep against the knotwork of his curls. Wariness that doesn't stop when pathing finally sweeps Fenris past the edge of his bed. It doesn't ease off when he hears the faucet run, or the rippling plink of cold water sloshing in its basin. Against his thighs, slim fingers seem to lock around themselves like the coiling of a snake before it bites, only doubled once Fenris' tall figure sinks down across the corner of that mattress. Imposing with its armor, and buckles, and guarded lacework— and it's the first time that fact has ever lived bright behind silver eyes.
That his bodyguard does fit the role.
And then comes a hand beneath his chin.
Wet relief pushed to his cheek.
A balm he'd never asked for, already turning his skin ice cold beneath his eye (and mercilessly hot along his neck around its nape), dripping as it runs towards his shirt collar, pattering to drip from his jaw— the sloping jut of his throat— down between his legs. His pulse ricocheting through soft tissue, every corded muscle tense enough to snap, and he prays his counterpart can't feel it where he holds his chin. Tongue pushed up to the roof of his mouth like it'll save him petty shame; he's had enough of it already. He can't take more now, too. (What does Astarion expect? Cruel laughter? Snide derision? A look to rival the smugness he'd aimed at Fenris over and over again throughout the last few weeks, let alone the first night they'd met? Oh, everything, maybe. All of the above. Cause and effect come to bear, and here Fenris is: lucky enough to witness its aftermath firsthand. Payback his for the taking, if he wants it.
But—
No, that doesn't make sense.)
The rag isn't laced with anything. The look on dour features hasn't budged since he came in. And for a moment pale eyes flit from mouth, to tsavorite stare, and back again, visibly weighing something just before he licks his lips. Chin bobbing slightly in that rough-edged grasp.
(If this is a trick, it's so deeply buried that it borders on nonsensical. Or genius. Either way, Astarion's too worn down to care.
He wants this to be real.)]
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[Lessons, he called them. But there's no point in learning anything that isn't true. Just another excuse to keep Astarion's fingers moving. His mouth shut, even when he knew better.] There was alcohol on his breath that I didn't even put there for once, and he's never known the difference between Poe and Ardunni to begin with.
He was a fraud. And a liar. And a cheat.
I don't regret chasing him off.
[Light scoff slipping in. Mouth quirking to one side by self-aware degrees, changing the angle of that rag.]
....But then nobody believes me because I'm a liar and a cheat, too. [Sober, his ensuing sigh: he knows fully what he is, and his voice sinks ever so slightly to admit it, shrugging wryly through his shoulders.] So I guess there's that.
3/3
....why are you being so nice to me?
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So why, then? He's silent for a time, focusing on his task, letting his mind wander. His thoughts drift towards that tutor, hired solely to shut someone up. Not a terrible man. Not abusive or cruel or vicious, not the way some can get. Simply terribly, horribly inept, and yet paid such a lofty sum because he knew how to keep his student occupied.
No wonder the tiger throws himself against the cage's bars. No wonder he snarls and seethes at yet another keeper's arrival. And yet Fenris does not quite know how to say all that, not really. Not without delving into his own past and revealing far more than he wishes to.]
I am to be your tutor now, in addition to your bodyguard. And unlike that drunken mess, there are things I can teach you— if you are willing to learn. Things like . . .
[For a moment his mind runs blank— but ah, he is skilled. Not learned, but very, very good at what he does.]
How to defend yourself. How to wield a dagger or aim a gun without hurting yourself in the process. How to walk soundlessly if you wish, or learn how to spot an assassin a crowd. How to utilize almost any weapon, and conversely, how to counter it. How to strengthen your muscles, and in that way get rid of the excess energy I assume plagues you.
[Young thing, and mercifully, he doesn't say so, but there's something knowing in his gaze. Setting the cloth down, his fingers linger for just half a moment longer than they should against that soft chin before dropping away.]
Consider this an olive branch. Do not treat me as jailer to be seduced or humiliated out of a position, and in turn, I will . . .
[He cannot ignore his father's orders. But still Fenris hesitates, and then finally settles on:]
We will see how much freedom you are granted as the weeks pass. If nothing else, I do not intend for you to spend all your days and nights locked in your rooms.
[Surely they can go on daytrips. Drinking a pint or two at early evening. Surely his lord father doesn't intend for Astarion to be totally sterile— simply less raucous.]
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[Tongue pushed hard against the backline of his teeth in hoarse diffusion.]
Of course he named you next in line. Nice to see his standards haven't risen since the last time he went hunting for a qualified lock and key. [Fenris was there. Fenris was breathing. What else does it take to ensure the heir you've given birth to stays settled on his heels? Particularly when vacancy won't do it, and the prior instructor's already halfway to Cormyr choking on his pride instead of wine, frantically trying to delete a swath of incriminating photos from his own personal accounts.
As for the rest, though....
Honestly?
It sounds like a lie.
A nice one (oh, all the best ones are), stirring up a fresher pulse of hope behind the soreness of his cheek, but— he's had others say things that sounded just as sweet before in the past, only to find out later (caught with their fingers wrapped around stacked coin or supple flesh), that it was never really true. One more thing bought and paid for just to keep him tethered to rote silence.
At least Petras talks to him, annoying prick that he is. At least the others in their group laugh with him. Have fun with him. See him as one of their own, up and coming forces that they are, no matter the trouble they get into.
But the thing is, it also makes sense.
Do not treat me as jailer to be seduced or humiliated out of a position, and Astarion can understand exactly what it is that Fenris wants out of this equation: not niceness or companionship— but security. And for some reason, unlike the others his family's directly taken on, he makes this bargain with Astarion— not his father. It's equal footing.
He can live with that.]
I've had worse tutors.
Worse jailers too. [His eyes following the retreat of that rag— falling on angled features instead: the strength of a face that still looks out of place in this overly extravagant world, and he's tempted to ask after it, you know. Why you. Where did you really come from. What is it you've seen?
None of that matters with an accord hanging in the balance.
The bruise on his cheek red from chill, but not inflamed pain anymore. Shining wetly in diffused sunlight. His thumb flicking at the corner of his index finger, thinking like a cat twitching its own tail.]
Do you really know how to shoot a gun?
[Focusing on the important things here, if he's taking this bargain.]
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So: it's something. A foundation to build upon, maybe, and Fenris nods in acknowledgement as Astarion offers that backhanded compliment.
But oh, that question, and internally, Fenris smiles. It's . . . well, it is a bit of a patronizing reaction, but he doesn't mean it that way. His intention isn't to coo over Astarion's age or lack of experience, it's just . . .
What a question to ask a living weapon.
Do you really know how to shoot a gun, and Fenris thinks of Danarius' slaves cowering from him, flinching at his shadow and whispering where they thought he couldn't hear. Of the countless hours his master spent forcibly reconditioning him, rousing him from his slumber so he could be made ever more perfect as a bodyguard and companion. Lessons in how to wield every single weapon in existence: guns and knives, swords and shotguns, and if all else failed, his body itself. Half a dozen martial arts tutors, the tactical lessons that never ended, the tests that he grew so good at passing . . . and that's to say nothing of all the magitech coursing through his veins. Lyrium was the start, not the end; nanobots swarm through his veins, their presence a constant assurance that Danarius' prized bodyguard would never succumb to poisons or sustained injuries.
Do you know how to shoot a gun, and it is the sweetest relief to be asked such an innocuous question.]
Yes.
[A slight half-smile.]
Very well, in fact.
[A beat, and then:]
Shall I prove it to you?
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Never to forget that disapproval isn't imprisonment, and like Fenris himself said, he isn't his bloody jailer.
So.
Right then.
Take two— this time with a little less shameful fucking naivety.
With the back of his hand, he swipes away the last few vestiges of glassy water from the fringe edge of his jaw, heavy curls carrying a few wayward droplets here and there, and all quickly dispersed. By the time it's done, he's just as straight-backed as ever. Chin resolutely lifted in a haughty show of command: not aimed or leveled at the only living thing in sight, just worn.
In other words, he's himself again.
Still livid, mind. And rife with roiling resentment hotter than the mark upon his cheek, but not a day goes by any differently, really. At least now there's something real to set his sights on. An asset worth having beside him, and a fascinating show ahead— wherever it might lead.]
Immediately.
[He orders, jewelry jangling. Cloth rustling. A light interlude spent straightening his clothes and jacket before departure.
And it's—
Not what he'd expected.
Even in the Upper City, the training range smells stringent and perfumelessly dank, yet there's more magitech inside its walls than what he's seen at the most extravagant of celebrations: from scrolling advertisements to minute readouts, to assistant-familiars meant to help select a weapon from one second to the next. Courses are marked, privacy screens obscured, running tabs for even things like ammunition or refreshments are tallied and paid for with a flick of a wrist. It's nice, but it's not that nice, which is baffling—
Before he realizes that no one here's a patriar.
At least not unless they're so well disguised as to cease existing altogether. Just assassins and servants, bodyguards and mercenaries. Well-paid fighters from the highest illegal rings. Merchant lackeys bearing their allegiance on their skin. All aside from Astarion, that is, who suddenly feels more out of place for the accessories he's sporting than he's ever felt before. Though at least that doesn't last long.
They're led into a private section of the range not much later. Muffled from outside noise. Filtered from outside contact— a thick wall of glasslike smoke the color of gunmetal outlining the borders of their given territory. A little notification bobbing latently in one far corner above a stack of weaponry and ammunition promises they could pay to broaden those boundaries, if they wished. The price for that obscured in favor of a small animated mabari, its wiry tail wagging back and forth awaiting an inquiry— or an order.
Huh.]
Is this where you come to practice?
[Question drifting in while he picks up whichever handgun's closest to him, starting to fiddle with its various fasteners and locks.]
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god that icon tho i am DYING about all these new ones
good because more are on the way for YOU >:]
AA BOO THANK YOU once again you spoil me :>
POINTS. AT. YOU.
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