[They've seen enough of each other in the last year to make even sidelong glances into mundane things. Funny then that there's never anything mundane about it: he sees the break in the gathering for what it is— a nesting perch for those disinclined to make nice with anyone they haven't met, or at the very least a shelter from the disarraying din, and sure enough, between gaps in silhouetted shoulders, Astarion spots a most familiar face.
And watches it, just for a breath or two (still such a luxury, that. Breathing,) as minutes pass. An addiction, maybe. Fixated and fixed. Gazing at those downturned ears eager to pin themselves flat for every passing conversation; a slip of cast-off lantern light poured out from a nearby sconce just to lay itself across the sturdy bridge of Leto's nose— Leto, soft as warmed sugar even in his thoughts, for the name now finds itself synonymous with that first night in Rialto, and the image of an elf lost to sleep in rumpled covers. He'd looked nearly as beautiful then as he does now, fierce and long and lean and sharp round darkened eyes in shadow, catching light in all the right places. As if it were meant to be there, mete out by an artist's hand.
And that armor....
Dark. Threatening. Black inlay tucked beneath bright lyrium contours and a slender, stubbornly raised head that only glowers at each passerby who dares to meet his eyes. Questioning their ability to think of him as either hand or help. In a momentary pause at one point, one thin measure of white hair drops out of place to curl against the center of Leto's forehead, and all the pale elf watching him can manage thinking is that he'd quite literally kill to press against him in its place.
Ergo he'd be a liar to claim it didn't do something to the angle of his spine on approach. That the balls of his feet aren't twisting a little more towards his center line, compensating for a careful gap held there between his strides. Slack agility in his hips and a dangerous amount of rigidity in his spine that borders on involuntary (something to do with bloodflow, and the fainter hint of color in his ears). Nothing that shows in his inevitable smile— all glittering fangs by the end of it.]
Do I really? [Astarion asks with the sort of breathlessness usually reserved for the raw gasps between suckling groans, deliberately angling his teasing towards the words hello and convincing, rather than the final apt correction.
His palm meets the cool plaster wall beside Leto's righthand torso, barely an inch or two below the ribline, and right where night-colored armor joints leash themselves to leather. It shortens the distance between them, and Astarion lingers in the sweeter scent of ozone, lost to it for just one flicker of a beat.]
And watches it, just for a breath or two (still such a luxury, that. Breathing,) as minutes pass. An addiction, maybe. Fixated and fixed. Gazing at those downturned ears eager to pin themselves flat for every passing conversation; a slip of cast-off lantern light poured out from a nearby sconce just to lay itself across the sturdy bridge of Leto's nose— Leto, soft as warmed sugar even in his thoughts, for the name now finds itself synonymous with that first night in Rialto, and the image of an elf lost to sleep in rumpled covers. He'd looked nearly as beautiful then as he does now, fierce and long and lean and sharp round darkened eyes in shadow, catching light in all the right places. As if it were meant to be there, mete out by an artist's hand.
And that armor....
Dark. Threatening. Black inlay tucked beneath bright lyrium contours and a slender, stubbornly raised head that only glowers at each passerby who dares to meet his eyes. Questioning their ability to think of him as either hand or help. In a momentary pause at one point, one thin measure of white hair drops out of place to curl against the center of Leto's forehead, and all the pale elf watching him can manage thinking is that he'd quite literally kill to press against him in its place.
Ergo he'd be a liar to claim it didn't do something to the angle of his spine on approach. That the balls of his feet aren't twisting a little more towards his center line, compensating for a careful gap held there between his strides. Slack agility in his hips and a dangerous amount of rigidity in his spine that borders on involuntary (something to do with bloodflow, and the fainter hint of color in his ears). Nothing that shows in his inevitable smile— all glittering fangs by the end of it.]
Do I really? [Astarion asks with the sort of breathlessness usually reserved for the raw gasps between suckling groans, deliberately angling his teasing towards the words hello and convincing, rather than the final apt correction.
His palm meets the cool plaster wall beside Leto's righthand torso, barely an inch or two below the ribline, and right where night-colored armor joints leash themselves to leather. It shortens the distance between them, and Astarion lingers in the sweeter scent of ozone, lost to it for just one flicker of a beat.]
[Deft doesn't begin to cover it. Deft, by definition, would only covet the swiftness Leto employs in his reversal— for Astarion's spent full lifetimes in the company of creatures that defy swiftness as any mortal knows it.
They all look clumsy, caught in the crosshairs of eclipsed hindsight.
Breathless, half-hard hindsight.]
Is that what the Crows expect from its flock now? Show up and fuck like rabbits in the nearest corridor closet? [Is a sly joke rooted in the very image that it paints when Astarion's eyes survey the lay of the wing itself from over armored shoulders (who's even bothering to notice them at all, in fact), around the shape of one dark ear tipped low across the peripheral borders of his vision. It is his heart that's thundering, rabbiting on scurried legs between the prickling flush blossoming beneath Leto's palpable voice and the narrow shiver that runs high along his inner thighs, soon flexed when one raised leg rocks itself against the fighter's own in full discretion— careful not to leave the sanctity of dark shadows. Obscured sightlines.
They're just a pair of colleagues having a chat, after all. And in that chat, slim fingers thread themselves through buckles and thin armor as a snake winds itself through grass, hunting for its next meal. Starvation all that drives it.]
My training must've been less thorough than yours.
....And far less interesting.
[They have a duty to perform. Blood and violence is, as Leto aptly mentioned, exactly why they're here when (or if) opportunity abides. The Venatori are clever when they wish to be. The Crows are territorial, self-serving on the best of days. The people here—
His touch snags. The pitch black gloves he wears in public aren't fond of the little gaps he's forcing them to tread, or the nimbleness the act demands; that second skin able to do the work, but it snags when it's caught against harsh metal joints, pulling back on all momentum.
And caged frustration's all it takes.
That, and the clinking of tines over glassware in a call for attention from the stage where someone— the lord or lady of the house, he's sure— beckons their attendees to take heed.
Astarion has him by the shoulders.
Hooks his grip around pauldron and strapwork alike with uncharacteristic roughness and all but drags his dear amatus into the closet quickly opened at their side across a set of hurried steps, mouth-to-hungry-mouth and seizing with desire. Fangs clicking against teeth. Ears ringing. Tongues lost in the scuffle and nearly nicked by the sharper points from canines, they collide, falling into each other— sparing only a single hand behind him just to shut the door.
In darkness illuminated by brilliant, azure-silver, everything crowds in. Coat sleeves and hangars, hat boxes and strung purses and the give of their weight where friction drives them.]
They all look clumsy, caught in the crosshairs of eclipsed hindsight.
Breathless, half-hard hindsight.]
Is that what the Crows expect from its flock now? Show up and fuck like rabbits in the nearest corridor closet? [Is a sly joke rooted in the very image that it paints when Astarion's eyes survey the lay of the wing itself from over armored shoulders (who's even bothering to notice them at all, in fact), around the shape of one dark ear tipped low across the peripheral borders of his vision. It is his heart that's thundering, rabbiting on scurried legs between the prickling flush blossoming beneath Leto's palpable voice and the narrow shiver that runs high along his inner thighs, soon flexed when one raised leg rocks itself against the fighter's own in full discretion— careful not to leave the sanctity of dark shadows. Obscured sightlines.
They're just a pair of colleagues having a chat, after all. And in that chat, slim fingers thread themselves through buckles and thin armor as a snake winds itself through grass, hunting for its next meal. Starvation all that drives it.]
My training must've been less thorough than yours.
....And far less interesting.
[They have a duty to perform. Blood and violence is, as Leto aptly mentioned, exactly why they're here when (or if) opportunity abides. The Venatori are clever when they wish to be. The Crows are territorial, self-serving on the best of days. The people here—
His touch snags. The pitch black gloves he wears in public aren't fond of the little gaps he's forcing them to tread, or the nimbleness the act demands; that second skin able to do the work, but it snags when it's caught against harsh metal joints, pulling back on all momentum.
And caged frustration's all it takes.
That, and the clinking of tines over glassware in a call for attention from the stage where someone— the lord or lady of the house, he's sure— beckons their attendees to take heed.
Astarion has him by the shoulders.
Hooks his grip around pauldron and strapwork alike with uncharacteristic roughness and all but drags his dear amatus into the closet quickly opened at their side across a set of hurried steps, mouth-to-hungry-mouth and seizing with desire. Fangs clicking against teeth. Ears ringing. Tongues lost in the scuffle and nearly nicked by the sharper points from canines, they collide, falling into each other— sparing only a single hand behind him just to shut the door.
In darkness illuminated by brilliant, azure-silver, everything crowds in. Coat sleeves and hangars, hat boxes and strung purses and the give of their weight where friction drives them.]
[There comes a near-deafening thud as the closet door rattles on its hinges, reverberating through Astarion's back teeth and jostling the space between their legs— what little there is to speak of made tighter with turbulent touch— and that's to say nothing regarding the streaks of adoration drawn hot across his throat, smoldering underneath his collar line. Phreatic as it burns beneath his skin and senses, both. Heady as intoxication and more than half as stupefying, as he only reaches back to push his hand across the doorknob (the place where metal not-quite-flush sits against metal is the place most susceptible to rattling— all too keen to rat them out before they've even started their affair), his left heel jammed against the frame— anything to keep it still and shut behind them. To keep this foolish game between them going for as long as it'll take to finish.
Or get close to it.]
Fasta vass— [scarcely manages to sound scolding (it runs thick against the roof of his mouth with cloying infatuation), bucking his intent with too much wildness to bridle— and by the end of that same breath it's turned molten alongside him, all but bearing down across every last tangible inch of his companion, starting with the rolling of his shoulders (starting with the cinching of his thighs, feeling muscle through the dig of armored legplates). A passing knock of his cheek against Leto's own portraying something of sobriety, for it's an equally short lived surrogate: lasting only as long as the sound itself— daggered teeth and a wicked tongue close around one tender, downturned ear like a hound upon its hunt, prey drive nothing but a fever.
He has to drive back against the urge to bite down. When the only craving he's ever known is blood, his body knows no other way to react.
(Stars and gods above, this is the man he loves. The one he'd waited centuries to find, and would've waited lifetimes more had it come to that, he's convinced of it now. But then again, he's been convinced for longer than he'd ever willingly acknowledged. Since the Silent Plains. Since the first time he laid eyes on him, half-blind and fumbling at his own temples like a fool. He's been wanted like this before thousands upon thousands of times, crammed into corners and alley sidestreets on command, but he's never wanted like this—
Not even Cazador.)
So it is a show. A performance, raunchy and demanding: dextrous thighs working till they ache to satisfy an appetite he only measures in response right from the start. Arching through his hips so that his stiffened prick snags hard against the lining of his trousers, sticking to the places where it finds sweet purchase and relishing each chance to bed in close against thick, accompanying heat.]
....is it everything you couldn't wait for....? [Is a whisper laid down slow, and punctuated by his body's machinations. It constricts and catches, suffuses when it snares, still clothed and rutting like he means to fuck him senseless in the dark (though to their eyes, it's still bright).] Everything worth risking being caught for....? [And there's no burying the glint of pride that curls across his lips in wicked playfulness— ]
I'll undress you without my hands as well, if that's what you want. Show you what it is a thief is capable of when he's not prowling on a leash....all you need do is ask, my darling, and I'll—
[Cut short by the handle that he's holding jiggling from the other side. Another hand on the knob, and it wars with the grip he's keeping, shaking that brass fixture the way anyone would when assuming that a door is jammed.]
Or get close to it.]
Fasta vass— [scarcely manages to sound scolding (it runs thick against the roof of his mouth with cloying infatuation), bucking his intent with too much wildness to bridle— and by the end of that same breath it's turned molten alongside him, all but bearing down across every last tangible inch of his companion, starting with the rolling of his shoulders (starting with the cinching of his thighs, feeling muscle through the dig of armored legplates). A passing knock of his cheek against Leto's own portraying something of sobriety, for it's an equally short lived surrogate: lasting only as long as the sound itself— daggered teeth and a wicked tongue close around one tender, downturned ear like a hound upon its hunt, prey drive nothing but a fever.
He has to drive back against the urge to bite down. When the only craving he's ever known is blood, his body knows no other way to react.
(Stars and gods above, this is the man he loves. The one he'd waited centuries to find, and would've waited lifetimes more had it come to that, he's convinced of it now. But then again, he's been convinced for longer than he'd ever willingly acknowledged. Since the Silent Plains. Since the first time he laid eyes on him, half-blind and fumbling at his own temples like a fool. He's been wanted like this before thousands upon thousands of times, crammed into corners and alley sidestreets on command, but he's never wanted like this—
Not even Cazador.)
So it is a show. A performance, raunchy and demanding: dextrous thighs working till they ache to satisfy an appetite he only measures in response right from the start. Arching through his hips so that his stiffened prick snags hard against the lining of his trousers, sticking to the places where it finds sweet purchase and relishing each chance to bed in close against thick, accompanying heat.]
....is it everything you couldn't wait for....? [Is a whisper laid down slow, and punctuated by his body's machinations. It constricts and catches, suffuses when it snares, still clothed and rutting like he means to fuck him senseless in the dark (though to their eyes, it's still bright).] Everything worth risking being caught for....? [And there's no burying the glint of pride that curls across his lips in wicked playfulness— ]
I'll undress you without my hands as well, if that's what you want. Show you what it is a thief is capable of when he's not prowling on a leash....all you need do is ask, my darling, and I'll—
[Cut short by the handle that he's holding jiggling from the other side. Another hand on the knob, and it wars with the grip he's keeping, shaking that brass fixture the way anyone would when assuming that a door is jammed.]
[....hush.... Astarion murmurs against the shell of Leto's ear as what feels like an eternity passes, so low as to border there on soundlessness itself. Holding fast against the next jostle, and the next little shove—
—and mutters a curse in thick Antivan before audibly striding away towards the crowds.]
—and mutters a curse in thick Antivan before audibly striding away towards the crowds.]
[He sees red. He tastes blood.
His own lip, bitten too hard in a gouging pinch between incisors, polluting the inside of his mouth with the rich embodiment of what he is at heart. (His laugh had been so thready, sharper at the end. Toying with the edges of an Orlesian mask as Gwenaëlle found herself squinting back, clearly not grasping the punchline: even here, even changed, even behind a pretty mask— a monster is still a monster.)
His chest heaves slightly as he watches blunter teeth tug fabric low around his middle-thighs, each and ever smoldering breath washing over softer skin like a fever before— oh before— (he runs raw; he clicks his teeth and rucks his hips, dark feathers tickling the underside of his jaw like fingertips in full caress; he grabs for something— the shoulder of a woolen coat— and it peels away from its hanger, spilling to the floor alongside his grip, leaving him more slung, more desperate, more arched forwards into the measure of those lips, nearly driving past them with shoving force. He's too far back across his heels, and he feels unmade in the sweetest sense. He feels that monstrous, keen desire. He tastes copper, and the crowding of his fangs against his tongue, and the buildup of his lungs as they burn for his held breath.)
He's stronger than he was, but for better or worse, he's a tiger in the body of a kitten.
When his grip hooks on either side in silver hair behind downturned ears like handles, it's without an overwhelming flood of strength. Even so, through the haze of panting lust, he's a dextrous, clever thing. He has leverage on his side. The advantage of his positioning. Height. It takes only a twist where he stands (starting from one heel set against the wall, then he presses, pivoting his hips and his latched grip)— and he's now braced against the wall, facing it upright, whilst Leto (his Leto) is pinned between both still on his knees: head caught between those hands, back and shoulders flush to plaster with nowhere left to go.
Hollow exhales from above. Reflective eyes, cast down.]
When you can't walk tomorrow, or we find ourselves exposed because you can't stop your mewling....
....don't say I didn't warn you, darling.
[His first thrust in past the border of softly parted lips, it doesn't ask. Doesn't wait.
It daggers.]
His own lip, bitten too hard in a gouging pinch between incisors, polluting the inside of his mouth with the rich embodiment of what he is at heart. (His laugh had been so thready, sharper at the end. Toying with the edges of an Orlesian mask as Gwenaëlle found herself squinting back, clearly not grasping the punchline: even here, even changed, even behind a pretty mask— a monster is still a monster.)
His chest heaves slightly as he watches blunter teeth tug fabric low around his middle-thighs, each and ever smoldering breath washing over softer skin like a fever before— oh before— (he runs raw; he clicks his teeth and rucks his hips, dark feathers tickling the underside of his jaw like fingertips in full caress; he grabs for something— the shoulder of a woolen coat— and it peels away from its hanger, spilling to the floor alongside his grip, leaving him more slung, more desperate, more arched forwards into the measure of those lips, nearly driving past them with shoving force. He's too far back across his heels, and he feels unmade in the sweetest sense. He feels that monstrous, keen desire. He tastes copper, and the crowding of his fangs against his tongue, and the buildup of his lungs as they burn for his held breath.)
He's stronger than he was, but for better or worse, he's a tiger in the body of a kitten.
When his grip hooks on either side in silver hair behind downturned ears like handles, it's without an overwhelming flood of strength. Even so, through the haze of panting lust, he's a dextrous, clever thing. He has leverage on his side. The advantage of his positioning. Height. It takes only a twist where he stands (starting from one heel set against the wall, then he presses, pivoting his hips and his latched grip)— and he's now braced against the wall, facing it upright, whilst Leto (his Leto) is pinned between both still on his knees: head caught between those hands, back and shoulders flush to plaster with nowhere left to go.
Hollow exhales from above. Reflective eyes, cast down.]
When you can't walk tomorrow, or we find ourselves exposed because you can't stop your mewling....
....don't say I didn't warn you, darling.
[His first thrust in past the border of softly parted lips, it doesn't ask. Doesn't wait.
It daggers.]
[He does.
Muffling him takes every inch of his damned cock. Every last measurement of his unimpeded will. Relentless just to keep this silent— driving heavy for the bottom* of that waiting throat. Guiding with a thumb press here, a squeeze there, little warnings that try to signal when it's time to breathe compared to when it's time to swallow. Trying to fabricate a language without words, something mutual and distinctly theirs, starting with the interplay of weight and wanting: the sight of Leto's hand working in the dark, more elbow visible than anything else beneath the vulgar pumping of a higher sight, shadows just a blur of movement underneath glazed, full lips. Eyes gone lidded and unfixed. Lost to control. To rhythm. To even the cacaphony outside, surrounded by a locked door and shuttered clothing. What's in the forefront should be everything that drives fine prickles of excitement up his nape— and it is—
But he can't stop staring without blinking. Till his eyes burn with dryness, sharper on each successive soundless groan that finally presses them closed for just a beat or two. Transfixed by the way Leto's working at himself, by the occasional gag or reeling drag that yanks on their direction before he's melting yet again, and all the while, his hands work. Signaling more than just arousal. How content he is to meet this without hesitation; content to rest on his sore knees before Astarion rather than the other way round, indulging himself so deeply that it's no afterthought, the way he fights with all his senses to get off.
And Astarion meets that.
Magnetized. Charged. Flaring with every breath he's still not used to taking, quickening his pace as much as neophytic tolerance allows without asphyxiation, there's a jiggle of the handle yet again and ill-advised as logic would find it Astarion slams his hand against the door in firm retaliation, quickly silencing the attempt to retrieve belongings from the other side. It won't last, he knows, but like an animal swatting from its den, for now, his instincts insist forestalling is enough.
Until either he sees white across those lips, or Leto sees it buzzing hot throughout his senses, no one is getting through that door.]
Muffling him takes every inch of his damned cock. Every last measurement of his unimpeded will. Relentless just to keep this silent— driving heavy for the bottom* of that waiting throat. Guiding with a thumb press here, a squeeze there, little warnings that try to signal when it's time to breathe compared to when it's time to swallow. Trying to fabricate a language without words, something mutual and distinctly theirs, starting with the interplay of weight and wanting: the sight of Leto's hand working in the dark, more elbow visible than anything else beneath the vulgar pumping of a higher sight, shadows just a blur of movement underneath glazed, full lips. Eyes gone lidded and unfixed. Lost to control. To rhythm. To even the cacaphony outside, surrounded by a locked door and shuttered clothing. What's in the forefront should be everything that drives fine prickles of excitement up his nape— and it is—
But he can't stop staring without blinking. Till his eyes burn with dryness, sharper on each successive soundless groan that finally presses them closed for just a beat or two. Transfixed by the way Leto's working at himself, by the occasional gag or reeling drag that yanks on their direction before he's melting yet again, and all the while, his hands work. Signaling more than just arousal. How content he is to meet this without hesitation; content to rest on his sore knees before Astarion rather than the other way round, indulging himself so deeply that it's no afterthought, the way he fights with all his senses to get off.
And Astarion meets that.
Magnetized. Charged. Flaring with every breath he's still not used to taking, quickening his pace as much as neophytic tolerance allows without asphyxiation, there's a jiggle of the handle yet again and ill-advised as logic would find it Astarion slams his hand against the door in firm retaliation, quickly silencing the attempt to retrieve belongings from the other side. It won't last, he knows, but like an animal swatting from its den, for now, his instincts insist forestalling is enough.
Until either he sees white across those lips, or Leto sees it buzzing hot throughout his senses, no one is getting through that door.]
[It's all so fast, you have to understand. Not the first time in his (un)life that's been the case, but it's the first time the aftermath of a whirlwind tussle's left him weak in the knees in ways he can feel right down to his own marrow— half-deaf beneath the ringing in his ears, panting so heavily through the opened lining of his collar, and all he can do despite himself is gawk as the world spins off its measured axis. As the corners of the room tilt downwards into gravity. As Fenris says something (for those pretty lips are moving, working into the light of a cracked doorway), deliberately angled if the unblinking locus of his stare translates to anything abstemious.
If any piece of this equation could be considered abstemious to start with.
Astarion certainly isn't. His swirling mind and animistic instincts aren't. And in that way all he can manage is to watch his lover leave in what feels like nothing but a blink— to what reception, he can't say— he's far too distracted once he's pulled himself together to give a damn how anyone attending so much as glances his way in the aftermath, let alone what they might say. Scandal in a place like this has merit regardless (is what he'll tell the head of Scouting once they return, without flinching), and carries the potential for desire alongside disaster, and only the confidence of the caught fool standing at its center matters when it comes to settling the difference.
His strides are quick. His focus farther than his sightlines, past shut doors and countless hallways that he navigates nose-first; a bloodhound in every last conclusive sense, so that when the washroom door slams shut behind him and Fenris finds himself pinned flat against the wall chest-first, it's with Astarion's teeth to the raised collar of his armor— daggered fangs scraping shallow rhythms in the gaps guarding his skin.
They've not said goodbye for the night.
Not after that.]
If any piece of this equation could be considered abstemious to start with.
Astarion certainly isn't. His swirling mind and animistic instincts aren't. And in that way all he can manage is to watch his lover leave in what feels like nothing but a blink— to what reception, he can't say— he's far too distracted once he's pulled himself together to give a damn how anyone attending so much as glances his way in the aftermath, let alone what they might say. Scandal in a place like this has merit regardless (is what he'll tell the head of Scouting once they return, without flinching), and carries the potential for desire alongside disaster, and only the confidence of the caught fool standing at its center matters when it comes to settling the difference.
His strides are quick. His focus farther than his sightlines, past shut doors and countless hallways that he navigates nose-first; a bloodhound in every last conclusive sense, so that when the washroom door slams shut behind him and Fenris finds himself pinned flat against the wall chest-first, it's with Astarion's teeth to the raised collar of his armor— daggered fangs scraping shallow rhythms in the gaps guarding his skin.
They've not said goodbye for the night.
Not after that.]
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