“Not afraid of striking me in your sleep anymore?” he asks, the sound of his own doting voice betraying the edge of humor he tries desperately to inject into its span. Something to keep this all from being impossibly sentimental— though maybe there’s no saving that, considering the look he wears when he reaches down with a few bare fingers to brush damp bangs away from Fenris’ forehead. His eyes.
Avaricious thing that he is, he’d hoard that viridian stare for an eternity. Keep it his own, locked away.
Enough energy for a laugh, enough energy for a joke. "It's worth the risk."
Fenris leans into Astarion's touch, happier in that moment than he thought he ever would be again.
"I'm too tired to hurt you," he clarifies. He's been this tired before, and he knows how he sleeps afterward. Like a dead thing, Hadriana had said. And now, where is he? Where is she?
Fenris rises from the water, searching for a towel. His expression is kind with fatigue, a fond smile.
He beats Fenris to it. One of the only times Astarion’s quicker on the draw, and no doubt because of a surplus of hard-fought exhaustion on Fenris’ part, or perhaps the heat still seeping into wearied bones— either way, he snags a towel between slender fingers and tucks it soft around Fenris’ shoulders.
“Didn’t hurt me before you left, either. Good to know that I don’t always have to force you to fight an entire coven whenever I want to steal you for myself.”
The side drain on the tub is pulled with ease via the toe of his boot, Astarion already tugging down some overlush velvet robe from a nearby hook. Until that armor is tended to, he won’t have Fenris slithering back into it.
“But must you truly burn the place to ashes?” He asks, heaping that robe overtop the towel without any amount of moderation. “I despise its wretched existence more than anyone, but the truth is it's also sprawling— a seat of power. There’s something to be said for that, you know. Especially when we’re more than a little strapped for resources.”
Fenris isn't too tired to be suspicious, but his trust in Astarion overrides that. He tilts his head to the side, bowing to Astarion's better grasp of vampirism and its follies.
"Is this place not dangerous?" He asks, "could Cazador not still use it? Or his allies?"
“Cazador is dead,” Astarion snarls, his voice twisting into a growl as he hunches where he stands, made feral by hate without measure, “I watched him burn.”
—as did Fenris. Because of Fenris. And the security of that promise has him remembering himself enough to draw back into grace and dignity and practiced, flawless poise once more. He smiles sweetly, stepping near enough to tie that robe in place around Fenris' hips with steady hands, knotting its silken belt somewhat loosely to keep it from agitating any wounds.
Something else he’ll tend to soon enough.
“The rest of his vampiric friends, I killed myself while you were away— aside from the spawn. And they’re nothing. Pests. They’ll no doubt scatter like cockroaches as soon as they wake.” As Astarion himself did once, what seems like an eternity ago. Before Thedas. Before everything that tore his world from its foundations, twisting it for the better at cost. “And it’s...true, he has endless allies within the city, but what does it matter? It’s not like a bunch of waterlogged ash is going to go waltzing about the city ringing alarms.”
His fingertips crawl high, settling soft across Fenris' shoulders, profile scuffing at Fenris' own. Slow. Contented. Certain.
“And even if it did...they couldn’t hold a candle to you.”
Fenris watches, listens, impassive. He's too tired to react to Astarion's theatrics, though he's glad they're there, signs of an unbroken spirit. He leans into Astarion's touch.
"I am not the fighter I was just hours ago. I think some of my ribs may be... cracked, at the very least." And he's been stabbed in the back more times he can count. And his neck aches from Astarion's bite. His feet throb. His body winces still from that strange sickness.
"Do not make me sleep in the monster's bed." If they are staying, he knows his limits.
His wicked heart longs to tease. To call Fenris unfair for denying him the satisfaction of bedding down with his boots on amongst Cazador’s favorite silks.
But that lone admission of injury is powerful; Fenris isn’t one to go on about his own state, and that knoweldge has Astarion withering faintly in its wake, expression cast in subtler lines.
“You might be surprised to hear it, but there’s supplies here that’ll help— I know where they’re kept.” He slides deft hands across the front of that robe before hooking one finger against its silk-lined cuff, beginning to cut a slow paced path out of that washroom into grander corridors curtained by spiderwebs and rotted archways, leading Fenris along as he goes. “Much as he loved his art, Cazador didn’t care to leave us permanently disfigured by his favorite games.”
And at the end of a frigid hallway sits a bedroom that was no doubt lovely once. Like the rest of this place, it lacks life. Warmth. Though the bed is exquisitely designed and the windows darkened by beautiful tapestries depicting something ancient and long-lost, there’s no mistaking the fact that no one has ever made it their home.
“It’s a guest room.” Astarion promises, before Fenris has the chance to curl his lip or turn away in protest. “Cazador never touched the place.”
Edited (...it's been a super long day, I'm gomen for these tired tags) 2021-06-24 07:32 (UTC)
Seeing a bed he can sleep in, Fenris is lost to its promise, and trudges steadily toward it. While he is usually one to sleep on his back, now Fenris curls up, fetal, in the bed's center.
He's no use to anyone, he thinks, until he's rested. He'll just have to trust Astarion's strength.
"Be careful," Fenris warns. "This place... sets me ill at ease."
“With good reason. Death is practically baked into the walls of this place. Torment, too. Not that I need to tell you that.” He follows in Fenris' footsteps, ghosting after its weary pace for the sake of doing meager work: pulling aside sheets, unfastening those robes (yes, he knows he just fit them in place, but there's dignity in ritual) to map out the worst of those injuries by sight— he needs to know what he's dealing with, if he's aiming to put it right. Just how deep the wounds run.
“Funny that after two hundred years of unwilling song and dance, it almost feels more like home than the one I had when I was alive.”
Time outweighs time, or something like that. With the place gutted of vermin of every tier, it's not anything remotely like a comfort, just...familiar. A den made of broken glass is still a den, after all. Hollowed earth yearning for a master. He sets the robe aside, murmurs a low promise of 'wait here', and then draws himself out with effort. Gone no more than a few minutes.
When he returns, he’s carrying bottles filled with vivid liquid, the same color as his eyes— though rather than blood, the fluid seems almost translucent on further inspection, shimmering with enchantments or magic or a mixture of the two.
“Consider this a compromise, my dear: I’ll tend to your wounds so you can sleep sweet as a newborn owlbear cub wrapped in its mother’s talons, we’ll stay here a day or two for the sake of your recovery, and then we can do whatever will set your heart most at ease— which by then no doubt will be whatever it is I want.”
Fenris eyes the concoction with suspicious trepidation. Yet he allows himself to be undressed.
"I can sleep this off," he murmurs, a touch proud. It's a fool's errand to tell Astarion not to condescend to him; that is the man's nature. Still, in this house of horrors, the pretension does sit oddly.
There are... similarities. Fenris vows to himself never to mention them. Anyone with sense knows the enslaved are influenced by the power wielded over them. Did Fenris not learn Trade from Danarius, and thus his accent, his way of speech, all formality?
Still, it worries Fenris. The sooner they escape from this place, the better they'll be. If that means complying for two days, so be it.
"I still wish to see it burnt," Fenris says, his back turned to Astarion. The stab wounds there are as evident as they are numerous.
It’s beautiful in it’s own way, the viciousness of those wounds. Proof of victory over everything Cazador no doubt hounded Fenris with right up until the bitter end. He admires them for a moment, studying the depth and damage, and then settles at the edge of the mattress, already soaking a rag with gleaming liquid. He dabs with care, though it no doubt hurts fiercely.
As for the matter of burning estates, Astarion only exhales through his nose in moderate concession. Proud. Stubborn. Once Fenris locks his jaw around an idea, it’s difficult to wrestle it back out again— charming to any creature of passion, true, but in the aftermath of all prior ordeals and near-eternal separation, Astarion finds he only wants to hold fast to the sweetness of Fenris’ stare. The way he’d gazed up at him before, all tired curvature and softer bearing.
So yes, fine. Set all talk of that aside for now.
“Yes yes. You’re practically a demi-god. Your wounds will heal, your strength will return, pain is but a gnat nibbling at your skin.” It isn't nagging, or even exasperation, exhaled in nothing but adoration as he finishes tending to the muscle and tissue of Fenris' back, before then moving onto his poor feet. His ankles. Methodical. Practiced.
“But you could do me the favor of letting me have this little,” says the man that Fenris fought himself to misery for, slipping down beside him like a serpent winding over its own coils. Catching the underside of Fenris’ jaw with his knuckles, just lightly as he tips it to one side, exposing that gruesome bite last.
“It’s mostly herbs. It’ll ease the inflammation. Start the scarless knitting of flesh. You’ll have to do the rest yourself, but I imagine you won’t have any complaints about that.”
"Scarless." Faintly, a look of discomfort flickers over Fenris' face. Danarius treated him similarly, not wanting his prize met any more disfigured than what he had already granted it. It comes as no surprise that Cazador indulged himself similarly, an empty strive toward beauty with no understanding of truth.
Perhaps one day, Fenris' body will be removed from such concerns.
He lets Astarion do his work, eyes closed, a pin scratch between his brows. It's all meaningless in a practical sense, though Fenris has learned that an austere dedication to practicality leaves in its wake a meaningless life. For now, regretfully, it must be clung to. In his mind, this encounter has not been survived until all traces of Cazador are finished.
“Why can you not let it rest?” Astarion snaps, his fingers still perched across those bite marks in mending, voice pitching sharp as though something sensitive and wounded's been brushed the wrong way.
As if he’s the one that has to endure the sting of mending.
And then he sighs, inhales without need. Eyes drifting shut as he draws that rag away now that the last of his efforts are finished.
“I don’t know. Maybe I just want the satisfaction of lording over everything that ever mattered to him.” The thought is vivid. Beautiful in its allure as much as he finds it distasteful. Is that strange? His brow line pinches, he forces his eyes open after a beat.
“We can discuss this in more depth later. You need sleep.”
"I am not skilled with resting," Fenris says, even as his eyes are half-lidded, his body loose with fatigue, his gaze unfocused.
But even he can acknowledge the urge as fair. No one can justly deny their right to pettiness. At the very least, Fenris cannot scoff without making himself a hypocrite.
His eyes slide closed. "I will trust your judgement. But please be cautious."
He tries to work himself into Fenris’ arms, to steal a rare opportunity for blissful slumber— the first he’ll truly know since before long fangs first kissed his throat in bloodied streets. The silence is oppressive. He shifts again, nosing in so that his cheek rests against Fenris’ collarbone, considering the merits of trying to wake him. They should be celebrating their way into dreams together. They ought to be reveling. Now he can’t get his mind back into the gilded span of relief, away from hollower pits of self-reflection.
He doesn’t love the idea that beneath all of his bravado, something still sits faintly out of place.
Cazador is dead. Isn’t that enough? Is this what it felt like for Fenris when Danarius died?
He tries to kiss that shoulder, but the scent of injury tempts teeth. And with a faint noise of discontentment he gives up and simply lies on his back, leaving Fenris space to sleep as the dead do, rather than the undead creature at his side.
In sleep he dreams not of Cazador for once— but of Fenris. Cast in sleek shapes by longing, reaching for him with steady fingertips. Willing, when he lifts his neck to Astarion. The beat of his pulse sweet in its adoring, unrushed tempo as he’s bled.
Beyond moderation. Beyond danger. Until those fingertips go cold and lifeless, his eyes glassy, still snared in a loving embrace.
—Astarion jolts when he wakes, sitting upright with the taste of blood in his mouth.
But it’s just his own. The edge of a fang must’ve nicked his tongue in his sleep, and panic gives way to waking reassurance, Fenris warm and resting beside him: it was only a dream.
Damn this wretched place. Maybe Fenris was right about burning it after all.
Sleep is dreamless, but filled with sensation. He remembers the ache of closeness and holds it there, wanting more and not being able, in the depths of sleep, to attain it. Something shifts on the bed, and-
Fenris wakes with a start, hand grasping for something in the darkness. The movement ends in a blow, landing on empty air. He's slept, but he's still off his game. He breathes slowly, trying to assess the damage, waiting.
No attack comes, but he can see the outline of Astarion's form. "Astarion," he says, blinking against the lack of light. He wanted to say something else. What was it? The thought flees from his mind, and only concern replaces it, a mounting dread he can't identify until he remembers where, exactly, they still are.
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no subject
Avaricious thing that he is, he’d hoard that viridian stare for an eternity. Keep it his own, locked away.
no subject
Fenris leans into Astarion's touch, happier in that moment than he thought he ever would be again.
"I'm too tired to hurt you," he clarifies. He's been this tired before, and he knows how he sleeps afterward. Like a dead thing, Hadriana had said. And now, where is he? Where is she?
Fenris rises from the water, searching for a towel. His expression is kind with fatigue, a fond smile.
no subject
“Didn’t hurt me before you left, either. Good to know that I don’t always have to force you to fight an entire coven whenever I want to steal you for myself.”
The side drain on the tub is pulled with ease via the toe of his boot, Astarion already tugging down some overlush velvet robe from a nearby hook. Until that armor is tended to, he won’t have Fenris slithering back into it.
“But must you truly burn the place to ashes?” He asks, heaping that robe overtop the towel without any amount of moderation. “I despise its wretched existence more than anyone, but the truth is it's also sprawling— a seat of power. There’s something to be said for that, you know. Especially when we’re more than a little strapped for resources.”
And very far from Yartar.
no subject
"Is this place not dangerous?" He asks, "could Cazador not still use it? Or his allies?"
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—as did Fenris. Because of Fenris. And the security of that promise has him remembering himself enough to draw back into grace and dignity and practiced, flawless poise once more. He smiles sweetly, stepping near enough to tie that robe in place around Fenris' hips with steady hands, knotting its silken belt somewhat loosely to keep it from agitating any wounds.
Something else he’ll tend to soon enough.
“The rest of his vampiric friends, I killed myself while you were away— aside from the spawn. And they’re nothing. Pests. They’ll no doubt scatter like cockroaches as soon as they wake.” As Astarion himself did once, what seems like an eternity ago. Before Thedas. Before everything that tore his world from its foundations, twisting it for the better at cost. “And it’s...true, he has endless allies within the city, but what does it matter? It’s not like a bunch of waterlogged ash is going to go waltzing about the city ringing alarms.”
His fingertips crawl high, settling soft across Fenris' shoulders, profile scuffing at Fenris' own. Slow. Contented. Certain.
“And even if it did...they couldn’t hold a candle to you.”
no subject
"I am not the fighter I was just hours ago. I think some of my ribs may be... cracked, at the very least." And he's been stabbed in the back more times he can count. And his neck aches from Astarion's bite. His feet throb. His body winces still from that strange sickness.
"Do not make me sleep in the monster's bed." If they are staying, he knows his limits.
no subject
But that lone admission of injury is powerful; Fenris isn’t one to go on about his own state, and that knoweldge has Astarion withering faintly in its wake, expression cast in subtler lines.
“You might be surprised to hear it, but there’s supplies here that’ll help— I know where they’re kept.” He slides deft hands across the front of that robe before hooking one finger against its silk-lined cuff, beginning to cut a slow paced path out of that washroom into grander corridors curtained by spiderwebs and rotted archways, leading Fenris along as he goes. “Much as he loved his art, Cazador didn’t care to leave us permanently disfigured by his favorite games.”
And at the end of a frigid hallway sits a bedroom that was no doubt lovely once. Like the rest of this place, it lacks life. Warmth. Though the bed is exquisitely designed and the windows darkened by beautiful tapestries depicting something ancient and long-lost, there’s no mistaking the fact that no one has ever made it their home.
“It’s a guest room.” Astarion promises, before Fenris has the chance to curl his lip or turn away in protest. “Cazador never touched the place.”
ur perfect this is perfect sh shh
He's no use to anyone, he thinks, until he's rested. He'll just have to trust Astarion's strength.
"Be careful," Fenris warns. "This place... sets me ill at ease."
no subject
“Funny that after two hundred years of unwilling song and dance, it almost feels more like home than the one I had when I was alive.”
Time outweighs time, or something like that. With the place gutted of vermin of every tier, it's not anything remotely like a comfort, just...familiar. A den made of broken glass is still a den, after all. Hollowed earth yearning for a master. He sets the robe aside, murmurs a low promise of 'wait here', and then draws himself out with effort. Gone no more than a few minutes.
When he returns, he’s carrying bottles filled with vivid liquid, the same color as his eyes— though rather than blood, the fluid seems almost translucent on further inspection, shimmering with enchantments or magic or a mixture of the two.
“Consider this a compromise, my dear: I’ll tend to your wounds so you can sleep sweet as a newborn owlbear cub wrapped in its mother’s talons, we’ll stay here a day or two for the sake of your recovery, and then we can do whatever will set your heart most at ease— which by then no doubt will be whatever it is I want.”
no subject
"I can sleep this off," he murmurs, a touch proud. It's a fool's errand to tell Astarion not to condescend to him; that is the man's nature. Still, in this house of horrors, the pretension does sit oddly.
There are... similarities. Fenris vows to himself never to mention them. Anyone with sense knows the enslaved are influenced by the power wielded over them. Did Fenris not learn Trade from Danarius, and thus his accent, his way of speech, all formality?
Still, it worries Fenris. The sooner they escape from this place, the better they'll be. If that means complying for two days, so be it.
"I still wish to see it burnt," Fenris says, his back turned to Astarion. The stab wounds there are as evident as they are numerous.
no subject
As for the matter of burning estates, Astarion only exhales through his nose in moderate concession. Proud. Stubborn. Once Fenris locks his jaw around an idea, it’s difficult to wrestle it back out again— charming to any creature of passion, true, but in the aftermath of all prior ordeals and near-eternal separation, Astarion finds he only wants to hold fast to the sweetness of Fenris’ stare. The way he’d gazed up at him before, all tired curvature and softer bearing.
So yes, fine. Set all talk of that aside for now.
“Yes yes. You’re practically a demi-god. Your wounds will heal, your strength will return, pain is but a gnat nibbling at your skin.” It isn't nagging, or even exasperation, exhaled in nothing but adoration as he finishes tending to the muscle and tissue of Fenris' back, before then moving onto his poor feet. His ankles. Methodical. Practiced.
“But you could do me the favor of letting me have this little,” says the man that Fenris fought himself to misery for, slipping down beside him like a serpent winding over its own coils. Catching the underside of Fenris’ jaw with his knuckles, just lightly as he tips it to one side, exposing that gruesome bite last.
“It’s mostly herbs. It’ll ease the inflammation. Start the scarless knitting of flesh. You’ll have to do the rest yourself, but I imagine you won’t have any complaints about that.”
no subject
Perhaps one day, Fenris' body will be removed from such concerns.
He lets Astarion do his work, eyes closed, a pin scratch between his brows. It's all meaningless in a practical sense, though Fenris has learned that an austere dedication to practicality leaves in its wake a meaningless life. For now, regretfully, it must be clung to. In his mind, this encounter has not been survived until all traces of Cazador are finished.
"Why are you so attached to this abattoir?"
no subject
As if he’s the one that has to endure the sting of mending.
And then he sighs, inhales without need. Eyes drifting shut as he draws that rag away now that the last of his efforts are finished.
“I don’t know. Maybe I just want the satisfaction of lording over everything that ever mattered to him.” The thought is vivid. Beautiful in its allure as much as he finds it distasteful. Is that strange? His brow line pinches, he forces his eyes open after a beat.
“We can discuss this in more depth later. You need sleep.”
no subject
But even he can acknowledge the urge as fair. No one can justly deny their right to pettiness. At the very least, Fenris cannot scoff without making himself a hypocrite.
His eyes slide closed. "I will trust your judgement. But please be cautious."
no subject
He doesn’t love the idea that beneath all of his bravado, something still sits faintly out of place.
Cazador is dead. Isn’t that enough? Is this what it felt like for Fenris when Danarius died?
He tries to kiss that shoulder, but the scent of injury tempts teeth. And with a faint noise of discontentment he gives up and simply lies on his back, leaving Fenris space to sleep as the dead do, rather than the undead creature at his side.
In sleep he dreams not of Cazador for once— but of Fenris. Cast in sleek shapes by longing, reaching for him with steady fingertips. Willing, when he lifts his neck to Astarion. The beat of his pulse sweet in its adoring, unrushed tempo as he’s bled.
Beyond moderation. Beyond danger. Until those fingertips go cold and lifeless, his eyes glassy, still snared in a loving embrace.
—Astarion jolts when he wakes, sitting upright with the taste of blood in his mouth.
But it’s just his own. The edge of a fang must’ve nicked his tongue in his sleep, and panic gives way to waking reassurance, Fenris warm and resting beside him: it was only a dream.
Damn this wretched place. Maybe Fenris was right about burning it after all.
no subject
Fenris wakes with a start, hand grasping for something in the darkness. The movement ends in a blow, landing on empty air. He's slept, but he's still off his game. He breathes slowly, trying to assess the damage, waiting.
No attack comes, but he can see the outline of Astarion's form. "Astarion," he says, blinking against the lack of light. He wanted to say something else. What was it? The thought flees from his mind, and only concern replaces it, a mounting dread he can't identify until he remembers where, exactly, they still are.
no subject