Chapter Text
Bloodlust is a compulsion he's denied a hundred thousand times. That's the credit no one gives you, when you're a vampire: all the times you deny yourself. The number of beating hearts you walk past without so much as wetting your lips.
But it's been days. Strength in numbers also means companionship at the worst times, and each night he's hungrier than the last. The rats and boars have never satisfied, they were never meant to. He can't remember if he's ever been satisfied, since last he saw the sun.
And the tiefling smells… delicious.
It possesses him, that night – that heady bouquet of sulfur and sweat, that rich thrum of heat that makes his breath catch any time he stands too close. The camp is asleep, and he watches from his bedroll as the firelight dances over Obsidian’s dark skin, caressing it in a way that makes his mouth ache. The night is still. Tranquil. The knife of his hunger presses sharp into his ribs.
Just a taste, he tells himself.
When he creeps up, his body feels leaden, as though the moon itself sees his unholy purposes and seeks to root him to the ground. He feels almost nauseous, dizzy and sick with wanting, drawn like a magnet. His skin is sticky. A hundred thousand times he’s denied himself and been denied flash behind his eyes – his breath catches in his throat, and with it, Obsidian’s sumptuous scent. He tastes the musk of incense, the heat of sweat, and something… unknowable. Even among their companions, the cleric stands apart, the soapy, sour scent of the illithid tadpole in his brain completely enveloped by the dark, addictive undercurrent that sings through his skin with every heartbeat. Astarion kneels beside him, very nearly in supplication; not a predator, a weak voice says into the back of his mind, just a soul in need…
As he leans in, the scent assails him – dizzying, dazzling, earthy and full. Obsidian’s infernal heat washes over him like a sunrise, warming him even inches away. His mouth waters. His fangs extend, pushing his lips open. And yet, ever the hedonist, he cannot help but to let it… aerate.
Which is his second mistake.
Obsidian’s hand on his chest frightens him up with a start. Want turns to ash in his mouth, anticipation to shame.
“...shit. No, no–”
Too quickly, they’re up – dread is an anchor in his chest. He sees a twist in Obsidian’s face, frantically tries to read it. A different instinct overtakes him, turns him kittenish and fawning. He wonders if a stake through the heart would be so different from the self loathing that sinks into him every time he cowers from an angry other.
“It’s not what it looks like– I swear.”
He’s panting. How humiliating. With each sharp intake of breath, he tastes more of him – more of what he could have had, if not for hesitation, if not for thoughtless revelry. The tattoos on Obsidian’s face cup his violet eyes in wreaths of dark flame, but the eyes themselves are lanterns in pools of ink, glowing with… what? Hatred? Accusation? Castigation? Astarion’s very existence counts on him naming which and bowing to it.
“I wasn’t going to hurt you.” Is it a lie? Does it matter? “I just–” The tremble in his voice is real. His eyes dart to Obsidian’s hands. A cleric of Ilmater needs no earthly weapon to rend him to ash.
Involuntarily, he thinks of the girl – the bard. The deadly secret he’s kept a tenday, now. His eyes slide up Obsidian’s muscular arms.
He’d needed no magic then, either.
“I just… needed blood.”
The seconds of silence between them ache. Obsidian does not move. His gaze travels from Astarion’s crimson eyes to the points of his teeth. When he speaks, his voice is low and quiet.
“How long has it been since you killed someone?” he asks. “Days? Hours?”
The hypocrisy of it is almost too much to bear. Laughter catches at the back of Astarion’s parched mouth. He knows to the very minute the last time Obsidian killed someone – hours ago, he’d watched as a gnoll ignited, engulfed in radiant, holy flame, and felt a pang of unwanted sympathy. And he knows, too, the way Obsidian avoids the accusing circlet of blood near the edge of camp. But he knows better than to say anything about it. He knew better then, and he knows now.
(That’s why he’d emptied the bloody water bucket at the edge of camp, just before dawn.)
“I’ve never killed anyone,” he says, unable to help injecting a bit of pomp into his voice at the presumption. “Not for food. I feed on animals. Boars. Deer. Kobolds. Whatever I can get.”
Obsidian hasn’t moved. Hasn’t raised his voice to wake the others, nor reached for his weapon – which, Astarion notices, always spends the night restrained in Obsidian’s pack, far out of arm’s reach. No holy glow dances at his fingers.
Anxiety takes over, words bubbling, babbling, tripping over his lips in a rush to beg mercy. “It’s not enough. Not if I have to fight. I feel so… weak.” He scoffs the word.
And you smell so good, he doesn’t say. And I’m just a man. Just a spawn.
“If I just had a little blood, I could think clearer. Fight better.” He tries to affect a pitiable expression, something simpering and pathetic – not worth killing. But he means it when he says, “Please.”
He pushes into him, using the tadpole to gently press up against his mind. He lies back, so to speak, and invites Obsidian to pull him open, to take advantage. He entreats him.
And all the while, Obsidian watches, unmoving.
Fear froths at the back of Astarion’s mind, desperation heating to a boil. Is he out of practice? Has he forgotten how to do this? The one thing he’s any good at – besides, perhaps, stabbing and sleight of hand – and he’s failing at it. He risks stepping a little closer, hardly breathing. Should he run? What chance does he stand out there alone, chased from the sanctum of their little artifact and the safety of these people too naive to realize they aren’t friends?
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
An absurd question. “At best, I was sure you’d say no. More likely,” Astarion’s eyes flick to the circle of blood that bore Alfira’s sacrifice, “you’d ram a stake through my ribs.”
When he looks back at him, the guilt on Obsidian’s face is so naked it shocks him.
He takes another tentative step forward, daring to hope.
“No,” he says, soft. “I needed you to trust me.” He leans in, nodding encouragement, and – with satisfaction – he sees Obsidian’s head tilt in a mirror of his own. “And you can trust me.”
We all have secrets, don’t we?
Obsidian’s voice is scraping and low.
“I do. I believe you.”
I keep yours.
Astarion steps closer, inches away.
“Do you think you could trust me… just a little further…?”
You keep mine.
“I only need a taste. I swear.”
Astarion lays him down on his bedroll with a showy tenderness he usually reserves for the Upper City. But there’s something enduringly… princely about him, not the least of which is how elegantly he submits. He looks up at Astarion with a meditative patience that would feel almost suffocating if he hadn’t just agreed to this. But Astarion forgets it all when he puts his mouth to his throat, and finally sinks his teeth into him.
His skin gives with an obscene ease. His blood rushes, molten, into Astarion’s mouth, and the flavor instantly overwhelms him: infernal sulfur and holy satin, like rolling a pearl on your tongue. Tannic and buttery, a complex full body with a note of fruit. He tastes like pomegranate, deeply sweet and sharply bitter, utterly intoxicating. The howling, ravenous hunger that Astarion has spent two centuries slaking, denying, suppressing with scraps envelops him entirely. He drinks deeply, profoundly, the blood filling him with heat that spreads from the crown of his head to the tips of his toes. Obsidian’s pulse thrums on his tongue. For the first time in two hundred years, Astarion feels full, feels whole, feels alive.
It's never been like this before – he'd thought he'd known what to anticipate, the way it would feel. He'd relied on a vague memory of Before, being fulfilled, being sated.
This is nothing like that. This is an entirely new dimension of experience, something so entirely unlike eating that "feeding" feels like the wrong word for it entirely. No, the sensation is more akin to sustained orgasm, to rapture, to ascension. Obsidian's life flows into him, and he erupts with it, senses heightened beyond compare, ecstasy ringing through his skull. He takes his heat into his mouth, down his throat, into his stomach, and lets it fill him like a second soul. No animal will ever compare; he feels frenzied, insensate with desire, completely engulfed. Thought dissolves under the onslaught of pleasure.
He wants to devour him completely. He wants to relish him for the rest of his days.
Obsidian’s hand on his chest makes him pause once more, bringing him out of his mania in drunk, heady whorls. Astarion feels him against his mouth, panting, tense. Tiny, nearly undetectable tremors race along his body. His horned head is canted back, face slack with bliss. Astarion’s knee presses between his thighs – and he feels him, hard and wanting.
And he feels the hand, pressed to the center of his chest, gentle in its insistence.
“Stop,” Obsidian breathes, and all at once, the night air is cold, and Astarion’s gratification suddenly feels painfully taken, rather than rightfully earned.
When he slinks off to the forest, he puts a saunter in his hips, tries to breathe back in his confidence, his electric glee. Obsidian’s blood roars in him, the fires of a blacksmith’s furnace, stoked with his own breath, forging him anew. But his shame drags behind him like an anchor.
In all the nights that follow, he never waits for Obsidian to stop him again.