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When he remembers it later, he won’t be able to pinpoint the line between the trance, the dream and waking. The image, impossibly vivid and bright and there of Cazador touching him and stirring into reality to find his own hand palming at the heat between his legs, sweat slicking his forehead, his bedroll tangled around him like a vise.
It’s the sort of dream that emerges from his subconscious fully-formed, without context. The stark, painfully real feeling dream begins with the tightness of rope around his wrists, up his arms, binding them together so he can’t move, can’t even squirm. As he tries, he feels the soft fibre across his chest, around his thighs, at the base of his cock. He tries to move. He wants to move, wants to leave, and his breathing gets faster, more desperate as he tries to escape. It’s this feeling, the building terror and panic that prompt dream-Astarion to open his eyes, and what he sees makes his throat swell with a hot, bitter hatred that he’s about to hurl out in the form of long-imagined insults before he realizes he’s gagged, his mouth stretched around something that keeps him from speaking.
Cazador looms over him. Astarions gut lurches with something like both nausea and heat. His skin is too white against the dark of his fineries, the lines of him too sharp. He’s all Astarion can see. Is the room dark? Maybe there is no room. Maybe there’s only the two of them. Maybe that's all there's ever been. Cazador traces a finger down Astarion’s chin, over the side of his neck where the stolen blood in his jugular races with the anxious pounding of an undead heart. He writhes. Cazador laughs, and it’s louder than it should be. With dismay, Astarion realizes he’s hard. Not in the half-focused, easy-to-ignore way of partly-formed erotic dreams that make him feel like a living creature again, the ones that remind him just how easy his body is and leave him with the sting of humiliation when meeting his party members eyes the following morning. No, he’s painfully aroused; he can feel himself throbbing, can feel the slow drip of pre-cum down his shaft. Despite himself, he wishes Cazador would touch him.
It’s only then that the other elf speaks. “Good, my child,” he says.
Astarion lets out a noise that is supposed to be a protest. Cazador smirks. “Cute.”
There’s a hand on Astarion’s chest. His eyes flutter; his whole body is sensitive, hot; the feeling of skin on skin is electric in the worst way. Run, something inside him insists. Snarl. Bite.
Give in, says something else. And since he doesn’t have a choice, he tries to let his body relax. He watches with helpless horror as Cazador sheds his coat, his cravat, unbuttons his blouse. He tries to still his animal trembling as Cazador kneels between his legs, forced wide by the bonds and the shape of the chair he’s found himself in.
“Isn’t this much better?” He can feel Cazadors’ breath over his exposed cock, knows that Cazadors’ mouth must be only a hair’s breadth from him, and he whines. “Doesn’t it feel better, boy? To let go? To let me take control?”
There’s a flash of wetness and heat over the head of Astarion’s prick. His hips rut up, involuntarily. He feels his mind fogging. Where am I? How did he… He forces his eyes open as Cazador speaks again.
“You know you desire this. You weren't like your siblings, boy- your body didn't need to be trained to to enjoy this. You couldn’t ever resist me. You can’t resist me, Astarion. Oh, you've always been my neediest child, haven’t you?” The taunting is punctuated by a hand around his base, teasing upwards; Astarion feels the shift of his foreskin under his Masters’ touch, the friction delicious and enticing and frightening and inescapable. He makes a sound. He tries to quiet it, but Cazador delights in the moment of weakness and kisses the tip of his cock and Astarion sighs again. He wishes Cazador would ungag him. He wants to let him know exactly how he feels.
With his eyes open, the dark room begins to take form. It’s not anywhere he recognises; the walls are rough-hewn stone, the floor dirt, or maybe just filthy. It's not a room in Cazadors mansion. There’s a vaguely familiar symbol somewhere on the floor, but the whole place feels wrong, almost static. Astarion’s struck with the sudden horror that someone is watching this. His- no, their- guardian knows. They see him, here, helpless in this dream under Cazadors’ thrall, unable to move, to stop this, even to protest. Fear overtakes him again, rises in his chest like a wave, and he fights the bonds around his wrists once more, letting them chafe at his skin.
“You know you need this, boy.” His Master seems unphased by his fear. Actually, Astarion bitterly acknowledges, he enjoys it. Is enjoying this. The bulge between Cazadors legs is growing impossible to blank out, and all the implication his Master's excitement brings. His Master takes the entirety of Astarion into his mouth and the rush of pleasure clouds out all of Astarion’s thoughts once more. But it’s momentary, the relief. His Master pulls back, moves himself up to sit on Astarion’s lap. His weight torturous against the insistent, pulsing need Astarion can no longer pretend isn't his. He jerks up, grinding slightly, against his Masters’ arse as the other elf reaches behind his head to release him from the gag that fills his mouth.
“Since you’ve been such a good boy,” he whispers.
“Fuck you.” Astarion spits it out as soon as he can speak. Before the option is taken away again. His master smiles indulgently.
“Don’t lie to me, boy.” His venomous voice drips with condescension and affection. Astarion’s face grows hot. His master knows him. He’s always known him. “You want this, don’t you?”
“Don’t touch me.” Astarion’s voice is breathy. Touch me, he despairs.
“Let me show you,” His master murmurs. “How good this all can feel if you just stop resisting.” Something in his voice makes Astarion tingle all over and he moans. Without his mouth stuffed full, it’s loud, and echoes around the dreamscapes walls and low roof. His Masters’ mouth is on his neck, bruising him, fangs pressed teasingly at the bite scars that tied the noose around the throat of his second life. His Master is moving against him, the friction unbearable, his Masters’ hands are in his hair, pulling at it, and the pain feels good, feels right, and Astarion is frightened, more frightened, maybe, than he’s ever been, and he breathes out, “more. Please,” and the scene dissolves in static and blackness and pleasure and he wakes, breathing heavily, hot, damp, hard. Before he’s fully aware, he’s touching himself, chasing the feeling, trying to bring it back, as much as it fills him with nausea-inducing self-hatred.
He’ll also try not to wonder what prompted the dream. To forget standing across from that insane drow woman as the party looked at him with expectation, the drow licking her full, smirking lips, the intense, searching penetration of her red eyes and their clever pupils. He felt ill. Even before he bit her. The same kind of sinking, churning feeling in his gut that he gets when Cazador commands him to sit in the lap of a patriar during one of his parties, or worse, when Cazador catches him in some baldfaced, desperate lie. He tried to swallow it back, to maintain the easy, practiced mask that he's learnt to offer everyone nowadays, but the drow isn't even looking at him. She’d directed her request to Gale, with an air of superiority that set Astarion fantasising about taking the dagger hidden by his belt and slicing it through the tendons of the maniacs neck. The thought was almost enough to make him smile.
Gale had said something about attitude as he was throwing up afterwards. Astarion had openly rolled his eyes at that point. Something about team spirit and the spinning, well-oiled cogs in the groups ordained greater goals. The hand Gale curled around his shoulder was more proprietary than comforting.
His cock had twitched then, and he got the sickening feeling that Gale knew. He stood, shrugging the hand off, and left the room without looking behind him.
That had been yesterday morning. He finds himself reliving it, unwillingly, as he absentmindedly strokes at his stiffening cock, entertaining the ache that builds there, the wetness leaking from it. He tries not to think of Cazador. Tries to conjure up memories of the tall, broad-shouldered druid he’d fucked for access to blood whilst they trekked across the Shadowlands, or the way Lae'zel just two weeks ago had grabbed him at the tieflings party and brooked no argument. The thoughts slide away from him like water, and his mind is all Cazador: his firm chest, the spotless sole of his leather shoes pressing down just-so against Astarion’s neck, the loosening of one of his ostentatious silk neckties…
His hand moves faster, more frantically. Stop, he tells himself. You don’t want this. A moan escapes from his lips and he curses: Fuck. No.
There’s a prickle at the back of his neck.
Good, Astarion. It’s almost like a memory. Almost like his mind is recalling what his Master whispered to him in his dream, moments ago, but it’s too loud, too insistent, too present, and he recoils. He’s aware, too much so, of the tent, the thin canvas seperating him from the others, and the mirror across from his bedroll where he knows he won't see his reflection if he dared look. He doesn’t dare. The voice cuts through his thoughts again and this time it isn’t a memory. It’s brand new. I don’t want to hurt you, Astarion. I’m trying to help you. Can you believe that?
“No.” The word comes out through teeth gritted against the fast-mounting pleasure that’s overtaking him, pushing him ever-closer to an orgasm he’s dreading and anticipating. “Get out. Of. My. Head.”
Go on, Astarion. Faster. That feels good, doesn’t it?
It’s as though he can’t help but obey. It does feel good. It's enticing, like a hit from a drug he knows he should avoid, and all his resistance, all the parts of his body and his mind screaming at him to stop only make him more desperate as he chases the orgasm that he knows is building. As he finishes, he groans, “Master,” and the voice in his mind replies, Good.
He’s disgusted with himself as he hoists himself from the bedroll, searching for a spare rag to wipe the evidence from his hand and inner thighs. His stomach churns, but the images of the dream and what came after don’t leave his mind, flashing back as he gets himself together for the day, gears up in his leathers, laces his boots. The whole march back to Moonrise Towers he’s paranoid, the hairs on the back of his neck standing straight up as he looks over his shoulder for somebody following him, somebody watching him, any evidence that the faces of his party can see the shame written across his features. They know. He wants to disappear back to their camp. He almost does, almost turns to slink back at the sight of the bridge that will bring them into Moonrise once more, but though he wants to, even imagines the way he’ll hide away to page through his looted books, he finds himself spurred into walking again at Gale's curious stare. The cobblestone is relentless, hard and cruel under his boots. As they walk through the front doors he notices how tired he is, as though he didn’t sleep at all. His body sore, heavy; he checks the dagger hidden in his sleeve and a jolt of terror runs through him at a raw, red spot on the inside of his wrist, the width of a rope he remembers in vivid, horrific detail.
That night, after the horrorshow they found beneath Moonrise, he once again slips from meditation to true sleep.
He sees astral skies stretched out above him and before he has time to do more than think fuck this and shut his eyes, he hears a voice from beside him.
“Astarion.” Their Guardian speaks brightly, like he’s been awake for hours and isn't an exhausted wreck from fighting a literal god. Against his better judgement, Astarion looks across. When their eyes meet, Astarion knows, with a cold, writhing dread that comes with acceptance.
There’s no slipping the leash for me, isn't there? He clenches the fists in his lap more tightly, feeling sharp nails cutting into his cold, slick palm, and says nothing.
“I'm glad you're here,” Their Guardian continues. “My shield has held so far but the commands sent by the brain and your master are getting stronger by the day. Out of all your companions you are at most risk if I fail. You need to listen to me. I am your only option if you aspire to be more than a thrall once more, Astarion.”