illithidnapped

I expect no more in an organization this close knit.

( they all bathe together. nothing is sacred. )

Shall I bring wine?

[Astarion has, by some estimation, roughly nine or ten bottles of wine in his Lowtown closet of a home at all times. More than plenty to entertain with without requiring more from his guests.

Instead, he's all teeth when he petitions ever-so-prettily:]

Please, darling. I'm fresh out.

And do mind yourself. Lowtown isn't the friendliest of places at night. I'll come running if you call, of course, but given that it's quite cozy inside, I'd rather not have to.

You, still wet with the ichor of the Fade from your arrival, lecture me about Lowtown?

( it's very nearly fond. there's a good deal of rustling in the background, silk crunching and the idle clink of glass against wood. )

Expect me within the hour.

I might be wet, but you're still the one that came to me for advice in the first place— I'm just covering my bases.

[And with that, he'll leave his dear acquaintance to it.]

In the meanwhile, Astarion returns to the miserly hoard of trinkets, treasures, junk and unadorned mementos cluttering the span of his flat. 'Cleaning' isn't the word for it, the way he either sweeps some of it away with his foot or drops it into a corner to be forgotten, but it's an effort, at least. And it keeps him busy for all of...

Oh, five minutes.

The rest of the time he deals cards to no one but himself, practicing the art of deceit— until a knock at the door breaks the silence, and he welcomes his guest with a dagger in hand. Customary, of course. Simple precaution.

"So you made it after all."

There is something consistently delightful about new rifters, all the little mannerisms they keep that mark them as outsiders as much as the shards. Watching them learn more about Thedas sparks a little of the same joy as watching an elfling learn how to shoot or write or skin a rabbit, and so Thranduil smiles indulgently as he slips past Astarion and into the tiny room, taking down his hood and easing the leather gloves off finger-by-finger.

"Do you have so little faith in my ability to protect myself," he asks, turning his back to the other elf to look around the room and take in the detritus. "Or is it my sense of direction you doubt?"

Gloves in one hand, he undoes the clasp of his cloak and tugs it off to drape over his arm. "Lowtown, and not the Alienage."

At the very mention of those two differing locations, Astarion lets out a pointed scoff.

"The Alienage can rot. I'm a city elf, not a city elf: I'm destined for greater places than this, and it's only a matter of time before I get there." So yes, in fact. Maybe he was a touch concerned assumptions (even between peers) might prolong the delay between departure and destination.

Still, he plays it off quite easily, a smile working its way across his lips.

"As for the rest," Astarion says, shutting the door with a single heel, gesturing towards a rickety little table with only two half-standing chairs, "maybe I'm just overprotective."

"Of me?"

Still amused, he eases a chair out from the table with one foot, gestures to it elegantly, and pulls a bottle from the bundle of his cloak. The glass is sea-dark, the wax sealing it a deep red. The label is, naturally, written in Orlesian.

"Glasses?" he asks, and when Astarion cues him, he takes them up. After a discrete pause to wipe the rim against his sleeve, he pours, first for his host, and then himself.

"Do I strike you as needing protection, or is this merely some chivalric urge." His eyes glitter as he looks at the other elf. "Are you hoping nobility of character will elevate you to Hightown?"

He’s right to wipe at it; Astarion hasn’t washed them in weeks.

That information, however, he keeps to himself.

“Tall and remarkable as you are, I’d have trouble fretting about your sturdiness, at least.” But that’s the only hint he’ll hand off as to his true motivation, sipping away at that wine as a segue before—

Oh. Oh, it’s lovely.

Infinitely better than all the other stolen bottles cluttering the space around them. Not swill. Not plonk, closer to sweetness than vinegar. He can’t keep the look of surprise off his face. The last time he’d had a bottle this nice, it was red Batteseria. Months ago now. When he truly was nothing more than wet behind long ears, clinging to Fenris’ coattails.

Now he makes his own way.

“And no. I’m not a fool. Money is what elevates anyone, anywhere. Money and power. I intend to find both.”

He’s pleased, a confident sort of warmth spreading across his face as he takes his own seat, relaxes into it. How nice it is, to be appreciated. How pleasing to bast in another’s delight.

Thranduil takes a sip from his own glass, then rolls the stem between thumb and finger.

“What would you fret about?” he asks, conversational, the weight of his whole attention on Astarion. He cultivated a number of affectations while he was Provost and before; the fidget, breathing more often, remembering to blink. He has dropped a number of them now that he is out of the spotlight, drawing upon the tranquility as a shield or a comfort, whichever sounds less pitiable at the time.

“Money cannot buy an elf as much power as a man, here. There will be a greater measure afforded to you making your name in Riftwatch— though what comes after is surely a thought that will have occurred to you.” He does not bother to advise not to attempt to marry into it.

“What do you hope to shield yourself from with it?” A pointed glance.

Astarion pauses, his attention already elsewhere— relaxed expression flickering briefly when he’s caught off guard by that final, unexpectedly potent question. Like an animal spotted in the brush, he goes entirely too still.

And then his mouth pulls upwards at its corner, just by the faintest of degrees. He pushes it aside with grace, all that telling stiffness. Or he tries to, anyway.

“All the terrible things lurking in the dark here, and you have to ask?”

Trading a question for a question is evasiveness at its finest. Fortunately for Thranduil, Astarion is incapable of shutting up. “Status inside the echelons of a minor resistance with no real influential leverage is as useful to me as soiled tissue. Riftwatch is a target. A shield. And I intend to be ready for anything. Even us losing this war.”

He'd said if it ever came down to it, he’d flee this wretched city, and Riftwatch as well without a second thought. A pact. A promise. His mind still hasn’t changed.

“Until then, the more powerful I become, the safer I’ll be. Surely you understand.”

Another elf, like him. Here. One who’s been here longer, in fact.

He gestures with the glass, the wine swirling.

“Corypheus has shown what he will do to Rifters should he win. There was… a slip in time in which some of us experienced as much. You might look up the records in the library.”

He drinks, then considers his glass.

“I am not attempting to dissuade you, but it would be rude of me not to inform you the information exists.”

He appreciates pragmatism. He is, after all, a grey elf, and an elf of Mirkwood besides. The luxury of prattling on about the lesser evil being no real choice at all is just that to him.

“I do,” he admits. “Visibility will be your friend. Patronage among the nobility of Kirkwall is of great use. I would suggest attendance at a Chantry to start- vice or virtue, everyone of consequence attends.”

And then he frowns, as if the wine has gone sour in his mouth.

“… but that is hardly a pleasant subject.”

“I know the bastard despises elves already. And admittedly I’m not much for study,” says the man who'd spent weeks in quarantine learning all that he could about Thedas under the urgent, needling press of self-protection, “but I imagine the rest is just the icing on the miserable cake. I’ve met his type before.”

Not that Astarion opts confess it outright. Why he’d snapped at Gwenaëlle across the network for pressing. For unknowingly stumbling into the thorny tangle he works so tirelessly to mask.

Or maybe just to forget.

Instead, it’s only when Thranduil lets slip something of his own assumed discomfort that Astarion twists in his focus. He sits at last, the stark difference in their height meaning he’d had a better eyeline while standing, but it’d be unforgivably rude to scrape and pry as the only member of conversation still on his feet.

No, he’ll play the lesser— the ignorant, in fact— for this when he asks, ever so delicately, “Is that where you started?”

“All tyrants are tyrants alike,” Thranduil agrees, and motions to offer to refill Astarion’s glass. The bottle won’t survive the trip back to the Gallows, and Thranduil is hardly the type to leave it unfinished.

“No,” he admits, near-instantly. “The place of elves here was unimaginable to me; the slavery, the mayfly lifespans.” He pauses, to assess Astarion’s reaction, to compare, the bold assumption that they are the same grounded in some fact: no Rifter elf has ever complained of their people being in universally similar conditions, all more alike to the elvhen.

“I was nobility in Arda, a leader of my people. For a time, I conducted myself here as I had in my own land. Centuries of habit fade slowly.” He shrugs, somehow managing to make it elegant. The silk helps, as does the hair. “But I realized that to get what I wanted, I needed to assimilate. To adapt. We are not separate from Thedas. We will live through the consequences of our actions.”

He smiles at the table, gently self-effacing. “A gift: you are able to learn from my mistakes.”

“Kind of you to offer them.” Astarion counters coolly, black humor painting the smile he wears, already tipping his emptied cup towards the bottle in wordless acceptance.

Nobility. Elven nobility. It’s such a rare thing to encounter here, even amongst Rifters, that for a moment Astarion gets tangled in the web of his own contemplation, mind ticking faster than a clock. He’s prone to rushing, like that. Greedy even locked away in his own head, and all too quick to latch onto everything without so much as stopping to breathe.

So it’s silent for a beat aside from poured wine and the faint clinking of glass against tarnished metal. Gathering his thoughts until:

“But I’ve made enough mistakes of my own to feel somewhat sure of my own footing, even here. Because aside from the lamentable strangeness of this world's universal disdain for sharp ears, I didn’t have nearly so far to fall from the shock. In fact, if not for that insistent little rift tugging me through the void or weave or ether or whatever you want to call it— I’d probably still be a slave.”

He says it in part because it’s true. In part because he’d already confessed to Gwenaëlle, and Fenris, and Ellie, and Derrica herself. A secret poorly kept. And more than that, he says it as punctuation to prove his own point.

“So, my very regal darling, you don’t need to worry about me: I’ll be just fine here. No matter what happens.”

“Come, now,” Thranduil chides, refilling his glass. “You must know that is exactly what to say to guarantee my continued— interference.”

Involvement, more like. Interest— which Astarion was already guaranteed, on account of being an elf. But Thranduil gives him room to deny it none the less, a dignified exit left wide open for someone he suspects might spook, and smiles over the rim of his glass.

“You have sparked up my righteous side, you know,” he confides. “Or perhaps with all the Orlesian influence, I should call it chivalric.”

Better to play it off that admit it still turns his stomach. Better still not to offer an apology, to express sympathy that cannot be enough.

He’s right to think Astarion might spook. In fact, the odds are high in general that when Astarion’s hackles are raised, he’s just as likely to run as he is to bite.

But this miserable little closet is his home. His guarded territory. He feels safer here than anywhere else, even under the worst of circumstances— of which these are not. So instead, he simply drinks, that same bitter smile curled against the lip of his glass.

“Might I suggest dousing that spark? Chivalry is a wretched habit. It’ll only do you more harm than good.”

He’s slow to trust. Resentful of pretty words and kinder gestures. Lies unless proven otherwise, and precious few here have his near-absolute confidence. Thranduil is beautiful, what he says as lovely as a dream...

But Cazador was, too.

So he meets consideration with claws.

“Case in point: you’re here with me, rather than nestled in a warm bed with your startlingly bewitching beloved.”

“Ah,” Thranduil says, where weeks before he might have merely ended the conversation and left, in a sweep of silk and cloak, “but she does not want me, and no amount of chivalry could have stopped her.”

The reminder does drag at his mood, make him reach for the bottle. He cannot mourn a living woman when the list of the dead is so long. It is better to leave the wound to heal.

“Everyone is allowed a few bad habits, I think. Let an inclination to aid elves be the worst of mine.” He drinks, pauses, amends, with a tip of his glass, the wine glittering dark. “— or a thirst for wine.”

Astarion can sense the sting of a struck blow. Faint and ignored when arched fingertips move to curl around the neck of that pitch dark bottle. He’d be lying if he tried to claim some wicked, ever-hungering part of himself wasn't basking in it for the briefest of seconds.

Entertainment indeed.

Still, it has the benefit of almost immediately pacifying what might have been an otherwise quickly souring mood on Astarion’s part. His shoulders relax, he leans forward by degrees, those red eyes darkened by the lower hang of long lashes.

“My darling, if you’re going to indulge, never stop yourself at the first sip.” Spoken as he pulls a steadier drink from his own glass before reaching— ever so improperly— to pour almost half of what remains into Thranduil’s cup in turn.

“You can do better in picking your nastier inclinations.”

A breath. A beat. Like daring someone to walk on a neck-shatteringly high ledge, or drawing a hand between jagged rows of teeth.

“...or should I say worse?”

“You speak as though you have suggestions,” Thranduil murmurs, letting himself be caught in the melody of the conversation and drawing in. How novel it all is, how exciting. How strange to be ancient and still find new experiences. He is still unaccustomed to playing to hart and not the hunter. Astarion has leaned in, so he leans back in his chair, elbow propped against the back rest, his cheek in his hand.

“Go on,” Thranduil urges. “I will hear them.”

“I always have suggestions. That said, I’m not— despite appearances— a complete monster: I don’t take what I’m not given.” Not when it comes to people, at least. That single line drawn in an otherwise morally nebulous wasteland.

The devilish cast to his smirk draws back, offering only a single fang when he speaks, rather than a full display. Thranduil pulls away, and Astarion doesn’t chase him. This is an old game. A familiar one, even here.

Because of it, he isn't compelled to rush: it’s only the desperate that whimper and claw and beg for what they want— and now freed, Astarion is anything but that.

Wicked dignity serves him better.

“So I’ll give you a choice. Whet your appetite for vice with me at the nearest tavern, bleeding coin and drink from the worst Kirkwall has to offer, knowing full well the evening will likely cap itself off with an attempt on your life— or mine— and please don’t let that dissuade you: it’s the best part, really. A climax of its own sort.”

His glass of wine is set aside. Pale fingertips splayed instead across the flat of the table as he shifts his own weight forward, lone silver curl slung in front of his leveled stare.

“Or. You stay here, with me. Forgetting for however long you like.”

He doesn’t specify what’s to be forgotten. That’s the beauty of it, of course. He doesn’t need to.

“So,” Thranduil says, crossing his legs. “Either the opportunity to have cheap ale spilled all over my clothes and get ambushed in an alley on our return, or,” and now he pauses, resting his hand palm down on the table.

“Or…” he repeats, and his fingers slide up, lifting to hover over Astarion’s own. “An evening in your company.”

It is the barest touch, fingertips along the last two joints and mail of Astarion’s hand, but when it is the only touch, all the sensation is magnified a thousand fold.

He does not want to not remember. That much would be impossible, she too entwined with all he has made of himself, of them. He wants to not think, to be in another category entirely. This will suit very well.

“Or...”

His cold fingertips twist against that touch, snaking around to snare him with all the deft precision of a hunter’s sprung trap.

A hart indeed.

“You can simply leave. The door’s right there.”

As close as the bed. The low burning fire. As close as Astarion, when he draws warm knuckles to his lips, one sharp fang catching faintly. A warning and a sign of want, all at once.

“I won’t stop you.”

He brushes his thumb along Astarion’s lip, then pushes it up to better expose the sharp point of the fang, nestled among more innocuous teeth. Curious, and his hand still caught in Astation’s grip, he risks a press against the edge, testing the sharpness, then lifting away.

“How many warnings is that by now? Two? Three? I would almost think you did not want me to stay.”

He seals it. Makes himself commit to a course of action. He has been so bored. Lonely, too. His shirt is all buttons at the collar and front, and with one hand, he opens them, down the line easing button from loop.

There are more tucked away behind that initial set of fangs— easily revealed under the curious press of a thumb: front teeth flat and seemingly innocent, the rest as sharp as razors, running towards the back of his mouth. Flashed bright when he grins, leaning into that touch.

“I only want to be sure you want this.” No second thoughts, no shivering moments of regret where someone else’s name might linger on delicately shaped lips.

Not that it matters if that’s what this comes to: it wouldn’t be the first time he’s played patron to another person’s dreams.

“...And now I am.”

Serpentine and languid, he’s almost weightless in how swift he is when snakes around the table to fit himself in Thranduil’s lap, straddling him as surely as if he belongs there. Quick as when he’s slit Tevinter throats in the dark, and just as venomous at heart.

His other hand is still wrapped around Thranduil’s own— the opposite, chilled and artfully balanced, sinks down to flatten against freshly bared skin, skimming across the line of Thranduil’s breastbone. Slipping lower by the second to finish what's been started.

And then, decisively, his mouth is pressed to lips that still taste of richer wine. A hungering kiss, febrile and demanding, punctuated only by the scuff of sharp teeth.

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