It feels sometimes as though it happened a lifetime ago.
[Three years won't do that, but leaping from world to world, body to body certainly will.]
You act differently here. I act differently here, I know . . . but you have flourished here. You carry yourself more proudly, and seem more your age than you did in Thedas. And I . . . I did not forget. I will never forget, [his head turning, nuzzling fiercely against the side of Astarion's head again and again.] But I forget how short a time three years has been . . . and how terrifying it must have been to give me those firsts.
[His nuzzling slows, gentle pushes with his nose as he speaks.]
I have never felt the way I feel with you.
[Soft. A little hesitant, truthfully, for he doesn't want to make this about him— but perhaps it will help to hear the comparison.]
I was teasing when I said firsts before, thinking only of sex— and I will not deny you have been my first for most of that, too, [he adds with a rumbling chuckle. But then, more seriously:] But I have never trusted the way I trust you. I have had friends, companions, that I trusted with my life— but never fully blindly. Never without thinking of all the ways in which that trust might be betrayed, or circumstances that might occur where they'd sell me out.
I never think of those things with you.
I have never given my heart to someone the way I have given it to you: wholly and without restraint. Trusting you even when I cannot trust myself; knowing that there is no set of circumstances that would lead you to betray me. [Never say never— but Astarion is no idiotic hero, and would not pull a pointless break-his-heart-to-save-him gambit. They have too much respect for one another for that.]
I am sorry it took me so long to find you.
[Sorry in the sense that his heart grieves for it, not in the sense of taking blame. And now, finally, he rises up just far enough to catch Astarion's gaze, his eyes blazing fiercely with protective adoration.]
But I am glad I did, even if I was two centuries late. And more glad than I know how to say that I could be those firsts for you.
no subject
[Three years won't do that, but leaping from world to world, body to body certainly will.]
You act differently here. I act differently here, I know . . . but you have flourished here. You carry yourself more proudly, and seem more your age than you did in Thedas. And I . . . I did not forget. I will never forget, [his head turning, nuzzling fiercely against the side of Astarion's head again and again.] But I forget how short a time three years has been . . . and how terrifying it must have been to give me those firsts.
[His nuzzling slows, gentle pushes with his nose as he speaks.]
I have never felt the way I feel with you.
[Soft. A little hesitant, truthfully, for he doesn't want to make this about him— but perhaps it will help to hear the comparison.]
I was teasing when I said firsts before, thinking only of sex— and I will not deny you have been my first for most of that, too, [he adds with a rumbling chuckle. But then, more seriously:] But I have never trusted the way I trust you. I have had friends, companions, that I trusted with my life— but never fully blindly. Never without thinking of all the ways in which that trust might be betrayed, or circumstances that might occur where they'd sell me out.
I never think of those things with you.
I have never given my heart to someone the way I have given it to you: wholly and without restraint. Trusting you even when I cannot trust myself; knowing that there is no set of circumstances that would lead you to betray me. [Never say never— but Astarion is no idiotic hero, and would not pull a pointless break-his-heart-to-save-him gambit. They have too much respect for one another for that.]
I am sorry it took me so long to find you.
[Sorry in the sense that his heart grieves for it, not in the sense of taking blame. And now, finally, he rises up just far enough to catch Astarion's gaze, his eyes blazing fiercely with protective adoration.]
But I am glad I did, even if I was two centuries late. And more glad than I know how to say that I could be those firsts for you.