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INBOX II

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Oh?

[Interested oh. Surprised oh. Somewhat amused oh, in truth, and Leto notes that emotion as it fills him for no other reason than it would be so damned easy to go the opposite way. To flinch back, remembering revelations about siblings and long-kept secrets— and it's not that his mind doesn't go there, understand. Just that he trusts in his amatus enough to give him the benefit of the doubt and assume this more a vague guess than a long-held secret.]

You have a guess when you were turned . . . is that based on something you remember, or general level of maturity?

[He's teasing.]

—ah, you brat!

[He's delighted to be conversationally cuffed about the ears.

It shows.]

You're one to talk about maturity, anyway, even if we are two peas in a pod on a good day.

But you could call it an educated guess, I suppose. A hunch I want to confirm when we get back to Baldur's Gate. Because ever since you told me my name— well, I wouldn't say the memories have come flooding back by any stretch, but there is....mm. I think I remember more about who I used to be.

I think I was a lot more like you than I realized.

[A beat, and then, with an abrupt little turn into all due henning fuss:]

And I saw myself in the mirror in Thedas, by the way, so this is not your invitation to go about commenting on how I may have happened to quite handsomely age in my decades of confined torment. I dare you to find any young elf that's been flayed alive that happens to look twice as good.

[Oh, what a dearth of information is packed into those sentences. I think I remember more about who I used to be, I think I was a lot more like you than I realized, and there are a thousand ways to interpret those facts. But though Leto's heart is leaping in his chest, his knuckles white for how tight he's suddenly gripped the notebook, he bites his lip until he knows he'll answer calmly.

For there's nothing worse for fragile memories than a rush of excitement. Demanding questions of who and where and why all crowd around, shattering whatever spiderweb-thin grip you have on that collection of sensations that might or might not be real . . . oh, yes, he knows.

So: keep it light. Keep up that teasing, toothless and vague, and let Astarion tell him as he will.]

I dare any elf to look half as good as you do, regardless of anything else.

[Lightly said, though sincerely meant.]

But you fuss too much about nonexistent wrinkles and flaws. You did age handsomely, my adolescent darling, but that only means you look an adult, not a teenager. And I vastly prefer to see one over the other in my bed.

[A breath, and then, gently:]

What do you mean, you were more like me?

[There's an age-old Waterdavian joke about what it takes to make a prostitute blush. Astarion can't remember the actual punchline anymore— picked up in the Flophouse over ale that reeked enough to turn his stomach— but all that pales in the face of the fact that he apparently is the punchline. Two— three hundred odd years or so old, and he can't help feeling his dead pulse stutter like machinery sputtering to start; phantom warmth pushing the tips of his ears down into a twitching pin behind his curls. None of it visible, some of it heard: sound in the back of Astarion's throat not unlike something being strangled. Or more accurately: strangling itself.

Hells' teeth. He's too bloody old to go about fluttering like a schoolboy in love.]

I—

Edited 2024-03-17 23:21 (UTC)

[But then the rest comes. And just like that the fluster's gone. Just like that, he's shifting on his end of the line (audibly by way of tread worn floorboards that groan beneath his weight in place of softer sighs), trading out one form of muteness with another.

He's fumbling. The words won't come. For someone with a heap of supposition attached to his own eroded name, suddenly it doesn't feel like enough. Like every confession he could utter's too concrete for its theoretical framework, all built up on half-recollections and a handful of weeks spent letting old nightmares wash back in with the tide, for once.

And then he pivots on instinct: comparison a language he can lean on.]

I don't believe Danarius made his tournament and then up and decided to ask you to join.

I think it was the other way round.

[There's a pause there, formed by held breath and the curl of his tongue against one fang. Subtle question lodged, and yet unspoken: (do you understand?)]

I suspect he saw a creature yet to rise to either age or potential, and knew it couldn't say no to an offer of salvation.

[Oh. Oh, oh, oh, and dazedly, beneath the rising rage and grief that roar in his ears and reverberate down to his aching fingers, he hears the question beneath those words. Fragile and unspoken, yes, I understand, yes, I know what you mean— yes, I understand why you say it the way you do.

Because the truth is such a fragile thing. Because words have power; you can endure a hundred thousand agonies and still shy away from having to ever articulate it. It makes it too real, makes it so that you can't take it back— and no matter that Leto wouldn't care if this hunch proved to be false, gods, it isn't about him. Not really. It's about Astarion. About having to face that awful truth; about having to realize and process and endure another horrific crime centuries after it was committed.

Volunteered, Leto had called it once. And it was not until Astarion had gently questioned the use of that word that Leto realized just how twisted the truth had become, even in his own mind. I think, I suspect, and it's so much easier to put it on someone else than to allow it to touch yourself . . .

But he cannot dive deeper into that thought just yet. Not when he's suddenly so angry he can barely see, breathe, function, never mind speak. I suspect he saw a creature yet to rise to either age or potential, and he has imagined that night a thousand times ever since Astarion first told him of it, but now the picture changes. Now it's not a noble in the prime of his adulthood, a magister drunk on power and foolish vanity; it's a boy. An adolescent. An elf no older than a century at most, flawed only in the way everyone else is flawed, his silver eyes bright and his fangs fledgling things, wandering innocuously home at night. Not knowing that his footsteps are stalked; not understanding that the catcalls and jeers from a block away are meant for him.

Not knowing for centuries that his fate had been sealed weeks before.

And it makes sense, you know. It's far, far more likely than Cazador happening to stumble upon a particularly pretty and clever elf that he happened to decide he wanted to turn. Such flights of fancy are for fools who glut themselves on indulgence and die too early; even Danarius wasn't so haphazard as that. Far better to arrange a scenario in which you become your victim's hero, even for a little while . . .

(Scarlet blood soaking into cobblestones, Astarion's voice broken as he begs for a savior who won't come; scarlet blood stark against the snow, a retching shivering creature crawling on all fours before his distant savior. If I do this, you set my family free? Stumbling through the streets, weeping for the pain and the shock of his lack of heartbeat, clinging to a figure that never quite returns the warmth and adoration you want so badly for him to display to you. My precious pet, show me just how grateful you are to your master— on your knees, boy. The ecstasy of being the master's favorite for weeks on end, not knowing you're being set up for a fall all over again. Training for weeks on end, his muscles screaming and sweat dripping down his face, his collar searing against his neck, all for the soft-spoken praise of good boy to leave him trembling in desperate adoration.

And then: the fall. The torment. The agony you never knew was possible (his throat bloody from screaming as he claws at his own lyrium), the horror you think you can't possibly endure (how long was he locked away, how long was he kept in one of those coffins, in the wall, moaning and weeping and screaming for forgiveness, knowing that you might never be let out). Adapting. Overcoming. Erasing your past not just because the pain wiped it all out, but because it hurts too much to remember what you were. What you lost. What you might have been, if only, if only, if only—)

[He's been quiet for too long.]

Yes.

[His voice is tight, grief and rage barely restrained. The book trembles before him, his hands shaking as he stares at nothing. Focus. Focus.]

I suspect . . .yes, I suspect you're correct. It would make more sense. He could find an elf he particularly enjoyed the look and sound of, [and all the while his mind screams and screams, killhimkillhimkillhim find him now hunt him down make him scream make him bleed make him suffer] and mold it to be his own.

[Deflection is Astarion's way, but blunt directness is Leto's— and he struggles for a moment, trying to find a way to be what his amatus needs instead of what he's instinctively inclined to do.]

I was eighteen, more or less.

[Gods. Gods.]

How old were you, do you suspect?

Edited 2024-03-18 20:15 (UTC)

[~~Vampires can't read minds.~~

What do you call it, then, when a knife slides hot between your ribs from half a day's distance away, panging in fractured resonance for something neither said nor seen? There for just a blink, then gone? I knew where to find you meeting I found you again echoed in the brackets of their chapters over and over again, and for a split-second he glances down over that book to find his thumb pressed deep (white as bone) against the midline of his palm, checking for a slice of sickly green arcana. Probing to see if it's still there.

Still linking them to one another.

To their home after all this time.]

[But all he feels is flesh. The knotted jut of bone just lurking underneath.

(Maybe they just know each other too well, that's all, and nothing more in the realm of possibility could be half as pleasant as that.)]

Older than that.

[And, no— he isn't thanking the Maker or Andraste for the less-than-hairline boon of Danarius not condemning his chosen pet to an eternity of eighteen. There's no gratitude there. No bliss. But all the same, the point stands true: knowing what he does of monstrosity, if he's glad of anything aside from broken bonds, it's that he met his lover with crease-marks on his brow and rough lines at the corners of his eyes before the rest played out.

Fenris could never be a normal elf. But for what, twenty years or so— including a little more or little less, depending— he got to live (focus on that, Astarion).

He drags his knuckles along his own jaw when he exhales, the sound whittling between sharp incisors.

It's not hesitation. Only the hissing catch of anger he can't place when its genesis is dead and long, long gone.]

But I might've had sixty or so more on my buckish dance card before he scratched his name into it. [Mild, despite its acidity. Light enough to border on playful joking if not for the gravity that holds it, keeping the corners of his mouth curled only by a scant few degrees.] I wasn't young for a magistrate in a human city, that much I know for certain. It made sense to serve, and gods, I don't doubt I must've wanted it—

Let alone took pride in it. [(Those flashes of memory that keep crawling in these last few months in dreams aren't laced with pleasant sentiment. And there's always the question of which came first in the figurative tale: the monster or the prince.)

Pulling away from it, he snorts.]

I imagine you were a much more tolerable youth.

I— yes, perhaps.

[It's a nothing-answer, a vague attempt at returning the joke withering in his throat. He can't tease right now. He can't banter back and forth about who was brattiest, not when his heart feels like ice and his mind roars with an inferno of hatred, seething simmering snarling for the murder of a creature miles and miles away.

Sixty, and it might as well be eighteen. No matter how the humans count it, Astarion wasn't grown, not really. Not as he should have been. There's a difference, and gods, doesn't Leto know it now. Sixty, and the word echoes in his mind in time with his thundering heart, a percussive beat that won't end.

In the distance, his friends call to him. He makes a vague noise, waving them off; then there's the sound of footsteps, short and sharp.]

I'm coming home.

[Of course he is. Of course he is, for they need to be together for this conversation. And yet Leto (or is it Fenris right now?) will not make Astarion wait in nauseating anticipation while he stalks there.]

What makes you certain you were sixty? I do not doubt you, [he adds hastily, feeling like a fool for how clumsily that came out. He can barely think right now, but gods, he needs to try.] But you seem certain of that age. Is it a full memory you can recall, or simply that certainty . . .?

Mmh. Just that I was young. ['Just that', Astarion says, as if that's not enough entirely on its own. And yet to his credit, he's not blind in his irreverence: only someone that didn't know Leto all that well would miss the meaning behind that fumbled banter. The surging promise that he's coming home.

And Astarion knows Leto very well.]

Impatient, I think. That's the sensation I feel most whenever I find myself blindsided by an odd pang of what must be half-formed memories trying their utter damndest to cram their way into the forefront of my mind post-sleep. Probably something to do with the apparent difference between what passes for a nice, respectable age for a proper magistrate in Baldur's Gate, and the 'lifetime'— as you so eloquently put it— that forestalls Elvish naming ceremonies.

[He squints at nothing for one beat longer, trying to make sense of something from the mess inside his skull, but it was never really there to begin with.

And then, sans any segue:]

You didn't just pass up all those friends of yours just now, did you?

Edited 2024-03-21 20:17 (UTC)

[Impatient, and what an apt word, for that's what he feels thrumming through him right now. Impatience at every obstacle that forces him to halt (the crowds thick, a particularly slow woman meandering ahead of him, a line of horses tied together and led one-by-one through the streets); impatience as all his soul screams that he isn't where he ought to be. Now I need to be near him now the clamoring cry of his heart, and it's almost as loud as the echoing shriek of his mind.

Sixty.

Sixty years old, and he cannot stop picturing it. Sixty, he hears the word with every swift step. Sixty, sixty, sixty, his face softer and less lined, his eyes bright and irreverent, sipping wine and giggling as he sat among his peers at a party . . . and it doesn't matter what he used to be like. Leto knows his lover well enough to guess that he was every bit the perfect noble, irreverent and selfish, thrilling in the power he held as a magistrate and caring little for those he sentenced, yes, he knows. But it doesn't matter, see? It doesn't matter if Astarion was someone Leto might have once loathed; it doesn't matter in the same way the color of his eyes or his inclination towards spice doesn't matter. They're important details because they make up who Astarion was, and he is owed them after so long— but whatever those details are, they don't change who he is now.

Perhaps Leto (and it is Leto) was the more tolerable youth. But perhaps not. Perhaps it matters and perhaps it doesn't, but they'll figure it out once he finally gets there.

But oh, that question. Leto blinks just once, dragged out of his intent focus on what came before.]

What? Yes. Of course I did. I will meet them tomorrow.

[The number of days he has left with them is growing ever-shorter, but they still have a few weeks left. And though his heart will be sore to leave them, though he mourns any lost time already, still. This is so much more important that it doesn't compare, not in the slightest. Besides: they're available so often. Rare is the day Leto doesn't end up running around with them regardless, stray pups with limited responsibilities and too much energy so eager to get into mischief as often as they can.]

But I can well imagine that impatience, especially among humans. Especially if they matched your age.

[Tell me more, and he doesn't know why it's so important, save that he fears if they stop speaking of it, they never will again.]

I—

[But no. No, he should save this. Fasta vass, and the curse is audible beneath his breath, his irritation with himself rising. I remember more about who I used to be, and he will not let them move on from it.]

Edited 2024-03-22 02:35 (UTC)

[And the thing is, he's probably right.

(How often have they picked at the worst of their own knotted scar tissue, pricking it open to ease off fenowed rot that never really wanes— only builds into a swollen sense of passive pressure, struggling for its chance at freedom? How often has it lasted, that same dedication to excising their wounds once they've exhaled and set back in along the lines of utter comfort or sheer, blissfully upending sex? They're good at diving in. Good at grasping. Gripping. Holding—

And most of all: forgetting. Never lingering too long, lest it starts to really sting.)

So even catching the winded quality of Leto's voice over the clopping of hooves in busy streets, he's struck headlong by the mercy of care that catches him off guard. By the fact that he wants him home, too, making it a mutual affair.

And there are times and places where astarion surrenders his guard, sinking into fragile marrow. Softened shapes. Knee pulled to his chest along the edge of their bed, knuckles pushed across his lips— back to front, ridge-first. Resigned.

This is one of them.]

Tsk— you might not be wrong.

[Like a laugh, but wan. Amused and moved, and aimless in the eye of that waiting consideration that asks and truly cares to hear him speak without leashing their attention on that pause (and more miracle that it runs both ways, for:)] I do believe I remember one or two fêtes, if I'm honest. Long nights. Possibly as rowdy as the one you and those friends of yours share.

[—Ah. On second thought.]

Mm. Maybe not.

At least not unless you end your scuffles swimming naked in champagne, in which case— I'd be quite jealous. [He wouldn't.

One foot propped on the edge of the mattress, Ataashi underneath his other heel like an ottoman. Her and the pups dozing in a circle round him as he works to keep his young kadan at ease through conversation until—

Is that the sound of naked footfalls that he hears?]

[Half as many footfalls as there ought to be, for Leto takes the stairs two at a time, skipping up them and opening their door so hastily he ends up stumbling in. There's a faint flush to his cheeks and a hint of sweat along his hairline, visible as he kicks off the hated chanclas (the closest he can come to wandering around barefooted). He'd run here just as quick as he could. And you could argue it was silly to do so when they were talking to one another the whole time, for what difference does a few minutes make— but the moment that Leto sees how his kadan is positioned, oh, he only wishes he'd gotten here sooner.

For it makes every difference. Not just because the topic might be lost, but because such things matter. Because after two centuries of torment, his vampire deserves to be taken care of, and shown that his pain and his memories matter more than anything.

He closes the door firmly behind him and crosses the room, picking his way carefully across slumbering pups and a sedate wolf until he can climb in on Astarion's other side. From there he settles his back against the headboard, one arm extending out in silent offer: curl up into me if you wish, easily given and easily ignored if it isn't wanted.

And all the while, Leto keeps his eyes on his mate, refusing to let this pause be broken by anything save what really matters.]

Tell me what fêtes you remember.

[Perhaps Astarion wants to start another way. To talk about the memory of gnawing impatience and arrogant superiority; to linger on the horror and grief of he saw a creature yet to rise in age or potential, and all the nauseating implications that carries. But sometimes, Leto knows, it's easier to start with irreverence. To start with there was a party instead of I remember the first time I was thrown to the wolves.]

[What Astarion wants is his mate. And it's a miracle all its own that the transition between arrival and the sprawl across their bed doesn't do anything to disturb the muzziness of their pack's sleep (though in all fairness, routine— the one they've settled into in Evereska— dictates that Leto would never be returning at this hour in the first place: whatever those tiny ears must pick up in the full depths of their treat-filled slumber, surely it isn't real). Quiet movement heralding the slow fall into his counterpart's side, cheek tucked under chin, contentment a slow, spreading sense of warmth to wash away the dark.

Their sleep schedules are going to be so fucked.]

It's—

[Hm.]

Do you remember that night you and I got utterly stupid drunk in Lowtown?

[The blur of nonsense they enacted on each other as much as anyone else in that place. Little whirring flashes of memory more imaginary than real without the rest to go along with it. Spilled drinks. Stolen coin.

Oh so many bruises.]

[Their sleep schedules are going to be fucked and Leto doesn't care, not when everything suddenly feels so right. A sharp contrast to his harried haste a moment before, every cultivated instinct whispering that he wasn't where he ought to be now swiftly silenced. Astarion curls up into his arms, small and contained and protected, yes, this is where they both belong.

It's been so long since he's gotten to do this, but that only means he tends to his duty more vigilantly, determined to offer Astarion a comforting space and steady ground to stand upon both. His chin lifts, making room for his mate to curl into, his fingers combing slowly through loose curls as his other arm settles heavily against his form, keeping him close. I will keep you safe, I will help you as best I can, all of him so intimately aware of how hard it is to recall bits and pieces of one's past.

And soon enough, there is an answer to his question. Puffs of tepid air against his neck as Astarion speaks in a tone that's reserved only for them, intimate and vulnerable.]

Oh, yes.

[Snapshots of sensation more than a clear start-to-finish: the sour scent of ale and unwashed bodies filling his nose as he'd peered over the edge of his tankard, grinning as Astarion showed off how easily he could pick a pocket. Gold glimmering between his fingers before being safely stowed away; it's a kind of magic, see? drawled out in Fenris' ear, and the teasing swat Astarion had received for such a joke was received with a barking laugh. Liquor so potent it stung his tongue as they'd egged one another on with bets over— oh, who could even remember? Sexual favors and teasing kinks drawled out as potential rewards, and by the end they'd gotten so worked up they'd left the bar just so they could rut in the alley nearby— only to encounter a few members of the Undercuts who wanted to lighten their purses. And so they'd fought (clumsily, drunkenly, and yet still far outclassing their foolish attackers), and fucked, and drank some more . . .

It's all blurred. He can remember snatches of the night, sentences picked out without context, smears of color and sound woven with a general feeling of happiness. Joy. Love, warm and content and delighted by how well the night was going.

And here and now, Leto suspects he knows where Astarion is going with this, and so adds:]

Bits of it, anyway.

[Diligent little heart, beating with more years than he looks from the outside in. Moments like this, they'd have to seem absurd to any uninformed observers (scarcely any wonder the buckish herd his amatus runs with can't seem to figure it out in any sense): watching a lanky moon elf barely grown into his ears and limbs comforting a full-fledged vampire with a worldly show of care— the streaks of silver in that hair companion to the laugh lines dappling his cheeks. Track marks for exhaustion beyond exhaustion.

(Laugh lines. Gods. What an ironic name, considering how Astarion earned his doing anything but that.)

But it wasn't long ago that the tables were reversed in their arrangement, and it was Leto who stood unshackled and prodigious in his ultimacy against a tapestry of horror that would swear it was a front. A lie. A game. No one could be that kind. No one would be that gentle, that fierce, that knowing, not without another motive— and yet he was: Astarion could barely keep up in his shadow, and Hells if he didn't know whether he wanted to be like him back then in those first few strides of buckling freedom, or with him.

Laid out like this, purring like an overgrown cat for all the attention that he's getting against soft skin and softer curls, he still isn't quite sure the answer isn't both.]

Oh—

Well that's more than I expected, at the very least. [Playful, the canting of his voice. The tipping of his chin, his lips— angling to kiss (to nip) the underside of Leto's jaw.] You could barely stand by the end of the night....

Though that gorgeous cock of yours certainly didn't have the same problem in my hands. [Hand, accurately: after a certain point all Astarion remembers is pinning Leto to a wall with his wrist aching for the angle of his buried strokes beneath rucked trousers. Breathing hot across pale markings that tasted like glass to his tongue, and almost seemed to buzz each time he tasted them.

He has to change the subject to keep from losing himself to homesickness, a sudden dead drop in his gut.]

Best parts of our adventures aside, it was....well, no. It wasn't like that, but— [His eyes dart upwards towards the ceiling, exhaling once. Twice. (Each puff of air cold as the corners of their sheets.)] My recollection is.

The patriar I danced with were young. In dreams, their faces blur, and I have no idea whether it's masks they don or my own failing recollection, but I know that I was happy. Thrilled. Eager to prove myself, and everything smelled like it did in Thedas, still: no copper tang polluting everything around me, no pricking myself when I laughed.

There was still ambition in me, whatever that was worth.

[Another pull of air, and then:]

After Cazador....not so much.

[He can imagine it so easily.

Astarion young and proud and bright: lips wet with droplets of champagne that glimmer gold in the enchanted candlelight, his eyes gleaming as he'd danced with some strapping younger son or pretty elven girl. Hands meeting hands as gossip is exchanged behind veiled pleasantries; flirtations gliding off slick tongues for no other reason than fun. Or perhaps it had been more daring: Astarion's face half-hidden behind a mask, the only thing visible a wicked smirk as he'd slipped his fingers beneath a hem or palmed pointedly up one thigh. Perfume brushed through his hair and his clothes so perfectly tailored, nothing on his mind save having fun and showing himself off to the world all at once.

It's familiar. Not just because Leto is used to such parties (albeit from a vastly different viewpoint, though Rialto gave him a taste), but because he knows the flaws in those recollections so well. Blurred faces and snatches of emotion disconnected from any larger backdrop . . . and how strange it is to recall. To have a snapshot portrait of who you were and how you acted, what you thought and felt and were, and yet to have no greater context to which to apply it . . . oh, it's disorienting. Nauseating. Overwhelming, and yet not so much so that you wish to never have remembered at all— gods, no. No, he held on (Astarion will hold on) to those memories with white knuckles, going over every detail again and again until he has gleaned every bit of information possible from them.

Leto knows the feeling. Gods, does he ever.]

No, I imagine not.

[He murmurs it gently, sympathetic acknowledgement without lingering for too long on it. For it would be so easy to get lost in bitterness of all that came afterwards (he knows), but that isn't the point right now. His hands keep up their steady motions, his heart warming as he feels more than hears the contented purr rumbling low in his lover's throat.]

Ambition to succeed as a magistrate? Or ambition to prove yourself regardless?

[A few seconds pass, and then Leto adds softly:]

I'm glad you were happy.

[Gods, he is. More than he can properly say.]

And perhaps some of those details will sharpen in time. Perhaps not who you danced with, but . . . I have found some come and go. What color you wore, maybe, or what you drank that night . . . such things have a strange way of cropping up.

[Leto's voice rings with it, understanding.

It strips Astarion to the marrow in an instant, unintentionally on either end of their array. Has him tight-lipped around the flexion catch of his softly clenched jaw, dry heat bubbling in his nose, swimming angrily around the backs of his eyes. He wasn't ready for it. For the heavy lay of sentiment like that, one foot wedged in past and present.

He feels like a bloody fumarole.

Ashamed even in absolute privacy— with the only person he'd ever trust with secrets this fragile to begin with— and the sheer absurdity of that comprehension somehow makes it worse. The words I'm glad you were happy having already hooked hard under fractured ribs, leaving him unguarded for a promise so sweet it scalds his tongue. His throat. His fingers. He doesn't know why.

(He should be warm. He should be kindled, burning from the inside out with that feeling of appeasement always shared to know his only lover understands. Not this. This wet, sick knot of rote taxation, upset at the promise that Leto heard some half-muttered story about a spoiled magistrate while his family and their hollow stomachs waited in the wings to play their written part, and offered, still— )]

Don't—

[Astarion cuts hotly.]

Don't. Say that.

[The words leave him wrong; that isn't what he meant. He's sat up somewhere along the way, though he can't remember when.

Something loitering on the tip of his tongue when he looks back.

It doesn't come unstuck.]

[It's like triggering a trap on Sundermount.

One wrong step, a click, and then that awful split-second where you have just enough time to realize how fucked you truly are before the flames begin. A singular misstep that might lead to disaster if it isn't handled correctly— and gods, but he does not want to misstep here. Not when this is such a vitally important conversation.]

What is it?

[His voice is low and unassuming, his body still as he forces himself not to leap after Astarion. For it reminds him, too, of those early days— gods, it was the first week they'd known each other, wasn't it? When their trust was still so tentative, and it was a daring thing to sleep on Astarion's floor instead of returning to that lonely mansion. Astarion had woken in a terror, so panicked and overwhelmed that any move Leto would have made would have set him off further—

And so he'd gone still. Quiet. No sudden movements, no abrupt cries or demanding questions . . . like how you'd treat a spooked animal, not wanting to make everything worse. He keeps his eyes locked up on his amatus— and unlike that nightmarish first night, he does not hide away his own emotions. Worry and surprise and concern above all, hungry to help and utterly unsure of what had gone wrong.]

What's wrong?

[It sounds so agonizingly stupid. So bloody trite. So—

Strewth, he doesn't damned well know what it sounds like, other than nothing Leto needs hounding him from the rabid maw of luxury itself, even if it did fall from grace nearly two centuries ago. Purgatory thereafter might've stripped away his skin, his bromidic sense of scepterdom, his sense, his hope, his very life— even the crude color of his eyes (which can't have been crimson; no high elves sport that shade)— but it didn't undo it, either.

And now what?

A kind gesture— the sweetness of conversation gifted to him by someone with the scent of sunlight still on his skin— yanked back to swim inside a handful of inches of empty air. Knees folded over, back hunched in a sullen arch. Leto's body language gone to stone, alerted to a catalyst he can't possibly know.]

You—

[Oh come on, Astarion. Come on. Think straight. Say something. Say anything. Don't leave him laying there like this.]

You should've been happy. If either of us deserved that before— everything, it was you.

[To mouth out something as absurd as 'I'm flinching because you tried to be kind to me' is about as reasonable or fair as spitting on closeness. On comfort. On love.

He doesn't want to be that.

Doesn't want to do that.]

[His eyes dart about Astarion's frame, drinking in the way he's curled in on himself.

And it really is just like that first night, isn't it?

Take your pick as to which he means, for two memories clamor for attention all at once. The first time (and he will always count it as the first time) they met. When he'd followed Astarion home and revealed the depths of his bitterness and his rage; when his kadan, in turn, had shared the details of his enslavement. I did better on my back than my heels; two hundred years, that's how long I was leashed to his side, and Leto can still remember the nauseating way his stomach had dropped to hear those facts. So much worse than anything he'd gone through, he'd thought but hadn't said, for comparison would only have been taken as pitying, not sympathetic.

And then again, Leto thinks of the first time in Rialto. Once the sweat had cooled and they were more interested in exploring other kinds of intimacy; when revelations about the web of scars adoring Astarion's back had come to light, and the topic had turned once again to their respective pasts. I always thought I knew just how bad it could get, Astarion had said hoarsely, and Leto had all but panicked in how vehemently his soul rejected such a notion. Two decades and a handful of memories were nothing compared to two centuries, he'd thought, and it had taken no small amount of soothing from Astarion to convince him that it was not a competition. That neither of them had it worse; that they were both such miserable, broken creatures, and that to compare would be foolish.

And it was.

And it is.

But perhaps, Leto thinks now, it's more difficult when you feel instinctively as though you did get the better deal. When you have woken your beloved from so many screaming nightmares; when you have heard him sob for the bitterness and grief of all the years stolen from him . . . oh, it feels the height of selfishness to insist I hurt, too.

Slowly, the tension eases out of Leto's frame. He makes no sudden movements, but nor does he keep that rigid posture of before. Instead: he uncurls. One leg drifting out, stretching along the bed until it rests beside Astarion. Not touching, not yet— but there all the same, and easy to lean into should Astarion want it.]

Well, yes.

[He says it so mildly it might almost come across as a joke, save for the quiet but fierce sincerity in his expression.]

I will not argue. I did deserve to be happy. And while I will not say I have no joyful memories of my early childhood, I suspect you're right: they don't compare to the luxury of parties or dancing. And I deserved better than what I had.

[His head cocks. And then, gently:]

But two mere decades of being my master's adored favorite doesn't compare to two centuries of competing among six siblings just so you could survive another day. Having your skin flayed from your body over and over might well compare against having lyrium forcibly grafted into your marrow and muscle— but then again, I only went through that process once, and I cannot imagine how many times you were left to shiver in agony. Getting to don pretty clothes as you went out to seduce victims does not compare to an iron collar in Tevinter's heat— and having to rut each victim, enduring their hands and mouths and vulgar desires, is far, far worse than the days when my master would force me to run behind his carriage.

I could compare every horror we have ever suffered against one another, Astarion, and who knows who would win? Neither of us, I suspect. For we have never compared. We have never played the game of who had it worse, for the answer is that we both did in our own ways. And the horrors you suffered were no greater or lesser than my own, not when it comes to how much we have both suffered.

[He takes in a shallow breath, and then, softer still:]

We have never compared, amatus. Do not start now. Not especially when it comes to our joys.

I am happy that you were happy, not because I do not wish the same for my own life— but because it would bring me no joy to know that you were miserable. You deserve that happiness just as much as I did, and do. And just as you would not begrudge me what few happy memories I have with Varania or my mother . . . so too do I not begrudge you the simple joy of a mere party, kadan.

[Understand, and he does not know why he suddenly feels a hint of a lump in his throat. His eyes aren't wet, he isn't about to cry, but desperation thrums through him. Understand, please understand, because he cannot allow this memory to be lost under a crashing wave of self-loathing and snarling defeat.]

[There's a moment of hesitation. A moment where Astarion is deathly still at the center of Leto's focus, pinned less by the heat burning behind his ears and more by every waking word he struggles just to drink in— their perfect inflow all he wants to drown beneath, no matter that his chin is barely above darker water. The noxious wash of history he never conquered so much beat back and shut away without once imagining it'd catch him so off guard as this (how— how is it that he forgets so easily, when picking out the thorns always leads to splinters underneath their skin for days), when contentment's so far given them a chance at bliss beyond bliss provided that they stick to the routine: the cues were so predictable till now, the warning signs were there. If Leto has nightmares where he's shrieking, don't press in the next day; if Astarion's too restless to stand still, he needs to go— to kill— to hunt until the burning boil of his thoughts subsides; let your consort chase monsters, shut the door if need be on those nights when you still think that you should breathe; be patient, be trusting, have faith.

You've never steered each other wrong before, if not a few degrees off course when falling between worlds.

And so there's that moment of hesitation. There's Astarion deathly still, drinking in whatever he can take of those words and this scene and the way Leto looks so ridiculously beautiful trying to untangle the threading they're caught up in. And while not comparing the nightmares is— not necessarily easy, only easier in practice: soot to ash, blood to bone, it's too stark— too potent— compared to macarons and molding handfuls of passed-off millet. Processing that, coming to terms with it....

(It never bothered him before.)

Full years away from the first time he felt the divide stretch out like a chasm driving them apart, but the first time he's noticed it before twisting like a cat to set it straight: thumbs pushing over Leto's face as if pantomiming wiping away the tears that aren't there.

That don't come.

(They try to keep forging ahead. Keep opening doors within themselves. Is it any wonder that what stumbles out from the other side aches and maddens when it finds them?)]

Maker and Adraste damn it. [His thumbs press a few degrees too hard without him noticing as he strokes along sharp cheekbones, leaving faintly reddened track marks in their wake. His voice, on the other hand, is sober. Sane.

Mournful, maybe, even as the corner of his mouth pulls higher on one side.] Stop being so clever.

[Warm. Warm. Fond as the heat of sunlight that clings to moonstone skin, kissing the pads of all his fingers.] You make me look an utter fool.

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