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[illithidnapped]

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[illithidnapped]

I'm an overachiever. [Astarion fires back slyly— a bulwark against the slow rise of something much like heat in the basin of his chest.] I love rushing.

[Well.]

In most things, anyway.

[Not all.

But he can't keep the rest at bay forever. And when it settles back in his expression stays sober this time. Somber, more accurately: fragile as a narrow pane of glass and caught in the vice grip of his own slow-breathing, and it isn't fair, he thinks, that to endure the beauty of dear kindness, he has to train his body down the same way he did for the knife.

And yet.

Avoidance never lasts.

(If it had, where would they be now? Not here. Not like this. Shelved up and cornered by worser fates— pass. Pass, and no thank you, and not ever again, if Astarion gets to have his say. Which: gods favor them for once, he does.)]

Come closer, little menace. You know I hate it when you're far. [Groused as if he isn't already pressed in like the bloody tide at dusk: somehow managing to wind himself further in over his mate's own relaxed form. Mostly in the angles of their hips and shoulders; most of all in the way his profile— his mouth— stubbornly squeezes itself in flush along the slant of Leto's neck beneath the frenzy of that grown-out fringe.

Like this, at least, he can talk without looking.]

I won't fight you on that. Not a word of it, provided you find it in yourself to grasp that I'm only kind to you because I'm smitten— and always have been when it comes to you.

But you can't go blinding yourself with your love for me, either.

[Slow, the onset of his breathing. Just a way to bridge one sentiment to the next without running out of air, and still, he takes his time. Enough weight in it to carry everything he wishes he knew how to properly say.

Everything he's been trying to say for three years now.]

I would've run. I would've kept running on and on, right into the arms of ruin if it wasn't for the miracle of finding you in freedom.

If it wasn't for you.

[A beat, tentative. He leaves his eyes shut.]

You didn't fail Shirallas.

He didn't listen.

[doggish]

[Funny how that undoes him.

The rest of it is, if not easy, at least bearable. He nods faintly as cool breath hits his neck, agreeing gently with every word: yes, he knows that his lover has flaws. That he would have kept on running if he hadn't run into Leto— and there is no disagreement there, no matter how highly he thinks of Astarion. Leto himself would never have stopped running if it hadn't been for the Fog Warriors, for Hawke, for Kirkwall; they neither of them exist in a vacuum. He does not miss the significance of what Astarion says, nor how tentative his lover's voice has gone as he whispers that sentiment, but oh, he understands it too well not to take it in attentive, adoring stride.

But it evokes emotion. It makes his heart ache in ways that he still isn't used to, even years later. And those last two sentences slip between his ribs like a knife.

Not like a wound deliberately inflicted, cruel and callous; not even like the shuddering statements of forgiveness that they offer one another, it wasn't your fault, you aren't to blame, the balm so sweet it stings. Rather: it reaches into his soul so deftly, slicing through skin and muscle to find the quick of him and brush against it with cool, kind fingers. You didn't fail him, and it's nothing Leto didn't know; it's nothing he hadn't told himself in the aftermath. There's no disagreement there, so why does it hurt?

Friend? he thinks again. Shirallas' bloodshot eyes and the teeth-aching wrongness of both their lyrium clashing against one another, red meeting blue, corrupt meeting pure. And what had his crime been? Devotion. Fanaticism. Desperation. An aching desire to see all magisters torn down, their sins exposed and their horrors repaid . . .]

He did not listen.

[Echoed softly after a long moment of quiet.]

And I will always wish that he had.

[But he didn't. He didn't and he's dead now, his corpse long buried and his spirit gone, and who knows what comes after? Vaguely, he hopes without hope at all that the elf found the peace he was denied in life, and knows even as he does that he doesn't believe it.

But there are more important things to focus on. Astarion's nose brushes against his neck, his eyelashes a faint tickle as he closes his eyes. He feels so small in Leto's arms right now, narrow shoulders and slender limbs. And he thinks about it: about Astarion finding him. About that first meeting that he cannot recall, that he is always so bitter over not remembering. Painful in a way that leaves a lump in his throat, I would have run right into the arms of ruin if it wasn't for you, so pivotal and yet not shared.]

. . . . will you show me?

[Soft. More tentative than he can ever truly say.]

How we met. How . . . how I helped you stop running. The first time . . . the first meeting, and all that came after before I left.

[illithidnapped]

[It hits harder than a kick to the chest. The shock of it– not suggestion: realization. That for so bloody long he'd viewed what was lost as something still lost: never to be reclaimed because for years and years it was.

And it was fine, you know.

It would always be fine.

One more thing they paved over with the promise that it was a step forwards and little else. Unimportant. And everything.

So somewhere in the middle of holding his amatus and processing every word, Astarion runs still. Forgets to suck in air. Corrects that.]

I—

—yes.

I suppose I actually could, couldn't I....?

[Hells' teeth.]

Is that what you want?

[Are you certain? -being the part of that unspoken: like all of this thus far, there's no going back once done. No putting the lid back on the tin or the cork back in its bottle, and forever staining Leto's own impression of himself through a set of blood red eyes.

It could be wonderful.

It could make him feel so small.]

[doggish]

[Is he? The idea sprung from mind to lips without a moment's contemplation, his tentativeness far more about the magic itself than the idea. Leto hesitates, his eyes darting down as he tries to probe the idea swiftly for all the potential downsides. And yet even as he does, his mind draws a blank, too eager to see that which was lost.]

You think it a poor idea.

[It's a question and a statement all in one.]

Why?

[illithidnapped]

No— [Astarion asserts in that too-swift way of his, coming as a sort of verbal hand upheld rather than obtuse (or acute) objection or rejection, quickly mellowed down into his private laid-back tenor:] —no, not a poor idea.

[Singular skipped beat slid somewhere in in-between that thought and the next.]

But a large one. Yes. That I do believe.

[It doesn't surprise him that there's a stark difference in perspective to be had there between them, either. Not when they were always as divided as they were aligned in their beliefs and wants and needs— one step in perfect stride and then the next entirely out of sync— because as this conversation so defines, it was never a perfect mirror.

Nor should it be, he thinks, catching a wayward tuft of hair curled just in front of Leto's ear and rolling it between his claws before it's laid soft with its fellows.]

Swear on all the gods and nightmares that I've known, I am grateful for this, my Leto. All these memories. These exchanges. Things I never knew existed— [strewth—] things that'll take ages to process properly, if I ever manage it without falling right back into the bliss of knowing your extraordinary thoughts just the way they are.

But— those were our memories. Mine relayed to you. Yours relayed to me.

[Maybe it goes without saying. Maybe all of this does, but still:]

I can't give you an artificial pulse. I can't restore what isn't there on your end, and what exists in mine is....very, very bright. That is to say: you were bright. And wondrous. And unsurpassed to this day, even as I know you better.

Because I know you better.

[And so, with a false breath that's worn for some feigned sense of mortal comfort than for air, Astarion underscores his bottom line.]

I don't want to ruin you with a tainted surrogate.

[One you won't be able to forget.]

[doggish]

[My Leto. Strange that that's what sticks out to him as he sorts this out in his mind. My darling, my kadan, catulus, amatus, precious thing, little songbird, and it's so rare his lover calls him by his proper name anymore. It makes him pay all the more attention, rapt as he listens to his lover's warning.

And he understands. He almost doesn't want to, but he does, for even as Astarion speaks some strange shadow of jealousy rises within him. A mixture of bitterness from his own lack of memories combining with the knowledge of brightness unsurpassed (and he knows what Astarion means, he has memories like that himself, but oh, it twists something within him all the same, too faint to be called hurt). It's the strangest mixture of emotions.

Finally, he glances up to meet Astarion's eye again.]

Tell me what happened first.

[They're so tangled up together already, and yet still Leto feels the urge to squirm in impossibly closer. Instead he focuses on those fingers playing with his hair, letting his own fretfulness be soothed by the steady action.]

Before anything else . . . I know the broad overview, but . . . I would hear the story itself first. And then I will decide.