illithidnapped | INBOX II

[I will . . . and for a precious few seconds, Leto does nothing but beam up at him. Joy (and it is joy, so rarely felt and so all the brighter for it) suffuses through him, the strangest (and sweetest) tempered excitement thundering in time with his pounding heart— for of course he'd expected no other answer, but it's one thing to know and another to hear it articulated. I will, in this world and every other, and he doesn't have to urge himself to remember, for he knows he always will. Every word. Every cadence. The way Astarion's eyes look, softened crimson eyes framed by dark lashes; the way his hand feels cupping his cheek, cold and delicate and perfect.

You're mine and I'm yours, and they have denoted it a thousand different ways. Through tokens (oh, he misses that bloody cloth so much) and possessive monikers, vows of devotion and promises of adoration. They have sworn it through actions and words both, intimacy and adoration growing stronger by the day— stretching back even before Rialto, all the way to when Astarion had first fallen into Thedas, for their intimacy is marked by so much more than mere sex.

But there's something so satisfyingly inevitable about a ring. It's you. It's always been you, of course they were destined to be bound together in every way that they can, through blood and vows both. The weight of a ring on his finger was as inevitable as his chasing Astarion through the Fade: it could not have gone any other way.

And when he speaks, he can't help but still smile: his lips irrepressibly curled up in the most foolish grin, his gaze full of stars as he stares up at his vampire. His beloved. His everything, and soon all the world will know it.]

Good.

[Murmured as he tips his head up, butting their foreheads together in a fond nuzzle once more. Good, a laugh in his voice and so much adoration in his heart that it aches, his nuzzling fierce and insistent.

And somewhere in there, he murmurs:]

I have never had a last name before. But Leto Ancunín has a nice ring to it.

[And afterwards . . . oh, but one thing at a time, for he has not forgotten Astarion's own proposal.]

It suits you. [Is a promise that isn't embellished for the sake of sentiment. Or— if it is, it's only that way because it happens to also be the truth, with no other facets whatsoever at stake.

And sometime in the future he'll scoff critically (in all usual, acidic fashion) before asking about elves having no other names at all— Dalish or city elf or otherwise, all. No excuse enough to stop Astarion from subsequently crooning about how that sets Leto himself apart in yet one more gloriously defiant way. Another notch against his origin, save for what parts of it he loved. Master of two worlds as a thing astride in both, worth envy beyond envy by everyone that'd ever laid eyes on him.

And everyone that hasn't let.

Astarion, as things are, can't tear his own away. Thief that he is, warmth always calls to him before he has the chance to resist its waiting lure; joy brighter than moonlight too beautiful to keep from setting his fingertips to. The little creases— the narrow divots— where Leto's contentment wrinkles in fine lines across his skin regardless of his age.

He doesn't realize that he's smiling, too.

Fooled into thinking it's only Leto that's bumping their foreheads together in that moment, time and time again.]

....but what of mine doesn't?

[He puffs out a laugh, the noise far more about pure joy than anything approach mirth. What indeed, and he nips at his bottom lip, nuzzling insistently against his mate, each motion and movement only leaving him giddier still. Their lips brush together in something that isn't quite a kiss and it leaves him soaring all the higher, thrilled beyond thrill and yet so sedate in Astarion's arms. This is where he belongs. This is where he feels safe. Forget the mansion. Forget the apartment in Baldur's Gate; forget anywhere and everywhere, for the only thing that has ever truly felt like home is right here in front of him.

Astarion. My Astarion, and foolishly, Leto hopes that his mate never lets him go.]

You suit me, [he says gently: not a correction, but an addition. His fingers slide against marble skin, tracing down the line of his neck and carding through his hair, content to relearn every inch of him in this new light.]

Your name. Your home. Your life, shared and tangled eternally with mine.

[Leto Ancunín, he thinks again. The name does not quite sound real, not yet, but it will. Just as he slowly went from Fenris to Leto, so too will this new addition become part of himself, until one day he'll no longer have to think about it before it slides naturally off his tongue.

A few moments pass . . . and then, so softly, he murmurs:]

And one day: my death. And my resurrection at your hands.

[Oh, yes. Oh, yes, he has not forgotten what led them here. He says the words so carefully, his eyes soft and upturned as he whispers that vow against cold lips. I am yours, and they will prove it with every show of devotion they can come up with. Life and death and back again, their love destined to last for centuries beyond comprehension.]

You will teach me all there is to know about being a vampire, husband of mine. And we will stalk the nights together, and know contentment for centuries to come. This I promise you.

It does sound rather romantic when you put it like that, doesn't it? [Oh, it shakes loose like a purr under the steady bid of those fingerprints. Trackmarks slid along his spine until he slides upwards along with them, twisting in what little room he has just to lend them further purchase wherever they might roam. Knees against thighs; lips against lips; ankles under shins or snared tightly within sheets and dampened silk; hot breath intermingling with cool air in the sloping narrow of their contours, a ravaging intoxicant.] Your death.

[Leto Ancunín's death.

Nothing but satisfaction wreathes around the thought of it, even in the lightless cavern of his skull. If he's been drunk before, it's never been like this. If he's been besotted before, it was a weaker thing. Finding himself possessive now in a way that only a fanged thing ever could be: where the cruelest endpoint life has to offer is the most mouth-wateringly ambrosial treat dangling just within his promised reach. Mine, all mine. The soft skin sprawled underneath his fingers— mine. The whimper of young life still beating hot in untapped veins— mine. Greedy and devoted by an ouroborosian mile, and aching to hoard everything like the addict that he is before he's swallowed up by love's greater, darker designs. Addiction, after all, would only kill Leto. It's love that brings him back and brands him as its own.

The perfect labyrinth for vampiric urges in a loveworn chest.]

But first....

[Ah, there he is. Astarion Ancunín, not Astarion the vampire. Heralding his own interjection with the catch of clawed fingers over branded knuckles just before they're brought up towards his lips.

A formality for marriage.]

You've a great deal more life to learn about as the kept bride of a vampire, you know. And if you don't perish before morning from that sniffling wreck you call a body, a sprawling number of centuries left before I go teaching you all the intricacies of the night.

[Don't dream too eagerly of your fangs just yet, my darling.]

Starting with a set of rings is a challenge more your tempo.

[His expression melts by soften degrees as Astarion kisses the back of his hand. It's such a charmingly doting action, chaste and sweet in a way they normally never are. A way of kissing more suited to courting than two elves that rut so eagerly day and night . . . it leaves him pleasantly flustered, just a touch, his lips curling up into a sweet smile as his ears twitch once or twice.

Though that vanishes swiftly enough as his vampire speaks, replaced with a sardonically amused little stare.]

More your tempo, he says to a god-killer . . . you speak patronizingly for someone in imminent danger of being sneezed upon.

[He sniffs it out as he curls in closer, content to snuggle in now that some of the emotions of the moment are starting to settle. He's no less happy, understand, but it's a more suffused sort of feeling now: warm and bundled and content as he tucks his head beneath Astarion's chin, overwarm cheek pressed to cold skin. There is so much snot going on right now, and the pile of tissues scattered around their sheets only proves it.]

Tell me what kind of ring you desire. And if what you desire is to see me dress in white lace for our, mm, third? wedding night, amatus, ask instead of assuming.

And I happen to get off on having a godkiller in my bed— but that doesn't make him any less adorable when he's barely grown into those twitching, oversized ears of his, [Astarion purrs, letting consonants carry the weight of his wolfishly sly affections. A sort of lilting through his overlong teeth] or his precious little canines.

[Oh, he's stopping now, he promises.

Cross his heart, he knows when to behave....somewhat. At least enough to toe the line between crowing playfulness and true annoyance, the latter of which he'd rather not invoke at the moment when they've just bound their hearts together.

It's slow, and obediently tame, the smoothing path his fingers trace as they comb back fever-saturated locks.]

Mm. Is it our third already? [Asks the creature that's kept track just as avidly all this time.] I suppose something simple will do, given our funding and the three— correction: four ever-hungry mouths we have to feed.

A couple dozen or so diamonds, a mithril band.

Small things.

[It's a testament to just how sick he is that those (utterly adorably oversized) ears twitch once or twice in muzzy confusion after that corrective statement. Four, and it takes him too long to understand what his mate means, some part of him bewildered as he wonders if there's somehow a third pup waddling about.

By the time those blissfully cool fingers work through his hair, he understands— and oh, it's such a sweet action he can't be roused into nipping for that bit of teasing. Nor for the (quietly and not-as-secretly-as-he'd-like adored) bit of patronizing playfulness his lover had crooned down at him. With a pleased little sigh, Leto's eyes flutter closed, his fingers sliding aimlessly against Astarion's frame as his lips turn up in a smile for that extravagant request.]

And you complain I'm expensive to keep . . . what of a silver band? With three diamond lookalikes, since no one will ever be able to spot the difference. You can't, [he adds preemptively.] Not really. I have seen the glass ones wizards conjure up, they look just the same as any natural-mined diamond. Perhaps we can inscribe it with something particularly sentimental . . . the year of when we met? Though that might grow confusing . . .

How about that?

Edited 2024-06-03 01:15 (UTC)

I was talking about your wedding night ensemble. [Astarion crows out with a devilish flash of white fangs— chin tucked down against his chest to exaggerate their daggered sharpness. Not to mention the even more knifing slant of his own lips.

He knows he's being clever.]

But— conjured glass? Really? [Tsk.] I'm all for the idea of an inscription, it'd be our own eternal secret— damning only to those who could possibly understand and also somehow know about your home world, but glass?

Couldn't we rob someone disgustingly wealthy instead and call it a honeymoon gift to ourselves?

I— mmm.

[It's a grumbling groan, wry and distracted both. A noise that starts with oh, very clever, wry and delighted both, and tangles midway with a flirtatious grumbling (because oh, his vampire chose his words well, and now Leto can all too well imagine what kind of ensemble he means), all combined with I can't, not now, not when I'm so sick, demonstrated in the way he glances away from that grin with a wry smirk of his own.]

We could, [he eventually says, his voice growing more thoughtful.] So long as there are no ways to track a diamond . . . are there? Some kind of magic tracer, perhaps? I would not spend our third honeymoon in prison.

And you cannot be picky if we rob them, fussing over the size or shape.

[It's the glance away that has two cool fingertips tucked under his striped chin, drawing him back to that look of docile affection, utterly besotted—

And at odds with the playfully smooth catch of Astarion's voice.] Sensible spending habits? Aversion to serial larceny? No fussing about what we dig up? What sort of teenager are you?

The middle-aged kind.

[His retort is tart, though his eyes are as besotted as Astarion's own. They must look a pair of fools, Leto thinks, mooning over one another like idiots in love— but gods, if ever there was a moment for it, now would be the time. And anyway, he likes feeling like this. He'd spent so many decades sunken within his own loneliness; it does them both good to remember those days are at an end.

So: he relishes the two fingers that have him caught, tipping his head forward to press against them fondly. So: he smiles even as he speaks, his wry smile turned sweeter. So: he ignores the feverish chills that are beginning to wrack his body, preferring to cling close to his mate as long as he can.]

The kind that remember what forty-five really means— and that have spent too many hours dodging the Hightown guards to ever want to repeat that here.

Though if it helps your sense of decorum, amatus, you can set a curfew so I might ignore it and and break it.

[They started out like this, as far as Rialto is concerned. Benchmarks and old, reflected memories by way of bloodstained sills, dropped bodies, and the overharsh pop of cracking fireworks outside.

He'd looked at him then the way he looks at him now: soft across knifishly-angled features, hazy in his blood-colored eyes with the avid gloss of something more than love alone, and yet made that much brighter by it.

Indescribable, the way it finds him. What he feels. What he's always felt, solidified in this very second by the pressure against his hold that's about as fragile as a pup shivering in cold rain. That Astarion takes a moment of time out to wrap those sheets a little tighter round them both, well, it's just a sign of his priorities.

The reoccurring theme tonight.]

Scandalous.

[His right canine a quick flare of blinding white, lengthening the angle of his smirk.]

I'll pick something appropriate for an elf of the very respectable forty-fifth birthday range, then, shall I?

A quaint nine o'clock, perhaps.

[Gods, but he loves him for the way he wraps the sheets around him, tucking them in so carefully so that no part of Leto is exposed. It's such a minor thing in the face of everything else tonight, but as his shivers grow worse (oh, he hates this, his body trembling and his jaw clenching as he fights off the urge to chatter his teeth), it's that which stands out the most.]

Hah.

[It takes him a few more moments before he can say anything more. It's not a lack of ability so much as he doesn't want to shudder and shiver his way through a sentence; bad enough he's already shaking against Astarion's frame.]

You would pick something around then, old man.

[His own teeth flash in echo of Astarion's gleaming smirk, fledgling fangs peeking out as he adds in a drawl:]

Though is that my nine o'clock or yours?

Old—

[Oh, play (or sick) or not, Astarion almost nips him for that one. Longer fangs eager to challenge the measure of their lesser counterparts just to remind them of their place in the pecking order, brought on by a competitive streak that won't be quelled even in the circle of those arms.

He finds a way to silence it regardless.

(Love. Stupid, entirely obstinate love, that's how.)] Old man??

You're far too unwell to be testing me like this, you know.

[When his resolve finally breaks, it's with a kiss that only scrapes across the bow of Leto's lips— canines (lightly) asserting their part in this arrangement.]

[Gods, Astarion's sensitivity to that never fails to amuse him. Call it the inverse of his own toothless bristling whenever Astarion teases him about his youth, perhaps— though Leto plays that card far less than his mate.]

Old man, [he affirms with a dazed grin, his lip throbbing from that teasing scrape. Or perhaps he's aching from that kiss, his body aching no matter how light a touch is bestowed upon it— or maybe he's just sore, so much so that anything and everything sets him off, aches in his joints as he has not felt since Thedas thundering with every pulse of his heart.

It doesn't matter. He'll get over it. He always has before.]

Centuries older than me, is that not correct . . .? O-or is that only true when you want to score a cheap point?

[And then, as he gives up on dignity and burrows in close, snuggling as pitifully as Ataashi on a lonely day:]

Save your punishments for later, and cash in on them when I'm well.

It's not a cheap point if it works. You should know that from our dockside escapades and nights of wicked grace well enough.

[But he's already curling in closer, sinking in along the edge of Leto's side and slipping an arm underneath the sickly thing (whose tacky, vibrantly sweatsoaked back drags a clammy little line down the length of Astarion's forearm in the process) before he's folded into the crook of it properly. Able to drape across the whole of Astarion's cool body, or fold the covers up higher as he needs.

The pups take their cue soon after, crawling up across the sheets while Ataashi minds her distance at their feet, already knowing sickbed routines after so many years of it by now (not too close, never far).]

How bad is it now, my bride to be?

[Asked as he wraps two fingers around the breadth of Leto's ring finger, pinching playfully.]

[It's strange marker for how happy he is (and just how much he loves Astarion) that Leto answers the way he does: by emitting one soft, utterly pathetic groan. Whiny and dissatisfied, and yet in the same breath assuring— for he wouldn't have it in him to whine if he were truly unhappy.

Besides: having Astarion near helps. Feeling cool hands against his sweat-soaked skin is blissful— but so is the feeling of being tucked in, snuggled close against a soft chest and strong arms that will hold him just as long as he likes. And the pups help, little lumps of nestling heat that they are; he can feel their little bodies rise and fall as they breathe, unusually patient as they learn this new routine. And oh, Ataashi helps immensely, her steady bulk endlessly assuring to the elf who still thinks himself protector after all these years.

So he groans, yes, and he is a miserable thing as he shivers beneath the sheets— but he also smiles at that moniker, his heart still so full. With a little sigh, he tips his head, pressing his face against Astarion's shoulder for a long moment. Then, muffled:]

It will be easier in the morning. And the pain still does not compare to winter in Thedas.

[So there's that. Raising his head again (and alas, leaving behind a small damp spot), he adds curiously:]

I realize I may know the answer before I ask, but . . . do vampires have an equivalent to getting sick? It seems something I should know before we're wed.

[Gods, he's never going to get over saying that.]

INBOX II

IT'S PERFECT

YOURE. ONE. TO. TALK. POINTS TO THIS!!!!!!!!!!11111

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