illithidnapped | INBOX II

[Oh.

Well that's not at all what he expected. Give him a proper moment to relocate, then. Settle in near a quieter little corner of the tavern's back of house, where no one will think to bother him.]

That's the one that caught you up? Really?

[Adorable.]

Well now i know it's not your fetish. [Rejoice, Fenris. You're officially beyond suspicion.]

But the answer is: it depends.

Some like the sight of something beautiful and delicate kept hidden away (hidden in my world, naturally) whilst others love the obscene dexterity required to do something as wicked as working a cock over with nothing but their toes. Then there's the sensory factor: if it's a matter of licking or kissing, it's one of the most sensitive places for most creatures, next to ears for elves or tails on a tiefling.

Does that help?

[There's a long (not that long), thoughtful pause.]

i

maybe
yes

i suppose

it seems like it adds more ~~comla~~ ~~multiplicitate~~ bits than there needs to be

but i suppose it makes sense

what about other body parts????

It's sex, darling. Adding more 'bits' to the equation keeps it fun instead of boring. In theory.

Other parts? Like what? elbows? knees? Are you asking if those count as fetishes too, or how they're used to make things

complicated.

[;)]

[The tone, if one can ascribe that kind of word to the sudden spiky quality in Fenris' handwriting, is: haha wow what an interesting question gosh hm well i guess if you really want to tell me but i'm not super interested, like not WEIRD interested, i'm just interested a normal and healthy and platonic amount in that answer haha]

both

Edited 2024-10-17 07:01 (UTC)

[c u t e.]

We'll be here all night if I'm to go over everything. Though it is tempting.

Most important to note is that there is no logical rhyme or reason to it— what gets the proverbial horses running could be anything, innocuous or alluring, it makes no difference. Ergo, any portion of the body is fair game. Anything you can imagine, in any nigh conceivable situation, is likely irresistible to someone.

And it goes without saying one can service said someone with all those mundane crevices— even the ones you wouldn't think only require a little creativity. A flattened palm to act as a bracket in a pinch [hah] whilst rutting against a stomach or a shoulder or a neck, or a couple of bound limbs.

Ah and never discount the simple novelty of those that adore mundane objects used on knees or wrists, cunts or cocks. [Strange, how this feels like deja vu despite never having had this conversation— or anything like it before. He's told no one of his trade unless it was demanded of him, and yet as he pens this down he has to check to shake the overwhelming notion that he has discussed this with Fenris. Perched atop a settee in a warm room by firelight, but—

Some remnant of some spice-wine laced dream, no doubt.]

Not in the way you might be picturing, either: just a few strokes of a hairbrush and a little filthy talk or panting, and off they go into blinding bliss— no intercourse required.

i

all right

i see

[There's a pause. It's not that he doesn't understand it in theory, no, nor that he can't imagine how one might discover they've an interest in such things— but it's a little like trying to extol the virtues of a seven course meal to someone who's only ever had a sandwich (albeit a particularly excellent one). He can understand the theory just fine, but that's still different than really getting it.]

~~people seem to have too~~

[No.]

~~does it~~

[No.]

was that so common where you're from?

[...is what he finally settles on. It feels stupid and childish, for it's not as if he's some sheltered little princeling. He has heard enough of the services offered by those at the Blooming Rose, and for Andraste's sake, he grew up in Tevinter. Never mind Danarius rarely attended all the blood-soaked orgies and vicious revelries of his peers; it's still impossible for Fenris not to have picked a few things up.

But he never really thought about it. Not the way he thinks about now, talking to Astarion and learning so much.]

such things are not utterly unknown to me. i am not gawking at the thought of kink, and i know of a few. but nor have i ever known anyone who, if given the choice, would opt to fuck someone's shoulder instead of their cunt.

[Then again, he thinks, taking another gulp of wine, how many people has he quizzed on the intimacies of their sex life?]

Edited 2024-10-18 01:53 (UTC)

[Somewhere a former vampiric spawn is smirking to himself as he pens out the words:]

Have you spent much time at the local brothels?

not as a customer

but a friend of mine did a few favors for some of the workers and inevitably i would be dragged along

and i lived in tevinter

why?

But did you talk to them, darling?

And I don't mean just the usual politesse, or sat within earshot during business hours— or did you do the same with any of the other chattel slaves Tevinter no doubt kept, for that matter. The way you and I talk now.

no

i do not talk to anyone the way i talk to you.

and in the past, it was much the same: i would speak of such things to hawke or varric, perhaps, but not a stranger.

Well there's your probl~~e~~~~~~

[O h

Here's the start of a joke: a whore gets flustered by some rough and tumble upstart disinclined to speak anything but the truth as it comes. No taking back that smear of ink now, but with luck, Fenris will never open his communication tome to this page ever again.

Varric. Hawke.]

I'd assume neither of them were the sort to mount inanimate objects or suck on toes, then.

[Of course he notices the ink blot, for he was so deliberate in choosing those words. Gratifying isn't quite the right word for what he feels when he sees it, but . . . it's something to have the weight of that comment acknowledged, even inadvertently.]

no

[Well—]

varric had a disturbing amount of fondness for fingering his crossbow, but i suspect that was a joke. probably. and hawke kept her sex life private, for which i was frankly grateful.

if anyone, isabela might have— but if she did, she never told me of it. her preference was to tease out innuendos and coy jokes rather than get into details— which was enjoyable in its own right. and when we slept together, it was

[Hm.]

thrilling. vigorous. but straightforward in that regard.

[What was flustered becomes—

Astarion doesn't know.

Sharp and needling, maybe. Like a buzz of uncomfortable static across his back teeth, up into his nape and the top of his skull. Why, is a mystery to him. He's never been uncomfortable before. Never been particularly prudish about others' intimate partners.

But there's something in those words that catches in a way that's more trenchant than bemusement on its own. A little more prone to sticking.]

Now she sounds a treat.

[Defies the heaviness sitting in his stomach. ]

Love a creature that knows the art of enigmatic play— a rare talent in any world, I've noticed.

oh, yes. she was a rare talent in many respects, and the ones anyone least expected most of all. you would have liked her a great deal, i think— she was very good at misdirection. flirting and dropping innuendos in order to make her opponents thing her little more than barroom slut— and then viciously proving them wrong.

[Not unlike you is the comparison he means to make, but wisely chooses not to. Not after penning barroom slut; it's hard to take it as a compliment after that, though Fenris assuredly means it as such.]

it made it hard to tell when she was serious about her exploits, though. which is how she preferred it.

still, i cannot call it educational. not in that sense, anyway.

[He probably would have liked her. Fenris is hardly wrong, if that's the impression she starkly left behind. Flirtatious, likely brighter than a star—

Hah.]

Oh?

In what sense was it, then? Don't tell me you were made one of those misdirected conquests.

Well, yes.

[That's a joke at his own expense, for he adds swiftly:]

misdirected, no. but a conquest? oh, yes. she approached me, and sooner or later, we tumbled into bed together. it was purely sex, which she made clear from the start— and which was a relief for me at the time, i admit. but it was straightforward, with very little variety in terms of kink or fetish.

[A pause, and then, a little carefully:]

she was my first.

[There's such a lengthy pause there, that for a time Fenris might be forgiven for thinking Astarion ran off and disappeared— his quill instead loitering above wax-skinned parchment, chancing the start of an inkblot once. Twice. Never quite connecting.

Ever? Is the question he can't ask, because he knows— or at the very least suspects there was another at the front of the line before her. Part and parcel for any slave with a pretty face (and sometimes not even that: what rough features fail to offer, youth, or a strong set of arms, or warmth alone might do for those with power on their mind).

But it digs in his craw like a splinter between set teeth.]

In freedom? [Writes itself before he can stop it.]

[There's no one else in the world he'd say this to, Fenris thinks, staring down distantly at the question. Isabela might have guessed long ago, but if she did, she had the wisdom to never bring it up. Even now, he isn't sure how he would have answered her. But not Hawke, not Varric— no one, for no one else would understand.

No one save somehow who had also gone through it.]

Yes.

It was

[Hm.]

Overwhelming. In every way you can imagine, it was overwhelming, but I do not regret it.

[Another pause, and then:]

It took me years before I was ready. I think we were in our third or fourth year of friendship when she began to flirt, and even then, it was a slow process.

Is it something you wish to try someday?

[No. No, he hadn't meant it that way. (Had he....?) —No. Don't be daft, Astarion.

Or at least don't be a cock.]

What, sex?

Yes.

~~You would have little trou~~

[Has he overstepped? Was this too much? Surely not— and yet something in Fenris writhes in agonized embarrassment for reasons he can't quite name. This is too much. This is too much too fast, he oughtn't have even brought the subject up— for it's one thing to ask that of a bodyguard, but a slave whose primary use was prostitution? Maker, he wouldn't blame Astarion for never wanting to touch a single soul again, and that's to say nothing of how objectified he must feel.

There's such a large ink blot forming before he writes again.]

Think nothing of the question if you do not wish to answer. It has not been so long, I know, and[...] as I said, Isabela was overwhelming even in theory.

[Hhhhhhhh]

Edited 2024-10-21 04:10 (UTC)

[He can almost sense that discomfort coming off the page in ripples, starting from the dead center of that inkblot. Funny, that his own trepidation left no trace where it could, and yet Fenris' is right there, front and center and precious enough to rot out every last one of Astarion's viperish fangs.

He's already hopelessly done for as it stands.]

Do you imagine I haven't yet?

Precious pup, it's fine. You can ask anything you like of me.

Doubly so for sex.

[Years later, when they've long since learned one another, Leto will laugh at his own folly. He'll know to read the come-on for what it truly is: a purring late night proposition that offers him an easy way in or out. He'll scoff at at his own fluster and the way he tripped over his own paws in his eagerness not offend— and he won't regret it, not really. Not when it was done out of care and concern.

But for now, what Fenris thinks is that Astarion has sensed his own discomfort and is overcompensating to make him feel better. That whether or not he is actually comfortable with it remains secondary; that training and conditioning have long since kicked in, whispering that offering a flirtatious statement is far easier than being raw and honest.

And that's fine. Fenris won't ever fault him for that. But nor does he want to make it worse. And yet—]

You have?

[The written equivalent of blurted out, his pen striking fast.]

when?

with whom?

(Hells' teeth. You really were flustered weren't you?

And here I thought you were straighter than a templar's rigid cock. Tsk. I suppose it's true what they all say: hindsight really is comparable to a beholder's gaze.)

--

[Well that's unexpected. Is it worry that has ink dashing over parchment, or the uneasiness of a former slave that needed years to find comfort in carefully applied companionship?]

Oh all right, fine. It was foreplay mostly. Just after my liberation from quarantine so

[Hm.]

yesterday or the day before? Sometime in there. I don't think it counts if they come from a hand job and pass out barely five minutes later.

No one noteworthy, cross my heart. Just some local riffraff with a good amount of coin in their pocket. Same as I was working towards tonight, as a matter of fact.

Though I like this better.

[That's— hm. Fenris frowns down at the paper, unsure how he feels about that— and unsure of how much of it is even his business to comment upon. Astarion is an adult, after all, and it's not Fenris' business to question how he earns money or what he chooses to do.

. . . but even so . . .]

I do too.

[Genuinely meant, if not distractedly written.]

did you want to do it?

i have contacts in the coterie, if you would prefer another line of work.

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