illithidnapped | The Bladesinger: Part 1

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"I'm of a mind to let him rot," declares the only soul in the room that need not say a word to get that particular point across. Astarion Ancunín, with pale hands pressed against his hips, glares down in disapproval at the unconscious body of their present employer, "though by now he's so pickled with spirit I doubt even the dead would want him."

Judging by the faint wrinkle at the edge of Leto's nose, he scents it, too.

"Well, the other dead, that is," Astarion quickly amends, flicking a few stray curls away with the tips of his clawed fingers. "The unlucky ones that aren't me."

Thank the gods that it tugs against the grain of an otherwise knitted expression. Happens to leave Leto closer to smiling than not, though it's always such a near thing when they're on the job, and doubly so in Faerûn, where the elf's lean face has yet to grow into attached downturned ears; I'm no child, he'll insist at a moments' notice, sharp and rough in all the ways his hands used to be— but insistence doesn't change his frame or force his clientele to pay him what he's due. Hence:

"We should just rob him and be done with it."

"He is my employer."

"So?"

"He has my name, Astarion."

" —and he'll forget it come morning. Look at him, my darling sunlight."

"Do not think to sway me with sweetness."

"I could sway you with something else, if you prefer...."

" —what's that?" the weathered genasi between them groans abruptly, hulking silhouette swinging back into consciousness' arms as if he'd never left it to begin with. His rocky limbs crack around their joints from the shoulder downwards, vibration like a noxious floodgate as it couples with his breath, soused.

He sounds like granite scraped against itself. A rumbling churn, "who's there?"

Astarion cuts in first, "No one, you old bat."

"What?"

"See?" Aims itself towards Leto proudly, "Deaf as a bloody doorknob. ....and only twice as smart." His arms fold across one another, "YOUR HIRED HEROES, DARLING. COME TO COLLECT."

On what might be the question stirring around in that genasi's skull whilst further trying to right himself— no small effort taken to see it through, for he is no small creature by any measure: even partially slumped at an odd angle in the basement of Lower City's finest copperhouse, Leto's hirer matches their height with ease, and the knotted fingers that struggle as they push against the wall could either be mottled from age just as easily as decades of scrapping. If two upstart elves feel like ripping him off....

(Ah, but there's the recognition, saturated though it may be. One squint transitioned into:)

"Proof?"

"Here," Leto offers, stripping a taloned claw the size of his forearm from his belt. "The monster attacking your trade routes is no more."

"Hmph. What was it?" Asks their client, turning over the comparatively toy-sized trophy between his fingers, no doubt assessing its veracity.

No doubt too laden with Baalor Ale to do it properly.

"A hippogryph. Young, and unusually large. My suspicion is the ambergris your men had been smuggling acted as a lure: it mistook the scent for one of its own."

"And if more problems arise?" Proves itself the oh-so-predictable aftermath as per Astarion's prior estimations. After all, those dabbling in seedy work rarely take him by surprise.

"Then you may call on me again."

The genasi grunts once more, soon performing the trick of folding and unfolding his fingers to produce a meagre leather pouch, stitches fraying at the corners. It jingles when Leto takes it— which makes assorted metal the most conversationally inclined participant in this exchange next to Astarion himself, as neither Leto nor his hirer opt to speak at all in parting. No farewells offered, no thank yous or job well dones or I'll recommend your service. Only silence and stony lips and the jingle of that purse, and the little sighs that Astarion lets slip when he tucks his fingers deep into his own pockets, following his partner out into the streets.

And despite that pervasive sense of lasting silence, their journey home— stretched between blackest night and pallid sunrise (frost on the water always manages to paint the clouds shades of lilac and gold, rather than the usual sunbursts)— isn't unpleasant, no matter the season. No matter the way Astarion checks behind them without a word to ensure they're not being followed. A tipping of his senses outwards into the greater ether, letting in the din of a world he usually keeps out. The subtle vibrations of a city full of life.

Perhaps that's why they don't speak: Leto knows his animal insistence on safeguarding them as much as their own den these days. Maybe he's left him room to focus....or maybe they're both lost in thought, entire Planes apart. It wouldn't be the first time.

Only when they've returned to the dockside boarding house named home does he finally shed his precautionary cloak and slip back into his own skin. Watches his beloved do the same in so many ways: shifting from Fenris— stern angles and frigid bearing framing wild eyes— to Leto once more, melting down around a swarm of wagging tails.

And to all due credit, Astarion still stays his tongue through the cool clicking of coins divided towards the necessary shares. Food, lodging, and supplies— no. Make that food and lodging, no supplies. Not nearly enough, if the sole remaining coin pinned under Leto's grasp finds anywhere to rest.

"He shorted you."

Is met with silence.

Astarion tries again, insistent, "I could go back. This isn't Kirkwall, you know."

"No, it isn't."

What a thing it is to have two different conversations in the same breath. He can see now that Leto isn't peering at the arranged coin, but at his hands braced bracketing around them— old armored talons there, courtesy of Ataashi's due return, yet they don't quite fit those sunset hands the way they used to, the plating puckered round its junctions and ties....

It isn't the only time they've knocked themselves into this topic headlong, either gracefully or otherwise, and like Cazador, or a past mired in divergent fog, or the nightmares that come calling, doubtless it won't be the last. And still, there's a sense of familiarity in everything around him, disagreements included: their narrow bed gives as he sinks into it, soft fabric of sleeping slacks pressing in against his thighs for the way he's folded one leg over the other, casual, "the man was a drunken cunt, catulus— "

Oh, the look Fenris sends his way for that endearment.

It doesn't stop Astarion.

"—he would have swindled anyone."

"Yet he did not swindle anyone."

Astsrion's responding exhale runs paper thin; it bends, rather than rears back again, and Leto wastes no chance to press on opportunity— to actually speak without vampiric commentary playing second part— lifting the measure of his rigid stare, "I seem to be the only elf capable of growing older and becoming younger all at once."

"Well, no, not exactly," Astarion mildly deflects with a soft crane of his neck, fingers lifting slightly, "I seem to recall the tale of one Benjamin, somewhere, who—

"Astarion."

(I am so angry, he'd said. A bold confession at the time. A poignant memory now, springing to the surface. One of countless many.)

Fenris had been younger once. And when he was, there were crows marks near his eyes and divots in his cheeks. Scars and callouses and the ruggedness of a dog outlived its fights— all capable of speaking for him at a glance. Now, his body whispers nothing beyond inexperience. The very pride that served him through intimidation only misconstrued as rancor or the headstrong stubbornness of youth. Even the claim of titled godkiller— while not as overtly susceptible in Faerûn to drumming up a hard scoff of denial— doesn't really amount to much where credentials are concerned: in a realm oversaturated with demigods, impostors, fallen idols and old myths, without a city heralding your name, you might as well have slain someone's excommunicated aunt for all it matters.

Oh, it's all there. All obvious. Telegraphed and begging to be lanced like the purulent injury it remains. And Astarion....

"What, then?" comes the inevitable needle, "if I'm not to comfort you or console you— if I'm not to even offer up a word of brevity— what is it that you want me to say?"

"Must I make it plain?"

Time stretches for a moment, wound tight in contention for that upset that ripples in the outline of autumnal, narrowed eyes.

"No," is such a quiet truth. Smaller than all of the above, and left to cling to the back of pallid fangs for it. Bears the weight of the lightest addition of, "....but it might feel better if you did."

It takes no time at all.

No more than that.

Leto's expression melts. His posture freezes, but even past arms' reach, Astarion's eyes are still too sharp to miss how deeply it affects him, and to the bed, he beseeches: come here.

A set of beckoning fingers and a patient upwards slant along the corners of his mouth. Involuntary, for he wouldn't den with wolves if he minded being bitten now and again, though watching the wild gleam in savage eyes, he's no idea whether or not it'll soothe. Whether the handsome creature— just as breathtaking in the outstretch of enchanted lantern light as he'd been in veridian bloom beneath an open rift, wild and bristling and attentive all the same— still holding his fingers to the table topped by their meager means, will turn tail and nurse his aches alone, or....

It's the clack of metal first.

The padding of bare feet second (stubborn, so damned stubborn a creature that even in this world he finds ways to make it work, that preference for unclothed feet), sinking through his knees onto the mattress. Crawling— cascading— into the center of Astarion's chest. All weight. All lean muscle and fresh pain and heat like a fervid hearth fire. An easy thing to hold. To kiss— starting from the tips of his ears to the borders of his temples, his cheek. Easy, now, amatus. And the only resistance comes from the latent tightness in taloned hands, gripping him so fiercely that he feels the prickling of his own half-punctured skin ( it's no matter; he heals too quickly when fed to even care. A simple truth they both well grasp by now).

"I was pressing you too harshly, wasn't I?"

"No," is a muffled murmur, sunken through the corner of his sleeve but Astarion can hear the truth stitched deeper underneath. To the hells with this job. Why not do something else— anything else? They don't deserve you. None of them do. Forget them, darling. Forget it all. Oh, it'd all been well intentioned at the time. Sincere as can be and invested more in the notion of wellbeing rather than any amount of coin.

And yet he gets it. More than Leto might surmise, in fact, for someone short on youthful torment.

They're creatures of great loss. Great helplessness. Whose knees stay bruised even without a master to kneel for, owing to a grave that should've been their life— and wasn't.

Anyone that knows it by name can tell you it's not the tragedy that haunts, it's the suggestion of it. The echo that won't stay fucking dead.

"You're not making this easy on me."

Another smothered noise of immediate agreement. Good, it insists, "I do not wish it to be easy."

"Stubborn old wolf, what do you want, then?"

"I do not know. Perhaps being undermined by this body alone would make for an acceptable start."

"Yes, well, in my defense it is hard, you know. Watching the one creature you cherish— the only one, in fact— endure cruelty and disrespect day in and day out by a swath of feckless refuse, all worth so much less than what they pay. At least the patriar—"

"Treated me like a lapdog."

A glorified shopping bag.

And in hindsight, Astarion can't even argue. And he cannot murder half the city without having the Flaming Fist brought to their doorstep, they've been over that already. Hence the sniping. The surface level conviviality. The comments just to prompt a laugh, and it ends here, if it has been little more than torment.

"Then I'll say nothing," he concludes.

"I do not demand you stay silent, Astarion ....I only wish you were not right each time you interjected. That I did not crave to spurn them all as you suggest, knowing what it would cost." It lifts his banded chin. Places it against Astarion's cool sternum through the channel of his shirtlaces, pleading and exhausted, "I cannot bear enduring disrespect like that again. I will not endure it again."

He sounds like what Astarion pictures Fog Warriors to be, even if all he's known is merely one of their kind.

How doting he becomes. fingers carding through white hair. The language of forgiveness mete through touch. "That is what I always admired about you."

"My integrity?"

"And spite."

"Neither pays well."

"Mmn, spite does. On occasion."

"On occasion," Leto finally agrees. "But only just."