[It's deft, that interruption. The swiftness of Kanan's intrusion into everything he'd wreathed himself in so thorough that for a moment he forgets he's weeping. Forgets his ire, too, drawing back by half a centimeter with the most bewildered look of fascination— as if some hidden codex is revealed. As if his world is shaken.

He's scarcely in his teenage years; to him, Satine had existed ages and ages beforehand. Since the dawn of time, before the Moulin Rouge, to Astarion's young mind, he'd imagined her a touchstone. In the beginning, there was sunlight, and the dust of the earth, and Paris, and Zevlor and Kanan, and the Moulin Rouge, and Satine.

He wipes his eyes, bleary and confused. Awestruck to say the least. (And beneath all that, hopeful now.]

—I....[Another blink, pausing.] I don't know. I wasn't thinking. [I was upset.]

It was.... [Warm. Hot. Comforting. Suffocating— in a good way: his blood boiled and his temples ached from the dizzying rush.] Nice? I think. I kept getting distracted every time I tried to focus, I mean, and he kept instructing me, but....

You know, I don't think he was faring any better, either.

[The way he'd shifted, the way he moved. Even the way he stuttered.]

Have you ever done it? Not—

[kissing. Not that. No.]

'Cultivating desire'. For someone else.