Chapter Text
It comes to him like a nightmare whispering sweet nothings in the form of memories.
Needlework, Cazador had called it.
The act of sewing words into his back with hot pinpricks of pain. He can taste the bile and tears on his rotten tongue, pierces his own flesh on his teeth just to keep the fear at bay. There is no sweet blood that pools for him to drink, only the metallic sour shame of his own past.
And he watches, fascinated by morbid curiosity, as unskilled hands so used to flipping through books and treasure pick up a fine thread and an even finer instrument to repair damage of the dead kind. Different from his skin – the fabric had been pierced by an arrow, nicking the cloth in such a way that its threads began to unravel.
Now his traveling companion sits by the fireplace and tries, valiantly, to make the poor robe whole again. And it amuses him in the way few things do, because watching something as mundane as unskilled actions turning into shoddy results is a joy much simpler than interpreting fleeting touches on his body and reacting accordingly.
In the present, he allows himself to chide with mockery. “Quite the artist, aren’t you? Is that what they teach great Sorcerers in Baldur’s Gate, nowadays?”
She looks up, startled. Pricks a finger on the sharp little thing and he can tell immediately because fresh blood sings in ways even people do not. It has him press his nose deeper into the tome he is reading, far enough away from the fire that the cold that clings to his form cannot be affected. Idly, he wonders, whether his dead skin could count as leather, if someone would wear it as their own, if they could rid him of it.
“Well, no”, she tries. “But there’s no tailor around. Can’t be that hard, Astarion.”
When she picks the cloth back up, the tiniest pool of red stains the fabric darker. But she does not notice, and carries on with her task, the stitches all wrong and warped. Her frustration has her clutch the needle harsher. Then the pain sets in, and she hisses.
Astarion can feel his stomach turn in unpleasant ways, too starved to ever feel full, too jealous to feel guilt. His back is forever marked, and she dares to make a grimace about a single drop of blood. Even though he had his fill of her blood, because she offers it akin to a gift.
In two hundred years, he has not been given a single one of those that did not come with explicit return policies.
But she has not complained, yet. So he will take and take and take some more until she does.
“I bet even the Tiefling toddlers would do a better job. No offense.” He means full offense, is all teeth and bite.
But, as he should know by now, she remains unfazed. It is the pride of her heritage, he is sure. The one thing that frames her heroic actions in greed and misery, because she would rather fail continuously than admit fault. As a Sorcerer, she was born with greatness flowing through her veins. “I will learn in due time, then.”
“Did you nick a sewing book for beginners together with the latest spell related tome?” He holds his own book up for good measure. “Or are you just that stubborn?”
She nudges the needle, stops, gets back to work. “There is no better place than to start with the basics. Ask Gale if you do not believe me.”
“Darling, if I wanted to experience the joy of sleep, I would rather you recite the boring lectures than the Wizard. Least from you, I won’t hear love poems for a tempting Goddess.”
That, at last, has her chuckle. Her voice is warm enough to make him be tempted to turn closer to the fire, but Cazador had been just as warm when he approached him with hot iron and the promise that it would be over soon.
The bastard had lied, of course. It had taken an eternal night to finish the deed. So Astarion stays rooted on his tree stump, pretends the words on the pages mean a damn thing, and listens but does not look. This way, he can pretend her laugh is vicious and meant to harm Gale, instead of something kinder.
“I would bet fifty shiny gold pieces that he’d talk about Mystra five minutes in.”
When he looks to her, incredulous, he notices the frayed edges of the failed needle stitches have made a mockery of the garment. He would very much like to look into her eyes, see the mirth there, but he cannot. If he dares to look away, then the weapon might lodge itself into his skull – or worse.
“I shall bet twice as much that you cannot fix your robe, then. It looks horrendous, if I may say so.”
Internally, Astarion counts out the pieces of gold. Cazador has never let him outside with more than what was needed to tempt victims – a small bag, hardly full. He only ever possessed enough to order a drink or two for himself and company.
The amount wagered could easily get him fabric nice enough to sew a suitable shirt out of, even though the texture would not be as satiny soft as his body remembers wearing when his mind has already forgotten.
“I must try harder, then”, she quips, clipped short, just a breath of air.
He picks at a stray thread on his own shirt, and then the jealousy is back in full force. Because she wastes the precious good she carries so carelessly, would rather destroy her own belonging than ask for help with fixing it.
The feeling is so raw he feels the numb throbbing of his scars on his back.
“I only see a petulant Sorcerer at her wits end. Cannot magic your way out of this one, can you?”
His hands make little flurry movements, and only his knowledge of bodies is to blame for noticing the way she gives the gesture her full attention. Everything to keep herself away from the frustrating task at hand. Astarion picks up an imaginary needle of his own, pinches its illusionary nature between two fingers, and mockingly stabs the air.
“That is how you look, darling, and it would be cute if you were attempting murder. But even your victim would laugh at your sewing skills.”
He feels the venomous words on his tongue akin to a poison, swallows around the weight of them, and adjusts his posture. When he talks next it is all pretense and none at all, something fully fake and ruefully real.
“Needlework is like passion – you need to feel the cloth the way one would a lover.”
When Cazador had carved his flesh, he had whispered I love your screams best, had uttered I like your whimpers well enough, had shouted but I hate your silence!
Astarion is silent, now.
She finds her voice after an eternity that could not have been longer than a minute.
“…you wouldn’t hurt a lover.”
“Pardon?”
“It’s not – I don’t think they’re the same. At all.” She turns fully towards him, now, body rigid but open. Confident. “You mend loved ones with kindness, not pain.”
“Hah!” His laugh is stilted. She does not buy it, would not even wager coins on its realness. “Does a Sorcerer lack the imagination needed to learn new tricks?”
“No…just accurate terms and detailed descriptions. Did you know that spell tomes for wizards are dreadfully simplified?”
Astarion huffs out a breath. “And yet my simple instructions are too much for your tadpole-occupied brain.”
“They’re not!”
“Prove me different, then. Else that shiny bet of one hundred golden coins shall be mine.”
“…fine.”
She smooths out the fabric in her hand, caresses it softly. It lacks poise and purpose, but the robe unravels into a less crumpled versions of itself. Astarion watches as she carefully cuts out the wrong stitches the way one would cut out fabric from healed suture wounds.
The action looks more carefully handled than anyone had ever treated any of his bruises, as though further damage of the good would mean personal harm to her. It is utterly boring to watch, and yet he does, body angled towards the warmth even when the rest of him sticks to the shadows.
“The first steps are most difficult. You need to really become intimate with your object of affection.”
“It is a garment, Astarion.”
“One someone could strip from you – and you wouldn’t want it to rip, then, mhm?”
He remembers the damage of his undershirt. Can recall the nights spent begging for the most crude utensils to repair it. It had taken bruised knees and an ego that could have not been beaten more blue to get them.
But he got them, in the end. And his fingers reach out on instinct, his mind a mile away.
“Mhm? If you think you can do better, Astarion, you need only say so.”
“I…am a master of my craft.” He hesitates. His hands stop. “Neither lover nor tailor would find me lacking.”
The way she glances over his form is not lost on him. She watches just to watch, not to take him apart piece by piece. And yet her eyes glide over his curves just the same, make him feel just as naked as any other old flame did.
But the fire that crackles and dances is new, and her gluttonous spirit is whole and not severed. She does not lust, only longs, and it frustrates him the way pinching yourself on a needle might.
“Something tells me you seduced a tailor or two in your time”, she quips.
“And if I had?”
“Well, I can only wager that your penchant for luxury comes from the debauched rewards of handsome men and women aching to dress you up in satin.”
Astarion knows she thinks herself clever from the way she cocks her head to the side, revealing her neck. It would be easy to walk over and unravel her the way she thinks he did for the long-gone.
Any other night he would jump at the opportunity to assure his continued spot in her space for companionship, to mold her into something he can press himself into and stay there.
But tonight she carries a weapon, one that glints sharp from the moon and the smoldering wood, and it gives him pause, pauses his thoughts, lets his words flow in ways no rivers would find delight in.
“You speak to corpses on the regular. You do not get to judge my sense for entertainment.”
When she laughs next, he watches. And though her joy is all teeth, they do not glint sharp in the campfire light. The smile that she wears is alive with something too gleeful to share with the world, because she hoards it all and hates giving things away.
“The Dead listen without judgement. It would be unfair to judge them based on the many burdens they carry, in turn.”
“Burdens?”
“I have not met a single one without regrets. They talk, if you ask them. And I always do.”
She speaks a compliment into the night, one that is safe to touch and hold, and he feels the need to claw it wide open so it remains his.
“Yet just between us – you make for a much more pleasant conversationalist. Better than any tailor I could talk to, besides.”
He wants to preen himself under the red glow, talk tall tales of all the noble talks he used to hold – but no subject or memory surfaces, and so his reply is just words said so silence cannot reign.
“A conversationalist? Of course I rank highly – have you heard the competition? Shadowheart moans and Lae’Zel mocks, and anything Karlach says would never be uttered in high society.”
“It isn’t a competition. Nothing of the sort. I just like to talk to you.”
She speaks it as though she means it. He knows such sweet nothings well, but this one is warped, the word order all wrong. Ghosted breaths of I love to hear you talk brush against his neck, stick to his skin and nestle near his scars.
“Well – who doesn’t?!”
He shudders and it is neither from pleasure nor from the cold. But she notices, and watches, and worries. He sees it in the way her brows crease, how her face scrunches up the same way she crumples the cloth in her palm.
Her words are deflections, persuasions of the innocent kind. Her voice has always been honey sweet whenever she has wanted something – coin, mostly. Astarion idly wonders if he could pour eroticism into his voice and drown her with his words alone, just so she would stop from trying to pry him open akin to the thick tomes she so adores.
“Alright, I’ll bite – who?”
The pun is lost on him. The word constricts his throat, has him scratch the faded puncture wounds near his neck. His body runs deadly cold and yet the points burn and cinder, and he feels sun-struck and dead-wished.
Cazador.
Talk was forbidden unless asked.
Cazador Szarr.
Screams were cherished. Words were damned.
He remembers being called a boy-sinner, a man-eater, a corpse-walker.
And he could never talk back-
“A bastard, mhm?”
He hiccups on his own saliva and gulps down shame. Then he washes it all away with wine, the cheap kind in scratched up glass bottles with weirdly sticky residue on the sides. It tastes foul, like figs that the fruit flies got to first. But as long as he drinks, he does not have to divulge information.
Astarion believes he can stall her out with indifference.
She takes it as a challenge.
“You can say anything. Talk freely. I do not judge you. It’s that penchant for the…undead, remember?”
For a moment he thinks she used to be a teacher, once. The kind that children flock to, and adults abhor. Mayhaps she had been a guardian figure that knew too much because she talked in secrets with anyone who had anything of worth to trade.
He does not know. She never shares her story, only ever sought to seek out closeness through a shared upbringing. Because Baldur’s Gate was her home, and his hell, and she knows enough to figure out that it could never be heaven but nothing else.
Perhaps he prefers it that way.
“I’m very much alive enough to share what I want to. If you try to force your tadpole powers onto me or, Gods forbid, try to magic your way into my brain, I’ll bring more than my teeth!”
Her hands raise. The robe falls to the floor, into the dirt, and lays forgotten on the cold hard ground.
When she stands he expects her to fetch the garment and seethe because he made her drop it – surely he must have, it fell after his words, and actions always follow reactions – but instead she leaves the warmth to join him in the cold.
Astarion half expects her to carry the needle with her, and so his eyes search frantically for any ounce of pain that he could fill his mind with – but her hands are empty. Nothing rests there, they are filled with little else than an open invitation of peace.
Surely a screw up as fatal as this one is deserving of repercussions. An open palm? Maybe, all the better to hit him with. But she does not force her hand; instead, she leans in, picks at the unraveling thread near his collarbone, and sighs.
“You could have told me yours needs fixing, too, you know.”
“It – is of no importance. I…can just seduce a tailor, next time we meet one.”
“Nonsense. You love that shirt, and if any tailors were around I wouldn’t embarrass myself so.”
Nervous legs entangle with his own in their haste to retreat, and she recoils at the touch, tries to find solace through the flames. But they only serve to tint her cheeks a more blood-touched color.
“I’ll fetch you a fitting thread. I brought lots of colors, you see. White should be one of them.”
Wishes to voice his indifference grasp at his unbeating heart, yet she beats him to it with her rush towards her treasure trove. So he stays, rooted to the same spot still, and focuses on the dirt stained robe.
Still on the ground.
Forgotten.
Unimportant, in the wake of his minimalist discomfort.
She returns with a small box of rainbow colors, fine spiderweb-thin strands of spun gold. When she lets him see the contents it is with a cherished glee that it is her secret stash of contraband that she shares with him.
He has no claim to the yarn.
She fetches his book away and sets it aside – carefully, not into the dirt, with a leaf between the pages he was reading – and pushes the many tints of white and cream into his arms.
“Which one fits best, do you think?”
He cradles the threads the way an ever young man with no worth would hold a newborn – stilted, forced, afraid. Astarion quickly holds on fast, feels his nails separate the thin layers spun into tiny balls.
“Wherever did you find such lovely items?”
“That’s a secret~ Go on, choose one!”
She walks away from him, then, finally, and leaves him to his own devices while she returns to her own bruised robe. It is only when Astarion stares longer at the yarn in his hands that he feels compelled to join her.
Because everything white looks the same in the moonlight.
Because the fire would make it easier to pick out to best tinted one.
Because the faster he can return all the others, the better.
So he joins her, and focuses on all the little differences he has not had to worry about in centuries. This one is richer, that one smoother, this one softer, that one rawer. All would work, and he feels overwhelmed by the choice.
“Hey, Astarion – that cream colored one? Most expensive one by far.”
He hears it over his shoulder, near his ear. She whispers it quietly, as though it were a precious thing to tell him and no one else. When he does not step away from the breath that tickles his skin she draws nearer still, clutching her robe with one arm while the other points towards the thread in question.
He huffs out a breath of air he hadn’t known he was holding, and closes his fingers around her prized possession. The others he returns into her waiting hand, making sure to touch her.
By now, she knows of the cold that clings to him, and merely shudders. He recalls that she had once said his freezing skin was different from that of corpses, and he had taken it in offense and in stride.
Ever since then, she has made it a habit to remind him that he is only lacking in warmth, rather than being cold. He bares his fangs for her and she bares her neck, and that is that.
“You could sit by the fire to get warm, you know.”
“Tempting as that may be, I take the act of sewing very seriously. My shirt and I do not require any onlookers – though you are free to join me in my tent.”
He chuckles with mirth that he would wager to be truthful. It is dark and sinful and like the night, but so much more. Somehow, he believes his words to be warmer than the campfire glow, despite his breath feeling like frost near her neck.
“Ah. To learn all about the things those tailors taught you?”
He does not dare break her skin. But his fangs could feel the pulse of her if only he pushed further. He does not.
“My intentions are pure, of course – sewing is not taught in but a single night.”
When her breath hitches his lips connect with her collarbone. On other nights, he might feed from her. Yesterday, he would have. Tomorrow, he might. Tonight he steps away, the thread still in hand.
He finds comfort in its softness, rubs the gentle yarn with desperate fingers that seek to own instead of rent. Perhaps, if he plays his cards right, she will surrender the rest of it once he is done mending his shirt.
“So you’re saying we’ll start with the basics?”
“That – and the hundred coins you owe me for losing.”