Chapter Text
Red is supposed to be asleep. Astarion seems to prefer it that way. Kind of a weird kink, but who is he to judge?
Turns out, it’s pretty hard to sleep when a predator bites you. His urges want to grab the toothy bastard by the neck, legs around him so he can’t get away. Bite him back. Then bite him again. Right on his pretty face, cheek is delicious. Noses cronch so fucking nice. He can take whatever he wants in the dark.
Okay, nope. Not that one. We don’t do that anymore, if that’s what we did. If that stinky little butler gremlin was telling the truth. If the stinky little butler gremlin exists. Seems likely, the gremlin did give him a cloak and all. But he hates cloaks -- they get stuck when he runs haphazard and grow heavy and clumsy when blood soaks them through. Astarion can wear it. The guy’s a bit more prissy about where he skulks. Less likely to get stuck, and if he does, Red gets to make fun of him. Win-win.
Instead, he focuses on why he’s not pretending to sleep tonight like a good little blood sausage. He needs Astarion. The toothy bastard is a smart toothy bastard, so he’ll probably know.
“So, you think Wyll would let me lick his horns?” Red says. It makes Astarion choke. Red didn’t think vampires could do that. Interesting. But not as interesting as an answer. Poking him hard on his fluffy head, Red repeats, “You think Wyll would let me --”
“Gods, no,” Astarion stares longingly at his bleeding neck. Probably asking himself if this is still worth it. Knowing that the answer is yes, Red continues.
“If I came up with a good enough good guy name, do you think he would let me --”
“No need to complete your abomination of a sentence, I heard it the first time,” Astarion sighs. Then, he says, “Is that why you’ve changed your tune, so to speak?
Astarion latches back onto his neck before he can start talking. Fair enough, he doesn’t want to waste his blood either. “Hmmmn...kinda? You don’t have a whole dinner just so you can eat dessert. Even a very nice horn-licking dessert. Everything is pretty bad, right? Lots of people are dangling their dicks in front of us like hey look at this wormy fix it. Would be nice, I think, to be the kind of person who can walk away from low hanging cock and do better for ourselves. And you know, for the mounds of helpless bystanders that think we're competent.”
Red knows Astarion’s finishing up because he does a weird, ticklish thing with his tongue. He squirms and wants to slap him, but he doesn’t slap him; the wound always stops itching after Astarion does the lick trick. Weird people mosquito biology.
“Let me see if I’m understanding your madness correctly, darling,” Astarion sits back on his bedroll and licks his lips. “You want him, and you think that a taste of catering to the needful masses will somehow help us out of this.”
“Not like my current motivation got me very far. The only bit of me I can remember has a worm in it,” Red shrugs. “Isn’t that how you get good at stuff? Practice solving other people’s problems so we can punt ours without relying on some needle-dick with a whole cobbler shop of other shoes to drop? That’s why you’re trying to fuck me even though you don’t wanna fuck me, right? Because you’d rather rely on the asshole in your same boat.”
“I don’t want to fuck you. And we aren’t so much as sailing the same river!” Astarion flings his arms about wildly, like dramatic gestures will distract Red from how he's protesting way too much.
“I know you don’t, I just said that,” Red rolls his eyes. Honestly, he thought Astarion was quicker than this. “Similar boats, then. The river next door. You have a Friggindor-whatsit, and I have a stinky gremlin that gives me presents for killing bards that not even the squirrels wanna hear.”
“His name is Cazador, and I knew you killed that bard!” Now Astarion’s grinning. Smarmy bastard probably feels brilliant and whatnot. Good.
“Whatever. And, of course I killed Alfira,” Red whirls out a duh with the hand not putting pressure on his neck. “Not that I wanted to. At least, I don’t think I consciously wanted to. Woke up all tangled in her intestines, and I don’t remember how it happened.”
Astarion sighs, again. “Well, now you’ve gone and made it boring by admission. Not that your admission was required. We all knew, and that’s why the Blade of Frontiers will not suffer your foul little mouth on any of his horns.”
“Damn,” Red curses and checks his breath. Eugh. Maybe Astarion has a point there. “What should I do?”
Silly eyebrows furrowing together, Astarion grumbles, “What in the devil are you asking me for?”
“About Wyll,” Red puts a finger right below the v of Astarion’s frilly shirt. “Help me with him, and I’ll do whatever it is you were trying to seduce me into doing. Yeah?”
The guy’s still suspicious. Valid enough. “Why me?”
“You’re smart,” Red counts off with his fingers. “You’re tricky. You know how not to look like someone that wants blood, and I have plenty of blood for you. Seems like a better deal than trying to fuck someone you don’t actually want.”
Astarion’s pretty red eyes go all big and surprised. Did he say something surprising? Or is the guy just not used to his opinion being more interesting than his body? Huh, that’s a good hole to peg later. When Astarion’s features school all cool and shitty again, Red knows he’s won. “Very well, my bloodthirsty friend. I’ll help you seduce Wyll.”
“Sweet, then --”
“But!” Astarion clamps a hand over his mouth. Uh oh. He blows a sloppy raspberry instead of biting into the thick of his palm like he wants to, and the vampire pulls back with disgust. “In exchange, I receive your blood every three days, you help me do as I like in pursuit of Cazador, and I put a knife in your gut if you mention this bargain to a single soul, or so help me.”
Red grins. “Don’t threaten me with a good time,” he does love a nice pointy gutting. Wait. That’s part of the problem. Less gutting, more preventing gutting. No gutting of innocents over his gutted body or so help him!
“Do you agree or not,” Astarion all but growls.
“The first one,” Red says, mostly still thinking about gutting and perforated intestines.
“Say it.”
Stubborn little vampire, isn't he? “All right, yes, I agree.”
“Shake on it.” Red sits up straighter, doing his damnest to look reputable as they shake hands. “So what should I do?”
“Well first we….hm…” Astarion frowns at Red, like he’s being deeply vexing instead of sitting there all peaceable and helpful-like, not imagining anyone's innards at all.
“Yeah?”
“Shut up, I’m thinking,” Astarion says and keeps up his frowning. Red does his best to shut up and sit still, but the staring makes that awfully difficult. Apparently, he has given the vampire a bigger task than he thought. The staring lasts for a long fucking time. If he had some intestines for jump rope, he could've skipped an entire nursery rhyme! But eventually, Astarion clears his throat, “Step one.” Red leans forward eagerly. “A bath. For all you insult that supposed butler by smell, you may actually be smelling yourself.”
Eugh. Fine. “Yeah, okay. What after?”
“With soap. Did they not have soap from where you came from?”
Astarion’s a fuckhead, and Red wants him to know it from his look alone. “How should I know? I’ve told you before, I don’t remember.”
Astarion’s digging around in his bag now. For soap, he’s guessing. Red certainly doesn’t have any. “Now you know. No excuses. At least a quick bathing should occur every other day, more frequently if you’re covered in blood.”
Damn. Seduction is busier business than he thought. “Okay, after this, I’ll go drown myself and lick soap. What’s after the wet part, already?”
Astarion’s suspicious again. Maybe he doesn’t trust Red to bathe himself. “Tomorrow, after breakfast, you are going to pull our dear Blade of Frontiers aside and ask for his advice. Confess to him what you did to me, that you had no intention of harming sweet Alfira, but you fear so fervently that you did anyway. You need his help, lest you become the sort of monster he’s meant to put down.”
Red nods eagerly. “Oh, that’s very good.”
Quite pleased with himself, Astarion adds, “Give him the chance to be your hero, darling. He’ll make that leap in a heartbeat.”
His heart is a wretched thing, but it twists with a strange want that’s as far away from gutting as he thinks he’s ever been. “...Really, you think he’d want to save me?”
“Obviously, you have met him,” Astarion does a pretty good mockery of some of Wyll’s more famous taglines. It’s hard to listen to properly, with his pulse thumping all weird.
“I want him to,” Red blurts out. Astarion’s silly brows lift into his hair.
Now, Astarion puts both hands to his forehead. Does he have a headache? Red has a headache. Or a heartache. He’s not sure. Sometimes, it all conspires against him.
“Next time, lead along those lines. You think Wyll would let me lick his horns, good gods,” Astarion scrubs at his hair and seems to use an immense amount of willpower to stand up. “Come along, you nasty little thing. It’s bathtime.”
Red frowns. “I can bathe myself.”
“If you think for one second I’m going to trust you with my soap --” Red snatches the pretty flower bar right out of Astarion’s hand and makes a break for the river. He’s a wood elf with fast hands and faster legs. That doesn’t stop Astarion from following him at an impressive clip, shouting all the way, “Get back here! Letting you foul up my things is not part of our bargain!”
*
Wyll Ravengard is immediately suspicious when Red, their strange sometimes cleric sometimes rogue, requests a moment alone.
“Well met,” he offers politely. At least today, Red isn’t head-to-toe doused in blood. The bright crimson hair they’d named him for even looks clean; Wyll hadn’t known that it was curly.
It doesn’t mean anything. Monsters can dress up as well as the rest of them. Red put on a good show at the Druid camp. Wyll won’t soon forget the brave wood elf that leapt out of nowhere to stab a warg in the neck when it had him down in a puddle of grease. The accolades from the tiefling children went far in Wyll’s estimation. Truly heroic acts, saving children from snakes, harpies, and the cruelty of adults who should know better.
Not to mention, Karlach. Wyll may owe a debt he can never repay. Left to his own devices, he would have slayed her, and his very self would be more damned than a pair of horns could ever achieve.
But since, a number of things about the elf set Wyll on edge. He doesn’t like the way Red looks at corpses, touches them, giggles at them. Or how he carelessly launched that captive gnome from a windmill with only a half-regretful whoops in remark after they fought to free him. Not to mention that awful, unspeakable morning they rose to a dead companion within their own camp.
Alfira. Poor Alfira. And Red poked at her lifeless body with interest, a most unsettling smile on his pale face as he claimed not to know a thing.
It’s the heart that matters. The heart that Wyll isn’t sure he can trust.
Red struggles to meet his eyes. Wyll does, after all, look like the monster between them. It’s understandable, even if it hurts. “Wyll, I --” he shakes his head and does, indeed, force himself to look at Wyll. At least, he can be stomached. “Okay. I think I’m the one who killed Alfira.”
Wyll frowns. He thought as much, but he hardly expected Red to admit it. “You think?” he repeats, hoping for clarification.
Thank Helm he had attuned his rapier and pocketed a scroll of Hold Person, just in case. He keeps his features neutral, preserving the element of surprise should circumstance force his hand. Red isn’t an opponent to underestimate.
“The thing is, Wyll, I don’t remember doing it,” Red says earnestly. “I woke up covered in her blood and I just…”
Disturbing words, honeyed words, sincere sounding words. He drops his gaze. Sometimes, the body tells what the eyes do not. Red’s boney hands wring together, as nervous as his speech. It matches, and that bodes well at least for the honesty of this conversation.
Continuing to confess, Red says, “I never intended to hurt her. I liked her fine enough! I just…I have these urges. For blood, for violence.” He swallows thickly. “I don’t understand them. But maybe…if someone I could trust kept an eye on me.”
The longer Wyll listens, the less attention he gives to the nearness of his weapons and all the ways he could destroy the person before him. The person before him asking for help.
Red had helped Wyll, when he needed it the most. And Gods help Wyll, he believes the dark eyes that look so hopefully into his.
So Wyll sits down on the log by the river and pats the spot next to him, “All right, let’s talk.”