Chapter Text
There had probably been other clues before now, Astarion supposes. He must have either missed them, or attributed some other, simpler explanation to them. Wyll was just… shy. Modest. A blushing virgin. Obsessed with achieving some fairy-tale notion of romance. All of those things are true, yes, but Astarion never tried connecting the dots, and so he failed to see the broader picture. Over time, he became so preoccupied with his seduction scheme that a lot of the rest of the world fell out of focus.
… In hindsight, perhaps that had been a different kind of clue, too.
The thing is, it had been easy to find plausible excuses for most of the things that were weird about Wyll. Some of those excuses had been provided by Wyll himself—the man has always been an excellent liar—but most had just seemed to make sense at a glance.
It had always been apparent that Mizora’s transformation had upset Wyll far more than he let on. For all his efforts, he had never been perfect at playing that particular reaction off. Astarion could understand that part, at least. Even in a world where Astarion could have lucked out somehow and attained a vampiric existence free of abuse and starvation, it probably would have still fucked him up a bit to have been beaten to death and reanimated as a creature that burned in the sun, cast no reflection, had no heartbeat, and always smelled faintly of the grave. Most of those are things that the general population never notices, but they still weigh on him. Wyll’s transformation is visible to everyone with eyes, so… Astarion does sort of get it. He also gets why Wyll is so keen to act like everything is fine. There is danger in letting anyone see your weak spots.
Then, there were the lengths Wyll took to avoid ever getting naked in camp. Other people had noticed that as well, not just Astarion, and it had been a source of some amusement. It hadn’t been unique, though. Gale covered himself up with illusion magic and the occasional well-placed Mage Hand. Wyll couldn’t do any of that, so if he just went off into the woods any time he needed to wash off goblin guts, people had a chortle about it and went on about their lives. Some people were just a bit funny about nudity. Hells, even after decades of everything life as Cazador’s thrall entailed, Yousen still changed his clothes behind a curtain any time he had the opportunity. Astarion thinks he should be given a bit of slack for not having noticed the connection—after all, Wyll had been modest even before Mizora changed him. There hadn’t really been any point of comparison.
Wyll also eschews sex, though, which had been a surprise. He had always been gentle about turning down Astarion’s propositions, always kind and apologetic and maybe just a bit wistful. Admittedly, this had been the hardest part for Astarion to wrap his head around. In the end, though, he had accepted easy answers there, too. Maybe Wyll’s true love fantasy had been to blame, or maybe he was just too unsettled by the possibility of Mizora’s spying to want to jump into bed.
The more time they spent in each other’s company, however, the less satisfying he found those easy answers. Astarion’s interest in Wyll had started out as something purely selfish, something purely transactional. Wyll was going to be his great defender, and sex was going to be the way that Astarion convinced him to stick around. However, one can only think about fucking Wyll Ravengard for so long before one starts to think about fucking Wyll Ravengard. Oh, Astarion’s interest in Wyll is still rather selfish these days, but it isn’t just about protection anymore. He doesn’t know when exactly that shift happened, just that it has been tendays now and it still hasn’t shifted back. When Astarion looks at Wyll, he wants him. In two hundred years of sex and seduction, that hasn’t really ever been a factor worth considering.
However, Wyll’s answer never changes. At first, Astarion had spared little thought about it except to be quietly thrilled that he might be able to get the benefits of a seduction without having to actually get on his back for it. Later, once Astarion’s stupid heart got itself involved, he had let himself believe they were being smart about this. Indulging in something akin to romantic companionship without complicating it with sex.
It isn’t that Wyll is uninterested in sex, either. When Wyll bares his neck and lets Astarion drink, the poor thing trembles with poorly-suppressed longing. When they kiss, Wyll sometimes has to make some half-baked excuse to scurry off back to his tent—or his room in the inn, seeing as they are staying somewhere vaguely civilized at the moment. And then there had been the sex dream.
A few nights ago, Wyll accidentally fell asleep in Astarion’s room… and then their tadpoles had connected. Aside from the frantic apology Wyll gave after he woke up, neither of them have spoken of it since. Really, Astarion isn’t sure why Wyll is so twisted up about it. They both know it had been an accident. Besides, it wasn’t even anything weird. Missionary with the lights off. Even in his own wet dream, Wyll seemed to just want to gaze longingly at Astarion’s face.
Astarion has seen the dog-eared paperbacks the man carries in his pack, too. Although he would not describe them as either accurate or well-written, they are anything but chaste. The endings all read the same, though. Two people fall in love, and then the author fumbles their way through a sex scene or two packed with tortured metaphors and dreadful euphemisms. Love. Sex. Happily ever after. Formulaic through and through, and Wyll can’t get enough of the stuff. Since they returned to the city, he has made three trips to a used bookstore to stock up on more of the damned things. Sometimes he even sighs over them.
So, Astarion reasons, there is no reason why this can’t just be simple. Wyll wants. Astarion wants. They are in some kind of a relationship now, and even talking a bit about what the future might hold for them. Maybe, possibly, Astarion lets his imagination run away from him. In his defense, he is half out of his mind tonight with the joy-numb-terror-grief that followed stabbing Cazador until he was more hole than man.
He thinks about how he only has a few dawns left until the sun is going to start burning him again.
He thinks about all of Wyll’s talk about tomorrows, always phrased like Wyll intends for the two of them to see those tomorrows together.
He thinks about all of the people that have ever touched his body, inside and out. What a shame it would be if the solution to Astarion’s whole “being weird about sex” problem had to be that he just never tries it again.
Somehow, they end up back at Astarion’s grave. On top of it, really. Astarion had not planned out the logistics here at all, only thought about how it might feel. How he might be able to find some satisfaction here even if he couldn’t seem to get it from killing the monster who stole his life.
However, it had occurred to Astarion that Wyll is a complete freak who might actually be into a bit of romantic graveyard sex. He is certainly happy enough to make out on top of Astarion’s grave. The moment Astarion suggests they do something more than just kiss, though, Wyll balks.
“It’s a flattering offer, Astarion, but I—we’re in public! In a graveyard, even. Anyone could walk by and see us, and even if they didn’t… well. You know. What if it’s disrespectful to the dead?”
Those are all extremely reasonable arguments. Arguments that Astarion would expect someone with Wyll’s level of propriety to find compelling. They also ring… weirdly hollow, like Wyll isn’t saying what he actually means.
Still, Astarion isn’t so far gone that he cannot recognize a polite “no” when he hears one.
“Right. That makes sense.” He rises to his feet, brushes the grave dirt off of the knees of his trousers, and extends a hand. Wyll does not take it.
“Oh. We don’t have to be—unless you want to be done, of course! But if you didn’t, we could still…?” He’s stammering. Sheepish. Adorably smitten.
Confused though Astarion might be, he does have to laugh.
“If it is disrespectful to fuck in a graveyard, then it is probably disrespectful kiss in one. Especially with that much tongue.” Astarion sighs, letting himself indulge a bit in his memories of the evening. Things had not gone exactly how he hoped they might, but it had still been pleasant. There are worse ways to celebrate his freedom than by kissing Wyll Ravengard. He offers his hand again. “Come on. Let’s go back to the inn.”
When Astarion says that, Wyll gets an expression on his face that Astarion recognizes at once. Although he might not be able to look at himself in a mirror, he knows that look all the same. He has worn it himself often enough.
Wyll is trying to pretend like he isn’t keeping his eye on the exit.
“We don’t have to go back so soon, do we?” he asks. His smile is wide, indulgent. Terrified. “Is there anywhere else you want to see in the city tonight? Maybe we could—I don’t know. Take a walk by the harbor. Find some tavern with a halfway decent bard and dance until dawn. Oh! You know what might be fun? What if we went back to your sire’s palace and set it ablaze?”
Once again, Wyll’s suggestions all sound reasonable. A bit unexpected in the case of the “setting Szarr Palace ablaze” option, but still, those are all things that they might actually have fun doing.
It’s just that Wyll sounds fucking miserable right now.
“Wyll, what’s wrong?”
“Nothing! I’m perfectly fine. The night is young, though, and—”
Astarion gives the man a flat stare. “You tried to distract me by suggesting that we commit arson together as a couple’s activity.”
“Should I jot that one down as a ‘no,’ then?” Wyll asks, all innocence.
“… Jot it down as a ‘maybe.’” Astarion tucks his hands into his pockets and starts to walk away toward the graveyard gate. Behind him, he hears Wyll scrambling to catch up. “Ask me again how I feel in the morning. Right now, I think I just want to go back to the inn and drink.”
“Wine? Or blood?” It sounds like Wyll is grasping for even the thinnest excuse for changing the subject. “If it’s blood you’re after, there’s a butcher’s shop just on the other side of the wall in Rivington that had a window display of fresh goose. I may also know a certain adventurer who might have a little extra blood in his veins tonight.”
“I was thinking of having both blood and wine, if possible, and in as great an abundance as I can manage.” Astarion says it like the throw-away comment it is, for all that it is also true. “But… Wyll? For the record, when I suggested that we go back to the inn, my plan was not to throw you down on the nearest bed and ravish you.”
Again, Astarion smells the sweet bloom of Wyll’s blush in the air.
“… Oh.”
That sounds like a relieved “oh.” Maybe a little disappointed, too, unless that’s Astarion’s pride making things up again. Regardless, something seems to have gone rather sideways tonight. Astarion thinks he might have guessed why, and the thought makes his stomach turn.
Is Wyll… afraid of him now? Disgusted, maybe?
The first possible explanation that comes to mind is that fucking guest bedroom. They stumbled across it while looking for Cazador’s secret ritual chamber. Although Wyll didn’t actually witness any of the depravity the room has played host to, he is smart enough to guess the kinds of things Astarion did there on a thousand wretched nights before. Astarion thinks, too, of those cages full of spawn. All the faces of the people he seduced. His marks. Conquests. Victims. The people who fucked him, and who Astarion in turn fucked over so much more viciously than he ever even realized.
He told Wyll once what he used to do for Cazador. How he used to be made to go out and fetch prey. At the time, Wyll had been sympathetic. Outraged on Astarion’s behalf. Gods, Wyll had been so kind about it, so much better than Astarion deserved. With gentle words and reassuring touches, Wyll had soothed away Astarion’s terror. Promised that sex was not, and would never be, a required part of their courtship. The way Wyll reacted—it had meant the world to Astarion. It had made him fall just a little bit more in love with the man, too.
There is a difference, though, between hearing about something and seeing the evidence of it face to face. Astarion isn’t quite sure how Wyll sees him now, whether he is looking at him as some washed-up, miserable thing with far too many bodies to his name, or if he has finally realized that Astarion is more of a predator than he had known. Regardless, something has changed, and Astarion cannot bring himself to blame Wyll for it. He wouldn’t want to fuck himself, either.
“Honestly, I would appreciate it if you could just forget I ever asked,” Astarion says, making himself smile. “Old habits, you know. They’re difficult to undo. Please believe that I was never going to force you into it, though. We can just… go back to the inn and do something else. Or sleep. It’s fine.”
Some piece of Astarion’s brain is struggling to understand what to do next. It’s a piece that still defines his worth in terms of what he can trade, a piece that only understands parting his legs to try and save himself a little pain. If he can’t offer sex, what can he give? What could Wyll possibly want from him at this point?
Maybe that’s just it. Maybe he doesn’t want anything from Astarion anymore. Leave it to Wyll to be so polite that ‘goodbye’ doesn’t even feel like a rejection should.
Wyll cuts in front of him before he can slip his way out of the graveyard gate.
“Wait! Wait, Astarion, I…” He holds a hand up, gesturing in some vague, meaningless way while he tries to find the right words to explain himself. “I must apologize to you.”
“For what?”
“For misleading you.” Wyll stares up at the sky for a moment, as though the answers he needs might turn out to be written up there with the clouds and the stars. “I know that you were not wholly honest with me about your motivations at the start of our courtship. Had I been braver, I would have answered your secret with my own. Brought us both onto equal footing. Instead, I… acted selfishly. Let myself take comfort in the information you told me about your past when I should have seen it only as a horror.”
At this point, Astarion feels like he has completely lost track of what is going on. Wyll seems even more upset now than when he had apparently thought that Astarion was planning some kind of sex ambush for him. That’s probably a bad sign.
“I seem to recall you treating it very much as a horror,” Astarion says. Then, he remembers what happened tonight. The blood, the gurgling, and the scrape of steel on bone. He giggles, still barely convinced that any of that had been real. “You… you helped me kill him, Wyll.”
“But I didn’t tell you the truth.”
Gods, Wyll makes it sound like he’s confessing the most vile, wicked sin to ever be dreamed up by the humanoid mind. Setting aside the fact that he has not actually confessed to anything at all yet, the very notion of this is offensive to Astarion’s sensibilities. Does Wyll really not understand the weight of what he has done? He gave Astarion his life back tonight. More than that, Wyll plucked him out from two centuries of misery and let him have a taste of something genuinely good for once. Wyll could be killing and eating people in his spare time and Astarion would not give a single, solitary fuck. In fact, it might make it easier for them to plan dinner dates.
Astarion is still at least half-convinced that this whole thing is going to turn out to be the set up to Wyll’s version of a gentle let-down. Still, Astarion can always slip out of the graveyard and disappear if he needs to. Wyll might be an accomplished monster hunter, but this is a big city, and Astarion has hunted here far more recently than Wyll has.
“So tell me now.” He gestures to Wyll, offering the man as much room to speak as he likes. “Whatever it is, I doubt it’s as dire as you have worked yourself up to believe.”
Wyll takes a huge breath, then exhales. “You told me that you did not want to have sex—”
Alarm bells start ringing in Astarion’s head.
“No. Not immediately. But we’ve been good, haven’t we, darling? We did the—the sensible thing. The responsible thing.” Hells, Astarion can’t help but trip over his words. Does he have to be pathetic in addition to being useless? “It doesn’t have to be forever. I’m ready to put that part of my life behind me… and behind you, too, if that’s how you like it.”
For just a moment or so, Astarion wonders if Wyll is going to be the one to go running off into the night instead.
“I let myself hope that it might be forever,” Wyll admits, finally. “If you just weren’t interested, then maybe we could keep on being happy together. That’s what I meant before. I used your pain as a shield to hide myself behind—and all because I was too much of a coward to tell you up front and let you decide for yourself whether you still wanted to be with me. Instead, I let our relationship grow and grow without ever telling you that there would always be a piece of it missing.”
“Wait a moment.” Astarion pinches the bridge of his nose. “Are you trying to tell me that this dreadful secret you’ve been keeping all this time is that you… what? Don’t want sex?”
“It isn’t a question of want. Astarion, I want you so fiercely that it is driving me mad.” Wyll gives a bitter, self-deprecating laugh. “But I can’t. No matter how I might wish it were otherwise, I physically cannot have sex… and I should have told you that a long time ago.”
There is a quiet hum of anxiety undercutting the relief flooding through Astarion’s brain. He is terrified that he has missed something here, that there is some other component of this mess that he has failed to see. It feels too simple. Too easy.
“Well. So far, we’ve been not having sex for about three months.” Astarion knows that there is a wrong answer here. Historically, Astarion has often been rather good at falling into those face-first. He gives his answer slowly, tentatively, watching Wyll’s eyes for any sign of reproach. “I don’t really see why… anything… has to… change?”
The look Wyll gives him is surprised. Not displeased, though. Not even a little bit.
“Would you be happy with a relationship like that?”
“Yes.” Astarion’s answer is immediate. He doesn’t have to think about it, not even for a moment.
Although Astarion is still sort of waiting for someone to the rug out from underneath him here, he does have to find this whole thing at least a little bit amusing. What are the odds that both of them would be simultaneously tying themselves in knots over the same baseless worry?
“Oh. Well. In that case…” Wyll laughs, still sounding a bit stunned, and pushes open the gate to the graveyard. It’s terribly squeaky, but somehow, Wyll still manages to make the maneuver look suave. He even offers Astarion an arm. “Would you like to go back to the inn? I find myself in the mood for a drink myself. Or six.”
Astarion loops his arm through Wyll’s and lets himself be led out onto the street. He has never been good at keeping his thoughts to himself, though. They barely make it ten steps outside of the graveyard before he blurts out the first stupid question that comes to mind.
“When you say that you physically cannot, what exactly does that mean?” he asks. “Because to me, it sounds like either you can’t get it up, or someone has cursed you. Potions could help with the first situation, and a cleric could help with the latter. And, I mean… we do know at least one cleric.”
Wyll first answers his question with a missed step over the cobblestones, and then with a strange creaking noise like the vocal equivalent of opening a door that has very nearly rusted shut.
“It isn’t something that Shadowheart could fix.” Wyll glances over and catches sight of how Astarion’s mouth is already opening. “Before you ask, no. I haven’t actually asked her. But you heard Mizora. The changes she made are permanent.”
Of course it would be her. For Wyll, his damage either comes from his patron or from his father. Sometimes, it comes from his father via his patron, as in the case of the whole banishment thing. It makes sense that if Wyll is this upset about something, Mizora is probably the cause.
Tonight, though, Astarion is still riding high on the impossible victory of killing his own abuser. He’s buoyed by a giddy kind of optimism that would have felt stupid and silly without having first brought about Cazador’s death firsthand. If he can escape his sire, if he can make a new life for himself, then there is no reason at all why Wyll couldn’t do the same. After all, his pact is ending soon. Why not start spiting Mizora now? Astarion did the same thing once he found out he could drink the blood of thinking creatures. This is the same kind of thing, just with a bit more skin contact.
He settles in closer to Wyll, walking in step towards a brighter future together—or whatever fluffy, overly sweet nonsense Wyll would say about it—and does his best to offer words of comfort and affirmation.
“Listen. Whatever weird thing she did to your penis, it’s probably fine.” Astarion wiggles his free hand around in an attempt to encompass the totality of penis-kind. “I think you’re underestimating the number and variety of cocks I’ve seen in my time, Wyll. Did you know that dragonborn have two of them? Two cocks! At the same time! And you have to make them pop out of this slit thingy before you can even see them. They’re like surprise penises, and the surprise is that there’s way more cock stuffed in there than it looks like there should be.”
Somehow, Wyll does not seem like he is either comforted or affirmed by this news… or by the “popping” gesture Astarion made to illustrate his two-headed point.
“I think…” Wyll stares straight ahead, refusing to look at Astarion even out of the corner of his eye. As close together as they are at the moment, Astarion can feel the heat of Wyll’s cheek. His ear, too. And his neck. “That you might be possibly assuming that perhaps I… might have in my possession… certain anatomical features that I, um… lack…”
Whatever modesty Wyll has, it got beaten out of Astarion decades ago—assuming he ever had it to begin with, that is. He doesn’t break his stride, but he does take a peek at the front of Wyll’s breeches. Sure enough, the bulge he has been eyeing for the past several tendays is still there. In fact, it’s more prominent than ever now that Wyll has gotten this tighter pair of breeches. Maybe Mizora just took his balls? That certainly sounds like her. The fucker.
“Okay, listen. I know there’s that whole adage about how people with no practical skills are like ‘a eunuch in a whorehouse.’ It’s nonsense. Don’t ask me how I know this, as I’m afraid it would rather bring down the evening, but I have it on good authority that you can still have sex even if you have had certain anatomical features removed. And it can feel good, too, just so long as the person you are fucking happens to be any good at it at all.” Astarion gives a little bow. “Which I am!”
Sure, perhaps he is extrapolating a bit based on a few unfortunate episodes within his own history, but Astarion knows that he is a far better bedmate than any of the people who have fucked him in the past. Besides, if he can pick a lock inside of the mouth of an enchanted statue without losing his hand or blowing anything up, why couldn’t he figure out how to give someone a post-castration prostate orgasm? Cazador’s dead, so anything is possible now. If Wyll wants to be fucked, fucked he shall be.
Right at this moment, however, Wyll is staring at Astarion like he just suggested that they attempt to defeat the Netherbrain through the power of interpretive dance.
“Do you really think that I…” Wyll blinks, and then points at his stone eye. He’s laughing now. It seems his mood is improving, although Astarion isn’t sure what prompted the change. “This one isn’t the only prosthetic I have. My other one… adds a little something to the heroic swagger. And, I admit, it helps my breeches fit better.”
“… A prosthetic?”
“Yes. As in, it isn’t a real penis, and it never has been. I apologize for making light of your confusion, Astarion, it’s just…” Wyll covers his mouth with a hand and fucking chortles like he’s some blue-blooded patriar having a bit of a guffaw over the winter gala serving unfashionable hors d’oeuvres. “I had been under the impression that you and I were… of a similar sort. Stylish as you are, I assumed that you must have at least heard of people wearing prosthetics like mine. They make all the difference in the world for one’s tailoring.”
If nothing else, it does at least soothe some of the sting of being laughed at for Wyll to immediately follow it up with a compliment about Astarion’s sense of style. While Wyll is busy continuing to chortle, Astarion glances again at the bulge that may or may not have taken a starring role in a few of his pre-reverie daydreams and attempts to recalibrate his expectations of what sex with Wyll might be like. It’s not a problem if it turns out that the man has a cunt instead of a cock—it’s just that it must be a damn good prosthetic to have fooled him for months on end. After two hundred years, Astarion considers himself somewhat of an expert at guessing information about potential marks at first look.
Then again, this might explain how he has never once felt Wyll get hard in all the time they have been tongue kissing each other and exploring erotic blood drinking. In hindsight, that feels like a glaring omission from Astarion’s mental “Seduce Wyll” dossier. How had he missed it?
Oh. Right. Because he had either been kissing Wyll, or drinking the man’s blood. Both of those things tend to be rather distracting activities.
“You know, it’s funny that it never occurred to me, given that I can just… make myself a cock on a whim. One of the perks of being blessed by the gods.” Astarion says that last part with a flick of his fingers and a mocking trill to his voice. Even though he is trying to pretend like it’s a throw-away comment, however, he cannot help but watch Wyll’s expression. He’s on the hunt for any glimmer of a reaction.
“I have always admired your skill with a needle, Astarion.” Wyll gives him a softer smile, then. A sweeter one. He even twines their fingers together. “This is an odd request, but… If there’s a pattern you like to use when you make yours, I would be grateful if you would be willing to show me. Mine is a bit on the older side these days, and I could do with a replacement.”
Oh. Oh, Wyll really has no idea at all, does he? Gods, how can he not know? Sure, Astarion has been defaulting to a cunt most of the time lately, and Wyll has never really been much for peeping at others while they bathe, so he can be forgiven for having missed the days when Astarion decided to switch it up. Astarion isn’t exactly being subtle here, though. If Wyll has read any but the very tamest kinds of elf erotica, he would be familiar with the implications of that phrasing at once.
Thinking back to the contents of Wyll’s personal smut library, however, Astarion is realizing that most of it had tended towards more monstrous love interests. There were… more than a few books about vampires, now that he recalls. Most of them had been in the newly purchased stack, too. Hm. That’s odd. Aside from that dreadful drow woman back at Moonrise, most of the people in Astarion’s life who treated him like a fetish object did so because of the elf thing, not the vampire thing. The vampire thing had always needed to stay a secret. Wyll knows, though, and he hasn’t ever been weird about it. Or, at least, not weird in a way that Astarion hated.
“While sewing you a brand-new bespoke cock does sound like a fun project, I did mean that I make mine more in the, ah… flesh and blood sense. Well, mostly just flesh, in my case. At least, until I started eating regularly again, that is. It’s remarkable how much you can do with just a little blood in your system. Gods, I thought people were making up that whole ‘spontaneous erections’ thing. Talk about tailoring issues! That’s half the reason why I have been giving myself a cunt as often as I have been.” Shit. Astarion is yammering again, and if he had been planning on making this news into some kind of sexy reveal, he has astoundingly missed his target. It’s just that no good ever came from people finding out about that particular anatomical party trick. This is Wyll, though, not some mark. Not his siblings. Not Cazador. He claps his hands together and pushes ahead. “Anyway. I am blessed by the gods! One of them, specifically. Corellon Larethian. Creator of Elf-kind. So… now you know.”
Once again, Astarion studies Wyll’s expression. Once again, he fails to see any sign that Wyll wants to make this into a whole thing. His mouth is doing something funny, though, and Astarion can’t quite pin down what the man might be thinking.
“Blessed by a god,” Wyll muses. “Would it be rude of me to tell you that I’m a bit jealous?”
“No, but I would question it. Attention from a god is a dangerous thing, even if it is fleeting.” Astarion makes a face. “Just look at Gale.”
“True, though I had been thinking more about the blessing itself. It sounds like it gives you a lot of choice.” He shrugs. “I can think of a few times in my life when I might have enjoyed having that kind of freedom—even before Mizora made her changes.”
It isn’t actually all that funny, but Astarion frequently laughs at things he shouldn’t. This is no exception.
“If it were freedom, it wouldn’t be something that gets dropped on you before you’re even born. Elves with this gift… You’re supposed to act a certain way. Be a certain way. Revere the fucking divine. There are expectations associated with it—not that I remember those, of course, but you do read about that kind of thing. I just… woke up like this. Down at the bottom of my grave. And then there were different expectations.”
Wyll looks back over his shoulder. It’s too dark now to see the shape of Szarr Palace up on the hill above the Lower City, but Astarion knows the placement of it on the skyline by heart.
“My apologies,” Wyll tells him. “That was a thoughtless comment. For what it’s worth, though, I can relate.”
These past two centuries, Astarion has come to think of Corellon’s so-called blessing more as “Corellon’s sick joke.” If that bastard of a god had actually wanted to bless Astarion, he would have given him the ability to banish everything between his legs altogether and leave himself blank. No such luck, alas. Cazador used to delight in ordering Astarion to take on the form of his choosing, tailoring his spawn’s body to fit whatever bespoke torture or assault he had planned for the day. Needless to say, Astarion does not really think of any of this as proof that he is particularly loved by the god of elves—especially since Corellon had never even once lowered himself to listen to the pleas of one who he had decided to bless.
It did have a certain degree of utility where seduction was concerned, at least. Things have been a bit trickier with Wyll, though, as the man has been very tight-lipped about his preferences. A cunt is usually a safe bet. People usually enjoy having two holes to choose from. At least, that had been Astarion’s thinking back when he thought Wyll had a cock. Now, his mental map of his would-be-lover’s body has a big question mark in a fairly significant location… and no matter what’s there, Mizora has apparently modified it to the point that Wyll thinks sex is impossible for him.
That might be true for people with no imagination, or limited time, or shallower reserves of spite at their command, but it isn’t true for Astarion. Plus, he can shift himself around as needed, so he has more options.
“Don’t apologize. There were times in my life when I would have paid a very high price in exchange for being cursed so badly that I could no longer fuck anyone.” Astarion raises his eyebrows. “Then again, I still feel like we could find our way around your predicament. If you want me to stop asking about it, I will, but if sex is something you would want…?”
Finally, Wyll stops walking. He sighs.
“I would want it, if such a thing were possible. In fact, in the past few months, I have thought about it more often than I would care to admit. Truthfully, I… I found your proposal earlier rather appealing. Making love atop your grave… it sounds romantic.” At this point, Wyll sighs again, and it is so lovelorn and so sincere that all Astarion can do is turn around and kiss the man before he does something regrettable like scream loud enough to attract the attention of any nearby Flaming Fist patrols. “My heart breaks to know that we cannot celebrate tonight with the passion it deserves.”
It seems that Astarion had been right in his earlier guess, then—Wyll is exactly the kind of demented creature who would be into that kind of thing. Pressing the heels of his hands against his eyes, Astarion substitutes screaming for a few moments of low, tuneless humming. Wyll Ravengard and his indefatigable charms are going to kill him all over again.
“This… change,” Astarion says. “Curse. Whatever it is. Did she put some kind of spell on you that will kill you if you have sex? Or kill your partner? Are your nerves switched around so that pleasure feels like agony? Is there some kind of infernal chastity belt situation going on?”
Wyll stares at him, aghast, as though each of those new horrors were just occurring to him as possibilities for the very first time. “No. Nothing like that. It’s just… I am anatomically incompatible.”
“… Incompatible with what? Is it just that you can’t be penetrated? What about hand stuff, or mouth stuff?”
Whatever image blooms in Wyll’s mind, it seems to alarm him—and not in a fun way. “Definitely not.”
“Well, is this thing limited to just your cunt? Could someone fuck you in the ass?” As soon as Astarion says that, Wyll’s mouth fully drops open in shock. Astarion starts trying to backtrack. “By ‘someone,’ I mean me, of course. I’m volunteering to be the ass-fucker here, not trying to convince you to find some random…”
Before he can finish this latest pointless ramble, Wyll turns on his heel and starts to walk away. Astarion panics for three solid seconds before he realizes that the man is marching back to the graveyard.
“We’ll need to take some precautions,” Wyll says, in exactly the same tone of voice that he uses when he starts planning out his strategy before battle. “My jacket could work as a barrier, and I… I will need you to promise not to look. Do I have your word, Astarion?”
“Sure. Whatever you need. I’ll even wear a blindfold if you’d like. You have my word.” Astarion jogs a little to catch up with Wyll’s military stride. “You just… don’t have my cock. At least not until tomorrow morning. I can only switch things around as I’m coming out of a trance. Unless that prosthetic of yours doubles as a toy…”
“Unfortunately not. I made it rather crudely, I’m afraid. There isn’t much to it besides some lopsided stitching and a pair of old socks.”
Forgetting for a moment the intricacies of planning first-time anal sex in a graveyard when one party has neglected to bring his penis along, Astarion slides to a stop behind Wyll.
“Socks!”
Gods, it comes out nearly as a screech. Right now, Astarion finds that he is seething with more rage than he has felt since he watched the light leave Cazador’s eyes, and he’s angry at socks.
“What’s wrong with socks?” Wyll asks him.
Nothing, in theory. They keep people’s feet warm, and they prevent blisters when you have to hike up a fucking mountain because one of your friends decided that she wanted to get brain surgery from a bunch of people who hate her. What they shouldn’t do, however, is be able to fool a penis expert. For months now, Astarion has been bamboozled by this mysterious prosthetic Wyll keeps in his breeches! As recently as two nights ago, he bit down on a pillow and fucked himself on three fingers until his thighs shook, and apparently, the target of his desperate wank fantasy had been a pair of fucking socks.
The worst part of it is that he can’t even tell Wyll about it. If he told Wyll, the silly bastard wouldn’t stop laughing until the end of the tenday, and they both really do seem to want to fuck each other before them.
“No, it’s fine. Everything’s fine. How about this. How about we—I don’t know, make you a few of them? A banquet of penises, all in different colors and different sizes. You could decide exactly how much heroic swagger you wanted to wear that day. And none of them would be made out of socks.” Astarion sucks in a breath as his ramble trails away into complete inanity. He hadn’t breathed all that time. “Oh, and I guess I could finger-fuck you in the ass instead, if you’d like.”
“Sure,” Wyll says, bemused. “We can try it. I know you are talented with your hands.”
It would be lovely if Astarion could just be normal about sex, but apparently, that’s out of reach for him. His options seem to be limited only to driving himself mad with senseless lust, flinging himself into a panic about harmless touches, or getting angry upon discovering that two centuries of sexual abuse has made him less of a sex expert than he had thought.
They make it back to the graveyard with haste, slipping through dim and foggy streets like there is something pursuing them out in the night. There’s no giggling as they sneak through the gates again, no teasing, no flirting. Both of them seem focused on the task ahead… and nervous, too. Loathe as he is to admit it, Astarion fears that the mood might be well and truly killed. As they settle back in atop his grave, though, he knows that there is no better place than here to prove that dead things can find life again.
Wyll is extremely precise about his requests. To Astarion’s delight, he does actually strip down to the waist, but that’s as far as it goes. The man seems determined to measure out the very minimum distance he can slide down the waistband of his breeches and still give access to his hole. One of them, anyway. He even goes so far as to tie his jacket around his lowered waistband like he is trying to use it as a belt to keep everything in place. Like he wants to block even more of himself from sight.
“Please don’t look. Or touch.” Once again, Wyll is starting to sound freaked out. Sad, too, in a way that Astarion can recognize even if he doesn’t understand what exactly is wrong. “Please.”
“Is this a Medusa’s curse situation?” Astarion jokes. “One look at your cunt, and it will turn me to stone?”
Any other day, he would have bet money that a joke like that would have made Wyll laugh. Tonight, he just grimaces like the comment hit a little too close to home.
“Nothing so dire. I just… no one should have to see that.” Wyll takes Astarion’s hand and gives him a desperate look. “Do you promise?”
“I promise.”
Under hazy moonlight and a cloudy sky, they kiss atop Astarion’s grave for the second time tonight. There’s still a thrill to it, still a sense that they are smoothing over something rotten—or trying to, anyway. In spite of every soft and welcome touch, a deeper tension lurks just beneath the surface. Astarion has fucked more people than he ever bothered to count, but he had never been in control of it. If a mark didn’t have a good time fucking him, it ceased to be Astarion’s problem after Cazador whisked them away. He gets the sense that he could really fuck this up tonight, though. That he could hurt Wyll a lot if he gets it wrong.
So… Astarion stalls. He stalls, and Wyll never calls him on it. They kiss, and Astarion kneads the approximately thirty percent of Wyll’s gorgeous arse that he has been allowed to touch, and they kiss some more. In spite of both of their best efforts, he never gets around to fingering Wyll. The angle is never right, no matter how they move themselves around. Astarion can’t actually reach Wyll’s hole without slipping his hand down the back of the man’s breeches—something Wyll really does not want him to do. Instead, they just keep kissing and kissing and kissing until Wyll puts his throat up to Astarion’s mouth and all but begs him to drink. After that, the night goes rather soft around the edges.
This whole mess started because Astarion had wanted to go back to the spot where his last miserable life began, just to see if Wyll could give him back something that Cazador stole from him. He wanted to know if sex could feel good if it was with someone he likes, someone who would be kind to him. Someone who thinks graveyard trysts are romantic. Someone who cares just as much as Astarion himself does about making sure Astarion gets to live as a free man.
But then, Wyll had started acting cagey, and Astarion realized that there was more to this than he’d known. He started thinking more and more about how they could make this good for Wyll. Give him something he never thought he’d get. At a certain point, Astarion had stopped thinking about his own pleasure in this at all. His new goal had been to prove to Wyll that whatever designs Mizora may have once had on his body, she doesn’t get to have a say in it anymore. She made Wyll think that she had changed him so much that he could never have sex on his own terms, and Astarion—he knows exactly what that feels like, right down to his bones.
Wyll is a crafty person, though. There is real guile hiding beneath all those lofty ideals. For all that he presents himself as some sort of heroic bastion of integrity with a keen sense of fair play, he can also be incredibly sneaky when he wants to be.
Somehow, amid all of their fumbling, Wyll manages to put his own breeches all the way back on and get Astarion’s all the way off. Astarion does not notice the former until he is well on his way to losing his capacity to notice things altogether. Wyll isn’t particularly skilled at giving head, but he is attentive, enthusiastic, and takes direction well. Plus, he waited to do this until after Astarion had already gorged himself with blood. All of it floods between Astarion’s legs, leaving him hot and sensitive with a clit so full it aches.
It’s… good sex, admittedly. Better sex than Astarion can remember having in a very long time. He barely even drifts out of his body during it, and he remembers for almost the whole time that Wyll is the one between his legs. Also, it is kind of satisfying to fuck on his grave. If good graveyard sex had been the only thing Astarion wanted, he might be smiling like Wyll is on their walk back to the inn. He is pleased to see Wyll smiling, and laughing, and acting like he had a good night. Still, Astarion cannot help but feel like something is missing.
So many people over the years treated Astarion as no more than a thing to be used. If anyone spared a thought for his pleasure, it was usually a distant secondary concern at best. Astarion has lived through too much of that fuckery for him not to rankle at the thought of such unbalanced scales. Yes, perhaps some of Astarion’s more embarrassing fantasies involve him being the center of Wyll’s undivided attentions, being doted on and spoiled. That’s different, though. He feels like something of a cad, walking away with wobbly legs and a belly full of blood while Wyll seems to still believe that his own pleasure will be forever out of reach.
“No one should have to see that.” Wyll had said that with such disgust in his voice. It doesn’t feel right that someone as good as Wyll should have to go around hating any part of himself so fiercely. He cannot seem to bring himself to even describe what’s wrong—not even to Astarion, someone who knows quite a bit about being forced to change to suit a monster’s whims.
Astarion can be patient, though. Hells, Wyll has been more than patient these past few months. No doubt Astarion owes the man at least that same courtesy. Assuming that Wyll has been telling the truth about all those tomorrows he wants to have together, perhaps Astarion can afford to take his time. He is very good at one particular thing, and if that can help Wyll… no matter what it takes, Astarion knows that it will be worth it.