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Astarion's thighs hurt.
Really, all of him hurts. His face, his scalp, the quickly purpling line of his throat, the sockets of his eyes, his aching jaw, the damp, raw space between his legs…
Astarion sniffles, his head in his hands. He's in the courtyard of his master's palace, huddled in on himself as he leans against the wall. He wipes blood and dirt and other things, things he doesn't want to think about, off of his face. It hurts. He cries quietly as the cold wind nips at the dozens of open cuts that litter his body. Cazador told him to wait here and so he waits, shivering and pathetic in the dark.
It wasn't supposed to be like this.
He's still learning the rules of this place, the things the man who calls himself master expects from him. He'd been trying to do a good job tonight, desperate for a break from Cazador's wrath for one evening. He was doing a good job, or so he'd thought.
He's learned a lot, and quickly, to his shame and Cazador's delight. His knowledge of the law and how to wield it to his advantage has been replaced with baser things, things that would have once made his cheeks burn and his heart skip a beat. Astarion's knowledge of the law and the city itself slips further away every day, with every set of hands and lips that land on his body, every cock that presses past his lips or between his legs. He no longer ponders ordinances and pardons, but instead how best to use his tongue and teeth to bring someone to the edge, the ideal cadence of his voice when moaning come home with me into a stranger's mouth, how to bend his spine at just the right angle, with someone buried inside of him, and make them both see stars.
Whore, he thinks of himself, bitterly.
He feels very much like one tonight. The men who'd left him like this would certainly agree.
The clack of shoes on stone, the swish of a cloak.
Astarion quickly wipes his eyes on the back of his hand and stands, bowing his head as respectfully as he can manage. Cazador, before him, studies him in silence. Astarion sniffles, pathetically, and a tear hits the stone below. His master cups his face and tilts it up, so that they're looking at one another.
"Poor little thing," he says, softly. Astarion's eyes well with tears and he sobs, weakly, humiliated at the reaction but unable to stop it. It's been so long since Cazador spoke softly to him, not since the first night, already a decade ago.
"I'm sorry," Astarion says, through tears, "I tried to bring- bring you something good- but-"
"Who did this to you, child?"
"A…group. Guards. I just wanted one of them, a pretty human boy. I thought you'd like him. It was going well and I- I followed him out down an alley and he- well, he wasn't alone."
"How many?" Cazador asks, as he strokes an open cut and makes Astarion whimper in pain.
"Five."
"They beat you?"
"Yes," Astarion whispers, his eyes closing. Cazador presses down on the space beneath his left eye, no doubt already black from the fist that kissed it earlier in the night.
"What else did they do to you?"
Astarion shakes his head, desperate now for this to stop. He doesn't like it, remembering them, their hands on him, their voices, the things they said to him.
He'd gone down hard, after the first punch. He'd been stunned, the world spinning as he laid there on his back, the men above him calling him whore and pretty boy and bitch. He'd begun to whine, in the back of his throat, as two of them began pulling his trousers down his hips.
"I don't want to talk about this, master, please-"
Cazador sinks a nail into the wound. Astarion screams and tries to slap his hand away, but fails. The nail digs in, then twists.
"Tell me what they did to you. Now."
"Turns-" Astarion gasps, before his voice breaks into a sob, "they took turns with me."
"Where? Here?"
Cazador presses his finger into Astarion's lip until he opens his mouth. He does it, reluctantly, trying not to gag as his master begins to stroke his tongue with his fingers. He whines softly in complaint, the sound pathetic and humiliatingly reminiscent of the ones he'd made earlier, for the others.
He nods. Yes. They'd had their fun with his mouth. He can still taste them, his eyes stinging with tears at the memories.
"Where else?"
"Between my legs, master," Astarion says, around his fingers.
"Did you enjoy it?"
"No," Astarion half-shouts, half-sobs. Cazador pulls his fingers from his mouth and grabs him by the hair, roughly.
"Do not raise your voice at me, boy," he hisses, into his ear.
"I'm sorry- I'm sorry, master, please don't hurt me-"
Cazador listens to him sob and beg for mercy, his hands wandering over his battered body as he does. He finds every little shame on Astarion's person, from the tear in his shirt (cut his shirt open, boys, I want to see his pretty little tits-), to the sticky mess on his back (there's no more room inside, use this-), to the ruins of his underwear, stained with his own come (aw, look he loves this, what a sweet little slut-).
Cazador examines each piece of him, making quiet comments in his ear here and there. He asks for specifics and Astarion reluctantly gives them, his face burning with shame.
Yes, he says, someone finished on my face. Yes, I came. Yes, it was more than once. No, no, no, I didn't want it, no, please believe me.
Cazador, eventually, releases his hold on him. He stares at Astarion in the dark, his eyes red and gleaming in the shadows. He looks like a devil, the way he did the night they met. Astarion finds it difficult to hold his eyes and he looks away, choosing instead to study the ground at his feet.
"I have been a poor father," Cazador says, after a few seconds of silence. Astarion looks up at him again, tilting his head curiously.
"I gave my daughters this lesson, but not my sons. The others did not need it, of course. You, though…"
He looks at Astarion, a smile playing at the edges of his lips.
"Men like boys like you, Astarion. Do you know why?"
Astarion shakes his head, the flush on his cheeks darkening. He doesn't want to hear the answer, but Cazador continues anyway.
"You are beautiful and you are weak. A dangerous enough combination on its own. But the real beauty of you is how easy you are to hate."
Silence. Astarion digs his nails into his palm.
"They want you and they want to hurt you for it. And we both know that you look so very lovely when you are hurting, my darling."
Cazador steps closer then, making Astarion flinch back. He grips him by the wrist, tutting quietly, then moves to take his hand. Astarion, afraid but curious, offers it to him. A dagger is placed in his palm, silver and heavy in his hand. He studies it in silence, baffled at the idea of Cazador offering him a weapon, something he could easily turn on his master in a second.
He doesn't, of course. Both of them know he would never.
He swallows the shame of that knowledge down, with difficulty, as he grips the pommel in his fist and meets Cazador's eyes with a curious look.
"This city is a dangerous place for pretty little things like you. Keep it on your person. I will not have the rabble damaging my property."
It's cruelty, yes, to be reminded now of his status as an object, a possession for his master to play with, but still, it almost sounds like affection, coming from Cazador's lips. His master strokes his hair, smoothing curls back into place gently, and that too feels like love, or the closest thing Astarion has to it anymore. He leans into the touch before he can stop himself, so very desperate to be comforted.
"You need your looks," Cazador says, as he cups his cheek. "They are the only good quality about you."
The words sting, but Astarion nods anyway. He grips the dagger tight, imagines sinking it into someone's flesh.
It feels strange in his hand, the object so foreign to him that it feels almost wrong to hold it. He never once wielded a weapon in his time as a magistrate, though perhaps it could have saved him, in the end. He sniffles, quietly, and tries not to think about how he got here.
"Thank you, master."
He moves to go towards the castle and Cazador stands, watching him walk away.
And then, too fast, there's a large hand around his throat, a body pressed against his own, holding him so tightly that he can't move. He gasps sharply, struggling in his master's arms as he's held fast, unable to slip away.
"W-what-"
"Spar with me," Cazador says, in his ear, "show me what you will do the next time a guard decides he wants you."
What? He can't have said that.
Astarion stands frozen for a moment, terrified to move. What if this is a trick? What if he hurts Cazador and gets punished for it?
He makes a frightened, confused noise and Cazador sighs behind him, annoyed.
"On with it. Show me, boy."
Astarion inhales, trembling violently as he considers what to do. Cazador, irritated at his resistance, shoves him and Astarion finally acts, afraid to disappoint him.
He scratches wildly at Cazador's forearms, trying to sink his nails into his skin, but it doesn't do much of anything. Cazador laughs in his ear, then licks the side of his neck. He shivers, struggling in his arms, and Cazador bites down, hard enough to make him cry out in pain. He begins to walk Astarion forward, towards a low wall in the garden, waist height. Astarion squirms in his arms, trying to wriggle free and failing miserably.
He slowly puts in more effort and then, now that he's doing his best, he's humiliated to find that he is so fucking weak. Cazador was right. He can't even pry his fingers off, let alone a hand or an arm. Everything he tries fails, every attempt easily thwarted by his master.
He's in tears by the time his knees hit the low wall, and sobbing loudly when Cazador finally begins to press him down, bending him over the stone. Astarion knows this position and knows it well, his heart slamming into his ribs as his ass goes in the air and Cazador presses up against him from behind.
"Please- please no-" he begs, as Cazador's fingers grope and prod at his ass, sore and aching from the earlier abuse, "please, master, it hurts, please stop-"
"Begging?" Cazador says, with a cruel laugh. "Do you really think that will help?"
"I- I-"
"Tell me, did it help earlier? Did they stop, when you cried and begged? Or did it make it worse?"
Astarion whimpers, horrified as he recalls how it went when he tried it. Cazador is right, again. Begging made it all so much worse.
They'd begun to mock him, threatened to plug his mouth up if he kept it up, then followed through on the threat.
"A sweet man might stop, if you cried prettily enough. But there are not very many sweet men in this world, are there, boy?"
"No, master," he gasps, as Cazador hooks his nails in his trousers.
And fuck, no he can't do this again. No, no, no, not like this, not again-
Astarion, desperate, pulls the dagger from the pocket in his cloak he'd tucked it in.
He drops it with a startled yelp as Cazador kicks his legs apart. It clatters away on the stone, then lies just out of reach. Astarion moans in horror and tries to reach for it, only to have his face shoved down, onto the stone wall.
"Pathetic," Cazador sneers, against the nape of his neck, "I am beginning to think you might want this."
"I don't!" Astarion hisses, through tears.
He squirms in Cazador's arms then, and it occurs to him that he could bite him. Cazador is so much bigger and stronger than him, but fangs in his arm might make him flinch, at the very least, and perhaps he could get out of his grip. He inhales, then attempts to sink teeth into flesh, only to be punched roughly in the ribs.
"No," Cazador hisses, "no biting. Have you forgotten the rules?"
"Sorry-" Astarion gasps, weakly. Of course. If he bit, he could draw blood. If he happened to swallow some of it, he would be completely and totally fucked. Whatever atrocities his assailant wanted to do to him would pale in comparison to the punishment Cazador would mete out in reply. Astarion shivers, imagining it, the full force of Cazador's unbridled wrath. Biting is firmly off the table.
Cazador presses against him then, his cock so hard and so big against his raw backside that it makes him flinch, a weak sound of fear ripping from his throat.
"No- please, no- I'll do anything- anything you want-"
"Bargaining, hm? I suppose appeasement could work, with the right man," Cazador hums, as he slides Astarion's pants down his hips, leaving him bare. "Let us hear it, then. What would you offer me, boy? What would make me stop? Think."
He gropes Astarion roughly, sighing in pleasure as he whimpers in pain and struggles beneath him. His mind whirls, too focused on the pain and the feel of Cazador hard against him to focus on anything substantive.
"I- I'll use my mouth- I'll make it good, I'll be so good for you-"
Cazador sighs, then slaps his ass, hard. Astarion gasps sharply at the sting of it, ignoring the traitorous throb of his cock.
"Your mouth? I will simply take that if I want it, like your friends did earlier. Try harder."
"M-money-" Astarion gasps, as Cazador's claws begin to trail down his spine, slowly. He shivers, tensing up as they dip progressively lower. "I'll offer them money- I'll keep gold on me, just for them-"
Cazador laughs at the answer, then dips his fingers between Astarion's legs, pressing firmly at his abused entrance. Astarion nearly screams, the muscle so sore and Cazador's nails so sharp that he wails, terrified of the pain. Still, his body responds to the now familiar touch of his master. His hole flutters around nothing, so embarrassingly eager to be used. He whimpers, humiliated, and Cazador chuckles in quiet delight at the reaction.
"Beautiful,” he sighs, as he strokes his rim with his thumb, “money might work on some, but I think the vast majority would prefer this."
There's the sound of laces coming undone behind him and then Cazador presses hot, hard flesh against him, his thick cockhead catching on Astarion's rim.
It's all about to get so much worse, so quickly. He remembers the men before, how it hurt every time one sank into him. He remembers the last time Cazador fucked him, when he was in the kennels, his stomach cut open and organs on display. He won't be gentle. He'll make the men from before feel like angels.
"No-" Astarion moans, writhing desperately against him. "I'm sorry- please-"
It's futile, though, and they both know it.
"Too late. You have failed, as expected."
Cazador sinks into him, buries himself to the hilt in one swift, brutal motion. It hurts even more than Astarion anticipated and he screams and writhes, trying to get away, but is held fast by the nape of his neck. Cazador begins to roll his hips, slowly and deeply, kissing and then biting the nape of his neck as he does.
"Poor thing. I foresee much of this in your future," Cazador sighs into his skin, as he begins to pick up the pace. He starts to fuck him hard and fast against the stone, keeping him pinned by the throat, his free hand prodding at his open wounds and making him gasp and cry out. "At least you seem to enjoy it. How very fortunate for you."
"No-"
"Yes. You love it. You will have fun while they rape you."
Astarion sobs, shaking his head desperately in denial, but Cazador just laughs. He reaches between his legs and grips his cock, hard against his will and leaking heavily into the dirt beneath their feet. Astarion whimpers, then bucks sharply as Cazador begins to stroke him in time with his thrusts.
"You loved it, tonight," he says, as he snaps his head, "did you not?"
"No," Astarion sobs, "no-"
"How many times did you come, boy?"
A broken moan. Fingers toying at his chest. He thinks of the men, one in his mouth, one buried inside his ass. The sickening throb of his cock as they used him, the horrified moan as he came all over himself, there in the alley.
"How many?" Cazador purrs, as he pinches and rolls a nipple between his fingers. "Speak."
"Three- three times-"
"Whore."
"Master, pl-please, please stop- mercy-"
"No."
The hand on his cock speeds up, as do his hips. Astarion's cock jerks in his master's fist, his skin slick with his own mess, and he moans, flushed from head to toe. The cock inside of him hurts but fuck, it feels good too. It's just like earlier, how after a while it felt good, despite the horror and the shame of it. He feels himself tensing up, whimpering pathetically as Cazador digs his nails into his cock and fucks him so hard that he feels like he might tear in two.
"Coming- coming, sorry- I'm sorry-" he gasps, weakly, before his voice tapers off into a whine, long and high and so horribly, disgustingly pathetic that Cazador actually laughs at him. He pulls his cock out, then shoves Astarion to his knees. He takes his cock, bloody and slick with the mess inside of Astarion, and strokes himself, quickly and roughly. Astarion looks up at him, his vision blurry, and gasps as hot, thick liquid hits him in the face. His master's come gets in his eyes, his nose, spills down his cheeks and into his lips, and he sits there, panting weakly and trying for all the world not to let his disgust show.
Cazador milks every drop that he can get, then steps closer and rubs the mess into Astarion's face, presses some it into his mouth with his thumb. He whimpers, so humiliated and so filthy and small at his feet, and opens his mouth, licks his fingers clean. Cazador presses his softening cock to his lips and he cleans that too, licking and sucking blood and come from him, tears streaming down his cheeks as he does. The dagger glints in the moonlight, several feet away, firmly out of reach. He doubts he could use it now, like this, anyway. He wants to curl into a ball and weep, wants the earth to open up and swallow him whole.
Cazador tucks himself back into his clothing when it's done, then folds his arms and looks down at him, his expression unreadable. Astarion's face begins quickly to feel sticky, the scent of his master so very strong on his skin. He wants a bath, badly. He wants to die a little, too.
"Practice with the dagger."
"I will," Astarion whispers, to the dirt.
There's a pause then, a long stretch of silence. Cazador picks the weapon up, then hands it to Astarion, who takes it with shaking, filthy hands.
"Come," his master says, as he rests a hand on the top of his head, gentle now, "you need a bath."
"Yes, master."
He adjusts his clothing as best he can, standing on wobbly legs. He nearly falls and Cazador, surprisingly, catches him. A strong arm loops around his waist, a large hand resting gently on his bruised hip. Astarion can't look him in the eye, but he accepts the help anyway, resting his head on his shoulder. Cazador strokes his battered skin with his fingers as they walk, careful to avoid the mess on his face as he allows him to rest against him.
His master washes him with gentle hands, in the bath that evening. He holds him in his arms after, tells him little things he can do to get away from men, how to hold the dagger properly, how to wield it to inflict maximum damage. Astarion buries his face in his chest and nods, exhausted, trying his best to commit it all to memory, as Cazador strokes his hair and murmurs to him in the dark.
He keeps the dagger clutched in his fist after his master begins to trance. He holds it to his chest and slowly drifts off himself, lulled by the candlelight’s reflection as it dances on the blade.