Chapter Text
Of Blood and Poison
Astarion was not brooding.
Okay, he was brooding a little. To be fair, there was nothing else to do when he was left at camp unless he wanted to take up a past time staring soulfully into Wyll’s eyes…or, well, eye.
It wasn’t like he had been anticipating the leisure time either. He thought he and Vixie had a good thing going. She laughed at his quips. He had proved himself useful opening chests and detecting traps that she seemed to deliberately not see. He had not left her side since the nautiloid crash and he would be hard pressed to admit it wasn’t a nice place to be.
But, this morning their supposed bliss had been annihilated as Vixie had skipped over him to snatch up Gale for that coveted third party member. It almost seemed like a personal attack. Gale? The man who ate shoes and had conveniently forgotten how to cast fireball?
She could’ve at least left Karlach but, no, she took her, too, (and this Astarion took as further proof of a targeted attack towards him for some slight he had committed). Shadowheart brought up the rear, as she always did, and it seriously caused Astarion to pause over learning some healing spells.
Leaving him, Lae’zel, and Wyll at camp...alone.
They had all stood around the campfire for a good ten minutes, simply blinking at one another.
It had never occurred to him how the others occupied themselves when they were left alone. Astarion didn’t care to ever know the answer, didn’t like that he was being forced to find it out now.
“So…” Wyll had been the first to speak, clapping his hands together. “We could—.”
“No,” Lae’zel cut him off, words wielded like a sword. She left the circle and retreated to her tent, pulling the tent flap closed.
“Well don’t look at me,” Astarion said when Wyll turned to him. “We are not holding hands and singing little campfire songs between the two of us. That would just be too weird.”
So, yes, maybe he was brooding. So sue him. He was bored.
A feeling that was quickly rectified with the return of their adventuring friends...looking like they had been scorched by dragon’s fire.
“Gale remembered how to cast fireball,” Vixie reported. Soot covered her head to foot, hid her freckles. The ends of her hair seemed singed. One strand, in fact, was still burning.
Astarion wet his fingers before he caught the flame-sputtering strand between them. He found a discarded rag and handed it to her. “He did, did he?”
“It was epic!” Karlach gushed. She was also on fire but that was quite normal for her. “He went BOOM, and the worgs went WHOOSH, and Vixie went flying—.”
“You were flying?” Astarion asked. “How fun.”
“Do you see any wings?” Vixie flapped her arms as she wiped her face clean, freckles being revealed in increments. “I was not meant to fly. But someone apparently mistook me for a worg—.”
“You are quite worgish at times,” Astarion chimed in.
Vixie held up one finger at him, her eyes narrowing, distinctly worgish.
“I yelled at you to get clear.” Said wizard—also soot covered and Astarion pondered how that had happened if Vixie had been the only one in the blast radius—walked stiffly over to his tent, where he retrieved a bottle of something and uncorked it. Astarion could smell the booze even from a distance.
“You gave me a two second warning. Excuse me that I don’t know misty step and can’t conveniently magic my way out of the blast radius.”
“I could teach it to you. In fact, I think it would be a useful skill for us all to learn in the event we face similar predicaments. We could have workshops—.”
“By Mystra’s tits”—Gale choked on his drink at Vixie’s admittedly creative expletive—“we are not having wizarding workshops.”
“I’m borrowing that one,” Astarion told her as he watched Gale try to recover. “Did you bring me a present?” he asked, dismissing the appealing sight as Karlach deposited an intricate chest near him.
“We found it near the owlbear cave,” Shadowheart told him. “And someone’s tools were, well, melted.”
“I wonder how,” Vixie declared as Gale continued to recover from having his goddess’ tits mentioned so blatantly. “Can you open it?” she asked, turning to Astarion.
“I don’t know. Can I? Maybe if I hear the magic word…”
“Fuck off.”
“Not that one. Are you always this delightful when you ask for help?”
“Only when they’re cute,” Vixie said with a fleeting smirk that Astarion could’ve sworn he had imagined as she continued on, straight-faced. “There might be a brand new pair of boots in there for anyone that wants to help out…”
“Oh, stop with the sweet talk, darling. I’ll help.” Astarion crouched, bringing himself eye-level with the lock. Vixie took up a position behind him, bending over. Even with the distinct, cloying scent of smoke, he detected her usual sent of poisons and something vaguely floral. A few practiced flicks of the wrist and the tumble gave way, the chest springing open with a dusty gasp.
The thing with chests is that there was a thirty percent chance something good was behind the lock and there was a seventy percent chance it was absolute rubbish. Honestly, who even bothered putting a lock on a chest that contained only rope? Sometimes, Astarion worried for the world.
Unfortunately, this seemed to be that dreaded seventy percent. Astarion shifted through books, their spines warped by time, and some moldy cheese, crumbling under his touch. “You better go out there. and get me a better present—,” he started to say when a loud screech from Vixie shattered his eardrum. He registered it as fearful at first but then realized it was just manic glee as she shoved past him and scooped up one of the sad books.
“What is it?” Karlach stepped forward, then caught herself and backed away lest she singe anyone further. “It’s not another creepy book, is it?”
“It’s a book of puns!” Vixie declared, flashing the cover to her, too quick for Astarion to see, but the title alone must have been a riot as suddenly Karlach was howling with laughter, bracing herself on her thighs.
Astarion felt the prelude to something horrible, as if a death god had walked across his grave.
“A book of what?” The noise had drawn Lae’zel from her solitude as she padded over. “What are puns? A powerful spell?”
“They’re jokes,” Vixie answered. “Like a play on words. And this one in particular… Ugh.” She held the book close to her chest and looked up to the sky. “Best. Day. Ever.”
“And we can mock our enemies with them?” Lae’zel asked, cocking her head to the side. “Did Karlach fall victim?”
The tiefling was currently on the floor, clutching her gut, face turning redder as she tried to catch her breath, feet kicking into the air.
“Apparently,” Gale said as he approached, bottle still in hand. “Do share. I always enjoyed a good pun—.” He froze as he beheld the book’s cover, still cradled in Vixie’s hands. Then, he turned, stone-faced, and handed Astarion the bottle. “You need this more than me,” he said as he walked away.
“Oh, please, it’s a book of stupid puns!” Astarion shouted at his back. “I fail to see—.”
He stopped, swallowing his own words, as he turned back around and beheld the book’s full cover, now held up to his face by a grinning Vixie.
Vampiric Puns for the Unholy, Unwell, and Undeparted.
Astarion felt the ground beneath him disappear, felt his soul sink down into a circle of hell even while his physical body remained rooted here.
Sweet hells.
“And these are spells specifically crafted to target vampires?” Lae’zel asked, peering over Vixie’s shoulder as she started to leaf through the book, grin only getting bigger.
“Uh, huh,” Vixie said.
Lae’zel glanced at Astarion. “And you will use these to torment him?”
He would never know peace—.
“That’s the plan, hon.”
“Try this one!” Lae’zel said with too much enthusiasm, jabbing her finger at a page.
“What’s a vampire’s favorite dog?” Vixie asked, her smile big enough to crack her face. She eyed Astarion, waited a beat, then shouted, “A blood hound!”
Perhaps what made it worse was that he heard the distinct sputter of repressed laughter from Wyll. As if that joke was actually funny, as if it wasn’t the lowest common drivel, taking the barest amount of thought—.
“Fascinating.” Lae’zel watched him, her nostrils flaring. “Though his body shows no wounds, you can see in his eyes the mental torment, the agony, as if he is being flayed from within. See how his eyes twitches? Another!”
Astarion brought Gale’s bottle to his lips and took a big swig, wishing for the sweet release of death.
X
Maybe if Vixie had limited the jokes to one harrowing afternoon, Astarion could’ve endured it mostly unscathed.
But, no, she just had to drag out the torture.
They were crossing a river and Astarion was watching his steps, knowing that wet boots this early on in the day would be terrible, and from behind him came Vixie’s voice, lilted high. “Hey, Astarion, did you hear the one about the vampire who became a poet? He went from bat to verse.” And Astarion’s boot slipped on the rock, soaking him up to his knees.
Sitting around a campfire, lulled into an unearned sense of safety, before Vixie’s voice was upon him again, grating, “Hey, Astarion, you know what vampires never order at restaurants? A steak.”
Crouched over her, ready to take the blood she had so stupidly offered, and she said into the quiet, “What do you call a vampire out on a date? A neck romancer.” He had left her there, her neck untouched, the moment ruined, and he had sat out in the woods alone for an incalculable amount of time, pondering his life’s choices and if he could get away with killing her (probably not).
In the middle of the goblin camp, danger thick in the air, one slip-up could cause the force of hundreds to be upon them and Vixie had the audacity to turn to him and ask, “Why do vampires take a lot of medicine? Because they’re always coffin.” And then she proceeded to shove Minthara off the bridge, as if it was normal to prelude violent acts with pure stupidity.
Sometimes there would be long stretches of days where his ears would go unassaulted, and he would start to hope that she ran out of material or that puns at his expense had lost their appeal. But then, just as his guard was lowered, one would slip into a conversation, disarm him, and Vixie would carry on about her day as if nothing of note had occurred.
He went to Karlach once, looking for comfort, and the tiefling had nodded, her expression sympathetic. “Yeah, I hear you. Some of these puns...they’re a real pain in the neck.”
Astarion stared at her, betrayed, while Karlach tried to keep a straight face and failed, bending over as she laughed.
“I will pay you,” he stressed to Gale another night. “Just eat the damn book.”
“You do realize I just don’t eat inanimate things.” The wizard plucked the cucumbers from his eyes, giving Astarion a serious look that was undermined by the ridiculousness of the face mask drying across his T-zone. “They have to be magical in nature for me to consume them and while that book does seem to have some untold power over you, it, unfortunately, does not qualify.”
“What if I sprinkle some glitter on it?” Astarion pleaded. “I’m sure it will be just as tasty.”
Still, Gale refused, claiming that he couldn’t eat the damn book, though Astarion felt as if couldn’t meant wouldn’t here.
He could feel his sanity slipping from him, drowning under the threat of clever word play and over-reliance on the word ‘blood.’ He would find it funny if it were happening to anyone else. But to him, a second death by puns felt too stupid.
X
“Hey, Fangs.”
Astarion had thought he had been safe in the confines of his own tent, night thick around him, a stretch of uninterrupted hours allowing him to reassemble what remained of his fractured mind, splintered by the latest: How does a vampire start a letter? Tomb it may concern.
...It was all so bloody stupid. He could feel his brain cells dying tragic deaths.
But his restoration was put on pause as that voice cut through the quiet like a knife. Astarion didn’t move from his bed roll, his back facing his tent’s opening, his eyes peeled wide and all of the muscles in his body stiffening, perceiving an awful threat.
“Did you know I used to know a vampire actor?” Vixie asked, voice less muffled as she entered his tent.
I could make it look like an accident. Take the body out back, act none the wiser—.
“But he could never find a role he could sink his teeth into.”
Astarion blamed his tiredness, blamed his fracturing reason, worn down by unending attacks, and his challenged wit for the snort that escaped him. He pressed his lips together afterwards, ashamed, wanting to bathe in holy water.
You laughed at a pun, a sane voice in his head scolded, disgusted to even count itself as a part of him. A vampire pun.
He had hoped maybe the snort had gone unheard, but no such luck.
“Really?” Vixie asked and her voice had no right to be as judgmental as it sounded. “That was the one that got you? Because I thought the coffin one was much funnier—.”
Astarion didn’t make the conscious decision to move, but, next he knew, Vixie was pinned beneath him, her red hair pooling beneath her, the damn book held between them like a shield.
Looking at Vixie, she seemed to be all hard, bony edges, from the stubborn angle of her chin to the sharp jut of her shoulders and the points of her ears. But now, with her leather discarded, sprawled out beneath him, he could feel the parts of her that were soft, from her hips, her thighs, the swell of her breasts.
“Do you think this is funny?” Astarion asked. “Tormenting me with bad wordplay?”
Vixie hitched a brow high. “Kinda?” She reached up, the tip of her finger tracing the middle of his brow. “You get this little muscle twitch right here when you really want to kill me. It’s cute.”
He didn’t know why it bothered him so much when she called him cute. Wyll was cute. Shadowheart was cute. He was devastatingly attractive. His handsomeness had ended lives, damnit. He was the farthest thing from cute.
Astarion peeled back his lips, flashing his fangs. “Darling, you know you try the patience of a monster, right?”
Vixie had the audacity to roll her eyes. “Oh, yes, so scary.”
He realized then that she could’ve rolled away, that she could’ve thrust her forearm into the vulnerable line of his throat, and wrested herself free of this compromising position. But she stayed where she was, allowing him to crouch over her, her flat on her back, the edge of her thigh touching his blanket and he tried not to get caught up in thoughts of Vixie and his blanket and miles of freckled skin.
But it was hard. Vixie made all things needlessly difficult. From a simple transaction of blood to the art of a seduction. She seemed bound and determined to frustrate him.
Wanting control, Astarion bent down, allowing his cold breath to fan across her throat. His one hand grasped hers and wrenched it upwards, pinning it there, feeling the delicate bones as his fingers coiled around her wrist. His knee knocked against her inner thigh. “You know there are consequences to actions,” he said, allowing his lips to drag across her skin as he spoke. “Right, dear?”
He meant to rattle her, just as she had been doing to him, maybe even scare her. A little payback.
He was close enough to hear the sudden spike in her pulse, took pleasure from it. He expected her to stammer and blush, maybe even apologize to the big, bad, scary vampire at her throat.
What he did not expect was for her legs to hook around his waist for her to roll them. He fell backwards onto his bed roll, air leaving him in a gasp and then leaving him further as the sight above him registered. Red hair was a glorious cascade around her, her eyes looking neon in the dimness of his tent. The puckers of the scar on her cheek were made hazy with the shadows. Softness settled over him, thighs on either side. Gravity tested the ties of her corset as she leaned down.
He could’ve escaped, could’ve pushed her off or made good on his threat and lunged for her throat. But he didn’t, little popping sensations firing off along his nerves at every point of contact where they touched. It was...exhilarating.
“Promises, promises,” she mocked. “When are you going to make good on all this flirting?”
He wondered if this had all been part of her dastardly plot. To wear him down for days with gods awful puns and then further frazzle him with this, her. It was a bit meandering, sure, but he could appreciate a good con.
“That depends,” he said, his tongue feeling heavy in his mouth, mentally scrambling for the upper hand even as he allowed his lips to cruel in a bemused smirk. “When do you want me to make good on it?”
So she wasn’t following the script of so many of his marks. So what? It had been a long time since Astarion had a challenge. Decades of lazy, easy marks. Now something like this, someone like her, to truly test him. Astarion would be chagrined to view that as a problem and not a gift.
Vixie tilted her head back, as if considering. “Hmm.” She settled her weight back fully on him and the heat of her at the apex of her thighs startled him. He was surprised when heat pooled low in his belly, but he took that as a thrill of the hunt side effect. “What about the tiefling party?”
“What about it?”
Vixie bent over him, the fall of her hair creating a curtain so all Astarion saw was red. “You. Me. Alcohol. And little romp through the woods after a night of celebrating. What do you say?”
Astarion bent one arm to cradle his head. “I suppose that could work.”
“You suppose?” Vixie folded her arms on his chest and used them to prop her chin on his sternum. “You’ve got a better proposal then?”
“I thought you might want a bed, first of all.”
“Beds are for sleeping, which I don’t imagine we’ll be doing much of.”
“Roses?” Astarion offered instead. “Candlelight?”
Vixie let loose a bark of laughter. “Are we fucking or are you proposing marriage?”
“Maybe both depending on how the night goes. I’m just trying to conjure a little romance, dear.”
“Did I ask for romance?”
“Well, not in so many words—.”
“Then stop trying to woo what you’ve already caught,” Vixie chastised, sitting up. “Do you want to fuck me or not? Because if not, the night is still young and Gale’s tent is only—.”
Mimicking her earlier actions, Astarion hooked his legs about her waist and rolled. A thrill went through him at the sight of her, pinned beneath him once more, her breasts heaving with her breath. She was here, in his tent, he reminded himself at the sudden weight in his chest. Very much not in Gale’s.
He had never been the possessive sort. Then again, he hadn’t had much to be possessive over.
“Did you hear me say no?” Astarion asked her.
“You didn’t say yes either—.”
“Yes,” Astarion said, cutting her off. “I would very much like to fuck you.”
Vixie blinked up at him, the flicker of a grin gracing her lips. “Well, alrighty then. The tiefling party?”
“The tiefling party,” Astarion agreed, a bit unsettled that this all felt so transactional. “Do try not to drink so much. I want you aware.”
As Vixie slipped from his tent, Astarion couldn’t place the tightness in his chest, the fizziness that filled his bones, the heat that left him a little breathy.
But he could place the mad sense of pure glee as he retrieved the pun book from where he had hidden it under his blanket in their little tussle.
“I’ll show you undeparted,” he spat at it, clutching it tight.
X
“I guess I had this coming.”
Vixie found him standing at the campfire, watching as the flames engulfed the book, the pages blackening, burning.
Astarion stabbed a fire poker through its cover for good measure.
“Which one did it?” Vixie asked. “Like which one pushed you over the edge? Was it the one with the priest?”
“All of them, my dear.” Astarion added more wood to to the fire, determined to burn even the ashes.
“That’s fair.” Vixie took up a stance beside him at his makeshift funeral pyre, watching as the gold embers reached for the night sky.
For a few seconds, there was only the crackling of the fire, the popping of the wood.
Then, pitched in a tone wholly familiar, “Hey, Astarion.”
A hole opened up in Astarion’s belly. He checked that the book was still burning, that it hadn’t grown legs and walked off, hadn’t resurrected itself. Its corpse still smoldered.
“Do you wanna know how vampires travel across the sea?” Vixie stared straight ahead, her expression serious. Anyone watching them, too far away to hear their actual conversation, would think she was recounting some grim tale not a stupid fucking pun.
“They use blood vessels.”
Crickets chirped. Something howled. A tree branch snapped in the distance. The fire continued to burn, its monster vanquished, but not its ghost.
Astarion stared out into the night, thinking he had escaped the noose only to feel the rope fibers back around his neck. “How many did you memorize?”
“A few.”
“A few?”
“Enough,” she amended.
“Mystra’s tits,” Astarion cursed, resigned to his terrible fate.