Could I request Astarion and his s/o getting into a sass competition where Astarion ends up confessing to her by accident and now he's all flustered?
Astarion x Reader
“Can’t you go any faster?”
“I’m not exactly as well versed into taking these off as I am in putting them on, darling.” Astarion quipped at you as he fiddled with the lock on your cuffs.
Being somewhat of an anti-hero liaisons these days, the group had been pinched on some trumped up but completely true & legal charges of petty theft and larceny. Your options were fight, flight, or get arrested when confronted by the guards and charges. And since you couldn’t fight a whole city’s worth of Iron Fists, and running also seemed unplausible as you’d have to come back to the city sometime, you decided to take you lumps and went to jail. Luckily, where there’s a will there’s a way. Or in this case: a vampire with a lockpick up his sleeve.
“Why did you wait to do me last anyway? Just to see me suffer?”
“Well,” Astarion cooed, “it does have a certain visual appeal.”
You clicked your teeth and rolled your eyes. “Could you just hurry up? I’m starting to lose the feeling in my hands. All the blood is rushing out of them.”
“Oh, well, we wouldn’t want that.”
“Well, if you want my blood again, you should be more sympathetic to my pain.” You told him. Sighing heavily as one arm was free and Astarion moved on to the other one.
“Don’t you threaten me. Besides, if you won’t give me what I want, I’ll just move on to some other lucky companion in our camp.”
“Ha! Like anyone else would have you.”
Astarion frowned. “I’ll have you know that there are plenty of people who would welcome my teeth at their necks. Hundreds. Thousands!”
“Yeah. One blood obsessed drow and…who was the other one you tricked again?” You pulled at the shackles, which jiggled the irons and knocked the lockpick free, but unbroken. The vampire growled at you.
“I tricked you easy enough, didn’t I?”
“Only because I took pity on you.”
“Pity?!”
“Yeah.” You told him. “That poor, sad, puppy dog ‘please feed me’ look was just something I couldn’t say no to.”
Astarion growled again. “That is not how it happened. Besides, if you didn’t like it you wouldn’t keep asking for more.”
“Oh sure. Blame the victim.”
“You are not a victim!” He snapped at you. He seemed a little wounded by that one. Maybe you went a little too far. “Gods.” He cursed under his breath with a frown. “You are lucky I love you so much, otherwise I would just leave you here, chained up, and never bite you again. No matter how much you begged me.”
The lock finally snapped open and your arm fell to the side. You lifted it to rub your wrist but were uncharacteristically silent.
“Would it have been too much to expect a thank you??”
“Did you just say you love me?”
Astarion froze for a moment. A little wide eyed at your question. He seemed to be racking his brain for a moment. Trying to remember the conversation before an ‘Oh. Shit.’ expression came over his face. “What? Oh, that. Figure of speech darling, of course.” He let out a single nervous cough after that and a rushed, “let’s go meet up with the other.” Before he turned on his heels and made a speedy exit.
You rub your wrist one more time as a soft, shy smile came to your lips behind his back. You follow after him and meet up with the others. Waiting just outside the prison for the two of you, as apparently just around the corner was enough of an escape from the mighty Iron Fist.
“Ah! I just love this fresh air.” You exclaim, followed by more comments on how dusty & dank your cell had been, but really just watching Astarion’s shoulders tense.
You spent the rest of the day subversively tormenting Astarion. Making comments on how much you loved the weather, or loved a dress in a window. How much you loved dinner that night. How much you loved getting a good night’s rest that night.
By the time everyone had gone off to their respective tents for the evening, Astarion had apparently had enough and slunk up to yours. “I know what you’re doing. Now stop it!” He hissed.
“But I thought you’d love it.”
“Stop it!” He hissed again. If he could right now, he would blush. You were tempted to let him feed on you for a moment to get the full effect. “I mean it! How would you like it if I threw every verbal misstep in your face? I don’t keep bringing up the time you said Ibis instead of Ignis, now do I??”
It was pretty funny when that bird showed up.
“So, are you upset that you said it and I’m teasing of you, or are you upset that you didn’t mean it and I keep bringing it up?” You honestly didn’t know which answer would be worse at this point. You felt bad you had wounded his pride to the point that he came to talk to you. But you also don’t think you could take it if he told you that he didn’t love you.
Astarion just stood there for a moment, thinking, before he sighed and waved you off. “Just…knock it off ok. I’ve had quite enough today. I’m going to get some sleep and I’ll see you in the morning.”
He turned to walk away and just before he fell out of ear shot you called to him. “Hey Astarion,” he looked back over his shoulder at you, “I love that you could come and talk to me about this.”
He huffed, but you could see the corners of his mouth struggling to keep down. “Oh shut up.”
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Was astarion's fate pre-tadpole the worst out of all companions? I mean... He was literally a slave in a sex-trade. His pimp being Cazadouche, who would take everyone he brought home and kill them. If he failed to do so, he would be tortured in ways that would easily kill a mortal.
He was starved and made to live in the darkness for a year for failing to bring home supper for Cazadouche once. He had to completely disassociate from his humanity, to the point where he literally can't even remember who he was before he was turned.
I often think about how he has high perception (and of course he does, cause he is a rouge) but hear me out: from a story-perspective, it would make sense that his perception was high as a trauma response. Always having to be hyper-vigilant (and keep his wits about) as to not piss off Cazador or his siblings. Even going through a far-less macabre experience for 2 years as an adult can make you hypervigilant to the point where you're dysfunctional.
And this was going on for 200 years. That isn't even a fathomable amount of time for a human. And the fact that, after all that, his humanity was intact.... He was able to fall in love, make friends, and be happy. He really has so much empathy. His empathy was a crux for 200 years, but it remained intact nonetheless.
As a survivor, Astarion has made me realize things about my healing journey that i never had thought of before. I think that's one big reason why he is a comfort character for so many of us. We can relate to him for what he's been through. We see a part of ourselves in him, and we want to help him and to hold him. We want to cherish him and tell him everything is going to be okay.
Maybe all this is for us is just a way to detach from the feelings of selfishness and shame that arise when you give yourself slack. When we see ourselves in Astarion, and we want to tell them everything is going to be okay, maybe we are really telling a part of ourselves that everything is going to be okay.
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