You Were My First

1: Will You Stay?

"Will you stay?"

The plea—almost inaudible in it's sleep-sodden breathiness—stopped me in my tracks. Stopped me as sure as my heart had stopped under Cazador's cruel iteration on salvation.

I could still taste him; his blood saccharine on my tongue. Warming my body faster than any spirit had ever done. I'd drank of him nearly every night since that first, gut-wrenching time; when he had caught me slinking in the dark, drawn to his throat like a clarion call.

Every night and yet he had not ever asked me to stay. Had never expressed anything other than a good natured bestowal of his trust upon me that I knew myself to be wholly unworthy of, despite having asked for it.

I let the words needle at me. Let them stoke something fragile and desperate and needful deep inside. And then ceased all genuine feeling in favor of the mask I wore; cutting off the pleasantly fluttering outpouring of emotion with a well-practiced, vicious precision before I allowed myself to hope.

"Stay? Are you asking for a cuddle, darling? How... cute." The role of the rake came naturally to me. As naturally as breathing once had. I wore it like a second skin; stretching it over the broken, ruined parts of myself until I was numbed to everything. A prophylactic for my soul. A sad attempt to spare myself some hurt. An automatic adaptation in the stinging poison of Cazador's compulsion.

It felt wrong with him, though; dripping cloyingly from my lips like honeyed words we both knew rang false.

He didn't deserve my lies. He was... kind. Trusting and true. Loyal and stalwart and so many things that I should have learned to stop yearning for two centuries ago. But he had seen my fangs, and offered his neck, and my resolve had crumbled under the trebuchet of his open acceptance.

I had no business indulging in him. No right to let him think that this could be anything other than a predator and his prey. I had been leaving when he had asked, and should have been leaving still.

I turned back in lieu of doing anything that resembled an action that my better judgement could take credit for.

Turned back and laid on my side beside him. Took in the angles of his sharp tiefling features in the dying embers of the fire with eyes that wished they could look at him forever.

He turned to face me, making room for me on his bedroll with an adorable eagerness that twisted like a blade in my chest; a sharp shard of desire. A pinch of loss as I faced the beautiful reality of something that could never truly be.

I'd bed him, of course. I had already decided that. But it would be for all the wrong reasons. Not for the easy way he smiled, or the generous way he gave of himself. Not for all the nights the sound of his lyre sent me off to blissful meditation no matter how dark the world outside of our always camp seemed. And certainly not for this blossoming... thing between us.

No. When I seduced him it would be for security. For safety. Insurance against betrayal. And with that sordid act would go the last shred of self respect I possessed. This I knew, and yet I lay there drinking him in as if the blood I had taken had only served to make me thirst for him all the more.

I arched a brow as he sidled closer. Feigning amused indifference when all I wanted was to hold him close and let him care. It had been far too long since someone had cared, if anyone had ever done. My life before Cazador and his tortures was like a blur of years long past. Sometimes I thought there may have been lovers and friends, but their faces faded faster the harder I tried to hold onto them. So I had resigned myself to letting them go. It was easier that way; not holding on to warmth and hope.

"That depends." His voice was pitched low; soft and soothing. Like someone intent on luring a wild beast. I did my best to not take offense. After all, it was not so long ago when I had been little more than a beast; stalking the streets of Baldur's Gate for the pure souls my master craved. "Is a cuddle on offer?" The question made my chest feel tight with a pang of poignant vulnerability; both affronted that he would assume I needed to be asked for such simple intimacy, and grateful that he had. I would never understand how he did that; cutting through the many layers of my carefully crafted façade to touch the tender, aching parts of me. As if he saw me in ways that no one ever had before. "If not... I thought maybe we could just be close for a bit. To... talk. Or... just spend time." The sentiment that his words conveyed left me utterly breathless; even more so because his usual easy confidence seemed to have abandoned him for once. "You always just leave after you..." He paused, stopping his hand halfway through gesturing towards his throat. "After."