Domination [Astarion x Reader]

Deliberation

It's late when you arrive back at the Last Light Inn on the boat with the tieflings and Iron Hand gnomes you rescued from Moon Rise Towers, and you're still a bit shaken. Seeing what's awaiting you - all those cultists led by the immortal Ketheric Thorme - it doesn't look great for you. But at least you have some leads on where Ketheric's immortality comes from now. And you freed the prisoners. These are good things, you remind yourself.

As the people held prisoner at Moonrise are being tested for whether they were infected with a tadpole, Astarion pulls you aside. "Hey, can we talk?" There's something in the way he looks at you that you can't quite place.

"Of course. Do you want to go to our room?"

He smiles. "Yes, that would be nice."

When you get to your room, the two of you sit down on the bed. Astarion thanks you for standing up for him with Araj Oblodra, and tells you that he's not used to his feelings mattering. That he had to ignore them for so long when luring in victims for Cazador.

You get really sad, listening to him. He's told you some about his life for the past 200 years, how horrible it was to be Cazador's puppet. But you hadn't really realized how much bodily autonomy had been taken away from with regards to sex, too.

He continues, "You could have done the same - asked me to throw myself at her, what I wanted be damned. But you didn't. And I'm grateful."

"I don't ever want you to do anything you don't want to do."

"It's just... it would have been so easy to bite her. To just go along with what I was being told to do. A moment of disgust to force myself through. And then I could have carried on, just like before."

"I'm so sorry that you had to go through that, Astarion," you say quietly.

He looks down at his hands, quiet.

You hate the thought that he might have viewed you that way - that he might still, even if everything you know and feel about the two of you tells you he doesn't - but you have to ask. "Can I ask - is that how you saw me in the beginning? Someone to charm, or lure in?" Gods, you hope it was just in the beginning.

"Of course," he says and your heart sinks. "I needed protection. People don't trust vampires - perhaps understandably so - so I needed to get someone on my side. And seducing you was easy, frankly. So imagine how stupid I felt when I started to genuinely feel something for you."

Your heart skips a beat when he says that last sentence and then feels so much less heavy.

"Trust me, I was not happy about it," he goes on, "You were a complication I didn't see coming. And yet..."

"Astarion, I care about you. So much."

"Really?" It breaks your heart that he feels like he has to ask that.

You pull him into a hug. It takes a moment for him to let that happen. When he does, he leans into the hug, placing his head on your shoulder. You gently stroke through his curls with one hand, the other on his back. "I'm here for you, for whatever you need, in whatever role you need."

He stays in your arms a while, quiet, perhaps letting that sink in.

"I... I don't know where to go from here. What happens next," he says after a bit.

"What do you want to happen next?"

"I... don't know. It's been so long since I've had to decide what I wanted. But I think I'd like to figure it out, with you."

"Whatever you need. I mean it."

You spend a while just lying in each other's arms, lying down on the bed after a bit. You've cuddled like this after sex, but never without it. It feels nice, but you're also still so sad hearing about what he went through. What Cazador did to him. If you ever get your hands on that bastard, you'll kill him, you swear to yourself.