Tʜᴇ Pᴀʟᴇ Eʟғ | Asᴛᴀʀɪᴏɴ Aɴᴄᴜɴíɴ (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
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faderift2021-06-01 01:09 pm
illithidnapped) wrote in faderift2021-06-01 01:09 pm
[OPEN] Young Blood, say you want me out of your life
WHO: Astarion and, gasp, maybe you
WHAT: catch-all for Kirkwall mayhem involving a certain vampire
WHEN: ~whenever~ pick your poison
WHERE: Gallows, Kirkwall proper, anywhere you want
NOTES: 1 intolerable vampire pretending he doesn't give a damn
WHAT: catch-all for Kirkwall mayhem involving a certain vampire
WHEN: ~whenever~ pick your poison
WHERE: Gallows, Kirkwall proper, anywhere you want
NOTES: 1 intolerable vampire pretending he doesn't give a damn
I: CHARITY
He keeps odd hours, that’s the nature of being a nocturnal monster designed to feed on the blood of his prey— or, well, former monster, as luck would have it. He certainly isn’t turning to ash each time the sun rises, and he isn’t burning to death every time he sinks into a nice, hot, afternoon bath. Food, even, that’s a new luxury too, though he isn’t entirely fond of what the Gallows serves on the regular: his taste runs a touch finer, as a habit— which might be why one passing trip through the market sees an arm slung sweetly around your own for a cheerful bout of unprompted conversation at Astarion’s mercy.
It’s quick, takes barely more than a few moments of lingering closeness, and then—
And then nothing. He’s gone as quickly as he came. Wait— do your pockets feel noticeably lighter?
Pursuit would only find him sometime later, slung casually across a table in some smoky little hole in the wall: drinking a glass of vivid red, eating a very lovely meal and chatting up someone with cheekbones so sharp they could open envelopes via proximity alone.
And he probably paid for all of it with your coin. Oh dear.
II: VICE CITY
“Aha, no, wrong again, darling— that win belongs to me.”
He’s learned the rules quickly. He’s learned everything, quickly, in fact, winking slyly as he rakes a meager mess of coins and knickknacks across the table towards him. Hardly a vivid sum, but enough that the brute opposite to him growls something unintelligible— veering away as the chair they’d been occupying topples right to the floor, the noise of it snapping right through an otherwise pleasant scene.
“Well.” Astarion scoffs, silvered brows raising. “Talk about a sore loser.”
He’d only cheated a little, besides. Still, red eyes snap to, the edges of his lips curling into an easy smile, gesturing with slender fingers towards the now-emptied seat across.
“Your turn, dearest.”
III: A VAMPIRE STILL
He haunts dark spaces in later hours. Bright eyes in shadow, attentive without exhaustion. The Gallows is bustling in daylight, and near silent without, and he prowls like a cat in the gaps between lanterns, searching for something nameless and shapeless.
Perhaps out of sight until the very last, unsettling second when pale features seem to cut through pitch-soaked corners.
Try not to shriek, if you stumble into his path, won’t you? It is late, after all, and he doesn't fancy a headache.
IV: WILDCARD
[ooc: pick your poison, swap one of the prompts around, opt for daylight and cheerful drinking— the sky's the limit. Astarion can even be caught doing a little studious reading in closed-off spaces, though don't expect him to take kindly to being noticed.
Also I'll match tagging format to whatever suits you, and/or hit me up if you want something else plotwise entirely!]
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But there's plenty more to be done in the dead of night that isn't just doting stitchwork, you know. Something fun, even by your standards—
Probably.
[Who can say how low the bar is set with her, after all.]
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not the templar tower, ideally. maybe florent is still squatting in one of the guest rooms he isn't meant to be in and wouldn't mind company. sabine would probably let her stay one night, although maybe she should save that for when she really needs it and when she's braided her hair more tightly. )
The likelihood of your idea of fun overlapping with mine at any point seems incredibly slim, ( is more matter of fact than sharp. gwenaëlle expressing her opinion, rather than attempting to hammer it into his face with a pickaxe. )
no subject
If successful, he'll drape his forearms across the back of it, lingering just near her shoulder, only conversationally waving a few delicate fingers back and forth as he muses quietly to himself:]
We could go rifling through belongings without permission, steal away with a little wine and see just how beautifully it shatters when dropped off the highest tower— find a place utterly drenched in shadow and forget our own names for a few hours.
The possibilities are limitless, really.
no subject
I'll remember you said that if anyone's belongings start going missing.
( he is now close enough to observe that she is very carefully embroidering an almost disturbingly true-to-life skull into the back of this shirt, black thread on black fabric. )
Since mostly I'm hearing 'great ways for Astarion to screw me over because he's bored'.
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Of course you could stay here. Do nothing. Make a lovely piece of cloth all the more pretty for someone who may or may not appreciate the effort, and then sleep...
[hm.]
Where are you sleeping tonight?
[Certainly not in Hightown, it’s far too late for that.]
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what a stupid thing to have kept up, all these years at war. once she blasted fade energy through a wyvern and out of its asshole, and she still finds herself returning to heavy skirts and needlepoint. it is not very cool and piratical of her, probably.
but captain flint likes her needlework, so on balance she decides she's all right. )
We're shorthanded as all fuck, ( she says, jabbing the needle into fabric with more force than is at all necessary, ) it isn't as if there aren't beds to spare.
no subject
[He watches that needle stab its way through fabric, hears the faint pop of given resistance. Something in her is riled— maybe at his words, maybe more than that.
He keeps his own form soft, his tone yielding, even as he presses:]
You could do better, you know.
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it's a problem. it is the familiar thing to which she retreats when nothing else makes sense: it is cold, unforgiving, implacable anger and when there is nothing else to be angry at it eats itself. every step she's taken for years has been driven, in one way or another, by this fury that she doesn't know how to put down and now it feels like another failure that she can't stop shredding the soft things that try to wrap around her.
that they don't make her feel warm, any more. that kindness feels like a knife. he makes himself soft and she doesn't trust it; can't relax next to it, tense as if she's bracing to be struck. )
Whatever you want, ( not dispassionate, but flat, ) you are barking up the wrong tree. No one listens to me and I'm spending other people's money.
( it isn't impossible he just genuinely wants, for some insane reason, to spend time with her. )
no subject
[The laugh he lets out is sharp, almost barking, colored entirely by disbelief.]
Oh sweetheart, no. I don’t need anything from you.
And you don’t need anything from me. That makes us even.
Forget suspicion. Forget need. Come on, surely there’s something reckless you haven’t done in an age, hm? Something we could replicate before you return to your high tower and gilded streets.
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a few years ago, she might have actually said, no one's punched me in the face for a while out loud. so in that regard, at least, she hasn't tumbled all the way back down the crevasse. but what's there left to ruin?
she doesn't have fond memories of past recklessness. she knows too well what it was. )
There's no one in Kirkwall I want to hurt.
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[Maybe she's spent a little too much time straddling the lines between missions and gilded bars to notice the beautiful, untouched midpoint. He leans across the bench, a few fingers rising to draw gently across his ruff, exposing delicate, vulnerable skin as if playing some version of defenseless quarry.
A vampire's favorite trick.]
I have. And I've found no immediate shortage of fools all too eager to chase down a little easy prey in the dead of night— only to find out they're the ones being played for sport.
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gwenaëlle's vicious streak is more personal. most things are, with her. )
Go find yourself some sport, then, ( she says, pulling her sewing up between them like a shield. ) I don't understand why you'd bother, but I don't understand what you're doing right now, either, it'll be one more mystery I'll find it in myself to live with.
( she takes up her needle again, but she's off-balance and agitated now, and when she jabs it through she stabs it into her own thumb and swears, immediately, in orlesian.
she sucks blood off the end of her thumb before she can stain flint's shirt with it, and says around her hand, ) The reckless things I used to do were to myself. You want to throw me off a tower and see how beautifully I shatter?
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Instead his voice is low and subtle, thready in a way that feels private despite their overwhelmingly public surroundings.]
I believe you’re doing that already.
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that's fair. )
Do I look like I've never seen a man want to stick his prick in something broken.
( —she's so much more charming when she isn't talking. sure, it doesn't happen often, but even gwenaëlle has to sleep some time and there were definitely moments between his arrival and hardie noticing him where she was almost picturesque.
her glasses slide down her nose, a little. )
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[There's a dangerous line here to be crossed. One he absolutely knows is within reach by now— part of his own not-entirely-past life, attached to invisible, demanding strings— but can't quite gauge whether or not the reaction he'd find would be beneficial, or terribly volatile.
Probably the latter.
Yet she isn't pulling away, either. That she could doesn't escape him in the slightest.] Besides, you can't blame me, you know. Vision that you are.
[It's genial, conceding even. He imagines catching crimson between his teeth and her own skin with it— and instead, quite carefully, simply twists her hand in his grip to set a single, chaste kiss across the span of her knuckles. Perfectly harmless.
And then she's free.]
But I'm no devil or demon. I didn't come here to barter for your soul, or snatch you up in petty, pretty lies. You're quite free to do as you please.
That said. I'll be keeping myself company in the templar tower, second floor, if you care to join me. [He considers licking at his thumb. He abandons that consideration too, with no small effort, scuffing it against the edge of his tunic.]
Plenty of room to spare.
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when he was soft and inviting, she looked half afraid of him. when he's frank enough to consider it almost unkind, something in her unknots. )
An excess of it, ( she agrees, ) you should consider finding yourself a room you aren't sharing with the dregs of the Gallows.
( mean thing to say about edgard, but she mostly means the little vint scumbag. and she's not sleeping with anyone in front of either of them. still, this is less of a sharp rejection than it might have been. maybe a get a better room and I might consider revisiting this. )
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It’s a little difficult setting up suitable residency when you’re from another world entirely— [Flashing the edge of his palm, fingers gracefully curling around vivid green before offering a sweeping brush towards his ears.] And look like this.
[And yes, naturally, he could aim for something in the Gallows with a little more leg room, but that seems absurd considering matters of coin versus pay versus what he insists he deserves.]
Still, I’ve never been the sort for quitting. Give it a little more time, I’ll have proper quarters soon enough.
...but do leave that [said with a meager flick of his hand at Hardie] at home next time you're out in my neck of the woods.
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( is it hypocrisy that she had more or less refused to live in any of those rooms the instant she could clamber out of the gallows for hightown, had only come back for central tower quarters and had not for an instant considered the fifth or sixth floors as an option while her grandfather's house was right there.
yes. how is that relevant. )
But you're going to have to just get used to Hardie.
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[It's not as if he's keeping company in his room as of late.]
Hmph. [Is all he has to say about that sweet little snack— pup at her side.]
But please. Enjoy your evening, your embroidery, and your very devoted drool machine. I'm certain it'll be a wondrous night, filled with adventures and sweet dreams, and not at all uncomfortable in the slightest.
[Said as he backs away slowly, deigning to grace her with one very elegant mock-bow: more petty than anything actually mean-spirited, the sort of teething bites left between packmates rather than enemies, figuratively speaking.]