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“Wyll, darling.” Astarion reaches up, cups Wyll’s cheek in his hand. “My love, my light, my – oh, I’m not going to try to compete with you when it comes to poetic appellations. If you ask me one more time whether I’m all right with this, I’m going to throttle you, and that would defeat the purpose of this whole little exercise, wouldn’t it?”
“All right,” Wyll concedes. “But Astarion, promise me, please. If at any time, for any reason at all, you don’t wish to continue –”
“– I’ll give the signal, and you’ll stop,” Astarion finishes for him. “Fine, you insufferable man, I’ll promise you that. Again. Honestly. I’m not made of glass, you know. You won’t shatter me with one errant touch.”
“I know, my star. I’ve just – I’ve no desire to cause you any further pain.”
Astarion arches an eyebrow. “Must I remind you that I don’t need to breathe? You’re not putting me in any danger by cutting off my air supply.” The corners of his mouth curl up. “You’ve done it before, you know, and if memory serves, you rather liked the results.” He palms Wyll’s cock through his trousers to make his meaning all the more plain – or to rile Wyll up further. Or both. Wyll shifts into his touch with a sigh, and Astarion withdraws his hand all too soon, still grinning.
“It feels different like this,” Wyll says. He rests his thumb at the hollow of Astarion’s throat, right above his collarbones. His skin’s so soft there, his bones so narrow. Wyll’s by no means a large man, compared to some of their past acquaintances, but his hands easily span the slender column of Astarion’s neck. Astarion’s made of stern stuff, he knows. He can’t actually crush the man’s throat with a mere flexing of his fingers. But images of ruin haunt him, nevertheless.
Astarion arches underneath Wyll and presses a kiss to his brow, right between his horns. “I know, sweet. But I meant it, when I said this could prove…illuminating.”
A tenday ago, they’d started to make love, but Wyll began to notice a certain roteness to Astarion’s motions, a distant cast to his eyes. He stopped, of course. Astarion protested at first, insisted that Wyll was kicking up a fuss over nothing, but then they fell to talking, and kept talking until the candle by their bed burned down to nothing.
It’s just…oh, I don’t know, Astarion had said, and tucked himself into the crook of Wyll’s arm. Old habits die hard, and all that. And my body’s so used to operating on its own, bypassing conscious thought entirely. I don’t decide, I just – do. Even when there’s no reason behind it. It’s a bit like breathing, in a way.
Wyll had opened his mouth to contest the comparison, then remembered, with a trace of sheepishness, that breathing was, in fact, more a matter of habit than of need for Astarion. You do it because it’s familiar, not because you need to. I think I understand.
Although…Astarion drew his finger up Wyll’s chest, less seductive than searching. That does give me an idea. You could stop me from falling back on certain habits, you know. And if you did, perhaps – it might be easier to feel the difference, between reflex and choice.
It made a certain amount of sense then. It makes a certain amount of sense now. Wyll worried about what specters of memory those acts might conjure, even if the true physical impact on Astarion was negligible. Astarion countered that if the two of them avoided every bedroom activity that brought back bad memories for him, they’d have to avoid sex altogether, and he, for one, was not ready to bid that part of their life good-bye. It’s a sound point. It doesn’t quell the uneasy squirm in Wyll’s gut as he kneels over Astarion, brushes a curl back from his forehead.
“Oh, come down here,” Astarion says. He seizes Wyll by the horns, pulls him down for a kiss. Gods, Wyll never tires of this: the soft yield of Astarion’s mouth, the slow slide of his tongue against Wyll’s own, the hint of fang as he scrapes his teeth over Wyll’s lower lip. Wyll knows that a bite to the lip doesn’t yield much in the way of blood for Astarion, doesn’t allow him to truly feed, but the fantasy of Astarion draining him with a kiss remains a potent one still, and Wyll groans into Astarion’s mouth at the thought.
With effort, he moves his mouth away from Astarion’s and starts to trail kisses over his ear, under his jaw, down his throat. He feels each flutter of Astarion’s throat under his lips, each hitch – each soft whimper, as Wyll rolls one of Astarion’s nipples between his fingers and pinches in just the way he likes. Wyll contents himself with small kisses and soft touches for a time, mapping Astarion’s skin with his mouth and hands. Every part of him deserves to be cherished, to be adored, from the tips of his fingers to the ticklish spot under his ribs to the divot of his hipbones.
And if stopping Astarion’s breath will help keep him present, will remind him that he need no longer retreat behind learned responses, then well, Astarion deserves that too.
Astarion’s already hard when Wyll takes him in hand. He lowers his head to lap up the wetness beading at the head of Astarion’s shaft, and Astarion thumps his heel into Wyll’s back.
“You – ah – you incurable tease,” Astarion manages to get out. Wyll raises his head, grinning. He loves seeing Astarion well-fed for countless reasons, but one of them, he must admit, is the gorgeous sight of a true flush spreading down Astarion’s face and chest and thighs.
“Are you ready to move on to the next part, then?” Wyll asks.
“I’ve been ready,” Astarion says; he aims for a petulant tone, but his voice is too threaded with need.
“All right.” Wyll steels himself. He releases his hold on Astarion’s cock, strokes his flank instead. “Touch yourself, love. Start slow.”
Astarion skates his hand down his body, runs his fingers over Wyll’s before curling a loose fist around himself. He gives his shaft a few lazy, languid pulls, his eyes drifting shut. Wyll watches the shift of his hips, the rise and fall of his chest, and wonders where, in the half-eroded corridors of Astarion’s mind, the impulse for each movement originates.
Wyll brings his hand up to Astarion’s face, traces the curve of his cheekbone with his thumb. Astarion’s breath is beginning to fray. His eyes blink open for a moment; he catches Wyll’s gaze, and nods.
Swallowing, Wyll clamps his hand over Astarion’s nose and mouth.
Astarion doesn’t stop reaching for air at first. He arches his chest, like he’s trying to create more space for his lungs, and little muffled puffs of breath cross Wyll’s palm. The apple of his throat bobs. For a moment, his legs tense, toes flexed – then the tension ebbs from them, and Astarion melts further into the bed. He toys with the base of his cock, the tightening skin of his sac. He…he hasn’t given the signal. He doesn’t appear to be in pain. He’s fine. He asked for this. He wanted this.
Still, Wyll doesn’t want to push his luck. He releases his hold on Astarion, and Astarion gasps, a shiver running down his chest.
“How did that feel?” Wyll asks him. His tongue feels thicker in his mouth than normal, clumsier.
“Strange,” Astarion says, after a moment. A faint line appears between his brows. He’s still fondling his cock, but he’s heeding Wyll’s instructions – instead of thrusting up into his fist, he’s working his hand slowly up and down his length, pausing to twist his grip or circle his thumb over his slit. “Not unpleasant, just –” His eyelids flutter. “Will you let it go on longer this time?”
“If you’re sure,” Wyll says.
Astarion looks at him, half-exasperated and half-fond, and nudges Wyll with his elbow.
Steady, Wyll tells himself. He isn’t sure why. He’s not the one in any danger here. His hand hovers over Astarion’s mouth again; are his eyes blurring, or is there the slightest tremor in his fingers?
“Wyll?”
“I’m here.” Wyll drops a kiss to Astarion’s brow and lowers his hand once more.
He ought to have set up some way of keeping time before they began this, he thinks. He’s trying to maintain a count in his head, but the tempo feels – incorrect, somehow, the spaces between seconds both longer and shorter than they should be. Again, Astarion draws bowstring-tight at first before unwinding, but Wyll watches a second shudder wrack through him after. His hand stutters on his shaft; he gives himself a tighter squeeze at the tip, and a moan vibrates against Wyll’s hand. The moan doesn’t have the same breathy quality that so many of his staged ones do. It’s an inelegant burst of sound, and it’s all the more beautiful for it.
(The noise draws forth a strange echo in the back of Wyll’s mind. He banishes it.)
Astarion visibly sags into the mattress when Wyll releases him, this time.
“Oh,” he says. His tongue darts over his lips, wetting them. “There. Yes. Something happened there.”
“A good something?” Wyll asks.
“I think – yes. I liked it, I want –” His gaze refocuses on Wyll’s hands. “Cover my throat this time, darling?”
“Astarion –”
“You needn’t press down, just –” He rests his free hand over his throat, his fingers splayed and tented. Wyll quells the sudden impulse to knock Astarion’s hand away. Astarion isn’t pressing down at all, he realizes. It’s the appearance of force, without the substance. “Just like that. So I can feel your hand.”
“Just like that,” Wyll repeats. He takes Astarion’s hand in his own, laces their fingers together. Presses a kiss to the hollow of Astarion’s throat. It’s all right. Astarion will tell Wyll to stop if he needs to. And Wyll will listen. He would never – could never –
Once more, he seals Astarion’s mouth. And this time, he spreads his hand over Astarion’s throat, just as he was shown.
Gods, he feels each small twitch in Astarion’s throat like this. Each desperate pulse as he struggles for breath that won’t come, each plea to stop smothered before – Wyll blinks, and there’s a strange buzzing at the base of his head, a tingling roar in his ears. He – oh. The pain’s in his chest now, a sharp stab piercing him through.
“Wyll? Wyll, look at me.”
His empty socket aches. He remembers, with a sickening lurch, the feel of Mizora’s laughter ringing through his skull.
Hands cup the sides of his face, tilt his jaw up. He nearly jerks away, but something interrupts the reflex – it’s the coolness of those hands, nothing at all like the blaze of hellfire-veined flesh. The softness of those fingertips, nothing at all like a cambion’s claws.
“Wyll, are you with me?”
Astarion comes back into focus. His curls are askew; his red eyes are wide, searching. Shame washes over Wyll.
“Astarion, forgive me, I don’t know what came over me,” he begins. “We can – I’m sorry, let’s try that again –”
“Let’s not, actually,” Astarion says. “That was illuminating, but perhaps not in the way I’d initially thought it might be.”
Wyll shakes his head, tries to shape his protests into something articulable. “But you wanted to try this. You thought it might help. And we’d barely gotten started, and – hells, I didn’t mean to let you down.”
“Wyll,” Astarion says. Wyll can imagine Astarion calling order to his courtroom with much the same demeanor that he’s adopting now. “You, of all people, have not let me down.” He sighs. “If anything, I was the careless one, really.”
“Astarion –”
“Yes, yes, I know, the idea that I may have, perhaps, slightly miscalculated something at some point is utterly foreign to us all, nearly unthinkable, but – well.” Astarion takes Wyll’s hands in his own. “It’s been known to happen, from time to time. And when I proposed this little experiment, I…wasn’t thinking about your own history.”
“My own history?” Wyll repeats.
“I remember the first night we crossed paths with Mizora,” Astarion says. “She hurt you even before she – transformed you. She pulled at the air, like she was yanking on an invisible leash, and she choked you.”
Honestly, Wyll had thought he’d forgotten that. It paled in comparison to all else he’d endured that night.
“And I don’t think that was the first time she’d done that,” Astarion continues. His thumb traces small circles on the back of Wyll’s hand. Such a small touch, but it unfolds something far greater inside of Wyll. “Was it?”
“No,” Wyll admits. It’s difficult to meet Astarion’s eyes. The wash of shame returns, thick and curdled. “She said – she told me it’s how you go about training a dog.” His throat threatens to close. With some effort, he forces himself to continue. “She said I needed to learn the feel of a collar around my neck, and she – she wouldn’t let me breathe until I’d –”
Until he learned his lesson, she’d claimed, but there was never anything new to be learned from it. Just the same command, again and again: heel. Obey. Accept what you’re given, and do as you’re told. Do what you need to, to get through it. Shove your own desires, your own needs, somewhere deep inside yourself, because if she draws them out of you, she’ll fashion them into yet another leash.
Oh. Wyll’s shoulders are shaking. Wordlessly, Astarion gathers Wyll in his arms, draws him in close. The rise and fall of his chest might not be necessary, but it’s – good. Steadying.
“It was hardly the worst thing she did. I don’t know why –”
Wyll trails off.
“I can’t make sense of it any more than you can,” Astarion says. “None of it makes a damned bit of sense to begin with. But I do know one thing – I’d rather blunder my way through it with you than with anyone else.”