It hasn't been uncommon for Astarion to spend the night in her room, ever since they took up rooms at the inn to begin with, though perhaps for all their teasing it would surprise some of her companions to know what they have done while in her room together. Planning the assault on Cazador's palace, hypothesizing about what each of their companions' blood would taste like, bandaging up wounds from the day's adventuring. On occasion, she's subjected him to listening to her playing the lute. On some beautifully tender occasions, they've just slept - or the elven equivalent - legs tangled together, her arms around his waist.
So why is she suddenly nervous when they step into the room, and close the door to quieten the world outside - Baldur's Gate merely waking up to the day, where they all have just arrived, tired and worn.
It might have something to do with the emotional turmoil that the night has left her in. To start it realising that she loves this elf - petty, dry-witted, sharp-tongued asshole that he is, she feels as though she's seen the diamond hiding beneath the hard rock, waiting for the right hand to draw it out - and to end it helping him free himself of his master's reigns. To be left to wonder, in the small, petty, dry-witted, sharp-tongued asshole part of her own mind, if he will find himself having no more use for her, now that she knows she loves him.
Ah, wouldn't that be something?
Stop that chain of thoughts now. You ridiculous girl - he deserves better, and so do you. Start with the bath.
"Oh - they've set out oils, that's nice," she finally says, gesturing the the fancy little bottles set up on a stool by the tub. And the tub, good gods, it's a luxurious thing on its own. Claw footed, set up behind a privacy screen that looks upon first glance to be hand painted, and steaming from the hot water already filling it.
She feels out of place in the face of this much luxury, just like she feels tongue-tied for the time being. Since she's likely to say the wrong thing, she decides to not speak until he's ready. There is a bath, there is a tub, so Hermione begins to undress. Her robes are not a complicated affair to take off, only a few buckles and she can slip them over her head and let them drop to the floor, toeing off her boots quickly, and shedding her gloves.
The inside of his armor still feels sticky with sweat and blood. Cazador's blood, the very same that had hung over his head, an unattainable zenith. Becoming something more than a spawn, a puppet, a slave to the darkness.
Whatever hope there had been of becoming more had died along with his master. Some part of him mourned, still.
"Ah. So they did." No witty retort, no dryly amused observation or playful tease. Only stripping out of his clothes and sinking down into the warm water with a shudder, feeling the heat immediately start to sink inward to the cold of his core.
Since he's undressing at last, she finishes off getting naked and slips into the tub a few seconds before him, shifting to rest against the edge.
She has her legs parted, glad for the width of the tub allowing for it, so he would fit - albeit snuggly - right there.
It will bring her in close proximity with his back, with the scar detailing the ritual they interrupted last night. He looks so larger-than-life usually, that this feels oddly surreal. He feels...smaller.
A wave of protectiveness sweeps over her, a desire to keep him warm and safe.
She lets out a long sigh, letting the water soothe lingering aches, and brings one hand out of the water to touch his back.
He knows he looks a mess, in the moment. His hair is in disarray, streaks of blood stark against the silver-white. Part of him wants to pull away at the touch. Not because it's her, no, of course not. It just doesn't feel right for her to have to touch him like this.
A ridiculous thought, frankly. They've seen -- and touched -- each other plenty over the last few weeks. She's seen all the ugliness he has to hide. And yet, she wants him close, even so.
He lets out a breath before sinking back as bidden, his gaze elsewhere and nowhere. "Apologies," he murmurs, the water comfortably lapping up against them both, the warmth of her frame sinking into him as surely as the water.
All the physical mess, that's fixable. The innkeeper included soap for then as well as oils, and there's going to be time for grooming themselves back to normality. The emotional mess, that will take time.
She finds herself patient and full of it now. There's still tadpoles in her head, there's a cult trying to end the world and turn it into an illithid colony, there's an unspoken agreement from the world at large that they're meant to save it - Hermione and her group of traumatised assholes - and yet it feels like the biggest threat is taken care of.
She can be patient, just as she's been with Astarion for some time.
Although that doesn't stop her from tsking her tongue when he apologises. "You've nothing to apologise for, my darling," she says calmly.
She dips her hand in the water, and brings it up to his forehead, then runs it back over his hair. It's by far the slowest method of washing his hair, but she isn't quite ready to let him go.
"You're allowed to feel things," she adds, "and it's nobody's business or say about what those things should be. You take your time now. Let me take care of you."
His eyes slide shut as the water drips down, trickling past his eyes and down his cheeks, but his tongue still feels leaden. What is there to say? The weight of the past night still reverberates through him, seeking an outlet and he isn't sure how or what to provide it.
But there is this, at least Her presence is a comfort he can allow himself, and to surrender himself to her mercies is no hard ask.
He does reach up to take hold of one of her hands, silently pulling it forward and kissing the back of her knuckles, almost reverently.
It squeezes around her heart strings, pulls mercilessly at them. Her heartbeat feels thunderous in her chest.
She leaves a kiss on his shoulder, her lips touching skin being the only sound in the room for a while. It really does feel like a bubble now - a bubble of silence, or a bubble like what Silence produces.
She's going to stubbornly forget all about this fight. About the Silences cast, contrasting with the screams of Astarion's pain. She's going to forget Cazador, because it's what he deserves: nothing. Nothing at all.
"Here, let's take care of this," she says, cutting the silence short, and reaches for a little bowl set near the tub. "Keep your head tipped back for me, love."
When did she become so used to giving him petnames? The dam keeping her affections in check has burst, and it feels so...so natural to call him that. All those things.
She shakes away the last dregs of embarrassment about petnames, and scoops water into the bowl, pouring it over his hair. A baptism, of sort. At the very least, she will make sure there is no more dried blood in those white locks.
He'd started the whole petnames thing, of course, but that had been a matter of keeping distance. 'Darling', 'dear', 'sweetheart', 'love', things he'd called his marks, ways of trying to ignore who they were as people and substituting only a grim string of circumstantial similarities.
All fools doomed because they stopped, they listened, they let him draw them in.
Something he'll never have to do again, never.
When Hermione says those things, it's the exact opposite. It's her way of sinking past the superficial, and the meaning shifts. The words have weight, now, layered over him as he tips his head back to allow her to do as she pleases. Slowly, the blood drains away, the metallic tang swallowed by the scent of the soaps and oils nearby.
"...I want you to appreciate that I'm entirely capable of doing this myself, you know."
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
/plays I Want to Live on repeat
So why is she suddenly nervous when they step into the room, and close the door to quieten the world outside - Baldur's Gate merely waking up to the day, where they all have just arrived, tired and worn.
It might have something to do with the emotional turmoil that the night has left her in. To start it realising that she loves this elf - petty, dry-witted, sharp-tongued asshole that he is, she feels as though she's seen the diamond hiding beneath the hard rock, waiting for the right hand to draw it out - and to end it helping him free himself of his master's reigns. To be left to wonder, in the small, petty, dry-witted, sharp-tongued asshole part of her own mind, if he will find himself having no more use for her, now that she knows she loves him.
Ah, wouldn't that be something?
Stop that chain of thoughts now. You ridiculous girl - he deserves better, and so do you. Start with the bath.
"Oh - they've set out oils, that's nice," she finally says, gesturing the the fancy little bottles set up on a stool by the tub. And the tub, good gods, it's a luxurious thing on its own. Claw footed, set up behind a privacy screen that looks upon first glance to be hand painted, and steaming from the hot water already filling it.
She feels out of place in the face of this much luxury, just like she feels tongue-tied for the time being. Since she's likely to say the wrong thing, she decides to not speak until he's ready. There is a bath, there is a tub, so Hermione begins to undress. Her robes are not a complicated affair to take off, only a few buckles and she can slip them over her head and let them drop to the floor, toeing off her boots quickly, and shedding her gloves.
no subject
Whatever hope there had been of becoming more had died along with his master. Some part of him mourned, still.
"Ah. So they did." No witty retort, no dryly amused observation or playful tease. Only stripping out of his clothes and sinking down into the warm water with a shudder, feeling the heat immediately start to sink inward to the cold of his core.
no subject
She has her legs parted, glad for the width of the tub allowing for it, so he would fit - albeit snuggly - right there.
It will bring her in close proximity with his back, with the scar detailing the ritual they interrupted last night. He looks so larger-than-life usually, that this feels oddly surreal. He feels...smaller.
A wave of protectiveness sweeps over her, a desire to keep him warm and safe.
She lets out a long sigh, letting the water soothe lingering aches, and brings one hand out of the water to touch his back.
"Lean back against me?"
no subject
A ridiculous thought, frankly. They've seen -- and touched -- each other plenty over the last few weeks. She's seen all the ugliness he has to hide. And yet, she wants him close, even so.
He lets out a breath before sinking back as bidden, his gaze elsewhere and nowhere. "Apologies," he murmurs, the water comfortably lapping up against them both, the warmth of her frame sinking into him as surely as the water.
no subject
She finds herself patient and full of it now. There's still tadpoles in her head, there's a cult trying to end the world and turn it into an illithid colony, there's an unspoken agreement from the world at large that they're meant to save it - Hermione and her group of traumatised assholes - and yet it feels like the biggest threat is taken care of.
She can be patient, just as she's been with Astarion for some time.
Although that doesn't stop her from tsking her tongue when he apologises. "You've nothing to apologise for, my darling," she says calmly.
She dips her hand in the water, and brings it up to his forehead, then runs it back over his hair. It's by far the slowest method of washing his hair, but she isn't quite ready to let him go.
"You're allowed to feel things," she adds, "and it's nobody's business or say about what those things should be. You take your time now. Let me take care of you."
no subject
But there is this, at least Her presence is a comfort he can allow himself, and to surrender himself to her mercies is no hard ask.
He does reach up to take hold of one of her hands, silently pulling it forward and kissing the back of her knuckles, almost reverently.
no subject
She leaves a kiss on his shoulder, her lips touching skin being the only sound in the room for a while. It really does feel like a bubble now - a bubble of silence, or a bubble like what Silence produces.
She's going to stubbornly forget all about this fight. About the Silences cast, contrasting with the screams of Astarion's pain. She's going to forget Cazador, because it's what he deserves: nothing. Nothing at all.
"Here, let's take care of this," she says, cutting the silence short, and reaches for a little bowl set near the tub. "Keep your head tipped back for me, love."
When did she become so used to giving him petnames? The dam keeping her affections in check has burst, and it feels so...so natural to call him that. All those things.
She shakes away the last dregs of embarrassment about petnames, and scoops water into the bowl, pouring it over his hair. A baptism, of sort. At the very least, she will make sure there is no more dried blood in those white locks.
no subject
All fools doomed because they stopped, they listened, they let him draw them in.
Something he'll never have to do again, never.
When Hermione says those things, it's the exact opposite. It's her way of sinking past the superficial, and the meaning shifts. The words have weight, now, layered over him as he tips his head back to allow her to do as she pleases. Slowly, the blood drains away, the metallic tang swallowed by the scent of the soaps and oils nearby.
"...I want you to appreciate that I'm entirely capable of doing this myself, you know."
no subject
She sets the bowl down on the stool, and leans in against him to whisper: "It's called pampering. I'm spoiling you."