drink me dry

The first time Astarion bites him, he dies. Rune wakes up enraged, the kind of snarling fury that demands payment, answers, punishment. He’ll bury his own teeth in the spawn’s throat, take back what was stolen—he’s lost enough. So he storms across the camp, punches Astarion square in the face, and Astarion—

Apologises.

Which puts the beast in Rune’s head so off-balance that his higher self has a chance to silence the urges baying for blood long enough to listen.

“You were my first,” Astarion explains. Rune hates that. Hates knowing that. Whatever he is—whoever he is—he shouldn’t be anyone’s first anything.

He didn’t hate how it felt when Astarion drank him down to oblivion. In the moment before his heart stopped, it was a calm like nothing else; body full of still, dark water, empty as the void between the stars and as quiet, so instead of telling Astarion to fuck off and never do that again, he just says,

“Ask next time.”

And walks away.

It becomes a need, and he dislikes how much of a hold it has on him. Every night he tells himself last time as he informs Astarion he can come back to his favourite fountain for another bellyful of red, and every night he makes a liar of himself.

Fangs sink deep and he bites back a moan as the pull on his veins draws the darkness out of him. A veil comes down over his shattered mind and only as his heart slows to a crawl is he finally able to understand what clarity means.

He doesn’t die again. He gets close enough to the edge to make Astarion hiss “Shit!” and pull back, frantically checking his pulse, sighing in relief when he finds it. Rune, chasing the black, resents him every time he stops, even though the part of him that possesses actual reason knows that dying on a regular basis would burn through the limited magic at their disposal—and through the doubtless finite goodwill of Jergal’s withered spy, lingering in their camp. Rune doesn’t trust the bonesack anyway. He knows too much and says too little.

Whatever magic ruined him—or maybe it’s the tadpole—such edge-dancing doesn’t dull him as much as he expects. He’s a little woozy, a little slow in places—not where it matters.

And until it matters, he isn’t going to stop.

There’s some wickedness in Astarion that sings in sick harmony with his own. They can both stand up from a fight, rank with gore, and readily lick it from their mouths without a grimace or a groan. They both play at being civilised beasts—though Astarion is far better at concealing the sharpness of his teeth. And they both have missing pieces.

Cazador—walking corpse, Rune thinks, undead is not dead, is not offal, is not carrion—took Astarion’s life and carved a mystery into his back as a display of mastery. Someone stole Rune’s life and left him with an empty head and a hungry knife and he doesn’t know why yet, but soon he’ll make that rotted little butler talk.

For now, there are no answers for either of them, and so he continues to give himself to Astarion, although sex, that pleasant, full-body distraction of sweat and flesh, falls often by the wayside on such occasions. He’ll start a seduction—badly, Astarion teases, for Rune’s seductions consist of walking up to his bedmate and hauling him into a tent—and less than halfway through give up on carnal satisfaction in favour of fangs in his neck and sweet, aching oblivion.

Especially after a fight. Especially after an easy fight, when his anger’s up and his hands shake with the need to keep carving and the only available meat belongs to the people who stupidly follow him—because what else is there to do to find a cure for this parasite swimming in their brains?—then, when he’s an inch away from turning the camp into a fine red mist just to make the itching stop—then he drags Astarion to his tent.

“You’re getting a reputation, darling,” Astarion says. He doesn’t bother trying to undress either of them, just loosens Rune’s gambeson enough to get at his neck.

“For what?”

“Post-combat sex addiction.”

Rune snorts a laugh. It sounds animal, more like a snarl. “I don’t care.”

“I know.”

Minthara is finished with him, dozing strange and unviolent at his side, and all he wants to do is wrap his hands around her neck and twist.

Rune shoves to his feet, snatches up his trousers and stumbles through the camp half-naked. Goblins snore in scattered, ale-scented piles, the dark earth dotted with makeshift weapon-stands; scimitars and knives and spears shoved into blood- and piss-soaked ground. He weaves through it all like a drunk, then drops to his knees at the red tent flap and barrels through it in a beastly crawl.

Astarion’s awake, sat up by shuttered torchlight with a book. He arches an eyebrow at the intrusion.

“I thought you were with the drow tonight?”

Rune snatches the book and hurls it aside. Grabs Astarion’s hand and puts it to his throat. “Drink.”

“I’m perfectly sated, thank you very much.”

There’s hurt behind the snark, if Rune cared to hear it. He doesn’t. Can’t over the drumbeat of fury pounding behind his eyes. The snapping of Minthara’s neck rattles in his skull—if he doesn’t do it, he’ll go mad. Madder. He yanks Astarion to him, fingers knotted in his hair.

“Drink.”

Astarion’s breath flutters over his skin, and the scar around his throat aches, tightening as if to strangle. Faint pressure, the tip of a fang. He can hear Minthara’s pulse on the other side of the camp, begging to be silenced. His nails scrape Astarion's scalp.

“Please,” he whispers, the word half-broken.

A sting and a sharp, hot pain—then finally the pull he needs. He clings to Astarion with desperate hands, and as the blood drains out of him, so too does the murderous desire. His mind goes quiet. His body goes stiller and stiller until he sags limply against Astarion’s chest, all weight and no thought. He clutches weakly at Astarion’s shirt with heavy, uncoordinated fingers.

“Thank you,” he slurs.

And then he’s gone.

At Moonrise, fragments of memory stir in the rancid soup of his brain. All they do is make him worse. Better when there was simply nothing, not this half-remembered rage and a tower full of monsters who know him and think him worse than they.

When the drow asks for his blood, he gives it. He has more than enough, and maybe she’ll find something in there that explains his empty head. Maybe the potion she can brew from it will put some colour back in his skin, clear the shadows from beneath his bone-white eyes.

When she asks Astarion to bite her, Rune almost rips her throat out. “Mine,” he snarls, and she takes it for some possessive affection. Some obsession. But that’s not it, because what’s really his is not just Astarion—for whom he’d gladly rip out a thousand throats—but Astarion’s bite. Those fangs belong to him, that precious oblivion his and his alone. How dare she, how dare she—dhaerow, Lolthsworn bitch, gut you cut you skin you break you—

Astarion puts a hand on his shoulder. Sharp nails catch the twin scabs on his neck. He exhales.

Araj Oblodra lives.

Dead. She’s dead. Dead dead dead, the Harpers are all dead, the girl is dead, and if it felt so good why does he feel so sick, why are they all looking at him like that, she was an insufferable Selûnite—Lady of Sorrows guide me, Shadowheart, I’m a Dark Justiciar now!—she was weak—if she’d been stronger she wouldn’t have died, would she Lae’zel?—she was…she was…

Meat. Pretty silver meat.

They’re all just meat.

They’re all just meat.

They’re all just—

“Take a walk with me, darling.”

The shadow-curse claws at his skin. No respite here, not anymore. The Last Light has been extinguished. Astarion’s hand in his is so cold, or is it the other way around? His hands are coated in blood. His arms. His face.

Behind the inn and out of sight of the massacre, Astarion tugs aside the collar of his gambeson and cleans away the spattered gore with his sleeve. “You’re shaking.”

“Kill me,” Rune says. “Before I do it again. I can’t stop this, I keep telling myself I can stop and I can’t, I can’t, I—” His voice twists into a guttural growl that rakes his vocal cords raw. He grabs Astarion’s shoulders. “Kill me.”

“No,” Astarion says, and bites him.

Rune clutches at his hair, red streaks in the white. His heart thuds, heavy like a war-drum, fast like a rabbit in a snare, and Astarion drinks and drinks and finally it slows. Rune clings to him like he’s drowning, because he is, because he needs to. A little more. Just a little more, take every last drop, make it all quiet, make it empty forever.

“You did it once,” he begs, ragged. “You can do it again. You know how.”

Head swimming, vision blurring, so close, so close—Astarion draws away. Rune tries to pull him back, but freshly fed, his vampire is strong. He gives up, limp as a marionette with cut strings. He takes a step. Staggers. Astarion catches him, holds him close. They both reek of blood.

“Still feel like committing wanton acts of butchery against our companions?” Astarion murmurs. Rune shakes his head. “There’s a good little murderer. Come on then, back to camp with you—before this darkness burns holes in your pretty face.”

This thing Scleritas Fel has turned him into—turned him back into—is familiar and foul, the straining muscles folded beneath his fragile skin a part of him he hadn’t known was missing.

He wishes he still didn’t know.

He’s no longer certain which body is his. The monster, the Slayer, that beast—it feels pure, the undiluted rage and bloodlust of a thing exactly as it’s meant to be. And isn’t it right that his outside matches his insides, which are as uncontrollable as everyone says they are? They all know him for what he is, now that Isobel’s dead. They can’t see him as anything else. Killing her was as much a need as breathing in the moment, but he still sees her broken corpse when he closes his eyes.

Too far. This has all gone too far.

So he swallows the monster and keeps his original flesh on, right up until he can’t. It’s stupid, the way it happens. Some pitiful ambush by shadow-warped warriors and groaning wraiths, and he’s always reckless, he knows this, it’s never been a problem before, only now after he falls and Shadowheart’s magic calls him back, he can’t hold his form. He turns inside out in a spray of blood and bellows forth reborn, a towering, four-armed thing of hunger and slaughter that rips and tears until there’s nothing-nothing-nothing left.

Shadowheart and Minthara keep a wary distance—the former with a hand on her spear, the latter with a look of cautious intrigue. Everything is dead and still he seethes. All is cast in a haze of red and he can’t so much hear their heartbeats as taste them in the back of his throat. The almost-sound scrapes the inside of his skull. He moves a half step towards them. Shadowheart’s fingers tighten around the haft of her spear.

A hand touches his flank. Rune spins, snarling, his monstrous face drooling blood an inch from Astarion’s nose. There’s no fear in his eyes. He reaches up to touch the side of Rune’s jaw.

“Time to come back, darling.”

Rune hisses, gnashes his many fangs. Astarion doesn’t flinch.

“We’re not having a contest over whose are bigger,” he says, flashing his own small teeth. He softens his voice, low so only Rune can hear it. “You’re safe. It’s over. Come back to me. Please.”

He strokes along the hard, strange flesh of the Slayer’s muzzle, and before he’s finished the motion, there’s a spine-cracking rip-tear of blood and warping muscle, and in an agonising clench, Rune twists back into himself. He collapses to his knees as the injuries that felled him in the first place howl for his attention. Astarion keeps hold of him, keeps him upright, even as the world sways around him.

He’s shaking. So badly it almost feels like a seizure, and his face is wet; most of it’s blood, but not all of it. Shadowheart’s magic and Astarion’s arms fold around him, and when Rune tilts his head, the fangs come at once, banishing every last trace of the monster.

“Now is hardly the time,” Shadowheart protests. “I’m trying to put him back together.”

“So am I,” is Astarion’s reply.

It’s late the next morning by the time he comes to. He’s in Astarion’s tent, weapons and armour piled nearby. There’s blood crusted on his neck and the world spins when he sits up, vision spotting. He’s trying to rub focus back to his eyes when the canvas parts and Astarion ducks into the tent.

“Ah, sleeping beauty awakes,” he says, holding out a waterskin. Rune downs it greedily. Astarion sits cross-legged beside him.

“How are you feeling?”

“Tired.”

Astarion worries at his lip with the point of a fang. His gaze flickers to the scabs on Rune’s scarred throat. “I’m not certain doing that is particularly sustainable. You’re an unusual breed of half-elf, but you do still need most of the blood to be inside your body.”

Rune swallows. Reaches out. Takes Astarion’s hand. Their fingers lace together—blood under both their nails.

“If I…” he starts. Falters. Astarion waits. “If I go, you have to kill me. Promise me you’ll kill me.”

“I told you already, I’m not going to—”

“Promise me.” Rune grabs his other hand. “If I can’t come back—if you can’t bring me back—you drain me dry.” He meets Astarion’s eyes. Holds on tight. “Please.”

Beyond the tent, the camp mutters with quiet life. The faint scent of frying meat turns his stomach; the endless moans of the crowding shadows echo through the taut silence between them.

At last, Astarion nods.

“Alright. I promise.”

The words lock around Rune’s heart, safe and secure as a muzzle. Relief puts the ghost of a smile to his wretched mouth, and he leans his face against Astarion’s cold neck.

“Thank you.”