Chapter Text
It was ill-choreographed, as kisses went. Astarion missed his mark, slightly off-centre, with more of her top lip than the rest of her mouth. That had never happened quite so obviously before, so he must have been nervous. His skills rusty.
It didn’t matter. Of course it didn’t matter. It was him. The sensation tore through Rose like a lightning strike, heart so full in her chest that it ached. As the angle of their mouths adjusted like a homecoming, she was already lost. Her mouth opened to his, and she reached up to cup Astarion’s face between her hands. His were at her shoulders. Tentative, perfunctory: like he could break them apart if something suddenly went wrong. That didn't matter to Rosalie, either. Finally, finally she could show him the comfort she had wanted to, from the beginning, the tenderness she knew he deserved. She poured all the love she could into the gesture, as gently as she dared.
Finally, she could apologise with more than words.
Astarion relaxed by increments. The kiss was soft enough to shatter, but it wasn’t very heated. It felt more cautious, than anything: as if they were both prodding at a bruise, testing to see how much it hurt. There was an edge of pain to it, the kind that ended sweet. When their mouths broke apart, their breathing was ragged from holding it, as if they’d both been scared to admit to human need and risk rupturing the moment. Rosalie wrapped her arms around Astarion like he was the entire world, and pulled him in close as his head dropped artlessly onto her shoulder. His hands were in her hair - he followed the curls down, down, down her back, then wrapped both his arms around her waist and bundled her into him. Her whole body, soft under the loose fabric of her night clothes, pressed all along his as she stroked a line down his spine and then tugged him closer still. She buried her own face in his neck and crushed herself to him, unable to quite believe any of it was real.
Chest against chest, she felt and heard Astarion’s heart pounding out a steady, frantic rhythm, perfectly in time with her own.
Neither of them said anything. Rosalie felt like any words she had to give were inadequate. How could you encompass a feeling as big as this?
Was there any point in articulating it at all, when you knew that wasn’t even needed?
When you knew the other person was feeling the exact same thing, and that knowledge was amplifying the emotion within you, a hundredfold?
She breathed in, and Astarion was there, and everything, everything, was finally ok.
Time passed, in that hug, in that silent darkened corridor, in her empty house which was no longer empty, because Astarion was there, with her. Rosalie found herself realising how much of her tower had been planned around Astarion’s absence - so much so that it only felt complete, with him stood there in it, alongside her.
Rosalie had no idea how long their embrace lasted. She felt no impatience - there was no end to how much her heart could hold, after being starved for so long.
But gradually, the air changed, and something between them shifted imperceptibly. She felt the ache in her chest leak out into other parts of her body. If they were to break apart and Astarion chose to look at her, she would have to make her excuses and blame certain things on the cold.
Luckily, when Astarion leaned back again in silence, his eyes were only on her face, and they were night-dark and shadowed with want. Rosalie could only be relieved, because she had become worried that what she was suddenly feeling was about to make their beautiful, tender moment exceedingly awkward.
Instead they made the same, wordless decision in tandem. When they crashed back together this time, their mouths on each other were frenetic and coarse. Rosalie felt her spine bow back with the force with which Astarion moved into her space, cradling the back of her head and manoeuvring her, to drink from her mouth like wine. As their tongues tangled together, she worried it was shallow of her to start calculating distances to her bedroom. She didn’t want to presume-
Then Astarion took a decisive step in the right direction, proving her wrong. But Rosalie hadn’t expected it. Her hands had been busy thoroughly mangling the collar of his shirt, and their mouths were still attached, so their legs smashed together and they both overbalanced. It mostly just ended with her slammed against a wall, swerved to the left last minute by vampire reflexes - a failsafe, to stop them both from falling.
Not that she minded. The breathlessness was only a little from the impact.
It had been a long time, Rosalie thought, since she’d been slammed against a wall. You started to worry those days were behind you, once you reached a certain age - or maybe just at a certain point in your own sorry dry spell.
“You alright?” Astarion asked her, nose-to-nose, one arm braced on the wall next to her. The words were spoken nearly into her mouth.
“Mhmmm,” Rose nodded eagerly, hand at his jaw, wanting to convey that yes, she was in fact perfect. She swallowed, then pulled back less than a centimetre, to ask: “Are we-”
She didn’t manage to finish the sentence. When she raised her gaze from his mouth and saw the way he was looking at her, it stole all her breath away.
Astarion gently lifted each of her hands from where they rested on him. His thumbs pressed soft, into the indents of her palms. He moved them both, to the buttons of his shirtfront.
“Yes, I think we just might be,” he informed her quietly, and then he kissed her again.
Rose pressed herself to the wall, through him - demanding all the weight of his body against her with one urgent tug. Then, her hands scrambled to follow his silent instructions.
She took Astarion’s shirt off there, untucking it from the waistband, pulling it off him, and discarding it blindly to the floor. She didn’t notice where it landed, too consumed with the sight of him in front of her. She immediately began running her hands over every inch of pale, exposed skin. A flash in her mind, unbidden, of the Ascendent: so untouchable, always fully clothed, never once without armour. Rosalie willed it away and instead focused on the man she was with, the one who trusted her with this, as her fingers relearned every line of a body that they had never really forgotten. The taut muscles in Astarion's back, pebbled with scar tissue. The swoop of those perfect, elegantly sculpted shoulders.
His skin was warm now, no longer cold. When she laid a palm possessively over the place where his heart lay, skin to skin, Astarion shuddered under her hands.
“Ok?” she panted, breaking their mouths apart just long enough to ask the question.
He made an inarticulate noise, immediately searching to reclaim her mouth.
“I need you-” Rose was fighting for her life, but there were certain things you wanted to make sure you got right. “I need you to say it clearly for me!”
“...Grand!” replied Astarion, with a burst of effort, in a voice that strained in all the right ways. His head dropped to her chest, as he muttered. “Just living again, for the first time. No big deal, really.”
The idea of it, of dragging him back to the living, of forcing him to experience his body the exact way the ritual had promised, meant it was Rose’s turn to make an utterly unintelligible sound. She raised his chin with finger and thumb and kissed him again, hard, biting deep into his lip. Taking both his wrists, she tugged him down the corridor. The journey was fumbling and blind, because they couldn’t keep apart for long. Walking them backwards, Rose finally reached her bedroom, groping the air until she found the door handle. She dismissed the Dancing Lights with a wave of the other hand, as she kicked it the rest of the way open with her heel. Astarion gave her two seconds to make her way successfully inside, before they both agreed it was two seconds too long. She reached out for him desperately with grasping hands, and he immediately surged towards her, mouth reclaiming hers and hands burying deep in her hair.
And then they were inside, and it was like a dream Rosalie had played out in her head a thousand times, then denied ever remembering the next morning. She knew this was real, however, because none of it felt sleepy. Not a single sensation was dulled. Her nerves felt pressed up against the very edges of her skin. She felt both a tug of desire, then a stab of adrenaline, when Astarion’s hands moved to her shoulders, to the straps of her nightdress.
They hesitated there, waiting for permission.
“I-” Rosalie swallowed, trying to moderate her breathing and find sense. She pulled back ever so slightly, looking up into Astarion’s wrecked face, knowing they had both made a ruin of each other.
“I’m not - I look a bit different than I used to,” she warned. “It might not be-”
“-Don’t you dare,” Astarion warned her, in that same strangled, frayed-edge voice.
“I’m just saying-!”
Astarion moved both hands immediately to her ass and yanked her bodily towards him, before kissing her senseless again, there stood at the foot of the bed. Normally this kind of argumentation lacked rigour, but Rosalie actually felt that he made a very compelling point. What use, exactly, were clothes to her, at this moment in time?
She reached for the straps while they were still caught up in each other and her eyes were still closed, hoping to hide from the thrill of vulnerability in a distracted moment. But Astarion felt her move and he paused, still and quiet and patient. His hands left her, giving Rose an audience as she pulled the nightdress from her shoulders. It fell from her body to pool on the floor, revealing nothing underneath.
Her tail lashed once, nervously, as she planted both her hands back on his shoulders in small little fists, to combat the urge to cover herself.
Astarion swallowed.
“Yep,” he said intelligently. “Still beautiful. Thank the gods we didn’t turn you evil.”
Rosalie didn't want to see where the blush started.
“Just so you know?” she murmured quietly, looking directly up into his face. “When it's from the right person, I really, really like praise.”
Astarion shed the rest of his clothes then, and she pulled him towards the bed. What came next under the dim light of the canopy was faltering; a little desperate, a little clumsy. Touches that were once sure felt uncertain - they both knew what the other person liked, but not what had changed. Everything felt fragile, like it was certain to break. Edges kept catching, but something about that made it sweeter, left her shuddering.
At one point, Rose found herself laid out on her back. Astarion crawled to kneel above her, in the space between her legs where she had kicked out and left them splayed in the sheets. Eyes following his own progress, he trailed an open hand across the ridges at Rosalie's throat and between her breasts. He followed the finely serrated edge down, across the prickling line of her sternum, and the starburst of her navel. His fingers came to rest against the soft lower curve of her stomach, but went no further, until her body began squirming in place with the thought of everything she was being denied.
She thought she knew what would come next: a kiss to the thigh, a pressure to pin her in place. She shivered, sensitive to a touch that wasn't even there.
And then suddenly, he stilled. What had started out as deliberate became something else entirely.
Rosalie recognised the look. “It's OK,” she said automatically, pushing up on her elbows as his hand fell from her, “we can stop.”
“No, I don't want to stop,” Astarion said, dragging his gaze away with such slowness that it was like he both couldn't stand the sight of her, yet struggled to look away. “I want-” he let out an unsteady breath, entire chest heaving, “I'm just so scared of getting it wrong.“
“Oh, my darling,” Rose said, unable to hide the sadness in her voice.
The ache in her heart and the ache of arousal began and ended as one. It all bled together - yet, somehow, none of it felt bad. She knew it was impossible to have one thing without the other, and there was nothing Rosalie wanted, more than this. This moment was always going to hold a little pain. But that didn't strike her as a bad thing: it just was.
She placed her hand to Astarion’s face, glowing pale in the blue light, and turned him back to face her. “Being apart from you, that was the only thing that was wrong.”
And then she traced his lip with her thumb and kissed him again, willing him to believe it. The moment softened, then caught like tinder. Rosalie pulled his naked body back over her, hooking her feet into the bend of his knees. From the noise he made, she thought everything might once again be perfect.
But then she realised that their positioning reminded her of one dream with the Ascendent, and she suddenly had to ask them to move.
Another awkward break in their choreography, as it was rearranged.
“Do you still like-”
“If I touch you here will you-”
“Tell me what you want. Slowly.”
It certainly wasn’t perfect, but it was theirs, and this, more than anything, was what seemed to set Rose’s body to molten pleasure. No one else could do this, the way they could do this to each other.
They finally found themselves with Astarion sat in the sheets, and Rosalie was still kissing him, spreading her now soaked thighs and clambering into his lap.
She broke the kiss only once. She was knelt above him, poised in such a way that their mouths were separated by the difference in height. Her bad knee suddenly twinged, faltered, and nearly gave out.
She jolted inelegantly, bracing herself on Astarion’s shoulder, and then she paused… momentarily considering logistics.
After a careful assessment, she placed her hand to her own chest, and cast Enhance Ability, to increase her body’s strength. She felt her knee stop its warning tremor on the mattress, and become secure underneath her. She straightened herself up again over him, tested its mobility. Astarion watched her and the way her body moved, the whole time.
“Not… a… word,” she told him, as sternly as she could manage. One hand was pressed to the indent gathering blue shadows beneath his exposed throat, and the other rested over his lips.
And Astarion smiled at her, beneath and between her fingers. It wasn’t a flirtatious, knowing smirk, but fully joyous, almost boyish in its sincerity.
“Really, darling?” he asked her gently, the fingertips of one hand skating from the sensitive hollow of her treacherous knee, all the way up her bare leg to cup her ass and steer her over him. “...not even one?”
Rose did her level best to frown, then lost all strictness when she watched his expression stutter and eyelids shut, as she took hold of him and eased down onto his lap - settled him into her - and guaranteed a moment of silence for them both as they gasped.
“Well, you can always thank me later,” she murmured into his ear, as she breathed in deep and relearned the sensation of him. She pressed her lips to the skin she spoke against, then down his neck, open mouthed and languorous, decadent as the stretch within. She felt his hand move up to span the curve of her waist - finally that pressure she wanted, full of barely-repressed strength - as she littered kisses across his chest and neck. His fingertips - index and middle - tapped once to her skin, then tightened bruisingly into her flesh, before she anchored a hand in his hair, and began to move.
She was a little out of practice, but it was little wonder that wizards could get lazy in their dotage: some spells really did carry the bulk of the work for you. If there was one thing Rosalie could claim mastery of, it was concentration. Hers held fast as it began to stretch taut, and became deliciously tested.
Astarion ignored her instructions - or maybe just listened to earlier ones - and started to whisper a litany of praise in her ear. Each word out of his mouth turned Rose’s whole body scarlet. He laughed breathlessly, each time her body rippled reflexively around his and tightened in response.
One sentence turned devastating - had her humming out this reedy, high sound that rose and fell with her body. It came out barely steady enough to even be considered a moan, before it just broke and collapsed in on itself in the middle. Heat built between them, in the friction as their bodies moved - he was just so warm now, she wasn't doing the work for two. Rosalie clung to Astarion like he was the fire that could warm her, her arms around him and her tail almost wrapping them both full circle. She coiled herself to him, tried to hold him as close as possible, with every part of her body. Her pounding heartbeat and aching breasts pressed against his chest. She felt the ridged welts of scars under her nearly clawed hands.
She kept trying to do the right thing and be good, check in on Astarion through her lashes as their foreheads pressed together, to look for any signs of discomfort. But honestly, from the first time he thrust himself upwards to meet her pace, became just as much of a part of this as she was, she was suddenly so overwhelmed that she could barely think beyond herself. Beyond this body, and how empty it had felt until now.
His eyes met hers, for just the briefest moment, catching her in the act, and the intensity of the held stare made Rose whimper, then screw her eyes tight shut. It was all just too much.
Rosalie thought she understood the Ascendent a little, in that moment: the intense belief that you could crawl inside a person and consume them, until they were your only source of meaning and life.
It couldn’t even be termed greed. Not when she knew it was desperation.
“Rose, love-” Astarion gasped, “-please.”
“I've got you, “ she murmured. “I'm with you. I'm here."
Astarion came, and then she finished on her own hand with him still inside her, gasping and panting, forehead pressed into the curve of his neck.
The feeling came slow, still holding that sweet edge of pain. The same kind of pleasure as picking at a seam until it unravelled, or a scabbed wound until it bled. Pressure built and built, and then - with a whispered nickname in her ear - it broke all at once. Her frail, mortal body went lax, against the monument she'd made of his. She gasped and spasmed her way through it, eyes still tight shut as if the moment would shatter with her.
But then, Astarion’s arms reached around her body, one hand anchoring on the vulnerable spot at the nape of her neck. He held her to him, and suddenly he was real again.
It was all real.
“I can’t believe I built all these bathtubs big enough for two, and I didn’t even realise it,” Rosalie intoned wretchedly into her hands, feeling utterly f*cking mortified. “Do you know how much I judged you, before, for the way that you-”
Astarion’s hand snuck around her waist from behind, and he pressed a kiss to her damp shoulder. “All I take from this, is that we both have faultless priorities, and excellent taste,” he observed, with a smile she couldn’t see but only hear. “I personally love it, when a bathroom is capable of meeting quorum, if pressed.”
It was the early afternoon of the next day. Sunlight flooded in through the window, and Verity warbled sadly by the closed door.
Rosalie and Astarion shared a bath that had been deemed thoroughly necessary. For all the first time had been awkward and uncertain, the second, and third and fourth had become much easier. Familiarity, it seemed, could be recovered, once they stopped treating each other like they were made from fine china. Rosalie thought that building up an earnest routine would only help smooth matters further. But for now they were sweat slick, and stank, and they hadn't wanted to be apart.
Luckily, it turned out she had built every bathroom with this eventuality in mind.
“Tiefling horns are very wide,” she stressed, certain that this had been her reasoning at the time.
“And also two people long,” murmured Astarion in agreement, pushing the thick length of her wet hair to one side and moving his lips to her spine.
“Do you need your hair done?” Rose asked, glancing backwards, “or is this not a wash day?”
Astarion raised an quizzical eyebrow.
“I remember there being some kind of routine to... this,” She said, gesturing at all of that… hair, which was currently very dishevelled. “Or an alchemy, of sorts. I'd hate to disrupt a delicate cycle.”
“....It depends,” he said, “if I say no, do I miss out on an exclusive one-time offer? Or will we be putting your many, many palatial bathtubs to good use?”
Rosalie made a show of looking pensive, mulling it over like a hardship. “I mean… if you play your cards right, and you're nice to me, and you’re very, very good-”
For a second, she saw something flicker across Astarion's features: an uncertainty. A 'will I ever be deserving?'
Then his face smoothed out again.
“- Isn't that your thing, darling?” Astarion said innocently.
Rosalie decided then and there that she'd never tell him anything, ever again.
Astarion saw the look on her face, and laughed out loud. And even though seeing that joy in him already had Rose immediately banishing every regret, she started to struggle her way down the ludicrous bathtub as if offended. The water (which was gold, and glittered, and smelt like citrus, because she'd gotten out the good toiletries) sloshed around her as she made a show of beelining towards the opposite end. This ultimatum had precisely the desired effect - Astarion immediately hugged both his arms around her waist and dragged her right back to him.
“No, no!” He said into her ear, “I'm sorry! I apologise! Hand on heart, I promise to never bring up your incredibly subtle and not-at-all obvious tastes-”
“And you won't, not in any public forum-”
“...How is this public, my love? Is there something salacious you’re not telling me?!”
“No, that’s very much your thing, actually. But Verity is at the door. And she is very impressionable!”
“It's cute, that you're embarrassed,” he informed her, smiling into the crook of her neck.
Rose shifted so she was more sidelong in the bath, to regard him more directly. “I'm very old and worldly now, Astarion,” she said, as primly as she could with her tit* out. “I don't get embarrassed.”
They both caught each other's eye just a second too long, Rosalie’s mouth twitched, and then they were both giggling.
“...I think I'll take that hair wash,” said Astarion softly, some time later.
The laughter had subsided, but they hadn't stopped looking at each other.
Rosalie cleared her throat. “Well, if anything goes… floofy, don't blame me,” she murmured, “I pay through the nose, to avoid having to worry about that kind of thing.”
Then she turned in the tub and raised herself up on her knees in front of him. Astarion was supposed to bend his head forward a little so she could see the crown of his head, but she was gratified that her body held his attention for long enough and with such apparent interest, that the Shape Water she cast and dropped on his head made him shout with surprise.
“...That did take somatic gestures, you know,” she informed him smugly, as he glared at her through his now dripping hair. “You must have just missed them.”
Although it would still probably ruin whatever delicate economy or magical ritual that made his hair look the way it did, all of Rosalie's cosmetics were very expensive, and as such felt divine. She had one shampoo left over from the salon that did her enchantments. She used it, in the hope it would give her natural talents a little saving grace.
Halfway through the lather, Astarion groaned, the sound coming from somewhere low in his chest. Rosalie paused, and wondered briefly how this would affect her future budgets for haircare.
She rinsed him off - the Shape Water, much less… abrupt… this time - then started combing his sopping hair back from his face with her sharp, water-soft nails.
“Why did we never do this before?” He asked in a contented rumble. Rosalie was still knelt above him, so he pressed his forehead to her sternum. “We should have been doing this, for always.”
The obvious reason wasn’t needed, so Rose grinned down at him. “Well, brackish Underdark streams and lakes where Withers is the resident lifeguard lacked a little… Oh… I don't know… atmosphere? Ambience?”
His arm looped around her waist. “Thank goodness you only wish to have your wicked way with me in castles now, little love. I find I can be quite agreeable, under the circ*mstances.”
Rosalie stopped in her tracks, her hand still anchored at the top of his head.
“...‘Little love’?” she said, carefully.
Astarion stilled, and his voice was worried, as he pulled back and looked up at her, suddenly regretful, “...is that not… alright? I thought, from what I could remember, that that might have been one of the few things you liked, about… well, about before.”
Rosalie looked down at him, gnawing at the edge of her own lip. In the pause, she turned over the phrase, and what she knew of herself, in her mind. She felt like she was teetering on the edge of admitting something dangerous… then realised that all she was actually doing, was being honest.
She raked her hands once more through Astarion’s hair, then rested them against his glistening wet shoulders. She met his eyes, and asked. “...Say it again?”
“Little love,” he said, carefully, as if on command. Then, he leant forward and gave an open-mouthed kiss over her breastbone, gaze holding hers the whole time. He murmured into her skin: “my little love, my Foxglove, my Rose-”
Rosalie all but tackled him. It was an utter travesty. She was lucky she had a magical servant - the bathroom floor was completely flooded after.
The Ascendent had found her weakness, after all.
