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When Astarion joins Wyll at the edge of the water, he does so with his usual silent grace.
He folds himself into a fetching sort of sprawl, one leg stretched toward the stream, the other bent. In one long-fingered hand a wine bottle gently sloshes in Wyll’s direction.
“No thank you,” he says. Wyll feels the familiar sensation of being judged and found wanting as Astarion arches one perfect silver brow, then sloshes the bottle again. Wyll caves, and sighs while his palm wraps around the curved, lightly-sweating glass.
While Wyll drinks the surprisingly decent wine, Astarion makes himself comfortable.
Wyll could count on one hand the number of times Astarion has seeked out his private company. From the beginning, the elf has looked upon Wyll with the sort of disdain often reserved for hated rivals; his opinion of the Blade in particular made abundantly and loudly clear at every available opportunity.
Why he’s here now, Wyll can only guess. The sounds of camp filter lowly through the trees separating them, a wall that the light of their cook fire can’t penetrate. The moon is bright enough to compensate, though, washing out Wyll’s skin and illuminating Astarion’s. He’d come here for a moment of quiet. Solitude is rare amongst their band, with Karlach’s aggressive friendliness and Gale’s appreciation for a captive audience. Wyll has seen Astarion flit between the others during their downtime: bothering Shadowheart for spools of thread, teasing Halsin about his battalion of wooden ducks, sulkily tolerating Lae’zel’s attempts to teach him how to properly sharpen his blades.
Unshy in his want of companionship, Wyll’s presence seems to be the only one that Astarion cannot tolerate.
Maybe it’s the way the wine warms his stomach, maybe it’s the way Astarion followed him out into the woods for the first time since Wyll turned down his advances during the tiefling’s celebration. Whatever it is, Wyll’s tongue loosens enough for him to finally speak.
“May I ask you a question?”
Astarion doesn’t look at him, but his head cocks ever so slightly. He gestures for Wyll to continue.
“Will you at least answer honestly?”
Astarion snorts indelicately.
“Darling, I may not answer you at all.” He retakes the bottle, and grimaces through a swig. “Ask me.”
“What— Why do you hate me so much?”
Wyll almost flushes. Had he realized how childish that would end up sounding, he might have continued to bite his tongue. Astarion actually laughs aloud, and Wyll flushes anyway.
“I’ve never met a Duke’s son with such a pedestrian brand of insecurity before,” he answers. “I can’t imagine why my regard should matter to you at all.”
Wyll doesn’t say that he hasn’t thought of himself as a Duke’s son for years at this point, or that his desire to be liked is something he’d been born with. This late into the night, his omissions feel marginally less like lies. He hopes the lack of strength in his voice does not discount his sincerity.
“I suppose I’d just like to know what I did. How I offended you, as I clearly have done.”
“What you didn’t do, more like.”
Astarion’s voice is suddenly as cold as Wyll has ever heard it. Surprised, Wyll turns, and is met by the marble cast of the rogue’s aristocratic profile. His jaw is tightly clenched, and his crimson eyes are narrowed out into the black of the forest.
“The Blade, hero of the Gate and lands beyond, savior of all those meek and lost and imperiled. One of any number of faceless do-gooders whose talent for self-aggrandizement is rivaled only by their thirst for glory.” Those eyes move to pin Wyll in place, bright with anger. “I don’t hate you, dear. I simply refuse to suffer the theatrics of heroes.”
The night is still and quiet. Astarion’s impassioned speech, delivered with all the quiet rage of a stalking cat, did not disturb the cicadas from their songs, and so they drone on.
Wyll simultaneously feels cowed and offended; chastened but righteously angered. His throat takes some clearing before he is able to speak.
“I don’t think that’s fair,” he says. The conviction with which he’d spoken in his mind is nowhere to be found once he opens his mouth.
Astarion’s eyebrow arches in disdain. Wyll carries on regardless.
“I don’t presume any insight into your own experiences, Astarion, but I’m sure that our paths did not cross before the Grove. I’m certain of that.”
“It’s the principle,” Astarion speaks in a hiss.
“What principle?”
“My own! Established after literal centuries of wasting and torture and disappointment!”
“So you blame me for not saving you, is that it?”
“Why shouldn’t I? You’re all the same, each and every last one of you blustering, bloody-hearted fools! How am I meant to look at you and see anything other than every hero that took one look at me and decided I wasn’t worth saving?”
It’s almost impressive, how quickly this conversation got out of hand. Indignation simmers in Wyll’s blood like bile. Any time it edges into anger, however, the hunted look on Astarion’s face curdles it back into sorrow.
He knows, before his next words leave his lips, that he’s probably revealing more of himself than he ever intended to. More of his heart, the how and why of the way it beats in his chest. So close to home, Wyll finds that he simply does not care.
“The same way I look at you and do not see a monster.”
Astarion looks as though he’d been slapped. Seizing the rare moment of silence, Wyll continues.
“I see you now, Astarion. You. The man. One who is brash, and opinionated, and sometimes even cruel, but a man all the same. Before our current circumstances? You would have been a spawn to me, man or no. A monster to be slain. I can apologize for that now, knowing you as I have come to do, but before I would not have done so. You can change your mind, Astarion, even from long-held beliefs. You changed mine.”
A night bird calls. A frog leaps from the bank into the glittering water, chasing a silver-sided minnow. Beside him, Astarion is still. Even his chest neglects to rise and fall, and if once that would have raised Wyll’s hackles, it does not now.
Astarion raises the bottle to his lips and empties it. The red that stains them is turned purple in the moonlight, like some fae prince. Wyll could not look away if he tried.
“I suppose I can forgive you,” Astarion says. He dribbles wine dregs from the mouth of the bottle into the dirt. “For your poor taste in drink.”
Wyll is smiling. He reaches to tug a burr from the sleeve of Astarion’s doublet.
“I don’t think there’s anything wrong with my taste.”
Astarion’s ruby red eyes cut to Wyll’s, glittering with something pleased. “You insipid little lordling.” His tone is a purr. “Have some propriety.”
“My apologies, saer.” Wyll raises his palms, and Astarion feigns mollification.
They sit in the quiet for a while more. When Wyll stands and extends a hand, even with the conversation just behind them, he can’t help but be surprised when Astarion takes it. He drops it once he’s on his feet, but Wyll savors the touch all the same.
Then Astarion is pressed against him, cool and slight, his hands the barest pressure on Wyll’s shoulders while his lips ghost over the scars on Wyll’s cheek. His voice, when it comes, is a balm to the shock of his kiss.
“You may be a hero, Wyll Ravengard, and that I have learned to hate. But, for what it’s worth, I find that I rather like the man.”
With that Wyll finds himself released, and left watching a gilded silhouette as it stalks back toward camp. Adrift, he is helpless but to follow.