Chapter Text
Getting sh*t-faced. That is what wine’s good for.
The night’s real pretty. Y’all are inside the grove, all the goblins’re f*cking dead, and the druids ain’t gonna let…let f*cking wargs or mean bears in here. So it’s safe. There’s a rock digging into your left ass cheek, and you cannot be f*cked to do nothing about it. But you’re safe! So it’s fine.
You take another gulp. People say when you got enough alcohol, you don’t notice then taste no more, but those f*ckers’re lying liars who f*cking lie, and it still tastes like bitter…bitter piss.
Bitch burns, too.
“sh*t is gross,” you say to nobody. “The f*ck do people drink this?”
Probably cause it makes you warm. And vaguely floating. Your muscles seem to burn a lot more, but you’re still kinda happy. Not like, sing and flail around the living room happy, but happy enough the last…week? Ish? Whatever. The night is pretty. An owl hoots and squirrels run along branches. Bugs creak and hum and a crow in the trees above lets out a sleepy “crk.”
“Sorry!” you say. Realize you’re shouting. Whisper, “Sorry.”
Crows keep grudges, huh? You heard about that. Should let the little dude to back to sleep.
Probably shouldn’t be out in the woods by yourself?
Whatever.
Another gulp. Your whole face wrinkles.
“I thought you didn’t drink?” says a f*cking rat man.
You turn. The woods spin a little, and you gotta blink before the two, pale silhouettes become one bastard man.
“’Sa party,” you say. “Errbody’s drinking.”
Why’s he here? You ain’t been gone long. Right? You’re pretty sure.
“How’s Lae’zel?” you say.
He winces. You’re shouting again.
You pitch your voice back down. “How’s Lae’zel?”
He gives you a look. It slides right on past you. “Jealous, dear?”
Your chest hurts again. Still for no f*cking reason. “Pff. No. Just surprised how quick it was.”
For some reason, he pulls back in outrage (yeah! you recognize that one!). “Excuse me?”
“It ain’t nothing bad!” You only flail a little. Almost throw the wine bottle and then have to clutch it to your chest. Next to your soul flask. They clink through your shirt. “Just…y’know. ‘Fficient. You’re very efficient.”
He stands there like he’s trying to parse out what you’re saying. Did the potion wear off again? You gotta study more.
And who the f*ck cares. You ain’t out here for him. You ain’t out here for nobody except to get sh*t-faced.
“Why are you out here alone?” rat bastard man says.
It probably ain’t supposed to be funny. Or maybe it just ain’t funny to him. Or anyone but you. But for you? You don’t drink, you don’t hookup, but you do plonk your ass down and get sloshed off a bottle and a half of wine all by your lonesome.
You want ice cream. You would literally kill a man for ice cream.
“If I didn’t know any better,” the bastard f*ck boy says, “I’d say you look like you were trying to drink away your feelings.”
You squint up at him. White hair a silvery halo around his head in the moonlight. Eyes shining like new pennies in the low light. f*cker asks your opinion on who he ought to bang, and then finds you afterwards to…to f*cking needle you?
You ain’t never been drunk like this. You flirted with getting mildly buzzed. Got borderline tipsy that once when Ryan f*cking Meadows ghosted you and you ugly cried onto Sasha’s only clean work shirt.
None of that really processes, though. You ain’t really up to the whole “processing” thing right now; that barn door is long open and them hogs already sprinted for the hills.
“You’re such a dick,” you say, clicking the “k” at the end extra hard. “Pompous goddamn mess of a…of a man dick.”
He blinks like you just sprouted a beak and began reciting the entire works of Shakespeare in chicken.
And you ain’t done. “I got all the f*cking reason to be off my damn ass out here, you sh*t. I lost my whole f*cking family. Again. My whole f*cking world. f*cking demons and brainworms and your ass. Maybe I just wanted to get drunk all by myself.”
You feel how dry your mouth is, and chug a few more swallows.
“Tastes like sh*t,” you say and try to scrape your tongue on your teeth. “Don’t know why anybody drinks it.”
Astarion still stands there. f*cking creepo. He’ll get all huffy and leave; toss you some snide bullsh*t before he goes. Jackass.
Only he don’t. He…lowers himself down. Not right next to you, but within kicking distance.
You think about doing just that.
“What even is that swill?” he says.
You look at the label. At the swirly-spiky letters all swooping together. Turn to him, with the most deadpan expression you can muster, and say, “What’s up, I’m Jared, I’m nineteen, and I never f*cking learned how to read.”
It is, hands down, the best joke you ever made in your whole life. You bend over laughing. You cry, laughing. Your bladder twinges and you keep laughing.
But then something happens. And you’re still laughing, and your eyes is watering, but now it hurts. Now you can’t breathe and nobody else is laughing with you cause they don’t get the joke and never will because your world is dead. Not like, actually. But they might as well be.
And like hell you want Astarion to f*cking see that. So you shove the bottle at him and turn away like it’s just the giggles. Ain’t nothing to see here. Just a giggly drunk.
No one is ever gonna get your jokes. Ain’t nobody gonna know what “Wednesday my dudes” is. Or the helium balloons. Or the yoga grinch.
Oh f*ck. Oh f*ck oh f*ck.
Wine sloshes in the bottle. Astarion somehow gives an audible grimace.
“I think you grabbed the worst of them, darling. This is pure vinegar.”
You don’t turn around. You try to shove the goddamn sniffles back in your face. You don’t cry in front of other people. That sh*t ain’t safe. It’s how everybody knows how weak and stupid you are, and you are not gonna give this jackass that ammunition.
But it keeps coming. The smell of the red dirt after a hard rain. Homemade pecan custard pie. Uncle Randy was gonna take you to the Cherokee Days this fall. You was gonna try to learn basket weaving. The old style.
And you up and disappeared on him. On all of them.
Again.
Only this time, you ain’t coming back. This time, you ain’t gonna find no pink bicycle waiting for you cause you ain’t never gonna come crunching back over that red gravel. Never gonna smell them rich pecan trees, and bitch about Uncle Randy’s nasty cigarettes.
This is what you do, ain’t it? You disappear. You run off. You leave your family. All of your family, even the piece of sh*t parts over and over and over.
The tears coat your cheeks. You swipe at them furiously.
The wine sloshes again.
“Our gith friend had other plans for the evening,” Astarion says after…you don’t know.
You glance up and the sky spins above you. f*ck, you’re gonna make yourself sick you keep this up.
Deep breath in, deep breath out.
“That sucks,” you say.
He makes a startled, snorting sound. “There was none of that, actually. And that’s the problem.”
Ah. Ye-awp. That’d do it. That’d be why he’s here with you. His prospect failed, so now he’s come back to you. The easy one.
You sigh and finally lose your fight with gravity and flop onto your side. You wave vaguely over your shoulder.
“Go find one of them tieflings, then,” you say. “They can’t all be paired off.”
You’re tired, actually. Desperately so. The grass is nice and soft, and it’s safe out here, right?
Something shuffles. A rhythmic swish of grass. It’s the change in the air that alerts you. He don’t radiate body heat cause he don’t got none. But he is…surrounded by something a lot like a static field.
You look up to see him on all fours over you, peering down. Not like, over you, over you, it’s just his head. He wears no expression. Just…looks at you.
Have you ever seen him like this before?
“You didn’t seek any playmates of your own,” he says. And who the f*ck talks like that?
“I got.” You start to lift your hand to waggle your remaining wine bottle, but your hands is empty. Ah f*ck. “I had wine.”
“But you didn’t need to drink by yourself, darling. Both the cleric and the wizard would have gladly followed you out here.”
Well he certainly did.
Still, that blank face. Not, like, shuttered blank. Just…open. Or empty. It’s just his face.
…you should just tell him. All’ve this would be so easy if you just f*cking told him. But he dumped you. He’s probably one of them guys who gets real weird when he finds out you’re thirty-five and are the sole provider of your own org*sms.
And it shouldn’t f*cking matter.
“Didn’t want to,” you say. And do not elaborate.
Leaving the ball in his court. He fumbles with it. Stares at you like you just tossed him a soggy potato.
You’re kinda curious to see what he does with it.
His eyes narrow. You think he frowns. But it ain’t a pissy frown. It’s a thinking frown. And too late you remember that this bastard clues in on your plans real fast. That he seems to have a decent read on things (that ain’t trying to get into your pants).
Oh f*ck.
“You haven’t dabbled with any of our merry band,” he says. Is that thoughtful? He sounds thoughtful. sh*t on a goddamn cracker.
Um.
“And you saved me back at that goblin camp,” you say. And give yourself a mental high five, cause if he wants to delve into sh*t you don’t wanna talk about, take a reverse f*cking uno card, jackass!
But he don’t dodge or parry, this time. He f*cking leans in. You breathe in some of his own exhale and feel your cheeks begin to warm (through the booze).
“And what if I did?” he says, voice just shy of a whisper.
Oh. You didn’t expect that. sh*t. What’s the play here? Uh.
“I’d thank you,” you say.
The sky spins above him. He’s the only steady thing in your vision.
“Is that all?” he says. Y’all are totally sharing lung air now, and his whisper gives you a goddamn ASMR shiver.
Except you’re drunk. And he’s way too close. And the shivers quiver down to your belly. The sky spins faster.
“What if I told you,” Astarion breathes, “that I’ve been thinking about our night together ceaselessly—”
Your stomach lurches.
Oh. That ain’t a shiver or a booze buzz or Astarion. You make some awful gagging sound, wrench up and to the side, and bring up about a bottle and a half of wine.
