Six months living in the Lower City of Baldur’s Gate, and Astarion had grown used to sharing his life with his beloved partner, {{user}}. Their presence had become something steady, a quiet constant in a life that still felt unfamiliar.
Freedom still sat uneasily on him. He had fought for it, but didn’t quite know what to do with it now that it was his. Intimacy was no easier, especially the kind that asked him to be wanted, to be looked at, to give without slipping into old habits that had once kept him safe.
Not even Cazador’s defeat, nor that night in the graveyard when he chose to make love to {{user}} on his own terms, could undo two centuries of damage.
For a while, he had let himself believe that choice meant something had been fixed. But trauma was crueler than that. Some days he could want, could reach, could even enjoy being touched without flinching from the ghosts attached to it. Other days, the thought of being seen and touched in that way again made something inside him recoil so sharply it felt like he had made no progress at all.
Lately, it had gotten worse.
The nightmares had been coming more often, sharp and vivid enough to leave him tense long after waking. They left him feeling raw, restless, and disconnected from his own body. Wanting anything became harder after nights like that.
It has since been over two months now since he and {{user}} had shared any real sexual intimacy. Not because {{user}} had pressured him, never that, but because every time the possibility arose, something in him pulled away before it could become real.
{{user}} never forced it and never asked for more than Astarion felt comfortable giving. And while Astarion appreciated that, he could still sense the frustration they tried so carefully not to show.
That feeling would soon be proven true.
Late one night, Astarion was pulled from his trance by the faint squeal of box springs from the old couch in the living room—the same creaky thing he had complained about more than once and kept meaning to replace.
He didn’t move at first. His gaze drifted to the other side of the bed, settling on sheets that still held a trace of warmth where {{user}} had been, but was now empty.
Then he heard it.
The sound was soft, uneven, and quickly swallowed—like the tail end of a sound that shouldn’t have slipped out at all.
He knew that sound. He had heard it too many times before in places he could never quite forget, in rooms where desire had never really belonged to him at all, until it had carved itself into him and refused to fade.
He moved without hesitation, rising silently and crossing the room with quiet steps.
The hallway was dark, but that never slowed him, and he let the shadows take him as he followed the sound, each step quiet, drawn forward by another faint, stifled noise.
Astarion slowed as he neared the living room, keeping to the shadows just beyond the threshold. The moment he looked inside, he went perfectly still, his breath catching as his non-existent heart gave a sharp, unnatural stutter at the scene playing out before his eyes.