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Some people like it, but that's a separate thing, it still doesn't fix what happened.
Do you want him to be sorry? Do you want him to understand?
[ He wants Arthur to recite more poetry in that soft cadence of his, the quiet power and finality in words known by heart. He wants to learn the defiance he felt rise like sweet bile when Arthur was afraid. He wants to hear Arthur laugh like the way dust dances in the sunlight. He wants the first person he ever knew to want to know him as much.]
I hate him.
[Arthur had been hateful to Yellow, after all. Jedao's voice is quiet, melancholy with understanding. He misses the first person he ever knew, too. He wishes that man had been - different.]
You can hate him. You can make him pay, a little.
But if you keep hurting him - if you can't let it be enough, that he's paid with one miserable, terrified death - then you're just going to be stuck in the feeling of how much you hate him all the time.
And I think you deserve to feel lots of other things.
"It's a little, uh, rough, under there -"
"D'you- is that--" he swallows dryly. "Is that okay, or-? I can-?" He shifts his hands to go for Jedao's pants in question.
He tries not to be overwrought about it, but he does still feel self-conscious.
Just that soft sound, seeing the way Jedao's body moves under the whip, makes Astarion's senses feel a little sharper and brighter. Feeding on pain is the closest he can get to feeding on blood.
"You sound beautiful, Jedao. Don't hold anything back."
He's got his eye in now, can be more confident about speed and weight. The next few strikes take about the same effort, but feel harder for being more focused: they don't land in stripes but in single focused spots on his shoulders, his back, his ass.
"Fuck - fuck, that's so good..."
He leans more of his weight onto the cross, feeling the cool polished woodgrain press against his cheek.
Astarion isn't empathetic in any way that's useful or compassionate, really, but he knows pain. He knows exactly how it feels to be on the receiving end of this treatment - though the matter of informed consent makes it a bit hazy - and pulling those sounds from his lovely throat is a rush that he so rarely gets to experience. The guilt and the shame he feels in doing these things is still here, but it's a background hum, not a howl across his thoughts.
"Something a little different, then."
The next two blows, back and forth, stripe harsh lines across his ass - through his clothes, yes, but with a little more strength in his arm to make up for it. The third connects them, making two points of overlap which are going to really bruise.
"Yes, yes, yes -"
The sound that escapes Astarion's lips, unbidden, is almost a growl.
"Hells, darling." A slash across his shoulders. "You told me to keep talking, and I will, but -"
A stroke down his spine, positively delicate - he knows the consequences of hitting too hard there.
"-It's damn near impossible when all I want to do is shut up and listen to you."
A line scored horizontally across his back, so close to drawing blood.
Jedao laughs a little, shaky and breathy, interrupted by little gasps and sharp moans. "Fair's...fair," he mumbles; neither of them holding back, neither of them hiding in silence.
"Oh, this feels like it's so much more than fair. This is...indulgent."
Another horizontal line rips across his back, barely two inches from the first, almost perfectly parallel. The next few hits are quicker, snapping across his thighs in rapid succession.
He wants to press himself up against Jedao's back, feel the heat of the welts in his skin, knead his bruises and press the pain deep into him.
"How much more do you want, darling?"
Slightly distinct from how much more he can take, which he might struggle to answer.
"More," he pants, half-hard against the wood of cross. "Want...want to bleed a little," he confesses, face hot, voice low and nervous and hungry. A cold stone of fear settles in his stomach, rough and bitter and poisonous as a peach pit. He's asking too much, he always asks for too much, he knows his blood is even more disgusting to vampires than it is to most people. But he feels loose and open with pain, his mind gone slippery instead of careful and calculation, and Astarion asked.
"If...if that's okay, please..."
"It's okay. Since you said please, pet."
It's so much more than okay. He's heard the warning about his blood, but at this point he really doesn't care; it would have to be absolutely, unutterably foul to distract him from how good he's feeling.
He takes aim carefully and concentrates his strength into a short, deep stroke across one shoulder blade, then another, crossing it. His skin splits at the junction of the two, blood welling up and trickling from the wound.
He yowls when he feels the cut open. It's not that the pain is so much greater - he could take more pain in silence if he had to, does it often enough when he uses his mothpushes on things that are too big to move without feeling like all his bones are on fire - but it feels raw, vulnerable, intimate. The pain is sharp and deep and perfect.
The blood that oozes up is black, more viscous than human blood, something with the shine of squid ink and the texture of tar. It beads up in the little wound, thick as honey, dark as the other side of the stars.
It certainly doesn't smell human, or like the blood of any other creature he's seen spilled, come to that. Strange but not repugnant. Astarion wants to lick it from his skin regardless of the risk. Wants to sink his teeth into the heart of his darkest bruises.
"Next time, I want a mirror in here," he says, voice a rough purr. "I want you to see how beautiful you look when you're hurting."
He also said he wanted to bleed 'a little', not just once. That distinction earns him another two small wounds at the small of his back, a deep lash crossing the two parallel lines already scored.
A less cautious partner might stop at this point, but when Jedao makes that sound - when he's all but begging for it - Astarion can't find the restraint.
"Two more, my sweet, and then we're done."
The last two are high and low, across his shoulders and just above his knees, as if framing his work. When he stops, when he crosses the floor to close the distance between himself and Jedao, he feels - almost delirious.
"So good," he murmurs, not quite slurred, but definitely in a lazier, more contented tone of voice than usual.
"You were," Astarion tells him, returning the smile almost in spite of himself - though it's a little sharper around the edges than Jedao's. He doesn't look flushed or exerted in any way; he is hard, and the snug leathers do nothing to conceal that fact, but he's decided he'll resolve that when he's alone or just let it go away. He's satisfied with what he's gotten from this.
"Not just good. You are exceptional, pet." His response to that word earlier was noted.
"Help me to the couch?" he asks, wavering just a little as he finally lets go of the cuffs, flexing his hands a few times, Astarion wouldn't have come this close if he really didn't want to touch, Jedao figures.
"Of course. I'll have to touch your shoulders to support you, but - I don't think you'll mind that much, mm? Just lean on me, darling."
He slides his arm under Jedao's, and he's definitely going to get some of that strange viscous blood on his sleeve, but so long as it isn't acidic he doesn't much mind. Couchward it is.
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