Astarion briefly bluescreens just at the question, and it's just as well Jedao is facing away from him because the uncertainty does flicker onto his face for a few moments. Having any veto power in these pastimes is so completely alien as to be almost funny, and it'll take time for it to lose its novelty.
"Honestly, darling? The only things I'd rule out are things I doubt you'd want anyway. I don't find breaking bones or dislocating limbs to be especially pleasurable. And, ah-"
His internal censor needs to be wrestled to the fucking mat for the next sentence. Keep your whore mouth shut give them what they want that's what you're good for that's all you're good for
"There's certain...language I would prefer not to use. A little light degradation can have its place, of course, but I wouldn't want to cross over into anything too...demeaning."
I didn't expect the mating urge to take you so strongly, he remembers, vivid and obscurely crushing, in Revenant's dry, disdainful voice in his mind. My ship called me a slut once, he'd muttered to Hakkai, years later. I think I have a complex about it.
He can't see Astarion's face, but he can feel the twitches of muscle underneath it; it's enough to corroborate some of what he already suspects.
"That you for telling me," Jedao says softly, warmly. "It makes me feel safer, knowing what to be careful about."
It only now dawns on Astarion that when Jedao said 'what things would you not like?', he meant giving and getting. Hm. His fingers keep moving steadily.
"Thank you. There's nothing I'd rule out as the recipient party, anyway, if things ever go in that direction."
What would he rule in? Not answering this question, probably. Inserting a psychic tadpole into his partners' brains so he could pluck out what they wanted without the awkwardness of having to talk about it. Definitely not the low-key existential crisis he has every time someone asks him what he fucking wants, like he's supposed to know.
"...You're being very gentle with me, you know?" he observes. "If that's because you're a warden and I'm not, you can rest assured I'd have no trouble breaking your arm if you touched me in a way I didn't approve of.
"...Well, I might have trouble, I have no idea about your physiology. But certainly no hesitation."
And as far as he knows, the only person who the previous flood taught anything about his sex life was John Doe.
"Mostly I'm being gentle with you because I can tell that's a hard question for you," Jedao says quietly. "I-"
For a moment, his voice fails completely, as though crushed out like an ant by a massive thumb, acrid in its silence.
He really, really doesn't want to trust Astarion with this. He doesn't want to tell anyone. He hasn't told Eiffel. He didn't choose to tell Norton, although he knows.
"I once mistook someone's eagerness to please me for real desire," he says quietly. His voice is a little bit wooden, a little far away. It almost feels like the warm ache of his back and the fingertips against his neck are the only things holding him in his body. Astarion could hurt him very badly, with that knowledge - let alone what he can extrapolate from it, in conjunction with Jedao's behavior.
"It is...one of the greatest regrets of my life. So I try to be careful with everyone, really. And if the only thing you want to rule in is hurting me just like this, I'll be perfectly delighted with that, every time."
Astarion doesn't say anything for a while. He just loosely holds Jedao in the curve of his arm, plays with his hair.
(He thinks of Sebastian. My name sounded like a lyric on your tongue. Red eyes livid with rage, reaching through the bars of his cell to claw at his executioner. You destroyed me.)
"...I just...don't like to imagine there are things which you want that you're denying yourself because of how someone else chose to behave."
"Because I'm the best person who ever lived and I deserve to get everything I want?" Jedao asks, a bit silly but not mocking, just - treading lightly.
"I don't think anyone gets everything they want, and that's alright. My life is an embarrassment of riches, these days. If I want something you don't enjoy just as much as you seemed to enjoy whipping me, I have other people in my life I can ask."
He strokes Astarion's wrist, where his arm is loose around him, along the bones of his hand.
"You proposed this, and - fuck, how perfect? I've never been whipped with that much skill. So I promise it's no deprivation to say that I'm only going to do things with you, if you're sure enough you want them to ask for them."
He laughs for a moment, soft and rueful. "I know that sounds like a trap, like I want you to guess the right thing. But I swear it's not. I like almost anything, and I like the idea of you getting to be...selfish with me. Even if it takes awhile to decide, when you've got space to avoid instead of ask. Which you do. In fact, I forbid you from answering right now. But think about it. And if you decide you do want something else - I'm yours for the asking, darling."
Astarion doesn't respond to the 'best person who ever lived' remark, just pinches his earlobe to communicate his displeasure at the ridiculousness of it and lets him keep talking.
He wants to believe that this is entirely to do with Jedao's hangups and his experiences with someone whose 'eagerness to please' was misinterpreted in a way his own was intended to be, countless times. Hells, isn't it self-centred to even suspect otherwise?
"Stabbed an innocent man in the face mid-conversation, full time sex pet slash bait, and that you'd forgotten what your face looks like," he answers evenly.
"But I like to think I would have been paying enough attention to be careful anyway."
Astarion isn't sure he believes that, and having so much of his life laid out quite so baldly isn't the most pleasant thing to hear. But he did ask. Maybe he's just easier to read than he likes to imagine, in the company of someone who's actually watching.
useless child
"I think you would," he agrees, and strokes the ear he pinched. "Personally, I would be very content to do this again just as we have, and if you'd prefer to wait to discuss anything further, I'm happy to do that."
"I truly don't know if I could have done any better," Jedao admits. "I got made with a lot of weird skills built in, but I don't see how the whip would be an especially practical assassin's weapon. But I did want to be sure."
"Oh, I'd never use a whip to kill someone. Incredibly unwieldy," he
agrees. "Two knives, a shortbow, a little magic and a quiet tread have
always served me perfectly well."
Up until they didn't, but no amount of stealth would have saved him in the
end.
"Magic," he agrees. "I keep forgetting that people don't just see the ears
and know, here. The Admiral took most of it, but - I still have a few
tricks up my sleeve, if you'd like a demonstration?"
He casts Mage Hand - invisible to anyone but himself - and uses it to pick
up the coiled whip from where it's been placed, letting it uncoil and
giving it a light little spin in midair.
The urge to twist around and kiss him, in spite of all his principles and everything he's said, squeezes Jedao breathless for a moment. He feels so pathetically unalone, even though he knows intellectually that whatever Astarion is, he's no voidmoth. There's something so gently familiar about the way he handles the whip in the air; no silly arm-waving, like telekinetics in Eiffel's movies. Just will and motion. Jedao reaches out with a mothpull and gives a little tug at the handle.
Astarion lets out a delighted little laugh and tugs back. The spell isn't as powerful as it should be, the strength it can exert here is honestly pathetic, but he only ever really used it for picking locks from across a room anyway. (Maybe the occasional shove if some idiot happened to be standing on the edge of a cliff.)
"Isn't that something. You've been holding out on me, darling."
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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Astarion briefly bluescreens just at the question, and it's just as well Jedao is facing away from him because the uncertainty does flicker onto his face for a few moments. Having any veto power in these pastimes is so completely alien as to be almost funny, and it'll take time for it to lose its novelty.
"Honestly, darling? The only things I'd rule out are things I doubt you'd want anyway. I don't find breaking bones or dislocating limbs to be especially pleasurable. And, ah-"
His internal censor needs to be wrestled to the fucking mat for the next sentence. Keep your whore mouth shut give them what they want that's what you're good for that's all you're good for
"There's certain...language I would prefer not to use. A little light degradation can have its place, of course, but I wouldn't want to cross over into anything too...demeaning."
fucking coward
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He can't see Astarion's face, but he can feel the twitches of muscle underneath it; it's enough to corroborate some of what he already suspects.
"That you for telling me," Jedao says softly, warmly. "It makes me feel safer, knowing what to be careful about."
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"Oh, I don't mind at all what you say to me."
Astarion's tone is warm, too, and amused. Two fingertips draw circles around the nape of Jedao's neck.
"There are just certain sticks I'd prefer not to beat others with."
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He might like it, he thinks, if it were calibrated just right; something to save for Eiffel and Hakkai, then.
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It only now dawns on Astarion that when Jedao said 'what things would you not like?', he meant giving and getting. Hm. His fingers keep moving steadily.
"Thank you. There's nothing I'd rule out as the recipient party, anyway, if things ever go in that direction."
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What would he rule in? Not answering this question, probably. Inserting a psychic tadpole into his partners' brains so he could pluck out what they wanted without the awkwardness of having to talk about it. Definitely not the low-key existential crisis he has every time someone asks him what he fucking wants, like he's supposed to know.
"...You're being very gentle with me, you know?" he observes. "If that's because you're a warden and I'm not, you can rest assured I'd have no trouble breaking your arm if you touched me in a way I didn't approve of.
"...Well, I might have trouble, I have no idea about your physiology. But certainly no hesitation."
And as far as he knows, the only person who the previous flood taught anything about his sex life was John Doe.
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For a moment, his voice fails completely, as though crushed out like an ant by a massive thumb, acrid in its silence.
He really, really doesn't want to trust Astarion with this. He doesn't want to tell anyone. He hasn't told Eiffel. He didn't choose to tell Norton, although he knows.
"I once mistook someone's eagerness to please me for real desire," he says quietly. His voice is a little bit wooden, a little far away. It almost feels like the warm ache of his back and the fingertips against his neck are the only things holding him in his body. Astarion could hurt him very badly, with that knowledge - let alone what he can extrapolate from it, in conjunction with Jedao's behavior.
"It is...one of the greatest regrets of my life. So I try to be careful with everyone, really. And if the only thing you want to rule in is hurting me just like this, I'll be perfectly delighted with that, every time."
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Astarion doesn't say anything for a while. He just loosely holds Jedao in the curve of his arm, plays with his hair.
(He thinks of Sebastian. My name sounded like a lyric on your tongue. Red eyes livid with rage, reaching through the bars of his cell to claw at his executioner. You destroyed me.)
"...I just...don't like to imagine there are things which you want that you're denying yourself because of how someone else chose to behave."
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"I don't think anyone gets everything they want, and that's alright. My life is an embarrassment of riches, these days. If I want something you don't enjoy just as much as you seemed to enjoy whipping me, I have other people in my life I can ask."
He strokes Astarion's wrist, where his arm is loose around him, along the bones of his hand.
"You proposed this, and - fuck, how perfect? I've never been whipped with that much skill. So I promise it's no deprivation to say that I'm only going to do things with you, if you're sure enough you want them to ask for them."
He laughs for a moment, soft and rueful. "I know that sounds like a trap, like I want you to guess the right thing. But I swear it's not. I like almost anything, and I like the idea of you getting to be...selfish with me. Even if it takes awhile to decide, when you've got space to avoid instead of ask. Which you do. In fact, I forbid you from answering right now. But think about it. And if you decide you do want something else - I'm yours for the asking, darling."
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Astarion doesn't respond to the 'best person who ever lived' remark, just pinches his earlobe to communicate his displeasure at the ridiculousness of it and lets him keep talking.
He wants to believe that this is entirely to do with Jedao's hangups and his experiences with someone whose 'eagerness to please' was misinterpreted in a way his own was intended to be, countless times. Hells, isn't it self-centred to even suspect otherwise?
And yet.
"...I do have a question, then."
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"You can ask me anything. Some things I might not be able to answer, but I'll just say that."
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"Of course. What did you learn about me during the flood last month?"
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"But I like to think I would have been paying enough attention to be careful anyway."
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Astarion isn't sure he believes that, and having so much of his life laid out quite so baldly isn't the most pleasant thing to hear. But he did ask. Maybe he's just easier to read than he likes to imagine, in the company of someone who's actually watching.
useless child
"I think you would," he agrees, and strokes the ear he pinched. "Personally, I would be very content to do this again just as we have, and if you'd prefer to wait to discuss anything further, I'm happy to do that."
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"But that sounds perfect."
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"Mmm. It does."
His arousal has faded now, at least, though he'll be recalling this fondly in private.
"I haven't been this pleased to win a bet in quite some time. Or allowed to win one," he adds, teasing.
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"I truly don't know if I could have done any better," Jedao admits. "I got made with a lot of weird skills built in, but I don't see how the whip would be an especially practical assassin's weapon. But I did want to be sure."
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"Oh, I'd never use a whip to kill someone. Incredibly unwieldy," he agrees. "Two knives, a shortbow, a little magic and a quiet tread have always served me perfectly well."
Up until they didn't, but no amount of stealth would have saved him in the end.
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"Magic," he agrees. "I keep forgetting that people don't just see the ears and know, here. The Admiral took most of it, but - I still have a few tricks up my sleeve, if you'd like a demonstration?"
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Although he did hear Hakkai made a blunder in that area.
"I'd love to see something, if it's not taxing?"
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"Not at all."
He casts Mage Hand - invisible to anyone but himself - and uses it to pick up the coiled whip from where it's been placed, letting it uncoil and giving it a light little spin in midair.
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"Ah-"
Astarion lets out a delighted little laugh and tugs back. The spell isn't as powerful as it should be, the strength it can exert here is honestly pathetic, but he only ever really used it for picking locks from across a room anyway. (Maybe the occasional shove if some idiot happened to be standing on the edge of a cliff.)
"Isn't that something. You've been holding out on me, darling."
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