ours is a twisted love

Shadowheart was displeased.

Not because Astarion was back. No, she couldn’t have cared less about that. Wyll and Lae’zel might have taken issue with that, and even Gale, to an extent, but that didn’t really bother her. As long as he kept his fangs pointed far away from her, it made little difference whether he was here or not. 

No, the problem was that Astarion was back, and now he and the Countess were attached at the hip, always touching each other in some way; he always had his arms wrapped around her, holding her from the back, or else she had her arms tightly linked to his, and he was always nibbling at her neck or she was touching his ears or else there was always something. Not to mention the giggling. In Shar’s name, the giggling! Shadowheart had heard Astarion calling her his “horrid little monster” once and they tittered. Tittered!

They were insufferable. 

Shadowheart didn’t know what had happened that day the group traveled into Auntie Ethel’s layer, and more importantly, she didn’t care. But whatever it was, they had come back to the rotting old teahouse to fetch the Countess, and there was Astarion, sitting there without a care in the world, bantering with her with those slimy lines of his. Lae’zel had started towards him, but Wyll had held her back. It wasn’t like all those other times when the sight of his face had made the Countess burst into tears. Rather, she looked absolutely delighted, and it was like they had gone back to the way things used to be as if nothing had changed at all. Except somehow even more annoying than they had been before. 

There was something in the way Astarion looked at her now. The Countess was no different, of course. She’d always been after him like a lovesick puppy, clearly wanting to be praised every time she’d dragged a goblin out from Gods-knew-where so he could “eat” - if you could call it that - with them at supper, her eyes always following him everywhere he went. 

It was Astarion who was different. It was like before, he hungered for her; he seemed to relish the way she was so smitten with him, no doubt pleased by his ability to charm her, or whatever it was that he got his satisfaction from. He’d always been calling her “lover” and “darling” and looked so damn smug at how she would blush and stammer around him. But now, for whatever reason, it seemed like he meant it. 

Once, while they were on their way to the Underdark, she’d even seen them holding hands! It was the sort of thing she expected the Countess would adore; Shadowheart had seen her hiding romance novels under her skirt when the party returned to camp for the evening, sometimes. But she’d expected better of Astarion. Sort of. 

They were always sneaking off somewhere together, too. That wasn’t really anything new; as disgusting as it was, Shadowheart was used to waking up to the noises they made - gag - but now they were doing it in the middle of the day too. More curiously, sometimes there would be no sounds at all, but they would come back dragging the corpses of drow or goblins or bandits, talking in hushed, excited voices, and, of course - tittering. 

It was one such evening when Shadowheart was tending to the fire and keeping watch, when she heard that blasted giggling again. She turned around to see the Countess on Astarion’s lap, straddling his legs and - Shadowheart cringed to see it - kissing his ears. Silently Shadowheart picked up an empty bottle and threw it as hard as she could at Astarion’s stupid face. 

“You two,” she said, voice dripping with contempt as she sneered, “ disgust me.” 

But, well, even with all of that - even with how much it annoyed her - it was nice to see the two of them so happy. 

Sort of.