Blood and Music (Tavran Gregory, Bard)
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She certainly must be hearing things, Shadowheart decided, when the bard stomped past and kicked one of the downed skeletons with a grumble that sounded a lot like, “not even any good for eating, no meat at all.”
The day had been long, and the stress was getting to her, was all.
The Durge wakes up on the beach more urge than person. Bafflingly, no one notices. Or, the feral!Tav fic two people asked for.
Series
- Part 1 of Blood and Music (Tavran Gregory, Bard)
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“Please,” Astarion huffed. “I think I’d prefer even limericks over that sort of prose,” he said, rolling his eyes. Tav grinned.
“When the owlbear was naught but a chick,
the wizard thought up a neat trick:
to raise as his own, but when it was grown,
the animal bit off his—““Ha!” Astarion cut him off. “Yes, very clever.”
“I was going to say ‘finger’,” Tav lied primly.
A rogue and a bard get to know each other, except they're both trauma-ridden liars. Somehow, this results in bad poetry. Set early in Act 1.
Series
- Part 2 of Blood and Music (Tavran Gregory, Bard)
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“Look, I think he’s trying to seduce you,” Gale blurted, and immediately regretted it.
In which Gale thinks he needs to warn the Durge about Astarion’s intentions, the Durge is more worried about what’s going on in his own head, and nobody knows Astarion is a vampire, which makes it all worse. A missing scene set shortly before the Tiefling party. (Stand-alone).
Series
- Part 3 of Blood and Music (Tavran Gregory, Bard)
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The scene before him looked like Astarion had gone too far, that perhaps there had been an attempt on Tav’s part to defend himself with the abandoned dagger, leaving them both flecked with the crumbs of a vampire’s meal and Tav too weak to fight back. “Easy,” he heard Halsin murmur from next to him, and he realized his fingers had gripped the hilt of his rapier without his say so.
Wyll misreads a situation. Halsin steps in to keep the peace. A missing conversation between companions about their unusual camp-mates. (Stand-alone.)
Series
- Part 4 of Blood and Music (Tavran Gregory, Bard)
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“Well. I am a creative type,” Tav continued, confidence clearly bolstered. “I guess it makes sense that I’m gifted with more than just musical talents.”
Astarion cringed internally, but he kept it off his face with decades of practice. ’Gifted’ was an awfully strong word, after all, considering the abomination he was trying not to look at.
In which bard!Durge discovers he should really stick to music, and Karlach is a great wingwoman. Or, two different versions of how "Tav draws Astarion so he can see what he looks like, but badly" could go. (Stand-alone missing scene from Act 2).
Series
- Part 5 of Blood and Music (Tavran Gregory, Bard)
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“No, that is not what I mean,” Lae'zel decided. “There is something a Harper said yesterday. She wanted to ‘get off with the druid’ before ‘the cultists off them both’,” she said, and Gale cleared his throat while Shadowheart barked a laugh. “This is the same word, but I believe she did not mean for Halsin to give her a mercy-killing."
A murderous amnesiac who plays at charming bard for his day-job teaches a ruthless githyanki about idioms. Or, two idiots will use any excuse to flirt in the middle of a crisis. (Karlach POV, durge/astarion, stand-alone ficlet)
Series
- Part 6 of Blood and Music (Tavran Gregory, Bard)
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“Sit. Down,” Karlach barked at him, loud and sharp, and Astarion, hatefully, aching with hunger and dizzy with weakness, found himself obeying, right there at the cookfire, knees folding beneath him.
The party has an issue with Astarion's blood-drinking habits. It is not the issue Astarion expects. (Stand-alone fic, mid Act 2, mild spoilers)
Series
- Part 7 of Blood and Music (Tavran Gregory, Bard)
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He’d been talking to Steelclaw just fine— then had gotten that sense of deja vu, the sense that he’d been here before, and frankly, walking right into enemy territory just because some rude old half-elf squinted suspiciously at him until he agreed to scout the place out seemed like a good time to scrape whatever advantage he could out of his shattered memories.
Instead, he was scraping cat off his boots.
The visit to Moonrise Towers is full of revelations. None of them are pleasant, but Tav hadn't expected (nor felt he deserved) comfort from his prickly vampire-friend. He got it anyway. Or, two killers learn to be kind to each other. (Missing Scene from act 2, stand-alone).
Series
- Part 8 of Blood and Music (Tavran Gregory, Bard)
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“Who knows, perhaps it means she’d help us take over the cult of the Absolute in the name of her Lady,” Astarion drawled, and Tav snorted.
“Don’t let anyone else hear your plans,” he said wryly, and Astarion bared his fangs.
“Please, I’m not an idiot. I’ve suggested it to you alone for a reason,” he purred. “As the sensible member of our group.” Tav raised a brow, and then they were both grinning ferally at each other. As if either of them could be called ‘sensible’.
A missing conversation about choices and freedom between Astarion and Durge in Shar's temple. (Stand-alone.)
Series
- Part 9 of Blood and Music (Tavran Gregory, Bard)
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“It is not,” Lae’zel interrupted. “They have not copulated since we entered the shadow-cursed lands a tendday ago."
“Uh, okay,” Karlach said, frowning a little, as Wyll sputtered into his ale.
In which everyone is nosy and Tav is-- intentionally or not-- always the evening entertainment at camp. A missing conversation in late Act 2. (Stand-alone)
Series
- Part 10 of Blood and Music (Tavran Gregory, Bard)
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“You’re mad because I hurt his feelings,” Gale realized aloud, a bit wonderingly. Astarion immediately scowled a denial, but this irrational defensiveness, from someone who prided himself on seeming to have no attachments at all, was telling. Telling rather a lot, actually. “You’re trying to protect him.”
Astarion and Gale have a heart to heart. Of a sort. (Stand-alone.)
Series
- Part 11 of Blood and Music (Tavran Gregory, Bard)
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“Four-hundred-pound monster, with tentacles strong enough to pierce steel,” Astarion reminded himself. Well, three-hundred pounds, maybe. This one looked like it had been starved for a while.
Damn it all.
Tav isn't a druid, so why the hells does Astarion feel like they're one adoption away from travelling with a petting zoo? In which Tav (definitely not Astarion, he would never) is maybe projecting a little too much onto the caged monster at the circus. Missing scene set early in Act 3 (stand alone fic).
Series
- Part 12 of Blood and Music (Tavran Gregory, Bard)
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“They’re not normal sewer rats,” Tav protested stubbornly. “They’re creepy. A bad omen. An ill portent,” he insisted. Gale gallantly resisted the urge to roll his eyes.
On Tav's hatred of rats. A conversation in the sewers, in which Gale is at his wit's end, Shadowheart is judgemental, Wyll is confused, and Astarion is no help at all. So, just like normal. (Stand-alone)
Series
- Part 13 of Blood and Music (Tavran Gregory, Bard)
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"You— you just let him gouge out your eye!” Karlach sputtered, flexing her hands with the desire to shake him. She didn’t want to add burns to the brain damage, though.
In which bard!Durge makes a lot of baffling decisions with his personal safety on the road to Baldur's Gate and somehow, that's everyone else's problem. Or, five times Tav does something completely unhinged, and one time he-- surprisingly-- doesn't. (Stand-alone fic, spanning all acts)
Series
- Part 14 of Blood and Music (Tavran Gregory, Bard)
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“I could hurt you,” Tav huffed, still avoiding his own reflection and the colors he'd find there, too familiar, and Astarion rolled his eyes.
“So could Gale. So could the dog,” he said dryly.
In which the Durge never got the ‘canon’ Astarion-refuses-to-break-up scene, because he was never quite selfless enough to suggest it. Here’s the conversation they had instead. (Stand-alone)
Series
- Part 15 of Blood and Music (Tavran Gregory, Bard)
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“You were undressing me with your eyes at your coronation, that part was obvious,” Tav said, rolling his eyes, and Enver blew out a breath, not sure whether or not he was insulted. He was, also, charmed; apparently the brain damage hadn’t left his favorite assassin damaged or stupid, as Enver had feared.
Reaching a dead-end in tracking down the location of Bhaal's cursed temple and their kidnapped friend, Tav-- Bhaalspawn and Bard-- goes to ask for help from the last person he wants to trust: Gortash. Karlach, already furious that they didn't kill the Archduke on sight, takes issue with the decision, but neither of them is happy with what they learn about Tav's past in the aftermath. (Stand alone fic)
Series
- Part 16 of Blood and Music (Tavran Gregory, Bard)
- Part 1 of Requiems and Recitatives
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“So you went out alone, without telling anyone, and paid someone to torture you into learning a new magic spell?” Astarion demanded. Wyll couldn’t tell by the spawn's expression if he was impressed or furious.
"Well," Tav said.
How does a bard learn a new spell? (Stand-alone fic)
Series
- Part 17 of Blood and Music (Tavran Gregory, Bard)
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For a bard, Tav went very quietly. Shadowheart wasn’t sure why she was so surprised by it. Tav did all the important things quietly.
There were seventeen minutes between the fireworks shop exploding and the rest of the team finding their missing rogue. There were also seventeen minutes from the moment Bhaal killed his rebellious spawn and when the amnesiac’s new patron came to claim the leftovers.
It's probably a coincidence. But the tadfools find there's a lot of honesty that can be had in a quarter of an hour. Or, even in a world of magic, fear of death means something. (Stand-alone fic)
Series
- Part 18 of Blood and Music (Tavran Gregory, Bard)
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If Bhaal’s plans had been derailed, his inheritance rejected, and the Slayer defeated, why were Tav's hands still shaking like he was dealing with another Urge?
Turns out being stabbed through the skull has consequences. Tav has kept the effects of his old injuries from the party, but once he is finally clear of his bloody inheritance, the others start to notice that not all is what it seems.
In which Tav is lovingly bullied into learning how to accept help, and Astarion's cracks are showing. (Stand-alone)
Series
- Part 2 of Requiems and Recitatives
- Part 19 of Blood and Music (Tavran Gregory, Bard)
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“You lied to me,” Astarion snarled.
“I needed you safe!” Tav snapped back, and immediately knew it was a mistake.
Tav doesn't make it to the ladder in time when the party escapes the Iron Throne, and he's left behind to drown. Astarion handles this as well as could be expected-- which is to say, terribly. In which dying actually has consequences, and caring about someone means their reckless disregard for their own well-being isn't that funny anymore.
Series
- Part 3 of Requiems and Recitatives
- Part 20 of Blood and Music (Tavran Gregory, Bard)