I’m glad it’s inspired you X3 I’m a bit rusty with this so just bear with me.
Astarion absolutely hates the situation he finds himself in where Tav had someone before him that didn’t end with a nasty breakup. It scares him deeply that the more time Tav spends around Gortash, the more likely it is that they’ll leave him. Gortash’s presence sparks the need for power in order to keep Tav’s attention in his mind now. It may become harder to talk him down later and Tav is none the wiser.
Gortash may act like he’s perfectly okay with Tav having another lover when confronted with the fact at his coronation but the moment he’s behind closed doors, he has to control the urge not to tear through something. Since finding out that Tav had survived, he had been planning on just picking up where he left off with them. They were going to nix Orin and rule at his side now that Kethric was dead. With Astarion in the picture, this complicated things. He couldn’t even say anything about the vampire because, of course, the Dark Urge had a thing for the dead. This corpse just moved on its own.
-After the initial meet-up, Astarion complains to Tav that Gortash isn’t even all that good-looking, though does admit he has a charm about him, perhaps his confidence. He realizes that Gortash is unconventionally handsome and there had to be something more there that attracted Tav to him in the first place, scaring him further. He only takes comfort in the fact that Tav doesn’t seem to remember the man. Gortash, on the other hand, is loudly bitching about how hot Astarion is to an uninterested automaton while pacing his office but comes to the conclusion that it’s a shallow attraction. Obviously, he had a deeper bond with Tav than this vampire so he should have no problem beckoning the Dark Urge back to him.
-Tav cannot leave the camp without being stalked by Astarion in the event that Gortash tries to get them alone, which happens within ten minutes of Tav leaving the Elfsong Tavern. Gortash had been waiting at the bar, watching the stairs for the Durge, and practically chased after them the moment they stepped foot outside of the establishment. Astarion appears at Tav’s side almost immediately when an invitation to a small gathering (by “small”, he means just the two of them) is offered and now extends to Astarion because Gortash doesn’t want to risk Tav backing out if rescinded. It’s a glaring match between the two that is only disrupted by Tav wanting to get on with it.
-Over wine, when Tav isn’t present, Gortash tells Astarion he knows more about Tav than the vampire will ever know and Astarion retorts that he’s welcome to hold onto memories of a dead person as he doesn’t know the one Gortash speaks of. Astarion also gets protective, verbally tearing into Gortash over the idea that he knew Tav was attacked by Orin yet didn’t check if they were actually dead or kept hostage. After all, he knows what happened to them at Moonrise before the Mindflayer ship. The sound of Gortash’s gauntlet gripping the glass tightly makes Astarion happy that he got under the man’s skin. Gortash relaxes and just chuckles, telling him it doesn’t matter once Tav regains their proper memories. Tav will be in their rightful place, at his side and in his bed then. All Tav hears upon returning is a table being flipped and Astarion snarling at Gortash about how he was the one at their side after the crash and he was the one who protected them for nights on end, not Gortash. He was the one who gave a damn about Tav’s safety and well-being while Gortash just whored around Baldur’s Gate worried about no one but himself. Gortash is now staring down at an enraged vampire spawn who has him pinned to the wall (We stan vampire strength in this house), his feet nowhere near the floor. Before releasing him, Astarion tells him he has no right to pursue Tav after the lack of urgency Gortash has shown and threatens him to stay away from them or he will tear his throat out, that Gortash is lucky that Tav agreed to an alliance with him or he’d do it right then and there. He tells him if he knew someone who hated Tav had them, he would never stop looking for them until he was sure they were dead. Gortash is dropped to the floor and Astarion storms out, calling for Tav as the visit is over and they are leaving. The threat doesn’t stick as the whole encounter has given Gortash a different angle to work with in order to get Tav back: show regret for not looking for them. Of course, behind Astarion’s back.
-Astarion pretends he’s fine around camp during the day but at night, Tav awakes to him on his hands and knees over them. Tav thinks it’s just one of the times he is going to feed on them and lays their head back only to be greeted by Astarion dropping his entire weight on them and crushing them in a tight embrace.
I can’t lose you.
-Meanwhile, Gortash is putting in preparations for when Orin is killed and trying to find a way to have a private conversation with Tav to somehow spark their memories of their time together. He’ll be damned if he loses the one person he wants to rule at his side with.
After everything’s said and done, Astarion comes up with creative but rather unsavory nicknames for Gortash as well as picking apart his appearance just to be petty. He is, however, looking forward to the ritual that will give him the power to keep Tav away from people like Gortash.
