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Chapter Text

Discernment, Gale knew, was among the most necessary skills a wizard could develop. An intimate knowledge of one’s own tastes (and a good sense for ferreting out the value in things) couldn’t be taught during apprenticeship, leaving students of the arcane arts to develop it on their own. To sense the eager thrum of weave reaching out to them from an amulet, or to recognize the quality of a robe by its stitching—a good wizard understood how and when to allow something to catch their eye. Before all else, know thyself.

Gale knew when he wanted something. Sometimes, after hours of uninspired rummaging through bookshop shelves, he would find himself with a tome in hand, fixated on how its leather binding wrinkled with age, how its gilded edges flaked like skin from a corpse. He would turn it around and around in his palms. Linger until closing. And when the final dregs of bookish patrons had filtered through the front door, he would step up to the clerk, sliding over a pouch of coins to purchase the old, decaying, wonderful thing.

He had wanted perfection, once, and she had wanted him back. To want anything more was human, and consequently a failing. So every imperfect thing that drew his attention was subject to this mental dissection: if you want it, name its flaws. If you want it, learn to want it less. Discern. Scrutinize.

As he watched Astarion settle with a wince onto one of the Underdark’s many craggy rocks, skin cast sickly green in the glow of the ormu, he wondered why his first instinct was to pick the man apart.

“Do stare until you’re satisfied,” Astarion said, not bothering to look up from the healing vial pinched between his fingers. He flicked the stopper off—seemed to listen as it went clinking into the darkness—before throwing his head back and downing it with a kind of strained showmanship. “Goodness knows there’s not much better to look at in this festering sinkhole.”

“Please, no need to posture on my behalf,” Gale answered, bright as could be. “Struggling to keep up appearances when one’s body is in no state to comply—it’s territory I have trodden well.” He offered up a smile, but between the rank, spore-thick air and Astarion’s own sulking pout, it felt more like an invitation to spar.

“Have you, now?” Astarion’s gaze slid down Gale’s face, then his neck, and landed somewhere a little too low to feel decent. Gale’s hand was already at the lapel of his robe, about to pull it further closed, when he realized what Astarion was peering at: the rounded top of his mark peeking out above his collar.

“And I’m quite well, thank you,” Astarion continued, mercifully averting his eyes. “Well enough to wish our dear leader hadn’t abandoned me in the most fungal recess of the Sword Coast’s bowels.”

Astarion was posturing. He sat with his weight shifted onto his right hip, keeping pressure off the side of his body where the minotaur’s axe had found him before falling. The hard-driven edge had nearly sundered his thin armor, and a savage bruise—if not a gash—was certainly hidden beneath. At best, that single healing vial had been enough to staunch the bleeding, but Gale knew the injury remained.

Their merry band had been assembled for just over a week, and Gale had begun to develop an ear for the chaotic drumbeat of their travels. It hadn’t been completely surprising, then, when they found themselves plunging unprepared and unsuspecting into the Underdark. Their de facto ringmaster had the privilege of being the strangest spore druid Gale had ever met. She had charged into the dripping gloom with such zeal, he half wondered whether she was expecting a welcome home party.

Unfortunately, that welcome party came in the form of cleaver-wielding, bull-headed beast men. The fight was too close. When one minotaur lay dead and the other was trying sluggishly to pull itself off the ground, Tav—bloodied, if not humbled—had sounded the retreat.

Gale should have been paying more attention. As they clambered up the mushroom-frilled precipice, he’d felt the humming undercurrent of some arcane energy. But this was the Underdark, he’d figured. The place was positively marinating in its own strange magic—faerzress, wasn’t it? And it didn’t help that his eyes, damn the fickle things, kept drifting back to the sight of Astarion, tense with pain, one frighteningly white hand clutching his side.

Half the ripplebark had been illusory. They’d barely hauled themselves to the top of the cliff when, with taunting puffs of dancing lights, huge swathes of the fungi began blinking out of existence. A foolish oversight, not to have noticed before. A humiliating one for a wizard of his pedigree. With a carefully guarded expression, Tav had glanced down the sheer rock face, put her hands on her hips, and declared, “well, we won’t be going back that way!”

Before he even understood that a plan was being formulated, let alone enacted, Gale had been assigned to Astarion supervision duty and Tav had slipped into the shadows to scout for another way down, rambling about “letting the spores show the way.” And so, he found himself perched on damp rocks with a worm in his brain, an annihilating hunger behind his ribs, a fungus-addled maniac poking around Mystra-knows-where, and a vampire spawn at his side. A spawn with a vicious wound, to be sure, hidden behind an even more vicious sense of pride, a crown of white curls drooping pathetically in the humidity, and a pair of roving eyes that were just the color of the clove-warm Manycherries wine he missed so terribly from Waterdeep.

Some things couldn’t be helped. He’d been circling back to that idea, lately, like water going down a drain.

When Astarion cleared his throat, Gale’s head whipped up so quickly his neck would regret it for days.

“You wouldn’t happen to have another potion clinking around at the bottom of that purse of yours, would you? Or a healing spell tucked away in your pretty head?” Despite the irreverent tone, Astarion’s posture made it look like he was folding in on himself. Shoulders hunched, hands fisted against the stone he sat upon—like a paper construct, liable to be crushed under its own weight. “If not, perhaps a hard knock over my skull with that stick, or an incantation to banish me to the hells. I’d like very much to be anywhere other than here, really.”

“Quite a list of requests, but I’m afraid I must answer them all with a ‘no,’” Gale replied, trying for his most polite grimace. “It seems our best and only medicine at the moment is patience. Have faith that our druidic friend knows what she’s doing.” The optimism felt cloying, but he couldn’t help himself. Astarion’s nature was like a serrated blade, and Gale found himself pressing the weight of his soft, bleeding civility against it time and time again.

“Spellcasters,” Astarion sniffed. “Have you considered retraining as a cleric? For all her ominous slavering over the ‘dark lady,’ at least Shadowheart knows how to dress a wound.” 

Gale sighed. “You need only say the word, Astarion, and I’d be happy to take a look. While my magical specialties may lie in less bodily realms, I’m familiar with the cleaning and bandaging so often necessitated by fieldwork.”

A flicker of… something, Gale thought, crossed Astarion’s face. It felt foreign. Sincerity, perhaps? It was gone in an instant, replaced by that empty-behind-the-eyes ‘come hither’ look. “How delightfully forward,” Astarion purred. “There’s no need for pretense. If you’d like to see me out of my clothes, you could just ask.”

The proposition was less disturbing to Gale than the fact that Astarion, knowingly or not, had touched on the slippery pulse of something real. When Gale offered to help dress his wound, it hadn’t been with the kind of friendly ease he’d feel when offering to help Tav, or Wyll, or any of the other accident-prone denizens of camp. His mind slid far too easily to a vision of pale, broken skin—to the way Astarion might feel cold and solid beneath his hands. Despite how he tried to chase it away, it wasn’t a lustful thought. It was, rather, the grim musing of someone standing before a mirage, trying to sieve dream from reality with the spaces between their fingers.

He shook his head. “Though I’m loath to criticize an injured man, you might have waited to polish off your final potion. Those vials are tricky things. Useful for closing scrapes, but only sufficient to take the edge off anything bigger. And the exposed edge—” Gale hummed, thoughtful. “The break isn’t always clean, and then one finds themselves with a new kind of pain altogether.”

“Oh, for—” Astarion’s expression slid with surprisingly little effort from seductive to venomous. “Spare me the lecture on temperance. Only fools deny themselves.”

And Gale wasn’t imagining it this time. Astarion’s gaze was on his throat, sharp and angry, and he felt as though a welt might raise on the soft skin where it fell. He swallowed, breathed out, forgot to breathe back in. He trailed the pads of his fingers over the pulse point thundering below his jaw.

Astarion’s eyes snapped back up, and unexpected delight danced behind his annoyance. “Don’t flatter yourself,” he said. “I can smell the rot in your veins from here.”

Ah—Astarion was toying with him. He supposed he should have expected this to be how the man chose to occupy his time. In lieu of a response, Gale let the silence hover like a taut bowstring. He recalled a memory from his youth, what felt like an eternity ago: Liar’s Night in Waterdeep, when the city forgot itself behind costumes and frivolity. He’d never been one to don a mask himself, but that year, he’d devised a plan to turn the tables on any would-be tricksters prowling amongst the revelers.

He'd fastened a rigged purse to the front of his belt, bumping when he walked against the top of his thigh. Indigo velvet, blending into the matching fabric of his robes. Visible, not conspicuous. To be fair, a young mage in a crowd was an easy target—all jewel-toned, gold-toting panache, and none of the deadly reflexes of fully-fledged wizards. It wouldn’t be long before somebody took the bait.

He’d hardly contained a grin when a pickpocket, anonymous behind his polished wooden mask, swept up beside him and slipped a hand into his purse. As soon as the man’s fingers breached the enchantment’s humming boundary, the Magic Mouth spell was triggered. “THIEF,” the voice wailed, as if the purse itself took offense to its defilement. The pickpocket started backwards, hands raised, and performed an apologetic little flourish before slipping back into the crowd.

Young Gale had been so pleased with the success of his plot that, as the man retreated, he almost didn’t notice the faint jostle behind him. It wouldn’t be until later that evening, as he reached for his coins to pay for an almond cake, that he would find his rear pocket empty. The thief who targeted his decoy purse had only been a distraction, buying time for an accomplice to work silently around Gale’s back.

An important lesson was learned that night: trying to beat a charlatan at their own game was a fool’s errand. One couldn’t hope to thwart trickery on its face, but had to understand why the trick was being played in the first place. A thief’s feints were almost always calculated to hide something earnest. No matter the grace of their hand nor the swiftness of their wrist, they were still performing the same needful grabbing, still clutching a palmful of pilfered, blood-smelling coppers. It was an alchemy of charm—an attempted transmutation of wretchedness into glamour with nothing more than batted eyelashes and a courtly bow.

Now, in the Underdark, Gale thought of how Astarion could slot a dagger between the lip and body of an old wooden chest with practiced ease, or how effortlessly he could find weak spots in moldering panels with the tip of his knife. How, even at present, he preened and posed like a debutante while bleeding beneath his armor. These days, most everybody in camp had learned to wave away Astarion’s advances with a laugh. They found the flirtation titillating, Gale figured, or a bit threatening, or some combination of the two. He wondered if anybody else found it sad.

“You’re making me uneasy,” Astarion said.

“Mm?” Gale looked up, and Astarion’s viperish glare had given way to something more watchful. “Pardon me—just lost in thought.”

“As irritating as I find your babbling, your silence may be even worse. What are you plotting?”

“It’s heartening to know you think of me so highly,” Gale replied. It came out snippier than intended. “Despite your best efforts, I enjoy your company, Astarion.”

Astarion shifted as he sat, looking like he might ask why.

“Well, of course, darling,” he said instead. The way he said darling made it seem as though anything he could consider dear would necessarily be vile. “Having endured your utter deficiency of charm, I’ve taken it upon myself to have enough for the both of us.”

“How noble of you,” Gale smiled, because he felt like a scowl might be exactly what Astarion was angling for. “Tell me—do you actually enjoy this pestering, or is it a habit left over from your days of wheedling prey into your bed?”

Astarion grew very still. For once, he said nothing.

“If it’s the latter,” Gale continued, “I’d remind you that you’re a free man now, and that you might benefit from a change of hobbies. Have you tried lanceboard? I would be thrilled to teach you.”

“A ‘free man,’” Astarion repeated. He stared at Gale, incredulous, as if he’d just witnessed a spectacle of stupidity so extraordinary as to rip all other words from his throat.

“Yes,” Gale insisted, as he was committed to digging this particular hole. “I’d say so. You’re as free a man as I. Or as free as one can be with a tadpole temporarily slumbering in their brain.”

Astarion clicked his tongue in disapproval. “You honestly believe that, don’t you?”

“Wholeheartedly. Failing to recognize one’s own agency is the first step toward tyranny,” Gale said, even as he felt the professorial edge creeping into his voice. “Or subjugation. I’m sure you agree neither destination is ideal.”

It was Astarion’s turn to sink into silence. His gaze fell to the pebbled ground, but really, it fell nowhere at all—he was somewhere far away, disconnected from the moment with the speed and totality of an automatic reflex. He worried his bottom lip with a knuckle, and something in Gale’s nervous system, fried by arcane hunger, sparked. This, it seemed to hiss, is the most important thing you have seen all day.

Just nerves misfiring, Gale told himself. A matter for academic contemplation. Perhaps he could find some precedent in the literature, sniff out some dusty thesis, that could explain how somebody could look so lost and beautiful, and why it made him feel like the moorings of his guts were coming loose, and why he felt like he was stranded on a dock in his own body watching a ship drift out on the tide. Maybe, Gale thought, there was a book that could explain how he knew this imaginary gut-ship was carrying bits of precious cargo that were not his to give away and could never be gotten back. Why he hoped, pathetically, that this ship might find port in the soft, tiny space between Astarion’s lip and finger.

Was this what it felt like to lose one’s mind? Gale buried his face in his hands.

“For such a patient man, you’re beginning to look troubled,” Astarion needled. Whatever quiet spell had fallen over him was lifted. “What did you tell me—have faith? Perhaps you’ve been sickened by your own medicine.”

“We don’t have to talk, you know,” Gale huffed, straightening back up. Shutting down conversation? He really was losing himself.

There had been a faint, impish quirk to Astarion’s brow, but he let it drop. He folded his hands in his lap.

“Do you think we’ll ever make it back to Baldur’s Gate?”

Gale felt his brow furrow at the question. It was uncharacteristically earnest, but not hopeful. Apprehensive, maybe.

“I confess, I haven’t thought much of it,” Gale started, then stopped himself. He felt a bit oafish. While his ties to the city were scant, of course his Baldurian companions would be thinking of home as they inched along the Risen Road. He decided on a different tack. “Yes. I rather hope we will.”

Astarion didn’t seem pleased. He drummed his long fingers against his knee, looking off somewhere above Gale’s shoulder. “I wonder if the old circus is still around. After dusk, when the shows were winding down, the clientele were always so… pliant.”

Reminiscence? This wasn’t even vaguely what Gale had expected to hear. He tilted his head. “Your old hunting grounds, I take it?” He anticipated some sort of rebuttal—in jest, or perhaps in anger—but none came.

Astarion looked thoughtful. “They had all manner of caged beasts. Pitiful creatures, locked up behind bars. There was this serpent—it was billed as a jaculi on the flyers. They kept it in a crate no bigger than a hatbox.” His eyes were vacant, but the corners of his mouth twitched down. “So small, it couldn’t even straighten out all the way, the pathetic thing. It was always trying to sink its fangs into its handlers. They had to handle it with tongs—” He pinched his fingers together, mimicking the motion from his memory, “—because the moment they opened the box, it would go for blood.”

Gale just nodded, listening.

“They had a dire wolf, too,” Astarion continued. “Once they fattened it up, it was so achingly docile. They even trotted it out in front of the children. Eventually, they stopped keeping it in a cage at all.” Astarion’s eyes caught Gale’s with all the delicacy of a steel trap snapping shut. “It wouldn’t even think to liberate itself.”

Gale pressed his lips into a thin line. “Dire wolves,” he said, slowly, “are far more intelligent than jaculi.”

“So they are,” Astarion grinned, and it was all tooth. “Last I heard, the jaculi made a fetching pair of boots for the tightrope walker.”

“Ah. A tragic end for the serpent, then,” Gale breathed.

Astarion leaned forward. “Perhaps. But at the very least, it didn’t forget that its master was its master, and that it was a pet.”

With this, some trembling thread of tension was severed. Astarion seemed satisfied to have made his point, and he sat back on his rock to preen. Gale averted his eyes and thumbed at his earring, counting each of the star’s points as they slid under his finger: one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight. How easily prayer became compulsion.

What, exactly, did Gale want? He was losing sight of everything that mattered, and his attention was being dragged, kicking and screaming, toward everything that didn’t. The neat catalogue of his mind—schooled desires, tamed intentions, cuticles bitten to the quick—was scrambled. That long-buried refrain of Mystra’s disapproval rang out in his thoughts. Rotten child. Insolent boy. In so many ways, her voice had become his own. He didn’t need his goddess’s hand to wield the flail: the punishments were self-administered.

Oh, how his head throbbed.

One thing he knew he wanted was to be gone from this place. If he were up on the surface, with the sky above him, he would have enough fresh air to clear his head. Far too much was unknown down here. He glanced around at the creeping vines and fungi, smothering the stone with their undulating light and low, discordant humming that was always too quiet to register comfortably in his ears. Things that grew in the dark had a way of turning out wrong—knotted, complicated. And Gale felt something growing in the stinging, orb-poisoned blackness of his own chest. It grew like wild brambles, black pupils eclipsing crimson, a tangle of alabaster curls.

If there was any mercy to be had in the world, this something would die inside him. But Gale had lived long enough to know mercy was rarely afforded to men like himself.

Chapter Text

Gale stared just beyond the ring of light cast by the fire, at the tiny, crumpled heap of black and white and red that had once been a bird. Curls of smoke began to climb from between its feathers. Already, the curse was working to return the body to itself. It would be ash, soon—one final flight as it was dispersed by the wind, integrating into the layer of sickly dust that blanketed everything.

Astarion stopped pacing. “Would you quit looking at it?”

“Where’s your sense of inquiry? We’ve been given a rare chance to observe a scarcely documented phenomenon,” Gale said. He sat on the cold ground, legs outstretched, hands folded in his lap. If he couldn’t will any enthusiasm into his companion, he would at least try to will it into himself. “Fascinating, how the curse seems to goad its victims into self-destruction.”

“Oh, yes! Absolutely fascinating,” Astarion snapped, voice sharp with hysteria. He stood with his arms folded around himself, clasping at the edges of his own body as if trying to hold himself together. “Has it occurred to you that this phenomenon has gone undocumented because it kills any scholar stupid enough to come here?”

Gale hummed, more in appeasement than acknowledgement, and kept his eyes fixed on the bird’s corpse.

Even Tav had been cautious as they ventured into the Shadow-cursed Lands. Though ordinarily resistant to guidance of any kind, she seemed to take Halsin’s warnings under advisement—perhaps some unspoken respect for the elder druid. They pressed into the place in starts and stops, sending out tentative feelers to map the contours of the land and keep tabs on the movements of cultists. Those in the good graces of the Absolute had some way of traversing the darkness unharmed, but Tav hadn’t yet allowed anyone close enough to investigate. For now, they eked their way through the shadows under the thin protection of torches and campfires.

Existence in this land came with a high price. The weariness stacked atop one’s shoulders like a mantle of coal dust, leaving tempers short and conversations stunted. When Tav rounded up her small reconnaissance party and set into the gloom, the camp they left behind was silent as a sepulchre.

The discovery of possible refugee tracks—cartwheel divots, boot impressions, and cattle hoofprints—was a welcome, if faint, ray of hope. They followed the marks to a washed-out crossroad, where the mud grew too wet to hold any kind of shape. Tav exercised a surprising amount of restraint by admitting it might be a tad irresponsible for everyone to run off into the unknown at once. Gale didn’t think twice about volunteering to stay behind and make camp.

It wasn’t pure selflessness. The lack of privacy in this new, strange life was suffocating for one accustomed to an entire tower’s worth of secluded chambers, and the quiet of the orb in his chest was making matters worse. It was as if the devouring hunger had carved out a space within him, and in its absence, he was beginning to understand just how empty he had become.

The detonation was no longer some wild, incalculable thing to be danced around. It loomed. Gale knew how the incantation would feel on his lips. He hardly slept, terrified that the words would slip out on an unconscious breath, and he would wake with a summoned dagger vibrating between his hands. He wouldn’t do it, but he would imagine doing it, and the thought was abhorrent, and hideous, and it made his lungs seize with how desperately he ached for release. There could be no punishment more perfect. He had to shoulder it alone.

At the crossroads, Tav declined Gale’s offer. She reminded him of her rule about each party having at least one member with darkvision. There was more to her decision, though she didn’t say as much. She’d been willing to skirt her own policies in the past, but not now. Not with Gale. He wondered if he was really so transparent.

With the law laid down, Tav and Karlach went bantering into the withered woods, and Gale and Astarion were left in the halo of their campfire, watching a bird driven mad by the shadow curse hurl itself into a patch of thorns until its body came apart.

“For the first time in nearly my entire existence,” Astarion spat, unprompted, “I can stand in the sun, and Tav insists on dragging us to every place in Faerûn where it doesn’t fucking shine.”

Astarion wasn’t faring well. He had always been angular in that delicate, elvish way, but in the patchy illumination of their little camp, he looked almost gaunt. As he slunk around in circles, seemingly oblivious to Gale’s concerned glances, there was something feral in his demeanor.

“I was in such a hurry to escape the Underdark,” he muttered. “If I’d known what was waiting for me, I never would have left.”

Gale cocked his head. “I’m surprised at how badly this place bothers you. For a former ‘creature of the night,’ I’d imagined journeying back into the darkness would be like slipping on an old shirt.” He swallowed as Astarion turned to glare at him. “An old, ill-fitting shirt, perhaps. But familiar, nonetheless.”

“If I was ever a ‘creature of the night,’ it wasn’t by choice,” Astarion bit back. From his mouth, the phrase sounded less like a tactful workaround for “vampire” and more like something lifted from a bad erotic horror novella.

Maybe it was just the way the firelight played on his face. But as Gale watched Astarion—the set of his jaw, the tight fold of his arms against his body—he thought he saw something beneath the indignation.

“Astarion,” he began, hesitant, “are you afraid of the dark?”

This was a step over the line. In three long strides, Astarion stormed over to Gale’s spot on the ground, a rare and incandescent fury flashing in his eyes. He stood between Gale and the fire, blotting out the light with his body.

“What could you know of the dark? Two centuries,” he hissed through his teeth. “I endured two centuries of torment in the shadows, the likes of which you couldn’t even begin to imagine. I was made to prowl the streets at night while you were learning how to walk.”

Gale should have been afraid. Apologetic, even. But all he could think was that this wasn’t an answer to his question, and it certainly wasn’t a “no.” With a twist of his palm, he pulled several hazy spheres of light from the air, washing the area in soft illumination. The small slice of world that he and Astarion shared was brought in from the blackness.

Astarion peered around at the orbs, letting his arms fall from where he’d gathered them against his chest. “Oh. That’s—” He looked back to Gale, and it didn’t seem like the light alone making his face softer. “Thank you.”

Gale thought to say you could have just asked, but he knew that across a thousand iterations of a thousand lifetimes, Astarion wouldn’t have just asked. “You’re very welcome,” he said, instead.

Astarion hadn’t shed all his prickles. “Magic tricks aside, it’s still too damned cold.” With a huff, he dropped cross-legged onto the ground at Gale’s side.

Gale suddenly and inexplicably became very aware of his posture. He kept his gaze pointed toward the fire. Was that polite? It seemed important that Astarion thought he was polite.

“I hadn’t realized you were sensitive to the cold,” he offered. “What with you being so cold yourself. In temperature, of course, not disposition.” A little lie was permissible in service of keeping the peace.

If Astarion bristled, Gale didn’t turn to look. “My body may not produce any warmth, but that doesn’t mean I don’t suffer from a lack of it.”

“I see,” Gale nodded. “A terribly cruel aspect of your condition.”

“The cruelty is the point,” came Astarion’s terse reply.

Whether it was a camp cook’s prerogative or the simple calculus of camaraderie, Gale decided he needed to get Astarion warm. Ideally, he would accomplish this with a hearty meal, but neither Gale nor his veins had anything appetizing on offer. He scooted closer to Astarion and tossed his cloak over his shoulders so they were huddled together under the wool.

Astarion was rigid against his side.

“You’re just about frozen solid,” Gale frowned. “Here. How’s this?” He wrapped his arm around the broad part of Astarion’s back, tilting him into the warmth of his own body.

The calculus was not so simple. Some variables, it seemed, had not been accounted for. Before Gale could register what was happening, Astarion had twisted up into his lap, straddling his thigh. It was almost enough to knock him flat on his back, and at first, he thought he was being tackled—that Astarion had finally decided to end his life here and now, orb be damned.

And then Gale was staring, absurdly, at the campfire, which was altogether too bright, as Astarion nosed across his temple and whispered against the shell of his ear.

“How’s this?”

Gale tried to say something, anything, but could only conjure up a pathetic squeak.

Astarion licked a wet stripe up his throat. What of decorum? What of propriety? Such things mattered, Gale thought wildly, beating back the frothing of his blood. He tried to turn, but found himself pinned between two lean legs and a pair of hands at the back of his skull. He could only wrest his head a little to the left, ignoring the needling at his scalp, and was met with a faceful of Astarion’s smoke-wreathed hair.

Oh, but he’d barely allowed himself to dream of this. He breathed in deeply. Some grasping, yearning part of himself slipped out on the tide.

Astarion stopped mouthing for a moment, but kept his lips leveled pitilessly upon Gale’s neck. “You started this,” he chided. “Show some initiative.” He loosed one hand from the back of Gale’s head to grab his wrist, guiding the trembling hand into his curls.

Gale moved his fingers slowly, as if to avoid dispersing the gossamer structures of an illusion. Astarion kept his own hand clasped on top. After a moment, he gave a sharp squeeze, urging Gale to grab, to pull.

“Hah,” Gale gasped, then scowled, as that was not the noise he’d intended to make. “Astarion,” he managed, and all his wheels were spinning to come up with language other than Astarion’s name. “Gentle, please, Astarion.”

Astarion leaned back, and Gale could finally see his face. He looked distant.

“Really, pet?” His eyes were half-lidded and fringed with white. Ice-latticed windows, Gale thought, and he couldn’t tell if he was coming in from the cold or being banished into it. “I’ve seen the way you look at me. It would’ve come to this, sooner or later.”

“The way I look at you?” A noxious combination of shame and need curdled in the pit of Gale’s stomach. He tried to use his thumb to stroke along the curve of Astarion’s head, but Astarion gave an irritated twitch and tightened the vise of his grip.

“Were you wanting me to play the blushing virgin? Apologies, but you’re hardly my first,” Astarion scoffed. “I’ve had all sorts. So many that were just—” He settled his weight atop the rounded muscle of Gale’s thigh. “—like—” He arched his back, driving his front flush with Gale’s abdomen. “—you.” He gave a hard, tight thrust.

Gale glanced down at the indecent junction of their bodies—supple black leather on plum velvet. “I can scarcely imagine you’ve encountered many scorned wizards with bombs in their chests,” he swallowed, and his voice only quivered a little. “Let alone slept with them.”

“He thinks we’ll sleep together! How droll,” Astarion sneered. “Come off it. You know what I mean. Wet-eyed whelps, hells-bent on saving the world,” he said. “Golden heroes who saw me for the monster I was—who would stake me, given half the chance, but not before fucking me first. And necromancers, with their mouths full of evil words, trying to bind me. Change me. There’s a market for undead bodies, you know. Especially ones—” Another perfect, performative thrust. “—that look like mine.”

The moment was starting to spiral away from itself. What were they doing here? Gale searched Astarion’s face and found no surety, no dock in the tempest—only something exquisite and rudderless. There was a real danger, he realized, they would float right past each other.   

Astarion squirmed under the scrutiny. “Go on, then,” he urged, like no one had ever hesitated so long before taking the bait. “Use me. That’s what you’ve been waiting for, isn’t it? I’d bet you’ve gotten yourself off, thinking about it. Having me under your heel.”  

Though they were both inhabiting the same space at the same point in time, it was becoming clear they’d arrived from opposite directions. It was horror now, not arousal, pulsing in Gale’s core.

“No,” he whispered, and tried to pull back.

Astarion didn’t allow it. Body to body, his surprising strength made itself known. “I don’t believe in mild-mannered archmages,” he snarled, and he wasn’t playing at seduction anymore. It was beginning to feel like a pretense to murder. “You want power.”

This was a condemnation, and for a moment, Gale burned with a thousand scalding rebuttals. Yes, he wanted power—power over himself, his destiny, his own body. Could he be judged for this? But it was the delicacy of Astarion’s features, marred by wrath, that reminded him: such a swift sentencing could only be handed down by one guilty of the same crime.

Gale managed to pry his hand away. “Stop this, Astarion. I don’t want to control you.”

Astarion looked like he could spit venom, but he hesitated before speaking. “And when do men touch without wanting to control?”

If only this could be done the right way, Gale thought—if he could gather Astarion in his arms, kiss him slowly. He kept his hands fisted in the dirt at his sides. “I won’t so much as lay a finger on you,” he said, “unless you can tell me, honestly, that it’s what you desire.”

Astarion looked at him as if he’d just recited a particularly convoluted passage from Etheril’s Enchiridion of Enchanting Easements. It took a moment, but something like genuine awe began to filter over his confusion.

“By the gods,” he whispered, and his jaw hung slightly open. “I know you have a stick up your arse, but has your goddess whipped you so thoroughly that you can’t get it up for a man?”

“What?! That’s—no!” Gale sputtered. None of the responses bubbling up in his head seemed like they could make the situation any better. “I’m giving you the choice because I want you to have the choice, not because I’m—” There wasn’t a right way to phrase this, was there? Worse, Gale couldn’t stop staring at Astarion’s mouth. Those fangs, he thought miserably, were so very pretty.

Astarion narrowed his eyes. With wicked resolve, he pressed his knee further between Gale’s legs, crowding against the growing hardness there. “That’s good, at least,” Astarion breathed, and the edge of his anger seemed to have mellowed. “You really won’t touch me, then?”

“No,” Gale shivered, trying to hide how undone he was by that little jostle. “Not unless you want me to.”

Something curious flickered in Astarion’s gaze. He leaned in close, almost enough for his lips to touch Gale’s, but stopped just before closing the hair’s-width distance between them. And he lingered, and the air was him, bergamot and liquor concealing the faintest, blackest hint of grave dirt. Like the earth had a claim on him, and it planned to collect. Gale wanted to tuck his nose into the hollow of his throat, where that peculiar scent would be strongest. Wanted to learn the taste of the grey, bloodless pallor along the edges of his lips.

Gale stayed still. Astarion barked a laugh, delighted and half-crazed.

“My. You’re a man of your word,” he said, petting at Gale’s grown-out stubble. “I might not mind playing this game after all.”

Then he ducked his head down, and Gale’s eyes fluttered shut as Astarion began lavishing his throat with his mouth. Licks and nibbles devolved into ruthless bites as Gale whined, tilting his chin back to allow greater access, and willed his body to be still. Astarion rumbled his open-mouthed approval, working with a precision earned only through experience—knowing just where the line laid between leaving a mark and drawing blood, and never crossing it.

He pulled away, and Gale swallowed a plaintive whimper. Astarion gave him a spit-slick grin that didn’t quite speak of happiness. “You’ll keep your hands off, even if I do this?”

He thrust again—a hard intrusion against the soft space where Gale’s leg met his trunk. Judging by the way his red eyes glazed over, it felt good.

“Yes. Do whatever you need,” Gale panted.

“You wouldn’t say a thing like that,” Astarion murmured, “if you knew how very much I needed.”

Astarion began rutting against him in earnest, but Gale could barely acknowledge any sensation beyond that of their lips finally meeting. It was less of a kiss, more of a demonstration. Astarion licked into his mouth with the familiarity of a man returning to a haunted home, and the layer of ghosts between them was leagues thick. Gale took it in gasps and swallows, striving so earnestly to be good—to prove through his willingness that his body was a place Astarion could inhabit. That he would crack himself down the midline, put his emptiness on display, if it meant giving Astarion some brief respite from the world. It wouldn’t work, of course. One couldn’t drive out a haunting with a haunting.

Astarion moved like he was trying to prove a point. His hips worked in strong, searching arcs, as though he were plunging into a warm body and not grinding through layers of clothes. He wasn’t careful, nor did he try to be, and Gale felt his own knuckles rubbing raw against the earth with the effort of keeping himself upright. The inside of Astarion’s knee provided some cruel friction between Gale’s legs—just enough to feel, not quite enough to do anything with.

Gale let him burn down the length of his fury. And inch by inch, moment by moment, his steady movements grew shaky, and his silence unraveled into quiet, punched-out huffs—uncertain, almost pained. Gale tried to learn Astarion’s face through stolen glimpses: his knotted brow, his screwed-shut eyes, a look of abject devastation shifting beneath two hundred years of ash.

It took mere minutes. It took aeons. Astarion clawed at the back of Gale’s robes and buried his face in the crook of his neck. “Fuck,” Astarion gasped. “H-hold me.” It wasn’t tender; it was a demand. But it was broken, and Gale thought that like this—with Astarion’s slight weight across his leg, all angles and sinew—he could see him as he was, before the breaking, before the death-become-undeath. A man, barely more than a boy. He folded Astarion into his arms, one hand cradling the back of his head.

“I’m here,” he soothed, and they rocked together.

Astarion rode out his orgasm like it was the ocean tearing through him, shivering apart against the bulwark of Gale’s body. Gale could do little but try to press some warmth into him. He wished he could be everything Astarion needed: the rest and the remedy that would make him well. He wished he could be more than something to collapse against, but he wasn’t, and in all fairness, Gale knew little of love but of submitting to storms. He wished, most of all, that his heart would stop feeling like it was breaking.

As the world came back into focus, he found Astarion still flattened against him, body heaving. Gale laid a whisper of a kiss in his hair—the single concession he allowed himself.

“Are you crying?” he asked, softly.

“No,” Astarion croaked, but he was.

For a trembling stretch of moments, they clung to one another. Gale mumbled an incantation to clean the mess away, hoping Astarion might understand that he wished to say something so much sweeter.

Eventually, sobs gave way to muffled, sporadic hiccups. Astarion sat back on his heels and wiped at the wetness smeared across his face. Gale lifted his hands, letting them hover in the cold air, and spread his fingers to gather the chill. When he lowered them back to Astarion’s sides, the leather was warm but cooling—the traces of himself always slipping, slipping, slipping away from where he’d laid them. Astarion kept his face tucked down, hiding his damp eyes.

Nothing ever stayed, did it?

With a final, decisive sniff, Astarion clambered out of Gale’s lap and settled unceremoniously in the dirt. “That’s quite enough of that,” he muttered, pulling his knees to his chest.

Gale gathered his cloak from where it had fallen and draped it around Astarion’s shoulders. It swallowed him—all ostentatious filigree against the more subtle stitchwork of his stolen Drow armor. Astarion said nothing, but pulled the fabric tight beneath his chin.

The spheres of mage light still glowed, bobbing around in the dust-choked wind. Gale watched their shadows writhe across the narrow breadth of Astarion’s back, the milky crescent of his face. It made him look like he was underwater, Gale thought. A small thing, lost at sea. He couldn’t help but feel he was coming to know Astarion in all the ways he didn’t want to be known.

Astarion let out a ragged sigh. “Put those sad eyes away, would you? You’re staring at me like I’m a drowned cat.”

“I would never leave a cat in such a state,” Gale protested. His chest felt leaden with the weight of what he wanted to say. Perhaps now wasn’t the time for bald sincerity, but time itself was in short supply. “This need not be the end of things, Astarion. I’m not quite as versed in affairs of the heart as you might expect, but I’m at least certain that…” Gods. What was he certain of? “…that, if you would have me, I—”

“—Ah-ah,” Astarion interrupted. “You’re about to say something I’d rather you didn’t. Allow me to fill the silence, if you find it so objectionable. Thank you. I judged you too quickly.”

“You don’t owe me your thanks,” Gale frowned. “If I gave anything, it was given freely.”

“Nonsense,” Astarion said, and for a moment, Gale thought he recognized a trace of that long-dead magistrate—some fleeting element of high-society seemliness. “You’re the first to let me do something like this on my own terms. I shouldn’t have likened you to those others.”

“I see,” Gale said, quietly. “I didn’t intend to dredge up unpleasant memories.”

“We’re both adults, aren’t we? Quibbling over intentions is for children.” Astarion’s tone was perfectly level, and by sound alone, one would never have guessed he’d been crying. But as he spoke, his knuckles grew taut with how tightly he clutched his knees to his body. “You have far less influence over me than you think. Those memories were never buried in the first place. They’re hardly memories, really. More just… faces, living in my head.”

Once again, Gale thought of ghosts. Of hauntings. He said nothing. Astarion looked to be working out a thought that had been a long time coming.

“I let them indulge their appetites for brutality, you know.” Astarion said it like it was an admission of guilt—like it might make Gale think less of him. “There’s something about me, I think, that inspires violence. I couldn’t ever tell what it was. Born under a bad star, perhaps.” This last bit was thick with irony, and he wagged an accusatory finger at the sky.

Gale felt like he’d taken a thunderwave to the gut. He was reminded of his own tendency to dismantle the things he wanted—to break theory, literature, people, down to their components. Was he so different from those patriars who bedded Astarion with the intention of destroying something beautiful? They had all mistaken desire for threat.

“You can hardly hold yourself responsible for the suffering levied upon you by others,” he said. “The fault has never been yours. All blame lies squarely with those who sought to harm you—to use you to their own ends.”

Astarion gave a dismissive flick of the wrist. “Blame—fault. Luxuries, aren’t they? Afforded to those with time to reflect, so they can learn to live with themselves.” He ran his fingers over the embroidered edge of Gale’s donated cloak. “So what, if they wanted to hit me? I let them. It didn’t matter. None of them lived to see the morning.”

“In all those years,” Gale broached, unsure if he wanted an answer, “did no one ever touch you kindly?”

“Some,” Astarion said. “And they wound up as dead as the rest.”

For several minutes, they sat without speaking. Gale kept expecting to hear signs of nocturnal animals—owls, perhaps, or the rustling of foxes. But the death of the land was evident in its silence. Only the wind and crackling fire whispered to each other in dreary conversation.

Eventually, Astarion shifted, unfolding his legs toward the fire. He looked caved in, hollowed out. “This—” He gestured broadly at everything. “—is disgusting.”

Gale watched him in profile and wondered if the sight would ever stop making his stomach twist. “No, you aren’t,” he said.

“All that fondness will get you killed,” Astarion clucked.

Gale gave a sad smile and traced the outline of the orb in his chest. “It already has.”

Perhaps this evening had been a series of terrible mistakes. Perhaps he wouldn’t live to regret them. His eyes drifted to the spot where, earlier, a shadow-cursed bird had battered itself into oblivion. Though nothing but a streak of ash remained, Gale thought of the frailty of the creature’s body. Even when the thrashing began to tear it apart, it hadn’t stopped.

His mind also wandered to the bush of briers. To allow something to break itself open upon you—how badly, he thought, those thorns must have wanted to be touched.

Chapter Text

Yet still you know so little of me.

If a deity plunged their hand into you—swirled around your stomach, clutched your heart like an overripe plum, squeezed until the juices ran—how much of it would you feel? Gale knew there were few nerves in the deepest parts of the body. Maybe all this vague, overfull numbness was a prelude to death. 

When he returned from speaking with Mystra, everybody seemed to know just what to do. Tav was quick with a sympathetic smile and all the right words. Karlach, staggeringly sincere, clapped him on the shoulder and offered to hack her way through the weave with her axe alone, if Gale ever needed her to have a word with his goddess. Astarion lingered by the doorway, scowling but biting his tongue. Gale sent them away. He needed some time alone.

That’s what a person was meant to do in this kind of situation, wasn’t it? Ask to be alone?

He sat on the marble steps leading into Stormshore Tabernacle. It wasn’t yet midday. A woman in a dark caftan climbed the stairs beside him, carrying a child on her hip who seemed just a touch too big to be toted around in such a manner. As she passed, she gave Gale a sympathetic smile.

Why? She knew nothing of his predicament. What could—

Gale remembered where he was sitting. Mourners often perched on these steps, steeling themselves to return to their daily lives after offering prayers on behalf of departed loved ones. That’s what he looked like, to everyone else. Just another mourner amidst a rising tide of Baldurians stricken by loss.

This wasn’t grief. This had to be something else, something more terrible, something not yet committed to language by scholars or poets. Mystra’s fingers had been hooked into Gale since he was a boy, and he had grown around them. He loved her like an inevitability. Pleased her with his words, his will. Sit. Stay. Come, if he’d been good. She knew him from the bones out. Yet still you know so little of me, she’d said. Gale thought he might be sick. He could feel her spectral hand raking across his innards.

Rummaging through his vocabulary, grief seemed to be the only word he could settle upon. What a fool he’d been.

A newspaper landed at his feet. Jolted back to reality, he looked up to find Astarion standing over him, arms crossed. His face was shadowed, but the sun caught the top of his head and turned his curls into a halo, an illusion broken only by the tips of his lovely ears.

Gale wanted to kick himself. Would he ever learn to separate infatuation from worship? He wasn’t just a fool; he was the greatest fool of all.

“Well?” Astarion raised an eyebrow.

Gale squinted up at him. “What?”

“You like to read so much, then read,” Astarion huffed. “Or pick it up and walk it to the garbage. I don’t care. But you’re done sulking.”

“Sulking?” Gale felt like his life was ending, and Astarion was throwing him cheap reading material like one might try placating a dog with a bone. He could almost laugh. “I don’t believe it. You’ve brought me a gift to try and cheer me up?”

Astarion looked away, tapping his toe. “I didn’t buy it for you. I was just trying to silence that little urchin of a newsboy howling on the corner. But then I had it, and heavens know I don’t read drivel like the Gazette, and—” He exhaled, then lowered himself to the step beside Gale. “—And I thought you might like it. The puzzles, maybe. They tend to be more competently written than the columns.”

With a groan, Gale leaned forward and picked up the newspaper. His eyes flicked across the first page. How odd, he thought, that even as the elder brain rattled its chains and steel watchers tracked blood through the streets, there were still advertisements for hair growth elixirs and 100%-satisfaction-guaranteed love potions. Life would keep going until the bitter end, wouldn’t it?

“Look at this,” he said, pressing his finger to a smudgy headline. “Sea monsters. How much would you like to bet we end up involved, somehow?”

Astarion wrinkled his nose. “We’d better not. I think I’ve forgotten how to swim.”

Gale managed a smile. “If we ever eke out an hour or two between crises, I humbly offer my services as a swimming instructor.”

“Swimming lessons? I hardly—” Astarion seemed to swallow a barbed comment. He grew tense with the effort. “I… appreciate the offer.”

“First a present, now a display of gratitude? You’re in an awfully magnanimous mood,” Gale said, giving him a suspicious once-over.

“Shouldn’t I be? You look like a piece of gristle that’s been chewed up and spit out.” Astarion dragged a hand through his hair, not taking the time to pat it back into place. “That witch of a goddess wants you to make an impossible choice. Believe it or not, I can empathize. And you should know—” Once more, he had that look of dire concentration. Like someone not accustomed to decency, either given or received, trying to wring it out of themselves.

He set his jaw and tried again. “—What I mean to say is, you’re a good man. Irritatingly good. And I trust you’ll make the right decision. I need you to make the right decision. Because if you can’t come up on the right side of this disaster, what hope is there for me?”

The words tumbled out of Astarion with the momentum of something long withheld. His hair was still mussed, though he didn’t seem to notice. Gale stared for a moment, feeling like he’d just peeked into an off-limits building.

“Ah,” he said, and gave a tentative nod. “I, ah—thank you, I think.”

Gale had seen the parallels, of course. By blessing or curse, both he and Astarion were within arm’s reach of unspeakable power. Would it be claimed or relinquished? Such a simple question. The same might be asked of a fisherman with a trout in his hand. Here, it drew the line between god and pauper.

What he hadn’t considered, teetering on this razor’s edge, was that his and Astarion’s fates could be linked. After that night in the Shadow-cursed Lands, they’d not touched again. Gale sometimes felt the faintest reverberations of a connection—when they sat a little closer than necessary on the log by the campfire, or when Astarion silently claimed the bed next to his own at the Elfsong. Only echoes, he’d told himself.

He thought about the story Astarion once shared in the Underdark—a tightrope walker. Snakeskin boots. He thought about two bodies, tethered at the waist. One falling, the other tumbling after. When Astarion had pressed his face, wet with tears, into the base of Gale’s neck, it’d felt like there was no space between them at all.

He looked back to Astarion. He was resting his chin in his hands, watching the crowd milling along the street below. Gale began to wonder whether they’d ever really stopped clinging to each other.

“Come on,” he said, rising to his feet. He straightened the newspaper out with a satisfying whap against his thigh, then folded it in half. “Time for the stray sheep to rejoin the flock. They may have need of us.”

As Astarion started to rise, Gale offered him his hand. It was meant to be the assurance Gale couldn’t quite put into words: I’ll do the right thing. For you, if nobody else. 

Astarion took it and pulled himself upright. He held onto the connection for just a second too long, boring into Gale with those red eyes—like how cheated men scavenged for honesty in every face they came across, half-suffocated with desperation. Then he let it drop, and his hand flew to smooth out his curls.

“Allow me to lead,” he said. “I know a way to the inn that’s twice as long as the usual path. Leads down some perfectly bleak alleyways—perhaps we’ll be waylaid by a mugger and get to shirk our duties that much longer.” He flashed a dazzling, deathly grin. “I wouldn’t mind the free meal.”

The path they took was both longer and less bleak than Gale had expected. There were no muggers. As he followed Astarion down the winding cobblestones, passing off-the-record produce stands and enchanted trinket shops of debatable repute, he found his mind wandering toward everything it couldn’t have. An image of an impossible future occurred to him: one spent just like this, side by side, full of empty, meandering days. Hours spent passing by gardens and saying “oh, would you look at those snowdrops,” and pretending not to be affected by them, but recognizing the fondness in the other’s voice. Lazy window shopping, bakery-warm bread smells, knocking shoulders. The kind of interminable life that went on.

He was imagining away the ending. The ending was the only certainty they had.

As promised, they turned a corner, and the inn’s shabby side entrance appeared. Guarantees could seem so comforting, Gale thought. And then life, bookended by death, handed you one, and you wished you’d had the foresight to ask for anything else.

Astarion’s quick fingers ended up being needed for a covert matter in the sewers. Gale stayed behind, taking up residence in one of the few comfortable chairs by the hearth. For the remainder of the evening, he threw the weight of his education against the dense cipher filling The Annals of Karsus. After several hours and zero progress, it began feeling more like self-flagellation than scholarship.

Darkness fell. As he laid in bed that night, the side of his mattress creaked down under new weight. He looked over to find Astarion clambering under his covers with a kind of silent urgency, like he’d just woken from a night terror and needed to be comforted. Gale knew it was a silly notion, as Astarion didn’t sleep. He didn’t dream, either, in the way humans dreamt. Astarion settled in, pressing his cheek against Gale’s shoulder, and wrapped a cool hand around his upper arm.

In Gale’s semi-waking thoughts, the important thing wasn’t that Astarion was here, but that he was without his blanket. Whenever Gale had seen Astarion in his own bed, he was laid out beneath that tattered grey sheet like a corpse beneath a burial shroud. He’d never asked where it came from, but it seemed to have sentimental value.

How could Gale serve as a security blanket, then? Groggily, he tangled their legs together. Warm skin on cold, drifting toward equilibrium. Astarion made a soft sound into his bicep that could have been contentment.

On the precipice of sleep, one of the memories to flit through his mind was that of a stray cat in Waterdeep. A slim, smoke-colored creature; almost lilac. One autumn, it took to hanging around the base of Gale’s tower, drawn to the warmth seeping from the kitchen window. It despised Tara, and the tressym’s own thoughts on the interloper were less than complimentary. So, it never came inside, but spent some nights napping in the window boxes, tucked in amongst dirt and vines.

For fear of scaring it away, Gale rarely tried approaching. He would watch from an upper balcony and leave scraps of meat by the doorway. When winter arrived, the cat disappeared. Though he nursed a faint hope that it might return in the spring, he never saw it again. Perhaps he had pressed too much, or not enough. It was so hard to love an undomesticated thing without making it think you wished to tame it.

Come morning, Gale knew he would wake alone. Astarion would be sitting cross-legged on his own bed, stitching up a split seam in his doublet, or standing in a beam of light at the window as he made low conversation with the other early risers—Halsin, Wyll. The important thing was that he would be gone. They would not speak of this.

Gale had always been unsettled by the concept of eternity. But if he were to inhabit these half-dozing minutes for the rest of time, Astarion curled at his side, it would be at least several millennia before he complained.

--

The days passed against Gale’s wishes. The party made steady, bloody progress under Tav’s guidance: Netherstones collected, awful lives expunged. The decision Mystra had burdened him with grew nearer, as did the feeling of impending catastrophe in his chest, gathering like frost around the edges of the sickly weave lodged within.

Astarion’s reckoning, too, seemed to loom indefinitely. A dark cloud in the shape of Szarr Manor, troubling the horizon with its bulk. It was always a matter for another day—until it wasn’t, and Astarion’s past was made present like a casket cleaved open. Seven marked spawn, seven thousand condemned souls. His old master, a final meeting. To Gale, it seemed to be over before it started. A howl in the night, ripped raw from the lungs of a loosed dog.

After, there were things to be mourned. Gale knew what losses came with enduring the brutal passions of a creator. What it was like to be seen as seed, progeny, a crop for harvest. How it felt when the connection was severed, and the tether reeled back to strike you in the face.

Yes. There were things to be mourned. Pieces of Astarion had been left behind in that dungeon—had gone flying as he’d driven the dagger between Cazador’s ribs, as he’d screamed as if to the gods, as he’d wept when there was no reply. These pieces were irrecoverable and would rot as surely as rat carcasses in the putrid shadows. But the better parts of Astarion had staggered out of that place into the sunlight. His soul, however bloodied, was intact, and seven thousand others walked free into the Underdark. Gale wouldn’t have to mourn the whole of him. He didn’t know if he would have been able to.

At last, there was quiet before the final storm. The native Baldurians in the party had loose ends to tie up: old friends to track down, affairs to put in order. Gale found himself with time to spare.

“This should be the place,” he said, dropping his overfull basket in the sand. He gestured around the secluded bit of shore, grinning as if he’d conjured an illusion of an Athkatlan ballroom.

Astarion looked on, not quite mirroring Gale’s enthusiasm. “You promised ‘a restorative afternoon,’” he frowned. “I don’t find sand in my shoes to be restorative.”

“Then take them off,” Gale replied, motioning for Astarion to step out of the way. He knelt down, rummaging through the pile of books in his basket until he found the old quilt tucked at the bottom. He spread it on the ground, then stood to gaze upon his handiwork: a six-by-six-foot square of soft refuge, hidden by tall reeds on the banks of the shimmering Chionthar.

“Cushions,” he muttered. “Cushions would have been a nice touch.”

Astarion didn’t take his shoes off. He toed at the tasseled edge of the quilt. “Don’t make me regret letting you drag me here. What is this?”

“The fulfillment of a promise,” Gale answered. “I once offered to show you how to swim, and I intend to make good on that offer. If you so desire, of course. Otherwise—” He stooped, producing a stack of tomes. “If you’re not looking to dive right in, so to speak, I’ve taken the liberty of procuring some manuals explaining the more technical aspects of the sport. Much lauded, I assure you. Guaranteed to take ‘a novice to a doggy-paddler in the course of one day,’” he said, reading off the back cover.

Astarion looked on in disbelief. Gale redoubled his efforts.

“Should that not pique your interest, I’ve brought an assortment of other volumes from my collection. One,” he said, “on the ecological regions of the Underdark, one on the physiological basis of vampirism, if you feel inclined to learn about your own condition, and, ah—one riveting collection of The True and Impossible Adventures of Tenebrux Morrow.”

He trailed off, and it suddenly seemed far too quiet. There was the slow sway of water against the shore, wind through the rushes, and the occasional squawk of a passing seabird. They’d gone too far downhill to be within earshot of travelers crossing in and out of the lower city.

Astarion leveled a withering glance at the basket. “You brought me here to read?”

“No,” Gale corrected. “I brought you here to swim. The reading is secondary.” He chewed at the inside of his cheek. “Truthfully, my intention was to provide you with some brief respite from everything. These last few weeks have been—”

Gale swallowed his sentence as Astarion stepped forward and pressed their lips together.

He staggered backwards half a step. “Oh no,” he gasped, turning his face away. Astarion smiled up at him like a cat with cream. “You’ve gotten the wrong idea. I didn’t bring you here to seduce you.”

“You? Seduce me?” Astarion laughed—a high, tinkling noise, like a bell. “And they say wizards don’t have a sense of humor.”

“I’m afraid I’m being serious,” Gale insisted, trying to ignore the creep of Astarion’s palms down his backside. “This is to be a restful sojourn dedicated to academic pursuits, nothing more.”

Astarion sighed, then gave Gale’s ass a sharp squeeze through his robes. “I’m seducing you, you blundering fool.”

“Oh!” Gale felt himself grow red. “There’s really no need. The pages of these books contain lessons so invigorating, you’ll—”

Astarion nipped at his bottom lip, and Gale squeaked as one of his fangs nearly drew blood. “Sit,” Astarion breathed.

Gale did as commanded.

To his surprise, Astarion didn’t lower himself into his lap. Instead, he circled around, slotting against his back and bracketing Gale’s legs with his own.

“I can’t see you,” Gale protested.  

“That’s the point,” Astarion snipped, though Gale could feel his cheek bunch as he smiled into the nape of his neck. “Now—scoot down a bit, would you? You’re too tall.”

“Whatever devious thing you’re planning—” Gale muttered feebly as he wiggled lower, until he was reclined against Astarion’s torso. Almost the reverse, he thought, of their last time. “This isn’t easy on the back, you know.”

“Well, magic away the pain when we’re done. We all have to make sacrifices.” Astarion nestled his chin into the space between Gale’s head and shoulder, hair tickling his cheek.

Gale shivered at the closeness. They fit together imperfectly—an odd joining of mismatched angles that would certainly leave him sore were it sustained much longer. In truth, he would have traded things much dearer than his own comfort to be held like this. The air was sweet with Astarion’s fougère.

“What do you mean, ‘when we’re done?’” Gale dropped his voice just above a whisper, like they were schoolboys in a library at risk of being caught and reprimanded. “If you haven’t noticed, we’re outside in broad daylight.”

“But you, my dear wizard, have brought us to a perfectly secluded location,” Astarion purred, not without a hint of threat. Gale inhaled sharply as he plunged a cold hand down the front of his robes, flattening greedily against his belly. “I don’t see a soul around. Do you?”

“No, but—ah!” Gale choked on his own breath as Astarion tossed the front of his robe open. He shrank back, the air biting against his newly bared skin. “Madman,” he hissed. “You mean to touch me right here?”

“I never said anything about touching you,” Astarion replied. He grabbed one of Gale’s wrists and guided his hand to his smallclothes. “We’re here in pursuit of knowledge, are we not? Perhaps you could provide a demonstration.”

Gale nearly rocked up into the light friction of his own hand. He thought he might rattle into pieces with how badly he wanted this—that the magic in his body might burst forth and set the river boiling, the reeds aflame. But as much as he wanted to take himself apart under Astarion’s watchful gaze, he needed to be sure he was wanted in turn. That this wouldn’t be another frantic, unmeasured coupling compelled more by fear than desire.

“Wait,” he started, bringing his free hand to Astarion’s knee. “Please, wait.” It sounded about half as compelling and twice as pathetic as intended. “I would give all of myself to you, Astarion, as many times over as you asked. But if it would make you think less of me—” He swallowed. His eyes were on the water. “I don’t want to want you if you won’t be able to forgive me for it.”

“Gale,” Astarion whispered, almost like it was an answer unto itself, “there’s nothing to be forgiven.” With a start that felt like a vase breaking, Gale realized he couldn’t remember the last time Astarion had used his name—wasn’t sure if he’d ever used it, in fact. Astarion pressed a kiss to his neck, gentler than Gale thought he deserved.

Gale took a deep, centering breath, feeling himself bob against Astarion’s relative stillness. Astarion’s fingers worked at the laces of his underwear, and then he was exposed—half hard, flushed, and feeling like it was the first time he’d ever truly lived in his body.

“Show me,” Astarion murmured, skirting his nails up his stomach.

Trembling, Gale took himself in hand.

He closed his eyes and stroked slowly along his own length, fearful that if he went too fast, reality might collapse, or his heart might give out, or he might come. All three at once, maybe, and that wasn’t particularly how he wanted to die. It felt strange at first—his body responding more readily than his mind, the muscles in his legs twitching with an autonomous desire to squirm, thrust, go faster.

Astarion had taken to kneading the rounded muscle of Gale’s chest, seemingly delighted with the novelty of his body hair. Gale tried not to watch those ivory fingers working over his skin—he’d never seen Astarion touch something so reverently, and he wasn’t sure what to make of it.

“Did she ever satisfy you like this?” Astarion asked, voice threaded low beneath the noises of the world. There was no need to clarify who she was—the idea of Mystra was invoked wordlessly, like a mistress scornfully eyeing a portrait of her lover’s wife. “In this plane? This body?”

Gale shook his head, though he sensed Astarion already knew the answer. Soft, wet sounds began to rise up from where he stroked himself.

“Such cruelty,” Astarion said, lips glancing over the shell of Gale’s ear. One of his hands began to inch lower. “Somebody like you should have been taken care of. There—” He petted the soft flesh of Gale’s belly. “Such a good boy. So neglected. You’ve had to do this yourself so many times, haven’t you? And you’re doing it again, now, for me.” Gale’s eyes snapped shut as Astarion planted a stinging bite in the stubble of his jawline. Something darker edged into his tone. “Have you done this for me before?”

Gale could only collapse against Astarion’s chest as he lurched closer to the edge. There was truth to what Astarion suggested. How many miserable nights had he spent in his tent, touching himself with one hand clapped over his mouth? He would try to think of anything but Astarion. Doing so felt lewd, improper. But when he came—when the thinking mind lapsed under the base, sordid clawing of need—he couldn’t help but imagine being pinned beneath fang-sharp flashes of white and crimson.

Astarion grabbed Gale’s wrist on the upstroke, trapping his hand over his tip. With a kind of horrified desperation, Gale realized he was waiting for an answer.

“I’m only a man,” Gale whined, writhing under the prison of his own palm. “I don’t know what you want from me.”

“I’ll take that as a ‘yes,’” Astarion relented.

Gale’s heart fluttered in his chest like a caged bird, or a bird set loose, maybe—the language he used to understand the world was beginning to fracture. Astarion scratched and mouthed like he was trying to work his way inside, to take the feathered creature of Gale’s heart between his teeth. And Gale would let him; would let him swallow it whole. He wanted love. He wanted to come. He felt so very, very close to both.

Astarion cradled Gale’s scruffy cheek, cooing when he leaned into the touch. “What if I left you here, with your robes thrown open? Would you finish yourself off?” He tilted Gale’s head to the side, forcing eye contact. “Or would you dress yourself, all hot under this velvet, and come find me? Beg me to see it through?”

“I would come find you,” Gale panted, neck strained at an odd angle. “I would always come find you.”

It was a gross display of truth. But what else could Gale offer, blown wide as he was? Astarion made a sound in the back of his throat—wounded, pleased—and kissed him.

Gale’s finish knocked the air from his lungs. He felt himself spattering up his stomach as he keeled into the framework of Astarion’s body, borrowing his structure to keep himself real. If he made any sounds, he wasn’t aware of them.

Slowly, he settled. He realized that Astarion was rubbing circles into his chest, encouraging him to open up, swallow down some air. He did. When Gale’s breathing grew steady, Astarion’s hand worked lower, lower, swiping through the sticky remnants of his orgasm. Those fingers went to Gale’s mouth, asking him to taste himself. He did.

He sucked tentatively at first, then more earnestly, and turned to peer at Astarion through heavy, pleading eyes—asking without asking. Astarion watched, spellbound, before a light of understanding fell over his face.

“Oh,” he breathed. “Yes—yes.”

It took a few moments of awkward shuffling before Astarion was laid out on his back. Gale worked the waistband of his pants down with singular concentration—he couldn’t remember the last time he’d been so set upon a task. Astarion’s cock sprang up, flush with the flat plane of his stomach, and Gale wrapped his fingers around it.

With a groan, Astarion stretched, and his shirt rose with the movement. The sun shone glorious upon him, across his stomach, illuminating the faintest wisps of white hair crawling down from his navel. He was an image of delirious contentment—drunk on all the light, his hair and skin bleaching into one luminous color. For an instant that looked like a still life painting—worthy of being captured in oils, set down upon canvas—he covered his face with his hands, an expression that wasn’t quite shyness. Gale stared, understanding that this was the picture he would come back to each morning for the rest of his mornings.

“Go on,” Astarion urged. He was watching Gale, and Gale was watching the way the corners of his eyes crinkled.

He took Astarion in his mouth. It had been far too long since he’d practiced such a thing, and he worked more clumsily than he would have liked. Judging by the small, insistent sighs Astarion made, he did well enough. Gale stuttered his way down, throat accepting the intrusion in uneasy gags and spasms. Astarion’s skin tasted of salt, and he fisted a hand in Gale’s hair, almost painfully tight. Not pushing, but shaky with the idea of it.

The sea, Gale thought, vaguely—you can’t take the salt from the sea.

He breathed through his nose, moved up and down, tried to let the rhythm find itself. Astarion didn’t last quite as long as Gale had. He came with an aborted yelp, hips snapping once, twice, and Gale felt tears being squeezed from the corners of his eyes as he screwed them shut. It was almost sweet, in the way nature could be sweet without meaning to. There was no great orchestral swell, just the swell of the tide, the blood in Gale’s ears. Deep, unhurried breaths from great lungs. He swallowed everything Astarion offered.

With a faint, wet pop, Gale pulled off. He rolled onto his back, staring dizzily at the clouds, and licked his swollen lips. Beside him, Astarion struggled to a sitting position. Gale listened to the rustling sounds as he tucked himself back into his clothes.

“Alright,” Astarion sighed, scooting closer. “We’ve had our fun. Now cover yourself up—” Sloppily, he tried to close the front of Gale’s robes over his bare midsection. “Before somebody catches us.”

Gale smiled up at him. “You thought there was a chance we could be discovered, and you still went through with everything?”

“Don’t look at me like that,” Astarion scowled, pushing a few strands of sweat-damp hair from Gale’s face. “It’s the end of the world, in case you’d forgotten.”

It was, wasn’t it? Gale let his head fall to the side, staring out at eye-level across the ground. This might be it, he thought. This could be everything. To try and make it more real—to act like there could be a continuation, some evolution of the quiet thing they sheltered between their bodies—would be dishonest.  

“I didn’t think this through,” he muttered, glancing at his tipped-over basket. The books were strewn across the sand—he would need to spend precious minutes cleaning them off, smoothing their pages. “We’re going to have to walk all the way back uphill.”

“Mm,” Astarion hummed, looking over the Chionthar. In the far distance, the sails of galley ships fluttered. “Eventually, but not now. I’d like to soak up the sun while I can.”

While I can. Sudden uneasiness flared in Gale’s stomach, and he sat up more abruptly than intended. “Of course,” he said, trying to gauge the dwindling daylight by the lengths of their shadows.

Astarion glanced at him through his eyelashes. “You’ll stay?”

“Yes,” Gale answered. “For as long as you’ll have me.”

Chapter Text

In a sense, the world did end, though in a much less terrible way than Gale had imagined. The days leading up to the final battle were characterized by an almost giddy fear. With the pressure of inevitability upon them, a helpless familiarity grew amongst the party. Their most dread secrets had been exposed, unraveled, held up to the light. Sympathetic touches were exchanged more freely. Tears were shed without reason, laughter burst forth at unlikely times, and people stayed up all night sharpening blades that were already sharp. Nobody questioned any of this.

Against all odds, the elder brain was defeated. The pressure lifted. In the startling, skinned-knee openness of freedom, of a future, life seemed to shake apart. The party went their separate ways, some sooner than others. There was no weight left to hold them together.

For a while, little felt real. Gale spent several days taking near obsessive stock of his circumstances: the Crown of Karsus sat in the deep silt of the Chionthar. Astarion was gone, vanished into the Underdark with the other spawn. The tadpoles withered, relinquishing their hold on the minds of thousands. Astarion was gone.

To Gale, enduring lost love came as naturally as breathing. Though the inertia of his mind turned, again and again, toward Astarion—the too-scarce moments in which they’d leaned upon one another, sharing a heartbeat—he forced himself to begin the journey back to Waterdeep. He left the Crown. If Mystra wanted it, she would have it. She had scores of golden boys who would fight amongst themselves for the honor of laying it at her feet. Any effort Gale made at retrieval would only serve as a token of his loyalty, and that loyalty was a burden he no longer felt obligated to bear.

His tower was exactly as he’d left it. Tara followed him from room to room, fussing over drafty windows and his “uncouth” beard. He would need to stop by his mother’s house, she reminded him—spend a few days, perhaps? —and check in with acquaintances, old friends, academic correspondences. A professor from the North Ward had written, asking if Gale could be persuaded into delivering a seminar. Two different newspapers sent bickering reporters to his door, clamoring to be the first to print his story.

That first night back, Gale spent hours pacing the length of his bedchamber. He stared at the tidy bookshelves, the linens tucked neatly under the corners of his mattress, the charmed flowerpots ever-blooming in shades of cream and violet. It made him want to itch out of his skin. He felt like he was standing in a museum of his own life. That Gale—the one who had arranged those shelves, made that bed, agonized over those plantings—no longer existed.

All that time on the road, gore-soaked and exhausted, he’d thought he wanted to go home. But he was home, now, and lonelier than ever. Perhaps he’d only wanted to be held.

He managed half a year in Waterdeep. One evening, as the clock struck eight, he felt the weave in his chest give an unsettling tremble before going quiet—not just quiet, gone. As he hauled himself from his chair to examine his mark before a mirror, he realized what had happened. In the Tabernacle, Mystra had promised to restore Gale as her chosen and free him of the Karsite weave if he brought her the Crown. She had gotten the Crown, though not directly from Gale’s hand. This was half a bargain, half fulfilled. A fairer end than expected.

In the absence of its feeding magic, the ring in his chest turned to an open wound. The flesh grew sick, then necrotic—it had been forced to sustain too great a power for too long a time. Daily, he administered home-brewed tinctures, dabbed his tender skin with healing poultices. As he tried to coax life back into the void at the heart of himself, he thought of the Infernal sigils carved into Astarion’s back. Masters always demanded their pound of flesh.

He healed, though his life was marked by a slowness not entirely necessitated by the healing process. His mind and body moved begrudgingly, sickened by the loss of something greater than his faith. It was just past the start of Leaffall when he decided he could take no more. He set his mug down on the dining table with an urgency that startled Tara from her midmorning nap, then set to packing.

Letters went to those who needed to know. He would visit his mother in person before he left. A half-formed worry sat like a lump in his stomach: perhaps this was delusion. Perhaps he’d never really had what he thought he did. But the price of not knowing, ordering his life around the pitfalls of those what-ifs, was too great. Bag in hand, staff across his back, he set out. This wasn’t about doing something for love—not about searching for or imposing it—but was about what love had done to him. There would be no more kneeling at the altar, no more stillness, supplication. If this was worship, he would move with it.

Picking up the trail of seven thousand travelers didn’t prove terribly difficult. It was almost like tracing the path of a pilgrimage, and his contacts in the Society of Brilliance provided maps to guide him in his descent. From what he gathered, many spawn lingered in the Upperdark, not yet daring to venture into the more developed, ergo more populated, regions below.

These travels afforded him an almost paralyzing amount of independence. He worked his way down, past the early, winding crags, then through a region of darkness so devoid of life and goodness, one might mistake it for a layer of the Hells. Eventually, the caverns opened their toothsome mouths, yawning into great, fungi-illuminated chasms that stretched as far as the eye could see. Here, an encounter with a troupe of wary svirfneblin explorers provided him with the first speck of hope he’d had in weeks.

“Best take a different path,” their leader cautioned, eyeing Gale up and down. “Some buildings down that way overrun by Callarduran-knows-what. Awful fog over everything—even the rats keep their distance.”

As Gale thanked the group and beelined in precisely the direction he’d been told to avoid, he heard their leader sigh and mutter an insult in Undercommon—something to do with mages, Gale thought, and their tenuous relationship with sanity.

He noted signs of spawn presence as he ventured further down the sloping path. An absence of warm-blooded creatures. A preternatural silence, as if the Underdark itself were holding its breath. Eventually, one side of the trail dropped away, and he was able to make out a shadowy grotto below him. It was filled with structures Gale initially took to be stalagmites, rising cobwebbed and ebon from the sightless depths, before he realized what they truly were: the spires of buildings carved into rock.

The structures had the kind of austere elegance characteristic of drow architecture, though they seemed long abandoned by their original creators. Some were half-crumbled, revealing their hollow insides. Weakly glowing mushrooms crept up their sides, bathing the area in teal, twinkling light.  

Standing before the final descent into the grotto, he paused. Was he to just… press forward? Would he sift, house by house, stone by stone, through the Underdark, until he found some trace of a man who might not even wish to be found? How could there be no guidance? Why was there no certainty? On the precipice of hope, Gale realized that if he took stock of everything—the force of his need, the sickness of his heart—he might crumble. It had taken him so far. Now, he felt it might destroy him.

Behind him, there came two soft footsteps. Lightly, something brushed the back of his shoulder. Gale turned.

He understood the scene in pieces. A hand outstretched, narrow fingers skirting over Gale’s robes, trying to determine whether he was real. A crown of white curls, grown out. Wine-sweet eyes, wide in disbelief, and a familiar cloak of plum velvet draped around his shoulders.

“Gale?”

“Astarion.”

For a moment, they stared at one another. Gale moved forward, pressing a hand against the softness of the cloak Astarion wore, just above his heart. That gold embroidery, the dense pile of the fabric—he hadn’t seen it since that night in the Shadow-cursed Lands.

“You kept this?”

Astarion’s brow furrowed, like he’d been expecting a greeting, not a question. “Of course I did. It’s a fine piece of craftsmanship. And—” He looked away guiltily, then tucked his nose down toward his shoulder. “It smells like you.”

Gale’s knees grew weak—how he imagined a sailor might feel at the end of a long voyage, stepping at last onto dry land. He wasn’t sure what to do with himself. Tentatively, he raised his palms to the sides of Astarion’s head, where his hair fell wildly around his bloodless cheeks. There was something crushingly open in Astarion’s expression, and Gale couldn’t quite bear to linger upon it. Instead, his gaze fell to the dark circles under his eyes.

“Look at you,” he said, voice hushed. “You’re positively grey. You could pass for a drow.”

Astarion, to his relief, smiled. “And you’ve gained a bit of weight,” he said, glancing at Gale’s midsection. There was no venom to it. The way he spoke was like someone smelling sunshine on the warm fur of a cat, just come in from napping outside.

Gale huffed a laugh. It seemed right that their reunion would consist of trading mild jabs, not pleasantries. “When you’re used to feeding more than half a dozen mouths each night,” he said, drawing his hands back to his hips, “it’s hard to adjust to cooking for one.”

He thought, briefly, that they might embrace. The instant passed. Astarion glanced around their wide-open, teal-lit surroundings, seemingly searching for something.

“As much as I’d like to stand about chatting,” he said, “perhaps we ought to have this conversation away from prying eyes.” His voice had grown distant, like he was addressing an unseen audience.

“Prying eyes?” In the gloom, Gale saw nothing but stone and shadow.

Astarion had already begun to walk. “Oh, yes. Dozens of them. You do know you’ve ventured into a veritable metropolis of vampire spawn, don’t you?”

Gale allowed himself to be led to a small, unassuming building, carved into the rock constituting one of the far walls of the grotto. It stood apart from the other structures, and Gale had to duck down as he stepped across the low threshold.

His eyes adjusted to the dim light. Inside, scattered about a meager home consisting of a single room, was all the evidence of the life Astarion had lived for the last half-year. A desk pushed against the wall, covered with yellowed scrolls, books thrown open mid-page. Baskets of glowing fungus, nestled in corners and suspended from the ceiling, casting their weak light. Nearly empty blood bottles, ominous clots at their bottoms. A bed, messy with clothes—Gale recognized most pieces as the practical garments Tav had picked up and allocated to Astarion during their travels. That grey, tattered blanket.

Gale thought of Astarion in this room, whiling away the hours. No sun to tell the time, no stars for comfort. He thought of himself in his tower, sunken into his mundane luxuries, wrapped up in the smells of tea and woodsmoke and book bindings. Sadness, like a dark bird, perched between his ribs.

“Ah! You’ve devoted yourself to your studies,” he hummed, careful to guard against any pity that might try slipping in at the edges. Surveying the materials on Astarion’s desk, he noted texts on vampirism, encyclopedias of the undead, a hefty tome on the nature of darkvision and photosensitivity. He moved to pick it up.

Astarion’s hand flew to his forearm, and he let out a small, distinctly inhuman hiss. “Leave it, please. You’ll lose my page.” He gestured to the stool under the desk. “Sit, if you like, but be good and keep your hands to yourself. I made my choice in Baldur’s Gate,” he said, folding his arms across his chest, “but there’s no reason not to try cheating it, is there?”

The old stool gave an ominous creak as Gale lowered himself onto it. “Certainly not. And if I’m a wizard worth his salt, I intend to help you.” He gave what he hoped was an affirming smile. Even having lived apart from polite society for so many months, Astarion was still unspeakably beautiful. Even in his melancholy, even with his hair untamed, even with the pallor of undeath heavy upon him. Even so. Gale wished he could say any of this aloud.

“It’s good to see you at the helm of your own ship for once,” he said, instead. “You more than deserve a chance to steer.”

“If this is a ship,” Astarion replied, “perhaps it’d be best if I allowed it to capsize.”

Gale frowned. “Surely you recognize how remarkable your situation is—how far you’ve come. This is as fine a start to a new life as any.”

Astarion gave a bitter laugh, then dropped onto the edge of his bed. He rested his clasped hands across his knees, worrying a knuckle with his thumb. “I hate it here. Feeding on beasts, seeing the world in shades of grey.” He sniffed. “The air is sour.”

“Might it be easier if you allowed yourself more company? I can appreciate the hermitage you’ve built—” Gale looked around the secluded little warren. It looked like a place a rabbit might hide. “—But could living with other spawn not offer some comfort?”

“What? And surround myself with the faces of people I thought dead for years, decades?” Astarion shook his head. “Each day, I’m made to remember what hell I’ve wrought, then reminded there’s no way to set it right. For once, I’m full of this need to atone, but gods,” he breathed, staring at his shoes. “Where am I meant to put it?”

In the slump of Astarion’s posture, Gale could see a man adjusting to a weight he would never be able to put down. Gale recognized a new burden of his own, alighting upon his shoulder: he wouldn’t be able to help Astarion carry this particular weight. By nature, it needed to be borne alone.

Astarion straightened up. He looked Gale in the eyes, insistent. “But, despite it all—this is mine. I am. It seems that half of being your own man is scraping up the strength to carry yourself.”

Gale rose and took a tentative step toward the bed. “It would seem you aren’t the only one adjusting to freedom,” he said, lowering himself to Astarion’s side. He hooked two fingers into the lapel of his robe and pulled it down just enough to reveal the mark on his chest—no longer a delicate swirl, pulsing with purple light, but a still-tender bed of scar tissue.

Astarion’s eyes widened. “I knew something was different. You found a way to get it out?”

“Not on my own,” Gale answered. “A final boon from Mystra.”

“Well. Beggars and choosers, I suppose.” As Astarion inspected the scar, some quickening realization stirred across his face. “With it gone, do you think—”

Gale swallowed, very aware of the lump traveling down the length of his throat. “I suspect, by now, that my blood should be back to normal. In composition, and, ah—flavor.”

The quiet of the moment cracked open, buckling under the fresh inundation of want in Astarion’s expression. The closeness no longer felt companionable, but charged, evocative. He leaned forward, steadying himself with his hands fisted in the sheets. “And you would…?” His voice was dry. His tongue darted out to wet his lips.

Gale brushed a stray curl from Astarion’s forehead, brought a gentle hand to his cheek. It would be a lie to say he hadn’t thought of this moment long, long before his arrival. There was a certain danger to the proposition, of course, but he had worked out the technicalities—he would limit the amount of time Astarion spent drinking. If he started to become lightheaded, they would stop. If Astarion couldn’t stop, there were spells. Defensive cantrips, things with force components. Minor magics, so well-worn and familiar, that Gale didn’t even need the entirety of his consciousness to cast them.

“I would let you drink,” Gale breathed, “if you’d like to.”

Astarion didn’t move immediately. He just looked at Gale, pleading, pupils swallowing the red of his eyes. Waiting for the final crumb of permission, the final buckle to come undone. Gale tilted his head to the side, baring his neck.

With his reserves of subtlety depleted, Astarion grabbed Gale by the front of his robes and curled face-first into his throat. Gale kept his palm against Astarion’s cheek, guiding. Astarion flattened his tongue against his pulse point and gasped—ragged, wet—into his skin.

Then, all at once, Astarion ripped himself away. Gale opened his eyes—when had he closed them? —and found Astarion on his feet, panic etched across his features. “No,” he muttered. “No. I don’t like this.”

“Astarion?” Gale looked on, bewildered.

Some of the raw fear began to drain away from Astarion’s face, and there was no hunger left in its place. Only weariness, bone deep. He sat back on the bed, further from Gale than before.

“I’m sorry,” he said, quietly.

“You needn't be,” Gale whispered. “Are you alright?”

A sudden opacity had materialized between them, obscuring their intentions from each other. A veil that couldn’t be torn away. They could only wade through, groping in the blindness, until one outstretched hand slotted into another.

“Yes,” Astarion nodded. “No. It’s—” He looked around, like he might find the words he needed hidden somewhere in the shadows of the room. “When we touched just now, it was… different. I’m not sure I liked it.”

Gale felt a pang of injury, small and white-hot. It wasn’t a feeling of rejection. It was regret, he realized, that he couldn’t nourish Astarion in the way he wanted to, feed him upon his own blood. He took a breath, reminding himself that his body was not a thing to be sacrificed at the altar.

“I understand,” he said, trying to be the steadiness they both needed. “Was it—was I too forward?”

To Gale’s surprise, Astarion let out a short, sharp laugh. “Too forward? Around me? Never.” He turned to look at Gale. “I’ve never felt hungry around you. Not like this. I knew your blood was bile, and that was enough to keep it at bay. So, when this—whatever this is—started between us, I knew I wanted you for you. Not for whatever was in your veins.”

A beat of silence.

“I don’t enjoy feeling out of control,” Astarion continued, voice low. “I’m already too close to an animal for my own comfort. Living in squalor, scrabbling in the darkness.”

There it was: a hand, outstretched in the fog.

Gale leaned forward, just enough to make his sincerity clear. “I would sooner prostrate myself before a beholder,” he said, “than have you do anything you didn’t wish to do.” Astarion blinked in relief. They’d found each other. “If the time ever comes that you’d like to try again, you have but to say the word. Until then, we’ll carry on as if I were still the most unpalatable thing you could ever set your teeth upon.”

“’Carry on?’” Astarion tilted his head, like he’d received unanticipated news. “You intend to stay?”

“Was that not obvious?” Gale asked. “If this is to be our home for the moment, I’ve thoughts on redecorating. Fresher linens, proper cabinets—that sort of thing. With some clever enchantments, I’m reasonably certain I could coax surface plants into growing here. I’ve plans for a garden that would be an absolute riot of color.”

“I can’t tell whether you’re serious, or if it’s just the spores talking,” Astarion said, expression inscrutable. “This is no place for you. It’s no home. You’d be giving up too much.”

Gale felt his brow furrow. “It wouldn’t be forever. With our combined skills, I’m confident we’ll find a way for you to walk in the sun again. And even if we find ourselves here for months, years, even, I would be giving up nothing and gaining everything.”

Astarion looked tense. Contemplative. “If I told you, right now, to go—to leave, and never come back—”

“—I would go,” Gale said, without hesitation, even as he felt his heart plummet. “Not a single day in the remainder of my days would pass without my thinking of you, but I would go.”

The moments Astarion spent thinking seemed interminable. A collapsing infinity between wave and shore, bird and thorn.

“Do you know,” he began, slowly, “how many professions of love I’ve endured? Please people well enough, and the declarations just roll off their tongues. Lie back, open up—suddenly everything’s on offer. Undying loyalty. Diamond rings.” He looked at Gale, eyes shining with a single, silent question: are you listening? “When you say the things you say—that you’ll respect my choices, no matter what they might be—”

He glanced away. “For the first time, I’m inclined to believe I could actually be loved.” When he looked back up, he wore a smile that felt, to Gale, like home. “Tell me more about this garden.”

--

They spoke for a while longer before Astarion stood, insisting there was something Gale needed to see outside. They took a short hike beyond the grotto, further into the Underdark, past bluecap-studded cliffs and unseen creatures that chittered in the murk. As Gale walked, he tried—for the first time, perhaps—to look his desire in the eye. It was no sin, he realized, to love something wholly, without trying to make it less than what it was. Some things were so great they hurt to swallow, but needed to be swallowed regardless.

Hunger was only hunger. It was not devotion.

As he mulled through his thoughts, he felt Astarion’s eyes fall upon him.

“You’ve lost your earring,” Astarion said, like he’d noticed earlier but hadn’t wanted to bring it up.  

“I took it out,” Gale replied.

“Ah. That easy? It didn’t burst into flames?”

“No. Not yet, at least. Although I haven’t checked on it in its drawer—maybe the tower was smitten down in my absence.”

Astarion hummed. “All this time, I’d assumed it was magically attached to you. Some brand Mystra used to mark the poor souls in her harem.” He pursed his lips in the way Gale knew foretold mischief. “I thought about biting your ear off, just to rid you of it.”

“My word, Astarion,” Gale said, feigning horror. “If I didn’t place such a high value on my own life, I might accuse you of jealousy.”

“Wise of you not to,” Astarion grinned.

At last, they came to a narrow ledge overlooking a depression in the ground—little more than a dimple, compared to the deep chasms that were so abundant in this region. Astarion perched on a rock, motioning for Gale to join him.

As Gale’s eyes began to sort through the darkness of the space, he realized it was full of tiny, nearly translucent mushrooms. Round, bobble-headed things, rising up on antenna-like stalks. Before he had a chance to inquire, Astarion opened his mouth.

“Do you remember the first time we were in the Underdark together?”

“How could I have forgotten?” Gale leaned forward, resting his chin in his hands. “You hated me, then.”

Astarion scowled. “In all fairness, I was bleeding out, and you were being insufferable.” He glanced over the field of tiny mushrooms, like he was searching for something in particular. “I’d already imagined kissing you, by that point. Killing you, too.”

Gale raised an eyebrow. “Really?”

“Yes,” Astarion answered, perfectly honest. “I didn’t think I’d get a chance to do one without the other. Now, look.”

He pointed out at the profusion of fungi, which seemed to have become slightly easier to see. Not just easier to see, Gale realized—they had begun to glow, emitting a faint, golden light from their bulbous caps.

He watched as the radiance grew, accumulating like fat droplets of honey. Bright, glistening, amber. Testifying, somehow, to the sweetness of life. Eventually, Gale couldn’t make out individual mushrooms, only a placid, glowing sea, above which tiny, parchment-winged insects danced.

“This is beautiful,” Gale breathed. “What is it?”

“Diurnum,” Astarion answered, like the name would be explanation enough.

“Vaguely familiar. Remind me?”

“One of the ways they keep time here,” Astarion explained. “Some kind of mycelial network that connects to the surface. It fluoresces with the sunrise.”

So, Gale thought. A new day burgeoned above, and the sun rose here, in this little pocket of darkness. A private sunrise to be shared only between the two of them. He sat back, recognizing that the stone was cold against his palms, but not truly feeling it through his own warmth.

At last, he broke the silence. “It’s funny, you know.”

Astarion glanced over, cast perfect and golden in the light. “Hm?”

“When we were on the road,” Gale said, “I only ever watched the sunsets.”  

***