Chapter Text
“This is a terrible idea,” Gale says, teetering sideways under the crushing weight of Karlach draped over one shoulder.
“And here I thought you said you’d acquired a taste for chaos,” says Astarion with an airy laugh. He’s arranged himself elaborately over a pile of nearly every bedroll in the camp and not a few sacks of supplies, which serves as the closest thing they have to a couch in the abandoned pier of Baldur’s Gate they’ve staked their claim on. Next to him, Shadowheart, similarly enthroned, snickers.
“Spin! Spin!” Karlach chants. Her cheeks burn even warmer than expected against his. He can smell the sweet wine on her breath.
“And why, exactly, do I have to go first?”
“Because you protested the most,” Wyll says, laughing and shaking his head. “That’s how it goes.”
“Have I fallen on a sword for you, Sir Ravengard,” Gale mutters.
“Enough hesitation,” Lae’zel growls. “If you must rely on random chance to accomplish what you are too cowardly to ask, go forth.”
Sweet Mystra’s questionable grace, he’s probably going to land on Lae’zel too, knowing his luck. “I haven’t done this since freshman year,” Gale mumbles, more to himself than to them, and reaches for the bottle.
“So did you play kissing games when you were growing up?” Shadowheart asks Lae’zel, chin on hand.
“There is no point in randomness,” Lae’zel says as Gale spins. “We would hunt each other through the halls of the créche when the younglings were asleep and our trainers were otherwise occupied. Whoever was trapped or cornered first would be passed among the rest until they wailed in ecstasy and begged for mercy. And my people do not show mercy.”
Wyll’s eyes widen. Shadowheart smiles without teeth, fascinated; Astarion, equally, with. “Fuck,” Karlach groans.
Gale’s brain stutters to a halt with the bottle, and it takes him entirely too long to realize that it’s not quite pointing at anybody. He squints, trying to triangulate which of Wyll and Shadowheart it’s closest too. And then Astarion exhales in delight and perks up, and Gale follows his gaze.
Halsin, who’d been puttering past to his own tent, stands there blinking. “Am I interrupting?”
“You have to kiss Gale,” Shadowheart says, glittering with mischief. “It’s the rules.”
Halsin takes everything in for a moment, and Gale buries his face in one hand. “No you don’t. It’s not as if you signed up for this ridiculous venture.”
“Is this how you play mistletoe in the city?” Halsin asks, then waves a hand. “I suppose you wouldn’t know the answer to that.” He smiles, warm. “I would not decline the offer. If none oppose, of course, given that I am crashing.”
The silence stretches, respectful, and a very large part of Gale wants to break it. Or perhaps take the opportunity to escape entirely.
Karlach ruffles his hair, claws tingling on his scalp, and a long lonely shiver runs through him.
“I’m hearing a distinct lack of opposition,” Astarion says, eyes clearly roving over Halsin’s biceps. Or perhaps the very visible veins in them. Gale can’t be sure. Except that by the time he pries his hand off his face, those biceps are right there along with the rest of the massive elf, kneeling before him with a surprisingly gentle smile and eyes that might be peering into his soul.
Whatever he sees there brings his hand to Gale’s cheek, thick and skin-warm and smelling of leather and musk. And then, with one breath, Gale’s giving in to some desperate yearning he can’t name and leaning forward. Right over a cliff. Gods only hope he can cast feather fall in time.
It’s been nine years since he’s kissed mortal lips, and the difference hits him like a hammer, dizzying. Halsin makes it slow, sensual, and little more than chaste. Even with that, the messy heat of his mouth is almost overwhelming. The closest he can come to feather fall is a palm on Halsin’s chest, not even close to pushing. Caressing, maybe. Forward even under the circumstances.
Halsin doesn’t seem to mind.
There could be painful consequences from this, Halsin considers, as he finds his spot in the circle. Unspoken feelings and uncertainties and pains run between the six of them in some complicated web, so thick he could almost pluck it from the air. But he’s fairly certain his presence won’t make it more complicated. And perhaps, in little ways, he can make it less so. Gale, who clearly hadn’t been kissed in some time, seems less nervous now, at least.
Besides, they are dear to him.
His spin points to Astarion, who coils, suddenly alert, and holds up a finger. “Wait. Extra rule, just for me. Close your eyes.”
It’s light, teasing, and every line of his body is taut.
“Why do you get to make special rules,” Wyll groans.
“Because I’m the one who made this happen,” Astarion says, all faux-offended and wide red eyes. “I’m doing you a favor, really, because who else could actually get this sorry lot to have fun? So really—indulge me.”
“Is it for sneaky bites?” Shadowheart teases, and the whole party breaks into light bickering.
It’s more than an indulgence, Halsin considers. If Astarion started this game, he wanted to be kissed. And, too, wanted to put himself in a position where he had more control than most. Which, after every horror they’d seen in the Szarr mansion, is hardly surprising. He ignores the chatter and answers without words, scooting over to take a knee in front of Astarion in turn. And close his eyes.
Among the rest, he picks out one very quiet sound from Astarion, barely more than an inhalation. Relief, perhaps.
Cool fingers skate over his face, his scars. Intuition keeps his hands at his sides as he tilts his head back.
“Watch the fangs, darling,” Astarion croons, and leans in. It’s like kissing a man come in from an autumn night. His lips are very dry. Within them, graciously allowed, his mouth is oddly slick. Halsin’s tongue tingles, just a touch—it’s numbing, he’d heard, a vampire-kin’s spit, at least at first. Astarion, with such delicate perfection that it seems as if he’s proving that he can, hooks one fang in Halsin’s lower lip, angled to keep pressure off the sharp tip. A tug without breaking even the most tender skin.
Halsin has kissed lizardfolk, weretigers, and a quince dryad in full fruit and thorn. After that, Astarion is easy. He’s almost silent, barely touching him, but there’s a shaky inhale which he hopes to take as a sign of enjoyment.
Astarion pulls back and leaves his hand spidered on Halsin’s chest, five tiny points of contact. “Open now.” And a sharp little smile. Not distressed. Whatever play he was making, it’s worked for him. “Lovely.”
Astarion watches his bottle on tenterhooks. Lae’zel’s the biggest risk. Nobody tells her what to do. But Halsin has, fortunately, set a very nice precedent. His attractiveness doesn’t need to have anything to do with this, thank you and you’re welcome.
And it’s Karlach. Oh, boy. Next biggest risk. She lights up and scoots forward; behind her, Gale reinflates, red-eared. “Do I have to shut my eyes too?”
“If you please, darling,” Astarion croons, because she’s easy. Just a little affection and she beams. She’s an entirely overlarge bundle of excited hormones, and he’s really not prepared for her getting handsy, so he pins her arms to her sides at the elbows. Well. Suggests, more like it. She could shake that off and break him in half—she’s Karlach—but she doesn’t. Thick muscle bunches under his hand as she clutches his elbows in turn. The furrowed scars in her bare and fever-hot skin are—not a feeling he needs to deal with right now.
Instead she gives a long sigh and a shiver of pleasure as her bright gold eyes flutter closed. “Oh, gods. You’re like an ice pack. I love you.”
Gods save them all from tipsy Karlach, Astarion thinks, with deep affection. He calculates risks, swiftly, and moves one hand from her bicep to her chin, pressing his knee against her arm instead as he slides in for the kiss. He doesn’t need her trying to eat his face off, slicing up her tongue, and bleeding still-too-hot and scalding his mouth so he can’t even enjoy the rest of the night.
She whines, open-mouthed, as he steadies her to a slow and calculated kiss.
Something touches his calf, and he jolts, and nearly rips open her lip in spite of all his caution. When he pulls back, he finds it’s the spade at the tip of her tail, curled around.
“Sorry, soldier,” she says with a big sheepish smile. “It’s got a mind of its own.”
“Like a kitty cat’s,” Astarion teases, valiantly pretending he has equilibrium, and tweaks her nose.
Okay, Karlach, she tells herself. Astarion doesn’t want people touching him for Astarion reasons. That’s fine. You can fantasize about those cold hands going everywhere later on your own time—oh gods, and how much you want to just wrap around him—nope, bad Karlach, he wouldn’t like that. Okay. You’ve got this.
She’s all but thrumming as she spins, dizzy with the possibilities, biting her lip so hard that she almost finishes what Astarion started.
The bottle stops.
“Oh fuck yes,” Karlach breathes, fervent.
Lae’zel, skinny lithe scarred little thing in nothing but her leather straps to the waist, rakes narrowed eyes over the length of her and nods, lips curling in satisfaction.
“The Lady has blessed us,” Shadowheart breathes.
Karlach surges across the circle because if there’s another second that she doesn’t have her hands on somebody’s skin, she might die. Lae’zel is steel cords under strangely velvety and cool skin, the texture of her spots nubbly under her hands. Lae’zel meets her like blade clashing against blade, wrapping vise-tight around her shoulders with uncanny gith strength.
Lae’zel kisses her like she’s going to eat her alive, and Karlach almost sobs with sheer relief into her mouth. Every single damn thought is falling out of her ears and it’s gorgeous, it’s perfect. Every thought except her worry that this is going to be, like, one cursory little kiss—because they’re playing a game and that’s probably what it’s supposed to be and there are people waiting for their turn and everybody’s watching them though it’s not like Karlach minds that part even if some part of her is a little sad that some of them are just watching—
Nope. Not cursory. Not brief. Lae’zel kisses like they’re fucking, like they’ve got nothing to lose, and there’s a good chance Karlach is grinding against her leg by the end there, and she can tell her tail is wrapped tight as it can manage around Lae’zel’s narrow hips, and ten long years of loneliness is starting to drain out of her chest like blackened pus from a wound. Starting to. There’s so much left in there.
These istik are so uncertain in their lusts—even Astarion, who talks a big game but scrabbles in fear—that witnessing a simple kiss done properly has left them reeling. There are lips parted. Eyes wide. Cheeks red. Lae’zel tosses her hair over her shoulder and basks in her splendor for a moment. And in Karlach’s. Of all of them, she was the one worthy of respect from the start. She can smell the raw lust on her even as she scuttles back to her place in the circle, tail shivering. The heat of her cunt dampening those leather trousers. It’s intoxicating.
Lae’zel might come to claim her later. It is long past due, and a warrior who is facing her death with her head held high deserves to be celebrated and taken to the heights of ecstasy. But in the meantime, there is this absurd game with a bottle to play.
Of all of them, she would have counted the wizard most likely to get cornered and passed around. The whims of this bottle give her the second most likely—as human men in particular, it seems, have little fire.
Wyll shifts, gulping one deep breath, and sets aside his stein. “Well.”
“Do you fear me?” Lae’zel asks, pacing across the circle.
“Should I?” Wyll croaks.
“Yes,” she says, and seizes one of his horns. Somewhere in the edges of her awareness, she hears noises of appreciation from Karlach and Astarion both. “You should be afraid,” she says, firm as a captain’s command, as she straddles him and savors his wide-eyed realization that his head is completely under her control. That he can’t shy away. “And aroused.” That, too, is a command, and then she claims his mouth.
His lips are absurdly lush. The texture almost makes her shudder, but there’s something pleasing about it as well, especially when she forces his head back for a better angle and his lips part. So breached, she enjoys him. And enjoys the low noises he makes in spite of himself, wrung out by probing tongue and sharp teeth.
His trousers are neither particularly tight nor thin. And he shifts, uncertain, beneath her, like he wishes to hide such things. Like he obscurely embarrassed, or thinks it is an offense instead of proof that she has earned her due. But he is as she has told him he should be: hot and hardening. Good.
She’s right. Gods damn it, Lae’zel’s right. Wyll doesn’t know what bizarre combination of beer, forcefulness, and Karlach is alchemizing to a wrenching arousal deep in his gut, but—it is. It is. And he’s long past denying Karlach’s part in it, but he was going to do things right, woo her, propose to her—
Yet here he is, roped into a game that he’d blithely told himself would be silly fun, at least until he’s been left with prickles of gith fangs lingering on his lips. The shiver-shock of being held like that is still rattling down his spine. It should be terrifying. It is terrifying, and he’s grateful no enemy’s yet exploited that weakness in a fight. But it’s also. Well.
Fuck.
No holding onto his dignity at this point, he supposes. They’ve seen him dragged through hell, seen all his wretched compromises exposed. They can handle knowing that the Blade likes it a little rough. Mizora, still watching through his eye, is never going to let him forget this, but he can deal with that—later.
His spin lands on Gale, and they share what must be identical looks of—whatever the hells one could call this feeling. It haunts my dick, Karlach had said once about—gods, he doesn’t even remember what. Yes. That. He’s never really been that close to Gale, but for a moment, it feels like the sort of perfect understanding that usually only comes through the tadpole. The understanding of haunted dick.
He’s not even clear on which one of them came to the other. Gale is slow, almost reverent. His beard prickles against Wyll’s chin, and the immediacy of it is solid ground under his boots. Gale cradles his shoulder with long bony fingers and the same delicate precision that forms his smallest spells. Gale gives a faint hum of satisfaction, rich in his mouth, as Wyll flattens a hand on his back. After everything else, it feels—simple. Pleasant.
They part. Gale gives him a flicker of a smile. Wyll smiles back and pats his shoulder.
Afraid and aroused.
Well, Gale has to admit, he’s never previously considered Lae’zel in so—vivid a light. He’s certainly never been able to deny that he’s weak to powerful women, given his everything, but he generally knows what he does and does not enjoy, and her demeanor clearly fits into the second category, and—well. He hasn’t spun her yet. He does not yet have to face whatever she might do to him.
“I’m being snubbed,” Shadowheart sighs to Astarion, and a moment later, the bottle stops, pointing at her.
“It heard you, darling,” Astarion says brightly.
“Ah, well,” Shadowheart says, delicate, taking in Gale from where she’s perched on a supply pack. “It seems that it did.”
“And I acknowledge that I am not of the fairer sex,” Gale says, pressing a palm to his chest in apology. “May I, regardless?”
She laughs and extends a hand, deceptively slender and perfectly silky except for the mace calluses on her thumb. “Don’t lay it on too thick.”
It’s not as if he doesn’t have a bit of a torch for her. Simply a torch. They both know it. It’s almost been satisfying to be held at such a distance, really, in some obscure way. So he slides over. Down on one knee—and then some instinct moves him, and he settles on both. No extravagant play at gallantry. That would be laying it on thick indeed. So there he is, on his knees, free hand in his lap as he takes hers and presses all his adoration to the back of her hand in one careful, dry kiss.
She’s lotion-soft. Smells of flowers. Strong tendons flicker under her skin.
“Oh, isn’t he a good boy,” Astarion croons, and something hot and watery jolts down Gale’s spine and churns in his belly.
“I think he liked that,” Shadowheart says, some edge in her voice that Gale can’t quite name. Thoughtful? Teasing? Her hand slips out of his.
Then she leans down to take his face in both of hers, tilt his head back, and claim one slow, dragging kiss.
Shadowheart could have just left it with the hand, really. The rules weren’t that specific. But seeing Gale utterly off-balance and reeling had been worth it. Besides, Astarion’s right. He was being a good boy.
The bottle almost points right back at Shadowheart, then settles just a bare bit to her left. She turns, trading an amused glance with Astarion.
“Darling,” he says, laughing.
“Honeybun,” she answers, smiling pert and pretty.
“Shall we,” he croons, extravagant.
“What, you’re not going to kiss my hand first?” she chirps.
Something flickers, strange and hard and quick in Astarion’s eyes. He catches her hand, bows very slowly with his gaze still locked to hers, and fits his fangs right around the root of her thumb like a cat who has decided to test if one is made of meat.
She shivers.
He lets go, skin unbroken, and she closes her eyes before he leans in. She knows—bits of it, at least. He’s trying to get himself back. She understands that feeling, a little. At least he must know on some level that, pretty as he is, he isn’t nearly imposing enough to catch her visceral attention. Perhaps that is some relief?
They kiss quick and dry and teasing, and she nips his lip with no bite in it, and he laughs.
The game has already fallen to pieces enough that somebody spun for Astarion before he even finished threatening to bite Shadowheart back. Probably Karlach.
It lands pointed at empty space, and somebody calls for a respin, and then Karlach says, “I think that was Gale’s seat, we could just count it for him?”
“The bottle likes Gale, apparently,” Wyll says with a shaky laugh.
“It seems the bottle seeks those who need it the most,” Lae’zel grumbles.
Which is when Astarion realizes that Gale is still kneeling in front of both him and Shadowheart, because he’d apparently forgotten to go back to his seat. The wizard twitches, face warm, on the verge of saying something—maybe asking for a respin? Astarion cuts in before he can start. “Now that’s well-spotted. I’m counting it for Gale. It’s convenient.” He leans forward, crooning. “He’s right here.”
“I,” Gale starts, and for once, for one gods-damn time in his stupid wizard life, he doesn’t seem to know what to say.
“Sshhh,” Astarion says, and reaches down to tap his lips. “Close your eyes, darling.”
Gale’s eyes narrow, a touch of sharpness, and for a moment he’s just looking up at him, pleasantly stormy, before he finally obeys. Astarion leans down, hovering, almost close enough to touch. Close enough to feel the heat of his body and smell the faint hiss of ozone and acid that burns in his blood.
Hells, it’s tempting to push Gale one step further. And himself. There’s so much to test.
“Put your hands behind your back,” Astarion whispers in Gale’s round ear, soft enough that even Shadowheart probably can’t hear.
“And why on earth should I do as you say?” It’s low, drained of his usual fussing. Low and almost dangerous.
“Because you want to,” Astarion says, and it should be teasing, but even he can’t pretend that Gale wanting things isn’t desperately important, can he? The whole point. The whole shitting point.
Gale’s frozen, breathing fast and shallow. Until, almost stiffly, his arms move. Behind him.
“Good boy,” Astarion murmurs, and Gale’s face crumples in something like relief, or gratitude, or pain.
Astarion stops breathing. It’s not like he needs to, really. Dead silent, he walks his fingers up the column of Gale’s throat into the prickle of hair at the very peak. The soft spot below his ear, over his hammering pulse.
“I’m not exactly,” Gale starts, an edge in his voice.
“Good eats, I know, I know. Ssshh.”
The tension in the wizard’s shoulders doesn’t ease. Not quite the abject adoration he’d given the lady beside him—who, judging from her soft hum, is probably enjoying the show. But he’s messing with him rather a bit more, isn’t he? He almost wants to burrow into his brain, ferret out however his goddess had, or hadn’t, made use of his obedience. What has his nerves crawling so clearly under his skin. But he hasn’t fled, nor begged for mercy, so Astarion doesn’t have to care, does he?
He slides fingers into Gale’s thick hair and gets a handful.
Gale sucks air through his teeth.
Gods, how many times had Cazador dragged him around by the hair?
This is probably a terrible idea. This is supposed to be a party. Fun. For Karlach, really, not that any of them have admitted it in so many words. And here he is, poking open wounds as if that could make them close.
“I’ve no wish to hurt you,” Astarion says, and finally, finally, Gale’s tension eases. He’s still breathing fast, but he’s pliant now, at least a little. Something hot unfurls in Astarion’s gut. Some sort of delight, genuine, at having him like this.
“What do you want of me?” Gale whispers, like he’s trying to ask a question much, much bigger than whatever’s happening right now.
“Well,” Astarion says, almost grateful for the reminder, “I believe I am meant to kiss you.”
And so he does, holding his hair in one hand, spanning his throat with the other, and Gale shivers under him in clear and uncertain delight. And, once he settles and learns to navigate the fangs, he proves to have—damn him—quite a bit of promise. Tender in ways that make him shiver. Hells. Apparently this man belongs on his knees doing things with his mouth. He’s certainly less annoying that way.
He would have been such an easy mark. The thought rises, unbidden and chilly.
“Very good,” Astarion purrs, breaking it off. “Now get back to your seat, why don’t you?”