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“There’s something wrong with Gale,” Karlach says, one day in camp during breakfast, and Astarion scoffs.
“My dear, you’ve only just noticed?”
“Oh, har-har. I mean it,” Karlach says, spreading a nauseating amount of jam onto a slice of grilled bread. “I know none of us are a barrel of laughs right now, but he’s been sighing his way around the place like some tragic stage heroine. Has he said anything to you?”
“Why in the world would he say anything to me, darling? What about me says ‘a shoulder to cry on?’”
It’s Karlach’s turn to scoff this time, mouth half-full of toast. “What, you’re putting your dick in him on the regular and he won’t tell you why he’s sad? You’re both so fucking weird.”
“Excuse me? Leave my dick out of this conversation, where it belongs, if you please,” Astarion retorts, and then adds: “Not that it has gone anywhere near Gale. For the record.” This is true in the technical sense, which is the only sense Astarion cares about right now.
“Yeah, alright, soldier. Whatever you say,” Karlach says skeptically, and then sighs, a cloud of steam venting from her nose. “Look, he’s been weird ever since his grandad or whoever came to visit, you must have noticed. I haven’t even seen him doing his Weave thing, doesn’t he need to do that like, every day?”
Astarion hums noncommittally. He hadn’t noticed until Karlach mentioned it, but it was true. He’d even declined some trinket of Astarion’s the other day, come to think of it.
“I’d ask myself, but we’re not exactly the touchy feely sort of friends. I think I scare him a bit.” Karlach sounds a little proud at the last point.
“And you think Gale and I are… touchy feely friends?” Astarion curls his lip in disgust.
“Ughhh, you’re so annoying,” Karlach groans, and throws a piece of bread crust at his head.
“How dare you!”
“I’ll dare whatever I want, mate, with the number of times I’ve walked past Gale’s suspiciously quiet and dark tent the last few weeks. I might be magic stupid, but Wyll’s an actual warlock, you think he can’t spot illusions?”
“Go,” Astarion says imperiously, waving his hand in the general direction of anywhere but here. “I reject this conversation. Leave me be, you abomination.”
“Fine, fine! Last time I bloody try to care about other people,” Karlach says, which is the biggest lie Astarion has ever heard out of her mouth. “Just let me know if there’s anyone I have to fuck up, yeah? Even Gale’s grandad.”
She blows Astarion a kiss as she walks away, and Astarion mimes catching it and throwing it on the floor.
So maybe Astarion has noticed Gale acting strangely the last couple of days. He’s been quiet, slow to rise in the morning, dragging his feet on the trail, less quick to respond to Astarion’s conversation. But what’s it to Astarion? Talking about these sorts of things isn’t what he and Gale do.
–
When Gale had sheepishly been waiting for him on his return from a hunt one night to ask him if maybe, maybe he might care for another round of whatever it was they had done last time, Astarion had set some clear rules.
“Don’t touch my hair. Or my ears.” Gods, how many people had grabbed them like handles out of some idiotic notion their greasy little fingers would drive him wild? “Don’t touch my back either. In fact, how about you just keep your hands entirely to yourself unless I say so.”
“And by that you’re choosing to include, ah…” Gale’s eyes had flickered downwards unsubtly.
“Especially that,” Astarion had said shortly. “Consider that none of your business unless expressly told otherwise.”
“As you wish,” Gale had said, spreading his hands magnanimously. And then he’d said: “Well then, ah… how do you want me? So to speak,” and then that was that. It was deliriously easy and it suited Astarion just fine. Trying to stop Gale talking entirely was like trying to hold back the tides, of course – but as long as he asked no questions, Astarion would tell no lies, and everything would be just hunky-dory.
The first time Astarion had blown Gale he’d slotted a polite little pinky into him, a genial introduction to the concept for someone he’d assumed was a newcomer to such things. Gale had made such a disappointed noise in response that Astarion had to immediately rewrite his world view and swap it for his index. Indeed, in the nights since, Astarion seems yet to find the limits of Gale’s, er, enthusiasm. Due to — or perhaps thanks to — Astarion’s own rules, they’d needed to get creative. Astarion’s fingers, of course. His tongue, if he felt the urge to get some very particular noises out of Gale. A lovely glass thing, bought discreetly from a drow trader in the Underdark when there had been an opportune moment — especially intriguing once Gale had fine tuned his spells to enlarge and reduce the size of objects. And the occasional self-application of a mage hand spell that Astarion was all too happy to direct from the sidelines.
The man was insatiable, honestly: first requesting more in awkward stutters and blushing whispers, then demanding, until he lost enough of his propriety that he would stoop to begging. It was fascinating, addicting almost — seeing Gale shake off all the trappings of his stuffy little life to grovel at Astarion’s feet, knees apart and chest to the floor. His hair tangled and matted with sweat, his thick thighs shaking, his voice reedy as he begged to be filled. It made Astarion feel almost high with power.
Was it the debasement that got Gale off? The sheer physicality of it all? The command that Astarion had over him? Astarion didn’t know. He’d never asked, and Gale had never offered an insight on the matter.
Astarion is perfectly content with their little… arrangement. So he shouldn’t be bothered that Gale is clearly keeping something from him. Ask no questions, hear no lies.
–
He finds Gale on the edges of the barrier at Last Light, looking out to the water, his arms wrapped around his knees. He looks… small, like that, younger than his human years, but the pensive knit to his face and the way the light catches him makes him look old and tired, too.
Astarion deliberately grinds his soles into the gravel so Gale can hear him coming, and he watches Gale straighten, passing a palm over his hair – as if having a strand out of place in that mop is the thing that will betray him. Astarion stops beside him and drops to a squat, watching the curious iridescence of the cleric’s spell on the water.
“Oddly beautiful, isn’t it?” Gale says. “The line between light and dark. The shimmer of a soap bubble, the only thing holding the chaos away from us. Everything could break apart in an instant, but right now… it’s beautiful.”
“Very poetic, darling,” Astarion says, sitting down properly beside him. The gravel is cold beneath him, enough to chill through to the bone if he stayed long enough. “I’m sure I’d appreciate it more without the impending disaster.”
“The impending disaster rather adds to it, in my opinion. Makes it more urgent,” Gale says with a huff of amusement. Then he asks: “What do you consider beautiful, then, Astarion?”
“Why, me of course, my dear, wouldn’t you agree?” Astarion says automatically, but Gale seems to be waiting for more. “Oh, I don’t know. A sharp knife? A well-constructed doublet. Sunlight through trees. Don’t put me on the spot like this.”
Gale’s mouth quirks upwards. “Ah, a good spot of dappled light in a leafy forest, an excellent choice. The susurration of the wind through the trees, the organic smell of the soil. Perhaps in spring, when the bluebells bloom.”
“I’m not one for flowers, or dirt,” Astarion says. “But I suppose that sounds nice.”
Gale falls quiet for a long moment, his eyes falling shut and his eyebrows knitting together, as if he’s concentrating on something very hard. Astarion is just about to say something to break the uncomfortable silence when Gale continues, eyes still shut: “We’ll reach Moonrise Tower soon, yes?”
“Well, I would imagine so. Shadowheart seems sure she can get us a good way into the village next time we go. If we get far enough in one piece, then all we have to do is flash our tadpoles and stroll up to the front gate, easy-peasy.”
“Mm,” Gale says. It’s unsettlingly inarticulate.
“Gale,” Astarion begins. “You’re—”
“Do you think you could make time for me again? Tonight,” Gale says, his eyes opening suddenly to look at Astarion, wide and round. Then he tuts at himself. “Look at me, clamouring for your attention like a babe tugging at your sleeve, and surely sounding just as undignified.”
“You didn’t even let me answer,” Astarion retorts, annoyed, and then huffs theatrically. “We’re creating suspicion, you know, darling. Apparently your tent illusion is a little too good.”
“Oh dear,” Gale says, turning pale. “Forget I said anything, then.”
“No, I–” Ugh, Astarion is fucking this up magnificently. “How about we just try something a little different? Something a little more… private.”
Gale’s head tilts. “What do you have in mind?”
—
Even with the protection of the pixie, walking through the shadow-cursed lands is exhausting, and nowhere is it more exhausting than in Reithwin itself; the air itself seems to thicken to treacle, heavy in their lungs and slowing their limbs. By the time they’d found the bridge that leads to Moonrise, they were all exhausted beyond thought, and could only stand in front of it in silence.
“Tomorrow,” Shadowheart had said. “We have to have our wits about us if we want this to work. Let’s not throw away our one chance because we’re bone tired.”
“Agreed,” Wyll had chimed in, soaked in the blood of possessed githyanki. “We cannot show weakness once inside. We step into a pit of fiends — we can spare no mistake.”
“Gods, I’m hungry,” Karlach had added, and so a consensus was reached.
And so here they are back at Last Light — and as the bustle of activity around the inn slowly dies down, Astarion gestures to Gale, a jerk of his thumb over his right shoulder. And with pleasing obedience, Gale follows.
The inn itself is far too open, of course, full of Harpers and tieflings in various states of slumber, and more importantly far too full of Jaheira. But through the basement to the scrubby little shrine to Selûne they’d discovered not so long ago, the noise starts to die away — and Gale laughs when he realises their final destination.
“Feeling particularly sacrilegious today, Astarion?”
“Oh, no more than usual, my dear,” Astarion says brightly, brushing dust and rubble from an old chair and setting himself down, one leg folding over the other. “Why do you ask? Worried about performance anxiety in front of a divine audience?”
“It’s rather thematically appropriate, actually, in its way,” Gale says, with a hint of whatever weariness had held onto him recently threading through his words. “But if you’ll forgive me a moment of theatre, I have an idea I think you might like.”
He looks up at Astarion with that adorable little flicker of uncertainty he gets when he’s waiting for Astarion’s permission, and Astarion waves a hand. “Well, far be it from me to deny a moment of theatre.”
Gale takes a deep breath, and Astarion catches the familiarly acrid scent of the Weave around them, a tingle that resonates with something elven inside him that has never quite died, even when the rest of him did. Then the dust and rock and shabby surroundings shimmer and bleed like watercolour from reality to illusion.
A forest, dappled in sunlight, its warmth bleeding through onto their skin. The sound of the wind rustling through the trees, the scent of the earth. Bluebells in bloom.
“Gale,” Astarion says, and then doesn’t know what to say next. He’s still on his chair, but it has become a tree stump, surrounded by sprouting ferns curled into spirals.
“Close enough, eh?” Gale says. “I can't maintain this for too long, much as I would like to. But long enough for a little respite for us both, something beautiful to end… to end the day. Gods know we need it.”
“I. Thank you,” Astarion says, and for once he means it, shocked into sincerity. Gale seems surprised to hear the words out of Astarion’s mouth, but then his tired face rearranges into something close to pride. Then he kneels down in front of Astarion’s seat and unloops his belt from his robe.
“Now, how would you like me?”
“Wait,” Astarion says, as Gale reaches for the shoulder fastening on his robe. “Wait. Gale, stop taking your gods-damned clothes off.”
“Oh,” says Gale, and stops, hands falling awkwardly into his lap. “Is this. Are we. Do you no longer wish—”
“And stop talking as well, before I do something drastic,” Astarion snaps, and then pinches the bridge of his nose. Gale waits on his knees, twisting at the hem of his robe.
“I’m,” Astarion takes a breath, forces the next words out, “Concerned. About you?”
“What?”
“I said stop talking,” Astarion snaps. “Look, you’ve been acting… oddly. And you’ve stopped doing your Weave thing.”
Gale opens his mouth, but Astarion fixes him with a look before continuing. “Karlach has noticed. And I’ve noticed. So likely everyone has noticed, and that means it’s serious enough to be worth asking about. So I just need to know if it’s something that’s going to be a problem for us all.”
Gale stays silent, looking up at Astarion from his place on the floor, light filtering through the Weave-wrought trees above them to dance in his hair. Astarion huffs and waves a hand, encouraging him to speak.
“I take it this isn’t going to be one of those things I can say I don’t want to talk about,” Gale says, eventually.
“I mean, you certainly can,” Astarion says. “But I probably won’t fuck you tonight if you do. So there’s your trade-off.”
Gale’s silent again for a moment, and then says: “If you found out this might be your last day in this world, what would you do?”
Astarion bursts out laughing. It is absolutely the wrong thing to do and it immediately shows on Gale’s face: hurt, embarrassment. But Astarion can’t help it. He can’t help feeling this giddy disbelief that, if he isn’t careful, could turn to rage.
“Gale, I am a vampire spawn. I had my last day, and then I had to live through two hundred more years — two centuries! — of pure shit afterwards. The stories I could tell you— things I wouldn’t believe myself if I didn’t experience every single excruciating minute of them! And the moment I find one single sliver of light in the gods-damned abyss, it turns out the thing that saved me is the thing that might destroy me. You know what I would do if someone told me this was my last day in the world? I would just keep going.”
“You’re mocking me. I see,” Gale says, coldly. “Apologies for bringing my own trivial concerns to someone who has already spat in the face of Kelemvor.”
“I’m not mocking you, you absolute cretin. I am telling you that right now, in the midst of all this, the concept of ‘the last day of our lives’ is completely fucking relative.”
Gale looks like he wants to argue, but then he huffs a laugh, short and cold. “I suppose you’re right. A bloodied sword hangs over each of our tadpole’d heads, what matter the length of the rope? What matter if it falls or we coax it down?”
“What is it that you’re not telling me, Gale?” Astarion demands. “Because this morbid self-pity isn’t exactly a turn-on.”
Gale looks up at Astarion, and then reaches out carefully towards one of Astarion’s hands, stopping long before their skin might ever touch. “If you would allow it, I could show you.”
Astarion frowns, but reaches out his hand, and Gale catches it between his own at the wrist and brings it to the mark above his breastbone. The gesture feels more intimate than any from their dalliances.
And as the air fills with the smell of the Weave again, but tainted, wrong, Astarion learns the truth.
— —
When Gale opens his eyes again he finds his fingers have wrapped so tightly around Astarion’s wrist that the skin is white between his grip. He lets go, fingers springing apart, but Astarion’s hand stays where it is, hovering over the mark of the orb. His fingers drop lightly onto the dark lines trailing towards Gale’s sternum, and Gale can feel the pressure against both his skin and against the curling tendrils of Weave inside him. It’s not particularly pleasant.
“So,” Astarion says eventually, taut as a bowstring. “Not so anxious about a divine audience, after all. And funny how even when the gods answer your prayers, they’ll still throw you to the dogs. Isn’t that just the way, my little ticking time bomb?”
“A penance earned by my hubris, I assure you,” Gale says, and Astarion laughs again, more cruelly this time.
“Penance? Ha! You think throwing yourself away will earn you anything? Penance is worth nothing. Penance is nothing but a gods-damned leash around your neck that you put there yourself.”
“Then what does it even mean, to live and to die?” Gale retorts, stung. “If that’s what you believe, then it means everything we do is just some… meaningless little checkmark in a book that no one even cares to read. Nothing to prove, nothing to atone for.”
“No,” Astarion retorts. “It’s nothing to do with anyone else. Not mortals, not gods. It’s whatever you can gather up into your greasy little hands, whatever you can buy or steal, whatever you can hold onto tight enough that no one else can ever take it away.”
“So you’d reject a chance of redemption if it wasn’t on your terms?”
Astarion’s eyes narrow, but they aren’t focused on Gale. They’re looking at something Gale can't see. “I’d say I get to decide whether I even need to be redeemed or not.”
Gale’s thoughts have been a whirl for days. Duty, absolution, sacrifice. Not so long ago, he thought he knew Mystra as much as she knew herself – he had dedicated himself to her, given his gifts, his talent, his body, all over to her, sought to prove himself an equal. In the end he knew nothing.
Gale knows so little about Astarion, really. He knows the broad strokes - magistrate, then slave, now conveniently lost. The details were held tight to Astarion’s chest, just like everything else. All he knows is the gleam in Astarion’s eyes when Gale falls to his knees and the way Astarion’s tongue and fingers feel inside him, how he seems to revel in Gale’s desperation and hunger. All he knows is that Astarion hungers, too.
It feels so simple in comparison. Maybe he just wants it to feel that way.
Maybe he just doesn’t want to think about it at all anymore.
“If you truly believe that’s all life is — what you can take for yourself — you’ve a colder heart than I even knew, Astarion,” Gale says. Then he looks up, meeting red eyes with his own, and adds: “But it does mean anyone you wish to possess… should be honoured to be held so close.”
The flattery seems to work: “Oh, darling, you have no idea,” Astarion says, leaning closer, grin wide and bladed. “And you know what else? It means if you want a leash for your neck, you should ask me.”
Astarion takes Gale abruptly by the hair, and Gale hisses and closes his eyes, relishing the sting. Yes, yes, this is what he wants. If he has to die tomorrow, let him spend tonight feeling every pull and stretch and ache of this mortal body.
“Look at me, my dear. No hiding.” Gale opens his eyes again and finds Astarion leaning into his face, taking in every weathered inch of it.
“Please,” Gale says.
“Please, what?”
“Take me,” Gale says. “Have me. As you see fit.”
Astarion growls and tugs at his hair again, pulling his neck taut, and for a dizzying second Gale wonders if Astarion will actually bite him, despite all his warnings. But instead he presses three fingers against Gale’s lips, and Gale only has time to open just a little before they’re shoved against his tongue.
He tastes salt and dirt on Astarion’s cold skin as they invade his mouth, claiming the space for their own - welcomes the press against his teeth and tongue and palate. There’s hardly any room for him to respond so he just takes what he’s given and lets Astarion fuck his mouth, trying to take in every dirty, tactile moment of it.
Astarion presses in until Gale comes close to gagging and then does it again, harder, and again. Then he pulls out to smear Gale’s own spit across his face carelessly, possessively.
“Now you can take your clothes off,” he demands, letting go of Gale and leaning back in his seat. He pauses for a moment, considering, and then gestures across his lap: “I want you here, Gale. Keep me warm.”
Gale shudders and peels his layers away, a hot and sticky humiliation rising in his gullet when he crawls through the soil to lay his belly across Astarion’s clothed lap. He must look like a scolded child about to be smacked, albeit a rather bulky and hirsute one. But there’s no pain from Astarion, at least not yet. He passes his palm down Gale’s spine, across his buttocks and then down one thigh, then back again. Gale feels goosebumps rise on his flesh wherever Astarion’s cold hand travels.
“I’m a selfish man, Gale,” Astarion says, from above, and then he digs his nails into the meat of Gale’s upper thigh. “You ought to know this about me by now, if you know anything. So I won’t share you - your god can’t have you tonight. You’re wasted on her.”
He raises his hand and brings it down sharply where his nails had been just moments before. Gale jolts, more with surprise than pain, until Astarion – once more with feeling – brings it down in the same place, and Gale can’t help but gasp with want this time. He’s starting to get hard just from this.
The hand comes down again on the other cheek, twice in a row again, and Gale moans this time, his hands twisting shut and opening again where they dangle along Astarion’s side. He wants to hold onto Astarion, cling to his ankles as he hurts him, but he has no permission.
Again the hand comes down, harder still, and again, and Gale is shaking when Astarion nudges his thighs wider apart, a now-slick finger nudging at his entrance.
“Yes,” Gale says. “Yes, please–”
“Insatiable as ever,” Astarion drawls, nudging into him just a little, to the first knuckle. “How much do you think you could take, darling? I have been wondering, you know. You’re always so needy for this.”
“I–” Gale doesn’t know. When Astarion takes him, in whichever way he chooses, Gale loses himself in it: the depravity, the reality of his flesh, the control Astarion has over him in that moment. “What exactly do you have in mind?”
“You saw it once, didn’t you? Back at the tower, through the tadpoles,” Astarion says, and Gale’s face blooms red. He’d never admitted one way or the other how much he’d seen in Astarion’s mind that first time, but he now knows exactly what Astarion is talking about.
“You’d keep my hand warm for me, wouldn’t you, my dear?” Astarion croons, and slowly slides his finger home deep inside Gale, just how he likes it.
“Oh, gods,” Gale says, shaky.
“I told you, darling. You’re mine, not theirs, tonight. So can you, do you think? Will you let me try?”
“I. Yes. Please,” Gale says, rocking back against his touch. He can feel his own spit smearing against the knee of Astarion’s breeches where his face is laid. “Please.”
“Aren’t you good,” Astarion croons, and starts to fuck him slowly with that single finger before adding a second. Gale can feel a trickle of oil running down his inner thigh. He can feel an ache building in his knees, and he can feel his pulse insistently between his legs. He wants to rut against Astarion, but he’s not allowed. He feels wild. Above them, birds sing and the wind rustles in the Weave-wrought trees.
Astarion seems to luxuriate in how he’s spreading Gale open. He takes his time with every slide of his fingers, every spread and stretch, every nudge at the sweet spot inside him. He adds oil again and again. He passes his free hand down Gale’s spine again when Gale can’t help but make fragile little sounds.
“You’re doing so well, darling,” Astarion whispers, and Gale feels a third finger pressing into him; not entirely unfamiliar, but less frequent. He jerks slightly in Astarion’s lap and Astarion hums to himself before dragging his nails between Gale’s shoulder blades to make him shiver.
“Oh, but this is nothing, my dear. You can take me, can’t you? My hungry little thing. Let me in, that's good, that’s right.”
Gale lets out a long shuddering breath as the third finger slides home, then deep, and Astarion hums and coos above him. Gale wants more: let him be full, let him be overwhelmed, let him be nothing. Let him be a cherished possession.
Astarion runs his nails along Gale’s back again and thrust back in with his fingers, and Gale lets out a noise he would find hard to live down if he was in his right mind. Astarion doesn’t hesitate to repeat it, raking over the already tender skin as he fucks Gale slowly and thoroughly.
“Please,” Gale says again, senseless.
“You want more, darling? Can you take it? You can take it. You’re doing so well.”
Gale makes a noise that comes a little too close to a sob. “Please,” he says again.
“Shhh, shhh, I’ve got you,” Astarion says, and as his fingers slide home this time, Gale feels the nudge of his pinky. It’s so much. It’s so much. Gale’s face is wet and he doesn’t know why.
“I’ve got you, darling,” Astarion says again, and there’s more, and more, and Gale’s thighs are trembling with exertion. It’s so much. There is a tide building inside of Gale, something that will sweep him up and carry him with it, and he doesn’t know when it will land.
“Say my name,” comes a demand from above him, ragged and greedy.
“Astarion.”
“Again.”
“Astarion.”
“Oh, you’re so good for me.”
“Astarion, please, can I,” Gale says, brokenly, and wraps his hands around Astarion’s ankle. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, please–”
“Shhh, it’s alright, you can hold me like that, there you go,” Astarion says, and Gale clings like a sailor to the mast of a shipwreck. He feels more oil running down his leg as Astarion’s hand sinks further into him, to the ridge of his knuckles. Gale makes an ugly, needy, bestial sound, and then he can’t stop shaking. Something is wracking him from the inside that he can’t hold back.
“Oh, Gale,” he hears Astarion say above him. “Oh, my Gale. My desperate thing. Mine.”
“Yours,” Gale sobs, and Astarion’s knuckles push into him, and he’s falling apart on Astarion’s hand, coming in waves even as his face is smeared with tears and spit.
–
When he regains his senses, the forest is gone, leaving them back in the ruins of the shrine. Astarion’s hand is still inside him but he’s pressing kisses to Gale’s spine, along the tender skin, whispering things Gale can only just hear about taking it so well and being so good for me. He’s never kissed Gale before, not really. His lips are as cold as the rest of him, and Gale shivers.
“Still with me, darling?” comes Astarion’s voice, a little louder now. Gale can feel him straighten in his seat.
“Mmn,” Gale says, unable to summon more words.
“There’s no polite way to do this next part, I’m afraid,” Astarion says, and there’s an awkward, shivery, all-too-sensitive few moments before Gale feels… far too empty. Gale hears a bottle being opened and water being poured, and then a damp cloth smoothing along his thighs and between.
“I suppose one way to stop you blowing yourself up at Moonrise Tower like an idiot is to ensure you can’t walk there,” Astarion says, contemplatively, and Gale huffs a broken little laugh.
“True,” he says, and his voice croaks as he speaks. The water bottle appears at his face, and he tilts his head to let Astarion dribble some into his mouth. Astarion’s other hand is still smoothing down his back. “S’not really something I can go to Halsin for healing about, either,” he says, when his throat has unstuck.
“Oh I don’t know, that elf gets around. He’s probably seen more sex injuries than we could ever imagine, I doubt he’d bat an eyelid. Can you sit?”
“Maybe, but,” and Gale hesitates for a moment before ploughing ahead. “Can I stay like this? For a while longer.”
“I suppose,” Astarion huffs, but the hand smoothing Gale’s skin trails up into his hair, scratching his nails lightly against Gale’s scalp. Then he chuckles a little. “Seems I’ve fucked the thesaurus out of you, Gale of Waterdeep.”
“Piss off,” says Gale, and he feels Astarion’s body shake as he laughs.
Gale drifts for a while. He aches everywhere. Inside, outside, all the way through. But he welcomes it, lets it thrum through him as he clings to Astarion. With the two of them entwined for so long, Astarion’s lap is almost warm now, if a little bony.
Eventually, Astarion speaks again. “You… won’t, will you?”
“I don’t know,” Gale says, into Astarion’s lap. “It’s bigger than you or me, this, isn’t it? No matter what you say.”
“Ugh, you bleeding heart,” Astarion says, his voice disgusted. Then he sighs. “Look, even if it is, you still have a choice. And the choice isn’t just ‘explode’ or ‘do nothing’, is it?”
“Can we talk about this later?” Gale says. “When I have clothes on. And more words in my head.”
“Oh, fine. Well, I’ve made my opinion on the matter quite clear, I think. It would be a terrible waste of a Gale.”
“Of your Gale,” Gale says, quietly.
“Of my Gale,” Astarion agrees, after a moment, and Gale shivers in delight when the hand briefly tightens in his hair. He hears Astarion take a breath, as if he's about to say something, and then stop. Then he opens his mouth again.
“We have rather a lot to talk about, really, don’t we?”