Work Text:
He makes it back to camp, but it’s a near thing. The shake from Cazador’s palace has gotten into his very bones. It’s a miracle no one notices. He thinks if someone so much as looks at him he won’t be able to stop himself from introducing daggers to organs.
He gets himself in his tent, but it’s still not enough, there’s only fabric between himself and—everything, all of it, his companions, damn them all, Karlach had tried to hug him, they’re going to want to talk, they’re going to want to—agh! He almost tears his pack apart. Hells, where is it, where is it, he’s going to burst at the seams, he’s going to boil right through his own skeleton, he’s going to—there it is, there it is, little roll of parchment, he’s trembling so hard he almost can’t read the words, his tongue uncooperative for long seconds before finally,
Te Astringo Lingua
And then blessed, blessed, silence.
His ribs almost crack with the first voiceless scream. He pounds his fists on the hard-packed dirt. Pours himself into the air like the bellows of a forge. He has a moment to think that this is wrong, this isn’t emotion anymore, something’s wrong, but then another soundless howl tears through him and for a long time he’s nothing but animal grief. He rages.
The next time he’s aware of himself the first thing he feels is the pressure of the silencing cloud on his eardrums. Like the time Cazador held his head under the water until his nose bled and he tried so hard not to breathe in even though he knew it wouldn’t kill him, even though he knew it wouldn’t make Cazador stop from—no, he’s dead, his master is dead, he’s—Astarion claws for the nearest thing in reach—a stolen Zhentarim tapestry—and he clenches fingers into it, clawing, and screams some more and it’s still not getting better, he doesn’t feel drained at all. If anything it’s getting worse. His whole body is shaking. The inside of the tent looks like someone unleashed a quasit. He doesn’t even remember shattering the stool. His knuckles are bleeding but he still can’t stop himself from reaching for something else. He needs to—break, he thinks. Himself, or someone, or all of it.
He’d thought, back in the palace, that the anger was coming out of him. The moment they had interrupted the Rite of Profane Ascension he’d felt the slam of it under his ribcage, and he’d unleashed it on Cazador then and there. But he’s not emptying. It feels like he’s filling up instead.
Something’s wrong.
He looks down at himself and there’s a moment of calm, like the eye of a hurricane, when he sees that he’s hard, and the pieces slot into place.
He’s not free, even now. He’s brought a curse back with him, of course he has. A leftover from the Rite, or a parting gift from Cazador, or maybe just his own rotten insides, picking battles with itself. His hand automatically goes to the front of his trousers, even though he knows it won’t be enough. He’s wrecked the inside of his tent, shattered all the trinkets he’s collected these last weeks, torn through the chest of his clothes. Any curse brought back from Cazador’s palace is going to require as much havoc be wrought on himself, too.
He screams soundlessly into the silencing cloud, desperate to give voice to it, to not have to do this, to be anyone but himself. He fumbles for the laces of his trousers and sees that the blood on his knuckles is no longer red, but black. The curse is in his veins.
There’s movement at the edge of his vision and he’s flinging his daggers before he’s even aware of reaching for them. Gale flicks them aside with a motion of his wrist. He’s in a bubble of some sort, and Astarion bares his teeth at him. For a moment they stare at each other, and Astarion thinks, wildly, of what he looks like, crouched here in his cloud of black silence and surrounded by the destruction of his anger, bleeding midnight from his knuckles.
Gale spreads his hands and the bubble spreads with him, pushing the black cloud to the edges of the tent. Astarion’s ears pop. The sound of his own breathing is suddenly loud.
“Get out,” he hisses, but it comes out ragged and wet. He’s torn something in his throat.
Gale takes a small glass bottle out of his pocket and tosses it at him and Astarion swats it aside, incensed. He doesn’t need a health potion, he doesn’t need anyone. He pictures his hands in Gale’s flesh, pulling, pulling.
“Get out!” he says again, louder, reaching for the nearest weapon, and his meaning must come through this time because Gale raises his hands and takes a step back.
“Absolutely,” he says, “no problem, on my way.”
Astarion’s fingers flex around the handle of the blade.
“It’s just,” Gale continues, because no one in this hells-damned party has any fucking self-preservation instinct. “There was an awful lot of power coming out of the tent, and as the resident weave expert I thought I—”
“OUT!” Astarion bellows, and charges at him, intent on—something. To toss him outside, maybe, or, tear, or bite, or, or.
His fingers clench on nothing. Gale disappears in a swirl of light and appears on the other side of the tent, perched on top of a pile of shattered detritus.
“I’m quite serious about the weave thing,” he says, as though he’s not standing in debris. “Is there any chance Cazador had a death-curse on his body?”
“I’m handling it,” Astarion bites out.
Gale very pointedly does not look around at ground zero of Astarion handling it.
“You need to burn through it,” he says instead. “It’s going to eat you alive.” For a moment, he looks almost in pain. “And I, for one, would most definitely miss your company, were you to let it take you.” He takes a tentative step forward, but his foot slips on a loose piece of leather, part of a scabbard maybe, and he flails. Without thinking Astarion lunges, like he’s physically incapable of not aiming for an opening when weakness shows itself.
Even distracted, Gale is formidable. He cries out, flinging his hands, and there are suddenly more Gales, all crouched, ready to strike. Astarion whips a blade into the nearest one’s shoulder and it disappears like smoke. The others advance.
Yes, this is what he wants, this is what his blood is craving. He bares his teeth, and attacks.
For a time it feels like the silencing cloud. He loses himself in the fight. The Gales only strike with glancing blows, small cuts, smaller bruises. He takes them out one by one. They replace themselves infinitely and he becomes nothing more than the end of his blade. A pivot, a slice, hands tearing, tearing.
This time, when he comes to, he’s on his knees. He’s panting, spent. The remaining Gales vanish and the real one steps out from the back of the tent.
“It’s not through with you yet,” he says. “You must keep going.”
“Fuck off,” Astarion gasps.
“You know I can’t do that.”
Astarion looks down at himself. His blood is still black, and he’s still hard. The fight has taken some of the energy coursing through him but it’s done nothing to alleviate whatever it is that’s taken over his body. He aches.
“I can help with that, too,” Gale says, quietly.
Astarion’s whole body clenches up, and he fights an urge to put a hand over himself. It’s too late for that. Gale’s seen. He’s seen. All that time spent being only the most untouchable kind of I’m fine and for what.
“Don’t touch me,” he hisses, not looking up.
“Okay,” Gale agrees, like it’s that easy. “But would you like to touch me?”
Astarion almost keels over from the blind desire that slams through his bones. Yes, that’s what he wants. That’s what he needs. A body beneath his. To be inside and—he chokes, claws at the earth. To break, to break, to break.
When he looks up Gale is right beside him and Astarion flinches and lurches backwards, falling on his ass and scuttling clumsily away. He didn’t even hear Gale get closer. He’s vulnerable like this, he’s losing time, he’s losing himself. Anyone could come in here and take advantage of, of—
And Gale—summoning infinite versions of himself, tossing daggers aside like they’re gnats, teleporting as easy as breathing… Gale is too powerful to be shown even a glimpse of underbelly.
“Let me help you,” Gale says, but even before he’s finished Astarion’s shaking his head. He can’t. He can’t.
“You’re not—” he says, and can’t finish the sentence. Safe, he thinks.
Gale looks immeasurably sad, like he heard Astarion just fine anyway.
“I would never hurt you, Astarion.”
Astarion thinks of the tiny cuts, and the bruises from the summoned copies, and knows—he knows, he does, he does—that that’s not what Gale means.
But it’s not enough. He can’t let anyone have that kind of power over him. It doesn’t matter that Gale won’t, only that he could.
A rush of clawing need bears him to hands and knees, and suddenly he’s run out of time. He puts a hand back on the bulge of his trousers. He’s going to burn up here in the wreckage of the life he’s eked out here in the wilds.
Gale kneels next to him. “Please,” he says. “Please let me help.”
Astarion swats him away. Peace, he needs peace. One more thing to consume his body and then it’ll be done. He’s burning alive. It’s almost over.
Gale whispers something and there’s a flash of light, and when Astarion looks up he’s holding a length of rope and chain.
“Tie me up,” Gale says. “If that’s what you need. To feel—If that’s how you need to survive this.”
Astarion can’t help but snarl at him. Just let me die, he thinks. Let it be done.
But even as he thinks it he’s eyeing the curve of Gale’s neck, the edge of a shoulder beneath Gale’s blue sweater, and the thing in his blood is wanting, and wanting. He shouldn’t have to die. He got out, he got free, and he deserves to live through this. Even if he has to take what he’s owed from someone else.
A length of summoned chain isn’t safe though. Not when the person who summoned it is the one to be taken.
He squeezes at himself through his trousers and it’s not enough, there’s so much power coursing through him and there’s nowhere for it to go but out.
“The holding spell,” he rasps, veins like barbed wire, head aching. “The one from—You used it last week against—” He coughs, gasping, and his hands are trembling where they’re tugging at his laces.
Gale goes very silent, and very still. He doesn’t say what Astarion expects. Astarion doesn’t know what he expects. That he won’t be able to fight back, maybe. Or talk, or help.
“How do you want me?” he says instead, and Astarion knew two hundred years of hunger but this is hunger.
“On your belly,” he growls. And Gale goes. He goes. He gets to his knees, pulls a flask from a pocket and uncorks it, swallows deep—barkskin?—then he’s on all fours, and then he’s down.
“If I lose concentration,” he says, putting his hands loosely by his head, turning slightly to the side so he can breathe, “you’ll have a few seconds warning to get some distance, if you need it. I’ll try to recast as quickly as possible.”
Astarion can hardly hear him. The pressure beneath his palm is suddenly insurmountable. He’s never wanted anything so badly in his life. More than the first taste of blood, more than freedom, more even than Cazador’s death.
“Dekarios,” he rasps. He’s dying. He’s dying, and he’s going to live.
“If you remember this later,” Gale says, and then pauses. He turns his forehead against the hard-packed earth, pulls a rug beneath him, lifts his knee up. “Whatever is taken, know that it’s freely given.” He breathes deep, then, “Non moverē.”
Almost before the runes have fully embedded into the ground Astarion is on him.
“Gale,” he says, or maybe doesn’t say at all. Gale’s wearing the horrible outfit he insists on when at camp. His hatred for the blue sweater knows no bounds. He shoves it up, gets the first glimpse of the skin he’s been given. “Gale,” he says again. “Gale, Gale.”
The pants are less fortunate. He gets fingers beneath the waistband and the laces prove too much of a challenge so he just shreds, fingers gone knife-like in his desperation. He barely has a second to enjoy the sight—skin and skin and skin, the place where veins go blue beneath the surface, the place his teeth would go—before he’s on him. Slots a hand beneath Gale’s lax arm to curve up and under and around his throat, holds him tight there and uses the grip for leverage to grind frantically against Gale’s ass.
The runes hold steady, and it’s bare seconds before he’s crying out, using his grip to turn Gale’s head further towards the ground so he doesn’t have to see Gale’s face, though there’s nothing to be done for the sounds he’s making, no way for Gale to un-remember this.
The rush of climax takes him, and then leaves him, and in the wake he’s still—hungry, he’s hungry, he’s going to—
“You,” he says through gritted teeth, nonsensically, gripping him harder, hauling his unresisting body up to meet his renewed thrusts.
Time goes sideways again, except this time he’s with Gale. He comes, and aches, and comes some more, and he doesn’t know where his shirt goes, or where his trousers go, but he’s laid out atop Gale like a dragon on gold, greedy and hungry, unappeased and unappeasable.
His cock slides perfectly between the swell of Gale’s ass cheeks, but he wants—inside, that’s what he was just thinking, wasn’t it? Inside, he wants—
He releases Gale’s throat and pulls the hand out from under them, reaching instead for the place between Gale’s legs where he’s going to fit himself next. He finds the furl of skin and rubs, hard, vicious. The runes flicker around them, almost breaking
“Don’t you dare,” he snarls, and uses his other hand to press between Gale’s shoulder blades, pushing him into the earth. He shoves himself down, Gale’s body sliding forward slightly with the force of it, and ends up splayed across Gale’s thighs.
“Don’t,” he warns again, and then loops both arms beneath Gale’s thighs, reaching around and up to hold him open, and then he leans in. He used to love doing this. But never like this. He doesn’t start slow or gentle. He buries his face there and works his tongue against the furl of muscle and then in and the runes flicker again and Astarion pulls out and bites, hard, into the curve of flesh at his cheek. His teeth don’t break flesh—thank you, barkskin—but it has to be a near thing, and the runes go steady and bright and he might say something appreciative or maybe he goes straight back to the task at hand.
Like this there’s nothing to grind his cock against except earth, and the pieces of clothing and debris that litter the floor of the tent. It’s enough, anyway. He fucks into rags—they might’ve been Gale’s trousers, actually—and holds Gale’s hips to his face and eats him out like he can speak the power in his veins directly into Gale’s insides. He’s full. He’s empty. He comes, more than once, maybe. And. He doesn’t—know, he doesn’t know. He’s not supposed to feel any kind of way, but there’s something like loneliness clawing at his insides even though he’s as close to Gale as he can get, nothing between them but skin, and he doesn’t know what it’s doing to him, having the expanse of Gale’s body before him, open and trusting and his and his and yet not here, not his at all, not—
The runes flicker again and Astarion cries out at him, sounding like wordless rage but feeling like something else entirely. This time, when he puts his hand between Gale’s shoulder blades it’s to haul himself up over his body, trembling, heavier than he should be. He puts both of his knees between Gales and lays flat atop him, spreads his legs so Gale’s legs spread too and—
“Stay,” he spits out, though it sounds like begging, and he reaches between them to guide himself into the place he’s opened up with tongue and teeth and the runes hold very, very steady, even as he pushes in, the muscles not fighting at all, the side of Gale’s face not moving, though his eyes might flicker beneath his eyelids. Astarion wants to press his mouth there, to the vulnerable skin of Gale’s temples, and he wants to bite into the ridge of his brow and pull, tear the flesh from his face, and he wants to dig his thumbs into eyesockets, jam his tongue in afterwards, consume him, and—he thinks—he wants most of all to press lips to lips.
He doesn’t do any of that. “Gale,” he groans, and then he’s in, and he pushes two fingers into Gale’s open mouth, holds his tongue in place even though Gale’s not fighting back at all. He gets his thumb to the tender underside and grips his jaw like that, holding Gale’s mouth open wide while he fucks up into him, seats himself all the way in one long slide, and comes just like that, shaking with it, hips twitching and knowing it’s still not enough.
“You can feel me,” he gasps, not making any sense. “I’m there, it’s me, you can feel it.” He rocks in place, and Gale rocks with him, and the holding runes are strong, and they’re not done yet.
When he pulls back, just a bit, Gale’s body can’t help but follow. Astarion wants to feast. His teeth ache. But Gale’s blood is poison and fire and he’s got enough poison-fire blood of his own right now.
He shoves one-handed at Gale’s sweater, which has somehow survived the obliteration of every other item of clothing in the tent. He rucks it up as far as it can go, crumpled up beneath Gale’s arms, which are still raised at either side of his head, palms down. The sweater makes soft folds at the back of Gale’s shoulders and it’s not until he has a fistful of fabric that he knows what he’s doing. He opens his jaw as wide as it can go and bites down—hard. It’s not the same as biting flesh, but he can use the grip as another point of leverage, twisting and yanking Gale’s body back to meet his own, his thrusts going wild as he chases another high, and then another one. Gale drools around his fingers, taking it silently, jostled only when Astarion jostles him, and Astarion loathes him for it, despises him for being here for this, burns with the intensity of his hatred and thinks, maybe, that it’s not hatred at all.
He keeps going.
He shakes, and aches, and screams into the back of Gale’s neck, mouth full but teeth clear of skin. It hurts, it hurts worse even than dying and becoming undead. It hurts worse than anything and it’s still so good. He comes, and comes again, and Gale takes it all and does not move, and does not speak, even when Astarion knows it has to be hurting him.
He rips through the sweater, eventually, and then Gale’s neck is bare as well. Astarion tugs on Gale’s jaw, yanking his whole head forward to expose the place in his neck where the blood thumps closest to the surface.
“Gale,” he finds himself whispering, and Gale still doesn’t reply, so he says it again, and again, and then—“Please,” he adds, and the runes go so dim they might actually go out for a moment, and he moans, ragged and wet, wanting it and scared for it at the same time.
The runes relight again, slowly, and he gets to his knees just as slow, sliding his thighs beneath Gale’s so that Gale comes up with him, draped over his lap, his legs spread so wide across him, Astarion’s whole body fitting in between. From this angle he sees clearly the stretch of Gale's body around his cock. The place where he's disappearing in that warm tight heat. He didn't do enough prep. Barkskin or not it has to be hurting. And he can't... stop. He can't stop yet. He lets go of Gale’s jaw but doesn’t take his fingers from the wet inside of his mouth, moving instead to tug at the side of his cheek, fish-hook him around so his lax face is on display, mouth open, lips wet with drool. His tongue is pink and his mouth is dark and his lips are swollen, wanting.
Astarion thinks, with sudden, dreadful clarity, that he has never once been more alone. Not even buried alive by his master’s hand. He has no master now, and it still hasn’t been enough.
“Don’t,” he says, aching, and not knowing what he’s trying to say, and what comes out is, “Don’t leave.” And he means stay, and he means come back, and he means sorry, and Gale is still and silent and he does not answer.
The fire comes back then, as bad as before, and maybe all this has been for nothing anyway. Maybe he’ll be ash by daybreak regardless.
He fucks Gale like that, hunched over on his knees with Gale bent in ways that must be uncomfortable, though the spell doesn’t break. He fucks him, and fucks him. Watches his cock disappearing into the welcome clutch of Gale's body. Curves low over his back and holds his hands down, pointlessly, though it has them touching everywhere, it has him buried as far he can get. He fucks him again. Spreads his legs as far apart as they can go and fucks him like that. Pushes his knees back together and fucks the space between his thighs. Fucks the dip in his spine, the crest of his buttocks. Goes back to his ass and slots himself inside again and again, coming for hours, days. Pauses millennia later when he rolls into the health potion Gale had thrown, drinks some himself and tips the rest into Gale’s mouth, hoping some goes down. He bites Gale, once, at the place where neck meets shoulder, and when his skin doesn’t break he bites again, and again, littering bruises across him like a lost language that trails over each vertebra.
He goes and goes until he feels a peak in the distance, finally, like he’s been scooping water out of a sinking boat and the ocean itself is finally running dry. Every muscle is shaking and his head is stuffy and sore.
“Almost,” he whispers, voice hoarse, lips cracking.
He shifts again, back to almost how they started, pressed up against Gale’s back. They’re at least on top of the rug again. He’ll have to burn it, later. He’ll have to burn the whole tent, probably. He reaches down to pull Gale’s leg up, to spread him wide for his cock.
He brushes flesh, and freezes.
Gale doesn’t freeze, but the light of the runes goes very, very steady.
Astarion pulls back and sits up. The furthest he’s been from Gale’s skin in hours. “What—” he says, and grabs at Gale’s shoulder and hip, shoving him over onto his back. Gale’s head flops sideways, his face impassive.
Between his legs, his cock is hard.
The sound of his groan breaks the silence.
“You,” he says, and puts a hand to Gale’s belly and presses, like he’ll be able to feel all the come he’s left in there. They’ve been going for hours.
He spits on his fingers. Sure, suddenly, in what he wants. The pause in their fucking has his blood writhing anew, but he can wait for this.
He straddles Gale’s hips, bends low, with one elbow next to Gale’s head, and with his other hand he reaches back and presses spit-slick fingers to his own hole, pushes in too-quick, spreads them even quicker.
The fingers of his free hand tangle into Gale’s hair automatically, pulling his head up so he’s facing Astarion, even if his eyes are still closed.
“Gale,” he says, for the thousandth time that day, and still the first time. He doesn’t know what he wants, except he does, he always did.
He presses their foreheads together, and then guides Gale’s cock to his hole, panting.
The holding spell shatters at the first press inside, and Gale arches, crying out, eyes flying open. There’s plenty of time to escape to the other side of the tent, or draw a weapon, or fight, but instead Astarion bears down, feels himself open faster than he ever has before, relaxed now with Gale beneath him, awake, eyes wide.
“Sorry,” Gale cries. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’ll recast, just give me a moment, I’ll—” he shudders, fingers clawing at the ground, then takes a deep breath, chest pressing up into Astarion’s. “Non mov—” he starts, but Astarion is faster.
“Don’t you dare,” he interrupts, and presses their mouths together, swallowing the spell. He seats himself fully and clenches up in the familiar rhythm of the curse, or whatever this is, coming again, somehow, on Gale’s stomach. Gale yells into his mouth, though it turns to a groan when Astarion clenches his hand in his hair, tugging his head up and back, so his neck arches. He swallows every sound Gale makes. And oh, what sounds they are.
“Whatever you need,” Gale says when they break apart. “Whatever you need, Star, you can—”
“I don’t need whatever,” Astarion snaps, and rises partway onto his knees just to fall back down, feeling full for the first time, finally, with something other than the raw awful power in his veins.
“It’s yours anyway,” Gale says, and grips him by the hips, feet planting, and Astarion could burst.
“Finally,” Astarion breathes, and this time when they kiss Gale kisses back. His other hand comes up to frame Gale’s face. He’s hunched over him, covered in his own spend, dirt on his knees. How did he ever think he couldn’t feel safe, when it’s Gale’s hands on him.
It doesn’t take much longer, after that. Astarion rides him, gently, now, determined not to move too far away lest he breaks their kiss. It’s Gale who breaks it, eventually, when he leans back to ask, low and desperate, if he can fuck him, and Astarion laughs and pretends not to know what he means, until Gale rolls them over and gives it to him properly, like Astarion’s been wanting this whole time. He comes again, on his own stomach this time. Comes again, when Gale puts one of Astarion’s legs over his shoulder to get even deeper. Astarion is delighted when he gets his mouth to Gale’s chest and finds that he can leave marks just fine in the sensitive skin around Gale’s nipples, even without his teeth.
Astarion feels like himself, more than at any other point during the night. When Gale leans down to claim another kiss, almost folding Astarion in half, he groans, feeling all the sore points in his body. He’s so spent. So close to being finished. His hands fall limp and Gale bares his teeth.
“You’re not giving up now,” he says, more demand than statement. “I am of Waterdeep, and of the Shadowlands, and of Baldur’s Gate, and I am not through with you yet.”
Astarion laughs weakly, wrecked, and feels the last ebb of power, almost gone, almost gone.
“One more,” he says, eyes closing. “Give me one more, and let’s be done.”
“Done?” Gale scoffs, rocking into him, searing that overworked spot inside him. “I think not, companion mine.”
Astarion hums, trying not to smile, and still with his eyes closed he snakes a hand down to pull at his cock, tired and over-sensitive and sore, but with one more left in it.
“I don’t think you’re done with me,” Gale continues. “And, if you would have me, I would that I not be done with you, either.”
Astarion laughs again, giddy with it, and when he opens his eyes Gale is above him, pressed in right where he should be, keeping him slick and full and alive, and, “Very well,” Astarion says, and sees not his reflection, but something of the sort in Gale’s eyes. “Sleep first, though, Dekarios. And then everything else.”
“Sleep first, he says,” Gale snarks, but he’s smiling, and he presses his mouth to Astarion’s and slides in him deep, and again, until Astarion reaches up to cup the back of his neck, and for some reason that’s what tips him over, spending into Astarion’s body and making noises that Astarion swallows whole, and which chase him across the edge of his own peak, shuddering out the last of the fire in his veins until he truly is just himself again, just Astarion, and Gale Dekarios of Waterdeep is with him.