Chapter Text
It wasn’t as if Astarion had never thought of a cure before. Of course he had. All those shameful years, all those lonely moments trembling in some cold, dirty corner – who wouldn’t want to be someone else?
Like a snake in molt, he’d always intimately known just which skin he must shed.
That part was easy. Imagining purity, imagining walking into a new life clean, imagining answering the pain of loss with losing even the reason to care. The hard part came with the world outside of his mind and all the rules that had to be followed. He had to survive and to take joy from living. Any long term plans had to be tossed aside to keep the fire burning in the present.
That was to say, he’d thought about it but he’d been content with just freedom.
At first, even ‘just freedom’ had been rather tricky. Any new beginning starts with desire and while he certainly started off with ideas about that, desire turned out to be a somewhat fickle mistress. It was not, in truth, an easy fire to keep burning. It seemed that the more he owned that could feed it, the more it hungered.
Once, in those early days when he’d still cared about playing family, Cazador had introduced him to ancient plays and poetry, hoping to at least impress on his unfortunate son the art of the metaphor. One of his Master’s favourites wrote paragraphs and paragraphs likening desire to a child grabbing a fistful of snow. Cazador had found it profound because of course he did. His taste in literature had always been nauseatingly saturated with everything except reality. Desire , he’d said, exists only in a singular moment – the only charm of the snow is in the melting. You hold it to chase the feeling. Then, once in your grasp, it melts away just as soon as you think it might finally satisfy. You’d do well to remember that, boy. There is a reason I cannot spoil you as you demand. Astarion could easily guess why that had been on his mind, at that stage in his life. It was the typical vampire’s love story; sometimes lovely, sometimes forceful but always adoring any mortal lover into an early grave. Or worse. He could attest to the worse.
Or perhaps Cazador had simply enjoyed the sham of it. A discussion in futility of want ought to spring up between two bored, content academics – not between a tyrant and his starving slave, seated behind a table loaded with food neither of them could eat. He spent most of that time daydreaming what it would feel like to strangle Cazador with his own intestines. Perhaps the art of the metaphor had been lost on him but he’d taken to the art of violence very well.
But now that his station in life had changed, Astarion could reluctantly admit that there might have been something to it. He had more than he ever remembered having yet somehow, it was all still so difficult.
Things always seemed more pleasant in his mind, was the thing.
He indulged in anything that seemed appealing anyway, just to test things out. He let the thrill drag him from fight to fight but once the adrenaline faded and his hunger was as sated as it could ever seem to get, there was only him, corpses and the quiet of the night that only seemed quieter with each death that disturbed it. Somehow he no longer felt victorious then. Or alive. On an occasion, his desire had led him all the way to someone’s bed, only to abandon him at the foot of it. It was quite a pickle. People were cruel and people were unworthy but he still wanted – he wanted. Until he didn’t. He didn’t know what to do with that.
Still, it was a good life and he thought he was content. After centuries of staleness, each day intrigued.
The complications started when he remembered it might be clever to keep in touch with his old allies. Lae’zel had gone off to war – he doubted he’d ever see the woman again – and Wyll and Karlach were in Avernus. While fortune seemed to favour people like them, their cause seemed simply too hopeless for him to ever count on a reunion. Wyll returned every now and then to talk to the Duke but Astarion never pursued those opportunities. Why waste hopes and dreams on what could never be? He’d gone out of his way to track down all the rest, though.
Shadowheart had been a bust. She lived in a remote Selunite commune with her parents and a barn full of beasties. The beasties weren’t too fond of him, the Selunites even less so and her mother found him too threatening. On his side of things, he found only pity. Decades of torment had left their mark. Shadowheart’s mother was a ruined woman, prone to episodes of fear and ill health and he was altogether too familiar with the process. If he’d wanted to remind himself of the inescapable decay of things, he'd simply go visit his family in the Underdark. With the living, the pain was even more acute. It really didn’t help that Shadowheart herself had suddenly turned awfully judgemental.
“If I didn’t know you were undead, I’d worry for the longevity of your liver. Is that all you do? Drink and disturb the peace?”
“It’s my own wine,” he felt like pointing out. “I bought it, even! With my own money! I can very well drink it if I want to. And just for this, I won’t share either.”
“You know what I meant. And would you please get off the counter? Food is being made here and I think nobody in this house would enjoy getting prehistoric vampire diseases with their bread.”
“Your loss. It’s not like there’s already lycanthrope fur in everything you make.” He swirled his bottle and crossed one leg over the other, making sure to put the sole of his boot solidly on the counter. Unfortunately it was not muddy enough to make a point – he took good care of his shoes.
Shadowheart scowled at him. He couldn't tell if it was her mother's illness or simply growing up, but she'd accumulated a housewife's authory.
“If all you intend to do is loiter dumbly, then you ought to go to the barn with the rest of the animals.”
Astarion hid his grimace under a long swing from his bottle.
This was another thing about Shadowheart that he really did not miss. She might have decided to embrace her better nature when she rejected Shar but her tendency to always aim below the belt was evidently not something she considered a problem worth working on. Small wonder she lived only with her aging parents and no love life to speak of. Who could endure her?
Fortunately, the wine made her a lot more pleasant. When he was the one drinking, that was. Drunk Shadowheart was somehow even more vicious than regular Shadowheart and only half as funny.
Even worse, these days she just seemed sad instead. As if she wasn’t, in some wicked sense, proving Shar right every time she wept over her mother’s incoming demise. Sometimes he forgot she was young.
“I am on vacation, dear. Drinking and disturbing the peace is what people usually do. I’ll have you know that on a normal workday my schedule is rather packed with murder, thievery and general debauchery. People don’t just inflict cannibalism on themselves, you know.”
“What a busy bee you are. But it’s really not your work ethics that concern me, precisely.”
There was a rather delicate looking vase on the kitchen table that Shadowheart had bought for her mother. “Making new memories,” she called it, as though the memories she was making with her mother were in any way worthwhile. It was a trap she was willingly walking into. The vase was pretty, though. It’d fetch him an even prettier price, he bet. Enough to buy a few bottles of Berduskan Dark and have a toast in the memory of this horrible, awful conversation.
“There is absolutely nothing for you to be concerned with. Good grief, woman, don’t you get it all out of your system changing your mother’s nappies?”
She gripped the broom.
“Get off the damn counter, Astarion.”
So the Selunites were not a viable option. He should have expected that, truly. Religious folks tended to be awfully uptight.
Jaheira – on the other hand – had been much better company, even if she was ever difficult to locate. Astarion enjoyed watching her escape her parental responsibilities but he was a little less enthused when she shamelessly revealed that she was equally prone to escaping fiscal ones. The High Harper, as it turned out, had a lot of paperwork and very little patience for it.
“I heard from our friend in Waterdeep that you have a law degree, spawn.” That wasn’t a question but if it were, Astarion would have denied it regardless. Paradoxically, it seemed like people were just the slightest bit more comfortable with vampires than they were with law officials. It just went to show that most would rather part with their blood than with their money. Fortunately for them, Astarion was kind enough to spare them the choice and take both.
“I was a magistrate, not a secretary. Do your own paperwork.” He considered his odds for a moment. The two of them, sitting around a campfire somewhere in the Hullack Forest. Jaheira’s scimitars near her bedroll, outside her reach. “Hag,” he added, with bite.
“If it eases your mind, this is private business, nothing to do with the Harpers. We wouldn’t want you to accidentally do a good deed and catch fire, of course. What a waste of a perfectly good scoundrel.” She clicked her tongue. “No, I have been informed that our wise leaders back in Baldur’s Gate adjusted the property tax after the Absolute to pay for the damages.”
“How pragmatic. Let me guess, the missive tragically missed your house?”
“For reasons beyond my understanding, this has been known to happen.” She considered him evenly. As much as he genuinely liked Jaheira, her eyes were evil. There was something wretched about them that made him feel like putting on several more layers of clothing and hiding his face. “Yet somehow I have never been accosted by the Fist about it. Let me put it plainly, I am not long for this world–”
He couldn’t help it. He groaned.
“I knew it. You’re getting your affairs in order, you morbid crone.”
Jaheira didn’t back down or look abashed, exactly. She was too old for that. But something in her eyes looked a little bit less cutting.
“If that’s what you want to call it. Yes, I suppose. Surely you can understand that the matters of death are logistically complicated.”
“Logistically complicated. That’s rich. You know, melodramatic as this all is, you’re no fun at all. Is that what you’ve been doing for the past year? Brooding about how you’re going to die soon and plotting your own funeral?”
He had felt strongly tempted to just get up and leave. That’d teach her. In fact, he couldn’t understand why he didn’t do exactly that.
Perhaps it was just because it was Jaheira. She’d never had any pity for him and he had none for her. There was something satisfying about the prospect of having this one thing to dangle over her head – because she was scared.
He could smell it on her. It was like rot clinging to her skin. She could dress it however she wanted and pretend she was too dignified for such things but the great old Harper was terrified of dying.
The fear, at least, was honest. He always liked it when the people Tymora had smiled upon didn’t pretend that their wonderful, perfect little lives were something they could easily stand to lose. Like they didn’t even care either way, despite being oh so blessed. People could call it selfish or cowardly – the open fear of death – but he called it being respectful. Not everyone had the fortune of having something to cling to.
It was deeply entertaining trying to make Jaheira understand, even if it came at the cost of his own time and peace of mind. Entertaining enough that he’d let her drag him back to Baldur’s Gate and spent a very annoying month at her house, enduring her unfortunate spawn and helping her figure out which people she needed to threaten.
After, though, Astarion couldn’t afford to linger.
He felt he’d exhausted her patience just as thoroughly as she’d exhausted his own. Like all things, mocking her just seemed more fun in his head. Once Jaheira’s years of brazen tax evasion were handled – it was not his area of expertise, thank you very much, but Cazador had also been a lazy bastard who sometimes preferred to delegate some of his responsibilities and Astarion had always been a fast learner with the threat of flaying hanging over him – and her will written, he once again found himself idle in the city he detested. There was a sour taste in his mouth. Nothing had been gained. In fact, watching Jaheira preparing dinner with her children – bickering the whole way through – he had a strong feeling that something had in fact been lost. Like something precious had been dangled in front of him and he hadn’t known he should have reached for it.
So just out of spite, he ate her badger friend when he spotted it following him around, smashed her flower pots, stole her gold and practiced his firebolt aim on her messenger rats before getting out of reach as fast as his undead feet would carry him.
That was another bridge burned, but she had given him at least a reminder to stop at Waterdeep next.
The crisis with Jaheira was his excuse for how he’d handled his final companion.
From the beginning, Gale had been kind and understanding. He listened to his complaining about Jaheira and Shadowheart and then he gave him an open invitation to his tower, which was a very foolish thing to do because it only made Astarion morbidly curious of how far he could push him before he revoked it.
He knew he shouldn’t.
He knew that mild-mannered though he was, Gale was still an archmage and could disintegrate him in an instant if he wished to.
He knew there was nothing he stood to gain from driving away perhaps the only friend he had left in the world.
And yet.
The Gods must play strange games with mortals or perhaps sometimes things just click into place regardless of how unlikely it feels. His wizard was just as lonely as Astarion was restless. Neither, it seemed, could budge an inch in either direction. It ought to have been a repelling force but instead, something inverted and their friendship somehow turned out to be a rather inescapable entanglement.
When Astarion had opened every single bottle of wine in his cellar only to abandon them after a glass, Gale had only commented that he was doing him a favour.
“I never managed to try most of these vintages myself, to be honest,” he’d said. “Peculiar how owning something makes you never want to use it. You’ve given me the perfect excuse to indulge for an evening.” And then he went and took notes. It was altogether an insufferably fine evening and Astarion hadn’t even needed to get drunk to endure it. What a rotten thing – letting a person have more influence on his mood than his own solitary indulgences could hope to match.
When he left dead pigeons on his couch – a petty retaliation for a crime he couldn’t stomach naming – Gale took that as gifts for his tressym.
“Tara thanks you sincerely, but just between you and me, she is supposed to be on a diet. Mother’s orders, you see. There is a colony of strays nearby who would appreciate your leftovers if you’re so inclined, however.”
Whether he left without warning – usually after things started getting too pleasant – or showed up without advance, the man didn’t seem to mind. He looked sad, in that way of his, but for whatever reason he seemed to readily accept being left behind.
Perhaps it was this lack of obligation that kept Astarion returning to Waterdeep over the next two years. He liked the freedom of it. Or perhaps it was just the company and the difficulties of traveling anywhere as a vampire spawn – Gale had given him a whole guest bedroom to claim for himself and the curtains there were reliable. He was not too fond of waking up to the stench of his own flesh burning because some miserly innkeep thought it was acceptable to let moths eat through their sun protection.
Either way, he got used to it. Got used to Gale, even, which wasn’t all that hard considering the two of them once spent a couple months getting each other's thoughts beamed directly into their heads by parasites. He knew the man very well back then and with his consistency of character, time had not changed him too much.
Catching up with how someone else’s life unfolded was a good second-hand lesson on how good deeds seldom go unpunished. Gods knew Astarion didn’t have a habit of testing that out on his own skin.
And his friend was somehow ever so unfortunate.
Gale might have surrendered the Crown to Mystra and earned her divine forgiveness – though Astarion could not understand why he’d want the forgiveness in the first place – but everyone worth knowing in Waterdeep still knew what he’d done. It was a tough sin to attempt overwriting, even amongst wizards who were, frankly, prone to such sinning. His disgrace was blood in the water for the academic elites. For anyone who wished to take a shot in, even, because they all had to know they could never beat him in skill or merit.
Gale might have made himself content with a humbler life of an educator but Astarion couldn’t help but wonder how much of that was because it was the only option left to him. He was only a man, after all. A clever man settled with what was given but the heart wanted what it wanted nonetheless. Give that clever man a means to power and it was a matter of time before he remembered that a beating, living heart was a device built for biting, not pleasing.
And Gods knew that Gale wore his heart on his sleeve; or oftentimes treated it as if he were handling a bomb. He never asked for it but he was embarrassingly grateful for encouragement – and for companionship, even if Astarion would have never been his first choice. Or his tenth.
Or rather, Astarion sometimes liked to think he hadn’t been a choice Gale had ever made at all. In his mind, he’d managed to sneak into the man’s life entirely uninvited and got away with it.
It just worked out that way. It seemed that out of their unlikely fellowship, the two of them were the only ones left with nothing to do. And what a wretched, horrible thing that was – for the world to just move on.
Any other time, Astarion would have elected not to share the misery but… Freedom seemed to have made a stranger out of him.
The visits grew more prolonged.
They’d gone out drinking more times than he could count. Astarion had tried to teach a very drunk Gale an elven pogo dance and laughed so hard he started crying right then and there at the Yawning Portal poseur table. Back at the Tower, the cellar seemed suddenly stocked heavily with the exact wines Astarion preferred. The windows all gained heavy drapery and Gale’s many plants – gifted by his mother over the years – were exiled to his bedroom. Sometimes new clothes appeared in his closet. Never anything grand that he could take offense to, just scarves, hats and earmuffs for frigid Waterdeep winters – he kept losing his own and somehow his wardrobe seemed to sense precisely when he was in need – but it felt like ripping open an old scar anyway.
Gale had even gone and introduced him to his mother. As if that was a thing one just did, with men like Astarion. People had shared many things with him, but usually never those nearest and dearest to them.
Much like her son, Morena Dekarios was an intense, clever woman. However, where Gale was thoughtful and sweet, she was stern and unyielding in her inquisitions. It sufficed to say she had been only slightly more confounded to suddenly find herself having dinner with a vampire spawn than Astarion was to be invited to dine with someone’s family in the first place. He could not tell why he’d even agreed to it. It hadn’t sounded fun, thrilling or wicked – the trifecta on which he based all of his endeavours – in the slightest, even when Gale had first proposed it. In fact, Astarion felt like the only thing that salvaged that whole situation was their mutual judgment of Gale’s lack of standards and Tara’s talent for moderating smalltalk. And an obscene amount of wine.
All of this was completely new to him – and most of the time, Astarion detested this kind of novelty. He lacked the starry-eyed wonder necessary to appreciate change.
This particular entanglement was, somehow, an exception to the rule. He found he adjusted to it rather easily. And – Gods help him – liked it.
He knew where to level the blame. It was all Gale’s fault.
One thing about Gale that marked him even more than the fossil-like imprint the Orb had left on his skin was that he was always just a little too eager to pull others into his world whether they asked for it or not. He loved to talk. And each time he talked – about his work, about his studies, his childhood, his everyday in Waterdeep, the stray cats he fed on his way home – it was an invitation to join him in the experience. To live his day through his eyes. Astarion thought it to be a mark of either an exceptionally lonely man or an exceptionally generous one. Perhaps both. When they had first met, he had resented it in its entirety. He didn’t want to hear what life could be like. He hadn’t truly even considered anything that happened outside of Cazador’s Palace to be real. People lived, fucked and died, generations came and went, and he was unchanging. Gale might as well have been spinning fiction, for how much it mattered.
Now, though, visiting Waterdeep felt less like a visit and more like emerging from the cracks and returning to real life.
So one night when Tara had long since retired and the two of them were still sitting in his library discussing – arguing over – some washed out poet Astarion despised and Gale inexplicably adored, he simply leaned over and kissed him.
It was an impulse but it didn’t just leave him dry and stranded. For once, it was just a kiss. Just as simple to give out as it must have been in those lost days of his youth.
A brief, forceful press of their lips. Then Gale leaned in and – oh. That was a tongue.
Unexpected but welcome. It was all the permission Astarion needed.
He grabbed a hold of Gale’s tunic to guide himself closer with one hand and carelessly shoved the wine off the table.
Crash.
The loud noise made Gale wince in alarm but he didn’t get a chance to pull back before Astarion was on the table himself, pushing him into the armchair cushions. The motions were all familiar but somehow he felt almost giddy.
Was this not exactly what he’d been missing?
The feeling of warm skin, the hitching of someone else’s breath, the thrum of someone else’s pulse, all the brief glories he could steal from the living. He hadn’t gotten this far since his tussle with Lae’zel – and Gale was against all odds a good kisser.
A thought crossed his mind briefly: wasn’t it a shame that he was only discovering this now, after all these years? He had been so terribly blind. He should have gone for it way back in that first camp.
“Stop.”
Just as quick as the passion had started, it ended. Gale half twisted in his armchair in an effort to shove him off while being gentle about it.
“For Mystra’s sake, Astarion. The table? Really? That was a perfectly fine bottle of wine and now I have glass all over my carpet.”
Astarion sat back on his heels.
“Oops,” he said, not apologetic at all. “Consider me guilty and repentant. Now shall we get back to business?”
Apparently not. Apparently Gale ‘Kisses with Tongue’ Dekarios was far more interested in picking broken glass from his floor. He gave him a look that was somewhere between cautiously guarded and openly exasperated.
“If this business of yours involves a conversation, then by all means. But first, please, my carpet. Do you have any idea how easily shattered glass can spread? I don’t want Tara stepping on it by accident.”
There was nothing to do except let him fuss. Astarion watched him languidly, determined not to help. So Gale wanted to keep him waiting – that was fine. Let him play his games. Astarion could be patient; he’d played these games for years and years and years. It’d take far more than this to let him squirm.
“Can you not just cast prestidigitation?”
Gale paused. His hair obscured his expression but his restless hands spoke volumes and his nervous pitch filled whatever blanks remained.
“Well – that is to say – I probably could. Yes. Prestidigitation is within my power.” He hurriedly returned to his task. “However – there is a sense of wonder to manual labour, wouldn’t you say? In one’s own Tower? It’s just respectful, that’s what I always say. When you love something you don’t take shortcuts.”
“Your face looks rather flushed, dear. Do try to be a bit more convincing.” Astarion squinted down at him. “Gods above. You’re not actually a virgin are you?”
“What?” Gale nearly tripped over himself. “I think you know fully well that I am not. It’s simply – well, unexpected. And now my floor’s a mess, did I mention that?”
“Only so much that I’m starting to suspect you’d rather make out with the carpet.” Admittedly, he was beginning to feel a little less steady now. “It’s fine, though. If you didn’t enjoy it, I mean. I simply thought… Well, I won’t do it again, do not worry. Your debatable virtue is safe with me, cross my heart and hope to – oh, wait.” He cackled at his own joke.
“That’s not – rest assured that is not what I am saying. At all.” Gale steeled himself like a man about to take a dive. With a wave and an incantation, the mess was taken care of and he looked somewhat sheepish about the whole thing. Serves him right, thought Astarion, for being so bloody stubborn. “Attention doesn’t need to be unwanted to be nerve-racking. You’re rather terrifying, you realize?”
He scoffed. Terrifying. Of course. His mistake – expecting the former suicide bomber to be a little bit braver.
“Oh, flatterer. Ye o’silver tongue. Please tell me more about how dreadful and off-putting you find me. Throw in some choice words about monsters too, if you feel like you didn’t get your point across well enough.”
“No, hold on, let me rephrase that. Again. I keep putting my boot in my mouth tonight, it seems. I don’t mean terrifying because you happen to be a vampire spawn – really, why would I start now? It’s rather more the fact that for months I’ve been watching and you’ve given me no hints of interest and then all of the sudden you are physically climbing my table. My table, Astarion. I hope you can see why I was hoping to hear some kind of explanation?”
“I’m a staunch believer in the lost art of spontaneity.” Astarion kept very still; it was a nervous habit. He could feel Gale’s searching stare digging into him like a sunray through a looking glass. A part of him wondered if Gale ever fried ants that way, as a boy. If he had reveled in it. If looking at Astarion now would do anything except bring out that innocent cruelty reserved for lesser creatures. Because right now, it could. He'd exposed some part of himself that could be wounded.
It took great effort to shove those thoughts aside before they could bloom.
This wasn’t fair to Gale. Against himself, he wanted to be fair. Even if being inspected never failed to make him feel like a stupid little boy who was about to get put back in his place.
“I don’t know,” he admitted. “Can you believe that? You say months. That sounds like a long time – but I try to not think of these things much, if I can help it. Perhaps the interest has been there the whole time. I truly cannot tell you.”
“I’m… not sure I follow, entirely. In any case, it’s your present intentions that I am more interested in.”
“Come on. You’re a smart man, I think you can hazard a guess as to what my present intentions are.” He raised his eyebrows conspiratorially. Predictably, Gale’s cheeks flushed and he shifted in his seat. Stretching like a cat, Astarion laid a hand against Gale’s knee. Not hard; he would wager that the man was of the sort that preferred a gentle caress.
A grip on his wrist pulled him away.
“I’m flattered,” Gale said but his face was flat. Guarded again. He cleared his throat a few times. “But I am not that kind of man. I would not share a night of passion with my friend and then proceed as usual. If that is indeed what you want – I can’t help but notice you have yet to answer the question.”
Astarion told himself that the rejection didn’t hurt – but as he drew back, the laugh that escaped his mouth was cold and cruel.
“No, I suppose you are not. More’s the shame.” He took a breath he didn’t need. There was a reason hidden somewhere in the depths. He wasn’t enthused to discover it, let alone share it with someone else.
But Astarion supposed he had started this; and unexpectedly, he found himself worrying that it could end rather badly. He didn’t like this look on Gale’s face one bit. He’d hurt him somehow, had done something wrong. Even for someone like him, the laws of reciprocity were easy to understand. A breach of trust required a show of trust, an offering.
“It’s not so casual for me either. How do I put this…? It’s rather embarrassing. I know what you must think of me but I have recently – in the past few years, that is – found myself becoming rather… selective. Against my will, I should say, because if I had my way, I’d be happily enjoying mindless carnal pursuits with whoever happened to be at hand.” His face felt frozen. The smile would not slip but it would not move either – he thought it must look uncannily more like a grimace by this point. Hardly attractive yet there was nothing he could do about it. “I just – cannot make it work.”
If Gale looked at him with those big, pitying eyes he used for his stay cats, dead pigeons and dog-eared tomes, he swore he’d get up and leave. He didn’t think he could bear it.
“Well,” said Gale after a bit, thoughtfully, “that is some issue. Not too unusual for an elf your age, I assume but–”
Hideously offended, Astarion couldn’t help but laugh for real.
“No. No. Absolutely not. That is – that is not what I meant. Everything works perfectly, thank you very much, you Weave-sniffing buffon. No. It’s just… People are evil, wicked creatures, you know. They are, don’t look at me like that. They want what they want and they rarely care what they have to break along the way. And I can’t – I suppose I am much too wise now, to be able to take those risks.”
And there it was. The famous Dekarios Wet Look of Pity.
“I don’t think that’s true,” he said softly. Like it made him sad to think about. “You have your reasons for hesitations, I know, but Astarion – your average person has no reason or desire to do you harm.”
Astarion waved his hand as if to physically shoo his point away.
“A naive outlook, at best, and willfully deluded at worst. Need I remind you, my dear, that I happen to be the sort of abominable beast most people would kill on sight? And aside from that, even if they don’t know they should be reaching for a stake – life is not a book. It’s not a story. The wicked are just as banal as the wise and people don’t work on logic. They don’t need a reason – they’ll do it just because they can. If they can.” He smiled in Gale’s direction. “The thing is though, I hate to brag but very few would pick a fight with me now and win. There’s no real risk and no reason for me to get so…”
Scared, his mind supplied. Terrified, frozen, stuck out of time.
“...cautious,” he settled for instead. “Yet I can’t seem to help it. It kills the mood. Truly, cursed are the wise.”
Privately, he worried it was not even remotely close to wisdom – a loss rather than a gain. That he’d simply done the deed afraid a few times too many and there was perhaps nothing that could still be done about it now.
Perhaps it was just like muscle memory. A dog that got kicked each time it left its enclosure would surely remember the kicks long after the boot that gave them was gone. Not all the time, of course. Just each time it learned to expect pain. That was how people trained dogs, in his youth – perhaps still?
How convenient then, that the boot Astarion had suffered under had kicked and kicked and kicked all the damn time, for any reason. Sometimes without a reason. And usually worse than just kicked. Now all he had was a body that remembered fear in every shadow and a mind that failed to remember anything else.
“I see… I’m sorry, friend. I’m afraid I don’t know what else to say. I’m not exactly the type to be able to take these endeavours lightly either, you know. Not from the same reservations perhaps, but I understand the unease. And after everything we’ve seen and done, everything that happened between me and Mystra, I can understand… caution with strangers as well. A singular person has the power to lead you down such unfathomable roads.” Gale spoke slowly, as if turning each word in his head about a dozen times before saying it out loud.
“I simply think – the world isn’t evil. The vast majority of people aren’t like… Well. Hm. Aren’t like Cazador, to be blunt. I’d like to see you one day live a life in which you can believe this too. I think the hope would look good on you. Everything does, of course, but happiness most of all.”
All these years and hearing that name still drained the colours from the world. A force of habit urged to sneak a look over his shoulder; to listen for the heavy snag of his staff against the wooden floor.
Of course Gale would go there. He supposed there was no other place to go, really.
“Ha . I am happy, thank you very much. Happier than ever. As it happens, the world is full of Cazadors. This suits me just fine, though – I can get my revenge a thousand times over and I’ll still never run out of evil bastards to kill. There’s nothing like getting to relive the best day of your life again and again, and then getting praise for it, too. I really don’t expect you’d be changing my mind on this. Ah, but no offense, of course.”
“That doesn’t sound very healthy.”
“Not for someone like you, perhaps.” Astarion tsked. He did his best to say it like the insult it was; but he thought it came out rather pathetic. “On the other hand, I am not so easily affected by getting a little blood on my hands. I’m made of harder stuff. So don’t you worry about the little old me.”
Hint finally received, Gale raised his hands in a placating gesture. The concerned crease between his brows, infuriatingly, remained. Worse than that, he had the look of a man who’d just received new insight on a matter – and Astarion doubted it was the insight he wanted Gale to take away from it all.
People had such a ridiculous habit of never taking him for his words.
“Alright, alright. My apologies. I didn’t mean to imply anything.”
Great wizard, poor liar, thought Astarion but he felt satisfied to let it drop.
“Regardless, though. It’s not the point. It bothers me, I’ll admit. I don’t know how else to put it. I feel cursed. Some nights it’s like…” He shook his head . “It doesn’t matter. I can escape everything, it seems, except for this. There's not a single thing I can do about this. Something must have been lost along the way. Or been taken from me, rather, but either way it’s gone. You have no idea how fucking furious that makes me. No amount of evil wretches sent to the ground makes it feel even.”
Uncharacteristically, Gale took his time. He hummed under his breath as if Astarion had proposed some fascinating mathematical problem instead of spilling his guts unprompted in the middle of his private library.
“Let me just… That is, I just happen to have a question,” he said eventually, when Astarion was already fantasizing about finding a ray of sunlight and taking a good, long soak, “What was it like – before? Before you were a vampire, before Cazador? Did you have a habit of seeking out strangers then?”
Astarion blinked slowly.
Out of all the things he could ask…
“I don’t really remember,” he said at first but then that didn’t sound exactly right. His memories were fragmented and hazy at best – like trying to walk down a meadow trail that had long been out of use – but he had some idea of the person he used to be.There were pebbles. Millstones. Mementos of a life lived.
He remembered an office. He remembered pacing to and fro before an open window, waiting for the sun to set, so nervously eager that he didn’t know what to do with it all. Somewhere between a lovestruck youth and a caged dog but all the way alive. There was no memory of before or after, just this senseless collage of feelings without a timeline but he could guess with enough certainty it was almost like knowing for sure. Before was perhaps a blank, but after – after was a who, not a what.
With far more clarity, he remembered some of his victims pacing just like that while they waited at their arranged spot. It was usually the younger ones, the sweet ones, the ones that didn’t know better and had to be lured in with a longer con. It was pathetic. Sometimes he had waited hidden for hours, just watching them come apart until they disgusted him enough that he almost felt like they deserved what was coming.
“No.” The admission burned his tongue. He wanted to strangle something. He wanted to drag Cazador by his hair and rip out his thrice-damned heart. He wanted to take his younger, living self and drown him in a lake. He wanted Gale to never mention this again at all. “No, I don’t think I did at all.”
“Then perhaps you didn’t lose anything,” Gale proposed, perfectly neutral. “I imagine not every habit you’ve picked in the past centuries has been of your own choice but they’re habits nonetheless. Sometimes when you’re doing something for a long time, you can easily forget why you began in the first place. Things you are used to can start looking frightfully like things you want. Or perhaps something can mean a whole lot to you without being enjoyable in itself. But either way I’d bet my skill with the Weave that you right now is more true than you five years ago.”
Astarion didn’t quite know what to say to that. Everything Gale said made sense, in some unfamiliar orderly way, and he hated the sound of it.
“I see someone's become rather wise.”
If Gale was offended by his tone, he didn’t show it. He shrugged, looking somewhere above Astarion as if his ceiling hid some grand insight. For all that Astarion knew, maybe it did. The Weave was obviously built into the Tower itself; he could hear the gentle hum whenever the household went quiet. It was like the universe itself was singing inside Gale’s home.
“I’ve walked myself into my fair share of existential corners and self-inflicted misery. I can’t say I learned much but one thing that did stick with me is how blind we can be about ourselves. It goes double for us ambitious fellows, I fear. I still wonder, to this day, who I could have been if I hadn’t decided so early. But there’s no turning back now, is there?”
“Yes, yes. Fascinating. I fucked a magma mephit once.”
Gale twitched.
“Excuse me?”
“Under compulsion,” Astarion clarified, satisfied that at last he was deemed more interesting than the ceiling. Or the carpet. “A practical joke at my expense. It was still less unpleasant than this fucking conversation. You know, it would have been far less time-consuming to just say, no, Astarion, I don’t want to experience the best night of my life tonight, thank you for offering, now leave me to my brooding. ”
It mildly pleased him that Gale seemed more annoyed than pitying now. Astarion thought that he liked this side of him better.
“Getting a little ahead of yourself, aren’t you? As I recall, I only asked for an explanation. And with a good reason.”
“And I’ve explained it already, now you’re talking about your mid-life crisis. Just say yes or no, don’t treat it like a business negotiation. It’s really not that serious.”
That earned him a frown.
“I disagree. Everything you just said makes it sound like it’s rather serious for you. How do I…” Gale sprayed his hands out, palms upwards as if asking for divine assistance. “I am not opposed. I assume you noticed that. If you haven't, then we need to start worrying about your eyesight as well as your comprehension and overall concerning lack of manners. But I will not be a choice you make simply because I happen to be conveniently at hand or a game you play to entertain yourself. I need this to mean something to you.”
A tall demand. Gale really did not know how much he was asking for.
Or perhaps he had the right of it. Astarion cringed away. The idea was as embarrassing as it was terrifying. A few years back, he wouldn’t have stood for it. Frankly, a few years back he wouldn’t even have bothered enduring this conversation in the first place. He’d have been content letting a precious thing slip between his fingers. And it would have been wrong. It was a sobering realization.
“It does mean something to me.”
“You said you haven’t thought about it before.”
“Now who’s assuming the worst in people?” Astarion narrowed his eyes. Things started clicking, somewhat. In retrospect, he should have realized Gale would be sensitive about this. At the end of the day, he’d almost died for love before. Or not for love – for parasitic devotion, rather. Poor fool had never been taught to know the difference.
“I haven’t been hopelessly pinning, no. I am not that kind of person and I think you know that. But I am… fond of you. I trust you. And the oddest thing, I rather enjoy living with you. I thought it was convenience, at first, but I…”
He shook his head, frustrated. There were words for it, somewhere, but they were stuck in his throat. Dislodging them felt a little bit like sticking a hand in his guts and ripping out his innards. Invasive, slightly painful but mostly it was just the cold, sticky feeling of wanting to crawl in some dark corner. To Godey, disembowelment had always been more about humiliation. He found the whole concept of flesh rather embarrassing though he had always been careful to not voice that particular opinion in front of Cazador.
“I feel cared for,” he said eventually. “ Seen. I have thought of that before – extensively, if you must know – but I never knew where to go with it. Or what to think about it. There’s no instinct to go with that feeling. It’s like trying to talk in a language I don’t speak. Kissing you was the closest I came to an answer. I can’t give you a word – I don’t know how – but I can give you that. It's all I can offer.”
Now that he said it, he felt worse. Whoever said talking about things made it all better needed to be taken to the rack, chained down and have their kneecaps pulverized with a hammer. Multiple hammers. At once.
“Oh.” The sound Gale made was almost too soft to hear. Astarion kept his eyes low, suddenly incapable of meeting his eyes. It wasn’t fear, he told himself, or nervousness. That was beneath him.
It was simply too much. Too much effort, too much sentiment and not enough room to back out now. He'd wanted to light a candle, not a bonfire.
If he looked at Gale and saw – what? Rejection? Acceptance? Either way, he’d be ruined.
“You… mean that. I wasn’t sure – I never expected…” He heard an armchair creak under shifting weight. Then a warm, perfumed hand pried apart the death grip of his fingers. He hadn’t even realized how hard he’d been squeezing until suddenly Gale was taking his hands into his own. The low light of the library made the whole thing feel like a daze. And above them, the tower sang. “I am sorry, then, for pressing you like this. And for thinking so poorly of you. It wasn’t fair and you’ve done nothing to deserve it.”
Astarion had to laugh at that.
“Nothing?”
“Well, nothing that serious. Let’s not waste our time on details,” Gale amended in good humor. “You may think me a fool for this but I’ve never thought you to be a fickle friend. Whatever you do on the side – something tells me it’s best I don’t know – it doesn’t matter. You’ve been nothing but loyal and kind to me through the past years. I always knew I had a bad habit of asking for more than was my due but I still quite couldn’t believe myself when I caught myself wishing for… well. More.”
Strangely, Astarion wasn’t surprised. A part of him must have known but closed his eyes willingly. Surely, Gale wasn’t that attentive to everyone.
“Because I happened to be there,” he surmised.
“Because you’re you.” Gale must have sensed the disbelief in his silence because he went on: “You were not too off-mark calling my musings a mid-life crisis earlier. When I returned to Waterdeep, there was… an adjustment. I settled down, something I’ve never really done before. I tried to keep my eyes on the here and now, keep my mind on the people who matter. I had to backtrack decades to realize again what happiness felt like, when it had no greater purpose. It was cleansing. But then came the horrible part. I could see my whole life before me. It wasn’t the end of that road that scared me, really. It was that there were no crossroads to anticipate, no millstones to meet, no mysteries to discover. No godhood, no glory. Nothing bad but nothing brilliant either. I found it unbearable and I hated myself for it.”
He pressed his thumbs against the palms of Astarion’s hands.
“Convincing,” Astarion couldn’t help commenting. “You’ve certainly sold me on the idea that you would be swept off your feet by the Counting House clerk wishing you a good day.”
“Let me finish, will you? After being alive for so long, one would really think you’d have a little more patience,” he scolded, without any heat to it. “I spent a long time turning it all over in my brain, trying to find a solution. But then you started visiting and – it just faded away, on its own. We talked and suddenly I had plans and the future was not so set in stone. It wasn’t anything you said, really. It’s not the set of your mind, or any centuries old wisdom I could hope to learn. Nothing I could take or buy or, Gods forbid, steal. It’s soul-deep, I think. That thing you have – it’s yours. You just have this way of looking at the world – like every single moment counts and you’re experiencing it all for the first time – and I thought, strangely, I could be happy with my lot, if I were to experience it right along with you. You’d have enough light for the both of us.”
“Ah,” Astarion said, intelligently. His heart didn’t beat anymore but for a moment, he could have sworn something contracted inside his chest. “Well, to be fair, I am experiencing it for the first time, more or less. It’s not all sunshine and rainbows, you know. Actually, there’s no sunshine at all.”
“I know.” Gale sounded genuinely sad for him. As if he hadn’t just offered him words Astarion would remember until the end of days. “A rather rough hand on all counts, I imagine. That’s why – understand, I’d never demand you stay. It’d be a crime to chain you to one place when you finally get to run free. But I do worry. You leave for tendays or months at a time and I don’t hear a thing. If something were to happen–”
“If something were to happen, I would handle it.”
“Yes, until you wouldn’t. The other time you showed up with your ear bitten off and you didn’t explain a single thing about it.”
He rolled his eyes.
“It grew back, didn’t it? No harm done.”
“That’s not the point!”
The library, spacious as it was, seemed to swallow the end of his words. It left them both frozen in the aftermath.
Gale shrank back, as if scared by his own shouting.
“Sorry. That was – I’m rather ruining my own claim, aren’t I?”
Astarion had nothing to say to that. He watched, cautious, as Gale pulled away his hands. Drove them through his hair.
“And look at me,” he went on, huffing in disbelief, “making the whole thing about myself and what I stand to gain from you. A rather selfish way of declaring affection, isn’t it? Gods damn it.”
In all his years, Astarion had seen plenty of misery. His old hunting ground had been the metaphorical rock bottom and his pick of lovers boiled down to the unfortunates that haunted it. He’d known this type of self-defeat before. He’d gone to bed with it.
In that sense, Gale Dekarios was nothing new. Just another man consumed with his own cycles while the world spun on, uncaring. Convinced, to the point of self-loathing, that he himself was a problem to be solved. Worse even, he thought that the problem was a finite one, that there was some solution at the end of it. Some state of perfection and the safety in it.
He scoffed.
“So - we’re selfish creatures, you and I. What about it? I certainly don’t mind . You shouldn’t weep and moan over it, either. You know, I never thought you someone who planned to lead a toothless life. If that is where you’re headed, dear, don’t count on me keeping you company. I can find enough self-pity on my own.”
Gale frowned.
“I’m trying to be better. More… mindful. I thought you’d want that for me.”
“You stupid, ridiculous man. What I’m trying to say is I like you just fine as you are. Only as you are.” Astarion jabbed a finger into his chest, lest someone think he was in any way soft. He let Gale take a moment to digest his words; it felt important that he understood. “You’re not content with your life. If you were, you wouldn’t be crawling out of your skin trying to find something to nourish you. You can do better. You will do better. But not by making yourself smaller. You need to take the space you’re owed.”
“I’m hardly–”
“Your department does not value you enough. You have more talent and experience than the lot of them put together,” he continued. “You said it yourself, didn’t you? They spend so long teaching a singular school of magic in isolation that they forget that the Weave in its purest form does not belong to any school alone. There’s a reason you were Chosen. Forget teaching, that’s a different skillset – but they should let you head the research. The Assistant Dean is a demented fool on the verge of retirement, is he not? You could easily have his position, if you play your cards right.”
The expressions on Gale’s face flickered by too quickly to identify. Astarion didn’t need to read his face, though. His body showed all the truth of it.
“...I didn’t realize you’d been listening to my ramblings so carefully.”
“Your workplace woes are scandalously entertaining, love. And as it happens, I have an exceptional memory for drama.”
Gale shook his head.
“Of course you do. It’s moot, though. The Blackstaff will never appoint me Assistant Dean.”
“But you want it,” Astarion goaded and enjoyed watching Gale’s eye twitch.
“I shouldn’t.”
“But you do.”
“... Gods damn it . You’re incorrigible. Yes, alright, the thought has crossed my mind.” Gale groaned, casting his eyes upwards in a silent apology. “Mystra help me, I learned nothing. I know how that story ends but it seems like I must do it all over again.”
“Must you? I don’t think so. Chasing what you want doesn’t have to mean disaster. We shall make sure of that.”
“We?”
Astarion smiled. He leaned forward, balancing himself by gripping Gale’s knees. He tried to be mindful of his claws but then, teasingly, he couldn’t help digging them in just for a brief moment, just until he heard Gale’s breath hitch.
This time, the man did not push him off.
“We,” he confirmed, breathing it against his lips. This close, he could feel him shudder. This close, he could count every freckle and layer in his dark, shining eyes and wanted to keep on looking until he could see even more. “I’ll gladly help you be satisfied with your lot, but just for saying what you said about me, I think you deserve better. I’d see you shine with light of your own, hm?”
With that, he had him. He knew he did. There was always a set of words that did the trick.
Warm hands drew him closer, exploring down his shoulder blades and settling on the small of his back with utmost gentleness. There was no kissing; just the harrowing, uninterrupted lock of their eyes but that was enough. It was heat, it was pleasure, not love perhaps but a mutual restlessness – and he felt his body freeze.
It’s just Gale, he told himself. Harmless, lovely, brilliant Gale. You wanted this.
But of course, it didn’t seem to matter one bit.
“Astarion?”
Gale let him go without complaint when he pulled back. His hands hung in the air, inviting but he didn’t press.
“Are you – Oh. Was that your sex thing? The one you mentioned?”
Astarion rubbed his mouth in what he hoped was a casual motion. His stomach was turning. If he had a heartbeat, he knew it’d be pounding.
Or perhaps it was just the sound of Gale’s own heart beating.
Or perhaps it was just the sound of a heavy staff against a stone floor.
Tap, tap, tap. The sound of dread. Tap, tap, tap.
He closed his eyes.
Waterdeep, he told himself. Not back there. Don't look back.
“...Please don’t refer to it as a sex thing again. It makes me sound prepubescent.” He pinched his cheek and furrowed his brow. The sensation of his own cold fingers tugging at his skin seemed to come with delay, like reality itself had gotten a little out of breath. But he was there; it wasn’t that bad. He could still salvage this.
“Of course. Are you – What do you need me to do?”
Astarion waved his hand vaguely. Who knew, even. He wanted for Gale to vanish and he wanted him to never stop holding him.
“...Let’s do this some other day. It’s rather late for you, isn’t it? We wouldn’t want you to be one grumpy wizard tomorrow. The future of wizardry can’t take that hit.”
Gale looked like he wanted to object. Or perhaps, even more harrowingly, like he wanted to talk about it. In the end, he did neither.
He worried his lip between his teeth, a bad habit Cazador would have trained out of him if he got his hands on him. But Cazador was dead. And Cazador had never even learned Gale’s name; he’d never get to rip a single bad habit from him. Gale would never die, choking through a ruined throat. Astarion was getting lost in his thoughts. It was either that, or the choking disappointment.
He stood up abruptly, smoothing down his shirt. It was a new one; the last one had been irreparably damaged by a Dragonborn sorcerer with a fetish for fire. It still struck Astarion as blatantly unfair that his skin would grow back but his clothes were, once lost, lost forever.
“Wait.” Gale reached for his hand then thought better of it. His fingers dangled there, helplessly. An invitation. “...If you want to, you could join. Er, that is, in resting. Just resting, to be clear. There’s something I want to show you.”
It was all so endearingly genuine. An open offer – it crossed Astarion’s mind to refuse it, to use this final moment to keep his dignity and walk away.
He took the hand instead.
The thing Gale had wanted to show him was the sun.
It was just an illusion; just light without warmth. But his eyes watered anyway.
His wizard was a master of his craft, in truth – not that Astarion had ever had any reason to doubt that. The scenery he’d conjured looked indisputably real . The tree branches above, fluttering in the wind. The soft grass around them, moving just right and completely masking that they were actually lying on a bed in an unlit room. The boulders and the bushes of different sizes, breaking up the monotony of the scene. The city down below, so clear he felt as if he could see the people buzzing down the streets.
Best of all, he had the sense not to try and give him flowers.
“This was a favourite spot of mine, when I was a boy.” Gale smiled to himself as he spoke. Or perhaps he smiled in the memory and his face had simply followed suit. “Mother used to force me to go on these walks. I was indoors too much, she said. I’d mold and shrivel like an old lemon. So we’d go outside of the city and I was strictly forbidden from taking more than a single book. They’d be too heavy to carry, she said. She wouldn’t help if I went and encumbered myself.”
“Must have been an agony for you.”
“It was.” He chuckled. “I was not the kind of child that was happy to go along with what others decided was best for me. But to be honest, it all grew on me. I may have been unwilling but the memories I have are nothing but fond – there was the one time Mother accidentally sat on an ant hill. Or the time we saw the most spectacular lizard and I could not wait to get back home so I could look it up in my encyclopedia and identify it. Even as an adult I found the time to return here, now and then. Not often enough, probably. I wish I could show you in reality.”
Astarion said nothing. Let him keep his fantasies.
“Maybe one day,” Gale went on, undeterred. “I’m certain there’s bound to be a way to keep the sun from harming you. It’s just a matter of figuring it out.”
“How long can you keep this up?” Astarion asked instead. “Not while you sleep, right?”
“Ah. No, I’m afraid not. But I don’t mind staying up a little, truly.”
It was odd, lying side by side like this, not even touching. They ought to be listening to the birdsong but all that his ears could pick up was the hum of the Weave, echoing around the four walls he could not see. Astarion wondered if this was how children felt, having sleepovers – then wondered where the idea came from. Had he done that once? Was there a nagging mother and a childhood full of small, insignificant adventures somewhere in his past?
What a silly train of thought.
He turned over to the side, facing Gale. The grass moved subtly, but did not bend as it should. Under it all, it still felt like the soft, feathery mattress Gale preferred.
“No need. Go to sleep.”
Gale hesitated and Astarion didn’t need the tadpole to know what was on his mind.
“It’s beautiful,” he told him. “Thank you for showing me this. But I’m tired and I’d like to get some rest.”
This was a lie; he didn’t know why he lied. The night was his time to live his limited approximation of a life. He didn’t exactly want to waste it lying down in bed.
But that was exactly what he did, marveling just how easily Gale fell asleep even next to him. Even knowing all he knew. He hadn’t even complained that Astarion brought a knife with him, hadn’t said a word when he set it shamelessly between the two of them – and for his part, Astarion didn’t know if that was a test or not.
How strange it was, to watch a human at rest and know they’d survive the night. Dreaming seemed to be such a restless activity. It was truly a wonder they got anything from it at all. Gale’s breathing hitched at moments and deepened at others. His eyes moved behind his eyelids. His lips were slightly open and after a bit, he started snoring. It was graceless. It was the sweetest thing he’d ever seen.
And without the Orb’s corrupting influence, his body smelled like a feast.
It would have been so easy; years ago, he wouldn’t have thought twice. Now though, the last thing he wanted to do was to ruin the moment.
Somewhere during that restless night, Astarion made up his mind. Even though it failed to be a miraculous exception to his damage, he wanted to keep this.