Blowmance

by DickBaggins

Summary:

Astarion meets the de-facto blow job queen of Blackstaff, an unassuming but popular grad student with the most luminous brown eyes.

Maybe one day he'll even unstop that pretty mouth long enough to get the guy's name.

Notes:

This started off as tags I used on tumblr for Gale: 'the blow job queen of blackstaff'. Others noticed and now it's a whole au! There's an alternate take on this au here and calolily draws some beautiful art of it too!

fyi, later chapters will feature multiple partners but they are unnamed and the focus remains on the main relationship.

Chapter 1

Stunning campus. Lush green foliage and never-ending clusters of trees, even among the bustling city. It reminds Astarion of home, of Evereska, and the university he spent four years clawing his way through.

Less competition, here, in Waterdeep.

But everything is so much busier. Bigger. It’s as exciting as it is strange.

Hence signing up for this campus tour.

He stands a little away from the crowd, watching them all in turns, over the square rims of his sunglasses. Freshmen, obviously, some of them. Others older, graduate students, like him. So much nervous energy and he hates that it rubs off on him. Adds to his already nervous energy. He can’t stop fiddling with his clothes, readjusting his posture. Fixing his hair behind a pointed ear. And on, and on.

“Quite the turnout,” someone says, moving beside him. Nearly too close and he means to turn and say something, to warn them off, but he’s greeted with an impossibly bright, casual smile. Sun shines off glossy brown hair, off the loose strands that frame his face and the others pulled back into a messy tangle at the nape of his neck. The full but trimmed beard says he must be older. Not, thank gods, a freshman.

Maybe he’ll let him stay close, then. Nearly shoulder to shoulder.

“I thought these tours were - what did the flyer say? Intimate?”

“Mm, it did indeed. I suppose that depends on one’s definition of intimate, in the end.”

“Mine is not a throng of over-excited students, typically.” He’s too bitchy and it’s hardly on purpose but he can’t help it; another annoying thing born of his nerves.

And the stranger laughs and it’s the most stunning sound he’s heard all week. Low and rich, with a hearty clap on the shoulder. And his eyes crinkle and they’re the lightest brown he’s ever seen. Maybe it’s a trick of the sunny day. He can’t be sure, but he can’t stop staring, either.

His mouth, too. Slightly stained red and Astarion lets his mind drift wondering why. A second later, there’s a shiny round lollipop touching those lips and the staring gets worse. The way his mouth wraps around the candy, the way it glosses up his lips. So definite and deliberate. And chased with a hint of his pink tongue before he talks again.

“So where are you from, then? Let me guess, some small town, hm? Somewhere…south-east, some glorious forested enclave? The city’s too much sometimes but this campus is a lovely little oasis in the middle of all that hustle and bustle. I think you’ll particularly enjoy the arboretum.”

Oh but he likes to talk, doesn’t he? And there’s something about it, so casual and friendly. So easy and confident. Astarion leans back against the concrete planter he’s resting on and, unseen, lets his eyes rake further over this stranger.

Undeniably handsome, for starters. Svelte, under the tight t-shirt and the knee-length light-wash denim that snugly hugs his thighs. Leaving very little to the imagination.

He wouldn’t mind seeing more of this stranger. So, he decides he might as well be honest.

“I’m from Evereska,” Astarion answers, finally, but his eyes remain fixed, fixated, on the sliver of skin between the t-shirt and the waistband. The dark hair there, the low-rise of the shorts. The sun even catches that hair and sets it shining.

How shameless.

Especially when his eyes go wide and he gasps, turning fully and grasping at Astarion’s arm. His eyes flicker to the grasp and then regard the man over his shades. How utterly familiar he’s being.

Astarion is surprised to find he hardly cares. He even likes it. A little.

“I wrote my undergrad thesis on blade dancers! Oh gods, I wish you’d been around last year, I could've picked your brain clean! Maybe we can get together later and you can tell me what it’s really like? I’m dying to hear about it.”

Oh, he’s so earnest. So sweet. And his eyes shine with something so…infectious.

What must his mouth taste like? All candied, sugar-shiny like that?

“I…sure,” Astarion blinks, blinks a few times and readjusts his shades.

“Perfect! Anyway, better get going,” he says, and nods towards the throng of milling students. A half turn back and he’s in Astarion’s space again, closer than before. Almost close enough to feel his warmth but just short of it.

Astarion takes a deep breath and doesn’t move. Watches.

He’s being studied, up close. Picked apart under those luminous brown eyes. Eaten up by his grin and the achingly casual hand on his chest. Dead center. Not that that means anything.

His heart flutters like he’s waiting for a kiss and it never comes. Instead, the stranger taps at his lips with the spit-shiny candy and like some stunned, obedient thing, Astarion parts his lips around it.

This is what he tastes like, then. And his eyes crinkle at the edges with the wider grin and his fingertips dig in a second, to Astarion’s chest, before he whirls away again.

And in a sudden, easy turn, his voice modulates loud enough that everyone else shuts up and takes notice and gods, of course, of course he’s the one leading this stupid little tour.

He says his name and Astarion misses it completely. Focus narrows to this taste, this silly gift and what it all means. It isn’t subtle, exactly, but shockingly fast. And in broad daylight. And gods, he must taste incredible from the inside out, too.

It’s a wonder Astarion manages to remember where the arboretum is at all, let alone anything else on campus.

Chapter 2

Summary:

The bright eyes, the utter spectacle.

A party. Some frat he doesn’t know the name of. Not the first he’s been invited to on campus but the first Astarion’s decided to go to. And no regrets, really.

It’s as chaotic as he likes. Drunk students everywhere. A sticky floor, a mysterious vat of some ruby-colored mixture of gods only know what. Music loud enough that he feels it in his chest and a writhing mass of bodies twisting and turning to the sounds.

He knows a few people now, a week into classes. He’s greeted them with an easy familiarity but strays away to watch things on his own.

He’s even thinking of trying that mystery punch.

Why the hells not?

A handful of coins in their little donation box gets him a red plastic cup and he ladles it out himself, catching the scent of fruit and the absurdly strong smell of liquor. A few little rainbow gummy creatures splash along with half-melted ice. Swimming around in the pool of unnatural red. He sniffs at it closer and sighs.

Might as well.

Turning around, sipping, he jostles into a body. Shirtless, all warm skin and he puts a hand on the shoulder on reflex, swallowing quick so he can sputter an apology.

But by all the gods above and below, that concoction is just disgusting, and he coughs instead. Awful, embarrassing, face pink as the stranger veers around and - oh!

It’s all the hair, first. Loose so it’s still settling around his face as he turns around. Long so it kisses the tops of his shoulders, so it tickles Astarion’s hand, still there. There’s just so much of it. Voluminous, shiny deep brown, wavy. Either wavy or simply wild. Either way. It’s stunning.

He’s stunning. For the second time.

And then it’s his eyes. Big, brown, squinting for a second. Widening, in recognition, and that handsome face splits apart in an easy smile.

“Evereska!” which isn’t his name, but it’s close enough.

Astarion wipes at his mouth with the back of his hand and nods, still coughing.

“Oh, the punch got you!” brown-eyes says, and he grabs at the cup, taking a long drink of his own. He swallows, waits, and there it is, a little cough of his own.

Somehow, it makes Astarion feel a hundred times better as the cup’s thrust back into his hand.

“Dear gods, that is something, isn’t it? Like gasoline mixed with fruit and sloshed over ice. C’mere, dance with me.”

And he’s pulling Astarion’s arm before he even has time to find his voice, to say no, thank you, because he doesn’t really dance but in the whirlwind of the party, and looking at the back of this familiar stranger, he goes.

The back is the same view he had on the tour. But he was far more covered up, back then.

Now, he’s shirtless, with only a pair of extraordinarily small shorts low on his hips. Dangerously low, really. The pert swell of his ass fills them out but it’s too dark to really make out the words there.

And too fast, they’re in the throng of people and brown-eyes turns and he’s still grinning with his mouth stained a little red and his eyes just fucking sparkling and when his hands latch on to Astarion’s belt-loops to tug him in, it’s clear this dancing thing is a facade.

They’re the same height. So it’s nothing at all to press together. For the stranger’s mouth to find his in a crush. There’s a hum on his artificially sweet lips. And this close to his heat, their bodies move together slow and close and he supposes it might be considered dancing, if you really stretched the definition.

Astarion closes his eyes and wishes for a free hand. One isn’t enough, squeezing the man’s shoulder, lithely muscled. He immediately wants more, even as fast as this is going. So tremendously fast.

He opens his mouth to breathe and gets an artful twist of tongue instead. A deep, sticky dive that he automatically strokes with his own. Gods, but brown-eyes tastes incredible. The punch, yes, but something underneath all of that. A semi-familiar tang, salty, sweet, and he spends the rest of the thumping song trying to figure it out.

It ends, and the stranger, who isn’t really a stranger now that they’ve had their tongues in each other’s mouths, Astarion figures, sinks both hands into his pristine platinum curls and grins again. Beautiful, hypnotic.

“Do you want to go somewhere with me?”

And another press of his slim, heated body seems to sear right through Astarion’s fashionable clothes. Their hips slot and the groan is embarrassing, uncontrollable. An answer all on its own but he says, “Yes,” anyway, just to be clear.

Another kiss. Dire, cloying, hot. Maddeningly good, the things he does with his tongue. Maddeningly fast and it’s over, and he’s being pulled through the crowd again.

Brown-eyes seems to know everyone. So many greetings, cheek-kisses, on their way through the party, and Astarion figured somewhere would be a bedroom, walls and privacy but it’s an overstuffed maroon chair in a darkened corner of some den, illuminated with fairy lights.

It’s dark enough.

But there’s still people milling around. One of them throws him a wink that seems extraordinarily knowing, but he doesn’t have much time to parse through it before brown-eyes gives him one swift push.

And he gets the idea. And he goes with it, falling down onto the chair and bracing for the man to get in his lap. A continuation, perhaps, of the dance floor’s activities.

But, no.

He’s on his knees, instead.

Hands trailing up Astarion’s soft black trousers. And down again, up again. A wicked grin on his handsome face.

“I’ve been wanting to do this since I saw you, last week,” he says, low and breathy and his hands speed over Astarion’s fly and his hips cant up with the motion, with the surprise of it. “I can just tell when I look at a person, that they’re going to have a gorgeous cock. It’s kind of a talent.”

He doesn’t know what to say. He frowns a little, and finally puts the stupid plastic cup down.

Astarion’s got a feeling he’s really going to have to focus here.

And gods, he wants to anyway. Wants to give brown-eyes his full attention, among other things.

“A man of many talents then, hm?” he says, and it isn’t quite as smooth as he intended, but it widens the other man’s grin before he leans in.

Brown-eyes nuzzles at his dick through his trousers and heaves a contented sigh. It spills out hot over him and his cock twitches in base anticipation. A hum next, and he wonders if the stranger felt it.

“You’re about to find out, Evereska.”

And he’s about to tell the man his name, and ask for his, but there’s no time.

Hands grasp his waistband and tug and there’s a mess, a crazy flurry of motion as his trousers and underwear end up around his ankles. And a shoe comes off too and he’s nearly naked, now, except for the puddle of his clothes around one foot and his thin white t-shirt.

No time to ruminate over how he’s nearly naked in public. Surely people are watching. But he can’t seem to care too much.

No, not when brown-eyes has his hands on his thighs again, clutching and watching his cock fatten up under the attention.

Another sigh before he leans in, mouth first, and runs his lips over the side. Down to the root, up again to his dark pink foreskin. And his breath, the whispered, “so gorgeous, I knew it,” ghosts hot over his already heating up skin, and his dick twitches, seeking more of that mouth.

A second of incredible anticipation, feeling all that heat, watching the beautiful open mouth, waiting for the tongue - and then brown-eyes pulls back.

“Oh, I almost forgot! Here,” and in the low-light, Astarion watches him fish his phone out of those tiny shorts, and he stretches his arm up with a smirk. “Can you take a video?”

Astarion blinks and takes the phone and blinks again.

The stranger takes the stunned silence for trepidation and his smirk widens.

“I’ll send you a copy, alright? I just like to see it, you know?” and he sits back on his heels, whirling his hair up into a bouncy mound on the top of his head, secured with one of the many things around his wrists Astarion hadn’t noticed yet. Bracelets, hair ties. A few rings on his fingers too and, as he settles back and starts recording, he notices the low lights glinting off of the bars through his nipples, too.

“Gods, you’re gorgeous,” he mutters, widening his legs, watching the view through the phone’s screen for a second. The low lights glitter against his brown eyes, his brown hair. The tan of his skin, the trimmed beard. The spit-shiny mouth set in a lazy, content smile.

And then, the real thing catches his attention, because the real thing isn’t looking at the phone at all but at him. And he winks and it isn’t cheesy at all, somehow. He winks and smiles wider, and nuzzles his close-clipped beard against Astarion’s cock, an altogether new sensation.

Rough, soft, at the same time. And watching it, too, watching it so closely adds an extra layer to whatever the hells this is. A shameless open display of depravity, but then, that’s just the sort of thing Astarion left his enclave for in the first place.

The nuzzling goes on. With contented sighs, with brown-eyes’ hands roaming over his skin. His fingers are smooth, soft, tireless in their exploration and the sight, the difference of pearl-pale skin against nut-brown is more beautiful than he could have imagined.

Not, of course, that he’s been imagining this.

He’s been thinking on the stranger a few times. Remembering the familiarity of the candy shared between them, before names. Looking, maybe, for snatches of the unruly brown hair in crowds and coming up short. But this is further than he’d let his mind wander. Further and filthier.

Astarion’s eyes flicker to the screen, the seconds ticking and surely it’s been more than a minute, but no. Less. Forty-five seconds and just that beard scraping against his sensitive pink shaft has him leaking out and twitching, has his other hand reaching for all that brown hair to give it a playful tug.

“If you need some direction, darling, I’ll be happy to provide,” Astarion says, half a joke, half an attempt to speed things along. To lessen his own impending embarrassment.

There’s a bright flare in those brown eyes. Rich, deep, and a smirk tugs up the corner of his glossy mouth. It’s better in reality, not through the phone screen. Magnetic and luminous.

It’s a smirk that Astarion feels in his guts; he’s going to eat those words, and it’s going to be very soon.

Immediately, almost.

A hand skims down his stomach. Under the dire hardness, turning to grip him slow and a little weird, in that position. Thumb at his foreskin, teasing it up, down, so the cool air licks at his shiny, sensitive tip. And then, the mouth, still smirking, joins the thumb and sucks at the barely loose skin. Tugs it into his mouth.

And he’s still looking up, past the camera, straight at Astarion. There’s another jolt of unbridled pleasure just from that, from the staring, from the heat in the gaze.

He sucks back harder and Astarion nearly bows off the chair. Already, already, it’s too soon to be acting so foolish. Everything feels so slow and drawn out but it’s not, not at all, barely a minute since the video started, maybe another minute since brown-eyes sank to his knees.

How strange time bends when you’re looking into someone’s eyes.

Then that tongue creeps out and it’s shot through with metal, just like the nipples, the navel, the ears.

Oh and where else, Astarion wonders? Wonders if he’ll even manage to get there, tonight. Or later. Or if this is some delicious one-off.

And then he wonders nothing at all as that tongue tucks into his foreskin and presses as a hard point against his leaking slit. And it twirls and rubs and then there’s that stud flickering too, battering against his sensitive skin and it’s so horrifically achingly clear that brown-eyes more than knows what he’s doing.

Astarion’s holding his breath, hasn’t realized it until he needs to take another one. He lets it out and gasps in anew but the air seems so charged, so hot between them. The breath does nothing but start him panting.

It’s a show, what brown-eyes is doing to him. Beautiful and awful, fast and too slow all in one. He’s still staring, his eyes crinkling around the edges, while his tongue runs laps over Astarion’s head, teasing out more and more wetness. And another show altogether when he suddenly sucks.

And sucks, and sucks.

And travels, easily, the length of Astarion’s rigid cock.

He’s watching, rapt, as the whole thing notches down brown-eyes’ throat, and he buries his nose flat against his pelvis. He didn’t even choke. No, he moans around the seated length and his beautiful eyes flutter softly closed. His hands clutch Astarion’s hips.

“Oh, you fantastic show-off,” Astarion gasps, unable to take his eyes from the scene. From the sweet, glossy mouth stretched obscenely around the very root of his cock. Unable, even, to look up when someone in the doorway laughs.

“He’s the biggest show-off on campus,” a woman’s voice calls, over the soft din of the party, rough and a little slurred around the edges. “Every time I pass by this chair, I swear he’s got someone new down his pretty little throat.”

And then the party recedes back, again.

But this new information, it’s delicious.

Astarion tightens his fingers in that beautiful hair, gives a little tug and feels a moan around his shaft as something of a reward.

“So I’m not your first, tonight?” he asks, low, amused. Somehow, not entirely surprised.

Brown eyes blink open and answer without speaking, the slightest nod, another clutch of his stunning throat.

“Or even your second?”

A no, he supposes. And all of it caught on video, just as brown-eyes wants. Hm.

“Did you record the others, too?”

He doesn’t answer that, but he does start moving again, back, a long wet trip out of his throat. All drool and precum and his glossy sweet mouth panting and a hand attaching to Astarion’s cock and stroking slow and thorough.

“I’ll send them to you, if you want. I like seeing it all, later.”

Only the faintest hint of blush at the admission, the faintest glow in his tanned cheeks, ghosting over the bridge of his straight nose.

He’s so delightfully earnest about all of this.

Astarion laughs after a second, low and fond and, “What a gorgeous cock-slut I’ve got here. Do you live on your knees? Dance around every party with a belly full of that foul punch and all the loads you’ve swallowed down? I assume you do swallow, yes?”

An emphatic nod, another cheeky grin. “Unless you don’t want that. I’ll happily take it across the face, or anywhere else you’d prefer.”

“Gods,” Astarion sighs.

The bright eyes, the utter spectacle.

The entire conversation, captured in excruciatingly high definition.

And again, he means to ask for his name. Means to introduce himself properly but brown-eyes is back down on his cock, tongue first, flickering over the fresh slick, twisting around the ridge of his head and snaking down the vein and then the heat of his mouth joins the ever-searching tongue and there’s nothing to do but groan and swallow the rest of his words.

How beautiful. How hungry.

And how easily he takes it. Even when Astarion tugs at his hair again, tugs him still and shoves his hips up. An attempt at control and brown-eyes goes so easily with it, so readily complying. More than complying; his eyes sink shut in some kind of perfect bliss. His mouth a perfect slick circle, tight and warm and accepting. Even when the head kisses the back of his tongue and plunges for his throat.

None of this is a problem, for brown-eyes. He accepts every thrust with enthusiasm. With choked moans and sweet eyes and grasping fingers. Silently, sweetly, begging for more. And Astarion means to give him just about everything he wants.

More than once, people stop to gawk. Never interlope, but for a brush of their fingers in that rich brown hair, or a pat on his shoulder, or a wink at Astarion. A few words of encouragement, here and there.

It’s amusing and he means to ask after it once he’s emptied his balls.

Which is happening sooner than later. Especially once brown-eyes gets a clutch at them in his deft palm. Tugging and rolling, squeezing at the full sac, damp with drool that’s fallen down. Oh, he’s an expert at all of this and Astarion relaxes against it, lets him take the lead for the final stretch.

“Redundant, telling you how good you are,” he huffs, leaning back against the chair, letting brown-eyes work his mouth up and down on his own. He’s picked up the rhythm perfectly, without prompting, but he pulls off for a moment.

That slack, he picks up with his other hand, stroking fast and tight over Astarion’s spit-slick cock.

“Tell me anyway,” brown-eyes pants, an edge of roughness in his voice, from all that hard work his throat’s been doing.

It’s nearly a plea, with his eyes glittering soft and wanting and the longing hits Astarion squarely in the chest like a throb that rivals his cock’s. It’d be foolish not to praise him, now.

“You’re doing so good, taking my cock down your beautiful throat,” Astarion murmurs, leaning closer, leaning hunching over him. Free hand out of his hair, skimming down his cheek to thumb at his swollen bottom lip, to push inside and feel that head he’s become so achingly familiar with.

Brown-eyes preens under the praise. A hitch felt in his breath, a watery glow about his luminous eyes.

He likes it. He likes it a lot. He likes it so much, Astarion nearly trips over himself to lavish more.

More, about his mouth, about the tight pink stretch of it. About how perfect it feels sinking down and down. How perfect it looks, obscene and whorish and beautiful just the same. On and on about his prowess and it’s nothing brown-eyes hasn’t heard before, Astarion’s sure of it, but it still seems to get him going more than anything else.

He stops short at praising his eyes.

It feels, somehow, too intimate to say all the things he’s been thinking about those. How he remembers what they looked like outside, in the broad daylight. How he loves the fan of lashes when he half-shuts them, when they make shadows on his skin. How deep and rich they look now, in the glittering low lights and how, even though swallowing is the clear preference here, Astarion’s dying to see a load - his own or one of those numerous others - dripping off his minky lashes, reddening up his clear brown irises.

Too far, that.

Too far, that he’s only been thinking of him, in the absence of a name, as those beautiful eyes. No, he doesn’t need to tell him any of that.

Instead, fingers threaded through his hair again and a tug, a tug of his lovely mouth off of his cock that leaves him panting and drooling and even, Astarion thinks, whining, although it’s hard to tell over the swell of the thumping music.

“Tongue,” Astarion says, panting himself, artful words falling away in the face of just wanting to finish after what seems like an eternity, but, he knows from the accuracy of the ticking video clock, isn’t more than five.

Dutifully, brown-eyes sticks out his tongue. A fresh slick of drool falls off of it and Astarion thrusts against it, rubs his aching cock against the warm, wet appendage. How good it’ll look on video, later. How lewd and showy, on both ends. And still, those fingers tug sharp and perfect at his balls, a neat little distraction that almost ends him right then and there.

And brown-eyes curls that tongue effortlessly around him, cradles his messy-wet head so sweetly. Another whine, maybe, over the music. Maybe not. The eagerness shows anyway, in his eyes, in his fingers clutching, in every part of his face and his body, perfectly attuned to Astarion.

And, “finish me,” comes out hoarser than he’d like, a little more broken and a lot less commanding, but he feels that resulting groan against him, a stunningly deep vibration while brown-eyes sinks down again. Messy and loose and then, with a suck, blissfully, heavenly tight.

It’s nothing at all for him to move so fast, apparently. He speeds to it, twisting one hand around Astarion’s shaft as he goes, eased by all that drool, all that precum. Nothing at all to moan like a champion whore around it. Astarion feels those vibrations too, in the jumpy pit of his stomach.

Shadows move behind brown-eyes. People still meandering in and out. Giggling, talking. Watching.

And he doesn’t care. Astarion doesn’t care, and the man on his knees in front of him doesn’t care, and he’s never not cared about something like that before. Amazing, how his world shrinks down in the face of this.

This mind-altering blow job.

In short order, he’s thrusting into the man’s pliant mouth. Crashing against each other in a slick, hurried mess and he nearly drops the camera, resting on his stomach, with the final push down into that gloriously open throat. He comes there, deep, fast, white-knuckles on brown-eyes’ jaw, not letting him move an inch.

He still feels those moans. Rippling over him, throbbing him harder and harder and he pulls out for one last glorious splash against that tongue, again dutifully sticking out.

His head spins, after that. Darkening at the edges, dimming everything but the man on his knees as he launches off of his knees. The phone taken from his fingers, his shirt shoved up but it won’t stay, so he ends up with it clutched between his teeth.

And brown-eyes on his lap, his eyes desperate and wild and close as their foreheads slam together.

And even better than all of that, the hot drag of the other man’s cock against his abs. Molten and iron-hard, slick and feverish, like the breath brown-eyes buffets him with, against his cheek, against his mournfully occupied mouth.

Astarion’s hands automatically reach for his hips and they’re busy, so busy, furtively thrusting. Sharp and quick, the shorts barely tugged down, only far enough to get his dick out, and did he do this with the rest of his quarry? Oh, he wonders. Maybe he’ll get to catch a look at it, sometime.

But, somehow, he doesn’t think so. Not from how wild he bucks. How pent up he seems. Eyes scrunched closed, searing breath, his fingers clutching Astarion’s shoulders, his neck, his hair. He can’t seem to stop moving and grasping.

Unasked for, Astarion reaches for the other man’s cock. Curls his fist around it. A fiery brand against his palm. A single thrust, a single throb and brown-eyes spills with a shout and a shudder and a hot, wet splash against his abs, across his chest.

Oh it’s beautiful, when he looks down. Dark pink-red slick wet and practically visibly throbbing as he rubs it against Astarion’s skin, over and over, his whole body slowing, still panting, twitching, gods, what a thing to see. To feel.

Brown-eyes wastes no time hunching again. Astarion can’t parse it for a second, for two, until that warm, wet tongue slides across his stomach. Cleaning up his own mess in broad, sweeping strokes, eager as he’d been before. Eager as he’d been this whole time, as eager for the end as the beginning, as the middle.

Astarion slides a hand into his hair and sighs, happily, contentedly. Even as his muscles twitch and jump under the attention. Brown-eyes works fast and thorough and it’s a job quickly finished. He grins, breathtaking, and tugs Astarion’s shirt from his teeth, where it bunches between them, to replace it with his tongue, instead.

Sodden and slick with his own cum, with traces, Astarion’s sure, of his too, but he opens his mouth and readily accepts it with a moan. With a hand on brown-eyes’ back to draw him closer until he feels the scrabble of chest hair against his smooth skin. Until he feels the other man’s heart pounding against his.

The filthy swap of saliva between them goes on for what feels like forever. A sweet, desperate kind of forever until, breathless, they both pull away and gasp and laugh.

What a moment.

He still doesn’t know this man’s name. And somehow, it doesn’t seem like a problem.

“You are very good,” Astarion tells him, for lack of anything else to say.

An easy smile, a hand carding through his curls, and, “I know. I love it.”

Simple and to the point and yes, Astarion can tell he does. Glowing under the attention, gleaming with a job well done as he tucks himself away, and slides off of Astarion’s lap.

Astarion dresses quick, a little more mindful of the eyes on them, now. The people filing in and out of this room between the other rooms, a busy thoroughfare and not the most secluded place for a bit of fun.

He’s just belted again when brown-eyes sinks back onto his lap and lavishes him with another deep, lingering kiss. His hands on his chest, clutching, his tongue searching, trying to sweep over every surface of Astarion’s mouth and before he has a chance to return the favor, he’s off again.

But with a breathless, “I like you,” curled up in a smile, as he works at one of the things wound around his wrist. Something lettered and beaded on stretchy elastic, and there’s the distraction of another kiss as he drags it up over Astarion’s hand and lays it against his wrist. It’s a little lose, there, warm from his skin, and he’s too dazzled, really, to care about anything but those eyes and that smile.

Too dazzled, still, to ask for name, number, anything that might help him find brown-eyes again, as a little crowd comes in and sweeps him away on a torrent of familiarity.

Somehow, Astarion’s sure he isn’t the first person to be left here, dazed and stupid. Doubtless he’ll be the last, either.

It isn’t until the next morning, cursing the sun streaming through his blinds, that he squints his eyes open and really sees the silly beaded bracelet loose on his wrist. Colorful plastic and in the center, tiny white beads with black letters spell out ‘I ♥ cock’.

He laughs, and his head hurts, and he drags the sheets over his head to blot out the light.

Maybe he’ll go to another party or two. What’s the harm?

Chapter 3

Summary:

The name seems fitting, for the whirlwind he’s stirred up in Astarion’s brain for the past month.

The arboretum isn’t quite as lovely as the Vine Vale but it makes a suitable canopy for a break. No tall pines and secret dells, but he finds a good number of benches along the semi-manicured pathway, and picks the one along the most overgrown foliage.

The sounds of the city, of the campus, completely recede here. There’s only birdsong and animal chatter, and now and then, the thump of footsteps. Most of them never wind down this particular path, and he’s glad.

A bit of solitude feels perfect. He curls up with a book, the first that’s not coursework in weeks. The first recreation he’s indulged in, outside of a whirlwind of parties. So many parties.

And he hasn’t seen brown-eyes again. And, worst of all, they never managed to exchange numbers, so that video is going mournfully unwatched.

Not that the vision in his head is being dulled by time, at all. He can’t seem to stop the forever rewinding track of it. Those luminous eyes, the dark flush of red across that sun-kissed skin. The effortless bob of his graceful throat, again and again and - gods, here he is, doing it again.

It invades his most peaceful moments. His busiest moments, too.

He’s sure he can put it all to rest if he just sees brown-eyes again. Learns his name, gets his number.

He’s even entertaining taking him out somewhere nice, but sometimes, when he remembers that ridiculous bracelet still clattering on his wrist, he isn’t so sure brown-eyes would appreciate something like that. Or even if he’d say yes.

He’s read the same paragraph thrice. Hasn’t internalized a single word. So much for the afternoon off. There’s an essay begging to be written and, throwing his head back with a groan, he wonders if that coursework might be a better distraction.

Something better winds down the secluded path.

He’s still staring up at the canopy, marking the glittering sun dancing on the full, rustling leaves, the book gently closing in his hands, when he hears the footsteps. A little heavy, a little crunchy, and definitely making for his direction.

It’s increasingly hard to be alone outside of his own room, and here it goes again.

Maybe if he pretends to be rapt by the flora, he’ll get some peace.

Leaves crunch ever closer. He slips his finger from the book, losing the page.

A shadow crawls over his face just before the friendly, warm laugh hits him.

Oh. What fate.

“Evereska! Fitting I’d find you out here!”

And of course that’s him, the subject of Astarion’s utter fascination in the two weeks since the party. The three since the tour. Since he tasted his mouth second-hand for the first time. Has he stopped thinking about it since then?

He blinks, brings his head up, focusing on the man before him.

Grinning, of course. Most of their brief encounters, he’s been smiling when his mouth hasn’t been full. His hair thrown back into one of those artless mounds again at the top of his head. Shirtless, sweating. Indecently small shorts yet again.

Whatever careful things Astarion’s held in his brain, on the tip of his tongue, for when he sees brown-eyes again fly straight out of his head and carry away on the sweet autumn breeze.

“What’s that you’re reading?” brown-eyes reaches for it and Astarion lets him. Fingers practically limp against the careless little tug. Hasn’t he noticed how tongue-tied he is? Or maybe brown-eyes doesn’t care at all. He doesn’t seem to care about much.

In the shafts of sunlight from the trees, the sweat on his face, on his chest, glitters. It hits the metal shot through his nipples, at his navel. In his ears, too. So well decorated for nearly being naked and surely he wouldn’t be cross about Astarion staring like this.

Isn’t that why he presents himself so? It must be.

“I’ve been looking for you,” Astarion says and winces, immediately. It sounds bad. Creepy, maybe. A little stalkerish. He scrunches his face up and starts again. “Not…looking, not like that, I just, maybe, expected to find you at a party again, and I haven’t. And you never gave me your number, you know.”

Brown-eyes shoots his eyebrows up. The smile dims a second and then he laughs, again, sweet and untroubled.

“I suppose I didn’t, did I? Bit of an oversight. Looking for me, hey?” and there’s amusement glittering in his eyes, there. Tugging the corner of his mouth in a smirk that ought to look cocky and not so indelibly handsome.

Astarion swallows and sits up and means to stand but there’s a hand square on his chest, while the other discards the book, carefully, beside him.

And reaches for his hair. It’s smooth, a smooth slip through his purposefully tousled curls. The heat of that hand, from the exertion, slides like sunlight across his skin and his head tips back, desperate for more of it as the grip moves off.

“I’m sorry you haven’t found me again. I tend to wander,” brown-eyes says, and the drop in his voice to something lower, sensual, nearly gravelly but just this side of smooth instead, churns up an unmistakable heat in Astarion’s guts. “I’m glad I’ve found you here, though. How beautiful you look in this forest.”

Already, his breath deepens. Surely brown-eyes feels it, with his warm palm against Astarion’s chest. Surely he feels the racing of his heart, too.

“You’re welcome to join me,” Astarion says. Attempting to be polite, stately, which is absurd.

The smirk widens. The hand on his chest clutches, harder, wrinkling his plain gray t-shirt, and then tugging.

“I have somewhere else in mind, actually. As lovely as this secluded little bench is, the forest has nicer places. Places no one ever goes, besides me.”

It’s impossible to say no to those eyes. To that look. He isn’t even pleading, he’s merely suggesting and Astarion’s sure he might go along with any number of things, as long as brown-eyes looked at him just-so.

“Is this finally the intimate part of that tour?” Astarion manages, letting the momentum tug him up. They press together and he hadn’t expected it so soon. But his hands flatten on brown-eyes’ hairy chest, the scrape of it against his smooth palms so lovely, so human and foreign. The heat of their breath mingling already threatens to ruin him.

The low laugh is what really does it, though.

“I suppose it is,” brown-eyes says, and the words are so close, Astarion swallows the heat of them, the breath they puffed out in. “I’ve never taken anyone else here. But I like you.”

And he’s said it before. And that came with a messy sticky kiss and this time, it comes with another kiss that’s pure heat instead. The heat of whatever’s been exerting brown-eyes, the heat that’s just there between them, the heat from the sunlight filtering through the leaves and settling against them.

How magical it seems, in that light. Wrapping up in it, feeling the heat of the other man against his chest, against his lips. Against his tongue, after a half-second. They both groan at once as the kiss deepens, another sure sign they’re on the same page. Even if they can’t manage to find each other for weeks on end.

I like you echoes in Astarion’s ears. The tone of it, the texture of the words. The fact he’s said it three bloody times in a row. They barely know each other and yet, there’s a sense that brown-eyes knows him all too well. Too intimately already, for meeting thrice, but not enough at the same time.

When they pull back for air, that’s in tandem too. Astarion blinks in the sunlight, in the face of those gorgeous laughing brown eyes. He watches them glitter in the sun, watches them crinkle in a careless, joyous chuckle. Still watching, when brown-eyes grabs his hand and, again, leads him away.

He shouldn’t keep doing this.

He wants to do nothing but this. Find himself led to wherever brown-eyes wants to take him.

It’s a semi-worn path behind the bench, winding through new growth trees, unkempt unlike the other ones, with their hard-packed dirt and trimmed-back branches. It’s riveting, following behind him again.

Like the tour, like the party.

Riveting, and not just for the view, although that alone is spectacular and maybe a little calculated.

The shorts, the folded over waistband sitting just an inch, half that, above the tantalizing swell of that pert ass. And clinging and falling barely below it. They’re soft blue, worn in, begging to be touched. Just like the rest of him.

“I don’t even know your name,” Astarion says, when he really ought to outright ask for it instead. But it’s so absurd. To share countless kisses. To be swept away again and again and not know who is doing the sweeping.

Except that’s not strictly true. Not at all.

He does know brown-eyes. He knows what his desperate whines sound like. Knows the throb of his cock against his skin, knows the heat of his flesh under his fingertips. Knows what the deepest corners of his mouth taste like.

Oh, what use is a name when you know all of that?

Does he even really want to put a name to him?

Another laugh, and brown-eyes cranes his head around. “Really? I gave it on the tour. Did you forget?”

“No, I…well, I was distracted, truth be told,” Astarion manages the excuse. A sharp tug brings brown-eyes by his side, instead of leading. “I spent most of the tour distracted, if you must know.”

“Oh? By what?”

And the grin is shameless, absurdly cocky, devastatingly hot.

“Trying to pry the taste of you off that candy,” Astarion answers, and that’s most of the truth. Hells, why not add the rest? “And, you know, your ass in those shorts was also very much on my mind.”

“Good. I’d hoped so.”

“Well?” Impatient, now. Flustered for admitting to those things.

Another laugh, again, and, “I’m Gale. Gale Dekarios.”

It seems fitting, for the whirlwind he’s stirred up in Astarion’s brain for the past month. He just nods and takes it in, replaces the stand-in moniker with the real thing, as the forest path narrows even further.

This looks more like the Vale, now. Thick and darker, and their shared gait slows. The sun thins and they press a little closer together, still hand in hand.

It feels alarmingly natural. The heat of Gale - Gale, that’s his name - against his palm. The wriggle of his finger against his wrist, finding the absurd little bracelet and giving it a snap.

“You’re still wearing this?” he asks, and it’s fond and sweet and surprised.

“I am,” Astarion says, and he ducks his head. “I didn’t see what it said until the next morning.”

“Which one did I give you?”

“Ah…the…well, it says, very plainly, I heart cock.” Halting, saying all of that out loud.

“Ooh, that’s a good one. True, too.”

“So I’ve gathered.”

He has questions, about that. He has a lot of them but what’s the right way to ask them? He wants to know how far this goes. This capriciousness. He wants to know in a very judgment-free way. Pure research, really.

“It’s not a problem, is it?” Gale asks and he blinks slowly, sweetly, lovely enough that even if it were a problem Astarion might answer in the negative on those eyes alone.

“Not at all. We aren’t, you know, anything besides acquaintances.”

“Oh, call us friends, please?”

“I just learned your name, Gale. You don’t even know mine.”

Those eyes again, big and pleading and Gale stops them, grabs his other hand and squeezes. “My name sounds so gorgeous in your accent. Will you say it again?”

A smile tugs at the corner of Astarion’s mouth. He hasn’t thought of having an accent at all. It’s light if it’s anything, the common tongue nearly as familiar to him as elven, but for Gale’s sake, he’ll say just about anything.

He leans closer, too. Makes it a whisper, makes the name come out all purposefully lilting. First and last, and it gets him another sweeping, impetuous kiss. Slower. Almost romantic, like this, as Gale’s hands wind around his shoulders and his warm mouth opens.

His skin is so warm, under Astarion’s fingers. They brush over his chest again. Brush teasingly past the piercings, where Gale jumps a little under the attention. And he settles the hands on his hips, on the very edges of his absurdly small shorts. Just for a second and then, he has to, Astarion grabs two big handfuls of that gorgeous ass and he squeezes while Gale huffs and melts further into his mouth.

The forest sings around them. The birds, the fauna. There’s a trickling stream somewhere close, maybe even a waterfall. It’s a beautiful day and this, here, has made it all the more stunning.

The grabbing, too, the shameless groping, brings them closer together and that warmth seeps through their contact, heating Astarion’s skin through his clothes.

Gods, he wishes he was wearing less clothes.

“I wasn’t even going to ask your name,” Gale says, against his mouth, pouring the words inside breathlessly. “I…normally, I don’t care, but, will you tell me? I’m longing to hear it.”

A little frown, as those words itch at his brain.

But later, he’ll unpack them. Later.

For now, he fights the frown into a smooth smirk and brushes his nose against Gale’s. Teases his fingers against the waistband of his shorts again, and they’d be so so easy to whisk off.

And in his best, most accented, haughty tone, he says, “Astarion Ancunin,” against Gale’s parted, panting mouth and feels the shuddering breath against him.

“Gods, that’s just so fucking beautiful. You’re beautiful. I’m going to suck your brains out of your dick against a tree, you’re so beautiful.”

A shock, for a second, but he laughs, in the end.

Because, why not? Why not let him, again? What’s the point of questions at all, when he can have that?

“I wonder what you’d give up if I started speaking elven then, hm?” with an arched brow.

And he flushes, a deep, deliciously dark red. It spreads across his face and Astarion feels it, that extra heat, everywhere they’re touching, in the skin under his fingertips, in the breath against his mouth.

No answer to it.

No answer but Gale’s hands on his chest, pushing him gently back and there’s a thick tree trunk there, exactly what he’d wanted. Perfect. Astarion goes with it, thuds against the trunk and watches, rapt as ever, as Gale - gods what a perfect fucking name - sinks down to his knees on the forest floor.

Astarion watches, and there’s an awful lot to watch. The contented sigh as Gale gets his hands on his thighs. Mirrored in his expression as he leans in, eagerly nuzzling at the bulge in Astarion’s trousers. It’s so achingly sweet and filthy, that pressure, the friction of it. Another sigh as a hand finds him too, and squeezes through his slim black trousers. They’re too thin, he realizes, feeling the heat from Gale’s palm.

He threads a hand through Gale’s hair, scrapes his fingers against his scalp. Warm there, too. Silky hair spills out from the loose bun against his fingertips and he brushes it back. It’s a cascading problem, as more and more seems to tumble out the more he strokes and, eventually, Gale pulls back with a mournful little noise and a sigh.

“It’s dreadfully unruly, one moment,” Gale says, quickly tugging his hair tie out of the mess, sweeping his waves up again.

And Astarion only switches his hand to Gale’s chin, to thumb over the swell of his bottom lip.

“It’s really stunning. Practically made to be tugged on,” Astarion ruminates, aloud. And a playful little flicker in Gale’s gorgeous brown eyes prompts him to go a step further. “Perhaps that’s the intention here, is it?”

“Perhaps,” Gale shrugs, but the smirk crossing his lips says it all. And more besides. And his tongue darts out to sweep over Astarion’s thumb, and his lips fix around it a second later.

What a tease.

Still. Astarion breathes quicker, feeling more syrupy warmth pooling in his limbs, in his stomach.

“Perhaps all of this is very carefully calculated,” he continues the speculation, eyes narrowing just a touch. “Every delicious piece of your body just begging to be looked at, to be fucked. Hmm?”

“Hmm,” Gale echoes, mouth still full. Still sucking Astarion’s thumb even while his hands take apart his buttoned fly. Deft, nimble fingers. Capable of a good deal of trickery, he doesn’t doubt. Especially with the speed they tug the thin trousers down, the quickness wrapping around his slightly hard shaft.

Astarion jumps at the contact and watches that too, his eyes pinging from Gale’s mouth to his talented fingers, like he doesn’t know which is best to settle on. The fingers skitter, tracing veins, lightly pulling at his foreskin. Gently rolling it and sliding up again and gods, Astarion already feels control ebbing away from himself.

His cock throbs against the too-gentle attention, seeking more of it when it stills, practically leaping against Gale’s fingers. All while the man still works his thumb over in his perfectly slick mouth.

“You really do know how to tease. It’d be nearly cruel if I didn’t know you could back it up. Substantially. That mouth,” he whistles, low, and pulls his thumb out, only to chase it back inside with his index finger, getting a slippery, tenuous grasp on Gale’s tongue.

He watches the shudder ripple through the man on his knees. Watches at the delicious change of his expression, to something slightly desperate, a little pliant. Gale’s hands flatten against his thighs. He drools and the sun picks it up perfectly, glinting off the wet strands, off the pretty oil-slick-metal stud like a dark rainbow through his tongue.

“Stunning,” Astarion sighs. “I really can’t stop thinking about one moment, the last time. I wonder if you can guess.”

He lets his grasp slip. Not entirely surprised Gale doesn’t reel his tongue back in. It stays out, dripping onto the grass. That dark flush finds his cheeks again, beautiful against his tanned skin.

Gale doesn’t say anything. But maybe this is the answer. On his knees, tongue still stuck out.

It’s exactly what Astarion was thinking of. That perfect moment. He tilts his head and stares for a long few seconds.

“Is this your guess?” he asks. And he grabs for his own cock, just like the exact moment he was thinking of. Grabs it and slides it over Gale’s dripping tongue. “It was when I simply said ‘tongue’ and you obeyed. So readily. So perfectly. I can’t get it out of my head.”

Gale’s still but it’s clearly taking a toll. His fingers grab, squeeze on Astarion’s thighs, and he nearly wiggles on the ground, on his knees. The excitement, the desperation charges the air between them.

“I liked that you told me what to do,” Gale answers, finally finding his voice again. He slides a hand over Astarion’s, over the one gripping his cock, and nuzzles against it too, sliding the length over his cheek and back, across his lips. “Not everyone does. Sometimes, they just sit there, all deer in the headlights. But you were clear. Direct. Confident. It was fantastic.”

“Shall I continue, then?”

“Please,” nearly whines out of his mouth. But it’s a little grounded, less shaky, more of a simple, direct ask, and Astarion knows precisely what to do with it.

“Just open your mouth - there, like that. Beautiful,” he sighs, happily, when Gale complies immediately, yet again. And he goes in fingers first, slipping over his tongue again. Rubbing against his teeth, finding the heat in there, the perfectly hot wetness he’s about to sink into. That he’s been dreaming of for weeks, now.

Obscene, how gorgeous he is like this. Especially in the sunlight, amongst the trees and ferns, the soft grass. What a lovely little oasis from everything else. So much better than the party, too. There is, of course, the chance that they may not be alone at any moment, but it seems so far away. So meaningless.

“Besides this mouth, which I have not had my fill of, don’t worry, what else do you do?” he asks, casual, still poking at the soft, warm give of Gale’s tongue, of his cheek. Holding his cock a mere inch away from his glossy lips. A tease, a reward.

Gale blinks. Imagination, or a little crease of worry in his eyes? Hard to say. Astarion pulls his fingers out, pinches his bottom lip and uses that slick wet hand for his cock instead, sliding the dry one into Gale’s hair again.

“I only do this,” Gale says. He’s breathless about it, but lovely for it. “It’s what I’m best at, and I want to get better. So, practice is important.”

“Hmm. You get a lot of that, don’t you? Four, five in one night? Was that a slow night? Or standard.”

The flush deepens on Gale's face and it’s lovely. His chest rises and falls faster.

“Normal. For a party like that. Normal, for one at a time. Sometimes there’s more. It depends.”

“Gods,” Astarion curses under his breath. His fist strokes a little faster over himself. It’s so easy to imagine that, too. Gale surrounded, Gale resplendently holding court for a whole throng of dicks. “I’d love to see that sometime.”

“Tonight? There’s a party. Private. It’s…hard to explain. Come with me?”

Better to get more information, probably. Better to ask more questions but instead of any of that, Astarion just nods. Nods and here he is again, letting Gale lead him around by the dick.

Well. At least he’s not the first.

“I’d love to.”

The grin that sets into Gale’s face is dazzling. Swoops his stomach and he feels it in his cock too, and then, that’s just about all the talking he wants to do about things that aren’t getting notched down Gale’s throat.

“Practice, then,” he grins back. Tightens the grip in Gale’s hair and drags him forward and it’s so, so fast, Gale’s mouth parting warm and perfect around his head. Cradling it there, with his lips, against his cupped tongue. No suction, not yet. Just the slightly calming sensation of being held, wrapped, enveloped.

He doesn’t need any fucking practice, that much is for sure. How could he ever be better? He’s so good. So precise. When that tongue reshapes, hardens and flickers over his head again, pressing against his slit with his eyes so wide and asking and Astarion’s cock jolts, releases the first slick drop of precum, clearly what Gale was teasing out. Clearly, from his wanton moan.

A moan he feels all the way down to his balls and a wicked smile, next, curving around his shaft. Almost too much to look at. Definitely too much when Gale starts what should be the slow and laborious, the careful and measured sinking Astarion’s cock down his throat.

Instead, it’s careless, carefree. It’s those big wide brown eyes glittering lighter than usual, in the sunlight and with utter, base delight. Impossible to look anywhere else. It’s a disarming experience. The lack of control he has while Gale’s hot, tight mouth sucks and sucks, starving for it, and then stops only because there’s no more dick left.

There’s a brief, smiling moment. Astarion staring down stunned as Gale grins as best he can with his mouth tight against the root of Astarion’s cock. Showy and terribly beautiful at the same time. Cockiness looks so good on Gale, it’s nearly unbelievable.

And then his eyes sink shut. Long lashes kissing his cheeks, his straight nose pressed into Astarion’s pelvis and there’s the warm, slick feeling of drool dripping down his balls.

Easy to see why Gale likes to record this. Likes to watch it back. It’s a shame this instance isn’t getting committed to a nebulous hard drive somewhere. Only in the nearly-misfiring neurons of his brain, sent stupid by the act he wants to remember so godsdamned badly.

“Just wishing for my camera,” he sighs. Hand cupping Gale’s chin, jaw and down to his neck, next. The bulge in his throat where he’s just seated and he wants to squeeze it, wants to see if he can, cruelly, make Gale cough or sputter or anything. He has a feeling he’d have to push pretty hard.

Still, the thought, nasty as it is, isn’t as easy to disregard as he’d like.

He manages, though. When Gale’s hands fix onto his hips and squeeze and those expressive eyes flare open again. Full of silent begging, an easy to decipher request.

“One day, I’ll make you ask. Not just once, either. Over and over. As many times as I can take before I give in. Which, I’ll be honest, right now isn’t a lot.”

Too much talking - he cuts himself off in a huff, with a muttered never mind, and he starts to rock his hips against the tight, dripping seal of Gale’s mouth.

Immediate relief floods the human’s soft brown eyes. A silent thanks, unless Astarion’s completely misreading things. He’s pretty well sure he isn’t, at this point. That bracelet still clatters around his wrist, after all.

Will he get another one, after this? Maybe he’ll snatch one up regardless; they’re still clinging tight up and down Gale’s left arm, a little cluster of three tiny beaded ones he can’t make out the sayings on. There’s others that are less precarious, more permanent on his other wrist. And more ornamentation besides. How perfectly adorned.

No benefit of a timer, this time, like those little ticking orange numbers up on the video he’d taken. Without that, on his elven time reckoning, this seems slightly ethereal. Outside of time, almost. Maybe it’s the setting, the glittering afternoon forest bright and green and beautiful. Maybe there is something truly or nearly magic about Gale's mouth that does it.

But it doesn’t matter, either.

Astarion’s content to lose himself watching his cock disappear into Gale’s mouth over and over. Content to mark time in those strokes, instead of a minute hand. He doesn’t care how long this is taking. Doesn’t care how fast or slow it is. No sense of entitlement or embarrassment.

Gale swallows and swallows and it could go on forever. Sunk into the forest floor on his knees, his hands grasping Astarion’s skin, denting the pearly white a soft pink. Spurring him when the rhythm slacks. Grabbing him too, when it gets too much, too fast. Which isn't often.

One day, Astarion’s going to test a bunch of theories. Going to find out just where Gale’s limits stand but today, he’s pushing at his own. Surely he’s never fucked someone’s mouth for so long. Never done that and not come. Something like five minutes last time and this has to surpass that.

So, that’s a win.

Really, this whole thing is.

Looks like for both of them.

“How will you get off this time?” Astarion says, a thought making it out loud somehow, low and barely considered. He’s thinking of the end, thinking past his own end from last time, to Gale furtively launching into his lap, rubbing himself off on his skin.

No suggestions from below.

But it’s obviously something to consider; the sunlight hits on a wet patch of Gale’s shorts, the light blue dark and glittery.

“Oh,” Astarion huffs out. And finds himself fixating for a minute. “Do you like getting blown, too? I’ll gladly return the favor, although I can’t promise such tremendous feats as the ones your throat is capable of.”

Gale’s eyes glimmer with laughter, but he shakes his head, shrugs slightly and pitches forward, throwing himself into the final act of the blow job with new, sudden fervor.

He doesn’t fuck, he doesn’t want to get blown.

Oh, it’s maddening. To look that good. To feel that good and only want this one thing. Surely there’s something.

There’s no room for thoughts that aren’t related to Gale’s mouth, to his pierced tongue twirling around his shaft like some kind of hurricane, up and down. All the movement Gale’s, now, so Astarion sinks back against the tree with a content shudder.

It’s very likely misdirection but fuck it all, he doesn’t care.

Still a hand in Gale’s hair. But it isn’t to hold him anymore, to tug and push, no, it’s just to feel the motions of him there, like he feels it everywhere else. His thighs twitch with every bob and swallow. Gale’s palm, his fingers, find Astarion’s taut balls and he tugs, sharp and sudden.

Astarion shouts and it echoes around them and gods, he can’t help but laugh at that. Of all the things. Hopefully no one’s sending a rescue party to Blackstaff arboretum.

Not that it matters; the laugh turns into panting, into moans and then nearly nothing as his mouth simply slacks open, breathlessly and artlessly, watching Gale finish him off in some kind of haze. His hips meet Gale’s mouth in sharp, short stabs and then, he stops, and Gale continues. Fast, and with his hand too, finding the scant few inches Gale can’t fit in his perfect, too-talented mouth.

He can’t even swear; can’t manage a fucking word. Gale’s eyes meet his and that’s the end of it. The plea in there again, but for a different thing this time. Astarion gives it to him. Mustering one last thrust like a surprise attack.

And Gale takes it perfectly. His mouth, his tongue, it all melts against Astarion’s spending cock. Coaxing and tightening, teasing out every last drop of his load while he moans against the length. The noises slick and messy with the swallowing, ceaseless, and gods, one day he wants to watch it splash against Gale’s tongue but he doesn’t have the presence of fucking mind or the simple will to pull out of his mouth.

“Your fucking mouth,” he says, and he says it like an epithet and it’s definitely some kind of curse. And it’s worse because Gale knows exactly how good he is at all of this, worse because he’s plainly spoiling Astarion for anyone else.

The terrible thought, that Gale’s actually spoiling an awful lot of people for anyone else.

And no one’s going to stop him.

Gale laughs, anyway, at the curse, untroubled and happy about the whole thing. He’s got what he wants and his deep, rich laughter rattles Astarion’s bones in a pleasant way. It isn’t unkind at all. It’s just happiness, to have a spending dick down his throat.

“Amazing,” he sighs and laboriously pulls out. While grasping Gale’s chin and trying, without really really trying, pushing him away. Even though he never wants to leave the space here, tight wet humming and whining his loss.

“Come here,” Astarion commands and it’s nearly a growl. Nearly so low and demanding, he wonders if it crosses some kind of line.

It mustn’t. Gale rises and plasters against him. Hands diving through his hair, a salty, deep kiss tongue-first into his mouth. And nothing but thin shorts between them, so he feels the full length, the sharp hardness of Gale’s cock against his hip.

He ruts there for a stunning few seconds. Ruts while he pants into Astarion’s mouth and it feels so primal and keen. Cutting and desperate and Astarion’s hands practically fly to peel down the already low shorts, to tug and twist until the heat of Gale’s cock slaps against his skin.

Gale reels back from his mouth with a shudder. His forehead buries in Astarion’s shoulder, against his t-shirt, and his hips won’t stop.

Not unlike the first time.

But unlike that time, Astarion’s got a little plan.

He presses his hand to the flat, furry plane of Gale’s stomach and then turns it. His fingertips ghost over the shaft, barely touching. His thumb sweetly kissing the thick, wet head. Barely anything at all.

Gale bucks sharp, hard into it. Fingers sinking to Astarion’s back, to his shoulders. One fisting into his t-shirt.

“So touchy,” Astarion purrs, letting his breath ruffle the loose hair by Gale’s ear, letting his lips chase it closer. “Is that why all you want to do is get on your knees?”

“No - no, I - “ Gale starts, but another pass of Astarion’s featherlight touch cuts him off.

And, “it wouldn’t take much more at all, would it?” he ponders aloud. Twisting his tongue along the furl of Gale’s ear, the swirls of it, until he can bite at the rim.

Another, “no,” in a defeated but expectant sigh and, what the hells, Astarion’s going to give it to him.

“Don’t fight it,” is all he says, before his fingers wrap tight. It’s absolutely unbelievable how hot Gale’s shaft is against his hand. How hard, pulsing with a distinct heartbeat, a rapid drumbeat that mirrors the breaths Gale’s huffing against his shoulder.

Unbelievable how that pulse picks up and throbs against his fingers and how, with just a few tight, firm strokes, Gale falls all apart against him. His body quivers and his cock shoots and it’s against Astarion’s t-shirt, which he did not plan for at all, but he doesn’t care, either.

Nothing else to care about besides how good it feels and sounds to have Gale like this. The tables easily turned. It seems to last for a while; long minutes of breath hitching and quiet moans and his hips tirelessly chasing the tight seal of Astarion’s fingers.

Gods and he barely did anything at all and it’s so godsdamned impressive. A real boost for his ego, if nothing else.

Gale’s mostly quiet, once it seems to cease. Sniffling into Astarion’s t-shirt. Clutching at it, ruining it in at least three or four different ways. Small price to pay for such a stunning display. He’d ruin a whole closet just to experience it again.

Gale pushes away with a shudder and the whole forest feels chilly. Was it too much? Did he really go too far? Wringing a desperate orgasm out of the human? Or was it something else?

Hard to tell from the hunch of his shoulders. But, Astarion enjoys the view of the back of him while he waits, and sets his own trousers right. He carefully peels off the t-shirt, an eye still on Gale.

And, after too many tense seconds that was really nothing, he’s sure, at all, Gale turns with a wide, tired smile and plasters himself onto Astarion again. Sweat sticking between them, dampening the lovely human chest hair. He crowds in for a kiss again and Astarion gives him another with ease.

No need, is there? To talk about things? Gale flings his arms around his neck and holds him there, like parting lovers trying to stave it off a few moments longer.

“The party, tonight?” he asks, simple, direct.

“Answer me something, and I’ll go.”

“You already said you’d go,” Gale points out, and there’s a glorious show of a pout on his glossy lips.

“So, I’ll go and you’ll answer me something. Happy?”

“Mm, yes. Ask.”

“You’re remarkably pent up for someone so free and easy with your mouth. Why is that?”

Gale’s eyes crease in a little frown and for a second Astarion wishes he hadn’t asked. But gods, he needs to know, it’s burning a hole in his brain.

“I don’t usually let anyone touch me. I don’t usually care about it, too much. But I really like you, Astarion.”

His name from Gale’s lips, common accented, the slight Waterdhavian heaviness to the vowels, might as well be some ode. The whole sentence, really. And in the context, it makes his heart pound, his spirits soar. With the demure flutter of his lashes, it’s intolerable.

That such a singular magical thing as Gale Dekarios might like him is outstanding. That he really likes him, something else entirely. A whole new plane of happiness.

“I like you too,” he sighs, and it sounds a little high stakes, all of a sudden, like that. Said right against Gale’s mouth, said looking into his crinkled brown eyes.

“I don’t have my phone or I’d give you my number, finally.”

“Me either.”

“Well. Quite the pair.”

Matching smiles, somehow. And a kiss of them before their foreheads rest together.

“Just meet me by that planter, tonight. Where we first met. You remember?”

Does he? Gods, he can’t walk past it without thinking about the first time he saw brown-eyes - Gale - and the taste of him sucked off that candy. He might never be able to be normal about that spot on campus ever again.

“I remember.”

“Ten.”

“Ten,” Astarion echoes. All sealed up nice and easy and then, suddenly, as they’re halfway down the path already, “wait, is this a date?”

“What? No,” Gale laughs, and it’s still not unkind. It might be from anyone else. “No, it’s a private sort of party, it’s at a bar, kind of, rather a room in a bar and…well.” His teeth sink into his lip and his eyes dart away a little shy, for a second or two. And what a view that is. He stops them on the path, grabbing Astarion’s hands, both, and turning to him. “Do you want to help me blow a bunch of guys tonight? You can just watch, if you want, or line up with them but I think it’d be really fun if we - “

Astarion laughs and presses the noise into Gale’s mouth, a little o of surprise for a second and no longer. “You’re fucking amazing, Gale. Of course I will,” Astarion says, a promise. “Of course, it can still be a date.”

Something light and lovely filters into Gale’s eyes and watching it, watching his grin practically reach his ears about it, pounds and twists and fans something deep in Astarion’s chest.

“Then, it’s a date.”

Easy as that. Apparently.

Chapter 4

Summary:

It’s a riveting way to get to know someone.

Notes:

they suck a bunch of anonymous dicks in this chapter but the focus remains on Gale and Astarion the whole time.

Astarion’s been using whirlwind as a descriptor for most, if not all, of the parties he’s been to. They certainly rival those more sedate affairs in Evereska, with everyone overly concerned about appearances, politics. Here, in Waterdeep, or at least at Blackstaff, no one seems to care too much about that sort of thing after hours.

It’s refreshing. It’s taking some getting used to.

This party, in particular, is the most interesting yet.

Off campus, a short walk. He’d followed close by Gale, their hands banging into each others until they easily grasped together somewhere outside of the university grounds, somewhere, some back street of Waterdeep.

It felt natural, and still felt so, walking down the stairs and into the dimly lit space. A club? There was music, soft, thumping but they hadn’t stopped by the dance floor or the two bars. Gale tugged him further in with a pleasant smile. Behind another door, a room well-furnished with low couches, with pillows all over the floor, with the slight smell of having just been cleaned.

They weren’t late, apparently, but a few people waited for them. Eyes turned as the door shut and Astarion barely managed to make out the figures before Gale tugged him by the belt loops for another impetuous kiss, to tug his shirt off at the same time.

And that had to be an hour ago, at least.

Esy to lose track of time when you’re spending it all on your knees.

It isn’t something he thought he’d like this much, but…

But there’s a power in it.

A power in making a stranger moan, in all the pushing and pulling. In choosing when and who. And in choosing to do it beside Gale.

They’re sharing a pillow, now. Sharing a dick now, too. Thick and uncut, richly veined jutting from an untrimmed thatch of strawberry blond. He sits back on his heels for a second, to watch Gale, a stunning vision.

He really does heart cock.

His glossy, puffy lips stretch out around it, suckling at the bulbous head, his jaw flexing underneath his close-trimmed beard. Truly beautiful, like this. And instead of staring up, as Astarion’s experienced more than once, he’s staring at him.

Staring at him staring, rather, and then he pops his mouth off, offering the prize over to Astarion with a drooling grin.

No stranger, really, to this. And the sharing feels like something special, something sweetly sacred. And, back of his mind this whole time, maybe if he does a good enough job on one of these semi-anonymous people, Gale might acquiesce and let him.

Gods, he’d love to. Love to make Gale fall apart quick and easy in his mouth, faster even than he did with his hands.

But, what little conversation they’ve had this past hour focused on the task at hand. Or, under tongue.

“Oh, for me?” Astarion smirks, and leans and sucks up one side of the dick. Leaving room for Gale’s mouth, which joins him a second later. It’s strangely lovely, like this. Sharing this. Meeting Gale’s lips around the heavy, throbbing shaft. Meeting his tongue now and then, too. Finding a rhythm, a balance, and finding it all together.

He’s lost count of time and of the dicks, too. He wonders, absently, as another load flies and splits between them, as they suck and swap it out between them, if Gale might be keeping track somewhere in that diamond mind of his.

No matter.

It goes on for a few more rounds. There’s a tiefling, with a dark mahogony shaft, deliciously ridged. Two elves, delicate and smooth as he is, working in equal tandem; they shoot at the same time, too. And one last cock shoves between them and after this, the room’s empty. Average, which is a relief for Astarion’s jaw at this point. It gives him more space to find his way into Gale’s mouth around the dark shaft. The veins throb against his tongue as he twirls it towards Gale and he really, truly gets it.

Not just why Gale likes this, so much, but why he’d asked him along.

It’s a riveting way to get to know someone.

Better than a night at the movies or a candlelit dinner. By the end, by time this last cock spurts like a fountain, aiming for both of their outstretched tongues, the tastes and sounds of Gale are as familiar to him as his own. He’s practically memorized the beautiful planes of his face. Marked the little pocket of gray in his beard, just by his mouth. Learned even better the texture of his silky hair against his fingers, and learned it from pushing him further down some rando’s shaft, just to watch him take it.

He’s sinking back into Gale’s mouth, tender, hot, used, when the door shuts. Still a mess between them, piecing together against their saliva and their tongues. Astarion knows better than to swallow, though.

He pulls back and only has to raise his brows expectantly; Gale opens his mouth and sticks out his tongue. His own gaze expectant too, his beautiful brown eyes wide. Shirtless too, his panting chest rises and falls and Astarion pitches forward grabbing it, sinking his fingertips into his pecs, into that lovely human chest hair.

And, tongue-first, he drops what’s left of that last load into Gale’s waiting mouth, slow and filthy.

Gale grabs at him, too, one hand curling around the back of his neck, the other flattening at the center of his smooth chest. He makes a show, of course, of swallowing, of proudly sticking his tongue back out once the job is done. But just to be sure, Astarion kisses him again anyway, chasing the last of the taste out and taking it for himself.

“Tell me you had fun?” Gale asks, nearly panting against his mouth.

“More than I expected.”

“Good! You’re a very adept partner. I think we made a great team.”

Astarion nods, agrees, but, “the night isn’t quite over,” he says, trying to make it all smooth but his voice, his very throat, is hoarse enough that the words are more gravel than silk.

Still. Gale grins against his lips and his hand skims lower, finding the waistband of Astarion’s thin, tight boxers, the only thing he’s had on for a while now. “Saved the best for last, I don’t mind saying.”

“Oh?” Astarion smirks, and can that really be true? A veritable throng of dicks and his, the best?

“It’s so pretty. You are, I mean. All of you. But, also your dick.”

It’s not a standard kind of compliment but from Gale, it seems like the highest praise. And, mostly ignored for however long they’ve been at this, his cock throbs like a sudden reminder he really needs to get off. Like, really really.

“What a sweet thing to say, Gale. And I absolutely adore yours, I’ll admit.”

A blush, a sharp oh, and Gale ducks his head. Actual embarrassment? And it’s so gorgeous on him, Astarion hardly believes it. How could he get even more gorgeous? Impossible.

He presses closer, his own hand skimming down. Gale’s got shorts on, again, soft and low on his svelte hips. Dark enough that, although Astarion feels a very distinct damp spot, he can’t see it. But a squeeze, a thumbing, and he feels all that slickness.

And Gale gasps like he’s been injured, gasps with an open mouth that Astarion sinks into with ease, despite the ache in his jaw. Bare, obviously, under those tiny shorts and Astarion wonders if he even owns underwear. But then again, what’s the point of something like that, when he’s so often on display?

“I bet I could get you off like this, hm? Over the shorts? A few quick squeezes?” he mutters against Gale’s panting mouth, against the delicious heat of it.

No answer but a whining little plea, and whether it’s to stop or go isn’t at all clear.

“Hmm? More?” Astarion asks, then, prods gently as he runs his tongue over Gale’s swollen-up mouth. His lips are as hot under his tongue as the rest of him is. “Or less? Or…well, you’ve seen what I can do with my mouth, yes?”

Gale’s whole body shudders. His cock throbs, evident through the barely-there fabric and for half a second, Astarion’s sure he’s got him. But no, he manages to cling on.

“Too much, I think. That would be too much,” Gale says, but it seems a little mournful. Like he does want it, maybe, but he doesn’t trust himself to handle it.

“We could just try it. And see. And I’ll stop, Gale, if you don’t want it. I promise.” Astarion’s very, very serious, even with his hand still squeezing at Gale through the shorts. His beautiful brown eyes narrow and he thinks about it, Astarion’s sure of it. Sure he can see those wheels turning.

“Just…your hand? Your hands are so gorgeous too, your fingers, gods, Astarion, they’re more than enough to destroy me, I don’t need anything else.”

Well, it’s a shame, but he won’t push. Not tonight, anyway.

Instead, a little shift closer, a little turning of his hips until the angle’s right. And they groan together when their cocks meet, even through two layers of fabric. Thin, damp, sticky, and it’s a harsh scramble to tug everything down.

Astarion’s the one that fists them together, his forehead against Gale’s, watching in the low light.

Gale can’t seem to bear to look; all those desperate pants and huffs and his hands both press onto Astarion’s chest, but not to push him away, not at all. They dig into the skin instead and his eyes squeeze shut.

“Here, look,” Astarion prompts him, hissing it out as he strokes them together, presses tight. Gale’s so much darker, the head thicker, a little longer altogether but beautiful and dripping and perfectly exquisite against Astarion’s own dick. Which isn’t something he’d considered the sight of, before, but he supposes it is pretty enough. Pink and smooth and less leaky than Gale’s, but still wet.

Gale doesn’t look. Not yet. Astarion kisses his jaw. Grabs one of Gale’s hands and guides it down so it fists their cocks, together. Their fingers meet, overlap and then lock against each other. Hands held, and he asks, again, “look? I want you to see how gorgeous we look together.”

And he meets Astarion’s eyes first, before anything else. Wild and desperate but then he does look, and Astarion feels his whole body shudder, again. A sharp tremor, a gasp.

“There,” he sighs. And strokes, slow and measured, pressing them tighter together. “Beautiful, yes? Perhaps not as beautiful as you with your mouth stretched full but lovely enough.”

“Yes,” chokes out of Gale’s mouth, and another shuddering sigh. It seems to relax him, though. His grip doesn’t dig into Astarion’s chest so hard and his breath deepens. “You were beautiful tonight, too,” Gale says, and his eyes snap back up.

So do Astarion’s. Not that he’s looking for traces of - what? Of some kind of falsehood in Gale’s gaze but finding nothing but earnestness behind those big brown eyes starts something hot and wild thumping against his ribs.

And a hand slides along his smooth jaw and Gale’s thumb skims over his ear, stroking up the point of it from the inside ridge.

It’s so subtle, it shouldn’t be anything at all.

But Astarion gasps and his mouth stays open and he tips his head into the touch. And, most telling, his cock absolutely throbs. Held fast against’s Gale’s, in the cage of their fingers.

Too long since anyone touched him like that and he’d taken it for granted, he supposed, back home.

Gale tilts his head and Astarion feels some shift ripple through the air at the look in his eyes. More assured. Still just as desperate, that didn’t go anywhere, but the confidence buoys up over everything and it sends another shiver down Astarion’s spine.

Gods, he loves that look on him.

It’s Gale, after that, that sets the pace of their hands. That squeezes their fingers together and starts rutting artlessly against Astarion.

“I always wondered, about the ears,” Gale says, in a breathless grin and he leans closer. That heated breath skims over Astarion’s cheek even as he holds his breath, waiting for the next move.

He should have predicted it but even then, he still would’ve moaned at the slick curl of Gale’s tongue against the scrolling height of his ear. The sound of it, the heat. He moans and shifts and just as carelessly humps into the tangle of their hands together.

The balance hasn’t quite shifted, maybe, but it’s even, and it’s even more fun, now, chasing some embarrassedly rapid end together.

There’s some wondering, as Gale sucks at the edge of his sharp ear, at some manner of oral fixation, but it flies out of his mind quickly enough. More important than considering anything is the feeling.

Hot and quick and it must be some kind of personal record when he’s typically not so uncouth and desperate. But Astarion spills first between them, leaning into the too-good feeling of Gale on his ear, Gale against his cock, Gale’s gorgeously warm body moving against his in ceaseless undulations.

First, maybe, but a second later and Gale’s joining him. He doesn’t desert his work at Astarion’s ear, either, so those moans ripple through his body in too many places, in a dizzying array. Against his skin, in his ear. The vibration of it against his chest, too. And the twin pulse of Gale’s cock as it throbs and spends and it’s nearly too much to look at, down there, tight between them.

The loads mingle in the low light and he can’t possibly tell them apart. Joined in a tandem mess that glitters between them, reaching onto Astarion’s abs, into the wild, rough tangle of Gale’s chest hair and the trail down to his neatly trimmed bush.

All there is to do is ride it out too, together. Grasping and shifting to kiss. Hands still held, secure, together, stroking in the mess until Gale shudders too deep and stops moving his. He laughs against, into, Astarion’s mouth.

“Too much.”

“Oh, shame,” Astarion purrs, and chases back the kiss for a long, blissful moment. “I could spend all night making you quake and moan like that. I’m getting obsessed.”

“Not usually what the obsessives fixate on.”

“Cretins. It’s usually your mouth, isn’t it.” And he pulls back to look at it, to thumb his free hand over the bottom lip. Gale nods. No surprise. “Well, that’s quite good too. This whole face, really. You know, I thought of you as ‘brown-eyes’ when I didn’t know your name.”

“So, until this afternoon?”

“Oh, yes,” and was it really just then? How long everything stretches between them, somehow.

“I quite like that. You can certainly call me that, sometime.”

“I can’t call you at all until - hold on,” Astarion mutters, and sighs, and godsdamn everything, he has to move. He’s getting chilly, their mess is too, cooling and pooling and getting sticky in some awkward places and with a furtive look at Gale, he unwinds their hands and they both sort of…retract.

The night’s activities being what they are, towels are nearby, and the cleaning up seems somehow more embarrassing than the rest of it.

Righted, half-dressed, he turns to find Gale shaking his hair out of the loose bun, Astarion’s phone in his hands. He mugs for a selfie right there, his tongue stuck out with a wink, and goes back to adding the number. From the couch, what must be Gale’s phone buzzes with an alert.

Finding himself watched never seems to phase Gale, and when his eyes meet Astarion’s, he just smiles. “There, I added myself to your contacts. See?”

And Astarion takes the invitation and walks over, and Gale tucks against him, prompting an arm around his shoulders, like they’ve done it a thousand times. And there’s his name - still so lovely and enchanting - with a crown and an eggplant emoji beside it.

“What’s that mean?”

“Oh! That I’m the blow job queen. Obviously,” Gale rolls his pretty eyes, and pecks Astarion on the cheek before he turns away.

It’s too innocent, for what they just did.

Too innocent for the words that just came out of his cum-splattered mouth. Too innocent for how low those shorts ride on his hips, over the tantalizing swell of his ass.

But gods, how it suits him. Not just that title but the wide-eyed wonder.

There’s a desperate urge to sweep him up from behind. Tackle him down onto that couch and see what other trouble he can find in the gorgeous planes of Gale’s body but, for now, he settles for the view alone.

Hell of a thing, anyway.

The walk back to campus seems quicker. Which is unfortunate because their filthy, private party only drummed up more questions in Astarion’s mind. The streets aren’t quite empty and it’s no surprise Gale waves at a few people, as their wind their way back to campus.

Astarion waits until their hands come together again, until he feels Gale’s fingers trace the silly little bracelet he’s still wearing around his wrist. Waits until that connection, before he decides it’s alright, maybe, to pry a little.

“Can I ask you something?” he starts. Soft, low.

Gale shoots him a curious look with a shrug, with an easy smile, with the promise of an answer in his eyes. “Of course. I might even give you an answer.”

“Cute. You were serious, weren’t you? That all you do is blow jobs?”

A huff of a laugh and Gale squeezes at his fingers, looks down at the old cobblestone street. “Well, what we just did in there was more of a mutual hand job situation so I suppose I might have to amend that to blow jobs and the occasional handy, if the opportunity presents itself.”

“Again, cute. I mean…am I ever going to get to return the favor?”

“Will it make you feel better if I say I don’t see it like that? As a favor to be traded? I just like to do it. I’m not keeping score, not with you or anyone else. I ask nothing in return, other than you enjoy yourself.”

It takes a second to wrap his head around that. It’s truly mystifying. Selfless and hedonistic all at the same time. He squints and stares at Gale as they walk, the streetlights throwing shadows against his handsome face.

He isn’t lying, either. Astarion can sniff bullshit out in a microsecond and Gale’s as honest as they come, about this.

But there has to be more, doesn’t there? Is there a bottom to get to, or should he let it all go at face value? His very nature is to pry. His first and strongest instinct, and it doesn't help matters at all that he’s so desperately curious about Gale. That he has been since they first met.

“So what if,” he starts, slowly, concocting some fantastical scenario in his mind with the ease that comes from reading endlessly about the law. “What if I asked you to simply relax and enjoy yourself. To let me make you feel good. What if we were all cozied up in my room with some mindless movie on as background and, oops, I ended up with my head in your lap, and then, naturally, mouthing at you through whatever indecently short shorts you threw on that day. You’d really say no?”

“Ah, my oldest nemesis. Relaxation.”

And there it is.

Several things click into place. Several more continue to demand answers.

A few moments of comfortable silence, before Gale continues.

“That isn’t the type of situation I put myself into, typically. With anyone else, I wouldn’t even be doing this. Walking home, holding hands. Even our date is quite the anomaly. But I -“

“You like me. I know. Just not enough to let me blow you.”

“I wouldn’t say no. But there is a massive asterisk and I think you know exactly what it is.”

“I do?” Half a play at innocence; mostly, he wants to hear the excuse, or lack of it, for himself. So he can refute it once and for all.

Gale glances at him sidelong, an eyebrow raised. “You do. You’ve born witness to it more than anyone else, Astarion.”

“Ooh, you mean how gloriously sensitive your dick is?” A stage whisper, even though there’s no one else around, as they pass the ornate wrought iron gateway that ushers them onto the campus proper. “That is not a problem for me. And if it’s a problem for anyone else, well, they aren’t seeing things the right way. It’s fun.”

“Fun,” Gale repeats slowly, flat, but his brows draw down thoughtfully.

“Tremendous fun. How hard you get. All that throbbing, gods, Gale, it’s stunning. I’ve been thinking of how delicious those needy hips would feel, slamming into me while I’m all spread out beneath you.”

“Dear gods,” Gale mutters, and there’s a deep, furious blush on his tanned cheeks. “I’ve…you have to know, I’ve never - “

“I sort of figured,” another showy, barely quiet whisper, but Astarion caps it with a smile, with a further clinging to him as they approach the dorms. “Just a thought I wanted to share with you. No pressure, you know, to follow through. But…”

He stops, turns so they’re facing each other. Oh, if only the walk wasn’t so short.

Astarion schools his expression into something more demure than usual, a fluttering of lashes, and it isn’t hard at all. It matches the treacherous drumming in his chest, his heart pounding like he’s the virgin here.

“But if you ever decide to branch out, darling, I’ll take one for the team, so to speak. I’ll sacrifice myself at the altar of Gale. Rough work, I’m sure, but I think you really ought to experience it.”

Still that deep, dark blush on Gale’s face. His own lashes fluttering, his fingers squeezing against Astarion’s hand, still. “I’ll…think about it. I will,” he says. Strained, tight, and surprisingly unreadable.

It’s about as good as Astarion figures he’s going to get.

And he realizes the worst thing has to happen now. The rest of the night has to pass without Gale. It’s late enough there’s no one else out, so he pulls Gale into another, their hundredth, he’s sure, kiss in front of the entrance.

Although, the way things are going, he would’ve done that if they’d been alone or in a bustle of other people. The gift of not giving a shit is shiny and new and he’s going to like getting used to it.

“You could come up, if you’re tired,” he suggests, in the breath after the kiss, while Gale’s eyes flutter back open.

“I’m just across the square here, actually. See?” and he points and Astarion doesn’t follow it at all, but there’s something nice knowing they aren’t actually that far apart at all. “I’m sure I’ll see you soon enough.”

The horrible desperate swell of his chest not to let go, at that. Astarion gives in, squeezes him tight for a second but lets go in the next. Makes himself let go. And they inch apart, but even that’s slow.

“I’ll text you,” he promises Gale.

And, “I know you will,” isn’t particularly promising back.

Where did he blow this?

The invitation up? Something back at the weird, shady bar? The offer of sex beyond what they’ve already been doing? Outside of Gale’s limits?

He watches Gale retreat and wonders and thinks and feels briefly awful.

But then Gale comes back in two big steps and another kiss, heady and flush and deep, with both of his hands in Astarion’s mussed curls. They ease into it in a moan, shared between their tongues, swallowed whole.

And after long, breathless returns, Gale’s the one peeling away, with what’s customary, now.

“I like you so much,” he sighs, and peels off another silly little bracelet to ease up Astarion’s arm.

He watches Gale do it with fascination, watching the plastic beads nestle where the first one still is. He watches Gale's face, close, instead of trying to figure out what it says. Watches like there’s never been anything more interesting to him than that fan of lashes, that quick, talented mouth.

Gale presses a kiss into the very center of his palm before he leaves. He doesn’t look back, a quick clip across the landscaped lawn, diagonally. The back of him nearly as beautiful as the front.

Only when he’s out of sight, Astarion lets himself look away.

What obsession.

The bracelet, the new one. Instead of text, instead of a cute saying set in among the colorful plastic, it’s five little red hearts.

He smiles, and presses that palmed kiss into his own mouth.

He likes Gale, too. So so much.

Chapter 5

Summary:

How well Gale times things, like this. How unserious, but incredibly studious he is about the filthiest things.

No surprise that Gale’s dorm is more books than room. Books on the table, books by the loveseat. Books stacked up to hold flower pots by the window.

“That’s ingenious, actually,” Astarion says, in passing, waving his hand towards the set-up. “I mean, why even bother buying furniture? Hells, sell that sofa, drape a blanket over a sturdy stack of tomes and no one would know the difference.”

“I can’t tell if you’re making fun of me or not,” Gale says, over his shoulder. His bare shoulder, of course. Astarion watched him peel off his cropped t-shirt at the party and it never reappeared. No real loss.

“I’m really not,” Astarion tells him, in a rush because gods, he can’t have Gale thinking like that. Not after accepting what he knows is a very sacred, very difficult to come by ticket to his actual dorm room. He rushes up to Gale too, winding around one of his arms and flashing him a grin. “I think it’s lovely. It suits you perfectly, all of this. Thank you for inviting me up.”

Gale stops moving through his apartment, stops outside what must, by the process of elimination, be the door to his bedroom. The only light in the small main room is dim, from the tiny kitchen, but his brown eyes glow. Like they make their own light, somehow.

“Well, that party was a real bore. Lucky we ran into each other, hey?”

“You know, I wasn’t even going to go out tonight. I’m glad I did,” a quiet murmur, as his eyes trail pointedly to Gale’s mouth. If there’s anything that might draw his gaze from those shining eyes, it’s his equally sublime mouth.

The things it does, the things he says. The easy smile that, even now, floats across his face and brightens his features even more.

How does he manage it?

“Do you want to show me your room now?” Astarion tries, utterly presumptuous. But with the smirk, calculated, he knows it’ll hit just right.

And it does. There’s a little blush creeping into Gale’s cheeks, and Astarion grins wider, presses closer. Laughs low and fond and presses his nose right up against Gale’s warm cheek.

“Oh, you don’t have to, if it’s going to make you nervous. I’m being too quick again, aren’t I? Let’s just - “

Gale cuts him off with the turn of his head. The shine in his eyes stays, but his brows draw into something serious. Thoughtful. He turns his body, too, so they’re completely facing. Turns it and takes both of Astarion’s hands and some vast tonal shift buttons up Astarion’s mouth quicker than anything ever has.

“I’ve been thinking. About things. About you.”

Nothing good comes after a sentence like that. Astarion fights not to let it deflate him. “And, let me guess, you like me.”

“Of course I do.”

“So much.”

“So, so much,” Gale repeats as emphatic as the first time he said it.

It makes Astarion feel as giddy as the first time, too. Every time. It hasn’t lost any of its punch yet, somehow.

“Is that all you’ve been thinking of?”

“No,” Gale said, and there’s finally a lift to his dire seriousness, a quirk at the corner of his mouth that Astarion knows precipitates a smile. “But I have this problem.”

“If this is about your deliciously touchy dick again, Gale, I swear - “

“No! No, not…not that. Although, if this conversation goes right, that will need addressing.”

“Oh. Oh. Well, keep talking then, don’t keep me in such suspense.”

His bones feel like they’re going to jump right out of his skin if he doesn’t hear right fucking now what Gale wants to say to him. What he’s been thinking. It sounds good, it actually sounds like good news and his heart races away already.

Still, always, too presumptuous for his own good.

“My problem,” Gale starts again, making a sigh out of the words, squeezing Astarion’s hands at the same time. “Is that I do want things to go further, with you. I don’t know how far, exactly. We’ve already surmounted my most casual rules, and we’re onto the more serious ones.”

“Such as don’t let anyone into your dorm.”

“No, it’s not quite like that. I let people in, Astarion. I’ve got friends, classmates. Just last week, would you believe it, I crammed ten people in here to watch a movie? It was a whole thing, I baked a cheesecake and it was lovely, but there was no sex involved, is what I’m getting at here. No one I’ve even so much as kissed.”

“Ah, that’s why I wasn’t invited.”

“Things get complicated in ways I never seem to understand. People…expect things. So I’m going to be clear with you. Painfully forthright.”

“Please.”

“I do want to…” his head ducks. Hair fans out over his blushing face and Astarion doesn’t hesitate to brush it back, to tuck it behind Gale’s ear and let his hand rest against the side of his neck. “I do want to fuck you, Astarion. Since you said it, it’s been difficult to stop thinking about.”

“Oh,” Astarion sighs and the held nerves dissolve right out of him. That’s really all he wanted, was Gale thinking about it. Because in the thinking about it, well, there’s no way that wouldn’t turn into something good.

“But…”

Gale draws it out and that’s mean.

It isn’t on purpose. Astarion knows that, sees the indecision in the man’s face. In the barely-there lines of his frown, with his gaze still so down-turned.

Astarion tips his head up, then. Hand under his chin and Gale goes easy with the motion and after a few seconds, he even looks Astarion right in the eyes again.

And continues.

“But I need to have some measure of freedom. This cannot turn into some locked-up relationship, no matter how beautiful the fetters.”

Astarion blinks, and Gale takes a breath to say more, but he cuts the man off with a finger over his mouth.

Oh, it’s so easy.

That’s all he wants?

“All you want, then, is to be able to fuck me and continue to reign free as the blow job queen, yes? Suck a hundred dicks a night? Jog through the campus with barely any clothes on? Tease your way through a dance floor? Gods, Gale, I’d never ask you to stop doing any of that. If anything, I’d be cross if you did stop.”

All the tension seems to bleed from Gale, at that, after a long, quiet moment. Astarion rests his hand against Gale's chest and it’s strong there, that heartbeat, under the warmth of his skin and his gorgeous pelt.

“Truly?” Gale says, and there’s a hint of incredulity there.

This has been a problem before. He sees it in Gale’s eyes. Hears it in the halting way he speaks, of fetters, of locks.

As earnestly as he can manage, he looks right into the shimmering browns of Gale’s eyes. “You’ll always be free to be your own person, Gale. No matter what we get up to. I can absolutely promise you that. I’d be a fool to try and stop you.”

“Well…what if we were dating?” And that’s halting too. That word, in Gale’s mouth.

Astarion shrugs, smiles gently. “Even then. Darling, we could be in some fabled future, fifty years married, and I’d never stop you from having your fun.”

“That’s…”

“A hypothetical. My stock and trade. That one was a lot, I know, but I’m simply saying - “

“That I can fuck you and still be the blow job queen?”

“I’d never come between you and that storied title.”

“Well…”

A lewd little joke but all Astarion can manage is a chuckle about it, before he presses further into Gale’s space. Rests their foreheads together and feels the heat of Gale’s body against his. Delicious and warm, a teasing sweetness in the way he breathes so deeply.

He cannot let another second pass without asking, without knowing.

“Does this mean you’re going to fuck me, Gale?”

He wants it so terribly bad. He’s spent the week or so since he mentioned it to Gale almost wishing he hadn’t. Because as much as it’s been on Gale's mind, he’s sure it’s been on his more. A heady daydream he keeps slipping into, mid-lecture. When he wakes, before he sleeps.

It’s been worse since they’ve been texting, catching meals together on and off, seeming to run into each other more and more. Astarion doesn’t believe much in signs, in fate, but maybe all of that is culminating here and now.

But the bedroom door is still closed. And Gale’s mouth with it, although his eyes restlessly scan Astarion’s, and his chest heaves against his body.

“I’d like to, yes,” he finally answers.

“Now?”

“Oh, why not? Why wait? Just tell me it won’t change anything.”

“I mean…you might not be able to stop after the first time. It might sear the perfect memory of how tightly I wrap around your incredible cock into your brain so sharply, so firmly, that you can’t stop thinking about me. That’d be a change, hm?”

“Not really,” Gale says, in an exhale, shallow and quick and from the tilt of his hips, Astarion knows the words, the promises, are getting to him already. “I already think about you so much. Nearly too much.”

“Nearly?” Astarion fakes a little pout and presses closer, eating up the last bit of space left between them. He slots a long leg between Gale’s thicker thighs, gives him a slow, telling grind. “Let’s fix that.”

It’s the slowest kiss. The slowest arrival to the kiss Astarion’s ever allowed. He doesn’t even use his tongue for a while; waits, instead for Gale’s, for Gale to open him up and at the same time as they truly sink into each other’s mouths, the bedroom door clicks open.

It’s a fight not to laugh.

How well Gale times things, like this. How unserious, but incredibly studious he is about the filthiest things.

There’s a tumble into the bedroom. Gale goes in first and Astarion follows him blind, follows the twisting and turning of his body as long as he doesn’t have to stop kissing Gale. Gods, he never wants to. What a truly perfect mouth.

The bed - he thinks so, at least - hits the backs of his calves and a hand out confirms it’s at least something soft and squishy. Something to support him against the light shove Gale gives. He goes with it too easily, sinking down and splaying onto his back. His hands grab for Gale immediately, pulling that warmth down atop him.

It feels so much more intimate, somehow.

The private room, the closest quarters yet. No interlopers. Nothing between them but a t-shirt and Gale makes quick work of that.

If he’s still nervous, it doesn’t show. Chest to chest, mouth to mouth. Maybe his heart hammers a little faster than usual but Astarion’s does too. Faster than it ever really has for another person.

And there’s so much more of Gale to touch, like this. His hands skim the human’s sides and grab his hips, his ass, still barely encased in the ridiculously small shorts he always favors for parties and just about anywhere else he can get away with it. A shame to pull his hands away but there’s the lithe muscle on his back too, that needs touched, and even better, maybe best of all, the soft silk of his forever-spilling-out hair.

And he can get a leg around Gale like this too, hoist it up around his hips and make them cram so much closer together. Gale groans into his mouth and grinds down harder, inelegant and quick and the trousers in the way become, immediately, the worst thing in Astarion’s life.

But the moving to take them off. Moving to stop kissing Gale, to stop touching him, might be the second worst. So he indulges it a few minutes longer. Until Gale’s breath hitches hard right against his lips, and his busy hips hold a grind long enough he swears he feels the human’s cock throb even through three layers.

“Let me get these off of you, yes?” Astarion mutters against his mouth, his hands, fingers clutching at the folded-over waistband on Gale’s shorts and giving a delicate tug. “And then my own, and then, well…”

Even the insinuation gets another groan from Gale and Astarion laughs, breathless and enchanted with all of this, but mostly, with Gale himself. How hot his skin is, how heavy and perfect on top of him. How easy he’s going to fall apart. How easy he already is.

A shuffle and Gale stands and Astarion chases him, on his knees on the bed, hands still hopelessly attached to those low-slung shorts. They peel off easy and he sighs, actually sighs to see that deep pink cock revealed, slapping up against Gale’s stomach gravity be damned.

He’s gentle, wrapping a fist around it. One finger at a time and even that sends Gale into a fit of gasping while he throbs against Astarion’s palm.

“How beautiful you are,” Astarion murmurs, looking up at the near-pained expression on Gale’s face. His lips parted and wet, his eyes all screwed up in a squint, his hair askew like they’ve already tumbled around. A nearly angelic frame, soft and thick and dazzling.

“Had I the wherewithal, I’d tell you the same.” It sounds a little apologetic, as Gale weaves fingers through Astarion’s hair, gentle and slow, and he lets the motion crane his head up higher, lets his eyes widen and his expression soften, naturally.

He needs Gale to see all of that. How much he wants him. Needs to convey, through expression, through touch, how changed he’s been since that first meeting and since every meeting afterwards. He can’t say any of it. That’s simply out of the question, especially knowing what he does about Gale. But if he gets a crumb of it through, he’ll be satisfied.

He thinks it works; Gale blinks and his squint relaxes. There’s a second of a frown, thoughtful, that draws down his brows. And another second later, Gale’s other hand warm and soft along his cheek, down his jaw. He nuzzles into it, shamelessly chasing the heat, the sweet touch, and turning to take Gale’s thumb between his lips. Even more shameless that he suckles at it, just to feel the throb in Gale’s cock over the act.

It’d be too easy to undo him, like this. Quick and simple and he could have Gale spilling before he’d even managed a finger inside and, fun as that sounds, it’s not what he wants. Not tonight.

“Just tell me how much you want to fuck me and I’ll call it even, then,” with a sly smirk, with a teasing lick at the pad of Gale’s thumb.

“So much,” Gale says, in a sigh. And it’s such a familiar echo of that other very sweet thing Gale’s been saying, it makes him laugh softly. “And it’s not…not particularly something I think on, you know. Well out of my oeuvre. But…gods, I’ve even been thinking about your mouth too much, you know.”

Eyebrows ping up and Astarion tilts his head and it’s impossible to halt the grin tugging at his mouth. And he’s so so close, he could just hunch and suck all of Gale’s cock right down his gullet and really, truly give him a taste of his own fantastic medicine.

“Really,” Astarion says, instead, “how intriguing. Why not both, tonight?”

“No,” Gale says, and it’s accompanied with a shudder, with another deep throb against Astarion’s palm. Another one when he finally moves his hand in a slow, loose stroke. “No, not…not yet, at least. I won’t have any hope of lasting, if we try for both.”

“That’s adorable,” and Astarion stretches up for Gale’s mouth, to sink against him for another kiss, deep and dirty before, “but you and I both know I’d get you hard again in a second. Or, more to the point, never let you go soft at all. You know, I could very easily just open myself up while I’m blowing you, and you could squeeze right in. Hmm?”

“Gods,” another shuddering sigh and Gale shuts his eyes, letting his forehead rest against Astarion’s. “I am incredibly tempted. But…well, you need to know, I’ve been imagining the tightness, the heat of you, opening up for me. And that’s the only place I want to come, tonight.”

“Oh, who could say no to that?” Astarion sighs back, and after another kiss, heated and long and a little desperate, he moves fast to get himself naked while Gale tends to the rest. Prepared, apparently, with lube, with towels, with an assortment of differently supportive pillows strewn across his bed.

Best of all, Gale doesn’t look too nervous, and he had worried over that. That he’d talked him into it, that he’d plied himself all too well to the human but no, Gale’s confident as he’s ever been, perched on the edge of the bed and waiting.

Another cocky smirk while Astarion covers the step or two between them, looking fondly down. So fondly. Almost too fondly, but he isn’t prepared to think too much on that, just yet. He stops in front of Gale, until Gale has to tip his head up to look.

“You want me on my back, I suppose?”

A deep breath, and Gale nods. His deft fingers flutter and clutch at the edge of the bed and Astarion longs to feel them everywhere, but specifically, working him open.

He’s coveted Gale enough; now he can take action. A ruffle of Gale’s hair and he crawls past him onto the bed. Not very big, about what he’d expect for a dorm, but that only means they’ll have to cram even closer together through all of this and that suits him just fine.

Gale turns while he’s still arranging himself artfully against the pillows, and drapes over him before he’s truly finished. He can’t complain, though. Not for that heat hitting him again, that scratchy lovely hair against his chest, his stomach, and the fiery hot brand of Gale's cock along his thigh.

“I’ll go slowly,” Gale promises him, his eyes sparkling with it.

“On my account? You better not,” Astarion counters. A little push at Gale's shoulder and, “let me show you something,” like he’s had it planned but he hadn’t; the dirty trick’s just occurred to him.

Astarion squeezes his hand between them, fits it around both of their cocks and remembers, so vividly, when they came together like that. The heady filthy pleasure of it, of their near-simultaneous orgasms. But after a second, he drops his own and presses Gale’s down flat, against his pelvis, against his stomach.

Gale starts, huffs, throbs. The standard reactions.

Astarion nuzzles along the side of his face, into that deliciously human beard covering his stunning jawline. “Look, look how deep inside me you’ll be. How far up in my guts you’ll get.”

Gale blinks wide before he looks, and his whole body seems to jerk. His hips stutter against Astarion’s grip and when he finally does look, there’s another huff of air and a second desperate, broken thrust.

“Oh, don’t, you can’t - not yet. At least let me…gods, please,” he babbles, tense, lovely.

“Let you what, darling?”

“Let me get my fingers inside of you before you start talking like that.”

And it’s said as he laces a hand through Astarion’s free one, right beside his head. Their fingers mingling, rubbing, squeezing and it shouldn’t be so horribly sweet but Astarion’s heart pumps hard and fast for a dizzying few seconds.

“Gods, yes, okay, go then. Please? Please don’t make me wait any longer.”

“It’s hardly been a wait at all,” Gale says, and now he’s the one with the amused tone, with the breathy smirk.

“Whatever time has passed between when I kissed you outside the door and this second has been entirely too long.”

“Fifteen minutes, I think.”

“Yes, alright, then it’s been fourteen minutes too long. Shall I beg?”

“You needn’t.”

“I will. If you want.”

A patient smile - far more patient than Astarion’s feeling - and another kiss before Gale moves. His mouth trails down Astarion’s neck and finds his collarbone. There’s a bite, there, with his blunt teeth, that sends sparks down Astarion’s spine. Gale moves further down, unlaces their hands to run his fingers over Astarion’s skin after every wet sweep of his mouth.

It feels like a new kind of torture. Waiting, watching. And wanting, so badly so quickly.

He hasn’t seen Gale work magic but he knows how much of it depends on those precise digital motions. And he has spent too many hours daydreaming about his hands. Especially the more casual time they spend together. Watching him balance a fork between his fingers, watching him turn a page. Watching him sweep his hair up in yet another messy bun. There’s skill, there. An ease of movement that, even now, Astarion can’t help but watch.

The fingers drum down his ribs as Gale tongues over his stomach, kisses his navel and sinks lower. Hands grip his hips, next. Thumbs rubbing at his hipbones and even though he’s watching, the twirl of Gale’s tongue over his cockhead still makes him swear.

He should’ve expected it but he’s been so focused elsewhere that it’s a blissful surprise. He tangles a hand in Gale’s hair and grinds out a throaty laugh.

“Gods, go easy, I was not ready for your perfect fucking mouth and I swear one little suck could have me bursting over your tongue.”

It doesn’t help, either, the way Gale looks up at him. Mischievous, light dancing in his big brown eyes. The tide has turned, for now but there’s nothing to begrudge him over. Nothing at all.

“I had to,” Gale explains, simply, as he leans in for more.

“Of course you did.”

And there’s no real telling him to stop. There’s no point to that. It feels too good, anyway; the warm, wet cradle of Gale’s tongue, the hot tug of his lips around Astarion’s head. Measured enough, he supposes that he won’t completely fall apart in the man’s mouth but gods, it always feels so precarious.

Like any second, Gale might do something, some stunning move or other, and completely obliterate any and all of Astarion’s stamina and willpower.

But, even as Gale slowly suckles at him, his hands skim down his thighs and palm the insides and that’s new. Never happened before. Astarion legs his legs fall open, then, again. And he arches a little, into Gale’s mouth, with a quiet little moan that’s half for sure. Mostly, just to speed things along.

“I bet you could multitask your way inside of me, you know.”

And Gale’s eyes squint at the notion and his gorgeous mouth drools off of Astarion’s dick, not moving far enough that the heat really goes anywhere. “I don’t think even a mind such as mine can accomplish that at first blush.”

“Oh, please, you could suck dick in your sleep, I’m sure of it. Here, give me your hand,” and he reaches for it, before Gale can even slide it up. Everything’s laid out just so, so all he has to do is grab the lube and they’re well on the way, all of a sudden.

But. He’d be remiss to skip the opportunity of hunching a little and sinking his mouth down around Gale’s first two fingers. A tease, a show, and Gale’s eyes go wide. A little strand of drool falls from his mouth onto Astarion’s slick cock. A beautiful sight.

“Sadly, not enough, no matter how long I salivate over your perfect fingers. But here,” and it’s just the index, for now, that he drizzles a little lube over until it’s shiny from that, too, and with some careful guidance, he maneuvers Gale’s hand back down. Back between his legs. Gale’s head leans against his thigh, his eyes fixing there, on their hands together, on Astarion reconfiguring his position and canting his hips and another, “here, just there,” before he presses that finger against the tight furl of his hole.

“Show me,” Gale says, broken and halting. Wide-eyed, staring up and flicking his gaze back down again, like he doesn’t know where to look.

But it’s already good, the press of his finger just there, not even moving. Astarion hitches a leg further up the bed and moves against it with a contented sigh, avidly watching Gale’s face. There’s nowhere else he’d rather stare, right now.

“It’s easy, see,” Astarion pants, and guides Gale’s still finger a little firmer. Rubs it in a slow circle, trying to relax against it but gods, it’s so good. He wants more, right away, always. But, if only for Gale’s sake, he’ll slow.

Gale, for the time being, seems frozen in place. Staring, his fingers flexing under Astarion’s grip.

“You’re supposed be the one imploring me to relax,” Astarion tells him, with a breathless chuckle that earns him Gale’s eyes again. “Hm? That’s usually how this works. Telling me to be patient while you tease me open with those incredible fingers of yours.”

“I’m…so out of my depth, I’m sorry, I don’t want to do anything wrong, I - “

“You’re so sweet, Gale,” he sighs, heart hammering, clenching weird again but gods, he’s really got to push past that and get things moving. “You can’t do a thing wrong. Here, just rub, like this,” and he moves Gale’s index finger for him and gives him a blissful smile and a nod, grinding back against the movements again.

Gale nods back, but he sees the swallow, the dark flicker in his eyes before it lowers again.

Then a hot huff spills out over his thigh, a pillow for Gale’s head, still, and, “gods, you’re so beautiful like this. Opening up.”

“Oh, there, see? That’s more like it.”

And already the flare of confidence in Gale’s brown eyes, and a flush darkening his cheeks again. Astarion moves his hand away and then that’s Gale, doing all the work.

Well. Most of it. Another grind and Astarion moans, while the tip slicks the way just inside, just barely.

Gale gasps along with it but he doesn’t recoil. No, he twists. He finds a better angle and he asks, “how will I ever fit? Hell’s teeth, you’re so tight.”

“Ah - keep going and you’ll see. Please, keep going.”

There’s a second or two of stillness, a second or two too long. Astarion clenches around Gale’s finger and only half of that is on purpose, trying to spur him into action. It works, snapping Gale’s apparent daze and he presses past that first taut muscle up to the first knuckle.

He does keep going. And it’s even more perfect than Astarion daydreamed about. No surprise Gale gets a feel for it, once he’s past his nerves.

And it’s been too long since Astarion let anyone do this. Too busy with his last year of school, back home. Too busy with moving and then, too consumed with this new life in Waterdeep. The parties, the new corners and alleys to discover. The new favorite person here, just between his legs, that he’s figuring out how to chase.

In a respectful way. In a way that makes sense and leaves them both free and clear to do whatever the hells they want.

He hasn’t stopped staring down at Gale, who hasn’t stopped staring at his single finger moving in a steady, slow rhythm. A little deeper but still so, so measured. And then he sinks to the second knuckle and shifts, laying a hot-mouthed kiss against Astarion’s inner thigh. How tender there, how sweet the feeling.

“You can go faster, now,” Astarion tells him, at the exact moment as he does do just that, like some incredible synchronization.

Gale laughs, that breath hot over his skin, and the grin he throws up Astarion’s way is nearly too much. He’s got it now, and it’s going to be very much too much. In the best way.

“Gods, yes,” Astarion groans about it, teasing a leg up over Gale’s back as the human hunches there, between his thighs. The bed moves with Gale’s effort, with his increasingly quick pace and something else, too. Gale’s hips, he realizes, rocking against nothing.

How gorgeous. Fun ammunition for later.

Or, for in about five minutes, when both their patience runs dangerously thin.

On pure impulse, Astarion reaches for Gale’s moving hand again, stops him and grins at the questioning glance up. “Another, please?”

“Oh, so soon?” a crease of concern, a furrow of his considerable brow.

“Yes,” Astarion says, immediately. Heedless how eager that makes him look because gods damn it all, he is eager for this. Spent the better part of a week obsessing over it. So it doesn’t seem soon at all, it feels like a long time coming for how worn the tread is in his brain.

Gale’s still doe-eyed and blinksome though, back at being a little halting and careful and Astarion’s got the cure for that, he’s sure.

It’s honesty.

“You need to understand,” breathy and that isn’t a show at all, and his eyes fix on Gale’s with something that feels achingly genuine, “that I cannot stop thinking about you shoving that gorgeous cock inside of me. I haven’t been able to, since I said so. Since long before that.”

He watches it take hold, watches Gale’s breathing pick up and his busy hips hitch again and oh, gods, to feel that motion inside, so uncontrolled and overeager and he tightens around Gale’s finger at the mere thought.

“Here,” Astarion rushes, paws for the lube and takes all the advantage of his long, willowy limbs to find Gale’s hand again, still between his legs. The cap pops easy under his thumb and he makes up for Gale’s lack of motion with a flurry of his own, until he’s sure it’s enough. Maybe more than enough, when he feels the slickness of those digits with his own. And, again, “please, let me show you? I can take it.”

And Gale nods, finally. More hair slips free, framing his flushed face like some mad sensual portrait. His fingers twitch. And Astarion guides him easy, the index out and then two pressing at the just-stretched rim, hot and slick and he watches Gale again, watches his face like he’s studying it, like he can’t hope to look away.

Gale’s gaze flickers from his face down to his ass, up and down and again like he can’t settle, even as he presses inside.

“I - the thing is - “ Gale starts, stutteringly, a wild wide expression on his face. “I don’t know if I can take it,” he pants out. “You’re so tight and warm and gods, I don’t know how to do any of this but I am so desperately close to, ah, embarrassing myself and - “

“Oh,” Astarion sighs out, and the rush of that flushes over his whole body. Clears his brain in one fell swoop and makes his cock fucking throb. “Truly?”

But he doesn’t stop anything; doesn’t stop moving against Gale’s guided fingers. Doesn’t stop guiding them either. He sinks them in deeper and watches Gale’s eyes go even wider, watches his whole body shudder and his breath catch and as much as he wants to see what Gale might look like if he accidentally shoots this soon, he’d really rather feel it somewhere deep and dirty instead.

“Fuck - slow down, Astarion, please, I don’t - “

“Here then,” breathless, scrabbling for any part of Gale with his less-sticky hand, “you can fit inside, quickly, here, here.”

Dirty, reaching right for Gale’s cock as he’s shifting up the bed but he practically has to, and anyway, it’s helpful if nothing else, slicking him up quick and then keeping hold while Gale hisses and throbs.

And gods, he’s so hard, and he always is. So hard and sensitive to every little touch that for a handful of heady seconds, Astarion wonders if he might come like this, before he’s even there.

If nothing else, it’d be a point of pride.

But, realistically, fuck pride.

He needs Gale inside of him, yesterday. Last week, even.

Their foreheads slam together, inelegantly, and Gale gasps right against his mouth. Hot and desperate and there, there’s the slick, hotter slide of his rigid cock against Astarion’s thigh, wet, so close and searching and he tries, he really does, to spear himself on Gale’s cock before it’s too late.

But he erupts right against his hole, on his skin, in a fiery mess. The human’s hips work erratically but Astarion manages, somehow, to stuff the spurting head inside.

It really is too much, that stretch, combined with Gale’s jerking hips, with his panting mouth and the so human heat of his body. Gale cries out something, nothing, against his lips and he’s still coming; Astarion feels it, the throb inside of him beyond the stretch. And it’s so, so good.

“Sorry, I’m sorry, it’s too good, I’m - “

“No, no no, stop,” Astarion pours, purrs the words right into Gale’s open mouth. “Nothing to be sorry for, just don’t stop moving, don’t even try - ah!” and there’s suddenly so much more of the human pressing inside of him, absolutely more than he was ready for. The throb presses him wider, like a second heartbeat filling him up, and there’s no rhythm, no art at all to Gale’s fitful thrusts.

It aches, the further in he goes. Aches in the best way and he only for a second regrets not spending more time on the prep, only for a single second until that dull pain sharpens into pure bliss.

With a shudder, Gale stills. Tellingly, he doesn’t pull out at all; he doesn’t even try and Astarion takes that opportunity to wrap him up with his legs, with his arms, to kiss against his still-panting mouth.

“I didn’t mean to - gods, you’re so - gods above - “ babbles out, no matter how hard Astarion tries to kiss all the words from Gale’s mouth. It’s a little charming, somehow, hearing him so broken and brain dead.

“I’m so what?” Astarion prods, has to. He wants to hear it, wants to hear every blessed thought crossing Gale’s sodden brain.

“Tight,” Gale says, in a sigh, dramatically.

“Hmm.” Filthy, that he tightens up more around the human’s still-hard cock. It drives Gale’s hips in another stuttering thrust, deeper, and he stays there. “Fuck all, that is perfect, Gale. What else?”

“Hot. Like a…gods, like a fire, inside.”

“Hmm, you are too. I can feel every inch of you searing me, darling, and it is so fucking good. Better than I’d imagined, and I have spent so much time imagining it.”

Gale relaxes, a second; an easy smile falls across his face and even so close that he’s blurry, Astarion’s struck, as he often is, by how unbelievably handsome Gale is. To have him here, sweaty and heavy and all to himself seems so fucking magical.

“Nothing else could ever feel so marvelous, I’m sure of it,” Gale says, like a sigh, and if Astarion doesn’t laugh at that he’s going to say something very, very stupid.

So he does laugh, head tipped back and breathless, strumming his clean hand through Gale’s hair to push it back, but it always falls back down like a soft veil around them. “Oh, you should try a girl sometime. Not quite so tight but deliciously wet and warm. Or someone else’s ass. It’d be fun to compare notes.”

Gale sighs out another, “oh,” with a jerky thrust and Astarion gasps because gods, that’s as deep as he’s going to get and the pressure is incredible.

And it’s a bit of a shame because he had a whole bit lined up about wanting to watch Gale fuck someone else but he can’t manage to make words about anything. Later, perhaps. A later tease, a later ramble when they’re all tucked into each other and groggy. Just some nonsense pillow talk.

“Too much?” Gale asks, and it’s so sweet, it’s really too sweet how concerned he is about this.

Astarion shakes his head, bites his lip. “No,” he manages to sigh, rocking his hips just a little against Gale’s body. There’s the warm squish of his balls against Astarion’s skin, and the sticky mess from his first load. Astarion wonders what it looks like, how lewd that vision must be.

How much convincing would it take to get Gale to fuck him in front of a mirror, he wonders absently. Yet another thread for another time.

Oh, he’s going to forget all of these things he wants to bring up later.

Oh well.

“Do you need a moment?” Gale asks, and Astarion realizes he’s been head tilted back panting eyes shut fingers clutching thighs twitching for too long.

“Do you?” he counters.

Gale huffs, thought creasing his face but, ultimately, he shakes his head, shakes that gorgeous halo of silky hair around them and catches Astarion’s mouth with his again.

He starts moving slow. Starts moving while he’s still sucking at Astarion’s tongue and it’s head-spinning. He’s so careful, measured and practically crawling. It’s maddening, it’s maddeningly good. Not enough, just enough, Astarion can’t decide, and he doesn’t want to press Gale into something before he’s ready, not at all, but, gods, how could he get Gale back to losing that tightly held control again?

He wonders.

And then, he remembers. Remembers Gale on his knees at that party, glowing while Astarion lavished the most basic praise on him. Remembers the glitter of his eyes, the soft, dark flush in his cheeks. Oh, that’s right, he’s so easy and it’s fantastic.

And he detaches from Gale’s perfectly talented mouth, letting their foreheads fall together again.

And, “you’re so good, Gale. You feel so fantastic inside of me like this. You’re doing so well.”

Gale’s chest swells in sudden breath against Astarion’s and he blinks slow. His mouth still slacking open, shiny-wet. “Truly?”

“Yes,” Astarion says, and lays a hand against his cheek, drums up his most honest expression. Which isn’t difficult, at all. Because he means all of this things he’s saying, even if they’re designed to get Gale worked up even more. “I don’t think I’ll ever forget this. Don’t stop? Show me how capable you are with that wonderful cock, won’t you?”

A breathless nod and Gale shifts, raises up and gathers his knees for better leverage and gods, he truly is a natural at all of this, somehow. Made to please someone and how incredible that someone is Astarion, for tonight.

“Yes, there, that’s how you do it,” Astarion praises him, can’t stop, especially when it makes Gale turn so pink, so determined.

Especially when it gets him moving, testing long, slow strokes that barely dip the bed at all. And that feel overwhelmingly good, even if they aren’t so fast as Astarion would like. There’s time, after all. More or less.

It’s satisfying to stretch out under him and take it. To watch Gale figuring all of this out and, best of all, to get to feel it. All that hard, tightly held desperation and he’s only just started breaking it.

A little faster and Astarion sighs happily, stretches like a cat basking. And, “yes, see, there you are. I bet you could keep that up all night, darling, hm? I bet you could fuck for hours and leave me brainless and leaking by the end.”

That hits something.

Two ways.

Because Gale thrusts sharp and sudden, a slightly different angle and it’s that angle that truly hits Astarion perfectly inside and makes him throw his head back again in a cry, and tighten around the human, even as Gale’s already pulling back again.

“Did I - “ already apologizing while Astarion tries to find it again, that blissful angle, that sharp thump of thick cock spearing him just so.

“Right there, there, can you - oh,” and he finds it again with another roll of Gale’s busy, twitchy hips.

“There?” with a creased brow, desperately curious. One of his talented hands curls around Astarion’s thigh, pressing it out, up, wide.

And he thrusts again and Astarion swears he sees stars behind his eyelids, moons, planets, whole fucking galaxies, so good he can’t even speak.

Gale gets the idea after that. Easily, quickly, absolutely born to please.

So rare he’s struck speechless, noiseless, but all Astarion can do is arch into this, grab at Gale’s arm posted up beside him, and stare when he manages to keep his eyes open. Incredible how well Gale takes to this. Incredible, too, how utterly human it is.

Nothing like fucking back home.

That always held a special delicacy to it. Sweet touches and breathy caresses. Whispered, time-honored phrases of devotion, even if they were untrue.

This is pure and filthy. Gale’s sweat drips onto him and his heat blankets Astarion’s body in delicious waves. His breathing goes ragged, combined lewdly with the slick noises of the mess he’s already made inside, outside. There’s hair on his arm, where Astarion’s fingers dig in. There’s the stunning pelt on his chest, the tantalizing trail on his stomach. The trimmed bush grinding against Astarion’s smooth, flat pelvis, now and then.

And the effort. The speed, the pounding, pulsing heartbeat feeling inside and out.

Pure human.

A quicker pace thumps the bed against the wall, forces Astarion’s eyes shut against the perfect onslaught of fucking. He skims a hand down Gale’s chest. Plucks at a pierced nipple just to feel the hitch in Gale’s hips on the way to his own body.

He’s waited long enough, he figures, grasping his own cock. He’s leaky, throbbing hard and Gale’s pace picks up even more, once he sees it.

“Are you - gods, are you going to make yourself - “

“No,” Astarion huffs, clean hand around the back of Gale’s neck, drawing him down, close, closer. “No, you’re going to make me come. Aren’t you?”

A shudder, a nod, and Gale, dutifully, slams hard with the next thrust, and the next, and on and on and Astarion doesn’t even have time to scream, to drum up some sweet, lovely encouraging words, before he’s clenching and squeezing around it. He barely registers his own cock throbbing in his hand, spending against his stomach, barely knows anything outside of Gale pounding in again and again, even while Astarion’s body tries to hold him steady, milk him dry.

“That’s - too tight, gods below, I can’t - “ Gale babbles, shudders, slams. Sweats and pants and then the pace is untenable for a few hectic seconds. Astarion’s not sure he can take it, in that moment, and what a fantastic thing to feel.

He’s barely regained anything of his senses when Gale finishes - again. This time it’s deep inside of him, a little more planned, at least. It’s perfect.

It’s perfect and he tells Gale so, while he licks at his bottom lip, while his body clutches at him inside. A mindless chant of, “that’s it, you’re perfect, fill me up again, perfect, fucking perfect.”

Until Gale cuts him off. Tongue-first. Still thrusting weak, but deep.

He melts into the kiss. Melts into Gale’s mouth while Gale sort of collapses, on top of him. A sweaty pile that Astarion only wants to hold on to, to clutch at for as long as he can.

Gale doesn’t stop kissing him until they’re both struggling to breathe, and even then, when Astarion gasps laughingly for air, Gale sets his mouth onto his neck, instead. Like he can’t have it empty, can’t have it idle.

Oh, that oral fixation.

More like a compulsion. But the best kind, because Astarion’s on the receiving end of it.

Eventually, Gale stills and rests his head there, in the crook of his neck. He heaves a hot sigh against the drying sweat.

“I can’t believe how good you feel inside,” he says, a tired, delirious edge to his voice that Astarion loves. “Still.”

“Anytime you’d like to do that again - “

“I’d say right now but I think I might actually need a minute. Perhaps even two.”

Astarion laughs softly. Fondly. Kisses into Gale’s unruly hair and traces the muscles of his back with his clean hand. A leg still hitches around his waist, holding him in place. But the human doesn’t seem likely to move anytime soon.

Good.

“You take all the time you need. Neither of us are going anywhere, I think. Unless you’d like me to leave.”

“No,” muffles against his skin, with another kiss. “Please, stay. I haven’t shared a bed in an age but I’d really love to, for as long as you can stand it.”

As it turns out, he can stand it until the sun comes up. And quite a while after that.

Until, at least, the smell of something from the kitchen rouses him.

It takes a second before he places the bed he’s in. In Gale’s bedroom. In Gale’s dormitory.

Gods. Gale. The smell of him lingers in the bed beside him, in the tangle of the still warm sheets.

He doesn’t bother with clothes, getting up. And he’s a little tender in all manner of places but nothing too terrible. Reminders of a night well spent. Of a night he’d like to repeat.

Gale’s in the little kitchen beside the bedroom, predictably in yet another pair of petite shorts, barely clinging to his svelte hips. Both hands maneuver something over the stove and a soft piece of piano music floats out from a tinny-sounding speaker next to a coffee pot.

He’s humming to it. His hair’s uncombed, and the light from the window, open, illuminates him from behind.

Astarion stays in the doorway for a long moment, undiscovered, greedily staring. Gale in all of his capricious beauty, was only his, last night. Who knows if he ever will be again, but he’s content with that night. Content with this morning, drinking in the scene.

Ridiculous that Gale blushes when he sees him there, in the doorway.

Blushes, yes, but strides over until he’s right there in Astarion’s space, still wielding his cooking things, but also wielding a sweet half-smile and a delightful sparkle in his eyes.

“Good morning. I tried not to wake you.”

“You didn’t,” Astarion tells him, the truth, and he kisses that little half-smile until, finished, it’s a grin across Gale’s face.

He ducks back to the stove, gorgeous and flighty as ever.

It’s pancakes and bacon, with the thick Waterdhavian coffee he’s become used to, eaten in the tiny breakfast nook by the open window. The breeze drifts in, sending the steam swirling, along with Gale’s messy hair.

“I would like to do that again, sometime,” Gale says, over the rim of his mug. It breaks a comfortable silence and sounds so nervous, unsure. As if anyone would say no.

Astarion smirks, leans across the small table. “Anytime you’d like, like I said. That was - you are, I mean, incredible.”

A little smile tugs at the corner of Gale’s mouth. He sips the coffee, but his eyes still hold something. Some unspoken thought or other, so Astarion waits. Patiently as he can.

“I would like to do that only with you, Astarion. And no one else.”

He blinks a few times. Perhaps he hasn’t had enough coffee for his brain to truly catch up.

Good gods, he doesn’t know what to say.

“I’d like that,” is what makes it out of his mouth and after a moment’s thought, he realizes it’s actually true. That there’s a heady, slightly uncomfortable swelling in his chest and a syrupy warmth spreading around inside of him. That he wants that, too, so much. Whatever it is, whatever it makes them.

Gale’s face lights up beautifully. A hand stretches across the table and fits neatly against Astarion’s. “In the interest of clarity - “

“You will still be blowing much of the campus, yes, I have no qualms with that. I will be there watching, whenever you’d like, enjoying the show and being unquestioningly supportive.”

He didn’t think the light in Gale’s eyes could brighten but here it is. The dark brown illuminated so stunningly, so in sync with the grin widening on his face. It seems to lighten the room even more. Seems to multiply even the sunlight streaming in, to sweeten the breeze.

“And helping,” Gale says, eyebrows raised. “I do love you helping me.”

“And helping,” Astarion repeats, assuredly.

And, “well, there’s this party tonight…”

Well, isn’t there always?

Series this work belongs to:

• Part 1 of Blowmance