Chapter Text
Such pervasive shadows. Even safely behind tower walls and in the glow of those tricky moon-lanterns.
They breed paranoia.
Worse, still, a nagging familiarity with the ruined town swallowed up in swirling green and black. A trick of the living-dead darkness, perhaps.
Perhaps not.
Making it to camp feels like an exhale must have, once upon a time.
Even if that camp is nestled in yet more ruins, deep in the crumbling tower. No windows, one exit. It’s not ideal but, he supposes, they weren’t spoiled for choice.
Funny, in a strange, dizzying way, how much better he feels seeing the wizard’s blue tent. The piles of books, the telescope, even inside. An attempt at the comforts of Waterdeep, the comforts of the ordinary.
Funny.
A few steps more and there, there’s Gale’s on a stool by the cook pot. A tome held aloft by one mage hand, while another stirs.
He looks tired. The fire flickers and makes dark shadows on his face, makes orange out of his brown eyes, his hair. He sighs so heavy, it deflates his whole body.
And then he looks up. And he smiles.
And there’s nothing at all left in Astarion’s dead chest to race. No reason at all why he should feel lightheaded, giddy, stupid. Being caught staring, surely that’s it. A minor embarrassment.
“Oh, here you are, at last!” Gale says, rising. The tome drops as the mage hand disappears.
And it’s in front of everyone that Gale approaches, that Gale reaches for the pack on his shoulder and eases it to the ground. It jangles with coin, as ever, and clatters with any number of pilfered treasures.
In front of godsdamned everyone when Gale unbuckles his drow armor and pulls him into the comparatively safe shadows of his tent.
If there’s eyes on them at all, Astarion’s missed them. No, after the trudge through the shadows on the heels of the drider, after the easy lies at Moonrise, there’s something so wonderful about coming back to this.
Gale.
Gale’s attention. His deft fingers brush through Astarion’s hair, plucking out a dead leaf or two. Curl around his neck, his shoulder and with a sigh, a tug, Gale pulls him into an embrace.
Gods, it’s so easy.
Really, truly, the easiest grift he’s ever pulled.
It’s fun, too.
He goes with a sigh, nestling into the warmth of Gale’s neck. Pressing against the heat of his chest, digging his fingertips into his back.
“It’s so wonderful to see you again, after nothing but those nasty shadows,” he sighs against Gale’s skin, and feels the shiver with a swell of pride.
“Awful out there, isn’t it? I’m relieved to see you’re in one piece. It’s like a storm that never ends, with ghastly, unsettled spirits instead of rain. I never dreamed I’d be caught up amongst such an abominable thing.”
No missing the reverence there, in the wizard’s voice. Allured as ever by the strange and unsettling.
If he’d spent more time out there, maybe he wouldn’t be so curious. If he’d seen the things Astarion had, the howling visages, the yawning cracked earth. That awful itching deep in his cored-out brain that he’d walked these streets before and worse still, that he’d walked these streets in broad fucking daylight.
A trick. It has to be.
He must give something away. Some minor tell he’s missed, revealing the discomfort, both general and acute.
Because, horribly, Gale slips his fingers back up into his hair, smoothing the curls, making the sweetest little hum of sympathy.
“Worse out there for you, I imagine. There must be some natural sympathies with such an environment, for a vampire, spawn or otherwise.”
Is that it? This feeling?
The first thought, first instinct, is denial. Assure Gale he’s perfectly fine. Distract him with a smile and a kiss and a heavenly blow job.
But. Beneath that, a different thing lurks, blooming, and he seizes it.
“Oh, terrible,” Astarion tells him. Nestles in deeper to his shoulder, digging his fingers harder into the muscles of his back. “And worse still, for you not being there, by my side.”
Strange that it doesn’t feel like much of an exaggeration at all.
Of course he trusts the party, at least as far as they’re willing to trust him, but there’s something steadying about having Gale shoulder to shoulder in a fight.
The bellow of his voice, the magic at his fingertips. The breathless exhilaration that pours out of him, so infectious.
And better still, the kisses that threaten to steal his breath, if he had any left in the ruin of his dead lungs.
“I’ll make a case for myself, tomorrow, just you wait,” Gale says, drawing back. Only slightly. He’s still so close he blurs and shimmers. And then, a kiss. First, just the corner of his mouth, and then full on.
Oh, such blissful warmth to sink into after the cold indifferent shadows. A whole day passed between the last one and this one and suddenly, Astarion’s not sure how he’d lived without it.
How stunning. How easy to get wrapped up in this. How suitable for his cause and nothing at all else.
Gale’s the first to pull away, too. Briefly resting their foreheads together, and then further, his nimble fingers working at the lacing on Astarion’s shirt.
“Well, let’s get you into something more comfortable. I did look for somewhere to take a nice, hot bath but I’m afraid we’re out of luck. For tonight, at least.”
“Thank you for looking, but I doubt some of your fancy soap and tepid water would be enough to scrub the shadows from my skin.”
“That bad, hm? We sort of sailed through the town quick as you like to set up camp, but I suppose the long way was more scenic.”
“Yes, and…” Astarion cuts himself off, as Gale drags the light blue shirt over his head. There’s a few fresh bruises on his torso and he watches Gale sweep his eyes over them, watches the sweet downturn of his mouth.
“And?” Gale asks. Brown eyes flickering up, back down again as he reaches for the trousers, next.
“It must be some trick of these shadows, but I feel as though I’ve been here before. Are you getting that, too?”
Gale darts his eyes up again. Squinting in that way he has when he’s thinking very hard, when he’s disastrously interested in something. “I can’t say that I am.”
“Oh, well,” Astarion shrugs. Content to drop this immediately, quickly, to bury it and never bring it up again.
But.
“Is it possible?” Gale asks, more to himself, seemingly only aloud on a technicality. “You know, I had quite a long, illuminating chat with Halsin over the particulars of this shadow-blighted land. He knew it before it was so touched. I wonder if you did too.”
“Oh, who knows,” Astarion waves his hand absently, then fixes it to Gale’s wrist, taking over undressing himself.
Very suddenly, he needs something to do, with his hands, with his brain. Something to take away the weird, free-floating familiarity of this place. His resting clothes are folded neatly, placed on top of Gale’s trunk, ready and waiting.
When was the last time anyone treated him with such care?
Oh, never.
It’s been all teeth, all knives, all sharp points and shoves off of cliffs.
“I’m sure I’ve been a lot of places. Listen, forget I said anything and help me with this confounded shirt.”
And now the need to distract Gale, too.
He turns around to face the wizard, half-dressed, his trousers low-slung on his hips, the crisp cotton, the hand-me-down from Gale himself, thrust out to him.
“If you’ve been here before, there may be a tactical advantage, if nothing else,” Gale says, very gently. Gentle too, his hands draping his cast-off shirt over Astarion’s shoulders, pulling, tying it.
“I doubt it. I’m sure if I was here, it was for something utterly untoward that benefits no one. Or at least benefitted no one, past tense. No need to dwell on it.”
“Oh, were you really so rebellious back then, do you think? Still drumming up trouble everywhere you went?”
“I must’ve been, don’t you think? There was probably some, I don’t know, underground million gold gambling ring or something of the sort. Maybe I buried treasure under one of those old gnarled up trees, two hundred bloody years ago. I’ll never remember, whatever fun it was.”
“I wonder,” Gale says, a sigh of it, finishing off the last of the ties at Astarion’s chest and resting his hands there still, warm through the cotton. His big brown eyes shine lovely, luminous. A beacon to follow when the useless roiling of his brain proves too much.
Whatever thought the wizard had goes unvoiced, and he shakes his head. “Well, never mind that tonight. I’ll draw up a map tomorrow.”
“Don’t bother. I have a feeling we won’t be staying long, from all that muttering Lae’zel keeps doing around the guards. One of them’s going to pick up on it sooner or later. Then we’ll be off on our heels to the next ruin.”
Gale hums in what must be agreement. Still lost in thought, a little, but then isn’t he always? Astarion’s sure the wizard has a wheel that never stops, in his brain, even at rest. He’s sure because he’s the godsdamned same and it’s exhausting.
Even now, it turns.
“Listen, enough about me. How are you feeling?” Astarion asks. He drops his voice for it, brushes a hand across Gale’s cheek and rests it on his shoulder, his thumb against the wizard’s neck. “It’s been, what, two days since that dusty old chap did whatever he did to you - “
“Elminster is not - “
“Any side effects, yet? Any new powers, strange feelings? How’s the hunger?”
“It’s…well, it’s gone,” Gale says, brow creasing.
Astarion raises his, his other hand falling, as it often does, to the space in question on Gale’s chest, hidden under his favored purple shirt. “Gone? Completely?”
Gale swallows, and he feels it against his fingers. “Utterly vanished. Traces seemed to linger, these last days but I woke up today with nary a craving.”
“Really,” Astarion sighs out, his fingers tightening over Gale’s shirt. “How cruel to be rid of such a burden, only to be saddled with another. I’m not sure that trade adds up at all.”
But, what would he give, to be rid of his own gnawing, gaping, all-consuming hunger? Is there a price too high that he wouldn't pay it himself?
Or does the hunger make the man?
Oh, too many questions, swirling around his brain.
Too many questions and a delicate tug of jealousy too. To be rid of the monstrous part of yourself.
More or less.
“I haven’t been otherwise affected, thus far,” Gale continues, drawing him from the envious reprieve. “If anything,” the wizard stops and starts, a crooked smile stretching across his handsome face.
“Oh?” Astarion asks. Tilts his head, strokes his thumb over these blackened lines, still very much there. Smoky scars on Gale’s tanned skin.
“I’ve long wondered what affect the orb had on my other appetites, if you take my meaning. And, unshackled from much of its influence, well, I feel rather hungrier for something else. Hungrier than I’ve been in a very, very long time.”
“Oh, so, this thing where I can’t even hope to peel myself away from you, for these last two weeks, that was you out of sorts, was it? Not at your full capacity, so to speak?”
“I’d like to test it out, at least. I have some theories.”
Gods, he laughs, head back, utter delight. What an absolute cad Gale’s trying to be, and worse still, how it works like a charm, like this is Astarion’s first romp in a tent.
It feels like it is, somehow.
How does the wizard do that? Twist up the game and spit it back in Astarion’s face, without even knowing what he’s doing?
The trouble’s already started, the fragile threads of this little play fraying. Astarion doesn’t make a move to gather them up. No, he bends back for a kiss, to ease his way into Gale’s mouth and once he’s exhausted the wizard’s breath, he spills out a torrent of filth against it, all the ways he means to test Gale’s theories, tonight.