Chapter Text
It’s hard to tell immediately, with his slumber only just disturbed, if the incessant pounding reverberating between his ears is indeed coming from his front door, or from inside his own head.
Gale wakes with a start, blinking back sleep slowly with lashes that would love nothing more than to close again. When he looks down at his body, he recognizes a distinct lack of pajamas—in fact, he’s completely nude, save for a single sock on his left foot that he must’ve missed when he went to undress last night. His indecency shocks him, and he quickly makes to cover himself with the bedsheet. A quick look to the right of his bedside, and there rests the pile of crumpled clothes he wore and discarded when he stripped down and tumbled face-first onto his mattress. Another headache to add to the list—wrinkly clothes.
He’s only just getting his bearings when the persistent pulse of a level of headache indicative of a hangover washes over him. Now cognizant enough to recognize—and feel— the kind of state he’s in, he’s instantly awash with an unquenchable thirst. His mouth truly feels like he’s rolled cotton around in it all night, devoid of any sort of moisture.
What…what happened last night? Eugh…
His brain, mush as far as he’s concerned, sets into motion a photographic reel of regrets from the night before:
Dark lighting, ambient music, and the soft laughter of fine company to pair with the wine. A glass of a Dalelandian white, then another…then another. Pale fingers wrapped elegantly around a fragile stem, bright crimson eyes, a sharp-witted tongue, and the breeziness of finding someone’s presence a welcome distraction. It’s all coming back to him in slow, excruciating detail, yet there’s just one thing he’s having a hard time making out.
He can envision Astarion’s face across from him with the utmost clarity—has committed to memory the way the right corner of his mouth twitches when he’s found something amusing, how his eyes so languidly roll behind alabaster lids when he’s feigning annoyance, or how the elongated shape of his endearing elven ears literally perk up when he’s heard something he finds pleasing.
All this–this crystal clear vision of a man he’s only recently met and is still actively learning about–but he can’t remember a single word Astarion said to him, after a certain point. The only thing that makes this worse is that he somehow remembers everything he said to Astarion—every boring, uninteresting, and embarrassing detail. He recalls prattling on way too long about Tara, remembers seeing Astarion’s eyes glaze over when he mentioned the gritty details about what stage in the writing process he is for his soon-to-be-published book, and unfortunately reminds himself of how he had commandeered the first half of their ‘date’. All of this sharing had been innocent enough, although, in hindsight, he realizes he might have just signaled to Astarion what a stuffy, reclusive cat-dad he is.
But there had also been a turning point in their conversation last night, at a moment where they both had perhaps imbibed a bit too close to the sun, where Gale’s sentences had fluttered out from his lips in a jumbled mess. In his tipsy stupor, he had thrown out perhaps the most presumptively invasive question one could ask of their not-quite date, especially if said date happens to be a vampire.
“So, tell me—how was it that you were turned?”
“Turned?” Astarion had immediately retorted with an eyebrow hostilely raised. Gale had been too inebriated to catch that immediate, wicked flash of abject horror at such an uncouth question.
“Yes!” Gale’s voice had sounded tinny—whiny, even. “Turned into a vampire, of course! 200 years you’ve been around, and so much has changed in the world!” The sloshing of his drink had paired well with his slightly slurred speech. “ You must get asked this ad nauseam, I’m sure you’ve rehearsed a wicked version of the story to tell!”
Astarion had laughed to himself so hollowly as he reached for his glass and brought the rim to his lips. Gale, sensing a mood shift, watched as Astarion swallowed—mesmerized by the motion of the hollow of his throat as he consumed the liquid-acidic taste of the grape. He had looked dejected, but not quite surprised for being put in this position—a reaction that now made Gale’s heart deflate.
“Well, yes. You’re correct there. I do get asked such unintelligent questions quite frequently these days–usually not from people as smart as you, though, so this is new.” Hearing this, Gale had jumped to bumble out some sort of response, to which Astarion had only to hold a pointed finger up in between them—the universal sign for ‘shut the fuck up’.
“But frankly, it’s no one’s business—especially not yours—how I was turned.” The base of the wine glass made a sharp sound as he all but tossed it down onto the table space between them. Gale had thought that surely it would shatter to bits from the force of Astarion’s discardment, yet it held intact—like a metaphor for the man himself. “I can assure you though, it was all very harrowing.”
And from that point on, Gale’s mind draws a blank whenever he attempts to recall anything else Astarion had uttered to him for the rest of the night. Maybe, he hadn’t said anything else to him at all, after that. The evening had, understandably, ended shortly after, although they had both stayed long enough to finish the rest of the bottle in what had to have been the most uncomfortable of silences. He vaguely remembers closing the tab, saying a curt goodbye, and walking the short distance back to his townhome, alone. Shaken by the consequences of his own actions, Gale wishes more than anything he could whisk himself back in time and eat his own words till his jaw hurts.
He had meant it from a place of general curiosity, but now, clear-headed and close enough to sober, he realizes just how offensive he had been. Harrowing…of course, it was harrowing! To die and be reborn again—that’s something Gale could never comprehend the weight of personally, no matter how many case studies he read. Shame blossoms tightly in his chest, as he fights the nausea that crescendos inside of him as he relives what he remembers.
It wasn’t a date, he has to tell himself—they never agreed to call it that, and it certainly hadn’t ended the way dates did in fairy tales or films. And if it was a date, well…it was a piss-poor one. It was just…wine with a new friend. Too much wine with a new friend, who also happens to be the most beautiful man he’s ever seen. But, still. He had no place being so invasive, and Astarion had every right to shut him down the way he did.
He likes Astarion, for better or for worse—likes his sharp wit and suave arrogance and cunning intellect, among other things. Admitting it to himself feels like a step in the right direction. He wants to have the opportunity to get to know him, and have the honor to unearth the more prickly aspects that make up his life. But he can’t do that if he dives in head-first, unseasoned and unprepared. It’s been nearly a year since he’s even entertained the idea of courting someone again, since things with Mystra…imploded. Finally, he feels well enough to at least put enough skin in the game to make things feel real again.
He only hopes he hasn’t fucked himself so royally that Astarion never wants to see him again. If he screws this up before things even have a chance to begin, it will feel like the most devastating of blows.
All this musing, yet the sharp banging sound continues distantly, unabating.
So, not in my head, I take it. Fantastic.
He makes to dress haphazardly, pulling a pair of sweatpants over his legs and grabbing a well-worn sweater out from the small clothes-mountain he’s accumulated on the floor of his closet. All the while, he’s anxiously looking around for any sign of Tara about—certainly, she’ll be peeved at him for not attending to her breakfast before anything else, but duty calls. The knocking has only accelerated in both intensity and persistence.
He bumbles the several steps it takes to reach his bedroom door, fumbles against the banister as he wills himself not to trip down the stairs, and eventually clutches the cool metal of the door handle with shaking fingers, before his whole world caves in.
“Well. Good morning, Gale. I see you’re looking…a little worse for wear.” Mystra—the last person in the world he’d want to see at a time like this—has a tight fist poised in front of her, caught mid-rap in the midst of the movement of the door swinging open. Yet her quick retort makes her seem as if she isn’t the least bit surprised that he actually answered her knocking. She looks pleased. “It appears you had a merry little time last night. How responsible of you.” Every word bites with disdain–aiming to open a sutured wound, right from the jump. “Gods know you don’t do anything fun without an entourage to stroke your ego—tell me, did she spend the night and warm your bed for you? Better yet, is she still here? Oh, I’d just love to send my regards!” She smiles so sickeningly sweet—a smile meant to ruin, a smile meant to humiliate.
“Mystra.” He mumbles, trying to find the right movements of his mouth to form audible words for the first time since waking. He chooses to ignore her tired questioning embedded in her superiority complex. “What is it now?” He’s already exhausted and not nearly as surprised at her rude intrusion as one should be. This isn’t the first time she’s shown up to what used to be their house at an ungodly hour, uninvited and looking to accomplish something. He has half the mind to cast Banishment just to get her as far away from him as possible but knows better than to test her. Even in all his hubris, Gale recognizes Mystra’s superior mystical control—she is, after all, the Chair of the Department of Magic and just shy of becoming one of the most renowned practitioners in all of Faerûn. That’s why she attracted him in the first place, all those years ago—because she was always the best at whatever she did. Her power and prestige had always been intoxicating to him.
No longer—all that died the moment she had asked him to do the unthinkable. He shudders to ponder it, even now.
“I’ve come to collect, Gale.” She says with swarming arrogance. “It’s come to my attention that I’ve left some spellbooks in the library. You know the ones—from my days at Blackstaff. Silly me!” Her hands come up, palms open in feigned ignorance. She’s talking about the volumes of spells she created for her dissertation nearly a decade ago—ones that had once sat on the shelf, untouched, since they’d moved into this place. “I need to present them as evidence of my technical prowess if I’m to become Dean soon. Which, by the way—I hope I have your vote, dear.” There’s that smile again, and the painful reminder that inter-departmental faculty promotion season is upon them. Gods, he wants to fucking vomit.
There’s no way she’d ever be so careless to leave anything behind like this, and even more, not remember that she’d left it until nearly a year after their separation. Especially not spellbooks with her own incantations in them. Although everything had happened so wickedly fast after Gale had drawn his ultimatum, Mystra had been coldly calculated in how she had executed her departure from the residence they’d shared for nearly half a decade. Gale remembers thinking that she must’ve had some sort of exit plan—for who knows how long—that kept her detached from all the things they ever mutually shared. She had even hired a mover to come and extract all her belongings while she jet-setted off to some tropical locale, too unbothered to face a despondent Gale. Although he had been the one to sever their relationship for good (and for good reason), he had still actively grieved the loss of someone who had been in his life since his adolescence—someone he had been so certain would never turn their back on him.
In moments like these, he’s reminded of just how precarious his tanglings with Mystra always were. Past versions—past lives, it almost feels like—come flooding back to him whenever he’s confronted with her attempts to reassert herself in a space where she is unwanted.
Mystra, his tutor—the first person to see his potential in the arcane arts. When he was just fifteen, she had flocked to his potential, moth to flame. Mystra was just a student at the time—several years older, but a fledgling practitioner herself, in many regards. Yet, she had this eloquence in weaving words so sweet and promising that made it easy for others to justify submission. In this way, she had easily wooed Gale’s mother Morena by lauding his promise as her next protégé and had claimed that in order to tap into this gift, extended magic tutoring sessions were absolutely necessary. She eventually got her way, and from that point, she was nearly always over at the Dekarios residence, putting Gale to task with incantations well beyond what young wizards his age were expected to pursue.
Thus began their nearly twenty-five-year-long bond. With a whispered promise that she could help hone his gods-given skills and turn him into a promising wizard, Gale had been swept away from all he had ever known, into a brand new, sparkling world of pseudo-studious radiance. When he came of age and followed her to Blackstaff, their relationship morphed from something akin to an apprenticeship into a romantic dalliance, constructed solely on her terms. So many afternoons, he spent in her company—so many hours, he found himself yearning for her praise and validation. Even before he was old enough to register what love or lust truly was, he found himself wanting her—wanting from her something so intangible and unrealistic that he could never articulate what it was. If her eyes were cast on him, he felt like he could blossom in her shadow like the most gorgeous Sussur Bloom. In the darkness of her apathy and negligence, he had always pathetically withered—a shell of himself and his own potential.
He lived like that for years, even when he became a prestigious wizard in his own right. Now though, he’s almost near the point where he can acknowledge how many years he’s spent in denial of her wickedness, yet old habits die hard. Even now, so cold and acrid, there’s something oddly endearing about the way she holds herself as if she were a goddess—that all should worship her brilliance and mystique like a cherished gift. Something weirdly otherworldly, something…
Gale snaps back to it as if cold water has been poured over him. He has to find a way to divert her attention and make her leave. With a steeled voice, he says: “They aren’t here, Mystra, I know this to be true. If there’s something of yours that I still have—which I highly suspect is not the case—I will be sure to forward it to your new residence. You have my word.”
This isn’t what she wants to hear, obviously. In a sharp movement, she attempts to push past him, expecting no resistance. Instead, Gale holds his ground with firmly planted feet, despite the dizziness that threatens to blow him over. “Please, Gale. Just one minute—” She starts to say.
“You must know that I can’t let you in. I don’t want…I don’t want to confuse Tara.” Although he’s capable of stopping her before she’s too far ahead, he says this so dejectedly, with the weight of their severed relationship evident in his downcast eyes and woeful posture. It’s as good an excuse as any, at this point. He may not be any sort of veterinarian or animal behavior expert, but he figures that after the hard adjustment to Mystra’s absence from the house, bringing her back in for even a few minutes might throw Tara into a befuddled tail-spin. It’s already been personally difficult having to navigate his ex’s intrusions since their very public and very volatile ‘divorce’, if you will—but to bring Tara into the conflict so suddenly again? Gale can’t stand for it—he knows that he must protect her peace.
Sometimes, he feels like he shields everyone else in his life from Mystra more than he does for himself.
“Oh, my—how endearing! You’ve always been so cognizant of the needs of helpless creatures, haven’t you? As if you aren’t one yourself!” She mocks, hand on her hip, and gaze narrowed in on him like a trained missile. “But I suppose it’s a silver lining that you’ve still got one pussy left in your life, even if she is only just a tressym—”
“Stop, please, just—stop!” He all but screams, feeling akin to a child throwing a fit out of desperation. Her crass innuendo always had that ability to make him feel like he could crawl out of his own skin from embarrassment. Heat rushes to his cheeks and his stomach churns in discomfort. “You can’t be here. This isn’t…isn’t yours, anymore.” He primarily means the house and everything inside it, but there’s something satisfying in knowing that such a simple declaration can refer to so much left unspoken between them.
I am no longer your plaything, falling to my knees to please you, he affirms to himself.
They’ve come to an impasse, he thinks. Mystra, staring at him like she wishes to bore holes into him, relinquishes the fight as easily as she started it. She knows it’s a losing battle, and perhaps, she hadn’t thought this far ahead—hadn’t considered him being so firm in his rejection of her attempts to weasel back into his space, his life.
“Fine.” She says, akin to a dog that’s all bark and little bite. “Have it your way.” Gale watches her eyes scan behind him as she steps back away from the doorframe. It’s almost as if she’s attempting to see past him, back into the house that once was equally hers. She’s looking for something—a final look at it all, for old time’s sake? No, she’s never been that sentimental. If anything, she’s absorbing the once familiar view to suck all the joy out of it one last time, just to spite him. That wouldn’t be above her.
But then it hits him: she truly is looking to see if he’s brought someone home—wants to catch him in the act of emotional infidelity, since she obviously thinks he shouldn’t have the right to move on from her yet. Her words before were said in that twinkling, teasing way of hers, but in actuality, they betrayed her innate jealousy at the prospect of him finding pleasure in someone other than her. Gale knows she could never live with the knowledge that she had been replaced. Perhaps, he should replace her—finally cast out that long, unforgiving chapter of his life and begin anew with someone worthy of receiving the vast ocean of endearment he’s capable of exhibiting.
For is he not deserving of that kind of peace? Of love, once more?
Not if I keep soiling my prospects by asking the worst possible questions, he thinks, conjuring the image of a wounded Astarion sitting across from him last night. Ah, he’s getting ahead of himself again.
“Oh, and Gale?” She pivots back over her shoulder for one last look at him. Her contrived attempt at appearing disengaged manifests in the way she adjusts her sunglasses up higher on the bridge of her nose, seemingly unbothered, although he now knows otherwise. “A little birdie told me that someone failed to complete his campus community service hours, hmm? Seems he’s wound himself up on the shit list of the department, contingent on whether or not he’s capable of making up for lost time—something you wouldn’t know anything about, would you?” A beat passes, then: “Expect a disciplinary email from the Dean later today. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.” She means it to sting, and sting it does. The final nail in the metaphorical coffin is hammered in—and the real reason she made herself known this morning at last, emerges.
With a final sauntering movement, she walks around the corner behind a hedge in his front yard, disappearing into the hustle and bustle of a morning in Baldur’s Gate. Gale’s left there, stupefied, until he finds the wherewithal to slowly shut the door. True panic sets in, as the weight of her parting warning begins to settle. Community service hours? Whatever could she—?
Fuck. Fuckfuckfuckfuckfuck! How could I possibly be so forgetful?!
Then, the voice of a welcome distraction reverberates from somewhere deeper inside the house.
“Did I hear her correctly? Does she think I’m ‘only just a tressym’?! That bitch!”
Tara—ever the keen eavesdropper—always knows how to make him laugh, even if just for a moment. As he makes those first few steps to find wherever she may be in the house, he casts aside thoughts of Mystra in favor of feeding his grouchy feline friend and finding himself a glass of water to quench his undying thirst. He’ll have all the time in the world to perseverate on how he’s going to get out of this mess–or messes, plural. But now, some comfort with Tara, a hearty Waterdhavian breakfast, and an anti-inflammatory are in order.