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Chapter Text

It was late at the Blackstaff Ball, but within the great hall, people were still dancing – teachers and faculty, and the older apprentices.

Vir stood outside on the large terrace outside the ballroom, overlooking Waterdeep far below. She could hear the sounds of merriment behind her, but she was more than tired to standing on the edges of the ballroom and conversing. Nobody ever asked her to dance, and if they had, she would have had to tell them that she didn’t know how. At least she was intimidating enough that nobody would ask, and she wouldn’t have to admit to the gap in her knowledge.

An illusion of a blue-green aurora blazed across the sky. Vir looked up at it, resting her hands on the balustrade.

She heard footsteps behind her, and thought nothing of it until Gale Dekarios, Professor of the School of Illusion, joined her at the balustrade.

When she’d heard he was going to join Blackstaff Academy, Vir had thought that Gale was coming for her job as Professor of Evocation. Evocation had been his speciality too, and they’d chased each other neck and neck through their Academy days, until he became Mystra’s Chosen, and the power boost made him outstrip her.

Instead, he’d replaced the retired Professor of Illusion, which meant that instead of being out of a job, Vir had perfected the art of ignoring him in the teachers’ common room.

It was going to prove harder to ignore him when they were stood side by side.

“What do you think of my display?” asked Gale, indicating the aurora overhead. Vir suspected that champagne was the only reason he was willing to talk to her at all, but he wasn’t drunk. Not yet, at least.

“You executed it well,” she had to admit.

The silence stretched out. “You know,” said Gale, “I think that’s the first nice thing you’ve ever said to me.”

“Probably,” conceded Vir.

Never let it be said that Gale Dekarios didn’t know how to fill a silence. He went on. “Why do you hate me?”

“I don’t hate you.”

“Respectfully, that’s rubbish. You can’t stand me! You barely even look at me. You aren’t even looking at me right now.”

Pointedly, Vir shot him a glare out of the corner of her eye.

“I used to think and think about it, about why you clearly don’t like me, and I’d wonder if there’s something I did – but I wracked my brains, and there was nothing. You hate me for no reason at all. Except you aren’t an illogical person, so there must be some kind of reason.”

He clearly wasn’t going to let this go. Vir turned on him, crossing her arms. “Fine. If you want to do this, then we’ll do it. You spent your whole time at school being applauded as a prodigy, while I was the oldest in class because it took me nine years to plan my escape from Menzoberranzan, let alone reach the surface. We were equals in the classroom, but everyone avoided me because I’m drow, even though I never hurt anyone – but you’re human, and Morena Dekarios’ son, so nobody feared you.”

“You were – jealous?” Gale concluded, looking as if he was beginning to understand.

“Hardly. As if I would want what you have. I have my power – I have myself. I don’t want to be you.” She raised her chin at him. “I’m just glad that Mystra doesn’t like girls, because then she might have looked at me instead of you. I’m from Menzoberranzan, Gale. Do you think I don’t know what it’s like when a goddess uses people? Mystra sees what I can do with the Weave, so she knows my worth, but she’d never make me her Chosen because she knows I see her for what she is.”

Vir had drawn herself up. She looked like a queen, like the matron mother she might have been if she hadn’t run from Menzoberranzan, furious that drow women were expected to become clerics instead of wizards, with a spitting hatred of Lolth’s machinations.

The shifting blue-and-green of the aurora played across her deep blue-purple skin and caught in her thick white mane of hair, loose and unbraided. It made her seem like something unearthly. Surely this woman had not come from underground. Surely she must be something higher.

“I saw Mystra take an interest in teaching you, and I mistrusted it. I saw her take you as a lover, and I knew my mistrust was right. I saw her use you the way she’s used every hopeful boy who ever looked at her, and I saw everyone around you praise your connection when they should have been repelled. If the Orb hadn’t happened to you, then something else would. Or you’d have ended up like Elminster; cast aside when you weren’t pretty anymore, and still dreamy about a woman who only ever used you. I watched all of that – everyone else looked, but I saw.”

Gale’s eyes had widened during her tirade. “I – I had no idea you thought that way. I thought only my mother and Tara held that opinion. You really don’t hate me, do you?” He gave Vir a small smile.

“That doesn’t mean I like you, Gale. Mystra aside, you were always an arrogant sod, and I expect to find that unchanged.” ‘Sod’ was a word she’d picked up squatting in the attic of a tavern, when she’d first come to Waterdeep with nothing to her name. She did not use it very often, but she’d fantasised of telling Gale Dekarios exactly what she thought of him often enough to know the wording she wanted to use.

“You never know,” said Gale lightly. “You might find me a little changed by my travels.”

“Really?” Even though she was a foot shorter than Gale, when Vir looked up at him, he knew she had the kind of gaze that could pin a fly to a wall. She could, and often did, silence a classroom with a look.

Vir’s lips parted. “Why are you looking at me like you want me to shove you against the balustrade?”

“Because I think maybe I do,” replied Gale, sounding strangled.

Narrowing her eyes and setting her mouth, Vir took a fistful of the front of Gale’s robes and pushed him backwards against the balustrade. His lower back was pressed against the stone. There was no denying the intensity of Gale’s gaze. He’d wanted this. He wanted it more.

Vir yanked on the front of Gale’s robes, pulling him down into a kiss.

It was not a perfect kiss. In fact, Gale seemed rather out of practise. When they pulled apart, they were both out of breath. Vir still grasped the front of Gale’s robes.

Gale seemed to be struggling to form words – he had other things than speech on his mind. “We could –” he said, “In the Weave.”

“You think I make love in the Weave on the first night?”

“You don’t – I – well, then…” Gale’s eyes strayed along the terrace to one of the benches placed at intervals along it.

Guessing his intention, Vir dragged Gale towards the bench, though it could barely be called dragging, since Gale was moving in concord with her.

“Well, then,” said Gale again. Vir had released the front of his robes.

He got onto his knees.

*

They heard the call for the attendees of the Ball to leave the great hall and go downstairs, to assemble on the lawn and watch the firework display.

Vir straightened on the bench and smoothed down her robes.

“I’ll go now – you go after a minute or two. Then it’ll seem like we weren’t together.”

“I – yes,” said Gale breathlessly, still kneeling.

Vir stood, and in a swirl of robes she was gone.

Gale clambered to his feet, his knees protesting that he was a few years too old to be kneeling on stone floors. His lower back also put in its own opinions about the situation.

Next time he did that, Gale told himself, he would put down a cushion first.

He was glad to be at the back of the crowd as he made his way downstairs and out onto the lawn outside Blackstaff Tower, and glad of the darkness outside. He’d done his best to neaten his hair and straighten his robes, but his robes were crumpled, his hair could benefit from a comb, and he was certain that he looked flushed and disordered, dazed, the picture of someone who had been caught mid-ravishment when everyone had been called to watch the fireworks.

He searched the lawn for Vir, thinking of a moment, perhaps half an hour before, when he’d come up for air, resting his head on one of her knees, and he’d felt her hand on the back of his head.

Some part of him had thought she was going to force his head back down, but instead, she had slid her fingers through his hair. Gale had whimpered.

Where was Vir now? Was she avoiding him deliberately? She could see in the dark; Gale could not. Vir would know that it would be easier for her to find him than the reverse.

Yes, things between them had only just begun, but could they not at least stand next to each other? Discreetly hold hands in the darkness?

Gale stood alone, barely paying attention to the fireworks, and Vir did not come.

*

When he entered his tower at Waterdeep, Gale stumbled slightly, and realised that he had perhaps overdone it with the post-fireworks champagne.

At least Vir hadn’t been there to see. According to Elminster, Vir had slipped away midway through the fireworks, tired and seeking her bed. Elminster had seemed surprised that Gale was asking; after all, it was known that there was no love between Gale and Vir.

Gale straightened, kicking his hallway rug under his feet.

“Ugh,” he complained, “My knees…”

“Your knees usually don’t fare too badly with dancing,” remarked Tara, sitting primly on the stairs. Then she sniffed the air. “I see. It wasn’t the dancing that did it. Well, well, about time. I don’t like seeing your rattle around in this tower with only me for company. It’s high time you found someone to settle down with.”

Gale knew there was no point in denying it. He might be able to conceal his blushes from his colleagues, but Tara knew him too well.

“Go on,” pressed Tara, “Out with it.”

“I was with Vir,” Gale admitted, as he stood in the hallway and wished the walls would stop swaying.

Tara raised her eyebrows at him. “Vir? Professor of Evocation? Has she not always hated you?”

“I don’t think she hates me anymore,” Gale admitted. “I think maybe she never did.”

He clumsily made his way up the stairs, tripping and swearing, gripping onto the handrail. At the top, it took three tries before he managed to get through his bedroom doorway without hitting his shoulder on the doorframe.

“Good heavens,” said Tara, watching him go.

Chapter Text

Gale woke with a hangover, and with doubts.

He slept in past mid-morning, eventually hauling himself out of bed (oh gods), wrapping himself in a dressing gown (oh gods), stumbling downstairs to the kitchen (oh gods), and fixing himself a mixture of raw egg, tomato juice, and vinegar.

What he wanted was to talk to Vir. Give more explanation about last night.

He’d planned, when taking his next lover after Mystra, to do it properly. Find someone he felt something for, lay out his feelings, and court them properly.

Yet by the time he ended up with Vir on that balcony, he’d been desperate after a year of living like a monk, months of stress over the tadpole, and more months of teaching when he hadn’t had time for romance. He’d rushed when he’d told himself he’d take his time.

And did Vir really feel the same? She didn’t hate him, that was certain. But that did not equal love.

In Menzoberranzan, drow women could pick out any man they wanted and use him for as long as they liked. Monogamy was sometimes the case, but most of the time, the matron mothers had a variety of men they might take to bed. Gale knew that Vir was far from a typical drow of Menzoberranzan, but he had to consider the possibility that Vir had only wanted him for this one physical moment, and that she would not want emotion to be caught up in the act.

Besides, he’d been horribly out of practice when he kissed her. She might have decided that he was too clumsy for her tastes.

Gale realised that he’d never heard anything about Vir taking lovers. She must be discreet about it, and it left him with no frame of reference for what she might like.

He’d been making his way through a pot of strong tea when Tara hopped onto her usual chair and said, “You’re moping, dear.”

“What? I’m not – I’m not moping.”

“Yes, you are,” Tara asserted. “My, my, the events of last night seem to have really got to you. Well, here’s my advice: first, wait until you look more alive and less like you’re about to throw up. Then, recall that drow men don’t wear beards and that you ought to remove that thing from your face as a respectful nod to your new lover’s culture. Thirdly, go to wherever the Professor of Evocation calls home and call on her. If you woo her successfully, you could have a ring on her finger within a year, and then all Mrs Dekarios would need would be grandchildren for her happiness to be complete.”

“Vir might not want any of that.”

“Only if you do a poor job in wooing her, dear, which I sincerely doubt.”

Gale passed a hand over his face. “Could you talk a little quieter, please?”

*

By the next day, he knew he had to see Vir. He couldn’t get her out of his head. He’d given himself to her that night on the terrace, but not nearly enough of himself – he could give more, wanted to give more.

Mystra he had worshipped, but as much as he’d got on his knees for Vir, it hadn’t felt like worship. It felt like collaboration.

He’d already dressed for the day, but he combed through his wardrobe with care. There was a gown of deep, bold blue that he knew he looked fantastic in, but he couldn’t wear that. It would be trying too hard. The third date, maybe. If Vir wanted him.

In the end, he picked out a simpler but still stylish outfit; a pale white-grey satin undershirt, beneath a sleeveless purple doublet that dipped in a v down his chest, decorated with gold whorls.

He’d trimmed his beard that morning, and added just enough beard oil to show himself off to best effect. His hair was neat. He set off.

*

There was no such thing as domesticity in Menzoberranzan, and, decades after leaving the place, Vir had never learned how to be domestic.

Her basement rooms had come cheap; she’d never bothered to change them for something better once she’d started earning a bit more money. Originally she picked them out because the windows, high up on the walls, could be easily covered, and she still sometimes found the upper world too bright. These days she left the coverings off the windows more often than not, illuminating the sparsely furnished interior.

It was all eminently practical: a room for her bed, a small kitchen, a room to wash, a room to study.

There was no room for receiving visitors because she rarely did so – her study would suffice. She sometimes thought that the best way to describe her living space could be summed up in a single corner of her study, where a full bookcase, bought very cheap during her student days, sat next to an elegant stone sculpture, three and a half feet of sweeping abstract arcs. Inexpensive practicality set alongside a sign of her good taste.

When she opened the door to Gale Dekarios, she couldn’t help but think that at least if he saw where she lived, he’d get a good reminder of the type of woman she was before he decided to take things any further.

And he did want to take things further. He stood at the bottom of the stone steps that led down to her door, afternoon light behind him, holding a bouquet of jasmine and violets. She wondered if they were a deliberate nod to her colouring, or if Gale had chosen the colours unconsciously.

“Good afternoon,” said Gale, smiling nervously. The purple of his doublet brought out the silver in his hair.

“You… bought me flowers because we had angry sex?” Then again, Gale Dekarios was probably the kind of man who wrote a thank-you letter after being with a lover.

Gale’s expression faltered. “It didn’t… feel… very angry.”

“No, it didn’t, did it?”

She let him in.

Vir watched Gale look around her small set of rooms, trying to find something nice to say about the very basic state in which Vir lived.

She didn’t own any vases, so she got a drinking glass from the kitchen for the flowers, and set it on the small table where she ate meals for one.

“So,” said Gale, trying to begin again, “At the Blackstaff Ball… I think I may have given the impression that it was a spur-of-the-moment action, the – the kind of thing that only happens once. I – in a way, it was. But also…” His dark eyes were very soft.

“You know, we’ve gone over what bothered you about me,” Gale continued. “The things that maybe still bother you. But what really, really annoyed me about you was how you never looked at me. You’d be there in the lecture hall, every day, front row, eyes forward. Or there in the study rooms, front row, head down. I didn’t know you were looking at me in other ways, but it felt like you never looked at me. I never thought to examine why I wanted you to look at me so much, but… I know why. I know why it hurt to think you didn’t think I was worth looking at.”

Gale took a breath. “You’re brilliant and beautiful and strong, though I’m sure you don’t need me to tell you that. I suppose that what I’m trying to say is that… I really wish I’d asked you to dance at the Blackstaff Ball.”

“I don’t know how to dance,” Vir admitted.

Gale’s eyes widened. “You don’t? Because you,” he tried to laugh, “You don’t have to pretend not to know, if you don’t want to dance with me.” He may have tried to laugh, but there was something in his eyes Vir had never seen before, but she suspected it had always been there. Insecurity.

“I wouldn’t pretend,” Vir told him. “If I didn’t think you had worth, I never would have let you touch me. Who would have taught me dance, anyway?”

His face fell. “No-one would have taught you. I’m sorry. I could… teach you? If it was what you wanted.” He played with his hands. “I am sorry. I had this idea, that with my next relationship, I’d do it all the right way. I should have done this the right way. Talked to you in the teacher’s common room, maybe slipped you some love poetry.” Nobody had ever, in her entire life, offered Vir love poetry. “But then we were there, and you were looking at me, and I just… wanted to.”

He looked at Vir as if wanting her might be a crime.

“You can teach me to dance,” Vir told him.

Gale smiled like the sun coming out behind clouds. “Really? Would you be free in three days’ time? I can make dinner. The quipper fish catch has been really excellent lately, and I make my own hundur sauce.”

“Of course you do,” said Vir, so affectionately that Gale lost track of what he might have said next. Vir stretched up and kissed him softly, and he smiled against her mouth. “I’ll be free in three days’ time,” said Vir.

Chapter Text

Gale needed to sleep, but Vir required only reverie, so she had mastered the art of slipping out of bed after her four hours of rest without waking Gale. She would sit in the library and pour over a book until morning. Sometimes Tara would sit in her lap, though she maintained that Gale’s lap was more comfortable than Vir’s.

Vir was aware that sleep habits were not the only difference. She had centuries left in her. Gale was human. As a Chosen of Mystra, his magic might extend his life much longer than a normal human’s, but not forever, and while his aging would eventually slow to a stop, he would age at the normal human rate until that happened.

His face would line. His hair would grey. His bad back and bad knees would get worse. Those dark eyes would stay the same.

Vir had seen human-elven couples a few times before. An elderly human leaning for support on the arm of a fresh-faced elf who might be three times that human’s age or more. Vir simply planned to stay by Gale’s side for as long as she could have him.

Tara and Morena had both been delighted at what Vir and Gale had begun to share, but among a few of their colleagues, there had been snide comments about how Vir, with her purple-toned skin, proved that Gale had a type, and that after Mystra had left him, he was simply seeking out the next best thing.

Vir knew that was not the case. She had seen how Gale was when he was with Mystra; she could see how he behaved now that he was with her instead. Happier with himself. Less desperate to prove his worth. More secure. She had come to realise that Gale’s social circle was not so wide as she’d been used to assume, but the few friends he had accepted the relationship unreservedly.

Vir had a collection of the love poetry Gale had written her, comparing her eyes to rubies, her hair to starlight, to snowdrops. A dozen commendations of her intelligence and skill. In the mornings, they’d walk to Blackstaff Academy arm in arm.

Vir had never thought she could make someone so happy. She had not thought she could inspire such depth of love. She had not imagined she could have a comfortable home, or a lover who looked at her the way Gale did.

She’d come to know him in ways she’d never imagined. To see the way he’d look at her, as he stirred a pot in the kitchen, only for Vir to come up behind him and tug playfully on the string of his apron, so he had no choice but to step back into her arms, laughing quietly. He cut a fine figure in his robes, but underneath them, his waist softened just the littlest bit, and it felt like a secret only Vir could know.

Vir heard Gale stir in the next room. She set down her book, and went back to the bedroom.

Gale lay in bed, his hair mussed from sleep.

If she cast her mind back, Vir could remember Gale as a fresh-faced young university student. She liked the man before her much more. More self-assured, more mature, with the beginnings of grey hairs and frown lines. Oh, he could still be insecure sometimes, but it was something he was growing out of. He knew that he was enough for Vir, even if he still looked at her in wonder, as he was doing now.

He smiled up at her. “Good morning, my love.”

“You’re awake early,” said Vir, bending to kiss him.

“Early enough that I can tempt you back to bed?”

By way of answer, Vir slipped under the covers. Gale pulled her close. “Allow me to warm you up.”

Vir relaxed against him. It had always been so very hard for her to relax, but she was learning to do it. It was easier to learn these things with Gale in her arms, creases on his cheek from the pillow, hair unkempt. It felt like safety. It felt like a home.