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“I suppose you’ll be wanting to head back to camp.”
One statement and it was enough to jolt Astarion out of what had been literally a magical evening.
He turned over to the man beside him, still beautifully languid, still sore in all the right ways. Astarion was a nimble man, able to dodge and strike with lightning pace and pinpoint precision, but tonight he had allowed himself to be formless, jellied bones and soft sighs. He could be persuaded to lay here forever, so wrung out and spent he was by the night’s activities that a simple shift had become an unwelcome effort.
“Now, whatever would give you that idea?” he said.
Beside him Gale lay bereft of the joy that had made the evening so wonderful, the shy exploration blossoming slowly into confidence and bliss, the most intimate shared laughter. After all this talk of death and time, fate and gods and justice and forgiveness, Gale had allowed himself a sliver of hope, a moment to want something, and as their time together went on Astarion had witnessed something beautiful, something delicate. Gale loved him, and Gale allowed himself to love him. Under all the bluster of the philosophy and magic was a truth Astarion held like a flower falling apart. Now he was worried he had done something to crush that fragile happiness under his feet.
“Gale?” he said, and the wizard continued staring up at the sky, lost in thought. He tried again. “I’m not going anywhere.”
There was a concerted effort to play up the charm, but his gaze stood fixed on the aurora he’d used to light up the sky. “Up for another round, are you?”
Astarion stretched, luxuriating in the feeling of finely woven sheets and real down pillows. “The spirit is willing,” he said, “but the flesh would very much like a full night in this bed.”
Not a twitch of a smile or so much of a little exhale of amusement. Gale’s mind was elsewhere, and it didn’t look anywhere good.
“With you,” Astarion added, “if that wasn’t clear.”
They had lain together before, these funny little trysts of manipulation and stress relief. Nothing this intimate, nothing quite this real. It had started as protection, Astarion scheming his way into safety with the only skills he knew he really could use to gain favour. His initial target was actually Tav, but the pale dragonborn’s red eyes saw right through the flattery and she asked him in low, dangerous tones never to try that on her again. Gale had been the backup plan, the oh so noble wizard who insisted on helping the vulnerable and assisting Tav in her adorable little mission to turn them all into heroes. He was the buffer, the leader’s trusted confidante who could be a useful asset in securing Astarion’s place in the group. Gale was naive, noble to a fault, oh so willing to trust and oh so desperate for any hint of approval, any glimmer of hope that he had made a friend.
It was a game, a familiar script that ensured Astarion’s survival.
Astarion had never anticipated that for the first time in two hundred years, someone had come along who could make him feel safe.
For all his lack of ability to read the room, Gale had somehow picked up on the strategy not even halfway into Astarion’s third attempt at seduction, pointing out that there was no need to bed him when for all their petty bickering he actually liked Astarion just fine.
“You are aware that you’re funny, right?” he’d pointed out, earnest bewilderment in those dark brown eyes. “Surely you must be. I think sometimes, regardless of actual relevance to the mission, Tav brings you along just to hear what you’d say.”
For once Astarion found himself wholly without quip or diversion.
“I… I only ever get compliments on my looks.”
And Gale laughed in disbelief. “Takes more than that to hold my interest, I can assure you,” he’d said. “Now come. We’re free at camp. What would you actually like to do?”
So they took a walk together, and halfway through yet another stop for Gale to pontificate about the medicinal uses of a specific type of tree bark they’d just passed by, Astarion realised that not once had it occurred to him that Gale would ever force this into being anything other than a walk.
They began reading beside each other. Their tents grew closer as the days went on. They would pass each other in the mornings as Gale prepared breakfast and Astarion returned from his latest hunt, and no physical contact needed to be made in the acknowledgement. Astarion would watch as Gale hummed to himself or practised his somatic spell gestures. Gale introduced him to his cat, a grumpy old tressym named Tara who regularly threatened to inform his mother of his latest little embarrassments.
They sparred at camp. They watched the sunrise.
Astarion found himself at a whole crisis of faith at their first hug.
Gale had started as insurance. Instead Astarion had found a best friend.
And eventually, after all their little adventures, after all their shared battles and private walks, his best friend had fallen in love.
And strange as it was to admit, Astarion had fallen right along with him.
He traced a hand along Gale’s jaw, the slightest little bit of pressure to nudge his face towards him. “Rest,” he said, a lazy kiss on the part of Gale’s neck he’d sucked hard enough to bruise less than an hour ago. “Gods know we both need it after tonight.”
“Was it enough?” Gale said. “Was it truly deserving of you if this is to be our last night together?”
Their last night. So he was still thinking about it, after all their talk of finding another way.
Astarion stilled beside him. He fought to keep the edge from his voice. “And here I thought I was the funny one.”
“I’m serious,” Gale said. “I wanted tonight to be worthy of you, something to leave you with should the time come to—”
“When, in the past I don’t even know how many hours,” Astarion said, “did I ever say that it was not enough?”
Gale thought about it. “Well, you did ask for more at various—”
“Augh, the literal thinking again,” Astarion groaned. “I was not disappointed. I wouldn’t have continued if I were.”
He shut up.
“If I wanted to have ghost sex in space,” Astarion said, “I would’ve asked—and quite loudly, apparently. That was a weird little titbit to learn about myself. Thank the gods you cast Zone of Silence.”
The tension in Gale’s body relaxed beside him. His heart beat slower, his breath came out a little more even. Astarion just about sighed in relief at the sound of his blood beginning to settle.
A sheepish smile crept into Gale’s voice. “You do know that spell only lasts about ten minutes.”
Astarion stared. “Gale.”
“I cast it a few more times!”
“Gale.”
“We’re far enough away from camp. It’s fine.”
He made a valiant effort to suffocate himself in one of the luxurious down pillows. If he was going to die it was going to be comfortable. “Gods, Lae’zel knows what I sound like. Wyll knows what I sound like when I—”
Gale was laughing as he sat up and removed the pillow. Small blessings, even if Astarion was about ready to murder him himself. “I jest,” he said. “There’s enough warding and illusion spells to keep an army away, never mind a nosy devil or two. I can’t believe you thought my Zone of Silence would only last that long.”
Astarion hit him with it anyway.
Gale nodded in conceded defeat. “That’s deserved.”
Astarion huffed, but his heart wasn’t in it. He could never stay angry with Gale for long.
He frowned. “This isn't you asking if I want the ghost sex, is it?”
“Again, really not how I would describe the sacred intertwining of our spirits in the embrace of the Weave,” Gale said. “But… Do you? If your interest's been piqued, there's still time.”
Gale glowed in the light of the fireflies and the illusion of the night sky. They both did, as the vivid colours bounced off their bodies and left them splendid, more than mortal. In the absence of other lights they had found themselves almost absorbed into the landscape, as magical as any illusion Gale could conjure, but the only things that would remain after the light show came to its inevitable end.
He sat up and kissed Gale, kissed him while he was still alive, still real. He kissed him to feel the bumps in his skin, the dried sweat in his hair, the faint scents of rose and citrus and a selection of herbs in the perfumes that he used.
“How could the passing novelty of astral love,” he said, “ever compare to that which I can hold?”
And there it was, the exhale of mild amusement. “Charmer.”
“I mean it,” Astarion said. “Gale, it’s been enough. It’s been, eugh, worthy, to use your terms. I’ve already been transformed once against my will and now I have this little beastie in my head threatening to transform me once again. My body hasn’t been mine for a very long time. I’m entitled to enjoy it while I can.”
He looked thoughtful at that. “I didn’t think of it that way.”
“Of course you didn't,” Astarion said. “Gods don't have to remember the concept of enough. That's why they can't be trusted to know when they ask for too much.”
And Gale's eyes grew wide in the glow of the aurora, and as his mind took him somewhere far off again, somewhere dark and familiar, Astarion wished for nothing more than to see him true, real and loved under a sky full of stars.
“Promise me there will be more nights like this,” Astarion said. “Promise me you'll trust in the group so we can defeat this together.”
“But if it’s fate, if I can save you all the risk of putting yourselves in danger—”
“Then what kind of victory is that?” he said. “We didn’t come all this way just to have you steal all the glory at the end. Wizards. Honestly.”
Gale smiled at that, and if Astarion’s heart could beat it would be soaring.
“We’re already wasting a perfectly good cult,” he continued. “I’m not losing a perfectly good Gale.”
He took Gale’s hands in his, and found them trembling.
Right, then. Enough. They were a good deal enough away from camp. This place looked safe. Gale had probably protected it with all manner of little barriers and wards if he was risking straying this far from camp for a night of fun.
“Turn off the aurora,” he said.
Gale blinked. “The aurora?” he said. “But I made it for you.”
“And for that I thank you. It’s been a wonderful evening,” Astarion said. “But turn it off.”
He did so.
And above them the sky filled with stars. Glittering pathways and vast swathes glowed above them, swirling and sparkling and dotted into infinite little trails, the brushstrokes of some divine painter. This was the sky Astarion knew on his hunts, far from the fires of camp and the eyes of civilisation, where the heavens could shine without rival.
Gale looked at it as if it was his first time seeing the night sky. Being someone who grew up in the city and then stuck close to camp during the wee hours, it very well could have been.
Astarion drank in the lights above, the sight of them both without glamours and tricks, laid bare under a true night. “I don’t know how you think all this isn’t any good without magic,” he said. “I don’t know how you can look at what I see and think all it's good for is a backdrop for the gods to have their little orgies and carry out their plans.”
Gale sat speechless for a moment, his eyes taking in the vastness around them, the true depths beyond. The magnitude of it all would strike Astarion in similar ways sometimes, the awe of it all, the knowledge that he was a speck lucky enough to look upwards and comprehend even a fraction of what it was able to see. “I take it we’re no longer talking about the stars,” Gale said.
“For someone who can struggle with rhetoric, darling,” Astarion said, “you can be sharper than you look.”
He could see an actual sense of recognition dawn on Gale, the shift from knowing in one’s brain to knowing in one’s heart, and oh, the look on his face, the thought that Astarion could ever want to trade this man for a god, that he would ever choose to have the legend of a noble sacrifice instead of more nights with him alive.
“You want to do something to honour me?” Astarion said. “Live. To the hells with fate. Get rid of this thrice-damned orb and go home and hug your mother. Read your books; cook your food. Let your happiness spite the gods. Live so long that it annoys them.”
His fingertips brushed against Gale’s cheek, a gentle plea to face him.
“And don’t give me a best friend just to take him away.”
When Gale spoke again it was almost a whisper, spoken through unshed tears.
“Astarion…”
It was all the warning he needed.
Gale was nothing if not verbose, and what he couldn’t speak out loud he managed to say in his kiss. The soft pleas for forgiveness in his lips, the fear of the unknown in the hitches in his breath. Gale’s hands, callused from years of spellwork and his love of training with the quarterstaff, spoke of love as one pulled him closer and the other tangled in his hair. I’m sorry, his body said as the kisses trailed down Astarion’s jaw and down his neck. I love you, it said, as the hairs on his arms rose and his heart began to race.
And who was Astarion, if not a willing and eager listener of Gale’s endless words?
He let himself sink back down into the luxury of the down pillows and finely woven sheets, and his own body’s reply remained much simpler, through all the searching caresses and clutching grasps. This was no tryst, no sordid tangle in the dark to toy with the feelings of someone disposable. All night Astarion had wanted, and more than that, he had let himself want, and he was not going to let go of the one person he had let himself want in a very, very long time. Every part of his body spoke in unison. Every sigh, every plea for more, every flutter of the eyelids and stifled cry and bitten off moan all sent the same message:
Stay here, with me.
They reached an understanding, bathed in starlight, as the sky moved overhead.
“I suppose you’ll be wanting to head back to camp.”
One statement and it was enough to jolt Gale out of what had been literally a magical evening.
He fought through the haze of love and lingering sleep, and turned to his best friend turned partner, who had stolen Gale’s pillow in what was evidently just a plot to indulge in having as many pillows as he could while he could.
Gale smirked. “And leave you to lie in whilst I crack on with breakfast?”
“My love, I am thoroughly spent,” Astarion groaned, gathering the blanket as well to add to his nest. “I expect to sleep—not trance, pass out cold and snoring—for the next tenday, and I should like all meals served in a mithral goblet in bed.”
Gale smiled. They had always known how to make each other laugh.
And then—
“My love?”
Astarion peeked groggily from behind a pillow. “Hmm?”
“Nothing,” Gale said. “It’s new. That’s all.”
“‘s that your new name for me?” Astarion slurred, sinking back into the pillows. “I like it.”
“No, it’s—” Gale stopped. “Never mind.”
Astarion yawned. “You can really be a proper Penny Purepants sometimes, you know that?”
Gale made a mental note to ask him later about where yawning fit in vampire physiology.
“Not vernacular I’ve come across this last century, but go on.”
He made another to ask about slang from the past two hundred years that may have been lost to time.
“Gale, I heard you wake and it’s not even dawn,” Astarion said. “What are you going to do, cook sausages in the dark? Tav’s not exactly going to give you a good grade and an encouraging sticker for early work.”
It was rather a bit of a walk to camp without darkvision, and a fair amount of time to safely deactivate all the spells he’d set up for the night, but far be it for Gale to say anything with Astarion in his current state. He shifted closer, taking in the sight of the scene in front of him, the reality of knowing that the one he loved was no longer out of reach and unaware of the full extent of Gale's feelings but lying here, sharing his bed. And apparently, stealing his pillows.
Astarion’s name suited him, Gale mused. He shone bright and clear under this sky full of stars.
“What would you have me do then,” he said, and then more hesitantly, just to try, “my love?”
“Oh that is good,” Astarion preened. He blinked away some of the sleep in his eyes and stretched, sated and boneless. Gale was never really one to intuit facial expressions naturally, but he could make an educated guess that this smile was very likely good. “How about, we watch the stars go by? It is almost dawn. We can head back at sunrise.” And then, “Or not at all. We could live in bed. We could sleep in the sun forever. See how long it takes for them to find us.”
Gale kissed him, rejoicing in the blessed lack of pain where before the orb would've protested in response. Astarion had made a good point. This was his body, he reminded himself, and he was entitled to whatever joy he could wring out of it while he could.
“The latter may be ill advised, but I’m always up for a bit of stargazing. Perhaps someday we could watch a meteor shower together.” Gale settled in next to him, and he was surprised to find himself actually able to picture more nights together, more days happy to simply sit and watch the sky. Perhaps it was proof, he wondered, and now he could believe it when he said he wanted to live.
The phrasing didn’t go amiss. Astarion regarded him much more awake now, eyes bright and voice soft with hope.
“And… I’d like to spar after dinner tonight,” he blurted.
It took a second to grasp the implication, and Gale found himself at a loss again when he realised he could actually promise that and mean it. “Not the best thing on a full stomach,” he said, “but I’ll plan accordingly.”
“And—And in the next tenday, I’d like to borrow a book. The filthiest one you have. And I expect you to pick it out yourself.”
Again, the subtle, almost unwelcome, sense of surprise. “My humble collection is ever at your disposal.”
It was strange. Where last night he worried that he would have to placate Astarion by talking about some abstract renewed zest for life, today he had found himself able to actually feel it. With the morning had come clarity, and where there had been inevitability he could now see infinite possibilities, endless stitches in a vast tapestry. There were indeed other ways, and his companions truly did mean to finish this together. This was not his burden to bear alone.
Gale could see the next day, the next tenday. One night he had given himself to enjoy as his last, and all of a sudden he could genuinely see a future, a whole lifetime of years to come.
He could live.
He deserved to.
It was a sobering thought.
Astarion had no need to breathe, but he sighed in relief all the same. His joy just about glowed in this sea of stars, shining through the usual veil of snark and bombast, and Gale had to wonder why he’d ever thought all this wouldn’t be enough.
They laid in each other’s arms, bathed in starlight.
Astarion yawned, and settled further into the embrace. “This is nice.”
And, brief though the statement was, Gale couldn’t disagree.
“You’re right, my love,” he chuckled, and what a joy it was to call him that, what a natural fit. “This is nice.”
They looked out, over the forest canopy, an understanding that never needed to be said.
Slowly, the sky moved overhead. The stars gave way to dawn, shadows trailing down towards them until the two found themselves blinking in the sun’s first light.
The day had come. It was time to head out.
And Gale Dekarios found himself facing the first of many more new days.