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“Well?” Gortash asks. If Teddy didn’t know better, he’d say the other man was nervous.
“I already told you I like your watchers,” Teddy says, examining the metal parts on display, “The tadpoled brains is a nice touch.”
“I spent so much time designing them,” Gortash says, “When I couldn’t sleep. When you were…indisposed?”
Teddy knows that Gortash feels somehow personally responsible for what Orin did. As if he might have been able to prevent it—Teddy doubts seriously that he could.
She must have used me against you. I’m a distraction. A weakness, he had said.
So? Teddy had replied and the topic had been dropped.
“I should have looked for you,” Gortash frowns, fusses with a metal gear on the desk, “I took Orin at her word that you were gone and that’s a mistake I won’t make again.”
“You couldn’t have known,” Teddy says. He picks up a blueprint at random and examines it. The watchers are a work of genius. And the Gondians are perfect for working on them. Teddy’s never thought himself to be smart, and when he sees Gortash’s designs he only believes it further. The man is brilliant, “How could you have known? It would have made sense for Orin to have killed me. It’s sheer dumb luck I lasted long enough to end up on that Nautiloid and crash on the beach.”
“Still. Ketheric Thorm turned to necromancy to bring back his loved ones,” Gortash reasons. Teddy briefly wonders all of the options Gortash considered after Teddy vanished.
“Ketheric Thorm was driven mad by grief,” Teddy counters.
“And I’m not mad?”
Teddy sighs, reaching out to put a hand on Gortash’s arm, “You haven’t gotten enough sleep have you. You’re always grumpy when you’re tired.”
“I think he pitied me,” Gortash continues, shaking Teddy off, “Of all people. Isn’t that absurd? He would look at me as if we somehow understood each other now.”
“I am sorry, you know. For what happened.”
“It’s not your fault,” Gortash hisses, and in some fit of anger, he launches the gear across the office where it bounces off the wall and clatters to the ground. Teddy frowns, “I certainly did not want Ketheric Thorm’s pity.”
“Well he’s dead now and you’re not.”
“Right.”
The office is mostly silent, save for the clanging of machinery in the other rooms, the stomping of the watchers outside. Teddy decides to stay quiet. Clearly this has been building for a bit now. He knows that Gortash doesn’t exactly have friends. He mostly just has underlings. He must have felt so lonely when Teddy was gone. Who did he confide in? Who did he have to unwind with? Who did he have at all?
“I was angry,” Gortash says, “At you. For leaving me alone in this fucked up place. You had promised me so many times you were going to kill me. Which meant I’d never have to live without you. And then you were gone. And Orin wouldn’t say what happened. I felt like a widow.”
Teddy twists the ring on his finger. He’s stopped wearing it around his neck, returned it to his finger where it obviously belongs.
“When I came back to the city,” he says, “Alone, mind you, which is not how it was supposed to be, I threw myself into work. Into politics. If I didn’t think, then it didn’t hurt. Orin couldn’t kill me, as much as she obviously wanted to, but it didn’t stop her from torturing me. She used to turn into you, you know. Just for fun, I suppose. I’m not sure what passes for fun in the Temple of Bhaal. You can imagine my shock when she tells me you were alive. And you can certainly imagine my shock when you walked into Wyrm’s Rock, an amnesiac, but alive. I didn’t even care that you couldn’t remember me. You were alive. I did wonder if you’d started up a relationship with any of your companions. I’m a jealous man.”
“No,” Teddy swallows, “I remembered being in love. I figured it was worth waiting until we got to the city to see if I could jog my memory.”
“It took everything in me not to dismiss the entire hall and drag you up to my office so we could sort it all out. I wanted to kiss you very badly.”
The facade that Gortash keeps up, brilliant politician and inventor, the savior of Baldur’s Gate, the Archduke—all of it—falls to the wayside and Teddy sees him for what he is. A sad, lonely man, so desperate for power and love and everything in between.
This is the man he’d fallen for.
“I’m going to kill Orin,” Teddy says, “I have to. But I also want to.”
“Can you? She obviously got the upper hand on your before?”
“I’m not alone this time. I’ll kill her.”
“Then what?”
“I think,” Teddy frowns, “I think we have to destroy the brain. I think we have to do the right.”
“This wasn’t the plan.”
“I know,” Teddy nods, “I know that. But this is all getting out of hand. I don’t know if we can control it. But we can try.”
“Then what happens? For us?”
Teddy sighs, “I don’t know. Whatever it is, I just want to be together. I don’t care about Bhaal.”
Gortash chuckles, “Don’t let anyone hear you say that. I don’t imagine your father will take kindly to it.”
“Can we finish the tour?” Teddy asks, holding out his arm, “I want to see this titan you were telling me about last night.”
Gortash accepts his arm—that feels promising, “You are the only person who’s ever seemed genuinely interested in my inventions.”
“Well I think you’re brilliant. I assume I always have.”
*****
There had been a discussion about going back to Wyrm’s Rock but neither one of them apparently had any self control, and so they had gotten a room at the Blushing Mermaid—no one asked too many questions if you shoved enough gold into their hands—and that had been the end of that.
“I’m an elected official now,” Gortash says, “I shouldn’t be fucking men in lower city taverns
“In an election you rigged,” Teddy points out, “And you aren’t fucking men in lower city taverns. Men are fucking you in lower city taverns.”
“I didn’t realize that my foundry would get you so excited,” Gortash says, “I should have brought you there sooner.”
The bed is ridiculously uncomfortable compared to their bed back home, but since Teddy has mostly been sleeping on the ground, anything with legs and sheets is a step up.
“Is what you said about Bhaal true?” Gortash asks softly.
Teddy lifts his head up enough to look him in the eye and puts a hand over his mouth, “You were right. I shouldn’t say that where someone can hear.”
Gortash circles his wrist with his own hand and kisses his palm. He hopes that Gortash knows he means it.
He’s going to have to reject his father.
Whatever that ends up meaning.
Teddy removes his hand and burrows under the cheap blanket. He’ll be glad to get back to Gortash’s fine things. Soft sheets. Velvet sofas. Teddy thinks he’s a very practical person, but he thinks that one could get very used to his kind of life Gortash provides.
“Teddy?”
“Yes?”
“Whatever you decide—I’ll be right behind you. I know you’ll make the choice that’s needed. And if it’s destroying the brain, denying your father, or killing me right here and now, I accept it.”
“Good,” Teddy says. He has no idea what he ought to do. Is there even a right choice?
But then he feels Gortash kiss his head and he thinks there’s a very obvious right choice.
It’s whatever let’s him keep this man.