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“Did you know,” Gale says, in the tone of voice Astarion knows precludes something so well-known as to be condescending or so obscure as to be mindnumbingly dull. “Apple picking is a Highharvestide tradition in Neverwinter?”
Gale’s looking upwards as he says it, at the willowy, barren branches of the dead orchards and forests of the Shadow-Cursed Lands as they pass overhead. He looks to Astarion for a beat, his expression brighter than anyone’s face has any right to be in this blighted, rotten place. “There’s even competitions to see who can fill a bushel the fastest.”
Baldur’s Gate has their own festivities – most places do for Highharvestide, a whole tenday leading up to a grand feast. Cazador’s was usually a grim parody involving a slew of unfortunate victims dragged home by the spawn. Astarion hasn’t had the luxury of participating in something as mundane as tradition in decades, outside the manor.
He’s barely listening, but that’s never stopped Gale before, and doesn’t seem to be stopping him now. “-- Waterdeep’s primary agricultural export is grain, which lacks the romanticism of an orchard, I think, but we do have a number of orchards and vineyards within a few days’ ride, most under the purview of the Vintners’ guild –”
“Gale?” Astarion keeps his tone gentle. They’ve reached an accord, though a little part of him whispers that holding hands beneath the illusory Waterdeep starscape is something more than an accord.
Regardless of its significance, it has given him a somewhat gentler perspective on Gale’s… effusive conversation.
Gale’s verbosity is more powerful than a gentle tone, however. “-- and the Cassalanters have in recent years taken to sponsoring feasts among some of the orphanages in the city –”
“Gale.”
He is so easy to look at it’s obnoxious. In the overpowering darkness, Gale is the sun, and it is not entirely the hot thrum of arcane hunger in his chest that makes him feel so inexorable. His expression is so lively; Gale talks with his entire body, inviting people in. There is a warmth in his eyes and his smile every time he tilts his gaze to Astarion that almost makes his incessant chattering charming.
Gale had once taunted Astarion that he enjoyed their walks in silence – fleetingly, Astarion finds himself longing for the strained silence of their rare traded barbs, scant tendays ago though that may have been.
“Gale!”
Astarin’s tone is sharp enough this time that the others pause to look at them, Karlach and Halsin with arched eyebrows and barely restrained (or not restrained at all, in Karlach’s case) smirks as Lae’zel scoffs in typical disdain.
“I was just wondering,” Astarion continues, a little quieter this time. He pointedly ignores the gossips staring at them until he feels their attention turn elsewhere. “If this was going anywhere.”
Gale’s face goes faintly pink beneath his tanned skin even in the dark of this glum landscape, interrupted by the thrumming purple wisps of his mark creeping down from his eye. “Ah,” he says finally. He clears his throat, sheepish, and flashes Astarion a small smile that Astarion returns with an arched brow. “I… well.”
His brow furrows; he’d clearly lost the plot on his own conversation, which is absurd enough that Astarion circles back around to being a little charmed.
“It just seems as if it might be a nice way to spend an afternoon.” Gale blinks and turns his big brown cow eyes on Astarion, that easy smile warming the darkness around them again. “With someone else.”
With Astarion, is implied. How unexpected.
How… novel.
Novel to consider the idea of such a mundane activity as – walking around together, without the frantic urgency of their potential doom. Just to spend time together.
Holding hands.
“Just a thought.” Gale’s voice is just as bright, but there’s a falseness to it that Astarion has developed a keen ear for through the decades, largely as a matter of self-defence. “Wishful thinking, prompted by the unwelcoming landscape.”
A dim glow rises on the horizon in the distance, and Halsin’s mood seems to improve somewhat at the head of their merry troupe, or at least he seems to straighten, purpose renewed with their location finally within their sights. “Last Light.” He doesn’t sound especially enthusiastic.
Gale does, though, that same hint of falseness lacing his tone. “A welcome break from all the gloom and doom,” he says brightly, moving a half-step faster. He can’t really get away from Astarion, not when the encroaching darkness keeps them all huddled around the torch light, but the intent is clear.
Astarion purses his lips.
He’s been very good at feigning interest in potential victims for centuries. Sincerity, it seems, is a much more difficult path to tread.
***
Gale’s spirits do at least seem to sincerely brighten when they reach the threshold of Last Light Inn, buoyed by the presence of the Harpers and his immediate deep curiosity about the nature of the orb surrounding the Inn. He drifts off to pester someone with questions while Lae’zel watches Karlach introduce herself to Jaheira with a sort of fond amusement Astarion knows she’d slit his throat for inquiring after, and Halsin heads into the infirmary to offer his services.
Astarion works hard not to be left alone with his thoughts very often. It feels particularly offensive to be made to be alone with them here, in this strange haven overlooking the only landscape he’s ever encountered more miserable than the silent tomb he’d been trapped in for a year.
There’s no more to eat here than there was outside. No good wine to drown his sorrows in. That smug tiefling wizard from the Grove is lurking about, looking sullen, and the bard’s here too, but Astarion sidesteps their attempts at conversation to find somewhere to sulk in silence. Back in Baldur’s Gate either of them could be a pleasant enough distraction for an hour.
Before he tossed them at Cazador’s feet, at any rate.
Besides, he thinks, before he can stop himself. Gale wouldn’t like that.
As if it’s Gale’s business.
I wouldn’t like that.
As if that’s ever mattered.
“Copper for your thoughts?”
Gale’s voice startles Astarion from – whatever it was he’d been doing. He glances down, realizing he’s been lurking from the second floor balcony for… well. He’s not sure. Jaheira and Karlach seem to be several wine glasses in under Lae’zel’s observation, as Halsin and a gaggle of other Harpers catch up on the other side of the bar.
He looks up to find Gale watching him with a thoughtful expression, one hand tracing idly over the braiding of the bracer on his other wrist.
Astarion glances back downstairs. “Hardly worth even that. This evening seems to have taken quite an unproductive turn.”
“The young woman maintaining the spell is in the middle of the ritual for it, evidently.” Gale leans against the rotting banister, and then seems to think better of it, returning to his idle fidgeting. “Jaheira advised us not to interrupt. I think Karlach is eager to seize that opportunity to enjoy the new tune-up to her infernal engine.” His tone goes a little wry. “Who am I to argue when Lae’zel was so agreeable to the idea?”
Lae’zel would sooner see them all bleeding out on the ground than see Karlach unhappy, something she is fiercely unapologetic about. It’s endearing, at least when that wrathfulness is directed outside of their camp.
“Who’d have thought she was capable of such sentimentality,” is Astarion’s dry retort. “Color me impressed.”
“I know it’s not really your – cup of tea,” Gale says, after a beat. He’s looking anywhere but Astarion, though the moment Astarion does Gale the courtesy of looking away, Astarion can feel Gale’s eyes on him. “Sentimentality.”
It’s not anything close to an apology, which is unusual: Gale is free with them, happy to keep the peace when an apology costs nothing, in contrast to Astarion, who would sooner swallow a hot coal than let one leave his mouth. He looks to Gale again to find Gale staring at him intently, expression a little uncertain.
“It’s not,” is all Astarion offers up in wary reply.
It hangs in the air between them. Finally, Astarion adds, looking away from Gale again: “It’s dangerous. Or it was, at any rate. Perhaps it will be again, if things go poorly when I return to Baldur’s Gate.”
“They won’t.” Gale’s reply is reflexive and firm. He seems to take Astarion’s reply as an invitation, and sinks slowly on creaking knees to sit next to Astarion on the floor, legs dangling over the side of the balcony where the railing has fallen away. “You have us.”
“Precisely the sort of dangerous sentimentality I was referring to.” Astarion doesn’t exactly regret the words when Gale flinches, but he rests a hand on the scrap of worn wooden floor between them.
After a moment Gale rests his hand next to Astarion’s, magic-calloused fingers brushing over Astarion’s. When Astarion doesn’t move, Gale covers his hand a little more fully. “Have you never been courted before?” Gale sounds a little incredulous at the idea, which would be charming, if it didn’t make Astarion’s stomach roil just a little to think back on what he’s missed in the long, miserable slog of his life.
“Have you ever courted anyone outside the Outer Planes?”
Gale’s fingers twitch in response to the question; he clears his throat, and Astarion bites back a laugh. “Some time ago,” Gale says finally, clearing his throat. “In my apprentice days.” He runs his thumb across Astarion’s knuckles, the sort of idle touch Astarion rarely lets anyone indulge in with him. If Gale didn’t look so distracted, he’d probably be more annoyed about it. “Would you like to be courted?”
People have asked before. An endless parade of people – some he could have been tempted by, most he never would have looked at twice if he hadn’t needed an easy mark – who thought they might be different from the other strangers buying drinks or batting their lashes from the other end of any one of the seedier taverns in Baldur’s Gate.
“No.” It’s not the real answer. Not the answer Astarion would give in a world where he wasn’t staring down ceremorphosis or a return to form as one of Cazador’s little pets. If he had the luxury to think about… something farther flung than this idle conversation. To think about Gale as anything other than a passing fancy or desperate distraction. “Maybe.”
“One day.” There’s a weight to Gale’s words that wasn’t there before. One day, of course, means after they’ve confronted the Netherbrain – after Gale has made a decision about what to do with Mystra’s final quest for him, something else Astarion has made a pointed effort not to think about since Elminster cornered them in the cliffs outside Rosymorn.
Astarion tangles his fingers with Gale’s, lightly, grateful for Gale’s loose grip. Gale’s not careful with him, exactly, but handles Astarion with the same delicate precision he handles spellcasting with. “That night outside camp.”
There could be a dozen of them, at this point, but Gale knows. His fingers flex briefly around Astarion’s again. The night they’d spent admiring the conjured auroras of the Outer Planes against a Waterdhavian sky, before Gale had pressed him into soft conjured sheets and –
“Your magic.” It’s a foolish idea, but Astarion sees Gale’s expression brighten slightly as it always does when a chance to flex his arcane skill presents itself. “You could show me.”
It’s as selfish as it is foolish, too, to ask Gale to conjure something like this for them in this rotten wasteland, but Astarion has never been known for his selflessness, even before he woke up with fangs and a gaping scar in his neck.
“I thought –” Gale falters slightly, hesitant. “You didn’t seem to…”
Astarion gives him a moment. He knows where Gale’s going, but he’s learned Gale gets annoyed when he’s not allowed to finish his own sentences.
Finally, Gale lifts Astarion’s hand and kisses the backs of his own fingers – something Astarion feels like a brand on his own skin anyway. “You hadn’t seemed especially interested in that sort of conjuration before.”
True enough. Spiraling through the Outer Planes tangled with Gale under the watchful eyes of gods that had abandoned Astarion long ago – even Gale’s illusory Waterdeep – had not seemed as appealing as something as simple as a warm bed and soft pillows and Gale’s warm embrace.
“An illusion would have distracted from the real thing.” Astarion can hear the way Gale’s blood rushes to his cheeks, and does Gale the courtesy of not looking. “What’s out here for you to distract me from?”
He glances to Gale, who’s watching him thoughtfully. “Besides,” Astarion says finally, a little quieter. “I’ll need practice with the bushel-filling, for next time.”
Too depressing to say what he’s thinking: if not now, then when?
Gale just stares at him for a long moment, and gives his hand one last squeeze. “Okay,” Gale murmurs. “After dinner. Come to my tent.”
***
Gale’s set up on the outskirts of the magical border Isobel is maintaining. A fraught meeting over a meager dinner leaves Astarion anxious for literally anything to distract him from the nightmarish environs, and by the time he finds himself fidgeting outside Gale’s tent he’s half considering scrapping the whole thing in favor of luring Gale to bed. Or to his bedroll, at any rate.
“Ah!” Gale throws open the flap of his tent before Astarion has the chance to do anything about it, a beaming smile on his face as he extends a hand. His enthusiasm is catching enough that Astarion feels himself smiling before he can stop himself, and Gale echoes it back to him with a fondness in his eyes that makes Astarion’s heart stutter in his chest. “You know, traditionally I would have come to fetch you at your door with a carriage –”
“I’m sure you can conjure the tradition, too.” Astarion tries not to dwell overlong on the thought of Gale in some fine robes, arriving at Astarion’s door with a charming bow. He’d probably bring a gift, some sweet little token that he’d press into Astarion’s hand with that pretty smile.
He takes Gale’s hand and lets himself be drawn inside.
They’ve spent a fair amount of time in Gale’s tent of late, sleeping mostly as Astarion soaks in the warmth of Gale’s soft, broad body and the thrumming orb in his chest, and on one occasion necking like teenagers until the slow creep of the dawn light over the horizon when a nightmare clawed Astarion back from the brink of a restful trance. There’s something cramped about it that makes Astarion feel an almost pleasant sort of claustrophobic, packed in close quarters with Gale’s books and pillows and arcane trinkets in a way that crowds out the litany of fears and regrets that scream endlessly through his mind when he’s alone.
Usually Astarion just crawls in when he can sense Gale on the brink of sleep, trying not to think about what it means when Gale drowsily opens his arms to him. It’s different to have Gale draw him through the threshold of the tent, across some magical barrier where the chill, creeping darkness and pervasive stink of decay give way to the autumn sunset and the sweet, crisp scent of apples on the air.
A tree-lined path, well-worn and sun-dappled through the fluttering canopy of the orchard. Gale is clever: there’s footprints scattered through the dirt and distant conversation, muffled, all of it hazy and strangely indistinguishable, as if Astarion is experiencing it all as a rippling reflection on the water.
“My mother brought me here.” Gale clasps Astarion’s hand in his, their fingers tangling. “When I was a child.” He plucks at his sweater, navy cable knit in a pattern Astarion distantly recognizes as having elements of the Waterdhavian crest – crescent moons mirrored across a horizon of pale gray. “She probably still has this sweater.”
He glances down at himself, suddenly aware of his own warmth against the breeze, only to find himself in a slightly oversized sweater in a deep plum. It hangs off his shoulders and just past his hips. One of Gale’s.
Astarion’s heart doesn’t skip a beat, but only because it can’t. “Don’t tell me you’ve conjured your mother up, too.”
Gale laughs, a little sheepishly as if he’d maybe considered the idea. “Just the two of us,” he murmurs, tugging Astarion’s hand a little until Astarion is tucked up against his side. “Some peace and quiet.”
There’s no buckets. No ladders. Nothing to count with. There’s birdsongs Astarion has never heard before, blossoming plants and creeping vines coiling around the tree trunks they pass by that don’t bloom in Baldur’s Gate. The echoing memories of overheard childhood conversations ring through the orchard. Gale drapes an arm across his shoulders; Astarion takes his hand first, and then slides his arm around Gale’s waist, fingers curling in his sweater, tracing the ridges and raised rows of the knit.
They talk. Not about anything, really. Not about Mystra. Not about Cazador. Not about the Netherbrain. They talk about Tara, Gale’s tressym friend. The perfumery in Baldur’s Gate where Astarion buys the little tin of soap that keeps him smelling – well, alive, a conversation that prompts Gale to tuck his nose against the curve of Astarion’s neck with a soft inhale and sweet sigh. About Gale’s mother, a little. All their favorite things about their respective cities, all the places Gale traveled to as an archmage.
They talk, and they walk as the sun sets. The air grows chillier as the stars twinkle into view, and when Astarion shivers, Gale presses his palm flat to Astarion’s chest and casts something that warms Astarion from within without pausing in the middle of his long-winded discussion of Waterdeep’s strict regulation of the local vineyards.
The orchard is endless.
Something feels endless about the way Gale looks at him, too, when Astarion tips his head up from time to time to tease him. It is so intimidatingly affectionate that Astarion can’t bear to hold his gaze for more than a moment or two, and every time he looks out at some unseen chattering bird in the trees Gale just squeezes his shoulder, accepting an apology Astarion doesn’t know how to give.
“Weren’t we meant to be apple picking?” Astarion drops his head to Gale’s shoulder, glancing up at the red ripe apples dotting the trees overhead. Gale’s body shakes a little with laughter, and Astarion glances up at him, indignant. “Am I not just holding you to the promise of this little outing, Gale of Waterdeep?”
“Dekarios, please.” Gale’s blushing; Astarion can hear the particular rhythm of it, and doesn’t bother hiding his own pleased little smirk. “I thought I was being something of a gentleman, sparing you from the tedium of manual labor.”
“I thought you were the one doing all the laboring.” Astarion gestures at the complex illusion around them – the scent of it seeping into their skin, the gentle breeze around them, the trees rustling. “What’s one more trick, wizard?”
Gale pauses, then, turning to face Astarion. What a portrait they would make, Astarion thinks idly, the sort of sentimental artwork that would hang above a mantle in the tower Gale called home.
He can’t afford to think about a life in Gale’s tower.
He cannot stop thinking about a life in Gale’s tower.
Gale looks at him – up a little, barely shorter – and reaches up to trace a hand through Astarion’s hair, tucking a stray curl from his face, fingers skirting over the sensitive line of his ear.
“I would do a thousand tricks for you,” Gale murmurs. “But I thought perhaps it would be more enjoyable to leave the apple picking for the real thing.” He pauses, eyes searching Astarion’s face. “If you would be so inclined.”
“That’s a dangerous promise to make.” Astarion leans into Gale’s hand anyway, pressing his lips against Gale’s warm palm. “Do they let people pick apples after dark?”
“Consider it one of my tricks.” Gale’s eyes sparkle a little, amused and hopeful. He brushes his thumb over Astarion’s cheek and draws him closer, leaning in to kiss Astarion like he’s accepting an invitation. “Would you like to discuss it further in my tent?”
That’s an invitation all its own, tentative and sweet and a little playful. Gale asks so rarely, letting Astarion take the lead, that Astarion is tempted to indulge him.
“Perhaps after we finish our walk,” Astarion murmurs instead, reaching to take Gale’s hand again. Gale asks as much to give Astarion the chance to say no as he does to give him the chance to say yes, and Astarion still hasn’t spent much time untangling the way it makes him feel when Gale smiles at him all the same, without a hint of disappointment.
Gale lingers close, and Astarion tips his head to invite another kiss, letting out a pleased little hum when Gale accepts again. “After, then,” he murmurs, drawing Astarion to his side again to lead him down the path once more. “We can walk for as long as you want.”
***
The smell of apples lingers on their skin the next day, when Astarion wakes up with his face buried in the warm curve of Gale’s shoulder, Gale’s arms wound tight around him.
“They’ll be looking for us,” Astarion murmurs, as Gale summons a mage hand to adjust the blanket over them. “We should find the others.”
Gale’s fingers trace along Astarion’s side. “After, perhaps,” he murmurs, and Astarion feels Gale’s heart skip a beat beneath his cheek when he murmurs we can stay for as long as you want in return.