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The sun had risen and then begun its slow dip back towards the sea when Gale found Astarion at last. He was, as it turned out, not at all far removed from where they’d been at the docks just that morning.
He’d imagined him somehow fleeing far from the city in the confusion and chaos. He’d imagined him burned beyond any ability to find some meager shelter from the unforgiving sun. He’d imagined a dozen possible horrors in exponential detail as his search began to feel ever more fruitless. He must have passed by him half a dozen times between morning and late afternoon.
But only now did his sun blinded eyes make out the curled up shape of him, huddled beneath the shadow of someone’s forgotten tarp. Unmistakable, now that he’d found what he was searching for.
“There you are,” his anger spoke in that moment more than his relief did. “Astarion, we have been searching-“
“Stay back,” Astarion’s voice stretched taut as a bowstring. “Stay over there.”
He halted his encroachment. He could make out the threads of tousled silver hair, the hunched curve of narrow shoulders. “Astarion,” he began again. “If you would but return with me now, I can protect you. We could-”
“I said no,” Astarion remained unmoving. “And don’t look at me.”
Oh, he thought. Gale took a breath.
“Fair enough,” he turned his back dutifully. “But I will take a few moments of rest with you, if you don’t mind. I have been on my feet for some dozen hours, at least.” Since they’d battled the nether brain, and won, against all odds. Since he had chosen, at last, to live.
“Do whatever you want,” Astarion said, which Gale decided was at least not an overt discouragement. He took a careful seat on the edge of the broken awning Astarion crouched under, back still turned. His body was tired, frayed down well past the brink of exhaustion. He took a moment to collect himself.
He could hear Astarion fighting for breath, which he imagined must be considerably uncomfortable for someone who did not actually need to breathe. He ached to turn around.
“You are still free, Astarion,” he offered gently, after a moment. “And we have won. However your skin tolerates the sun at this time.”
“Yes, I am. He’s dead,” his words were bitten off, sharp and furious. “And yet he’s still taking things from me. I want all of it back. Everything. All the things I don’t even know I’ve lost because I don’t remember what it was to have them.”
His voice broke, a terrible hurt sound. Gale fumbled in his pocket for one of his better handkerchiefs, offering it to him without turning his back. Astarion took it and blew his nose.
“Better?” he asked hopefully.
A wet scoffing noise. “If you’re waiting around for that you might as well go.”
“You’d truly prefer that I left you here?” Gale would not consider it, but it would be helpful, he thought, to know what flavor of despair he was dealing with. He waited.
“I-“ his trepidation hung in the air. Gale’s heart twisted with it. “…No. Don’t leave.
“But don’t look at me. I don’t want to talk about it anymore, Gale.”
“No talking. Right,” his mind circled frantically. “I can do that.”
A long suffered sigh. “I said I don’t want to talk, wizard. You can say whatever you want.”
“Ah. Well,” Gale considered. “Given that someone saw fit to lift Moons of the Crescents from my bedside I have yet to peruse its conclusion. But I am assuming you have,” Gale waited. “How did you find its end?”
Astarion was silent for so long that for a moment Gale began to fear he had fled after all. He had made up his mind to turn and look again when he spoke.
“Tawdry, darling. But I’m afraid it all ended happily for everyone involved,” Astarion shifted behind him. “It will be quite to your taste.”
He startled a laugh from Gale. “I’ll ignore for now your rather derogatory assessment of my preferences,” he said. “Is it so impossible to imagine such an end? Love ignited at long last? Friends reunited?”
“With so many horrible deaths still waiting in the wings?” He hears his sigh. “Hardly. And Droer has nothing to offer her. She’ll hardly want him now, whatever she says.”
“Love is not traded for favors,” Gale said, stupidly. Forgetting himself. “It is its own end, when shared between willing hearts.”
Then he can only watch the last tendrils of sunlight vanishing into the water, his cheeks aflame. He recalled unbidden the touch of cool fingers on his neck. Silver hair beneath his fingers, soft as down. He closed his eyes, tried to drive the feeling out.
“Where’s Karlach, Gale?” Astarion spoke suddenly, startling him. Closer now behind him then he’d placed him a moment ago. “She- well, she didn’t look well when I-“
He flinched involuntarily. “She’s- alive. In Avernus,” he felt he must reassure Astarion. “But she’ll not walk through it alone this time. Wyll is with her now.”
He hears Astarion’s quick breath out. “Good,” he said. “That’s good. If you ever tell her I said that, I swear-”
“You’re hardly alone in that wish,” Gale told him. His skin prickles with the memory. “But perhaps we never quite know how much we want to live until death in all its finality stares us in the face.”
A silence fell between them. Astarion remained still as a grave, behind him.
“Well, I-“ he seemed to stumble on the words. “I’m glad you’re not dead either, Gale. For whatever that’s worth.”
Gale stared at his hands. “Well, someone… offered me another perspective on the situation. They were quite insistent that I reconsider my assumptions.”
“Were they, now?”
“A good friend,” his throat closed on the word. “Someone very special to me.”
“For all his unending beauty and devastating charms, I suppose.”
Gale choked a laugh. “Oh, he can be quite infuriating. But he’s also the funniest, bravest person I’ve ever met,” he had more to say, and for a moment he was in true danger of letting it all spill out unchecked. “He has become very dear to me.”
“Gale,” Astarion began just as Gale said, “But you don’t need to-“
“Let me say it,” Astarion said. There was a hand on his arm suddenly, the ghost of a touch that was gone again a moment later, like it had thought better of itself. “You… deserve an apology, for what I did.”
“I- oh,” he had no right, certainly not now, to feel as if his heart had been run over by a cart and then placed back in his hands. “You’re sorry you-“
“Well, I- regret… going about it in the way that I did. You deserved to be asked, Gale. Before a kiss. You deserved-” his breath caught. “Well, we don’t need to speak of it again.”
His ridiculous heart fluttered. “Well, if the subject is truly not of interest, then we’ll simply let it go unexplored. But it has been quite some time since I’ve been the subject of… any such desire. To feel it again, even for a moment, was most pleasant.” Perhaps the last moment of real passion he’ll ever know. Perhaps given time, he’ll be able to think of it like that.
“Gods above,” Astarion was clearly frustrated. “If you really believe that I am losing my touch.”
Gale paused. “…You- you did? You were?”
“Yes, you silly wizard, why in the hells did you think I kissed you?”
“You were telling me not to explode!” Gale was deeply affronted. “You were very insistent!”
“Yes, because I didn’t want you to explode!” Astarion flailed his arms, just beyond Gale’s field of vision. “But I also wanted that.” His sigh was painfully resigned. “Well, now you know, I suppose.”
The fingers at his neck. The way they’d slid into his hair. Astarion had kissed like he was starving for him, kissed like it was the world itself crumbling around them. Kissed like he could hold Gale to the world with that alone, and stop what seemed then inevitable.
And he’d been right, after all.
“Well, um,” Gale took a moment to gather his fraying wits. “Since we are on the subject, if there was some interest in repeating the experiment… not now, of course, but-“
He felt Astarion’s movement before he was aware, suddenly, of his proximity. He had taken the narrow space beside him, close enough for their thighs to nearly brush. Gale’s heart turned over on itself, but he closed his eyes, dutifully.
“Yes, you can look,” he said.
Gale opened his eyes. Astarion was still covered in several layers of grime, though Gale knew he could hardly look any better. He could see where the sun had touched him that morning, but the burns were healing already, soon to fade away to nothing at all. His tears had marked tracks through dust and dirt.
“I look a mess,” his red eyes were wet. Trepidation, exhaustion, and shame written there. “I don’t want them to see me like this, Gale.”
“May I?” he asked. With Astarion’s hesitant nod Gale whispered a spell and produced a damp cloth. He set to his task carefully, gently smoothing the worst of it away. Astarion’s eyes fluttered closed with the touch.
“You are beautiful,” he said, because it was true. “But it matters not. Not to those who love you.”
As he began to draw away at last his fingers reached out to grasp his, to hold him there for an extra moment. Gale cradled his face in his palm, gently caressing his cheek with his thumb.
“Thank you,” Astarion said simply. “I don’t know how else to say it. But- thank you.”
Light fingers mapped his jaw, gently traced the line of his brow. And then at last he was being kissed, a gentle press of lips to his. It was not at all like the desperate, fervent, world ending passion of the first kiss. And yet he felt the sweetness of it, a warmth that ignited in his chest, deeper even then where the orb slept.
Astarion still held him when they broke apart, resting their foreheads together. Gale was dizzy with it, his heart alight. He wanted another, and then another after that. The nearness of him alone was intoxicating.
But Astarion let go of him and stood with some finality, reaching out his hand to help Gale to his feet as well. And then to his surprise he slipped his arm through his, drawing him close again as they began to pick their way across the field of debris scattered around them. As if they were indeed two lovers taking a moonlit stroll by the water. Gale felt himself in danger of floating away.
“I’ve always loved the night sky,” he said, as they reached the docks once more. The sun had fallen below the horizon at last, but the edge of its light still burnished the sea. “Daylight has its charms, but there is so much beauty that passes entirely unnoticed in its light.”
“...Well, you aren’t wrong,” Astarion had paused to look as well, his eyes still fixed on the vanishing light. “But I’ve seen them all. Two hundred years of endless nights in this city.”
“Well, you haven’t seen them on every shore, have you?” Gale squeezed his arm. “Neither have I. There is so much left to experience, under the luminous tapestry of night.”
“I suppose the company does make all the difference,” When he turned to look he found Astarion’s eyes on him, soft and warm in a way that nearly turned his insides molten.
“You may have as much as your heart desires,” he said. He can make such promises now. He has years yet to live. A life to make his own, just as Astarion does.
“We did kill a nether brain, after all,” Astarion said. “Gods above, we won, didn’t we? And no one’s even sprouting tentacles.”
“And I did not explode,” Gale agreed, beaming.
“You didn’t,” Astarion’s grip on him tightened then, almost possessive. Gale shivered at the feeling, almost embarrassingly undone by that simple touch alone. “Don’t ever do that again.”
“I think we’ve well earned some rest from battling gods,” Gale assured him. He would have the crown to think of, of course. Mystra’s price to pay, in the days to come. But he could see the end of the orb in sight, at long last.
The city had fallen dark as they’d lingered, but the streets still bustled, even among a not inconsiderable level of ongoing chaos.
“And what will we tell them then?” Astarion asked him, as their feet at last led them towards the relative peace of their lodgings. He still held Gale's hand tightly in his. “About what we've been up to, all this time?”
Gale did consider the question. “Well, the obvious answer,” he said easily. “We had a torrid tryst. When we found each other in the remains of our city, we were quite overcome with passion. No further questions need arise.”
It earned him a laugh, true and delighted. “Impatient, are you?” Astarion slid a hand down his upper arm, then dug his fingers in. Gale stumbled, missing a step. “All in good time, darling.”