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It all goes to shit the moment Gale casts Sunbeam. The battle is mostly won, but Gale, ever cautious, casts the evocation spell and hurls it into the center of the room. Most of their enemies immediately burst into radiant flame, dying fast and with screams that would be sure to haunt Gale’s dreams. It is all entirely calculated by the archmage to finish the battle in a nice, tidy manner. He carefully considered all angles and made sure all his companions were out of range. The only thing he hadn’t considered was the orthon throwing Astarion directly into it.
Gale will never forget as long as he lives Astarion’s tortured screams as the holy light burns away his skin. The horror he feels as Astarion’s pale skin turns red and begins to flake away in radiant silver light. The look of terror and agony on his face as he frantically crawls out of range, his hands curled, claws digging into the stone below and scrabbling against it. Gale immediately feels guilt and dread sinking into his guts as he faintly hears Astarion’s pain filled whimpers. When the orthon lets out a roaring laugh before going invisible, Gale sees red.
He’s not entirely sure how he casts as many spells as he did, but he unleashes a part of himself his companions have never seen.
First, a cloud of daggers ripping through where he had last seen the orthon, knocking him out of invisibility, followed by a flurry of magic missiles. Thrusting his hands forward again and shouting the verbal components of any spells he could think of, a barrage of evocation spells sink into the orthon’s flesh while his companions look on in impressed horror, battling the last of the merregons and felling them while Gale unleashes hell.
The orthon falls with a mighty thump, shaking the crypt floor, but Gale stands there panting for only a moment before rushing down the ramp to where he last saw Astarion. His heart in his throat, he scans the room and when he finds him he feels a wave of sorrow and panic.
Curled in a darkened corner, with his arms thrown over his head, sits Astarion.
Gale rushes over, falling to his knees with a wince and reaching out to the pale elf.
“ Don’t . Touch me,” Astarion hisses, his face still hidden behind his arms. Gale hesitates and sits back on his heels, his hand falling into his lap. He clasps his hands together to avoid reaching out again and nods his head miserably even though Astarion can’t see it.
“Astarion, are you alright?”
“Obviously not,” Astarion hisses in pain, voice tense and muffled from behind his arms. “What in the sweet hells were you thinking, casting that spell? I was right there !”
“Actually, you were not. You were closer to the orthon and he threw you into the spell, but uh. I’m sure that is not helpful at this present moment,” Gale winces at the other man’s scoff. “Please, can I see the damage?”
There is a moment of hesitation before the vampire spawn lowers his hands, and Gale sucks in a breath at what he sees. His face is a map of reddened skin, small blisters already visible on his cheeks and hands. It looks excruciating .
“Well?” Astarion demands, his hands shaking slightly as he lowers them to his lap. “How bad is it?”
“It’s not bad at all,” Gale answers immediately, his gaze darting away as he unslings his pack.
“Liar,” Astarion sighs, wincing in pain as he shifts in place.
Gale doesn’t bother replying as he digs through his pack, becoming more and more frantic as he comes up empty. In a moment of desperation, he upends the bag and digs through the content before accepting what he can clearly see: there are no more healing potions to be had.
Quickly scooping the spilled items back into his bag, Gale turns to his other companions. The result is a sea of shaking heads and sympathetic winces.
“Shadowheart?”
She shrugs and shakes her head again, “I’m sorry but that took everything I had, I will need to rest a while before I can heal him.”
Gale sighs in frustration before turning back to Astarion who had slowly and carefully been standing up, his hands cradled to his chest to avoid jostling them.
“I truly apologize Astarion, but we have no healing potions and no more spells to cure your wounds. But, if you’ll allow me, I have some ointment from the Emerald Grove that supposedly works wonders for sunburns.”
The look Gale receives is as if he had just asked Astarion to strip naked and sing the Song of Balduran to a crowd full of people. Gale steels his gaze and silently holds up the ointment, raising his brow in challenge. After a few moments of awkward silence, broken only by the whispers of their companions behind them, Astarion nods stiffly and sits back down slowly, his back ramrod straight.
Gale waits a moment as their companions leave, a murmur of explanation that they’re going to loot what remains of their enemies, before uncorking the bottle of ointment. He carefully scoops out a dollop of the ointment before leaning in slowly, as if to a scared animal. Gale hesitates, his hand hovering above Astarion’s cheek, and raises his eyebrow in silent question.
There’s a moment where they simply stare at each other, Astarion’s gaze filled with pain and some other unnamed emotion, Gale’s filled with affection and worry. Finally, Astarion nods again and leans forward slightly as Gale starts to smooth the cream over his burnt cheeks. Astarion sucks in a pained breath before releasing it in a loud whoosh as the numbing agent takes effect.
The silence between them loses its tension as the minutes pass and Gale doesn’t do anything more than simply spread the cream across Astarion’s face. There’s a brief pause as he hovers over Astarion’s sunburnt and chapped lips before, light as a feather, pressing his fingers to them. Astarion’s mouth drops open slightly, his warm breath damp against Gale’s hand, as Gale carefully smooths the balm back and forth. His lips are chapped under Gale’s calloused fingertips, but he can imagine how soft they will be once they are healed. Even burnt, they’re plump and give under the slight pressure of his index finger.
The world falls away around them as he works the balm into the elf’s lips, tracing the area with a featherlight finger. He scarcely dares breath, afraid to ruin the moment that stretches between them. A single wrong movement would snap it into oblivion, and Gale has never been more sure in his life that he wants this moment to last.
He flicks his eyes up to Astarion’s crimson gaze and what he sees causes his heart to stutter in his chest. His eyes are slightly hooded, staring across at Gale’s face, drinking him in as if he would like to devour him.
He retracts his hand slowly and inhales shakily, flicking his eyes back up to Astarion to see he is still staring at Gale, an odd look on his face that is in no way lessened by the intensity of his red eyes. Clearing his throat and leaning back breaks the spell that had descended over the pair, and Gale feels a pang in his chest over the lost moment.
“Give it a minute or two to work its magic and your skin should start healing,” Gale says roughly, attempting to hide how affected he is over simply touching Astarion. He swallows harshly, his throat bobbing with the movement, wiping his hands clean on his robes. He can see out of the corner of his eye when Astarion raises his hand, gently touching his lips as if unbelieving that happened. When Gale turns to look at him, he quickly lowers his hand and gives off an unaffected air, a smirk pulling at his sunburnt skin.
“Yes, well it would be a crime to allow such a beautiful face to remain blemished,” he says before standing and gently patting himself free of dust. Without waiting for Gale, Astarion spins on his heel and darts up the ramp to where Gale can now hear Karlach and Shadowheart arguing over loot. The sudden dismissal stings and a strange feeling settles in his gut, akin to the panic he had felt earlier but more…disappointed somehow.
They had never mentioned the connection between them, not since that ill-advised night at the tiefling party when Astarion had propositioned him rather abruptly. But lately, Gale has felt moments such as this stretch between them, a heated tension that only seemed to grow with each occurrence. And each time, Astarion was the one who pulled away first. And each time, it hurt the same way.
Gale sighs heavily before pushing himself to his feet, his knees letting out an awful sounding crack as he does so. He winces and pushes the pain to the back of his mind where his yearning and pining go to die. Readjusting the pack on his back, he starts up the ramp, ready to intervene and sort whatever goodies the others are fighting over.