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There’s hardly a thing he wouldn’t do for Karlach should she ask for it.
She’s a bleeding heart, to a concerning degree—but she’s been his rock in the aftermath of all that is his disastrous relationship with Cazador: which is why he finds it near impossible to deny or ignore her when she needs something.
But that isn’t to say he doesn’t try his damndest.
“No,” he says, scowling down at the skillet as his egg rapidly turns to a crisp. Non-stick pan. As if. “No, no. And, oh, right. No.”
“Please, ‘star,” Karlach pleads, hands clasped together as she prostrates over the kitchen island. “You’d really be doing all of us a favor. Like, the biggest.”
“Absolutely not. I love you greatly, darling, but you can’t make me change my mind about this.” He dumps more pepper in the skillet, immediately sneezes directly onto his food. Disgusting... but at least if Jenevelle comes out from hiding in the bedroom to pilfer his food, he’ll have the satisfaction of knowing it’s his germs she’s devouring.
“You don’t understand how bad it is. Gale’s really taking the divorce hard,” Karlach says, sighs. When he spares a glance over his shoulder, Karlach is staring off to the side, eyes unfocused as the concept of this... Gale begins to trouble her more. “It’s, it’s creeping us out, like. We keep finding him just. Sitting motionless in the dark listening to this... insane clown group, or something.”
He tsks, transferring his crisp egg to his bowl full of burnt rice. “Anyone who likes clowns isn’t to be trusted. A proper maniac, sounds like. It’s no wonder he got dumped.”
It’s a mistake to turn around for the soy sauce—Karlach’s got a better set of puppy dog eyes than Wyll’s dog on the best of days. He points at her with the rubber spatula covered in charred egg bits.
“Do not give me that look. No is no.”
Karlach gives him The Look ™ harder.
“Gods damn it, no!” he says again, and again. And Again.
But there’s two things Karlach is utterly devoted to: making sure her friends are truly well taken care of and annoying him to bits and pieces. His resolve holds fast—for that, he is immensely proud of himself—but when Karlach calls Jenevelle out of the room to help convince him, who instead begins to insult his lack of dates and withering sex life as he eats his subpar meal, he gets fed up.
“Fine!” he shouts, throwing his hands up. “Fine, fine. Just shut up already!”
Karlach beams and immediately pulls her phone out as if she never actually expected him to deny her in the first place.
The picture Karlach shows him isn’t impressive. Gale is very much not his type despite Karlach’s insistence. In the picture: Gale sits on a very soft looking couch holding a very grumpy looking black-brown-and-orange tabby cat. Gale is... okay-ish: older, graying hair cropped and coifed with one of those beards that have the chin missing. Giant glasses sit crooked on Gale’s face, and in Gale’s right ear dangles an earring in the shape of a spoked wheel—no, a star—more than likely a remnant of a by-gone rebellious era.
All in all, Gale is very much not someone he would’ve given a second glance to should he happen upon him on the street.
“Gods,” he murmurs, squinting down at Karlach’s cracked screen. It’s apprehension in his chest, definitely not anxiety. “This is going to be a disaster, isn’t it?”
“Nah, he’s a good guy, ‘star. Trust me. Charming as hell, too.”
Via text, Gale is very perfunctory.
It’s as if he’s texting someone’s grandfather for how dry the conversation sits between them: no personality, proper capitalization and plentiful typos in words that most certainly don’t warrant them as if Gale’s fingers are too helpless to hit the right letters on his phone screen.
After an hour of obligatory conversation that pushes him to the point of extreme boredom, they finally agree on a venue, a date and time: an aquarium, this Saturday, 10 AM sharp. It’s a terrible thought: thinking about being stranded at giant concrete prison for aquatic animals with what seems to be the human embodiment of drywall—but if it’ll make Karlach happy, then...
He stares at his ceiling, sleepless the night before the date.
An aquarium. How juvenile.
It’ll be a relief once it’s said and done.
He makes it to the aquarium an entire hour before 10 AM, content with chain smoking and sneering at anyone who stares at him for too long. Interested or not, it’s important to look one’s best in every occasion: and if his best happens to be all black and his most obnoxious accessories, well. So be it.
10 AM comes, goes; 10:30 AM comes and goes just the same.
Half of him is... irritated, yes, but another part is almost relieved—he has an excuse to leave now. He stands, stretches and throws the still lit end of his cigarette down on the pavement. Now, he can spend his afternoon doing better things, perhaps better people, but just as he’s grabbing his satchel to walk off towards the subway, a snobby voice comes from behind him:
“You shouldn’t do that, you know.”
“Excuse me?” he says, sneers, turns. He’s expecting maybe one of the aquarium security guards but instead he finds:
Gale, Gale who is every bit unassuming in person as is in photographs.
It could just be a by-product of his boots, but standing close, he towers over Gale just so—a height difference that’s only exaggerated as Gale bends down to pick up the little pile of cigarette butts he’s left on the ground. He watches in horror as Gale sticks them all in his trench coat pocket—a trench coat—before Gale turns back to him.
In person, Gale’s hair is a little grayer, a little bit longer. The cologne drifting off of Gale in waves smells like saltwater taffy, black ink and the eyes blinking up at him through coke-bottle glasses are shockingly brown. Not bad, but... he could do without the frown twisting Gale’s face.
“Littering is bad,” Gale says, pushing his glasses up. “You shouldn’t do that. Especially cigarette filters. Did you know they take a devastatingly long time to decompose in the natural environment? That is, if they even decompose at all? Not to mention what it does to the wildlife, especially our oceans.”
It’s rare that he’s rendered speechless but Gale has seemingly managed the impossible.
“No, I did not know, and I can’t say I care anymore than I did thirty seconds ago,” he says, squints. There’s cat hair all on Gale’s trench coat. “You... do know who I am, right?”
“Yes, I do, in fact,” Gale says, frown easily replaced by a quick smile as he extends his hand for a handshake. “Astarion, correct? Karlach has told me much about you. Nice to meet you.”
He doesn’t shake Gale’s hand—only grunts and looks at the offending thing until Gale has sense enough to let it drop.
“Sorry to keep you waiting. My car, it’s,” Gale says, clears his throat. “Well. It’s seen better days, that’s for certain. Did you know—,”
“We should get going,” he interrupts, none too nicely. “I’m sure we both have other things we’d rather be doing, hm? So let’s just. Get this over with, shall we?”
Gale blinks, eyes magnified by his glasses. “Yes. Yes, of course. After you.”
He rolls his eyes and stomps towards the aquarium entrance, trying his best to ignore the weight of Gale’s eyes on his back.
They’re in the aquarium barely three minutes before things begin to derail.
It isn’t enough that Gale pulls an honest-to-gods paper map of the aquarium from inside of his trench coat—but as Gale starts to unfold it, a group of kids run past. He avoids the gaggle of them effortlessly, but Gale, oh so preoccupied with his map doesn’t even notice them until one of the hellspawn slams against Gale’s back.
The map falls.
The lobby quiets once more.
People drift past, but the only moving Gale does is to gingerly bend to pick the map settled by his feet up.
He raises an eyebrow. “Any day now, darling. We aren’t getting younger.”
“Ah, well. Yes,” Gale says, clearing his throat. “I seem to have... lost something of great importance.”
“What could you have possibly lost?” he asks, not bothering to hide the exasperation in his voice. “We’ve not even went in yet.”
Gale turns around slow.
It is a monumental effort to keep himself from bursting out in hysterics as he takes Gale in: one of Gale’s glasses lenses is missing.
“I’m afraid I can’t see very well without my glasses. My depth perception shall we say is... not the best. I do hate to impose on you but,” a pause, “would you be so kind as to assist me with finding it?
He laughs this time but with no humor.
“Sorry, I’m positive I didn’t hear you correctly,” he says. “You want... me to crawl around on this filthy floor like a worm? To help find your glasses?”
Gale blinks, blushes. Only then does he see what Karlach must see: there’s a sadness lurking in the creases of Gale’s eyes that he can recognize. It’s... a familiar one—he can see why maybe Karlach would think they’d get along but—
“No, no, of course not,” Gale says, sheepish. Red pushes up on his face and it’s... the slightest bit endearing. “How foolish of me to ask. If you’ll just, give me a moment here—.”
He watches in equal parts mild fascination and horror as Gale drops to his hands and knees and starts feeling around for his runaway lens. Secondhand embarrassment isn’t something that happens to him often, but a part of him withers away with each second that passes.
Three hundred seconds, five minutes: that’s how long it takes for Gale to shout a triumphant “a-ha!” loud enough to echo in the lobby. Gale pulls his glasses off and fiddles with the frame. A click-pop, and Gale slides his glasses back on his face, looking over with a smile.
“Luckily, this happens often enough that I can pop them back in,” Gale says. “Right as rain and such... albeit, a tad bit smudged.”
“Wonderful,” he says, monotone.
They maintain eye contact for longer than he’d like, and it’s... uncomfortable, strange. He narrows his eyes.
“Well? What are you waiting for? Get up.”
“Yes, yes, we should make haste,” Gale agrees, hesitates, clears his throat again. “I... don’t suppose you’d be willing to help me up? My knees aren’t what they used to be, I’m afraid.”
Charming, Karlach had said—yet as he grabs Gale’s hand that’s covered in gods-know-what, he finds that he’s everything but charmed.
The first half-hour of their date is spent navigating the main building’s endless maze of shark tunnels; he’s never been the oceanic or space loving type—anything unfit for human habitation aren’t of any interest to him. Above them, some sort of spotted shark swims past. He swears he can see abdominal muscles on it. Terrifying.
Karlach owes him big time.
“Amazing, isn’t it?” Gale says from beside him.
“If one likes feeling as if they’re moments away from drowning, I suppose,” he murmurs. Gale laughs.
“You’d be surprised at how strong aquarium glass is, my friend,” Gale says, pushing his glasses up on his nose. “Five-hundred thousand gallons of water held up by layers of polycarbonate and laminated glass. I dare say this might be the safest place in the entire facility.”
Gale continues to prattle on, pointing out different species of fish, sharks and underwater flora as they maneuver through the glass tunnels. It’s as if he’s stuck in the middle of a documentary that has no actual ending in sight. He fakes interest for a while, giving half-interested grunts until even that feels like too much work. Could he be a little nicer? Probably, yes—but this little date of theirs is nothing more than a favor for Karlach; he’s no real interest in what Gale thinks or how Gale feels as long as he can say he went through with the date.
Gale must sense his disinterest; the torrent of information begins to trail off, and by the time they’re on the last tunnel of the building before heading up and outside, Gale’s taken to shuffling nervously beside him now that there’s a lull in things to info dump about.
“So, Astarion,” Gale says brightly. “What do you do?”
“Sorry?” he says, absentmindedly. In front of them floats a shark with big wide eyes. He doesn’t appreciate the way it’s staring at him.
“You know, what do you do,” Gale says again. He looks over at Gale. The blue of the aquarium washes Gale out, and his eyes seem magnified more than usual. In the dark, Gale’s quite passable. “For a living! What brings you joy?”
He barks a laugh that gets a stern frown from one of the aquarium attendants.
“Darling, sex gives me joy,” he says. “For a living? I work at Karlach’s bar which brings me considerable less joy than fucking even on the best of nights.”
“Oh,” Gale says, clears his throat. “Well. Nothing wrong with matters of the flesh.”
“Mm,” he murmurs, eyebrow arched. “And you, pet? What gives you... pleasure?”
It’s a question full of innuendo that gets ignored as Gale brightens.
“I teach, as a matter of fact!” Gale says.
“Really?” he says. The shark staring him down loses interest.
“Yes,” Gale says, nods, clasping his hands behind his back as they make their way to the end of the tunnel slowly. “A professor of theology. It is a great joy to interact with such curious minds.”
“So you’re the sort that likes kids, hm?” he says. “Never liked the snot nosed brats myself. Too loud. Too many questions, eugh.”
Gale shoots him a frown. “They’re not ‘brats’, I’ll have you know. They’re university students, the best of the best, even.”
“Anyone younger than me is a brat, as far as I’m concerned,” he says, climbing the stairs that lead outside.
“I hardly think that’s a major feat to overcome,” Gale murmurs from behind him.
He pauses to shoot a glare over his shoulder.
“Excuse me?”
Gale blinks, smiles with all innocence. “I said, shall we visit the touch tanks next?”
Finding out Gale teaches for a living puts a lot of things in perspective—including the way Gale seems to be in love with the sound of his own voice (—and, did you know—, Gale says, and he sighs, thinks to himself: no, but I’m sure you’ll tell me); the little bit of peace and quiet that walked beside them as they wandered around the small ponds and exhibits outsides evaporates as they enter the second building.
“What’s all this then?” he asks, looking around. He’s not really asking—he couldn’t give a shit, really, but the amount of kids he sees puts him on edge.
Gale answers anyway, sounding pleased. “This, my friend, is the shark and sting ray touch tank exhibit. A most marvelous experience, if one is to believe the internet reviews.”
“Sting rays?” he says, arching his eyebrow as they head towards an empty space at one section of the touch tanks. “Aren’t those supposed to be dangerously... deadly?”
“Typically, yes, but that’s usually in the wilds of the sea. Here, their stinging barbs are trimmed, thus rendering them harmless.”
He opens his mouth, but Gale interrupts. “And it is painless for them... so far as we know.”
“Wonderful vote of confidence you’ve given me, thank you.”
The touch tank room in general is... very depressing. The support wall where the tank glass sits flush is painted with a seamless horizon landscape: blue skies and even bluer water. Little blobs of rocks are anchored in the water with vegetation glued on top. The sharks and sting rays swim around in circles, back and forth, unaware at the true nature of their confinement.
He squats, getting eye level to the water level as one swims up to the glass to stare at him. The sting rays are odd, funny: flat pancakes with beady little eyes. A wave of melancholy washes over him—how dreary it is, to be kept captive.
Gale stands next to him, quiet, contemplative.
“Would you like to perhaps... touch them?” Gale asks, and he looks up. The stingray takes the chan
“Why? Are you that eager to see me electrocuted?” he asks, and Gale laughs.
“Hardly,” Gale says. “In fact, I’ll touch them with you. I’d be delighted to, really.”
“Touching slippery things together on the first date?” he says, standing up. “You’re full of all sorts of surprises, aren’t you?”
Given the blush that sits on Gale’s face, the innuendo lands this this. He tries not to feel smug about it as he rolls up his sleeves.
Another sting ray gets close, lingers, floats. It’s a tiny thing, barely the size of his palm. He splays his fingers, not... coaxing but, inviting, should it choose to get closer and it does, drift closer, right underneath his palms, fingers, and the feel of it it’s... strange, unlike anything he’s ever felt before: rubber velvet, if he had to find a descriptor.
How quaint.
He smiles despite himself; next to him, Gale laughs, occupied with his own shark.
“Fascinating,” Gale breathes.
When he looks over Gale’s face, smile—it’s the brightest it’s been since they entered the aquarium. In such clear, white lighting, he finds that, much to his chagrin, Gale is quite handsome: but only then does he see the sadness lurking in the creases of Gale’s eyes; it’s a sadness he can recognize, a sadness he often sees reflected in his own on those mornings when the shadows from his dreamed memories linger.
It’s not like him to feel sympathy for people, especially people he’s only just met—but there’s... an inkling of guilt as he watches Gale murmur to the shark as if the thing can hear him.
Clearly the people in Gale’s life care about him; clearly he is a good person even in light of all his dubious clown music tendencies. For one reason or another, Karlach really thinks they’d get along and as loathe as he is to admit jenevelle being right about anything, it has been a terribly long time since he’s been in a real relationship.
He pulls his hand free from the water and wipes the wet off on his jeans while giving Gale an assessing look. Gale turns when he feels the weight of his stare, curiosity melting away to leave a careful sort of guardedness as Gale makes eye contact.
“Well,” he says. “I’m not dead yet, it seems.”
“Imagine that,” Gale says, with a touch of sarcasm but his eyes: they’re hopeful.
It... doesn’t have to be love at first sight but... just maybe he can try to make it a decent enough date.
“Mm. Where to next, professor?”