Adult Content Warning
This work could have adult content. If you continue, you have agreed that you are willing to see such content.
-
Shelter In Place by ICanFixHim (pixel7777) for Elwing42
Fandoms: Baldur's Gate (Video Games)
15 Jan 2026
Tags
Summary
Gale is a survivalist romance author who writes about love after the end of the world. He's a divorcee who has plans B through G for power failure, but no Plan A for getting laid. Astarion is a former artist who decided to winter in the northern Michigan lake house he got in his divorce. He's not exactly rural-winter ready. When a massive blizzard knocks out power across the community, Gale—seeing Astarion's dark McMansion—trudges through the blizzard to prevent his idiot neighbor from freezing to death, but they'll both keep each other warm in the end.
This low-stakes, cozy, modern, the-Ant-and-the-Grasshopper AU softens both Astarion's and Gale's traumatic pasts to gaslighting, controlling exes who leave them lonely until they discover their strange neighbor is a better fit than they had imagined.
Note: In case you are unfamiliar with the fable of the Ant and the Grasshopper, the Ant prepares for winter by working all summer, while the Grasshopper wastes the summer singing and having fun. In the oldest tellings, the Grasshopper gets cold and hungry in the winter and goes to the Ant for food and shelter, but the Ant scolds him and turns him away. In our version, of course, the Ant is a bit kinder 😉