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“You’ve got to be fucking with me.”
It’s unnerving, to hear Gale’s laughter from three different sources.
Nothing you haven’t heard before, of course. In the heat of battle, with enemies pressing in on every side. A sure shoulder against your own becoming two, becoming three, and four, surrounding you, the taste of Weave on your tongue stronger than even the tempest you bring down upon your foes. When the adrenaline is running high, his arrogant chuckle makes you run hot.
In the safety of your tent, the rest of your traveling companions drinking away their woes with the refugees, Gale's gentle laughter raises the fine hairs at the base of your neck.
“Come now, little Tempest. It’ll be fun.”
You flush, both at the nickname and the purr with which it is spoken. It’s. Heady. To have his full attention during the best of times. He has such warm eyes, and now three pairs of them watch you with heat, and you can barely believe you are not about to combust.
Not enough to keep you from being suspicious, though. All three of Gale circle you, like a wolf would a lamb. You narrow your eyes at him as he passes.
Curse his damnable skill. Even your eyes can’t tell which is the real and which are the fakes.
“This is revenge for something, I just know it,” you mutter under your breath, and are rewarded with three of Gale’s infuriatingly cocky smirks. A hand brushes the small of your back, just enough to tug at your bedclothes, a phantom sensation that has you whirling around with a snarl.
They don’t stop moving, of course. Like shuffle cups hiding a prize. They are, blastedly, solid when they step into your space, warm even, and your breath hitches as you feel yourself hemmed in on all sides.
Gale isn’t an icon of human masculinity, but he certainly isn’t a small man either. And compared to you, who inherited much more from your mum’s side than your dad’s, you can’t help but feel. Small. Contained.
“Easy, Love,” Gale soothes-- one of him, all of him, maybe, you can’t tell. Two sets of hands on your waist, another cupping your face, and your eyes flutter closed with a whining whimper. “Easy. If you don’t want this, if you want it to stop, all you have to do is say the word.”
Everything goes still as you force yourself to breathe in measured stretches, forcing thoughts through the haze of lust in your blood. One of your hands twists in Gale’s robes, and the other you raise to his face, tracing the edge of his beard, the freckles that have darkened over the days since you’ve met. You run your nail along the thin, still-pink scar that splits the far edge of his eyebrow-- he hasn’t told you the story of that one yet, but you’re guessing it has something to do with the crash.
His eyes are more pupil than iris, and he watches you with such intensity, like there is nothing in this world but you.
You love him to the point of pain, sometimes.
To the point of insanity.
You kiss him with all the hungry desperation of a starving man before a hero’s feast, and let yourself be carried away by sweeping, strong hands and the scent of that stupid woodsy Waterdeep cologne he insists on wearing. Though how he managed to mimic even that is beyond you.
The brief thought of this impossible man spritzing his own mirror images rises in your mind, and you giggle helplessly against his lips.
The noise catches into a groan against your will as his laughter rumbles from all around you. You throw your head back against the shoulder behind you, inviting the teeth against your throat, the many hands that tug at your clothing and roam what flashes of skin are revealed.
“Something funny, my little Tempest?” Gale asks, a low, teasing rumble against your throat, into your hair, from where he has knelt to play with the hem of your sleeping pants. You laugh again, with him, when hands sweep upwards and pull your shirt over your head, tossing it to corners unknown.
“You,” you sigh, leaning back and trusting that he will hold your weight. “Just-- you.” He rolls his hips forward into yours and your voice hitches, something between a growl and a whimper, as your thoughts go thick and slow and sticky-sweet as candy.
“ Bed,” you hiss out against another roll of his hips, twisting when a gentle touch turns into the sting of nails raking against the bare skin of your belly. “The bed, you impossible idiot. I am not getting dropped on my ass when your concentration breaks.”
Gale laughs.
One of them picks you up. It’s hard to tell which one, this close, what with the surge of Weave that he calls forward to bolster his strength, thick enough that you can taste it on your tongue. You’ll feel insulted, later, when the sensation of your own magic rising in response beneath your skin doesn’t have your head swimming with a fresh wave of lust, when the effortless way you’re tossed about doesn’t make you burn with need.
Bedrolls stacked on the ground are hardly the softest bed, and you feel yourself caught by a gentle cushion of magic just before you make contact. You crack open an eye you hadn’t realized you had closed, one eyebrow arching at the new, embarrassed blush spreading over Gale’s cheeks.
“I forgot,” he grumbles, half-apologetic, and you laugh as you reach up for one of him, any of him.
He goes easily, kneeling so that he might catch your mouth in a hot, wet kiss. Your hands scramble against his shoulders, holding yourself up against him, fingers turning to claws as he mouths at your sex through the thin fabric of your sleeping pants.
You gasp as he groans-- the sound is physical, like summer thunder striking far too close.
Is it Gale against your mouth, all-consuming, demanding your attention with every lick and nip and stolen breath?
Or is he between your legs, pleasuring you with eager skill? The hands holding your hips apart are firm, his beard scratching against the sensitive skin of your inner thighs, and the tongue slurping obscenely against the length of you feels real, feels slick-- though that might just be you at this point, leaking helpless and desperate.
Or is he against your chest, trapping you beneath his weight, clever fingers playing with your nipples? Is it his mouth against that starburst scar on your chest, proof of his spell gone awry, kissing it gently before scraping it with his teeth in a motion that makes you jacknife off the bedroll, impossibly pressing up into all of him at once?
“Gale,” you moan-- and then whatever thought you had in your head is gone with the teeth against the vulnerable soft beneath your jaw.
He smirks, self-satisfied as a cat with a canary, as he sits up, taking both of your hands in his and squeezing reassuringly. “You have me, Love,” he says, and you whine as the mirror image against your chest returns to the Weave in soft moots of light.
“My perfect little Tempest,” he says, releasing one hand so that he can reposition, and then it is just him between your legs, the Weave humming everywhere his skin touches yours, two slick fingers pressed against your hole. “How can I be anything but yours?”
He is gentle, but quick about it, wordless desperation in every line of his body that has you straining up to kiss him. It’s a terrible angle, made all the worse by the fact that you refuse to let go of his hand, but you manage to get his breeches undone, shoving and scraping them just far enough down his hips to get his dick free.
He is gentle, but he is not slow about it, and you pray that none of your other companions have thought to return to camp for the night when you wail Gale’s name for the deities to hear.
He finally pauses when he is fully sheathed, sticky hand tight against your hip as you both struggle for breath, to adjust. There will be bruises there later, you are sure of it, marks that his mirror images never could have left, and the thought rattles a groan loose in your chest, makes you brace against the ground and shove yourself back to take that last inch.
The hiccuping sob it wrenches from Gale’s throat is just as satisfying as the fullness. He doesn’t fit you perfectly, of course, just on the side of too big, but you revel in the stretch, the burn, the tiny hitches of his hips as he struggles from control.
The knowledge that you will be walking with a bit of a limp tomorrow, no matter how hard you try to hide it.
Gale is slow, but he is hardly gentle about it. Indulgent, maybe, just a little bit, when he draws his hips back, only to snap forward, and then grinding rudely in a way that steals the air from your lungs. You writhe and cry out with every thrust, clutching his hand with enough force to feel his bones creak, your other hand clawing against the sheets as you buck your hips into his.
He hunches over you, looming, murmuring pleading endearments and nonsense praise against your skin that makes you flush with embarrassment all the way down your chest, and arousal rise like an inferno. He must notice, and chuckles, breathless and a little mean, and kisses that starburst scar.
“Close,” he gasps, hips stuttering against yours. Your shaking legs flail for just a moment before you get them around his waist, ankles locked tight behind his back as you clench around him.
His thumb finds your center and strokes up, and down, once, twice, and then--
It is imaginary, illusionary, but you swear you feel him spending deep in you-- though that may be the way he keeps rolling against you, chasing the tail end of his own orgasm, stroking you until you whine, high and tight, pleasure twisting just on the wrong side of too much.
His fingers leave you to run a comforting hand down your side, his other hand untangling from yours to run through your sweaty hair and scratch at your scalp, and you groan languidly. You do not imagine the way he softens, still within you, his spend slipping out in thick trails. It is filthy.
You keep your legs where they are, to hold him against you for just a bit longer.
Indulgent, maybe, just a little bit. But his magic washes over you like a zephyr, water first, and then a warm gust of air to dry, and you sink a little further into the warm, liquid, languid feeling that spreads through your every muscle.
“ Love,” Gale chides, and you force your protesting limbs to curl tighter around him. He chuckles, rubbing his cheek against your own. “C’mon, now. I’m hardly going to let you sleep in the wet spot. It’s going to be disgusting come morning.”
You grumble and wave a lazy hand, prestidigitation already leaping through your fingers, and you shiver as he shivers-- his might be a gale, or a morning breeze, but at its gentlest your magic is still the crackling of static.
But he does not shy from it. Instead, Gale curls to make himself a little more comfortable, unhesitantly resting the full of his weight on top of you, one hand fumbling off to the side until he finds the edge of a blanket to pull over you both. It will be too warm, come the middle of the night, and too cool come morning, but right now, his slowing heartbeat against yours, there is nowhere else you would rather be.
“Astarion,” Gale finally murmurs against your neck, apropos of nothing, and you lazily crack one eye open to raise an eyebrow at the red curve of his ear. “He made a comment. About my magic. And. You know. Us.” He clears his throat and turns his head away from yours, beard scratching your shoulder as he goes. “I didn’t even realize that I was being. Selfish. In that manner. Hopefully this apology is satisfactory.”
You stare at him, uncomprehending, until the laughter grows too much to contain.
“You’ve got to be fucking with me!”