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“Indulge me in a brief experiment, if you will,” Gale says, pattering down fungus-strewn steps into the room where Astarion is sharpening one of his daggers. As soon as Astarion hears the words, he snorts in derision.
“Brief, he says. Brief like the time you pulled me out of our home to track the minotaur migration with you for a month? Or brief like when we tried your newly-concocted blend of mushroom tea and spent eight hours high as a gods-damned kite?” He pauses briefly, reflecting: “Not that the latter wasn’t a little fun. At least for the first six hours.”
Gale folds his arms defensively, smearing ink from his fingers onto the linen of his shirt as he does so. He’s like this more often than not, now: his finer robes folded into a chest and enchanted against the damp, leaving him in sleeves blackened with charcoal or stained with plant juices as he darts around the Underdark pursuing any investigative whim that delights him. His hair unruly and tied back with a leather band, his eyes alive with curiosity.
“Fine, if we must throw ourselves prostrate before the altar of linguistic accuracy,” Gale concedes, “I would like to undertake an observation of your spellcasting, for between thirty and forty-five minutes.”
Astarion narrows his eyes. “My spellcasting? Why?”
Gale’s gaze moves to a spot somewhat to the left of Astarion’s head. “I’m making an appraisal of your abilities. For, ah, protection and education of the spawn, of course.”
“What else could the spawn possibly need from me? My dear, I’ve thrown naught but grease and fire for the last... well, almost a year,” Astarion says.
Time is a strange thing to elves, and even more so to Astarion. Realising how long they’ve been down here in the Underdark is still rather a surprise. To think that they’d wrangled seven thousand feral spawn from ’savage bloodthirst’ to ’slightly more manageable bloodthirst’ in a little less than a year seems… incomprehensible. There had been bitter fights, faction splits, tragedies and miracles. And Gale had been with him through it all.
Gale opens his hands, benevolent: “Ah, the details may be rusty, but I bet you can remember the broad strokes of quite the repertoire, no? Nothing like the urgency of the impending apocalypse to forge one’s skills in fire.” He tilts his head slightly, and there’s that pathetic, all-too-effective little pout that makes Astarion want to bite his face off: “It would be nothing more than a fleeting interlude to your day, I assure you.”
“It’s very annoying when you use the puppy eyes on me, darling,” Astarion says, dropping the dagger onto his worktable and arranging himself upright.
Gale’s lips quirk upwards as Astarion lopes towards him, and he accepts Astarion’s hand gripping his jaw with nothing but a smug little blink. “Ah, but why discard a method that proves so effective?” he says, and Astarion can feel his words under his fingers.
“I’m going to bite your face off one day.”
“I look forward to seeing you try, my love.” Gale says, pulling his head and Astarions hand forward so that they can kiss, as gentle as can be. “Is now a good time?”
–
And so Astarion finds himself in the garden of the DeHurst tower, a reasonable distance from the sussur blooms, casting illusions and charms at empty flower pots like a performing kobold at the circus. Gale stands beside him, watching intently.
“You’re doing wonderfully, but, ah… your somatic work does need some improvement,” Gale says, after another illusory tabby cat scampers off into nothingness. “You’ve the grace of a dancer when you use your daggers, a sight to behold. A little more, ah… pizazz with your magical gestures, as well, would do your spells wonders.”
Astarion stops mid-cast, insulted beyond imagining. “You’re lecturing me about pizazz? You, Gale Dekarios? The man who wouldn’t know pizazz if it crept up and bit him?”
Gale bristles. “Rude, much? I was top of the class for Somatics at Blackstaff, I’ll have you know. I can pizazz when required.”
“Ah, so you’ve just been holding back for the entire time I’ve known you, then.”
Gale rolls his eyes. “Look, I am merely suggesting– just try something like this, maybe…”
Gale casts the same illusion, moving in - as far as Astarion can tell - exactly the same way. The pedigree Amnian, glossy haired and green-eyed, that appears across the garden begs to differ.
Astarion huffs, dropping his hands. “Did you just bring me out here to show off? You still haven’t told me how this little ’observation’ session of yours is of any benefit to me. Or the spawn. In fact, I think you have an ulterior motive and you’re lying your little enchanted knickers off.”
“Is the pursuit of excellence not its own benefit?” Gale retorts defensively, which isn’t actually denying anything Astarion just said.
Astarion stalks over to Gale and prods him in the middle of his chest. “You’re up to something.”
Gale looks again at the spot to the left of Astarion’s head, and is he blushing? “It’s nothing–”
“Gale!”
Gale sighs. “Oh, fine. At this point attempting to hide the truth from you would only cause more problems than it might avoid.”
“Always the right conclusion, darling. Now spit it out.”
“There’s… something I’ve been working on. As a gift. For you. But it will require a not inconsiderable amount of somatic control in order to be used safely - hence my undertaking an assessment of your current abilities.”
Astarion stares, blindsided. “A gift? What kind of gift?”
Gale is definitely blushing furiously now. “An… invention of sorts. It’s for… both of us, really. I think you should be able to more-or-less, ah, handle it as it were, but I’d feel more reassured if you spent the next tenday honing your gestures. Just to be sure.”
Astarion, despite everything, can’t help but laugh. “Briefly setting aside the fact you’ve just given me far more questions than answers, darling… you do realise you’re setting me homework for my own gift, don’t you? Of course you do, you wretched man.”
Gale’s eyes are round with earnestness. “Homework that will only reap its own reward! Devastatingly deadly as you are, my love, what harm to sharpen all the blades at your disposal?”
Astarion hates that he’s smiling now. “Ugh. Flattery will get you everywhere, my dear, and you know that far too well.”
“I always was a quick study.”
Astarion pushes at Gale’s chest again, right where the orb isn’t anymore, just because he can. “Very well, you menace. Educate me.”
“Perhaps if… hmm. A conjuration of a web, perhaps? A simple gesture, but consider the pull of the Weave within you. Feel it spool like thread from your hands. Pull it taut, and then release it.”
Astarion shrugs; it’s hardly the most complicated of spells. He lifts his arms up, pulling the Weave to himself, and then pushing it down: “Voco araniae.”
A perfectly acceptable giant cobweb bursts from the ground not too far from Astarion’s feet. Gale makes a faint noise.
“Ugh, what? What exactly could I have done wrong with a two-arm wave?”
“It’s not wrong!” Gale protests. “This is about improving, not correcting. If you just add a little–”
“Pizazz, yes — I may need a little more instruction than that, Professor Dekarios.”
“Perhaps if we cast it together?” Gale suggests.
Astarion sniffs. “If you insist.”
Gale steps behind Astarion, light-footed. “May I touch you?” he asks, courteous as ever, and on Astarion’s cautious nod he takes one of Astarion’s wrists in each hand, moving into his space to guide their position.
Astarion tries not to flinch as Gale’s breath tickles faintly at his ear, closer than he expected. He’s tried so hard to be less precious about how people touch him, and when. The raw flayed edges of him that had screamed in pain for two hundred years are… healing, he supposes. Healing in the way that leaves ugly twisting scars that never really leave but might turn numb.
He can sit with Dal as they mend their clothes together, and accept a pat on the knee or a fleeting kiss on the cheek. He can let Gale wrap an arm around him from behind without warning, and not go to snap his wrist like a twig. He can pull a shuddering, sobbing orgasm out of the man he loves and then actually hold him close until the shivers subside, indulging in his warmth and the thump of his heartbeat. They’ve even managed to pull one or two orgasms out of Astarion lately, when he’s fed well and had a very good day. Astarion wants to touch. He wants to hold, to be held.
But so many things day-to-day will catch him by surprise, whether it’s something that shouldn’t be fine but is (Gale mouthing and sucking mindlessly at the bite scars at his neck one night while sat astride his clothed lap, delirious with pain and delight) or should be fine and isn’t (one of the little Gur spawn tweaking his ear as a tease, which, for some reason, made him want to retch). And when he has a very bad day, he becomes the old snivelling, snarling, mewling, pathetic little creature he used to be, and he hates it.
Some days, it doesn’t feel like his body at all. Like he’s some hapless puppeteer, watching from above, just trying to haul whatever that is left of Astarion Ancunín’s corpse through eternity one limb after the other.
He’s trying to be better. It’s not easy. But he’s trying.
Gale pulls Astarion’s arms up, and Astarion focuses on the task at hand as he feels arcane power surge through them both, that acrid scent in the air and curious vibration in his gut. They’re conjuring separately, but together - two trajectories with one target. Gale raises them both together slowly, and then circles their arms with a flourish, pushing back down with a snap. The Weave rolls and surges with their movements. They move as one.
Gale’s magic alongside Astarion’s own is like adding runepowder to a campfire, and so the far end of the garden explodes into sticky, dusting webbing, covering the flowerpots like snow.
“Did you feel the difference?” Gale says from behind him, letting go of his wrists, and Astarion can hear his pleased grin even without seeing it. “Even without my own power, that was a much more effective conjuration.”
Astarion huffs. “Yes yes, very good, you’ve made your point. So it’s about… adding a little drama to your movements?”
“In a fashion,” Gale says. “But it’s mostly about moving with the flow of magic, not against it, as far as you can. Without compromising on the accuracy of your gesture.”
“Ooh, you do get me rather hot and bothered when you get all… pedagogical,” Astarion grins, turning around to catch his arms around Gale’s neck.
“Is that so?” Gale grins, pattering his fingers lightly at Astarion’s waist. “Would you like me to set you some assignments? Perhaps an essay or two?”
“You filthy boy. You’ve already got me spending a tenday throwing webs around our garden, what more do you want from me? This gift had better be worth it.”
“Oh, it will be,” Gale says, kissing his nose. “Trust me.”
—
Astarion’s days follow very little routine, which is the way he likes it. His time under Cazador’s control had either been horror or mind-numbing tedium, whether it be laid out screaming on the rack with Godey or whiling away weeks in the dorms when Cazador’s attention was focused on other spawn. After he had been snatched by the nautiloid his life had merely tumbled down one rabbit hole after another until he had been spit out the other end. Now, down here in the Underdark, he does as he pleases.
A lot of that is killing, admittedly. What can he say? He has a talent. He hunts deep rothé and goblins and bats and any other creature he can drain, bringing back anything that might be useful to the spawn who have decided to settle down around the tower. He stalks the perimeter of what he considers their territory and dispatches any erstwhile monster hunters hoping to make their name by threatening his own. He and some of the other spawn had even thwarted a duergar raid that had hoped to drag some of their motley crew all the way to Menzoberranzan for a quick profit; that had been a feast so bloody even Gale, ever fascinated by the monstrous, had decided he needed to be elsewhere for a while.
Every day something new. Every day his choice to make.
Still, for the next tenday he makes time to slip out into the garden and practise his casting. He sticks with conjuring webs to begin with, trying to remember the flourishes Gale had added, trying to focus on the way his magic moves through him.
High elves have a natural affinity and passion for the arcane, or so it’s commonly understood. Astarion doesn’t feel like much of an elf anymore — the elf died on the night the spawn crawled out of the ground. His senses, his strength, his appetite, all rewritten — even his night reverie feels like some fumbling mockery of the real thing. Had he ever been taught the proper exercises? Had some guiding, motherly voice ever taken him through what to do, what to say? If he had ever learnt, he could remember nothing of the teaching anymore — merely left with something that felt half like instinct, and half like a child’s mimicry.
He hates thinking about this. Every time he does he feels so angry, like he wants to split apart into shards and lacerate anything in his path. But he’s trying. He’s been trying ever since Cazador fell crumpled to the floor, cut to ribbons.
No matter. He may not know elves so much anymore, but he knows magic, knows how to cast. So he takes the stance and pulls power through himself again — he can feel the resonance of his own power deep in his gut, the way it runs through him and up his arms, all the way to his fingers, running like a river undammed. He lifts his arms, follows its momentum, takes it a step higher than he usually cares to, circles his arms as he lowers them the way he remembers Gale doing. Feels his muscles, his skin, his joints stretch and move.
“Voco araniae.”
A perfectly respectable giant cobweb splatters onto the ground. Maybe the webbing is a little prettier?
Fucking pizazz. He’ll show Gale.
—
The following tenday Astarion finds Gale in his workshop, which is a generous name for a floor of the tower that Gale has completely filled with books, plant-growing racks, a tank of baby flumphs, a pile of meticulously planned but half-finished academic treatises and a dead, stuffed flail snail. He’s sat awkwardly cross-legged on a stool, his quill hand scratching at a scroll while the other occasionally reaches for a sandwich. A third hand, spectral and conjured, is misting his plants.
Astarion watches him for a moment. He’s pretentious. He’s insufferable. He gave up godhood or prestige or a comfortable life in Waterdeep to come live with seven thousand creatures that might snap and drain him dry at any moment. For some reason, Astarion doesn’t want anyone or anything more than him.
“A moment, my dear,” Gale says, holding up the sandwich in acknowledgement, and then he makes a few small precise marks on the scroll in front of him before leaning back, pleased with himself. “Perfect. Now, what can I do for you?”
“I’ve been doing your homework in the garden,” Astarion says, “and there’s something I’ve been wondering.”
“Oh?” Gale pivots towards him, relinquishing the sandwich back to its plate. “I’m all unpointy ears.”
“You don’t speak to Mystra anymore, do you?”
Gale blinks, clearly surprised at the question, and then shrugs. “Not since I returned the Crown, no. I made it perfectly clear I had no interest in being her Chosen again, and she accepted that with… whatever she considers to be grace, I suppose.”
“But your magic still needs her. You gave up your only chance to cut yourself off from her entirely and build a new Weave. Don’t you feel—” Weak, something in Astarion wants to say, “—strange? Still needing to… cling to her apron strings like that?”
Gale thinks for a moment, a hand briefly drifting up to thumb at his earring. “Yes, I did,” he says, simply. “At first. But she is the one true spell behind all spells. She is the mother of the Weave, she is the Weave. As a wizard I can no sooner abandon her, than I can abandon… breathing. When she made me her Chosen she was my everything — by her design, I hasten to add, and oh how I know the meaning of that now. But… I made the choice I was able to make when I gave back the Crown.”
“To follow her again.”
Gale gives him a sharp look here, but it’s not angry. “To not fall into hubris again for the sake of my vanity, more like. You know that.”
He does know. More than most. “We could have had it all, you know,” Astarion says, archly. “You, a god worshipped by three idiots and a cat if you’re lucky—”
“Please, Tara wouldn’t worship me even if I could make tuna rain from the sky.”
“—Me, some pantomime villain of a vampire lord, as pathetic as the bastard that turned me. What a pair.”
“Yes, well. Given how things could have ended during the span of our little misadventure, trust me — I’ve been very, very content to return to the slightly more, ah, hands off relationship most magic users enjoy with Mystra. She’s not my everything anymore. Far from it, in fact.”
Gale stands up and reaches out towards Astarion’s hands, hovering an inch or two above his skin. “For one, I have other very important people in my life, now.”
“Oh?” Astarion closes the gap between their hands, smiling, and lets Gale bring them to his mouth to kiss his knuckles. “Don’t tell me about them, darling, or I’ll get jealous.”
Gale huffs a laugh, then looks at him, head tilted. “Colour me curious, what brought this topic to the fore?”
Astarion shrugs, remembering the feeling of magic flowing through him, all the way to his fingertips. “Remember the night you showed me how to channel the Weave? I suppose it’s been on my mind what with flinging all those spells about in the garden.”
“A night I would find it hard to forget,” Gale says, his face softening. “A different physical manifestation of the Weave, of course. The difference between spinning the threads and reaching for the raw material. But no less thrilling!”
“It’s all a lot more… physical than you might expect,” Astarion says.
“I have to admit I’ve been rather impressed by your diligence,” Gale says, eyes gleaming. “I’m not ashamed to say I watched you from this window once or twice. You cut quite the devastating figure.”
Again with the flattery, but Astarion preens anyway. “Well, I’ve always been easily bribed, darling. Anyway, aren’t you going to review my progress, Professor?”
Gale grins. “Oh, I can do one better than that. Come with me.”
—
Gale leads them to their bedroom on the top floor, which should have given Astarion some clue as to what was about to come next, but he’s still a little baffled when Gale presents him with a spell scroll.
“Cast it when you’re ready,” Gale says. “It’ll require a small measure of concentration to maintain, though ah… hopefully not too much.”
Astarion unfolds it and frowns, eyes scanning over the sigils and diagrams, concluded with a pair of words. “It’s a… conjuration?”
“Indeed! Give it a try.”
Astarion shrugs, holds the scroll out, and reads from the bottom: “Imperio brachium.”
The Weave shudders through the scroll and through Astarion, and as it does a pool of iridescent tar bubbles upwards out of the floor.
“What,” says Astarion.
“Keep holding the scroll,” Gale says, “And lift your arms.”
Astarion does, and with the movement of his arms, something bursts out of the tar. Several somethings, in fact.
“Gale, what the flaming fuck am I conjuring?”
“It’s, ah, a variation on an old favourite? The esteemed Evrard thought of this conjuration as more of a way to obstruct oncoming enemies or intruders, but I think its uses are a little more, ah, diverse.”
Astarion waves one arm, and a swarm of shining, writhing tentacles follow his lead. He moves the other, and a second swarm hurries to obey. He can feel his connection to their movement through the spell. When he guides one swarm closer to Gale, the tendrils start to reach out towards his skin, like a grasping many-fingered hand.
“Gale Dekarios, you disgusting little pervert,” Astarion says with wonder, swimming his hands back and forth, revelling in the way the spell follows his every movement. “How long have you been working on this?”
“Not that long,” Gale says defensively, a blush rising on his cheeks the second the tendrils approach him. “But considering the approaching date, I thought it might be a suitable gift."
“The date..?” Oh. Oh, shit. “It’s been a year, hasn’t it.”
Gale shrugs, a gesture that moves his whole body on the spot in an awkward little wiggle. “The… evolving nature of our relationship makes it hard to pick an exact date, of course, but were we to thrust a pin towards the rough area of our... first entanglement, it might strike around now.”
There must be something in Astarion’s expression because Gale starts to wave his hands appeasingly. “Oh, don’t fret! I’m well aware that your near-immortal nature makes the passing of a mere year rather inconsequential. There’s nothing I need in return. Merely our shared enjoyment in this... endeavour.”
“We’re re-visiting this conversation when I’m not about to fuck you with a tentacle spell,” Astarion warns him. “Now, get on the bed and take your gods-damned clothes off before I take them off for you.”
“Is that, ah. Is that a threat,” Gale says, scrambling backwards onto the mattress, colour high on his cheeks.
“Oh, you wanton little thing,” Astarion says with relish, and curls both of his hands to point towards Gale.
The spell swarms towards him, following him onto the bed, leaving faint iridescent trails in its wake. As soon as one tendril brushes the man’s leg it latches on and starts to writhe towards the cuff of his breeches, its siblings following suit so that tentacles writhe upwards underneath the fabric. Gale shudders, pinned in place, his hands awkwardly hovering over his own body like he can’t decide to welcome his new guests or rip them away.
Astarion cannot feel Gale’s skin through the spell but he can feel the intent of the tentacles’ movements, the direction of their momentum, the strength within them - how they could caress or strangle with a gesture. And with his own senses he can hear the rapid thump of Gale’s heart, see the flush on his skin, smell his excitement.
Oh, this is going to be fun.
Astarion flicks his wrists, nudging the tentacles’ direction of movement away from the apex of Gale’s thighs to instead push at the seams of the worn, well-used fabric of his breeches. “You weren’t keeping these for a special occasion, were you, darling?”
Gale shakes his head, and Astarion snorts at the breathy, high-pitched little noise that accompanies it. He spreads his fingers wide and hears the sound of splitting fabric in time with the flex of his joints. Astarion grins as the tentacles fling aside ruin scraps of fabric, swarming up to make short work of his shirt to match, before wrapping themselves back around Gale’s thick olive thighs. Gale gasps. His cock is already pressing a faint line against his briefs, and when the tendrils make to wrap around his wrists and ankles, Astarion sees him shudder even from his place across the room.
Speaking of, maybe Astarion should make himself comfortable – make sure he can really enjoy the show. “Tell me, Gale. How long have you been thinking about this particular little scenario?” Astarion asks casually, settling into a nearby chair and folding one leg primly over the other. “Has it been keeping you up when you’re supposed to be sleeping? Left you indulging in a little self care while I’ve been busy?” He twitches one finger and watches a single limb disentangle itself from the writhing mass to climb further up Gale’s body.
“Oh, you know,” Gale says huskily, eyeing the trajectory of that one tendril along his chest. His eyes briefly fall shut when it snakes through the hair on his sternum and curls against his nipple, leaving a slick trail in its wake. “Sometimes a project just sort of… hah… ticks along in the background until you’re motivated to pick it up.”
“Motivated,” Astarion echoes, amused.“Yes, I’m sure you were. Show me some of that motivation now, darling.”
Gods, the power Astarion has right now - the magic thrumming through his body tying him to the spell, the way Gale’s body flinches and writhes to the touch of the limbs surrounding him. Astarion flicks his finger with a flourish again and thrills when the tendril teasing Gale’s nipple surges upwards to push against his lips. Gale moans, and as his lips part to make the sound the tentacle immediately slides in to fill the space, wet and insistent.
It’s the sound of Gale briefly gagging that sends the first lightning bolt of pure, true arousal through Astarion, and he lets out a little shaky breath of his own. Well, fine, he thinks, as as he watches Gale valiantly recover and invite the tentacle to fuck his mouth, if this is one of the days Astarion’s libido decides to actually come out and play, he can think of worse times.
He leans forward to drink Gale in. Whatever iridescent residue the limb secretes is sliding down Gale’s chin and his lips are stretched wide, his eyelids fluttering in bliss as his mouth is taken. The rest of the tendrils pluck and stroke at the hirsute bulk of him, grabbing at his tits, rubbing at the stiff peaks of his nipples, teasing close to his tented underwear but never quite reaching their destination.
“Gods, you’re beautiful like this,” Astarion says huskily. He’s still on the chair beside the bed but through the spell he feels the way Gale is surrounded by him, overwhelmed by him, as clearly as if he were touching Gale himself. The man’s heart is thumping with arousal and Astarion can smell the way he’s starting to leak against his underwear. Astarion twists his wrist with a dramatic gesture and some of the tentacles break off from the writhing mass to finally slide under the waistband of Gale’s briefs.
Gale makes a noise, and Astarion lets the limb fucking Gale’s mouth slide away for a moment. “Still with me, darling?”
“Oh, yes,” Gale says immediately, his voice raw and rough in a way that sends another pulse of desire through Astarion. “Just... hah, ah, ...I may not last without assistance, if you’re– hgh– about to do what I think you’re going to do.”
"Well, I appreciate the warning, even if you’re still able to form far too many words for my liking." Astarion says, and encourages one slim limb to curl snug around Gale’s balls, making him wheeze in surprise. "That should do nicely, no?"
"’Nicely’ as an adverb in this particular scenario may be up for debate--" Gale rasps, but Astarion cuts him off, filling his mouth full of tentacle again.
"Ah-ah, speaking privileges are revoked again," Astarion says, sing-song, thrilling at the garbled noise Gale makes, and then uses another tendril or two to rip Gale’s underwear from his body, flinging the ruined fabric to the floor beside the mattress. Astarion’s own cock is filling and pressing against his clothes but he ignores it for now to slide a tentacle between Gale’s cheeks. It teases and rubs at his hole, nudging but not entering, making Gale shudder and twitch as that shiny residue starts to slide down the inside of his thighs.
“Do you want it, Gale?” Astarion asks, casually, not allowing the limb fucking Gale’s mouth to relent. “Do you want to be taken at both ends? Have you been good enough to deserve it?”
Gale makes a desperate little sound around the tentacle, eyes looking wide and pleading at Astarion, and Astarion can’t help but twitch one hand towards himself, palming briefly at his prick through his breeches. “Oh? You do want it? Normally I like for you to beg for me a little longer, but I suppose this is meant to be a treat for both of us.”
The slick end of the tendril nudges into Gale’s hole just a little, strokes at it as deftly and relentlessly as a tongue, and Gale moans so loudly that he chokes.
“Fuck,” Astarion says emphatically, watching hungrily as Gale squirms: sweat-shiny and dishevelled, a blush running from his scalp to his stomach, held and pinned and surrounded and fucked at both ends. Entirely under Astarion’s control. Astarion can feel so much right now - every plunging, tugging, writhing movement of the limbs around Gale’s body connected to Astarion’s own through the spell, along with his own thrumming desire. Then he flinches as he feels something nudging at his leg.
It’s a small bundle of tentacles, divested from the main – following the unconscious beckoning from when Astarion had begun to touch himself.
Astarion looks back up at the way Gale is writhing, then back down at the tentacles.
Well. In for silver, in for gold, as they say.
He flicks open his breeches and squirms them, underclothes and all, far enough down his hips for it to count. Then he gestures towards himself, and the tentacles accept the invitation.
They’re warmer than he expects, as warm as a mortal body, and the shining residue on them leaves trails on Astarion’s pale skin that are only slightly cooler. They thrum with a faint pulse that echoes the flow of magic through Astarion from the spell. With only the faintest suggestion they move to curl deliciously around Astarion’s prick – warm, wet, tight and relentlessly single-minded. A slim tip strokes and nudges at his slit and under the head.
“By the nine hells, you are a genius,” he gasps, looking up at Gale, who blearily looks back, too insensate with his own arousal to even preen from the compliment. Astarion pushes the limb nudging and lapping at Gale’s hole further into him just to watch those brown eyes roll back, and then with a flourish he fucks Gale at both ends. The rhythm of the tentacles’ movement matches the relentless squeezing pressure on his own cock, the relentless drumbeat of the spell like a feedback loop through them both.
They both sprawl, wide red eyes locked with tear-shining brown, and Gale makes a pleading little noise; Astarion has just enough sense in him to release the tentacles’ grip on Gale’s balls and pull the other tendril from his mouth. A shining line of drool connects to his lips as it withdraws, stretching then breaking.
“’Starion,” Gale rasps. “Can I, please–”
“Hold on just a moment longer, darling," Astarion says, urgently, "just wait for me. You– hah– you can be good, can’t you? You can wait until I finish? My desperate little thing. My Gale."
Gale makes a sobbing little gasp and nods, screwing his eyes shut, his body rocking forward every time the tentacle fucks into him. He’s so beautiful like this: helpless, frantic, nothing but Astarion in his head.
“After this,” Astarion says, inflamed, “after I’ve finished, I’m going to hold you down and bite you.”
“Please, Astarion–”
“Beg me again. Say my name again.”
“Astarion, please, please, bite me, I’m yours--"
It’s too much; Astarion growls and fucks into the grip around his cock, once, twice-- and then he’s lost, and he can hear Gale sobbing with his own release not a moment after.
As he slumps back in the chair, shivery with aftershocks, he feels the tendrils slither away from him, and hears a thump as Gale is dropped unceremoniously onto the mattress: clearly his spell concentration skills can’t quite hold their own in the face of a frankly spectacular orgasm. Astarion can live with that.
He pushes his breeches and underclothes all the way off, stepping out of them to stagger over to the bed and then crawling, half naked and boneless, over Gale’s body. Gale smiles dazedly up at him, and when Astarion smiles back he reaches up, wrapping faintly damp and slimy arms around Astarion. Guiding Astarion gently towards the juncture of his neck and shoulder.
“You alright?” Astarion murmurs, running his nose across Gale’s skin, smelling the salt and damp of his flesh, the blood thrumming just below. It’s so familiar to him, now that it’s free of its Netherese blight. Warm and rich and overindulgent like melted chocolate.
“More than,” Gale whispers, and Astarion can hear the satisfaction in his soft voice. He presses a hot, wet kiss to Gale’s neck once, twice, and then bites down, hearing Gale sigh long and loud as he does. Wrapped in Gale’s embrace, their legs twining together, skin on skin, he drinks: long luxurious pulls until his belly feels warm with stolen life, feeling Gale’s heartbeat flutter beneath him.
When Astarion pulls back, lapping languidly over the wounds to encourage them to close, Gale is no less hazy than when he’d started. He makes soft, pleased noises as Astarion settles carefully against his side.
“If I were a younger man,” Gale says wistfully, and Astarion snorts.
“Really? You get fucked senseless by a tentacle spell and my bite still gets you going? You really are an insatiable little thing.”
“What can I say? The heart wants what it wants. Or other organs want what they want, I suppose. So, ah...” Gale rolls towards Astarion. “...What did you think?”
"It was..." Astarion tries to think of how to put it. "...reassuring."
Gale’s eyebrows climb towards his hairline. "Well, that certainly isn’t the adjective I expected. Care to elaborate?"
Astarion rolls his eyes, “Well, obviously it was extremely arousing, darling, and your brilliant, spectacular, filthy mind has revolutionised our sex life for years to come. I’m sure that goes without saying considering the events of the last... however long I just held that spell for. But, ah…” He falters, trying to find the words. “...it’s hard to explain. Never mind.”
“No, please, I’d like to know," Gale says, propping his head up with a hand. "Academic curiosity and the burnishing of my own ego aside."
“Well. Even with casting all those gods-damned webs in the garden, trying to achieve your bloody pizazz, it felt... satisying? To think about how I was moving. How the magic moved in me. And that spell, just now – I could feel it with my body, the whole time, I had to feel it, and– ugh, I can’t put it into words."
Gale’s expression softens, melting into that fond little smile that makes Astarion want to disembowel him. "I think I understand somewhat. The connection between the arcane and the flesh is a delicate, gorgeous ballet, when one chooses to dance. There are other somatic exercises I could teach you, you know."
“This wasn’t an invitation to give me more homework," Astarion says shortly, and Gale huffs fondly like he knows that isn’t a refusal either. Astarion turns away from him, finally stripping off his shirt. Then he leans back: settling his dulling, fading scars against Gale’s unmarked, blight-free chest. When Gale catches an arm around him, placing his palm flat below Astarion’s collarbone, Astarion almost doesn’t flinch.