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It’s hot. It’s so hells-blasted hot that even Astarion, who is corpse-cold, can feel it.
The party are laid out in various shady patches around the camp, stripped mostly to their smalls. Tav has summoned a tiny floating rain cloud for Karlach.
“I’m going to die,” Gale says, still wearing his shirt and trousers, which is actually the most undressed Astarion has ever seen him.
“Poor wizard,” Astarion says. “Too tired to muster even a little snowstorm?”
Gale makes a face at him.
Astarion chuckles to himself, and settles on his bedroll. The sun is only just setting but if everyone else is resting he may as well nap too.
“I never thought I’d envy the dead,” Gale says, eyeing the bare skin of Astarion’s arms.
“Don’t start now, darling.”
“Astarion.”
He wiggles on his bedroll, laying out flat on his back. He can feel Gale watching him, which is going to make sleep difficult, but hopefully he desists when it becomes obvious the conversation is over.
“Astarion, please.”
Well, let it never be said he was immune to a bit of begging.
“Please, what, my sweet?”
“Humans can actually die from overheating, you know.”
Gale, who can summon demons and hellfire and fields of black tentacles with a flick of his fingers, is about as close to human as a quasit is to an orchid, in Astarion’s opinion.
“Uh huh,” he deadpans. He can feel goosebumps along the back of his neck where Gale is still watching him.
“Come now, Astarion, you wouldn’t let me fry my brain, would you?”
Wouldn’t he? The thought is intriguing. What would that do to the tadpole? They’ve never asked Withers to bring back someone with a melted brain.
Apparently his silence is answer enough, because Gale drags over his bedroll and lays down beside him, which makes the hairs on his arms stand on end. A body lying next to his own has historically never been a prelude to a good night’s sleep.
For a moment, irrationally, he half expects a dagger in his side, or worse still, Cazador’s lips against his ear. Even though Gale hasn’t—Gale would never—
“Big spoon or little spoon?” Gale asks, bewilderingly.
Astarion, who’s food preferences don’t require any cutlery at all, is lost. He doesn’t reply, because that’s usually the best way of dealing with the strange meandering pathways of his companion’s conversation, and turns his back on Gale to get comfortable.
“Of course,” Gale says, like Astarion’s said something that requires agreeing to. “Of course you need to be able to reach your daggers. Here.” And then he reaches over Astarion, the front of his body pressed along Astarion’s back.
Astarion flinches so violently he ends up in the dirt.
Gale is left lying awkwardly, hand still outstretched where he had been reaching for the pack, to draw it closer.
“Astarion?”
“Well, darling,” Astarion blusters. “Not even dinner first?”
Gale is looking at him with alarm and something uncomfortably close to perception. “Are you alri—”
“Forgive me, sweet thing. I only startled, that’s all. Far be it from me to deny a visitor to my bed.”
Gale scoffs, but the assessing gaze leaves his eyes. “You have no body warmth,” he explains. “And, as I’m sure you’ve noticed, I have been blessed with an abundance of it.”
Ah, so that’s it, then. Well, he knows how to be wanted, even if for something so paltry as a cool touch. He feels the world steady beneath him, like a ship sailing from a storm into a safe harbour.
“Why, darling, is this how they flirt in Waterdeep? My, my.” He crawls back onto the bedroll. He doesn’t really try to make it sensuous, he’s not sure Gale would even notice such a thing, but he smiles his most lascivious smile on the way down.
“It really isn’t that hot,” Gale lies. “You actually don’t have to—”
“Well we wouldn’t want to… how did you put it? Fry your brain? That doesn’t sound pleasant at all, sweetling.”
Gale rolls his eyes, but a blush creeps across his cheeks at the endearment.
“You’re incorrigible.”
“Such naughty words they let wizards use these days.” And then with another slow smile Astarion turns over once more, even though his skin prickles like it’s a predator at his back rather than Gale. But that’s not a feeling he’s unused to, either. At least he’s allowed to wear clothes, these days.
Gale pauses for a moment, then shuffles closer again.
“You don’t have to,” he says again, and Astarion scoffs. He knows better than to let the enemy see weakness. Even if Gale isn’t… even if he’s not…
He can handle whatever touch Gale wants from him, is all.
He goes tense all over at the first contact, the way he always does when someone touches him. Waiting for the threat, the hidden dagger.
And then Gale… settles.
Just like that.
Just where he is.
He presses his sweaty forehead to the back of Astarion’s neck. “Oh,” he murmurs, voice pure relief. “That’s much better. Astarion, you’re a gift.”
His arm is still over Astarion’s waist, and his fingers flex briefly against Astarion’s stomach to pull them flush together. His knees tuck in against the back of Astarion’s thighs and Astarion is… Astarion is…
“Gale,” he says, and doesn’t know what else to say. His skin feels… strange. Actually, his whole body feels strange. He waits for Gale to do something. To move back to his bedroll. Or, or roll over once he’s leeched the chill from Astarion’s flesh.
But instead… instead, Gale squirms a little in place, arm tightening and releasing rhythmically while he moves. His face rolls briefly against the back of Astarion’s neck, as though searching for the coolest spot to press his flushed cheek, and then he goes still. He lets out a long sigh, his breath warm on Astarion’s skin.
Astarion waits for him to move.
Astarion waits for him to move.
Astarion waits for him to move.
Eventually he has to breathe, and it almost hurts, what with how tight he feels. But he draws a breath in anyway and even the air is Gale. The smell of him. He keeps mentally tripping over the image of Cazador above him, taking whatever he pleases from Astarion’s body, and pouring a healing potion into him after if needed. But this isn’t that.
Gale is touching him with no inherent danger. This is not Godey, using Astarion’s flesh to create pain. This isn’t even Cazador, who’s touches could be mistaken for pleasure, sometimes.
Astarion realises, there in the aching cage of Gale’s embrace, that he can’t remember the last time someone touched him without pain being the end goal.
Gale doesn’t comment on the ragged sound of Astarion pulling air into lungs that technically don’t need air at all. He actually might already be asleep. His breath is even on the back of Astarion’s neck. His hand hangs loosely, slightly curled against Astarion’s stomach, like he’s reaching for something in Astarion’s belly. It causes something like physical pain, though there is no wound, and he’s never known a wound that feels like this. Like… like…
He thinks of Halsin whittling him a tiny bird, of Shadowheart brewing a tea for his headaches, of Tav grinning at him over breakfast, and thinks that this is something like that, even though it hurts, even as it hurts.
A tremor runs through Astarion’s entire body. He tenses, waiting to see if Gale will comment on it. The tremor felt like a shiver, almost, but Astarion doesn’t feel cold. He literally can’t. And anyway he’s warm, now. Warm everywhere Gale is touching him.
He shivers again.
And again.
Gale makes a sleepy snuffling sound into the back of Astarion’s neck and Astarion locks down his muscles ruthlessly hard. He doesn’t know why he’s shaking and he doesn’t know what’s happening but what he does know is that he absolutely, under no circumstances, cannot allow Gale to stop.
He feels his body attempting to shake again, muscles begging to twitch, but he’s already got them contracted so tightly they’ve nowhere else to go. He will not be waking Gale, accidentally or otherwise, simply because of… because of whatever this is.
Cazador once cut off his cock, right at the base, and secured it in Astarion’s mouth with rope, and then put his own cock in his ass, to fill Astarion at both ends, and fell asleep with Astarion like that, bleeding out on the fine sheets, choking on his own blood and flesh, waiting to see if his healing power could regrow his own cock.
Some of the marks that he’d brought back to the mansion had had similar tastes. Cazador always preferred it when he brought back big men, people who would hurt him when they fucked him. Some of them had liked making him bleed.
Even his siblings, when seeking relief, had used or been used by him in fast, cruel motions, looking only for a fracture in the chasm of their suffering, and using their claws or teeth to get what they were after from whatever body happened to be closest.
Astarion has never, to the best of his knowledge, slept beside someone who did not wish him harm. And Gale, who he has seen literally disintegrating people, could cause him more harm than anyone. Astarion has enough sharp things in reach that he could at least put up a fight, this time.
But Gale is not disintegrating him. Gale Dekarios, famed wizard of Waterdeep, appears to be drooling slightly against the nape of his neck.
His whole body shudders again, and Astarion tenses harder. This is not Cazador, and this is not a conquest he’s seducing for Cazador’s desire, and this is not even a fellow spawn, looking to relieve themselves in the night. His skin feels… fizzy. Electric, and cold, then hot. If he didn’t know for a fact that his last meal was certified organic free-range mountain boar then he would almost wonder if he had been poisoned.
That actually… gives him an idea.
He reaches for his pack as slowly as he’s capable of. An inch at a time. Gale doesn’t stir behind him, and Astarion tries very hard not to feel any kind of way about that. As dangerous as Gale is, so too is Astarion, but Gale is so trusting that he isn’t waking even as Astarion reaches for his pointy things.
Well, his pack has other things, too. He finds the wyvern ashes amongst the mess of alchemy ingredients in a side pocket. When mixed, the ashes are poison, but he’s fairly sure that on their own they’ll simply take away his strength.
He takes a pinch, and has a moment’s hesitation—surely he’s not about to make himself more vulnerable, when someone literally has a hand against his underbelly—but then Gale snuffles again, leaning more fully into Astarion’s body, and—yes, actually, yes, this is important, this is—
He rubs the ashes into his gums, and almost immediately feels his muscles lose tension. His arms flop uselessly to the packed dirt beside his bedroll. He feels another shudder, almost painful, but this time it’s only on the inside, and Gale doesn’t even stir.
Astarion lets himself relax fully, safe now that he knows his useless traitor of a body won’t wake Gale up. He lets himself feel what it is to be touched by someone seeking something other than pain from his body.
He wants Gale to wake, to be with him properly, and he wants Gale to never wake, so the night will never end.
They lay like that for many hours. Astarion trembles imperceptibly, and though Gale is leeching the coolness from him it feels as though he’s leeching something from Gale in turn, like there’s some parched empty well inside him that has received the first drop of a spring rain after millennia of drought.
The ashes wear off eventually, and he takes some more. He thinks he should sleep, at least for a few hours, but he’s never felt so awake. It’s agonising. At some point in the night Gale rolls over, back onto his own bedroll, and Astarion almost weeps, not even really knowing why, except then Gale makes an unhappy sort of sound and rolls right back, and this time his arm comes around Astarion’s middle and goes up the front of his shirt, and even with the ashes Astarion cannot stop the sound that comes out of his mouth at that. Some animal, broken thing.
“Astarion?” Gale mumbles, rising partly on his elbow.
“Shh,” Astarion manages, voice slurring and hoping Gale thinks it’s the slur of sleep.
Gale mumbles something else, and his hand pulls them closer together, and then he rolls forward slightly so Astarion’s face is pressed to the bedroll and Gale’s entire weight is flush along the length of him. His bare hand spreads reflexively against Astarion’s sternum, as though feeling for the bones caging Astarion’s unbeating heart, and then he goes still.
His hand is so hot against Astarion’s skin. And Astarion finds that he wants, he wants, a feeling he thought had been bled from him decades prior. A feeling he would have sworn only a few hours ago that he was physically incapable of.
He wants to stab someone, maybe, or possibly stab himself. He wants to tear the skin from his bones, if only to allow Gale even closer, and he wants, most of all, for this night to never end.
But end it must, and when the sun peeks above the horizon Gale makes a sleepy noise of protest, then sits up suddenly.
“Ah,” he stammers, moving his warm body away immediately. “Sorry, Astarion. I didn’t mean to… Well, sorry.”
Until the loss of it, Astarion hadn’t actually noticed the press of Gale’s morning wood along the back of his thigh, and doesn’t think it worth an apology, anyway.
He mumbles something unintelligible, the last of the wyvern ashes still dissipating, but Gale is already moving sheepishly over to the food chest, setting up breakfast.
Astarion’s skin feels too tight, but he also isn’t trembling anymore, and when he gets up some long minutes later he doesn’t even flinch when Wyll claps a hand on his back, bidding him good morning. It’s so unusual that he goes out of his way to brew Shadowheart’s favourite morning tea, and when he hands it to her he lets their fingers brush, and it’s… fine, it’s fine. It feels fine, or maybe something more than fine, though whatever it is he lost the vocabulary for it long ago.
He turns back to the group and finds that Gale is watching him, eyes lingering on the place where he had just touched Shadowheart’s hand.
“Is everything alright, Astarion?” he asks, and the whole party turns to look at him.
“Fine, darling,” he says, and though the rest of the party turns back to their various meals, Gale only looks more alarmed. It occurs to Astarion that this time yesterday he probably would have greeted such a question with a scathing remark or something rude and snappish.
He doesn’t feel rude or snappy, though. He feels rather peaceful. Which is strange, considering he didn’t sleep for even a single minute last night. He must look frightful. Even elves need beauty sleep. Gale looks refreshed, even if he has put on his normal camp attire, which makes him rather frumpy, in Astarion’s opinion.
Karlach belches loudly, and Tav almost chokes while laughing, and Gale is suitably distracted. The rest of the morning carries on as normal.
Though the day starts cool, it warms again quickly. Faerûn summers are brutal. They manage to pester a few sewer rats, and then they stumble on some sort of battle between sewer humans, and by the time they’ve dealt with that the whole party is ready to go back to camp.
Astarion is almost vibrating with it. It’s just as hot as the day before. He very carefully avoids even looking at Gale, and when he goes out hunting he settles for the first thing he can find; a rat, of all things, so old that snapping its neck is almost a mercy killing.
He’s back at camp well before dusk. Someone, maybe Tav again, has summoned enough water to puddle in the middle of camp. Jaheira has turned herself into an otter and is twisting happily in it, but the rest of the camp looks about as miserable as they did the day before. Astarion can’t help but feel pleased about it.
He unrolls his bedroll by the unlit fire, trying to look unhurried about it. He lays down and waits.
And waits.
Eventually he sits up, and looks around, making sure that he’s—yes, he is. He’s definitely in Gale’s line of sight. Except Gale is stretched out outside his own tent, apparently ignoring Astarion’s silent offer.
Astarion lies back down.
And then sits back up. Gale is still outside his tent, sweating through his shirt, not even looking over.
He lies down again.
Well, what the fuck.
A few hours pass, and the sun sets, and even Astarion can tell it’s still hot as the hells. He knows Gale isn’t asleep, because every few minutes he rolls over, trying to find a cooler patch of earth.
After another hour, he gets up, and stalks over.
“What are you doing,” he snaps.
“What are you doing?” Gale retorts.
“I seem to recall that your brain will fry if you didn’t cool down.”
Gale looks at him, and even in the dim light Astarion can see that it’s a strange sort of a look. “Astarion,” Gale says, in the voice he uses to explain big wizard words when the party needs a weave expert. Astarion immediately tenses up.
“Forget it,” he says.
“I’m not going to make you uncomfortable just so I can sleep a little better.”
“I’m not—what?”
“You clearly didn’t sleep well last night, I’m not going to inflict that on you again.”
Astarion feels his shoulders rising up to his ears. He stays silent for long enough that he knows it’s weird, he’s being weird, but Gale just sits there, waiting patiently.
“That wasn’t about you,” he says eventually.
Gale snorts. “I find that hard to believe.”
“It wasn’t about—” Astarion grits his teeth. “It just wasn’t, okay?”
“Okay,” Gale says, dubiously.
“It was… It was better.”
“Better!”
“With you there. It was a better sleep. Than other nights.” He feels so tense his teeth might actually crack in a moment.
“…I see,” Gale says, after a long moment. “Can I ask… Do you need a potion, or something? I admit, alchemy is not my forte, but if there is something to make your sleep more restful I am sure I could—”
“It’s not that,” Astarion says. “It doesn’t matter. Just—” He almost says forget about it, but bites his tongue at the last moment. He doesn’t want Gale to forget about it. He’s been thinking about it all day. He wants Gale pressed up against him again. He wants, actively, for the first time in centuries, to have someone in his bedroll.
“Okay,” Gale says eventually. “I… Do you want to?”
“Yes,” Astarion says, too quickly. “I know I’m irresistible, darling,” he adds, trying to return this to a territory that he’s familiar with.
Gale only peers at him, entirely too perceptive.
Astarion feels himself tense up all over again, feels something scathing on the tip of his tongue, more comfortable still with his defence being offence.
But, “Okay,” Gale says, and waves his hand, and Astarion’s bedroll floats over, parks right alongside Gale’s and Astarion, trying not to appear too eager now that he’s shown his hand so completely, flops down with exaggerated exhaustion.
“Thank you, dear, how lovely you are.”
He rolls onto his side, facing away from Gale, invitation clear, and Gale hesitates for long, fraught seconds, before finally, finally putting an arm around Astarion’s waist and tucking his face, almost tentative, into the cool curve of Astarion’s neck.
“Ah,” he says, breath on Astarion’s skin.
The problem is clear almost immediately.
Astarion’s pack, and the wyvern ashes inside it, are on the other side of the camp.
Astarion waits for the tremors to reappear, but whatever the side effects Gale’s touch caused yesterday were, they do not reappear, as though Astarion’s body is a haemorrhaging wound that has finally been cauterised, the terrible hunger wrung out of him, leaving him wanting but not pathetic with it. He once again lets himself feel Gale’s body against his own, and relaxes into having this, being had, and doesn’t realise Gale is relaxing as well until he’s already done it, like he was waiting for Astarion’s body to want him, too.
“Astarion,” Gale whispers, in the hush of the camp.
“It’s not you, darling,” Astarion says, pre-emptively, and it’s the truth but also a damnable lie. It’s only ever been Gale.
“Hmm,” Gale hums, tickling the hairs at the back of Astarion’s neck, and Astarion closes his eyes and sleeps almost immediately, last night’s vigil finally catching up to him.
Even still, he wakes first. He always does, barring Halsin, who makes himself scarce most mornings anyway to go roll naked in the grass or whatever it is wood elves do at dawn.
Gale’s got his hand in Astarion’s shirt again, and this time Astarion knows to check for his—yes, yeah, there is it, Gale’s morning wood, even though it’s barely morning, pressed tight against the back of his thigh. Astarion gets a flush of heat, then cold, his body instinctively ready to be receptive, and then readying for a fight, the only two ways he’s known how to handle being wanted in this way.
Instead, he turns around, careful, held only loosely in Gale’s arms, knowing Gale wouldn’t hold him properly, anyway, if he didn’t want to be held.
He puts his thigh more decisively against the front of Gale’s trousers, rolls a little so he’s the one mostly on top, using gravity to his advantage to rub, just a little, Gale’s brow furrowing in his sleep. Astarion holds his breath, waiting to see what will happen, giddy with it, and when Gale doesn’t wake he leans down to kiss, gently, the corner of Gale’s mouth.
There’s a flash, and then an ice-cold knife is against his throat, and Gale is still blinking sleep out of his eyes but Astarion grins down at him anyway, comfortable even with a weapon at his neck because it’s Gale, of course it is, and he says, “Good morning to you, too,” all smug, and it takes Gale another long second to figure out what’s going on—Astarion’s thigh in between his own, their cocks pressed together, only clothes in the way and—
“Astarion?” he says, bewildered.
“Well, since you asked so nicely,” Astarion says, and kisses the same spot, just the corner of Gale’s mouth, and Gale sucks in a shocked breath and the ice knife disappears.
“But you don’t even like me.”
Astarion feels the temptation to lean into the opening he’s been offered. He spent a long time cultivating that air of disdain. It would be so easy to make this something else, make this just two bodies seeking relief in the dawn.
But then he thinks of Gale holding him, feeding the hungry animal in his chest without even Astarion knowing it was there. Skin on skin, a gift all the more precious for having been given freely, by Gale, by Dekarios, by someone powerful enough to magic the feeling out of his skin entirely, probably, if he felt so inclined, but powerful enough in other ways not to need to.
“I like you,” Astarion admits, instead of any of the rest of it, only realising once it’s out that it’s a bit raw. Too much.
But Gale’s eyes go soft and his hands come around Astarion’s waist again, under his shirt just where he wants them, skin on skin on skin on…
“How do you want me?” he says, seeing right through Astarion, as usual.
“Holding me,” Astarion tells him, and reaches between them to free Gale’s cock, at last, and then his own, skin on skin in a different way, and Gale makes an indignant sound and looks around at the rest of the camp, Tav’s sleeping right there, and Shadowheart wakes up at the drop of a hat on the best of days, and Astarion couldn’t care less about his other companions but he does care about Gale—ugh, gross, is he a sap now?—so he rolls them, once, twice, not taking his thigh out from between Gale’s, until they end up under the thick canvas of the gazebo Gale calls a tent, too hot last night but perfect now, away from prying eyes. And through it all Gale doesn’t once take his arms from around Astarion’s waist, clinging to him. And Astarion spits into his hand and reaches down to wet Gale’s cock, his own getting messy in the process, oh, how nice, Gale leaks so pretty, and Gale makes a bitten off, wanting sound as Astarion’s palm smears across the head of his cock. Astarion’s mouth falls open automatically, trained too well to expect anything other than a throat-fucking, but it’s easy enough to shake his head, to not be there, to be here on top of Gale Dekarios, fucking his thigh, a bit, and letting his own thigh get fucked a bit in turn, doing his best to palm the both of them, uncoordinated, Cazador would have sent him to Godey for such a poor effort, he can’t be—
“Kiss me,” Gale gasps, panting in the half-light of the tent, and Astarion has never been further from Godey’s cells. He leans down, brushes his lips against Gale’s cheek, his nose, the cupid’s bow of his upper lip, until Gale makes an exasperated, eager sound and tilts his head back to capture Astarion’s lips himself, mouth open already so Astarion can lick in behind his teeth, Gale’s tongue warm and slow against his own.
Gale spills first, over his own belly and Astarion’s hand, and Astarion pulls away from his mouth to feed his fingers one by one past Gale’s slack lips, feeling heated from more than just the rising temperature, from more than just Gale’s leeched body warmth.
“Do you like it, darling?” he asks, pleased that he still sounds smooth even though he feels so rough, torn down to pieces in Gale’s arms
And Gale, who Astarion has seen recite entire spellbooks while fighting off horror-hounds from the hells, cannot formulate anything more lucid than “Guh.”
Astarion hides his grin in the side of Gale’s neck, and jerks himself off until he’s adding to the mess on Gale’s belly.
They cool down to their normal respective body temperatures, Gale’s arms never once leaving his body. Astarion thinks he could sleep again, here, even though he can hear the others starting their morning routine, outside.
“We should get up,” Gale says, maybe reading his mind a bit.
“Not yet, love,” Astarion murmurs. “Hold me. Just a bit longer.”
And Gale does.