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Gale sighs into the cold, stale air. It burns his nostrils, his throat tightens, a sob about to spill.
He hasn’t cried in so, so long. Not even when dark magic entered his chest, not even when Mystra left him behind, forgotten like so many before him. That’s what he got for trying to love magic itself.
Maybe, now that Elminster’s charm is in place, he could allow himself to cry. He considers it for a good second, with terrifying gravitas, now that the storm inside him doesn’t threaten to spill at any moment.
They’re at Moonrise, now. Tomorrow they’ll face Ketheric Thorm, an immortal undead, general to a terrifying horde of monsters and cultists. Gods, it doesn’t sound real when he puts it like that, does it? Then again, nothing of what happened to them does.
A group put together by sheer chance and ruin, which, despite being full of capable people, had chosen Gale as their leader. A broken wizard with a ticking bomb in his chest.
Among all, he finds his thoughts traitorously lingering on Halsin. He was the only one who’d joined them of his own volition, when it wasn’t even his battle. Yes, he too had his own quest to follow, a step from completion now that they’d found Thaniel in the Shadowfell, thank all that was good for small mercies.
The fond looks, the soft spoken reassurances, he treated Gale as if he were another one of his charges. To see that gentleness wasted on him, it made Gale feel young, painfully so, as if all his grievances could leave in an instant were Halsin to smile and whisper in his ear that everything would be alright.
A silly notion, and Gale takes a moment to contemplate what tomorrow will bring.
At first it’s just a desire to see the stars, after weeks without them. He flickers a constellation over his palm. The Weave responds to his fingertips, letting itself be guided into a pattern, thrumming with the elation of potential. Weaving illusions always grounded him, and he envisions memories, dreams, and lets the canvas fill under his hands, like a weaver and his tapestry.
He lingers for a second on the trees, the way they rustle despite no wind blowing through them. The air has no smell, now, but it’s better than corpses and rotten darkness, so he sighs again and concentrates on the northern lights he’d seen during that one trip to Icewind Dale, back when he was still in the academy. One by one pink and green tendrils light up and intertwine in the sky, so far away and yet well within Gale’s reach. He could easily pluck them back, just as he’s placed them there, and the small, secret rush of it is like a sip of brandy at the end of a long day.
“Am I interrupting something?”
Gale startles, the lights he freed into the sky brightening for a second in alarm, only to return to simulated peace once he realizes who interrupted his improvised pity party. “Halsin! No, not at all,” he clears his throat, shuffling around like he doesn’t know what to do with himself. “Join me?”
Halsin smiles, his eyes round and bright. People seem to forget that Halsin still is an elf, and he’s beautiful like any of his kin under the handsome ruggedness. He looks knowingly at Gale, which finally makes him aware of his staring.
He snaps his head back to the sky just as Halsin speaks. “It’s a beautiful sight. Your doing, I wager?”
“Yes,” Gale breathes out, busying himself with hanging a few more stars in his sky. “This might just be my last night alive. I want it to be under a canopy of beauty and wonder. And with company to match, now,” he adds. It’s a friendly thing to say, nothing more. Friendly, because he couldn’t bear to see Halsin’s face darken with pity, see his brow furrow as he lets him down easy.
Halsin chuckles warmly, a drop of honey that lodges in Gale’s throat, but shakes his head. “I appreciate your company as well, Gale, but you can’t possibly think I’ll let you get away with such troubling talk.”
“I am merely stating the truth.”
“Pessimists often like to think they are merely stating the truth,” Halsin tilts his head, a cunning look in his eye. He fishes his pipe out in one fluid motion, lights it up, and Gale marvels at how easy it all feels, despite the dread that has settled deep in his guts like a rock.
He snorts and regards Halsin with a forlorn grin. “Leave it to you to use my own disillusioned musings against me. Call me a doomsayer and a pessimist all you want, but I’d rather ensure my death had meaning, at the very least.”
Halsin exhales, looking at the sky as the smoke exits his lungs in pale wisps, before he’s offering Gale a drag. Why the hells not? He hasn’t indulged since his academy years.
Gale takes a hesitant puff, closes his eyes in relief as the smoke fills him with satisfying heat. As the silence lingers, it takes him by surprise when Halsin speaks again.
“That is not something you can determine,” he’s looking straight ahead, jaw clenched, thoughts somewhere far away. “Martyrdom seldom ends in greatness. It’s a light snuffed out before its time. Nothing grand about that.” There’s something old buried in his words, a deep hurt that threatens to resurface.
“What if this is my time? Maybe this blasted orb was meant to destroy the Absolute from the start.” Halsin throws him a glance, his expression sours where he’s biting the stem, and Gale remembers what war took place a hundred years before in these very lands.
Of course, what does he know about death? He’s talking to someone who’s seen it hundreds of times over, pulled people from the brink and snuffed out just as many, so that life could thrive where death had once been sown.
“I’m sorry,” he crumbles, his face sinking in his palms. “You have better things to do than indulge a foolish wizard’s solipsisms.” What a way to show Halsin just how put together their leader truly is.
Halsin makes a sound, already leaning closer in that instinct to soothe that comes to him as easily as breathing. Even such a little thing raises goosebumps on Gale’s skin.
“Please, dont—” he tries to warn him, doesn’t even know about what, and Halsin halts, one hand suspended between them. Big, strong, with calluses on the palm and middle finger, dirt under the nails, but Gale knows how gentle they can be as well. He’s seen them heal, help animals, children, or turn into a bear’s paws, too.
It’s been so long since he’s had someone else’s hands on him, his mind helpfully provides. Far before Mystra, when all Gale had going on for him was a good head on his shoulders, talent and ambition; when he’d entertained the thought of sharing himself with another for the mere reason he could, and that he could be wanted, in turn.
Halsin looks him over, brows furrowed as if he were racking his brain over what is going on. When he straightens all of a sudden, Gale’s traitorous mind imagines this ancient, beautiful man on him, arms dwarfing his frame, lips dragging down his throat, and his neck burns, oh how it burns in pure, naked shame. Halsin sees it, unfortunately.
“Gale,” he starts, and his voice is as soft as Gale had imagined it, so he turns away from it, a wobbly little smile on his face for no one to see.
“Worry not, there’s no need for platitudes. I already know.”
“What do you know?” Halsin’s voice stays neutral, but there’s a shadow over his face and it looks like grief.
“Do you really wish for me to say it?” Gale pushes his hair back where it threatens to spill over his eyes from the many times he ran his fingers through it. “You have duties, we have duties, and I cannot possibly ask that of– what I mean is, it’s preposterous for me to—” he cuts off, groaning in frustration and embarrassment alike, rubbing his nose and cheek like that could somehow erase it. “You are good to me, and I should not let that get to my head,” he admits.
“For someone as clever as you are, I find myself baffled at how poor your insight can be, at times,” Halsin mutters after a beat, putting out the last of the tobacco. “Gale, none of us want you to meet your end, no matter how much you think everyone will be better off if you do.”
“I—” he takes a loud breath, but Halsin shakes his head.
“If only you could see how wonderful you truly are,” he adds, inching closer, and when his gaze settles on Gale it burns down his throat and leaves him breathless. There’s an hesitation in Halsin’s demeanor, an involuntary locking of his jaw, as if he too were fighting an internal struggle. He swallows, a bob of his throat Gale follows helplessly.
“This truly doesn’t feel like the right moment, my friend, but you deserve to know,” he breathes out between them, Gale’s hand dwarfed in his own. “You have been a guiding star in the darkness, I have no idea what would have become of me had I not met you. My heart does not stir lightly, but it does now,” he admits, looking down to the ground, a poignant lilt to his usually steady voice.
Gale’s hiccup surprises them both, and he slaps a hand over his mouth when Halsin looks at him with those big round eyes. “You,” Gale breathes through the tears welling in his eyes, “you are very dear to me, Halsin, I…” He swallows, afraid the next words will make him choke.
His heart beats a drum against his ribs, hard and loud, so much so he almost misses Halsin’s soft request. “May I hug you?” He barely has the time to nod when the smell of the forest envelops him along with Halsin’s arms, even warmer and stronger than what he’d imagined.
This really shouldn’t be how it goes. It should be grand, extraordinary, Gale thinks as his face sinks in the crook of Halsin’s neck, the wet point of his nose staining his shirt, and sobs louder.
“I have you, my heart,” the words resonate within him from Halsin’s chest, a huge hand circling slowly over his back, “you can cry.”
Gale tries to breathe through his nose, fat tears rolling down his cheeks and mixing with snot over his mouth and sinking in beard. It isn’t pretty, but the privacy of Halsin’s shoulder saves him from the shame of being seen. “Look at this, I’ve made a mess of your clothes,” he babbles between rattling breaths.
“Clothes can be washed,” Halsin states simply, never stopping his slow, soothing gestures. His hand raises to Gale’s hair, pushing it away where wet locks cling to his cheeks with a tenderness that has Gale gasp again.
Drying his face as best as he can, he burrows as close as he can until his lips meet with the side of Halsin’s neck, leaving a small, hesitant kiss there. Halsin freezes under him, and Gale’s already forming an apology when Halsin makes a sound and squeezes him tighter.
“Gale,” he whispers in a breathless little pant, touching his own mouth to Gale’s temple, right over the blemish there. There’s a heat now simmering low between them, their restraint fraying at the edges as Gale kisses a path up the underside of Halsin’s chin. “My love, you are– you are in a vulnerable headspace right now.”
Gale presses his forehead into his chest, hearing how Halsin’s heart, too, is beating fast. “I can’t believe I am being the less sensible one, here,” he sniffs, smelling salt and crisp grass.
“We shall wait until Thorm is no more. Then…” Halsin trails off, an arm slung over Gale’s waist. “We shall have each other.” It’s a promise, and it lights up a firmament under Gale’s skin.
“You truly make it sound so easy,” he croaks out with a smile, finally taking a look at Halsin’s face. Under the stars his eyes shine that pretty blue that merges with hazel, but it’s the naked devotion that has him weak in the knees. He looks away, clears his throat. “Then, will you hold me?”
“No hardship from me,” Halsin whispers, kissing his forehead, and leans down in the grass.
“Wait, we should make ourselves comfortable first.”
“I am as comfortable as can be in the cradle of nature, and with company to match ,” his tone is light-hearted yet genuine, which has Gale smile through his tears. He settles down beside him, head on Halsin’s bicep.
“Thank you,” he says, and remains silent, for once, save for the quiet sniffles that manage to escape him from time to time.
Halsin holds him through it until he falls asleep, humming an ancient melody beneath a sea of stars that carve a ray of hope in the darkness.