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Writer's Choice (BG3 and TWST)
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Astarion isn’t an idiot. He sees the flare of desire in Gale’s eyes as he draws a knife delicately across a goblin’s throat, the same self-conscious interest that sparked when Astarion brought down that bandit with a flashing dagger. The same spark of interest that seems to rise when the man is beaten and bloody and thrumming with post-battle vigor. Gale of Waterdeep, fallen wizard extraordinaire, likes danger.
And yet he doesn’t seem to be a masochist. He turns away from the priest of Loviatar, despite Astarion’s coaxing. He doesn’t seek out pain.
The wizard presents a set of contrasts. Contradictions. It’s inordinately irritating.
“Would you like to do a bit of magic?” Gale offers one afternoon at camp, when it’s just the two of them waiting for Karlach and Wyll and Lae’zel and Shadowheart to return from whatever wretched swamp calls itself the sunlit wetlands. (A name that idyllic has to be hiding something.)
“Darling, I hardly need the Weave to make magic,” Astarion purrs, almost reflexively, with a gentle roll of his hips to underscore his meaning.
Gale rolls his eyes, but there’s a faint flush rising in his cheeks. What a pity his blood smells like bile — or perhaps that’s a blessing. At least Astarion isn’t tempted to chow down on his most verbose companion. (No matter how delightfully quiet it would make camp.)
“Be that as it may, I’d still like to show you.” So Astarion follows Gale through the motions of channeling the Weave and nearly cries at the gentle cup of Mystra’s hand cradling him for a brief, beautiful moment. Half his mind screams, anguished: where was this when I was locked in Cazador’s kennels?
But the other half notes the bridge between his mind and Gale’s, and he can’t stop the impish curl of his mouth as he pushes an image through the connection: slinking, coiling, catlike, pressing himself against the wizard’s back in a mirror of how he’d press a blade against Gale’s throat.
He means it as a tease. A push to annoy the wizard and give himself time to rebuild his protective walls of prickly chaos, but Gale… Gale gasps, and swallows, and Astarion’s eyes cannot leave the bob of that lovely throat or the way those nimble lips press together to stifle a word that tries to break free.
“Why, Gale,” he says. “Tressym got your tongue?”
“Er. Some— something of the sort,” Gale says faintly, eyes widening as he stammers. “I didn’t— well. Erm. This has been most enlightening; I didn’t realize I aroused your murderous instincts so thoroughly.”
Oh, he cannot leave that one alone. “I find all of my instincts most thoroughly aroused,” he murmurs, and closes the distance between their bodies in an easy, languid motion. “I see you watching my knives during fights, you know.”
“Or when you’re doing tricks with them outside your tent,” Gale says, with something like a prayer in his pretty, gentle voice.
“Who’s to say they have to be put towards killing?” Casually, Astarion draws the gold-hilted thing he pinched from the goblin trader — a traveler’s loss from the ashes of Waukeen’s Rest, no doubt, and better used in his hands than in a corpse’s. “Perhaps I should find… alternative uses.” And he twirls the dagger on a fingertip and watches Gale fall.
The wizard makes a hungry, broken noise. “I don’t… I don’t want you to cut me,” he confesses.
“As if I lack the precision necessary to avoid such things,” Astarion sighs. “Dear me, Gale, one would think you haven’t been paying attention at all. I’m wounded.” Gale babbles a protest, but Astarion ignores it in favor of flipping the dagger again to watch the way wide coffee-brown eyes follow its flash. “Trust me, darling, I shan’t even scratch that pretty skin. Just…” And he curls around Gale’s back, one hand cupping his throat, the other keeping the dagger hovering just a breath away from the man’s neck. “Don’t make any sudden moves.”
“R- right,” Gale stammers. “Certainly not.”
“Good boy,” Astarion purrs.
The choked noise Gale gives him is almost as delicious as the gasps of something dying. Perhaps more so, given that Astarion could wring it free from him again. Perhaps he doesn’t even have to touch the man’s cock, doesn’t need to bare his own body— power courses through him, an entirely different authoritarian pleasure than the thrill of using the tadpoles.
“Tell me what you want, Gale,” he murmurs, pitching his voice low and silky into the rounded human ear. The hand circling Gale’s throat traces up, along the lines of the Orb, and Astarion gently tucks a lock of brown hair behind one of those silly short ears. The move, as always, is a hit; Gale shudders and whines as Astarion breathes cool air against the newly-bared neck, and for once, he’s not holding back from biting because of Cazador’s orders but rather his own disgust for the oily black blight of Netherese magic tainting Gale’s bloodstream. “Shall I take you like this, make you stay still while I thrust into you? Put you on your back and ride your cock while I trail the tip of the blade along your chest? Let you use my mouth while I daydream about slicing into the veins on those delectable thighs?”
Gale wheezes. “Weave save me, Astarion, let a man— nngh.” A rippling shiver of desire passes along his body.
“Let a man…?” But Gale merely gapes, goldfish-like, as Astarion drifts the dagger along his throat and down across the poncy purple velvet tunic. “Hmm. We’ve found other clothes that could replace these, I think.” He even has some purple dye stashed away, in case Gale feels the need to continue laying claim to an entire section of the color wheel.
“Wh- what?” Gale blinks at him, half-hazy, head twisted to take in the avaricious glitter of Astarion’s eyes.
“Stay very still, darling.” Astarion plucks at the neckline of the shirt, raising space for the dagger to drift from Gale’s throat to the collar, turning it so that the blade begins to split open the fabric and is only a breath away from likewise splitting the wizard’s skin.
With the concentration and mental control of a man who can keep a foe cackling for minutes on end even while Astarion slices them apart, Gale freezes in place. Only the human-quick patter of his pulse and the frantic, huffing breaths betray his desire. Astarion hums approvingly, and Gale lets out a shuddering, longing sigh.
The knife splits the shirt, precisely down the middle. (Astarion already has Plans for repairing it, using some ribbon he found as lacing to show off that glorious dusting of chest hair. But for now, it’s unnecessary.) He uses the flat of the blade to flick apart the shredded halves of the tunic, letting the point dart quicksilver-close to Gale’s surprisingly muscular pectorals.
“Astarion…”
“Yes, my dear?”
“Can I—” and here, Gale cuts off, as if he’s about to stumble into the Underdark without casting Feather Fall. “That is to say, would you be opposed if I…” and he gestures towards his pants, framing a very prominent bulge.
“I’m afraid I don’t take your meaning,” Astarion says, giving Gale an innocent look he’s perfected after years of sneaking hands into coin purses and wares off tables.
“Gods be good, Astarion, if you don’t touch me, I will be forced to take matters into my own hands!” Gale says, the words bursting free with all the force of a fireball.
“Mm. Can’t have that.” Astarion darts a hand out, lightning-quick, and captures Gale’s wrists to press them against the slowly-thickening waist. Gale had started this little adventure looking like a previously well-fed man in the throes of illness, skin loose and body weak; the constant journeying seems to — in some way, at least — be good for him. At least right now, they’re awash in camp supplies, and Gale has been stuffing the food-eaters of the group with rich cheesy potato soup and sausages, roasted fish and glistening haunches of pork.
Astarion misses food.
But he has a delicious little treat here in front of him, so he refocuses on the rabbit-quick thrum of Gale’s pulse beneath his fingertips and murmurs, “I have never been called an inadequate lover; I suppose I shall show you why.”
He trails the blade along the rise and dip of Gale’s body, leaving the tiniest pale scratches in its wake. “Can you be good and hold still for me, or shall I bind you?”
“I’ll be still,” Gale croaks.
“Good boy,” Astarion murmurs, and the reaction to the second time is almost better than the first: a half-stifled sob and a quick inhale. The tip of the dagger traces along the trail of hair on Gale’s chest and stomach, teasing down to the waistband of his trousers, and the muscles below Gale’s trapped wrists shift and twitch in a fascinating shiver as the knife passes along their rise and fall.
“Astarion, please,” Gale bites out, and Astarion savors the desperation and the power like the finest of wines presented to him in a jeweled goblet.
Then, a flick, and he twirls the dagger across his knuckles in a showy display of dexterity before using its point to nudge at Gale’s trouser fastenings and removing his hand from the wizard’s wrists. “Open up, sweetheart.”
“Cut them off.” The words are a plea rather than an order, and Astarion lets his grin widen into a threatening, delighted curve against Gale’s cheek, sharp teeth and sharp smile and sharp blade all working in concert to urge the man’s pulse into a deliciously heady thrumming vibration that Astarion can feel in his bones. It throbs against the air like a drumbeat.
Gently, delicately, he lets the knife prick into the fabric.
Gale moans, muffled, directly into his palms where Astarion has freed him as if in knowing anticipation of the slip, as if he’s been waiting for Gale to break. He has.
The wizard is unfairly beautiful like this, vital human pulse shadowed with the ravenous magic within, wide eyes beginning to glaze over with need.
Gods, but there’s something sickly fascinating about doing this for himself, of having no one waiting to take advantage of his skills besides himself. He’s good at this, has been trained to it for centuries and brings that all to bear in service of getting to drink in Gale’s noises, his growing desperation—
Something twists in his stomach and he chooses to interpret it as eager rather than revolted—
Gale whines again, soft and breathy behind his hands, and when Astarion tugs his hands away to nibble sharp-fanged kisses against his lips, he breathes “let it kiss my skin, Astarion, please,” like he’s dying for the threat of pain to drown out the constant, clawing hunger with something more mortal, more material than any kind of sex the wizard has had in gods only know how long.
And Astarion is really not very good at self-control (that’s why he was singled out for time in the Kennel so often, that’s why Leon and Aurelia and Dal wound up in Cazador’s good graces so often in comparison to him). How is he to resist that plea, spoken so fervently into the clear night air that only recently sparkled with Gale’s former divine lover’s touch?
So he leans in, lets the very tip prickle along Gale’s inner thigh in a mirror to the way he drags his fangs along Gale’s mouth, and amazes himself by tugging away as he smiles and murmurs approvingly. “Darling, careful, you’ll tempt me into breaking skin. I’d hate to ruin the evening with the scent of bile in the air.”
Gale swallows hard, eyes clearing a bit. “Y-yes,” he stammers. “Quite right. Eminently sensible.”
He looks positively wrecked as he says it and Astarion’s grin deepens, thrill at his power over the man spilling triumphant into the crease of his eyes and cheek as he leans back.
“I, er, enjoyed sharing a bit of magic with you tonight,” Gale murmurs, gaining his feet as if he means to scuttle back to his tent.
“Tsk tsk, Gale, I didn’t picture you as one to run,” Astarion says idly. Gale freezes and the elf smiles, sheathing the dagger as he stands and dragging cool, clever fingers along the wizard’s throat and along the short-cropped beard. “Just because I’m not going to let you slice yourself to pieces on my knife on our first attempt at this doesn’t mean I’m uninterested in the gentler pleasures, you know.”
Standing like this, they’re roughly of a height, one lithe elven body coaxing a gawkier human one, and Astarion rocks his hips pointedly against Gale.
“Oh,” Gale whispers. “Then— yes, Weave preserve me, Astarion, let me touch you.”
Oh. Astarion likes that phrasing very much. That makes it much easier to frame this within allowing Gale what he begs for, of being in control of whether he is touched or where or how. Is this what personal boundaries feel like? (Does he have those? He thinks that’s probably something else Cazador stole from him, because even this little pack of utter buffoons gets to have their boundaries: one doesn’t tease sharp little Lae’zel about Vlaakith without crossing them, or pry into Shadowheart’s mysterious… everything, really.)
He allows it. “Chest to knees are the only places I want to feel your hands, then. Everywhere else, you use your mouth, on my lips and throat and ears. No biting.” When Gale nods fervently, Astarion graces him with another teasing rock of the hips and a pair of cupped hands against his cheek and jaw, cradling his face as he kisses soft and deep into Gale’s mouth.
Gale follows directions admirably, wrestling with the fastenings of Astarion’s trousers blindly, eyelashes fluttering against Astarion’s cheekbones when he twists to pant warm and needy into the pointed ear. “Will you… hah! I’ve dreamt about your hands, Astarion, please, anywhere…”
Well, that’s a plea even better men would struggle to resist. “Of course, my dear.” He trails one hand down, briefly curling along Gale’s throat and moving on quickly to his waist to avoid overstimulating the Orb. “Sweet thing, do you think me so selfish? I’m the very soul of generosity, sharing myself with you like this.”
A heavy, pleading whine lands in his ears with the force of a thunderclap. Gale doesn’t know when to shut up, but his constant vocalizations are positively enthralling like this. “Kiss me again, Astarion, please.”
He can’t know what kind of astral sex Gale’s been accustomed to, these last years. All Astarion knows is that Gale is greedy for kisses, writhing against Astarion’s touch as he moves his hand to cup the thickening length beneath ridiculous purple underpants.
(Astarion’s own are a joke gift from Dal, and he finds his own silly underthings much more acceptable. Gale just shouldn’t have any. It’s unfair to keep this lovely cock so confined when he could be bare beneath his wizard’s robes—)
“Darling,” he breathes, feeling the fabric dampen against the tip as he rolls his fingers across it in a tease. Gale pants against him, breathes heavy and hot and human into his mouth, and then moves in a gawky sort of crumple that Astarion shouldn’t find charming as he tumbles over the wizard into the grass. “So eager.”
”You must know what you look like,” Gale protests, and the words are ice like Cazador’s fangs anew.
Astarion springs back. “I don’t, actually,” he says curtly. “Not since the change.” He wants to fold into himself, flounce away from this babbling moron who apparently can warp the very fabric of reality and uses that skill to shove is own foot so far into his mouth it probably comes out the other end.
Gale blinks up at him, half-dazed for a moment and then with dawning horror. “Oh. Oh gods. Astarion, I’m so sorry, I— here.” He flicks a finger, curls another, and a purple-limned elven head curls out of thin air.
Well.
If Astarion has to take anyone’s place, it might as well be a goddess’s. Give Gale a chance to fixate on something a little closer by. He moves forward as if in trance, reaching for the image suspended in Gale’s palm. “Is this…”
”You’ve got the most beautiful cheekbones,” Gale breathes, beckoning him close and using his left hand to trail along the real skin at the same time that a mage hand lifts to trail along the image’s. “Strong nose.” A human-warm fingertip along the bridge of it, tapping gently at the tip.
“Do go on,” Astarion says as Gale pulls his hand away. “What else?”
”Vain,” Gale says, but there’s no censure or judgement in it. (He shared Astarion’s delight when they found scented soaps in the wreckage of Waukeen’s Rest, after all.) “An absolutely beautiful crinkle here—“ he strokes his thumb gently at the corner of Astarion’s eye —“when you smile.”
”I beg your pardon?” Astarion says, recoiling. “Are you suggesting I have wrinkles?”
”Even undeath and fine skincare together cannot fully stave off the passage of time,” Gale says solemnly, but he cracks as Astarion puffs up in dismay, pulling his hand away. “Wait. I jest.” Astarion’s magical image vanishes and he doesn’t mourn it. Not at all.
Astarion is adrift in a sea of magic and a muddle of confusion and it is unacceptable for him to be so far out of control. “Hm. I suppose I could forgive your offense under one condition.”
Gale raises his eyebrows and, miraculously, keeps his mouth shut.
“Oh, good boy,” Astarion breathes. “Consider the slate wiped clean after a little punishment, then, hmm?” And he reaches for the dagger once more, holding it in front of the wizard’s face to watch his eyes go wide and dark once more. “I won’t touch you. That’s your punishment; after all, you were very rude about my apparent crow’s feet—“
”Nonexistent crow’s feet,” Gale hastens to add.
”—and you touched my face with this hand,” Astarion adds, tapping the flat of the blade against the offending left thumb. “I do believe I said lips only. I may not have a wizard’s memory, but I’m certain I did establish that. You touched when you weren’t supposed to, so I won’t touch you. I believe that’s fair.”
He says the word with all the vitriol of someone who doesn’t believe the concept truly exists, but Gale latches onto it like a lifeline.
The wizard swallows, and the bob of his throat beneath the scruff is so beautiful in its desperation that Astarion almost breaks. But no. Gale struggling to keep still while he works a hand against that prick will be enough entertainment that he wants to see this through. “Apologies,” he manages weakly.
”I’ll forgive you eventually, I’m sure,” Astarion says, and Gale presses his lips together. Chews on his bottom lip for a moment before he inhales and speaks.
“So. I’ll… I’ll begin then.” But he doesn’t move, doesn’t actually follow through, and Astarion scoffs.
”Surely Gale of Waterdeep isn’t too good to have a bit of a pintle pull in the woods,” Astarion says. “A stretch of the pipe. A play on the silent flute.”
Gale rears back, fussy half-bun pressing into the grass. “A what?”
”You went to college,” Astarion says, waving a hand. “And wizards are quite creative, I’m given to understand, so I’m sure your catalog of euphemisms is even more robust than mine. Perhaps they’re different in Waterdeep?”
”I take your meaning perfectly,” Gale says, red roses of blood blooming harsh along his cheekbones. Gods, if only his blood weren’t so tainted. Astarion could drink him dry and the wizard would probably thank him.
So instead of responding, he clambers off of Gale and stretches, long and languid, beside him, and twirls the knife across his fingertips to land with the point just barely at the juncture between jaw and neck. “Then do it.”
Gale swallows, and the motion presses his skin imperceptibly closer against the blade’s edge. He fumbles at his small clothes, pulling the fat cock that Astarion felt earlier free, and… well. Astarion has seen a lot of pricks, both literal and the humanoid ones led by Cockzador himself, and Gale’s is lovelier than any he’s seen in years. He hums with pleasure as Gale wraps his fingers tentatively around the length.
The first pull can’t be comfortable, dry enough that Gale winces, but he’s not a wizard for nothing; a whispered voco arvina slicks his fingers with grease and he lets out a shuddering, breathy moan on the second stroke. “Astarion…”
”Yes, darling?”
”Are you not going to talk?”
”You told me you enjoyed our walks in silence,” Astarion says, needling. He lets the blade at Gale’s throat tilt, teasing with its sharpness as well as his words.
“I take it back!”
”Mm, I do like the sound of that. But no.” He tosses his curls. “You’re being punished, remember?”
Gale makes a soft, breathless noise, like a stone has been thrown directly into his stomach. “Yes. Oh—" and he arches upward, gasping, as his hand moves faster. He’s nearly off the ground entirely, back bowed, hips tight under the looming pressure of orgasm, but…
He stays there, fingers flying against his cock.
Astarion knows a thousand and one ways to make a man come when he’s locked a breath away from the peak, but there’s only one that suits, tonight. He leans in and scrapes his fangs gently against Gale’s carotid artery.
A gasp tells him it worked. (Of course it did.)
Gale shudders beneath him hard enough that a tiny bead of blood wells up, and the breaking of skin seems to throw him fully into pleasure, eyes squeezed closed and hand flying against his cock and his other hand clutching at the grass beneath as he spills.
Astarion can deal with the black-bile scent of orb-tainted blood for that image, at least in this moment.
Gale laughs shakily, sitting up onto his elbows as Astarion leans back and sheathes the dagger. “Well. I can’t say I’ve done that in years. Must have been in the dormitories at Blackstaff, as I recall.”
“And yet you haven’t lost a whit of skill,” Astarion purrs, standing fully. “I’ll consider that your atonement. Next time, remember to kiss instead of touch.”
And he walks away, trying very hard to hide the rise beneath his own breeches as he goes.