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The tower is elegant and regal, standing out proudly against the city scape around it. Gale eyes the rising stone with something akin to trepidation as they approach, almost self-conscious. |
The wards over the door react to his presence, a bright burst of magic as a series of arcane locks click open and the heavy double doors swing open in welcome. |
Scratch bolts inside first, eager to acquaint himself with all the new smells he can find. Tav laughs and steps in after him, watching him race around the room and disappear up the massive, winding spiral staircase in a flash of white fur. |
The tower is just as beautiful and elegant on the inside as it is from the outside: the first floor opens into a wide, grand entryway, dark floors covered with lush carpets, lit with a warm glow from hanging chandeliers and candelabras with flames that flicker to life the moment they step inside. She spins slowly, trying to take in as much as she can. He had given her a brief overview of what to expect, and she’d seen the glimpse of his study that he’d shown her that night in camp, but still, the sheer grand scale of it is overwhelming. |
She knows the first few floors are dedicated to the things one might expect to find in any respectable manor: a large kitchen, a parlor for entertaining guests, a grand dining room. The bulk of the floors above it made up his personal library and rooms dedicated to various fields of study and arcane experiments. At the very top of the tower were his personal chambers and study. |
The tower is empty and quiet, waiting for them. |
She spins in a slow circle, trying to take in as much of it as she can. There are bookshelves against nearly every wall, and rich, beautiful tapestries on the walls without, tables and hutches filled with baubles and artifacts that catch her eye, all arranged with careful, thoughtful precision. And the books alone—it would take her weeks to fully explore, even if she glanced over some of the sections of his library that interested her the least. |
And all of it was beautiful and warm and safe and theirs. |
She turns to ask Gale for that tour he’d promised her only to find that he is not at her side. The words die on her lips as she spins to find him still standing in the doorway, his dark eyes drifting around the tower, heavy and serious, his lips set in a hard, solemn line. |
It’s a stark comparison to the bright joy that had lit up his face when they’d first stepped through the teleportation circle and out into the House of Wonder, and nothing in comparison to the warmth of his smile as they’d knocked on his mother’s door. |
She turns her attention back to the room around her, searching for something that looked amiss, something that would trouble him on sight in such a way, but there’s nothing. |
"Gale?" Tav steps closer, reaching for him. |
His attention snaps to her, his eyes widening slightly as they focus on her as if he was surprised to see her. He’s still blazing with intensity as he takes her outstretched hand and tugs her to him, pulling her into a fierce kiss. |
Her noise of surprise quickly melts into a quiet whimper as he raises both hands to cradle her face, holding her against him even as he presses into her, pushing her back. She staggers blindly back, her hands coming up to grip at the front of his robes as he guides her, his lips never leavings hers, his kisses growing deeper and more ravenous by the second, his tongue pressing into her mouth to tangle with her own. |
She clings to him and he holds her tightly, one hand moving around to bury his fingers into her hair and slide down, over the back of her neck, flat palm smoothing down the curve of her spine to grip her rear and grind her hips against his. She gasps into his kiss but he doesn’t stop, doesn’t even slow, just keeps moving her back until her foot meets a solid surface and she nearly falls, her arms scrabbling to wrap around his shoulders as he catches her. |
It’s a tricky process, trying to step up a staircase backwards, with her eyes closed and her mind so thoroughly preoccupied by the scorching heat of Gale’s mouth on hers and his hands in her hair and on her ass, his hips pressing forward into her as he matches her every step, and Tav is certain that she’s going to fall at any moment and send them both crashing down, but Gale’s movements are confident and sure and she lets herself be guided, slow and careful but insistent. |
He only takes her up a few steps before he stops, and he tears his mouth from hers to trail scorching hot kisses over the curve of her jaw until they settle against her neck. |
Tav sucks in a desperate, shuddering breath as he begins to press her down, bending forward over her, easing her down and down and down until she feels the press of the staircase against her back. She drops one hand from his shoulders to brace herself against the steps and buries the other one in his hair, anchoring herself to him as he sucks at the tender skin of her throat. |
"Gale—" She tries to form a thought, a question, but her mind is scattered under the blazing heat of him, lost to the sensation of his lips against her skin, the quick, grinding roll of his hips against hers before he’s shifting them away, replaced by his hands as they move down her front to tug at the laces of her breeches. |
Her own hands shake as she tries to help him, but his are perfectly steady as he pushes hers away and practically tears the offending garment from her, down far enough to free one leg, and then his hands moving up to grip at her thighs, holding her apart for him as he shifts down to settle between them. |
She barely has enough time to register to sensation of the cool air against her skin before it’s immediately replaced with scorching heat as Gale lowers his mouth to her core. |
Her gasp morphs into a strangled cry as he drags his tongue over her in a long, slow sweep, dipping into the heat of her briefly before licking up to tease at her clit. |
For everything the two of them have gone through, they’ve spent a relatively short amount of time together, and much of it has been spent either fighting for their lives or dropping off into an exhausted slumber in the middle of camp, surrounded—if not crowded, at times—by their friends. They’ve managed to steal a few moments together, in between all of the chaos, so Tav knew that Gale had—how had he phrased it?—a talented tongue. |
This isn’t the slow, tender explorations of their first time under those too-bright stars that he’d conjured, or the hushed desperation of their stolen moments together in the dark of their tent or the shared room in the Elf Song Tavern, fighting to stay as quiet as possible, movements and noises restricted by necessity. |
This is a blistering heat, ravenous and utterly focused as Gale devoured her as if he could find salvation in her cunt. His hands keep a firm grip on her thighs, keeping her legs spread wide for him, holding her in place as her hips stuttered and squirmed. His attention is merciless, his tongue alternating between fucking up into her long, deep licks through her core and moving up to curl and tease circles around her clit, and when she’d squirm and whimper he’d only seal his lips around the tight bundle of nerves and suck, hard enough to make her back bow up from the steps behind her. |
Tav scrabbles for purchase, trying to anchor herself however she can: one hand wraps around one of the wooden rungs of the banister in a white-knuckled grip and the other burying itself in his hair. She can feel the dizzyingly tight coiling in her core growing stronger as her vision blurs, her sense of self narrowing down to only the overwhelming pleasure of her lover’s lips on her aching cunt. |
He groans against her as her grip on his hair spasms, and that’s enough to send her over the edge. Her release floods through her, hot and dizzying and overwhelming as her vision narrows and she cries out, her whole body snapping taut for a long moment before she collapses, boneless and empty, back onto the hard jut of the staircase, gasping for breath and blinking up at the winding staircase above her head as the world slowly swims back into focus. |
She realizes, as it does, that she’s still gripping Gale’s hair in her fist. He’s still hovering between her legs as she manages to raise her head enough to stare down at him, and she loosens her grip and cards her her fingers through it, sweeping it back from his face. He’s looking up at her with dark eyes, his hair a wild, untamed mess, and his chin still glistening with her own slick. As she watches, still panting for breath and trying to formulate enough of a coherent thought to say something, he releases his grip on one of her thighs and brings a hand over to wipe his chin. He drags his fingers over his skin slowly and brings them to his mouth, his eyes never leaving hers as he licks his fingers clean. |
Tav lets out a tiny whimper—the only sound she’s capable of making at the moment, she’s pretty sure—and Gale gives her a smile she could only describe as sinful before finally shifting away from his perch between her legs, rising to his feet and holding out a hand to help her up. She takes it gratefully—her legs still feel like they’re made of shifting sand, and she staggers a little as he helps her upright. Gale just wraps one arm around her waist and holds her tightly against him, and she lets herself sag into him, her fingers gripping the front of his robe in tight fists. |
He lets the two of them sway there for a moment until she gets her feet under her, keeping his arms around her, and tucks his chin to press a kiss to the crown of her head. |
"Are you alright, my love?" He murmurs, and Tav snorts a laugh against his chest. |
"Am I alright? I’m bloody fantastic, Gale, what sort of question is that to ask someone who you’ve just had your—" |
"I meant," he nudges her playfully with his nose until she leans her head back to peer up at him. "Because of the stairs. I realize that that was perhaps not the most opportune place for such a thing, in hindsight, but in the heat of the moment..." |
"Yes," she says quietly, reaching a hand up to chuck his chin gently. His skin is still damp, and it sends a tiny shiver through her, even as her legs haven’t quite stopped trembling. "The heat of the moment, indeed." She doesn’t answer him about the stairs—the truth is, she can already feel the ache where she’ll likely form some level of bruise across her shoulders the next morning, but she plans on keeping that to herself. |
A little pain and a mild bruise is a pittance of a price to pay for his singular attentions. |
Still, even though she doesn’t say it, she can see in the way his eyes sweep over her, searching her face, that he sees some trace of it, and he winces slightly and holds her to him a little more tightly. |
"I’m sorry, darling. I should have... well, there are no shortages for more appropriate places in this tower for such things. It’s just that... being here again, at last..." He trails off, and his dark eyes flicker around them, taking in the space once more. |
Tav raises herself up to press a soft kiss to the underside of his jaw, to where the thin tendrils of scars still remained, etched into his skin forever, neatly hidden beneath the rough scrape of his beard. |
"What is it, love?" She asks quietly. She tries to follow the path of his eyes, searching their surroundings, but it’s all unfamiliar to her. |
He sighs and shakes his head. "Nothing. Truly: everything is exactly as it should be, and I couldn’t be happier. I am back in my home, back in Waterdeep, free of both the pesky little unwanted guest in my brain and the impending doom of the orb in my chest. My mother is well, as is Tara, and, best and perhaps most miraculous of all, you are here, with me." He smiles softly down at her. "Here, in my home. In our home, if you’ll allow it." |
She loops her arms around his waist and squeezes him tightly. "I go wherever you go, Dekarios. My home is with you." |
A flurry of emotions flicker over his face—love and affection and a shade of disbelief, even now—and he presses a kiss to her forehead. |
"Then we are home, indeed." he says. |
She hums against his chest. "Is that what all that was about? Just... happy to be home?" |
He lifts one hand to brush his fingers through her hair, gently smoothing out some tangles. |
"Partially," he says quietly. "And, in truth, this is the first time I’ve been back here since... well, since I spent the better part of a year locked inside, every waking moment spent either frantically researching for a way to cure myself of the Netherese orb or in pursuit of a magical artifact that could sate it’s hunger. It consumed me, body and soul and mind... and I was, for all intents and purposes, alone. Tara tried her best to keep me company, and spent much of her days researching for a cure, but... Gods, Tav." His voice is low and rough and he has to take a moment and swallow around the knot rising in his throat. "I was so alone. I hadn’t... I don’t think I knew that that kind of loneliness existed, up until that point. I had never given it much thought, certainly. And why would I? As a Chosen of the goddess of Magic herself, I was never truly alone. I had the Weave, always, right there at my fingertips, and through it, Mystra, and all the endless possibilities... |
"Until, one day, I didn’t. Mystra had turned away from me, and the orb was draining me of my connection to the Weave faster than I could stave it off, and everything I was—everything I thought I was—was slipping through my fingers. And no matter how hard I tried to hold on to it—to hold on to myself—I was losing. I was lost." Gale takes a slow, shaky breath, and Tav presses a little closer to him, pressing her ear to his chest to listen to the steady beating of his heart. "And then, when there was nothing left for me here, when I had exhausted every tome in my library and devoured nearly every item of any worth and the void was still there, still empty and still hungry, I left. I told myself—and Tara—that I was going to find answers somewhere else, that there must have been something I was missing, and I set out to go find it. Or perhaps just find a quiet, empty place to lose whatever threadbare pieces of me still remained, and let the orb have whatever little was left of me, some place where the casualty count wouldn’t number in the tens of thousands. |
"Of course, that particularly dour train of thought was interrupted by an entirely unwelcome visitation from our tentacled friends, and then, well." He ducks his head to kiss her hair again. "The rest of the story will likely sound quite familiar, I’m sure." |
Tav nods, her head still against his chest, and pulls back enough that she can look around the space around them with fresh eyes. It doesn’t look like a place where someone had spent a year trapped inside; the space is a little sparse, perhaps, for a man of Gale’s eccentric taste, but everything is tidy, tables upright, books stacked neatly, rugs free of dirt and dust. The sconces flicker with candlelight that bathes the room in a pleasant glow, warm and welcoming. |
If she had spent the better part of a year trapped inside a single building, no matter how grand, it would not look anywhere near as presentable as this, she was certain of that. But to Gale, for a time, this had been more of a prison than a home. |
"Bad memories," she mutters. Those, she can understand. |
Gale hums in agreement, drawing her attention back to him. He’s smiling softly at her, and even after all this time the sight still makes her stomach flutter. |
"Indeed," he says. "I wasn’t sure how it would feel to come back here, in truth, until the moment I was here. And there was the weight of those memories, the darkness of those days I spent alone here. But there was also the sight of you, standing inside the doorway of this place—my home—and that was a very pleasant sight, indeed, my love. Much more so than the lingering shadows of the past, certainly. So I thought I would chase that feeling, instead. Overwrite some old memories with some new ones, hmm? "Begin as you mean to go on,’ as my tutor’s used to tell me." |
"Oh?" Tav raises an eyebrow. "And you mean to go on between my legs, do you?" |
Gale’s eyes darken as his smile grows a little sharper, and the fluttering in her belly shifts into a low, coiling simmer. |
Tav’s heart stammers in her chest and she finds herself having to swallow around a suddenly dry throat. She takes a quick breath and licks her lips, and his eyes flicker down to follow the movement before rising to meet hers once more. |
"Well, then." She says, her voice sounding much more steady than she feels. "If there’s a whole year’s worth of bad memories in this place that need to be made up for, it sounds as if we have our work cut out for us." |
Gale takes one of her hands in his and raises it so that he can press his lips against the bare skin of her wrist. It’s a tiny, gentle kiss, almost innocent if it weren’t for the shiver that it sends through her as he slowly pulls her closer, moving his lips up her arm as he does. |
"Then I suppose," he punctuates each word with another kiss, up her forearm and over the curve of her shoulder until his lips are pressing against the curve of her neck. "We had better get started, hm?" |
Tav’s free hand comes up to rest on his chest, her fingers gripping the fabric of his robes, and she lets her head fall back with a sigh, exposing more skin to his wandering, eager mouth. |
"Where—" She cuts off with a strangled whimper as he gently scrapes his teeth over her pounding pulse point. "Where do you suggest we start?" |
"Hmm," she can feel the vibration against her skin as he mouths at a tender spot on the underside of her jaw. "I don’t know, darling; it is an awfully large tower." He nuzzles his head against hers until their lips are just barely brushing against one another’s, their breath mingling as Tav pants through parted lips. |
"Perhaps," his lips move over hers as he speaks, his voice low and heady. "We should start at the top and work our way down." |
Her hum of agreement comes out more like a whine as she presses up, chasing his lips. He’s smiling into her kiss, but his smile gives way to a low groan as she tightens her grip on the front of his robe and surges up, teasing the seam of his lips with her tongue until he parts them for her. She brings her other hand up to tangle in his hair, holding him to her as she deepens their kiss, chasing the taste of herself still lingering on his tongue. |
"I don’t care where we start," she pants, pressing herself into him and rolling her hips against his. "As long as we start right now." |
Gale moves his hands to her waist and takes another step forward, keeping her pressed against him as he walks her back, his mouth never leaving hers as he pours himself into their kiss. She lets him guide her, too focused on the feeling of his lips on hers, his teeth scraping over her bottom lip, his tongue pressed against hers. It’s not until her back collides with something solid that he breaks away from her lips to pant a response. |
"My lady," he rasps. "Your wish is my command." |
He raises one hand to press something in the wall beside her head—she catches a glimpse of some sort of crystal that flares to a sudden, bright blue—and then the world around them blurs and the wall behind her vanishes and she staggers back a little but he catches her, one arm around her waist and the other cradling the back of her head, his fingers threading through her hair as he drags her into another kiss. |
Tav once again finds herself in the difficult position of walking backwards trying to focus on not stumbling over her own feet while her lover kisses her as if he were starving, and the last drop of nectar could only be found within her mouth. She only barely manages a few steps before she begins to lose her footing, and this time Gale lets her fall. She scrabbles at him as she does, catching him by the front of his robes and hauling him after her, and the sudden flash of panic that rises in her dies away as she lands on a soft, plush mattress. |
Candlelit sconces flare to life in the room around them as Gale follows her onto the bed with a quiet laugh, catching himself with one hand braced beside her head to keep from tumbling on top of her. |
She glares up at him, even as she uses her grip on his robes to haul his mouth back to hers. |
His bedchamber, then. She vaguely recalls him mentioning that his chambers were on one of the tower’s uppermost levels. Her head spins, just a little, and she thinks she can taste the tiniest spark of the Weave on his tongue as she sucks it into her mouth, the deep groan he rewards her with sending a bolt of liquid heat straight to her core. |
"Was that a magic elevator?" She pants, releasing her grip on his front to tear at the clasps of his robe. |
He makes a quiet noise of approval into her mouth, shifting back to give her hands better access. "Of course—this is a magic tower, after all." |
He busies his own hands with her clothes, still only haphazardly replaced after their little interlude on the staircase. She whimpers into his kiss as he tugs her breeches off easily, then glides his palms back up her sides, slipping underneath her shirt to tease at the hooks of her brassier. |
Despite the trembling, her fingers manage to find the clasps for his robe and undo them, and she surges up on the mattress to shove it off of his shoulders. He has to take his hands off of her to remove it, leaning back to shrug it off and let it drop into a pile on the smooth, polished wood floor. |
"You’ll have to show me how to use that." She says. She takes the opportunity to pull her shirt up and over her head, then leans back on her elbows, scooting a little further onto the large mattress to watch as Gale stands up to remove his own pants. |
She lets her eyes drag over him, slow and greedy in the warm glow of the candle light. She traces the pale scars left over from the Netherese orb, from just below his eye and over his cheek, down the strong column of his neck and curving over his collarbone to the center, just below the hollow of his throat. |
Shadowheart had offered to try to heal the scar, or at least lessen the intensity of it, but Gale had declined, and in truth, Tav was glad he had. |
The orb might be gone, now, sealed away once more by Mystra, but it had still been a part of him. It had left its mark on his body, and it had left its mark on his life. On both their lives. |
Tav sweeps her eyes down from the pale circle of scars, over the dark, coarse hair of his chest that her fingers itch to run through, down the valley of his abdomen to where his cock rests as he steps out of his pants, hard and smooth and perfect, and a stab of aching want lances through her, the walls of her cunt clenching around nothing. |
She raises her eyes to find him watching her, his own dark eyes just as hungry. |
"My darling," he murmurs as he joins her on the bed, hovering over her. "I intend to show you everything." |
Many of Astarion’s decisions, up to this point, had been from the result of panic. It was something he had become quite skilled at, being able to channel manic energy and suffocating fear into thinking up solutions very quickly. It made him quick on his feet, it made him slippery, he was quite proud of this skill he had. |
However, when there was no action for Astarion to immediately pour that panic into? Astarion ended up not...faring as well. |
Take the mindflayer ship. The mindflayer ship had been one of those things. No matter how he had flipped it around in his head - no matter how much he channeled that adrenaline into thinking, no logical solution had presented itself to him. They had stuffed him into a claustrophobic, sickeningly warm pod and done something to his eyes. |
He did the only thing that he could think of to do in such a situation as this. |
He shrieked at the top of his lungs, wailed until his throat was hoarse and raw, and clawed at the window of the pod until his nails had been worn down into bleeding stumps. Demanding - begging - yelling. |
When everything had went black, he thought that maybe the mindflayers had gotten sick of him squealing and decided to just kill him. It would’ve been a mercy, he would’ve accepted it at that point. |
But, of course, he had to wake up. Not only that, but wake up with a godawful pain in his head, and a funny feeling behind his eyes. The pain made it hard to focus, but he was quite certain that if he |
dead, he wouldn’t be feeling anything at all. Good or bad thing? Jury was still out. |
Astarion was sprawled onto his chest, his nose felt like it had been broken. It was nothing compared to the pounding pain in his skull. He hissed, tangling his fingers into his hair - digging his nails into this scalp - as he pleaded with the damn thing to |
(The jury had decided no, it was not a good thing he was alive.) |
So preoccupied he was with trying to will away his headache, that he had not even yet noticed that he had landed outside. |
With the sun bearing down on him. |
There was that panic again! But it was an actionable panic, he would take an actionable panic over being trapped and helpless any day of his life. Astarion immediately stopped caring about his headache, scrambling to try to find somewhere to hide. The feeling in his limbs wasn’t quite there yet, so forced was he to crawl on the ground like some half-dead insect. (Wouldn’t be the first time, he had a strong suspicion it wouldn’t be the last.) He saw a patch of shade under a rock - he just had to crawl there. It wasn’t that far, he just had to get there before his body went up in flames- |
It then hit him that besides the awful feeling in his skull, he actually didn’t feel particularly...crispy. Astarion rolled onto his back, looking down at his hands to make sure he those mindflayers hadn’t disconnected his nervous system or something similarly terrible. But, no, besides his raw and bloody fingernails, he looked and felt perfectly fine. |
Astarion was...bewildered. He turned his hands over to examine the backs just to extra make sure. He felt - thrilled, terrified, a mix? He wasn’t sure, his thoughts felt strained and jumbled. He probably should’ve been happy, should’ve been over the moon. Here he was! Standing in the sun, completely unharmed, for the first time in centuries! But while he wished he could’ve taken the time to feel something about the matter, there were far more pressing matters. He |
just been dropped from a mindflayer ship, after all, and he wasn’t sure if those things would come back for him; or where he even was. |
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