Self Indulgent (almost a weekend WIP) Sunday…
Yes..it’s not Sunday…yes it’s no longer the weekend but thank you so much to @rdekarios @optimisticgrey and @onlytavs @gortashsrighthand for the tags…
In my self imposed exile, I speed red as many of the relevant FR novels as I could to sort through some pre-canon, and I came away with a very different Gale in my head, who he would be and what he would have done in the canon of 1487-91 Waterdeep…and how singular his intellect really is in that moment in time…
I’ve been writing it a lot…so…here is a bit..
(Lorewise~arcanabula may be the singular, but my Latin studying brain would not allow it)
He woke in the early almost-light on his back, one arm tucked behind his head, the other curled near his cheek. The sheet had slipped low on his hips, and one knee had fallen open around the place where she sat.
Lily was bare, half tucked between his legs, his spellbook open across her knees. She turned the pages without realizing he was awake, murmuring over the shape of his spells, the architecture of his theory, the small vanities of his notation, while she twirled a lock of silver hair around one finger. The small earring he wore by day had unfolded beneath her hands into folio and vellum, its glamour shed, its pages bright with ink only the Weave could keep from fading.
Gale lay there and felt the slow, unmistakable pull of desire tighten low in his stomach, the weight of it stirring against his thigh. He watched her for a long moment, his chest tightening with a fondness that was almost painful in its intensity. She was a stunning creature —the curve of her hips, the elegant slope of her shoulders, and the absorbed stillness of her posture.
His lips traced a slow path along the elegant line of her spine, lingering before he pressed his mouth to the curve where her neck met her shoulder, open-mouthed kisses down the side of her neck, tasting the salt of her skin. He inhaled her scent, rainwater and clean, floral soap, and groaned low in his throat. His hand roamed over her stomach, tracing her gently, feeling the subtle answering tension beneath his touch.
“You little thief,” he said with an indulgent smile. “First my heart, then the coverlet, and now my spellbook. Shameless.”
She laughed softly, “Gale? You’re awake?”
“It would appear so.” His arm tightened around her waist, drawing her closer. He pressed his mouth to the hollow behind her ear again, slower now, savoring. “Say it again.”
“What?” She shifted against him, settling more fully into the cradle of his body, resting her head against his shoulder to look up at him with those pale eyes. The motion pressed her bare hips against him, and his want of her stirred more insistently now.
She smiled. “Gale…” letting it linger in her breath.
He hummed softly, his hand roaming up her stomach to rest between her breasts, feeling the steady rhythm of her heart. “I am, I confess, absurdly fond of the sound of my name in your mouth.”
Lily made that small sound he loved, too delicate to be called a snort and too unrestrained to be called a laugh. It was for him alone, here, in his bed, in the ruin of the sheets, with his spellbook balanced over her knees and her hair coming loose because he had put his hands in it too many times to allow any elven plait a fair chance.
“There must be a thousand spells in here,” she murmured.
His mouth moved against her neck. “Mhm. Something like that.”
She turned another page. He felt the change in her body: the way her breath caught, the way all the soft warmth of her attention went pouring down into ink.
She did not answer at once. “Why are there a thousand spells in your arcanabulum?”
His lips brushed just beneath her ear, her pulse soft against his lips. “Because the other two thousand are mostly derivative.”
A quiet laugh moved through him, warm against her skin. “Then what does that make you?”
Her attention had gone back to the page, but something in her had changed. The amusement had thinned into astonishment, and beneath that, almost reverence.
"Gale," she said quietly, "this is a lifetime's worth of theory. An elven lifetime. It’s extraordinary.”
His mouth stilled at her shoulder.
Her fingers hovered over the page. "No wonder she wanted you."
The words entered the room softly, but they altered it. The air seemed to thicken with the weight of old grief, of choices made in devotion and paid for with regret.
Gale's arm tightened around her waist. Not sharply. Only enough to feel the living certainty of her there: her warmth against him, her breath moving beneath his hand, the long line of her body drawn back into his.
But she did not close the book.
He kissed the hollow beneath her ear, slower this time, less in seduction than petition. "Come back to me."
“What’s this?” Her finger hovered over the page. “That’s my sigil.”
"It is." His hand moved over the spellbook, not quite touching it. "I have been reworking some of my abjurations. You are reckless, and more so when Astarion is at your side."
"I couldn't bear it, Lily." The words came rough, unbidden. "The thought of you—" He swallowed. "It is only a little warding glyph, folded through a contingency. Nothing so dramatic as that expression deserves." He turned her enough to meet his eyes, his mouth still near her skin. "And any further answers will cost you a kiss."
Her expression softened as she set the spellbook carefully on the bedside table, her movements deliberate and precise, and then turned in his arms to face him.
The sheet slipped lower as she moved. He could see the swell of her breasts, the strong plane of her stomach, the silver hair that fell over her shoulder like moonlight caught in a waterfall.
"Then I suppose I'll have to pay," she said.
The kiss was slow, unhurried. Her lips moved against his with tender patience. Her tongue traced the seam of his mouth, and he opened for her with a sound that was halfway between a sigh and a groan.
“What does that get me?” She looked at him wide eyed.
His hands found her waist, then slid up the curve of her back. Her skin was smooth beneath his palms, warm from sleep and the tangled sheets. He traced the line of her spine, feeling the way her muscles shifted as she pressed closer to him.
"Lily," he breathed against her mouth.
She answered by deepening the kiss, her fingers finding the hair at the nape of his neck. She pulled, just enough to tip his head back, and her mouth moved to his throat.
She laughed against his pulse point, the vibration of it running through him like a river breaking its banks. "You have a thousand spells," she murmured, "but you crafted new ones for me?"
"I did," his voice ragged as her mouth traced a path to his collarbone. "Lily—ah."
He moved without thinking, rolling her beneath him in one fluid motion. Her back pressed into the bed linens, her hair fanning across the pillow in a spill of silver. She looked up at him with those pale eyes, and he felt the weight of her trust like something sacred placed in his keeping.
"I love you," he said, the words escaping before he could catch them. “I’ve loved you since the first night, when you kissed me in the Weave, when you enchanted me.”
Her hand came up to cup his cheek. Her thumb traced the line of his jaw. "Gale," she said, and there was no mischief in her voice now, no teasing. "I did, “She smiled. “The look on your face.”
“I invited you to witness the very nature of my heart, and you answered with illusion. Wicked girl.” He kissed her again, and this time there was nothing slow about it.
His mouth claimed hers with an intensity that surprised them both. His tongue swept past her lips, tasting her, consuming her. She arched against him, her body pressing up into his, her legs falling open to cradle his hips.
The sheet was nothing between them now. He could feel the heat of her against his thigh. His desire, hard and heavy, pressed insistently against the soft curve of her belly.
She looked up at him, breathless. “How many?”
“How many spells are for me? Can I see?”
“That was a question. Two, in fact. I demand my kisses.”
Her eyes narrowed. “What if … I made it worth your while?”
“I would be a fool to enter into negotiations with you in my present state.”
She smiled. “What state is that?”
“Utterly in love and willing to give you anything.” He bent to her, mouth grazing the tip of her ear. “Pinned beneath me, bare and flushed, and you still make me speak of abjurations. Lily, you torment me.”
She turned her face to him, soft as a whisper, “Illusion then?”
Gale drew back only far enough to look at her. In the pale morning, with her hair loose across his pillow and his spellbook closed beside them, she was still watching him as though desire had only sharpened her attention. That undid him more thoroughly than the warmth of her body beneath his. “I dreamed of that night for quite some time,” he said. “By every sensible measure, the spell was indefensible. We were half-starved, hunted, marching through a cursed land toward an army and an elder brain, and I spent enough of the Weave to fortify a battlefield because I wanted you there with me. In Waterdeep. Under my stars. I wanted to give you eternity.” His thumb brushed the curve of her cheek. “I had not allowed myself that kind of extravagance in years.”
Lily’s hands rose into his hair. She held him there, fingers threading through the grey at his temples, keeping his face close enough that he could not retreat into theory. “It was reckless,” she said. “Irresponsible. Wasteful past reason.”
“And I loved every moment.”
“Because you gave me the city that made you. The sky you missed. The home you thought you might never see again.” Her thumbs moved softly against his temples. “You wanted to be known by me. Not admired. Known.”
Her voice lowered. “That was extraordinary.” A breath. “You are extraordinary.”
For a moment, he did not move.
“I understand you better now,” she said. “I know what I saw in your arcanabulum. A thousand spells, Gale. A thousand. You could have stood apart from us. You could have answered every danger with the kind of power most wizards only meet in legend and footnote.” Her fingers tightened gently in his hair. “Instead, you stood beside me. You trusted me with your life, and then spent a king’s ransom of the Weave because you wanted me to have a night outside death’s reach.”
She turned her face and kissed his palm.
“If you had loved me less, you would have been wiser.”
“I love the man who made that spell,” she whispered.
He turned his face into her hand as he exhaled.
Her fingers tightened in his hair, and he kissed her wrist, her palm, the inside of her thumb, each touch slower than speech. When his mouth found hers again, there was no flourish in it, no cleverness, no attempt to master the moment.
The arcanabulum lay closed beside them, its thousand spells shut away for a moment.
No spell answered him. No silver fire came singing to his hand. No borrowed grace stood between them. Just breath and skin, and the mortal wonder of wanting her while morning mists gathered at the glass.
Morning paled at the window. Gale did not turn toward it.
Uno reverse no pressure tags plus excited..I’m so glad to be back tags for @lilhumanoid @archduchessgortash @asorceresswrites @missfortunetherogue and @wasted-sam …also I am fully aware that I suck so add an open tag if I missed you!
