#goblins!

You wish you could strip down to your drawers, tits out, and try to vent yourself. Rather than stew around in your own sweat and funk. But Gale putters around right outside the tent and the flap is open in a vain hope of catching some straggling breeze. That and the pillow immediately under your head shifts as Astarion recrosses his ankles.

He sort of started doing that during the height of your fever. Since he runs cooler than a living body. Back before y’all entered Satan’s apparent ass crack of a heat dome, that meant he was kinda pleasantly cool. Now his poor shin is probably just soaking in your neck sweat as he reads.

“You’d be more comfortable if you moved up, you know,” he says.

To his thigh. Where your head wouldn’t be lying directly on his shinbones, but on his more muscled, and therefore softer, thigh.

“I’m good,” you say.

He’s your friend. Like roommates. Y’all can chill around each other (not that you really been lucid enough for that to mean something, fucking every disease in Faerun hit you all at once). Y’all sometimes slept in the same tent (on separate bedrolls). But that…is too weird. It was enough of a struggle bus for you to accept this.

He jostles you, deliberately.

“Shall I call the bear for you?” Astarion says.

“He’s just gonna tell me to eat something and move around.”

Which like, is good advice. It’d do you some good. But the stupid fucking heat kills your desire for both.

Halsin followed y’all outta the Shadow lands. Rescued the kid-also-a-god, got the place on the very first baby steps on the road to not being a cursed death pit, and decided to come with y’all.

Mostly for your benefit, you think.

No one else from that clusterfuck slaughter at the tower opted to go with y’all. Jaheira said something about meeting y’all at the city, thank fuck. You don’t know how you would’a looked her in the face for days and days after you got all her people fucking murdered. You was mind-controlled and shit—thanks, past therapy and also Halsin and his warm voice over tea—but.

You wouldn’t ever say any of that. The CIA couldn’t water board it outta you.

You wonder if she guessed anyway.

A scrabbling outside. Then a small shadow scuttles through the open tent flap and Wesa ducks into the shade with a huff.

“You’re supposed to knock,” Astarion says.

Wesa, bless her, snaps her teeth in his direction and trots over to you. And lifts up a dead bird in her hands. One with a bite-shaped chunk missing out the middle. It’s suspiciously goblin-mouth sized.

“Tribe!” she says.

You got no idea (some idea, you was in her head for a half a second) why that word bubbled up in her memory and no other. Brain injuries is real weird. But it’s been weeks getting carted around, her in the wagon beside you, reflective eyes shining out at you from underneath the blanket she done wraps herself in.

“You got another pretty?” you say.

She nods. Spreads the bird’s limp wing out to show off the very admittedly pretty feathers. A shimmery green-blue. She holds it up to her hair, which is almost too short to braid things into, but she’s managed various trinkets that click as she moves.

She’s surprisingly fastidious. Remembers basic care and skills. She don’t wash like the rest of you do—seems to dislike water entire—but she routinely scrubs herself down with as course of dirt as she can find. She smells kinda…gamey, up close. Not bad, necessarily, but something almost ferret-ish.

“Better take it out to Gale to get it cleaned up,” you say.

She nods again. Murmurs to herself. Pulls one of the feathers off the wing and sticks the quill into her mouth like a country boy chewing on a grass stalk.

Then she looks over to the tent flap, to Gale outside. She grins. She don’t speak but that one word, but if there ain’t a whole sentence in that shit-eating grin grin she gives.

“Tribe!” she says, which sounds vaguely like a threat not aimed at you, and ducks back outside. Hits full speed the second the sun touches her sensitive skin.

“I’ve no idea why you tolerate that,” Astarion says.

You look over to the newest shirt on her bedding pile, recognize it as one of his spares.

You don’t answer. Ain’t nobody said nothing, but it was real obvious not a one of them was stoked when you suggested taking her along. Ain’t none of them seem to like goblins. Your experience with them was pretty hostile. And the ones you met in the cult seemed to be a bunch of bullying assholes. But Astarion scrambled Wesa’s brains when he clubbed her over the head, and it didn’t seem right to just leave her and…well.

Part of you notes how careful they all is around you (imagined or not). Wesa does not care. Don’t matter to her what you did. She brings you pretty rocks she finds. Neat little twigs. Anything shiny she scrounges off the ground. Then she tries to braid that into your hair (Gale offered the first time to do a magic cleaning on the little pile of bones she found). You been, unfortunately, too sick and sweaty for anything to work out.

It’s selfish as fuck. But you’re so goddamned relieved for somebody you don’t gotta feel bad around. (There’s some kinda psychology going on in you, isn’t there.)

“Tribe!” She’s found her target outside.

“Oh, ah,” Gale says. So many emotions folded into those two noises. He volunteered the once. Wesa is a lot sharper than anybody seems to expect—she picked up on a pattern. You can’t see outside at this angle, but you can picture the pinch to poor Gale’s face as he gingerly takes the dead bird. “Yes. Another contribution. How, er, fantastic.”

“Tribe.”

“Yes, I’ll get right on that. Ah. Thank you.”

“Its revolting,” Astarion says.

His breath reeks of iron when he comes in for the night sometimes. But you ain’t in no position to be passing judgment on nobody. Not after everything. Especially not when he’s been propping up your head with his leg. So you say, “It’s just decorations.”

“Feathers I can almost understand, if a bit crude. But you know she’ll want to put the bones on your hair.”

You shrug. “People make jewelry and combs and shit outta bones. I seen jewelry here made outta shells. Ain’t them just clam bones?”

He makes a sound. You know for a fact the man just rolled his eyes, even without looking. But he ain’t got a comeback to it, and he holds his tongue when Wesa comes charging back in, rubbing at her exposed arms.

“We gotta get more clay on her,” you say.

His next wordless noise is closer to a groan.

“She’s sensitive to the sun,” you say. “I thought you’d get that, Mr. Vampire.”

“Mr. Vampire-with-illithid-protection, thank you very much. I quite delight in basking in the sun.”

He’s so fucking weird. He’ll let you lean on him (it’s not cuddly, it’s just a practical arrangement) one second. And then turn around and be the biggest fucking bitch you ever did see.

“Halsin did say I should exercise,” you say.

Laying prone for two weeks while your body tries to expel your spleen out your nostrils pretty much undid the progress you was making with Lae’zel. She been grumpy about it the whole time. Watching you as you recover, and you know sooner or later she’s going to throw your own spear at you and demand a match and then systematically point out every, single thing you do wrong. And meanwhile, you’ll be doing your best not to drop the goddamn spear.

“He meant tottering around camp. Not playing in the mud with a goblin,” Astarion says.

Wesa crawls onto the pile of clothing she done scavenged up. She circles it a couple times, kicks at it with her back feet a few more times, before she settles down.

She tends to sleep when its hottest out, you noticed. Makes sense: her eyes are so big and reflective. Probably crepuscular. First it was just the extra blanket she’d curl up on or under. Then one of your shirts showed up. And then one of Gale’s. Pretty sure she’s got something from everybody, now, and you got theories on that.

“It’s sunscreen,” you say. Stop to yawn. “You gotten anything good to eat, recently?”

It ain’t exactly subtle what you’re doing. You kinda gave up on subtlety (can’t trust it, can’t trust you).

Astarion takes the bait, though. Partially cause he don’t win this argument the handful of times it done come up, and partially because Wesa stares at him, eyes round and reflective green in the shade of the tent. She’s quick, you learned. Swipes little birds clean out the air. Bites them, too.

A rustle as Astarion sets down his book. He looks better than he did back in the cursed lands, in a lotta ways. The eye bags are faint smears and his skin is less cadaver gray. More shut-in pasty.

But there’s a tightness to his expression, too, whenever you catch him unaware. One that wasn’t there before. Y’all are coming up on the city of Baldur’s Gate, chasing down an army of brainwormed cultists and their two, remaining leaders. And the big ass, floating goddamn brain.

And Astarion? He’s coming right back to the front steps of the man who enslaved him. That fuckface will be hunting him. Desperately, if that devil told you true (and everyone is pretty sure he did). Astarion will be in his reach. The last person, piece of a contract, that fucker needs to sacrifice to a bigger devil to gain unholy cosmic power.

Astarion knows this. He ain’t said as much, but he’s a little quieter, these days. Actually volunteers to take watch. Complains pisser than ever over the smallest shit—he nearly threw a knife at Karlach when he got a rock stuck in his shoe and she made some quip about it. He likes Karlach.

“Are you offering?” he says.

He ain’t bit you since…the inn. Before the inn. Since before you got your soul ripped out and it turned you into a fucking monster.

Astarion is your friend, and y’all’re closer than you been with anybody in a hot fucking minute. But…you kinda miss…

It was nice to be touched. Platonically! You ain’t thinking of more than that. Yeah, it’s his lips and tongue on your neck, but y’know, he also. Um. Held you.

You need to stop that. You care about him. You’re the man’s first fucking friend (and that makes your heart wibble and cranks your blood pressure up so high you feel it in your neck).

You cannot ruin this. You cannot push anything. Leave him alone. Be his friend. It’ll take his mind off things. Right?

“I been feeling a lot better?” you say.

His gaze flicks to your neck. Man swallows. And there’s the faintest trace of…you ain’t sure. Something almost sad. Almost, wanting in some way. Until he buttons that down.

“The cleric would stake me,” he says.

Shadowheart. She’s been cordial, but kinda distant. Has left most of the doctoring to Halsin.

You did that. You deliberately manipulated her (even if in part for good reasons). Y’all talked it over and she ain’t mad at you. Not exactly. But that girl’s got trust issues, and she was starting to let you in, and you all but stabbed her. (You literally slit her throat.) (She got better.)

She justifiably withdrew. All you can do is give her space.

“I think you’d be fine,” you say.

There is something in his eyes. Echoes something around in you. He starts to bend down, and y’all will have to adjust positions because he’s flexible, but he ain’t that flexible—

A scuff. A shadow falls over the opened tent flap. A familiar scent wafts in—reminds you of oil painting, for some reason—and Wyll clears his throat.

“If I may?” he says, cause he’s a gentleman and the last time Karlach busted in while you was alone, you was tits-out from the heat and you might’a screeched and the whole camp came running.

“No, you may not,” Astarion says. “We’re both terribly indecent and in the throes of ecstasy.”

Wyll tentatively peers in. Spots the book Astarion set down. His expression brightens. “Ah, The Duke’s Escape. Is that the third one? I’ve only read the second and the fifth.”

“Well I’m reading it now, and I’ve no intention of sharing. What do you want? Aside from pilfering my books.”

The books he pilfers from Gale.