#pr@ncing

thinking about astarion who has been pulled along into a strange friendship by gale who takes astarion's random stealing of his books to mean that he's reading them. astarion isn't, he's just doing it to piss gale off, but the opposite effect of it has him annoyed instead. nevertheless, he decides to just go ahead and read it, then passes on his own "recommendation" in the form of a spicy novel he picks up while traveling. thus is the start of their book club.

it happens early on enough that astarion decides someone as powerful as gale proves a good ally for his fight against cazador, and he can also tell just how easily manipulated gale can be in the right circumstances. so he interrupts one of their book club sessions with a kiss, and gale freaks out saying he's not so sure this is a good idea given his Orb and all that.

naturally they both go to bed disappointed, but the next day gale is super apologetic saying he's been unable to stop thinking about it, and how he desperately wanted it but also fears putting them both in danger. astarion relents because yeah. that makes sense. and thinks nothing of it other than well we've got something going on here. not sure what it is but he seems to trust me enough without needing sex, so that's weird.

then elminster comes and suddenly astarion is fucking fuming at the revelation that apparently, if the gods ever do answer your prayers, it's just to tell you to die. astarion makes it a point to, with the orb stabilized, have raunchy nasty woods sex with gale all to make himself feel like he has some control over the situation. it's in this sex though that gale finally learns all of astarion's little tricks and comes to realize that he's really only having sex with a dead man who's been trained to use his body this way.

not that gale rejects him for this, but it does make his concern for astarion grow. he realizes first that their relationship isn't properly mutual, but he's weirdly okay with it because he can see that astarion genuinely does care about making gale remember the joys of living, and how ironic it is that it has to come from an undead. it's through this revelation that gale decides he wants to share an escapist illusion with astarion of a world that might have been, and though gale isn't expecting anything in return for it, astarion's undead heart twists somehow. he writes it off as a strange taste of empathy.

it's only when astarion finally ascends that he realizes the depths of his feelings. how utterly insane he is for gale, his heart racing ten million miles an hour as he looks at the man who doesn't know when to stop giving away pieces of himself, and how starved astarion is for every last inch. it's because of these feelings born from his newly living heart that the moment astarion learns of the crown of karsus, he's terrified of gale taking it. he would have been in favor if he were just a spawn who hadn't had his chance at revenge, but now that he's done that and more, he realizes how horrifying a world without gale at his side could truly be.

when gale tries to explain this to him in the boatride, astarion grabs gale's hand and pulls it to his chest, all his rage and fire gone as he expresses genuine vulnerability for vulnerability's sake, begging gale to understand how much astarion loves him without wanting to say the word because it doesn't mean anything on his tongue anymore. gale asks him to say it anyway, because he'll be able to tell. astarion says it, sounding like he's never said it before in his life. gale kisses him, and promises he won't reforge the crown, because astarion is right. it would be terrible to throw away his heart for power when he could give it to astarion instead.

and then gale just falls even deeper as a result because wao...he really has someone he loves that loves him right back, just the way that he is right now..................a bit ironic that he'll end up losing his heart either way, but it's alright. he'll know it's always beating for astarion