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The Crown is gone, returned unto Mystra as Gale had promised.
It had never rested upon his brow - had, in fact, sat in his hands for less than a fraction of a moment, there within the Weave. And yet he feels it, a buzzing through his body, palpable, like he's drunk five cups of the extra-strong coffee Karlach prefers.
He thinks, now, that if he reached for the spells that once came to him as easily as breathing, they would do so again - if only for a breath, an instant.
But there is no foe to disintegrate, no army to crumble to dust, and - no, the thought crosses his mind, fleeting, but the dregs that holding the Crown of Karsus had given him were not enough to put the likes of Wish within his grasp. No miracles he can work, not with this fragile fragment of what could have been.
So he deals with the tingling, buzzing energies in a much more mundane, mortal way instead: he fucks his lover senseless atop their shared bed, silk sheets sweat-darkening with the intensity of their coupling.
Gale Dekarios is not as young as he had once been, and these days, embarrassingly, he's usually a "one and done" type of man unless he uses a spell or potion to help him along. But not today. High on the power of holding Karsite Weave itself in his hands, he spills inside Astarion with a frantic cry of the vampire spawn's name and his cock does not even begin to soften.
He pauses, considerate as always, to check that Astarion is okay if he keeps going - but the white-haired beauty pulls him down into a passionate kiss, murmurs yes and more as he nips at Gale's lips, and the wizard continues, thrusting against the other man's sweet spot as ancient and untamed magic thrums through his veins.
For several minutes, the low, throbbing beat doesn't register to him. Again, Gale is no longer young, and heavy exertions such as the wild fucking he's currently giving Astarion causing his heartbeat to thrum in his ears is not an uncommon occurrence. But the Wizard of Waterdeep is an intelligent and observant man even in the throes of passion, and he soon registers that it not his own heartbeat he is hearing.
Or not just his own heartbeat, rather. Beneath his rabbiting, arousal-fueled pulse is a second beat, deeper and slower, an almost primal throbbing that he can, as bizarre as it seems, feel in his cock as the vampire spawn's truly magnificent ass flutters and clenches around him.
For a moment, he thinks it's the Orb. That Mystra had lied, and hadn't removed in exchange for the Crown - had gone back on her promise and destabilized it instead, returned it in some final act of spurned-lover pettiness to its volatile pre-Elminster state.
But no, Gale realizes as he looks down at his chest and sees the same sight he'd rushed to his home's sole mirror to check as soon as he'd gotten back. The swirling lines of the Orb are gone, and his heart feels lighter and his breathing easier than it has in years.
Then what...?
A spell a rival wizard had cast upon him, taking advantage of his distraction? Some clever new toy Astarion had purchased from the temple of Sharess to surprise him with? Tara, wreaking havoc in the kitchen? A particularly insistent visitor at the door?
He looks down at Astarion, prepared to ask his partner if he has noticed the strange sound-sensation - and stops short.
Astarion Ancunin is blushing.
Not the pale, very-edge-of-a-spring-rose-petal tint that sometimes appears along his elegant cheekbones when he's at his most blood-drunk, but a proper blush, Karlach-red, painting his face from forehead to chin.
And yes, Gale's cock is still in Astarion's ass, and Astarion is moaning so sweetly, and a second orgasm is threatening to burst out of the wizard - but, at his heart, Gale Dekarios is still first and foremost a scholar. And so he brings his not-insignificant observational skills to bear as he attempts to figure out just what in the Hells is going on.
He hears: ragged, irregular breathing, sharper and shallower than his own, catching and hitching with each thrust of wizard cock against rogue prostate.
He smells: Astarion's usual cologne, of course, the tartness of the bergamot blending with the sweetness of the brandy and slight zing of rosemary, but beneath that, something new, something musky and vital and intoxicating. Sweat, exertion, without a hint of the coffin or the grave.
He feels: flushed skin, flushed warm skin under his hands, the flutter of a pulse-point as he brushes fingers against the base of that pale elegant neck.
He tastes: unblemished flesh, as he licks a stripe up his beloved's neck, he realizes that the two ragged, never-healing puncture wounds at the base of his throat are gone, gone, gone.
He sees:
red eyes flutter closed in pleasure
and spring-green eyes, sparkling with life, snap open as Gale gives another particularly well-aimed thrust, striking his most sensitive spot dead-on.
And with so much evidence pointing in one inevitable, miraculous, impossible, but somehow true hypothesis, Gale comes to two conclusions at once.
One is his second orgasm of the day, sending jolts of zinging magic-tinged pleasure up and down his body as he shoots rope after rope of spend deep inside his partner.
The other is something he realizes he must share with his partner immediately, even though the post-orgasm haze fogging his brain and the urgency of Astarion's own approaching peak.
"Astarion." He grasps his lover's hand, places it on the man's own chest, urging him to feel what Gale has felt, to realize what Gale has realized. "Astarion, you're alive."
And as he feels his heartbeat for the first time in nearly two hundred and fifty years, Astarion Ancunin comes with a wordless shout of shock and disbelief and triumph and love.
Gale is reluctant to pull out of Astarion - he's pretty sure he's already addicted to the feeling of being fully enveloped by his newly warm lover - but he knows the other man needs time to see and process for himself what has just happened.
So Gale casts his usual prestidigitation cantrip to clean up the messes both on Astarion's chest and inside Astarion, and follows it up almost immediately by sending a Mage Hand to fetch the mirror from his study. (It's the only one in the tower - he'd wanted to remove them all when Astarion moved in, but his partner had made the rather sensible argument that several spells required mirrors or mirrored surfaces as a component, and so that one had stayed.)
The elf - the no-longer vampire spawn - cradles the mirror in is hands like it's the most precious of jewels. He gapes open-mouthed at his reflection: flushed, hair pasted lankly to his forehead with sweat, green-eyed, punctureless, lips red and kiss-bitten, mouth filled with normal elven teeth without a single fang to be seen.
Some of these, of course, are typical side effects from multiple vigorous rounds of sex with Gale. Others are very, very much not.
He's silent for a moment, prodding with one finger at the teeth that had until just a few moments ago been fangs.
Finally, Astarion asks the burning question practically hanging in the air between them:
"Gale, did you just fuck me back to life?"
Gale blinks. Had he...what? But Astarion's point is a valid one. The change had very definitively occurred while they were mid-coitus, and he hadn't consciously cast any sort of spell. He'd been thinking about it, of course - when he'd touched the Crown briefly, the only thoughts in his head had not been of power or godhood but of Astarion, stolen life returned to him once more.
Finally, finally, Gale connects the dots. It seems improbable, but not quite impossible - and, therefore, must be the truth.
"Er, yes, my love, it does seem as if that has been the case."
"How?" is all Astarion can manage to say.
Gale, on the other hand, has not lost his words at all - he has ever been given to lecture, and now is no exception. "I did hold the reforged Crown in my hands briefly, and felt its power," he explained. "I - must admit that I did not fully trust Mystra, and withheld the Crown for a moment, waiting to see that she had fulfilled her part of the bargain before handing it to her. And while I did not consciously attempt to siphon or absorb any of its power, I must have, because I did come home feeling rather strange, and then I -"
"Do you still feel like that? Strange? Powerful?"
Gale takes stock of his condition. The buzzing is gone, and his heartbeat has slowed once again. "No. I think whatever part of the Crown's power I took into me, it used itself up resurrecting you."
Astarion silences him with a kiss. His lips are warm, and Gale falls in love all over again.
"Gale," He feels something wet against his cheek, and Gale realizes that Astarion is crying. "Gale, I'm sorry - you, you had the kind of power you always dreamed about, and you could have used it to become a god, or at least some kind of uber-powerful archmage, or..."
"Shh." Gale presses a finger against his partner's lips. "Powerful magics like this work using intent," he tells Astarion. "The magic brought you back to life because it's what I truly wanted. It gave me my heart's desire."
Astarion throws his arms around him at that, peppering kisses across his cheek, lips, chin, neck, chest - every part of Gale that he can reach. "Fuck, Gale, I love you, I love you so much." He takes Gale's hand and holds it so that Gale can feel his steady, miraculous heartbeat. "You did this. Not any Crown or any god or any spell. You, Gale Dekarios, the most brave and brilliant wizard in all of Faerun."
"It shall ever be my proudest accomplishment," the wizard swears as he looks into his love's beautiful green eyes.
After a moment, Astarion begins to giggle, then to truly laugh - a full, chest-heaving, body-shaking laugh the likes of which Gale had never seen from him before.
"What is it, my love?" Gale murmurs, watching as another flush - this one from laughter - rises to the no-longer-pale elf's cheeks.
"The others. They're - they're going to tease us about this forever."
Astarion's right, of course. Karlach and Shadowheart and Jaheira and especially Tav are never going to let him live this down. Wyll will be polite about it, and Lae'zel will probably write it off as some "strange istik ritual," but the two of them will not be enough to combat the jokes that will arise. Gods, Minsc will probably ask questions, insisting it was vital information to "make him better at kicking the butts of the bad vampires." And he thinks he could live a thousand years more and not be prepared for whatever speech about "the healing power of nature's most vital connection" that Halsin will inevitably give.
"They are," he admits, wrapping his arms around Astarion. He rests his head against his lover's chest, listening to the heartbeat he's pretty sure he'll never get tired of hearing. "But we'll deal with it together. Eventually. It can wait. I'm not done admiring my newly alive and just as gorgeous as ever partner."
"Don't you mean 'smugly admiring your own handiwork?'" the elf teases him.
"That may be part of it, yes," the wizard admits. "It is true that no spell I have ever cast or will ever cast will quite live up to doing this."
"I don't know," Astarion grins, stroking Gale's hair with one gloriously warm hand. "There was that time you figured out how to modify Mage Hand to replicate...other parts of the body."
"Astarion!" Gale starts, but any protest he attempts to make is cut off with a kiss.