Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

“I’ve given it extensive thought, darling, and I’ve decided I’d like you to fuck me.”

Gale had always found spit-takes a crass, vulgar, grasping attempt at humor, and was therefore dismayed by the fine spray of artisanal coffee that burst from his pressed lips in response to Astarion’s sudden declaration.

Tara glanced up from her bowl of chicken purée with a distinctly disdainful expression, and licked her lips primly before padding off toward the living room as though Gale’s dramatics had put her off her breakfast.

Gale winced at the sound of her claws scraping along the domed plastic buttons of her accursed talking mat… tapping… deliberating the choices before her, before settling on—

“Disgraceful!”

Oh. Well, that wasn’t so terrible. He’d heard far worse from those buttons. His blasted housekeeper had taken to updating the recordings quite frequently, and Tara always rose to the challenge of learning new words and phrases.

There was only one button Ethel was forbidden to tamper with.

I love you, darling.

Astarion dabbed at his coffee-splattered face with one sleeve of his crimson dressing grown, undeterred. “Not now, obviously,” he said. “Not at the breakfast table.”

Gale snorted—another undignified response to which he was normally indisposed. “That’s quite a different opinion than the one you demonstrated on Fourthday. I seem to possess a rather vivid recollection of being bent over this very table and filled with something decidedly not the ham and Roaroke omelette I’d labored the morning on.”

Astarion’s answering growl came out as more of a whine, his lips pursing into that diabolical pout of his. “That was entirely your fault,” he said. “You know what it does to me when you wear that damned apron.”

Gale did indeed. Which was why he’d chosen to wear it unaccompanied by any other article of clothing.

Astarion lifted his mug to his lips, hands trembling, and drank his coffee with the vacant stare of someone utterly lost to the pull of memory.

Gale was all too eager to take advantage of his lover’s easily distractible nature, and soundlessly pushed his chair back across the slick dining room tiles. Inwardly bemoaning the dire state of his knees, he bent low and crawled beneath the table.

By the time Astarion realized Gale’s repositioning, Gale was already pulling open his dressing gown. As he’d suspected, the memory alone of their last dining room tryst had been enough to stir Astarion’s arousal, and the elf was already half-erect when Gale bowed his head and nuzzled against the hairless root of his swelling cock.

“Ohh,” Astarion moaned in delighted surprise. He spread his legs unbidden, lean pale thighs emerging from scarlet silk. He let out a sharp hiss as Gale parted his lips and made a few laps with the blade of his tongue around the firm weight of his smooth balls.

Gale pulled back slightly, gaze drifting upward to lock on Astarion’s flushed face through the glass table. “Eat your breakfast, love,” he murmured, his mouth so close to Astarion’s straining cock each word was like a kiss. “I worked hard on it.”

Astarion shoved his plate away—ungrateful—to clear his view of what was happening beneath the table, his hands curled into shaking fists to prevent himself—Gale well knew—from gripping Gale round the back of his head and filling his throat with cock.

This table was newly acquired, and Gale had chosen a glass one for this very reason. He knew how much Astarion liked to watch him work.

Gale blinked up at him as he trailed the tip of his tongue along Astarion’s shaft, circling the glans, prodding along the leaking slit. He maintained eye contact as he loosened his jaw and took Astarion into his mouth.

Astarion made every attempt to bite back the ungodly moans spilling out from the depths of his throat, squirming in his chair with the effort it took not to thrust or roll his hips and just let Gale see to his pleasure unhindered.

Gale gripped at Astarion’s quivering inner thighs with both hands, bracing himself, willing the muscles in his throat to relax and give way. Reactionary tears stung at the corners of his eyes, welling and then spilling in rapidly cooling trails down his cheeks, dampening his beard as his nose nudged flush with Astarion’s pelvic bone.

“Gods… fuck!” Astarion whimpered. “Fucking hells… hngh… shit!”

Gale adored it when Astarion lost his words, devolving into near-insentience whenever he had his cock buried in one orifice or another. Encouraged by Astarion’s sudden verbal illiteracy, Gale bobbed his head and put his tongue to earnest use, ignoring the growing ache burning at the hinge of his jaw and the steady stream of foaming saliva bubbling from the corners of his mouth and dribbling down his neck… pooling in the hollow of his clavicle… dripping down the center of his chest.

The sounds echoing throughout the dining room, punctuated by Astarion’s thready whines and broken moans, were utterly obscene.

He sensed it when Astarion started to come, recognized the tightening in his lower belly and the rigid, anticipatory tension of his stuttering breath—and pulled off at once, jaw wide and tongue lolling. He closed his eyes as the first warm pulse splattered high on his cheek and across the bridge of his nose. The rest were true to mark, and Gale felt his mouth filled anew with the salty, slightly bitter tang of his lover’s emission.

When Gale open his eyes again, Astarion was leaning over the table, his forehead pressed to the glass, his downy curls framed by his trembling arms, his grey eyes sharp and hungry.

“You’re a damned menace,” Astarion growled.

From the living room came Tara’s stern directive:

“You boys had best clean that up!”

***

Gale rolled onto his stomach and gathered a wad of fluffy duvet into his arms, propping his chin atop the luxurious mound as he watched Astarion struggle with Hiss Majesty.

Astarion—clad only in a hastily-donned pair of powder blue underwear—was sat cross-legged on his bedroom floor, striving to wrestle his squirming sphynx cat into a handsome black suit with a houndstooth collar and center-front stripe.

“He doesn’t have to wear it, love,” Gale said, voice muffled in the blanket folds. “He’s made it abundantly clear how little he likes it.”

“Nonsense,” Astarion snapped. “It’s a special day, and this suit was a gift from his daddy, and he’s wearing it, gods dammit.”

Gale buried his grin in the duvet. “A gift from his what now?”

“You heard me.” Astarion let out a shriek of triumph as he successfully threaded one of Hiss Majesty’s paws through a narrow sleeve.

“However did you arrive at the assignment of such a moniker? Why am I daddy?”

“Because ‘father’ is taken already. By me.”

Hiss Majesty reared back with an enraged yowl, his fangs flashing, eyes widened for the hunt.

Gale pushed up onto his elbows, alarmed at first by Astarion’s grunt of pain, settling back once he’d assured himself Hiss Majesty hadn’t bitten all that hard. “Well then,” he asked mildly, “can’t I be ‘papa’? Or something to that effect? Something less…”

Arousing?

“Ugh. No.” Astarion’s tone was firm as he fished Hiss Majesty’s other forepaw into the shirt’s remaining sleeve. “I’m ‘father’, you’re ‘daddy’ and this little shit is about to discover whether or not he can land on his feet with the best of them once he’s been hurled out the fucking—”

Astarion’s tirade ended immediately the moment he managed to adjust the suit down over Hiss Majesty’s svelte little body, his grey eyes sparking with delight as he smoothed flat the houndstooth collar.

“Oh my gods!” he cooed. “Who’s the handsomest fucking boy in the Realms, hmm? It’s me, you wretched little beast, but I’ll admit you’re a very close third. Your daddy, of course, being soundly in second.”

Gale laughed, contracting muscles in his body that released in a sudden gush the fluids he’d been striving to keep inside him. He felt a warm wetness oozing in a thick trail along the rise of one asscheek, catching in the cleft of his thigh as he rolled onto his side with a long sigh.

“I really ought to clean myself up,” he said, gingerly dislodging himself from the blankets, oddly wary of spilling onto the bedding any of what was now leaking out of him in a steady stream. It was a strange and irrational sort of politeness, considering the mess he’d made of the bedsheets already.

Astarion released his hold on Hiss Majesty, and the cat bolted through the cracked bedroom door, his claws skittering on floor tiles as he careened round the corner of the hallway into the living room.

“Oh hells,” Astarion groaned, and Gale could see him bracing for the inevitable.

“You’ve had enough!” Hiss Majesty declared from his talking mat. “Now go! HISS!”

Astarion shot to his feet and slammed the door all the way shut, but not before shouting into the hallway, “Hiss yourself! No milk for you!”

Gale crawled off the bed and rose with a grunt that swelled quickly into a drawn-out moan of appreciation at the sharp bolts of pain that burned and stung and throbbed and ached all over his body. A constellation of sensation. He felt nearly intoxicated with it.

He closed his eyes and stretched his arms and spine, tilting his head back and displaying his neck, feeling Astarion’s gaze on him. He half-expected to open his eyes to the sight of a plush mouth descending with rapturous focus to latch onto one of his pebbled nipples, or to feel sharp teeth nipping at the underside of his jaw, or elegant fingers clawing and groping at the swell of his ass.

But Astarion remained nearer the door, only halfway returned to the bed, his expression oddly pensive. “You know…” he began slowly. “You never answered my question.”

Gale arched an eyebrow. “Oh? What question might that be, love? The one from earlier, when you kept repeating endless variations of ‘Oh gods, please, can I come inside you’? The evidence of my answer is making its way down the back of my left thigh, just at present.”

Astarion’s nostrils flared. He crossed the room in a flash, and gripped Gale’s elbow to spin him partway around, tugging on his arm to encourage him to bend. “Fucking hells,” he murmured at what he saw, sounding dazed. “You can’t just… you’re so… fuck…”

Gale sensed Astarion dropping to his knees, felt the cold shock of his wet tongue eagerly lapping and licking at the milky trail.

“I’m afraid I must still insist on taking a shower,” Gale said, when Astarion had finished.

Astarion grinned wickedly. “I’ll join you. Make another mess in you, hmm?”

Gale’s lower back sent a plaintive cry pulsing up his spine, igniting at the base of his skull, even as he felt a twitch of interest in his spent cock. His entire body was a tangled mass of mixing signals and blaring alarms, though each one muffled and dimmed in turn the longer Astarion stood there, pinning him in place with that hungry, licentious stare of his.

Gale sighed. “I suppose the shower is, after all, the most convenient place to make a mess.”

Forty minutes later, in the now-lukewarm spray of Astarion’s rainwater shower head, Gale keened wanly against the slick tile as Astarion shuddered behind him, one hand fisted in Gale’s sodden hair and the other pumping furiously at his rigid cock.

“Come on…” Astarion murmured, his breath a bloom of humid heat on the back of Gale’s neck. “Come for me, darling… I know you can… I know you’ve another…”

Gale heard the strain in Astarion’s voice, felt the way the muscles of his torso and thighs flexed against Gale’s back and buttocks, and knew how desperately he kept himself from the edge of his own climax—determined as ever that Gale had to finish first.

Astarion’s thrusts were shallow and erratic, yet still so precisely angled, the depth of each one meticulously calculated to drive Gale mad with pleasure and the ache of constant want.

Astarion talked him through it, encouraging and commanding at once, and the dissonance of it all rang at something deep in the pit of Gale’s stomach. He came with a sharp cry that petered abruptly into huffed-out whimpers as Astarion emptied himself with a single rough thrust and a longer, grinding pressure.

Gale’s knees gave out but Astarion had him. Cradled him with pale arms that were stronger than they looked. Cleaned him up, and out. Swift and efficient and tender.

“I want you to do that to me,” Astarion whispered, seeking Gale’s eye, a frown tugging at his petal-velvet lips when he noted Gale’s earnest evasion of that contact. “Don’t you want that?”

Gale reached back and wrenched at the tap, cutting off the water flow. He tried to smile, but it felt pained and pointed on his face. “I think this is a conversation best set aside, for now, when we’re not so woefully behind schedule.”

Astarion pouted—whether at the dismissal or the reminder of the time, Gale wasn’t quite certain.

***

“We really ought to get you some falconry gloves,” Gale observed ruefully, eyeing with concern the long, jagged claw marks painting bloody trails down the back of Astarion’s hands.

“The beast is vanquished,” Astarion said, jostling the carrier in his arms and soliciting an angry caterwaul from the exquisitely dressed feline within. “Any warrior should expect a few battle scars.”

Gale glanced into the carrier, meeting the blackened glare of Hiss Majesty and experiencing a fully warranted shiver of trepidation. “I know we have to do this,” he said faintly. “I know they have to meet at some point if we’re ever to… when we…”

“This feral mongrel will remain in the carrier until I’m convinced he can behave himself,” Astarion assured him. “Until we’re both convinced. Please don’t worry, darling, I’d never let him hurt dear Tara.”

Gale’s answering chuckle was uneasy, fueled by a weak exhalation. “It’s really not her I’m worried about,” he admitted. Through his mind paraded memories of bloodied feathers and decapitated pigeons, and that one time he’d found half a beak in the kitchen sink.

He shook his head and turned his attention to Astarion instead as they continued the short walk from the detached garage to the front door. The pathway was lined with vivid purple wisteria and gnarled oak, carefully tended yet still paling in beauty when held in contrast to the stunning elven man at his side.

He still couldn’t believe, at times, that Astarion had chosen him. Wasn’t bored of him. Wanted him.

Had bought a house with him.

Was moving in with him.

Astarion sighed and drew up short, reaching up to brush his fingertips down the length of his own pointed ear. “If you stare at me like that,” he warned in a thick, honeyed tone, “I’m liable to bend you against one of these lovely trees and have my way with you. Foul temptress that you are.”

Gale hummed. “I’ve always so admired your restraint when it comes to impulses of that nature.”

Astarion scoffed. “I’m fairly certain Auntie Ethel’s peeping out from an upstairs window, and I’m not sure the old bird could handle a show like that. Restraint indeed.”

Gale had nearly forgotten about Ethel meeting them here, even though they’d just seen her lime-green Vespa propped against the ivy-swathed brick garage.

“She wanted to keep Tara company until we arrived,” Gale explained. “Help her acclimate to her new environment.”

“Is she staying for the party?”

“She said she would.”

Astarion nodded, shifting the carrier from one hand to the other, ignoring Hiss Majesty’s immediate growl as his expression soured. “I’m afraid I’ll never forgive you for inviting Old Man Withers.”

Gale fought an urge to roll his eyes. “Professor Jergal is a highly respected academic genius who—”

Astarion waved him off. “Yes, yes, how ever could I forget. What with you mentioning it every spare moment.”

Beneath the mostly farcical display of petulant jealousy, Gale detected an unmistakable wealth of fondness. However poorly Astarion spoke of his elderly neighbor, he knew there was a great deal of respect and admiration shared between them. Professor Jergal had been immensely supportive throughout the last year, whilst Astarion navigated his way through a tricky lawsuit against his ex-husband.

No—ex-abuser.

Their marriage had been annulled. Cazador has lost everything, and was currently awaiting sentencing. Cazador’s legal team had tried every last clichéd trick in the proverbial book; bribery had quickly escalated to threats, some of which had actually been carried out. Every one of them another nail in the coffin Cazador Szarr had carved out for himself.

Astarion was still struggling to gain back the weight he’d lost, still couldn’t sleep through the night without interruption of nightmares or bouts of outright insomnia. His psychiatrist, Dr. Ravengard, had suggested a change of scenery, prompting Gale to swallow back every doubt he’d ever had about himself, fight off every hesitation and fear—and ask Astarion to move in with him.

After the four hours of strenuous love-making that had followed that question, Astarion had made a counter-proposal.

Let’s move in together, darling. In a house that’s ours.

They stopped now at the entryway of their home, regarding together the square-arched double doors.

“Should I carry you over the threshold?” Astarion asked.

Gale laughed. “We aren’t even properly moved in yet! And besides, your hands are rather full, at present.”

Most of Astarion’s things were here already, primarily because he’d had so little to begin with, and even less that he’d wanted to keep. The only piece of furniture he’d wanted moved with him was Hiss Majesty’s marvel of a cat house, built in near-perfect imitation of that famous historic inn south of the city—Last Light. The cat house fit perfectly against the wall in the fully finished attic loft, which had already been deemed “Hiss Majesty’s Realm” in anticipation of the cat’s proclivity toward elevated spaces.

“If Tara’s gotten into the inn…” Astarion muttered suddenly, and Gale knew the elf had been following the same line of thought he had.

“Ethel’s under strict orders to keep Tara from the upper floors. It would hardly do for Hiss Majesty to arrive at his new domain with it already smelling of the sister he didn’t know he had.”

Astarion stared down through the carrier’s top-loading grate, no doubt met with the baleful glare of Hiss Majesty. “The rescue recommended he stay an only child,” he said after a long pause. “What if they… him and Tara… what if they just hate each other? Forever?”

“We’ve talked about this,” Gale said gently. “They can have their own rooms if need be. Take turns being loose about the house. We’ll manage.”

Astarion looked as though there was more he wanted to say, but the doors swung open just then with only the faintest hint of a squeak in one hinge.

A thin, mildly stooped old woman stood in the doorway, simply dressed, but with her long white hair tidied into two sweet-roll buns at the base of her skull. Her faded blue eyes were narrowed with a sort of annoyance Gale had come to realize as being primarily false, but which still gave him pause now and then.

“Ye gods,” the old woman exclaimed, sounding exasperated. “You’ve been out here for ages, sweeties—come in, come in! Don’t make me fetch the wooden spoon, now!”

Astarion’s anxious expression dissolved into a broad grin, and he moved forward to allow for an awkward one-armed embrace as he crossed into the house. “Morning, auntie,” he said.

Ethel pursed her lips to hide her own smile. “‘Morning’, my arse, petal—it’s gone past noon!” Her eyes lit up at the sight of the carrier. “Well, if it isn’t the new young master. Let’s have a look at you then. Go on—let him loose, sweetie.”

Gale closed the door behind him, wincing at the tinny echo that clapped off the bare walls and tiled floor of the unfurnished entrance hall. “We’re concerned the cats may not get on, Ethel,” he explained, pressing a hand to the small of Astarion’s back for balance as he toed off his shoes. “We’ll introduce Hiss Majesty and Tara slowly, let them smell each other out and grow accustomed to one another’s presence before, ah, letting them loose.”

Ethel crinkled her nose. “What a fat load of feck-shite. They’ll sort themselves out.”

Gale heard a thunk, followed by the subtle chiming of collar tags as Tara leapt down from wherever she’d been perched in the next room and came trotting into view. She screeched a greeting at the sight of her fathers and came eagerly trotting over, meowing in little bursts with every step.

“It’s Tara!” Gale called out in that high-pitched sing-song tone reserved specially for his pretty girl.

Astarion lifted the carrier overhead with swiftness, striving to keep Tara and Hiss Majesty from catching any glimpse of one another before he was ready to mediate. He kicked off his shoes and swept into the living room.

Following closely after him, Gale was pleased to note the movers had already brought and arranged the furniture set he and Astarion had selected together last tenday: a long, plush sectional and two over-stuffed reading chairs, a tufted sofa against one wall, a smattering of side tables and a large round coffee table.

Just in time for the house-warming party.

The kitchen and dining rooms were still empty—the glass table and other sundries from Gale’s current flat weren’t scheduled for moving until the day after next—but he wondered idly what other furniture might have been delivered from their substantial order. They hadn’t packed for overnight, but if the bed was here…

As always, Astarion seemed to have arrived at the same thought as Gale, and at the same time.

“Auntie, have the movers brought anything else?” Astarion asked, setting the carrier down on the sleek surface of their new coffee table. “An enormous—and I mean disgustingly enormous—bed, perhaps?”

Ethel smirked knowingly, brushing the pad of her thumb across the tip of her nose. “I’ve only just finished getting that monstrous thing all dressed for you, petal. Nearly did my poor back in, but not to worry. Depending on the lighting, none will be the wiser if the duvet’s a mite lumpy.”

Tara brushed against Gale’s leg in greeting, rubbing her face on his trousers and purring.

“The poor dear’s been lost without her wee talking mat,” Ethel said. “I‘ve explained to her about the new one, but she wasn’t in a listening mood.”

Gale hummed, bending briefly to scratch and pet at Tara’s head—particularly behind her ears—in the way she liked best. “I’m awfully curious if you’d ever any intention of mentioning to Astarion and I about this… new one.”

Ethel clicked her tongue. “What with the young master joining the household today, it’s obvious, isn’t it? The little dears needed a new mat. A bigger one, for the both of them. I have it set up in one of the spare rooms for now, but I’ve not even programmed half the buttons yet, so no snooping, boys, you hear?”

Astarion laughed. He poked a finger through the grate of the cat carrier, then jolted back with a hiss of his own, not quite fast enough to dodge Hiss Majesty’s angry swat.

“This little beast barely got the hang of a few buttons on his own mat,” Astarion said. “I don’t think he’ll be very interested in learning his way round a new one.”

Ethel flapped a gnarled hand dismissively. “Nae bother, petal. Don’t worry your pretty little head about it a moment longer, and just let Auntie Ethel sort the details.”

Tara drifted away from Gale’s side, nose upturned, eyes wary, and Gale knew she’d caught Hiss Majesty’s scent.

He saw Astarion stiffen as Tara approached the carrier—her fluffy tail perfectly vertical, her ears swiveled forward, her whiskers fully extended—but did not deter her from leaping gracefully atop the table and nosing about the grate of the small enclosure.

From within the carrier, Hiss Majesty let out a low, steady growl of warning, heavy with the threat of violence. Tara let out a series of rapid, hiccuping chirrups—the same sort she unleashed when she caught sight of pigeons through the window and was desperate to get at them. She pawed at the grate, rattling it in its loose hinges, and mewled plaintively at Astarion.

“Aww,” Ethel cooed.

But Gale wasn’t fooled. He gave his thighs a few pats. “Come, Tara, into the office with you. It’s your brother’s turn to explore.”

Tara turned and blinked up at him slowly before reluctantly padding back over to him and stretching her forepaws up against his leg.

“Uppies!” he exclaimed, bending to scoop her up. He held her against his shoulder like an infant. She pressed her wet nose against the base of his ear, licked once at his beard, then burrowed her forehead into the hollow of his shoulder and went lax in his arms, purring like a motor.

By the time Gale returned from down the hall, where he’d deposited Tara within the small office they’d designated for her things, Hiss Majesty had been released from the carrier and was cautiously exploring his new environs with obvious disdain.

“No—no scratching the couch,” Astarion said firmly, as Hiss Majesty reared back to do just that. “It’s new! Let me have nice things, damn it!”

The sphynx’s blue eyes darted about as he slunk low to the ground. He caught sight of the stairs and bolted at once, disappearing into the upper floor with a resounding hiss.

“Ah,” Astarion said. “Well I suppose that’s… that’s about what I’d expected, actually. How wonderful of Hiss Majesty not to disappoint.”

Gale could see at a glance how crestfallen the elf was, and realized Astarion—in spite of his persistent pessimism and caustic sarcasm—had been harboring some small, secret hope that Hiss Majesty would be miraculously receptive to a new house and a new sister, and would acclimate with ease and grace.

“He’ll come around,” Gale said with forced cheer.

“Ach,” Ethel said. “No use giving out ‘bout the wee thing acting a right bugger. Mistress Tara will set the young master to rights in no time at all, you mark my words, boys.” She sniffed, and clapped her hands. “Now, the catering’s due any moment, and the guests not long after, so I’ll need the pair of you to keep out the way until I’ve finished sorting the kitchen.”

***

Gale had never done well with parties.

Oh, he’d performed his hosting duties at the start, of course: greeted and directed the caterers, welcomed guests alongside Astarion as they began to arrive, graciously accepted gifts from those who’d brought one (despite being expressly instructed not to), and had flitted about the living room on Astarion’s arm with a pasted-on smile and panic rising steadily in his chest.

Try as he might, he couldn’t shake her voice out of his head tonight. 

You’re not here to make conversation with my friends, Gale. They’re all painfully bored of you. Can’t you behave?

It wasn’t long at all before he excused himself with an inarticulate plea and fled down the long hallway. Most of the rooms here were empty, and he quietly eased open the first door he happened upon: the expansive spare room destined one day to house rows and shelves and cases of books, along with Gale’s beloved reading chair, his desk, and his assortment of rugs. It did not surprise him that in seeking refuge he’d gravitated to this room, empty for now but redolent already of paper and ink and the soothing rasp of a turned page.

The cacophony of music and laughter vibrating and thrumming at his back was pervasive enough that he did not hear the subtler susurrations of isolated voices filtering from the soon-to-be library. It was only after he’d stepped into the room that he identified the individual tones of Auntie Ethel and Professor Jergal. In his state of near mania, he experienced half a moment of deranged certainty that Tara and Hiss Majesty had escaped their separate enclosures and were merrily chatting with one another in the center of the room.

But no—it was his housekeeper and Astarion’s neighbor, sitting together on the floor with a wide rubber mat unfurled between them, colorful plastic buttons scattered across the tile, wires and speakers and paper notecards strewn in a half-circle around the pair of them.

Professor Jergal was bent over a stack of notecards, rifling through them with one liver-spotted hand. “Not this one,” he proclaimed sonorously, folding in half the card in question before tucking it away out of sight. “Nor this one.”

“Why, I never!” Ethel protested, snatching back the discarded prompts and smoothing them flat against the floor. “Fat lot of good you are, love.”

“If the young sir is intended to utilize this new arrangement of speaking buttons,” Professor Jergal insisted, “there needs must contain within them an assortment which cater thusly to his own preferences.”

Ethel let out a guttural sort of chuckle, the likes of which Gale had never heard her utter before. “If you wanted to record some of the buttons yourself, petal,” she said slyly, “you might have just said so.”

Gale crept soundlessly from the room and eased the door shut behind him. The sounds of the party grew around him once more, thickening the air until his lungs felt full of steam. He reluctantly returned to the living room, her voice scraping along the inside of his skull. He could almost feel her at his shoulder, manicured nails digging into the flesh beneath his collarbone.

Ran off and hid for a bit, did you? I’ll save the lecture, Gale—no one even realized you’d gone.

Gale planted himself against the living room wall, desperate for a spot of wine but reluctant to brave the kitchen, which was presently milling with a rowdy group of Astarion’s colleagues from work.

Streams of people stopped by; most he recognized (a very few he’d even invited) but eventually the faces began to blur. He found himself talking far too much, on subjects of exquisite—and exclusive—interest to himself, never quite able to fall into the quaint rhythms of small talk or jovial banter.

Even with those whom he considered close friends.

Boring. You’re boring. Shut up!

“I’m just sayin’!” Karlach leaned over him to shout directly into his ear, increasing the already substantial volume of her voice to be heard over the throbbing bass and cacophony of sound vibrating from multiple speakers placed strategically around the room. “How can you be a professor if you don’t, like… teach?”

Karlach was gripping a nearly empty pint glass in one hand, her long tail lashing and snapping with the beat of the music. The jagged edges of her broken horn—shorn off in some childhood accident she never spoke off—glinted in the revolving, glittery lights of the tasteless, multi-faceted mirrored ball spinning from the ceiling.

Gale squirmed, smelling the sour beer on her breath, feeling a bit caged by her burly arms and domineering presence. “I’ve endured my share of time in classrooms,” he shouted back. “I find the ineptitude of today’s youth quite irksome, and am extraordinarily pleased to have reached a point in my career when I might step more firmly into the realm of research and—”

“There’s my girl!”

Gale sagged in relief at the sound of Jenevelle’s voice. The half-elf veterinarian swept into view like the portent of a miracle, bearing a sizable glass of her own brimming with her preferred dry red wine.

Karlach let loose a giddy giggle that wholly belied the enormity of her muscular tiefling form, and swiveled away from Gale. “My wife!” she squealed, like she hadn’t seen Jen in a decade, like they’d been married a tenday and not eight years.

“Oof,” Jen grunted, bearing with aplomb the weight of her exuberant wife as Karlach’s arms lifted and squeezed. “Let’s just get you some air, yes?” She cast an apologetic glance back toward Gale as she steered Karlach toward the back patio, her long platinum hair swaying with every staggered step.

Gale hadn’t even a moment’s respite before the space previously occupied by Karlach was subverted by a dour drow woman on the cusp of middle age, dressed in a sleekly formidable business suit and wearing an expression to match.

Gale swallowed thickly.

Minthara Baenre was not only Astarion’s employer, she’d also single-handedly assembled the legal team that had taken down Cazador Szarr. She was terrifying, and Gale felt incredibly indebted to her, and she was terrifying, and she didn’t seem overly fond of Gale, and she was utterly terrifying.

He cleared his throat when Minthara refused to speak, and shuffled his feet at her tireless stare. “Ms. Baenre,” he said politely. “How wonderful to see you. It was most kind of you to take time away from your busy schedule in order to—”

She interrupted with a low laugh utterly devoid of mirth. Her uncanny maroon eyes were unblinking as she studied Gale’s face.

“I did not bring a gift,” she said in that abrupt, stilted manner of hers.

“Ah,” Gale said. He barely resisted the urge to cast his eyes about the room in search of Astarion. “That’s no trouble at all. Gifts were entirely unnecessary.”

Her eyes glinted. “So you say. And yet I observed many of your other guests arrive bearing one regardless.”

Gale held up his hands in an attempt at placation. “I’m afraid a few of our friends could not be dissuaded from doing so, but let me assure you, your presence here is gift enough.”

There. That was tactful and succinct and an entirely appropriate thing to say to Astarion’s boss.

Minthara smirked. Her lips thinned. “Do you have any elder siblings, professor?”

Gale got the distinct impression she was about to say something awful. The music was loud, but she did not seem to have to raise her voice in the slightest to be heard.

“I—ah… why, why do you ask?” he stalled.

Now his eyes did dart about, catching sight of Astarion across the room, where he appeared to have struck up a lively conversation with Gale’s personal trainer, Lae’zel. Ever attuned to one another, Astarion’s gaze lifted the moment he felt the weight of Gale’s attention, and nodded in grim acknowledgment of his predicament.

“You’ve an aura of neglect I see most typically in middle children,” Minthara said. “You seem to lack the drive to excel that eldest or only children such as myself display. Nor do you convey the spoilt sort of entitlement typical of youngest children. I may therefore conclude you are some sort of middling child. Or adopted, perhaps. Are you adopted?”

“Minthara!”

Astarion swept into view bearing a glass of pink wine in each hand. He pressed one into Gale’s trembling hand with a knowing look, and presented the other to Minthara.

“You made it after all!” Astarion said happily. “I wasn’t sure you’d be able. You really must let Gale and I treat you to dinner soon. It’s the very least we can do, after all you’ve done for me.”

Gale cleared his throat, certain this was an instance where he was meant to add to the conversation. “Yes we’re, ah… we’d love to treat you. We’re certainly—Astarion, that is… Astarion’s quite lucky you stepped in as you did. With that whole, ah, unpleasant business.”

Minthara’s smile was cold as the edge of a blade. “Astarion does not need luck to survive. Not when he has me.” She sipped at her wine before adding, “And besides, it’s not as though I needed an excuse to take down that ghastly bastard, Szarr. If only I’d known your predicament sooner, I’d have buried him from the start. Although that does remind me, Astarion—you’ve yet to see Humanoid Resources regarding the correction of your date of birth. Alfira simply will not stop pestering me about it.”

Astarion nodded contritely, threading his arm through Minthara’s to steer her away. “I’ll do it straight away when I’m back in office, hmm?”

Gale downed the pink wine in a few long pulls—hardly marking the flavor, noting only that it was vaguely sweet and more carbonated than he might typically prefer—sinking into the instant warmth that spread through his belly, grateful for the way his senses dimmed and his mind quieted.

Drinking again, Gale? How much have you had? Are you developing a habit? I’m just concerned—I can’t be concerned?

“Do shut up,” Gale said aloud, through grit teeth.

“Who me? I wouldn’t dare.”

Gale hadn’t even marked Astarion’s swift return, preoccupied as he was with watching the dregs of his wine accumulating at the bottom of his glass one bubbling bead at a time. Astarion’s eyebrows arched at the sight of his empty glass, and Gale braced himself for a reprimand.

“Well, all right,” Astarion said mildly. “Can I get you another, darling?”

Gale quickly shook his head, leaning harder against the wall to conceal how the movement had made the room spin around him. He realized then that he’d had nothing to eat nearly all day. Perhaps he ought to remedy that.

“No?” Astarion asked, frowning now. “It’s no trouble. We’ve agreed on staying the night, yes? No need to worry about driving.”

Gale didn’t have a chance to answer before they were assailed once more, this time by a frizzy-haired woman with a chubby infant on her hip.

“Sorry, Mr. Ancunín,” she said in a whiny sort of voice that sounded like she was on the verge of emotional distress. “Can you show me to the toilet? Little Connor needs his nappy changed.”

Astarion turned slowly, his shoulders stiff. “Mayrina,” he said. “Is this your… child? Why have you brought it here?”

Mayrina—the receptionist at Astarion’s law firm, Gale recalled—pouted abominably, her lower lip quivering. “You said I could bring Connor.”

Astarion sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose with his elegantly tapered fingers. “I thought Connor was your husband’s name.”

She brightened considerably. “Oh! It is.” She gently jostled the baby in her arms, reaching up with one hand to pat at his predominately bald head. “This is Connor also.”

“I’ll have to check the group text again, dear, but I’m quite certain no invitation was extended to any Connor also.”

Gale pushed off the wall, and made some attempt at looking friendly. “Come along with me, then. I’ll point the way.”

“You had better double-bag that nappy!” Astarion shouted after them. “And take it home with you!”

Gale laughed, mostly to put poor Mayrina at ease. She looked as though she might burst into tears any moment. “He doesn’t mean that. You can just put it in the bin.” He gestured vaguely down the long hallway, almost amused now by how violently the floor and walls were dipping and swaying. “The toilet’s just there. Second door.”

She tottered off.

Gale had just finished congratulated himself on the completion of his most successful encounter of the evening when he noticed, with a sluggish sort of alarm, that he’d failed to specify left or right. He watched, dumbfounded, as Mayrina turned the handle of the second door on the right side of the hallway.

She pushed open the door, and Tara darted out.

“Wait!” Gale shouted. Far, far too late. He stumbled to intersect Tara’s path as she swerved between legs and leapt over laps, her citrine eyes honed on the stairs. “Tara! Pretty girl, come on girl! Come here!”

Her whiskers twitched and her ears swiveled toward him and Gale knew—he knew—she’d heard him, and was choosing to ignore him.

She’d never disobeyed him like this before, never with such brash willfulness, and he was filled with a cold terror that radiated from the base of his skull down the length of his spine.

She was determined.

Images again danced through his mind of bloodied feathers and half-masticated birds’ feet and severed heads, and in his frenzied state his imagination inserted Hiss Majesty in place of the pigeons.

Astarion hurdled over the couch and shouldered through murmuring guests, staggering toward the stairs, his grey eyes rounded with fright.

“Oh gods, no—Tara!” Gale heard Astarion gasping brokenly, and realized then that the elf was still worried about the wrong cat.

Tara barreled across the living room, deftly evading every attempt at snatching her up—even from the guests who’d seemed to glean the direness of the situation. Lae’zel nearly got her boxed in between a wall and the refreshment table the caterers had set up, muttering in her fricative-heavy native tongue as Tara wriggled free from even her adroit grasp.

Gale recognized some of those words. Lae’zel often spat them when he started flagging on the rowing machine.

Tara vanished up the stairs, her fathers close on her thrashing tail, but not nearly close enough.

By the time Gale and Astarion had rounded into the attic loft, panting heavily and clutching at one another for balance, the tip of Tara’s fluffy tale was disappearing into the bottom level of the Last Light Inn cathouse.

There was a fraught moment of thick silence—

—then a piercing, warbling yowl punctured through with strident hissing and low, menacing growls. There came a series of clatters and staccato thunks of small bodies tumbling about; the inn rattled and clunked against the wall. Then Hiss Majesty—still bedecked in his smart houndstooth suit—leapt from one of the upper windows, defenestrating himself in his desperation to escape the pigeon-slaying fiend.

Tara was after him in a flash, pinning him with her significant bulk and embedding her teeth firmly into the scruff of Hiss Majesty’s bare neck as though he were some wayward kitten. He tried to wriggle free and she shook her head fiercely.

Gale had seen her do that before, to break birds’ necks and put a swift end to their squawking and flapping about.

“Tara, love,” he said, attempting to sound calm although the words shook out of him. “Let him up, sweetie.”

Tara’s glare was baleful and full of exasperation. Hiss Majesty hissed, and she walloped him soundly about the ears—claws thankfully retracted—until he reluctantly stilled beneath her. His eyes were wide, pupils blown, his mouth working though no sound emerged.

Hiss Majesty turned his head and tried to bite at Tara’s legs as she held him down. She smacked him on the nose, then held a paw over his face, just hovering, as though daring him to try that again.

“Everything all right up there?” Jenevelle called up from the bottom of the stairwell. “Need a hand?”

It wasn’t a terrible idea. Jen had cared for the cats separately since they had been adopted, and her gentle hands and warm manner were the only reasons Tara didn’t fuss about check-ups and vaccinations.

By all accounts, Hiss Majesty was a right terror about seeing the vet, but Gale supposed that was to be expected, given his temperament.

“No thank you, we’re all right!” Astarion shouted down, almost sounding as though he believed it.

“I’m so sorry, Mr. Ancunín,” Mayrina wailed. “I didn’t know!”

“Hush, girl,” came Minthara’s stern directive. “See to your squalling babe.”

Gale kept his attention fixed solely on the felines. He dared inch a step close. “Tara…” he said in a low, soothing tone. “Please, love…”

Hiss Majesty made another attempt at breaking free. Tara rolled him onto his back, sat on his belly, and put her fangs at his throat.

Astarion whimpered, only now coming to understand the very real danger his son was in. “Tara,” he choked out. “That’s your brother. Gale—tell her to stop.”

Gale cleared his throat. “Ah, yes. Well, Tara. You heard your papa. Um… stop it?”

Tara and Hiss Majesty glared at one another for several long seconds, unblinking. Then, Hiss Majesty relaxed onto the floor, half-shuttering his eyes and lowering his paws. A sure surrender.

Gale was dumbstruck. He watched, speechless, as Tara slowly unpinned Hiss Majesty and stood primly beside him as he struggled to roll back round and find his feet again. Once he’d stood, his whip-like tail curled contritely around his paws, she reached out and tapped at his neck, smoothing down his collar.

“Gale,” Astarion whispered.

“Astarion,” Gale whispered back.

Tara nudged Hiss Majesty’s forehead with her own and made a small chirping sound.

Hiss Majesty slunk toward the stairs and began a slow decent, Tara close at his side with her fluffy tail draped over his back like a comradely arm. When Hiss Majesty paused after a few steps and nervously looked at her, she encouraged him with a few licks to the face and a flick of her tail. When the overwhelm was too much a few steps later and he hunkered low with a long hiss, tensing to streak back upstairs, she bit down on his nape to illustrate how little option he had in continuing.

Gale and Astarion held on to one another in silence, aware of the fragility of the moment.

The music downstairs had been turned down, the confetti-like scattering of lights from the mirrored ball disabled.

Tara led Hiss Majesty to the landing and paused with him at the edge, surveying the guests gathered beneath them. Royalty, making an inspection of their subjects.

“Oh. My. Gods.” Karlach exclaimed in the least subdued whisper Gale thought he’d ever heard. “He’s wearing a suit. A fucking suit—Jen, you seeing this?”

“With my very own eyes,” Jenevelle answered drolly. “You should have seen how he was dressed for his rabies shot. Like he was attending a gala.”

Karlach edged closer and extended a hand toward Hiss Majesty.

His ears flattened and his eyes narrowed as he hissed at her. Tara nipped at his ear with short growl of warning, then turned and laid the pads of her paw against Karlach’s hand to arrest the tiefling’s movement.

Astarion cleared his throat, then, and moved to stand over the cats. “Hiss Majesty doesn’t like being touched,” he explained. “Tara,” he added sternly, “you can’t make him. He’s being so brave already.”

Tara tilted her head back to regard him, eyes slivered in consideration. Then, with a low purr, she flopped onto her side and showed her belly.

Gale didn’t know if Astarion fully grasped what Tara had just done. In a matter of moments, she had entirely shifted Hiss Majesty’s understanding of the hierarchy. Tara was the boss of Hiss Majesty. And Astarion was the boss of her.

Gale wondered, absurdly, whom Tara viewed as the boss of Astarion, and felt a little silly with how fervently he hoped it was… him.

Ridiculous. That wasn’t even how Gale felt about their relationship. He felt wholly owned by Astarion, rather like a pet himself, at times, and that was how he liked it. How he wanted it to stay.

“Gods, I can’t even stand it,” Karlach groaned. “They’re so cute. They’re so cute. I’m gonna explode.”

Jenevelle sighed. “See, this is why you’re not allowed to come visit me at work.”

Slowly, the party resumed. Hiss Majesty remained on the landing for the duration, observing the goings-on with wide, wary eyes, while Tara fluttered amongst the guests, dispersing affection and receiving adoration as she saw fit.

Astarion brought Gale another drink—a semi-dry port, this time—and observed him carefully as he swallowed it down. Too fast again. Gale thought about mentioning how hungry he was, how sour the drinks sat in his belly, how deeply and quickly the alcohol was affecting him, but held silent in the end.

He was enjoying himself, now. Finally. Even danced a little with Karlach and Jenevelle, each of them bumping and swaying on either of his sides, as flushed in their faces as he was in his—though it was hard to tell with Karlach’s ruddy complexion.

At some point, Lae’zel handed him a thin flute of some amber-colored liquid, hissing at him when he knocked it back in two swallows.

“Bah, such a delicacy is meant to be savored,” she snapped. “Sipped and appreciated.”

Gale apologized, grinning. He felt Astarion at his side—recognized his smell and the charge in the air that always seemed to spark whenever he drew near—and leaned against him on instinct.

“I was watching you dance,” Astarion said, directly into his ear in a low voice more akin to moaning than speech.

Like one of those fumbling newly born giraffes, he heard Mystra whisper in his mind.

“Like a fumbling newly born giraffe,” Gale repeated aloud, and wondered if the pressure in his chest was an urge to giggle or cry.

“Not at all, darling,” Astarion murmured. “It’s been wonderful, seeing you so relaxed tonight. I feel I can relax, too, now that I know the babies aren’t going to murder each other. In fact, I think I’d quite like to hide away with you in one of these empty rooms and show you how hard you made me, gyrating about like a vixen.”

Gale felt a burning sensation at the tips of his ears, and stumbled after Astarion as he was dragged by the wrist into the long hallway.

“Let’s give the library a proper breaking in,” Astarion whispered conspiratorially. “It has a lock on the door.”

A faint zing of alarm crackled across Gale’s brain pan, and he scowled, struggling to put words to the images that poured into his mind at the mention of the library. Something about plastic buttons and scattered notecards and—

Astarion opened the door.

“I find you deeply annoying in a manner that intrigues me sexually,” Gale heard Auntie Ethel declare.

Astarion froze half through the doorway, his expression ghastly.

“Where matters of the flesh are concerned,” Gale heard Professor Withers—Withers? That’s not right, is it?—intone in response, “I believe you will find me far from lacking.”

Astarion’s eyes were wide and panicked. “I feel we’re intruding,” he gasped out. “We should leave. Quickly.”

Gale’s vision spun as he was pulled instead into Astarion’s future home office—the small room so recently occupied by Tara and now blessedly empty. And quiet.

“Let me blow you, right now,” Astarion said, “or I’m taking a melon roller to my eyeballs.”

“Oh,” Gale answered, inwardly a bit surprised Astarion knew what a melon roller was. “Bit dramatic, that. Yes?”

“You’ve not seen what I just have!” Astarion insisted. “If I don’t have your cock down my throat in thirty seconds or less I will pass away.”

Gale clicked his tongue, tasting bile. “Can’t have that. By all means, go ahead.”

***

The next thing Gale was truly aware of was the sound of trickling water, and a trail of viscous heat down the center of his chest. A sense of weightlessness, of being tethered by an enveloping warmth.

“You there, darling? Back with me? What a fright you gave me, naughty thing.”

Astarion’s voice was low in his ear, the cadence of it slightly off. It was how he spoke when he was pretending everything was all right. When he was trying to deny having woken from a nightmare even though he was plastered in sweat and shivering, throat raw from screaming. When he wanted to act like he was simply too busy for breakfast on the days his stomach couldn’t handle food.

Gale hated when he used that voice.

“What’s wrong?” he demanded.

He tried to sit, heard and felt the sloshing of water, and realized only then that he was in a bath.

In their bath. In their home. The master bath was large, but still crowded with the both of them huddled within its sloped sides. Astarion was leaned against the back of the tub, opposite the taps, and Gale was drawn up against him, his back to Astarion’s chest, his hips cradled between Astarion’s spread thighs. The water was steaming but clear, unscented by any soaps or oils. Astarion was scooping up handfuls of it with cupped hands and trickling it over Gale. His chest and ribs. His neck and arms.

“What’s wrong?” Gale asked again, his tone more subdued now, as confusion took hold.

They’d been in the office, hadn’t they? Astarion bobbing on his cock, swallowing around him, tears streaming down his cheeks. Gale remembered gripping up fistfuls of those rich snowy curls, of bowing over Astarion as he knelt before him, the sounds they were making echoing off the unadorned walls—

“I was very much hoping you’d be able to shed some light on that for me,” Astarion said, after a long pause. “I’ve the same question, you see.”

“Um,” Gale said. “The party…?”

He couldn’t hear anything beyond the en suite’s closed door. The house seemed quiet.

Astarion sighed. With one hand he brought more water up over Gale’s chest, letting it trickle out slowly between his fingers. The other he stroked through Gale’s dampened hair.

“Everyone’s gone home. I sent them away after you collapsed.”

“After I… what?”

“I didn’t raise a fuss, I knew you wouldn’t want that. I told everyone you weren’t feeling well, that the cats were overstimulated… you know. Blah, blah, etcetera. No one seemed to notice the vomit all over me, but I think the smell got to a few of them. They left pretty quickly, all things considered. I messaged the caterers to reschedule the clean-up for tomorrow. I handled it.”

He was still using that voice. The false light-heartedness that made his voice higher, turned his forced laughter shrill.

“You vomited?” Gale ventured meekly. “Are you—”

“You vomited,” Astarion interjected. “On me. You finished on my face—which is fine, you know I don’t mind that—but then you made this awful, twisted up expression and you shuddered horribly and you threw up all over me and it was pure alcohol, Gale. Not a scrap of food in all that mess. When’s the last time you ate?”

“I’m sorry,” Gale said.

“I asked you a question.”

Astarion never once paused the soothing motions of his hands, and that somehow felt worse, hearing the hurt creeping slowly into his tone while still receiving such steady, sure comfort.

“I think, ah, breakfast,” Gale answered at last.

“The one we ate at the very crack of dawn?” Astarion said, incredulous. “The one neither of us finished?”

“I seem to recall you finishing,” Gale said.

Astarion sounded for a moment like he was choking. “Don’t do that. Don’t make jokes right now. You collapsed, Gale. You ate nothing, all day, and took every drink everyone brought you, and you never… you didn’t… How am I supposed to feel? You let me bring you drinks. You made me an accomplice in whatever self-destructive impulse has had you in such a grip all day.”

Well. When worded like that, it was—

“That was awful of me,” Gale said at once, his empty, shriveled stomach in knots. “It’s not what I intended, not consciously, but you’re right.”

He tried to move away, to sit up and turn and gauge how deeply ran Astarion’s anger.

“Oh, hush,” Astarion said. His caressing strokes paused only so that he might fasten both arms around Gale’s shoulders, holding him firmly in place. “I’m not angry, I don’t mean to lecture. In fact I… I rather suspect this is all my fault. It is, isn’t it.”

Again Gale struggled to sit, and was again thwarted. “Your fault?” he said in exasperation. “How in the hells do you figure that?”

Astarion hummed. “I’m not stupid. I know when this started. You’ve been so strange all day. Distracted. Keeping me distracted. I asked you to fuck me and you’ve been going to pieces ever since. You could’ve just said ‘no’, darling.”

Astarion—seemingly convinced enough that Gale wouldn’t bolt the instant he was released—unfastened his arms from Gale’s shoulders. His hands gentled; he ran his fingers through Gale’s chest hair and across his collarbones, traced over his rib cage.

Gale knew Astarion was waiting for him to say something. To explain.

“It just… seemed important to you,” Gale whispered. “You kept bringing it up, so earnestly. So excited by the idea. How am I meant to just, just refuse you like that?”

“Because you could have trusted it wasn’t anything I found more important than you.” Astarion heaved a sigh. “I’m going to tell you something, Gale. And I’m not telling you to make you feel guilty, or manipulate you into doing what I want. I’m telling you so you can understand why I asked in the first place.”

Gale huffed and wriggled. “Let me up,” he said. “I want—I’d like to be able to see your face.”

“So you can see if I’m angry?”

Gale stilled, hesitant. “Maybe I just like your face.”

Astarion snorted. “And who could blame you?”

But Astarion’s arms loosened, and Gale pulled himself to the other side of the tub before slowly turning.

Astarion’s curls were flattened back across his head, leaving his long elven ears on full display. The heat from the bath had put a flush in his cheeks, chest, and shoulders. His grey eyes were bright and watchful, but there was nary a hint of irritation swimming within them. Only concern. Only love.

Gale sagged against the side of the tub, dizzy with relief.

Dizzy with hunger. Dizzy with hangover.

But mostly relief.

“Better?” Astarion asked softly, and Gale nodded. “All right, then. Can I tell you now, what I want to say?” Gale nodded again, and Astarion let out an explosive breath, his cheeks puffing. “Gods,” he muttered. “I rehearsed this so many times with Dr. Ravengard, but it’s still… not easy.”

“Take your time,” Gale offered in feeble, though heartfelt support.

“I have taken my time,” Astarion said, sounding frustrated with himself. “I’ve been working up to this for months, if you can believe it. No—sod it, I’m just going to say it, all right? I’m just going to… I want to bottom for you because, because I never had a choice before.”

His eyes screwed shut, his face wrinkling with an internal pain Gale had come to recognize as distinctly Cazador related.

“You know there was only one ‘before’… before you,” Astarion went on determinedly. “I always bottomed for Cazador. He wouldn’t have me any other way. And even when he passed me about to his friends, they weren’t—”

Gale jolted, the bath water sloshing over the edge of the tub and splashing across the tiled floor. “He what?!”

Astarion sighed again. “There’s a reason you weren’t allowed at the trial, darling. And don’t worry, I’m talking it all over with the good doctor Wyll. And truthfully, I… I don’t remember much of Cazador’s parties. He always drugged me first. There were videos, though. What a fun day at court that was. In any case, as I was saying: even when he passed me about, no one else was allowed to fuck me outright. They had to use my mouth.”

Gale knew he had nothing left in his stomach to expel; he felt the hollowed-out emptiness within himself, felt it spreading.

“My point is,” Astarion pressed on, “I’ve only ever had Cazador inside me, and I… for a long time I thought, with you, that I’d just top forever and be fine. I didn’t think I’d ever want to bottom again. But more and more I…” He broke off, swallowing hard, and looked away. Like this was the difficult part for him to discuss. “I want to purge Cazador, yes,” he admitted. “I want to erase the sensation of him. And I realize that sounds like I’m trying to use you. But it’s really not about that, I swear to you. I just… I just wanted you inside me. That’s all. That’s really all. And it’s fine if you don’t want to, if it makes you uncomfortable or… or anything. But I’ve just been incredibly vulnerable with you, darling, so if you’ve a reason for not wanting to, outside of just… preference… I’d really like you to talk to me about it. A little reciprocation, if you please.”

When Astarion fell silent, the bathroom rang with the absence of sound. Gale thought he might be crying, but he was silent about it, holding tightly to the shuddering sobs he felt trying to shake him apart at the seams.

“I don’t know how to talk about it,” Gale said at last. When he could trust himself to speak. “I haven’t been practicing.”

“Try,” Astarion said softly, pleading. “Please, darling, try for me?”

“I think I might need you to, ah, to hold me again. For this.”

Astarion held his arms out without another word, and Gale settled himself within them. He pressed the side of his face to the center of Astarion’s damp, hairless chest, closing his eyes to the sound of the elf’s racing heart. Astarion’s embrace was tight, and didn’t slacken even when Gale took several minutes before speaking again.

“I was with Mystra for twelve years,” Gale said finally. Her name scoured through his brain like an acid wash, scalding his tongue when he spat it out. “Even I, with all my education and vast repertoire of endless words… I can’t find any way of distilling my experiences with her into palatable conversation.”

Astarion kept silent. He cradled Gale’s head with one bent arm, trailing the fingertips of his other hand down Gale’s back, leaving gooseflesh in his wake.

After a while, Gale tried again. “I never slept with her,” he blurted out, and felt Astarion stiffen, momentarily freeze, before resuming his careful, tender caresses. “Not in the traditional sense,” Gale amended. “I wasn’t… permitted. We, ah, we coupled in other ways. Each one like a ritual in the art of humiliation. She had me convinced, you understand, that I was… aberrant. Wrong. In just about every way a person can be. She said I was too big, that I’d hurt her if I ever… hah, that sounds ridiculous, doesn’t it? Anyway, I was convinced I was just… this disgusting sort of creature that only she had the strength of will to withstand. Utterly convinced, you understand. It was my truth. The only thing of which I was wholly certain.”

Astarion made a choked sort of sound that vibrated against Gale’s cheek, and Gale shifted his arms through the water to encircle Astarion’s waist. Clinging to him.

“I’ll hasten to point out how differently I feel now,” Gale said. “The benefit of hindsight, and all that. I understand now how isolated she kept me. My circle got smaller and smaller and I was… just alone. Alone in my little tower. You may have noticed how few of the guests tonight were here on my invitation.”

“Lae’zel is… so charming,” Astarion said faintly.

“I’ve not spoken with my mother in seven years,” Gale murmured, pushing the words through the sudden swell of pressure in his throat. “I’m not certain I ever will again. The things Mystra said to her, the things I allowed her to say… it was unforgivable. Oh, I’ve reached out since,” he added quickly, catching the way Astarion’s chest seized. “I, ah, text her from time to time. I told her when I left Mystra. I’ve sent her pictures of Tara. I told her… told her about you. But she’s never once responded. Maybe she’s changed her number. Could be I’ve been texting a stranger all this time, or no one at all. I did ask her to forgive me, but I… I’ve no expectation of mending that particular rift.”

There was silence again, for a long while. The subtle sloshing of water. The wet slide of skin on skin as Gale and Astarion adjusted their positions in order to hold one another more tightly.

“I truly don’t feel that way anymore,” Gale said. “The way she made me feel about myself. You’ve scattered away every broken fragment of the tattered web she left in my mind. The way you love me, Astarion, it’s… it leaves no room for doubt. But I… her voice has been in my head all day. Saying things. The sorts of things she used to say, and I… I wasn’t able to shake her. I’m sorry.”

“No,” Astarion said sharply. “Not that. Don’t apologize. What in the hells for? You’ve done nothing wrong.”

“Even so, I—”

“Gale.”

“Ah, yes?”

“What was it that gave you the strength to leave her?”

Gale stiffened. His vision went red and fuzzy at the edges, and he closed his eyes. “She hurt Tara. I know it’s difficult to tell with all her fur, but Tara’s tail is… well it’s shorter now than it used to be.”

“Oh…” Astarion said in a small voice.

“Jenevelle fixed her right up,” Gale said. “She’s healed beautifully. It doesn’t bother her.”

“But it bothers you.”

“A bit… yes.”

“And it bothers me. Gale, it bothers me. All of it does, everything you’ve just told me, but… but Tara? Mystra had best pray I never meet her.”

The breadth of Astarion’s outrage made it somehow easier for Gale to acknowledge his own. To shoulder it more firmly without fear of it breaking him.

When Gale started shivering—the warmth of the water having long past dissipated—Astarion drained the tub and helped him stand. They hadn’t brought any towels, so Astarion dried them both off with Gale’s trousers, which was apparently the only stitch of clothing that had survived The Great Deluge.

“Auntie said she’ll bring us some clothes in the morning,” Astarion said. “Fuck—I can’t look at her the same, now I know where those hands have been. And her mouth.” He gagged, shuddering violently. “Though I suppose it might be a nice change of pace, having nightmares that aren’t Cazador related for once. You’ll hold me, won’t you? All night?”

Gale nodded solemnly. “I will,” he vowed. “And from the look of things here, I’ll even have to do so while we’re both naked.”

***

Hiss Majesty was spending less time in the inn these days, opting instead to slink about the house in hopes of catching Tara unawares. Sometimes Tara actually feigned surprise when he leapt out at her, often allowing him the first strike before bullying him soundly into a corner and whacking him into submission.

Jenevelle, when informed of this strange behavior, laughed it off as nothing to be concerned with. “She’s teaching him to hunt,” she assured them fondly. “Seems she’s open to a wingman in her war against the pigeons.”

Gale got a bit paranoid about open windows, after that.

Although Gale would not quite venture so far as deeming the sphynx cat affectionate, Hiss Majesty had certainly come a long way from the hissing, reclusive little beast he’d once been. Astarion’s graceful hands almost never had bites or scratches on them anymore.

Following now the muted murmur of distant voices, Gale soundlessly drew the library door closed behind him and made his way down the hallway with as much stealth as he could manage. He paused in the archway to the living room, and leaned against the wall with crossed arms, grinning at the scene before him.

Astarion was sitting cross-legged in front of the cats’ talking mat, Hiss Majesty at his side in jersey knit pinstripe pajamas, undergoing what had become nightly negotiations with Tara.

“You know you can’t sleep with your wings on,” Astarion said cajolingly.

Tara wriggled her shoulders, jostling her buckled harness and making the fully articulated feathered wings—which Astarion had painstakingly hand-painted to match her multicolored fur and sown to the back of her harness—flutter and flap. She stomped firmly atop a series of buttons that were becoming rapidly well-worn.

“I’ll do whatever I please.” Followed swiftly by, “Your concern is appreciated, but unnecessary.”

Astarion cast his eyes toward the ceiling in a long-suffering manner. “You’ll break them, Tara. Or suffocate.”

“No. Shan’t.”

“You can wear them again tomorrow.”

“No. Now is preferable.”

“What sort of example are you setting for your brother, hmm? You’re being quite a naughty girl.”

Hiss Majesty, clearly bored, reached out and swiped a paw across one of the pastel green buttons. “Let us conclude this weary repartee.”

Tara kneaded fretfully at the lifted lip of the rubber mat, surveying the array of buttons and looking very much as though she still meant to argue. After a moment, however, she settled herself onto her hind legs, causing the faux wings to fold in and lay flat against her back. She tapped reluctantly at two buttons in quick succession.

“Oh, very well. Needs must, I suppose.”

She stood very still and allowed Astarion to unlatch the padded harness’s buckles and slip the wings off her back. He smoothed them out with great care, under her watchful eye, then reached out to comb through her rumpled fur with his long, tapered fingers. 

Hiss Majesty observed in silence, still befuddled at times, it seemed, by his sister’s open displays of affection and demonstrations of trust.

“Uppies?” Astarion ventured, and Tara crawled obligingly into his lap. He cooed at her, petting down the center of her spine, scratching at the base of her tail before cautiously, tenderly stroking along the length of her tail.

Gale felt his throat tighten at the sight of Astarion’s hand trembling every time he encountered the blunted, stunted tip of Tara’s tail, and it took him a moment to understand what it was the elf kept repeating to himself in low, urgent murmurs.

“Papa will never hurt you,” Astarion whispered, pressing his forehead to Tara’s. “Papa will never, never hurt you, and I promise you can have your wings back tomorrow, little darling.”

Tara gently pressed a paw to Astarion’s mouth, politely letting him know when she was finished with kisses and cuddles, and Astarion released her at once. She dipped low to head-butt Hiss Majesty, prompting him to stand.  Together, both cats circled back to the talking mat.

“Rest well, boys,” Tara pressed.

“Vermin, away!” offered up Hiss Majesty.

Astarion snorted. “Tell that crypt walker he’s done that one already. Senile old—”

“Vermin, away!”

“All right, all right.”

Astarion climbed to his feet, leaving the cats to settle in to sleep on the couch or up in the inn or wherever they wished. When he turned and spotted Gale watching him from the archway, his look of mild surprise bled away almost immediately to a soft adoration that Gale felt diffuse throughout his belly and chest and fill his mind with light.

Gale held a hand toward him, palm up, and Astarion took it with an arch smile.

“Everything all right, Professor Dekarios?”

In answer, Gale pulled the elf closer, pressing their hips flush. He kept silent, running feather-light fingertips across the sharp curve of Astarion’s cheekbones, taking a moment to register the hitch in Astarion’s breath, the rapid dilation of his pupils, before bending his head and capturing those petal-velvet lips with his own.

Astarion sought to deepen the kiss at once, his lips parting with a wet gasp, but Gale kept it soft. Kept it slow. He worked his hands beneath Astarion’s t-shirt, gripping briefly at the protrusion of his hipbones before reaching round to trace his fingertips up the length of Astarion’s spine.

“Gale…” Astarion whispered.

Gale answered with a shift in position, lowering his center of gravity. His arms tightened around Astarion’s back and waist as he lifted the elf into his arms. He was simultaneously pleased by the amount of weight Astarion had gained back over the last few tendays, and thrilled by the ease with which he carried his lover to the stairs. Those brutal sessions with Lae’zel—not strength training but battle maneuvers, as the githyanki insisted on calling them—were certainly paying off.

Astarion’s arms shot around Gale’s neck on reflex as he was lifted off his feet, his eyes rounded with shock and delight. “Don’t drop me,” he teased.

“I’ve got you,” Gale said softly. He paused for another kiss on the landing. “I have you. Let me have you tonight.”

Astarion stiffened. He searched Gale’s expression in silence for the remaining journey up the stairs. If he was looking for doubt, or hesitation, or the merest iota of fear, Gale was confident there was none to be found.

But Astarion asked anyway. “You sure?”

“There is very little of which I have ever been more certain.”

Gale left the bedroom door open and deposited Astarion on the edge of their massive bed. Astarion reached for Gale’s waistband, licking his lips, his pupils already blown, and Gale gently took hold of his wrists and steered his hands into his own lap.

“I’d like you to undress,” Gale said, “while I fetch us what we need. Is that all right?”

Astarion nodded, swallowing in such a way that Gale knew his throat had gone dry. He tore off his t-shirt and shimmied out of his underwear, kicking both offending garments across the bedroom floor. He turned and crawled up the center of the mattress, watching Gale hawkishly as he moved about the room, fetching lube and a few towels.

“Should I prepare myself?” Astarion asked, the slightest hitch of nerves catching on the final word. “It’s been… you know it’s been a while. For me.”

“I would be incredibly disappointed to be deprived of the opportunity of doing so myself,” Gale answered, and Astarion grinned. “I intend to take my time with you. If at any point you’d like to stop, I trust you’ll let me know.”

“I will,” Astarion promised. “I’ll be honest, I swear. I want the same promise from you.”

Gale smiled, and eased onto the bed next to him. “I don’t anticipate being troubled by any second thoughts, so that’s an easy enough promise to make.”

“Gale?”

“Yes, my dear?”

“You’re really going to fuck me? Because you want to, right?”

Gale bent over Astarion, one hand on his pale, slender shoulder, pressing him into the mattress, while the other traced along the shell of his pointed ear. “I’m afraid we’re well past simple want and firmly in the territory of desperate need.”

With gentle, telegraphed movements, Gale turned Astarion onto his stomach. He gripped him around the waist and coaxed him onto his knees. He knelt behind him, generous with his touches, stroking along Astarion’s flanks and thighs, down and up his back, before taking firm handfuls of his smooth, plush ass and parting him along the seam.

For the first twenty minutes or so, Gale used only his tongue. He lost himself to the taste—the scent—of his lover’s most intimate place, scarcely registering at all the burning in his own jaw as he lapped and suckled, thrust and swirled. He paid no attention to the intensity of his own arousal, caught up entirely in every moan and whimper Astarion let out, hyper-focused on each little shake and shiver.

He felt Astarion’s rim softening, giving way to the prodding insistence of Gale’s cramping tongue, and just when Astarion’s inarticulate cries began to take the shape of panted-out words—More, Gale, I need more, I’m ready for more, please, please—he drew back slowly and pressed in with two fingers.

The saliva was slick enough for the initial thrust in and timid exploration, but Gale knew they would need the lube before he tried a third finger. He felt it in the rough pull and clutch of Astarion’s tight hole, the shivering undulations of his inner walls as they clamped around Gale’s questing digits. He curled his fingers, brushing against and rubbing over what felt like a little mound, slightly harder and more textured than the wet softness surrounding.

Astarion jolted and cried out, gripping at the duvet. The arch in his back deepened as he pushed back against Gale’s fingers. “There, yes, right there,” he babbled, rocking himself forward and back.

Despite Astarion’s eager willingness, Gale forced himself to go slow. To take his time. He found himself utterly fascinated with the way Astarion felt inside, how warm he was, how tight and wet. He couldn’t stop himself imagining his cock in place of his fingers; he was painfully hard in his trousers but resisted a growing urgency to touch himself, denying himself any pressure or friction.

He withdrew his fingers to wet them with lube, his throat clicking drily at the sight of Astarion’s dripping hole clenching around nothing. Before Astarion could even whine about being emptied, Gale pushed back in with three fingers, eliciting a sharp, shuddering gasp from the elf beneath him.

“Too much?” Gale asked.

“N-no, no, n-not,” Astarion murmured, voice muffled in the bedding. “Good… it’s good—that’s three, right? Three now?”

“Yes,” Gale confirmed, keeping his focus. He watched, entranced, as his fingers vanished and reappeared, vanished and reappeared, the muscles pulsing around them growing steadily more pliant and relaxed.

Another five minutes. Then ten. He hadn’t touched Astarion’s cock once, nor had Astarion touched himself, yet the elf was hard and dripping, his cock jumping with every thrust of Gale’s fingers, pre-come oozing in thick beads from his slit.

Something about the way Astarion was rocking his hips… the curve of his spine… those little dimples above the swell of his buttocks—Gale reached a point quite suddenly where the reality of existing outside the tight, trembling heat of Astarion became too painful to bear.

“Astarion…”

Gale scarcely recognized the wrecked, broken sound of his own hoarse voice.

“I’m ready,” Astarion answered, sensing Gale’s tension, his need. “I’m ready, just—can I look at you? Can I—”

Gale withdrew his fingers in a rush and took hold of Astarion’s hips, flipping him onto his back—not roughly, not quite, but with a sort of immediacy that betrayed his crumbling restraint.

Astarion reached for him with shaking hands, fumbling with the fabric of Gale’s shirt, his clammy fingers fighting for purchase on infuriatingly small buttons. Gale wrestled with his trousers, working open the fly and tugging them down round his hips along with his underwear.

The instant his heavy cock sprang free he was crowding Astarion with his arms, working himself between the elf’s lean thighs, insistent now in the wake of his shattered patience. He remembered about the lube, slathered himself with a liberal squeeze of the bottle, and notched himself into place.

Astarion pressed the sides of his knees into the mattress and arched against Gale, his arms sliding beneath his half-undone shirt, over his ribcage, his hands locking at the center of his spine. When Gale hesitated, Astarion’s hands migrated again, descending to the plump curve of Gale’s backside, pulling insistently, encouraging him to proceed.

“I’m all right,” Astarion said. “I want this, I want you, I’m ready for you. Please, Gale, please, please.”

Gale’s breath was ragged, his lungs burning in his chest. He reached between his body and Astarion’s, gripping himself firmly at the root of his cock, and pressed in slowly. He gasped aloud at the sensation of Astarion’s hole stretching around him, taut yet yielding, but froze after the initial breach.

Astarion’s ankles dug in at the back of his thighs, disallowing any retreat, urging only forward movement. “You won’t hurt me. You won’t, you won’t, you—hnngh…”

Gale rocked in a few more inches and Astarion’s chest spasmed, his words breaking apart into fragments of sound. Gale leaned back and stared at where they were joined, his teeth chattering with a rush of emotion he couldn’t rightly name.

“I know there’s more,” Astarion whimpered. “I can take m-more, more…”

Gale rolled his hips, pressing deeper. He cradled Astarion between his bent arms, lips ghosting along the underside of his jaw before kissing him open-mouthed and swallowing down the next sharp cry he unleashed as Gale continued his relentless intrusion.

“Tell me if it’s too much,” he panted into Astarion’s mouth, and the elf shook his head fiercely, swollen lips leaving a damp trail through Gale’s bearded chin.

“N-not… not too—hnnng—much.” Tears beaded along Astarion’s dark lashes, welling and spilling as his face folded in a sob stifled by the back of one hand. “Not too much. It’s good… it’s good.”

Astarion’s hands flew up to fist at the blanket above his head as Gale hilted at last. He was writhing, his hips rolling, nudging Gale that slightest bit deeper. “I’m so full,” he whispered. “So full of you.”

Overcome by a tender sort of curiosity, Gale pressed a palm flat against Astarion’s lower belly. He withdrew halfway, thrust back in with cautious excitement, and felt himself moving beneath the pressure of his hand.

“Don’t wait for me, tonight,” Gale said. “I want you to come without worrying about me. I want to watch you come on my cock.”

“So close already,” Astarion mewled in answer. “You worked me… worked me over, for so long. Not fair. Won’t last. Won’t… won’t…”

Gale thrust, hard and deep, at Astarion’s every other word, the overwhelm of sensation settling as a burning throb low in his hips and at the base of his spine. Astarion was so tight… so warm, so giving. Gale didn’t—couldn’t bring himself to—fuck into Astarion with the same crazed abandon that Astarion often displayed, but nor could be maintain the gentle focus he’d shown during preparation. He was losing himself to the pulsing clutch of Astarion’s inner walls, the way slick muscle slid against and clung to his rigid length. The subtle swell and ebb of the bulge he made in Astarion’s belly. The punched-out moans and strident pleas bubbling from Astarion’s lips between the low, throaty groans.

Astarion didn’t hide himself away. Didn’t censor any of the emotion playing across his expression. He watched Gale through hooded, watering eyes, dazed and adoring. “I’m gonna come,” he whispered. “I’m gonna…”

“Come for me,” Gale moaned. “Gods, let me feel you come for me. I’ve got you. I’m here. I’m—”

Astarion tossed his head, back bowing, thighs quivering, and Gale felt every side and angle of his fat cock squeezed. Astarion reached down and locked a desperate fist around his own cock, pumping firmly twice, three times, and then he was coming, thick ropes of milky spend splattering over his chest and belly and his own shaking fist.

Gale slowed his own pace—or tried to; Astarion clung on to him, arms and legs wrapped inexorably around Gale’s shoulders and waist. Trembling still with the aftershocks of his own orgasm, Astarion locked his grey-eyed gaze on Gale’s face.

“Come inside me,” he pleaded, whining, each word a bloom of damp heat on the side of Gale’s neck. “I want to feel you dripping out of me. Then I want you to fuck me again, all over, all night. I want to sleep with you inside me, wake up to you fucking me. It’ll never be enough, you understand? I’ll never have enough of you, I can’t… I can’t… I have you and I still need you, so badly.”

Gale felt his orgasm crash over him in waves. His hips stuttered, slapping against the plush globes of Astarion’s ass. His arms fully encircled Astarion’s head and shoulders now, returning the ferocity of his frantic embrace. His balls tightened, his cock swelled, and then he was thrusting in hard, and emptying himself in dizzying bursts.

Gale gasped, whimpering. He thought he might be sobbing; his face was wet where it was pressed into Astarion’s shoulder. He didn’t pull out—Astarion seemed disinclined to let him—and felt himself slowly softening inside Astarion’s warmth.

“I love you so fucking much,” Astarion whispered. “You’re mine.”

“I’m yours,” Gale affirmed.

“And I’m yours.”

“You’re mine.”

Astarion’s embrace didn’t slacken. “I don’t want kids.”

Gale sagged into his arms, spent. “Me neither.”

“Maybe another cat, someday.”

“I’m amenable.”

“How do you feel about marriage?”

Gale choked, and tried again to extricate himself from the taut tangle of Astarion’s limbs. “I don’t, I’m afraid I—marriage?”

“I don’t need it,” Astarion said. “I would, if you wanted, but I don’t need it.”

“I… that’s certainly, ah… something to think about.”

“I want rings, though, regardless. Awful, gaudy ones.”

Gale grinned into the hollow of Astarion’s shoulder. “Any other demands you’d like to make of me this fine evening?”

Astarion inhaled deeply. “We’ll just circle on back to the first. Fuck me again.”