Chapter Text
They came to a mutual decision in the weeks leading up to Tav’s departure: they would not expect to see the other in the flesh until next year.
The rationale? They both have things to do. They would need at least a week of free time to make it even halfway worth the grueling multi-day travel, and neither of them honestly thought they would have that kind of availability. Not this year.
And so far, they’ve been right. The residency is about networking as much as it is about actually working, it seems. Tav is exhausted, always. And Gale finds that he’s being called on by his colleagues to weigh in on Institute matters more and more, as well as being sent to meetings with funders and to represent his department at conferences and professional meetings. At first, he thinks it's likely that the other faculty are using his recent sabbatical as an excuse to saddle him with extra work. Of course, he eventually learns how wrong he is, at which point he can clearly see how his own exhaustion and pining resulted in his overlooking of the obvious.
After Gale learns how wrong he is, and after the fall semester ends, he goes to his mother’s house. It is full of extended family who have not seen him in years. He does his best to say hello to everyone, but he can’t stay long. He finds Morena in the sitting room and pulls her aside. They proceed to have an incredibly overdue conversation that ends in tears and a demand that he promises to fulfill. And then he has to leave.
It is a small blessing that Gale is so busy that he can’t really register the next two days. He sends emails, writes, reads, takes and returns phone calls whenever he has service. When he falls asleep in a hotel room at the end of the first twenty-four hours, it is only possible because he remembered to pack his Xanax. He is exhausted, but wired. His brain resists shutting down. When he wakes, he doesn’t need coffee, just as wired as the night before, but he drinks some anyway.
Gale’s final flight is on a plane with only twenty seats, ten rows of seating separated by a narrow aisle. The plane is so small, so fragile seeming against the force of the cold winds, that Gale feels the risk of death must be much higher than normal despite his familiarity with the natural laws that govern such a thing.
The plane lands safely at an airport with only two floors and a handful of kind, unhurried workers. He chats with one of the morning employees as she handchecks the medication in his carryon and upon mentioning where he’s headed, her eyes light up in recognition. She sets him up with a reliable ride to an address he’s only ever mailed things to and the driver is familiar, navigating them easily to the outskirts of the campus district. Their town is known internationally for two things, after all, and this is one of them.
Gale is dropped off at a modern cottage in the middle of a private and small snowy expanse. He can see mountains in the background that he’s only viewed on his phone. He can’t see the lake behind the cottage from here, but he knows it’s there. Despite the cold air, his hands and neck are sweaty. He realizes how grimy he is at that moment, covered in airplane germs and perspiration preserved by the heat of his wool coat and scarf and hat. He takes his phone out of his pocket and opens an app he spends too much of his time staring at. She’s inside, a blue dot in an expanse of green. He just has to—
The door two feet away from him swings open. Tav is wearing a familiar fluffy robe. Her hair is a mess, half fallen out of her high bun, and he can see her pajama pants peeking out from underneath her hastily tied outer layer.
As she stares at him in disbelief, he says hello and then begins to tell her that he will kiss her as soon as he brushes his teeth again and maybe takes a shower because he is disgusting. But he does not get very far into his warning because Tav practically launches herself out of the front door to grab him by the coat and scarf to kiss him sloppily.
Logically, Gale knows that he had to step into the cottage to get to where he ends up—on the couch, beneath her as she straddles him—but he does not remember doing so. He also does not remember being divested of his outer layers, but his coat and scarf and hat are on the wooden floor next to Tav’s fluffy robe.
It feels so much like the first time they did this. He is helpless jelly underneath her as she sucks on his neck and grinds down on him and touches him underneath his sweater. But this time, Tav doesn’t laugh at him or tease him. She keeps saying that he’s here, he’s here with her, and it is reflective of how little either of them can believe this is happening. Because they agreed to not expect each other until Tav’s return. They did. Hells, Gale took the flights and feels every bit of travel in his body and that isn’t even enough to make it feel real. No, it doesn’t feel real until he is touching Tav back, until he is squeezing the softness of her hips and her thighs and smelling the familiar cream in her hair and feeling himself get incredibly worked up by the evidence of her existence, the weight of her on his legs.
These days, he is so pent up that a stiff breeze gets him going. But he has dreamed of this. Of her. As if in testament to the intensity of his anticipation, he proceeds to cum in his underwear at the graze of his fingertips over the tightened skin of her bare nipple. He looks down at his crotch, wet briefs still hidden under his trousers and Tav’s body, and feels a small seed of frustration begin to germinate. It dies when he catches sight of Tav’s satisfied smirk. She kisses him with that smirk, leads him to her bathroom with that smirk, finishes undressing him with the smirk, and pulls him under the hot spray of water, still incredibly pleased with herself. He lets it happen, lets her hum happily as they take turns getting each other clean. They brush their teeth side by side, still wet and wrapped in towels. They watch each other in the mirror as they do, as they gargle and spit. It is the best kind of mundane.
They don’t dress, only dry each other off fully and get into her unmade bed. They don’t speak very much until they’ve settled into a familiar position: Tav, on her back with Gale half draped over her body, head laying on her breast and his leg hooked over hers.
His cab woke her up when it drove up to the cottage. Still half-asleep, she checked his location on the app out of habit and maybe suspicion and hope because why would she be getting an unannounced visitor on Saturday morning? Then she practically fell off the mattress at the sight of their little blue dots so close together.
“Is everything okay? Not that I don’t appreciate you making the insane trip here. But you’ve been having a hard few weeks…”
Tav is right. He has. He’s been busy, even more so than usual. For the past month, he has hardly seen her more than twice a week over video calls and he was late sending his regular care package.
He tells her he is exhausted and that he needed to see her. It doesn’t quite answer her question, but it also does, in a way. Regardless, Tav does not press him and not for the first time, especially this month, Gale is grateful.
They speak in low voices, ignoring the passing time of morning, and stay cuddled up against each other. Four days. He gets the next four days with her before he has to leave. And he doesn’t think he’ll be able to do this again. But Tav is just glad he’s there, with her. She says she will do her best to show him everything she has seen, to not keep him completely cooped up for the next four days. Gale silences her with a kiss and a murmur that they will play it by ear. All he wants is to be near her.
They fall asleep until well into the late afternoon, when a reminder alert goes off on Tav’s phone. There is a residency dinner tonight at one of the Directors’ homes. She tells him he doesn’t have to go and certainly not after his trip. She even offers to see if she can flake, but Gale feels more rested than he has in months and he is not here to derail her.
They dress each other slowly in suitable clothes, picking sweaters and pants that build off each other’s accent colors. Gale puts on Tav’s necklaces and bracelets and rings with an intensity that results in a long, drawn out kiss. As the telltale tone of a priority email comes from his phone, he pulls away from her to look for it with a groan that makes her laugh. He finds his phone on the floor by her bed… which means he gets a perfect look at the black case underneath.
“Now what’s this…”
Tav calls him a snoop. And then tells him to open it. He has a notion of what’s inside and opening it proves him very right. He grins as he looks at the assorted materials and colors.
“Which one is your favorite? For inside, specifically.”
He enjoys the tinge of bashfulness on Tav’s end at his question. She points to a lavender toy with a thoughtful curve, meant for internal clitoral stimulation. He hums casually and picks it up, turning it this way and that with an unnecessarily scrutinizing eye, just to watch her squirm. He recognizes it easily from a picture she sent a couple of months ago.
They’ve coped with the distance in a range of ways. From the very beginning, Gale sent her plenty of texts and audio messages. He does this so frequently, in fact, that he eventually sent her a minute-long audio message while asleep. He breathed and groaned and talked about being low on Tara’s favorite squeeze treats. Tav permanently saved that message.
A few weeks into her residency, Tav started sending him emails. When she is in the middle of working on her laptop and thinks of something she would like to tell him, she notes it in a draft email that, once she is satisfied with, she sends. She writes the emails like they’re letters, with his name and full address on the top left, and signs them with valedictions he never could’ve anticipated a year ago. Forever yours and missing you terribly and, his favorite, as always, loving you.
Every month, Gale sends her a care package. It almost always contains: a shipping-safe snack from his mother, a piece of his clothing, wool socks, seasonal trinkets, and a handwritten letter. A week or so after she received the second care package, Gale got a small box of his own. Inside was: an artisanal snack from the small town Tav is staying in, a tiny wooden figurine of a three-legged cat, a cloth pouch, and two envelopes.
One of the envelopes contained a short letter. Tav wrote about going to the town market and finding the snack and the figurine, which is supposed to be lucky. She wrote that she loves him. And then the post-script said she hopes he enjoys the pictures and souvenir. So Gale hardly managed to not rip the other envelope open in his haste.
Five polaroids spilled onto his lap, partly shielding the already growing evidence of his arousal.
He saw Tav, wearing the sweater he sent her, smiling widely at the camera. Tav, turned around and looking back at him, in the sweater he just sent her and a pair of panties that cover less than half of her ass. Tav, on her back, sweater hiked up and exposing the underswell of her breasts and one tantalizing nipple. Tav, touching herself over her panties with blunt, maroon nails. Tav, on her knees, panties lowered to right under the swell of her butt, revealing the heavenly seam between her legs.
Later on, during their video call that evening, he asked her how she managed the different angles. She proceeded to talk him through the art of timing one's own nudes before asking if he enjoyed the pictures and souvenir—the cloth pouch containing the lacy blue panties she wore in the photos, which still bore the smell of her. And he did. Oh, how he enjoyed them. It was enough that even after enjoying them thoroughly earlier, he enjoyed them again with her over their call, this time letting himself ruin the soiled purity of the soft blue lace with his cum.
Each month, he sends a package. And each month, she sends him pictures and a pair of her underwear and a few other keepsakes that are cherished, but not as likely to give him a heart attack. He doubts it’ll ever stop being enjoyable for either of them, though fantasies and sporadic phone sex have been trickles of water on their raging fires, hot enough to consume buildings and the sky.
This is all to say that he has seen Tav and he has seen this toy and he has seen Tav use this toy.
Gale turns to her, stepping into her atmosphere in the way that only he gets to do now, and asks if she’ll give him a live demo. Her expression is a question mark and Gale provides no answers, just a warmly expectant look. Tav’s hands move slowly to the waist of her pants and he watches with satisfaction only to stop her after she’s undone the top button and the zipper.
“We do have a commitment for now, remember? But your eagerness is certainly flattering.”
And then he starts to laugh, which earns him a sharp shove towards the door of her bedroom as she puts the small case of toys back underneath her bed.
Later, after they have schmoozed and chatted and Gale has been introduced for umpteenth time, they stumble eagerly back into the cottage and Tav gives him that demo. She leans back against her pillows and lets him watch as she rocks with the gently curved silicone buzzing softly inside of her, bumping right against her tender spot.
Gale sits between her legs and massages the meat on her thighs as he takes all of her in. When his awe is finally toppled by his hunger, he gets on his stomach and laps at her clit and holds her thighs open by force when they try to snap closed. He likes the darkness and warmth and smell of her smothering him, but he still wants to watch. He wants to see everything, from the movement of her soft stomach to the hand not threaded in his hair, gripping the pillow beneath her to the wetness gathering around the curved base of the toy inside of her.
After she cums, he doesn’t wait. He switches off the toy still inside of her twitching hole and reaches for the lube they also retrieved from the case under her bed. He slicks his fingers and her puckered hole and works her open with care. Gale finds Tav praiseworthy all the time, but there is something particularly special at how she always trusts him with her body like this, how she has faith in his care even through his desire. She breathes deeply and eventually pushes back onto his fingers when he has three fully in her ass.
“You’re so perfect. You take my fingers so well,” Gale breathes as he sets the vibrator still inside of her back to its lowest setting. She exhales a shaky please as Gale spreads his fingers in her ass and admires the grip of her, feels the toy rumble inside of her other hole.
Gale removes his fingers out to maneuver her onto her stomach with a pillow under her hips and one of her legs hiked up at her side. He leans over her back and slowly presses into her, laying kisses to her head once he’s halfway inside. More? He asks in a soft murmur by her ear. She exhales into the bed sheets and nods. Gale does his best to keep his breathing steady once his hips are flush with her ass. She is so tight and warm around him and his cock is pressed up against the vibration inside of her cunt. He feels his mouth salivate and heat settle over his head, crawling up from below his gut.
Tav can’t move very much right now, pinned below him as she is, but he feels her hips move back and her clench around him. Please, he groans, be still. Please. He’s very close to the finish line, so to speak. But Tav is a demon, so she only pushes back against him again and again until he growls and begins to push back.
Gale buries his face in her neck and rocks into her. He can feel her legs bump against his at the unrelenting pressure of it. He hasn’t been pulling out very far, just a bit to give him room to press into her further with force, to push her into the pillow beneath her hips, into the mattress again and again, back on the toy, still buzzing inside of her. But if he keeps this up, he’s going to cum soon from the vice around his cock. In a strained voice, he takes a moment to calm himself and to rile her further.
“Mm, it’s not too deep, is it? Maybe I should stop—“
Tav gives him an elongated no , stretched out along the ‘o’, and he can feel her body tremble underneath him as he pauses anyway to pull back and sit up a bit. He takes the bottle of lube on the bed and tilts it gently over her hole, still stretched taut around his cock and glistening.
Gale pulls out further, rubbing the skin where their bodies meet with its newer slickness. It’s filthy, but this sight is in a three-way tie for his favorite, along with the view of his cock moving in and out of her cunt and when Tav holds him in her mouth, her lips red and thinned over his girth. Gale pulls out slowly to just before the ridge of the head of his cock and then pushes back all the way in. He does it over and over and feels dark satisfaction at her voice rattling in her throat again.
“Hm? Does that feel good?” He works her with long, measured strokes. She says it will once he fucks her already and he doesn’t even try to resist then, fucking her into the bed as Tav claws at the sheets below them so hard that one of the elasticized corners pops off and she’s breathing yes, yes fucking Hells over and over.
“This is what you wanted all along, isn’t it? All these months? For me to take you like this?” He rasps roughly by ear and feels her nod into the mattress. Gale moans a laugh. “Gods, I love you. I should’ve done this earlier, fucking bent you over that couch as soon as I got here.”
Tav turns her head to the side to speak, undoubtedly to give him some smart mouthed remark about the undeniable pleasures of watching him cum in his pants, but he slips his hand between their bodies and turns the vibrator inside of her up to the next setting. What comes out of her mouth is incoherent and choked and Gale laughs again, breathy and strained and still destroying her with forceful, long strokes that jostle her bedframe.
He lowers himself once more once the heat in his head has abated minutely. He lays himself over her back and rocks into her again. He stays close, only pulling out enough to press her into the mattress like before, to leverage the pressure of the vibrator, and he feels both of them approach their peaks again. At some point, his fingers are grasped by hers, weak and shaking, and he feels his throat tighten at a sudden surge of emotion.
“This is all I think about, you know? In meetings. During class. When I’m home, alone. The way you make me feel…” He speaks into her ear and feels her tighten all around him. Her hands. Her holes.
“Gods, you don’t even understand. How badly I want to fill you with my seed. How I would stay inside of you, loving you like this for a fucking eternity, Tav.”
With a sharp gasp and whimper, Tav falls apart beneath him and drags him along. Gale thrusts extra deep as he climaxes and Tav moans at the feeling of him filling her sore ass with wet warmth. When he pulls out, her hole is stretched and dribbling with his cum. He takes her vibrator out and pulls away to go to her bathroom and wash his hands and cover a washcloth in warm water. When Gale returns, Tav is still laying on her stomach. He spreads her ass to clean the mess away gently with the washcloth and she hums a tired note of enjoying appreciation.
“I’ve missed that.”
Still wiping gratuitously, Gale feels his softened cock twitch.
“Me too,” he replies.
—
The next day is Sunday. They sleep until noon and then Gale cooks brunch. Thankfully, Tav has a weekly grocery delivery courtesy of the residency and her fridge has workable ingredients. He makes them a frittata and crispy home fries and slices fruit and they eat at the small table in the kitchen right beside a window facing the mountains. And either Tav is trying to kill him or she has been culinarily deprived these past few months, because her mms and ahs and other sounds of delight are especially obscene.
He cannot keep his hands off of her afterwards. They fall back in bed as Tav tries to make a case that neither of them believe in for going outside and maybe driving to the town square, but the promise of eclectic books and special hot chocolate do not work on this Gale, this starved version of himself with an incredibly selective appetite. And Tav abandons the suggestion quickly. She wants to stay pressed up against him too, wants to slip her fingers under the waistband of his lounge pants so she has no chance of drifting away.
“Will you sit on the back porch with me tonight?”
He can feel her form the words with her face pressed against his neck as her fingers run up and down his inner thighs and the length of his cock. Of course, he breathes. It’s a date.
Later, they have a simple dinner and Gale makes them a hot spiced cider that he is concerned about, but that Tav ends up enjoying. They put the cider in a thermos and bundle themselves up and sit on the back deck of her cottage. The lake is frozen, the ground is covered in snow, and the view of the stars is incredible. They drink the cider and she lays her head on his shoulder and Gale feels that if there is a moment to tell Tav what he has not yet told her, it is now.
“I thought of proposing to you on this trip, you know. But we haven’t talked about it, or some other vital things, so I decided not to.”
Tav sits up, pulling her head away from his shoulder to look at him.
“You wanted to propose to me…” Tav says it not as a question, but like she needs a few extra beats to process the statement.
Yes, he says. He did. He would still like to, in the future, but only if she thinks that’s something she wants. Honestly, he’s surprised that he wants to do it himself, given the fact that he’s been married before and it turned out awful. But as he’s learned, it only takes one person, one little change, to see things anew.
Gale waits to see if she has any preliminary opinions she’d like to share, but Tav still seems to be processing that he wanted to propose to her.
“I’ve never been proposed to before.”
He raises an eyebrow and reminds her that she was married. Yes, Tav says, but that was fairly rushed and mostly a matter of logistics. She was in love with Wyll, but she was also broke and had no family money to fall back on if she couldn’t hack it in grad school. And Wyll was in love with her, so he offered to marry her. And the sooner she and Wyll married, the sooner they could justify living together in Baldur’s Gate using his family’s money. There was no proposal and no ring and no kneeling, just as there was no wedding.
Gale nods with the slowness that happens when many things start to make sense. As a person, he understands the circumstances. As a romantic and lover of both ceremony and Tav, though, he’s saddened.
He asks her if she thinks she’d like that: a proposal, getting married again, having a wedding. Tav says she’s not sure. She hadn’t considered any of that as real options until two seconds ago, when he first brought it up. The thought of being with him forever makes her nervous, but happy. Very happy. The thought of formalizing that in a legal process and event with other people, however, only makes her nervous. She’s not sure why, but maybe she can explain that better with some time.
Of course, he says. There’s no rush on his part and he figured that she would have some complicated feelings, hence his scrapped proposal plans. And Gale is telling the truth, of course. He’s not in a rush about it. But he does wonder how the hell he’s supposed to tell her the rest of it now.
Tav’s tentative voice pulls him from his thoughts. She says she’s also been thinking about the future.
“I’m up for tenure when I get back to Baldur’s Gate… but maybe I can start somewhere new. Like Waterdeep.”
Gale… cannot do anything but stare at her. She continues. Obviously, she says, it depends on if any relevant departments at any schools are hiring. But she is open to leaving BGU.
“What about the townhouse?” is, for whatever reason, the thing that comes out of his mouth first.
Tav shrugs. “I’d sell it. No real use keeping it if I find a job closer to you. I’d use the proceeds to buy a new place… for both of us.”
He can’t believe it. He can’t fucking believe it. Gale tells her she’s fucking crazy. And wonderful. Gods, he loves her. And then he proceeds to laugh so hard that his stomach cramps. Tav goes from amused to confused to concerned as he takes her by the face and kisses her, still giggling ever so often over her mouth.
“Okay, you gotta tell me what’s going on. Please.” Tav eyes him with anxiety, face still sandwiched by his hands on her cheeks.
Gale lets go of her face to grab his phone from his pocket. He scrolls to one email in particular and hands it to her. She reads it. She reads it again. The next thing she says after what is surely her fifth read through of the email’s contents is bury the lede much? in a shaky, disbelieving voice.
He barks a laugh. He wasn’t trying to bury the lede; rather he was trying to make his consideration of a proposal seem less mad and egregious by comparison to this. Because he’s done a few crazy things this past month, much more outrageous than almost asking her to marry him. But then she tried to out-crazy him. And now, here they are.
“This is… you’re moving to Baldur’s Gate? To BGU?”
“I am.”
It was after a conversation with Halbazzer Drin, the most senior of the Institute’s Executive Board members, that Gale put the obvious pieces together. Drin floated into Gale’s Institute office and took a seat in one of the chairs in front of his desk, opening with a question about the sabbatical project Gale was completing a preliminary results article for. But the discussion took a sharp turn after a few minutes. The Executive Board would meet again soon to finalize the Primary Director recommendation with another vote. A more-than-slight majority of the members wanted someone with new ideas and priorities to lead the Institute into the future. There was also a separate, smaller portion of members who specifically did not want Mystra in charge.
Drin didn’t ask outright if he wanted the job, because he’s technically not supposed to have told him anything, and Gale was equally coded in his response. He had thoughts. And he needed time to think. Drin was understanding about his implied ambivalence, but for inaccurate reasons. Gale knew that Drin thought he was afraid of backlash or awkwardness around being Mystra and her affair partner’s superior—in whatever slight capacity that would be true. Maybe there was a speck of validity to that. But those were not the thoughts he was having as he spoke to Drin.
“So I spoke to Mystra—“
“Mystra?”
Gale winces. Yes, Mystra. After speaking with Drin, he took an hour to get his head together and then went to her office. He told Mystra not only were her Principal Director prospects bleak, but there was a contingency of Board Members who were on the Anyone But Her train. So what did she have to offer him?
At first, she’d tried to call his bluff. But there was no bluff and she figured that immediately. Gale was then unmoved by her subsequent appeals around doing the right thing. Mystra has always defined “the right thing” as whatever suits her goals and desires. And it is so clear to him now in a way that would’ve been unfathomable five years ago. Gods. What a waste.
He left her office that day without a word beyond asking what she had to offer him. He almost threw up in the wastebasket next to his desk afterwards, but he held it together. And two days later, she walked into his office and shut the door behind her just after the conclusion of his open hours.
“I’ll agree to the divorce,” she said without preamble, standing in front of his desk, “I’ll sign on your terms.”
Gale figured he should’ve felt incensed and vindicated at the roundabout confirmation that she’d been dragging out the divorce as a fucked up bargaining chip for control. But he already knew that and he only felt empty and tired. He told her that the divorce alone was not enough and that he had more than half a mind to go back to the court and judge route if she dragged it on past this year. She hadn’t expected that response. She looked at him, scrutinizing. And then asked him what else he wanted.
A comparable job, he said. Somewhere else. He did not name the city he wanted to be in specifically, because that information in Mystra’s hands was dangerous. But he already knew there was an opening at BGU’s Center for Astrophysics. The job posting had been an open tab on his laptop since August. If Mystra truly wanted him out of the running, and wanted his help getting herself nominated, she would find him a comparable job at a comparable school. And U of Waterdeep has few equivalents in the academic landscape, at least where research activity in his field is concerned. BGU, with a handful of other prestigious institutions, is one of those few.
Mystra was reluctant to sign the divorce papers before he’d swayed the Board, but she caved. Even with his sudden, uncharacteristic bargaining maneuver, she did not think him ruthless enough for betrayal, he’s sure. She held out for a week and then he got a call from Lae’zel with the news. Gale told her the full story, of course, of how he made it happen. He expected an earful about backchanneling, and Lae’zel did lecture him, but she also seemed… pleased.
From there, he completed a few applications to different places to keep Mystra in the dark. And when it came time for interviews and phone calls and leveraging contacts, she worked her magic. On his end, Gale worked on Drin and the Executive Board as best as he could. He got the official offer from BGU a few days ago and while Mystra was not the Board’s first nominee, her promotion will be announced at the start of the Spring semester.
As he explains, Gale grows anxious at the inscrutability of Tav’s cold-kissed face and the fact that his actions only seem more insane as he recounts them.
“Why… Were you scared to tell me?”
He nods. And he can’t explain why. Beyond the insanity of it. Beyond the tenuousness of it and the fact that he still can’t believe any of it worked. He was scared. He is scared. Tav knows.
“Did you… did you do all of that for me?”
Gale is silent for a long moment, looking at the dark blanket of stars above them. Eventually, he says no. No, he didn’t do it for her. He would have. Someday, he will do something of equivalent or greater difficulty solely for her. He’d like to. Maybe this is how he is when he loves someone and Tav has revived that dead piece of his heart or maybe he is only this way for her, but the why of it doesn’t matter. Eventually, he will sacrifice. He will go to her wherever she is, follow her wherever she goes. He loves her. But.
But.
While she may have made him move faster, given the circumstances, he did not do this for her. He needs to put Mystra behind him—for them, yes, but also for himself. For his own sake.
…Plus, he hates the Institute. The building is an act of architectural terrorism and it isn’t any prettier from the top floor office.
Gale does not expect for Tav to take him into her arms and tell him she is proud of him. So happy and so incredibly proud. And Gale does not expect to fall apart completely, to sob like the past month, year, decade just caught up with him. But he does.
Eventually, they retreat inside when it’s too cold even for them and they crawl into bed once more, speaking in soft tones. She asks him how it feels. He's practically divorced from Mystra now. In a few months, he will receive the final confirmation from a Waterdhavian judge about his completed divorce. But Gale has yet to feel true relief in that vein and he doesn’t think he will until he has a paper in his hand that declares it legally and officially over. Maybe even after that. Besides, there are plenty of things to celebrate in the meantime.
“Like?”
“Besides leaving Waterdeep and a pay bump? You said the idea of being with me forever makes you nervous, but happy. Very happy, if I recall correctly. And, soon, we’ll begin that forever together. That is worth celebrating.”
“Of course it is,” Tav says this with warmth and a tinge of sadness. Gale waits for her to continue, drawing idle patterns into the curve of her hip over her underwear.
She sighs. She’s ruining the moment, she says. Gale kisses the swell of her breast under his cheek. No, she isn’t. Tell me, he says.
“It feels like… now that I have you, losing you is… inevitable.”
Gale understands. They have spoken around this before: Tav cannot help but look at him and see another tragedy. And they both know she’s not necessarily being irrational. He could die right now, tomorrow, when she returns, on the day of their wedding if she ever wants to have one. The chance is never zero.
“For as long as I exist, you have me. And if I die before you, whether that happens tragically young or at the ripe old age of 99, I promise to haunt you until you die too. And then we’ll either find each other again in the next life. Or we could spend our afterlife bothering the living. Haunting mirrors and slamming cabinets shut and all that.”
She laughs, surprised and warm. “Got it all figured out, huh?”
Oh yes, he says. He does. Tav laughs again briefly and he feels it on his face through her chest. She quiets.
“What if it's not just about death, though? I’m… I’m not the easiest person to love…,” Tav trails off and he hears her wipe at her eyes.
Gale considers this. He has loved her since college. It was just a different kind of love. Now, he is in love with her and it is the most wonderful thing he has ever been able to do. And the easiest, on many levels. But that’s not the point. It’s not what she means.
“I don’t need you to be easy to love. I don’t. You are who you are and I already love you for that.”
He hears her sniffle. He moves up slightly to look up at her and she turns her head. He brings her back to face him with gentle fingers. Gale kisses her wet lips, salty with tears.
“Do you understand? That you’re it for me?” Gale murmurs against her mouth.
He feels her nod. She says something rushed through a sob that he cannot quite make out against his lips. But, somehow, he knows anyway. He can feel the letters fall into his mouth, warming him like hot spiced cider.
—
The next day is Monday. They sleep in as long as they can, but they both have work to do. Tav insists Gale take her desk in the cottage’s small office, the one drenched in sunlight that he has watched her work from so many times before. She goes to the couch in the small sitting area near the kitchen so they both have some chance of getting anything done, but it doesn’t last. Once Gale has barely completed the absolute minimum amount of work to prevent any disasters, a pair of familiar hands slide down his chest. He looks up and finds Tav smiling down at him, surely about to suggest they both blow off work. And when she does, he quickly assents.
They spend the daylight hours in town. She takes him to the eclectic bookseller. They get the special hot chocolate. They eat from stalls at the market for lunch. They go to a local museum. He even manages to coax her onto the surface of an ice skating rink. Tav squeezes his hands so hard it's both painful and hilarious. He leads her along the edge without incurring any major falls. And she is appeased by her reward of a particularly filthy kiss that he would absolutely not condone in public if she hadn’t just done something she was terrified about.
Gale fills the trunk of her residency-sponsored vehicle with groceries and they return to the cottage. He sets about making her a series of meals to store in her freezer because he promised himself he would do so and there isn’t much time left. Tav sits at the small kitchen table and works idly, distracted by him and his chatter often. It’s so familiar he almost tears up again.
After their dinner for that night is consumed, Gale goes to his suitcase. He has brought several romances for Tav that he has already read. If she finds any free time and will to read recreationally, she will enjoy them. Tav wanders in after finishing up their cleaning in the kitchen. Her eyes do not go to the books first, but the blue velvet pouch he carefully set aside during his rummaging, laying innocently on her bed.
She picks it up. Maybe he should do something. Scramble to grab it or warn her to not open it. But he doesn’t. Tav unties the drawstrings and then a ring tumbles into her palm. She stares at it with wide eyes.
“My mother gave it to me right before I left to see you. I didn’t get a chance to store it away properly.”
“It’s beautiful.”
It is. A light gold band with an emerald at the center, beset by smaller diamonds on either side. He speaks as Tav holds her palm close to her face, like she’s afraid of touching it more directly.
“It was my great grandmother’s first. And then my grandmother’s and then my mother’s. I suppose that if my mother had a daughter, it would’ve gone to her already.”
“You didn’t give it to Mystra.”
It’s not a question. He didn’t. He wouldn’t have it now if he had. No, Gale says. He didn’t ask for it at the time and his mother never offered it, despite both of them knowing how important it was that it be passed down. He thought about asking, but Morena and Mystra had barely tolerated each other. He didn’t think his mother would’ve agreed and he didn’t think Mystra would want it and it felt important at the time to not introduce additional conflict.
“But you asked now. And she gave it to you.”
That’s right, he says. Morena happily gave it to him. To her. But it’s not a mandate. Just because he has it, doesn’t mean she needs to wear it. It doesn’t mean they need to be engaged. It doesn’t mean they need to get married, ever.
Tav bites her lip and then asks if it’s okay if she tries it on. Gale says yes. Of course, it is. And then he carefully asks her if she would like him to put it on. She nods quickly and then he is doing it while both of them pretend that their hands are not shaking.
The ring does not fit. It’s too small to breach the second knuckle of Tav’s finger. It will need to be resized, she says. Without missing a beat, but feeling a bit faint, Gale says yes. It certainly will.
—
On their last full day together, Tav takes him to campus. The foundation that funds the residency is housed in a big beautiful building made of stone. There are columns and old paintings on the walls and tall ornate fireplaces in most of the rooms. Gale half expects a monarch to walk by, but it doesn’t happen.
Tav stands at the podium in one of the well-appointed seminar rooms and is every bit the academic as she leads a lunchtime craft seminar. Every seat is taken when they arrive, just barely before the scheduled start; while Gale insists he’s fine with standing at the back of the room, Tav asks one of the foundation staff if they can find an extra chair and they do. Gale watches Tav from his chair near the front, beside the IT professionals ensuring everything is recording and streaming properly. She discusses her writing process and answers questions from students and faculty and Gale even takes notes. He’s not sure what for, though he is moved to do so.
Perhaps he’ll take up poetry again.
Later, as they walk on the freshly cleared sidewalk, mounds of snow on either side of them, Tav asks him if he had a good day at school. And there is something about the teasing and the wind gently lifting her hair as they walk and Tav's voice when she is being a Professional and also the fact that she is wearing a dark green turtleneck that he bought her before she left… It makes him stop and pull her close just a few feet away from her car.
“I need you to know… I want you always, but especially now. Right now.”
Eyes still sparkling with mischief, she bites back a laugh. “You liked getting to sit down that much?”
“I did like that you made sure I had a chair, yes. But more than that, I liked hearing you speak and watching everyone listen to you. As they should.”
“Mm. Remember you said that next time you want to sass me.”
He leans in, a breath away from her mouth. “Deflect all you’d like. It doesn’t change that when we get back to yours, I already know how I’m going to have you.”
Tav’s hands grip the steering wheel far too tightly, but they arrive safely. When they get inside, Gale undresses her with care, from her coat to her boots to her sweater to her underwear, until she’s fully naked and fidgeting with anticipation as she sits on her bed. He gets towels from the bathroom and then kneels beside her bed to get what he wants from her case. He reaches for a bottle he stashed in there himself the day before: a peony-scented massage oil.
Gale lays the towels down and then strips to his briefs, straddling her legs as she lays on her stomach. He has not done this in a while, several years in fact, but it is easy enough to find his way back. And he wants nothing more right now than to know that he’s touched every single centimeter of her.
He starts with her hands and works up her arms. Her shoulders, her upper back. He moves to her feet, ankles, and calves. The more he touches, the more she sighs, the more she squirms. Her back is perpetually tense and so he takes his time there, working out knots and smiling at her visceral sounds of relief.
She stiffens again with anticipation as he moves to her thighs and begins to massage the meat of her ass and he bites back a small laugh. But the longer he kneads and gropes and denies, the more she dissolves back into pliant softness. When her guard is fully down, he spreads her ass and pours an unnecessary amount of oil over her puckered hole and her glistening slit. The oil trails down and her toes curl underneath and her quiet breaths grow heavy.
And then he tells her to turn over. When she does, her face is pink and her chest is heaving. When she shifts her thighs, they make a wet gliding sound that he wishes he could hear again, immediately. But he pretends not to notice, just as he pretends to not notice her lips chasing his when he bends to give her a chaste kiss. She mutters that he’s trying to kill her and he feigns innocence as he takes in the beautifully flustered picture she makes.
Gale returns to his work. He kneels beside her on the bed and starts with her neck and the base of her skull and Tav’s eyes flutter closed. That’s right, my love, he tells her. Just enjoy. Do not anticipate. Just feel
Tav takes this to heart. She settles back into calm. Gale takes his time rubbing behind her ears, her jaw, the slight dips of her collarbone. Her eyes roll back once he’s brushing her nipples with oiled fingers, but she does not tense or flinch. Again, again. Lightly, the way she likes best. She whimpers. She breathes deeply as he touches her waist and her stomach and her hips, leaving behind shiny, floral smelling skin.
“You’re beautiful, my love,” he murmurs, as he kneads the tops of her thighs.
“I—I like when you call me that,” she replies dazedly.
“Beautiful?”
“Your love.”
He hums thoughtfully as he touches the soft hair on her mound. He moves her legs apart gently, one and then the other.
“Do you want me to call you that from now on? Would that please you?”
Yes, she says with unguarded sincerity. Gale replies that he will. And then he slips his middle and ring fingers into her cunt. Tav’s mouth falls open in a silent cry.
“And this, my love? Does this please you?”
The wet lewd squelch of Tav’s hole is an answer. Her back arching off the bed, another more. Gale drags his fingers against the tender notch inside of her and presses on her soft pelvis with his other hand. Tav is lost to the feeling of fullness, to the way he’s unraveling her from the inside, and he loves it. He loves her like this, so much: eyes glazed over and full of tears, thighs and stomach shaking, mouth open and without words.
The wetness between her legs, the sounds of his fingers pressing against that spot in a steady rhythm, takes on a special quality.
“Do you hear that? You’re going to drench me soon. You’re going to make a mess, my love.”
Tav whines weakly in protest.
“Oh? But you are. See?” Gale quickens his hand.
Her whimpers do not change the outcome. Her walls seize around his fingers. The spray soaks his hand and his arm and her thighs. And then before her climax has fully passed, he’s moving between her legs and sliding his cock into her body. Fuck she’s soaked and weak and hot and her breasts move with every thrust. He pushes her knees towards her chest and tells her to keep them there. When he shifts to bully the notch inside of her once more, bumping with every thrust, her mouth falls open wider and her nails dig into the backs of her thighs as she holds herself open for him.
“That’s it. Just like that. Think you can take me like this for a bit, my love?”
She nods with a shaky, overfull uhuh that makes him groan. Very good, he praises. Very fucking good. Gale presses down on her soft pelvis once more and strokes her glistening clit with his thumbs. Tav makes a quivering ohh sound that is the essence of falling apart as he thrusts. It’s wet and messy and he can feel her swell around him. Fuck fuck fuck.
It was so hard not to think of making her into a soaking mess at that podium, he says. He thought of her giving her talk with his cock deep inside of her, making her stutter over every other word.
“If only they could all see you now, in the throes of what you love best. Taking my cock until you’re a beautiful, simpering mess.”
But this is for no one else. Just for him. Just for her. Just for them.
Tav shakes with the ceaseless thrusts of his cock against the front wall of her cunt, the push of his hand, the way his thumb plays her clit like a slickened instrument. She says something, weak and garbled. She says it again, no less distorted, but Gale is sure he knows what it is this time.
“Say it again.”
“Get me pregnant,” she whimpers.
His thrusts stutter and then he is pounding into her. Tav’s voice climbs. Oh gods. Oh gods . It is a blaze of heat, a molotov cocktail breaking on the floor.
She seizes again—impossibly, inconceivably fucking tight around him, so much pressure that he almost slips out of her. He pulls her knees down from her chest at last, laying himself on top of her, stomach to stomach as he rocks inside of her, hardly pulling out at all.
He groans in her ear, feeling possessed. “Can you feel how close I am? My seed will take so easily, my love. They’ll all know what we’ve done in no time at all.”
Tav’s nails dig into his back now and she clings to him as she drenches their bodies where they meet once more. That’s it, he coos. Gods, that’s it. His cock pulses and twitches as he empties himself inside of her. He smothers her sweaty face in kisses as they cool down.
Eventually, Gale insists on getting off of her. When he pulls out, he feels an ache of overexerted want in his gut at the sight of him leaking from her. He’s achy as he gets them water. He may have overestimated the fortitude of his knees and back again. He sits and talks to Tav softly, checking in on her as she hydrates. She is quiet, but coming down and responding just fine. He coaxes her into the bathroom as he changes the sheets on her bed, throws the soiled linens in the wash. When he returns, she’s sitting on the edge of the shower tub, wiggling her fingers idly under the running water. They take their time getting clean, moving carefully with sore bodies, but do not belabor the process. When they lay back in bed, Tav is so quiet as she lays against him that he thinks she’s asleep for a long moment.
It is dark outside and inside of her unlit room when she speaks.
“You haven’t changed your mind, right? About kids?”
He hasn’t. They’ve spoken about children, funnily enough, despite skipping over the remarriage discussion. Neither of them want any. They never have. Not because they don’t like children, but because they don’t want to be parents.
“Gods no. But I’m a depraved man who very much likes hearing you beg for my—“
A pillow hits his face and he laughs, placing the pillow at his side. Gale flicks on her bedside lamp to find Tav rolling her eyes half-heartedly at him.
“I had it on good authority you would. Not that you hide it, exactly.”
He asks her what good authority could there possibly be on this particular subject.
“Do you remember Tasha Ravenmire?”
He does. She was the last person he dated before starting grad school. It was strictly sexual—he was too fixated on Mystra at that point for it to be anything else and Tasha did not want anything more. She was Tav’s partner for a class project and Tav introduced them… Just thinking about it makes Gale want to wring his own neck.
“She was… very open about some of the things you two got up to,” Tav smothers a laugh as she looks at his horrified face.
They don’t often talk about college. Honestly, it’s because of him. He’s wondered over the past year how things may have turned out differently had he seen Tav as she was back then. It is a source of pain, at times. What could’ve been avoided. What could’ve been much sooner.
“Hey.”
Tav’s thumb caresses his cheek and he comes back to the moment, to her.
“We have forever for me to learn the depths of your depravity firsthand, remember? If I don’t smother you in your sleep before that, of course.”
She gives him a warm look as her nails scratch at the skin under his beard. He leans into her touch, sighing with easy pleasure before surprising her with a gentle nip at one of her fingers.
“Ah! You fiend!”
“Do I get to provide input on the kind of smothering? Because if so—“
That earns him another pillow to the face.
They don’t sleep that night, nor do they speak anymore of college. Instead, they make plans. In the summer, after Tav returns, they will find a week to visit his mother and another to stay at Karlach and Dammon’s farm and, perhaps, find time to crash Astarion and Halsin’s annual spa trip. In the winter, Gale will take her to the vacation cottage in Amn that will be fully his after the divorce is finalized.
At one point, Tav asks if he still has the key to the townhouse. He does. Good, she says. She won’t have to make another copy of hers. When she returns, she will make time to finally clear out the basement and the upper floor the way she’s been meaning to. Tav wants there to be enough room for his own storage and the skylight upstairs would be a perfect place to set up his telescope. She says they could move furniture and shelves and even one of Tara’s cat trees up there and make it into a cozy little space.
He watches her silently, until Tav notices.
“What?”
“Is this your way of asking me to move in with you?”
It would be more accurate to say, from the color of Tav’s face, that she’d never considered he wouldn’t. He laughs, despite the way he’s practically swooning inside. And then he tells her there’s no place he’d rather be. After all, cooking her dinner and doing the crossword together will be far easier if he doesn’t have to commute.
Tav brings him to the airport the next day. And she gets to walk him all the way to the gate, even without a ticket. They go through the metal detectors together and then sit in the mostly empty waiting area, holding hands.
When his flight arrives, they embrace. It is mostly an undramatic affair. Things are calmer now. Clearer. But before he takes too many steps away, Tav grabs his hand.
“Tell me it won’t be much longer. That we’ll be together again before I know it.”
Gale recognizes the words of his goodbye, months ago. He laces his fingers with hers.
“It won’t be much longer. We’ll be together again before you know it. And when we are, I plan to stick to you like the most stubborn barnacle on the boat.”
She snorts a teary laugh. “That… might be the most romantic thing anyone’s ever said to me.”
“Give me a flight and half and I’ll come up with something better,” he replies.
He gives her a goodbye kiss. And then another. And then another, until the agent checking tickets at the metal door gives him an apologetic notice that they need all fliers seated.
Gale looks back at Tav every other step as he makes the descent to the plane, until he has gone too far and the metal door has closed and he can see her no longer.
-
-
-
Some time later…
Tav is late. Ridiculously late. Her first flight got delayed and she missed her connecting flight and the next one didn’t arrive for four hours. And she barely snagged a seat, given what day it is. It was a terrible idea, booking her return travel with such a small layover. Gale will never let her live it down, not after telling her it was a recipe for disaster.
Tav’s phone buzzes with a text. Her car speakers say it’s from Astarion.
“How am I at your house before you?”
A few seconds later, she gets another text.
“Nevermind. Gale said you made poor flight-related choices.”
Of course he did. That fucker. Despite her effort, she can’t get upset. And she can’t keep the dopey smile off of her face. The injustice of it all, really.
It takes her thirty minutes longer than usual to get home, but it could always be worse, she supposes. Tav can hear the commotion inside from the sidewalk. Nothing concrete, just the faint bubbling din of the holiday. She unlocks the door and steps inside. It smells of something savory. She can hear everyone more clearly now, but the only person she sees is Morena, who peeks towards the foyer from the kitchen and waves before disappearing again and announcing her arrival.
Tav breathes a laugh through her nose as Karlach and Astarion respond dramatically to her arrival from the kitchen. She sits on the small bench by the door and leans down to take off her boots. It was one of the first things Gale added to the foyer after moving in.
Two slippered feet enter her vision that she recognizes immediately. She hurries with her unlacing and speaks before Gale can.
“I know, I’m late. Don’t start with—“
She finally looks up and goes quiet when she finds Gale smiling down at her, holding a spring of something above her head. She sits up.
“Is that rosemary?”
“Yes. Thanksgiving lacks a mistletoe equivalent, but I figured it would do just fine.”
She snorts and stands. He bends to meet her mouth. She feels a flutter in her stomach as he pulls back and looks at her again, eyes glittering like stars. Will the butterflies ever go away? She’s not sure. She’s never once looked at him and not felt them.
“Welcome home.”
They take a moment to lean against each other.
“I never want to go anywhere ever again.”
“Mm. I’d like that.”
A theatrical ugh emerges from down the hallway. Astarion calls them gross and goes back into the kitchen. Gale chuckles as Tav takes a deep sniff of his shirt, her head buried in his chest. He smells like he’s been cooking all day. Why does she like it so much?
She cranes her neck to look up at him. “How have things been here?”
Gale sighs. There have been three last minute grocery trips so far. Everyone is crowding him in the kitchen. Astarion found their good wine. And he’s missed her terribly. His arms tighten around her. When Celia asked her three months ago whether she’d be willing to give an invited talk at her new university just before Thanksgiving, Tav had accepted without fully thinking it through. A favor for an old friend was easy to justify. But in the cradle of Gale’s arms, she cannot imagine agreeing to something that takes her away ever again.
Karlach calls for her from the kitchen, tells them to stop making out. Is she twelve?
“Let me help.”
Gale is reluctant to let her go, but Tav promises to get everyone out of the kitchen and that is enough to convince him. Gale and Morena stay, working on dinner and desserts respectively, and everyone else joins her in the living room. Halsin settles into her armchair and Astarion perches on the armrest with a glass of their good wine. Tarik sits beside her on the couch, overjoyed to not be cooking for once, and Karlach sits on her other side, plopping her feet in Tav’s lap like always.
It is their second time hosting Thanksgiving. It’s still strange for her, having so many people over. Holidays were quiet and somber when she and Karlach were young, before they left home. And after she married Wyll, she spent the holidays with his family at the Ravengard cabin, surrounded by people who were (complicatedly) right and wrong about her being a gold digger. But this is different. Now she almost understands why people make a fuss about holiday gatherings.
Dinner is delicious and as chaotic as prep was. Astarion calls her and Gale out for the crime of holding hands in open view. Karlach makes scandalized ooh noises. Morena tells stories of some of Gale’s failed cooking when he was very young and prone to experimentation and both Astarion and Tarik delight in the knowledge that Gale had to struggle to develop at least one skill. Gale pouts and looks to her for defense, though she isn’t very convincing. It’s his own fault for being perfect and good at everything, really.
Later that night, once the leftovers are split and Astarion and Halsin and Tarik go home and Morena is settled in the guestroom and Karlach is asleep on the sofa bed in the converted attic, Tara reemerges. She hops on her lap and kneads her thighs as Tav leans on Gale, warm under the safe weight of his arm across her shoulder. Tav scratches her chin and cheeks the way she likes it and Tara drools between her rumbly purrs, settling down with her small head on Tav’s knee.
She and Gale don’t speak much and really only to comment on Tara’s ears or say something mundane that they’ve been meaning to tell the other for a few days. Their sides are flush together and Gale’s head leans against hers, his silky hair brushing the skin above her eyebrow. Tav can feel him, thinking either a million thoughts or one of infinite depth. She wants to know which, so she asks. But Gale only says that he wants to shower.
They go upstairs. Tav lets him shower alone so he can decompress and she sets about unpacking her suitcase. She throws her dirty clothes in the hamper, puts her toiletries away, and places her laptop in her office, which she swore she would not use for the next two days. One of the odds and ends from her suitcase is Gale's clicker, which she borrowed for her presentation. She doesn’t want to misplace it, so Tav goes back downstairs to put it in his office where she found it.
Tav remembers well what Gale’s office once was. The room that Wyll liked to work in. The place where she took that call from Ulder and got shot out of the sky. But it is not what it once was. It was the first room she changed after she got back from the residency, two weeks before Gale officially moved to Baldur’s Gate. It looks like him now, smells like he does. He has three computer monitors and a ridiculous number of external hard drives and almost as many books as she does. There is a picture of them on his desk that she knows well, of the two of them dressed up for Astarion's last Bhaalentine's Day party, but it is too dark to make out the details.
Tav opens the top side drawer of his desk and places the clicker inside. In the dark, she almost misses it. But it’s there and she sees it. A dark velvet pouch. She shouldn’t, is the thing. She should leave it alone. But she has not seen this pouch for a long while and once the question is in her head, there’s no chance of it leaving unanswered.
The ring is just as she remembers it. A light gold band with an emerald at the center and small diamonds on either side of it. She looks at it. She’s only seen the ring once, but she knows the answer to her question. Still, she puts it on.
It fits perfectly.
“You’ll have to pretend to be surprised tomorrow.”
She jumps. In the doorway, illuminated from behind by the hallway light, is Gale. His hair is wet and pushed out of his face. He’s wearing a faded U of Waterdeep t-shirt and pair of lounge pants and he walks towards her looking deeply amused.
“They’re all coming back for it, you know. And my mother would be crushed if she woke up tomorrow and we were already engaged when the plan is for me to do it once… well, I’ll keep that part to myself.”
He steps in front of her and takes her hand gently to look at her finger.
“Even more perfect than I thought.”
“Yeah, the jeweler did a good job,” she says, flustered.
“That’s not what I meant. But yes, it is a nice fit.”
He threads his fingers with hers. Only a sliver of light leaks in through the cracked door, hardly enough to light up the room, but she can see him perfectly. Like he’s lit up from the inside. Her brain knows the details. She's spent days, months, years thinking about his mouth, the brown of his eyes, the dark fringe of his lashes. She swears she could paint him from memory if she had to.
It was a good hiding place, Tav says. But he forgot she borrowed his clicker. Gale hums. He did. Serves him right, he says, for showering and leaving her alone. She snorts. And then she apologizes for ruining the surprise. Gale shakes his head. No, this feels fitting, he says. He asks her if now works. For a test run. It is her first time, after all. She swallows and says yes.
Gale kneels with a quiet grunt in the middle of his unlit office, in the room where her life once ended, and asks her for forever. She says yes. It will happen again. Tomorrow, they will do this one more time in front of people who love them, who want to be present for this. But right now is just for them. Right now, he is just hers. There is only the two of them, at the center of the universe.