Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Gale woke up way too early. So early that Astarion, a natural earlier riser due to his biological lack of need for traditional sleep, was still trancing beside him. Gale squinted into the pitch-black room and craned his head to look out the windows, finding only the barest wash of blue diffusing up from the horizon. He yawned, stretched his legs beneath the summer quilt, and tried his best to go back to sleep. Unfortunately, his mind was buzzing with a heady mix of excitement and anxiety, and instead of drifting back to sleep, he found himself blindly blinking up at a darkened ceiling.

Astarion had said yes to Gale asking him out.

He had said yes.

They were going to go on a date together, after the trip, once they were home.

Visions of the night before flooded Gale’s mind—the way Astarion’s curls had looked splayed on the pillow as Gale fucked him, the way his eyes crinkled when he had laughed with joy at Gale’s bumbling date invitation, the way his voice had cracked and gone silent with strain when he had orgasmed.

But there was worry there too, in Gale’s head. There always was. He had finally started therapy a few months before the trip after the repeated insistence from Jen had gotten too annoying to ignore and had found it— shockingly —to be quite helpful. Gale had always been somebody that thrived when presented with the opportunity to learn something, and framing the building of self-insight as a personal research project with no deadlines or funding requirements had been a brilliant move on his therapist’s part.

So he knew he got anxious, sometimes.

But usually it was about absurdly mundane things. If he had locked his apartment door. If he should go ahead and fill up his gas tank even though it was only half empty because what if he got stuck somewhere. If his shirt was weird.

But this anxiety was about something so much more important than any of that. It was about if he was good enough for Astarion, good enough for him to stay interested in Gale for more than one measly date. Sure he had agreed to go to the planetarium, but what if he got bored? What if Gale couldn’t keep his interest past the initial high of this whole “sneaking around in Montana” thing?

A few more moments of that sort of mental self-flagellation and Gale realized he definitely was not going to be able to fall back asleep despite the stupidly early hour. He quickly glanced over to Astarion to confirm if he was still in full trance (he was) and then he slipped out of bed as quietly as possible. There was a slight grumble and a fidget from the elf as the half-awake part of his brain registered Gale’s departure but he quickly settled back into his rest when Gale padded over to the bedroom door and slipped out.

The cabin was silent and rather cold in the early morning. Dark, too. Gale turned his phone flashlight on and stared down at his feet as he walked, paranoid that he would trip over something and wake the entire cabin up. He passed down the stairs and into the kitchen, mindful of keeping his steps quiet on the hardwood.

The familiar clicking and dripping noises of the coffee maker were surprisingly soothing, as was the rich smell of the coffee itself as he poured himself a mug. He debated sitting at the kitchen island or on the living room couch to drink it, but a glance at the clock and then another out the window confirmed that sunrise wasn’t far off, so he decided sitting outside in the crisp air to watch it was a better course of action. He was halfway to the back door of the cabin when he remembered the little private balcony off the master bedroom.

From a purely logistical perspective, both decks would offer the same view (as one was directly over the other), but Gale quite liked the idea of having a little private slice of the cabin all to himself.

Well, himself and Astarion.

He turned away from the back doors and back towards the stairs, mind make up.

Cracking open the master bedroom door revealed everything to be exactly as he left it, so he silently crossed the room and unlocked the French doors. The one he opened squeaked a bit when it swung, which wasn’t ideal, but Astarion seemed to be unbothered by the noise. Gale was met with a wave of cool, fresh air that smelled of grass and wildflowers as he stepped outside and sat down into one of the Adirondack chairs.

The bison weren’t visible anywhere yet but Gale guessed they would be around at some point. The prairie was quite still, overall, but lilting calls from unseen birds increasingly filled the air as the sky continued to gently lighten. In the distance he could see a little cluster of tall prairie grasses rustle as something tumbled around in them. A fox, perhaps, netting itself a hare or a vole? Gale hoped for the fox’s sake it was the former. He couldn't imagine going through all the trouble of hunting only for one’s meal to be so small.

The blue in the sky was shifting, growing and lightening, and the soft undersides of puffy clouds were becoming visible as the growing light dusted them lavender. Gale took a sip of his coffee and watched the outlines of shrub bushes grow orange and the clear surface of a distant stream sparkle with yellow ripples.

Gale jumped, nearly spilling his coffee. He turned to see Astarion rubbing at his eyes with one hand and closing one of the doors behind him with the other—the one Gale hadn’t opened earlier, and the one that didn’t squeak, apparently.

Gale rolled his eyes and held out his mug towards the little grabby-hand motions Astarion had started making once the door was closed. “Good morning to you too.”

“Mhmm,” Astarion hummed. He rounded the chairs and sank down in the free one as he sipped at the steaming mug. “Urgh, this is so bitter.”

Gale scoffed. “No it isn't! It’s perfect.”

Astarion frowned down at the mug and then shoved it back towards him. “Bitter.”

“It has some milk in it,” Gale shot back, clutching the mug before it could tumble from Astarion’s weakening grip. “That’s enough for me.”

“Just milk?”

Gale squinted his eyes and took a sip. “Yeah?”

“Gross,” Astarion deadpanned.

“Oh? And how do you take your coffee then, princess?”

Astarion bristled and looked down to pick at his nails with a raised eyebrow. “Well for starters, I don’t know what you consider to be “some” milk but whatever you put in that barely constitutes. There should be at least, like, triple that amount. Quadruple, even, since it’s regular milk and not cream.”

Gale huffed a laugh and nodded at him to continue.

“But more importantly,” Astarion continued, “there needs to be something sweet in there. Preferably hazelnut syrup, but seeing as we don’t have any of that in the cabin, plain sugar would suffice.”

“Oh?” Gale replied, smirking despite himself, “and how many sugar packets would you put in this, then, to make it drinkable?”

Astarion considered for a moment before shrugging. “Five? Six, maybe?”

Gale felt his eyes grow wide. “Astarion,” he started, doing his best to keep the budding horror from his voice, “You’re telling me in one cup of coffee you would put four servings of milk and six sugars?”

Astarion looked up from his nails then and shot Gale a challenging look. “I would, yes.”

Gale carefully set his mug down on the little table between their chairs so he could use both his hands when he leaned over to grab Astarion’s nearest forearm. “I think we might have to have an intervention.”

Astarion leapt to his feet and pointed an accusatory finger at Gale. “You wouldn’t dare.”

Gale, in turn, stood and took a step towards Astarion, crowding him into the corner of the deck. “Oh I would.” Astarion scoffed, and Gale took another step forward. “If what you are saying is true, Astarion, then it sounds like you routinely commit heinous crimes against that most delectable of morning drinks and I, for one, cannot stand idly by and watch it happen. Something needs to be done.”

Astarion was scowling at him but the corners of his mouth were twitching in a clear indication that he was fighting a grin. Gale watched his eyes dart to the side and he held out his arms to cage Astarion firmly into the corner before the elf could make a dash for it. The second Astarion moved he was on him, pulling him into a firm embrace and pressing him into the dark-stained railing. Astarion gave a high pitched little squawk and giggled as Gale tried to lean in to press firm kisses against his jaw.

“You’re terrible,” he groaned, wiggling in Gale’s grip. “Go back to drinking your dirt water and leave me alone.”

Gale hummed and shook his head against Astarion’s neck. “Mmm…no. Don’t think I will.”

He reached around and down to cup Astarion’s ass through his soft cotton joggers and pull their hips flush. He was unsurprised to find Astarion half-hard already and he tilted his head to run his tongue along the shell of Astarion’s ear, earning himself a low whine.

“You’re much more delicious than coffee, anyway,” he whispered. Astarion huffed and shoved halfheartedly at his shoulder.

“I should never have said yes to that date,” he muttered through a half-smile, “I’ve created a sap monster.”

Gale stood to his full height and met Astarion’s eyes with a raised eyebrow. “So you’re saying you don’t want to neck me in a darkened planetarium, then?”

Astarion lifted his chin and pretended to think for a moment before letting out a dramatic sigh, as if conceding was tantamount to accepting some great burden. “No, I do want that, unfortunately, and I already told you yes. I am a man of my word, Gale.”

“Uh huh.”

They moved forward at the same time, immediately falling into a deep, searching kiss. Gale slotted their legs together and reached around Astarion to grip the railing with both hands and use it as leverage to grind his hips forward.

They went on like that for a while, moving together in the growing light.

Gale periodically cracked an eye open to check the progress of the sunrise, not wanting to miss it despite the otherwise generally more stimulating source of entertainment currently pressed into him. The sun wasn’t quite visible yet but Gale guessed it would be soon from the pink glow cresting the tops of the mountains and the prismatic spray drenching the prairie in color.

He pulled back just enough to speak against Astarion’s lips.

“Can I fuck you?”

Astarion nodded and moved like he was trying to walk away from their embrace. Gale gripped his hips and shook his head.

“No…out here?”

Astarion pulled back further and laughed. “How positively naughty. I’m surprised, Gale.”

“No one else is awake,” Gale replied with a shrug, “And it’s not like the prairie dogs are going to care.”

Astarion snickered and then pushed Gale back again with a bit more force. “Fine, but we need lube. I’ll be right back.”

Gale let him go and leaned his hands against the railing to watch as the first sliver of sun began to peak above the horizon. He smiled and turned his head to watch Astarion through the glass of the French doors as he fumbled through the bedding, presumably looking for the little bottle they had apparently haphazardly tossed somewhere the night before.

Then, from below, came the sound of the main deck doors opening.

“Gods, would you look at that!”

It was Karlach.

Gale froze. Inside, Astarion had resorted to throwing the quilt fully off the bed to root through the sheets.

“Gorgeous,” came the replying voice of Jen. “Perhaps the best sunrise I’ve ever seen!”

Gale carefully stood fully upright and took a step back from the railing. He wasn’t entirely sure why—it wasn’t as if he wasn’t allowed to be up here, on the private balcony of his own room, looking at the same sunset as his friends. And he wasn’t doing anything inappropriate by just standing there, waiting for Astarion to—

Gale held up his hands, palms forward, as Astarion walked back toward the doors with the lube held triumphantly above his head. He froze mid-step and tilted his head in question. Gale moved one hand to his lips, finger raised, indicating that Astarion should be quiet as he slowly reached forward to open one of the French doors (the one that didn’t squeak) and gestured for Astarion to come outside. Gale carefully shut the door behind him and kept his finger to his lips while he shot a pointed glance down toward the deck floor.

“All sunsets are equivalent to me,” Lae’zel’s voice came from below. “They are simply refractions of light. Nothing to lose one’s head over.”

Astarion met Gale’s wide eyes with his own. In response, Gale bit his lip, not sure how to proceed.

“You can’t truly believe that, Lae’zel,” Wyll’s voice answered. Gale heard one of Lae’zel’s signature scoffs in response and then there was a grand shuffling noise as the group— all four of their friends, apparently—settled onto the patio furniture below.

Astarion leaned forward and pressed his lips against Gale’s ear. “Why are we being quiet?” he whispered. Gale hesitated, which was the wrong move, because Astarion continued, his teasing tone clear even through such hushed words. “Were you hoping to continue right along with your plan Gale? Did you still want to fuck me out here?”

Gale let out the deep breath he had been unaware he was holding. Heat was flooding his cheeks.

“You do, don’t you, naughty boy?” Astarion continued. “You want to fuck me out here with our friends just below us.”

Gale shook his head.

“No!” he whispered back, mindful of his volume but injecting every bit of incredulity he could into the word. “That’s…that would be so wrong, Astarion.”

He felt more than heard the answering snicker.

“And jerking me off in the back of the van was okay?” Astarion replied. “Letting me lick your cum off my knuckles while all our friends were mere feet away from us was okay?”

Gale swallowed thickly. “I…”

Below them, their friends were chattering away, commenting on the beauty of the morning and the smell of coffee that had woken them up.

“If none of us made it then it must have been either Gale or Astarion,” Wyll commented. There was a pause and then he continued. “What, Jen? What’s that face for?”

“You know perfectly well, what,” she replied archly. “A bit suspicious, no? One of them makes coffee and then disappears back upstairs with it?”

A peal of laughter from Karlach. “What’s so weird about that, Shads? They got a whole deck up there to themselves, don’t they?”

An icy rush zipped down Gale’s spine, contrasting sharply against the warmth of the body pressing into his chest. Astarion’s eyes had narrowed from shock to some sort of disconcerting predatory intent and at some point he had brought their fronts back together.

“Well I don’t hear anything up there, and I assume they would have said ‘hi’ by now if they were, in fact, outside right now,” Jen replied. There was a beat of silence as if the group were waiting for a reply from either Gale or Astarion. When none came, she continued. “So, logically, it means they’re enjoying the coffee together…in their room.”

Astarion was kissing his neck now, licking over his fluttering pulse as Gale tried to calm the rush of anxiety he was feeling. A glance to the side revealed the sun almost fully above the horizon, a razor’s edge sliver still kissing the earth.

“And?” Karlach replied, incredulous. “What, you saying friends can’t drink coffee together?”

There was an exasperated huff from Jen. Gale imagined her silently gesticulating in the air.

“Jenevelle means to imply that they are engaging in some sort of sexual activity,” Lae’zel replied in a deadpan. It was Karlach’s turn to scoff, this time, although it came out more like a guffaw.

“No way!” she half-yelled, “D’ya really think? But when—”

“Not sure,” Jen replied smoothly. “But something has been… up between them, recently.”

Gale pulled his head back enough from Astarion’s searching mouth to shoot him a panicked look. Astarion raised an eyebrow in response and reached down to cup at Gale’s erection. “Deny it all you want,” he whispered, “but this doesn’t lie. You like the danger of this, don’t you?”

Gale opened his mouth to reply and closed it again a moment later.

“You were excited about what happened in the van,” Astarion continued, eyes sparkling with mischief and the early morning sun, “It wasn’t just that I was coming on to you, was it? There was something about the risk of being caught that made it that much more exciting, no?”

His mouth was too dry. He couldn’t get his words to work.

“I noticed something too,” Wyll stated from below, and Gale had to bite back a hiss when Astarion’s fingers squeezed around his cock through his sleep pants. “Gale was definitely acting weird yesterday…well, weirder than normal.”

Astarion smirked at that and Gale shot him a glare that was immediately replaced with a near-silent open-mouth groan that he barely managed to contain as cool fingers dipped below the waistband of his pants. He had opted to sleep without underwear beneath them…a choice he was now regretting.

“Seemed normal to me,” Karlach shot back, “And when would they have had the time, anyway?”

Astarion pulled his waistband down over his ass and let the fabric drop to pool on the deck boards. He looked up to meet Gale with a wicked grin before beginning to sink to his knees. Gale grabbed frantically at his shoulder and shook his head. In response Astarion paused—Gods bless him—and tilted his head in question.

“You said you heard some shuffling in the back seat, didn’t you?” Jen asked. “I hesitate to suggest it, but perhaps…”

Karlach cackled and there was a thumping sound like she had slapped someone on the shoulder. “No fucking way! Trust me, Shads, I would have heard it if they’d been up to any kinda hanky panky back there, okay?”

Gale was frozen, fingers clinging to Astarion’s shoulder like a life line. He didn’t have to look down to know how the soft morning rays of the Montana sunrise were glinting off the head of his achingly hard dick. He stared into Astarion’s eyes, helpless, and watched as the elf raised a teasing eyebrow and stood back to his full height.

“Well I stand by that they’re up there right now doing something sexual together,” Jen concluded primly. “And good for them, may I add. I was getting sick of seeing them dance around each other all the time.”

Something about that statement tickled at the back of Gale’s brain but any ability to process her insinuation oozed right out of his ears as Astarion pressed the bottle of lube into his hands and then turned to brace himself against the back of one of the Adirondack chairs. Gale watched lamely as Astarion looked back over his shoulder and reached down with one hand to pull at one of his cheeks, exposing his hole to the fresh morning air.

“Go on, then,” he whispered.

Gale bit his lip and stared down at the invitation. “Astarion…”

There was a round of laughter from below. Gale couldn’t make out what they were saying. He looked back up to Astarion’s smug face and whatever remained of his self-control dissolved.

Gale’s hand shook but he nodded and uncapped the bottle delicately, trying his best to make no noise as he squirted out a generous amount and stepped closer to bring his hand to Astarion’s ass. He was still a little loose and just a hint swollen from the night before, and Gale could tell there was a touch of soreness when Astarion let out a soft hiss at the first press of his fingers.

“This okay?” he breathed. Astarion glanced up at him and nodded.

“Yeah,” he replied through a half-bitten lip. “Bit sore, but I still… mmm. Still want it.”

Gale nodded and got to work prepping him fully, briefly losing himself in the feeling of Astarion on his fingers. He had nearly come down from the anxious spiral he had been in, too lost to the moment, before an excited shout from below startled him back.

“The bison are here!”

Sure enough, in the distance, the beginnings of a herd was cresting over the horizon just below the rising sun, their shuffling forms resplendently outlined in gold. Astarion looked up then too and paused, letting out what sounded like an awe-filled breath. Gale smiled at the reaction and tried to tamp down the little spike of anxiety the reminder of their location gave him.

Suddenly Astarion was pulling away from him and walking around the chairs to lean his crossed forearms on the far railing. He glanced back over his shoulder just long enough to whisper, “Gale, look!” before turning back and bending at the waist to rest his chin on his folded arms. His feet were set in a wider stance than one might expect of a sightseer, and Gale could tell he was canting his ass and hips back and up a bit to better show himself off.

Gale rolled his eyes at the clear bait and took it despite himself, stepping forward and running a hand down the length of Astarion’s back.

“Slut,” he whispered. Astarion huffed a laugh and wiggled his hips.

There was some rustling from below them as at least one person stood up. Gale held his breath, trying to listen for further cues, but Astarion had started to grind the slick cleft of his ass against Gale’s cock and he was quickly losing the ability to focus on anything else.

“Can someone take a picture of me with them in the background?” Jen’s voice asked, earning a murmur from the group at the decided who would take it (except Lae’zel, who commented that they had already taken enough pictures the day before and that it was foolish to waste any more cloud storage space on the “same animals you photographed before”.)

Astarion was trying to reach behind himself to grasp at Gale’s dick but the close press of their bodies was making it difficult. Gale reached a hand up to grab at his curls and tipped Astarion’s head back so he could better reach his ear to whisper directly into it. “Jen’s walking to the edge of the deck.”

“So?” Astarion breathed. From his angle, Gale could make out the corner of a smirk.

“So, she’ll see your arms over the edge of the railing,” Gale replied, trying to sound admonishing but somewhat failing given the low volume.

Astarion shrugged against Gale’s chest. “Not necessarily. Not if she doesn’t look straight up.”

Gale bit his lip, considering.

It was risky. Very risky.

But then that’s what had gotten him into all of this, wasn’t it? Being turned on by the risk of it all? If he were honest with himself—actually, really honest—Astarion hadn’t been wrong about that first encounter in the van. The danger had been part of it.

And, really, what was the worst that could happen? If Jen did look up all she would see would be Astarion’s folded arms and an unflatteringly low-angle view of his face. She wouldn’t have any reason to think anything untoward was happening. Although she would probably also be able to tell that Astarion was shirtless, and if she then walked a few further steps out past the edge of the deck then she would be able to see more, and then—

Gale’s cock slipped inside and Astarion let out a triumphant little noise, letting go of the base that he had finally managed to grab and maneuver while Gale was distracted with his ruminations. He cut off a gasp at the sudden heat and tightened his grip on Astarion’s hair.

“Can you see them well enough?” Jen’s voice came from what sounded like the space directly below them. Karlach—the enlisted photographer, seemingly—gave an affirmative and then some suggestions for poses. The group started laughing as Jen apparently moved to make it look like she was holding the distant herd in the palm of her hand.

“Move,” Astarion hissed, grinding his hips back as much as could given the angle.

Gale clenched his jaw and gave a slow, tentative thrust, careful to not let his thighs slap against the back of Astarion’s. It earned him an annoyed grumble and a twitch of Astarion’s hips.

“Fucking move more,” he ground out, slightly louder than before, and Gale frowned. The horny idiot was going to get them caught if he kept that sort of volume up.

“Be quiet,” Gale hissed, pulling Astarion’s head back by the hair more firmly to show he meant business.

That was the intention, anyway, but unfortunately it just spurred Astarion on further. A choked-off moan rumbled from the long line of his arced neck and Gale watched as he visibly swallowed to keep down another. Gale snapped his hips forward and was met with a choked gasp.

“Fuck, Gale, right there.”

It was said slightly above a whisper. Far too loud.

Right. Well desperate times called for desperate measures.

Gale leaned back just slightly to give himself room and brought the hand not threaded through platinum curls up and around to cover Astarion’s mouth. He was still close to Astarion’s ear, close enough to barely breathe his words and be heard, so he repeated himself as firmly as he could in a whisper. “I said be quiet, Astarion.” He gave another thrust, firm and deliberate.

There was a playful nip of teeth on his palm.

Gale sighed.

He twisted his hand and shoved three of his fingers into Astarion’s mouth instead, pressing them down onto the elf’s tongue to hold it still.

“Stop being a brat,” he muttered through gritted teeth. “Be fucking quiet or we’re going back inside.”

Astarion whined around the fingers in his mouth and twitched his head in what Gale assumed would have been a nod if he wasn’t being held in place so firmly by both of Gale’s hands. Satisfying that he had the elf successfully mollified, Gale increased the pace of his thrusts, knowing that without Astarion’s external interference he could move quickly enough to be pleasurable for them both but slow enough that it would be silent to those below.

“Me next!” Karlach yelled, and Jen laughed. There was more shuffling as they swapped places. Gale could hear the squeak of Karlach’s high topped sneakers as she rocked on the balls of her feet in excitement. “Oh can you do one where it looks like I’m holding up the sun?”

“Sure,” Jen laughed. “Just move over a bit…yep, right—no, not, uh, back where you were, yep!”

Astarion’s tongue was hot and wet beneath the pads of his fingers and Gale could feel his warm breath huffing down over his knuckles from his nose, sharp and panting between every bump of their hips. Gale loosened his grip on Astarion’s hair and rubbed little soothing circles into his scalp where he had been gripping him.

“Doing okay?” he breathed. Astarion nodded—more freely this time, now that he was able—and Gale ran the hand down his back and over the swell of his ass to grip the top of one thigh. He started to slip his fingers from Astarion’s mouth, hoping that the elf had enough self control not to need them, but the second they began to pull away he let out a long, low groan so Gale shoved them back in with a soft huff of both annoyance and affection.

“We should get a group picture,” Wyll announced from below, “At least of the four of us.”

“I can go knock on the boys’ door,” Karlach offered in response, “It’d be a shame to not include them. Maybe they’re, uh…done?”

There was a beat of silence. Gale bit his lip in anticipation and took a moment to grind back and forth a little pressed close against Astarion’s ass.

“We should give them time,” Jen responded delicately, “Potential awkward interruptions aside, I’m really rooting for them, y’know? I think they should have some space to…well. To be together.”

“By definition they will be together if they are within the larger group,” Lae’zel added (very helpfully). There was a collective groan from the group below and, from above, a finger-muffled groan from Astarion as Gale resumed his previous rhythm.

“Gmmml.”

Gale stared down at the back of Astarion’s head and smiled. “What was that?”

“Ghhl!” Astarion repeated, trying his best to speak around the fingers. Gale pulled them back a bit, leaving the tips hooked onto Astarion’s bottom lip but freeing up his tongue.

“—aale,” Astarion tried again. 

Gale managed to stifle his laugh and asked again, voice innocent. “Can’t hear you, Star.” 

There was a low, frustrated growl from Astarion and then suddenly he was standing and trying to spin in Gale’s grip. He let go, allowing Astarion to face him with a glare.

“I was clearly moaning your name,” Astarion spat out without any real heat, “I don’t know what was so Godsdamned confusing about—oh.”

Gale raised an amused eyebrow.

“You teasing little bitch.”

He was being pushed back and down, lowered into one of the Adirondack chairs and then awkwardly climbed on top of. The tilt seat meant a lack of a level surface for the grumbling elf to perch on and the angled armrests left no room for Astarion’s knees as he tried to straddle them to either side of Gale’s hips.

“Fucking hells, ugh. Fucking chair, fuck—”

He tried to help maneuver but it quickly became apparent that it was hopeless. Astarion stood with a huff and glared down at the armrests like they had personally offended him.

It was, Gale thought, quite adorable.

There was a collective peal of laughter from the group below that caught his attention. A squeal of surprise that sounded like it came from Jen was followed by a shout that sounded nearly like a war cry from Karlach, and then the pounding of feet against deck boards like one was chasing the other. It continued past the point directly below them and further, out towards the grass.

“Astarion, we should move, they—”

He was cut off by a sudden lapful of elf, facing forward this time. Astarion glanced over his shoulder and smirked.

“We simply must stop meeting like this, Gale.”

Gale shot him a look and tried to push him off, but the slanted angle of the chair gave him little leverage. Astarion lifted himself up by pushing down on the (apparently forgiven) armrests and shifted to hover over Gale’s cock.

A beat of stillness passed between them. Gale heard Jen and Karlach run out onto the grass. He couldn’t see them from this angle, low to the ground as he was, and he assumed Astarion couldn’t either. There still could be an eyeline, though, if the two women moved far enough away from the house and looked up at them. Gale took a deep, steadying breath, trying to decide what to do.

“Well?” Astarion huffed, “Put it in, Gale, I can’t use my hands right now.”

“This is getting too dangerous,” he replied shortly, “They will see us if they keep running out in the field like that.”

Astarion sighed dramatically and wiggled his ass midair. “Darling I don’t care I just need you back in me. Now.”

Gale bit his lip and looked down at his own erection, straining against his stomach and begging to be touched. A drop of lube from Astarion’s ass landed halfway down the shaft and slid downward, sparkling in the morning light.

“Fine.”

The second he guided the tip where it needed to be, Astarion was sinking down again, sitting with his full weight in Gale’s lap.

“Oh fuck,” he breathed, “Gods, you’re deep.”

“I can’t—” Gale cut himself off as he tried to thrust upwards, thighs utterly useless pinned below Astarion and tilted back at the angle they were. “You’ll have to move for us.”

Astarion spread his legs a bit wider to either side of Gale’s knees, digging his heels into the ground, and clutched at the armrests. “I have to do everything around here,” he grumbled.

“Astarion that is blatantly not—oh fuck.”

It was everything he had wanted to do to Astarion in the van, feeling the warmth of his body surrounding and squeezing him as he desperately held onto grinding hips. There wasn’t much vertical thrusting that could occur like that, but it was fine with how much friction there still was between them. Astarion leaned back and braced his shoulders against Gale’s chest for more leverage, using his core to bounce himself up and down. He tucked his face against Gale’s neck and sucked at the skin.

“Ah, Ast—”

“Can I leave a hickey now?” Astarion asked, then in a sickly sweet voice made breathless, added, “Please?”

Gale nodded frantically, too far gone to consider the consequences. Astarion bit down and held himself there, working the skin between his teeth as they moved. Gale slid his eyes shut, overwhelmed, and rocked up into Astarion’s heat as well as he could. A bolt of inspiration hit and he reached around to pull at Astarion’s cock, trying his best to keep in time with the rhythm of Astarion’s hips but only half managing to keep up as he increasingly lost the ability to do anything but sit back and be ridden senseless.

Somewhere out in the prairie, Jen squealed with joy and taunted Karlach to catch her.

“Close,” Astarion managed mere seconds before his whole body seized up, clamping down so hard it was nearly painful. A sudden wetness hit Gale’s cheek and he realized with a jerk that Astarion had somehow managed to shoot over his own shoulder with the force of his orgasm. The knowledge startled a laugh out of him that tipped very quickly into his own peak and then he was spilling into tight heat with a gasp.

Time froze. Cum dripped down to Gale’s chin.

“Ha!” Karlach yelled from somewhere out on the prairie. “Got ya!”

Gale glanced over Astarion’s shoulder and was relieved to find the statement wasn’t directed at them. He allowed his head to thunk back against the chair and took a deep, calming breath. Above him, Astarion had gone bonelessly limp.

“Not fair!” Jen yelled back, “Your legs are longer!”

Karlach's protest was cut off by Lae’zel, who replied with a scathing “Do not blame your stature for your lack of physical prowess, Jenevelle.”

Gale still couldn't see any of them, but realized with a sudden rush of post-orgasm clarity that the second either he or Astarion stood up their upper halves would likely be visible to whoever had made it out onto the prairie. Which from what it sounded like was, at minimum, half of their friends.

He tapped at Astarion’s hip, earning him a soft grumble.

“Leave me be,” Astarion sighed. “This feels too nice.”

“We need to get up carefully,” Gale answered, tone even. “I don’t think we can stand, we’ll be seen, so—”

“Nope,” Astarion said, cutting him off, “Not getting up at all, Gale. I live here now.”

Gale huffed in annoyance and turned his head to nip at Astarion’s ear. The resulting squeak was satisfying but also reminded him that they definitely needed to move before they were caught.

“This is going to sound…uh. You’re not going to like this,” he started, frowning down at the deck floor, “but you need to sort of, like, tip yourself forward and crawl off of me. I think.”

Astarion shot him with what seemed to be an incredibly incredulous look, if the third of his face that Gale could see was anything to go on.

“That’s stupid.”

But, blessedly, he was already going along with the suggestion, slithering off of both Gale’s lap and spent cock and sliding to his knees in front of the chair. He flopped forward onto all fours with a surprising amount of grace and shuffled around to look up at Gale.

“This is stupid,” he confirmed, and Gale had to stifle a laugh with his knuckles.

“I know,” he replied, already moving off the chair in the same fashion. It was awkward, and his knees immediately protested, but soon he was beside Astarion on the hard wooden deck and they shuffled over to the French doors alongside each other.

“I feel like one of the fucking bison,” Astarion whined. Gale rolled his eyes and reached up for the door handle, opening it with a too-late realization that he had picked the wrong one.

A loud squeak filled the morning air, and a moment later there was a loud greeting from below.

“Morning!” Wyll called up. Gale froze, hand still on the doorknob. Astarion looked over his shoulder to level him an amused look.

“Uh, m-morning!” Gale called back, “Just, um. Just wanted to look at the sunrise but it looks like I missed it! Oh well!”

He let go of the doorknob to gesture wildly forward, urging Astarion on with desperate eyes. Astarion giggled softly at that but trudged on regardless, shuffling through the door.

“That’s too bad,” Wyll replied. “Come on down, though! We’re all out here.”

“There is no need to rush,” Lae’zel added, “Please, do take the time to cleanse yourselves first. I do not wish to sit beside the smell of sex all morning.”

Gale blanched. Astarion lifted himself up on his knees to call back down to her over Gale’s shoulder with a wide smile.

“Of course, darling! See you all in a bit!”

There was a pause and then an awkward affirmative noise from Wyll. Lae'zel let out a short, dry laugh.

With a sigh, Gale finished making his way through the door and shut it behind them.

Chapter Text

Gale stared at the mark on his neck, red and darkening, right below his left ear. Behind him, Astarion was still showering, steadily filling the bathroom with steam that Gale kept having to wipe away from the mirror with the side of his palm so he could keep staring at the blooming hickey.

“You almost done in there?” Gale asked, not breaking eye contact with his neck. He heard Astarion’s scoff, just loud enough to be audible over the rush of the shower, and finally looked away from the mirror to watch Astarion through the glass shower door.

“You cannot rush perfection,” Astarion explained, meeting Gale’s stare with an eyeroll. He was sitting on the shower bench, some sort of thick purple mask matting down his curls, rubbing some sort of sparkly paste over his arms.

Gale tilted his head and nodded his chin towards the paste. “What is that?”

Astarion raised both an eyebrow and his hand, showing off a palmful of the grainy-looking substance. “Sugar scrub?” At Gale’s confused expression he huffed a laugh and explained further. “You rub it onto your skin and it helps slough off dead skin.”

“Ugh,” Gale replied, scrunching his face, “Gross.”

Astarion shook his head dismissively. “Hardly, darling,” he huffed, “Exfoliation is extremely important.”

Gale frowned. “Is it? I’ve never done it.”

To his chagrin, Astarion smirked. “Oh I am aware, darling. Your skin is wonderfully…rustic.”

Gale turned towards him fully with a raised eyebrow. “Rustic?”

Astarion hummed in agreement and moved on to rubbing the scrub into his thighs.

“Does it remove hair too? You’re so…smooth,” Gale asked. Astarion laughed at him for a moment before catching himself at Gale’s genuinely curious expression.

“Oh, you…no, Gale. It doesn’t remove hair,” Astarion replied. Gale watched him spread the thick, shimmering scrub down over the swell of his calves onto the planes of his feet and rub it into his soles with small firm circles. “I don’t have much body hair to begin with—elven genes and all that—but I’m prone to some peach fuzz I’d rather not have. Normally I do shave, but I wanted to do something special for the trip, so I went and got sugared last week.”

“Wait,” Gale deadpanned, “What?” He briefly looked up to Astarion’s face in confusion before following his line of sight back down to stare at Astarion’s fingers as they slid between his toes, “But you just said it didn’t remove hair?”

Astarion froze in place for a second before looking up at Gale with an amused smirk. “No, darling. This is sugar scrub. I’m talking about being sugared at a salon. It’s like…being waxed?”

“Waxed? But how would sugar…”

“They heat it up until it goes all molten,” Astarion replied, going back to his extremely important exfoliation, “Then it cools a bit but stays a, like, gel? I don’t know. It’s sticky enough to remove hair. Pleasantly warm, too.”

Gale must have had a horrified look on his face, because Astarion burst out laughing.

“You rip your hair out with…with molten sugar?”

Astarion rolled his eyes. “No. Isobel my esthetician does.”

Gale threw his hands up in surrender and turned back to the mirror. The sight of the hickey greeted him once more and he frowned at it. The sudden urge to poke at it overcame him but he resisted in favor of trying to push his hair around in such a way to cover the mark. The only feasible way was to part his hair down the middle and let his waves dangle in front of his ears, which was very much not his usual style (for sensory reasons if nothing else).

“You told me I could leave the bite mark!” Astarion asserted, clearly noticing his struggle, and Gale pinched the bridge of nose.

“I’m aware,” he sighed, “I have been known to make…less than advisable choices when aroused.”

Astarion’s responding snort was barely audible over the shower spray but Gale caught it and turned to look back at the elf with an amused smile. The sugar scrub process was concluded, apparently, and Astarion was rinsing off his legs and feet with the detachable shower head. He looked up as he finished and met Gale’s eyes with a smile. “See something you like?”

“Oh yes,” Gale shot back.

Astarion blew him a kiss with his free hand and as he stood to replace the shower head and rinse the mask from his hair Gale noticed a distinct swirling sway to his hips.

What a fucking minx.

This was it. Gale was walking down the stairs of the cabin, down to where the rest of the group was gathered in the living room, internally dreading the moment one of them noticed the hickey.

Shockingly, none of them did.

Although Karlach did make a teasing gibe at his hairstyle, of course, which frankly was to be expected. He waved her off with a vague comment about “trying something new” and she let it drop. Jen, in contrast, shot him a raised eyebrow but he quickly turned away from her and started chatting with Lae’zel about her professional-looking hiking boots.

A few minutes later Astarion joined them, sauntering down the stairs like he was the star of his own private little fashion show. Gale barely avoided staring at his bare thighs as they flexed beneath the rolled hems of the entirely too-short and too-tight khaki shorts.

“Oh I like your fanny pack, Star!” Karlach commented as the elf alighted to the same level as the rest of the group. Astarion’s eyes went comically wide and Gale bit his lip to avoid laughing.

“This is not a ‘fanny pack’ , Karlach, this is a Coach belt bag,” he sniffed, earning him a whoop of laughter from her in return. “It’s fashion.”

Whatever it was, it hugged Astarion’s hips perfectly and served to cinch in the otherwise loose shirt he had paired with the shorts—a short-sleeved tan button down also rolled at the cuffs. Together with the shorts he looked like he was about to embark on the sluttiest safari of all time.

“Looks like something a mom would wear to an amusement park,” Karlach was laughing. Gale blinked a few times to recenter himself and looked up to see Astarion scowling at her.

“Well when you inevitably start getting blisters and need a band-aid on the trail, don’t come running to me, darling,” he shot back, “At least looking like a mom means I’m prepared like one.”

“Surprisingly practical of you, Astarion,” Lae’zel commented in her typical dry tone, “I will also have plenty of necessary supplies in my pack, should you need them, Karlach. Although if your hiking boots fit and are broken in adequately, there ought to be no need for a bandage.”

There was a beat of silence as she looked back at Astarion and then she raised her brow.

“Your boots are broken in as well, I hope?”

Gale glanced fully down for the first time, down past the hairless and scrubbed-smooth legs to a pair of decidedly designer boots that probably barely counted as something one could hike in. Unsurprisingly, they looked brand new.

“Well,” he scoffed in reply, tipping his head back and forth, “Kind of?”

Karlach cackled and pointed a finger at Astarion’s growing frown. “Well at least you have a fanny pack you can stow your feet in when they fall off on the trail,” she laughed, and Gale couldn’t help the giggle that finally sprang forth from his clenched jaw.

“Heathens, the lot of you,” Astarion spat with a distinct pout. Gale had the sudden urge to reach up and run a comforting hand down his arm. He managed to tamp that urge down by squeezing his hands into fists and turning to go help Wyll pack their lunches and extra water bottles into the cooler.

The back seat of the van was clear—all of their belongings having been stored inside the cabin for the week—and Gale assumed as he sat down in his same seat that Astarion would sit against the other window like a fucking normal human (elven) being.

He was wrong.

At the very least, Astarion opted to sit in the middle seat and not on top of him again. Although, given the oddity of the choice as well as the immediate presence of Astarion’s hand clutching Gale’s thigh through his baggy athletic shorts, it would have been clear to anyone looking back at them that the elf was being rather clingy. Luckily no one does, but it rose Gale’s hackles all the same.

“You’re a menace,” he muttered as Wyll started them back down the gravel driveway towards the road.

“I know,” Astarion shot back with a satisfied smirk and a gentle squeeze of his fingers.

The hiking trail Lae’zel had researched was just under an hour away from the cabin. There were plenty of closer ones, some only a few minutes away, but they all consisted of gentle prairie hills and river valleys. She had set her eyes on something a bit more intense for them, apparently, and they needed to head to the base of the mountains where the proper evergreen forests began.

The drive felt short in comparison to their two-day trip, especially when Gale didn’t have to constantly worry about popping a boner to a lapful of wiggling elf. Astarion kept his hand mostly still—thank the Gods—and actually allowed Gale a modicum of peace as he intermittently scrolled his phone one handed and looked out the window at the increasingly alpine environment rushing past the van’s windows.

“Beautiful,” Gale breathed, mostly to himself, but then Astarion murmured an agreement and Gale turned to look at him and smile. The sun was bright, the sky mostly cloudless, and it sparkled off Astarion’s irises in a way that made Gale turn away and look outside so he wouldn’t stare.

Eventually the road turned back to narrow winding gravel and led to a mostly-empty parking lot. Climbing out felt good even though the trip was short—Gale wasn't sure his back had quite recovered from sitting for so long only a couple of days ago. The thought that he will have to sit through the return trip home at the end of the week flashed across his mind but he ignored it in favor of following behind the group as they crunched their way across the gravel lot.

The trail entrance was marked with a large wooden sign, some of it printed and some of it hand painted, detailing the length and difficulty of the several trails that split off from the opening path. Lae’zel insisted they go for the hardest on offer but Jen managed to talk her down to one of the middling ones, shooting a pointed look over at Astarion. Lae’zel scoffed at the same time that Astarion exclaimed a few choice expletives but the decision was made all the same.

They started out, and very quickly, Gale realized he was not equipped for even the middling path.

He wasn’t out of shape, per se, but he had never been an athlete, either, and it became increasingly apparent as the first half hour dragged on that his knees were not well suited for hiking alpine trails.

He had always been fine walking for longer distances, but that was always on relatively even, flat ground—campus, or the surrounding town, or back home walking the local bike trails with his mother. In contrast, the hiking trail is all uphill dirt and loose rock and little sections where it turns into uneven steps hewn from split logs half-buried into the ground. His calves were burning and his joints were clicking and his stupid fucking hair kept flopping into his eyes. The urge to pull it back into a bun or a ponytail was growing increasingly strong, unfortunately at odds with the reality that doing so would reveal the mark on his neck.

Why he couldn’t bring himself to let his friends see, he was not quite sure. He knew they knew something —that much had been made clear from their little conversation on the porch that morning. But to have it confirmed, to have them all fully aware and cognizant of whatever this thing with Astarion was…no. It was too scary.

Beside him, also lagging behind the rest of the group, Astarion was groaning under his breath with every step.

“Feet?” Gale panted, and Astarion nodded begrudgingly.

“Don’t tell Lae’zel,” he muttered back.

Gale hummed an acknowledgment, then paused. “Wait,” he said, holding out a hand to stop Astarion in his tracks.

“What?”

“Do you, um,” Gale started, then turned fully towards Astarion with a sheepish expression, “Do you just want to just…break away? From the group? Neither one of us is enjoying this, I think.”

Astarion raised an eyebrow. “Gale Dekarios, you naughty thing.”

Ahead of them, their friends had continued forward, oblivious to the two men pausing on the trail. Gale fished his phone from his pocket and shot Wyll a quick text explaining that they were fine and just needed a break. Luckily he still had service and he assumed Wyll would as well. If not, then…well their friends would figure out what happened eventually.

Before anyone could turn back to them, Gale grabbed Astarion’s wrist and tugged him off the trail, ignoring the peal of delighted laughter it earned him. He walked a few dozen feet and hopped down over a little crest of scrubby undergrowth to a lower section of ground beneath, barely managing to catch himself as his hiking shoes hit a patch of half-decomposed pine needles and slipped. Astarion followed him down much more gracefully, still giggling.

“Well,” he huffed through a smile, “what did you have in mind, darling?”

Gale looked up to where he knew the trail was. From this angle and elevation it was no longer visible. They would still be able to be heard if they weren’t quiet, but then what was new? That had been every sexual experience he and Astarion had enjoyed together so far, so it didn’t particularly bother him. He wasn’t keen on the idea of moving much farther away from the trail and getting lost.

Plus, that annoying deep part of his brain pointed out, the risk made it hotter.

With a groan both at himself and from his budding arousal Gale pushed Astarion’s shoulders back and crowded him against the thick trunk of a Douglas fir.

“Your hand on my thigh was maddening, you know,” he muttered against Astarion’s mouth, surprised at how strained the words sound. “How do you do that? Drive me crazy with the smallest touches?”

“It’s a carefully honed skill,” Astarion replied with a smirk. Gale leaned in to kiss it off him. He pressed close to Astarion’s body, pushing him into the tree trunk and digging his fingers into his hips just over the strap of his belt bag. Astarion’s hands flew up to wrap around his neck, thumbs on either side of his jaw, and he felt the gentle tug of Astarion’s finger tips in his hair.

“How is your hair so fucking soft,” Astarion mumbled against his lips. Gale pulled back just enough to shoot him a smug grin.

“Is it?”

Astarion pulled him back in with a scoff and bit at his lower lip. “It is,” he replied, “Which is a fucking mystery and a travesty, really, because I know I saw you use—” he paused to shudder, full bodied and dramatic, “—fucking two-in-one shampoo and conditioner this morning.”

“What’s wrong with that?” Gale asked, genuinely curious, and it was the wrong thing to ask, apparently, because Astarion nipped him again. “Ow!”

“You’re such a fucking man,” Astarion growled.

“Isn’t that—”

Gale’s words were cut off by Astarion’s tongue, and he returned the press of it for a few moments before he continued. “Isn’t that a good thing?”

“Hmm?”

“Me being a man,” Gale clarified. For emphasis he shifted his hips and pressed them forward to grind his clothed erection against Astarion’s. The belt bag was in the way, a bit, but he still managed enough contact to pull a gasp from the other man.

Astarion groaned and pulled back again. “Yes, obviously, Gale. Clearly I like that about you.”

“Then what’s so wrong with two-in-one shower products? Or not knowing what ‘sugar scrubbing’ is?” he asked.

Astarion let out a frankly hilarious noise of frustration. “It’s ‘sugaring’ and ‘sugar scrub’, not ‘sugar scrubbing’! Learn the difference between a Godsdamned verb and a noun, Gale!”

And that pissed him off just a little bit, because his intelligence and education were both things Gale was fond of about himself, and the implication he wasn’t aware of elementary-school level grammar was quite the affront. He opened his mouth to say something snarky back but then Astarion reached down and palmed him through his shorts and pedantic retorts flew right out the back window of his brain.

“I don’t want to kneel in this dirt,” Astarion said, breaking through Gale’s cerebrally defenestrated thoughts, “Can I just jerk you off?”

Gale nodded. What a fucking question.

“Good.”

Astarion reached down, then, unzipped his dumb little bag, and fished around for a moment before triumphantly pulling out a small refillable travel tube. He then rezipped the bag and shoved it even farther to the side of his hip it had already been jauntily angled against.

“Just take it off,” Gale groaned, “It’s in the way! Also did you pack fucking lube for our day trip?”

Astarion gasped with mock indignation. “First of all, Gale, there is no way in the Hells I’m putting this bag on the ground. It might not be my nice Burberry one but she certainly still doesn’t deserve that.”

“Your bag is a she?”

“Secondly, Gale, no I did not bring fucking lube on a public hiking trail,” he continued, frowning adorably, “What do you take me for? Some kind of degenerate?”

Gale hesitated, which was the wrong move, apparently.

“Careful, darling,” Astarion hissed, narrowing his eyes, “Keep that up and I won’t help you come.”

Gale scoffed and let go of Astarion to hold his hands up in surrender. “I didn’t even say anything!”

“Uh huh. Pull down your shorts.”

He did, of course, and so did Astarion.

Then Astarion uncapped the little travel tube and squirted some sort of white cream into his hands. Gale was about to ask what it was but the smell hit his nose and answered the question for him before Astarion could.

“You’re going to jerk us off with sunscreen?” he asked, incredulous.

“No,” Astarion shot back, rolling his eyes, “I’m going to jerk you off, and you will do the same for me. I’m not doing all the work here, darling.”

Gale rolled his eyes right back. “That’s obviously what I meant, Astarion.” He took the tube and squirted out his own dollop of the cream.

“See this is what I meant about using precise language,” Astarion replied archly, “It’s important too— fuck.”

Gale had reached down and wrapped his sunscreened fingers around Astarion while the man was distracted. “Yes?”

“Fuck off.”

But then Astarion was kissing him and wrapping his own hand around him and Gale felt him smile into the kiss. Success.

Gale tried to keep his voice down as they worked up a rhythm, aware that anyone could walk by on the trail at any moment and hear them if they were too loud. He hadn’t lied when he had said Astarion drove him mad, earlier. He did. Him and his little touches and looks and flirts and words and the way he made Gale’s chest go all warm and tight and his stomach swoop out from under him.

Fuck.

Gale tried to keep pace with Astarion’s movements but he kept doing interesting little things with his wrists and his thumb and it was making it hard to focus. Then Astarion nosed past the hair handing in front of his ear to lick over the mark he had made earlier and Gale’s hand faltered completely, nearly coming to a stop. Astarion giggled against his neck and pulled back to meet Gale’s eyes.

“Am I making it hard to concentrate, darling?” he teased. Gale narrowed his eyes and that just made him laugh more. “Here, just hold your hand like—yes, just…”

He adjusted Gale’s grip with his free hand and then started thrusting into his fist, starting back up with his other hand on Gale's cock, matching the rhythm of his fingers to the press and swirl of his hips.

“That feel good?” he whispered. Gale nodded against his cheek and angled to capture his mouth again, pressing in with his tongue and laving it over the back of Astarion’s upper teeth to draw out a moan.

“Mmm, fu— ”

“I want to fuck you,” Astarion gasped against him, “not here, but at the cabin. Later. Tomorrow maybe, I don’t— ah. I don’t care when.”

Gale nodded again, unable to articulate the zing of electricity the thought sent up his spine.

“I feel like I am now, almost,” Astarion continued, pumping his cock in and out of Gale’s grip, “It’s not the same, I know. Your body would feel so much better, but…”

He thumped his head back against the tree trunk. Gale winced at the noise but Astarion didn’t seem to care and he stared up to somewhere above them. The sky, probably, peaking through the layers of verdant fir branches. It elongated his neck, stretched it back into an achingly tempting expanse of skin. Gale’s mouth watered at the idea of sinking his teeth in and leaving his own mark there.

“How would you fuck me?” he asked, doing his best to keep his own eyes open to watch Astarion visibly swallow before speaking.

“I don’t know,” he groaned, “I want to fuck you so many ways, I…maybe I’d bend you over something, first, for revenge.”

Gale managed to huff a laugh despite his state. “Revenge for what?”

“For fucking me over the railing this morning,” Astarion replied simply, like it should be obvious. He looked down his nose at Gale, eyes barely open and obscured by thick lashes from the angle of his head.

“That was your idea!” Gale laughed.

“You were the one who wanted to fuck outside,” Astarion shot back, “and look, here we are again doing the deed in mother nature.” He paused to smirk. “Is this a kink I should be aware of, Gale?”

As much as he loved a healthy verbal repartee during sex— apparently —Gale was getting much too close to his orgasm to focus on the conversation any longer. “Just… fuck, Astarion, just shut up for once, please.”

Astarion barked a delighted little laugh and tipped his head back down to peck Gale on the lips. “That’s rich, coming from you, darling.”

“Uh huh,” Gale sighed, and then leaned forward to lick into his mouth again. His hips had started pumping alongside Astarion’s, at some point, but the man had seamlessly adjusted the motions of his hand to accommodate the motion. Where Astarion got such dexterous fingers Gale had no idea.

It was more than just during sex, Gale realized, somewhere in the back of his head in the part of his mind that was always analyzing things, even when the rest of it was fuck-drunk. Astarion had incredibly skilled hands. He texted lightning fast, he applied his beauty products with exacting precision, and though Gale hadn’t witnessed it first hand, he knew Astarion liked to sew. That dress he had worn in the van had been altered to look that way by himself, after all. It was captivating.

Everything about Astarion was captivating, really.

Gale felt his abdomen clench. He gasped into Astarion’s mouth and turned at the last minute, just managing to direct his aim away from his location-inappropriate safari outfit to spill over the ground beside them, instead. A questioning noise made it halfway out of Astarion’s throat before he realized why Gale turned and—clearly seeing the wisdom in the choice—angled himself the other way as his thrusts grew slightly stilted against Gale’s fingers. Gale barely had time to tell him to come before he was spilling too, shooting down onto the dirt.

A moment of silence passed as they caught their breath and then Gale let go and turned to look down at where his own spend had gone. To his embarrassment, he caught sight of it dripping down the sides of an unfortunately placed pinecone. He cleared his throat awkwardly and reached out with the tip of his shoe to turn the pinecone over, hiding the liquid beneath it and the earth.

Still pressed against the tree, Astarion burst out laughing.

When the rest of the group finally came back down to the parking lot, nearly an hour later, Astarion and Gale were sitting on a felled log near the trail entrance.

“Where did you two run off to then?” Wyll asked as they approached, “You only texted me that you were ‘breaking off’, not what happened.”

“Astarion’s fee— ow,” Gale started, cut off my Astarion’s elbow in his ribs, “Uh, Astarion… felt bad for me. Because my legs. Were hurting. So…”

“Right,” Wyll deadpanned. “Okay, well. Who wants lunch?”

“I could eat a fuckin’ horse,” Karlach sighed and then added, at Lae’zel’s shocked look, “It’s an expression, Lae, I would never hurt a horse.”

“Majestic creatures,” Lae’zel replied with a sharp nod.

The group spread out on a picnic blanket in a patch of grass next to the lot and ate their bagged lunches. It was getting warmer out and Gale was sweating a bit despite having been still for quite a while. He couldn’t imagine how the others who had actually exerted themselves felt. Karlach was loudly complaining about feeling “like a furnace” and had rolled the bottom hem of her tank top up to her bra strap, baring her toned stomach to the sun. Astarion had offered her some sunscreen and she had turned him down, citing wanting to tan. Gale had to look away from the little travel tube before he blushed too hard and busied himself with watching a small pair of birds flit through the dense branches of a juniper a little ways away from where they sat. He couldn’t tell if they were caught in some sort of territorial dispute or a mating ritual.

Gale realized he had zoned out when Jen started calling his name. He blinked and turned to look at her, swallowing the food in his mouth before speaking. “Yes?”

“You okay?” she asked, voice gentle and low. The rest of the group was chatting about something—Gale wasn’t sure—and it afforded him and Jen a little pocket of privacy.

“Yeah?”

Jen looked skeptical.

“You were chewing that same bite of turkey and provolone for over a minute, Gale,” she stated gently. Gale looked down to the barely eaten sandwich clutched like a lifeline in his hands.

“Oh.”

“What’s going on with you and Astarion?” she asked, point-blank. Gale lurched and shot a frantic glance at the others. No one had turned from their conversation, so he sighed and looked back towards her.

“I don’t know,” he answered honestly, “We’re… something. Something is definitely happening, I just don’t know…I-I don’t really want to talk about it, if that’s okay.”

Jen nodded and took a thoughtful bite of her own food before continuing. “Okay. I’m just worried about you, after—”

“He isn’t Mystra,” Gale cut in, voice harsher than he meant to despite the hushed volume.

“I know,” she replied, tone soothing, “I’m not worried about him hurting you, Gale. I’m worried that you’ll hurt yourself, so to speak.”

Gale waved her off and took a long, deep sip of lemonade. There had been leftovers from when Astarion had made it fresh the day before, some held aside without being spiked. It was still good, if a bit stale tasting.

“I…yeah. Okay,” he conceded after a moment. She reached out to pat his knee and he shot her a small smile. “Thank you.”

“Anytime,” she said, and he knew she was being genuine.

Chapter Text

The third day in the cabin, the group collectively decided that they wanted to watch a movie. Lae’zel had been gunning for another hike but was shot down to a chorus of sore grumbles. The weather was still lovely, though, so a compromise was made to open the large windows in the cabin’s living room and kitchen as far as they would go to let a wildflower-scented crossbreeze through.

Then had come the decision of what movie they would watch. The cabin had a smart TV and Wyll had seemingly every streaming service account. After much belabored scrolling and light arguing they all settled on Addams Family Values. A bit of a weird choice for the time of year, perhaps, but Karlach justified her insistence on it by pointing out the movie heavily features a summer camp. Additionally, Lae’zel had never seen it and she was intrigued by the description of Joan Cusack’s character manipulating Uncle Fester via her sex appeal in order to steal his money, so they settled in with some microwave popcorn they found in the kitchen cabinets and glass bottles of Mexican Coke that Karlach had insisted they buy at the grocery store on the way to the cabin a few days before.

The living room had two leather couches which faced each other and sat perpendicular to the wall with the TV. Gale preferred not to have to twist to watch the movie, so he pulled the plush reading chair from across the room where it sat next to the windows and placed it at the end of the coffee table, directly facing the TV. Wyll, Jen, and Lae’zel settled on the couches and Karlach opted to sprawl out on a blanket on the floor, citing the need to stretch her legs in a way that couch sharing wouldn’t allow her to do. That left an open seat on the lefthand couch closest to the end where Gale’s chair sat. A seat that would likely be filled with Astarion when he finally came down from whatever he was doing upstairs.

The movie started, and immediately his friends were murmuring over the opening scene, commenting on the absolute divine force that was (and always will be) Morticia and Gomez Addams’ relationship. Gale rolled his eyes at their lack of self control and took a sip of his Coke. Then, quite suddenly, something small and hard landed in his lap and he had to catch himself from spitting the soda all over himself.

Astarion walked past, wearing a t-shirt and set of joggers that were no less luxurious or well-fitted for their basic form. As expected, he curled up into the available space on the couch and immediately focused on the screen, legs tucked up against his chest with his chin resting on his knees.

Gale looked down to what Astarion had dropped into his lap. It looked to be some sort of remote, about the size of his thumb and made of hot pink plastic. He tried to catch Astarion’s eye to shoot him an incredulous look but the elf’s attention appeared solely focused on Wednesday and Pugsley trying to creatively murder their new baby sibling.

He inspected the remote further. It had a power button with a little indicator light that was currently unlit. Below that there was a button with a few wavy lines, indicating something Gale couldn’t immediately parse, and below that a simple set of up and down arrows. He blinked down at it, frowned, and fished out his phone.

Gale: Um???

He watched Astarion pluck his phone from the pocket of his joggers and hold it in front of his shins so he could type out a reply without moving his chin from its resting place.

Astarion: yes, darling?

Gale: What did you just give me?

Astarion: turn it on and see

Gale turned the remote over in his fingers a few times, studying it for any further clues, and when none presented themselves he sighed to himself and hit the power button. Other than the little indicator LED lighting up red, nothing happened.

Gale: That provided no new information, Astarion.

Astarion: no, but it does feel amazing

Gale looked up at him. He hadn’t moved but Gale could see that he was holding just a fraction more tension in his shoulders.

Gale: What does?

He watched Astarion type out a reply and then tilt his head just enough to make eye contact with Gale as he hit the send button. Gale glanced down at his phone screen and felt his stomach fall out from under him.

Astarion: the vibrating plug in my ass. the one *you* are now in control of

Immediately, several things ran through Gale’s mind at once.

Firstly, that this was not at all an appropriate thing to be doing in a room full of his friends.

Secondly, that he didn’t actually care, because holy shit.

Thirdly, he needed to hide the remote before anyone turned back to look at him, fast. 

He brought one leg up to fold over the other one, hoping that he could hold the remote in his lap and angle his thighs to hide it. A sound plan, in theory, but then he also realized with a growing dread that that wouldn’t be enough to also hide his growing erection.

With only a mild sense of panic he cast his eyes around the room, searching for a solution. Astarion was smirking at him, the corner of his mouth pushing his cheek into his knee, and Gale shot him a glare before continuing his search, rocking back slightly with anxiety. The motion pressed his back firmly against the throw pillow behind him that he hadn't bothered to remove before he sat down—lumbar support, and all that—and he quickly yanked it out from behind himself to sit it in his lap, pretending to half-hug it for some sort of comfort while he furiously texted one handed behind it, the remote squashed below his hand against his increasingly tented shorts.

Gale: Why are you like this?

Astarion: who knows, but you love it

Astarion: go on, now. let me really feel it

Gale swallowed thickly and briefly dropped his phone to grab the remote, hitting the up arrow twice. He then swapped back to his phone.

The back and forth was going to be annoying, but he simply had to keep holding onto the pillow with his other hand.

Across the edge of the coffee table, Astarion shifted, adjusting the way he was sitting so his weight was directly over his center as opposed to leaning more on one hip. Gale watched him make the tiniest swirl of his hips against the soft leather of the couch, grinding himself down onto the plug.

Gale: What does the other button do? The one with the little wiggly lines?

Astarion: changes the pattern of the vibration. right now it’s gently pulsing

Gale hit the button once.

Gale: And now?

Astarion: slightly faster pulsing

He hit it again.

Astarion: that’s the fastest pulse setting

Astarion: fuck that feels nice

Gale was fully hard now, straining against his shorts and pressing up into the pillow. He bit his lip and looked back at his friends. They were all fully watching the screen, mostly no longer making comments or quips about the movie. Lae’zel had insisted that they allow her to focus on “the intriguing murder family” and the rest of the group had agreed to be quiet. Gale closed his eyes for a moment and focused on listening for the vibration of the plug as he hit the up arrow once more. Luckily, between the sound of the movie and the crunching of popcorn (mostly from Karlach) it was inaudible.

The buzzing of his phone, however, brought his attention back down to his lap. Also not really audible but certainly palpable.

Astarion: Gale. don’t go all dissociative on me now

Astarion: focus

Gale: Wouldn’t dare.

Gale: What’s it feel like?

There was a pause while Astarion typed out a series of messages.

Astarion: so fucking good

Astarion: the plug isn’t very long but that makes it perfect

Astarion: it perfectly grinds against my prostate

Astarion: gods I want to touch my cock so bad

Gale resisted the urge to correct his improper adverb use and instead gripped the pillow tighter while he typed out his own reply.

Gale: What do you want?

Gale: A different pattern? More strength?

Astarion: whatever you want to give me

Astarion: like I said, you’re in control

Gale took a steadying breath.

Gale: Yeah? So I can do whatever I want?

Gale: Maybe I’ll just…

He clicked the power button, turning the plug entirely off.

He saw Astarion startle slightly from the corner of his eye and he looked up to be met with a glare. He tilted his head and gave a teasing look of mock confusion. When Astarion shot a pointed look down to his lap and then up, Gale mouthed “What?” at him and smirked.

Two can play at whatever unhinged game Astarion had invented for him.

His phone buzzed.

Astarion: don’t be an ass. turn it back on

Gale: You’ll catch more flies with honey than with vinegar, Astarion.

He glanced up to see Astarion’s reaction to that. From his angle he could just make out the corner of his little frown.

Astarion: I assume you mean you want me to ask nicely

Astarion: fuck that

Astarion: I’ll just enjoy it without the vibrations

Gale raised an eyebrow down at the text and shrugged to himself. Well if it was going to be like that. He put his phone down and turned his attention back to the movie trying to catch up with what was happening on screen. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Astarion tilt his head back towards the ceiling, eyes closed, and take a deep breath. Then, he looked back down with a little grimace and typed something out.

Gale’s phone buzzed.

Astarion: fine

Astarion: please, Gale

Gale: Please what?

A pause and a visible (though inaudible) huff from the elf.

Astarion: please turn the plug back on

Gale: Why should I?

Astarion: because it felt so good

Gale paused, considering. He could just give in. But Astarion was the one who had started this, and they had an entire movie to make it through. He had time.

Gale: I’m going to need you to be more specific.

Astarion was still gently rocking, the movements so small they would be unnoticeable to anyone not looking for them. But Gale was looking, and he could almost see the frustration with which Astarion was seeking pressure and movement.

Astarion: the plug does feel good without being turned on. but it feels so much fucking better when it’s vibrating

Astarion: please Gale

Astarion: I could feel it through my entire core, before

Astarion: and knowing you’re the one controlling it is so fucking hot

Astarion: also tbh you refusing to turn it back on is fucking annoying

Gale: Ah ah ah, Astarion. Honey, remember?

If it weren’t for their current situation, he’s sure Astarion would have growled at him by now.

Astarion: please please please please

Gale: First, answer a question: If I turn it back on, will it go back to the prior setting from before I turned it off or does it reset?

Astarion: it resets

Gale: Understood.

Without warning, he flicked the power back on and hit the up arrow four times.

Astarion lurched slightly in place. At the other end of his couch, Wyll turned over his shoulder to shoot him a concerned look. “You okay, Astarion?”

“Yeah,” he choked out in response. Gale watched him swallow and try again. “Just started to feel a cramp…still uh, s-sore from yesterday!”

His tone was weirdly chipper. Wyll looked unsure but turned back to the movie anyway. “Okay.”

Astarion waited a few seconds and then turned back to shoot Gale another glare.

Astarion: what was *that*

Gale: What you asked for, was it not?

Astarion: you fucking dick

Gale barely resisted a self-satisfied smile as he replied.

Gale: I’m sure you *would* like my dick fucking you, huh?

Astarion: that was terrible

Astarion: please don’t stop

Gale: My jokes?

Astarion: no the plug, obviously. I’m asking nicely. please don’t stop

Gale: I won’t.

He clicked the pattern button twice to bring it back to the fastest level of pulsing.

Gale: How many other settings are there?

Astarion: I don’t remember

Astarion: there are a few little wave patterns and some random ones

Astarion: and then just solidly on

Gale paused, considering.

Gale: That seems like too many settings. 

Astarion: honestly yeah

Astarion: fuck I wanna touch myself

Gale sucked a breath in through his nose and let it out slowly through his mouth. His own cock was starting to ache, the lack of touch becoming hard to cope with. He shifted, moving the pillow to sit flat in his lap with both his hands on top of it gripping his phone. The remote stayed tucked between his abdomen and the edge of the pillow, accessible but not visible. It allowed him to press down on the pillow with his forearms while he typed, putting some much-needed pressure where he needed it.

Gale: I want to touch you too.

Astarion: not yourself? I see what you’re doing with that pillow

Astarion: should I be jealous

Gale: No idea what you’re talking about, Astarion.

Astarion: you’re grinding against it

Astarion: I wish it was my ass you were grinding against again

Astarion: like in the van

Gale looked over the group. No one was even tilted his way.

Hesitantly, at first, and then a little more firmly, Gale let himself rock up against the pillow. He kept the movements gentle and small, some part of him terrified that someone would see the motion out of the corner of their eye and look at him. The danger of that possibility simply added to the appeal, unfortunately, although the sliver of his sanity that still remained justified that if someone did turn to look, the motions were slight enough that he could ostensibly play it off as merely adjusting the way he was sitting.

Gale: Okay, yes. Fine.

Gale: I’m so hard it hurts a little. I wish I could touch myself too.

Gale: Or, better: I wish you were touching me.

Astarion: oh?

Astarion: how?

Gale took a moment to consider.

Gale: You’re already stretched out from the plug.

Gale: If we were alone, I would want you to come over and sink down on me.

Astarion: hot, but a bit boring, darling

Astarion: you can do better, surely

Gale shot him a look, but Astarion was far too focused on staring at his phone screen, waiting for a reply as he continued to rock his hips. Gale smiled slightly at the eagerness and typed out his reply.

Gale: Well I do actually kind of want to watch this movie.

Gale: Maybe instead of riding me you could just stay there.

Gale: Pressed down on my cock as far as you could go, warming it for me while the movie plays.

Gale: Maybe you could face me, instead of away from me. So you could tuck your face in my neck and relax while I hold you and use your body like my own personal cock sleeve.

Astarion, bless him, let out a soft groan.

Wyll turned back again, eyebrow raised.

“You sure you’re okay, man?”

Astarion nodded sharply. “I’m fine, Wyll.”

“Okay! Okay.”

As soon as Wyll had turned back around Astarion shot Gale a glare.

Gale: What? You said you wanted something more creative, didn’t you?

Astarion: you’re going to kill me

In response, Gale hit the up arrow on the remote once more. He watched Astarion shiver and then replied.

Gale: This was *your* idea, Astarion.

Gale: It’s not my fault you’re such a fucking slut.

Gale read his last message over again, panicked a little, and sent another text even as he saw the little indicator dots showing that Astarion was typing.

Gale: I meant that affectionately, by the way.

The dots paused for a few seconds before continuing.

Astarion: I know, Gale

Astarion: I was about to tell you that was hot

Astarion: you need to calm the fuck down sometimes

Astarion: you can call me a slut if you want

Gale took a deep breath to recenter himself.

This was all very…new.

Not just the increasingly unhinged sexual situations he seemed to be finding himself in with Astarion, but all of it. The banter, the dirty talk, the pure chemistry of it all.

Sex with Mys—with her had always been…nice. Fine. Perfectly adequate. It had all seemed way more exciting at the time than it was in hindsight—losing their virginity together, sneaking around in finished basements and parked cars, finally having sex in a proper bed once they went off to their freshman year of college together.

But then…he grew up. The novelty wore off. And her real colors had started to show.

Gale wasn’t sure what he liked, really, beyond the vanilla or the mundane. Clearly the last few days had unlocked some things within him he wasn’t aware were hiding away. How much more was there? How much more would Astarion allow him to find out about himself?

Gale: You are, you know.

Gale: A slut.

He typed and sent the next message before he had time to think about it.

Gale: *My* slut.

Gale looked up, eyes wide, and watched Astarion read the message. There was a pause, what looked to be a deep, stuttering breath, and then a reply.

Astarion: fuck yes, Gale

Astarion: your little slut

Gale hit the pattern button and then the arrow button once more. He watched Astarion’s biceps tense.

Astarion: fuck that one is so good

Astarion: it’s like little cresting waves

Gale: It’s so hot watching you fall apart like this.

Gale: How far can I push you, I wonder?

He pressed down harder on the pillow, shifting his forearms against it to rub it a bit forward and back as he rocked his hips up.

Astarion: as far as you want

Astarion: although maybe that’s too rash

Astarion: you seem capable of so much more than I thought you were

Gale: What do you mean?

Astarion: before this trip

Astarion: I always thought you would be kinda…boring in bed

Astarion: no offense

Gale raised an eyebrow down at his phone.

Gale: You thought about what I would be like in bed?

The idea of that sent a heatwave through him, warmth licking along his skin, and the cool prairie breeze coming in through the window sent him shivering at the contrast. How often had Astarion thought of him like that? Even if it was only once…

Astarion: maybe

Astarion: you do realize you’re hot as fuck, right?

Astarion: and turns out not boring at all

Astarion: god where *was* this version of you before this trip

Gale took a steadying breath and felt a small smile tugging at his lips as he replied.

Gale: Who knows?

Gale: Hidden deep within the labyrinthine hallways of my psyche, apparently.

There was a pause, and then—

Astarion: I need to fucking touch myself, I can’t take this anymore

Suddenly, in a flurry of movement, Astarion was standing and turning, angling himself away from the group so no one would see the front of his joggers, and sprinting away towards the stairs.

“Uh, bathroom!” he called over his shoulder in way of explanation. “Be back in a bit!”

There was an awkward moment of laughter from Karlach, at that, but she quickly settled back into her popcorn. A few moments later, Gale  got another text.

Astarion: see if the remote still works from this far away

Gale hit the pattern button once and waited.

Astarion: it does. fuck

Astarion: keep going

Astarion: …please

Gale smirked down at his phone screen.

Gale: Oh so you do learn, hmm?

He hit the pattern button again.

Astarion: shit that’s just solidly on now. nonstop vibration

Astarion: feels so fucking good against my prostate. gods Gale I want you so badly. I wanna fuck you so badly

Astarion: want you filling me up again

The texts came in relatively quick succession. Apparently Astarion was able to type more freely, now that he wasn’t having to be subtle about it.

Gale: Then fuck yourself for me on the plug.

Gale: Pretend it’s my cock.

Astarion: your cock doesn’t vibrate

Gale: True. But it’s bigger, isn’t it?

Astarion: bigger isn’t always better, darling

Gale huffed a quiet laugh. Even in a situation like this, Astarion was finding a way to be a brat.

He would be lying if he said he didn’t love it.

And Gods did his dick ache.

Astarion: you could come up here, you know

Astarion: rip this plug out of me and take me against the bathroom wall

Astarion: I’d let you. let you do anything you want

Astarion: be a good little slut

The pillow wasn’t enough. At some point his little thrusts had gotten more pronounced. He tried to tamp them back and found himself failing.

Fuck.

Gale: I can’t go up there. They’ll know.

Astarion: how would they know

Gale: Well they would hear the bathroom door open, for one. And then notice you not coming back down.

Astarion: I don’t fucking care I need your cock

Astarion: please please please

Gale took another steadying breath in through his nose and out through his mouth.

Gale: Fine. On my way.

He took a moment to reach down and carefully slide his hand into his shorts to adjust himself, tucking his erection up against his abdomen with his waistband holding it flush. It wasn’t very comfortable given how hard he was, but desperate times and all that. He stood, also quite quickly, and made his way towards the stairs.

“Now you too? There’s a half bath down here, Gale,” Wyll stated, looking far too incredulous.

“Oh, u-uh,” Gale stammered, awkwardly half-turned away from the group. The tucking trick only worked so well, after all. “No I don’t have to…I just want to take a nap, I think. I’m still pretty tired?”

He didn’t mean for the end of that to come out like a question. Lae’zel turned, then, and narrowed her eyes.

“You barely hiked yesterday,” she said, “Are you really so weak as to be still recovering?”

Gale was already halfway up the stairs.

“Uh, yeah! I guess I am. I, um…”

He didn’t finish the sentence, opting instead to hurry up the rest of the steps and then down the hallway. Opening and closing the bathroom door as silently as possible was tricky, but he managed it well enough. Certainly no one would hear it over the volume of the movie, at least.

The second he was fully inside there were hands on his shoulders, spinning him around and pushing him against the door. He barely had time to process the change in position before his mouth was taken and hands were shoving his shorts down over his hips.

“Fuck me,” Astarion gasped against his lips. “Now.”

Gale pushed Astarion back and then carried the momentum forward, grabbing at a bicep and using it as leverage to swing their positions around so he could press Astarion front-first against the slate-gray tile wall next to the door. He skimmed his fingers down smooth arms until he found Astarion’s wrists and brought them up to pin above his head.

“You’re fucking incorrigible,” he growled against Astarion’s ear, noticing the way it sent a palpable shiver down the elf’s spine. “Oh? You like that?”

He darted his tongue out to ghost over the pointed tip. Astarion groaned and angled his head to press it more fully against Gale’s mouth. “More.”

Gale nuzzled at his neck. “Honey.”

Astarion huffed a laugh. “Oh we’re using pet names now, are we?” In response, Gale nipped at his neck.

“Not what I meant and you know it.”

“Fine,” Astarion breathed. He turned back to press his forehead against the cool tile. “Please, Gale. Please fuck me. Please touch my ears more. Please, just—”

His words were cut off by Gale licking a firm stripe up and and then all the way down, catching the lobe and worrying it gently between his teeth.

“Like that?”

“Fuck yes.”

Gale let go of one wrist to reach down and blindly feel around for the base of the plug. The second he found it he pulled it out, still vibrating, and tossed it down somewhere off to the side. The gentle buzzing sound of it vibrating away against the floor tiles provided a backtrack of white noise that filled the bathroom as Gale replaced the plug with his cock, sliding inside in one smooth motion. Astarion was loose, already, although as Gale bottomed out he could feel where he was still tight deeper within in the places past where the plug couldn’t reach.

“Fast, please,” Astarion gasped. Gale nodded against the back of his neck and immediately picked up speed.

“Whatever you want,” he ground out, “Whatever you fucking want, Astarion.”

“Want to be your slut,” Astarion groaned in response, words slurred from his mouth being half-smushed against the tile by the pressure Gale was putting against the back of his head with the kisses he was pressing into his curls, “Want to be yours.”

Gale whined, high pitched and needy. He leaned down to sink his teeth into Astarion’s shoulder. “Mine.”

“Yours.”

It was as if some internal dam had broken. Even as half-crazed words gasped out during rough sex against a bathroom wall, the sentiment meant something to Gale. Sure, Astarion had agreed to go out with him after the trip. Sure, he had continued to seek Gale out for sex and little touches and sure, they had fallen asleep two nights in a row tangled up in each other whispering sweet little “good nights” into the other’s neck.

Hearing it, though, hearing those words said out loud…

“Gonna cum,” Gale gasped. He was shocked at himself for getting there so fast. They couldn’t have been fucking for more than a minute or two. “Wanna fill you.”

“Please.”

Astarion was trying to twist in his arms and Gale let him, kept fucking into his perfect heat as he captured Astarion’s mouth in a somewhat-awkward half-kiss and gasped a string of expletives against his reddened lips as he felt himself tip over the edge.

“Astario— oh fuck.”

He slowed to a gentle rock, one hand still holding Astarion’s wrist to the wall, the other pressing bruises into his hips, as he felt hot, tight walls milk him of every bit that he could give. He allowed himself time to stand there, panting, eyes closed and mouth slack, just feeling himself be held in Astarion’s addictive warmth.

And then Astarion was wiggling against him, baring down on his suddenly over-sensitive dick.

“Fuck, ow, be patient, Astarion,” Gale groused, “Hold still while I pull out.”

He glanced down and around, quickly locating the hot pink plug where it sat happily buzzing away an arm’s length away from his feet. He glanced back and forth a few times, planning his next move carefully, and then in one swift motion pulled out and reached down to grab the plug, bringing it up to press back in to Astarion before too much of his spend could leak out from the reddened rim.

Astarion moaned and rocked down against the plug, using the counterpressure of Gale still holding the base to it exactly where he needed it.

“Turn around,” Gale murmured, and as soon as Astarion had, he grabbed one of his smooth, pale thighs and pulled it towards his shoulder. “Hook this over me.”

Gale held one hand beneath the raised thigh, steadying the position, and reached his other down past Astarion’s balls to grasp the base of the plug again. Once he felt he had a good grip on everything, he looked up at Astarion through his lashes, gave him a pleased smile, and leaned forward to capture the head of his leaking cock in his mouth.

Fingers immediately twisted into Gale’s curls and he nodded before sinking down, allowing the back of his mouth to go slack so Astarion could thrust into him, thigh squeezing over his shoulder and heel digging into his back for leverage. He pressed against the plug firmly and then released the pressure, over and over again, not really fucking Astarion with so much as he was just rubbing it against his walls, grinding his own cum into Astarion’s prostate.

“Gods, Gale, you’re perfect,” Astarion gasped above him. Gale whined at the words and he could feel the shiver that the vibration sent through the elf’s body. “Can I fuck your throat?”

Gale hesitated, then nodded. It wasn’t something he had tried before. In truth, his experience with partners that had penises was rather limited, having spent much of his time post-Mystra with limited success (and at times, limited interest) in finding people to fuck.

Astarion shifted slightly, changing his angle, and then pushed forward. The first press into his throat was okay—a strange sensation, for sure—and for a wildly overconfident moment Gale thought he would be able to handle it. But then, inevitably, his gag reflex kicked in and he had to pull his head back, a choking cough making its way out around the cock still in his mouth.

“Ah,” he gasped, pulling off completely with a strangled wheeze, “Sorry, I—”

Astarion was looking down at him with wide eyes, pupils blown and dark, “No, it’s okay, that…that was hot, actually.”

Gale swallowed thickly and nodded. “Yeah?”

“Yeah,” Astarion replied. He nudged his erection forward again, pressing it against Gale’s half-open mouth, “Want to try again?”

Gale nodded, smearing precum over his lips. “Okay, just…go slow. Please.”

“Of course.”

He gave it another go, this time taking his time to consciously relax his throat and breath through his nose before carefully pushing down, focusing on the feeling of the head pushing past the transition from soft palette to pharynx. He managed to move up and down three times before the reflex hit again and he pulled off, gasping and drooling a bit.

“Better,” Astarion praised, “Go again?”

The positive feedback was doing something to Gale. If he could get hard again so soon after coming he knew he would be rock solid again. Alas, the limitations of his body prevented that from happening, but he felt the stirring in his gut regardless.

The next time he tried he managed to keep Astarion’s cock there, nestled in his throat, and after a moment of stillness he felt Astarion start to rock his hips. He concentrated on keeping his muscles relaxed and breath steady, little inhales in through his nose whenever Astarion moved out enough to clear the way, holding it whenever he pressed back in.

“Amazing,” Astarion gasped. Gale closed his eyes and focused on the sensation, the weight and the stretch of it. The feeling of his nose pressing into Astarion’s lower abs when his cock was at its deepest. The velvety skin dragging back and forth over his tongue.

He realized quite suddenly that his fingers had completely stilled on the base of the plug. He pressed up, once, and the break in his concentration had him gagging again. Astarion pulled out at the sudden choking noise and Gale opened his eyes to a look of amusement from the elf.

“Just focus on your mouth,” he half-laughed, “I’ll do the rest. The vibrations feel good enough on their own, trust me.”

Gale nodded, but in a sudden burst of inspiration he reached down to fish around in his pocket for a moment, pressing the up arrow on the remote he had stashed there several times. Astarion lurched and moaned.

“Fucking hells, Gale, fuck.”

Gale smirked and left the remote where it was, bringing the hand up to clutch at Astarion’s hip instead. “Back to it, then?”

Astarion huffed a laugh and nodded. “And you call me incorrigible."

The sink back down was decadent, some growing part of Gale’s mind glowing with self-satisfied pride at his newfound ability to deepthroat. Astarion was gripping his hair again, not so much pulling as holding, allowing his hips to do most of the work sliding in and out, taking his pleasure from Gale’s throat and openly (though, luckily, still mostly quietly) moaning his appreciation out into the lightly echoey bathroom.

“You feel so good,” he was saying—repeating, over and over—as he moved back and forth again and again, “So fucking good, Gale. So good for me.”

And then he was moving faster, more erratically. Gale tightened his grip and took as deep of a breath as he could manage, preparing himself.

“Oh shit, gonna—”

He barely tasted the cum as it filled his throat, the head of Astarion’s cock pressed deep past the point where his taste buds ended. But then he was pulling out, still leaking his final shots, and the flavor burst over his tongue. Gale barely managed not to choke on all of it as Astarion finally withdrew fully and unhooked his thigh from Gale’s shoulder, immediately sliding down the wall into a spent lump on the floor in front of him. Gale reached into his pocket and turned the plug off, finally, and smiled at Astarion’s sigh of relief.

“Good?” Gale laughed. Astarion cracked open an eye to shoot Gale what he presumed was meant to be a glare.

“What do you think?” he muttered back, no real heat behind the statement.

Gale smiled and leaned forward to peck his lips. “Seems pretty good to me.”

Astarion hummed a noise of agreement and closed his eyes again. “Want to take a nap with me?”

“Sure. I told the others I was taking a nap, anyway, so it would be pretty suspicious if I went back downstairs right now,” he replied with a shrug.

Astarion was still for a moment before he answered. Gale had started to stand, even, thinking he wasn’t going to reply to that, but then Astarion was talking.

“Why don’t you want anyone to know?”

Gale froze and looked back at him.

“I…well,” he started, then paused. Astarion was looking at him fully now, expression unreadable. “I don’t know, but…I thought you didn’t want them to know, either.”

Astarion frowned. “I never said that.”

Well shit.

Gale turned the events of the last few days over in his head and realized he was right. They had, by necessity, kept their little encounters private (or, well, as private as possible given their apparent shared kink of risky semi-public sex). But outside of those times, when it was the two of them hanging out with the others, Astarion had made no indication that he didn’t want anyone else to know. In contrast, Gale had found himself dodging questions more than once, maintaining an air of plausible deniability for…some reason.

“I’m sorry,” Gale said, quietly.

Astarion regarded him for a moment before leaning forward and pulling him into a hug. “It’s…look, I’m not great at… feelings.”

Gale pulled back enough to give him an incredulous look. “Feelings?”

Astarion shrugged vaguely and turned his head to look off to the side, mouth flat. “Yeah.”

A few moments of silence passed and then suddenly they both started talking at once.

“I don’t want to hide th—”

“If you want, I can—”

They both froze and then Gale burst out laughing. “If it comes up, I won’t keep it hidden from any of them,” he compromised, “But I don’t think I’m quite ready to just come out with the information apropos of nothing, if that’s okay. I do want our friends to know, eventually, I…I just need to figure out what’s holding me back, I guess.”

Astarion looked back at him and nodded gently. “Okay.”

Gale reached up to tuck an errant curl behind his ear. “Besides, I’m pretty sure Jen fully knows what’s going on at this point, anyway.”

Astarion huffed a short laugh through his nose. “She would.”

They stood, then, and after a somewhat awkward moment of de-plugging Astarion and wiping up their mess, carefully opened the door and went to cuddle up together in their shared bed, the warm rays of the midday Montana sun streaming in through the windows.

Chapter Text

It was the sixth day of the vacation (fourth full day in the cabin) and Gale stood, arms crossed, studying a series of holes in the ground.

“Y’know these are called ‘towns’! Isn’t that cute?”

“Hmm?”

Gale blinked, clearing the haze that had formed in his vision from staring at one spot for so long, and turned to look instead at Jen.

“Towns,” she repeated, gesturing at the little series of holes.

“Thought they were just called burrows,” Karlach said from where she was bent down a dozen feet away, squinting at the dirt.

“Each little set of tunnels and openings is a burrow,” she explained, smiling fondly at the crouching tiefling, “but when you add all the burrows together and consider them as an interconnected community you refer to it as a ‘prairie dog town!’”

“You’re right, that is cute,” Karlach replied, “Would be cuter if the little fuckers would actually show their fuzzy faces, though.”

“Oh hush,” Jen shot back, “I’m not surprised they’re hiding, after the racket we made walking over here.”

They had all been standing there for at least twenty minutes, having made the journey across the stretch of prairie behind the cabin on the recommendation and direction of their Airbnb host who knew how to get to the closest little cluster of mammalian dwellings. This “town” was relatively small but still likely contained at least a hundred individuals.

“Likely” being the operative word, there, because they had yet to see a single one. Gale wasn’t surprised, really—Jen was right. They had hardly been quiet as they had approached, talking and laughing and (in Karlach’s case) stomping around in the tall grass instead of walking along the footbeaten dirt path that led across the field and down to the nearby river.

“Then maybe we should leave for a bit and let them resurface,” Wyll suggested. He was standing a little ways back alongside Lae’zel, both of them watching the others with an air of amused incredulity.

“Yes please let’s leave,” Astarion groaned from Gale’s other side, “This is getting boring.”

“Prairie dogs are not boring, Astarion!” Jen chided, “They’re adorable!”

Astarion scoffed and rolled his eyes. “No, I am adorable, Jenevelle. These little cretins are simply…truant.”

“Oh, same!” Karlach laughed, and at the group’s confused look, added, “truant, I mean. Well, I was, anyway. In high school. Skipped school a lot to go run around doing fuck knows what. Luckily I got my shit together by the time I applied for college.”

“And we’re glad you did,” Jen replied, smiling, “or we would never have met you, hmm?”

“Agreed,” Wyll added congenially.

“Ugh.”

Gale turned to raise an eyebrow at Astarion. “Yes?”

Astarion gestured vaguely around at the group. “You’re all a bunch of saps.” He turned, tilting his head towards Lae’zel. “You agree with me, don’t you?”

Lae’zel narrowed her eyes. “Not at all, Astarion. I too am glad we met Karlach. Her physical strength and sheer tenacity make her an unparalleled gym partner. I owe many of my muscles to her.”

Astarion threw his hands up in the air with a huff of exasperation.

“Anyway,” Jen continued, voice slightly pointed. Astarion crossed his arms and stuck his tongue out at her. “I agree with Wyll, let’s leave for a bit and come back.”

“I wanted to check out the river,” Gale said, gesturing with his head towards the part of the trail that branched off into a gentle downward slope. “Anyone else want to go?”

There was a minute of discussion amongst the group in which it became clear that, in fact, no one else was interested in going (“it’s too chilly today”; “I don’t have the right shoes on”; “ugh, fish” ), and Gale was about to agree to just head back to the cabin with the others to find something else to do when Astarion piped up beside him.

“The river sounds nice, actually,” he said, meeting Gale’s eyes with a meaningful look. Gale felt himself start to blush and cleared his throat forcefully.

“Right. Well. That…sounds like a plan, then.”

Gale was still looking at Astarion when Jen started speaking again. He tore his eyes away from Astarion’s smirk to glance at her and felt the blush grow stronger at her raised eyebrow. “You two have fun,” she said, a hint of a tease breaking through her tone, “Agree to meet back here in an hour? Quietly, this time?”

Gale nodded sharply and turned on his heel towards the river path, Astarion hot on his heels and waving goodbye to the others with a snicker. They walked for a few minutes, chatting about college, and then Gale decided to steer the conversation back to the vacation. Thinking about the stress of their upcoming senior year wasn’t something he was keen on doing, at the moment.

“So…what did you want to do once we get to the river?” Gale asked, “Personally, I wanted to look for whatever fish are out and about and then cross-reference the wildlife guide I downloaded from the Montana Fish, Wildlife, and Parks website to see if I can identify them.”

Astarion shot him an amused glance. “I wanted to fuck, Gale.”

Suddenly, the dirt beneath his sneakers seemed much more uneven, and Gale stumbled slightly, barely managing to catch himself from tumbling forward. Astarion’s hand shot out, grabbing his bicep, and he helped Gale full right himself back to standing. There was a moment of stillness as Gale met his eyes and they both froze, blinking at each other, and then they both burst into laughter.

“It is fun getting you all flustered,” Astarion giggled, “I don’t think I’m ever going to get tired of doing that.”

And because Gale was still laughing, slightly out of it and a bit high on adrenaline from almost falling, he didn’t think of his next words too carefully before saying them.

“I certainly hope not, but I’ll take as long with you as you’ll give me.”

…oh.

Gale froze again, this time with much less levity than before.

Astarion was staring at him.

“You would?”

Gale looked down, suddenly very interested in a little clump of mud near his left shoe, and nodded haltingly.

“Yeah.”

He heard Astarion take a deep breath and then another. And then suddenly cool fingers were lifting his chin and pulling him into a kiss. It was gentle, slow. Unsure. Astarion pulled back and smiled softly at him. “Let’s just get to the river, okay?”

They walked in silence for a while. Gale bit his lip and tried to focus on taking in the beauty around them. There was so much to look at, after all, and it was a gorgeously sunny day (if slightly cold, for early summer). He was determined not to let his thoughts run too far away from him no matter how wont his brain was to pick apart every little interaction between them. After all, Astarion hadn’t reacted negatively, exactly. Just…neutrally. It was fine. It was fine.

Astarion broke the silence, eventually, by asking a question.

“Is it just me or do these flowers look like dicks?”

Gale startled, blinked, and turned to look at the flowers in question. They were indeed rather…phallic. Each was a little halo of yellow and red-brown petals, arranged in a drooping sort of skirt-like pattern, from which a two-inch long central column rose, bumpy and covered in tiny purplish-brown florets that seemed to be shedding from the column in a top-down pattern that served, if anything, to make everything even more penis-like.

“Ah, yes,” Gale replied, "Prairie coneflowers.”

Astarion had stopped and was leaning forward slightly, squinting down at the little cluster that the flowers grew in.

“Weird. My family gardens have some coneflowers but they don't look like… that.”

Gale chucked and shook his head despite Astarion probably not being able to see him from his bent-down angle. “I assume your gardens probably have some varietal of echinacea. These are a different genus than those despite having a similar common name. Prairie coneflowers belong to Ratibida, not Echinacea.”

Astarion straightened and gave him a look. “How do you just know that off the top of your head?”

Gale shrugged. “I’ve had a soft spot for taxonomy since I had to take a few requisite biology credits. The way that generations of scientists have worked together to organize and classify something as chaotic and broad as the living natural world is…immensely satisfying.”

“And they taught you about dick flowers in taxonomy class?” Astarion quipped back. Gale rolled his eyes.

“No,” he huffed, “I read up about the local flora and fauna before we came here. I wanted to know what to expect.”

Astarion stepped forward and looped his arms around Gale’s neck. “Oh? And what have you found, Future Dr. Dekarios?”

Gale felt his cheeks warm.

“U-Um, well,” he stammered, “we found the, uh, ‘dick flowers,’ so that’s a good start.”

“Not the only dick you’ve found,” Astarion murmured, lasting all of about two seconds before his seductive smirk widened into a toothy smile. “Sorry, that was terrible.”

Gale leaned forward quickly to peck at his lips. “I liked it.”

Astarion pulled back with a hum and looked back down to the clump of coneflowers. “Y’know I’m quite in the mood to make a dick crown, I think.”

Gale’s sudden laugh caught in his throat and he coughed twice to clear it. “Excuse me?”

“A flower crown,” Astarion clarified, swishing back over and dropping seamlessly into a crouch. Gale blinked down at him. 

“Uh, sure.”

He watched Astarion spend a few moments perusing and trying to pick the blooms on offer before it became apparent that Astarion was struggling to break the stems cleanly. Gale reached into his jeans and pulled out his portable multitool. “Here.”

Astarion glanced up and immediately raised an eyebrow. “You carry a fucking Swiss Army knife? What are you, a fifty-year-old father of three?”

Gale frowned.

“No,” he groused, “I just like being prepared if I’m going to be out in nature. It’s the Eagle Scout in me, I suppose.”

Astarion took the tool and unfolded the little blade hidden within. “Somehow you being an Eagle Scout doesn’t surprise me. What was your service project?”

“I helped the local library run a used book sale and new book donation drive,” he said, a tinge of something like pride coloring the words. Astarion snorted into the handful of flowers he was gathering.

“You’re a fucking dork.”

Oh.

Gale frowned down at his shoe. “I know.”

There was a pause, and then—

“No I like it, Gale.”

He glanced up to see Astarion looking at him with a surprisingly vulnerable expression.

“Oh.”

Astarion stood, one hand now clutching a bouquet of little cocks, and reached out to lay his free hand on Gale’s shoulder. “You don’t like yourself very much, do you?”

The candor of the question was like a shock down his spine. He met Astarion’s eyes for a moment before looking away. “I thought you weren’t good at feelings.”

“No,” Astarion sighed, “No, I’m really not, but…”

They stood there for a moment in silence.

“I was not…popular, in high school,” Gale said, eventually, “at least not at first. Then when I was a junior I started dating Mystra, and suddenly my whole world expanded.”

Astarion nodded, quietly, watching him carefully.

“She was well-liked, arguably one of the most popular girls in our grade,” he continued, “I had no idea why she liked me, really. I think at first she just wanted to copy my physics homework, honestly. But then we got closer and she asked me out, and—”

“She asked you out?” Astarion asked, tone holding a healthy dose of surprise but no discernable cruelty. Gale nodded.

“Oh yes,” he replied, a soft smile painting his lips despite the subject matter, “and suddenly I was being swept up in all sorts of things I never would have imagined for myself. Including, well…”

He paused to tap at his chest, below which they both knew the tattoo sat.

“I sort of lost myself to her, I think,” he concluded. “It took a while to find myself again.”

Astarion nodded, slowly and gently, and then slid his hand up to cup Gale’s jaw.

“Well she’s not here now,” he murmured, “I am. And…and I like you the way you are. Dorky bits and all.”

Something warm and syrupy spread through his chest at that. Gale smiled and reached up to cover Astarion’s hand with his own.

“Good,” Astarion said, tone lifting into something lighter and brighter, “Now, then. Help me gather some more flowers? The little cocks are lovely on their own but I think we need some variety to really flesh the crown out, don't you agree?”

Gale huffed a laugh and turned to survey the field for appropriate filler.

By the time they reached the river, Astarion’s arms were overflowing with blooms, a mix of arrowleaf balsamroot and plains coreopsis piled up alongside the coneflowers. Astarion had decided on a yellow and burgundy theme, claiming that it matched the prairie sunsets he had already grown quite fond of.

The river wasn’t very wide, really, only about 10 feet across and seemingly only about waist-deep. There wasn’t much of a shore to speak of, simply a narrow rocky riverbank that extended only a few feet beyond the water before quickly morphing to vegetation. There were trees there, too—a mix of evergreens and a few birches—and low-lying scrubby bushes that grew past the grassline into the rocks and shaded the edges of the gently moving water. Gale crept forward and gasped when he spotted a little school of minnows plucking at insects floating along the water’s surface.

“Fish!” he cried, perhaps a bit too excited, and Astarion happily laughed beside him.

“You enjoy watching them,” he replied fondly, “I’m going to go sit on that flat rock over there and work on my crown.”

Gale shot him a smile and carefully climbed down the little drop to stand just beside the water’s edge. There were slightly larger fish, further out, darting along the bottom and stirring up wisps of mud into the otherwise mostly-clear water. He pulled his phone from his pocket, pulled up the PDF from the Montana FW&P site, and started looking for notable features among the different species he could spot. Size, coloration, fin shape, behavi—

There was a sudden loud splash off to his side.

He turned, wide eyed, and caught the tail end of Astarion’s body plunging below the surface of the water into which it had, apparently, fallen.

“Astarion!”

He moved as quickly as he could, stepping carefully over slick stone and patches of mud until he made it to where Astarion was slowly pulling himself up and back to the shore, coughing and spluttering. He held out his hand to help pull him up and was quickly met with an armful of wet elf.

“Mother fuck,” Astarion gasped, “Shit, my phone.”

He scrambled back from Gale’s grasp, pulling his phone from his pocket and shaking the excess water off it. A cursory inspection proved that it was still working and Astarion sighed with relief before leaning to gently toss it onto a dry patch of grass. He looked down at himself, frowned, and reached for the hem of his t-shirt.

“Astarion,” Gale repeated, heart still thumping with adrenaline, “what happened?”

Astarion huffed and pulled the sodden shirt over his head, smearing residual mud over his flattened curls. “Ugh. I don’t know, I slipped on some loose rock, I guess.” His tone was casual, dismissive, like he didn’t want to admit to making a mistake. Gale allowed him the grace of that and looked down at the pile of flowers chaotically scattered amongst the riverbank stones.

“At least they didn’t fall in too. You can still make your crown,” he offered, smiling awkwardly.

Astarion shrugged and started kicking off his sandals. “I suppose. I need to rinse all this fucking mud off first, though.” He reached for the button of his cut-off denim shorts.

Gale swallowed and let his eyes drift down over Astarion’s toned stomach. “Won’t you just get more muddy?”

“Not if I move slow and keep to the clear bits,” Astarion replied as he pulled down both his shorts and underwear in one swift motion. Gale’s eyes went wide.

“Astarion,” he hissed, “We’re…we’re outside! You can’t just be—”

He was cut off by Astarion’s withering look and he paused, realized the irony of what he had been about to say, and nodded jerkily instead, a sudden warmth flooding his face.

“R-Right. I guess we have been…yes.”

“No one is around,” Astarion said, kicking his pants fully off, “And the only people even remotely likely to turn up here are our friends. Honestly I think they would be more embarrassed by seeking me naked than I would be.”

Gale bit his lip and watched Astarion gather his pile of clothes into his arms before carefully stepping past the bank back into the water. He waded out to the center, careful to keep his movements slow to avoid kicking up too much mud, and held the fabric at the topmost layer of water where it ran swiftest and clearest.

“Should only take a minute,” he mumbled, manipulating the little pile in his hands to rinse it all out. When he was done, he turned back towards Gale. “Can I toss these to you to spread out on that big rock there? Otherwise I’ll have to wade out and then all the way back in so I can rinse off my body.”

“Uh, sure,” Gale agreed, bracing himself with his arms out. Astarion tossed the bundle at him and he managed to catch it without letting anything drop, although the front of his own t-shirt was suddenly much wetter than it had already been from grabbing Astarion earlier. Water immediately began dripping down his front to the waistband of his jeans and he cringed at the feeling. He turned quickly to lay the clothing out on the aforementioned rock, careful to spread the fabric so it would dry well in the sun, and turned back to watch Astarion rub water over his arms.

“You might as well lay yours out to dry too,” Astarion sighed, affecting a tone like it would be such a burden to see Gale naked. Gale shot him an amused glance before acquiescing, pulling his own shirt off and laying it next to Astarion’s. He paused, considering, and then pushed his jeans down to join everything else despite them being only slightly damp.

“Underwear too, darling.”

He bit his lip and met Astarion’s eyes. “They didn’t get wet…”

Astarion grinned wolfishly.

“No. No they didn’t.”

Astarion was looking at him expectantly, and Gale was but a simple human man, so he pushed his boxers down where he stood and shuffled forward towards the water, already anticipating the next request. “I assume you want me to join you in there?”

Astarion laughed, high and bright, and nodded. “You assume correctly. It’s only fair, after all, for both of us to be naked, hmm?”

That seemed like rather flimsy logic but Gale wasn’t about to point that out. Unfortunately, however, his first step into the water had him hissing and pulling his foot back. “It’s fucking cold.”

Astarion shrugged. “Well yes, it’s not exactly a hot day, is it? ‘Mild’, I would call it. But the water is perfectly fine once you’re in it, Gale, don’t be precious about it.”

Gale returned his foot and stepped forward, ignoring the chill along his calves and wading out to meet Astarion. “‘Precious?’” he huffed, “Me? Have you tried looking in a mirror lately, Astarion?”

Astarion flicked his wrist, sending a little arcing spray of water in Gale’s direction. “All the time.”

“Uh huh.”

He wasn’t sure which of them reached out first but suddenly their lips were meeting, and Gale found he was much less cold with Astarion’s warmth pressed against him knee to chest. He could feel himself start to harden beneath the water and wondered if the temperature would prevent a full erection.

Only one way to find out, really.

He reached down and around, grabbing Astarion’s ass with both hands to pull him closer. Astarion moaned into his mouth as he pressed forward with his hips, grinding their half-hard cocks together. Astarion returned the pressure in kind and slipped his fingers up to thread them through Gale’s hair, pulling it from its half-bun so scratch as his scalp.

“Careful,” Gale gasped, pulling back enough to reach up and extract the hair tie from where it was precariously dangling from only half the strands it once held up. “If this falls in the river I’m never getting it back.”

Astarion giggled at him as he pulled it loose and turned to toss it onto the riverbank by their clothes.

“You’re cute.”

Gale hummed a noise somewhere between annoyance and affection as he turned back into Astarion’s embrace, a shudder working its way up his spine from the way the motion dragged his length over the elf’s smooth hip. “Don’t you still need to rinse the mud out of your hair?”

Astarion raised an eyebrow.

“So I do.”

And then before Gale could really process what was happening, Astarion was sinking down, kneeling in the waist-high water to bend down and mouth along Gale’s cock where it floated just below the surface, fully submerging his head in the process. He spent a few moments down there, teasing at Gale’s still only-half-hard cock (it was actually pretty fucking cold), before resurfacing and shaking his now mudless curls away from his face.

Gale huffed a laugh and reached down to push a few stray hairs back into place from where they had plastered themselves to Astarion’s forehead. “You look a bit like a dog when you do that.”

Astarion scoffed and batted a playful swat at his hip. “I do not. Take that back.”

Gale giggled and shook his head. “Some sort of fancy dog, though! A show dog. Maybe a poodle?”

Astarion rolled his eyes and stood with far too much grace for someone who was just kneeling in the mud. He took a moment to lift each leg, rinsing his calves off in the upper layers of the water, before dignifying that with a reply.

“I would win ‘Best in Show,’” he groused, a hint of smile peaking through, “And I’d get all the coveted dog food sponsorships and a center spread in whatever the most popular magazine for dog owners is.”

Gale nodded, keeping his expression serious. “You would.”

It was nice to see Astarion be so playful. In all the time Gale had known him, he had always seemed just the tiniest bit distant, like on some level he was putting on a show of being friendly and engaging. At first Gale had assumed it was simply because Astarion didn’t like him very much—plenty of people didn’t, when they first met him—but then he saw how Astarion interacted with everyone, and, well.

He was never outright cold. Never dismissive. He did smile and laugh and flirt and joke, and some of all that was certainly genuine. It was just that there was always this…veneer, of something. A layer of high-shone polish meant to cover the scratches someone else had left.

But this trip had been different. Ever since the van and, increasingly, every day since.

Astarion was giggling, probably still about the dog thing. Gale leaned forward to kiss him and only barely managed to connect before Astarion was pulling back with a small shiver.

“It, uh,” he murmured, averting Gale’s eyes, “It is actually pretty chilly in here. It’s kind of killing the mood, to be honest.”

Gale smiled and ran his hand up to squeeze Astarion’s arm.

“Then let’s climb out, hmm?”

So they did, stopping just before the water line to rinse each foot and carefully place it onto the rocks one at a time. They weren’t clean, exactly, and Gale knew the second they got back to the cabin he was going to take a long, hot shower. But at least they were largely free from any lingering grit.

Their clothes were still far from being dry and they had a while yet before they needed to leave to return to the group, so Gale moved to a different flat area not far away and sat down. He watched in silence for a moment as Astarion picked up his dropped blooms, careful to not to crush any of them any more than they had already been by the fall, and then walked over to sit beside Gale.

“So how do you make a flower crown, anyway?” Gale asked as Astarion set the flowers aside and began to sort them by size.

“You twist the stems together,” he explained, “It’s hardest at the beginning when there isn’t a framework. The longer you go and the more structure there is the easier it gets.”

Gale hummed and looked out over the water. The midday sun was catching on the surface ripples, highlighting their gentle undulations in little flashes of gold.

“One could say that’s a metaphor for life, y’know.”

Astarion hummed and tilted his head in acknowledgement.

“Sure, I guess.”

He watched Astarion work, those nimble fingers twisting and braiding and tucking the stems together to form an increasingly full halo.

“Where did you learn?” Gale asked, after a comfortable moment of silence. Astarion glanced up to meet his eyes and then looked back at his creation with an unexpectedly sad expression.

“I mentioned my family’s gardens,” he sighed, “They are…large. Extensive, even. Growing up I didn’t really have any friends outside of school, so I spent a lot of time out there alone whenever I wasn’t engaged in some one extracurricular lesson or the other. Making flower crowns was more interesting than just wandering aimlessly among the rose bushes.”

Gale’s eyebrows shot up. “You, not having friends? You attract people to your side like a magnet. I’ve seen it.”

Potential veneer of false gregariousness and occasional bitchiness aside, Astarion was very charismatic. People were always falling all over him whenever their little group went anywhere. Gale had spent a fair number of nights out at bars with a strange sort of jealousy lurking in the pit of his stomach when Astarion would inevitably be approached by some gorgeous stranger and asked to dance. It wasn’t until this trip that he had consciously realized it wasn’t Astarion he had been jealous of, but the strangers. 

Astarion shrugged. “People were scared of me…or, rather, they were scared of my family. I went to a private school where everyone knew who I was. Who my father was.”

There was a moment of silence at that. Gale watched Astarion’s fingers work, unceasingly in their braiding.

“I see.”

Astarion looked up and half-smiled. “Let’s not dwell on that, though, okay? I’m here now.”

Gale half-smiled back. “That’s the second time you’ve said that today,” he pointed out.

Another moment of silence. The crown was nearly finished.

“Can I try it on once it’s done?” he asked.

Astarion smiled for real, then. “Of course, darling.”

This time, when they approached the prairie dog town, there were at least a dozen little creatures skittering around. Gale just managed to contain his gasp as they crept up, keeping a sensible distance this time, and settled onto a gently sloping hill to await the others.

“Adorable,” he whispered.

Beside him, Astarion hummed a contented sort of noise and turned to look at him. “I agree,” he replied, voice low and face angled to look at the completed flower crown nestled into Gale’s now-loose waves, “and the prairie dogs are pretty cute, too.”

Gale huffed a laugh and twisted to give Astarion a kiss.

Steam filled the bathroom, coating the walls of the shower in a layer of condensation that smeared into little rivulets wherever Gale’s fingers ran down the tile, desperate to gain purchase as he thrusted forward at an increasingly erratic pace. In front of him, head hanging low between his shoulder blades, Astarion was panting and similarly trying his best to not slip right down the wall.

“You take me so fucking well,” Gale groaned, ripping a gasp from Astarion with a particularly hard thrust, “You feel so fucking good.”

Astarion nodded, forehead rubbing against the tile. “Yes, Gale, yes.”

He brought one hand down to run along the length of Astarion’s back, digging his bitten-short nails as much as he could into the skin to leave gentle pink trails. The water in the shower was starting to run cold and Gale fought the need to shiver, focusing instead on the sensation of Astarion wrapped around him, hot and tight and wet from all the lube he had carefully fingered into him.

“So fucking good,” he repeated, unsure of what else to say. What even was there to say, when Astarion did, in fact, feel that fucking good?

“I could ride your cock forever,” Astarion groaned, rough and wrecked ragged, “Fucking forever, Gale.”

Gale nodded frantically, zero part of his brain caring that Astarion couldn’t see it. “I’d let you. I’d fuck you as long as you wanted me to.”

Astarion twisted his head just enough to meet Gale’s gaze from the corner of his eye. “Not right now, though. Right now I can’t wait any longer. I need you to fill me, Gale. Fill me so fucking full of your cum. Can you do that?”

Gale nodded again, a choked-off whine escaping his throat.

“Please,” he gasped, stomach clenching with need.

Astarion reached up with one hand, grasping at Gale’s wrist where it braced against the tile, fingers digging into his skin like so many little anchors.

“Then fucking do it, Gale. Fill me.”

Gale bit his lip and stilled to a near stop, breath catching on a desperate gasp as he felt all the tension in his groin release at once, a flood of sensation moving up and out and down his cock as he pumped Astarion full of his release. He opened his eyes to the sight of Astarion’s shoulder shifting, moving up and down frantically as he pulled himself off, spilling against the wall a moment later with Gale’s name on his lips.

By the time they caught their breath the water had run properly cold. Gale winced as he washed his dick off with the handheld shower head, the little flurries of soap sluicing down his thighs and catching on his legs hairs in a swirling anachronistic mockery. It was fucking summer, he shouldn’t be cold.

“Shower sex is overrated,” he grumbled.

Astarion laughed and shrugged as he stepped out and grabbed a towel from the rack. “And yet you did finish, didn’t you?”

Gale hummed and stepped out as well, taking the offered towel from Astarion’s outstretched hands. It, luckily, was still quite warm from the lingering shower steam.

“I did,” he conceded, reaching out to pull Astarion in so he could plant a kiss on his cheek and then mouth down to nuzzle into Astarion’s neck. “It was worth it, I suppose.”

And if the little giggle that Astarion let out at the tickle of his beard warmed Gale through more than a hot shower ever could…well. He saw no reason to complain about that at all.

Chapter Text

Gale lounged on the bed, legs extended below the covers, book in hand.

Also below the covers was Astarion.

“I’m trying to read,” he sighed.

A muffled, “Not any more,” came from below and Gale rolled his eyes.

“Astarion,” he shot back, “Y’know I did have plans for this vacation other than having sex with you.”

(He hadn’t had any plans to have sex with Astarion on this vacation, originally, but that was besides the point.)

He glanced over top of his book to see the giant lump that was Astarion shift indignantly.

“You’re being boring.”

Gale chuckled at his tone and looked back to his book. “Am not.”

“Are too!”

It was a juvenile argument to be sure, but Gale liked how easily they fell into this type of silliness. He hummed a vague noise in response and reached down to brush a hand over the section of quilt he assumed was above Astarion’s head, keeping hold of his book with the other. The little sigh of satisfaction the touch was met with told him he had aimed correctly and he smirked down at the page in front of him, still fruitlessly trying to concentrate on the words it bore.

He felt a tug at the waistband of his sweatpants and he lightly swatted at the lump beneath his hand.

“Stop it.”

Several quiet minutes went by in which Gale actually managed to read, idly petting at Astarion’s head through the covers. Then, inevitably, Astarion was trying to pull his sweats down again, this time much more slowly.

“Astarion!” he laughed, fully putting the book to the side now. He wasn’t going to be able to concentrate on it anyway if the infuriating man beneath the covers was going to keep this up. “Going slower doesn’t mean I can’t still feel you trying to get me naked.”

There was a muffled grumble followed by a huffed, “I thought maybe it was Jurassic Park rules.”

That took a solid moment for Gale to parse.

“Okay, first of all,” he started, resisting the urge to point a finger for emphasis. It was a habit he was trying to break, and Astarion couldn’t see him, anyway. “Are you referring to the thing in Jurassic Park where they say dinosaurs can’t see you if you don’t move? Because you know there is zero evidence that that is actually true, and wouldn’t make sense anyway. T-rex was a highly adapted predator, why wouldn’t it be able to see something standing still?”

There was a pause followed by a quiet little, “Oh.”

Gale brought his other hand to rest alongside the first, rubbing gently where he estimated Astarion’s shoulder to be.

“And anyway,” he continued, smiling softly, “even if that was true, you weren’t actually being still, Astarion. Moving slowly is still moving.”

Another pause, and then Astarion was climbing upward quiet suddenly, scrambling somewhat inelegantly up over his chest to poke his head out from the quilt just below Gale’s chin, curls all mussed and a playful glare narrowing his eyes.

“Stop telling me dinosaur facts,” he hissed, “It’s just making me want to fuck you more, dammit.”

Gale tilted his head back in shock and gave Astarion an incredulous look through narrowed eyes. “What are you, like…horny for natural history?”

Astarion huffed and scooted up further so his head was in-line with Gale’s.

“No,” he sniffed, “Obviously not, Gale. Gods. Do you really not understand at this point the weird way your general…I don’t know…dorkiness gets to me? When you use big words or go off on little academic tangents like you just did.”

Gale could feel himself blushing.

“I…no. Really?”

Astarion nodded sharply, frowning just a little bit. “Yes.”

Gale smiled and tipped his chin to give Astarion a kiss.

“In fact,” Astarion murmured, a mischievous sort of glimmer coming across his eyes, “I’ll show you right now just how much you rile me up.”

And with that he dove back under the covers, kissing down the length of Gale’s torso until he reached the hem of the hitherto-un-dropped sweatpants and began to ease them down with his mouth. Gale groaned softly at the thought of what Astarion must have looked like down there where Gale couldn’t see him. He shoved his pants and boxers down to his thighs in one go, ignoring the little grunt of protest from Astarion when it pulled the waistband free from grasping teeth.

“Hey! That was my job!”

The pout was audible even through layers of cotton.

“And you were going to be a menace about it, I’m sure,” Gale replied, half-laughing through the increasing haze of arousal.

A huff, and then—

“Yeah, okay. True.”

The first press of Astarion’s mouth to the head of his hardening cock had Gale resisting the urge to buck upward, instead settling on thunking his head back against the little pile of pillows he had set up against the headboard to support himself while reading. They served a different, much hornier (if not equally noble) purpose now.

Astarion’s mouth continued downwards, pressing open-mouth kisses down the underside of Gale’s length until he reached his balls. Gale unconsciously spread his legs, giving Astarion more room. And that was apparently the right move, because he felt Astarion’s cool hands gently pushing at the insides of his thighs, encouraging him to spread further so that wicked mouth could continue down, down…

Gale jolted at the first press of lips beneath his balls, against his taint, unceasing in their continued downward journey to—

“Stop!” Gale yelled, scrambling backward, head bumping against the headboard painfully. Astarion pulled the covers off himself immediately, sitting up and looking at Gale with wide, concerned eyes.

“Gale? Are you—”

“I’m fine!” Gale lied, awkwardly rolling to the side of the bed and carrying the momentum to hastily stand, the sheets half-dragged with him and momentarily causing him to stumble. “I, um. I just need, uh.”

He was walking backwards, vaguely in the direction he knew the bathroom was. His back bumped what felt like the doorframe and Gale hurriedly turned to shuffle through.

“Wait! What’s wrong, I—”

Gale swiftly closed the door and leaned his weight against it, breaths coming fast and shaky.

It was fine. He was fine.

Right?

Astarion hadn’t done anything wrong. In fact, the idea that someone would want to do…that to him…it was certainly arousing. Sexy, thrilling, exciting in the sort of miasma of taboo the act sat in, but…

But so, so vulnerable.

A hot wave of self-consciousness crashed through Gale just as a gentle knock came from the other side of the door.

“Gale?” Astarion called, voice now muffled by wood instead of cotton, “If you really don’t want to talk I understand, I…I’ll leave you alone. But you really don’t seem okay and I don’t want to leave you.”

“I’m…no, I’m not okay,” Gale conceded, struggling against the urge to smooth it over. He stepped away from the door and turned to face it. “You can come in.”

It opened just a crack, at first, and then Astarion peered around the edge as if testing unknown waters. “You sure?”

Gale nodded. “Yeah.”

So Astarion walked fully in, closing the bathroom door gently behind himself. He held his arms out and open. “Do you want a hug? If you don’t want to be touched, though, that’s—”

Gale was already moving forward into the elf’s embrace, burying his face into the soft material of his shirt. Astarion held him there for a few moments, still and warm and steady, the only movement the slight motions of Astarion’s thumb rubbing little circles into Gale’s shoulderblade.

“I’m sorry,” Gale murmured, eventually. Astarion pulled back just enough to level him a somewhat unreadable look.

“Don’t apologize,” he said. Simple and firm.

“Oh.”

Astarion tilted his head slightly, eyes softening. “What happened?”

Gale felt his face heat again. “You…you were going to. Um.”

Astarion nodded gently. “I should have asked you first, I wasn’t thinking. I’m so sorry. If you don’t want to—”

“No!” Gale said, cutting him off in a rush. He felt his cheeks once again warm. “I do want. That. I…fuck why is this so hard to talk about.”

Astarion’s thumb was still rubbing those soothing little circles. Gale took a deep breath and continued.

“I want you to…do that. To me. And I think I would like to do it to you too,” he managed, voice only a little bit shaky, “It’s just very new to me. And I was suddenly very aware of my lack of, well. Prep?”

The last word ended on a questioning lilt. Astarion smiled gently and nodded.

“You just took a shower a couple hours ago,” he replied, “and you’ve done nothing but sit around the cabin since then. I promise you it would have been fine, Gale.”

Gale nodded, eyes darting away from Astarion’s face to stare down at the minimalist tile of the master bathroom. “I just…I don’t know how to navigate this, sometimes.”

“This?” Astarion asks.

“Sex with a man,” Gale explained, daring to glance back up. “I’ve had some experience but it was all rather limited before you. Not that, uh, rimming can’t be done by people of any gender but it’s just…”

“Not on the typical heterosexual vanilla menu?” Astarion supplied. Gale nodded and met his gaze fully. He wasn’t blushing any more.

“Yeah, let’s go with that.”

Astarion ran his hands up to gently hold Gale’s cheeks. “We’ll go at whatever pace you want,” he said.

Gale smiled and leaned forward to press a lingering kiss against his mouth. “Thank you,” he murmured, smiling against Astarion’s lips. He pulled back and raised his eyebrows playfully. “And you say you’re ‘bad’ at talking about feelings.”

That earned him a huff and an eyeroll.

“Maybe you’re helping me be a bit better.”

Gale laughed and moved in to hug him again.

“Karlach you seriously think they’re better like that?” Astarion scoffed, looking over at her on-fire marshmallow with measured disdain. “Surely they just taste like charcoal at that point.”

The tiefling shrugged and blew the little ball of flame out, leaving behind a blackened husk of melted sugar. “You don’t know what you’re missing!” she exclaimed. Astarion continued to eye the fully melted mallow as she sandwiched it between chocolate-laden squares of graham cracker and popped the whole thing into her mouth with a near-sexual groan of satisfaction.

“I’m clearly missing something,” Astarion shot back with a sly little smirk, “if that noise you just made is anything to go on.”

Gale looked down at his own marshmallow, carefully impaled on a metal skewer and held a sensible six inches above the campfire flames, and tried to focus on watching the soft brown toastiness bloom across the surface in lieu of thinking too hard on the mental images Astarion’s words had immediately brought to the forefront of his mind.

This fucking elf was going to ruin him, wasn’t he?

(...Gale was okay with that, actually.)

“Fun fact,” he said, quite suddenly, images of Astarion’s tongue and what he now wanted to try doing with it still holding firm in his imagination, “this is called a Maillard reaction.”

The group turned to look at him.

“Isn’t that a type of duck?” Karlach asked, dead serious.

Wyll laughed and nudged her in her arm, knocking the fresh marshmallow she had been impaling onto her skewer out of her hand and onto the gravel surface of the firepit area. She gasped and plucked it up just as quickly, holding it in the air triumphantly. “Five second rule!”

“That’s not rea—” Gale began, just as Lae'zel cut in to point out that Karlach’s chosen method of burning her marshmallows to “a charred heap” would “surely burn off any contaminants.”

“You’re thinking of ‘mallards’, Karlach,” Wyll laughed, earning him a stuck-out tongue and scrunched nose from the tiefling.

“What I said was ‘Maillard,’” Gale confirmed, “named after the chemist who first described it. It’s what you call the chemical process of food browning from heat. Everything from toasting these marshmallows to searing a steak is a Maillard reaction.”

Beside him on one of the horizontally hewn logs that served as firepit seating, Astarion shifted a few inches closer. Gale watched him from his corner of his eye.

“Facinating,” Astarion said, tone somewhere between teasing and serious. Gale felt the tips of Astarion’s fingers brush against his thigh where they rested on the weathered grain of the wood.

“T-Thank you.”

Gale took a steadying breath, hand tightening on his toasting skewer. Astarion’s fingers pressed closer, the full side of his pinky now pressed parallel to the outside of Gale’s thigh. He hadn't lifted his hand from the wood, though. Unlike so many of their previous dalliances, they were currently in full view of their friends.

Turning to Astarion fully revealed the way the firelight danced over his pale skin. Astarion wasn’t looking at him in return, choosing instead to stare over the top of the flames at Jen and Lae’zel leaning similarly close on the other side of the pit. Gale watched Astarion quirk an amused eyebrow and held back the urge to lean over and kiss it.

“Gale! Your marshmallow!”

Gale looked back to the fire, gasping and pulling his skewer back from the flames that were now fully engulphing his once perfectly-toasted treat. He lifted the end of his skewer in dismay and blew the flaming sugar out with a short annoyed puff of air.

“At least try it,” Karlach insisted, waving her own blackened monstrosity around. “It adds such a  nice toasty flavor.”

“That,” Astarion began, pointing his free hand accusatorily towards the new s’more Karlach was assembling from another blackened marshmallow, “is not ‘toasted’, my dear, it is incinerated.”

“Pshhh, fuck off, Star,” she shot back goodnaturdly, “Enjoy your raw s’mores.”

Gale chuckled at Astarion’s affronted expression and reached for another marshmallow, his last one having been tossed into the firepit to be fully subsumed by flame. The moment he turned, distracted, he felt Astarion’s fingers begin to creep up the side of his thigh in a slow slide that ended with Astarion’s hand fully splayed just above Gale’s knee.

It was dark outside, the sun having set nearly an hour before over the golden prairie, but Gale knew his legs were fully visible in the flickering firelight. A small rush of panic moved through him and he turned to stare at Astarion. The elf wasn’t looking at him.

Gale swallowed nervously and glanced around the firepit. No one had noticed the hand on his thigh. He fidgeted in place for a moment, heart pounding in his chest, before making the call to follow in Astarion’s nonchalant metaphorical footsteps and pretend like nothing was amiss. The marshmallow he had reached for before was carefully skewered and he held it out to hover over the fire.

The hand above his knees flexed, Astarion’s fingers momentarily digging into the meat of his thigh.

Gale’s marshmallow almost dropped into the fire, but by some miracle managed to pull it back up at the last moment unscathed.

“Hold this for me?”

Gale glanced over. Astarion was holding out two graham crackers and a square of chocolate. Gale took them with a confused tilt of his head.

“Why?”

Astarion lifted his skewer, waving around the perfectly toasted marshmallow at the end for emphasis. “Because I require two hands to assemble my next s’more, obviously.”

Gale swallowed thickly.

“You have two hands, Astarion.”

“Mmm, well. One is busy.”

A warmth unrelated to the fire spread across Gale’s cheeks. Dutifully, he held out one of the graham crackers, waiting until Astarion had correctly positioned his marshmallow before placing the chocolate and other cracker on top and pulling the whole sticky little sandwich off the end of the skewer. He handed it to Astarion, who took it with a mischievous quirk of his lips. Gale didn’t have time to react to the expression before the trajectory of the fresh s’more was suddenly reversed, brought up to Gale’s own lips by Astarion’s pale fingers.

“Open up, darling,” he whispered.

“I—mmff.”

Lingering heat from the marshmallow had melted the chocolate even in the short window of time since the s’more had been assembled. Gale’s mouth filled with the sticky-sweet taste of campfire nostalgia, warm and gooey on his palette. A second bite finished the thing off and Gale resisted the urge to lick away the lingering chocolate smudged across Astarion’s fingers.

The firepit area had suddenly gone quite silent. Gale looked up as he swallowed his mouthful to every single one of his friends staring at him.

“Um…”

Karlach’s eyes had gone wide. She stood, the hand not holding her skewer (the end of which held a currently on-fire marshmallow) pointing at where Astarion’s fingers still grasped Gale’s leg. “I knew it!”

Gale glanced to his side. Astarion was looking at him with a somewhat unreadable expression.

Right. He had promised not to hide their…whatever it was they were doing. Gale cleared his throat.

“Yes,” he eventually managed, looking around at all of his friends but avoiding eye contact with any one of them for too long, “Astarion and I are, uh. We’ve been…we’re going to go out on a date to the planetarium! After the trip…obviously. There isn’t a planetarium all the way out here in, uh, M-Montana. Or, I mean, the prairie at least. There probably is in, like, the state as a whole, I assume. Um.”

There was a beat of silence from the group. Jen broke it first.

“About time you two got together.”

Gale felt the pressure on his thigh increase as Astarion leaned over to peck a single kiss against his heated cheek. He turned to see that Astarion was—quite uncharacteristically—blushing as well.

“Yeah,” Astarion answered, looking not at Jen but at Gale, “I couldn’t agree more.”

Gale turned on his heel the moment he was inside the bedroom, barely waiting for Astarion to close the door before he pushed him against it and kissed the man with as much gratitude as he could muster.

“Thank you.”

Astarion raised his eyebrows in question. Gale had pulled back only enough to breathe the words, but he could still see the motion in the top corner of his vision. “For what?”

“For…all of this,” he answered earnestly, “For being with me.”

Astarion smiled gently and moved forward the fraction of an inch it took to reconnect their mouths. Gale mirrored the motion in the opposite direction, tilting his head back and away. Astarion made a soft noise of confused frustration but allowed him the space. Gale took a deep breath and steeled himself for his next words.

“I think I…um,” he said, then paused.

“Yes?”

“I…”

Gale swallowed around a sudden lump in his throat. It lessened as he took a few more steady breaths. He tried again.

“I want to try again,” he managed after a moment. It was only part of what he originally had wanted to say, but for now it was enough. He flicked his eyes to the bed.

Astarion tilted his head. “Try wha—oh. From earlier? You want me to do that to you?”

Gale nodded.

“Yeah.”

There was a warmth spreading through Gale’s body, similar to how he felt earlier sitting by the fire. Part of it was certainly a blush again—apparently his facial capillaries were in outright overdrive today—but part of it was…something else. Arousal, probably. Deeper emotions, maybe.

Astarion gently cradled Gale’s cheeks with his manicured fingers and leaned in to whisper, “Of course, darling. I’ll take care of you.”

Oh. Oh yes, definitely deeper emotions too.

Gale nodded shakily and took a few blind steps backwards towards the bed. The frame was closer than he had anticipated, though, and suddenly he was stumbling and falling onto the mattress. An audible “oof” was knocked from his chest as he landed on his back, arms askance and legs hanging halfway over the edge. There was the distinct muffled sound of Astarion holding back a snicker and Gale blinked up at the cedar plank ceiling.

“Smooth,” Gale muttered, mostly to himself, which apparently gave Astarion the permission he needed to answer with a full-bodied laugh. Gale lifted his head to send the elf a playful glare and Astarion laughed louder, walking over to reach out a hand to help Gale up.

“If you’re going to make fun of me, at least help take my clothes off.”

“Certainly.”

It was a matter of only a few moments before they were both naked. Gale settled onto the bed (limbs all laying in reasonable places, this time) and watched as Astarion climbed up as well and settled between his calves.

“Ready?”

Gale met his eyes and nodded.

“Yes,” he answered, breath shaky but tone assured, “I trust you.”

Cool hands ran up Gale’s legs, rubbing in wide upward arcs. A gentle push encouraged Gale’s thighs to fall open and another pressed them up and out of the way, the tops meeting Gale’s soft stomach. There was a sudden sensation of cool air against him in places air didn’t normally reach, and that gave Gale a moment of pause, but then Astarion continued the gentle trail of his fingers along the soft skin of his inner thighs until he was only inches from his groin.

“I’ll go slow,” he promised. Gale nodded and flopped his head back against the pillow.

His legs gave an involuntary twitch at the first press of Astarion’s lips below his balls. Gale realized with a sudden wave of affection that Astarion was beginning in the same place he had left off earlier, giving Gale time to mentally prepare.

“Fuck you smell good,” Astarion moaned, “Masculine and smoky. I think I can smell the campfire on you.”

Gale bit his lower lip at the praise but released it with a hitched breath as Astarion kissed just a fraction of an inch lower. “What about the toasted marshmallows? Can you smell those too?”

Astarion hummed in contemplation. “No, but you’re plenty sweet enough on your own.”

Gale’s answering snort was cut off into a choked moan as he felt the first press of Astarion’s warm, wet tongue against his hole.

“Ah.”

There was a pause. A moment to allow him to adjust. And then…

“Ahhh—ahhh…ahh.”

Part of Gale thought maybe he should make a different noise. Unfortunately open mouth cries were all he was able to manage as Astarion continued his advance, licking into Gale with practiced precision.

It was an odd sensation unlike anything Gale had ever felt before.

Odd, but also fucking fantastic.

Gale’s cock was weeping against his stomach, rock hard and throbbing. The urge to stroke himself was strong. He resisted, barely, choosing instead to let his eyes slip shut and focus entirely on the feeling of Astarion’s mouth against him. The lack of vision served to heighten his hearing after a moment, and Gale allowed himself to luxuriate in the frankly obscene noises filtering up to his ears. He tried to say Astarion’s name but all that came out was a rough whine.

“Good?” Astarion breathed, pulling back just enough to utter the word before diving back in.

“Ahh, fuuu—”

He felt more than heard the answering giggle.

Words came so naturally to Gale, normally. Even during sex, unless he was only moments away from orgasm (and sometimes even still then), Gale had both a unique ability and an unwavering penchant for verbosity. At the present moment, however, he felt almost as though his brain might be leaking out through his ears. The sudden irrational urge to reach up and check the pillow for telltale dampness ran through Gale’s mind, but then Astarion did some sort of swirling sucking thing with his mouth and Gale keened into the increasingly warm air of the bedroom instead.

His toes were curling. Gale could see them when he cracked open his eyes. At some point he had hiked his legs even higher—as high as he could get them, really—and a quick inventory of the location of his hands revealed them to be clutching at the backs of his thighs, fingers digging into his skin as he used them to hold himself steady.

“As—ah—starion.”

Well that was sort of a word. A valiant effort at least, and his therapist always liked to point out that some progress is more than no progress. Gale gave himself a mental pat on the back for not falling prey to an all-or-nothing cognitive distortion, even during sex.

Astarion hummed against his rim. His fingers pressed bruises into Gale’s hips, helping him keep still.

“I—fuck,” Gale gasped. Godsdammit, why was it so hard to talk?

Astarion, damn him, pulled away with a slick smacking sound and looked up at Gale through dark lashes. “Yes, Gale? Something to share with the class?”

Gale took a steadying breath. The momentary break finally gave him a chance to find his words. “Where did you learn to do that?”

Astarion shrugged, “Oh, you know. Places.” He was raising a teasing eyebrow. Gale rolled his eyes goodnaturedly. 

“It’s nice, being with someone with so much more experience in these things,” he admitted. “It makes me want to try other things I’ve never done…”

A sudden urge shot though Gale and he caved to it immediately.

“For example, I have also never had, uh…I want to try…”

Well now he was struggling to speak for a different reason. Astarion was looking at him patiently. Gale swallowed thickly and continued on.

“Can you f-finger me?”

Astarion’s breath hitched and he nodded frantically. Before Gale had a chance to say anything else the elf was already shooting across to the room to fetch the lube. As he returned he met Gale’s eyes with his own blown-out pupils.

“You’ve never had anyone finger you?” he asked, voice creaking with want.

Gale shifted awkwardly, hands still holding his legs back at an angle. He probably could have let them go for a moment, if he had been paying any attention to things like that, but as it was he was frozen in place, pinned under Astarion’s heated gaze and trying not to vibrate out of his skin from desire.

“Never had anything in me, actually,” he managed after a moment, “not even my own fingers.”

“Oh,” Astarion breathed. He settled back to his prior position and ran reverent palms up the tender inner planes of Gale’s thighs. “Then this will be fun.”

There was a soft snick sound as the bottle cap was flipped open. Gale involuntarily flinched at the noise and then hissed a harsh embarrassed breath at his reaction. Astarion reached out to pet a soothing palm down Gale’s flank.

“It will feel good, I promise,” he murmured, “But say the word and I will stop immediately, okay?”

Gale nodded. Astarion dispensed some gel onto his fingers and moved them down, down, down—

“Oh!”

It was…

“Fuck.”

One finger, only up to the first knuckle. Barely past his rim, but he was already sensitive from Astarion’s tongue, and—

A slow slide, and one full finger was inside of him.

Astarion stilled, allowing him time to adjust.

“How does that feel?”

“I…”

Gale had the sudden inexplicable urge to cry. Not from sadness or fear or any other uncomfortable emotion. It was like something deep within him—pun not intended—had been released. Some part of himself he had spent a very long time now allowed to exist at the surface where it belonged.

Astarion’s other hand moved back up to rub at his side again, slow and soothing. Gale sucked a shuddering breath in through his nose and breathed out his next words on the exhale. “It feels incredible.”

Astarion beamed at him, the corners of his eyes crinkling in a way Gale knew would probably devastate him if he could see his reflection at the moment.

“You deserve to feel incredible,” Astarion whispered.

And then he began to move his finger.

Gale let his eyes slip shut again. Let himself simply lie there and feel.

“You deserve so much more than just that, though,” Astarion continued, voice reverent. The urge to cry was suddenly stronger. Gale felt a telltale prickle beneath his closed eyelids. “You deserve to be cherished, Gale, I…”

He could hear Astarion’s uneven breath. The warm hand at his side suddenly left and the angle of the finger inside him changed as a soft groan met Gale’s ears. He knew what that meant.

“You know I’m not good at feelings,” Astarion panted. The slick sounds of him touching himself rang through the space between them like a hymn. “But I want…I want.”

“Yes?”

“I want you,” he continued, “All of you. Your mind, your body. Your little science facts and your—ah—your frumpy clothes.”

Gale’s eyes shot open to glare at him. “Hey! My clothes aren’t—ah ah, fuck.”

“They are,” Astarion laughed, “And I love them.”

Gale almost said something quite stupid in response.

Instead, he moaned Astarion’s name a few times and hung onto his own thighs for dear life.

“You want another finger?”

“Fuck yes,” Gale panted, the words leaving him before Astarion was fully done with the question. He opened his eyes and looked up at the man hovering over him. “Please. Please, Astarion, I want—”

There was a hint of a burn as the second finger pressed into him but it left almost as quickly as it came, replaced by a dizzying warmth. Astarion moved the fingers in unison at first, accustoming Gale to the increased girth. After a few gentle thrusts he began to move them independently, scissoring and crooking and rubbing at Gale’s walls until, quite suddenly, Gale found out what having his prostate massaged felt like and had to slap a hand over his own mouth to keep from altering then entire damn cabin what they were up to.

Astarion smirked.

The thigh Gale was no longer holding onto lowered a bit. He dropped the other one too to finally take his throbbing cock in hand.

“That’s it,” Astarion groaned, “I want you to come around my fingers. Can you do that?”

Gale nodded frantically. Astarion’s eyes were half-lidded and dark with lust. They stared at each other nearly unblinkingly, caught in the moment. Gale snapped first, releasing his own mouth to pull Astarion down into a frantic kiss, open-mouthed and messy. Moans filled the air they shared between them.

“I’m glad our friends know, now,” Astarion gasped, the words stuttering between pulls of his own fingers against his cock, “I want the whole world to know, Gale.”

Gale’s mouth fell open on his own gasp. Astarion’s tongue shot out to fill the space.

He could feel his orgasm approaching, the steady climb of it leveling into an agonizing plateau of pleasure that ran right up to the precipice of his self-control and teetered on the edge. His fingers were still threaded in Astarion’s soft curls, mussing them in a way he knew the elf would huff over when this was all done. The thought was adorable. It made the longing in his chest impossibly deepen. Astarion made everything impossibly deepen.

Pun also not intended.

“I want to fuck you, one day,” Astarion panted, tembling and wild, “If you’d let me.”

Gale nodded frantically. “Yes. Anything. Yes.”

For now, though, the end was too near to do anything other than hold on for dear life. Gale couldn't wait another second, so close to the brink.

So close. And then he tipped over.

Pearly white shot across his abdomen. Mere seconds later, Astarion’s release joined his. He kissed him through it, keening into Astarion’s mouth and holding him like he meant it.

Because Godsdamn it he did. He fucking meant it.

Chapter Text

The last full day in the cabin, it stormed.

Gale was in the shower when the first darkened clouds had begun to roll in, so he hadn’t known at first that the weather was changing. Which was just as well, because he had always been rather fascinated by storms, and the current activity he was attempting in the master bathroom’s shower was something that required concentration.

The prior evening’s activities had been playing over and over again in Gale’s mind for the whole day, all through the shared pancake breakfast he had helped cook as well as the collective early morning walk along barely-trodden trodden prairie trails to try and spot a black-footed ferret (Jen’s idea—she was quite fond of small fuzzy creatures). Throughout it all, Gale could still feel the ghost of Astarion’s tongue on him. In him. Wet and warm and firm against his skin. The gentle stretch of Astarion’s fingers as he slipped them inside…the words Astarion had spoken to Gale near the end, voice ragged and heartfelt.

“I want to fuck you, one day.”

Astarion hadn’t exactly specified what “one day” meant, and Gale was nothing if not anxious when he had to wait an unspecified time for something. So since “one day” could well and truly mean any day, technically (and Gale had spent an inordinate amount of time thinking about what counted in the early hours of the prior night as Astarion had tranced beside him), he figured it might as well take place that very afternoon.

The thought continued to consume Gale all throughout lunch. The group had made themselves plates from whatever bits were left in the cabin’s fridge. Despite having a cooler in the van, the trip back home would be far too long to take any leftover perishables, so Gale had enjoyed a lovely (if not rather strange) bacon, apple, and arugula sandwich alongside a half-serving of creamy coleslaw and the last of the fresh-made lemonade. Astarion had sat next to him with his own disjointed meal of cold steak on salad, mac n’ cheese, and the dregs of a bottle of red, pressing his thigh alongside Gale’s and openly staring at him with a sort of sparkling affection in his rounded eyes. More than once, Gale had to endure cooing comments from the table at how “cute” he and Astairon were together. It was sweet, and Gale found himself surprisingly heartened by the positive feedback, but every remark about their burgeoning relationship only served to remind him of Astarion’s tantalizing words.

So after lunch, as everyone broke off to take afternoon naps or pile into the van to go off on some short-range final adventure, Gale headed upstairs to take a shower and…prepare.

A frantic Google search lying in bed that morning as Astarion had gotten ready in the bathroom had revealed some things. Gale had been vaguely aware of the realities of receiving anal sex, but he had never thought to inquire to any of the very limited number of partners that he had topped what sorts of things they did to prep. The few times he had fucked Astarion so far had been so damn spontanous…Gale wasn’t sure if the Astarion had planned ahead or if he had just gone in to it without caring either way. In the heat of those moments, Gale certainly hadn’t noticed anything either way.

Regardless, bottoming without at least attempting to give himself a thorough rinse wasn’t something Gale was mentally prepared for. Unfortunately, getting fucked was not something Gale had been aware might be a possibility when he had been packing his bags for this trip, so he didn’t have any equipment with him. Not that he owned any back home, either, but perhaps he could have bought something. Asking Astarion if he had anything Gale could borrow was too mortifying to even think about. Not to mention the sanitary concerns with sharing. Gale knew, ultimately, that Astarion probably wouldn't mind how internally clean he was or wasn’t, but Gale wanted to feel as comfortable as possible for his own sake if nothing else.

So without a single douche kit or shower enema nozzle to his name, Gale made due with the handheld shower attachment and a non-insignificant amount of prayer to whichever perverted may have been Gods watching him struggle with the “power massage” setting at that exact moment.

When he left the bathroom, freshly cleaned and thoroughly embarrassed with himself, he finally noticed the storm clouds gathering over the far away mountains.

Gale had looked into the weather patterns of the Montana prairie before the start of the trip, of course, just as he had looked into the local flora and fauna. He liked doing things like that, looking things up before he went to a new place. Part of it was a genuine thirst for knowledge, part of it was his anxious mind always wanting to be in control. Regardless, it had been nice knowing about the coneflowers so that he could connect with Astarion over it, and it was nice now to recognize the signs of an incoming summer storm over the prairie.

The sight greeted Gale as walked to the middle of the room. He watched the gentle progress of the clouds through the deck doors as he wiped himself down. The horizon was blanketed by them, some nearly black with the rain they held, and a few were well on their way in the direction of the cabin. The gorgeous pale cyan of the sky had deepened to indigo and a shadow fell over the swaying prairie grasses, muting their color. Gale wrapped the damp towel around his waist and moved to stand in front of the doors.

He was still feeling a bit too nervous to summon Astarion to the room, so he stalled for time by watching the progression of the storm. It was fascinating to be able to see the margins of it as it crept along. Gale was used to the weather back home or at school, where the sky was not so open. Storms were less visible, less predictable. Here in the prairie they came swift and strong, sometimes quite out of nowhere, but one could at least see them coming.

The sudden urge to walk outside gripped him, and before he could think twice, Gale opened one door and stepped out onto the deck. A wave of cool air immediately hit him, sending a shiver down his naked spine. It wasn’t raining, yet, but he could feel the growing moisture in the air even against his still-damp skin.

He peered over the edge of the railing and watched the way the wind rustled through a patch of wildflowers. Suddenly, a hare leaped out of the little clump of blue and purple and yellow. Gale watched it sprint a few dozen yards and disappear again, likely into a nice warm burrow. He wondered how many other hares were down there, sheltering together.

He should text Astarion. Ask him to come upstairs. But then…how? Should he send a cryptically sensual message? Something basic and straightforward? Maybe he should just get dressed and just go find him. That would be best, probably, in case Astarion didn’t want to have sex right at that moment. But then how long would his, erm, rinse job last? Shit, he should have looked that up too.

A crack of far-away lighting startled Gale from his anxious reverie. It also startled another hare from a different clump of flowers. It ran to the same burrow as the first one.

At least two hares sheltering together, then. Cute.

Gale’s mind drifted to what would happen once this week was up. Once they went back to normal life. Clearly he and Astarion were together now, in some capacity. They had told their friends. They had voiced their intent to be an item. They had at least one date planned. Gale smiled as he imagined taking Astarion to the planetarium back home, staring up at the domed screen together and watching a simulated cosmos.

But how long would it last? Gale had never really dated anyone outside of her. He’d had flings since then, and one or two ill-advised drunken hookups at the encouragement from Jen or Karlach or Wyll steering him towards beautiful strangers at bars, but the only real relationship he had ever had was the one he had with Mystra. And that had ended…poorly.

There was a soft clicking noise from behind him. Gale turned to see Astarion entering the bedroom and smiled at the elf through the still-open deck door. Well that solved the texting dilemma, then.

Astarion raised an inquisitive eyebrow. “You know it’s about to storm out there, right?” he asked, his tone a teasing lilt. He paired it with a vague gesture outside, somewhere over Gale’s shoulder to the wide-open expanse behind him. Gale rolled his eyes, the smile still on his face.

“Yes obviously, Astarion.”

“So then…why are you out there?”

Gale shrugged.

“I don’t know,” he replied, “I’ve just…I’ve always liked storms. The sounds, the smells, the sensations.”

Astarion walked to the threshold and leaned a shoulder against the doorframe. “Sensations?”

Gale sighed into the fresh ozonic air. “Storms feel wild. Untamable. Standing in them makes me feel…free.”

Astarion tilted his head. “Are you not ‘free’ already?”

Gale paused. Considered.

“Well…yes,” he answered, eventually, “In the most literal sense of the word, sure. But in a more…metaphorical sense, let’s say, well. No. Or, well, I wasn’t, for a long time, anyway.”

His earlier thoughts of Mystra flashed back through his head. It wasn’t just her, though, it was more profound than that. Gale bit his lip and watched Astarion’s expression go pensive. The surface instinct of Gale’s told him to change the topic to something else. Something lighter and more fun. Perhaps to the expressly lewd reason for his prior shower.

But another part, some deeper part that sat closer to the core of who he was, told him not to. Maybe that part of him was fed up watching the rest of him stumble through life without letting anyone in. Maybe it was some side effect of therapy finally kicking in. Maybe it was how fucking safe Astarion made him feel.

“I thought I was…that I was straight,” he began, voice soft against the wind, “For so long I thought I was straight. All throughout middle and high school, I noticed girls so easily. It was…simple, to assume what I was. Uncomplicated.”

Astarion started to take a step forward but pulled his leg back with a look of discomfort toward the sky. The darkened clouds had continued their trek across the prairie, almost reaching the cabin now. The first few stray droplets were falling, tapping gently against Gale’s skin in spare patterns. It was growing colder, too, and though Gale’s skin had largely drip-dried from his shower, his hair was still wet. Another shiver ran through him.

“Why don’t you come inside?” Astarion asked. His eyes were flickering between Gale’s face and the storm. “I want to…this feels important. We can talk in—”

“I noticed guys, too, I think,” Gale continued, cutting him off. It was rude, maybe, but something inside of him was finally uncoiling. “In fact I know I did, in hindsight. I noticed plenty of guys. Boys. Men. Whatever. I think I even had a crush, once, on this sweet boy in my chemistry class. His name was Rolan. He…he was nice to me, back before Mystra. Before everyone was nice to me, suddenly, because I was her boyfriend and they all felt compelled to.”

Astarion shifted his weight to lean back against the frame, his eyes no longer skittering about. He was staring only at Gale, eyes soft.

“I didn’t realize it was a crush at the time,” Gale admitted, “I thought we were just close. But now I think back and realize that, yes, that strange little fluttery feeling I got when he talked to me was the same as any other time I’ve liked someone. Same as Mystra, eventually. Same as…as you.”

Gale swallowed against the sudden lump in his throat. “And I do get that feeling with you,” he continued, “and I do find all sorts of people attractive, not just women. Jen told me about this term, once, earlier this year. Uh. ‘Comp-het’ I think? You’ll have to ask her about it, I don’t remember much. I just know I was put into this…box. Where everyone just assumed I was straight and I just…never questioned it. I don’t know what word fits me, now. Functionally I think I’m probably pansexual but ‘bi’ feels like it fits better? I don’t know. It’s all so…”

“Confusing?” Astarion cut in. Gale nodded helplessly. Astarion smiled gently. “I’ve known I liked boys since, well. Since I was a boy. I knew I liked everyone, really. But my experience with anyone was quite limited until college. I told you before that I wasn’t the most well liked in school.”

Gale blinked against the increasing rain. “You?” he scoffed, “I know you said you weren’t popular, but surely once you hit high school you—”

“No,” Astarion admitted, shaking his head, “Even then. People were too scared of Cazador. My classmates lacked the critical thinking skills to ever guess that I wasn’t automatically like my father.”

He was frowning. Gale wanted to tug him into a hug, but his skin was once again growing wet and he figured Astarion wouldn’t appreciate that. He hummed a noise of kind acknowledgement instead, and Astarion’s expression softened.

“Are you sure you don’t want to come inside?”

“Not yet,” Gale replied. He glanced up to look at the sky. The clouds were roiling, now, nearly overhead. From the edges of his vision he could see the tall prairie grasses whipping in the wind. “I like it out here.”

He returned his gaze to Astarion. The elf was raising an eyebrow.

“You’re so…weird.”

Gale smiled. From anyone else the comment would have stung. From Astarion, it was a commendation.

“Yeah,” he breathed.

“And you’re getting all wet.”

Gale tipped his head back, letting the heavy, clear drops hit his face. They were coming down strongly now, the storm growing wilder around him. Thunder rumbled across the plains. Gale stared up at the swirling sky and took a deep whiff of the air. He had never been in a storm that smelled this clean before. It was incredibly refreshing, both to his mind and his body.

“So I am,” he replied.

A quiet chuckle was followed by a pause and then a question. “You were already wet, though, and you’re in a towel. Did you take a shower just now?”

Something gripped Gale’s chest, somewhere between anxiety and excitement, cutting sudden and sharp through the warmth that had been building within him. He allowed his chin to drop back so he could look at Astarion.

“Yeah, I did.”

Astarion raised an eyebrow. “Why? It’s the middle of the day.”

Gale took a steadying breath.

“I…I was cleaning myself out,” he explained. A sudden gust blew wet hair into his face. He shoved it back over the crown of his head. “Uh, internally. Y’know, f-for…”

Astarion’s eyes widened.

“Gale,” he said, slowly and carefully like he very much did not want to misunderstand the other man’s meaning, “Are you saying that, just now, in the shower, you were…you were prepping so we could…so I could fuck you?”

Gale bit his lip and nodded.

A pause.

And then a rush of movement as Astarion moved forward, out into the storm, pupils blown wide and mouth already parting to crash against Gale’s in a desperate kiss.

Gale's hands flew up to wrap around Astarion’s back, anchoring the elf to Gale’s chest against the wind now whipping around them both. He pulled back just long enough to gasp against cool, plush lips.

“You’re getting wet!”

“I don’t care.”

A sudden flash of lighting from somewhere off to the side sent Gale’s heart racing. The answering boom of thunder a few seconds later vibrated through his body. He felt more than heard the answering groan in his own chest. Astarion grabbed the back of his head and pulled him into another bruising kiss.

Astarion’s hair was growing limp, sticking to the sides of his face. Gale carded his fingers through the wet curls to push them back, smiling against Astarion’s mouth at the resulting huff. There was a tug against the towel around Gale’s waist—now waterlogged and barely clinging to him—and suddenly he was bare to the world, rain pelting his back and legs while his front pressed close to Astarion’s soaked clothes. Those came off too without hesitation once Gale began pawing at them, helping to peel the wet fabric away where it clung to pale skin. Astarion shivered against him and Gale wrapped the elf in his arms, warming them both as he poured himself into the press of their lips.

“Gale.”

It was a whisper, said just barely above the din of the storm. Gale held Astarion’s trembling jaw and felt the hot breath puffing between them, so much warmer than the air around them.

“Inside,” he gasped.

No matter how majestic, no storm could ever compare to the man in his arms.

And…well. He was getting rather cold.

Astarion nodded and began to back up, not breaking away from Gale’s body heat for a moment. They tumbled together through the threshold, hands roaming and clawing at wet skin. Gale kicked the door blindly closed with his foot, rattling the glass in its frame. Eventually they made it across the room, falling onto the bed with less than perfect grace but more than perfect connection.

“Lube,” Gale gasped and Astarion nodded. They both shuffled, awkwardly twisting until Gale could reach for where it sat on the side table. He pressed it into Astarion’s hands. “Want to do the honors again?”

“Fuck yes.”

Gale laid back, letting his legs fall open much as he had the day before. Astarion began slow and gentle, one finger at first, and Gale let his eyes slip closed to focus on the sensations. Some part of him was expecting to be sore, but he found that beyond perhaps a single initial twinge, Astarion’s finger only felt nice as it moved in and out. Testament to how well he had been treated before, surely.

“You’re amazing,” Gale breathed, the reminder of Astarion’s kindness and care breaking through the barrier of his thoughts to spill out as words instead.

Astarion smirked down at him.

“l know.”

One finger became two, and then eventually three. Gale rolled his hips into the sensation, whining as Astarion’s slick fingers swirled directly over his prostate.

“Right there?” Astarion murmured. His brow was scrunching slightly from concentration. Gale nodded when he looked up. “That’s the spot?”

“Mmm ye—yes, fuck.”

“Knew it.”

A smart quip about the sheer cockiness of that statement was half-out of Gale’s mouth when his words were cut short but another long moan. Astarion’s fingers were relentless, pulling pleasure from him he didn’t know he was capable of. Above him, despite going entirely untouched so far, Astarion was panting through parted lips, lust-dark eyes flitting between Gale’s face and his hole.

“I’m not even touching you,” Gale murmured, awed and breathless, “and you’re already half-wrecked.” Astarion shook his head, then nodded, then shook it again.

“You don’t have to touch me,” he replied, “You just…do this to me, Gale.”

They surged back together, teeth nearly clacking from the force of it, and Gale tilted his head to allow the deep press of Astarion’s tongue, seeking and writhing and twisting against his own. He felt Astarion shift against him and then his leg was being lifted, tender and deliberate, a slow question of a movement with plenty of time for him to pull away.

“Please,” he begged, tilting just enough to breathe the word into the scant space between them. “Take me. I’m yours.”

There was a beat of stillness. Gale assumed Astarion was gathering together his own sex-addled thoughts, preparing to join together in the ultimate show of—

A snort of laughter, muffled against the heel of Astarion’s hand, filled the silence.

Gale pulled back sharply and eyed Astarion with a scrunched brow.

“Excuse me, what are you—”

“Sorry,” Astarion laughed, pressing his palm more firmly over his mouth. It dampened his words, slurring them slightly at the edges. “It’s just…the way you said that, it…reminded me of a line from Hercules.”

“The…the Disney movie?”

Astarion nodded helplessly, shrugging in a sort of “I have no fucking clue” sort of way.

“Meg says it, at one point. Kind of…kind of just like that, actually,” he explained, voice exasperated.

Gale rolled his eyes and reached up to playfully swat at Astarion’s chest. “I was trying to be sexy, dammit.”

His hand was summarily swiped away so Astarion could lean down and peck at Gale’s pouting lips. “You are always sexy, Gale. No need to try.”

Gale eyed him with a not-insignificant amount of suspicion but didn’t directly comment on that. Instead, he tilted his head innocently and asked, “You watch Disney movies?”

The glare that met that statement was enough to send Gale into a fit of giggles.

“Gods,” Astarion huffed, reaching down to poke at Gale’s side and drawing out another peal of laughter from him, “you are insufferable.”

Gale grabbed the wandering hand away from his side and then pushed at Astarion’s chest, effectively moving him off and away so Gale could sit up.

“Yeah?” he replied, glee still twinkling at the edges of his voice. Astarion raised an eyebrow. 

“Yeah.”

Gale smiled and gestured towards the sheets with his chin.

“Lay down.”

“Mmm, I like when you boss me around.”

“Oh shush and do it.”

Astarion moved to where Gale had indicted, neatly arranging himself so Gale could swing a leg over and straddle his hips. The mirth had left the elf’s expression and he looked up at Gale with something akin to adoration in his eyes.

“This is better,” Gale explained. “I can better control how this goes.”

Astarion nodded and brought a hand up to cup his cheek. “Take what you need, then.”

That sent a zing of something through Gale that felt a lot like lust and a little like something else he didn’t have a name for yet. He pushed up on his knees and reached blindly behind himself for Astarion’s cock, failing on the first few swings of his hand to locate it. Astarion said nothing, gazing up patiently until Gale’s fingers finally located his prize and moved it into position at his entrance.

“Slowly,” Astarion murmured, voice rough at the edges. “Gently.”

Gale didn’t mean to hold his breath as he began the careful slide down, but he did. Some part of him probably thought it would make it easier. Really, all it did was zero in his focus beyond what it would have already been on the sensation of being truly pressed open for the first time. It was strange. A delicious pressure and the slightest of burns. Not painful, just…different.

Wonderful.

“Fuck.”

Astarion was trembling beneath him, fingers pressing bruises into his hips, staring up at him with a depth of emotion in his eyes that made Gale’s heart stutter in his chest.

“You feel…” he breathed, “You feel so…”

“Like what?” Gale replied, his own voice ragged now. “What do I feel like?”

Astarion swallowed, throat visibly bobbing. His hair was still wet, the occasional drop falling onto the pillow beneath his head. “You feel so tight. And warm, a-and soft, and—”

“Gods.”

Gale was nearing the base, if the first gentle brush of the curve of his ass against Astarion’s upper thighs was any indication. He felt so full already.

Speared open, laid bare.

Connected.

“Just a little more,” Astarion said, staring down past where Gale’s cock hung hard and heavy. “You’re so close, you’re…y-you, ah—”

And just like that, all of Astarion was inside him.

A moment of quiet passed between them, the only sounds in the room their heavy breaths and the rush of blood in Gale’s ear. That latter bit was probably something Astarion couldn't also hear. Then again, it was so fucking loud, so maybe he could.

“When do I move?” Gale asked. Astarion looked at, pupils blown wide.

“Whenever you want,” he replied softly.

Gale nodded and looked down to the pink flush across Astarion’s chest. The sudden urge to pluck at the elf’s peaked nipples struck, and Gale was never one to hold back very long from his urges, so he reached out and did just that. It earned him a shudder.

“Whenever you want,” Astarion repeated, “but also, please move.”

The sudden realization that he did not actually know how to ride a dick washed over Gale. He blinked down at his groin.

“Um.”

Astarion raised an eyebrow. “Yes?”

“How…um.”

“Oh.” Astarion smiled fondly and rubbed soothing circles over Gale’s hip bones with his thumbs. “Just…just move up and down. Feel it out, you’ll find what feels good. And don’t worry ab—oh, oh fuck.”

Astarion was right.

He did feel it out.

The first few bounces were awkward. Gale found himself using muscles he wasn’t sure he’d ever used before. But then he found a rhythm, and allowed himself to stop worrying about his posture, and simply started to feel.

“Just like that,” Astarion panted, “fuck you feel so good.”

Gale nodded frantically. Some of his hair had fallen forward in front of his face and the shower-and-rain-damp ends brushed over Astarion’s chest in a cascade of deep brown half-curls. “You too.”

They moved together. At some point Astarion started fucking up into him, meeting each slam of his hips. Gale felt wild, untethered.

Fucking free.

Minutes passed. The notion of saying something to fill the panting silence came over Gale but he wasn’t sure what exactly it should be. He opened his mouth, a slew of emotions swirling around in his head like the undulations of their bodies moving together.

“I…”

The sudden thought of what he truly wanted to say struck him like the bolts of lighting striking the prairie outside.

I love you.

“Astarion, I…”

Say it.

Gale swallowed. It was too soon. They’d been together less than a week. Mere days, really.

“God, your ass is amazing,” Astarion gasped. Gale bit his lip and quietly sped up the cadence of his hips.

He couldn't say it. Not like this. This…this wasn’t special enough. And wouldn’t Astarion judge him? The man was shitty at emotions by his own admission. Wouldn’t he think it was…was weird or something, that Gale said something like that so soon?

“Where do you want me to come?” Astarion asked. His breathing was growing irregular. Stuttery. His eyebrows were scrunching together.

“Inside?”

It was a little terrifying. Both the feelings and the idea of dripping with Astarion’s cum. He wasn’t sure what he would do with either.

“Shit, yes, okay, fuck,” Astairon moaned, “I’m getting close, Gale, I—”

It was easy to nod, to smile down at Astarion. Even if Gale couldn’t say what he really wanted to, he still should say something.

“Please,” he begged, “I want it. Want you so deep inside me. I-I like you so much Astarion, I need—”

“Gale.”

It was surprising how much he couldn’t really…feel the process of being filled with Astarion’s cum. There was a slight sensation of wetness, but that was really it. No grand explosion, no sudden deep warmth. Just the tensing of Astarion’s thighs below his ass and the tightening grip of his hands and the near-pained expression of ecstasy that suddenly came over his delicate elven facial features. Gale watched Astarion tip over the edge and then slowly come down, panting up at him with wide eyes.

Then Astarion reached for Gale’s aching cock and wrapped skin-warmed fingers around the head. Gale had been dripping for a while and the trail of precum he’d left down his shaft eased the way for clever little strokes and twists.

“Come for me?” Astarion said.

And that was it.

Gale’s head dropped forward to lock eyes with Astarion as he came undone, clenching tight around the not-yet-flagged cock inside him. Cresting, coasting, crashing, over and down, shaking and shivering and then, finally, he collapsed forward, smearing his front along the opalescent puddle he’d made on Astarion’s stomach.

Cool arms wrapped around him. Gale nuzzled into Astarion’s chest with a contented sigh.

Back in the shower, staring at stray water drops sliding down the wall while Astarion’s cum similarly slid down his leg, Gale took several deep breaths.

He loved Astarion.

He loved him.

Who fucking cared that it had been less than a week? He’d known Astarion for years. What was it that Jen had said the day before? ‘About time you two got together.’

Had it been so obvious to everyone but himself?

He certainly hadn’t loved Astarion before the vacation. He had always been attracted to the elf (who wouldn’t be?), but for the longest time Gale assumed his feelings had ended there. Astarion had a pretty face, a firm ass. That’s all it was. But then, thinking back with a critical eye and a clear mind, Gale could see how his affection for the man had certainly grown over time.

“You okay in there?”

Gale startled, nearly slipping on the slick tile.

“Y-Yeah!” he called back.

Right. This was supposed to be a quick rinse.

Gale squatted down, wincing a little at the strange feeling of the rest of Astarion’s cum leaving his body. After an awkward moment spent staring at stringy white rivulets sluicing down the drain he stood and rinsed off any remains (and damn if he wasn’t grateful to the owner for picking a handheld attachment for the master bathroom shower).

When Gale returned to the bedroom, Astarion was waiting for him, lounging on the bed in a fresh pair of joggers and nothing else. He’d gone to wash his hands and his cock before giving Gale use of the shower, and clearly in the meantime had made himself comfortable.

“Hey handsome,” the elf joked, looking up with a smile. Gale returned it and crawled over to join him, a telltale heat rising in his cheeks. “How did it go in there?”

“F-Fine,” Gale stuttered, the blush rising farther. Astarion chuckled and reached a hand up to smooth over Gale’s reddened cheek.

“You’re cute.”

Gale tucked himself in against Astarion’s side and murmured a quiet, “So are you.”

Astarion hummed and tilted his head enough to meet Gale’s eyes. “Is that so?”

Gale nodded. “Yeah.”

They stayed like that, curled up together under the covers, chatting about nothing and everything, until Gale realized that the sun was shining in through the windows and doors.

“The storm ended,” he said.

Astarion nodded against his hair. “So it has.”

Gale swallowed thickly.

“Hey,” he started, suddenly unsure how to voice what he really wanted to. “I, um…”

“Yes?”

“I really like you,” he managed.

Astarion nuzzled his cheek against Gale’s dried waves. “You did mention that fact, darling. Just as I was about to orgasm, I believe.”

He was teasing. Gale took a steadying breath and pushed on, the need to share what he was feeling growing with every moment.

“No, l mean…I really, really like you.”

Godsdamn it.

He just…couldn’t say it. Of course he couldn’t say it. It was a ridiculous thing to be feeling so soon into this relationship and an equally ridiculous time to share such a feeling.

Right?

“Well I really, really like you too,” Astarion shot back. He was smirking but something in his tone rang deeper.

“You…” Gale began. He glanced away from Astarion’s face, suddenly overwhelmed with eye contact. Over at the end of the bed, hanging from one of the corner posts, was Astarion’s flower crown from days before, now dried and looking slightly worse for wear. Not all the flowers had dried evenly, some wilting more than crisping up, and the edge that was holding the whole thing up against the post was starting to unravel.

“Remember when I told you about prairie coneflowers?” he finally managed. “That they’re a different genus than ‘regular’ coneflowers despite having a similar common name?”

Astarion blinked in confusion and titled his head.

“Yeah?”

Gale sat up suddenly, running a hand over the back of his neck. He was facing away from Astarion now. If he turned any closer Astarion would be able to see the panic in his eyes.

“Standard coneflower—Echinacea—has medicinal purposes,” he explained, “It’s good for the immune system, for skin. It’s being studied to potentially help fight cancer, for fuck’s sake.”

“What are you—”

“But prairie coneflower. It’s…it’s nothing. It has no use. It’s just a fucking flower!” he continued rapidly, “A flower that looks like a penis! It’s fucking absurd!”

“Gale—”

“Why the fuck are they called the same thing?” Gale asked. His voice was nearly frantic. He never cursed this much (outside sex). “They have similar radial petals, I guess, but honestly they don’t look that similar, so—”

“Gale!”

He blinked down at his hands, all twisted up in his lap. There was a shift behind him and then Astarion was sitting up beside him, a hand on his shoulder. Gale risked a glance over. The elf’s eyebrows were scrunched together. He was frowning.

Shit.

Gale took a shaky breath. Shook his head. Looked back at the flower crown.

“I don’t know what the fuck is happening,” he breathed. “With myself, with my feelings. I feel like everyone had this…this idea of me for so long. I’ve always been the smart kid, the nerd, and then I was smart nerd with the hot girlfriend and I went and got a fucking tattoo for her and that was never who I was.”

“If it’s any consolation,” Astarion said gently, “I think the tattoo is hot.”

Gale gave him a half smile and continued on in a steadier voice. “I like the tattoo too, actually. I just…I feel like I always saw myself as a particular type of person. The type of person everyone else saw me as. Gifted, straight, blessed with a bright future. But we’re about to be seniors and then I’ll be applying for graduate programs and I’m fucking terrified that all this time I thought I was Echinacea when actually I was just a fucking…dick flower.”

Astarion took a sharp breath in through his nostrils and opened his mouth to reply.

“It’s okay,” Gale said, cutting him off. “You don’t have to say anything.”

Then, suddenly, he was being kissed.

Astarion’s lips were a bit chapped, which was a surprise. They were normally so soft. Probably due to all their earlier…activities.

“First of all,” Astarion said after he had thoroughly kissed Gale down from his spiral, “People are way more complex than fucking flowers, dick-shaped or not. Second, I don’t know what ‘kind of person’ you are because I don’t really know what that means but…whatever you are, it’s good.”

Gale felt his eyebrows rising in the middle.

“The only one who gets to decide what you are and who you are is you,” Astarion continued vehemently, “Who fucking cares whether some popular girl in high school thought you were fuckable or not? It doesn’t change who you are. It doesn’t change who the Gale Dekarios sitting beside me right now is. A Gale Dekarios who, by the way, is smart and nerdy and interesting and fucking sexy. And…and I know I said it already but…I like you. Quite a bit.” He paused and then sniffed primply, flicking his head like he was flipping hair off his shoulder. “And I have excellent taste. So.”

Gale blinked back rapidly gathering tears. “Really?”

Astarion nodded, his eyes burning hot with something that made Gale’s chest hurt. “Really.”

That time, it was Gale who surged forward for a kiss.

Loading up the van was just as complicated as it was originally. Despite having used up some supplies over the course of the week, there were still enough bags and boxes to fit in that accommodating two people side-by-side in the back seat remained impossible.

“Oh my,” Astarion sighed, faux dramatic concern practically oozing from his person. “I suppose there’s nothing else to be done, hmm? I simply must sit on top of Gale again.”

Gale clenched and unclenched his fingers at his side. Jen shot them each the same raised eyebrow through the front side window.

“Wait,” Karlach deadpanned. She paused half-way through the sliding van door and turned to stare at them both. “Before, on the trip here. I heard some sort of tussle in the back seat. You…you weren’t…”

Astarion giggled, high and clear. “Now really, Karlach. Get your mind out of the gutter!”

Gale knew his eyes had gone wide. Karlach pointed an accusatory finger at him and then turned to yell towards the driver’s seat. “Wyll! You’re captain of the van! Tell them they aren’t allowed to have sex in the back seat!”

Wyll, bless him, only spluttered a little bit. “I-I would have thought that much was obvious!”

“Van seating is a less than ideal arena for reaping carnal pleasure,” Lae’zel added helpfully from her seat. “If you wait until the hotel tonight you will have both more room and better leverage.”

Gale was going to die. He was simply going to drop dead right there on a sun-baked gravel driveway somewhere in Montana. Astarion reached out and pulled him in to plant a playful kiss on Gale’s cheek. Jen made an audible “aww” sound. Karlach huffed and climbed the rest of the way in.

“Just don’t do it while I’m awake at least, for the love of the Gods,” the tiefling muttered. “I love you guys but I do not need to hear you fooling around.”

“Don’t do it at all!” Wyll cried, staring back at them all over his shoulder. “Platonic activities only in the van please!”

“Pshh,” Astarion shot back, slipping a hand down Gale’s back to quickly squeeze his ass before pushing him towards the van door with the same hand. “Boring.”

Gale found his seat, face burning hot, resigned to another two days of pleasurable torture.

Gods he loved Astarion.