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ponder-the-orb · 4 months

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Inspired by this fanart by the wonderful @abneyart

Pairing: Fem Tav/Gale, (unnamed tav)

Tags: 18+, smut and angst, post/during Act 2 romance scene

Word count: 3.3K

Read on AO3 or below

***

She isn’t a stranger to the feeling of new love. The fervent glances, the unschooled or unintentional touches, her stomach tightening to the pleasurable edge of an ache at the realisation that someone could want her just as much as she wants them. It may be a slightly different flutter each time but the joy always has that same sunny taste -something easy and new, a precious thing to be savoured.

Not this time though.

Because there was love. And then there was Gale. Feverishly erudite and a new kind of infuriating and who somehow slipped under her skin to tear up and remake her definition of want into something so strong it almost hurts. She should be satiated, excited even as she holds him in her arms, but she can’t. Every time she tries, the warmth is darkened by an encroaching bitterness, the same thought turning over and over in her mind until the words wear flat like a stone against the tide.

How can she truly love a man so ready to let himself burn?

She almost doesn’t want to. She had a plan, or at least part of one. Earlier she’d murmured it to herself over and over again as that scarily accurate magical replica of him led her from camp to where he was sitting. She was going to push her feelings down, fold them away into the darkest part of her mind and let him down until she knew she could scrub Elminster’s message from both their minds. And then there he was, with an aurora painted in the sky and an almost painfully earnest confession, “I’m in love with you.” There was never going to be any going back after that.

The lightest scratch against under her collarbone pulls her from her thoughts. He’s shifted slightly, his chin nuzzling against her skin until a warm pink blooms in its wake. There must be a dozen pillows summoned around them and yet he seems perfectly content with his head on her chest, his hand curled under her shoulder. They’re both lying in the most comfortable bed she’s seen in what feels like months and she’s still not entirely sure where he summoned that from. The poster curtains are mostly drawn, but the light still creeps in a soft caress over both their bare forms, enough to forget the cursed land beyond even if just for one night. For once, the permanent pinch between his brows has softened, his mouth half open in what looks to be the most relaxed sleep he’s had since they began travelling together.

Sleep won’t come for her yet, perhaps not at all. Not if she’s expected to be content with the fact she can count the hours they have left tangled up like this on her fingers.

She tightens her arms around him, breathing shakily.

She wants more time, the time stolen from them by this wretched journey. Time to discover each other properly- more than just their bodies, more than what she’d been able to glean from slightly flowery anecdotes whilst walking. She wants the mortal details most don’t know, the smallest threads of the tapestry that made him: when he started going grey, how dark he likes his toast and why one man can own so much damn purple. There’s purple bitten and sucked across his shoulders in a messy constellation now too. She presses each one gently, making a memory of how his face shifts as she does. She’d been deliberate with her mouth before, leaving bites of her passion that would shine and ache for days afterwards so he can still feel the intention whenever his fingers graze those same spots. You are wanted. Here. Now.

Even if he won’t believe it.

She presses slightly harder until his own grip tightens against her, a sigh warming her skin. She’s not sure if that’s what hurts the most right now- that it isn’t enough. For either of them. She could love him black and blue, take him to the crest of ecstasy over and over but it doesn’t take away the truth.

They’d seen first hand the armies the Absolute commanded, the powers these tadpoles can give, how easily the most powerful minds can bend. Even if she knew what this heart of the Absolute was or had a plan to end it, what are her words against the command of a Goddess? A command that she was evidently too busy to deliver herself.

She knows it’s pointless to try and unpick divine reasoning but it’s still hard to swallow. She can’t understand how it could be so easy to sentence a person you once cared for to die with the same unfeeling cruelty as a child pulling the legs off of a spider. But Mystra’s wants and whims are just that… ineffable. Godly reasoning can never be boiled down to good or bad, selfish or wanting. Apologies and explanations won’t come. That’s something she’d been told multiple times when trying to wrap her head around the existence of the pantheon as a child. You might as well berate the sea for the vessels it swallows every day.

She chuckles quietly to herself. A fool's errand perhaps, but she knows all too well that if it took the person she loved, then she’d try. Try and try and try until the salt dried her skin to shards and withered the magic from her soul.

She’d never liked that metaphor anyway. The ocean can’t think about consequences or see the havoc it wreaks. Gods can. They can see and hear and touch anything they wish whenever their mood swings a certain way, somehow both omnipresent and ignorant.

It’s the reason she asked him to dismiss such a beautiful illusion of Waterdeep and bed her as far away from the cup of Mystra’s hand as possible. Her mind would have wandered, angrily. That if she turned away from Gale and bit down into the beating strands of the weave itself it might just be enough to make a Goddess bleed.

She has precious little other than the clothes on her back and equipment stained by corpses, yet when he kissed her for the first time she finally finally felt like she had something she could call her own. Would it really be such a selfish thing to fight to keep it?

She laughs again. It’s colder this time.

She knows the answer is yes and she has no problem with that. There’s no fear of damnation- what punishment is it to be locked out of a paradise she’ll never want? She’ll wear the title of sinner like a crown if it’s cast on by a Goddess she’ll never have love for.

The simple truth is she’ll damn the world itself if it means she can keep the man she loves whole.

She traces the curve of his back and exhales softly towards the canopy, her words caught somewhere between a prayer and a plea.

“Please don’t do it.”

She doesn’t expect his half open eyes to meet hers as she looks back down. She stiffens slightly, unsure if he heard. He doesn’t say anything, just watches her in the dim light for a few seconds before resting his head back against her chest. She assumes he’s going back to sleep until she feels him kissing across her skin in a lazy pattern. The scratch from his beard is already strangely familiar and the tension wracking her body relaxes a little as he continues his unhurried exploration.

Her fingers tighten in his hair as the swell of his bottom lip brushes her nipple. He smiles against her as he does it again, his tongue dipping out to lightly trace the same spot until her hips start to jerk underneath him of their own accord. She holds his head there, groaning as his hand joins in, brushing over her other nipple in a slow tease.

He stays there for a few more tortuous moments, a louder cry pulled from her as he gently nips at the skin. He lifts his head again, eyes bright and intention clear.

“Yes?”

She catches his jaw, dragging his face back to hers so she can press her answer into his mouth. “Please.”

She weaves one hand back into his hair, the other cupping the side of his face as he settles properly on top of her. She’s not quite sure exactly what she’s asking for, but she knows she needs him close. Close enough to keep safe, to push away all those bullshit expectations she can almost physically see weighing with crushing might on his shoulders.

Their kisses are messier than before. There’s still the lingering taste of herself on his tongue, a stark reminder of him burying his face for what felt like hours between her thighs. It hadn’t taken long to discover that he makes love with the same devastating precision as when he casts - pushing her to the heights of the heavens like it was the sole thing he’d been put on this plane to do.

She chases the heat of that feeling, grinding down against his knee in an urgent rhythm as he presses it between her legs. He swallows her harsher breath when she presses harder, letting her follow those blunt sparks of pleasure before pulling his leg away. Her frustrated cry dies as the hand brushing over her chest slips down to replace his knee.

She throws her head back, baring the column of her throat and his lips meander down to kiss that gentle curve. He caresses the length of her folds a few times, each pass becoming firmer. She bites his lip at the maddening touch, already keenly aware of how wet she is- desperate for him. Thankfully he doesn’t leave her in limbo for long as his fingers finally sweep against her clit, once, twice, three times.

For one of the first times since their journey began, there aren’t any words between them. All of them are lost somewhere between her heart and his lips on her neck. Any other time she’d be thrilled to explore the no doubt exhaustive list of other uses for his mouth, but not in this moment. Right now she needs to hear him say it, that he’s taking back his steadfast choice to die, or at least find her own way to convince him. If she can’t find her own voice then she’ll do it with her body: kissing, fucking, loving it into him until any thoughts of Mystra’s command are eclipsed by her own.

You deserve to live.

She tugs his hair as he massages her clit more firmly, a familiar pressure he’d discovered with a smirk right before the first time he’d made her come. She rides that pleasure for a while, steady and hot as a candle’s flame. It sears right down to her toes as he slips one then two fingers inside her, curling and rubbing until she’s seeing messy stars behind her eyelids. Part of her wants to melt into the feeling and enjoy his fingers into her own end, but another part won’t let her. Not until he does.

She grabs his waist and rolls over, pressing him into the mattress. She leaves a deliberate kiss over the orb, then again like she can dive through that vile magic to his beating heart. She lingers there as she reaches down to stroke his cock, making another memory of the way his throat bobs and his eyes flutter- a sight just for her right now.

His hand moves from between her legs to cup her hips and lightly brush the skin there. It’s a moment of sweetness in a haze of want, a reminder of exactly who she’s here with- someone who’s been looking at her for days like he’d pull the stars from the sky if she asked.

She holds his gaze as she eases herself down onto him, a rosier warmth spreading under each of his fingers as they grip her harder.

She doesn’t need the stars. She needs to know he’ll still be there to watch them with her when this is finally all over.

She arches her back, crying out some strangled version of his name as he thrusts up under her. She follows that feeling, shifting up and down to find her rhythm. There’s no finesse here, just an almost primal need for him to find his own pleasure with her, in her. Whatever he needs, whatever she can give.

He sits up, hands moving from her hips to lock round her back and pull them close. The orb pulses with an increasing brightness between them, bathing their skin in swathes of blue light. It had been quite the shock the first time that had happened, a sizable panic snatching away all her bliss until he’d reassured her it was the excitement and not an incoming explosion.

She brushes those bright strands from his eye down over this neck until her thumb rests over his rabbiting pulse. It’s a small caress and her own reminder that he’s still here. That at least in this slick, desperate moment, he’s hers and hers alone.

She holds him harder and kisses any skin she can find, his neck, his forehead, the top of his head. She pauses there, inhaling deeply. Underneath the sweat and the sex there’s something else, earthy and rich like some freshly cracked tome. It almost makes her laugh because of course inbetween life, death and sleeping in the dirt he’d take the time to do that.

She leans back, taking in the sight of him even more. His hair is a mess in her hands and every inch of visible skin blooms with a deeper flush under the light. It breathes a strange sense of pride in her. To the world he’d been nothing but prim and proper since she’d first pulled him from that portal, but only she gets to see him like this: perfectly wrecked and wanting.

He brushes her bottom lip with his thumb as she closes her eyes, pulling her focus back to his gaze. It’s more intense this time, like the look of a dying man finally seeing the oasis in the desert. It’s almost heartbreakingly beautiful but it pierces like an arrow through her chest. She pushes his face into her neck, her eyes burning.

Any other time she’d want to drown in that rum-dark want but for now she just can’t. She knows all too well what it means- how he’s clinging to this as some final comfort in his oblivion. She isn’t strong enough for that. Even the ghost of that feeling is almost enough to shatter her like delicate shells underfoot. She doesn’t want to be a bright spot in his final days, nor some happy face to think on when he finally unleashes it all. How is she supposed to hold herself together after that happens? To live with the fact that she gave herself so irrevocably to a man content to confess his love and his suicide in the same breath.

Even with the wall she’d erected around her feelings, he has to know that she needs comfort too. Comfort from the parasite, from the pain of her own expectations, from the fact that the role of leader to a group of broken misfits was thrust upon her whether she’d wanted it or not.

She blinks back her tears, a louder gasp leaving her as he moves faster. His fingers slip between them to find her clit and he rubs her in a circle until the hot spring coil of pleasure inside her feels ready to snap.

It isn’t fair, not even remotely and she isn’t even sure if she wants to curse or thank the winds of fate for giving her this. Or for making him so fucking easy to fall for.

He bites down on her shoulder as he comes, his movements messy and erratic while he rides out his orgasm. She roughly pulls his head back, muffling her own climax into his mouth as she finishes against his fingers.

He caresses the back of her neck as they catch their breath before gently pushing their foreheads together. It’s such a tender thing that it makes her want to cry all over again.

Don’t go.

“It’s been quite some time since I’ve been woken up that way,” he murmurs, his hands coming up to rub her shoulders.

She brushes her nose against his as her voice finally finds its way back to her. “If you’re very lucky, it won’t be the last.”

Please. Don’t go.

He chuckles at the soft tease, dropping his face back against her neck. “Here’s hoping then.”

Please.

“Don’t go.” The words leave her mouth in a damp whisper before she can swallow them back.

His smile wavers against her skin. She winds a lock of his hair between her fingers, so tempted to hold his face there and stop him from seeing the cracks finally breaking across her expression. He shifts back, eyebrows knitting together as he softly touches the corner of her eye. She almost chokes when she sees the wetness shining on his thumb.

“What-”

“This isn’t your final night, you know. It’s… it’s not,” she blurts out, cutting him off. She sucks in a shaky breath, gripping onto his fingers like some desperate lifeline. He regards her carefully but keeps quiet, almost as if he can see the mess of words stuck in her throat like a shard of glass.

She sits for a second, grounding herself with the feel of his hands, his breaths. She hadn’t exactly planned on saying this with him inside her but she knows she can’t let it go now. She presses her forehead more firmly to his as if she could spill her intent right into him, no parasite needed. “There are going to be so many more. I’m going to make sure of that, I promise.” There’s more she wants to say, but it’s all she has right now. Something barely coherent, but as painful and honest as she can be- her heart split right open for him.

She tilts back and waits for the inevitable brush off.

“Better to meet it on my own terms,” he’d said before. A heartbreak gift-wrapped as comfort as if that could possibly make it hurt any less.

It doesn’t come. Instead, a gentler smile settles on his face and he twists his head to kiss the palm of her hand. “Well, who am I to argue with that?”

It’s a warm touch, like magic itself spreading through her hand and into her belly. It’s not a confirmation nor a promise, but it’s something. It’s enough for the sourness resting at the edge of this night to melt away a little.

She lets him brush the tears from her face, his lips following the path of his thumb until they land back on hers. He eases her onto her back, squeezing her shoulder as he pulls out. She hears him murmur something against her skin and the stickiness between them is gone in an instant.

Perks of a wizard lover she thinks, cupping his chin to kiss him again.

“I mean it Gale,” she mumbles as they eventually pull apart, her words a feather’s caress against his mouth, “you’re not going anywhere.”

He settles back against her chest, lazily brushing his fingers over her stomach. “And so did I.”

His voice is soft and easy enough that it almost feels like reassurance. Just enough for her limbs to finally give into their exhaustion as he stills against her again. She knows come morning this calm will probably disappear back into the curse along with the bed, but for now she’ll take it. And perhaps in this brief moment somewhere between magic and martyrdom, she’ll even believe he isn’t a liar.

***

It only took 200+ hours of playing and three glasses of wine to finally write something BG3 related.

Again please give @abneyart a follow!

#bg3 fic #bg3 gale #gale dekarios #gale of waterdeep #baldur's gate 3 #bg3 #If Mystra has 0 haters it's because I've died #My writing #gale fic #gale x tav #mywriting

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