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Mornings in Waterdeep are the easiest he’s ever had, and the hardest. Every morning he’s home, Astarion wakes when his body wills him awake, a luxury still unfamiliar to him even after decades of freedom. And there are other untold luxuries: he always wakes up warm, cocooned in silk and cloistered away with velvet drapes — and Gale, all over him, bleeding warmth into Astarion’s skin everywhere he presses them together.
Astarion is a thief at heart, always desperately hungry for more, and in the weakness of the early morning he can’t help himself. But is it really theft, when Gale is always so willing for him? Astarion presses a kiss onto his lips and they part, pliant and permissive even in sleep. Astarion noses his way down Gale’s neck and he throws his head back, all the better for Astarion to press kisses where neck meets shoulder and breathe deep of that lovely skin-warm scent.
There are small tragedies too. Years ago, Astarion would have indulged himself in a little sip, secure in the knowledge that he was always welcome. He wouldn’t dare now. Time creates delicate weaknesses in all things, and his husband is no exception, getting frailer by the day as humans are wont to do. But, no matter. For today, Astarion contents himself with sucking a small bruise onto Gale’s collarbone, and he relishes in the little sigh that escapes from his lover at the treatment.
Still sound asleep. One last kiss, and Astarion steels himself for the greatest tragedy of the morning.
Extracting himself from Gale’s embrace is a tactical affair; the challenge is in escaping Gale’s limbs and fighting his way out of the blankets swaddling them both. A devastating blow to morale is struck every time Gale makes any noise of distress, and only quick thinking and a quick mollifying kiss lets Astarion finally slip out of their bed.
He regrets it already.
He dresses quickly and efficiently, bundles up warm for Waterdeep’s frigid winter, and before he leaves the tower he doesn’t forget to take the shopping bag Gale insisted on enchanting. A bag of holding with tricks up its sleeve, Gale had called it, and utterly invaluable in the winter: cavernous enough to hold all daily purchases, a compartment that magically keeps both bread and blood warm for both of their breakfasts, and another compartment to keep fresh meats perfectly cool.
When he steps out of the tower, the moon is still shining overhead. But Waterdeep is a city that never sleeps, and even hours before dawn, shops are open and Astarion is only one of many souls bustling about.
He has regulars now. First, a half-orc butcher in the market who bottles fresh blood for Astarion with no awkward questions asked. This morning, he wraps up orders from the other occupants of the tower too: beholder eye stalks for Tara, who’s quickly getting tired of chasing after her prey, and half a pound of beef liver for Gale. There’s an order for a whole dressed duck too, but Astarion tries to put a stop to that.
“He’ll be cooking with duck fat for tendays if I let him buy that,” Astarion snaps at the butcher. “You know it’s bad for his health, stop enabling him!”
“I’m a butcher, not a healer,” the half-orc grunts back. “And I’ll not have Himself back here all disappointed-like, so take the fucking duck and dump it into the canals for all I care. But you’re signing for the pick-up before you do it.”
It’s not just a duck, Astarion realizes with dismay. It’s a duck, and a beautifully marbled roast, and a selection of cured meats that he knows full well are bad for Gale’s heart. But he also recognizes this: Gale’s expecting to cook for company, if he’s gone and ordered a whole roast. A quick mental review of their calendar brings up the likely culprit: advising for thesis proposals at Blackstaff are in a week, and Gale is going to have flocks of students crowding around him again, begging for apprenticeships. Astarion scowls, but begrudgingly pays for the whole lot. It makes Gale too happy, entertaining colleagues and older apprentices in their home.
The next stop is Gale’s favorite bakery. The master baker, a stout halfling named Hayfurrow, had a temper almost as foul as Astarion’s in a snit. But the man made the most wonderfully soft bread, perfectly square and fluffy, and his niece always had the most salacious gossip — Hayfurrow’s is the best bakery in the city, and everyone and their servants buy their bread not an hour after the servant’s bell. If he times it right, Astarion can get to the bakery just an hour after Lady So-and-So was caught by the chambermaid somewhere and with someone she shouldn’t have been, and he can get Gale a loaf of milk bread just turned out of the cooling rack.
Today, he stays for the gossip, and he lets himself get upsold from a plain loaf to Hayfurrow’s latest invention, the bastard son of white bread and croissants. Berry Hayfurrow, who knows him too well, winks at him, nudges his attention toward a display of potted jams, jellies and preserves, and whispers: “Your gentleman liked the lemon curd sample the last time he dropped by a tasting — it’ll be incredible with the new bread, I promise! I’ve never led you wrong, Mr. Ancunín, I’m not about to start now!”
It’s a whole dragon for such a small jar of lemon curd, but Gale had liked it well enough to remark on it the other day…
Astarion leaves the bakery with considerably less coinage than he entered it, furious with himself for giving in to the impulse for indulgence. He spitefully skips the grocer that sells Gale’s coffee (if he wants to drink the poisonous swill he can pick up his order himself!) and the cheesemonger’s (anything blue will stink up the bag, and Gale always orders the blue), but he stops by the fruit and vegetable vendors like a dutiful husband and buys the produce that the clerics at the Hospice of St. Laupsenn particularly recommended. Leaves and twigs, he thinks disdainfully. If he’d wanted nature to provide a cure for human aging he’d have gone directly to Halsin.
He has one last stop before returning home. Right at the corner near the tower, a tiefling newsboy peddles the Waterdeep Wazoo, early enough that the sun has yet to rise. “Two copies as usual, sir?” He asks Astarion, far too chipper for this early in the morning.
“Hm, I guess I’ll take them,” Astarion says carelessly, hands over a few coppers and leans over the display of papers — then his hand darts out, quick as lightning, seizing the child’s wrist inches away from his fingers. Astarion tuts.
“What was the first rule I taught you, child?”
The child’s eyes are nice and round, appropriately impressed by the speed of Astarion’s reflexes. He gulps. “Don’t go for anything that might be missed.”
“Correct. Anything valuable will eventually be missed, of course, but someday you’ll have to figure it out: there’s a difference between valuable and valued.” Astarion lifts his left hand and shows off what the kid had been going for: the adamantine eternity band around his finger, studded all over with diamonds and a great big moonstone in the center, crackling with arcane energy. “Why do most adults wear a ring on their left-hand ring finger?”
“It’s a wedding ring,” the kid mumbles.
“Now, is a wedding ring valuable or valued?” Astarion asks patiently. Gods, Gale’s professorial manner is catching.
Something sparks back into the child’s eye when he sees that Astarion isn’t angry. “I’m betting that ring’s right valuable,” he shoots back cheekily. “Just the stones have got to be worth thousands of gold pieces.”
Astarion’s impressed. What a wonderfully larcenous child, to have such a honed appraiser’s eye at three and a half feet tall. “You’re not wrong,” Astarion says, and the kid preens with the smugness of being right. “But! I also very much value this ring — so much so that I had a very powerful wizard enchant it against theft. If you touched it with the intent to steal it, you would be crispy-fried by now.”
The thief, knowing full well which very powerful wizard is most likely to have enchanted Astarion’s wedding ring, shudders, full-body.
“Precisely,” Astarion says, then tosses the kid’s own coin purse back at him. He hadn’t even noticed Astarion picking his pocket throughout this mini-lecture on thievery. “Pick something more fungible next time. Rings on the right-hand side, perhaps — or plain old gold! All the better if you lift just enough that your marks never notice.”
“But I don’t even know what fungible means!” The kid complains.
“It’s all over the news, darling.” Front pages of the Wazoo, even; the bankers are all up in arms over the devilish new invention of ‘non-fungible assets stored in a permanently inaccessible pocket dimension.’ Astarion prefers a more honest kind of theft himself, but he has to admire the verve of these new charlatans. He skims a few more headlines, then folds up his papers and tucks them under his arm. “Well, that’ll be all for me this morning. Thank you for the free papers, dear.”
“Free papers? What do you —”
Astarion cackles as he vanishes from sight. Poor child, he scrambles to dig through his coin purse for the few coppers Astarion had paid him earlier, but of course, they’re gone.
~
Dawn finds Astarion safely back inside the tower, newspaper, groceries, and even the daily mail in hand. The other residents are still asleep; he checks in on Gale and finds the bed a mite too cold now, so he casts prestidigitation with a whisper to warm up the duvet. A hand darts out of the sheets to catch him while he’s at it, and Astarion gets a sleepy kiss to his palm for his trouble.
“Another hour, love?” Gale mumbles.
“Take as long as you want,” Astarion whispers back. Gale has an appointment with Blackstaff’s current dean of Evocation this morning, but Astarion’s never had a high opinion of the man. He can wait for Gale to be fully rested for the honor of Gale’s company, surely.
Gale, blissfully ignorant of his own schedule when he’s this close to sleep, just nuzzles into Astarion’s hand one more time before falling back asleep. Astarion presses one more kiss into Gale’s silver hair, and leaves to check on Miss Tara in the library.
She’s curled up before the fireplace there, lit by her own continual flame: sound asleep, just as they left her there at half-past eight the night before. The sleeping is beginning to worry Gale, but Miss Tara is a stubborn creature and refuses to see a druid. Gale can only love stubborn creatures, and is uniquely built to capitulate to and indulge every one of his beloveds’ whims, but Astarion is a stubborn bastard himself. Another tenday, Astarion resolves, and Miss Tara will be having a fireside chat with Halsin if Astarion could manage to bring him here.
In the meantime, minced beholder eyestalks. Astarion gives Tara a good scritching before he goes back to the kitchen; she stretches in pleasure at the sensation but does not wake.
He sets out the newspapers on the dining table, sorts through the mail and separates Gale’s letters from his. Even Miss Tara has correspondence from a gynosphinx in Tarmalune. Astarion sets out the new lemon curd and warms up a bell jar with hot water, brings out some butter to soften. Then he turns his attention to the bushels of greens.
Gale has no love for the concoctions he’s been prescribed. “Not an ounce of the arcane in it! Hardly worth the effort, my dear — I could make myself some spinach soup and get the same results,” was what he’d said when they walked out of the Hospice. The problem, of course, is that even at his most conscientious, Gale will only consume his vegetables drowned in butter and rich sauces. The perils of having a gourmand for a husband. Astarion, having been on a strictly liquid and carnivorous diet for centuries, would never have thought to contradict Gale on matters of his own nutrition if not for Shadowheart’s unexpected visit the year before.
Fresh from the ordeal of caring for her mother through old age and beyond, Shadowheart was full of grim advice, from elf to elf. “I pray to the Moonmaiden that none of our friends will have to endure what my mother has over the past five years,” she’d said heavily. “I don’t think Gale is in much danger of that kind of dementia — thirty years as a captive of the Lady of Loss is a unique stress upon the mind — but I must warn you now: keep him as healthy as you can. He cannot go on living as he is, as if he were still a much younger man. Don’t let him scoff at mundane interventions; a change in diet and lifestyle can work wonders in extending a lifespan.”
The conversation had left a shard of ice in Astarion’s heart. He hasn’t told Gale of it — of course he hasn’t, Gale never takes care of himself and gets self-conscious when someone points it out. Instead, Astarion’s taken it upon himself to watch Gale’s health like a hawk: he nags him into seeing his doctors, keeps an eye out for healthy recipes to try, and contrives to keep Gale’s diet as clean as possible. And of course, Astarion keeps making the vile leaf concoctions, with ground-up leaves, grated roots, all suspended in the juice of far too many oranges.
He’s too focused on his work today, and he nearly stabs Gale when Gale’s arms wrap around him from behind, and his chin settles on Astarion’s shoulder. “I’m not sure what color this is supposed to be, love,” he says doubtfully. “I do hope I’m not meant to drink it.”
There is beetroot, turmeric, spinach and strawberries in the brew, all ground up as fine as Astarion could get them and mixed together in a slurry. He’s added some honey; honey is supposed to make teas taste better, and there’s leaves in this so it must be a tea. When he ladles it into a mug, both Gale and Astarion watch the viscous mixture take forever to slither out of the ladle, and when it falls to the bottom it does so with an unappetizing plop.
Astarion stands by his work. “Everything in this is good for you,” he says imperiously. “What color it is should be irrelevant. So drink up, my dear, and after you do I’ve a treat for you.” He spins around to thrust the mug into Gale’s hands, and the pout on his face! It nearly makes Astarion’s will crumble.
“Must I?” Gale whines, taking a whiff of the brew and nearly gagging.
“Must,” Astarion says severely, but gives Gale a kiss before his mouth gets contaminated by leaf flavor. Gale makes another face, but he does as he’s told. He shudders when the mug is finally empty.
“That was vile,” he complains. “I do hope that treat you promised is worth the suffering. Is there any bread?”
Astarion shoos Gale into his seat at the table, and produces the croissant loaf, warm and lightly toasted from sitting next to the kitchen fire. “A new recipe from the Hayfurrows’, dear. And they had the lemon curd you mentioned last week — I was guaranteed that this bread with that curd and some butter would make for a heavenly combination.”
The smile Gale gives Astarion is syrupy-sweet and entirely besotted. “You remembered!” He says brightly, finding the little jar and delighting over its very twee packaging. He cuts himself two very generous slices of the bread — delights in the buttery, flaky layers — and slathers both with rich butter and the soft yellow curd. The noises he makes when consuming good food! It always puts a smile on Astarion’s face, watching that hedonistic pleasure break across Gale’s.
“A dark, bitter tea would be most excellent to pair here,” Gale says through a mouthful of bread. “Do you mind if I go make myself some?”
Astarion waves him off, and opens his paper. He has a goblet of warm blood — a young heifer today — his husband humming the bourrée from the Lliirian Suites in the background. There’s fine gossip in the Wazoo, and the season’s programming for New Olamn’s amphitheater was finally released. They make idle conversation about which performances sound appealing, whose playing is getting better or worse, and before Astarion realizes, his goblet is empty and half of the croissant loaf is gone.
Gale looks so happy, with crumbs in his beard and some lemon curd on his lip. Astarion can’t bring himself to disapprove.
“Darling, you’ve got —” Astarion reaches out to wipe the lemon curd away, cradles Gale’s jaw in his hand, but Gale gets a mischievous gleam in his eyes. That’s the only warning Astarion gets before Gale takes his thumb into his mouth and sucks, and Astarion’s breath hitches.
“Oh, you naughty, naughty wizard,” Astarion breathes. Gale hums in approval, cheeks hollowing out as he draws Astarion’s finger further in. His lips are always so plush, and soft, and the inside of his mouth so warm and inviting. Every swirl of his tongue sends Astarion shuddering and the sight of it burns through Gale as well. He moans, and when the rumbling sets off Astarion’s arousal to a burning heat, he wrenches his thumb from Gale’s mouth.
Another tragedy of the morning. Gale looks so utterly bereft, his mouth hanging open, empty and begging to be used. “Darling,” Astarion says, trying to control the desperate need to have him. Honestly, he’s not trying very hard. “You’ve a meeting at nine with the dean —”
“Oh, sod him,” Gale growls, and dives for Astarion’s lips and a dirty, dirty kiss.
~
Gale, disgraced with the evidence of their morning tryst, retires to their rooms for a much-needed bath, and Astarion takes the opportunity to check on Miss Tara again. She’s already awake, but only barely so, but she purrs for him when he strokes through her fur.
“Doing alright there, Miss Tara?” Astarion murmurs.
“Yes, now that you’re here.” She stretches, and sighs. “Oh, do keep doing that all morning, Mr. Ancunín, that’s so very lovely.”
He grins, and makes himself comfortable on Tara’s pile of cushions. He had brought his letters with him into the library, and he reads them one-handed with the other still buried through Tara’s fur. A letter from their bankers, recommending a handful of new investments. Some swatches of new fabrics from Astarion’s third favorite fabric emporium. A gith tablet from Lae’zel: delivered by a spelljammer docked at Waterdeep for a fortnight, and willing to carry letters and packages back, judging from the advertisement appended. He sets it aside to read with Gale later.
Most letters, he reads aloud to Tara, with a few biting, backhanded comments about the Waterdhavian society belles who desperately want to bring Astarion Ancunín’s work back into Waterdeep’s ballrooms. Honestly, he’d gone quite mad in those first few decades of freedom. Suddenly having the opportunity to do something that wasn’t killing things or getting things killed went straight to his head, and Gale had supported him all throughout an ill-advised decade as a couturier. He’d done impeccable work, of course. Beautiful gowns, dashing suits, all sorts of garments in between — all of it was done well, and gorgeously, and sometimes during the season’s crush of social engagements he still spies one or two of his best works handed down to new debutantes in their families.
But he was never really a person for the fine details. Specifically: the accounting details, and neither was Gale. In hindsight, it was a good thing for Astarion that the magistrates closed down his workshop. He was getting very close to draining his most irritating clients dry.
The only two letters of any importance, aside from the tablet from Lae’zel, is a letter from Halsin, to be kept a secret from Miss Tara, and an envelope of plain paper. The only return address is the Yawning Portal, and those two non-details pique Astarion’s curiosity. Plain paper for stationery — unheard of in Waterdeep, and most of his friends are now settled enough to have their own stationery made. The writing is boilerplate, therefore addressed at the post office after someone inquired after his address.
He takes a deep sniff of the letter and freezes. Old blood, undeath, and Underdark flora.
He’s not heard from his siblings since he set them free.
He rips the letter open with shaking hands, upsetting Tara in the process. “Mr. Ancunín,” she complains. “Do be careful!”
“Oh? I’m sorry, dearest,” he mutters back, distracted but contrite. “I’ll have to attend to this letter immediately.” He speeds through the letter full of bland, useless platitudes: … apologies for not writing sooner … would love to catch up… important matter within your expertise… I’m at the Yawning Portal for the whole week. His lip curls at the close.
Love, your sister
Dalyria
His fist crumples around the paper, hand shaking. Tara notices, because of course she does. “Upsetting letter, sir?” She asks, wary, and gives the empty envelope a sniff. Her nose crinkles. “Well! It took a while for them to show their faces and properly thank you for the favor you did them. Which one is it?”
“Oh, this isn’t a social call,” Astarion says, forcing levity into his voice. “Dear Dalyria is in Waterdeep, apparently, here to consult me regarding —” Astarion refers back to the letter “— ‘an important matter within my expertise.’ I do wonder what expertise she might mean. She’s only known me to be good at two things: fucking things and killing things. At the moment, neither is appealing.”
“I do hope not,” Tara says firmly. “Those days are very much behind you, if Mr. Dekarios or I have anything to say about that — and trust me, we have very much to say on the subject. Will you see her?”
“I so hate to disappoint family.” Astarion wishes he were half as unbothered as he sounds. “But I suppose she’s made quite the journey, and it would be rude beyond anything to make it all for nothing at the final leg.” He makes a move to stand, off to the writing desk to send a reply, but Tara puts a paw on his thigh and her claws dig in.
“You do not owe it to her, Astarion — not this meeting, not anything she might ask of you. You owe her nothing, and she has no right to make you feel as if you do. You have freed her, all of your siblings, all seven thousand of the sacrificial spawn, and most of all yourself when you slew that pile of bones that dared to call itself your master. Don’t let her pretend that there are any shackles of obligations that still chain you to them.”
Astarion stills, and his dead heart swells in his chest, full of affection for this little harmless creature determined to protect the apex predator that had been invited into her home. “I know that, Tara,” he says, and bends to press a kiss to her soft little head. She smells of books, of candles, and of beholder blood. “If ever I forget, I’m sure that you will immediately be there to remind me.”
She bumps her head against his chin, purrs, and says: “Good. I’ll be off to take my breakfast; if you do meet with her today, don’t forget that we have an appointment at three o’clock. I’m a creature of habit, Mr. Ancunin; it would simply be terrible if there were any disruption to my routine.” She stretches, and with one final rub against Astarion’s shin, she conjures a mage hand to open all the doors before she flies down the tower.
Astarion watches her go, and then goes to sit at the writing desk under the grand window of stained glass. It was one of Gale’s earliest presents to Astarion, from even before they were married: only just arrived at Waterdeep after the Netherbrain’s defeat, having spent the whole journey north cringing away from the sun and the agony it brought. Gale had written ahead to Tara, or arranged things with her before she left Baldur’s Gate —however he did it, Astarion’s never asked. Magic has always been more wondrous to him when the knowledge of how it was done is kept secret, and this was a piece of magic he never wanted to be made mundane.
Astarion had arrived in Waterdeep hooded and shrouded in darkness like the vile monster of the night that he was. Gale would take no chances, not with Astarion’s safety, so he had his entire tower shrouded in magical darkness too. All the windows, all the doorways, every nook, cranny or crevice through which sunlight might wander — all of it was warded, boarded up, or plastered over with velvet drapes. Except for one.
In the time it took for Gale and Astarion to journey north, a team of master blacksmiths, glassmiths, and glaziers had installed a window in the library. South-facing, bringing in the most light — and every single pane of glass stained just enough to let light through and keep the sun’s radiant power at bay. The glass, in dizzying shades of red, orange, pink and gold, formed a sun before which Astarion could stand, whole, unblemished, and unafraid.
Astarion had wept on seeing it; had fallen to his knees within that little puddle of sunlight made safe just for him. Gale had fallen beside him, gathered him up in his arms and made him a heartfelt promise. “I swear it, Astarion: one day I’ll return the sun to you.”
Astarion almost hadn’t believed him, but — a man on his knees before Astarion, with that look on his face, bathed in the impossible sunlight pouring in from a stained glass window — Astarion had felt a god then, in that moment. A broken god, weak and powerless, but for the devotion of one man.
And he knew: he would see the sun again.
Astarion thinks about that for a moment: that when he was freed, he had at his feet a man for whom devotion was easy as breathing, who could and did stand against the might of the heavens for a shred of Astarion’s love. He thinks about the Underdark, how empty and barren and dark it was, and thinks of centuries of darkness only to end in more darkness.
He pens a reply on a sheet of paper, lets it furl into a bird on his palm. Then, he thrusts open the window, and into the weak winter sunlight caressing his skin, he lets the bird go free.