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In the grand scheme of things, Gale is pretty sure he’s dying.
Oh, he’s definitely dying. Of many things simultaneously. Age, slowly. He’d be a damn lucky man if that’s what takes him out of this mortal plane of existence. Evil brain sucking tadpoles? He’s got his very own buried right in his occipital cavity. And, the whole insatiable orb of unstable raw magical power? Right at home in his chest, waiting for its day to implode in a visceral, city-leveling cataclysm.
But today? Today, the threat is immediate— immediate and infuriatingly mundane. A nature’s folly, so to speak, one of his own making.
Spores. One wrong step in the Underdark and— poof. Incapacitated wizard.
The impenetrable darkness of the Underdark hangs overhead, cut through by the eerie glow of luminous mushrooms. Gale lays out across the ground, rendered utterly useless . A jab Minthara was swift and eager to make.
He bemoans it. His stupidity. This ailment. And then, one ill timed bulette. All colliding in perfect, horrific synchrony. The sounds of battle drown out his more pitiable moans. The voices of his distant companions meld together, but a few things slip through:
“The wizard is useless. Leave him here.”
“Don’t look at me. I’m a positively horrendous cook. We cannot just leave him.”
“Shadowheart. Tend to him, now. Before it—“
Gets worse? Kills him? Or, before he’s dragged off to the depths of the Underdark by an unsightly creature looking for a mid-afternoon snack? It would be their disappointment. He tastes absolutely terrible.
Gale attempts a self-deprecating laugh. All he succeeds in is turning to his side with a painful wretch. Sweat sticks uncomfortably to clammy skin, and he stares down at the cold ground in defeat. He is a wizard. At a time— a great one, and this is what he’s reduced to? Mystra would laugh. His peers, too.
Someone comes to him and sets him back. The hands are strong but not large enough to belong to the man Gale wishes was by his side in this moment of weakness.
(To sweep him off his feet? Rescue him in a moment of need? Or, to quench this desire budding deep in his core.)
Gale is not so sure the tadpole is the only thing which has nested in his gray matter. The enigmatic man that is their leader has taken up equal, if not greater space, of late. Instead of Tav, it is Shadowheart who leans into his blurred field of vision. A wave of healing magic washes over him, yet there is nothing to mend. This is no simple cut or bruise. Gale spills no blood, but gods… the ache is unlike anything he’s ever known.
He writhes beneath her, nearly biting through his own tongue when he says, “Agh! Quickly now, before I— before—”
Combust. Incinerate. Poof into a puddle of Gale shaped sweat, tears, and other suspicious fluids.
She grunts, “Stop. Moving. It’s not working.”
A shiver shoots down his spine. Gale arches from the ground with a cry. Adrenaline pounds blood at his temples. His heart quickens— the orb, too . Both gripped in the tight clutches of this mysterious ailment. Suddenly, it stops. Everything floods south, and Gale groans.
It echoes off the rocks of this infernal place. Loudly . A small, feeble part of him holds out in the hope that it’s a pained one. It is not. He knows it. Everyone else knows it, too. It brings Shadowheart to a pause. “This is beyond me,” she frowns, nose scrunched in disdain. At the failure, or… at him?
Oh, it is absolutely him. Gale cannot delude himself otherwise.
Shadowheart looks down to his rucked up robes. One layer has already been lost, feverishly stripped in the midst of battle with the searing touch of magic singing his fingertips. Propriety is but a thin sheet of fabric between his companion, and well…
His erection.
In the middle of the Underdark, as half of their party remains tangled in battle on their way to this so-called Absolute. Gods, the timing. Curse these mushrooms— those infernal little fungi. They’re everywhere in the Underdark and with just as many nasty and novel side effects, too. Fits of uncontrollable laughter, explosions, hallucinations, and… this.
Arousal. Sex. Biologically speaking— to encourage, uh, mating.
Gale thinks he prefers the exploding ones. A swift end seems preferable to this new creative torture. Unfortunately, immediate death is not on the table, only this pitiful display of human biology. The only cure, and sufficient balm being: sex.
Sex. Here.
Story of his life. In this moment, body wins over mind, and Gale decides he doesn’t much care for the details. As long as the ache is satiated. As long as he’s filled, spent, and claimed. Again. Again. And, again. Until—
Gale heaves. Tears wet his cheeks, spittle his lips, and then, his cock throbs. Untouched. Unspent, And, furious.
Shadowheart looks over her shoulders. They sag with a relieved sigh. “This is your problem, now,” she says, prying herself from Gale’s side. In its place, another person presses their palm to his feverish forehead. It makes his body convulse of its own accord— knowing.
“I have heard of plants with aphrodisiac qualities but never mushrooms?”
Not the sort of thing they make a tincture for in Baldur’s Gate. More like an ailment which needs to be worked out of his system in days of agony. Inconvenient, time-consuming, and embarrassing agony. Half of their party is likely to leave him behind. Gale can hardly blame them. Not with these creatures nested in their heads and the threat of an unknown god on the horizon.
“Leave me here,” Gale rasps. He always has had a penchant for self-sacrifice and the dramatic. “I’m of no use to you like this.”
The snort he’s met with is resoundingly familiar and completely dismissive, “You aren’t dying , Gale.”
Oh.
Oh, that voice. How hadn’t he noticed earlier? It melts over him in a way no one— well, not even Mystra — ever could. Gale’s eyes shoot wide, adjusting to the dim light of the cavern. Tav. Tav. Tav. The man runs a hand through Gale’s hair, and the touch alone is nearly orgasmic. His hips buck, trousers damped by the slick spill of warm pre.
A smirk hints at Tav’s lips. Under different circumstances, Gale might chastise him for it. It’s lascivious, playful, yet dangerous. All the things which should warn him away, yet always seem to draw Gale closer. Now, he wants nothing more than for this man to give into the same desires that already have him in its clutches.
“We just need to work it out of your system.”
Gale gapes, “We?”
“Did you have doubts that I would leave you here? Oh, Gale. You need not worry. I am prepared to get an earful from Minthara later for it. As for you…”
Tav reeks. His armor is sticky with fresh blood, and perhaps, some that is ever older. The edges of his clothes fray, singed and coated in a layer of soot. Beneath, he’s soaked in sweat. That musk Gale once teased him over, now drives him mad as though he were some animal enticed by pungent pheromone.
“Please, hurry. I—” Gale grasps at his head. A pant blows softly between his lips. “I do not know how long I will be able to handle this.”
“Long enough to not explode,” Tav ventures.
Gods, it would be a way to go, wouldn’t it? One pent up wizard, one earth-shattering orgasm, and then, the Underdark caves in on them all. Adventure over.
Under his breath, he mutters, “Fuck.”
Tav chuckles. It rattles like machinery from his chest. Metal clinks and clothes rustle, only for Gale to quickly find himself disrobed from the waist down. “I can arrange that,” he teases, eager to get to the root of the problem. Er, Gale’s. His cock, in plain terms.
Gale tries to ignore the monster’s blood spilled mere meters away, and how his whines bounce off the stone in an echo chamber of his own pain and pleasure. With Tav here, they shift towards the latter, as the man fits himself into the space between Gale’s thighs and without second thought swallows him down.
It will not be the flora and fauna of this unknown place which take him but this man . This baffling, infuriating, and unpredictable man whom Gale has found himself wholly enamored with.
“Tav–!”
Self-consciousness runs down his spine like ice and is melted away by warm mouth and tongue just as quickly. Tav cares not for what the others think— for the intrepid glances and curiosity of their companions seeing him deepthroat their resident wizard’s cock.
(It is not only Tav who will get an earful later, but Gale, too. Camp gossip has a new hot topic.)
Tav slurps him up in a mess of bubbling spit, as he bobs effortlessly from root to tip. It’s not what he needs. Not quite what Gale wanted. The stimulation makes him want to claw his way out of his skin, but the perpetual emptiness makes him want to beg for more.
More, more, more.
The orb throbs. Gale’s knees kick up, pinned around Tav’s head. He breaks away briefly with a deep breath and taps the shaft to lips left puffy and slick. Obtusely attractive, as always.
Gale gasps, “You… you always tease… ”
Until, Tav doesn’t. Until, something comes over him. A starved, feral thing. One that transforms the man, twists him to a shadow. Gale fears it, and yet, he is also filled with…
Love.
Every part. Every inch. It is not a topic he’s been able to give life with words, nor is it something he has completely reconciled with himself. Those nights when he had awoken, hands bearing on his windpipe, a feeling— not fear, not hatred — stirred in his gut.
Tav challenges, “Ask me, then.”
He crawls up the prone form of the wizard like a spider winding him in silk. Gale is already ensnared, prey begging to be eaten. His partner looms above him. Gale’s chin is caught between pointer and thumb, head angled straight on. He can’t look away. The fingers dig into his jaw and pull it down.
And…
For the first time…
They kiss.
Saliva drips into Gale’s opened mouth first. The very same that once bathed his cock. Deliriously, he thinks it tastes of fine wine— dry but sweet. Another trick of fickle biology because it could not be further from the truth. Soon after, it is chased by lips.
Is this not what Gale has dreamed of— night after night left alone to his own thoughts?
He is a man of great sentiment and longing. He would prefer proper courting, romance , and on a basic level— a kiss before… ah, intercourse . It’s all been shuffled up, but now… now! He finally has everything he’s wanted within reach.
The ground shakes beneath them, and Tav is pitched forward. His tongue shoves deeper into Gale’s mouth, licking over his soft palate and teeth. His hands press up to the other man’s chest, and with a sharp pang in his gut, Gale is reminded of the less than ideal circumstances he is afflicted with right now.
“Mmph… Tav, Ta—” Gods, Gale feels like he may actually spontaneously combust if he doesn’t get something— anything— in him at once. “Need you to— ah, m… mate me… please…”
The choice of words comes without a thought. The spores have really gone to his head. It doesn’t work like that— the logical part of his brain wants to assert . He cannot bear offspring. Its efforts are useless on him. At least, so he thinks.
Tav goes stiff. What humor he once found in the situation dissipates, and an unusual tension creeps in. “Careful,” he warns. “You do not understand what that does to me.”
What it does to him, Gale will only understand much later. Later, after his origins and struggles are revealed. Later, when Gale realizes the severity of the urges his would-be lover stifles. A Bhaalspawn is meant always to create more for his progenitor.
Those thoughts are beyond him now. Instead, Gale sucks down a petulant whine. It strains his chest and makes him thrash against his partner. His cock rubs Tav’s bent knee, and his eyes go a little bit wider. Semen streaks down his pants. Despite it, Gale remains hard as ever, if not harder.
Tav murmurs a string of unintelligible curses beneath his breath, fumbling with his trousers to give Gale an inkling of what he desires most. For once, not power or knowledge. Amazing how nature can reduce him to such a simple creature.
The blunt head of Tav’s cock pushes against his entrance. Anticipation sears in a way that almost balms how bad it is. The prep is too little. The penetration is too dry. Gale is uncomfortable, and his lower back hurts. Not from aphrodisiac spores, but simply because he is a man of a certain age unused to sleeping outdoors for weeks at a time.
Despite it all, Gale’s nerves sing at finally, finally, being filled. The cock stretches him thin, his insides forced to accommodate the intrusion as Tav makes room for himself. It is neither slow nor delicate when Gale is bullied open. The palpable sensation of fullness settles in Gale’s lower abdomen. It satiates the primal little urge set aflame by the spores, and for the first time, Gale doesn’t feel like he’s dying.
(Far from it, actually. Gale is consumed instead with the desire to milk Tav of every last drop.)
“Why are you so hot?” Tav murmurs, confused, between clenched teeth. “You never felt like this before.”
Sweat beads from his brow and spatters to Gale’s cheek. His eyes seem distant, pupils blown dark and wide in a state of rampant arousal not unlike Gale’s own. He wonders, for a moment, how long his partner will be able to hold on. Gale is not the only one here with his grip on sanity slipping.
Perhaps, this had been a bad idea. Gale is no mycologist. He could be contagious and have doomed them both to a life of mindless reproduction at the behest of the colony. The thought is as outlandish as it is derivative. He’s read this before. Not in any research materials but in a book— a dirty one.
Gale lights with drunken laughter, reaching up to cup Tav’s cheeks. It catches him off guard. His thrusts grow still inside him, and his cock settles to a shallow rut, warm beneath Gale’s belly.
“Wha—?”
Gale drags him into a second kiss, and they collide in a messy, desperate union— starved as though neither of them has seen a meal in weeks. His legs hook behind Tav’s waist, pulling him closer and then deeper . Tav hisses, bites Gale’s lip, but it is not out of malice or that destructive urge which plagues him so. It is from the jump of his cock— sudden and swift— which sends him spilling over into Gale’s body with his oh-so-satisfying seed.
A drop in the bucket. Gale cums a second time, but remains stubbornly aroused. It is not enough.
“Perhaps, I could drive a blade into my eardrums and finally get some sleep,” Shadowheart rolls her eyes, tired, and clearly over it. “How long have they been in there?”
“Five hours. Aren’t you curious about it, though? Oh, just imagining Gale’s face tomorrow morning when he realizes…” Astarion breaks into laughter. “It will be worth it.”
Five long hours of shameless, noisy, messy sex. Tav freed himself once for a breather, some water, and a quick ‘chat’ with everyone else— to the point that they were forced to set up camp to accommodate. Eventually, it will run its course. Tav won’t mind, but Gale… Gale won’t be able to look anyone in the eye for days.