It's late morning by the time Gale wakes up, and he has no idea what day it is. That tends to happen when you've spent months refusing to leave your home, though. Every day is dedicated to trying to source more magical artifacts he can consume first, then researching ways to be rid of the orb in his chest next, and any time in between given over to sulking. Sometimes, the work goes late into the night, but what does that matter when he lives alone? Well, save for Tara, though she also spends time visiting his mother and searching for magical artifacts in her own way, which he doesn't have the luxury of questioning.
But today is... different. He doesn't realize why when he wakes and slips on his robe, thinking it was the sun peaking through the curtains that woke him. Except, then he hears voices. Two feminine voices. Gods, has Tara brought his mother over? He hasn't seen her in months, too ashamed to even try to explain everything that's happened. At first, he thinks he'll simply stay upstairs unless someone comes up and gets him. Then, he actually listens. One voice is surely Tara, but the other one is not his mother. Strange.
Gale heads down his stairs and into his kitchen, brows furrowed in consternation. Whatever he expected, it wasn't what he finds. There's Tara, sure enough, seated at the little table where he eats most of his meals when there's no reason to go into the dinning room (which is always, because he never has guests). Sitting across from her, however, is a woman he has never met before. She appears to be... a clown? Is that a rude assumption?
"Uhh?" is his eloquent introduction, shock robbing him of every word he knows.
"Mister Dekarios! You've slept half the day away!" Tara chides upon noticing him.
"That's not technically true, I think it much closer to a third, and, besides that, who--"
"This is Miss Quinn. Be a good host and put on some tea for our guest, would you?" She turns to the woman to add, apologetic, "I would, but I haven't got thumbs."
Gale stood there staring, fairly certain that he was under no obligation to be a good host to someone he most assuredly hadn't invited into his home, and halfway suspecting that this was some strange dream brought on by a late night and too much wine.
"Ahem?" Tara said, fluffing her wings in a gesture Gale recognized as meaning, Get moving, would you?
And, okay, that would at least give him something to do with himself in this strange situation. He moved to grab the kettle, using a spell to fill it with water and another spell to light the fire before hanging the kettle on a hook over the fire.
The thing called Quinn rests her elbows on his table and cradles her chin in her hands. Most of her face is covered with makeup but a spot is bare on one cheek. The skin there is pale and new, healed with a potion and not yet repainted. The shoulder of her garment is charred on the same side, and the faint smell of burning still lingers in the air around her. Although she and Tara are certainly on good terms now, apparently their first meeting was not quite harmonious.
The ribbons braided into her hair are trimmed with bells that chime softly when she tilts her head at Gale in greeting. The line of her smile is emphasized by curls drawn out from the corners of her mouth. There are so many patterns and colors happening at once that it all makes for quite a garish impression overall. Dazzling, in the way of a poisonous flower or little venomous creature. Danger, do not touch.
"Hello, sleepyhead!" she chirps in an accent that's all wrong for Waterdeep. The harlequin is an invasive species. Her eyes flick over Gale from toe to tip and then away to Tara, the wizard already forgotten. She seems under the impression that this is Tara's home and Gale's presence here is merely incidental. Which, really, is she entirely wrong?
"You're extremely capable even without thumbs, Tara-my-dear," Harley coos at the tressym, "and you were very right to bring me here."
Another soft ringing of bells as she twists in her chair to watch Gale with the kettle. "The straits are dire."
Gale takes out a box of tea and three dainty tea cups, and he's almost more surprised when the leaves don't turn into worms when he adds them to the cups, still half convinced that this is a bizarre dream. There are powerful wards on his home, enough to keep out all but the most powerful of wizards. If the clown woman was a powerful magic user, then he would sense it, but he doesn't -- that means that Tara brought her home and let her in. But why?
Dire? She was right, but that doesn't mean he resents the assessment. "Miss... Quinn, was it? I'm Gale of Waterdeep," he says. Typically his introduction would involve a lot more flourish, but then again, usually he wouldn't be introducing himself in his house coat. "How do you and Tara know one another...?" He places the tea cups on the table, along with sugar and cream.
"We met this morning! Bit of a misunderstanding, but we've worked all that out now. She was exceptionally nimble in dodging my fireball, though!" The tressym says this with fondness, and Gale furrows his eyebrows again, further confused. He casts a spell, and a spectral blue hand appears to get the kettle and pour water into each of their cups before returning the kettle to its place and disappearing.
"You fireballed her, Tara?" Tara isn't the only one in this house capable of a disapproving tone, apparently. He takes a seat at the little table beside his strange visitor, eyeing the missing makeup and part of her garment with new understanding. He adds cream to Tara's cup (it's at least half cream), then gesturing for Harley to help herself.
"Yes, but we've got that all sorted! Miss Quinn is actually going to help me source magical artifacts for you," the feline answers, and Gale sits up suddenly straighter.
"Tara, did you tell her--?"
"I told her that you required magical artifacts, but the details of the whole tragic tale is yours to tell." For the first time, she sounds tired and sad.
"Yes, well..." Gale begins, eyes mostly on his cup as he stirs the sugar in. "So, you really mean to help? I can pay you, of course, for any items acquired."
Harley's laugh at his reaction to Tara's retelling is a soft puff of air, like it's a fond moment of nostalgia and not something from just a few hours ago. She adds enough sugar to her tea to practically make a syrup and lets Tara take the lead in explaining circumstances.
The whiff of gossip makes her perk up, but she is honestly just not interested enough in Gale to pry. Not yet, anyway. She is utterly charmed by the tressym and the tressym wants magical artifacts, therefore she will buy the tressym's friendship by stealing as many magical artifacts as her fluffy little heart could want.
At the mention of payment, Harley's brows go up and her lips purse against the rim of the cup. It's a genuine expression of surprise, because the idea of payment hadn't even occurred to her.
"I do like money," Harley concedes, tapping her nails against the table, "but I don't like the way people think they can make demands of me once they give me coin." Employment, as a whole, is not a system she enjoys. She ponders it for a bit, then shakes her head. "Mmmnno, no, I don't think so. I won't be paying for any of it anyway."
She sets the cup down and rests her chin on her hand again, turning the full warmth of her smile on Gale.
"I like Tara a lot, and this is important to her, so I'll do it until I don't want to anymore. From my side, your circumstances are incidental." She rolls one slim shoulder in a blithe shrug. "No offense."
The job was only supposed to be a couple days, but the patron hadn't provided a map and the entire party had ended up lost in the Underdark. A month later, she hauls herself up through the Yawning Portal with a pack full of rare mushrooms and crystal shards and nothing she was actually sent to recover. But the rest of the party is dead, including the person supposed to pay them, so fuck it. Gotta get paid somehow.
She trudges to Gale and Tara's house (which she refuses to call their tower, because it's not) at an absurdly late hour and lets herself in the usual way. After weeks rolling around in the dirt, Harley is not willing to wait one second more for a real bath and bed.
She can hear groaning and harsh breathing from the study and thinks for a second that Gale finally took her advice and found a rebound. Then thinks, no, that's absurd. He'd have to leave the house on his own to meet someone. She peeks into the room and ...
Huh.
Well.
The glowing and agony is definitely new!
She's at his side and checking vitals before she even fully processes what's happening, tearing his shirt to see what that weird thing is, and her hand brushes his chest and -- and now another weird new thing happens. And her ring of glamour doesn't fucking work.
"Okay. Now that, you're gonna have to talk about."
Gale lay on the floor of his study, hurting down to the marrow of his bones, waiting for Tara to come back with a magical item. He was just beginning to contemplate whether it was time to leave Waterdeep when several things happened very quickly.
Someone is on him so fast, a hand on his throat and another tearing his shirt, that he is sure he is being attacked. It's too hard to push them off in his current state, and he is about to attack with magic when the thing in his chest begins feeding. Usually it didn't do so outside of his control, but like a beast dying of thirst drinking from a dirty puddle, it has lost all sense -- or maybe he has lost all sense. For a moment when he looks up and sees Harley, he's certain that he has. She's been gone for over a month, and Gale has been telling Tara that whatever amusement the woman found in them had clearly passed and she had moved on, and that she should accept it.
But now she's here, hovering over him, the candlelight at her back making a halo of her frazzled blond hair while the glow from the mark on his chest lights her softly purple from beneath, turning her into a bruised angel. He has a hundred questions, and she has questions of her own, but all he manages is, "I'll replace your ring."
She gapes like a fish and then lets out a high frantic giggle at the absolute nonsense of that being his first thought.
"You are absurd."
She rubs her face, smudging the dirt into new shapes, and pushes her hair back but she's been without a real bath for so long that greasy strands clump into spikes. She reeks of mildew and sweat and old blood, but thinks she might still be the better off between them right now. She rocks back on her heels and breathes out a long, long sigh.
"Harley," Gale whispers. The tiniest sliver of daylight leaks into the room from between the heavy drapes, just enough to see the feather Tara left on his chest to let him know she got home safely. He is loathe to ruin this little cocoon of safety, but he needs to make water rather badly. "Harley, if you'll get up, I will make breakfast. Whatever you like. Pancakes? Omelettes? Crepes, with berries and cream?"
Harley whines in protest but the growl of her stomach, which hasn't known a full meal in weeks, overrules her. She disentangles their limbs and rolls off him, setting him free at last.
She sits up and stares blearily around the room, clearly not entirely awake yet.
"You're still here," Gale reassures. When he sits up, he presses a kiss to her forehead, where a vicious bruise is spreading in sickly shades of yellow as it heals. "Sleep as long as you like. I'll be in the kitchen when you're ready."
It's hard to say how much time passes, whether Harley drifted back off and for how long, but eventually the smell of bacon sneaks into the bedroom to rouse her.
After all the headspinning revelations and dizzying kisses from the small hours of the night-into-morning, Harley has trouble finding sleep. She dozes on and off for a few hours before giving up and untangling from her wizard to start the day.
She bathes, dresses in silk short pants and an undershirt like this is her own home, and goes to read Gale and Tara's research notes in the study. The desktop statue of Mystra startles her when she lights a lamp.
"No," she says out loud, immediately, and turns it to face away from her. After a few aborted attempts to read anyway, she picks the goddess up and shuts her away in a drawer. Bye, bitch.
Gale's sleep habits have been irregular since he decided to self-isolate in his tower, with nowhere to be and no one to see. Maybe it's no surprise then, after the previous day, that he sleeps through most of the morning. When he finally does get up, he's patting the empty bed beside him before he's even fully awake, and it's the alarm that finally chases him out of bed. She's gone and you dreamt it all war for the reigns of his galloping heart, but he keeps his movements steady as he throws a dressing gown on and goes looking.
The study is the first place he looks, and the tension bleeds out of him when he sees her sitting there, surrounded by his own notes. "Good morning," he says with a smile, as if it were still morning, and as if he hadn't just been panicking.
Over the course of the morning, Harley has managed to both curl up in and sprawl over the chair. She unfurls when she hears him come in, and squints confusion at how far the sun has progressed while she was studying.
She tips her head over the back of the chair and blows him a kiss. "Hi, loverboy," she coos as she stretches her arms toward him. "I'll give you a present if you make breakfast."
The past days of stealing kisses, longing glances and moon eyed stares at each other have been lovely in a way that makes her keep wondering if it might all be a dream, but she's not built to stay inside for days on end. One late morning Harley decides it's time for them to go out, and doesn't even scoff at his outfit this time.
She finally makes good on her promise to take him to a bookstore, and lets him take as much time as he likes without a fuss. She wanders while he delves into the books on offer, occasionally coming back to read over his shoulder or show him a saucy passage from a bodice ripper. Anything he lingers over or sets aside is taken to the counter where she actually pays for things, in deference to his better morals.
Harley beams as she shows off her best find so far. It's a shameless smut extravaganza called Night Lessons at the Wizard's Tower and apparently part of a quite prolific series.
"Maybe it is about me. How do you know I didn't write it?" he answers, his expression cheerful (as it often is in bookstores) but giving nothing away. "I've had a lot more free time these past few months. I could have decided to write something autobiographical, and changed the names because it was too scandalous"
She cages him against the bookshelf with her arms and there's a flash of something in her eyes. He can probably now recognize that look as one of I want to fuck you right here and now. Her gaze lingers on his lips and drags down his body.
"Is that so? Then we'd better get started on your next installment."
Harley had been given clear instructions by the temple clerics before leaving Baldur's Gate and in letters from the representative Blackstaff wizards. She was to conduct herself in a manner becoming the temple and the distinguished learning institute. Prim, proper, pristine. Do not speak until spoken to. Stand straight and still. Radiate gratitude at this astounding opportunity.
She took it all in with a smile and an attentive nod, and immediately decided to do her own thing.
Now she's waiting in the entrance hall for her guide, covered in road dust and humming a tune. She already thoroughly poked and prodded everything in reach, and now sits on her travel trunk and drums her fingers on the worn wood. It isn't like they didn't know she was arriving today. The wait feels like a bullshit test and she's just not in the mood.
The boy that finally approaches her is human, not especially tall but handsome in an academic sort of way, teetering on the verge of becoming a man, though not as far across the threshold as he seems to think he is, based on the way he carries himself with too much rigidity in his spine.
"Ah, you must be Miss Quinzel!" he says as he approaches, robes billowing in his wake. "I'm Gale of Waterdeep, and I'm to be your guide." He gives her a bow that feels practiced, repetition in the pursuit of charisma.
Harley hinges forward at the waist to peer at his face when he bows. Her blonde hair sways with the motion and amusement curls her lip.
"Isn't 'of Waterdeep' kind of a given?"
She rises from her perch, slaps at the dust on her frayed overcoat, and hefts her trunk to her shoulder. It isn't a great feat of strength. The trunk is small, and all her worldly goods still don't fill it.
Gale has been deep in research most of the day, only convinced to step away briefly to stretch his back and once to put out a small kitchen fire that Harley absolutely had entirely under control. The sun is dipping below the horizon when she decides it's time for him to rejoin society.
She leans over the back of his chair, wraps her arms around his shoulders, and kisses his neck until she has his attention.
"An invitation came for you today, to the Blackstaff alumni ball."
His muscles loosen as she winds around him, and he tilts his head to make those kisses easier. Gale is still as focused on his research on removing the orb — if anything, her presence in his life has redoubled his efforts, given them purpose — but Harley never has a hard time distracting him either. He hums, warm and deep and approving, already contemplating letting this become more than a momentary distraction, when her words finally register.
"Ah! That time already?" He says, words a little higher than they should be, shoulders going all tense again. He has been a regular at every alumni ball since his graduation, but it hadn't exactly been on his mind this year. After all, even if the crowds didn't make him nervous, and it wasn't unsafe, the thought of parading about in front of colleagues who must know by now that he lost Mystra's favor turns his stomach into a storm tossed sea.
Like a cat trying to pretend it doesn't want attention, Astarion stands in an easy lean against the house, fist upturned so he can examine his fingernails, picking underneath them with the point of a fine dagger. It might be alluringly casual, if he weren't very clearly waiting beside the front door to Gale's townhouse (ahem, "tower"). He notices Harley, but finishes what he's doing (not much of anything) before sheathing his blade with a smile. "Darling, you're looking lovely. Amazing what having a tadpole removed from one's brain will do for you." What it had done for him was make him once again allergic to sunlight and unable to enter homes without an invitation. Not that he'd try picking the lock on Gale's front door knowing he probably has nasty magical surprises in store for any intruders.
Harley had stayed out later than usual after finishing her errands. Gale and Tara weren't in and she hates coming back to an empty house. But eventually, even she had to run out of ways to put off the inevitable and she dragged her sulking feet toward home.
When she first sees Astarion, she has a moment of thinking she's started hallucinating from loneliness. Then he speaks and she lets out an ear-splitting shriek of giddy laughter before crushing him in a hug.
"You're here! You're really here! Where are you staying? Nevermind, you'll stay with us now, obviously. Come inside!"
She links arms with him and drags him through the front door.
"Have you had supper?" She starts rolling up a sleeve and holds out her arm. A good hostess always offers a drink to a guest.
Astarion stiffens at the hug — he still prefers touch that he initiated,
and there's an instinctive part of his brain that reacts to unexpected
touch like a sprung trap — but he eases into it, eventually wrapping his
arms around her too. Not because she's a friend, or because she's
pleasantly warm, but because he needs their help and he's just trying to
endear himself to her. Obviously.
"Oh, if you insist," he drawls, like he's doing her a favor by accepting,
though he had been hoping for the offer to stay here and needed the
invitation to even enter the home. He has slowly begun to accept the idea
that some people mean what they offer without hidden strings, but that
doesn't mean it's easy to ask for help.
And speaking of offering, Astarion looks almost startled when she holds out
her wrist like it's nothing more than a cookie. He's got a belly full of
stray cat blood, but his mouth still positively waters at the offer of
thinking blood. He likes Harley, likes that she can be chaotic and violent,
likes that she says what she means, but he still can't shake how much it
feels like a trap that will slam down around him. Besides, all he needs is
for Gale to come through the front door at an inopportune moment and
Disintegrate him. "No thank you. I've already had supper. Important to
maintain my figure, you know." A joke, since his appearance will never
change in any significant way.
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But today is... different. He doesn't realize why when he wakes and slips on his robe, thinking it was the sun peaking through the curtains that woke him. Except, then he hears voices. Two feminine voices. Gods, has Tara brought his mother over? He hasn't seen her in months, too ashamed to even try to explain everything that's happened. At first, he thinks he'll simply stay upstairs unless someone comes up and gets him. Then, he actually listens. One voice is surely Tara, but the other one is not his mother. Strange.
Gale heads down his stairs and into his kitchen, brows furrowed in consternation. Whatever he expected, it wasn't what he finds. There's Tara, sure enough, seated at the little table where he eats most of his meals when there's no reason to go into the dinning room (which is always, because he never has guests). Sitting across from her, however, is a woman he has never met before. She appears to be... a clown? Is that a rude assumption?
"Uhh?" is his eloquent introduction, shock robbing him of every word he knows.
"Mister Dekarios! You've slept half the day away!" Tara chides upon noticing him.
"That's not technically true, I think it much closer to a third, and, besides that, who--"
"This is Miss Quinn. Be a good host and put on some tea for our guest, would you?" She turns to the woman to add, apologetic, "I would, but I haven't got thumbs."
Gale stood there staring, fairly certain that he was under no obligation to be a good host to someone he most assuredly hadn't invited into his home, and halfway suspecting that this was some strange dream brought on by a late night and too much wine.
"Ahem?" Tara said, fluffing her wings in a gesture Gale recognized as meaning, Get moving, would you?
And, okay, that would at least give him something to do with himself in this strange situation. He moved to grab the kettle, using a spell to fill it with water and another spell to light the fire before hanging the kettle on a hook over the fire.
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The ribbons braided into her hair are trimmed with bells that chime softly when she tilts her head at Gale in greeting. The line of her smile is emphasized by curls drawn out from the corners of her mouth. There are so many patterns and colors happening at once that it all makes for quite a garish impression overall. Dazzling, in the way of a poisonous flower or little venomous creature. Danger, do not touch.
"Hello, sleepyhead!" she chirps in an accent that's all wrong for Waterdeep. The harlequin is an invasive species. Her eyes flick over Gale from toe to tip and then away to Tara, the wizard already forgotten. She seems under the impression that this is Tara's home and Gale's presence here is merely incidental. Which, really, is she entirely wrong?
"You're extremely capable even without thumbs, Tara-my-dear," Harley coos at the tressym, "and you were very right to bring me here."
Another soft ringing of bells as she twists in her chair to watch Gale with the kettle. "The straits are dire."
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Dire? She was right, but that doesn't mean he resents the assessment. "Miss... Quinn, was it? I'm Gale of Waterdeep," he says. Typically his introduction would involve a lot more flourish, but then again, usually he wouldn't be introducing himself in his house coat. "How do you and Tara know one another...?" He places the tea cups on the table, along with sugar and cream.
"We met this morning! Bit of a misunderstanding, but we've worked all that out now. She was exceptionally nimble in dodging my fireball, though!" The tressym says this with fondness, and Gale furrows his eyebrows again, further confused. He casts a spell, and a spectral blue hand appears to get the kettle and pour water into each of their cups before returning the kettle to its place and disappearing.
"You fireballed her, Tara?" Tara isn't the only one in this house capable of a disapproving tone, apparently. He takes a seat at the little table beside his strange visitor, eyeing the missing makeup and part of her garment with new understanding. He adds cream to Tara's cup (it's at least half cream), then gesturing for Harley to help herself.
"Yes, but we've got that all sorted! Miss Quinn is actually going to help me source magical artifacts for you," the feline answers, and Gale sits up suddenly straighter.
"Tara, did you tell her--?"
"I told her that you required magical artifacts, but the details of the whole tragic tale is yours to tell." For the first time, she sounds tired and sad.
"Yes, well..." Gale begins, eyes mostly on his cup as he stirs the sugar in. "So, you really mean to help? I can pay you, of course, for any items acquired."
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The whiff of gossip makes her perk up, but she is honestly just not interested enough in Gale to pry. Not yet, anyway. She is utterly charmed by the tressym and the tressym wants magical artifacts, therefore she will buy the tressym's friendship by stealing as many magical artifacts as her fluffy little heart could want.
At the mention of payment, Harley's brows go up and her lips purse against the rim of the cup. It's a genuine expression of surprise, because the idea of payment hadn't even occurred to her.
"I do like money," Harley concedes, tapping her nails against the table, "but I don't like the way people think they can make demands of me once they give me coin." Employment, as a whole, is not a system she enjoys. She ponders it for a bit, then shakes her head. "Mmmnno, no, I don't think so. I won't be paying for any of it anyway."
She sets the cup down and rests her chin on her hand again, turning the full warmth of her smile on Gale.
"I like Tara a lot, and this is important to her, so I'll do it until I don't want to anymore. From my side, your circumstances are incidental." She rolls one slim shoulder in a blithe shrug. "No offense."
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approval not high enough, pls insert additional magical items
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She trudges to Gale and Tara's house (which she refuses to call their tower, because it's not) at an absurdly late hour and lets herself in the usual way. After weeks rolling around in the dirt, Harley is not willing to wait one second more for a real bath and bed.
She can hear groaning and harsh breathing from the study and thinks for a second that Gale finally took her advice and found a rebound. Then thinks, no, that's absurd. He'd have to leave the house on his own to meet someone. She peeks into the room and ...
Huh.
Well.
The glowing and agony is definitely new!
She's at his side and checking vitals before she even fully processes what's happening, tearing his shirt to see what that weird thing is, and her hand brushes his chest and -- and now another weird new thing happens. And her ring of glamour doesn't fucking work.
"Okay. Now that, you're gonna have to talk about."
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Someone is on him so fast, a hand on his throat and another tearing his shirt, that he is sure he is being attacked. It's too hard to push them off in his current state, and he is about to attack with magic when the thing in his chest begins feeding. Usually it didn't do so outside of his control, but like a beast dying of thirst drinking from a dirty puddle, it has lost all sense -- or maybe he has lost all sense. For a moment when he looks up and sees Harley, he's certain that he has. She's been gone for over a month, and Gale has been telling Tara that whatever amusement the woman found in them had clearly passed and she had moved on, and that she should accept it.
But now she's here, hovering over him, the candlelight at her back making a halo of her frazzled blond hair while the glow from the mark on his chest lights her softly purple from beneath, turning her into a bruised angel. He has a hundred questions, and she has questions of her own, but all he manages is, "I'll replace your ring."
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"You are absurd."
She rubs her face, smudging the dirt into new shapes, and pushes her hair back but she's been without a real bath for so long that greasy strands clump into spikes. She reeks of mildew and sweat and old blood, but thinks she might still be the better off between them right now. She rocks back on her heels and breathes out a long, long sigh.
"What was that?"
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"Harley," Gale whispers. The tiniest sliver of daylight leaks into the room from between the heavy drapes, just enough to see the feather Tara left on his chest to let him know she got home safely. He is loathe to ruin this little cocoon of safety, but he needs to make water rather badly. "Harley, if you'll get up, I will make breakfast. Whatever you like. Pancakes? Omelettes? Crepes, with berries and cream?"
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She sits up and stares blearily around the room, clearly not entirely awake yet.
"I'm still here?"
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It's hard to say how much time passes, whether Harley drifted back off and for how long, but eventually the smell of bacon sneaks into the bedroom to rouse her.
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She's Barbie.
And he's Galenough
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She bathes, dresses in silk short pants and an undershirt like this is her own home, and goes to read Gale and Tara's research notes in the study. The desktop statue of Mystra startles her when she lights a lamp.
"No," she says out loud, immediately, and turns it to face away from her. After a few aborted attempts to read anyway, she picks the goddess up and shuts her away in a drawer. Bye, bitch.
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The study is the first place he looks, and the tension bleeds out of him when he sees her sitting there, surrounded by his own notes. "Good morning," he says with a smile, as if it were still morning, and as if he hadn't just been panicking.
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She tips her head over the back of the chair and blows him a kiss. "Hi, loverboy," she coos as she stretches her arms toward him. "I'll give you a present if you make breakfast."
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deletes multiverse, time for real tag
wait no, take me back to the world where his head is stuck in a trashcan
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She finally makes good on her promise to take him to a bookstore, and lets him take as much time as he likes without a fuss. She wanders while he delves into the books on offer, occasionally coming back to read over his shoulder or show him a saucy passage from a bodice ripper. Anything he lingers over or sets aside is taken to the counter where she actually pays for things, in deference to his better morals.
Harley beams as she shows off her best find so far. It's a shameless smut extravaganza called Night Lessons at the Wizard's Tower and apparently part of a quite prolific series.
"This one is about you, isn't it?"
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"Is that so? Then we'd better get started on your next installment."
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The Broken Hearts Study Group AU
She took it all in with a smile and an attentive nod, and immediately decided to do her own thing.
Now she's waiting in the entrance hall for her guide, covered in road dust and humming a tune. She already thoroughly poked and prodded everything in reach, and now sits on her travel trunk and drums her fingers on the worn wood. It isn't like they didn't know she was arriving today. The wait feels like a bullshit test and she's just not in the mood.
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"Ah, you must be Miss Quinzel!" he says as he approaches, robes billowing in his wake. "I'm Gale of Waterdeep, and I'm to be your guide." He gives her a bow that feels practiced, repetition in the pursuit of charisma.
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"Isn't 'of Waterdeep' kind of a given?"
She rises from her perch, slaps at the dust on her frayed overcoat, and hefts her trunk to her shoulder. It isn't a great feat of strength. The trunk is small, and all her worldly goods still don't fill it.
"You're late, Mr. of Waterdeep."
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tropes! tropes! tropes!
She leans over the back of his chair, wraps her arms around his shoulders, and kisses his neck until she has his attention.
"An invitation came for you today, to the Blackstaff alumni ball."
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"Ah! That time already?" He says, words a little higher than they should be, shoulders going all tense again. He has been a regular at every alumni ball since his graduation, but it hadn't exactly been on his mind this year. After all, even if the crowds didn't make him nervous, and it wasn't unsafe, the thought of parading about in front of colleagues who must know by now that he lost Mystra's favor turns his stomach into a storm tossed sea.
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She drags his chair away from the desk so there's room for her to sit on his lap. She grins at him and runs her fingers through his hair.
"I accepted for you and a plus one, of course."
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When she first sees Astarion, she has a moment of thinking she's started hallucinating from loneliness. Then he speaks and she lets out an ear-splitting shriek of giddy laughter before crushing him in a hug.
"You're here! You're really here! Where are you staying? Nevermind, you'll stay with us now, obviously. Come inside!"
She links arms with him and drags him through the front door.
"Have you had supper?" She starts rolling up a sleeve and holds out her arm. A good hostess always offers a drink to a guest.
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Astarion stiffens at the hug — he still prefers touch that he initiated, and there's an instinctive part of his brain that reacts to unexpected touch like a sprung trap — but he eases into it, eventually wrapping his arms around her too. Not because she's a friend, or because she's pleasantly warm, but because he needs their help and he's just trying to endear himself to her. Obviously.
"Oh, if you insist," he drawls, like he's doing her a favor by accepting, though he had been hoping for the offer to stay here and needed the invitation to even enter the home. He has slowly begun to accept the idea that some people mean what they offer without hidden strings, but that doesn't mean it's easy to ask for help.
And speaking of offering, Astarion looks almost startled when she holds out her wrist like it's nothing more than a cookie. He's got a belly full of stray cat blood, but his mouth still positively waters at the offer of thinking blood. He likes Harley, likes that she can be chaotic and violent, likes that she says what she means, but he still can't shake how much it feels like a trap that will slam down around him. Besides, all he needs is for Gale to come through the front door at an inopportune moment and Disintegrate him. "No thank you. I've already had supper. Important to maintain my figure, you know." A joke, since his appearance will never change in any significant way.
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