corporeity | SALTBURNT AU

[ He spots Gale when he arrives. (Hard not to, he'd say, when he always seem to catch the sun just so.) It's one moment, there and then gone. Gale getting out of his car, Astarion in conversation with someone else, though his bright stare seems to close the distance between them like an arrow. He smiles— and that's it, as he's taken by the elbow and ushered into the manor. But one moment is enough.

Later, in the afternoon: ]

look who the cat dragged in, just in time for me to take confessional and tell you how positively awful i've been.

[ Gale saw him then — it’d be impossible to miss one so luminous, glowing even from afar. Weeks ago, he had thought to ask if Astarion would be here, for this trip, but then he’d felt too shy to say anything at all. (Hoping against hope he’ll find a new book in his chambers, petals pressed between the pages.) ]

Surely you haven’t been so terrible, though I would be glad to hear from you, regardless.
You look well.

[ (This time, it's a copy of The Little Prince, with a rather bold choice — a red rose — tucked inside, with a short inscription reading: It seemed thematically appropriate. Though, if Gale reads through to the end, there's one other bloom tucked into the slim volume. Azure blue sage. I think of you.) ]

you've no idea, father. your toes will curl.
i look more than well, don't i? lovely? radiant? beautiful?
i'll settle for "nice," if the rest make you blush.

You make me blush, as I’m sure you’re aware.

[ the fact of him, no matter the question and answer. he’s certain astarion strives to fluster, at this point. even something as innocuous as a gifted book, a dried bloom, warms his cheeks. ]

How about… striking?

[ a word that conveys awe without attraction, though the latter is — on the mind. ]

[ He's glad, suddenly, that they're having this conversation over text and not in person. Through the remove of a cellphone screen, Gale can't see the way Astarion falters — of course he means to fluster the priest, in no small part because he wants (needs) to be wanted, or at least some clearer path through the bramble of thorns formed by the late nights, the walks about the grounds, waves that press against but never crest the boundary of chasteness. You make me blush. He doesn't know what to do with that, when he senses the arm's length still separating them. ]

you're lucky i'm in a generous mood.

[ A beat. ]

you look well, too.

[ In that pause, Gale fears so much. Having said the wrong thing, having finally overstepped after a hundred instances of approaching the line and toeing along the edge —

But it passes. Nevermind that he drops his phone atop his chest, on reading the second half of that belated reply. ]

So you are.
I let the beard get terribly scruffy while travelling. 😅
But it’s kind of you to say.

[ typing dots ]

Have you any free evenings this week?

you'll have to tell me all about where you've been.
pick a night, and it'll be yours.

[ Then, typed in a rush and sent before he can think better of it: ]

pick more than one if you really want to make me happy.

Careful now. Even men of the cloth have greed within them.

[ which is less inflammatory than his first pass at a reply, where he made it as far as typing tempting before a portrait fell from the nearest wall. ]

Shall we start with tomorrow? Patience is a virtue, after all.

[ as if he could wait longer than a day. ]

don't threaten me with a good time, father.

[ Because that's what he wants, isn't it? To see even a flash more of that greed, to know he can have something from Gale that his God can't or doesn't want. ]

tomorrow.
can i expect we'll begin with dinner?

You would have been a terrible influence on my younger self.

[ With his Aristotelian pride compulsive need to please. He’s grateful Parisa omits the details of his boyish folly, even in her most unflattering accounts. ]

Dinner, a walk, and a gift. Nothing so grand as you usually receive, I’m sure. It’s only that it made me think of you.

maybe, maybe not.
i used to walk the straight and narrow, you know.

a gift? really?

[ Typed and deleted:
for me?
are you sure it's not meant for someone else? ]

is that even allowed by the church?

I’m a priest, not a monk.

[ apart from the, y’know. ]

And, as I said, I’m sure it pales in comparison to your usual tributes.

[ Case in point: ]

could've fooled me.

don't tell anyone else, as i do quite like my diamonds, but
it's not the gift that matters but the person giving it.
just tell me it's not something edible, or i'll
i don't know
have to get it resin-cast or let it rot forever.

Hah.

[ typed and deleted: you and everyone else. he wouldn't want astarion to think he’s like the others. ]

So I should bin the airport macaroons? Even the chocolate ones?

[ The right instinct, when it centers so much of what Astarion worries about privately — that Gale treats him in a way that nobody else does, yet that Astarion might be no different to him than any of the other hangers-on who loiter about the chapel whenever he's present. ]

i said i'd put them in resin, didn't i?
centuries from now, historians will wonder what they are.
(evidence of psychosis, clearly.)

[ why bother? for something so small, so silly, even in jest — ]

A psychosis shared is a psychosis halved.
Or perhaps multiplied.
I shan’t be seeking treatment, regardless.

[ It's easy until it abruptly isn't. He knows Gale better than to think him a liar, and yet— there's something about it all that feels like being invited into a house one can't find the door to. ]

multiplied, i think.
haha

[ The typed-out laugh, a pathetic diffusion of what he suddenly fears might seem too genuine, otherwise. Though, perhaps that's the point: the genuineness of it all. ]

we could have sat together at the doctor's office.

There’s still a chance for us, if another Saltburnt fête goes south. Not sure I’d have stumbled to the infirmary without your assistance last time.

[ he can hardly recall what had dizzied him so. trouble seems to strike more often here. gale only occasionally thinks on the strangeness of it, when it’s the natural consequence of such rampant indulgence. ]

[ Strange, he can't quite remember what had happened, either. Just the cocktail of worry in his stomach, and the whirring weathervane of concern whipping from Gale for getting himself in such trouble to the guest who'd— stabbed him? No, that couldn't be right. ]

it's a lucky thing there are other ways for me to get you alone.
i don't think you'd last long, otherwise.

[ there it is again, the flirtation that couldn’t possibly be specific to him, but seems that way sometimes. a ripple in the shallows, just as easily the work of the wind as an elegant hand. ]

Your winning smile? Your scathing literary critiques? Your impeccable timing?

[ when gale begins closing the chapel for the night and hears his featherlight gait. ]

you must be thinking of someone else. 🤭

[ But then, as if reading his mind — as if in tune, one note laid on top of another in tenuous harmony, ]

i was thinking more along the lines of "asking nicely."
i make everyone else beg.

[ an immediate, traitorous thought that he should be so lucky — to beg for astarion’s attention until his tongue ached and knees gave out. that if there were anyone worthy of holy service in the manor, in the world, it would be this celestial creature, with his sunlit eyes and moonspun curls.

the correct answer: please don’t take this the wrong way, but i shouldn’t ask you for anything. and you shouldn’t come to the church any longer, or i’ll kiss you in front of the stained glass and, paradoxically, beg for the pleasure of being made to beg, by you. nothing personal! ]

What an honour.
I’ll strive to be deserving of it.

[ An honor. As though men of his calling could give themselves to anything but their God or the greater good. As if he wouldn't say the same thing to anyone else, accommodating as he is. Then again, isn't that why the priest had caught his eye to begin with? The sense that he'd make time for him no matter who he was, how lowly or undeserving he might be, making it a cardinal sin — greed, hand in hand with hypocrisy — to want all of that attention for himself.

So, not for the first time, Astarion wonders if he ought to stop, to give it up, to abandon his apparent pursuit of dashing himself to pieces against the holy rock. Please don't take this the wrong way, but we ought to be strangers again, or I'll have to come to terms with the fact that I want something that I can't have and don't deserve. It's very personal. But maybe it's better to feel a little pain than to feel nothing at all. ]

you wouldn't have it if you weren't.
dinner, then.
wear something nice.

[ That Astarion believes him deserving is — too pleasing, his mouth curving lopsided and high.

He thinks to wear a shirt he packed at the last minute, cornflower blue, because Astarion complimented the cut when he donned it the prior summer. This presents two issues: 1. That Astarion might remember. 2. That he won’t. Both mortify, and so he resolves never to wear it again.

Instead, he cycles through the rest of his modest belongings, for something appropriate. A lavender button-down. A short-sleeved, silken shirt in off-white.

(In the end, he wears the blue with grey trousers and ponders his death drive the entire walk to their meal.) ]

I’ll admit I packed with the hope you’d find time for me.

[ because he doesn’t see many people outside of his duties while visiting — or, indeed, much at all anymore. ]

See you then, ⭐️.

I imagine you're the reason there's a queue in front of the chapel already.

I saw you in a dream last week, you know. Would you like to hear about it?

[ ah. ]

The prodigal priest returns.

[ just some bible jokes for you. ]

Certainly, Jenevelle. I hope you know I always have time for you.

It wouldn't be a proper Saltburnt fête without you, even if the festivities aren't always to your liking.

You and I were in a rowboat on the North Sea. It was night, a dark moon, the cluster of the Pleiades bright overhead. Venus nestled among the Weeping Sisters, a sorrowful evening star.

You were naked in the bottom of the boat, your wrists and ankles bound with black rope. I washed your hair with sea water from a crystal jug, and a star fell into the sea beside us, illuminating everything for one bright moment. You wanted to catch it but insisted upon remaining bound. I told you you could have one but not the other.

[ whatever he expected — and he expected a lot from jen, who has only grown more esoteric in her fame — it isn’t this. a series of images that leave him aching without knowing why.

the holy father speaks to all, even those who do not listen, in signs and dreams, words and visions. he recalls a homily from an american church, visited not so long ago, where they spoke of the man who asks for aid from god but denies the boat that sails to rescue him — waiting for the divine and failing to see it, in his messengers.

it wouldn’t do to dismiss jenevelle, even if he did not care for her (and he does). he misses the sea and the stars both. one, at least, he’ll find here at saltburnt. ]

Did I choose, in the dream?

[ No matter how long they've been apart, there will always be a small corner tucked away in her heart for Gale. A quiet shore with mournful seals that vanish beneath the waves when she watches them too long.

Shadowheart believes in soulmates, of course--she and Emmrich are two halves of one warm heart--but they come in all shapes, and not all are forever. Gale is a star in her own bright cluster, one she knows she'll find in the next life in one form or other. ]

I woke up before you could.

You'll tell me if the dream continues while we're here, yes?

Of course, though I’ve been too tired to dream much, of late.

[ he only recalls fragments, upon waking. libraries and far shores, eyes tinted gold by the sunset — a hallway of blackest obsidian, where he’s sure to find his doom. ]

Hopefully I’ll not haunt your dreams to compensate.

I don't mind your hauntings, Gale.

I can bring you some of my passionflower and valerian tea, if you'd like.

Ha, I’ll be alright. Afflictions of the mind, not the body, as ever.

You might change your mind after a few days of taking confessionals here.

[ quite. ]

The guests at the manor are as deserving of forgiveness as anyone else.

Though they do…surprise and amaze.

[ he already has a migraine. ]

Even me?

[ To both points, perhaps. ]

Of course
For your sins, at least.

For your taste in dalliances, however…

[ he’s actually referring to henry wright and NOT emmrich ]

Signore Dekarios, I have a gift for you. Will I have the pleasure of your company while we're both here, or should we schedule a meeting next month at the Vineyard?

A gift from my favourite Salvatore, and I haven’t even made it to my rooms. What an auspicious start to my stay.

I’ve always time for you. That is to say, I’ve to tend the confessions tonight and tomorrow morning, but the Reverend Ashcroft will be sharing my usual duties from Thursday onward.

[ which is — fine. ]

The Reverend? Well. I suppose we are in England.

[ eugh, protestants. ]

Don't be too excited about the gift—it's as predictable as it's always been. Just as sincerely offered, though.

Quite.

[ he didn’t want to be the one to say it! ]

I’ll be adequately enthused, then. Nothing too obscene.
Is the rest of the family here?

Yes, all of us—Stefano, Katherine, Teo. Have we told you about Roza yet? She is una miracola, you'll adore her.

Thank you for the prayers, by the way. For our father. We are very grateful.

SALTBURNT AU | INBOX.

✉️ text — un: ⭐️.

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

text 🌙 @SELENE

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

@salvatore

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject