corporeity | SALTBURNT AU

[ 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, ⭐️.

SALTBURNT AU | INBOX.

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