#anyway yes afterwards this intensifies and they 100000% fuck eventually

[bearhugsandshrugs]

Prompts you say? Don't mind if I do!

Post game Tav and Gortash have a stable if very tentative partnership in ruling Baldur's gate.

Gortash is an inventor, he's got to be good at drawing/draftsmanship. Would love to see a Tav finding one of his many personal workbooks after a meeting. Full of meeting notes, but also lots of personal project ideas when clearly he's been bored during a meeting. Maybe there are rough schematics of the steel watch improvements, maybe drafts for other sorts of useful inventions.

Through all the snooping Tav has to admit that Gortash is a(n evil) genius.

But as they keep looking there's rough sketches made of Tav quickly in the heat of an argument, smiling during a party, trying not to fall asleep during a meeting. Maybe there's MORE than just one sketch that spans all the way back to that first encounter... Or even before through the first glimpses of the steel watch/scrying eyes (read someone headcanon that all they were controlled or provided by Gortash?)

Catching Enver's growing fascination with them...

Bonus points if they get caught snooping 👀💦

ughhhhh i am such a sucker for this side of him. honestly. i love it. i love this prompt. thank you.

It was a heat of the moment decision. After a particularly long meeting about employing the Steel Watch outside of Baldur's Gate, Tav and Gortash had, quite literally, run into each other. Tav's cup of by then cold coffee had spilled all over Gortash's clothes, and the Archduke had dropped his bundle of documents, paper flying down to the floor mixing with Tav's own notes. When she reached down to sort between his and her notebooks and letters and files, she accidentally grabbed his personal notebook, buried between her docs. She decided to keep it. For now.

Back at the guest room he'd provided her for the prolonged negotiations (this was day two of the expected six), Tav set down the stack of papers and poured herself a glass of wine, then settled at her desk to snoop through his personal affairs. The notebook dated years back, and it was extensively filled; the many many pages brimming with orderly, clean handwriting and meticulous sketches. It gave her a rare insight into his mind: Machinery manuals, engineering instructions, weight calculations, and various use cases for specific parts of (what she recognized as) the Steel Watch, the Iron Throne, and even the Scrying Eyes. There were some notes scribbled in between the margins ("Overload? Recalculate max. magical proximity" – "Visual specs tbd" – "input variables formula needed"), hinting at the genius behind the notes. Tav swallowed as she flipped pages upon pages, fascinated by the man she still couldn't quite place.

There were different sketches two thirds into the notebook: Minthara, hunched over a table in the goblin camp. Moonrise Towers. And then. Her.

Tav recognized herself immediately. He'd captured the moment she had waved into the Scrying Eye at the Goblin camp, a small note below simply reading: "Wiped them out. Sense of humor. Who is she?" What followed were details of the orders given to the Absolute cultists, bargains made with Orin ("Hot but insane. Staying away.") and Ketheric ("He's a fool. A useful fool."). Then, after their first real life meeting, it started.

An entire page, filled with sketches of her face, her body, her movements. One drawing was of her furrowing her brow ("Won't back down, annoying"). One was of her crossing her arms ("Will consider offer – good"). Others were of Tav walking out of the coronation, rolling her eyes, waving him off, and then, the last one, was of her, pouting.

More meeting notes followed that page, and once she got to the meetings they attended together, there were yet again more drawings of her. A meeting about taxation featured a study of her eyes and mouth. A meeting about refugees was adorned with sketches of her smile. A meeting about guard rotations included... Tav gasped.

Behind her, an all too familiar chuckle made her jump in her chair.

"Good book?", Gortash asked, walking over to lean against her desk. Tav's face burned red. She shouldn't have snooped. But that last – "They're probably not as realistic as the rest", he nodded towards the page that had left her speechless. "It's difficult without the real life comparison." His gaze trailed down to her breasts, and Tav pushed herself away from the desk, then stood up to create space between them, not wanting to give into the tension that had started to build.

"You can't sketch... this", she gestured at the page, "during work. What if anyone sees?" Gortash shrugged. "Accidents happen." It was quite clear what he meant by that. "Stop", she shook her head. "What if I don't want to?" He asked her, voice low and dangerous. "Besides... looks like I'm not the only one taking liberties. Or why is my personal notebook on your desk in the first place?"

There wasn't a good answer to that. And the drawings she had seen, of her, of her body, of her with him, had left her mouth dry and her focus hazy. As vulgar as those sketches were, there were also parts of him he had sketched, parts she now couldn't get out of her head. Everything else had been sketched realistically, down to the last detail. Did he.... look like–

"I can tell you have lots on your mind", Gortash chuckled, following her eyes that had subconsciously settled back onto the open page. "Best I'll leave you to it." Tav wanted to object, but she also wanted him to leave, lock her door, and maybe take an ice cold bath. The words only found her once he closed the notebook in his hands. "They're slightly off", she said, and she wished she could sketch, because the way his eyes widened was worth documenting. "Plus I doubt that's the face I make when–" "Oh?" "I just thought you should know." They stared into each other's eyes, sizing each other up. "I'll make sure to run the next draft by you for approval", he pulled back after a moment, unwilling to move beyond the current state between them. "Thank you." And with that, he walked out of her room so swiftly she couldn't even reply. This was bad.

A heat of the moment decision indeed. Otherwise Tav couldn't explain why she felt like her body was on fire.

Fuck.