#shadowheart smells like a dark closet

[megidonitram]

Everyone's Running From Something (ch.1)

A Baldur's Gate 3 University Professor AU

Rating: M

Quick Summary: Astarion and Gale are two University English professors precariously mentoring a troubled 19-year-old and falling in love.

💖Main Pairing : BloodWeave,(Astarion/Gale) 💕Side Pairings: Shadowheart/Nocturne, Karlach/Dammon, Wyll/The Dark Urge, Tav/Tav 💔Past Pairings: Gale/Mystra, Astarion/Sebastian, Astarion/Tav

Master List | Ao3 | Next Chapter =>

**Please see Master List Entry for Full Content Warnings**

⏰Chapter Warning⏰ None

Astarion stared in mild consternation at the particle board desk that had been haphazardly squeezed into his office. Half his things -reference books, picture frames, a school flag one of his students had given him because “he didn’t have enough school spirit”- sat in a pile in the corner of the room. He very distinctly remembered his office being in one piece when he left for winter break.

“Jenevelle!” He yelled.

Professor Shadowheart ducked out of the breakroom with a mug of marginally drinkable Keurig coffee clasped in her hands. “I’m glad to see you too Astarion, how was your break? Did you successfully avoid your family?” She chirped with deeply ironic affability.

Astarion ignored her. “Do you know what happened to my office?”

“Oh, that? Yes, admin let us hire a new English professor to handle rhetoric and technical writing courses since Karlach decided she only wanted to stay part-time.” Shadowheart replied. “I thought you were on the hiring board- shouldn’t you remember this?”

“I know we have a new faculty member. I want to know why my office has been torn apart.” Astarion fumed.

“Provost said we didn’t have the office space for everyone in the English department to have their own office, so he said two of us would have to double up.” Shadowheart shrugged. “He thought you should be the one to share because you have the biggest office.”

“And I wasn’t informed about this because…”

“We were told not to let you know because you’d throw another fit in the dean’s office.”

“I’m the senior chair of the department, I shouldn’t be sharing my office with an adjunct- can’t he take Karlach’s office? It’s not like she needs one, she only teaches two courses a semester.” Astarion huffed. “Or he could be with you since you’re both teaching the entry levels.”

“My office was a literal broom closet before I started here!” Shadowheart shot back. “I don’t have room to meet with students, let alone share the space with another professor- but if you don’t want to share an office so badly, I’d be willing to trade with you.”

“Absolutely not,” Astarion replied. “Your office smells like bathroom cleaner.”

 “Then it looks like you’re stuck…”  Shadowheart sighed. “I’ll see you at the humanities all-hands.” She turned on her heels and went back to her office.

“Remember this moment when you need someone to drop a course so you can get another creative writing class on the roster,” Astarion grumbled.

He scrubbed his hands over his face and let out an exasperated sigh before he set to picking through his things to figure out where his colleagues had put everything. He liked Gale well enough as a professional, he seemed gregarious and personable, the kind of lecturer who could keep a student’s attention, and he was a lot more technically minded than any of the current faculty- but that didn’t mean he wanted to share a fucking office with him.

He should have known there was going to be a catch- there always had to be a fucking catch with admin. Balduran University was a business school through and through and put very little stock in any of its humanities departments- especially not into “dying fields” like English or literary studies. Usually, the English department didn’t get a cent more funding than absolutely necessary, and even then, their budget was constantly scrutinized to ensure it was actually necessary. He’d done a frankly unscrupulous amount of begging for years to get another full-time English professor in their threadbare department- everything short of just walking out and letting admin scramble to pick up the pieces. Of course, they would give the department the faculty member they’d been asking for and refuse to provide him with a space to work.

Astarion noticed a particular book from the pile of discarded things and turned it over in his hands, trying to place where he’d gotten it from. It was a collection of Paul Verlaine’s poetry in the original French, with a chipped yellowing dust jacket. It felt eerily, heartbreakingly, familiar, but he couldn’t place quite place it. He flipped through the slightly brittle pages to see if there was a passage or annotation that might jog his memory when a polaroid stuck in the dust jacket fluttered to the floor.

Astarion’s stomach lurched at the sight of the young man smiling up at him, relaxed and innocent as he lounged in the grass. His long ash-blonde hair spilling to one side over his shoulder, warm brown eyes gazing fondly at the person behind the counter, champagne silk button down undone just-so…

“I think we lose something when we don’t read an author in their original language.”

“And what am I losing when I read Verlaine in English?”

“Ça alors, the beauty- no, the music of the words. The English does not sing the way French does.”

A cautious knock at the door jolted Astarion quite rudely out of his thoughts. He grabbed the Polaroid off the floor, shoved it back into a random page in the book, and whirled around to see Gale standing stiff-backed in the doorway, clutching a box of his belongings. God, he was dressed like he was playing an English professor in a community theater play: Argyle vest, half-moon glasses, a tweed jacket with elbow patches and everything.

“I ah… didn’t mean to startle you.” He said with a nervous smile. “Jen told me we were sharing an office, at least temporarily.”

Temporarily in the sense that one day, one of them would eventually retire or die.

“Yes, that's apparently what I heard too,” Astarion replied. His eyes landed on the box in Gale’s arms. He hated this already. “Do you need help moving stuff up?”

Gale’s face lit up as he set his first box on his desk. “I do, actually! Thank you!”

Astarion grimaced when Gale turned his back. He’d offered out of courtesy, but he didn’t actually want Gale to take him up on it. He set the poetry book on his desk and pushed it out of his chair. Maybe a little bit of air and exercise would do him good. He followed Gale down the hall and up the stairs to the ground floor -Balduran U kept all its least loved departments sequestered away in the basement.

“So, have you been teaching here long?” Gale asked. He turned down the wrong hallway, and Astarion stood and watched as it slowly dawned on Gale that he was lost. He sheepishly turned on his heels and limped back over to Astarion.

“Ten years of my life wasted in that squalid little basement.” Astarion sighed. “I would tell you to get out while you still can, but I’m tired of suffering alone.”

Gale chuckled. He had a congenial chuckle like a talk show host. “It can’t be that bad, surely.” He said, “Or else someone as bright as you would have jumped ship by now.”

Astarion pounced on the compliment like a house cat. “You think I’m bright then?”

“Oh, I know you’re bright,” Gale replied. “You did your due diligence before you offered me this job. I did my due diligence before I accepted it. I read some of your published work, it was very impressive.”

Astarion swallowed back a pleased smirk, running his tongue over one of his canines. “Flattery will get you everywhere, Dr. Dekarios.”

They stepped outside into the dreary grey staff parking lot in the middle of the dreary grey of January. Gone was any of the merriment of the winter holidays, now all that was left was the cold bite of the wind and a few skeletal trees. Gale clicked the unlock button on his key fob, and a squat black hatchback with a bumper sticker in the rear window that said ‘Life’s better with a calico’ flashed its headlights.

“So why do you stick around if you find this place so disagreeable?” Gale asked. He popped the trunk and picked up another cardboard box filled to the brim with books.

“I’ve become quite attached to having a work visa,” Astarion replied frankly. He picked up a much lighter box of desk accessories. “And I suppose some of the students can be quite rewarding to work with- being a smaller program means you get more of an opportunity to form personal connections with the kids in our degree track… if you’re into that kind of thing. I personally get tired of all the recommendation letters they ask me to write.”

That and there was a certain level of anonymity that came with working at a small university. No one outside the city -outside the neighborhood really- had heard of Balduran University, and no one really cared about it. News stations never covered random happenings on campus for a quick local interest piece, so there were never any articles mentioning Astarion’s name and job title in passing to make their way back to people they shouldn’t.

“Ah, I did notice you had an accent!” Gale glossed over Astarion’s snippy comment as naturally as if it hadn’t even happened. He shut his trunk and started back for the office building. “Do you mind me asking where you’re from?”

“I grew up in Central London,” Astarion replied shortly.

“That’s quite a long hall. Do you get back home often?”

“Not if I can help it.” Astarion shuffled his box around in his hands to catch the door for Gale. “I’ve never gotten along very well with my family. We have an irreconcilable… difference in lifestyle choices.”

That was the understatement of the century.

“I’m sorry to hear that. I honestly can’t say how I’d get by if I didn’t have my mom.”

A woman with a pleasant face and an ankle-length floral skirt -probably an early-ed major- held the door to the stairwell open for the two of them. Their footsteps echoed off the polished concrete.

“I hope you’ve managed to find peace on your own, at least.”

“I’ve found ways to fill the void-” Astarion stepped backward through the door to the arts and letters wing and stopped so abruptly at the site of the large bald slap of muscle in gym shorts loitering outside his- and Gale’s- office door that Gale almost barreled into him. Astarion was rapidly approaching his surprise quota for the day.

“Dr. Ancunín!” Minsc bellowed, too chipper for the first Monday back from winter break. “Man I was looking for! How was your holiday? Good, I hope.”

“It was fine, Minsc. What are you doing here? Is something wrong?” Astarion fought the urge to dash past him and check his e-mail.

Minsc, infuriatingly, looked past Astarion to give Gale a big stupid grin. “Hello! Are you a new friend of Astarion’s? He does not get those very often.”

 “I’d like to think we’re friends!” Gale replied, and Astarion rolled his eyes. “I’m Gale Dekarios, the new English adjunct.”

Minsc whisked the box out of Gale’s hands as if it were full of feathers. “Very heavy books, Dr. Dekarios!” he said, “heavy books make a strong mind like heavy weight makes strong muscles.” Minsc gave Gale a handshake so firm Astarion was half surprised it didn’t bounce Gale off the ground. “Is pleasure! I am Coach Minsc, I am athletics director of martial arts program.”

“The -ah, the feeling is mutual,” Gale replied, wrenching his hand out of Minsc’s grasp before he broke fingers. “To what do we owe the pleasure?”

“Right!” Minsc lit up and turned back to Astarion. “Xenia came to practice today. Have you talked to her?”

Astarion’s jaw set tight. He was afraid Minsc was here to talk about her. “We haven’t spoken since Christmas.” He said, trying to stay measured. “The last I heard, she wanted to take a leave of absence this semester.”

“Is what I thought to. Her shoulder is still in cast.” Minsc replied. “She says her request to suspend financial aid package was denied. She cannot take break.”  

White hot rage surged through Astarion’s body. He tasted iron in the back of his throat. It was far too early in the semester to get kicked out of the dean’s office for causing a scene- but it was also far too early in the semester for this kind of fuckery.

“Who’s Xenia?” Gale asked.

“She is sophomore student,” Minsc replied. “Very bright but very troubled. She had… episode last fall-”

“She can decide if she wants Gale to know about that when she meets him.”  Astarion snapped. He loved a bit of student gossip as much as the next bored faculty member, but Xenia was a… delicate case. Astarion had been plenty of students’ favorite professor throughout his career, but very few were ever as vulnerable with him as Xenia was. He handed Gale’s box of office supplies back to him. “I’ll be right back.”

Astarion turned on his heels and headed back to the stairwell. He needed to have very serious -and perhaps explicit- words with whichever authority figure he could corner in their office.

[anthro-bean]

Tavart: 6, 20, 31, and 50.

6. Which party member do they relate to the most?

It's hard to say because EA but I think Wyll.

His past with Mizora and Spike, his pact vs. Her oath, their need to live up to some heroic expectation. They both want so badly to be good and I get the feeling they both struggle to actually do that more than you'd think.

20. Which of the five senses do they rely on the most?

Well, it's not technically one of the five, but she uses her Divine Sense a lot.

Divine sense is said to manifest itself as any of the five senses. (Like a phantom pain or a hallucination almost.) They hear things, see things, smell things, feel things. Some paladins experience it one way more than the other. Tavarti's is usually smell.

The Divine Sense is something you have to hone and focus on. Tavarti (like all paladins tbh) is very nosy and is flexing that muscle almost constantly. She won't pry but she "sniffs out" every person she meets.

This entire group smells weird af btw. She's not entirely sure if it's the tadpole or actually them at first.

31. They're given a blank sheet of paper- what do they do with it?

She'd nervously stare at it; not wanting to ruin the clean sheet. If she's thinking about something else however, she'll absent-mindedly doodle flowers or people off in one of the corners. She'd be embarrassed to show people.

50. Can they sing? Can they dance?

Tavarti can sing beautifully but has a hard time doing it in front of others unless it's in a group or choir. She's definitely more a "sings in the shower" type.

She cannot, however, dance a step. Wyll might try to drag her out into the party but it's just embarrassing. She's awkward, heavy footed, and uncomfortable jumping around in front of others. You'd have to roll pretty high to pass the charisma check needed to get her to dance with you.

:3 These were fun