Touch-starved Gale Dekarios
• He spent what, a year in self-isolation in his tower with only Tara for company? You bet this man is touch-starved
• When you take his hand to pull him out of his unstable portal, he’s more focused on the relief than the lingering warmth in his palm
• He doesn’t really know it at first. Doesn’t understand that his longing to be closer to you as you’re traveling isn’t only because it’s his first bit of companionship in a long time.
• It’s when he’s first showing you the Weave that he gets physically closer, taking your hands to guide you through the motions… and realizing that your touch holds a similar grounding warmth to the hug of the Weave’s presence
• He starts to find excuses to bump into you as he walks, blaming it on his usual clumsiness. Or setting a hand on your shoulder when explaining something, or pointing something out.
• When he reveals the truth of his condition, your hand against his chest, his hands shake slightly as he holds your hand there. Because that very well might be the last bit of physical contact from another person he’d ever have if you cast him out. He’s accepted his fate, his loneliness, his isolation. This short amount of time was a nice reprieve before the end
• But then you don’t, and he realizes he doesn’t have to let this go. You don’t pull your hand away until he lets it slip away, and his gaze might linger on it for a little too long
• And then Elminster gives him his ‘mission’ from Mystra, and he’s forced to resign himself to his fate yet again. He figures it might be easier to pull away. If he starts distancing himself again, the end will come easier.
• You hug him that night, and that mindset is quickly shattered.
• But despite his best efforts, he can’t truly bring himself to pull away entirely. Because even if it might make the end hurt more, he wants that warmth. That connection. That comfort.
• He’d phrase requests for affection like facts. “Are you aware that is is a proven fact that a consistent access to physical touch improves mental health? Fascinating, no?”
• Hugs last for long moments, not just a quick thing. He’d bury his head against your shoulder, inhaling deeply to ground himself with your scent. Thumb brushing over your back as if to assure himself that you’re there, and this is real. He hasn’t completely lost his mind in isolation in his tower and made all this up.
• He complains one day about his hair getting in his face during a battle, and you offer to braid it back. The sensation of your fingers coming through it, rhythmic strokes, blunt nails against his scalp… he is practically melting by the time you’re done, leaning back against you and murmuring something about how he tried to braid his hair once with a mage hand and failed.
• He falls asleep in your arms that night, and sleeps better than he has ever remembered. Waking up surrounded in the warmth of your embrace instead of by scattered papers and books is the calmest he’s felt in a long while
• He feels guilty asking to do it again. After all, why would you? What are you getting out of this? He isn’t providing anything, and he’s selfishly asking this for his own comfort- but when you continually say yes, he starts to consider that perhaps… perhaps this is something he can have without guilt
• Ultimately, when the netherbrain fight is over and he’s still alive, it truly sets in for the first time that… he can have this life
• Days spent waking up in your arms, lazily draped across your lap while lost in reading, or holding you in his, chin hooked over your shoulder as he reads aloud, holding the book in your lap. Holding your hand as you walk down the streets of Waterdeep.
• Suffice to say, he’ll never need to go without contact again
