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mumms-the-word · 7 months

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First Confessions

Day 21 of the BG3 Fic February Challenge

How could I not write first confessions for ALL my Tavs/Durges?

Each little flash fic below is the first time my Tav/Durge has said "I love you" to their LI. Some confessions happen really early! And some, surprisingly late. I had a fun time trying to think how each Tav/Durge would confess and what the LI's might say or do in that scenario. Hopefully you guys will be enjoy one or two of these as well.

Check out my masterlist of BG3 fics!

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21: Love confession (by any character)

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Dani

“Gods, I love you.”

It fell out of her mouth in the middle of a laugh, her nose slightly scrunched, her sharp teeth flashing, her eyes misty with mirth. They’d been swapping stories around the fire, telling jokes, sharing funny memories, until at last Gale had sent half of them into fits over a tale about a student at Blackstaff who’d convinced him to play a prank on a much-despised instructor, resulting in a marble bust of the instructor spouting a colorful variety of insults thanks to a well-cast magic mouth spell.

She said it casually and instinctually, the way she did when she was with her Rovers. Without thought, but also meant with her whole chest. Affectionate and warm and light. It didn’t strike her until a moment later, wiping her eyes, that it was the first time he’d heard her say those words to him. The first time she’d said those words to anyone other than the Rovers. His face had seemed warmer after she said it, but that could have been from his laughter too. If he thought anything of it, it didn’t show on his face.

She couldn’t have known then that it would be the first many I love you’s between the two of them. But even so, in the moment, she wouldn’t have taken it back for the world. He often made her smile, often made her laugh, and she loved him to bits for it.

So the words came easily. They always came easily, meant with as much affection on that first utterance around the fire, with all her friends as a witness, as they did one thousand reiterations later, when she spoke the words softly into the crook of his neck as they lay together alone in their bed.

But she had no way of knowing what lay in her future that night around the campfire. That night she said the words with a laugh, bright and affectionate, falling a little bit in love with him but thinking nothing of it.

She didn’t know, of course, that at the very same moment he was falling a little more in love with her too. It would only be a handful of days before those words returned, murmured softly under a starlit sky, carrying the weight of a different, deeper kind of love.

But for now, as a far as first confessions go, the words were out there, but her love remained a fledgling little secret, tucked away in the back of her heart to grow over time.

———

Invi

“I love you.”

She whispered it into Astarion’s blood-flecked hair, sinful red on bone white, holding him tightly as he shook under the weight of his world crashing down around him. Cazador was dead just a foot away, the ritual ruined, seven thousand and six spawn alive but with nowhere to go. And one broken, shuddering spawn who was shattering in her arms.

She probably shouldn’t have said it. It was probably the worst thing she could have said. She didn’t even know if he could hear her over the roar of grief and pain in his skull. She could sense it in his body as he pressed his hands into the blood-soaked stone of the ritual platform, his chest heaving with choked sobs. She could sense it in his mind where they were connected by the tadpoles, all barriers gone. His thoughts were a whirlwind of emotions, relief mixed with sorrow, anger mixed with frenzied joy, and grief, so much grief. It was too much for his mind alone so his body has responded for him, releasing the energy in a torrent of tears and wailing cries.

Still she held on, embracing him as best she could, grounding him the only way she knew how. She understood what it was to lose control like this. She remembered all too well the night she’d struggled against her bindings, every cell in her body urging her to break free and kill Astarion, while the person inside, the girl known as Invi, screamed in the prison of her mind that she loved him and fought with all her strength to resist. He’d stayed with her the whole night. She could do no less for him now.

Still. Maybe she should have saved the words for later. Maybe they would have been better said in a quiet room where it was just the two of them. Maybe this confession would be another mistake in a long road of mistakes she’d already made. But the words were out there now. And she said them again, pressing a kiss to his hair as he struggled to regain composure.

I love you. I love you. I love you.

She wanted to say so much more, but she didn’t know how to communicate it. Those were the only words she had, and in the end, those were the words that calmed him.

He didn’t say them back. She didn’t expect him to. She didn’t even know if he had really heard them. But now that the words were out there in the world, she could deny them no longer.

She had wanted to say them the morning she woke up, still bound, and found Astarion safe and well by the smoldering campfire. She had wanted to say them before they entered this room to fight Cazador, just in case she never got the chance to again. Both times she had choked on them, unsure of the timing, or how he would respond, unsure if she even really knew what love felt like.

No more. She said the words now, because they were the only words she could say. Whether he was ready to accept them or not, she had said them, and she refused to take them back.

———

Freyr

“I love you.”

He murmured it softly into Minthara’s ear as they lay together in a shared bed at the Elfsong, the darkness of the room interrupted only by a few sputtering candles. He traced his fingertips lightly across her nightshade skin, slowly up the curve of her spine, following the paths laid out by scars, pausing at old wounds as his fingers brushed against them. She lay against him, cheek on his chest, fingers at the pulse of his neck, dozing lightly. But at his words, she stirred.

He didn’t know why he said it. He didn’t know what had possessed him. Or perhaps, that itself was the problem. Nothing possessed him. He was free of his dark urges at last.

It was the first night his mind had been quiet, the first he could easily remember. In the dark of the room, with Minthara drifting away into a meditative doze, there was nothing whispering in his mind anymore. The only voice in his head was his own.

And so, unable to sleep because of the quiet, he had contemplated the woman in his arms. Turned every drifting thought back to her. Admired her beauty, her strength. Replayed the words she had spoken earlier that day, the words she had whispered as she had guided him to lay back on the bed, trying to commit them all the memory now that he had a mind to remember things. And in his contemplations of her, the words had simply fallen from his lips.

She turned her head, resting her chin on his chest, blinking sleepily at him. He waited for her to scoff, tell him love was a weakness, or even ignore his words entirely. But instead she smirked faintly and traced the curve of his lips with pad of her thumb.

“I know,” she murmured, her voice a gentle rasp.

Of course she knew. How could she not? He’d been drawn to her from the moment he met her in that ruined temple months ago. He’d devoted himself to her the moment he’d watched her fight. Sworn to protect her when he saved her from Moonrise. Vowed to kill Orin as vengeance for her as much as for himself after hearing how Orin had tormented her. Now with Orin dead and his madness at an end, he saw his actions for what they were, what they had perhaps always been. The actions of a man madly in love.

Yet he didn’t feel any weaker for having said the words. If the dark urge were still a part of him, it would have churned his gut with revulsion. But there was no more dark urge. There was only him and the woman in his arms.

Perhaps he would say it again, another time. Perhaps it would be a phrase that came easily to his lips, and perhaps one day she may even say it back. But for now it was a simple truth that they shared between them. No more need be said.

———

Ardynn

“Halsin? I love you.”

She said the words as casually as she was able, trying desperately to ignore the pounding of her heart in her chest or the way her hands trembled with fine tremors. They were walking hand-in-hand through the newly cured lands around Reithwin, the air quiet but for the sound of a few intrepid birds that had been among the first to return. She spoke the words into the still air and held her breath, trying not to look as scared as she felt when Halsin turned to look at her.

She must have said it a hundred times in her head before this moment. A fleeting, silly thought when she’d had too much to drink at the tiefling party. A yearning plea when she was in the depths of the shadow cursed lands, clutching a token infused with his nature magic to her chest. A whispered prayer as she lay across from him with the campfire between them.

When they’d lain together for the first time, under the stars with the river drifting lazily by, when his lips were on her skin and his hands on her body, the words had laced together in a pattern in her mind, locked behind her teeth as she clenched them together and arched her back with pleasure. When she fell asleep in his arms each night since then, it was the last thought she cradled close to her heart before drifting away. When she woke with her body against his and opened her eyes to find him smiling gently down at her, it was the first thought that sprang to her mind.

She screamed it in her head in the midst of battle, urged the words to form on her tongue in desperate moments where he was hurt or in danger. But she hadn’t said them. She had nearly choked on the words several times, at the Iron Throne, at the Netherbrain, when she had run and jumped into his arms a tenday after the defeat of the brain, having reunited with him in Thaniel’s lands, each time nearly letting them escape only to bite them back in a hurry. These days she felt the words fill her mouth when they were doing nothing of consequence at all, sitting in silence over a meal or contemplating the landscape together. But she had never once said them out loud.

Because he had never said them, either.

She didn’t doubt his love, of course. He proved it daily with his tender looks, his desire, the very fact that he had stayed by her side in a city that he could barely tolerate and still found time for her as he worked to build a new community for refugees of the smoldering city. She heard it when he called her “my heart” and cradled her face in his warm hand. She tasted it on his lips when he kissed her, felt his love press into her skin when he kissed her forehead.

He loved her in his own way. In the way that wood elf bear druids who were over three centuries old loved. She was content with that. And she would be content if he never said the words that rang daily in her skull, beating with her heart. She just didn’t know how he would respond if she said the words.

A part of her worried he would react negatively, withdraw, create space between them to remind her of his nature to roam. But even if he did, it wouldn’t change what she felt. She loved him. Roaming and all.

So she said them now, trying to sound casual, as though this were part of their every day speech when it very much was not. He turned to looked at her, only the barest hint of surprise on his features, and for a brief moment she regretted ever putting a voice to her thoughts at all. But then he smiled warmly and bent to kiss her, her hand still in his.

“And I love you, my heart,” he said quietly.

Just as naturally as if he’d said it a hundred times before.

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bakuliwrites · 11 months

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So, I've been in the midst of planning for a longer BG3 fic featuring my Tav, Orlando (a Tiefling with a deep sea aesthetic), and her questline, were she to have one. However, my brain is in a bit of a fog right now and all I've really been able to write for it are a series of letters between her and Gortash. Also, Gortash storyline spoilers. TW: toxic relationship, slightly suggestive

For some context, I wrote up a post about them here. Otherwise, here are the final letters they sent one another before Orlando was captured by the mindflayers and tadpoled. Orlando doesn't have any idea what Gortash is up to, other than he's rising in the political sphere. She's not sure how, but she has some suspicions. Note: They write in code to one another and Gortash signs his letters as EF because Orlando knew him mostly as his surname Flymm when they were young

Orlando to Gortash:

My Cherished E,

I grow weary of you dodging my questions. You act as if you are doing me a favor by sparing me the dirty details of your work. You are not a martyr, and I am not a little girl trapped in a pond in the dank basement of a devil’s lair. I can handle whatever it is you have done. I have my own skeletons in the closet, as you well know. Over the years, you have shown me yours piece by piece, rib by rib, vertebrae by vertebrae. Can you not simply rip the wool from my eyes? I don’t care what it costs me. I suffer more in the dark.

You speak of our future together as if it is set in stone, yet when I ask to come see you, you deny me. You push me away, E. And then draw me back in, time and again, with promises of tomorrow. You say your furtiveness is for my protection. But I think you are afraid of something. Of me, E? Of me leaving? I won’t make promises I can’t keep, but can’t you at least grant me the respect of knowledge? Can’t you tell me what “grand plan” you have that’s to guarantee our future?

Sometimes I wonder if, perhaps, you are ashamed of us. Of where we came from, who we used to be. Would I be a detriment to your campaign? Were I to show up in the midst of your glory, would I disrupt the delicate balance you’ve built? You run from the past, as do I, but I’m tired of it.

E, as always- as it has been since our youth and as it shall always be- my heart is yours. But if our path is to be one paved in secrecy and withholding, I will need to reevaluate where we stand with one another. It is painful for me to write this, but I have shed too many tears to remain reticent over the matter.

Yours Eternally,

Gortash's Response:

My Abyssal Angel,

You wound me. If you would indulge me for a moment- imagine me, sitting at the desk in my office, bathed in fading candlelight, head hung in defeat as I pour over the letters you’ve sent me these last several months. Imagine the heavy sigh that escapes my lips as my eyes sweep over the closing of your last communication. Can you not hear the very ache of my heart when I read your cutting words? To imply that I have some ulterior motive for keeping my work from you wounds my very soul. My secrecy is your safety. My discretion, your protection.

Nothing has changed, my dearest. There is, and forever shall be, a place for you at my side. As there always has been. We are equals. My plans have always included space for you. But I “martyr” myself (as you put it) not just for you, but for my campaign. What if our letters were to be intercepted? What if our code were to be broken? What then? All would fall to ruin. I would have nothing to give you. But if you are going to be so insistent upon knowing the nitty-gritty details, then it seems I can no longer hide them from you. Come to me in Baldur’s Gate, quick as you can, and I will divulge everything. Let me prove to you that it is not shame I feel. I work only to protect you.

But I must warn you- what you learn will irrevocably alter the nature of our relationship. If you are ready for this, then by all means, come to me. Allow me to show you the fruits of my labor. Perhaps, when you partake in their glitz and glamor, you will understand why I have done what I have. Or perhaps not. Maybe you will find an underlying bitterness to their saccharine taste. Either way, come to me. Allow me to hold you one last time as the man you’ve known since our youth, before you meet the one I have become.

As it has been since our youth- as it shall always be- my heart is forfeit to you, O. I await your reply with bated breath.

Yours with Fervor,

Orlando's Response:

My Cherished E,

I wrote my last missive to you in a bout of sorrow and anger. I was upset. It was a hastily written, ill thought out rambling that should not have made it past the privacy of my diary.

E, what knowledge could you impart unto me that would so vastly alter my feelings for you? Even so, I will accept what you have to say. I will come to you in Baldur’s Gate, post haste. I can wait no longer. Too many years we have spent apart. It feels as if ages of the world have fallen away while we have sat idle. My heart yearns for yours. The sea bore me away from you. It is the sea that will carry me back. Share with me the strife you have faced in my absence. Share with me the secrets that weigh heaviest on your mind. I will listen with patience.

In a tenday, wait for me upon the docks. I will appear to you there, by the light of the stars, and you can make me yours. For however long that might be. One night or forever, I don’t care. I simply cannot live this way anymore.

Yours Eternally,

Gortash’s Response:

My Abyssal Angel,

You need not apologize for voicing your concerns. In fact, I find your combativeness refreshing. A stark change from the Devil’s Dutiful Daughter act you once put on for that oaf, Raphael. You have changed, blossomed in your years since our captivity. We’ve both grown so very much.

I look forward to seeing more of that fire in you when you arrive in Baldur’s Gate. You have embers in you, O. Unleash them. Let them blaze as bright as I know they can. I can feel them straining against the confines of your lungs. Breathe your fire, my darling. Set the world alight with me.

We are not tools. We are not pawns or playthings or trinkets to display. As I said before, you will always have a place at my side, a part to play in my work. Soon you will see what part that is. And soon, you will be by my side. For good, if that is what you should want. Our union would be good not only for the two of us, but for the world.

I know you do not keep up with news in Baldur’s Gate, but I know you are aware that I have been rising in the ranks these last several years (hence the secrecy). I now have every reason to believe that I will be crowned Archduke soon enough. I should like it if you are there for my coronation. Date, to be determined. It may be a few weeks, yet. If you can stay in Baldur’s Gate that long, I can promise you a most thrilling visit.

But enough shop talk. All will be illuminated once you arrive. Hopefully, by then, I’ll be more than I am now.

With Adoration,

P.S. I have come to understand that the throne in the audience chamber of Wyrm’s Rock is padded. My imagination runs rampant, my darling. Already I can feel the lick of your newfound flame on my lips…

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