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tcustodisart · 1 year ago

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What are some cute moments that occur throughout the different acts that aren’t necessarily in the game but live in your head rent free?

Oh, this one is going to be a long answer, because there's a lot of squatters in my head and there's a lot to be unleashed. Let's start with this doodle with the boys playing lanceboard at camp and continue under the cut. Lots of cringe and brainrot incoming, so brace yourself.

Act 1:

Connie is constantly bickering with Astarion over him stealing his journal. Gale suggest to cast arcane lock on it, but Connie knows it won't stop that gremlin from reading it so why bother.

This sad pile of rugs is where I imagine Connie sleeps in Act 1. Additional Astarion line: "Damn darling, you live like this?"

During the first romance scene Connie tells Shart about his family, about how he and his brother know the city inside and out, about his parents and the tavern they run, about the trap incident. It's the most he talked to someone who wasn't his family or his crow in years. He wishes that night would never end.

Connie sends letters to his family via Faust, he stops after entering Underdark.

Act 2:

I mentioned it before that Connie is not taking the Shadow Curse very well. He misses the sun, misses the grass, he's unable to contact his family, Shart has distanced herself from him. Karlach notices it and tries to cheer him up. They end up having long talks almost every night. That's the moment their friendship evolves from just friends to besties.

When Connie finds the second warding bond ring, he wishes he could give the other one to Shadowheart, but finds the moment inappropriate. He ends up giving her the ring at the beginning of Act 3.

Act 3:

I have a lot of stuff for this act.

This is inspired by one of Jaheira's lines: "'The Cub and the Crow'- sounds like a cautionary tale. As it probably should." Connie draws her a mock up cover for a kids book. Jaheira sticks it to the traveling chest (I mostly store food there, so to me traveling chest = fridge).

Connie goes through a serious breakdown at the start of this act (after a companion is abducted), he ends up crying and saying that for the first time he doesn't believe they're going to make it, that he'll never hug his mom, never hear his brother sing again, won't be able to tell his step dad that he saw Darkmaw the Wicked. He's being comforted first by Jaheira and then by the rest of his party.

His favorite armor gets damaged one time, he's very upset about it. But the next morning he finds it magically repaired (Astarion fixed it, from the start of Act 3 they become besties).

This wip that I'm very slowly working on happens during act 3. Connie makes some flower crowns and talks about how his mom taught him to do that. I'm not going to say more, because I really want to finish that comic.

Connie has a deal with Popper that he'll pay him double for every night orchid he finds (I actually did that in game, I bantered him more money for the flower than he asked for, I love that little guy so much).

This one is more funny than cute but when Connecticut Tav was younger and still lived in Baldur's Gate he used to visit Sharess's Caress pretty regularly because it was the best way to practice drawing people. He really enjoyed talking with the workers there, he eventually convinced them that maybe creating an union isn't such a bad idea. He ended up being banned from entering the brothel because of that. So when the party approaches it to meet Voss, he's very nervous that the owner will remember him (she does). There's a dialogue in my head but it would work better with some visuals, so maybe one time I'm going to draw it.

In my head, the cottage they end up living in is Connie's old hunting hut. So after the conversation with Shadowheart about her plans for after defeating the brain, he suggest that it would be the perfect place to go. He then draws the house to show her how it looks like, tells her that it's surrounded by a forest, there's a lake nearby, a small stable that can be turned into a barn if needed, and that he's not sure about the quality of the soil, but he did grow some herbs there, so maybe it's going to be good enough to grow flowers.

At the end of the game Connie decides to stay in Baldur's Gate for a while to help his family fix their tavern (which was heavily damaged). He tells Shart to go the house I mentioned before, because he wants her to start her new life as soon as possible + because it would be better for her parents. He stealthily puts his journal in her stuff with a note attached to it saying that he finished it this morning and she can read it if she wants to. He also gives her Faust so she can write him letters whenever she wants to. After 2 tendays he arrives at the cottage with some gifts (night orchid bulbs and a pamphlet about how to take care of them, there was supposed to be another gift, but he wasn't able to find it just yet, but that's for another story).

Epilogue party (because I'm that insane):

It's been sitting in my wips for more than two months, so I don't know if I'll be able to finish it. But during the party Connie and Shadowheart take 10 minute brake to visit the place from the first romance scene. They have a very similar conversation like before, but their roles are reversed now - It's Connie asking questions about Shart's current life. "Tell me something about yourself, but no tadpoles, weird artifacts, petty goddesses. Something about you."

#ask me anything #bg3 #connecticut tav #oh oof this took some time #but know this annon I am giving you a kiss on the cheek and I'm paying for our imaginary kids' collage for asking this question

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bromcommie · 1 month ago

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my dear victorian child, might i offer you a few more words if they would be of any use to you? i love your snippets so dearly <3 (and no pressure if the writing bug has left already)

truth | between

ever so grateful (!!!) for your continued kind commentary and artistic nourishment, dear friend <3 the writing bug has indeed not left me, it's just been relegated to the evenings so I can actually get anything at all done during the day lol

send a word, get some words?

Between

So here is what he knows instead: names are a dangerous business. They wield too much power. You give the wrong thing a voice and it’s liable to define you for the rest of your life. You let a thing go unnamed too long and it forgets what it is it was in the first place. What happens to all places that are forgotten? They lose form, become a non-thing. They slip away through the cracks in the floorboards into the dark of an unknown fate, burn from below until the whole house goes up in flames. If you want to survive the fire you have to give it a name first; do it before it can swallow you whole. He looks at Steve now, the smudgy shadow of his lashes when he looks down, away, back to meet him, eyes quiet and wondering, wandering over his face: not deciphering, not interpreting, just cataloguing. He counts the steady rise and fall of his breaths and feels out the cavernous space between his own ribs, the desperate, livewire creature clawing up his throat, and when he brings it up to the light he calls it want. The fear tightens like a noose.

Truth —so once again, this unearthed a VERY long part of a pretty old, abandoned scene. I feel like you can tell some parts are a little outdated, and I'm gonna try to tighten it up some more when I can, but also: predictably, it's yet another scene I don't know if I'll ever get around to actually putting into a published fic, so. Thank you for giving me the opportunity! And also like. Very sorry this happened, but there you go.

He walks all the way back to the outskirts, looping around and through the winding streets and sucking up the fresh air, trying to make his body give up the ghost and tire enough to take to his bed easy, thinking he might as well take advantage of not being in close quarters with everyone else for five damn minutes.

But really, the truth of it is this: London, in the end, feels terribly lonely.

When he reaches where they’ve been stationed on the sprawling estate of some ex-officer, long dead or otherwise shuttled off to the countryside by now, it’s a little past midnight and the big house is still enshrouded in dark and quiet. He tramples over the once-manicured lawn and into the main parlour with the aimless intention of scoping it out for a hidden nightcap, and inadvertently stumbles straight onto Manelli where he’s sat at the table in the low light: feet propped up, spreading out rows of cards on its polished dark surface, a focused frown on his face like not a single thing exists in the world around him.

He's looking a little better, cleaned up like the rest of them—and thank the fucking Lord for lukewarm water coming out of some actual pipes, no matter how odd-colored—but there's the sagging slope of his shoulders, his hair falling in his face and tangled up like he'd been running his hands through it, the way it seems like he's hanging onto consciousness by sheer force of will. Been there a while, then, and not necessarily in the merriest of moods.

Bucky considers leaving him to it in favor of walking upstairs to his own bed but lingers despite himself, leaning against the doorway and see-sawing for a second between the idea of an empty quiet room and entertaining empty conversation instead.

“How’s the head?” he settles on finally.

“Like a nest of bees is making house,” Manelli mutters, not looking up from his game. He lolls his head side-to-side as if to demonstrate its continued presence. “But other than that, still on my shoulders. So: a good day.”

Bucky snorts, because sure, that’s familiar as anything. “The guys asked about you. Thought you would be passed out by now.”

“Too quiet. Makes the bees louder.” He glances back at him with a long-suffering sigh, shoulders by his ears. “Sit down, friend. You’re making me nervous.”

Bucky doesn’t, but as a courtesy he crosses into his field of view to stroll over to the drink cart in the corner, surveying its meagre offerings. “Luxury lodging, my ass—did you go through this already?”

Manelli grunts, morose. “Mr. Officer has a beautiful house, but a sad taste in alcohol. This one is not too bad,” he tips the bottle on the table his way, grimacing a little as if in distate, "Well, at least for the end of the world. Please, help yourself.”

Bucky grabs one of the heavy crystalline glasses from the tray and drops into the seat across from him, taking in the half-empty contents of the bottle and Manelli's red-rimmed, heavy-lidded eyes as he pours the amber liquid out for himself.

“You know," he starts conversationally, "they say you ain’t supposed to drink with a concussion.”

“And you ain’t supposed to fight a few days after playing butcher’s favorite to some German’s knife,” Manelli throws back in an uncanny parody of Bucky's own voice, the non-sequitur taking him by surprise, "Yet here you are."

He rolls his eyes when Bucky’s eyebrow ticks up in question, a huge, sweeping thing, and finally gives the solitaire a rest. “Word travels fast, Sergeant, and spies are horrible gossips. Soldiers are even worse. And," he adds with a small, wry smile, "most of both are liars, in one way or another, which is I imagine the reason you're not in a hospital somewhere right now."

It should be easy to confirm it—laugh it off like he did with the rest of the team, make some smug remark about how it gets boring in there, all those pretty girls fussing over you day and night, he had to get out, et cetera. It would be the easiest thing in the world, any other day, had Bucky not just spent two hours walking around the deserted, bombed-out streets of London thinking to himself how he's not entirely sure any of it is real; how instead he must've bled out in that field, surrounded by cow dung and dead Germans, because that would be the easier explanation to handle for why he feels perfectly, miraculously fine.

It should all be easy: but it's been a very long day, and Bucky wants a drink or two or ten or possibly a fight, so instead what he says is, “What about you, then? Which category do you fall under?”

"Well," Manelli says, looking back down at the cards with a curious sort of focus you only ever see in the drunk or the truly miserable, scoring them together with a soft fluttering sound, “I try to be whatever is needed at the right moment.”

Bucky scoffs. “How very generous of you. But, uh, speaking of needed—” he digs through his pocket and tosses the little brown paper packet into his lap. “Congrats, you’re not dead. Happy Easter.”

Manelli frowns as he unwraps the square of ration chocolate, and Bucky delights a little in the flash of surprise on his face: a rare, genuine thing to play out in that landscape. “What, you don’t want it?”

He shrugs. “I’m not the one who got blown up less than twelve hours ago.” He doesn’t bring up how he hasn’t had a taste for the ration chocolate in months, the sickly-sweetness of it just a degree off, a taste too chemical.

Manelli tilts his head, appraising.

“You’re very used to taking care of other people, aren’t you?” he says after a moment, and it’s not entirely a question. "Is that a sergeant thing or a James Barnes thing?"

Bucky blinks away, clears his throat. Ridiculously, he can feel his face going hot. “I dunno. I guess it’s just a the way we’re raised where I come from thing.”

Manelli hums noncommittally at that but he drops it, taking a savage bite out of the hard chocolate like he hasn’t tasted anything better in months. He extends the reshuffled deck out like an offering in return, and Bucky cuts it down the middle, flicking the top card on habit.

“So, what game are we playing?” he asks, and Manelli looks at him like he just said something funny.

“Scopa.”* He grins like a shark when an incredulous laugh escapes Bucky at the familiar shape of the word.

"You what?"

“Well, it means broom. You're supposed to sweep all the cards off the table, you see," Manelli says peacibly, but there's that knowing, amused look again, the one that invites Bucky straight back into the original moment: the two of them trying to one up each other at every turn. "Unless you’d rather play something else. I don’t know if you know the rules.”

And well, what the hell is he to say to that? He can recognize a challenge and rise to it, too. “I catch on quick.”

It’s true—he picks up on the boundaries of the game fast enough as Manelli deals them out and they play a trial round, tracking the cards that pass over the table. It’s a simple enough fishing game, and he enjoys the easy back and forth of the math as they play round after round in silence, burning through the liquor.

That is until Manelli pulls out the training wheels he apparently had in place, and Bucky gets on a horrible losing streak that’d put even Steve to shame.

Steve, who's god knows where tonight, wearing his big funhouse mirror body and his big serious expression and either Carter's eyes or all the eyes of London HQ on him, trying to figure out how to best paint him into a very attractive moving target.

He hopes it's the former, he does. And he's not here to think about Steve, anyway.

"So how come you aren’t out with the rest of them?” He says after the third time he’s defeated in a row, dropping his hand down onto the table in grudging resignation. “That kind of debauchery seems to be your style."

“I could ask you the same.” Manelli pulls out a beat-up, silver cigarette case from his pocket, offering the last one for Bucky to pluck out and sliding it back into his pocket in a slight of hand that's too fast for Bucky to pick up on the engraving on it. “I was happy with my cards—didn’t need noise," he says, a note of complaint to it, but he’s smiling around the filter in his mouth as he packs the tobacco, quick and practiced, "But then you come and disturb the peace."

“Now you just sound like my mother.” Bucky stretches out in his chair, watching his hands deftly roll another cigarette for himself. “I was asking more why you’re not out looking for company like every other red-blooded guy out there. Don’t need noise for that.”

Manelli shakes his head. “Too much work for tonight.” He knocks his knuckles against his skull lightly. There’s a missed patch of blood over his right ear still, a sweaty lock of dark hair sticking to it where it’s fallen out of the stiff, manicured shape of the pomade, and something in Bucky gets zeroed in on that detail—the little inadvertent admission of fallibility, the soft, vulnerable skin just under it. "Bees, remember?"

For better or for worse, it also makes him like the guy more than he did five minutes ago.

It's like Manelli reads his mind, because the next thing he says is, "And like I said—now you’re here. Who else would I be beating at cards?”

“Now I’m here,” Bucky echoes. “I see.” And then he finds himself pushing farther, perhaps buzzed from the whiskey and feeling unusually bold with no one else around for miles, or perhaps just trying to make something happen in the otherwise dead still of the night. “I dunno, Manelli, that sounds awfully queer.”

He means it to come out at least a little cutting but the man just scoffs, unperturbed as he sticks the cigarette into his mouth and lights it. He looks up at him with a thoughtful expression after a second, rolling the smoke back and forth between his fingers, a useless little tick that undoes all his hard work putting the damn thing together in the first place.

"You want to know what I notice?” He waves his hand vaguely, trailing smoke. “You people, you need to give words to everything, even when they don’t make much sense."

Bucky snickers, the sound of it ungainly and a little ugly, and doesn’t ask who you people specifically entails in this scenario. “I’m sorry, what else would you call it, then? They don’t got a word for fairy in Italian?"

“Oh, they have many. But why do I need to call it what other people call it?” he says, returning his challenging gaze unwaveringly. “Why do I need to call it anything? I know what feels good, and so I do it. The dick do I care what you do with that."

Bucky eyes the little gold chain around his neck, the dull glint of a cross peeking through his undershirt, and digs in. “And you think God is okay with that?”

He’s silent for a while at that, frowning at Bucky a little unfocused, like he understands why he keeps trying to start fires where there’s no kindling but thinks he’s asking all the wrong questions, anyway.

Finally, he says, “Siansa leberuot tot nuv dai sant sufrianza e veita sant umilaziun.”

Bucky laughs, clicks his tongue. “No dice. I don’t actually speak Italian, you know."

The look Manelli shoots him is a little impatient, the one from before he's learned to read as: you're missing the point again or, you really are American, aren't you. It should piss Bucky off, the way so many other things about the man have; instead there's something like a smile tugging at his mouth, and he really has no idea how or why it got there. “Well that's good, since it is Dalmatian. That is what my father used to say, pace all’ anima sua. Want to know what it means?”

Bucky nods, perplexed. Of all the possible ways this line of conversation could've gone, a language lesson wasn't one he was expecting.

“Without freedom, every new day is suffering, and life is a humiliation. Well, I have seen enough of both in my life.” His smile is grim, anchoring his face down at the edges. He really does look more miserable than drunk, if Bucky lets himself think about it. “So no. I don’t know if God cares or if He ever did, but I will not play a coward. Not for those idiots out there, not for Him, and certainly not for you.” He downs the rest of his drink, grimacing at the clear bottom of the glass like the cheap liquor or the sudden lackthereof offends him on a personal level. “And when His judgement comes, if it ever does, He will have much worse things on my list than who I like to take to bed.”

He looks back up at Bucky, and the challenge there is more resigned than anything else now, like he's gearing up for a response: taught by a lifetime of experience and refusing to let the lesson stick.

Maybe, it occurs to Bucky, he's not the only person looking for someone to just give them a reason to swing first tonight.

“Well then. Fair enough,” Bucky huffs after what feels like an eternity. “That’s goddamn fair enough.”

“But what about you? I wouldn’t have thought you for a God-fearing man, the way you were talking this morning,” he smirks but his eyes are assessing again, and Bucky feels like he’s being picked apart like one of his da's particularly faulty old radios. “Wouldn’t have thought you were the kind to scare easy at all.”

“Oh, I’m plenty afraid,” Bucky laughs, hollow and a little relieved. It’s easier, somehow, to keep saying things he means in all the improbable, sucking quiet of this place. “All the time. Just not of God.”

Manelli nods like it’s the most reasonable thing Bucky’s said all night, then shakes the last of the whiskey out to top them both off. He raises his glass in a mock salute. “Welcome to the club, then, Sergeant.”

Bucky makes a face. “Christ, if I hear that one more time. You can call me Bucky, you know. I’m off duty.”

"Ugh," Manelli says, and then chuckles a little at what must be an offended expression showing on Bucky's face despite himself. "No, I'm sorry. Just," he shoots him a slanted look. "Are you, really?"

“You see a rifle in my hand?” Bucky throws back. He doesn’t mention the pistol or the two knives strapped to his thigh and ankle.

Of all things, that's what makes Manelli's expression mellow into something warmer, and he stick his hand out.

“Alright then, Bucky. Call me Dino.” It’s goofy, he thinks; Bucky shot somebody for the guy just that morning. He shakes his hand firmly anyway like they’re just meeting for the first time, feeling a smile tugging at his mouth.

“I can see how you would’ve made a good actor, Dino. That was one hell of a speech.”

Dino barks a laugh again, endlessly amused. “Oh, I was never a good actor, to tell you the truth. I was just good at getting what I want," he admits, conspiratorial. “That’s why I make such a good spy, you see.”

He’s looking at him different, now, dark eyes heated with mirth and something unplaceable but so very familiar that it lights up a dormant part of Bucky’s mind like a Times Square marquee all the same.

“Is that right,” Bucky murmurs. Their hands are still folded together over the table; he can feel the callouses on Dino’s warm palm catching on his own. Something hungry is coiling rapidly deep in the pit of his stomach, climbing like a fever up his spine. He thinks it has been for a while, now. “Okay. Alright. What do you want, then?”

*Fun fact about the word scopa, or perhaps only fun to me: other than meaning "to sweep", the verb scopare that the game takes its name from is coincidentally also a popular way to say "to fuck" in Italian slang. Which, in my head at least, would possibly be one of the handful of words Bucky would be familiar with if he'd spent enough time in the Italian campaign and/or around Italians back home. Make of that what you will.

#ask #somanywords #my fic #wips #thank u Cass you've literally been sustaining the writing spark for a good three days now <3 #I have no excuse for this #nor for creating this very loose version of Dino Manelli tbh. I just read a comic with him in there and thought: no I could do bettter #and then I also watched Pasolini's Accattone and saw Franco Citti and thought:#hm. I need to have these two imaginary dimple-chinned repressed twinks interact in a way that is both a little hostile and sweet #and kiss possibly.#profoundly unedited contextless unhinged way to post this btw. I haven't even read through it the usual five hundred times

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