[They started out like this, as far as Rialto is concerned. Benchmarks and old, reflected memories by way of bloodstained sills, dropped bodies, and the overharsh pop of cracking fireworks outside.

He'd looked at him then the way he looks at him now: soft across knifishly-angled features, hazy in his blood-colored eyes with the avid gloss of something more than love alone, and yet made that much brighter by it.

Indescribable, the way it finds him. What he feels. What he's always felt, solidified in this very second by the pressure against his hold that's about as fragile as a pup shivering in cold rain. That Astarion takes a moment of time out to wrap those sheets a little tighter round them both, well, it's just a sign of his priorities.

The reoccurring theme tonight.]

Scandalous.

[His right canine a quick flare of blinding white, lengthening the angle of his smirk.]

I'll pick something appropriate for an elf of the very respectable forty-fifth birthday range, then, shall I?

A quaint nine o'clock, perhaps.