Work Text:
It had all started normally. Astarion got to the cafe at opening, ordered his espresso, and sat down with a sketchbook to think. The smell of the fresh ground beans made for a cozy environment, a place Astarion could think removed from his workshop.
At 8:15, the runner came in, sweaty as always. His hair was tied back and his t-shirt was soaked through at his chest, his back, and his armpits. The runner placed his coffee order, as he always did, paid and tipped, smiled, and moved to wait for his drink.
"Hello," the runner greeted Astarion, smiling good-naturedly. "Nice weather today!"
It always took a few moments for the stink to overpower the coffee beans, but it inevitably hit Astarion's nose like a fucking freight train.
"Yes," Astarion agreed pleasantly, ignoring his overwhelming desire to put his face inside of the runner's t-shirt. "It should be nice all week."
"I'm Gale, by the way. I see you here every day. A bit silly not to introduce myself."
That part wasn't supposed to happen. The runner was supposed to drift closer to the counter, receive his beverage and leave before Astarion could say anything insane.
"I'm Astarion. I've noticed you before too." Shit. That sounded creepy. Fuck.
But Gale, the runner named Gale who had never stayed so close long enough before for Astarion to realize had hair on the little bit of chest exposed under his shirt collar, but now he had so Astarion simply had to live with that information, smiled warmly. Gods, he was going grey. He was sexier up close. "The path in the park is lovely in the morning."
"Yes, I'm sure it is." Cedar, oak, earth, juniper, grass, cool and wet in the morning dew. Verdant and optimistic.
"Luckily I don't teach any early morning classes."
"Oh? Are you a teacher?" Hinoki, Astarion thought to himself, with the cedar and juniper, something bright and green and beautiful to complement the earthy, musky basenotes of Gale's sweat.
Gale ducked his head and blushed. Astarion never should have seen that happen, should never have known it was possible. "Professor, actually, at the university. What about you?"
Shit. "I make perfume." Ambergris, he smelled like ambergris. The real stuff, pulled out of a dead sperm whale and aged for a good long while. The illegal kind. He could never say that out loud, because most people didn't understand what a compliment it was to smell like illegally acquired aged whaleshit.
"How fascinating!" His drink was ready, Astarion was free, but no. Gale beamed at him. "Do you mind if I join you?" He grabbed his coffee and sat before Astarion could reply.
"I don't mind at all." He minded but now he was in it and wanted to stay forever.
"Perfume! Oh." Gale's face fell, and he blushed again. "I am not at all in the ideal state to have coffee with someone who has a keen sense of smell, am I? How rude of me." He was going to get up to leave, which wasn't allowed.
"All I can smell in here is the coffee. That's why I come every day. It clears my head." A lie and then the truth. He hoped they balanced out to sound reasonable.
That made Gale relax, good. This close, Astarion could tell that Gale used soap from the grocery store that came in a white bar. His shampoo was also probably scented something called "Clean" or "White." Citrus and sandalwood notes so cheap and synthetic they're unrecognizable as anything but soap. It was a heady combination on his natural scent. Gods, Gale had no clue how good he smelled. Astarion shifted in his seat, trying not to get hard at 8 in the morning.
"I've never met a perfume maker before," Gale leaned forward and took a sip of his coffee.
"It's better if you take the top off." Fuck. "The lid, I mean, sorry. Not the top. If you can smell what you're drinking, it tastes better."
Gale blushed at Astarion's slip up, but complied. "I'm already learning! How does someone become a perfumer?"
"A keen nose, like you said, and an interest in fashion helped," Astarion explained even as he was trying to greedily inhale Gale without being too obvious.
"I confess I've never really liked perfume–"
"You shouldn't," Astarion interrupted. "Almost all perfume is terrible."
Gale laughed at that, a bright and surprised eruption. "You sound like an academic."
Emboldened by the laughter and intoxicated by the drying smell of Gale's ambery musk, Astarion smiled in a way he hoped wasn't creepy. "You could come to my workshop one of these mornings, if you'd like."
One of those mornings came, and Astarion took Gale into his dark, cramped workspace. It was difficult to be so close to him in such a tight space. He had to try to keep his head on straight if he was going to survive this.
"Would you mind if I smell you?" There went keeping his head on straight.
Gale laughed nervously. "Well, I suppose that is what you do, isn't it?" No. Not at all. Astarion never did anything like this. He worked with vials of expensive substances shipped from around the world, alone. But Gale didn't need to know that.
"What do you teach?" Astarion leaned in and smelled the nape of his neck.
"Ah, the physics of magic. My area of focus is the intersection of dark matter and Weave." Astarion was close enough to feel the heat of his skin, to sense his pulse speeding up. "I should have done this after a shower or something, I don't know what I was–"
"No. You smell… good." Astarion swallowed, pulling away. "But I don't want to make you feel uncomfortable."
"Really? My ex-wife always complained when I came in from a run."
Astarion busied himself looking for a bottle of one of his new projects. "She must have terrible taste in perfume, then. If I could bottle you, I'd be a rich man. Where the fuck did I put– Ah! Here." The morning run. Verdant and optimistic. He unscrewed the lid and replaced it with a clean atomizer. "Give me your hand, please."
Gale complied, Astarion sprayed the perfume onto his wrist and then looked at him. Gale sniffed his wrist.
"It smells like… perfume?"
"Give it a minute." Astarion was being weird. He knew it. He'd made this hot, musky, ambery, hairy professor hate him and now he'd never come back.
"I have to confess, I maybe confused what you meant when you invited me to your workshop." Gale winced, clearly embarrassed. "I'm not interested in perfume at all."
"Fine. You can leave," Astarion felt stupid. "Wait, why did you think I invited you?"
"I was under the misapprehension you were, ah, interested in me."
"Oh!" Astarion perked up. "I mean, not in the workshop. This is all breakable glass filled with liquids I can't afford to spill. But I have a bed in the back."
"You have a bed in the back," Gale repeated, looking optimistic again.
Astarion took him to his small bedroom and immediately began to strip, dropping his clothes on his walk to the mattress.
"Lie down," he directed, lighting a candle. Orris and sandalwood.
"Clothes on or off?" Gale was good at taking direction. Astarion appreciated that.
"On, please."
So compliant. Gale laid down fully dressed, the bulge in his thin shorts already growing more prominent.
Astarion just stood for a moment, drinking him in, straight out of his fantasies in his little sweat through running gear.
"Gods, Astarion, the way you're looking at me…"
Astarion crawled on top of him and kissed him, tasting coffee and soy milk and a little bit of toothpaste in his mouth. A good tongue, a sweet kisser, and he was careful not to scratch Astarion with his beard. Nosing up Gale's cheekbone, Astarion was able to make his way to his hair, smelling sweaty and clean.
Gale used it as an opportunity to start talking, growing hard against Astarion's leg. "I can't believe I'm here. I've wanted this for so long. You're always sitting at the same table with your little notebook, impossibly sexy, so cold and aloof, untouchable."
Astarion threaded his fingers through Gale's hair and yanked his head back, exposing his neck and taking a deep whiff, grinding his cock down into Gale's.
Gale opened the door to talking, which was a dangerous road for Astarion, but he couldn't help himself, babbling: "Gods, yeah, you have no idea how good you are."
Gale let him nose his way down his neck to his chest. Astarion urged his t-shirt off of him, balling it up and breathing it in. Gale had worn antiperspirant that day. There should have been more sweat. Astarion dropped back down to Gale's chest and groaned. There was the ambergris and the musk, like life and death and earth and skin and hair, like sex. Tired of pretending, Astarion swept his tongue up the line of Gale's pec into the thick humidity of his armpit hair. Fumbling, he pushed down Gale's running shorts and felt for his cock, mouthing and licking at Gale's pit like an animal. "Your ex-wife is a fucking moron," he groaned, slotting their cocks together and grinding down. "There's oil on the left, can you slick us up?" Astarion didn't want to leave his armpit for the rest of his life.
"Oh… why does that feel… why is that so…" Gale sounded surprised that a mouth in his armpit would feel good. Astarion was happy to show him something new. And there was the slick, cool at first from the room temperature bottle, but warming up as it absorbed the heat from their bodies.
"You came in every day, dripping sweat, stinking the place up, distracting me, making me so fucking horny I couldn't think straight, at 8:15 in the godsdamn morning."
"I thought you couldn't smell me over the coffee," Gale's hand was starting to explore Astarion' body now, stroking down his back and squeezing his ass.
"I fucking lied, Gale," Astarion hissed, grinding against Gale like he was fucking him. "I lied so you didn't think I was a psychopath because it's hard to explain to a stranger that they smell naturally like what everyone in the world wants to pay to smell like. Which I wouldn't care about except you also look like this and do you have any idea how hard it is to comment on the weather when what you want to say is 'you should be face down with my tongue inside you'?"
"Oh gods, yeah, yes. I can be face down."
Astarion moaned into Gale's armpit at the thought of it, but shook his head, propping himself up to look into Gale's eyes. "Not today you can't, because your ex-wife, who I already fucking despise, has clearly convinced you that you need to wear antiperspirant and it's stuck in your mind long enough that you have ignorantly come here doing the entire world a disservice by denying us the luxury of your natural fucking stink. So you will have to run here another day, fresh and sweaty and ripe, with nothing sprayed on you, and allow me the honor of peeling your shorts off and tasting you."
"Fuck!" Gale bucked up into Astarion's hand. "I had no idea you'd be this talkative."
"Apparently," a rough thrust, "I come off as kind of intense, so I try to be quiet around strangers."
"I like it, gods, yeah. It is intense and I really like it. You're so fucking hot, will you kiss me again? Please?"
Astarion kissed him, pressing their cocks closer together as he pumped them until Gale came all over himself, shooting thick ropes into the hairs of his chest and stomach.
"You're perfect." Astarion shook his head in disbelief. "Spread your legs."
Panting, sweaty, covered in cum, Gale complied, giving Astarion the space to dive between his legs, mindlessly jerking himself off, face pressing against the join of Gale's pelvis and thigh. His orgasm built and he couldn't stop himself from snuffling like a godsdamn truffle pig into Gale's balls and taint, breathing him in and cumming with an ugly grunt.
As Astarion caught his breath, the clarity started to hit, and he pulled himself away from Gale's balls. Before he could start to spiral, he saw a look of awe in Gale's face.
"That was so fucking hot, Astarion, gods. I- Would you kiss me again? Please?" The cum was drying on his stomach. Good.
Lying down next to Gale, Astarion let him kiss him a little more lazily than they had before. He wrapped his arm around Astarion, once again revealing a sublime armpit. Astarion resisted the urge to nuzzle into it, but allowed Gale to cuddle him.
"I know we live in an insane world full of stupid people, but if that was the first time anyone ever worshipped your armpit, I'm kind of offended on behalf of the entire perfumer community."
Gale had an even nicer laugh after he'd just cum, it turned out. "Do you want to do this again? Or, I don't know, get a drink? Go to a museum? I think I rather like you, Astarion."
"Yes." Astarion twisted his head toward's Gale's wrist and inhaled. "I was right, it does smell good on you."
Gale chuckled warmly. "I'll be the judge of that. You seem to think everything about me smells good." He brought his wrist to his nose and made a soft noise of surprise. "It smells like.. the park I run in? That's really quite nice, Astarion! And I don't even like perfume."
"It's important that you know I'm really very good at this and not just a deranged pervert." He smiled. "You need to throw out all of your antiperspirant and deodorant."
Gale laughed until he saw Astarion wasn't laughing. "You're serious?"
Clear-headed, Astarion knew not to say that not only was he serious, he could easily make Gale a gentle, inoffensive deodorant out of arrowroot, scenting it to go along with his preferences. He knew not to tell Gale to invite him over so he can throw out anything in Gale's home that he finds offensive and replace them with suitable products. He knew better than to offer to eat Gale out and fuck him stupid every morning after his run in exchange for being his muse. So he cuddled into Gale's side and kissed his neck sweetly. "A little bit of hyperbole. Just skip it when you see me, please. In case you didn't notice, I really enjoy the way you smell."
"What do I smell like? If that's something you can describe."
Dirt, fucking, stale sweat on synthetic fibers, grocery store soap, all in one shampoo, soy latte, cum, spit, skin, musk, and amber. Life and death, man and beast. "The term we use in perfumery is 'animalic.'"
"'Animalic'? That sounds rather… pungent."
Astarion hummed and indulged in another deep sniff. "You smell alive."
Kissing Gale goodbye, Astarion slipped a vial of the morning run in his pocket, already scheming something richer and darker. Incense, maybe, something appropriate for worship.