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The grimy walls of the motel look the same as the last motel they stayed in before the job — floral wallpaper, yellowed with age, curling off the walls, suspicious stains on the comforter and carpet, the bathroom intolerably caked with grout, feeble light from an exquisitely ugly lamp casting shadows upon a truly awful nautical themed painting, and enough greasy, hot coffee for all three of them to indulge in without fighting over who gets thirds.
Guinevere unscrews the flask containing the Not-Emergency-Vodka she has and pours it into her cup. Why not? Another job well done — a little rough around the edges she supposes as she knocks the drink back with a grimace, but any mission that ends with Lancelot not gaining another scar on his hands should be a cause for celebration. Or Gawain going blind with bloodlust. Or Gawain and Lancelot going blind with bloodlust. Or even Guinevere herself getting her hands dirty.
(It’s not that she can’t or she won’t — Guinevere has been in this business a very long time, longer than Lancelot and Gawain even, and she knows how to incapacitate, how to bruise, how to hurt, how to kill, how to dominate better than anyone.)
(She had to of course, how else would she have survived?)
(It’s just that she’s had a recent shift in interests — less fieldwork, more pulling the strings, more velvet words whispered in Lancelot and Gawain’s ears dragging them back from the symphony of bones grinding and cracking against one another or to excite them up into a frenzy. It’s humbling. It’s powerful.)
(Guinevere likes power.)
(She likes Gawain and Lancelot more, maybe. She doesn’t like to think about that part, not very much.)
Gawain nudges her with his good shoulder, eyes wide and pleading as he gestures to the Not-Emergency-Vodka with his chin. The sight is comical and entirely Gawain Orkney for Guinevere can still see the splash of dried blood on his shirt collar. Lesser men would fall for it in a heartbeat, but Guinevere knows where to look. Even at his most arresting, there’s always something a bit too sharp in Gawain’s eyes, his mouth a bit too smug, the words dripping from his tongue too honeyed, and his hands too eager, always itching for a fight.
Guinevere pours the Not-Emergency-Vodka into his cup and Gawain takes a big gulp. He smiles. “Oh, this is awful.” He takes another long drink. “More please.”
Guinevere grins and tops off his glass. It’s probably more vodka than coffee by now.
The bathroom door opens, releasing a jettison of sweet smelling steam and a clean Lancelot clad in his softest grocery store sweatpants and t-shirt, all debris and dirt washed off of him. His long hair is still wet, plastered against his neck, rivulets staining his shirt. It’s nice to see him stained in something other than blood even though it is always puzzling, the picture just a bit wrong. Lancelot looks best in blood. Guinevere knows a little too well that Gawain’s an enthusiast about Lancelot-and-blood because Gawain has the tendency to never shut up when plied with sweet wine and muscat shine grapes.
Lancelot pads over to where Guinevere and Gawain are huddled together on the bed closest to the window. He tilts his head to the right like a puppy and Gawain hands him his cup. He sips, tentative, and then sputters, making a wounded noise. Gawain’s grin grows wider, wilder, and a little bit more truer.
(Guinevere looks away.)
Lancelot nudges Gawain’s ankle with his foot, attention already divested by the patches of red blossoming on Guinevere’s knuckles. He takes her hand in his, inspecting. Guinevere lets him, relaxing against Gawain’s shoulder.
(Caring, kind, gentle Lancelot who worries more than anyone Guinevere knows. Who fusses more than anyone too. She allows him this concession, better to get it over with now or else she knows that she will wake up in the morning with her hand bandaged, wondering not for the first time just how Lancelot pulled that off, how she did not awake.)
(She doesn’t know what she hates more — the fact that Lancelot could get the best of her or the fact that she isn’t as alarmed by it as she should be.)
The bed creaks ominously as Lancelot sits on it. He hastily gets up, pulls a chair close instead. “Michigan is still a no go, then?” He murmurs as he and Gawain pass the cup back and forth between themselves.
Guinevere hums. “I’m afraid so. Too close.”
Lancelot nods, his face contemplative, eyes understanding. Tension lines the back of his shoulders, causing them to jam up higher and higher to his ears. He had been looking forward to going home — well, not home home, but Michigan is home all the same to him with its snowy boroughs of trees and lakes and reclusive little dying towns tucked away in between empty fields blanketed in snow, hiding something far more sinister to awaken come spring.
(Lancelot thinks of Viviane, of her in that empty house by the lake, alone for another year and swallows his regret down with another sip of coffee.)
“We could still head north,” Gawain suggests. “Alberta, Canada is beautiful this time of the year.”
“It’s winter,” Guinevere says, suspicious. Gawain hates the cold.
“Winter in Alberta,” Gawain grins, teeth catching the light. “Doesn’t it sound dreamy?”
(After missions Arthur allows them the concession of wandering around as long as they stick together, as long as they keep a low profile, as long as they stick in the shadows and the gloom and the sick and the rot, as long as they are together.)
(Arthur, Guinevere thinks and his name is bitter even in her thoughts. There’s a storm brewing on the horizon, one Arthur is blind to because Guinevere has made sure of it, has backtracked and checked her own footfalls, has untied the strings of his power and rearranged them into something beautiful, has knotted it up so thoroughly that Arthur, even if he were to discover it, would not be able to trace it back to her.)
(Or to Gawain and Lancelot.)
(Guinevere doesn’t like to dwell on why, why they’re the exception.)
(It’s only a matter of time before her grand entrance, before she cuts Arthur’s string and watches him fold upon himself like a puppet. Arthur’s own puppeteer, Arthur none the wiser despite Kay’s watchful eye and Bedivere’s pinched mouth. Pinnocchio so desperately trying to be human, Arthur so desperate to be free — Guinevere will free him, in a manner of speaking.)
“Alberta?” She murmurs, pushing her hair out of her face. She needs to shower, desperately.
Lancelot’s eyes sparkle in the lowlight, a small smile catching his mouth, wrinkling the scar on his cheek. “Sounds like a vacation.”