Archive of Our Own

The first hint of trouble was that Lancelot was dead again. He had informed his three closest friends of this eventuality, and reassured them each individually that it was just a fun prank, but because he didn't enjoy large social gatherings he had done so privately. Each of them, therefore, was under the impression that they were the only one who knew he was alive. This accounted for their smug air of confidence the day after his funeral. 

"He was my dearest friend," said Queen Guinevere, wiping away a crocodile tear as she leant against the windowsill for support.

“Stay strong, Guinevere,” said Gawain, patting her shoulder. “He’d want us to get through this.” He turned his face to the ground in an exaggerated display of grief. 

Galehaut nodded solemnly. He looked out the window and hitched his breath. “I just can’t believe he’s gone.” 

"It's so sad," Guinevere said, hiding her smile.

"Tragic," Gawain agreed, smugly. 

"He's— he was my best friend," said Galehaut.

Gawain and Guinevere’s heads shot up in unison. Guinevere almost forgot to keep pretending to cry. 

“Well,” she said, quickly blinking to keep the tears coming, “I mean he told me personally he was my best friend. Not that it’s important.”

“To be fair to him — to his memory,” Gawain said, looking sympathetically at Galehaut. “He always said I was actually his closest friend. It’s not like you were less important or anything, just that—”

“I don’t think anyone said anything about importance to our dear, dear deceased friend Lancelot,” Guinevere said. 

“Yeah I don’t think anyone needed to bring that up.” Galehaut frowned. “But if we’re counting, I’ve known him longer.” 

The tears ground to a halt on Guinevere's face. "Well, if we're going by time of acquaintance, I think you'll find I've known him the longest. I knighted him, after all."

"Well, I'm his boyfriend."

Gawain glowered at both of them. "I'm— I— he's rescued me from a lot of haunted castles. That has to mean something."

“Your haunted castles can’t compare to our love, Gawain,” Galehaut said, hinging on hysterical. “You can have your — your ghosts and swords but you’re not his best friend.” 

"That's fine, I don't care about friendship, I only care about Instagram clout."

"You— I— that's an appalling sentiment." Like an affronted parakeet, Galehaut twittered. "I hope you find the true meaning of love one day, Gawain. I wish I could help you do it."

Guinevere examined the two of them and hummed. “I could profit from this,” she said to herself. 

“What?” Galehaut turned to her. 

“I didn’t say anything. Unrelated, but have you two ever wanted to move to the suburbs?”

They stopped in their tearful tracks. They looked at each other. They looked at Guinevere. Galehaut said, "What the fuck is a suburbs?"

"A suburb is an urban area attached to a larger metropolitan center by way of shared cultural venues, transportation systems, and economic resources," said Gawain scornfully. "Come on, Galehaut. I bet you haven't even read about white flight and the commodified gentrification of American middle class society in the 1950s."

“Please don’t swear at me,” Galehaut said, shaking like a damp chihuahua but, like, a really big one.

“I think the suburbs would do you both good,” said Guinevere, ignoring both of them. “You know, with the grief.”

“The grief, of course.” Gawain looked mournfully away from them. “Only the suburbs can contain it.” 

“You could live together!” Guinevere exclaimed, pointing at Galehaut intently. 

“Well now that you mention it, the suburbs are actually quite small. I don’t know if my grief would be best suited there,” Gawain said. 

Guinevere gave a very sweet smile. "That doesn't sound very modest to me. You know, if I were Lancelot, I would want my best friend to be humble."

"Ah," said Galehaut, "uh, who is your best friend, anyway? Apropos of nothing."

"Wouldn't you like to know, boyfriend boy," said Guinevere coolly.

“Well, yeah, kind of.” 

“Good. That’s part of it.” She nodded like this all made perfect sense. 

“Okay,” Gawain said, glancing between Galehaut and Guinevere. “Part of — part of the suburbs?” 

“Aren’t you quick. You two are moving in together —” 

“Well, let’s discuss that—”

“Aw, you’re sweet Gawain, but we’ll take care of it, don’t worry,” said Guinevere. “You two are moving in together in the suburbs for — hm — let’s say a month. Think of it like a long, mandatory vacation.”

"Why the hell would we—" Galehaut cut himself off. "Pardon my proto-French. Why the fuck would we live in these— these suburbs you speak of?"

"Well…. If you did… you know, both of you are so lonely following Lancelot's death… I'm sure you'd like to know which of you is my best friend, hm?"

"Me," they said in perfect unison. 

"Uhuh. Right. You sure about that?"

Neither was. They glanced at each other nervously and then back to Guinevere. "So you want to bet us something?" Gawain figured out. "What exactly are you betting us?"

She smiled. "If you two un-amicable acquaintances can put up with each other in domestic bliss for a month, to provide entertainment for me— then I'll correct the presumptive man who incorrectly thinks he's my best friend."

Galehaut's mouth twisted suspiciously. "And if we can't?"

"Then I'm the one who gets to say Lancelot loved me best."

The two men relaxed slightly, casting smug looks at each other. It would be no problem. Of course they could live together for a month. "Well, that sounds acceptable," said Galehaut. "I mean, it's not like you're asking us to get married or anything."

"They need to get married," proclaimed Guinevere, her hands on her hips. Her lips were lifted in a slight smile, as menacing as a wolf’s. "That's part of the dare."

"Oh." Arthur fidgeted on his throne and surveyed the three people gathered before him. "Well, ah — two men can't actually get married, you know — marriage is between a man and a woman —"

"Can't you waive that?"

“What? Waive — waive gender?”

Guinevere gave him a brief pout. "Just for Galehaut and Gawain. Look at them, Arthur. They love each other so much." Behind her back, she made a brief gesture with her fingers that indicated they had better show Arthur how much they loved each other or she would be showing them to the gallows.

"Ah, yes!" said Gawain, who was quicker at coming up with lies, "won't you let me marry this piece of hot sexy man beef?"

Galehaut coughed. “He’s the — the love of — the love of my life.”

Guinevere turned back to Arthur with a brilliant smile. Her teeth shone like a diamond, or a shark. "See? They desire each other so carnally and just need a teensy little legal trick to help them get down and dirty with God's approval."

"Yeah," said Gawain miserably, "please let me get fucked by this man who slaughtered my favourite squire."

"Right," said Arthur, with the balance of a man on very tall stilts. He glanced between the two men before him nervously. "Ah, right. Well. I'll do that, then. Ah— I now proclaim you man and— man and giant."

“What, right here?” Galehaut said.

“Yes? I am king, you know.”

Galehaut was turning a shade of green most known to the court in the context of sudden beheadings. "But we'll have to— kiss and everything."

"I don't like it either," muttered Gawain. He cast a nervous glance up at Galehaut, whose mouth existed two feet above his own.

"You'll kiss!" Guinevere said gleefully. "Or you could do a stage kiss, you know, put your thumb on his mouth— Gawain, don't you have a thing for finge—"

“Do I?” squeaked Gawain. 

“Man and Gawain,” finished Arthur miserably. 

There was silence in the hall. The two newly wedded grooms stared at each other balefully, weighing their prospects. Arthur shuffled his feet and waited for someone to tell him what to do. Guinevere smirked.

Finally Galehaut broke. "Uh, Guinevere," he said, "I love my— my new husband— so much— I can't stop at kissing him, so, uh, we should go somewhere in— in private. Not kissing here. Kissing somewhere else." 

"And then engaging in sexual relations," Gawain added, putting a minimum of effort into the scheme.

Guinevere reached out to pat Gawain on the head, because he was lower to the ground. "Terrific! And tomorrow you can ride out to the suburbs. I bought you a horse for the occasion! Consider it my wedding present."

The horse didn’t look like any horse Gawain had ever seen. He told her so. 

“This horse doesn’t look like any horse I’ve ever seen.” He frowned at it. “Is it sick?”

The horse was considerably larger than most horses, even Gringolet, and shaped more like a box than a long animal. Its coat was also peculiar. Galehaut stroked it, only to pull his hand back in surprise. 

“That’s too smooth,” he said. 

Gawain inspected the sides of the horse. It appeared that you could see into the animal, a frankly horrifying and grotesque prospect. He looked at Guinevere, aghast.

“Where on God’s green earth did you manage to get this?”

Guinevere’s smile dropped and she suddenly looked very serious. 

“That’s for me to know and you to find out. Get in the horse.”

Gawain and Galehaut got in the horse. 

“So, uh,” Gawain said, cringing as he sat on the leathery interior. “What do we do?” 

“You use the wheel there like its reins, okay? Just — um — turn it. And that pedal is like — well — it’s like the spurs. You press it into the horse to make it move. Kind of.”

Gawain and Galehaut stared blankly at her. 

“You’ll figure it out, I’m sure, congratulations on your marriage!” Guinevere sped away, leaving the two of them to wrangle the horse. 

After a long and strenuous few hours, of which the death toll was unimaginable, Gawain and Galehaut figured out how to drive Toyota — the name of the horse they found branded into her hide — and followed Guinevere’s directions to The Suburbs, which were outside Camelot at an ideal distance for weekly commute into the city if the streets weren't clogged with horses during rush hour. 

Galehaut ended up in charge of the rein wheel — Gawain kept trying to turn it and tearing up, before insisting “No, I’ve got it. I’ve got it. I just need to talk to her,” at which point Galehaut would push him out of the driver’s seat. They pulled up to their house, identical to the 30 or so others surrounding it save for the silver ‘421’ on the door. 

Galehaut huffed. “That should be one less. What’s the point.”

“I don’t know what you’re saying to me,” said Gawain, who had spent the last two hours on the verge of tears at the prospect of being inside of a horse. 

The neighborhood was unremarkable and hideously beige. The sun seemed at once too high and too low, which made Gawain confused and uncomfortable. To make things worse there was a man on the lawn next to theirs. 

“Hiya!” Said the man. “You must be the new neighbors. I’m Dinadan. Sure is a hot one today!” Dinadan held out a hand. Neither of them took it. Gawain was too busy shaking and trying to unlock their door, and Galehaut simply didn’t want to. 

“Alright then!” He took his hand back with a smile. “Well, welcome to the neighborhood, you two. Ciao!” 

He retreated back into his own beige house after waving a friendly goodbye to them. 

Once he had gone, Galehaut said, "I didn't like that man very much."

"Oh yeah?" The key was still not turning. Gawain gave the door a depressed rattle.

"He had the desolate air of a late night talk show host."

"Oh. Jesus. Yeah, you're right." Gawain wiped a hand across his feverish brow. "I hate him now with every fiber of my being. Hey, do you think you could punch this door in? I'm not asking that in a sexual way."

“I probably could. Have you tried the key?”

Gawain gave him a long look. “I’ve tried the key, Galehaut. I’ve tried putting in the key and I’ve tried turning the key and I’ve tried giving the key a loving squeeze to show how much I value it. Would you like to try the key, Galehaut? I think you’ll find it does not work.”

Galehaut tried the key. The door — bright red against the beige tack of the house — opened smoothly over the threshold. 

“I think you were turning it the wrong way,” Galehaut said.

Gawain scoffed. “I outrank you.”

But it was only the first day, and Galehaut was trying to be patient. Water under the bridge, he thought to himself. He wasn’t sure what this meant, so he thought it again. Water under the bridge. Little things like ducks and maybe a fish under the bridge too. Swimming around. Swimming around with fish-like tendencies. Ready to be stuck with a sharp implement on a nice day off work and hauled up to show off on medieval social media. Yeah. Fishing. Thus full of inspiration, he entered the house.

“Oh,” said Gawain. “I thought there would be more stone.” 

The floors were carpeted in a rough white yarn layer — not practical for blood feuds, Gawain thought — and the walls had a thin coating of eggshell colored paint. They were bare, save for the several frames spread randomly throughout the living room, showcasing different copyrighted families, printed in black and white. 

A noise moaned from somewhere outside the house. Then again, longer and higher, and then in a quick succession, faintly but noticeable.

“Did you hear that?” said Galehaut. 

“Hear what?” 

“That noise. It sounded like someone playing bad accordion.”

“There’s no accordions in the suburbs, Galehaut,” said Gawain, without any basis of truth. “You’re imagining things.” 

Galehaut accepted this with a nod and wandered over to a picture displayed on a small table next to the staircase. “Isn’t that the fellow we just saw? The one with the annoying haircut and the glasses?”

“No.”

“You didn’t even look.” 

Gawain looked. “Not all people who wear glasses look the same, you know.” 

This worried Galehaut about his own internalized prejudices, so he moved on. The house was large, larger than he had expected when Guinevere had described the suburbs, and furthermore it was furnished with a large variety of excitingly newfangled implements. “This is impressive. I’ve never seen a lot of this technology before. The suburbs are really better than the 6th century.” He paused by something labelled as a Keurig. “Wow, this is for coffee! I don’t even know what coffee is. Hey— I wonder if they have some modern thing for fishing really quickly.”

“Lancelot used to fish…” Gawain sighed. 

“Yeah,” said Galehaut, “with my cast. And then we would— nevermind.”

“Your mom used to fish with my cast,” Gawain said under his breath. 

“What?” 

“Nothing,” he said. Then, “Your dead mom used to fish with my cast. That’s all.”

Galehaut made an expression like he’d swallowed a pill bug on accident. “Please don’t be a hussy,” he said, electing not to rise to the bait. “Come on, let’s finish looking at the house.”

They looked at the house, which was very nice if bland, but the authors don’t want to describe it. Once they were done looking at it all for the first time, there was a knock on the door. 

Gawain looked up from where he was perched on the tile counter in the kitchen. Galehaut was over by the window, looking over their pristinely cut front lawn disdainfully. “No sustainable biodiversity,” he would mutter to himself every few minutes, increasing in irritation.

The door thus remained unanswered about 30 seconds after it had been knocked on. 

“Galehaut,” said Gawain calmly. “Are you going to get the door?”

“I thought you were going to get it.” Galehaut was still looking at the grass. He thought it might have been plastic. He didn’t like plastic grass; it had given him a rash once because of Tristan. 

“But you’re right by the door.” 

“What? Oh.” 

A tall woman was standing on the doorstep with a casserole dish in her hands, only a smile visible from under her cloak. Fog tendrilled subtly from underneath her feet.

“Are you a Jehovah’s Witness?” asked Galehaut. 

“Yes!” she said. “Are you boys ready to witness… this ?” She held out her casserole dish and, when Galehaut failed to take it, let it drop to the porch and shatter. “Hm.” The woman nodded. “That’s alright. If it happened, it was meant to be. Oh, are you bleeding? Epic.” 

Galehaut was on the ground, trying to pick up the broken ceramic and doing very badly. 

“It’s so hot,” he whispered. 

“It’s fresh baked casserole!” she said excitedly. “Well, was. Please may I have your blood?”

“What’s in it?” said Gawain suspiciously. He had deigned to approach the front door. 

“Casserole!”

“Oh,” he said. “Good.” 

“Sorry, but do you mind?” A thin vial emerged from beneath her cloak. “I really must insist on that blood.”

“Uh.” Galehaut looked at his hands. “Of course. How much?”

“Oh, not that much at all, you’ll barely miss it!”

“What do you need it for?”

 “Casserole!”

“That sounds nice.” The woman was now gently pooling blood from the cut on Galehaut’s hand into her vial. Once she felt she’d had enough, she slipped it back into her cloak. 

“Alright, thanks dears! Welcome to the neighborhood!”

“Wait,” Galehaut said, reaching a hand out to stop her. “There’s more of you?” He glanced at Dinadan’s house nervously. 

She pursed her lips and gave him a concerned look. “There shouldn’t be. I keep telling Morgan to keep the lab locked up tight.”

“Morgan?”

Her face — what could be seen of it — softened. “My partner.”

“In crime?”

“Well, technically we’re partners in real estate,” she said. “But we’re also partners in life.”

Irrationally skeptical, Galehaut squinted. “What?”

“Oh, nice,” said Gawain. “Morgan my aunt Morgan?”

“Who are you?”

“I’m Gawain. I’m my aunt Morgan’s nephew.”

“Oh, Gawain! Hi, I’m Sebile. I’m your aunt Morgan’s girlfriend.”

“What?” said Galehaut again. He didn’t like the information he was receiving.

“Well, it was nice to meet you,” Gawain said, ignoring Galehaut’s helpless glance his way. “Have fun with your blood.”

“Oh, I will,” said Sebile, backing away ominously off of the porch. “I will…” Then she was gone. After a brief moment, Gawain closed the door, in case any further neighbours arrived to menace them, and patted a vegetative Galehaut on the shoulder. 

“What the hell was that?” Galehaut looked like someone had just shown him a full size Shoebill stork. 

“Sebile? She’s my aunt Morgan’s girlfriend,” said Gawain authoritatively, turning away from the door and striding over to the staircase. He stood admiring it for a second before skipping up a few steps and swinging one leg over the bannister to slide to an uncomfortable sitting position. “What’s the matter with that, Galehaut?”

“They’re—” He had to stop himself for a moment. “They’re homosexuals?”

“Oh,” said Gawain maliciously, a slow smile spreading across his face as his suspicion was confirmed. “Oh ho ho. Yes, Galehaut, they’re— you might call them members of the LGBT community.”

“What the fuck are you saying to me.” Galehaut shook his head quickly. “I don’t know what that is.”

Miraculously, Gawain managed to lounge along the bannister as though he were going to be painted like a French girl. He hadn’t even fallen off yet. “A homosexual is… well, why not give an example? You and Lancelot are homosexuals, Galehaut.”

“No?” Galehaut appeared lost in the suburban home now, darting glances around the room looking for an escape. He said it again. “No?” 

For a moment Gawain indulged in considering a blissful world in which Galehaut was correctly asserting that he and Lancelot were not, in fact, engaged in a homosexual partnership. Then he dismissed it with bitter realism. “Are you lesbophobic, then, Galehaut? Do you only want gay rights for yourself?”

“The rights. The gay ones. I wouldn’t have them?” 

“I mean, I’ll take them if you don’t want them,” said Gawain, hopeful despite himself.

Galehaut made a desperate noise in the back of his throat. “So you’re—? The gay rights are for you? You’ve had (homo)sex?”

“With Bertilak, yes,” Gawain said. “And all I got for it was this stupid t-shirt.” He gestured down at his chest, where it read: ‘I HAD (HOMO)SEX WITH BERTILAK; AND ALL I GOT WAS THIS STUPID T-SHIRT’, adorned with a bloody axe. “If you mean am I queer, yes, I’m pretty queer. Have you ever seen me without this stupid green belt on? That’s queer.”

He did not appear to be wearing a green belt. “You mean the leather belt? That’s brown, Gawain.”

“Oh, where I’m wearing it you can’t tell,” Gawain said, winking. 

Galehaut took a deep, steadying breath. “I hope you fall off the bannister and break your elbow,” he said, and then followed it up with, “Do you have plans for dinner?”

“I can’t cook,” said Gawain. “What do you think I am, a housewife?”

“A what?”

“A housewife?”

“Yeah, I heard you the first time. Are you— nevermind. Is this more about gentrification?”

“Tangentially, sure. I mean you could argue that the idea of a suburban housewife with its roots in conservative motherhood could— that’s not the point. You’re cooking.”

Galehaut gave him a sniff that implied he suspected housewives, gentrification, and conservative motherhood were all codewords for involvement in BDSM, but didn’t have the evidence to prove it yet. “I’m an excellent cook,” he said. “You’re going to get treated to Galehaut’s famous hot hog.”

Gawain raised his eyebrows. “That was quick.” 

“What?”

“Oh. Never mind.” Gawain looked slightly relieved. “Go on. Famous warm pig.”

“Hot hog.”

“Mmhm.” 

“I’m making it,” said Galehaut, already walking away. “No questions.”

“It’s not even dinner time yet!” Gawain called after him. He didn’t get a response so, shrugging, he opted to wander upstairs and scratch things into the floorboards under the carpet. 

In the kitchen, Galehaut fiddled with the stove for a moment as Gawain’s footsteps clunked upstairs. Then he stopped. It was a lovely kitchen, wide and sunlit, with windows on two sides. He checked both windows plus the two entrances to be very sure that no one was watching him, and then rooted around in one of the duffel bags he had brought for this occasion. 

The far away accordion played again. 

Dinner was procured, quickly and out of sight of Gawain, and then was set to rest on the counter while Galehaut wasted time by staring out the window and wondering if he could install an artificial fish pond in the backyard. He spent several hours engaged in this, such that when he finally emerged from his rich and fish-filled fantasy, it was in fact dinner time.

Gawain materialized in the doorway wiping wood shavings off of a small knife. 

“There’s something thumping under there.”

“What?”

“I wouldn’t worry about it,” Gawain said, looking over his shoulder. “Is your boar ready?”

“Hot hog. And yes.”

Galehaut presented the plates, still warm from the hog, to Gawain at the kitchen table. 

“Huh,” Gawain said, examining the food. “Well, congratulations Galehaut, you’ve managed to cook something that looks not only edible but tolerable. I’m impressed.”

“I’m a nationally-ranked chef.”

“Wow, really? Tell me more, king.”

“Well, actually, I could tell you about my tour in Paris-”

“What is that?” Gawain looked at him with a blank expression.

“Wh— Paris?” Galehaut sputtered. “Paris, France.”

“I don’t understand.”

Galehaut thought for a second and remembered he didn’t know what Paris was either. “Oh, yeah, nevermind. Anyway, you like it?”

Gawain chewed slowly, considering. “I enjoy your hog, Galehaut.”

“Oh, well, thank you.” He found himself smiling. “It’s an old family recipe. My mother taught me before Tristan beheaded her.”

“Yeah, your mother taught me a few tricks too.” 

Taking another bite of his hot hog, Galehaut frowned. “What? I don’t think you met my mother. She was a giantess and it was hard for her to see anything low to the ground.”

“That’s so interesting. I’m so glad we’re learning about each other’s families,” Gawain said, and then got up from the table and promptly left the room. 

They slept in separate rooms. Even Guinevere wasn’t that cruel. 

The next morning, Gawain woke up bright and early. He was a chronic insomniac, although because he was from the 6th century he had simply assumed for most of his life that he had a magical affinity for the hours of sunlight. Today’s mission was to perform reconnaissance on the neighbours. Those of them whom he had already met terrified him greatly, and he was hoping others might prove to be more amenable to conversation, sex, or Galehaut-hating.

He started by ringing the doorbell of the house directly across from theirs, reasoning that the mean man was to their left and the mean woman was to their right, so this one might be alright. The door was bright purple, and the birds twittered around him. He was about to reason that the inhabitants of this house were probably asleep, given as it was 5:20 in the morning, but then the door swung open. 

“Hi!” said Gawain, before he could get a good look at the person inside. “Are you amenable to conversation, sex, or Galehaut-hating?”

There was an agonizing pause, during which his brain processed the sensory input from his eyes and made a rapid switch to wishing he was a small rodent under a very large rock, safe from neighbours he had already met named Dinadan. 

“Wow, king,” said Dinadan at length. “You must be really lonely. Are you, like, alright? Do you need a number for a therapist?”

“Do I need a what?” Gawain asked, astounded, before quickly moving on, “You didn’t live here yesterday.” 

“I can live anywhere you want.” 

“What?”

“I said I can live anywhere I want,” said Dinadan amicably. “Sorry, people tell me my voice triggers their auditory processing disorders a lot. It’s just one of those things. Hot one today, isn’t it?”

“Yeah.” Gawain nodded. “Um, well, I can’t be here anymore but I hope you have a great—” He looked in the door. “Accordion practice. Goodbye.” He shut the door before Dinadan had a chance to.

For all Gawain’s faults, however, he was adept at shaking things off and maintaining confidence following social gaffs, or at least he liked to pretend to himself he was. He made his way to the right and knocked on the next door. No answer. He repeated this process with nearly a dozen more houses, making his way steadily further down the street, before finally one door opened to his ring. 

“Hey,” he said, peering into the darkness of the hallway. A figure was barely visible at the back, holding a glass of wine in one hand and otherwise shrouded in shadow. He didn’t think to wonder how the door had opened. “Are you amenable to conversation, sex, or Galehaut-hating?”

“I would be open to at least one of those things,” a voice said, and the blood in Gawain’s face went cold. Dinadan stepped out of the shadows, swilling his glass. “It sure is hot out there, huh. Care for some wine? It’s artisanal. I got it from the Czech Republic.” 

“Is the Czech Republic a big wine country?” asked Gawain, with a nagging dread settling in his stomach. He didn’t know what else to ask. 

“Not really,” said Dinadan, without further explanation. 

Gawain backed up slowly, barely managing to stop himself from falling when his foot met thin air above the top step of the porch. “I’m good,” he said, “thank you though. Bye! Sorry to trouble you again. Enjoy your accordion!”

“I don’t play the accordion,” Dinadan started before the door shut again. 

A fox crossed the road three times. Gawain saw it on the fourth. 

“Hey,” he said, and the fox looked up hesitantly. “Are you named Dinadan?” 

The fox did not respond, or shake its head, or even make any movement to indicate an answer, but Gawain knew it was not, in fact, named Dinadan. It did not attempt any small talk about the weather, for one. And then, the fox turned and began to trot over the quiet asphalt. Gawain didn’t know what else to do but follow.

He walked. And walked. He didn’t ring a doorbell for fear of accordions or wine or tall vaguely Slavic-Italian men with glasses waiting behind them. Besides, the fox was not ringing any doorbells. They had been walking for what seemed like an hour, and they were still in the suburbs. Guinevere was wrong, Gawain thought to himself, this was not a land of housewives and transportation systems and urban areas attached to metropolitan areas. Here there was just Dinadan, and foxes, and Galehaut’s famous hot hog. 

The fox stopped on a doorstep. It looked exactly the same as every other doorstep, just in a different door colour edition, with a different veneer of paint slapped on, and a different nondescript car parked outside. Shrugging, Gawain hopped up the steps and rapped on the front door. 

A voice called from inside. “Hello? I’ll be just a minute, who is it?”

That didn’t sound like Dinadan. Grinning with relief, Gawain said, “Hi! Are you amenable to conversation, sex, or Galehaut-hating?”

There was a pause. “Yeah, absolutely, all three sound great.” Footsteps sounded down the hallway and Gawain stood back at the sound of a deadbolt being undone. Then the door swung open.

“Nice to— Deus ossibus .”

In the doorway stood Gawain. The same perfectly coiled brown curls, the same dark eyes, the same half-laughing smile. He was dressed in a lacy robe which Gawain himself definitely didn’t own, and his expression didn’t seem shocked. “Oh, hi. It’s you.”

Gawain slammed the door shut. Then he stood, his heart racing, staring at the polished wood, hoping desperately it didn’t open. After what seemed like an eternity, he got up the nerve to back very slowly down the steps, not taking his eyes off of the doorknob in case it began to turn. Finally, his pulse still pounding frantically in his chest, he turned away to look for the fox, hoping it would lead him ba—

The next morning, Gawain woke up bright and early. He was a chronic insomniac, although because he was from the 6th century he had simply assumed for most of his life that he had a magical affinity for the hours of sunlight. Today’s mission was to perform reconnaissance on the grocery stores near the suburbs and rank them on accessibility, quality, and bisexual atmosphere. He took Toyota and a notebook, and set out for the local shopping square. 

The local shopping square, it turned out, happened to have more grocery stores than Gawain had ever seen in one place packed into a quarter mile squared lot. He had only ever been to Priamus and Friends, Camelot’s small community grocery offering goods like small squirrel woodcuts Priamus had done, or his recipe for sugar free baklava, or some lettuce that Luned had found, and that was perfectly fine for the Camelot residential population. Gawain wasn’t sure why the suburbs needed such an obscene amount of grocery stores — it seemed like there were only five people living there including him and Galehaut — but he was never one to judge. Except, of course, on the proper criteria. 

Gawain’s Suburban Grocery Tour

Trader Joes

• Blindingly middle class. Eminently unsexual. 

Safeway

• I could suck someone off by the bagels, I think. 

• Cashier slipped me his number even though I didn’t buy anything. 

• Maybe I can suck him off by the bagels

Dangerway

• Narrowly avoided getting attacked by the buffet server, who had an axe. 

• No bagel aisle, just bagel holes. 

• Cashier from earlier had an identical twin brother who also slipped me his number.

• Sucked him off by the bagel holes. 

99 Ranch Market

• 100% better than Dangerway. There was a buffet AND no one tried to murder me. 

Esselunga

• Orgy in progress in the pasta aisle.

• Why was there an orgy in the pasta aisle?

• Kind of uncomfortable, honestly. 

• They told me to fuck off. 

Sun Valley Market

• Good falafel.

• Can’t go here with Galehaut. He can’t find out about the joys of falafel.

Carrefour

• French.

Tesco

• Neither accessibility nor quality, but a highly intriguing atmosphere that is both bisexual and deeply depressing.

• Compelling vegetable section, but not appealing.

Hole Foods

• Only bagels and donuts. Very expensive bagels and donuts, but not very good ones.

• There is nothing bisexual or accesible about this grocery store. Disappointed. 

Swiss Migros

• Good quality, but everyone there was Swiss.

Turkish Migros

• No Swiss people! Unfortunately the store is entirely inaccessible due to a glitch on the front sign which makes the M repeat ad infinitum. 

• A nice quantum physicist outside studying the 0dMigros explained the concept of infinity to me.

• Now I know what quantum physics is.

• (It’s the study of things that are very small.)

• She ruined it by saying she could study me.

• FUCK Migros.

Borelle

[claudio u gotta do this one]

Eurospin

[again this is claudio]

At the end of his scouting expedition, Gawain regretfully decided that he should report back to his new husband. The words rattled around his brain for a moment. Husband. He didn’t feel like a husband himself, much less the possessor of a husband. Perhaps he could be the wife, minus the gender requirement.

His malewife thoughts were pushed aside by the sudden, enraging sight of their next door neighbor Dinadan on Gawain’s front porch. Galehaut was talking to him through the window, passing a mug of red wine back and forth and laughing flirtatiously. 

“Oh, hi there, Gawain!” Dinadan turned and smiled with his mouth. “How was your grocery tour? Did you like the Hole Foods?”

“I’ll kill you,” Gawain said under his breath, and then louder, “The Hole Foods was inaccessible and made entirely of donuts and bagels. I was unimpressed.”

“Ah, yeah, I could have told you that,” said Dinadan, lounging back in his chair. “Everyone in the neighbourhood knows not to go to Hole Foods.”

Galehaut laughed, and whispered something to Dinadan, who also laughed. 

“Right,” said Gawain shortly, shifting in place. He reached into his purse and produced the pad of paper on which he had taken notes, and chucked it at Galehaut with a little more force than was necessary. “Here are my notes. We— we should go buy food.”

“Sure,” said Galehaut, who was still making full eye contact with Dinadan. “I’ll come to Toyota in a minute. We haven’t finished our wine.”

“Oh, okay.” Gawain waited and watched in silence as Dinadan and Galehaut took long, slow sips of their wine without saying anything. “Uh— Dinadan!” he said, once the lack of conversation became unbearable. “I had an interesting run this morning.”

“Oh?” said Dinadan mildly, after a final sip of his wine. 

“I noticed the neighbourhood didn’t actually have, you know, any inhabitants.”

“Oh! Well, you were probably out too early. What time was it?”

“Five.”

Dinadan nodded, sharing a knowing look with Galehaut. “That would do it. The neighbourhood doesn’t quite show up until six, you see.”

“Yeah,” said Galehaut. “You probably haven’t even met Dmitri. Or Rasputin.”

“Who’s Rasputin?”

“You don’t even know the song “Rasputin” by the celebrated musical group Boney M?” said Dinadan. “Oh, Gawain.”

“Um,” Gawain said. “What’s happening? I don’t know what’s happening.” He couldn’t make eye contact with either his husband or next door neighbor. 

“Oh, this is bullying. You’re being bullied.” Dinadan smiled not with his mouth. 

“What?” Dreadfully, embarrassingly, Gawain felt himself begin to flush. He never flushed, he stayed cool and calm and collected, but the two of them were staring at him, their eyes laughing and their teeth—

“Gawain?” Galehaut’s voice sounded through the fog of half-sleep. Vaguely, he felt himself being prodded on the shoulder. “Gawain, wake up, we’re at Carrefour.”

“Hrrmgngh?”

“You fell asleep in the car.”

Gawain opened his eyes. It was sunny out, as it had been before, and he was sitting in shotgun. It had all been a dream, then, he thought with relief, until he scanned his brain and found he could not remember how he had gotten in the car in the first place. There was a faint scent of wine. “Huh!” he said. “Sorry. Let’s go buy some turnips.”

They made their way inside Carrefour, the grocery store which Gawain had suggested they try first due to the fact that it was French and thus might bring up positive memories of their dearly departed friend. Galehaut, his messenger bag slung over his shoulder, tramped suspiciously inside after him. He didn’t like it when Gawain brought up Lancelot. It wasn’t jealousy— he was too amiable and overall generous for that— but rather the uncomfortable emotions associated with realising someone else views you as an object of envy, mainly because that someone is horribly, terribly lonely. If only, he reflected cattily to himself, Gawain wasn’t such a manipulative back-stabbing little git. Then he might have some friends. 

But there were more important matters to ponder. Namely, his ongoing theme of the day had been a sudden and gripping preoccupation with the concept of homosexuality. Was he a homosexual? Was he gay? He owned a lot of land and felt that should offer him some sort of pass on the whole affair. 

“Everyone at this Carrefour desires me carnally,” Gawain said, suddenly behind him. 

Galehaut jumped. “No,” he said. “I mean, surely not everyone.” 

“Everyone.” Gawain nodded and picked up a turnip. “The French sure know their turnips—” He stopped short and the turnip fell out of his hand. For a very brief moment he stood gaping at a spot behind Galehaut, but then his face rearranged into an expression of smug nonchalance. “These are the best turnips I’ve ever seen. I think we should get some radishes too, while we’re at it.” Then he winked.

When Galehaut turned, he himself did a double take to find a Carrefour worker had approached behind them to offer them a small cart for their groceries. This, on the whole, was not an exceptionally shocking development, but—

“Can I offer you a shopping cart?” said Lancelot. He was wearing a red vest with a name tag that read Tolecnal. “That way— oh no— I see you’re shoving turnips into your purse. Stop— stop doing that.”

“What?” said Gawain. One hand was on the pile of turnips and the other was inside his purse, but he blinked at them both innocently. “I’m not doing anything.”

“Well there’s — I see them in there.”

“I brought these from home.”

“Ah. Okay then.” He looked Gawain up and down and nodded. “I recognize you as Sir Gawain, who is famous and hot and would never lie, so that’s perfectly fine.”

“What?” said Galehaut who, being caught between delight at seeing Lancelot and terror that Gawain should recognize him as alive, had quite neglected to listen to the conversation. This was good because he had not yet grasped the concept of fake-flirting between friends, and would have been a bit concerned.

“Hi sexy,” said Tolecnal the Carrefour attendant. “How are the fish?”

“Oh, they’re so slippery,” said Gawain. He didn’t know what was going on, and he was worried Lancelot would say something that would accidentally let Galehaut know he was alive. That would be bad, because the only person who knew Lancelot was alive was him, Gawain. No one else knew. 

“Cool,” said Lancelot, giving finger guns at both of them. “If you steal turnips I’m going to get in trouble, so you should stop. Bye!”

“Byeeee.” Gawain waved his fingers as Lancelot left, still discreetly placing turnips into his purse. All Galehaut could do was grind his teeth and avoid staring. 

They stood in awkward turniphood for a moment before Galehaut blinked, shook his shoulders, and said, “Weird man. Weird man. What’s for dinner?”

There was a note on their front door by the time they got back to their house, this time with turnips. It was pinned messily to the wood with a butter knife, and there were marks across the door where it looked like someone had attempted previous note-pinning. 

“The HOA is going to hate this,” said Galehaut. 

Gawain glowered at the knife, for once united with his unfortunate husband in ire. “Yeah. Fuck. This is so fucking shitty. We’re going to take all the blame for this knife in our door. Should we barricade our windows so they can’t find us?”

“That seems like a reasonable response.” Galehaut huffed. “If they wanted to invite us over they could have used less knives.”

“Wait, what?” 

“Oh, you haven’t read the note?” 

Gawain peered at the cramped handwriting. 

HELLO! Happy pride month. Congratulations on being gay! And also, for moving into our neighborhood. Welcome 

to our homes. Haha, just kidding, not all of our homes. But definitely ours! This thursday(today) at 19:30 for merriment and casserole (no blood!) (well, maybe some) (that’s for us to know and you to find out) wink wink. 

It's the one next to you. No, not that one. 

Italian blessings, 

Sebile and Morgan

“What’s pride month?” Galehaut asked. 

“What’s an Italian?” Gawain asked. 

Because no answers presented themselves, Galehaut pushed the door open hesitantly, still worried that the HOA would appear and passive aggressively deliver fines to them. Inside, the house looked as it had before they had left, except for the black slab across from the couch, which was now moving. No sound accompanied the images, but it did not take any to make out the events, depicted like a finely-woven tapestry in motion. Together, they stared for a moment. 

“That man’s really tall,” Gawain said eventually. “Even taller than you.”

Galehaut nodded. “I don’t like his mask either.”

“Or his machete.”

They watched for another minute. 

“Say, why do you think they let him go to space?” said Gawain, who had a vague conception of the heavenly layers and the fixed spheres contained within them. “That seems irresponsible considering how much murder he’s doing.”

Onscreen, the machete snicker-snacked. “Hey, Gawain?”

“Yeah?”

“Do you think this is a threat? Is someone threatening us?”

Gawain paled. “Is it the HOA?”

“You never know.” 

They both jumped when someone knocked — unnecessarily loud, Gawain thought — at their door. 

“Oh god,” Galehaut said. “They’re here.” 

“In case anything happens—” Gawain looked at Galehaut. “I don’t love you.” 

“I don’t love you either.” 

Gawain slowly opened the door, revealing a remarkably cheery Morgan. 

“Oh, hello there! Did you get our note?” 

“Please don’t kill us,” said Galehaut, nearly trembling. He had never before met Morgan and presumed she was an assassin sent by the HOA. “I have a lot of money. Gawain is poor but I will bravely cover for him on this occasion.”

“I don’t need your money! I am a dental hygienist. But thank you!” Morgan smiled at Galehaut with all of her teeth, as if to prove this. 

“Morgan,” Gawain said, “it’s a delight to see you, but you’re going to get the HOA upset with us if you keep sticking butter knives in our door.”

She beamed at him; a genuine smile, this time, and not a tooth display. “Gawain! How is your mother? It’s been too long.”

“She’s extant!” said Gawain brightly. “She’s gotten very into horse gambling. I don’t know how it’s going to go.”

“That sounds like her. I hope her horses are being gambled responsibly.”

“They’re not! How are you?”

“I’m a dental hygienist!” 

Gawain and Galehaut looked at each other. “Is that… a good thing?” Galehaut ventured.

“Well, if you enjoy teeth, gums, and other, then yes! Personally, I find it moderately to very enjoyable. Will you be attending our neighborhood merriment and casserole?” 

“Do we have a choice?”

“No, not quite. We have more butter knives where that one came from.” She gestured to the door while making full eye contact with Galehaut.

“Oh, Aunt Morgan,” said Gawain, laughing. This familial connection had put him back on solid ground regarding his ongoing social struggle with Galehaut. “You’re so funny with your murder jokes. Truly a great role model for an impressionable young child—”

Morgan frowned. “Gawain, you are no less than twenty years old and no more than forty years old, stop your act. Dinner or no dinner?”

“Dinner would be lovely, thank you-” 

“I thought you were a real estate agent?” said Galehaut.

“Correct! Sebile and I do real estate on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and through the entire month of July. But most of the time, teeth are my full time commitment.” 

“Wow. You’re very dedicated.” Galehaut brought his hand halfway up, and then down again, deciding a salute was not appropriate at this time. “Thank you, um, for your service.” 

“You’re welcome.”

Sebile and Morgan’s house was surprisingly quaint. As far as Gawain could tell there were no dungeons, nor closets with writhing bodies or muffled screams. 

“I love the place, Aunt Morgan,” said Gawain. “Your interior decoration is sublime.”

Galehaut glanced around. There was nothing on the walls for the most part, except above the fireplace in the living room, where a single DVD of The Room hung. He had never seen The Room and assumed it was a small chapel. “Gawain,” he hissed, “should we have a chapel? If everyone else in the suburbs has a chapel maybe we should have a chapel too.”

“Egg?” said Sebile. She was holding out an egg.

Galehaut was slightly afraid. The last time Sebile had offered him something, there was blood involved, and then a distressing discussion about gay rights. 

“He’ll take the egg,” said Gawain, giving Galehaut a stern look. “Right?”

“Yes…” Galehaut gingerly took the egg from her hand. “Should I eat it?”

“I don’t know. Love is love,” said Sebile. 

That felt like something to do with gay rights so Galehaut, instead of engaging, placed the egg gently into his mouth. 

“Oh,” he said, mid bite. “This is raw.” 

“Yeah,” said Gawain, looking like Galehaut was embarrassing him in front of his aunt and his aunt’s partner in real estate and in life, “we’re in the living room, Galehaut.”

“What?” Galehaut tried to whimper, but because of the egg in his mouth he just made a whining noise and dribbled a bit.

Morgan clapped her hands. “I think we need to immediately end this scene,” she announced. “It’s beginning to look like the intro to a weird pornography. I want everyone to make sure their pants stay on.”

The guest list ran as follows: Morgan, Sebile, Gawain, Galehaut, Dinadan the perpetual neighbour, a man named Priamus whom neither Gawain nor Galehaut had ever met because he lived in Alexandria and so there would never be any reason for their lives to intersect in any way, and Roger and Susan from across the street.

Gawain had no interest at all in speaking to Dinadan, and in any case Galehaut was already chatting with him in the living room. Morgan and Sebile were preparing dinner, and he didn’t want to bother them. He also didn’t really want to know what happened in Morgan and Sebile’s kitchen, considering he had known Morgan for a very long time, and Sebile had told him she was a huge fan of a television program called Hannibal. Gawain didn’t know what Hannibal was, but it sounded a hell of a lot like Mannibal, the man cannibal from stories, and Gawain only wanted something to do with that occasionally. 

Roger and Susan were another issue. They seemed charming, sweet, and generally well rounded neighbors, but they lived in the suburbs by choice, and that put Gawain off. He looked around. The feeling of everyone talking in pairs around you was an unfamiliar, and highly uncomfortable one for Gawain. And then he realized — not everyone was talking in pairs around him. Priamus from Alexandria was standing awkwardly at the edge of the room with a can of Medieval Sprite in his hand. Breathing a sigh of relief that someone else was experiencing the same situation he was, Gawain made his way over. 

“Hi!” he said. “I’m Gawain. Morgan said I shouldn’t play poker with you?”

Priamus blinked at him for a moment. Then his face split into a broad smile and he stuck out a hand. “Nice to meet you! I’m always honoured to not play poker with people. You’re, uh, one of the nephews, is that it?”

“Yep.”

“Don’t tell me… I’ve heard stories about you all. Are you, uh— let me guess— Aggravating?”

“Highly,” said Gawain, surprised at having been seen through so quickly. It took most people quite a while to realise he was unbearable to be around. Until the morning, at least.

“Oh, okay,” said Priamus, nodding. “Well, it’s nice to meet you. I’ve heard one or two things about you, maybe.”

“Oh?” Gawain was curious despite himself. He gave Priamus a winning smile. “What sort of things?”

“Well, um, hm.” Priamus squinted at the ceiling. “Um, there was something about murder, I think. And the goth thing. Or was that the other one? Maybe cats. Boy cats. Catboys?”

Gawain squinted. “What? What are you talking about? I’ve never engaged in murder ever, that’s illegal. I’m not a Goth, I’m a Scot. And I don’t have any pets.” He thought about this. “Well, I have a horse, but he’s only loosely mine.”

“Oh. Understood.” Priamus did not understand, but he smiled at Gawain, hoping he wouldn’t notice. 

“Thank you, I’m really good at explaining things,” said Gawain. “Say, what do you do for a living? I’m a stay at home wife, but I’m sort of a man, so I’m a house husband, except my gender is housewife, but I’m not a woman. I’m unemployed. I’m the richest man in Britain. I’m not a man.”

“That’s amazing,” said Priamus, and he meant it. “Impressive life you’re leading. Could never be me, but I hope you’re happy.”

“Almost never.” 

“Well.” Priamus glanced around as though to make sure no one else was listening in, and continued, “What’s to be unhappy with? Your husband is handsome and seems nice. You’re extremely handsome and seem tolerable, mostly. Isn’t that a good life?”

“So you think I’m handsome?” Gawain elected to ignore the rest of the sentence. 

“Of course,” said Priamus. “Who wouldn’t? Morgan never mentioned it, but you’re quite good looking, Aggravate.” 

“Hwrrhwggh?” said Gawain, who was experiencing the horrifying realisation that someone was a) mistaking him for his brother, and b) misattributing his own good qualities to his brother. “No, I’m… not… I mean. He isn’t. I’m. Gawain. My. No.” 

Recognition dawned on Priamus’ face. “Ohhhhh!” he exclaimed. “You’re the one my boss Lucius says was an absolute stuck-up asshole when you were both teenagers!”

Gawain walked away. 

Meanwhile, Galehaut was standing on the exact opposite side of the room drinking martinis with Dinadan for the second time that day and making fun of everyone else there, but pretending that he didn’t want to be. “Oh my God, Dinadan,” he was saying, “you can’t say that! That’s so mean! Gawain isn’t here to defend himself!”

“Yes he is.” Dinadan pointed. “He’s right there.” 

“Well, he’s not here here,” said Galehaut, and turned his head sharply and up to face Dinadan. He blinked once, maybe twice, a little too hard. He decided to return to an earlier point of the conversation. “Oh, Mr Dinadan, you really think you could get me into the movies?”

Dinadan gave him a thoughtful look. “I should think so.”

“Really?” Galehaut batted his eyelashes, mostly by accident. 

“There are ways…” said Dinadan, trailing off without extrapolating. 

“Oh? What would I have to do?”

They were very close. “Well, it’s simple,” said Dinadan, his voice very above a whisper. “Meet me Saturday afternoon in front of the Loew’s Theatre. I’ll take you in—” He paused, blinked once at Galehaut’s wide-eyed gaze. Then his sardonic smile slid back into place, taking any hint of flirtation with it. “Unless there’s something playing I’ve seen already, in which case you’re on your own!”

Dinner passed quickly and with a minimum of further commotion. Galehaut spent it in a haze of embarrassment from getting turned down by Dinadan. Gawain spent it in a haze of embarrassment from being mistaken for his brother. Dinadan and Priamus chatted aimlessly about work. Roger flirted with Galehaut, Susan drank heavily and pretended not to notice, and Morgan and Sebile were extremely concerned with their casserole. 

At the end of the evening, Gawain found himself alone. He was normally alone, and never minded it very much, but this was different. Galehaut had gone for a “drive” with Roger, to look at the “fences” on the other side of the “neighbourhood.” Priamus and Dinadan had retired, and after a long talk with his aunt, Gawain found himself stepping out onto the front steps, entirely alone. He took a deep breath of the cold night air. He could hear crickets, and the faint sound of the wind in the trees, and— he paused. Someone was crying, very quietly. 

He bounded down the steps, peering into the darkness of the street. In the pale moonlight he could just about make out the hunched figure of a woman— Susan. He hadn’t noticed her leave, but she sat curled on the curb, her head falling forward. 

“Hey, Susan?” said Gawain, whose primary inclinations to kindness consisted of comforting women he barely knew in strange and unfamiliar lands. “Hey, are you okay?”

“Oh, oh god.” Susan sucked in a breath and laughed, the kind when someone has just caught you sobbing and you don’t know what else to do. “Hi! It’s, um, Gawain, right?”

“Well, technically it’s Sir Gawain,” he said, giving her a gentle poke with his elbow to 

put her at his ease. “I’m a knight from the 6th century, you know.”

Her mouth crooked for a second, and then she burst into tears, which Gawain was simply not equipped to handle. He thought his knight joke was good. It was true, anyways, and the best jokes were usually true. Why was she crying? Why wasn’t she laughing at his knight joke?

“Why aren’t you laughing at my knight joke?” said Gawain, and he tried to edge a little bit of comfort into it. 

Susan’s sobs shifted into raucous laughter, so hard she started to cough. “It’s just,” she said, wiping a tear from her eye, still giggling. “I’m so fucking lonely! And then you come over here, and you ruin my crying session, and you tell your shitty knight joke, and I don’t know! Why the fuck is Sir Gawain from the 6th century here while my husband is off fucking his?”

“Because I saw you crying on the curb,” Gawain said frankly, ignoring how pathetic her words made him feel, no matter that he and Galehaut weren’t even really in a relationship, “and I think you’ve had too much to drink to be out here by yourself. Can you stand? I think you should get inside.”

“Yeah, I’m fine.” Susan stood, but she wobbled, and Gawain held an arm out. 

“Just, you know, if you need.” 

She looked at him, fully. Makeup was running down her face in a cliche, weepy-girl-has-too-much-to-drink way. She just looked tired. “Thanks. It’s been a while.” 

He couldn’t quite understand what that meant — maybe he’d had a bit too much to drink too, or he just wasn’t well versed in middle aged married women who are being cheated on (well, maybe he should be (not that he was getting cheated on (was he?))). “Of course. You live in the blue house, right?”

She did. In silence, he walked her several doors down. He unlocked the gate on the fence for her. He helped her up the steps. When she spent three fruitless minutes attempting to unlock the front door, he held out his hand and accepted the keys. “Go to bed, okay?” he said, when she had finally made it inside. “Don’t think too much about it.”

Susan gave him a very long look. “If I’m lucky,” she said, “I won’t remember anything in the morning.”

Gawain just nodded. He understood this one. He had just started to step back towards the street when she stopped him. 

“Hey,” she said. “Do you want to come in?” 

Pausing, he looked back. “To do what?”

“Just— God, just stay with me? Please? I can’t be alone. I just need to— hold someone’s hand.” In the darkness, she let out a faint burst of violent laughter. “Christ, I sound stupid. Hold my hand, Sir Gawain, I’m so lonely . Oh, God. Please hold my hand.”

Gawain closed the door behind him gently. 

The next morning Gawain made Susan tea with honey and walked back over to his house. Galehaut was in Toyota, asleep. Rather than attempt to wake him, Gawain grabbed the keys from where they rested on the driver's seat, closed the door gently, and locked the entire car. Then he entered the house and phoned Galehaut’s office, explaining that Galehaut would not be attending work today because he refused to get out of bed and Gawain, his long-suffering spouse, was at his wit’s end and also the end of the eggs. He concluded his first hour of consciousness by staring blankly at the wall of his suburban bedroom, wondering why the suburbs made him feel so helpless when normally he was really quite good at helping himself, and also he was very popular and everyone wanted to be him and (this was positive self-talk and thus not vanity) he was very intelligent and hot and cool.

Well, he thought, that was far too much self reflection for one morning. And there were grocery stores to get to. Gawain shoved a still-unconscious Galehaut to the passenger’s seat and started to drive. 

The Hole Foods was an inconvenient distance, appropriate for an inconvenient establishment with inconvenient customers, but irritating for Gawain who had to deal with Galehaut’s sleep talking. There was only so much he could hear about Lancelot at this hour in the morning, and it was beginning to feel too familiar to his night with Susan. 

Finally, waking him became unavoidable. After ten minutes spent silently sitting in the parking lot, Gawain poked him on the shoulder. “Galehaut? Wakey wakey eggs and bakey. I have breakfast for you.”

“Hruh?” said Galehaut, waking up. Upon doing so he discovered he was in a car, and there was no evidence of bacon. “You lying whore .”

“Hm,” said Gawain, unblinking. “Yeah, sorry about that. Just in my blood, you know. Maybe you shouldn’t have married me.” 

“God, I wish.” 

Outside of the Hole Foods, by the out-of-season gourds, there was a figure, dressed vaguely like an excommunicated priest who walked out of the church years ago and never stopped walking. 

“Hello,” he said, in Latin, as Gawain and Galehaut approached. He had an expression like his deigning to talk to them at all was the greatest honour they would ever receive. “Hi, hello, is this the Whole Foods?” 

Not understanding Latin, Galehaut just looked. Understanding Latin, Gawain said, “Yeah, I guess so.” 

The young man looked deeply touched. “Thank you for your service.” This time in French: “My name is Julien Frenchrealistnovel. I will be following you around the store, if that’s alright.” 

“Oh.” Galehaut blinked. “Why?”

“Because I thought we could bond over the terrible French pop-rock musical adaptations of our respective fictional properties.”

“Okay!” said Gawain. “That would be delightful, Julien Frenchrealistnovel! Wouldn’t it, Galehaut?” 

“I don’t know what a pop-rock musical adaptation is.” 

“Well, I bet you aren’t even in it.”

Rather than listen to them bicker any further, Mr. Frenchrealistnovel gestured for them to enter the store in a manner which somehow simultaneously implied the exaltation of their social statuses in comparison to his, yet also the depth of his disdain for their conversation. Inside, there were a lot of holes. There were bagels, and donuts, and some other things that shouldn’t have holes but had holes inserted into them, like potatoes. “Hm,” said Galehaut, and gave Gawain a long, skeptical look. “What exactly are you planning to purchase here, Gawain?”

“Food.”

“What kind of food?”
    “Food with… holes in it?”

“Yeah? It would have to have holes in it, it seems.”

“Why holes?” asked Mr. Frenchrealistnovel, with an expression indicating he felt the deepest shame at having to ask something which to them seemed obvious. 

Galehaut looked at Gawain, who was looking too upper class to have this conversation. He took it upon himself to answer. “This is Hole Foods. It’s for foods that have holes in them, Mr. Frenchrealistnovel.”

“What?” The young ecclesiastic looked horrified at his faux pas. “I thought it was Whole Foods.” (He pronounced this with a hard W.)

“They don’t have Whole Foods in 6th century Britain,” said Gawain, in a voice of utmost patronization. He was feeling embarrassed that he hadn’t planned a shopping list for maximum efficacy, and when he got embarrassed he got snippy. 

Fortunately, to Julien Frenchrealistnovel his snobbish air manifested as cool self-possession. “Oh,” he said. “One must pardon me for my ignorance. Do you know where the asparagus water is? How many holes does that have in it?”

“That doesn’t have holes in it,” said Gawain, who was having an anxiety attack. “Galehaut, do those bagels look sufficiently eatable to you? Do the holes look okay?”

The three of them were standing in the middle of the bagel aisle, which was nearly a third of the store. No one else was nearby, but that didn’t stop Galehaut from feeling the heavy cloak of public shame settling over his shoulders. “Gawain, stop, you’re making a scene.”

“I’m making a scene?” Gawain flung his arms around, wishing someone other than the annoying French priest was watching so he could wink at them. Then he paused and took a second look at the man. His brain made a quick assessment. “Galehaut, everyone in this store desires me carnally, no one’s going to complain. Even this one desires me.”

Julien Frenchrealistnovel looked lost. 

“Oh, come on now—” Galehaut started. 

“ Everyone in this Hole Foods desires me, Gawain, carnally. Right?”

A woman buying artisanal boxed water with a hole in it frowned at him, while a man who was previously agonizing over a bag of under ripe avocados clicked his tongue in approval.  

They bought their bagels very quickly and left the Hole Foods in utter silence. 

    “So I think we should talk about last night,” said Galehaut, after they had unloaded their groceries in silence and then failed to put them in the fridge. 

    Gawain leant back against the marble counter, examining his nails. He wanted to do nothing less in the world. “Yeah?”

    “Well,” said Galehaut, in a voice he thought was non-confrontational but mostly came off as faux-modest, “you know, I know you went home with Susan.”

    “Oh, you do, do you?”

    “Yeah, I mean—” Galehaut stopped. He was a very considerate man in his nature and there were some things he felt very strongly should not be implicated, only stated. “It’s not polite of you to— to use her to get back at me.”

    “Use her to— Galehaut, you’re the one who went off and had an affair,” said Gawain, who had forgotten not to use that word. 

    Galehaut reeled back, his hand veering dangerously close to a carton of eggs on the counter. “An affair? That would imply a relationship, Gawain.”

    “A relationship which we very much have to maintain if we are to find out which of us is Guinevere’s best friend.”

    “Oh. True.” Galehaut paused. Opted for plain reason. “Well, you cheated on me first.”

    “What? When?” 

    “You told me you— you orally pleasured a cashier by the bagel holes several days ago.”

Technically he had done that. Gawain ran a hand through his hair and stared vaguely out the window. Outside, birds chirped. The sun shone. No one outside wanted to attack their husband with a frying pan. “That doesn’t… I mean, that’s not cheating. Like, define a sexual experience, Galehaut.”

“What?” said Galehaut nervously. 

“Explain to me in excruciating detail what a sexual experience is.”

This felt like a trap, probably because it was one. “Uhm,” Galehaut said, with an impressive amount of valor, “it’s when two or more people—”

“Oh?” said Gawain brightly.

Galehaut blushed an impressive shade of red for a man who was not in any actual sense uncomfortable with sex. “It’s when one or more people obtain— pleasure— through the use of their— genitals,” he finished, unable to think of a different word.

“Well, I didn’t use my genitals,” Gawain said, clapping his hands together, “and pleasure is a strong word. Ergo, I didn’t cheat on you.”

“Do you always have to be so goddamn pedantic?” 

“You know, I don’t think pedantic is the word you’re looking for there.”

It was, in fact, the word he was looking for. Unfortunately, Gawain had cast doubt into his mind as to whether pedantic meant what he had thought it meant, or whether it referred to something to do with feet. He felt his heart rate pick up at the potential embarrassment into which he had just blundered, and tried to cover it with a subject change. “That’s beside the point. Everyone knows you went home with Susan. It was very shameful for our reputation and we— we should do something to reinstate ourselves in the neighbourhood hierarchy.”

“Well, you know what they say, sleep your way to the top. Except it seems like you’re already doing that, hm. Where does Roger stand in the neighborhood hierarchy, Galehaut?”

“Do you know how to grill?” said Galehaut, who wasn’t listening. He had drifted over to the window and was staring out at the wide backyard. The sun was shining for the third day in a row, pristine and irritatingly perfect. “I’ve been thinking about throwing a barbecue.”

Deciding to abandon all efforts of previous conversation, Gawain sighed. “I can put meat on flame. Will that work?” 

“I suppose. Do you know how to put fake meat on flame too? Roger is vegan.”

“Oh, he is, is he?” Gawain snapped. A nasty suspicion that he was being baited crept over his spine, and he communicated this thought without the required conversational bridge. “Galehaut, do I look like a fish?”

“Hmm.” Galehaut squinted. “I mean, your features could be considered fish-like. A little in the eye-sockets and the mouth, if you look at it from far away. Almost a carp situation.”

“Huh? What? Are you looking at me from far away? Perv.”

“I think we should invite the neighbours over for a barbecue,” Galehaut said, valiantly shoving them back onto the previous conversation track with the tact of a large bulldozer. “We can do it on the weekend, make it a big housewarming event. Don’t you like— you know, parties, stuff like that?”

“Fine. Let’s do a neighborhood barbecue. But I refuse to be in a room with that Dinadan.”

“Barbecues are typically outdoor events, from what I’ve read.”

An idea sparked in Gawain’s brain, and he clapped his hands. “A tournament! We should throw a barbecue tournament!”

“There are no horses in the suburbs.” 

“You forget about the one in our driveway. And there are so many Toyotas in this neighborhood, I bet we could train them to battle.” 

“But what about the swords?”

“What do you think was in all of those suitcases?”

So despite Galehaut’s protestations, the tournament-barbecue housewarming party was scheduled for that Sunday. Everyone was invited, including all of the people neither was sure existed, because the neighbourhood really was very evil in its nature and no one could be sure how real it was. 

Dinadan arrived first. This was highly irritating to both Galehaut and Gawain, as it was about three hours before the tournament was actually scheduled to start, and he mainly sat awkwardly in their living room making occasional comments on the upholstery. Some of it, he pointed out, was paisley, and some was not. This was the most interesting thing he had to contribute to their day. 

Finally other guests began to trickle in. They had done up the living room extra fancily by removing the copyrighted family portraits hanging from the walls, and Galehaut had put together a variety of hors d’oeuvres, most of which were made of fish. He was desperately wishing he could go down to the river by his castle and catch fish with his beloved boyfriend. Unfortunately the boyfriend was “dead” and the river was very far away, over a thousand years in the past. He contented himself with making little salmon sandwiches using fish that just kind of showed up. 

“Where did you get the fish?” Gawain had asked, looking eavesdropping and evil and slutty. 

“It’s fish,” said Galehaut. “I don’t know what you want from me.”

“Is it from Dangerway? Did you go grocery shopping without me?”

Galehaut gave him an odd look. “It’s fish,” he repeated, and that had been that. Gawain had been able to get no more out of him.

Morgan had nothing but cheerful aunt encouragements on Gawain’s hosting skills, and the creativity of a murder tournament-barbecue event. Sebile had nothing but ominous comments about casserole and Galehaut’s blood. Priamus was allergic to fish, and could only eat the vegan pasta salad that Galehaut had prepared — it was only a single serving, so Priamus had to eat out of the same bowl as Roger, while Sebile, who was determined to taste everything in the room, occasionally wandered over to take some. 

Outside, excited guests were rubbing down their horses and sharpening their lances. At precisely two o’clock Gawain and Galehaut decided the festivities should commence, at which point Morgan produced a loudspeaker and, quite against their will, announced to the whole street: “Everyone get with your partner! You will be jousting to the death. Please kill!”

The first jousting match of the day was between a young couple from down the block, Torec and Miraude. Each got into an identical Honda Civic, drove them at each other at high velocity, and crashed. Galehaut gasped, and looked at Gawain. “This is so much better than with horses!” Whereupon Miraude emerged from the wreckage of her vehicle carrying a large lance. Her ankle had been twisted in the crash, and she limped towards Torec’s car as he frantically attempted to unbuckle his seatbelt. 

He could not do it in time. Miraude withdrew a large knife with her left hand and sawed the seatbelt off, then pushed Torec out of the passenger door with her lance. He crumpled onto the asphalt, half-concussed. “Death or mercy?” Miraude asked, crouching over him with the knife. 

“Mercy,” he rasped. 

The assembled barbecue guests booed. Miraude shook her head.

“Sorry folks, we have a no-murder contract in our prenup.” She helped Torec up and pocketed the knife. “Next?”

Tristano and Isotta, who looked suspiciously like Tristan and Isolde with mustaches drawn on in Sharpie (both of them) were next. Isotta drove a replica(or perhaps the original model) of the Popemobile, and Tristano drove a 1962 Peel P50. This was famous for being the smallest car ever manufactured, only 41 inches wide and 51 inches long. Isotta promptly ran over Tristano with the Popemobile and kept going. Come to think of it, the crowd mumbled, no one had ever met Tristano and Isotta before, nor seen them in the neighborhood, and it was unclear who invited them. 

The afternoon continued, as did various murders. Then, at 5 pm, Morgan suggested they bring everyone back to life and eat burgers. 

“I didn’t know that was an option,” Galehaut remarked to Gawain, as everyone filed inside. “I thought we were just committing.”

“And kill all of our neighbors? Galehaut, what would the HOA say?” 

Galehaut had recently grown terrified of what the HOA would say, and it became Gawain’s only successful strategy in shutting him up. “Oh, God,” he said, paling. “Good point. Well, Gawain, I must say— congratulations on a successful house party. Champagne?”

“Yes, thank you. I must say we did an incredible amount of murder with none of the consequences.” 

They clinked their glasses together, winked, and took a sip. “You know,” said Galehaut, with an impressive amount of humility, “you’re not that bad all the time.”

Gawain gave him a cool look and opted to play along. “Thank you. You as well.” Somewhere over by the grill, Sebile gave a loud cackle. “My ex-girlfriend is an event planner, you know,” Gawain offered. “Florie. She organizes fancy tournaments.”

“Oh, I think I attended one of those once. Does she decorate in excess? Big fairy crowd?”

“Oh, yeah. You know I actually met her through my brother. Do you know Aggravaine?”

“I think I’ve met him once or twice.”

“He never could keep a girlfriend to save his life.” 

“I take it back. You are that bad all the time.” Galehaut took his champagne and the bottle and stalked off. 

“Oh, please, I just seduced a girlfriend, at least I didn’t fuck my neighbor’s husband. Hi Roger.” 

The following day, in order to restock their grocery supplies, they braved another supermarket. This one was Tesco. It was British. 

The main problem of a Tesco is its depressing and desolate atmosphere. Countless people enter a Tesco every year, and some of them even live to tell the tale, so anthropologists have determined that the mind-numbing blandness of, say, your average Merseyside Tesco is roughly akin to the first 200 years spent in the third circle of Hell. It inspires things in people. It inspires extremes of moral depravity. This was the situation that occurred in the vegetable aisle. They returned to an oft-debated topic: whether or not everyone in the supermarket was attracted to Gawain.

"Don't say it," said Galehaut, his voice low. "Please, Gawain, we can't keep doing this. Let's just get our bell peppers and—" 

"Don't tell me what not to say! I'll say it if I want! I'll speak my truth!" Gawain's voice was rising, and various shoppers turned to peer at him. "Everyone in this Tesco desires me carna— mph!"

The kiss took him by surprise and also succeeded in shutting him up, which had been Galehaut's plan; unfortunately it then continued several seconds past the time either could conceivably justify it as a distraction. Then it continued several seconds beyond that, as well, and involved certain things such as teeth and tongues and hands which were not generally used in fake kisses, nor in front of the bell peppers.

Finally they broke the kiss. Everyone was staring at them: Galehaut felt himself turning bright red, and Gawain was flushed as well, although possibly not from shame. Then Gawain shrugged and grabbed a bell pepper. It was a green one, because of course it was. "Okay," he said, and took a suggestive bite of the crunchy and unpaid-for capsicum annuum. "At least one person in this Tesco desires you carnally."

Galehaut squirmed. “Um — oh.” He frowned at something that had caught his gaze. “Behind you.” 

Gawain turned, met with an aggressively blond Tesco employee. The Tesco employee — his name tag said John — looked at the bite taken out of the bell pepper and gave a ‘hm’ under his breath. He didn’t look displeased.

“So as much fun as you two seem to be having,” Tesco John said, looking Gawain up and down, “I am unfortunately going to ask you to leave the premises for the yelling and the making out and the bell pepper and — hey, what’s your name out of curiosity?” 

“Galehaut,” Galehaut answered, which earned him a scoff from Gawain. 

“He doesn’t mean you,” he hissed.

“I mean, either one is—” Tesco John started, interrupted by Gawain offering a handshake. 

“It’s Gawain.”

Tesco John smiled and took his hand. “John. Constantine.” 

Galehaut rolled his eyes.

“Well, Gawain,” Tesco John — Tesco John Constantine — began, “I almost hesitate to ask after, well, all of that, but are you single?” 

“No,” Galehaut cut in before Gawain could say anything. “We’re married. He’s just a slut.” 

“Hey!” Gawain said, at the same time Tesco John Constantine said “Married?” 

“Yes, and we’re — “ Galehaut swallowed, “ unbearably happy together. We’ll be leaving now.” 

“Sorry, mate.” Tesco John Constantine raised his hands defensively. “He’s all yours.” 

“Homewrecker.”

Outside the Tesco, they found themselves with nothing but an uncomfortable sense of vague sexual tension and a half eaten bell pepper between them. They couldn’t exactly go back into the Tesco — being asked to vacate the building aside, Galehaut wasn’t sure he could look any of the customers or employees in the eye after that.

As soon as the two of them returned to the house, Galehaut pronounced he was going fishing. 

“There aren’t any rivers in the suburbs,” said Gawain tightly. These were the first words the two of them had spoken since the Bellpepper Incident. 

“There is a golf course,” said Galehaut, not looking him in the eye. “I will fish in the pond at the golf course.”

“Oh. Well, don’t get eaten by the snakeheads.” Gawain had seen a nature documentary about snakeheads in Florida, and he didn’t know if they were in Florida, so he thought it was best to be safe. Then he reassessed. “Actually, nevermind.”

“What? What are snakeheads?”
    “It was a joke about golfing. Snakeheads aren’t real and can’t hurt you. Have fun!”

Galehaut did not have fun. He was worried about the snakeheads. All he could think about on the way to the pond was little beheaded snakes, wriggling around and trying to eat him. Well, that and the fact that Gawain’s saliva was probably still in his mouth. Both of these upset him deeply. Somehow, Gawain still found a way to ruin his day and fishing trip and he wasn’t even here. 

Gawain, however, was having an entirely separate nightmare experience sitting on their scratchy beige couch. He had been dealing with a pounding headache since the Tesco event, and attempted to take Ibuprofen to alleviate this. Except, he had taken three pills, not the recommended dose of two, and now he was experiencing hallucinations. Gawain was always paranoid about getting too high off of over the counter drugs, he didn’t know how he had slipped up this time. It was probably Galehaut’s fault. But that didn’t matter now, because Dinadan was in his home and there were spiders at the edge of his vision. He was thinking very hard about Dinadan, so hard that it almost seemed as though he was viewing a story written from Dinadan’s perspect… Gawain fell asleep.

The dream never ended, because it was only a metaphorical dream in that Gawain was living out his wildest fantasies. He and Dinadan got queerplatonically married and moved to Hollywood and then split up after six months in an explosive court case that left them both on the tabloids for weeks on end. Gawain started an MLM. The end.

“Gawain!” someone was screaming. “Gawain, you have a fever! Did you eat my casserole?”

He blinked his eyes open. A hazy figure was standing in front of the chaise longue, fanning him with a rolled up Martha Stewart magazine. After a moment’s squinting, the figure resolved itself into Sebile. Gawain scanned his memory. “Your— casserole? At the party yesterday? I thought we were supposed to eat it!”

“Oh, well… you know, are you ever supposed to eat casserole?” Sebile said. She produced a large glass of amber liquid from somewhere and handed it to him. “This is Martinelli’s sparkling apple juice. It will help with the fantasies of running away to Hollywood with your mortal enemy.”

“Wha…? How did you know?” said Gawain, worrying he was obvious. 

“Oh, that’s just what casserole does. Drink up.” She eyed him as he drank. “Galehaut really embarrassed you at our dinner, you know.”

Gawain was too bleary from the ibuprofen-casserole fever dream to recognize such blatant manipulation. “Yeah,” he said hoarsely, eyeing the poker above the fireplace. “Yeah. Thanks, Sebile. Don’t worry about me, it won’t happen again.”

She left quickly after that, and Gawain headed for the bus stop. By the time the bus let him out at the golf course, the effects of the ibuprofen were beginning to wear off, and the thought crossed his mind that he was playing exactly into Morgan and Sebile’s evil enchantress plans. Then he decided that since Morgan was his aunt, and her evil plans had always worked out for him before, that was probably fine. 

Galehaut was where Gawain had expected, standing at the wide artificial lake in the middle of the golf course. The sun was setting. Not bothering to hide the sound of his footsteps, Gawain stepped up beside him. “Hi, Galehaut.”

“Oh! Gawain, you— you really spooked me, haha.”

“Haha,” said Gawain. “Snakeheads get you yet?”

“I don’t think there are any snakes here, actually.”

“Oh, yeah.” Gawain thought about this. Well, overall, he was Arthur’s favourite courtier, and everything pretty much worked out for him all the time. Very dramatically, he said, “Well, there’s me.” 

Then he pushed Galehaut into the pond, where he was eaten alive by Floridian snakeheads.

3.

Galehaut came back unscathed by the snakeheads, as luck would have it. 

“Gawain?” he called, setting his obnoxiously large fishing poles at the door. “I’m home.”

Gawain looked up at Galehaut as though it physically pained him to do so. “I saw the devil and went to hell.”

“That’s nice,” said Galehaut, walking past him to the kitchen. “Hot hog tonight for dinner!” 

This was the only meal Gawain had eaten, besides the dinner party at Sebile and Morgan’s and the tournament, since they had arrived at the suburbs. “My god,” he said, getting up from the couch with great effort. “Didn’t you just go fishing? Must we eat the hot hog again?” 

“Nothing in the pond. Just stacks of mud and rocks.”

“Well I could have told you that.” 

Galehaut stopped preparing the hog. “Do you have a problem with my cooking?”

“Maybe I do,” Gawain said, raising his voice for effect from the living room. He made his way to the kitchen. “Maybe I have a problem with your signature recipe. Maybe it’s exhausting having to live with you and eat the same goddamn meal every night.”

“This is a cherished family recipe. Are you being classist, Gawain?” 

“I thought you were richer than me.” 

“Well sure, but everyone knows that hot hog is a staple of working class life. You just don’t appreciate what you’re given.”

“Not when it’s given by you! I can’t believe I ever agreed to marry you, even for a bet.” Gawain looked around the kitchen. He realized that since he had given Galehaut housewife duties, he hadn’t been in here all that often. He hadn’t even looked in the refrigerator. Gawain pulled open the door and stacks of hot dogs came tumbling out onto the tile. Slowly, he looked up at Galehaut, who was frozen still in front of the stove. 

“Tell me about Galehaut’s famous hot hog,” said Gawain slowly. 

“Gawain, I can explain—!” 

“Yeah, I’m sure you can. What is it, from Safeway?”

Galehaut’s face was an unorthodox combination of embarrassment and venomous hatred. “No. It’s— you could say it’s free range farmed.”

“What?” shrieked Gawain, who didn’t like the look on his face. 

“Extended hog.”

Gawain blinked. “What?” he said again, but now it was from confusion. 

“Elongated pork?”

“What are you talking about?”

“Uh, nevermind.”

“What the fuck is wrong with you? Why are you so fucking—”

“Why am I so fucking?” Galehaut’s face was turning red with rage. “You really are something, Gawain, you know that? Acting so much better than me just because you didn’t have an affair, flaunting yourself around this house. Flirting with that Constantine at Tesco just because I was there. At the end of the day, you’re just a whore with a superiority complex, aren’t you? Even if we weren’t fake married, you deflower everything you touch. Oh, Jesus, what the fuck is that noise?” 

    “It’s Dinadan playing the accordion,” said Gawain, too numb to bother keeping up the pretense.

    “You mean you hear it?” 

    Gawain snapped his neck around. “Newsflash, asshole, I’ve been hearing it the entire goddamn time!” 

    “Why didn’t you say anything?” 

“Because I hate you!”

The doorbell rang. 

“Well, that’s probably Dinadan, isn’t it?” screamed Gawain. “Coming to see what all the fighting’s about.” He picked up a 2x4 plank that was sitting on the ground for unexplainable reasons. 

“Gawain no!”

“Why not?”

The doorbell rang again, two more times. 

“What is it, Dinadan?” yelled Galehaut, stalking to the door.

Guinevere was standing on the doorstep, cool and smiling. “Well. Good evening boys. It’s lovely to see you.”

Coda. 

It had been six months in the suburbs, although it had only felt like a week or so, and Guinevere had finally come to check on them. When they had expressed surprise at how quickly time had passed, she stared at them like they were stupid. “Did you set your watches to suburbs time?” she asked. 

They hadn’t. 

 They had lost the bet, obviously, as soon as Guinevere had seen Gawain on the verge of murder and heard about Galehaut’s affair. It turned out Lancelot was Guinevere’s best friend anyways. And that’s who Gawain found himself sitting beside on a Tuesday morning ten years later, when the suburbs were very far from his mind. They sat on the bank of a river in the middle of nowhere in particular, listening to the wind whistle through the long willow branches and the birds chirp. 

“You know,” Lancelot said, in that thoughtful voice that meant his mind was very far away. “I haven’t thought about Galehaut in a while, but he used to take me to rivers and we would go fishing. I think he had a fishing kink.”

“Yeah.” Gawain thought back to memories he hadn’t taken off the shelf in years. “Yeah, he definitely had a fishing kink.”

Lancelot blinked. “Wait a second,” he said, “how do you know Galehaut’s kinks?”