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While the count trends slightly toward Lancelot being the rescuer and Gawain the rescued, Gawain plays the role of savior on this occasion. Lancelot had been kept in the tower for the better part of a month, the whim of a lady who’d offered hospitality, then decided to be less hospitable when he’d refused her advances.
Lancelot doesn't mind the reversal of roles. He dreads those times when Gawain is missing or in danger, and more so, he's fond of the way his spirits soar when he realizes yes, Gawain has come, and he meets his friend's eye, and finds himself the recipient of such compassion and violent protectiveness that the coldest heart in the world couldn't fail to melt in response. At present, he is still giddy from that rush of feeling, seated in a clearing where they've stopped for the night, fondly looking on while Gawain finishes tending the horses.
Lancelot smiles when Gawain gives Gringolet a last pat before drawing back over, but his pleasure falters at finding his grin met with a sudden frown, then a sound of shocked disapproval. Gawain drops to one knee and swears at him, moving Lancelot's arm abruptly aside. "Christ almighty! Why didn't you tell me you're bleeding?"
Baffled, Lancelot follows Gawain's gaze to the blood beginning to spot through his worn, filthy tunic. He lifts the garment to bare his abdomen, then frowns more deeply at the red-stained bits of cloth Gawain had woven around the wound before they’d begun riding. The cut had been inflicted during the escape; Gawain had given him a dagger to fight with, Lancelot’s own weapons stolen away, armor long gone. He’d mostly hidden behind his companion and let Gawain cut his way past the lady’s soldiers, but there’d been no shielding himself entirely.
By the grace of God, the scratch was all he’d gotten.
Or well. It wasn’t precisely a scratch.
“I hadn’t realized,” Lancelot admits, poking at the soaked-through fabric. “Ow.”
Gawain huffs, rolls his eyes. “Off,” he orders, and Lancelot wrangles free of his tunic. Gawain rifles through his bags; produces a wine bladder, first, which he passes over wordlessly. Lancelot hardly needs to dull his senses to endure a little pain, but he drinks anyway, because he does wish to dull his emotions.
It isn’t that anything terrible happened while he was held captive. He’s just—very glad Gawain came, and that he’s safe. It’s a lot to feel, and whilst Gawain has never shamed him for his habit of falling easily to tears, Lancelot has never liked doing so in front of a man he’s never seen cry at all. It’s a matter of pride. Two long swallows help to settle him. Gawain takes the wine and draws his own swallow, then sets it aside with a rakish grin.
“Can’t let you steal all of it,” he tells Lancelot, red-gold hair wild from his helm. There’s a fresh cut along his left cheekbone, not deep enough to scar. A bruise on his jaw. He’s still in his mail, though has removed his gauntlets. In the orange of twilight, every inch of him seems lit through as with fire.
Lancelot’s tongue goes heavy in his mouth. Used to his silences, Gawain fishes in his bags, then kneels beside him with a small pouch of herbs, along with a mortar and pestle. A bottle, too, of what Lancelot recognizes as vinegar. There’s no use pointing out there are better ways to take up space in his saddlebags, that at the very least, he could grind his herbs before setting out. He’s tried. Gawain insists some things are more potent made fresh.
“Would’ve seen to you before the horses,” Gawain muses as he peels a garlic clove and deposits it into the mortar.
“I said I hadn’t realized.”
“That doesn’t make it better.” He throws in dried leaves seemingly at random. ‘You spend too much time lost in your own head. A man ought to know if he’s about to bleed to death.” Gawain’s hands slow in their task. “I hope… There’s nothing else needs seeing to, is there?” A pause, then a tightening in his voice when he asks, “That lady didn’t do you any harm?”
Lancelot grimaces. “No.”
A nod, a smile thrown out like it’s nothing. His eyes remain dark. “I should have been faster.”
“You must have come soon as you found out.”
“Still.” Gawain’s frown deepens, his jaw set. “You’re always very quick when it’s me who needs saving.” He jams the pestle down harder than Lancelot thinks necessary. Gawain’s hands tremble a little. He shakes his head. “Give me that wine.” When Lancelot does, he takes a long drink, his throat bobbing. Belatedly, Lancelot notes signs of wear beneath the glow of sunset. He is pale, his eyes sunken and lined with dark circles. He hasn’t been sleeping.
“Is something amiss?” Lancelot asks, now frowning. “You look…”
Gawain bites his lip and frowns harder yet, looking at his herbal concoction in so troubled a manner it’s frightening. “Last time you ran into trouble,” he says, slowly, “it was Hellawes. Who wanted to kill you, so she could ravage your dead body.”
“I dealt with that,” Lancelot says insistently.
“Yes. But.” Gawain gives a few more jabs with his pestle. “Things like that happen to you often. Sometimes I am afraid…” He trails off.
Lancelot touches his shoulder and tries to smile. Gawain peers back at him, intent and still so tired looking, like he’s of a mind, at present, to put Lancelot in a secure room and plant himself in front of the door, standing guard with his sword out. Lancelot’s ears heat. He breaks eye-contact to study his hands.
Gawain goes back to pounding at the herbs. When he’s finished, he adds vinegar to the concoction and soaks pieces of linen with it, then packs the wound and binds everything up tight. Partly due to the wine, but mostly because pain has never bothered him a great deal, Lancelot endures the treatment without difficulty, instead watching Gawain with an abundance of interest. It’s always delighted him that Gawain should be so adept at healing when he kills nearly as easily as Lancelot himself.
By time Gawain has finished, watching him, being in his presence, has cured the worst of Lancelot’s lingering unease. He relaxes and has a few more drinks of wine, picks at food Gawain has stowed away. Though Gawain drinks down his own share of the wine, he doesn't seem as able to forget his fears. Every so often, he eyes Lancelot as if expecting him to disappear, or perhaps in fear of discovering some new wound Lancelot failed to notice. It’s odd behavior. Gawain so rarely seems to worry about anything at all.
“We should sleep,” Lancelot suggests eventually. “All will be well in the morning.”
Gawain wipes a hand across his face, then gives one of his more charming smiles. Boyish and a little embarrassed. “I’m becoming—” He fishes. “What’s the word? Mawkish. Something like it. I can’t say what’s come over me. I’m just—” He stares at Lancelot, his eyes alight from the flickering fire. Drink makes his words blend a little. “S’like it’s been building up over time. Like it was fine when you got hurt the first time. Or when you were kidnapped once. Or, or, what have you. But it keeps happening. S’ getting… harder.”
Lancelot blinks. This is not the sort of thing they talk about. It isn’t the sort of thing Lancelot knows how to talk about. “I mean,” he says, stammering. “You—Do you have a right to talk? You’re in dire straits as often as I am.”
Gawain snorts. “It’s different for me.” He seems to have emptied his wine, and casts it aside with a sigh. “More like, more like it might be for you, when it’s the queen.” He nods. “Aye, like that.” Then, a yawn. A shake of his head. “I ought to…” He trails off; Lancelot has shot from his perch on a felled log to kneel in front of him.
Indignation swells in Lancelot's breast. “Are you implying you care more?” he asks, grabbing him by the arms to give him a shake. “That’s—that’s…” He doesn’t know what it is, but he doesn’t like it at all. Unable to give voice to his upset, he plows inelegantly onward. “I wish you should not speak as you do. So grimly. It is not like you.”
Bafflingly, Gawain responds with a smile. “Oh. You’re so. So.” He puts a hand on Lancelot’s cheek. Before Lancelot can make sense of that, Gawain sort of falls forward, onto his knees, so their faces are level and very close. He stares into Lancelot’s eyes. With tender fondness, he asks, “Can I kiss you?”
Can he… Lancelot doesn’t understand at first. Then comprehension dawns, and his stomach sinks. Can he kiss him. He isn’t asking after something like a kiss to the forehead. There’s no world in which Lancelot could misinterpret the way Gawain's eyes have darkened, or how they’ve dropped to his mouth.
This isn’t right. It isn’t right at all. This is Gawain, who is his closest friend. One of Arthur’s best knights. Asking to—kiss… him. Another man. Asking to kiss, to properly kiss, another man. Who is Lancelot. His friend. A man.
It’s late now, and dark. So dark he can’t see anything except the dimming fire, and the shadows it sends flickering across the two of them. His heartbeat thrums in his throat. This isn’t right. Oh God.
Lancelot puts a hand on Gawain’s shoulder. “You are, you’re… drunk. And very tired.”
Gawain’s eyes focus all at once, like Lancelot has thrown cold water over him. He falls onto his backside, blinking fast. For a long time, he stares at Lancelot with outright horror. Then he shakes his head, hard, once, and moves away further. “God,” he says. “Damn it to hell. I—” He breaks off and backs toward the tree line. “I need to…” Another unfinished sentence, abandoned as he disappears into the darkness. Unarmored, unarmed, on very little sleep, and if not drunk, not sober either.
Lancelot stares frozen after him.
Nearby, Gringolet makes an accusing horse noise.
Lancelot doesn’t go after Gawain, but he doesn’t sleep either. Can I kiss you? And the way Gawain had fled. And—what he’d said before, which Lancelot hadn’t thought about because it sounded like a hundred other remarks Gawain has made over the years. The comment about how when Lancelot went missing, it worried him the same way Lancelot feared for the queen’s safety when she was in harm’s way.
He remembers now, with a dipping stomach, the way Gawain had followed him after he’d first come to Arthur’s court. It’d been mostly odd and bewildering, so Lancelot had tried to ignore Arthur's strange nephew and his queer fascination. Then Gawain had undertaken some adventure to save two of his mother’s damsels, and later he'd sent Lancelot horses and lances against Galehaut, when Gawain himself had been forced from the fray after nearly dying in a terribly uneven battle. Lancelot had begun to return his interest, and after they'd come to know one another, Lancelot had forgotten the initial intensity of Gawain's awed curiosity.
Looking back now, Gawain’s behavior does seem rather less in line with that of a fellow knight interested in Lancelot’s prowess, and rather more like—a lady, attempting to court him? No, not quite that. Like some, some improbable melding of the two.
Lancelot paces agitatedly for a time, then sinks to the ground before growing restless and pacing some more. His side hurts badly from all the movement, but it’s stopped mattering. The more he thinks about it, the more certain he is that this hadn’t been one of his friend’s thoughtless whims, or something born of intoxication or exhaustion. Gods help him, how many times in the past has Gawain referred to Lancelot's beauty in his hearing?
“Can I kiss you?”
Lancelot wonders what he should do. He certainly can’t tell anybody. Once, he'd seen a church with stone carvings along its outer walls, and one of them had featured sodomites burning in hell. The figures had been so oddly carved he hadn’t understood and had needed to ask the priest about it. The priest had explained the imagery, and when Lancelot questioned him as to the actual problem with sodomy, he'd received a brief lecture that leaned heavily on the term 'abomination,' and which also detailed appropriate responses to deviant behavior.
The exchange had been so troubling that it’d put Lancelot into one of his tempers, and his ire had sent the priest scurrying off. As he sees it presently, any sinfulness which might lurk in Gawain’s attraction is of the same category as Gawain’s laying about with women who aren’t his wife, or his indifference to God or church or prayer. It's certainly no worse than Lancelot bedding Guinevere before he’d concluded their relationship was more appealing when it didn’t involve intimate touching. It isn't disgust or worry over the supposed deviancy which bothers him, and he'd sooner lop off a limb than let Gawain be shamed for it.
But he fears what it means for the two of them. He has no idea what he should say, how he should act, now that he suspects—
Something hard and flat slaps against the space between his shoulders. Lancelot jumps and yelps, turns to find Gawain with his sword drawn and staring at him with frustration.
“You ought to stop that,” Gawain tells him sharply. “Do you know how dangerous it is to get so lost in thought somebody can call your name for five minutes and you do not hear them? What if you were to come across somebody keen on a fight?”
“Oh,” Lancelot says, blinking. “That’s happened before. It worked out. Did you hit me with your sword?”
“It was that or a rock.” Gawain sheathes his blade with an impatient noise. “We ought to be going.”
Lancelot realizes that Gawain has already saddled both of their horses. Their things are together and ready to go. The sun is up.
He looks around, touches his wounded side to find that it’s nagging him terribly.
“There’s an abbey not far down the road,” Gawain tells him as he swings onto Gringolet. He isn’t wearing armor, must’ve gotten that packed away as well. It makes him seem oddly vulnerable. Once he’s settled, he adds, “We should reach it by tonight. I thought we might stay there, then go separate ways. Morgan has been missing me.”
Lancelot digests this with a frown. Gawain might as well have said, I will take myself off your hands, and go somewhere you won’t feel guilty about not following me. He is trying to make it easy, without actually addressing what it is.
This leaves Lancelot feeling even more tired and hollowed out. He ignores the ache in his side as he staggers onto his own horse without breakfast or relieving himself or even having a drink of water. It doesn’t matter. He’s in one of his moods, one of those that Gawain sometimes teases him about, where his feelings occupy so much of his awareness that nothing else seems relevant.
Gawain keeps silent as they ride. Lancelot tries not to stare at him. “Can I kiss you?” The question has begun to echo in his head alongside all of Gawain's adoring looks, alongside memories of seeing him in the stands at more than one tourney, watching Lancelot. Several times, knowing his identity, others… seemingly unaware of it, though it’s always seemed he’s paid Lancelot undue attention no matter which arms he bore.
Eventually, his willpower fades and his eyes fix on Gawain’s back.
Surely there’s a misunderstanding. He can’t be a sodomite. Perhaps it shouldn’t be so shocking. It’s only, Lancelot would’ve thought such a man would be less—normal. Less adept at arms. Less strong and honorable and Gawain-like. Less admiring of women. If Gawain is a sodomite, then it’s as if anybody can be a sodomite. It’s baffling. The priest, who’d explained about the carvings, had made it sound like such a dramatic perversion. And nobody else talks about it.
Lancelot had assumed it is something that doesn’t often happen in Arthur’s lands. At his mother’s castle, in the Other World, such things had been more acceptable, but there are a lot of things fay do without judgment which are very, very wrong. It’d been easy to group sodomy with a category of other behaviors, like stealing away unattended infants, or blinding somebody who sees you when you’d rather they hadn’t.
But Gawain, asking to kiss him, does not feel on part with child theft or causing permanent blindness.
“Would you.” This time, Lancelot does hear Gawain’s voice, and he jumps when his companion spins Gringolet to face him. Lancelot stops his own horse, and his stomach drops when he sees the way Gawain’s eyes flash, the rage in the set of his jaw. Gawain has to take a deep breath and restart his sentence. “Would you stop watching me? I’m not going to ravage you on the road.”
Face heating, Lancelot sinks into his saddle. “I,” he begins, his tongue sticking his mouth. “Can I kiss you?” asks the Gawain of his memory. He shakes his head, unable to bear having those eyes on his face. “I need to relieve myself. I didn’t. Before we left.”
Gawain scowls, but it’s one of those dark looks he pulls out when he’s genuinely upset, but would rather seem angry than troubled. He gestures for Lancelot to get on with it.
Lancelot dismounts. Then sways as his stitches pull and his head spins, and his stomach gives a hollow protest.
“We could eat, now,” Lancelot says. “This is a nice enough place to stop.”
Gawain briefly shuts his eyes. Then reluctantly slides from his horse. “If you insist.” The wording seems intentional. If you insist. I’m not detaining you, it says. I’d let you be free of me as soon as possible. Do not resent me for this.
Lancelot tries to smile a thanks. Fails. Ties off his horse, instead, then wanders into the trees for a moment of privacy. When he’s finished, he returns to the clearing to find Gawain sitting against a tree, his head bowed as if he’s struggling not to doze off. His eyes snap to Lancelot, then lower and stay fixed on his knees.
Lancelot digs in his bags and pulls out a bit of bread. Then sits. He glances at Gawain and remembers his hand on his face. “Can I kiss you?” Gawain hadn’t even returned to the clearing trying to deny his intentions, or laugh it off, or insist it didn’t mean anything. As if he’d lacked the heart to even attempt to do so.
“You should nap,” Lancelot finds himself saying.
“We’ll reach the abbey in a few hours,” Gawain says dismissively, then scowls like he’ll fight if Lancelot pushes the matter.
Looking away, Lancelot picks at his bread. He hates this. It’s terribly uncomfortable. It isn’t right at all. The truly convenient solution would be—God help him—if he shared Gawain’s unnatural proclivities. It would be lovely, even. Lancelot can imagine Gawain’s surprised disbelief should Lancelot answer his request for a kiss with belated acceptance. If he’s correct, and Gawain has held feelings for some time, he’d likely be very enthusiastic.
The wretched thing is, if he did not know better, Lancelot would almost think he does have such feelings. Whenever he’s been captured, after all, he’s been as certain of Gawain coming for him as he knows Guinevere had been certain of Lancelot’s doing so. He’s looked forward to it the same way, imagining Gawain riding up on his horse, looking like himself, before swooping forth and setting all to rights.
He’s always been partial to having Gawain heal him, as well. And it’s never failed to make him sit straighter on his horse when he catches Gawain watching him at tourneys. Then there are the times when circumstance has led to Gawain appearing before Lancelot in some state of undress, and Lancelot has been compelled to make a close study of his knightly strength. Or the times Lancelot has admired the shade of his hair. Or how astoundingly giddy he feels whenever he catches Gawain’s eye, and Gawain gives him one of his terrible, reckless grins.
Then there’s actually fighting Gawain, which is altogether one of his favorite things. And if sometimes, when they’ve sparred, it’s affected him physically, everybody says that happens during fights. Not that he’s had that problem with Tristan or Gawain’s brothers or anybody else, ever, but Gawain has always been different.
Lancelot stops murdering his bread.
“Oh,” he says, aloud, shooting to his feet. Gawain’s head flies up. He had begun to nod off. Now he’s blinking wildly, looking around, hand on his sword. Lancelot discards his bread and stares at him.
Surely if Lancelot is the sort of person who possessed unnatural urges, he would’ve known. Surely that’s not something a person can not be aware of? Except he has… been aware, after a fashion. He’s been aware that he finds Gawain attractive, anyhow, and that he likes to look at him, and that he feels strong things toward him.
But those feelings have never struck him as unnatural or immoral. Rather, they’re so easy and wonderful and familiar it’d never occur to him to associate them with something supposed to be sinful.
Gawain stands slowly. “Lancelot. You don’t need to have one of your—episodes, over this. Don’t run off into the forest. Please. Don’t—go mad. Would it be better if I left?”
“I want to try something,” Lancelot says, voice trembling with nerves. This has swiftly gotten overwhelming, but it’s not a bad feeling. It’s like a great many dislodged pieces of himself have slotted all into place, and now the entire world makes vastly more sense.
Gawain eyes him as he moves closer. “Try. Something?”
Lancelot only stops when they are nearly chest to chest. Summoning his courage, he gives Gawain a soft, brief kiss.
Gawain freezes.
Lancelot lets his mouth linger close, their noses touching. He waits, his heartbeat loud in his ears. His mouth dry. When Gawain does not push him away or protest, he kisses him with more intent. Gawain makes a noise that shudders through Lancelot’s whole body, then responds with an odd degree of caution. Like he’s waiting for Lancelot to pull away. Or maybe afraid of making him do so.
Eventually Gawain picks up confidence. Before long, they end up on the forest floor, Gawain on top of him, kissing him as if he would not mind devouring Lancelot whole. Lancelot’s stitched side aches, but that's the least important thing in the world. The hot, burning energy that spikes through him whenever they spar surges now, except this time it isn’t bound up and frustrated, doesn’t tug aimlessly at his skin without hope of release.
Now it’s free and simmering out, between them, dancing along every place their bodies touch. Lancelot’s hands tangle in Gawain's hair, move across his back, and it occurs to him that he could do this forever and never stop. He wouldn’t mind staying in this clearing, in this forest, kissing Gawain until the heat coursing through his blood burns him entirely to ash.
But Gawain pulls away vastly too soon. He hesitates with his head still bowed over Lancelot's, then sits up and gives a sharp exhale. The frown which crosses his lips is not promising. Grimly, he says, “You were horrified when I suggested this last night. What are you doing?”
“I hadn’t thought about... it,” Lancelot says, uneasy. “Nobody talks about this sort of thing. It… wasn’t in my head. Then you—put it in my head. And I did think about it.” The speech is so garbled and clumsy, Lancelot fears it'll only make things worse.
Instead, Gawain's frown softens. “That’s not what I imagined you were thinking about.”
Lancelot looks away. “I… It must seem foolish. That I wouldn’t—realize. But—”
“I understand." Now the frown has vanished. Hope makes Gawain's eyes soft and bright. “It’s not foolish at all.”
“You can kiss me. That’s what I should have said last night.”
Gawain shifts so he can press his mouth to Lancelot's neck, a grin in his voice. “I don’t think we should go to the abbey.”
“No. We’re both tired. We should camp here.”
“And my aunt. Probably best I forgo that visit.”
“Joyous Gard isn’t so far off. Only—um, a very brisk fortnight’s travel.”
“You’ll want to go there to recover from your ordeal,” Gawain agrees, lips whispering across Lancelot's throat. “With your closest friend to tend to you.”
Lancelot tries to kiss him in response, but Gawain's remark seems to have reminded him of Lancelot’s wound. He moves away and begins cursing in Gaelic, then orders Lancelot's shirt off so he can ensure they didn’t cause any further damage. Lancelot complies with a soft, true laugh, and Gawain smiles even as he continues his scolding. When he has finished redoing the bandages, Lancelot insists Gawain try to sleep, and takes him in his arms for the sheer joy of being permitted to do so. As Lancelot drifts off alongside him, it is with the drowsy certainty that no man could ever have been happier than he is in that moment.