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It was one of those quaint little inns that they stayed at so frequently, on the way to patch up a treaty with King So-and-So, and possibly deal with some Problems along the way in a more surreptitious manner. The two of them sat in the common room, nestled in the corner, warmly anonymous and drinking in the noises of the evening. They had long since finished the first round of wine; dinner was a distant memory, and perhaps they were slightly too comfortable. The familiar topics of conversation had been exhausted, because no matter how circumspect the location, there was a minimum of court secrets that could be discussed even in hushed tones.
“The innkeeper thought you were my wife,” Gawain announced cheerfully, because he knew it would irritate her.
But she was bored enough to take the topic with grace. Tilting her head in her hand, she mused, “I could be. If Arthur met a tragic end. I know you would come around if I pushed the matter.”
“What’s wrong with queen dowager? Don’t you want to be my mother?” he asked, grinning.
For a second it seemed she would have a witty riposte to this, but then she took another sip of wine and seemed to decide it wasn’t worth the effort. “Fuck you,” she said warmly. “Come on, Gawain, won’t you marry me?”
“I hear that everyday, you’re going to have to try harder,” he said, playful with an edge of oh God where is this conversation going Guinevere I hope you know what you’re doing.
“No, no, it’s a-- it’s a hypothetical discussion,” she said, waving a hand at him. “I just-- I mean, I do wonder if I could do it. Get away with it, I mean. I would have Kay to contend with, I suppose, but you’re a very useful political tool.”
“Aw. Thank you. I think you’re a useful political tool too,” he said, then, lending a look of earnest concentration to the issue, to please her if nothing else, he added, “I do think so, yes. If we went about it right. Timing, optics and all.”
“Take a leaf from Morgan’s book,” she mused, her eyes drifting, “and then turn it over and do it right this time, without all the messy witnesses. I’m not advocating filial murder, just to-- just to clarify. I don’t have sons. That’s a benefit.” Then her eyes snapped back into focus and she frowned. It wasn’t much of a hypothetical exercise, more of a daydream. “I think you would be very mad with me, because you love him, just a little bit. You’re so protective of family. But if I really insisted you would follow.”
“This is starting to feel less and less hypothetical,” he said, with uncharacteristic caution, because she was right, really, he was loyal to a fault sometimes.
“You want to know a secret?”
“Mm?”
Guinevere bit her lip, rethinking her confession, then continued in an odd sort of voice, “I talk about it with Morgan a lot. I know it’s not quite fair. He’s not a bad person, not really, and there’s no point. But I just get so angry sometimes. I hate the whole court, Gawain, did you know that? I wish I didn’t have to deal with it. I wish I had normal friends.”
Aren’t we friends? he didn’t say, because he didn’t say things like that. Perhaps he didn’t even think it consciously. “Someone doesn’t have to be evil to ruin your life,” he thought aloud instead.
“You got your revenge,” she said, with a dash of pettiness in her voice, “why shouldn’t I get mine?”
“Oh, yes, and it worked out wonderfully for me,” he noted. But there was something a little sympathetic in it.
“Well, look at it like this,” she said, leaning towards him over the table. “Even if they know you did it, they certainly aren’t saying anything. A very masculine luxury, in all honesty. I hate you a little bit for that.”
He didn’t have an answer for this, for a moment. Then, with an air of confused consolation, “If you’re asking if I would support your attempt the answer is yes, unequivocally.”
Guinevere gave a small hum under her breath, slightly mollified. “Well, that’s good to know, I suppose. You would be very mad at me if I did it. I know that. And-- ha-- pissing you off is probably not a good idea.”
“Well, you know, you’re my family more than he is.” This meant nothing coming from anyone else, and a great deal from him.
“ Good ,” she said, her voice suddenly very dark indeed.
“You will give me advance notice, I hope,” he said casually, as if an air of demureness could return the theoretical to the table.
She didn’t respond, just blew her lips out moodily in an unusual show of childishness. The burbling noises of the inn had quietened enough that even unnamed, vague discussions of illegality would be inadvisable. Still, something reckless was in the air, and neither of them moved to leave their table.
“You’ve really been planning this for a while,” Gawain said somewhere between admiration, humour and bitterness. “I always wondered why you interceded on my behalf, but-- really, you are a genius.”
Guinevere’s eyes widened slightly, and then narrowed in amusement. “What, are you hurt? It’s not like it’s my sole purpose in life. Just a-- what’s the word?-- a thought exercise.”
“Oh, of course,” he granted with a gesture of generosity. “Just a petty amusement.”
She squinted at him. “You’ve got a bee in your bonnet about something.”
He grimaced. “Don’t say it like that, Jesus. Don’t mind me, I’m probably drunk.”
“Oh, you’re definitely drunk, but so am I. Come on.” Then, when he was silent for a moment, she poked at him. “Come on, Gawain-- Gawain, Gawain, Ga--”
“Gawain?” someone muttered at a nearby table.
Gawain shot her a look rife with Now look what you’ve gotten me into.
“--could help you with this issue!” she added on, slightly lackluster. But it seemed to do the job. “Come on, I’m too tired to sleep too. What’s on your mind?”
“Good save,” Gawain said dryly. “But truly, don’t trouble yourself with my petty irritations, you’ll find they make up a great deal of me and I look better if you leave it alone.”
“But I like you looking bad.”
“So does everyone,” he said with false immodesty. And, to prove a point vis à vis his own immaturity, he stuck his tongue out at her.
“No, no, seriously.” She made to take a sip of wine, realised that her cup was empty, and pouted at it. “Entertain me. I want to point and laugh.”
“So that’s why you keep me around, to be an ad hoc court jester.” He grew suddenly more serious. “Why do you keep me around?”
Across the room, someone let out a great guffaw of laughter. Guinevere flicked her eyes over to its progenitor, scowled vaguely, and then returned to the matter at hand with less seriousness than she had for their previous topic of conversation. “Well, let’s list it off, hm? You’re kind of dreadful, which makes me feel better about myself; you’re very good at cleaning up messes; and my alternative ally is Sir Kay. You can hardly blame me for choosing the more amiable option.”
“Oh, of course. I would also choose you over Kay in terms of amiability. Thank you for indulging me.” His expression was utterly unaffected, at the most dryly amused. Casually, he checked his drink, and found it still empty. “Well, on that happy note, I’m going to bed.”
“I shall stay here by myself and make bad decisions.”
“What-- really?”
“No. We’re sharing a room and I have to keep up the façade of our happy marriage.” Letting out a huff of breath, she pushed her chair back from the table and stood. “It’s probably good there’s no more wine. Might say something stupid and emotional. Might decide on a murder.”
“Don’t know which would be worse,” Gawain said flippantly. “No, it’s the first one.”
Gawain gave a friendly wave to the room before they retreated up the stairs, their motions slightly more clumsy than usual. They stood in silence as he fumbled with the lock to their room; awkward, perhaps, in a way to which neither was accustomed. Finally he vanquished the doorknob and swung the door open with a dramatic flourish. “My lady.”
“Not yours,” she scolded, a small, mocking grin on her lips, “not unless-- oh!-- not unless you help my very hypothetical attempt to kill my husband.”
“Bribery!” he exclaimed, and pushed past her unchivalrously to enter the room first.
“Yes, yes, I’m-- I’m tempting you with my body,” she said, shoving the door closed and laughing in that particular wine-drunk way. “Are you tempted? Oh, God, we need to sleep.”
“Oh, what an evil harlot, tempting a good Christian virgin,” he lamented, collapsing on the bed and kicking one shoe off. It hit the wall and they heard muffled swearing from the adjoining room. He kicked off the other one in that direction too, out of spite.
She paused, waited several seconds in silence, and then made a very indecorous noise. Unfortunately the attempt was somewhat mitigated by the fact that she collapsed into giggles shortly after, soon joined by Gawain. “Good and married!” Guinevere proclaimed, yanking her own shoes off and flinging them onto the floor for the sound effect.
“The innkeeper wasn’t enough?” Gawain asked, through a somewhat stupid-looking grin. “Here.” He sat up enough to reach over and grab one leg of the bed, giving it a few jerks so the headboard banged loudly and suggestively against the wall.
It took a moment for her to reign in her laughter, but in a not entirely convincing tone of voice, she exclaimed, “Oh! Boris!”
“Boris? Really?” he muttered under his breath. Then, more believably, “M-- Morgan!”
He clapped a hand to his mouth to stop laughing aloud at her face. “Fuck you,” she hissed through breathless laughter, “fuck you in all variety of exceptionally creative ways. You’re awful drunk. Just terrible.” Then she paused, because wrestling off her overshirt and talking at the same time was untenable in her current state. “Well, that’s nothing new, I suppose.”
“What’s nothing new,” he said, wondering privately at how one’s face could cut from smiling after the warmth of laughter turned icey again. “My drunkenness, or terribleness?”
“Oh, the, the-- the terribleness.” Having vanquished the battle with her overclothes, Guinevere collapsed onto the bed beside him. It was not very comfortable, but she was very tired.
He rolled over to face the wall. “Of course.”
“You’re-- you’re throwing a fit!” she realised, with a certain measure of glee. “You’re having a moment! You never do this! Are you that drunk, or are you losing your grip, Gawain?”
“Both!” he announced dramatically. “Goodnight.”
For a second Guinevere lay in the dark, staring up at the invisible ceiling. She sorted through her options. She could spare his dignity and drop the matter, or she could badger him about it and have her sadism sated but not her curiosity, for he was certain to retract further into himself if she did. It was very late at night and she was tired, so tired in fact that sleep itself seemed too much of an effort-- an idea blinked at her. She raised her voice, pitched it breathy and annoyed. “You’re not as good as you think you are, Boris.”
He didn’t say anything for a moment. Finally, there was a tired huff of laughter. “I know, you’re always telling me that I’m terrible.”
And, with a dash of sour realisation, it clicked. “So-- that’s it? That’s what you’re all worked up about? You’re feeling bad about your-- morals? Or rather, what I think of them?”
“Laughable, I know. I care what people think of me. I care what you think of me. Pitiable, alright.”
Outside their window an owl screeched. Guinevere, in a very determined and only slightly cruel fashion, sorted through the issue. “But you don’t want to earn it, you just want to reap the rewards?”
“Why shouldn’t I?” he asked quietly, as if he knew it was silly even as he said it. “Goodnight,” he tried a third time, perhaps hoping it would prove more effective with repetition.
“I bared my soul to you!” she said indignantly, and then, when there was no immediate response, she reached out an arm and jabbed at him. “You could destroy me, you know. I mean, I would put up a good fight, and I might win, but so might you. The least you can do is be pathetic for my edification.”
With an overwrought sigh, he turned to stare at the ceiling. “Well, anything for your entertainment. Interrogate me at will.”
“Do you…” She sounded out the words. Then she gave up. “Why are you sad?”
“Oh, lord.” He raised a hand and gestured broadly, narrowly avoiding hitting her face when it dropped back onto the thin blanket he was hogging. “You’re going to need to be more specific or this’ll take hours.”
“Don’t be melodramatic. You’re evading.”
“I’m good at that, Guinevere. It’s why I still have all my limbs. Do you like me? As a person?”
She blinked in the dark. “What?”
“The clauses were unrelated. Are we friends?”
“What are you talking about?”
It was too dark to see, but she could sense a sardonic frown. “Oh, tell me what’s wrong Gawain, why are you being pissy Gawain. I’m listening. It’s not a complicated rhetorical-- I can’t think of the word. Jesus.”
“Fuck you,” she said, not entirely certain why.
“If I have to say goodnight again, I will.”
“No, no-- I’m listening. I don’t have a, a-- what’s it called? I don’t have that. Just talk to me.”
“I don’t think very many people like me, as a person. They like me because-- you know, money and power and, and reputation.”
“Oh no, to have money and power and reputation,” she muttered under her breath.
But he was already off on a melancholy tare now, and tried to ignore this. “I think you’re only friends-- allies with me because I’m useful. That bothers me, sometimes. I’ll forget it soon, don’t mind it.”
The lack of a question, somehow, was harder to deal with than the question had been. Suddenly tense and feeling slightly more sober than she had before, Guinevere clutched at the edge of the rough linen sheet. It should have been easy to say a simple phrase of reassurance. It wasn’t. It felt weak.
After a long stretch of silence, Gawain hummed. “Nothing to say. Alright. Goodni--”
“Why the hell would I tell you I fantasize about murdering my husband if I didn’t like you?” she forced out, because the silence felt rotten. “I mean, what’s the point of-- of anything, if you don’t have anyone you like? If you don’t have people who bring you joy? You think I enjoy the little games the court plays, just on their own, to no purpose? You’ve got to have someone you’re fighting for besides yourself. I’m not-- God, you must think me worse than you know yourself to be, if you think that.”
He was silent for a moment. Then, in a sort of small voice, he said, “Thank you, Guinevere. That was very-- inspiring. Touching. I don’t know. Please pretend I have said something charming and trite, I-- thank you.”
“I’ll pretend.” But the bottle, once opened, could not be closed so easily. “I don’t-- I mean, you’re not terrible to me. You’re a terrible person overall, but-- that is-- you’re not alone in that, are you? What does it matter I don’t get my hands dirty? Last month I watched Lancelot disembowel a man. I could have stopped him. I didn’t.”
“Oh, we’ve all seen Lancelot disembowel someone, you’re not special.”
“Well, I didn’t fuck him about it, did I?”
He seemed to temporarily cheer up. “Hey, say that line louder, I think it’ll really contribute to the fiction we’re crafting for our neighbors.”
"I know you fucked him, Boris!" she proclaimed, a tad too quietly to actually be heard by the neighbors. Then the smile sloughed off her face and she flipped towards Gawain, pensive. "No, if you're-- I mean-- it's hard for me to say, so I'm not going to, I'm just going to talk around it. And the fact that I don't have to say it, that you know … God, this is hard. Look. If it bothers you that much when I disparage you, I won't do it. Really. It's only a-- a tactic to feel less lonely, in the end."
The silence that followed was more contemplative than cold. “I suppose I don’t really mind that as much as I should, that's not-- I know I’m not a good person, I’m not trying to be otherwise. I sort of admire those who do but I can’t seem to manage it myself. I-- wanted surety.”
"You have it," she said, warmly, almost, or as warm as she could make herself. "Besides, you really think I'm smart enough to know that strange, reclusive young prince in the dungeons would turn out to be-- I don't know-- you? I appreciate the credit, but I just thought you were in the same situation I was, and that meant we could look out for each other. Call it stupid and sentimental, but I was a very idealistic young girl."
“I would hope-- I would hope that you were right,” he said, and it sounded like a peace offering. “I mean, that's what we were talking about earlier, with--” He paused. “My uncle.”
In the dark, Guinevere sighed. Then, in a burst of loneliness, she reached out a hand and grabbed Gawain by the waist, pulling him towards her in half of a hug. The dark was the only place one could talk about such matters without the fancy language and allusions. "I don't know if I'll kill him, in the end," she whispered. "I would like to talk it out with you, sometime. Not now, obviously. It's a pointless revenge and I might easily end up worse than I am now. But I want it so bad. I know that hurts you, I know you love him. I'm-- I'm really sorry."
Gawain let out a held breath. “Despite what people say I don’t always get everything I want. I’ve killed a lot of people I don’t think deserved to die, it doesn’t weigh on me so heavily. Whatever you decide, you know, I’m always-- on your side.”
“Always?”
“Mhm.” He laughed faintly, edging towards exhausted hysteria. “You can say goodnight now, I’ve used up all of mine.”
Guinevere snickered, tugged him closer, tucked her chin just above his shoulder. “Goodnight, Gawain. Have good dreams.”