Chapter Text
The earliest memory Gwaine had, the one he held close to his chest, hung on a chain and glimmering gold, was that of his mother’s hands. He remembered them blushed and calloused with work, dirt under the nails from every odd job she kept to keep them afloat, but most of all he remembered how they felt pressed against his arm, his hand, his cheek.
“We love with our hands,” she had told him, a memory eroded by time and under boot. Gwaine traversed the same paths so frequently, wandering the forests of his mind in search of secrets he might have overlooked, a glimpse of a man or a word gone unnoticed, that the images with which he was familiar began to wear down. He liked to think, when she had told him that, it might have been a sunny day, one of the few that season. He thought, perhaps, she had been beautiful in the golden air, a goddess to her eager son. When she had said it, she had put her hand on his, covering his short, dirtied palm with her own labour-worn fingers, and the warmth conjured had flowed through his body like life itself.
He reminded himself of this when he felt his knuckles collide with the jaw of some nameless man at the tavern. His joints popped, his mind fuzzy with drink, and the room around him exploded into a kind of commotion he was used to by now – one he hungered for like a ravenous coyote. It was too easy an outlet, especially when a couple strangers had set it up so perfectly for him to join.
Arms wrapped around him and he struggled against the strange electric coil in his chest. A fist came hurling towards him and he dodged, imagining its sharp impact and aching echoes reverberating through his skull, and he told himself he didn’t want it – knowing, at his core, that this was true. Between all the fighting and gambling and drinking, he had suffered far fewer injuries than one might expect, even himself, but he knew to anticipate the split-second doubt, the wicked temptation to receive a touch so condensed it hurt.
Between all the impassioned bodies and panting before dawn, he sometimes wondered whether getting beat around the head might not be preferred. He sought out flesh either way, keened under the low light of a stranger’s room and lips on his throat, but a sickness in his gut tended to rear its head and clamp down on his stomach like a dog. It was a battle between raw fury and desperate connection, and Gwaine supposed he had to pick his poison.
With a man’s head under his arm, he pushed his way to the bar. His mouth was dry, his mind clearing in such a way he couldn’t sit with, not amongst the din of the tavern. Creeping sobriety never did him any good at this point in the adventure – whether he woke up under unfamiliar sheets or in the woods.
After shoving the man to the ground, pushing away the feeling of wiry hair against his palm, Gwaine reached out a hand.
“Pass the jug, huh?” he asked, catching the eye of the man behind the counter.
This man, one of the strangers who started this mess, seemed out of place, almost frantic, though he didn’t question Gwaine’s request. Gwaine took a swig of the ale and felt it slide down his throat like water, felt its heat pool in his stomach and only wanted to bask in it. The man’s eyes darted somewhere behind Gwaine, the beginning of a warning on his tongue, and Gwaine felt it, the shift of the air, the electricity in the room, and turned with a clenched fist without looking first.
He felt bone against bone, sharp and holy.
“What do they call you, then?” he asked, because, really, what was this man doing, starting fights with an entire tavern? He didn’t seem confident or assertive, not in a way that placed him here, of all places.
The man was panting. “Merlin,” he said, heavy but unwavering, like he wanted Gwaine to know.
“Gwaine,” he offered, and outstretched his hand. Merlin’s clasped his forearm, certain and strong and unexpected from someone Gwaine had first coined to be new to all this. Gwaine felt the heat soak through his tendons like magma. He could feel the calluses of a worker, the grip of a man who could not afford to be thought of as weak, and realized he must have assumed incorrectly.
Something pulled deep inside him, a line tethered to the base of his abdomen that tugged uncomfortably. Gwaine thought for a bizarre moment that he wouldn’t mind studying Merlin’s hands, or perhaps laying in them. This was the kind of man Gwaine could see himself getting used to – one who got into trouble and didn’t run, one who had the hands of someone who loved fiercely.
“It’s a pleasure to meet you,” Gwaine said, and it tasted far too genuine on his tongue, so when another man came hurtling towards him and he smashed the half-full tanker on the thug’s skull, he flashed Merlin a grin. “Such a waste, huh?”
Merlin watched him with wide eyes, bewildered or aghast, Gwaine couldn’t take the time to find out. When a knife was pulled – cheater – Gwaine didn’t think. He rarely did, some might say, but he knew better than to run at a man with a blade when he, himself, was only armed with bruised knuckles and a fiery tongue. But something clicked inside him when he saw Merlin’s companion crumpled on the floor, something far too close to caring and a bit short of loyalty, and so Gwaine lunged.
When the blade entered his leg and his mind caught up to him, cool dread soaked through his pant leg with crimson blood. His eyes flickered down to it, fingers pressing near the cut, and he felt it sear like a branding iron. He couldn’t believe how stupid that had been. Where was he meant to go? How, he asked himself, almost hysterical, was he meant to heal this? He, who had intended to stay in this tavern’s inn, but instead had helped destroy the place.
His foot slipped, his leg giving out, because even he could admit this one hurt like hell. In the brief moment he felt himself falling, caught in midair by the back of his mind, he thought of Merlin without a scratch on him.
His temple collided with a stool, and he was unconscious before he hit the ground.
In a bleary state of unawares, Gwaine’s mind drifted back to his mother and the ever-present line of worry between her eyebrows. He felt sheets around him, and curled inwards, feeling the ghost of her touch against his arm, his cheek. A pressure at his thigh sent a strange wave of nostalgia through his body, sickening like too much honey, and he saw her with bandages and a washcloth at the table.
He dreamt of a rainy day, bruised and crying, his mother tilting his gaze to meet her own. Her eyes were fierce, devoted, and despite the hazy grey world they seemed surrounded by, she remained the most beautiful woman he had ever known. Her eyes had been like the earth she tended, like the old wood she leaned over, and in front of the fire he had sworn an entire world crackled and glowed within them.
He dreamt of his mother’s fingers on his own.
“We love with our hands,” he heard her say, kissing his torn knuckles, and Gwaine felt his chest split open.
Mine have forgotten how, he whispered, and watched her weep.
Gwaine blinked his eyes open to a strange room and sunlight he wished to melt into. His thigh felt like it had been flayed open, but his eyebrows only raised when he noted he was, for some reason, shirtless.
His memories were foggy, cluttered, but he usually remembered some part of his steps into bed with an unknown face. Some echo of the evening, the body heat or the smell of their hair – some lingering imprint that he could ground himself in. He felt the rough edges of the sheets against his stomach and shivered.
The door opened, and Gwaine remembered the man’s name quicker than he expected. His stomach turned, cautious and uncertain, as Merlin only stared at him from the entrance.
Gwaine pushed himself up slowly. “What am I doing in this bed?”
He had never been so thankful to learn of a fresh wound. His mind stumbled at the thought of the alternative, the forgotten greed in a night of bare chests and sweat such as what he had suspected. Gwaine fell into those nights without regret, frequently even having fun, but the idea of spending a night such as that with Merlin felt wrong, rushed, dishonest. His eyes drifted to Merlin’s hands, handing him a plate of food now, and ached for them to be pressed against him.
He threw a berry into his mouth, distantly chastising himself – his mother had always said his appetite knew no bounds.
The conversation with Merlin gave him something to settle into, an easy space to explore. The subject of nobility always made him want to squirm or punch a wall, but he let go of such acidity for now. Merlin was a good man, a man who served trays and treated wounds, and he didn’t deserve that edge to Gwaine’s tongue. Gwaine hated to bite at those who did not cause the fury.
“Why did you help us?” Merlin asked, then, curiosity ebbing from his voice like birdsong.
Gwaine sighed and grinned, letting aloof flirtation take the reins as the truth snuck to the back of his throat like a cough he couldn’t get rid of. “Your chances looked between slim and none,” he shrugged, resting his hands behind his head and soaking in Merlin’s attention like a lizard in the sun. “Guess I just liked the look of those odds.”
Merlin’s gaze was scrutinizing, like Gwaine was a mystery he intended on solving, or perhaps a new species of creature on which he was determined to become an expert. There was something comforting about it, though, a sincerity in his eyes that let Gwaine sit under that scrutiny without discomfort. It was almost like a finger trailing across him, and Gwaine let it, drank it up like he was a man in the desert licking droplets from the sand.
“I have to tend to my duties to Arthur,” Merlin said suddenly, and Gwaine couldn’t stop the amused huff that fell from his lips, “but if you need anything at all, just shout.”
Gwaine leaned forward, clapping his hand on Merlin’s arm, and felt muscle and bone push back. “Thank you, Merlin. I’ll be alright, you just worry about yourself, now.”
As the door shut, Gwiane leaned back against the headboard and looked to the window. The sky was bluer than he remembered it ever being before, his palm open in his lap and thrumming with the memory of Merlin’s jacket against his skin. Perhaps this world, these people, would satisfy that hunger inside him, the one feasting on faceless bodies and stinking ale and still left ravenous. He had never had the courage to feed it anything else.
With his head and thigh aching, he remembered so many nights running out of forgotten taverns, bleeding and bruised but his laughter echoing in his own ears. He remembered leaning his head back, mind foggy with cider and nose dripping crimson. It had been so long since he had felt the careful hands of a worried mother. He remembered being an angry child, as much as he wished he had been a good little boy. He remembered scuffles and pulled hair over the careless words of heartless children.
He told himself not to get used to it, this warmth he felt in his veins at the knowledge that someone else had cared enough to dress his wounds. It would only be a matter of time before he would leave, surely – before he mucked it all up and ran with a smile that felt too wide, too tight.
Gwaine thought of Merlin’s eyes, bluer than the afternoon sky.
She would have loved you.