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Chapter Text

Hi, I love your Merlin fics! I love how you set up Gwaine and Leon’s relationship in Worth. Could we please have something where Gwaine is the one dealing with self doubt and Leon is the one comforting him?

It would surprise most people, Gwaine knows, that he does not choose to drown his sorrows in spirits and bedfellows. Perhaps that in and of itself plays no small part in his current wallowing. Nevertheless, he adjusts the small bag hanging over his shoulder and continues to walk.

The woods are quiet so early in the morning. A few deer have stopped in their grazing as he wanders past, looking at him curiously, large brown eyes lingering on his form for a scarce few seconds before returning to their breakfast. Birds call out to one another. Rabbits dart about and scamper back and forth, leaves rustling. He has a fleeting thought that dashes away with one as it flops its ear at him and continues to make his way along the crest of a small hill. He steps over a large mossy log and heads down toward the river.

There is a single flat rock overlooking one of the wider sections. He eases his weight down, propping his boots against another rock, reaching into the bag for the small roll of bread he'd packed earlier. One of the nice ladies in the kitchen, Malwen, had given it to him shortly before he left. He recalls her expression, sweet and knowing as she pushed it into his hands, and allows himself a small smile. She, he knows, would not be surprised to know how he drowned his sorrows.

Perhaps that makes her unique.

He sighs, putting the remainder of the roll away and letting his head hang. There is no audience here in the woods, save for the creatures that go about their lives here. They don't know his reputation, they don't know his performance, they only know him as the strange and somewhat bumbling two-legged that sometimes comes to sit by the river. He thinks he might prefer to be the strange two-legged for a while. Not Gwaine.

Gwaine was an incorrigible flirt, an amusing drunk. Gwaine was the butt of the joke for the Knights of Camelot, the irritating and only somewhat endearing fool that caused just as much trouble as he helped solve. Gwaine was the one with the wandering hands and wandering eyes who could never understand something like feelings or sacrifice or hardship.

Gwaine is…tired. He's so very tired.

He hears a crunch behind him and just as quick he's on his feet, reaching for the small dagger at his hip, only to nearly stumble into the river.

Leon. Of fucking course it's Leon.

Leon was not the butt of the jokes, and if he ever was, it was because he allowed himself to be. Leon was the perfect fucking knight, Camelot's First Knight, the closest to the King and the most beloved by the realm. He couldn't even say a bad word about Leon, not outside of the petty comments that he only made because he was the troublemaker and Leon was the fucking perfect one.

And here, as he stands with his armor and his red cape flowing resplendently in the breeze, looking at Gwaine with what could only be thinly-veiled disappointment, Gwaine feels his sorrows curdle in his gut as he plasters a smile across his aching face.

"Leon! Come to join me in my wanderings this morning? Never thought I'd see the day where you'd venture into the woods without a patrol and a horse."

"I've noticed your absences from early morning training. Figured I'd come see who was keeping you."

The words, spoken not to be cruel, hit him all the same, piercing his chest and landing frigidly in his gut. Still, he shakes his head and winks. "Come to catch me in the act, eh? Didn't take you for the sort of man that likes to watch."

Leon doesn't reply, just tilts his head. Gwaine can feel the smile beginning to fade and rushes to affix it back in place.

"Well, I'm afraid you've not gotten lucky today, my friend. I'm the only one here this fine morning." The smile turns sharp. "Unless, of course, you've come for another reason too?"

"I'm not here to engage in a woodland tryst with you, Gwaine."

"Mm. Pity. We could've had such fun."

Leon just rolls his eyes, glancing around. Memorizing the location, probably, which means Gwaine will have to find another place to go to cope with his sorrows. He feels no small regret that he would no longer be able to come back here, the breeze doesn't come too harshly around the bend in the river, the rocks are never damp, the hill provides good cover from the back…

But he comes here to be himself, and he couldn't do that if any knight from Camelot could just so happen to stumble in after him.

"Well," he sighs, dusting himself off with feigned nonchalance, "we'd best be getting back, then. No use in the both of us missing training if we're not going to be having any fun doing it."

Do you know the other thing Gwaine can't help but resent about Leon? The man has an unerring capability of finding out the truth.

"What troubles you, Gwaine?"

Fuck. "Me? Well, currently, I'm slaving away at my disappointment, but—"

"Gwaine."

"What? Can you imagine something so awful as to expect that—" this time, Leon cuts him off with only a look and he sighs. "It's nothing so awful it won't keep me from training."

"It's managed to do so for a few weeks now."

See? If he weren't on the receiving end of it— and not even the fun sort, the facade snorts—he would be impressed. Right now, he just shuffles and tries to disguise it by fiddling with the strap over his shoulder. "A man has to satisfy his wanderlust somehow, you know. Settling down in Camelot isn't how I saw my life going."

"Nothing keeps you here."

His head snaps up. "What?"

Leon just looks at him strangely. "Nothing keeps you tied to Camelot. If your wanderlust is so insatiable, you could chase it once more."

Is…is Leon telling him to leave? It's a remarkably cruel joke, especially for him, and he's left so open and unguarded by it that he doesn't have time to realize his pain is written all over his face. "Well—I—what's that supposed to mean?"

"Precisely that. If being a knight is not where you see yourself, then perhaps it would be better if you sought your life elsewhere."

A lump grows in his throat. It grows and grows and grows until all he can do is nod and stuff another hunk of bread in his mouth, because Gwaine is the knight constantly obsessed with food and it saves him from trying to figure out what the appropriate thing is to say to that. Leon turns, cape fluttering elegantly in the wind, and he stomps after him back to Camelot.

After that, it's hard not to take the jokes personally. His incompetence, his overconfidence, his brashness, his lack of grace and decorum. He's never begrudged himself for not learning the politics and manners of court, but as the laughs strike him with all the fury of loosed arrows, he wishes that maybe, just maybe, there was something he could actually do that they wouldn't laugh at him for. But he's Gwaine, so he smiles and laughs and jokes right back, trying to think of somewhere else he can go to manage his sorrows.

He can't leave Camelot. He won't leave Camelot. Despite what Leon might think, there are things keeping him here, but he won't tell them what they are. Not when it would only lead to more jokes.

But his luck is not to last, it seems, when he comes down the front steps one morning to see Leon returning from some errand. He stops, offering a modest nod, and Gwaine nods back.

"What wakes you so early this morning?"

He thinks about making a joke, but he shakes himself out of it. "An obligation."

"Do you require assistance?"

"No, but thank you for offering."

Leon looks at him a moment longer before nodding and sweeping off to somewhere else. Gwaine shoulders the large bag and begins to walk down the streets, smiling and greeting the bakers and the merchants and the other early risers. He rounds the corner to the broken cobblestones and sets down the bag, whistling.

In a moment, the hoard of kids scurry from the abandoned barn and surround him, plying him for stories, to tell him their own, to sit in his lap, to be carried just for a second. It breaks his heart when the littlest one, Celeste, holds her arms up with tear stains still fresh on her cheeks. Nightmare, the others mumble, and he pulls her into his lap, wiping her tears and bouncing her up and down until she giggles. He shares the food and the few stories he's made up since the last time he saw them, laughing as they try to act out what he's saying as he tells it. They try to get him to stay for longer, but he can't. Not when he just saw a red cape fluttering out of sight just down the street.

He manages to make it back to the citadel before whirling on Leon.

"I don't care if you stick your nose into my business," he says, voice low and stern, "but do not interfere with theirs. Are we understood?"

"Are they yours?"

Gwaine sees red. He just barely restrains himself from punching Camelot's First Knight and instead grits his teeth. "Are you so small-minded that you believe me capable of showing affection only to children that are mine, or is it that you think I cannot stop myself from fathering bastards left and right? Huh? Is that all I am to you?"

"I didn't—"

"Or are you trying to figure out what it is keeping me here when it's obvious that no one wants me here?" It's the first time he's seen the unflappable Leon look anything other than sure of himself. "Well?"

"Gwaine, you need to calm down."

"No, I don't! I do not need to calm down when I've just been followed like a common thief and accused of subjecting countless women to the pain of childbirth without offering them the proper support a father should. I do not need to calm down when the lives and well-being of innocent children has been threatened, and I do not need to calm down just because you said I have to!"

He's shouting, he knows. He's finding it very hard to care. He'll suffer the ding to his reputation—not that it matters much more anyway—as he whirls on his heel, storming off. He hears the murmurs and the whispers and he lets them harden into armor, his boots thumping on the stone. He throws open the door to his chambers, tossing his empty bag aside and all but sulking on his bed.

He'll regret it later. He'll have to apologize later. He'll suffer for it later. But for now, he'll pout and sulk and throw his tantrum and try and figure out how to put his heart back in his chest.

There's a quiet knock on his door.

He doesn't acknowledge it, but then there's a creak of the hinges and the flutter of fabric and he's not ready yet, he's not ready for it, he can't do this yet—

"I know I may be the last person you wish to see right now," Leon says, "but I can't leave you like this."

"You can."

"No," he says, just as softly, as he approaches the bed, "I cannot. Not when I owe you such an apology."

Gwaine glares at him from under his lashes and sighs, resigning himself to a shitty apology that will turn into a lecture where he'll have to make his own apology. He is not prepared, then, for Leon to sink to his knees in front of him.

"What—?"

"I'm sorry. I'm sorry for following you, into the woods and into the city." He takes his hands and holds them tight. "I'm sorry for all of it, my friend, I didn't mean to upset you so."

He swallows. "Why did you follow me?"

"I was worried."

"Worried I would find some way to sneak away from my responsibilities?" he can't help but spit.

"Worried because you were upset and you weren't coming to any of us, not even Merlin."

Gwaine blinks. Then he blinks again. "You—you what?"

Leon's face falls even further, if such a thing is possible. "Gwaine, you've been quiet for months. You haven't been going to the tavern, you've not joined us for a drink in our chambers, you've not even gone on your walks with Merlin—don't look at me like that, he's been trying to get you to tell him what's wrong too—Gwaine, even Arthur's worried."

"…he is?"

Leon nods. "So I thought to follow you, just to see if you were alright, but you—I fear I just made things worse, and then this morning, you were—you looked so afraid, I—"

"I looked afraid?"

"Yes. Like you were about to be hurt, and I didn't realize that it was me that would hurt you until I…did."

Gwaine sighs. He takes his hands slowly back from Leon's and pinches the bridge of his nose. "None of those children are mine. They're just street kids who can't get by when there's not harvests going around to share. I help them out."

"Of course you do," but it's said softly, not in a mocking way, "you're the kindest of all of us. I'm sorry I accused you."

"Is that truly what everyone thinks of me? That I'm such a brute that I could father a dozen bastards with no regrets or remorse?"

"No, Gwaine, that's not—"

He curses Leon's perceptiveness. He curses himself for being so easy to read.

"Oh, my friend," he murmurs, reaching up and brushing Gwaine's hair back from his face, "we've been cruel to you, haven't we? With the jokes at your expense, with all of it…why didn't you tell us that we were hurting you?"

He chokes out a laugh. "What good would it have done?"

"What good—we would've stopped! We wouldn't have kept up with them if we'd known how hurt you were by it, we are your friends, your brothers, we wouldn't have done something if we knew that it would be causing you pain."

Gwaine gets up. He has to get up, has to walk over to the table, has to brace his hands on the edge and bow his head. He can't do this right now, he can't. Leon will flay him here. He'll be so exposed, so raw, so stripped of everything he's let Camelot know about Gwaine that he's not sure he'll ever recover.

But he doesn't get what he wants.

Or rather, he gets exactly what he wants but would never have the courage to ask for.

He lets out a wounded noise when arms wrap around his waist, a head resting heavily on his shoulder. His knees threaten to buckle as warm breath puffs across his cheek.

"I'm sorry," Leon whispers and Gwaine shakes his head furiously, "forgive me, forgive me…"

"Stop," he croaks, "you have to stop."

Leon pulls away a little, but doesn't let go. "Why must I stop? Let me comfort you."

"You don't want that."

"Why don't I want that?"

"Because I'll—I'm not—I'm not what you think," he manages, he's going to cry at this rate, "I'm not just some lecherous bastard that sleeps with whomever catches my eye, I'm not some stupid man-thing that can just bounce back so easily when I'm hurt, I can't—I won't be able to just forget this."

It's the closest he'll let himself get to saying it. Leon is quiet for a long moment before there is a hand on his shoulder, turning him around, and he's being pulled into his first proper embrace since—since—

Oh.

Oh.

Oh, no.

"Forgive me," Leon whispers, voice curling gently around his ear, "forgive me, forgive me…"

"Leon—"

"I'm not going to forget, Gwaine, I'm not going to assume, not anymore…I'm going to try and keep you, don't you see?"

" Keep me? You want—you'd want to keep me?"

"Is that not what I have been trying to do all along?"

"But you—but you're—I'm not—I can't—"

"You can," he interrupts softly, holding him closer as though he were the most precious thing in the world, and his head spins, "you can let me keep you. You can come to me when you need to, you can—you can let me help you.'

" Why?"

"Oh, Gwaine, have I not made that obvious by now? I care, not because you are a knight, but because you are you. Do not deprive me of the pleasure of caring for you, please, I couldn't stand it."

Gwaine can't stand either. Not when Leon is holding him so tenderly and telling him such sweet things. He falls to the floor, held fast in Leon's embrace, wrapping his arms just as tightly. Leon doesn't balk, doesn't pull away, doesn't tease, just holds him.

He drowns his sorrows in Leon's chest and thinks that maybe…maybe this could be better now.

Chapter Text

I just reread Drowning of Sorrows. I love the depths of emotion in it. If the muse is so inspired, could we please get more? – wanderingjedihistorian

Gwaine wakes up and is…confused. Because his head is not pounding as though he spent the night at the tavern, something he hasn't done in months, but there is the scent of someone else on his pillow and he—he recognizes it.

Then he remembers.

The children. Leon following him. His apology. Being held and hushed as he cried and Leon—

He shudders at the phantom breath on his shoulder as he cards a hand through his hair, trying to recreate the feeling of gentle fingers scratching at his scalp. He lets out a pathetic laugh at the thought of the others finding out how he's behaving, like some virginal waif just been kissed by a handsome man—that is the role he should be occupying, isn't it? And yet here he is, torturing himself with the ghost of a touch because he's a fool.

He forces himself out of bed. No use in missing the training when he's already to be teased for it.

It takes him until he gets down to the field to remember what else they talked about. How everyone has apparently noticed that he's been upset for a long time, how they're worried because he's not talking to any of them, and how he isn't nearly as good at hiding his hurt as he thinks he is. By the time he realizes that, though, he's already out onto the field and they're staring at him.

Wonderful.

He holds a hand up in greeting, thankful he swiped an apple to stuff into his mouth—or rather, Malwen pushed one into his hands as he passed her in the halls—as he makes his way over.

"Gwaine," Arthur says with a smile, "there you are. Thought you might've gotten lost."

He huffs a good-natured laugh along with the rest of them, only to balk when Leon rolls his eyes. "At least he's not the one who can't find the library after being raised in the citadel."

"Oi!"

"I notice there's no stew in your hair, it must have been a while since you've read anything," he continues as though Arthur isn't the King, even as Merlin chortles next to him.

"You can be the one to start, then," Arthur grumbles, even though he looks more like the petulant child being scolded than the one doing the scolding as he stomps off to his starting position.

Leon winks at Gwaine as he goes and Gwaine—was not ready for it.

Percival thumps him on the back as he chokes, waving off their concern with an innuendo that really isn't that good, but it makes them roll their eyes and stop paying attention to him. Merlin sidles up to him and elbows him—and Merlin probably saw that wink too, which means that he's going to be teased about that later, isn't he?

Sure enough, it takes less than twenty seconds after everyone else has left the armory for Merlin to whirl on him with a grin that spells nothing but trouble.

"So, what did you do last night?"

"Weren't you the one who called gossip a waste of time and energy?"

"No, I called Elyan's blacksmithing stories from when he was eight a waste of time and energy, and you're not going to tell him I said that because he will make me listen to more of them." He sits himself down right next to Gwaine. "So you can tell me all about what you did last night and why Leon winking at you had you choking like you were—"

Gwaine has to shove him off the bench to shut him up. Merlin tumbles off, laughing as Gwaine puts his head in his hands and groans. He's back a moment later, bumping their shoulders together. "Since when do you say things like that?"

"Since you're the one pining so loudly that the trees are getting jealous."

"Oh, like you can talk."

"Exactly! Which is why I'm saying it!" When Gwaine doesn't look up, Merlin's voice quiets, the hand on his shoulder gentling to a reassuring touch. "Oh. It's…it's not like that, is it?"

He shakes his head.

"So nothing happened last night?"

"No," he mumbles, "he…he just stayed for a little and…he just held me."

Merlin shuffles closer, his chin on his shoulder. "Like this?"

"Yes. And he—Merlin," and his voice breaks and Merlin flicks his fingers to close the door and he should scold Merlin about using his magic so blatantly in the middle of the day but he can't, not when he's so not-Gwaine right now, "I don't—I can't do this."

"Do what?"

"I'm not like this," he whispers, " you're not like this, you know it, I know it, but we're—we're stuck now, aren't we?"

And Merlin is quiet, because Merlin does know what he's talking about, he is perhaps the only other person in Camelot who could possibly know how Gwaine feels and he was a fool not to talk about this with him earlier, but then he forces himself to remember that Merlin is the one in far greater danger than Gwaine ever will be and for a moment he feels terribly, terribly selfish, but then Merlin is taking one of his hands and wrapping it around his own shoulder.

"I'm here with you," he says quietly, "I will always be here with you. This you, not the one that you show everyone else."

"I'm here for you too."

They sit in the quiet for a moment, listening to the far away rustle and bustle of the castle, before Merlin nudges him again. "So he held you?"

"And he…apologized for hurting me."

"Do the rest of us need to apologize to you too?"

He shakes his head. He tugs Merlin a little closer and rests their foreheads together. "When I get too greedy, tell me."

"What? What are you talking about?"

He huffs out another one of those pathetic little laughs. "When I start to annoy you, tell me and I'll stop."

"Annoy me—Gwaine, you know I don't care about whatever stupid rules they have for behavior here, right? I grew up in a tiny village where we slept in the same bed when the winters got cold and ate off the same plate when the harvests were thin. I don't care what they say, I care that you're alright. You won't annoy me by touching me."

Gwaine's quiet for a moment too long. Merlin sits up and takes his face in his hands and stares at him.

"Have we—Gwaine, have we made you…?"

Gwaine doesn't say anything. Merlin muffles a curse and yanks him in for a hug.

"Touch me all you want," he mumbles, and he can't even summon the energy for the joke he should be making, "I don't care. If it's what you need, do it. I'll tell them all to bugger off and make it so their shoes won't stay on properly."

Finally, finally he manages a proper laugh. Merlin laughs too, pulling him closer. "You really don't care?"

"No, Gwaine, I don't. I don't care at all. You—fuck, you've had to—because of the jokes, right? You've had to stop yourself from touching all of us?"

"Only so many times I can hear about it before I decide it isn't worth it."

"And Leon noticed, because Leon notices everything—"

"Everything."

"—and he—he held you, right?"

Gwaine nods, burying his head in the crook of Merlin's shoulder. "It was pathetic."

"What, you finally getting a hug after not letting yourself touch anyone else for fear of being accused of something? Yeah, sounds real pathetic."

"Well, when you say it like that…"

Merlin sighs, breath ruffling his hair. "Can I…if I tell him, would you—would that be okay?"

"I think he knows."

"So I shouldn't tell him to cuddle you because it's kind of funny watching you be the flustered one for a change?"

He pushes Merlin off the bench again.

***

Leon corners him. There's no other way to put it. Leon knocks on his chambers after a long day of training and patrols when he knows Gwaine is exhausted from everything and smiles at him and knows that he can't do anything about it.

And he'd really like to put up a fuss about it, he would, but he corners him with food and drink and complaints about the nobles that he knows Gwaine is hungry for because any excuse to remind them all that the nobles are just people who are exceedingly bad at being subtle about just about everything is excellent in his book, and now he's sitting at the table with a belly full of wine as Leon jokes and laughs with him like they're friends who just do this now, and he's absolutely certain that Merlin put him up to this because there's no way Leon is just here now, not when he left Gwaine a sobbing and pathetic mess on his bed, who could care about something like that—

"Gwaine."

"Huh?" He shakes himself. "Sorry, what?"

Leon looks at him for a long moment, then sets down his goblet and reaches over to put another sweet roll on Gwaine's plate. "What's troubling you?"

"Nothing." Leon just gives him a look and he's shuffling and quiet again, looking down at the dark liquid spilling around and around his cup. "I don't…I don't know what's going on."

"What do you mean?"

"I don't know why you're here, I don't know why you're talking to me like—like we're friends."

"Didn't you hear me," he says, voice light and words sweet, "I'm going to keep you, remember? That means boring you with the Council's incompetence and sharing wine when you're—oh, Gwaine…"

For Gwaine had pushed himself back from the table and fled to the window, wrapping his arms tightly around himself and trying to come up with the words that wouldn't sound too greedy and selfish for his own ears. And sure enough, a few seconds later, Leon follows, arms once more around his waist in such a tender motion that he could sob from it.

"Is this too much all at once? Am I being too much?"

"No," he rasps, "you're—you're perfect."

"So are you," Leon responds with that devastating certainty he so often has, "you don't need to pretend with me, Gwaine, I don't need you to."

"I'm not—you won't—you won't like me."

"I like you just fine. I like your big heart, your protective soul, I like your clever tongue and your bold words," he murmurs, as though he isn't stripping Gwaine of his armor once more, "I like your steadfast nature, your strength, your wit, your humor…well, most of it," he concedes when Gwaine lets out a disbelieving hum, "I do like you, Gwaine, you don't have to be so afraid of me deciding you're not worth caring about."

"Merlin put you up to this," he accuses weakly, "didn't he?"

"Merlin may have smacked me upside the head for leaving you on your own—"

"Wait, he what?"

"Don't know how Arthur puts up with him sometimes," Leon mutters, "but yes, he did. And I was none-too-gently informed that if I dared to hurt you again, he would, and I quote: 'make it so generations of knights to come would feel it.'"

Gwaine winces in sympathy but he's learned not to doubt Merlin's threats. Whenever he makes them, he means them. "I don't—I didn't mean—"

"Oh, as if having you in my arms would be such a hardship."

"Leon!"

"Yes?"

"You can't—don't—don't say that."

"Why not? Because it's true? Because it's not what you'd expect from me?"

"Because I'll believe you, and that's—"

"You should believe me, it's the truth."

And Gwaine just…goes quiet. Not just because Leon's hand is now pressed over his heart, holding him against his chest, but because for once he doesn't have any words to disagree.