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“Why– will you not– just– sink?”
Palomides was standing waist-deep in water, hands pressed to Tristan’s shoulders and thighs clamped firmly around the other knight’s torso. He had been trying to drown Tristan for about ten minutes but, push as he might, the body beneath him would not slip under the surface.
Tristan had submitted to these attempts in a self-satisfied silence, fingers half-heartedly laced around the nape of Palomides’ neck. At the sound of the rhetorical question, he perked up:
“Oh, Dinny didn’t tell you? I can’t sink. Magic-enhanced buoyancy,” He beamed at the sodden and fuming Palomides, slipping his hands down to rest on the other man’s chest. “I think it’s like Gawain’s sun thing. Or maybe I just got cursed,” he frowned, thoughtful. “I don’t actually remember. I get cursed pretty often, did you know that?”
Palomides glowered at where his rival bobbed beatifically in the water, hair spreading out beneath him in a halo of bleached ends. Al’ama, he despised that hair– blacker than a moorhen’s wing, yet Tristan still insisted on dying it an eye-straining shade of yellow. The worse part was that he didn’t even have the decency to look bad afterwards; it suited him, just like everything else. Even now, in the process of being drowned, the bastard remained impossibly handsome. I hate him, Palomides thought abruptly. I hate his hair and his clothes and the way he smells after a joust and those ridiculous long eyelashes. He dug his nails into Tristan’s shoulder, and the resulting gasp filled him with something sweet and vicious.
“I wonder what other noises I could get out of you,” he muttered, absentmindedly circling a collarbone with the pad of his thumb. He smiled at the sensation of Tristan’s body tensing between his legs. And then stopped smiling. Did Tristan think–? Don’t even stop to consider it, whispered a voice in his head. Talk about anything else, anything other than the feel of his body under yours or the things you want to make him moan. Buoyancy. Talk about buoyancy. Tell him about Archimedes’ principle. Palomides cleared his throat.
“Feh. Magical buoyancy, as if. I bet it’s actually due to all that empty space in your pretty little head. Like...” He slid his hands up Tristan’s neck, felt the flex of jaw muscles under his soaked grip. Tristan inhaled sharply and leaned into the touch, baring the soft, droplet-flecked roll of his jugular. Something in Palomides’ stomach clenched.
“…Like.” Palomides found himself desperately casting his eyes away from his rival, trying to complete his thought, trying not to think about the shifting space between them. A shared tension seemed to hum through the points where their bodies met, and Palomides was suddenly very aware that he was still straddling Tristan’s waist underneath the water, that Tristan’s hands had come to rest on his hips. He felt the smooth turn of Tristan’s cheek– warm, now, too warm– and then, impossibly, lips brushing against his palm.
He looked, then. He couldn’t help it. He looked and he saw Tristan, radiant and pinned beneath him, all heavy-lidded eyes and strong shoulders and flushed skin and– no. Stop this. Think about buoyancy instead, you know about that– oh Allah, his skin is so soft, I– no. Buoyancy. Archimedes’ principle. Fish. He finally managed to get ahold of himself, and looked down at the other knight with what he hoped was a sneer.
“Like the swim bladder. In bony fish.”
“I love it when you talk dirty to me,” Tristan purred, before sliding Palomides’ fingers into his mouth and biting down.
Hard.
The next few minutes were an incomprehensible blur of strained muscles and angry splashing, punctuated by loud swears in Cornish and Arabic. Without their swords or armor they couldn’t do each other much damage, and neither knew how to swim, so the fight quickly dissolved into an aquatic wrestling match with no clear winner. It eventually got too dark to continue, and they were forced to crawl back onto the bank, devoid of the energy to do anything more than lay next to each other in the mud. On their backs, breathing heavily, grins hidden behind their hands. Looking everywhere, anywhere but each other.
—
Dusk crept over the lake in a quiet, purple haze, heralded by nothing more than the marshy tang in the air, the chitter of grebes, the orchestra of crickets. A patch of reeds rustled to their left– a water vole, perhaps, returning to his mate. Or seeking out a rival.
Or, maybe. Maybe both.
“I,” panted Palomides, “I. I really will kill you one day.”
“Sure,” Tristan smirked, propping himself up on an elbow. Something about it seemed uncomfortably intimate, as if Palomides had just woken up next to him in bed. As if they were– the warm wet of his fingers in an other man’s mouth, the graceful slide of tongue around knuckle– well. It didn’t matter. He had an attractive enemy, so what? He forced himself to return Tristan’s gaze, to maintain the charged eye contact even after he felt his face grow hot. They were breathing the same air now, faces close. Tristan looked like a painting, with his tangled dripping hair and his torn doublet and that infuriating, long-limbed elegance. Palomides wanted to punch him, to tackle him. To kiss him. No–
Tristan stood up, suddenly and with a breathless little chuckle. Palomides watched apprehensively from his position on the ground, waiting for the inevitable parting insult.
“Sure,” Tristan repeated, “I look forward to the day when you’re finally man enough to take me beneath you.”
And then he walked away, leaving Palomides alone amongst the reeds with his mouth agape and fingers smarting.