#sunlight🌞 | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

gingersnaptaff · 3 months ago

Note

💖 for lancelot gawain and ragnelle ?? <33

Hi, Richie! Am super afraid this prompt ran away from me and also I completely fucked up the Lamorak-Morgause affair and aftermath for the 💫story💫 but it's okay cuz you get GAWAIN TIME.

(Also, I hc that Gawain's sun powers mean that when it becomes wintertime his whole body just shuts down. So it is a combo of SAD and chronic pain.)

Anyways, here u go!!!

Sunlight

Gawain supposed it to be the easiest thing in the world, fighting. He knew he was good at it - accomplished even - knew he craved the head-dizzying rush that derived from it, the wounds, the pride, the iron tang of blood. He much preferred it to lording over all, clad in ermine and silks. It was as an integral part of him as breathing. Certainly, it fizzed through his blood as well as the sun's rays, those amber-honeyed shafts of light that effervesced through his being from dawn till dusk. They hollowed him out until he could no longer bear their excruciating rush.

And then, he'd crumple to the floor as if he were a dirty dish rag, devoid of all sense and purpose.

Catatonia, his mother called it.

Witnesslesness, had been Ag's snarled retort when they'd been naught but adolescents traipsing through the sunlit undergrowth of Orkney's forests.

Yes. Witlessness.

A fine word for it, but, in truth, not exact.

Witlessness didn't take him to his bed for months on end once the skies darkened and winter’s shroud set in. Frail and feeble, he'd stagger about in his chambers back in Camelot as gaunt as a wizened old man. He highly doubted it would've sapped his vigour either. Even his hair did not escape from the loss of sun. Its normal fiery hue turned brittle, whitening to the damage shade as the snows that Orkney endured at that time of year.

And now, here he was. Back home. Back at his family’s castle. Its black, craggy walls loomed above him, a gnarled trunk of a thing. Purple raptor-emblazoned remnants snapped in the bitter wind. An imposing welcome for the first-born son, he thought wryly as he stared up at it, the boat swaying beneath his feet.

His stomach lurched. Not even the steadying warmth of his wife’s hands in his could abate the sickness that leadened his limbs.

Cowardness did not become him. Craven, that's what he was. Doddery.

Yet, at that moment, he could not bring himself to care. Let him be so. Nothing would sustain him so much as sunlight. Not even the odd, delighted tingling that had burrowed itself deep in its belly like a dagger in his side.

Orkney smelled the same as it always did in wintertime - salt and snow, and little else. Seabirds swarmed, eagerly awaiting the glut of first they thought the craft would surely supply.

A thin smile came to Gawain's lips at that. They'd be sorely disappointed.

They docked easily enough, despite the choppiness of the sea. Staring up at the castle, Gawain's stomach flipped. Blood all but evaporated from his body. The clouds, dark and foreboding, coalesce above it into a blob.

Soon it would storm.

He sighed heavily, sagging against the wall of the ship. Lancelot and Ragnelle, standing on either side of him, quickly noticed.

“Are you well?” His wife asked, the sultry smoke of her voice fugging his brain.

He nodded, tight-lipped, in reply. Nausea threatened to make his stomach revolt.

God, he'd not stepped off the boat and he already felt wretched.

“All will be well,” she murmured, running a hand through his hair. Dark eyes shining with barely disguised concern, she tutted softly at the beads of sweat on his forehead. And then, sharply: “Lancelot, grab him, won't you? I don't wish for my husband's doddery limbs to give out the second he gets onshore.”

A bark of laughter issued from Gawain's right. Lancelot's blue gaze shone with merriment, a sunlit sea despite the endless grey. “Of course,” he smoothly replied, gallant and guileless. His Breton accent was mink fur against Gawain's skin. His chest tightened, spasming all the more when Lance duly wrapped a well-muscled arm around his waist. A waft of perfume emanated from him; meadowsweet, if Gawain was not mistaken. “Come now, Gawain. You're blushing like a maid!”

He grumbled, shooting him an evil-eyed stare. His head throbbed. Mouth dry he only croaked, “Awful.”

Lancelot's face lit up. His smile sharpened into a smirk. “I'm awful? That wasn't what you said last night. You begged me to alleviate your needs and I did. What am I, if not a charitable sort, eh?”

With a rather put-upon sigh, Ragnelle interjected, “Perhaps you might continue your teasing once you have given our beloved your aid, good sir knight?”

Duly reprimanded, Lancelot nodded and aided Gawain across the ship and down the gang plank.

Glass embedded itself in his lungs every time he breathed. The air was frigid. Sharp. His legs wavered. Bolts of fire shot up his spine. Stomach lurching from the dreariness of his entire being, the feeling of having water-legs, and the now too-solid ground beneath his feet, Gawain knew he'd have to plead sickness in order to release himself from whatever… celebrations his brothers had planned.

“There we are,” Lancelot murmured, huffing goodnaturedly when Gawain slumped against him. Ragnelle immediately took him into her arms. Her eyes were soft, adoring.

Gawain's heart skipped a beat. The Breton knight, the Lake's Son as the bards called him, grinned knowingly, but did not tease him. He was simply content to admire Ragnelle as she deftly maneuvered Gawain over the rocky beach, lagging behind a little so as to let husband and wife have their peace.

“Does your head still ail you?” His wife said, her eyes tight and searching. Her voice blurred in his ears, while she fuzzed in his rapidly distorting vision.

He swallowed. His throat felt blocked. A wheezed crackle left his lips in lieu of words. Suddenly, as if he were a flower sagging beneath frost, the Hawk of Orkney’s body gave out. Flopped forward.

A panicked shriek rent the air: “Gawain!”

He knew no more.

----------

He did not know how long he’d slept for. Minutes dragged on, became hours. Days dragged onto months.

And the bloody snow remained.

It had been Gareth and Gaheris who had dragged his unconscious body half inside the courtyard. Agravaine and Mordred - as well as a flurry of physicians, lackeys, grooms, and other concerned members of his mother's court - had raced out of the castle, their eyes bulging with concern, their faces pale with fear.

What a welcome indeed!

Orkney’s first-born buckled under the weight of his own bloodline-ordained powers, looking as decrepit as an elder.

His mother would've wept if she'd seen it.

Alas, she had perished.

“By Lamorak's hand,” had been Gaheris’ strangely wooden response once he had enquired why their mother had not been to grace his chamber with her presence. “Decapitated her like a craven.”

‘Well, I and the North Walian had that in common,’ he’d wryly commented to himself, even as his heart panged at the loss of his mother.

His mam.

“The Witch Queen,” many in his uncle’s court sneered beneath their breaths.

“Queen Morgause,” the Orcadians would've said, their faces beaming and their postures proud. They loved her as they had once done King Lot, his father, before he had been ripped away from them, his head cleaved from his neck.

And now, his mother had suffered the same fate. Butchered, like a pig.

That ought not to have been her fate, nor his dad’s.

And those who lauded her death as they had once his dad’s ought to have been ashamed. Although he doubted their bodies even possessed a paltry scrap of it.

What made it worse was that he'd missed her funeral.

The rites were not Christian - would never be, not for any Orcadian who possessed a jot of sense - but were of a more… heathen nature. If his uncle - the man who, if Mordred was to be believed, now offered their mother’s killer sanctuary - ever laid eyes on them then he’d expire on the spot, there was little doubt of that.

No, they’d burned her on a pyre and, once all that had once been flesh was now ashes, scattered her on hills of heather and gorse.

“Prickly things, ay, but she would’ve liked that,” had been Ag’s little joke when he’d visited him in-between council sessions and other such duties. He'd uttered it around a wavering sob, while his dark green eyes were shining with unshed tears. “Mordred suggested it.”

That had surprised Gawain. That his youngest brother, so surly and standoffish towards anybody who did not bear the name Agravaine, had put forth such a sweet-hearted recommendation made Gawain wistful for the past.

He'd toddled around these grounds once, his mother guiding his steps and inquisitiveness with an astuteness that made her all the more formidable. His father, not to be outdone, had taken him under his wing in courtly matters and weaponry as soon as he’d decreed Gawain to be old enough to lift a sword.

And… And when each of his brothers came into his life, born in the bed he now laid in, Gawain had held them after his parents and vowed always to care for them. To keep them safe.

Ag's lisp had meant he could never pronounce Gawain properly, opting instead to call him Gavin. And the rest of the family had quickly caved to the second-born's insistence that ‘Gavin’ was Gawain's name for he knew his brother better than anyone. Of course, Agravaine had only proclaimed that because Gawain had caught him sobbing in the scullery late one night after some older lads had taunted him. Once Gawain had confided that it sounded ‘better’ - and after he'd beaten his younger brother's bullies to a bloody pulp - Agravaine had, in his starry-eyed adoration, taken that as writ to tell others that that was Gawain’s proper name.

Once Gaheris, Gareth, and Mordred had come then, well, they had simply called him Gavin too until Gawain was certain that that was his true name. It had leached into his blood and bones to settle there like a second sun, bright and burning.

Yet… when he'd fled with them and his mother to his court he'd been forced to don the mantle of Gawain again, the King’s favoured nephew and chiefest of knights.

Not Gavin. Never Gavin.

Only the hard chrysalis of Gawain remained, sunbleached and unrecognisable.

He sniffled. Chest constricting under the weight of his own sorrow, he found it difficult to breathe. Sobs tore from his aching, bloody throat. Cold tears sapped what little warmth the furs and blankets had cultivated from him, decimating his already declining body.

When had he become as skeletal as dead leaves? Why was he suddenly weeping for all he’d lost when before he’d left Camelot he had been joyous, nay, exhilarated at the prospect of returning homebound?

With a quiet, weary sigh, he scraped a hand over his face, and moved to the side of the bed. That action brought him his first bout of bee stings, for the pain stung him so sharply that he thought a swarm had set themselves upon him. Trying to ignore the dull pounding in his head as he did, he swung his legs to the side and gripped the bed covers for leverage.

Bent-backed by nostalgia’s shroud, he stood. On doddery feet - pad, wait, pad, wait - he moved towards the fogged window where the scantest amount of light knifed through the grey.

Orkney was replete with memories. If he wallowed in them he might never escape. They dragged him down like a rock around his neck.

Bile scorched his throat once more. He wished it were sunlight. Gold and molten and sweet. He craved its cloying, saccharine warmth the way one would a comfit.

He propped himself against the window with a forlorn sigh, his legs all but giving out. It had been a struggle just to walk across the chambers let alone to get to the window. Needles stabbed his soles. Hollowness left him bereft.

The door squealed open. Gawain did not turn around, content to let the stinging white of the snow that blanketed the ground make his eyes water.

“Still no sun?” Ragnelle's voice was a soft hum in his ears. She seemed amused rather than concerned.

Gawain grunted. Words made his throat bleed.

She laughed softly, the noise ringing through the otherwise silent chamber, before walking into the room and up to him. Draping herself against his back - her lips peppered kisses against his shoulder blades and aching spine - her arms curled around his waist.

“It will come soon,” she assured him, her voice velvet. The spiciness of oud clung to her skin and Gawain let himself relax against her, softening into the wine-coloured silks that clung to the curves of her body.

He sighed. Frowned. The diamond-shine of snow glittered tauntingly outside. His head thumped against the window. Cold crisped against his skin, a dull, innervating shock, one that mimicked the ice-hot throbbing of his joints. “I wish it were here already,” he murmured, ignoring the knife-sharp twinge of a thousand lacerations reopening, as well as the blood coating his throat. “‘M only grateful for you and Lance.”

His wife smirked against his neck, pressing a kiss to his hammering pulse. “Your brothers are eating him alive, love,” she wryly declared. “You're missing all the fun. He and Agravaine have already come to blows once this week.”

Gawain huffed out a laugh. The feeble warmth of his breath iced the windowpane over and - his eyes firmly affixed on the flurries of snow that fluttered down - said, “I heard them shouting. Something about borders, wasn’t it?”

His wife hummed in agreement. Her breath sent a shiver up his spine as she murmured, “Lance is insisting your uncle would only need him to defend them if war broke out. Agravaine accused him of glory-hounding and only wishing to better himself within the eyes of the court. Suffice to say it ended with the two coming to blows.”

“To the surprise of nobody,” Gawain deadpanned, surprising himself.

“Gawain!” Ragnelle nudged him reprimandingly. “Your brother is well within his rights to feel slighted.”

He swallowed down the blood coating his tongue. “Ag's has always been a bit… hot-headed in these matters. Him and Lance are like putting a match to a powder keg. Or like rutting goats.”

“Rutting goats?! Well then, they should try and-”

“Wife!” Gawain broke in, shoulders shaking with laughter. “If they did do as you suggest then I'd never hear the end of it from either of them. No. You'd be better throwing them together in a locked room and having them fight it out.”

Gawain saw Ragnelle pout reflected in the windowpane, a distorted wisp one that lengthened her already imposing height and sanded her body of its plumpness. The windswept dark silk of her hair cascaded over her shoulders and she tossed a strand away from her face irritatedly before heaving a sigh.

He reached down and squeezed her clasped hands. The action left his bones throbbing jaggedly, as though they were smashed glass, yet it was worth it for the small smile that bloomed across her flushed face. “Was your ride satisfactory?”

“Mmm-hmm. Gareth went with me. He’d hoped to bring you back some pears or plums, but none were forthcoming. Luckily-” and here she winked before loosening her grip upon him and moving the rifle through the pouch that was attached to the belt around her thick waist. “-I was able to procure one by… other means.”

“Did you raid the stores? You're as bad as Gaheris for that, you know. My mother-”

“By other means,” she cheerfully cut across him, brandishing a pear. Green and ripe, its speckled skin shone with a golden sheen that Gawain recognised as being magical in nature, and he couldn't help but raise his eyebrows in perplexity. “You conjured a pear?”

His mouth was surely agape, judging by Ragnelle’s answering snort. Putting a finger to her lips, she winked.

“How? Why?”

“You were sad.” She emphasised the word as though he were simple-minded.

“About the weather.” He laughed, brightening a little. The ache in his limbs persisted, as well as the tang of blood within his mouth, but the warmth that radiated his body filled in the cracks the withdrawal of the sun had left behind and left him dizzily breathless. Overwhelmed by this simple act of love, he scrunched his eyes shut in an effort to cease the tears that pricked his eyes and rested his head against the window once more. “Not at the lack of pears upon our table.”

She giggled, tinkling and soft, and Gawain chuckled as she maneuvered him to stare at her. Her dark eyes held a mischievous glimmer, clearly pleased with her sneakiness and the reaction that it had evoked in him, before insistently pressing the pear into his shaking hands and pecking his cool cheek. “They won't be as good as the ones your aunt procured for you, but if they aid in your recovery-”

“He's moping, ‘Nelle.” Lancelot's smooth purr cut across her and Gawain rolled his eyes as the door shut behind him with a bang, his fingers flexing a little around the pear.

“Is he now?” Ragnelle enquired as they turned to face him, an eyebrow raised speculatively. “And here I thought he was ill.”

Clad in a silken blue tabard and crimson trews, Lancelot's stroll was languid as he walked past the raging fire - briefly stopping before it to warm himself and haphazardly chuck another log on it - beholding all the liquidity of lakewater, while his eyes shone with amusement when Gawain shot him a glare. “Oh no. That's a moping Orcadian.”

Gawain swallowed, grimacing. Grief and guilt were deep set in the sunken catacomb where his heart ought to reside and he couldn't help but agree with Lance's assessment as much as it ranked him. He was moping, there was some truth to that, but more to the point he was simply too bogged down to do little else. If he was not constantly allayed by hammer strikes of agony in his limbs, or his head, or his eyes, thanks to there being scant little of the thing he needed to sustain him, then he might've felt fine. Maybe even whole.

But his memories - those sharp-clawed raptors - had scoured him clean the second he'd returned home, until he did not know where Gavin began and Gawain ended. And his body, the very essence of his being, was bare of sun and feeling; naught but an empty- pain-filled husk, dipped low beneath the horizon.

His oesophagus felt as though somebody had assailed it with a wood plane. Running a hand through his shaggy, powder-white hair and loathing its brittleness against his fingers, he shook his head. He prayed to those heathen gods that his uncle so disdained that he looked as disgruntled as he was.

Lancelot sighed as he came upon him, and duly pulled him away from Ragnelle and into his arms. The hard planes of his chest were warm against Gawain’s cheek and a silken shudder shot through him. “Come along, old man.”

Gawain huffed indignantly, scowling.

“He's as old as you!” Ragnelle laughed, smoothing the crease between Gawain's eyebrows. Even that hurt.

“In years, ay, not in looks.”

“Lance, should you antagonise him again, he'll push you out the window.”

He smiled, showing teeth, and made a show of preening. “Then I shall simply swim once I land in the moat, and climb up the walls again.”

A smirk broke across the otherwise storminess of Ragnelle's rosy visage while Gawain grunted disapprovingly in response, and rolled his eyes.

He adored Lance, of course he did and hoped he always would, for he'd embedded himself in his heart as easily as Ragnelle had. Like two entwined ivy strands they’d constrained and constructed him until he’d crumbled under their combined weight and had taken them both up.

His heart might as well have their names emblazoned upon it.

Wife. Lover.

Certainly, his jousting favours often did - although only he and Gareth were privy to that. He did not know why he'd informed his fourth youngest brother about his relationship, only that he had.

Gareth, as was his way, accepted this without scorn or withering comments. He'd made efforts to ingratiate himself with both Ragnelle and Lancelot, despite his other brothers’ contempt for him, and Gawain was endlessly grateful for that.

But there were sometimes where he wished that the Knight of the Lake would cease his portentousness and this was one of them.

‘Dare I say it, but Agravaine’s furore does have a certain point.’

All his strength - what little remained, anyway - rapidly ebbed away. Conversing would soon become a chore. Blood lingered on his tongue as he spoke, “What want?”

“A walk, my love.” Lancelot replied, his voice honeyed silk, as he flicked a curl of his blonde hair away from his forehead. “With you. Your Goodly Gareth suggested it.”

Gawain pouted. The snow was five hands high, if that, and he could barely summon the strength to change into clothes, let alone go out and feel the icy sting of the wind knife through his body, or the slush of ice soak through his boots. Furthermore, he would have to contend with seeing the gardens his mother had tirelessly cultivated. Hoeing weeds in winter, browning the backs of tanned hands in summer as she pulled up roots, plucking and drying herbs in storehouses, each replete with a thousand different medicinal usages that Gawain’s incinerated brain could barely recall.

She had trained him well and he'd forgotten it in the blink of an eye. His stomach dropped. All that knowledge, gone.

‘Pure folly!’ He could imagine her scathing tone hissing as she jabbed a finger at his chest, her green-grey eyes sharp. ‘It was pure folly to teach you all I knew when you'd discarded it for sword and adulation!’

He swallowed, his throat tightening around a keen.

In lieu of speaking - for that really was quite tiring and his throat could do with a rest - he shook his head, flattening his lips to further illustrate his inherent dislike of the idea.

“Alright,” Lancelot relented, wilting under the fierce glare Gawain graced him with. Exhaling, he unwound himself from Gawain and took up Ragnelle's hand, flinching at her skin's icy chill. “I suppose it's to be us then, ‘Nelle, for our dear Orcadian wolf is choosing to become a recluse.”

Gawain, choosing to ignore the barely healed scabs clotting the back of his throat, growled. Eyes narrowed, he stalked towards Lancelot, his expression one of cold, imposing wrath, and smirked at the surprised grunt that left his lips as Gawain tugged him squarely to his chest. Tilting his face up, Gawain placed a kiss on Lance's soft lips, enjoying the low, husky moan that left his lover's lips.

“Go,” he ordered, the tang of blood on his tongue replaced by Lancelot's saline-sweetness. “Let me mope. I'll be happier for that.”

Lancelot cupped his cheek. His hand was warm and smelled faintly of leather as he stroked the sharp line of his cheekbone with his thumb. They stayed like that for a few contented moments, nothing more than the sound of their chests rising and falling in sync echoing around the room, before Ragnelle murmured, “Come along, Lancelot. I want to see the flower gardens.”

At once, he snorted and stepped away from Gawain to affix her witch a mock-glare. “You wish to purloin them for your ointments, you mean.”

She shrugged lackadaisically. “I have to take advantage of my mother-in-law’s lovely gardens, or what's the point? Nobody else will.”

Gawain bowed his head, fiddling distractedly with the collar of his fur-lined dressing gown. His guts twisted. Red-hot shame lanced him in all directions and he dearly hoped that they reasoned his silence was due to the agony that weighed upon his body and not his heart.

Squeezing his hand, she murmured, “And you - rest! Don’t hobble about like a fool. You're aching again, aren't you? I thought as much. Now, into bed with you, or must I chivvy you about like a hen?”

Gawain barked out a laugh. Did she notice how much effort it took for him to remain upright? His spine burned from it, his limbs shook violently. Had she even noticed he was sagging? “No. I’m perfectly capable.”

‘Besides,’ he thought, his heart clenching. ‘I have to watch you both. I need to feel like I’m there somehow.��

Ragnelle’s dark eyes seared him, raking up and down his body as if inspecting some buttery panacea that would aid the world of all its ills. Gawain’s heart hammered in his chest, and he only exhaled once she'd tilted her head and pronounced, “If you're certain. Although if I return to find you've collapsed because of your pride then I will not be so pleased,” before, without further ado, tugging Lancelot out of the chamber and down the hall.

Their footsteps echoed off the walls, each growing fainter than the last.

Gawain breathed raggedly, collapsing against the wall, his aching legs all but giving out. Relief warred with sorrow in his chest.

The worst of it was he wished to be with them, but he did not want to be.

He would only be maudlin, inward. Poor company, as Gareth had teased him for being so many times before. “To know when winter's coming, brother, we need only look at your face,” had been his playful words the morning after they'd arrived hither and Gawain had been roused to consciousness.

With a pained grunt he steadied himself about as well as he could and waited until he heard their voices - loud, always joyful, and muffled by the windows - shattering the tranquility of the snow-drenched vistas. Feasting his gaze on Ragnelle's tall, plump form, he grinned. Her hair shone, crow-black against the white wounds of the clouds and snow-covered grounds, while her chubby cheeks grew flushed from the cold. Her smile was wide and infectious as she pointed, using the pair of shears she held in her gloved hand, to one of the plants on the fenceline opposite the rose trellis that stood beneath his window. Said plant was utterly festooned with pinkish-rued hued bulbs of rosehips.

They'd be sweet now they'd been through a frost, he knew that much. His mam used to brew them in tea. Their sour tang was redolent on his tongue throughout most of winter, when the skies were muddied and the land icy.

Lancelot, lithe and compact, stood beside her clad in a thick woolen cloak, with a wooden basket perched precariously on his arm, watching as she worked. The tan of his complexion and the nosiness of his cheeks drew Gawain’s eye to him, and he took a few moments to admire him, drinking the knight in until his form blurred.

Exhaustion soon bogged him down, mired him in its muck.

Satisfied that the two were enjoying themselves, he staggered back to bed and tumbled into a fitful sleep.

----------

Thump-thump-thump. Thump.

Gawain shot up, the covers pooling around his waist. Eyes bulging in fear he clutched the handle of the dagger beneath his pillow, a shaky breath leaving his lips. The coolness of the leather-wrapped handle against his palm comforted him. Each jewel was smooth against the skin of his thumb as he brushed them.

His father had bestowed it upon him the night before he left to battle his half-brother-in-law. “King Arthur, that mightiest of men!” he'd crowed as he'd placed a broad hand on Gawain's slight shoulder. “I'll dispatch him soon enough and you can return home, aye? Take care of your brothers and mother for me, Gavin.”

Ears ringing with his father's last words, he swallowed, rubbing at his throat. The taste of blood had lessened, replaced by a noxious sourness that made him grimace. His heart hammered in his chest while his sleeping clothes stuck to him, stinking sourly of perspiration. His father’s dark eyes faded away, replaced by the gloom of dusk. Still, the bruising purple-black of it seared his eyes as well as leaving his head hazy, a whirling dervish of thoughts and sensations that clamoured together like the pounding of a war drum.

The room was icy. The fire had long since burnt out, and he shivered, his teeth chattering as the cold scythed through him.

Goosebumps prickled his skin and he rubbed at his bony wrists in an effort to infuse them with warmth.

Alas, none was particularly forthcoming.

Thump-thump-thump.

And then a bark of laughter.

He frowned, his eyes scanning around the room.

The noise was muffled a little, but unmistakable. It mimicked the frantic thump of his heartbeat, that discombobulated ring, and he bolted upright, the dagger still in his white-knuckled grip. Slowly, the ringing in his ears receded and, blinking rapidly, his eyes adjusting to the lack of light, his mind slowly turned.

Lancelot and Ragnelle were still not back yet. And that laughter…

That sounded awfully like Lance’s warm chuckle.

Thump-thump-thump rang out again slower this time, more tentative, as though whoever had done it had been rebuked.

Without a second thought, he shambled to the window, clutching at the bedframe and posts for support, and, after a small yelp left his lips, blinked in astonishment.

There, standing atop the - admittedly shaky - rose trellis, was Lancelot and, sitting atop his shoulders, lay Ragnelle, her arm outstretched and her hand curled into a fist in order to knock against the windowpane once again. Gawain's eyes widened.

Both wore bright, giddy grins that made their faces glow even in the rapidly approaching darkness, while Lancelot showed no apparent signs of difficulty holding Ragnelle. In fact, with his chest puffed out and his golden hair gently tousled from her fingers, he looked as beautiful as he had ever been in that moment. Certainly, there was a rugged air about him that he otherwise lacked in the close confines of Gawain’s uncle’s court, and he couldn't help but laugh.

His wife waved at him, her eyes sparkling. Her dark hair was tangled about her ruddy face while her skirt was rucked over her legs in an effort to not encumber Lance. Throaty laughter spilled from her lips as Lancelot said something to her, his lips moving rapidly, and Gawain’s chest loosened.

Slowly, he took a breath. His pulse beat against his ribcage furiously as he pushed the window open - being careful to ensure that he did not hit them - and said, “What are you doing?”

“Climbing!” Came his wife’s high-pitched response, the word shot through with a childish elation. “You wouldn't come with us, so we thought we'd surprise you!”

A lump rose in Gawain's throat as he pressed a band to his heart. “You climbed up my mother's rose trellis for me?” His eyes swung between them, and a burst of laughter left his lips as he shook his head. “Fools,” he whispered, voice raw.

“It's rather sturdy, actually," Lancelot smugly declared, grinning up at him. Hands otherwise occupied with being wrapped around Ragnelle's ankles, he opted instead to wink at Gawain. “Besides, ‘Nelle insisted upon it.”

He should've been fuming at this degradation of his mother's garden - and he surely would be once he'd regained a grip on his senses - yet, at that second, Gawain pressed a finger to his smiling lips and murmured, “Did you?”

Ragnelle's smile slowly grew until she positively beamed.

“The pear was enough, my love,” he murmured, his voice rich with emotion. A mad tingling beset his limbs that had little to do with agony, while the fullness in his heart hurt. He was fairly sure that his cheeks too ached from smiling and Gawain laughed when Ragnelle lopped her arms around his neck and kissed him firmly. Her lips were soft, hungry, and she laughed against his lips. His cheeks flooded with heat as she moaned, losing herself in him, and Gawain felt a stab of inadequacy both at the fact that his lips were chapped and at his state.

Yet each of her kisses scorched that feeling away, cleansing him of all his pity. Something warm settled in his chest, a sunlight-shroud softened the tension in his shoulders and back, and he sighed at the small reprieve her kisses gave him. Pain no longer lingered in his limbs. The fog in his mind slowly lessened, although none of it abated entirely.

Gently he cupped her cheek and deepened the kiss. Tears glimmered on her cheeks and he swiped them away, even as her breath ghosted across his lips. She tasted of plums, sweet and juicy, a mouthwatering nectar that reinvigorated him, and he plundered her lips happily until they flew apart, bruise-lipped and light-headed.

“Do you feel any better?” She queried after a few moments of silence.

Dazed, Gawain could do little more than nod. He watched then as Ragnelle clambered down off Lancelot's shoulders and then he clambered onto hers.

After ensuring that he was seated securely, she lifted him to the window, bouncing on her toes a little as she did.

Crow’s feet were the first thing Gawain noted upon his lover's face. Etched onto his face, they deepened as his smile became broader, adding to his beauty as he leaned forward and spoke in a low, hushed tone that, Gawain suspected, Lancelot normally only reserved for charming Aunt Guinevere, “Ahh, what a handsome sort I see. As lovely as any tender-hearted maiden.”

Gawain chuckled. “I told you such things in confidence, my love.”

“But how sweet it is to know that you'd wish to be my wife if you could be!” His eyes twinkled in the first creamy rays of moonlight and Gawain snorted again, his heart pounding in his chest.

“Awful,” he reprimanded without a hint of bite, before tugging him in for a kiss.

Lancelot squeaked against his lips, his hands flying up to Gawain's chest. Below them the trellis squeaked a little and Ragnelle’s laughter came, rich and sultry, as close as the air before a thunderstorm.

Salinity was thick on Lancelot's lips and Gawain drank it down all too readily. Where Ragnelle had been carefully controlled hunger, the skin of a plum yielding beneath teeth, Lancelot was desperate and whiny, all teeth and tongue and saliva. It was strange in a way, seeing him lose composure, this most peacockish of knights, yet the sight made a prickle of pride curl in Gawain's gut.

Here he was, mewling like a kitten! Du Lac the Lover courtiers called him, and that wasn't half false. Du Lac the Desperate had a ring of truth to it.

Gawain tugged him closer, cupping the back of his neck. Lancelot uttered something between a sob and a moan as his hands splayed against Gawain's chest and Gawain shuddered joyously at the syrupy cloy that infused his blood.

It was not sunlight but, nonetheless, it eased the grief and pain that suffused his very being.

Once they drew apart Lancelot whined softly, his eyes dark. Both their chests heaved for air. The ice of it caught the back of Gawain’s throat and made him double over in a bout of hacking coughs, while Lancelot wrapped his arms around his waist and shivered, looking akin to a frightened street urchin before he jumped up, horsed himself over the window ledge, and back into the bedchamber.

“Silly man,” he admonished, before, without even breaking a sweat, he aided Ragnelle up. “Come, let's get you to bed. There's snow in the air again, you can taste it.”

Gawain, far too tired to argue, willingly let himself be led back to bed. The pear still lay there, green as grass and shining in the moonlight, and he happily munched on it, gazing at his lover and his wife as they set about closing the window and the velvet drapes, banking up the fire, and aiding each other in divesting themselves of their clothing.

Once they had changed into nightgowns, they snuggled together. Eyes heavy, Gawain let himself be pulled back into slumber’s arms.

When the sun came he would greet it the way he would a long-lost friend, and, once the snow receded, he would travel back to his uncle’s court and avenge his mother’s death, for the sun would imbue his wrath with flame and fury.

Let that North Walian cur run. Let him limp for sanctuary in Logres!

His head would be snicked off his shoulders in a matter of months.

But, for now, he had his wife and lover. That was enough.