Chapter Thirty #2
“Because I do love you,” Arthur said, still furious.
“Obviously. And I’ve been trying really hard not to.
But it’s been … I mean, I don’t know why I agreed to be on your stupid round table, except that Sidney was desperate to be made a knight and I thought if he and Gwen were both gone I might throw myself off the guest turret.
I knew it would be torture, and it has been. ”
“It’s been hard,” Gabriel agreed, his heart racing so fast his vision felt a little spotty. He felt like he was either about to be executed or pardoned, and either option was going to make him throw up. “For me too.”
“And now you’re asking me to just take that risk, again, when you might hurt me, again, and it’ll probably be even worse the second time. I’m stupid, but I’m not that stupid.”
This didn’t seem to be going Gabriel’s way. “I don’t think you’re stupid at all.”
“Gabe, I don’t…” Arthur sat down and put his face in his hands. “I can’t do this right now. I need time to think, I need space, I need—”
“You can have space,” Gabriel said. He was trying to speak normally around his very tight throat, and mostly failing. “I’ll leave you alone.”
“But that was always the problem,” Arthur said sadly.
“I didn’t want to be left alone. I wanted you to barge into my room and demand to see me.
I wanted … I wanted you to fight for me.
To want me. By the end it felt like I was always the one chasing you around, initiating everything, until I honestly thought I was just bothering you.
I felt annoying, and I hate that, because I only want to be annoying on purpose.
It was as if you were just with me sort of incidentally, and that once I stopped turning up where you were, it would be over.
I was too scared to test the theory for ages, and then I did, and I was right.
I stopped coming to see you, and that was that. And it broke my heart.”
“I know.” It felt rude to be crying. Arthur was the one who should have been crying. He stood up with an air of finality, and Gabriel watched him do it with undisguised longing.
Arthur cleared his throat. “I suppose I should say … I am grateful, that you said all this. I know it’s difficult for you. Thanks.”
“Please don’t thank me,” Gabriel said. “I don’t think I deserve it.”
“Well you wouldn’t, would you,” Arthur said, and then he shook his head, gave Gabriel one last look of bewilderment, and then turned and walked slowly back down the hill.
Gabriel only let him have twenty paces of a head start before following him back to camp, because sitting alone on that rock as Arthur walked away from him had suddenly become the worst thing he could imagine in the whole world.
The party began to die down close to midnight; although everyone had rallied magnificently when Viv appeared, there was only so much the addition of a witch and lots of questionable wine could do to overcome weeks of travel exhaustion.
People started drifting away to their tents. Gabriel had already been hiding in his, lying perfectly still as his mind raced, but when he peered through the tent flap to see who was left, he discovered that Viv was alone by the fire, gathering up her things to leave.
“Hello,” he said warily. “Did … did anybody offer to walk you home?”
“I live here, alone, all year round. My neighbor is a sheep. His neighbor is a sheep. I do not need walking twenty minutes away.”
“All right,” Gabriel said. He spotted her shawl, draped over a rock, and handed it to her. “Thank you. It was … good. To meet you.”
“Mmm,” Viv said, throwing her shawl over her shoulders. “You tell Dustin he should visit Wales more often. He needs a break.”
“… Dustin?”
“Hurst! Merlin, you really haven’t got a clue!” She laughed. “Listen to me. You should have me executed for insubordination. But you won’t, will you? That’s okay. Execution should always be a last resort.”
“I agree,” said Gabriel. “Sorry to ask this, but I have to know … Are you really … are you…?”
“Magic?” She wiggled her eyebrows at him. “Not in the way you’re thinking. I follow in the steps of the witches and wizards who came before, but you don’t have to be able to turn water into wine to love Jesus, you know?”
“No, I suppose you don’t.”
“It would be good though. Water into wine. Anyway—to be a witch, you just have to love the earth, and want to help people, and … believe. And I do believe.” She patted Gabriel on the arm. “Plus, I’ve been around long enough to know a few things, that’s all. And you will be fine.”
“Aren’t you … only about forty years old?”
She sighed. “I am five-and-forty, boy-king, and you should just take the reassurance and be grateful. Stop punishing yourself—the world will do that for you. Go be happy. Or at least a bit less miserable. Goodbye!”
She left. Gabriel sat down by the dying fire and gave himself until the last ember sparked out, and then he went to Arthur’s tent.
It was probably a bad idea. Monumentally bad. Nail-in-the-coffin bad. But his intuition, usually silent, was trying to tell him something, and as it was such a rare occurrence, he thought he ought to listen.
He tried to knock before entering, useless as it was, a couple of dull thunks on one of the tent posts, and then he ducked inside and found Arthur sitting on his cot, still dressed, waiting for him.
“Thank fuck,” he said. “I was starting to think you weren’t going to come.”
Gabriel felt such a warm flood of relief that he stumbled forward without hesitation; Arthur stood up to meet him, and then they both stopped, wary and out of practice, inches away from contact.
“I missed you,” Gabriel said, and Arthur let out a long breath, then bridged the gap, putting one hand very gently on Gabriel’s chest, his eyes following his own fingers.
“I’m not going to kiss you,” he said very seriously. Gabriel swallowed. They were close enough now that he could smell Arthur’s perfume, see the wetness on his dark lashes.
“Okay,” he said, trying not to disturb the air too much as he did.
Arthur’s gaze flicked up to meet Gabriel’s, and his eyes narrowed, like he was throwing down a challenge. “I want you to kiss me.”
For once, Gabriel didn’t overthink. He just did as he was told.
He kissed Arthur hard, his hand coming up to touch his jaw, his hair, anchoring him; Arthur let out a tiny, heady gasp, fisted his hand in Gabriel’s shirt, and Gabriel remembered … everything.
How his whole body just melted into Arthur’s at the slightest encouragement; that the kissing made him loose and happy, a giddy high, leaving him breathless and almost laughing; how Arthur would always pull at him, ruining his collars and hems, bending everything out of shape, in his efforts to get closer, touch more, until not even air or light could come between them.
He was doing it now, running his hands over the lines of Gabriel’s shirt, and it felt so good to be touched—like that, by Arthur—Gabriel could have cried.
Arthur kissed him hungrily for a few seconds more, pushing everything else out of Gabriel’s head, and then he broke away, removed his hands, and put a painful two feet of distance between them again.
“Just…” he said, his chest heaving. “Wait. A second. It might be … it might be too much, too soon.”
“Okay,” Gabriel said. He’d do anything Arthur said at this moment, entirely at his mercy. Besides, he was feeling overwhelmed too. He went to sit on the bed, and Arthur sat down next to him, and they stayed there until their breathing had slowed somewhat.
“Lie down with me,” Arthur said. “I’m tired, I need some sleep. But— I don’t want you to go.”
Gabriel did, gladly. The bed was small, narrow; they had to be very close together, lying on their sides facing each other, knees bent and touching.
“I still don’t know if this is a good idea,” Arthur said seriously, and Gabriel nodded.
“That’s all right.” It wasn’t. It really wasn’t. But Gabriel wasn’t going to push his luck.
“But it means a lot that you … listened. Came here.”
Gabriel’s hand twitched toward Arthur’s face, and then he stopped, and said, “Can I…?”
“Yeah,” Arthur said, closing his eyes.
He traced Arthur’s face from forehead to cheekbone like a child discovering clay, watching Arthur’s expression go soft and weightless.
Then to his jaw, rubbing the pad of his thumb over the soft stubble there.
He touched Arthur’s mouth, gently, and Arthur sighed against his fingers, his brow furrowing, like he was concentrating very hard on something complex and important.
When Gabriel went to take his hand away, Arthur’s shot up lightning-quick, held him by the wrist and kissed him there, on the soft meat of his palm, while Gabriel watched in breathless wonder.
“I like your mouth,” Gabriel said, dazed and stupid, and Arthur groaned and pressed his forehead to Gabriel’s fingers.
“I like all of you,” he said. “That’s the problem.”
“I can leave,” Gabriel murmured. “Maybe I … shouldn’t have come here.”
“Well, I wanted you to,” Arthur replied. “I do need to think. I meant that. But this is still okay, because this isn’t thinking. This is almost the opposite of thinking.”
“I don’t know if that’s … logically sound.”
Arthur propped himself up on his arm, face cradled by his hand. “I don’t think I care.”
“Will you care tomorrow?”
“It already is tomorrow,” Arthur said. “And wow, look—I don’t care.”
“Come here?” Gabriel asked, and Arthur did, and seemed surprised when Gabriel wrapped his arm around him, pulling his face flush to Gabriel’s chest. “I think I know how to do this, now,” he whispered in Arthur’s ear. “The two of us. Me and you. Please … let me do it right this time.”
“I don’t know,” Arthur said, voice thick, so Gabriel just held him tighter, trying to think of right now instead of the pain that might come tomorrow, and after a while the tension left both of their bodies, and they eased into sleep.