which circle of hell is this?

I literally can’t even speak

john is a lord/prince/knight/whatever you want from a noble family and gale is his squire/servant/whatever you want. they’re friends, kind of, in a way. at least gale thinks so. all squires spend all day every day with their knights, and all squires sleep at the threshold of their knights’ chambers, but gale is the only one in the castle who has a nice straw pallet to sleep on, and he’s the only one who can mouth off without getting punished for it. john just laughs or shoves him or pets him like a little plaything, which gale feels like he should resent more than he actually does. of course most of the time he’s well aware of the divide between them—there are his duties, for one, and if john’s in a bad mood he can get snappy and act like a rich dickhole, and the other knights/lords almost always treat gale shittily.

so one night john’s out carousing or whatever with gale waiting on him and they return to the castle to find the entire noble family and staff killed and gale’s immediately like, you have to leave. now. and john says, “i need you to come with me,” all wild-eyed.

“that’s impossible,” gale says. “you’ll make your own way,” and john says, “i can’t. i can’t do that.”

“you can. just because you’ve never been alone—“

“—and neither have you,” john says. “i’m ordering you to come with me.”

and even tho orders have no meaning anymore bc everything they ever had is gone, gale gives a short nod. lifelong habit and all. they come up with a plan to switch places bc nobody looks too closely at a servant: gale cuts his long hair off and they trade clothes and john rides behind him into unknown lands. they have to keep up this charade for months while wandering (for money? revenge? whatever) and eventually john starts to chafe under it. he’s not used to this, being treated like shit on a shoe. in private, they resettle into their roles but john starts drinking more and making more and more snide comments, bc some nasty part of him wants gale to remember his place.

finally one night gale snaps. they get back to the room and john starts to flop down onto the bed but gale yanks him back up by the collar and drops him on the floor like, “who the hell do you think you are?”

“who do you think you are?” john asks hotly. “i outrank you, i’m your lord, i own—“

“you own nothing. you sleep on a stone floor. you have no land, no money, no family, no home,” gale states in a cold voice. he gets a handful of john’s hair in a fist. it’s been growing out for the first time since he was a boy, unruly and tangled. “and look at you now: you’re kneeling at the feet of your lowly squire. so i’m asking you again—who do you think you are?”

and john is—hot for it?? maybe he’s just drunk. strong mead out in the countryside, that’s for sure. he says, “fuck you,” and wrenches out of gale’s grip and crawls his way onto his sad little pallet and waits until gale is asleep before humping the straw out of it. obviously the next morning they pretend nothing happened. the mead, john thinks again. yeah.

One by one, the shapes in his periphery disappear. Gale faces down the last of them by a blade thickened with red. When it smears onto the man's neck, he whispers, "Wait," and Gale falters for the first time because—because that's a boy's neck, a boy's voice, chin overhanging in shadow and wide, frightened eyes.

"Please," he says, staring. 

Gale stares back.

Behind him, metal whistles through the air; stops with a clang, punctuated by a visceral squelch and two thumps, the second somehow deader than the first. A disembodied head rolls into view just as the boy scrambles up and takes off into trees. It happens too quickly. Gale can only watch him go, breathing the gasps of someone coming up from underwater only to suck in the stench of open flesh.

"You fight well," John says. He's crouching, making use of a stained tunic to clean his blade. "Don't hesitate next time. And swivel your head."

Gale loosens his grip. "I haven't ever—"

"Now you have. Here," John says, holding out a hand. When he gets no response, he says, impatiently, "Gale. Your sword."

Sometimes he'll make a joke of it. Call Gale sir, sire, master, the tone of it shifting between amicable to bittersweet to just plain bitter, but he keeps doing it all the same. Gale passes his sword over. John cleans it and hands it back, hilt aimed to Gale's right side in deference.

"My liege," he states.

A flicker of ire makes Gale snatch it with more force than necessary. He hadn't asked for any of this. He doesn't know what is keeping him here, other than the thinnest sense of duty. He could leave; he could sneak away when John is too drunk to notice and ride back into the city to start over with a new family, a new lord. 

This is for lovely @luvwhumpgirly — so sorry it took so long 🥰 But I also want to support Bucky for @hbowartournament (since Buck already lost 🥲).

+++

"Alright, I've got a question for you" Alfie says, looking sideways at him.

"Ask away."

"I suppose you watched the Norway match."

"I did," Tommy agrees, cigarette smoking between his fingers and a lock of hair falling over his forehead. Despite it being almost nine o'clock, the air is still warm and he can feel moisture beading at his hairline.

"So Jude Bellingham and that big Norwegian fella."

"Erling Haaland," Tommy supplies.

"Yeah, him," Alfie says, nodding hard and clapping his hands together. "What's the deal with that?"

"In what sense?" Tommy knows what Alfie is getting at but he wants to make him squirm.

"You know what fucking sense, Tommy. Come on now, don't be thick."

Tommy shrugs, blowing smoke over Alfie's shoulder.

Podcast about Austin’s baseball training for Caught Stealing last year

This part right here broke me 💔 🥺😭

NEW MOTA CONTENT IN 2026??!?