#hoorayyyyyyy

Morgana makes a sound, rather embarrassingly, like a pup’s wounded whimper, before any sort of coherent answer manages to appear. But then her words are tripping over themselves to make it out first, a hurried tremor of want rushing to be made safe in Gwen’s mouth:

“Yes,” she says, nodding, heat humming under her skin and curling between her thighs. “Yes, yes, I—please, Gwen.”

They have come close to this, before, but never gone beyond it. Each time, they’ve come a little further—ever since they first snuck off here, to this little stretch of grassy meadow and open sky caught between the trees. Close enough to the Druids to still be protected, but far enough away to feel wholly theirs. That very first time had been the first time Morgana felt far enough away from the storm in her head to turn and kiss Gwen how she’d been wanting to for years, and Gwen had at once silenced all her fears with her gasp, clinging to Morgana and sinking into the kiss like she’d been starving for it just the same.

It is a wonder that it’s taken them this long to get here, with all their hunger—but then again, it is not so much a wonder as it is a small tragedy. The burning eyes of Camelot and its king are not quick to release their captives.

“Oh, my lady,” Gwen breathes, her voice shaking, as she lays another kiss upon Morgana’s greedy lips. Morgana has been trying to get her to stop using that address in their daily lives, where neither of them is higher than the other any longer—but here, there is something terribly heady about it. Something in the way Gwen seems to be saying mine, mine, mine, in a way she could only ever profess in undertones before.

It feels so lovely, to have her this close. To have her attention laid on so thickly, the awestruck parting of her lips and the tender fluttering of her eyelashes and the way her brows furrow at every twitch and sound emitted by Morgana’s helpless body. And then there is Gwen's hand, calloused but gentle, slipping under the loose ties of Morgana’s trousers, and her little gasp like she can’t believe she’s being allowed this as her fingers brush a line of nerves that makes Morgana’s muscles jump.

There is so much humming under Morgana's skin. So much heat; so much wanting—

At once, realization strikes, and cold fear jackknifes in. Morgana thinks desperately: Not now. Please, not now.

“Wait,” she gasps, arm shooting up to grip Gwen by the shoulder. “Wait, stop, stop, I can’t—“

Gwen pulls back immediately, her hand sliding back up to rest modestly over Morgana’s navel. Her brow furrows deeper, now, her lips worry-pursed—and Morgana hates it. Hates to have put such a look on her face.

“What is it?” Gwen asks. “Too fast?”

Morgana breathes slowly, willing the buzzing at her fingertips to subside. Of course; of course it could not be only want. Of course her own body could never be so simple.

Of course the fire, still so new and so terribly resistant to being tamed, would refuse stay quiet through something as precious as this.

“No,” Morgana manages eventually, shaking her head. Humiliatingly, she feels hot tears form and fall before she can stop them. “It’s just—Gwen, I can’t—I can’t control it.”

It must be igniting in her eyes, as violent and gold as it always has been, because Gwen at once softens in understanding. Her free hand comes up, and Morgana has the foolish urge to yell at her, No, don’t get too close; it’ll burn you—the same as she would warn someone reaching too close to a campfire. But Gwen cradles Morgana’s cheek, and thumbs away her tears, and none of her burns.

“It’s alright,” she says, tender as a thumb upon a bruise. “You don’t have to control it, Morgana. Not here.”

She doesn’t understand. Of course she doesn’t.

Gwen has always had too much faith. It drove her here, so far from her friends and family; so far from her life. Just so she could make sure Morgana would not be alone.

“No,” Morgana spits, her fear sharpening into spines. She tries to back away—but the blanketed ground is at her back, and Gwen is spread over her like the night sky, and Morgana loves it all too much to truly break free. “No, I can’t—I don’t want to hurt you.”

“And you won’t,” Gwen insists. The glint in her eyes is fierce; righteous, like a knight's war-footing vow. “I know you won’t.”

Morgana closes her eyes; shakes her head.

She doesn’t know how Gwen can sound so sure.

All Morgana ever sees is terrible things. Things she cannot stop. She’s set fire to more sets of curtains than she could ever keep count of. When the Druid chief, Alaric, first tried to help her reign it in, she burned down a tent and sent up a trail of smoke so thick only the camp’s veiling magic stopped them from being spotted by the patrols of every surrounding kingdom. She has been getting better, since then—but not enough to stop this.

“I trust you, Morgana,” Gwen says, still so terribly faithful. Still with her hand cupped to Morgana’s cheek. Still, her dark doe's eyes brimming with love. Softly, her thumb stroking over Morgana's damp cheekbone, she shakes her head. "I could never fear you."

Morgana swallows down a sob. Feeling very brittle, she asks: “How can I trust myself?”

Gwen’s brow folds in, her lower lip caught between her teeth.

“I don’t know,” she says quietly. “But… you could trust me, to start. If it’s easier.” She smiles, small and buttercup-sweet. “I’ve been told I'm quite good at holding my own.”

Morgana smiles back despite herself, remembering their last sparring practice. The marvel of Gwen with a sword in her hand, flushed and laughing, victorious.

"You are," Morgana breathes.

It is weakness, perhaps, that she allows Gwen to kiss her again—but she has always been weak, where Gwen is concerned. She has always wanted more than was fair to either of them. Gwen's time; her touch; her smiles; her love, selfishly, the truth of her no one else had ever seen, when all that they were to each other was duty. When Morgana already had all the rest of Gwen's life in her hands.

But then duty fell away, and the love had been there all along, anyway.

"Let me take care of you, my lady," Gwen whispers into Morgana's drunk-open mouth. Her eyes are so unfathomably kind; their depths, the safest place Morgana's mind has ever been.

It is weakness, perhaps, that leads Morgana to nod urgently, and pull her close again. But trusting Gwen will always come to her like breathing.

Morgana gasps at the first touch of Gwen’s fingers between her legs. The first pass of them through her folds, where she is slick and too hot with need; the first roll of a finger-pad over her clit. She feels it bubbling in her again almost at once: the rising tide, the threat of overflow. She tenses on instinct, her lip bitten and her eyes screwed shut as she tries to keep it down, but—

“It’s alright,” Gwen murmurs, her brow furrowed in sympathy as she traces slow, aching circles in Morgana’s breeches. “Just let go; I have you.”

“Gwen,” Morgana gasps, wretched. In her head, a warring symphony: please don't stop and please, please, more, crashing up against I can't stand the thought of hurting you.

“It’s alright,” Gwen repeats. “You’re safe with me. You’re safe here. Let it go, now.”

She kisses Morgana’s temple, then her jaw, then her mouth again, each plying drag of her lips draining more and more of Morgana’s fear away.

Morgana reminds herself that Gwen knows her better than anyone else as she finally lets it spill over.

Her body relaxes into the blanket on a shivering moan. Warmth, like the warmth of the sun on bare skin, rushes up and out. Her legs splay out to either side, knocking against Gwen's warm body on her right; her hips arch into Gwen's hand. Like tree sap bleeding from a cut trunk, like a river overflowing its banks in a heavy rain, like steam rising around the lid of a pot, it sweats through her flimsy skin.

“Oh,” Gwen gasps, her pretty voice stricken with awe. “Oh, Morgana. Oh, my goodness—look at you. You're beautiful.”

Tiny flutters of movement register in Morgana's periphery before anything else. She sees them, little splotches of color in the corners of her blurry eyes; feels them, little twitches in her hair, against her scalp, between the fingers she finds have worked themselves off the edge of the blanket to wind in the dewy grass below. The sweetness of spring thickens in her mouth, and—

From the hand Morgana still has tangled in the shoulder of Gwen's tunic, little flowers blossom.

They're everywhere, more appearing with her every shattered breath; shooting up from the grass, the earth, the very fabric of their clothes. Pale purple flax, soft blue cornflower, milk-white lily of the valley; kingcup, harebell, cranesbill. Tangled green necks and hungry yellow mouths all reaching for the sun.

The whole meadow, singing at the call of Morgana's magic.

Morgana wants to laugh. She wants to cry. She thinks she does some combination of the two, a hysterical sound barking up from her throat as pleasure swoons in her stomach.

“So beautiful,” Gwen repeats—like she’d say to the stars; whispered for none but them to hear. Her fingers comb gently through Morgana’s fanned-out hair and catch, Morgana expects, on yet more scattered blooms.

"Please," Morgana whispers back, feeling the tail ends of all her thoughts spinning out of reach. Every need in her body, condensed into a single word.

Gwen’s touch curls down and in, and Morgana makes a dying sound. Her trembling hands crumple soft petals as she drags Gwen down by the back of the neck, craving her again (though it isn't as if she's ever stopped)—sloppy, wet breath and begging, the closest she can come to a kiss. The closest she can come to a thank you, blown out with the gold in her veins.

For once, she isn't afraid.

—