velocibee words

Square the Block by @blueeyesatnight here is the ao3 link (must have an account to view)

summary: "In an original draft of the script it was revealed that Frankie was working as a P.I. and was a bit of a shithead and so I give you DARK PRIVATE EYE FRANKIE. He's not in a good headspace and he desperately needs a vegetable." --DUDE I FINISHED IT IN ONE NIGHT AND I THINK ABOUT IT ONCE A WEEK I LOVE IT SO BAD. so Frankie is a P.I. and he's supposed to look for the reader/ofc (she isn't named and she has hella backstory, but FOR ME if she isn't named, it's reader). this is my all time favorite Frankie fanfic and my top ten fanfics ever. I fucking love this fic.

one of your girls by joelscruff on ao3

summary: "unpacking some of frankie's old things leads to a revelation about his past. (OR to put it simply: frankie morales x triple frontier boys circle jerk)" --Frankie is vulnerable and he is SEXY. it is mostly yaoi but it is cunty to me p.s. sorry if this exists on Tumblr; I couldn't find it anywhere

Seis Dias by kilojulietsierra on ao3

summary: "A well known photographer on vacation with her new fiance just got called in on a once in a lifetime, last minute job for one of her biggest customers. Promising her fiance that it'll be a quick 2-3 day trip from the south american resort they're staying at to the job and back. With an overnight bag, her camera and a bribe for the... quirky pilot that flew them to the remote vacation spot, she takes off to the shoot. A storm rolls in while they're in the air and the quick trip takes a dangerous turn.  Forced to land in the middle of the night when lightning strikes their plane the pair find themselves in the middle of the South American jungle with a wrecked plane and no way to get help and no way out of the jungle but to work together.  They survived the crash but that's the least of their concerns, the jungle has more than one danger lurking in its shadows." --this is Frankie x OFC (I normally stay away from original characters, but at the time I read this, I was so tired, I didn't realize until homegirl had a name), but the story was so good, I didn't even care, so I think that says a lot! (again, couldn't find a Tumblr link)

Kinktober 2022-A Helping Hand A Helping Hand (Benny Miller, Frankie Morales + praise kink, breeding kink) by dameronscopilot on ao3

summary: "ORIGINAL PROMPT: "Kinktober!! Thank you for blessing us... can i request Benny x reader x Frankie with praise kink and breeding with "You can do better than that." Thank you."" --established Benny/Reader staying at Frankie's house, Frankie walks in on them (on purpose) and kind of tells Benny what to do to the reader/shows him how to do things better. idk it's sooooo good

Better Together Universe on ao3 by absurdthirst (no Tumblr link?)

I'll sum it up as: reader gets invited into established Frankie/Benny's sex life for a threesome, they lowkey plotted on her and it just follows the beginnings of their throuple

You're Looking Kinda Lonely by watchcatewrite on ao3 (don't think there's a Tumblr link) (feat. Santiago "Pope" Garcia)

I'll sum it up as: established Frankie/Reader. Reader asks if Pope and Frankie ever slept together; nastyyyyyy stuff ensues --also btw I am 99.9% sure this is the first Triple Frontier fan-fiction I ever read and I remember being astounded that they even made any, plus alsooo, spending an entire month going through the Triple Frontier works helped me learn how to use ao3

Dog Tags by honestly_shite (no Tumblr link?)

I'll sum it up as: Frankie puts his dog tags on the reader tw: choking kink --it's short and sweet but yummyyy

Shark Week by @f0rever15elf here is the ao3 link

summary: "It’s the start of shark week, and you’re stranded at Frankie’s house thanks to a freak snow storm. Hormones are at an all time high for you, and when Frankie sees you going braless due to the effects your period has on you, he can’t help but find out if maybe you like him back the way he likes you." --Frankie is yummy and not afraid to get messy

Anarchy of temptation by @lavendertales here is the ao3 link (must have an account to view)

summary: "Santiago asks for you and Frankie’s help for a mission that requires you both to go undercover. things that will get uncovered though will lead to a surprising evening." --just sexy as fuckkk

Sleepy Sex by @rosethornxs here is the ao3 link

summary: "Lazy morning sex with Frankie." --gimme this man let me domesticate him pls

Unwrapped by @starlightmornings here is the ao3 link

summary: "Frankie hosts a holiday getaway at his mountain cabin with his girl (you) and the rest of the boys. A little alcohol, some spicy board games and a hot tub lead to steamy shenanigans. This is an excuse to be worshipped by all the Triple Frontier boys and I regret nothing." --girl all four of them and no Miller incest hallelujah

baby blue (want you by my side) by styleslovebot on ao3 (no Tumblr link)

summary: "Frankie needs some stress relief after a rough day at work, and when he comes home to find you and Santi napping together, you're more than happy to provide." --polyamory and pregnant reader. in other words: chef's kiss. I fucking love ambiguous baby daddy trope. it's like crack to me.

The Bet by (orphaned :() on ao3

summary: "“I bet you I can stay sober for one week and if I win, I get to fuck you.” You scoff at his proposal but your body heats at the thought... Frankie has fallen off the deep end since Tom's death. You confront him one night and the two of you strike an interesting bet." --mean!Frankie. I don't usually fw that, but this was enthrallingggg to the freaking max dude

Frankie's Favorite Day by @sharkbait77 ao3 link here

summary: "In honor of the national holiday on June 24th." --girl you take a fucking guess. immaculate.

Voyeur Girl by @velocibeewords (there is a Tumblr link, 1,000 words less and with less angst)

summary: "Will's been struggling lately. He's more reserved, serious and quiet in ways that you know have to do with the anniversary of Tom's death- the trip he never speaks of. Turned inwards upon himself until one night at a party, he let's go of his carefully crafted restraint with yours and Frankie's help." --seldom do you see Frankie/Reader/Will, but when you do, it hitsssss

Eucharist by @gaiuswrites here is the ao3 link

summary: "Frankie always wants you, regardless the time of the month." --this shit just hitssss idk what else to say

Moving Day Universe, specifically the first part by @adverbedly Tumblr link for Moving Day here and Tumblr link for Firelight here

Moving Day summary: "There is absolutely nothing enjoyable about moving. It’s sweaty, it’s stressful, it’s tiring.

Moving Day summary: "There is absolutely nothing enjoyable about moving. It’s sweaty, it’s stressful, it’s tiring. If you’re lucky, you can afford to hire movers. If you’re really lucky, you have friends to help shoulder the burden, to tote boxes from home to truck to home again in exchange for nothing more than beer and food. You happen to be extremely lucky—you have a crew of strapping not-quite-young men who not only would but had taken bullets for you, and you had them on standby. Without hesitation, they had descended on your shitty downtown apartment at oh-seven-hundred on little more than the promise of thick black coffee to help you move everything to a quiet bungalow just inside the city limits." Firelight summary: "The trail-side campsite is empty except for the two figures crouched on a fallen tree. Around them, the crickets chirp their cheerful praises to the night sky. Lightning bugs flicker and flash as one of the figures, a man, pokes at the crackling kindling to spark the embering flames back to life." --Frankie/Reader/Santiago is always gonna be chef's kiss

High Rise by @slater-baby (underrated series imo) ao3 link here

summary: "The first time Frankie saw you was on a sunny, summer day. Changes in ownership were never good, Frankie reminds himself, get shuffled around too much and suddenly you're back working at McDonalds, wishing your boss hadn't drawn the short end of the stick on your behalf. But alas, glamor and money were the spirit of the Chapman, the essence of LA itself. After living in the city for so long, he's tired of the frills and facade. But this time around, he can't find it in himself to despise it when glamor and money look like that. ----- Or, alternatively, the 80s hotel AU where you're the new owner of a luxury hotel brand, and Frankie's a repairman that's lived in the shadows for far too long." --I ate this the fuck up in one night

finally I'll recommend my own fic: Waves

summary: "It's Frankie's two year sober anniversary, and you and Benny spend the weekend celebrating with him." --I had fun writing this. I am a Fish!Ben truther. kind of. at the very least, it was clear to me in the movie that they were best friends and I hold the OPINION that everyone only writes Frankie and Santiago as best friends b/c Pedro Pascal and Oscar Isaac are real life friends, but the movie's truth is that Frankie and Benny are BFFs but also that is just my interpretation and I am not here to tuck anybody's yum. just talking into the void.

edits below: Table for Two by @hellishjoel

summary: "Tommy’s Diner is where dreams go to die and burnouts clock-in for work. Waitressing would be boring without the flirtatious distractions of line cook Frankie Morales." --somehow have never read this, but @la-vie-est-une-fleur29 recommended it to me, and if she says it's good, it must be! (I will report back soon on my thoughts)

in another life . . . by @chronically-ghosted

summary: "Partner. That word had been jammed up inside his brain for as long as he could remember. Gym-class partner, lab partner, work-out partner, partner-in-training, partner in this fucking life or death situation where we’re only going to get out alive if we trust each other more than I trust myself. And then he met you and the definition changed again." --have read this one, but @/la-vie-est-une-fleur29 reminded me of this one, too! Frankie is whipped for his wife, what more can you want?

feel free to recommend more in the comments!

dividers by @/saradika-graphics

|||

Will always has the same nightmare. Carried with him since his teenage years- when the OCD first reared its ugly head. The nightmares had heralded it- an entire summer of bad dreams leading up to basic training which by feat of exhaustion broke the chain. The links fell away for awhile but they never really left. Like a snake coiling around his ribs, smooth and slippery so he hardly even felt it squeeze his breath bit by bit until he woke up gasping.

But there are years between now and basic and his brain has been weaponized. Has gathered ammunition. Fuel to add to the fever of his nights. Drenched in sweat and dread and a sort of knowing that lingers long after his eyes are hurting from the way he won’t let them shut.

It’s always the same.

The worst one at least.

Unchanged since he was seventeen.

He’d almost find it funny. There’s been so many things it could have become. Could have morphed into like a shape shifting beast that he knows his OCD to be. Every day a new theme. Every hour, every minute. If he can count on anything to remain the same then it’s this.

Something’s coming down in the sky and he’s terrified. Frame frozen, eyes locked on the black fog gathered into apparition- other times its an alien ship of sorts. Some times its a bird. Blades clipping through the air like a ceiling fan the size of Jupiter and possessed by a vengeful spirit.

There’s nothing but fear. A scream locked in his throat. Air choked out from how scared he is. He never truly knows what it is that descends from the clouds. All he knows is it’s bad. An impending sense of doom that takes hold. Grips strong like a shadow during the full moon but it feels like the darkest night. It won’t shake loose even when he wakes violently- trembling, chest heaving, gaze severe on the entry points until he remembers where he is.

He’ll drift through his waking hours with that cement block in his gut. Chipping away and absorbing it until its soft. Until chunks will careen through his veins and he’s left shredded. Exhausted and torn up inside- unwilling to rest and unable not to. He’ll ritualize his bedtime routine to hell and back but nothing will compare to the hell that awaits him in his sleep or the one that greets him when he wakes.

He checks the gunsafe. He checks the kitchen drawers and then the ones in the bedside tables. Pushes his alarm clock until its just out of reach. No weapons available to his waking mind- torn between reactions trained into his body and the very real harm he could inflict versus the one he’s convinced he’s about to suffer.

Put there’s a part of Will he can’t dismantle and tuck away somewhere hidden. His hands like forged armour melded to his frame. A cage of tendons and flesh- a grip he’s honed and sharpened with violence. An edge he won’t lose. He’ll dull it only for it to come back sharper. The snap of his fists against the heavy bag until he’s too exhausted to stand. Collapsing into dreams that he’s only roughened into solid form in front of him.

Will falls asleep with his finger tips tracing over his body. The same hands that have caused harm are driven by his mind to search out if they’ve unknowingly inflicted more upon himself- and when he allows anyone in his bed he lies awake. Fingernails digging into his palms to resist the urge to check them for injuries. Mapping out scars and the places where he knows there are none.

The greatest nightmare is the one he can’t wake from. The gasping of choked off air echoing off the shelves strewn with cartoon faces and processed grains- the heat of the man at his front. Scrabbling hands and nails dug into his forearm. Crescent scars that mirror the moon in the sky on the nights he lies awake. Self inflicted punishment for the harm he’s caused.

The linoleum shakes under his feet. He releases the man and looks up just in time to see the roof of the grocery store be ripped away. There’s a storm and it’s raging. It rattles his teeth in his head and everything is so loud that even if he screams it’ll be useless. Absorbed into the angry vibrations of the darkening sky until he’s one with it. Until he’s swept up into the clouds- the same ones that hold the horror he can sense with every nerve ending in his body- the one that he can’t see-always waking a moment before it arrives.

The same question repeating like rapid fire in his mind.

What if he’s the terrible thing descending?

Pyre - a heap of combustible material, especially one for burning a corpse as part of a funeral ceremony.

|||

Emerging from your room and into the inn once again, it feels like leaving the narrow, insulated seed pod of fireweed about to burst, and being thrust into a thick hedge of blackthorn. Your ears prick with the sound of men- lots of them and they’re loud, drunk and boisterous.

The soft, gentle embrace of the sleep you’d only just been lulled into, is torn away as though it were as thin as a poppy’s petal. Suddenly, you feel fragile, like the moments of being cared for have worn you transparent.

You hold yourself, clinging to your cloak out of habit, tugging it close and you think if you were to look at your hands, you’d see the fabric through your fingers.

Like you hadn’t enough time to grow a protective layer around yourself. Raw and delicate. A freshly budded leaf, shiny and curled around itself, wanting to reach out for the sunlight. And that would be Arthur.

Because of course it’s him. Whose made you feel less like a husk of yourself, and more like something about to bloom.

The noise of the garrison reaches you as soon as Arthur cracks the door. Men shout slurred jests and jibes, tankards meet the worn wood counter of the bar for just a kiss before they’re lifted to ale slick lips. The innkeeper’s pleas to not raid his dwindling pantry are lost amongst the din of the crowded main room.

Your hand tightens around your coat even further, pulling your hood over your crown with an old habit. The urge to hide is great, and you loathe the steps ahead that will bring you to your next resting spot.

Arthur pauses at the landing of the stairwell, allowing the innkeeper’s children to dart past him and disappear into their father’s abode. The eldest assures Arthur that your tent is prepared, even as his hands are busy collecting his brothers and his expression assures their safety with a maturity that betrays his years.

Three grim faces peer up at you before they disappear behind a door that locks with haste, each younger than the last, and your heart pangs alongside them. You know what it feels like to lock yourself away, out of reach of danger and threat.

Arthur casts one look back at you, his face twisted into something solemn and serious. One hand grips the straps of your supply bags over his shoulder, and the other reaches out for yours.

As naturally as planting sage with cabbage to protect from slugs, you slip your hand into Arthur’s solid, warm grip. It makes an awful sort of sense, to continue the charade of your pairing, at least until you were clear of prying eyes. The burst of warmth in your gut at his firm hold, of your feelings for Arthur taking root in your being, are no farce though.

Descending into the main room, you fold yourself into Arthur’s wake. Despite the way you keep your head lowered, Arthur’s body language doesn’t escape your notice. It’s like he commands whatever room he steps into.

Straightening in front of you, Arthur takes the steps at a pace you’d deem too slow for your liking, although your own would be closer to fleeing, and you decide the confident air he adapts is more suited to going unnoticed than your usual fearful approach to being in the vicinity of scary King’s guards. It’s strategic, the way Arthur moves. Aware of how he adopts space, and filling it the way he’s expected to. He does it with such ease, that it’s easy to forget your false pretenses, and slide into the role you’re allotted aside his.

His woman.

With ease, Arthur joins the fray of the crowd. His grip on you remains firm, holding you closely in his wake, so that your nose nearly brushes the soft leather of his coat at his spine. The scent of him surrounds you- the sage and feverfew from his bath, and something that’s all Arthur. He’s lowered the supply bags, perhaps to draw you more comfortably into his shadow, or to have his hand closer to the hilt of his sword, but either way you feel gratitude bloom in your chest. The entirety of your vision is eclipsed with his broadness, and it feels like gazing upon the sea. Vast and certain, overflowing with a mysterious power that he commands with nearly terrifying ease.

Your steps are short, given you cannot see well, but Arthur’s stride does not falter as he aims for the inn’s doors. Whatever expression he’s adopted, which you suspect may be more annoyed than the friendliness he’d assumed earlier on the road, assures that whoever notices him, and you next, their interest is fleeting and easily given over to something else. It seems you’ll escape the garrison’s attention this time without interrogation, and relief is a breath away as you cross the threshold of the inn without any interference.

Your belief in being unconfronted is lost however, when the yard is swarming with the garrison yet. There’s more than you met on the road out here, and they’re drunker than the lot inside. A few stumble towards the door that swings shut in your wake. One, smelling of retch and sweat, knocks into Arthur’s shoulder with enough force that you're taken back with it.

It’s enough movement to draw attention.

First, you yelp in surprise at the sudden jolt, unaware due to Arthur’s frame blocking the path ahead of the incoming collision.

Then, there’s the soft oof as you collide with the wall of Arthur’s spine.

Next, comes the dull thud of your head meeting the door behind you. Thankfully cushioned by your hood, but a thrash of pain spikes nonetheless from the base of your skull, up and over to your eyes.

Your pained hiss is met with Arthur’s low curse as your hand slips from his as you try to collect yourself.

The slurred apology of the soldier gives way to a moment of silence as you right yourself against the wood before it begins to pull away from you with a creak. Just on the wrong side of catching your balance, you tilt backwards into the opening void.

In a blink, Arthur’s hand closes around your wrist- unfortunately your injured one, and another pained sound escapes you before you can bite it back. It’s worse than the first and Arthur’s apology rapidly follows another growled curse. You know his dark words are meant for the drunk guard, and all his place in your hurt. But Arthur keeps them low enough between you to not garner unwanted attention, ever aware of your position in regards to threat.

Pulling you back to center, Arthur releases his grip as fast as it comes, only allowing a lingering pass of his thumb over your skin, a silent apology as his other hand comes up to caress your crown. Arthur tugs you into his chest, pulling you into his embrace with a fierce look at the guard that gazes upon the scene as though he’s yet to process it. Swimming eyes and mind lost in drink.

“Mind whatever words you’d put to your temper, son. This one gets mean when he drinks,” A gruff voice comes from your back, muffled with your hood and Arthur’s arm, but you recognize it from earlier. It’s the oldest guard of the garrison, the one that had ordered Carlick to stand down and let you and Arthur pass on the road.

Now, he’s ordering the same of Arthur it seems, a warning along with it, and Arthur’s answering growl rumbles from his chest and into your ear and what feels like your entire being with the darkly protective quality of it.

“Perhaps your men should mind their step if they do not wish to meet my vexation,” Arthur says, the words bit off with his aggravation. Silence comes from your back, as though the guards are weighing his words, so Arthur offers more weight, as though to settle their debate before it begins.

“I promise you, I can be meaner when it comes to protecting my wife,” Arthur says, voice tight with fury, sharp as the point of an arrow. Tense like a bow drawn, ready to be loosed. Still, his hold of you is careful, although his entire body is rigid with anger.

Your face pressed to his chest, you feel the heat of him grow, pressing into you as though you embraced a fiery hearth. There’s a flash of blue in your vision, as though dawn had arrived in an instant, and you shove your face further into him, hoping to impede his magic from anyone else’s view.

It wouldn’t serve you for Arthur’s magic to be discovered by anyone else. Especially those loyal to Vortigern’s reign. They might believe him a Mage.

Arthur senses your unease, and perhaps the reason for it, his arms wrapping around you further as though he could cage you from harm. As though he could contain his magic from sheer force of will. Perhaps he can, because it does not appear again, but still you lift one of your hands and press it between your cheek and his chest, a firmer and more consistent application than when he’d slapped at his magic before.

It seems to settle him, for the guard that collided with you disappears into the inn without a word, and the older guard hums with an accepting “Aye, lad, git on yer way” before the door swings shut.

Arthur’s hands find your face, fingers brushing your jaw as he draws backwards, eager to look at you.

“Are you alright?” Arthur asks as your own hands find his, squeezing as you try to implore him to move from the door, your own gaze scouring his chest for any indication of magical flames.

“M’fine, please, let’s make haste,” you say, eager to put space between you and the inn, from any further interactions with this garrison.

Arthur sighs tightly, seemingly unsatisfied with your answer, but he bends to collect the supply bags, and turns his attention to locating your camp.

His hand remains fast around yours, like he’s loath to release you. Like you’d wish to be anywhere else but near him, especially given the swarm of guards about the yard like hornets invading a bee hive.

Around the side of the yard, close to the treeline, tucked in like a secret, a small tent sits in the shadow of the hedge that borders the inn. Arthur presses you gently onto the makeshift seating, an old worn stump near the circle of stones meant to be your firepit. Careful to keep the inn and its trespassers in his eyeline, Arthur sets to making you comfortable.

First, the supply bags are placed at your feet. Then, Arthur drops to his knees beside them, his face centering in your vision with a strange intensity in his expression. Your head throbs, and your wrist hurts, but the pain feels separate. Like you're floating on the surface of it and it’s somewhere deeper within you.

Arthur’s hands find the hem of your skirt and before you can react his fingers ghost up your calf. Your knees snap together, a startled gasp captured by Arthur leaning into your neck, his lips pressed into your skin as he speaks.

“Your knife,” he says, and then one deft hand finds the strap around your leg, and the weapon it sheathes before his touch disappears completely on his retreat. The hilt is simply pressed into your hand, your fingers grasping for the weight of it as your mind tries to wrap around the moments before. Anyone observing would believe it a brief lover’s exchange, and not the supply of protection that seems to settle the last of Arthur’s lifted edges when he sees the blade in your grip.

Arthur snaps kindling over one of his wide thighs, before tossing it into the pit. He casts small glances between you and the inn beyond, like he’s assessing both for threat.

“M’fine,” you attempt to implore, but your words are higher than you intend, and float across the space between you like the smoke that begins to curl from where Arthur prods the fire to life. As easily as he’d ignited the flame in your body- like it was there all along. Just waiting for the right moment to catch. The heat between you is like a mullein torch. Burning with fuel and strength enough to last. A bit unpredictable but never unwelcome.

|||

He’d fucked up.

Arthur knows it like he knows his fate.

He shouldn’t have gotten angry with the guards. Not when he knew they’d camp near the inn tonight. Not when he knew his magic had a tendency to flare with his emotions.

Arthur knew it the moment he’d heard your head meet the planks of the door.

That dull thunk echoing in his mind. Feeding into his fury like it found the center of him and pulled him inside out.

Arthur feels it like it’s carved into him. The urge to protect you and the one to wage his wrath on those that would do you harm feel like the two edges of a blade, and he’s being cleaved beneath it.

Once they reach the little camp, you sit on the stump like a wildflower that’s been pelted with rain. Wilted. Like pulling yourself upright might take too much effort. Like it might cost you something you cannot reclaim with ease.

Your hands tremble around the blade he pressed into them. You wince every time your wrist brushes your thigh. Your teeth clench every time you turn your head to glance at the inn, clutching the knife. Looking cold and needlessly brave and like you’re the one protecting him.

The darkness softens everything but he spots the pain in your features as clear as if it were his own.

Gods, he wants it to be his. All of it. Would take it from you and pull it over himself and feel every measure of it for the rest of his days if it would spare you.

Arthur kneels by the fire pit and forces himself to busyness. Stealing glances of you, only allowing himself to truly look at you whenever he thinks you are unaware because he’s coated with enough pain as it is. Covered with a sharp wrongness of desiring what he cannot have. That isn’t his despite what he’d told the guard.

You aren’t his wife.

You never would be.

This knowledge burns as brightly as the flames that jump beneath his fingers. He hadn’t even used a flint. The fire had appeared, as quick and hot as his thoughts as they burned in his mind.

And now they grow hotter, every time he looks at you- which is too often- he knows this, but it cannot be helped. Not when you’re trying to appear fine for his sake.

For him.

Something in him unravels. A knotted rope coming undone. Arthur feels like a ship unmoored. Missing its anchor.

He should tell you.

He should admit to you the truth of who he is.

About the danger that follows him closer than his next breath.

But if he did….

Arthur’s hands shake.

The reality of it, of you knowing, might place you further into the path of threat than they’ve already strayed. Into the kingdom he never asked for and was overrun with the bloated pests of Vortigern’s prior reign.

Arthur glares at the garrison as they stumble around the yard.

A spark catches. Eager to meet his disgust.

Flames jump beneath his hands as he spears a log into the smoking kindling.

Arthur barely notices the fire climbing towards him.

The only movement he focuses on is the herbalist when you jump forward.

“Arthur!” you shout, reaching towards him and the bright lick of flame that snaps towards him. Like a hand reaching out, keen to meet his ire, yours is just as quick.

Arthur reacts quicker than thought, his hand releasing the log before yours can cross the threshold of clumped stones surrounding the pit. But his retreat is not obeyed by the flame, which follows until it seems to change its target. Its trajectory folding over itself, seeking new flesh.

You cry out, your hand snapping back from the heat. Boots scraping the dirt as you throw yourself into the stump you’d been perched on.

“Did it burn you?” Arthur asks, launching around the pit and to your side.

Your eyes are wide upon him before they flit over your skin. It’s free from blisters or scorching.

“No, m’fine, the fire grew is all,” you say, a slight stammer to your words that Arthur hasn’t heard before. His stomach clenches. His breath thins.

You say it as though the flame doesn’t come alive when he’s near.

As if he weren’t the reason for it’s disobedience.

It's a clear affront to its own nature.

And you speak as though you’re trying to disguise your fear.

Guilt storms through him.

And yet you look upon him with concern.

Like he deserves that.

And not your fear. Not your distrust. And yet he finds none of that.

It’s worse than if he had. At least, he’d know what to do then.

Arthur sighs through the hand that drags across his face.

Your voice comes, soft and impossibly kind, wrapped around his name in a way that makes him feel like he might break. Might cleave apart and spill all he’s ever been and might have been.

He should tell you.

That he’s the true threat here.

Not the flames. Not the guard in the market. Not the garrison and the other loyalists to Vortigern. Not his magic. Although Arthur is beginning to believe it all is connected. And all still a danger…

But he is the greatest one.

And if you were to know the whole of it - of him - then you may never be safe again.

Arthur cannot bear it.

Could he bear your fear? Your distance? Your absence?

Arthur thinks he must. That when all of this is over and he returns to his castle, and you your home in his wood, that he will.

But for now, the best thing he can offer you is his silence. His own separation. As far as he can bear it.

The fire pops. Cracks and bursts and splits the night.

Arthur forces his breathing to steadiness. His face calms before he looks at you again.

“You should sleep,” he says, and you blink at him, “I’ll keep watch,” he adds, voice thick with something you cannot place.

“It’s less suspicious if we bed together,” you say, and Arthur’s shock ripples through him. His hand pauses its scouring of his jaw, a stress tic of his fingers brushing the coarseness of his beard, his gaze finding yours as quick as a burst of spark from the fire.

“You glare at them like you wish for a fight,” you say, but there’s no accusation or tease in your voice, it’s merely fact. Arthur sighs with a deep nod.

“Aye, you may be right,” he says quietly.

“And you need to have a clear dream,” you continue, and Arthur nods his agreement again. Chin tucked to his chest, the firelight dancing over his features, gone impossibly serious.

Your words repeat in his mind.

A clear dream.

You sound certain. Assured.

If only you knew how much he loathed sleep. The years of nightmares. The brief reprieve since he’d been crowned had not been long enough to remove his anxiety over sleeping. And now, the nightmares have returned. Worse than before. Twisted with darkness and smoke and evil.

Something hunts him there.

Something that burns hotter than the flames in his chest.

It glows behind his eyes and scathes a line over his head where the crown should lay. Makes him feel like he’s made of ash.

Arthur swallows. Forces himself to nod.

Just once.

If you note his next breath does not take root behind his ribs as solidly as the ones before it, you do not say anything. Instead, you slip your hand into his when he offers it, and you do so without pause.

Because you trust him.

The thought needles into Arthur’s awareness. Slides into the spaces between his ribs.

“Come,” Arthur says, holding the tent flap open for you, his voice steady only through practice.

You duck beneath his arm, and Arthur tries to ignore the limp in your gait but he can’t. Noticing every injury you’ve ever sustained in his presence and wishes them absent. Forcing the worse ones that flood his thoughts as he frets to be buried somewhere he can’t look at the whole of them.

Not when the flap falls shut behind him and in the darkness you fold yourself into the blankets and you’re so near he can sip from your next breath. Can be close to you in this small way that makes him feel alive in ways he hasn’t felt in a long time.

He settles beside you. Leaving space between you even though everything in him begs to leave less than nothing. Yearns to gather you to him. To shield you from everything beyond the thin fabric of the tent. The cold that leeches in through the flimsy walls. That sets your body to shivering so that he sheds his coat and lays it over your shoulders before he lays down once more.

It’s the only warmth he can trust himself to provide.

The residual heat of himself, adorned upon you but not in the way he wishes it to be. He’d hold you until he was only bones and beyond. Until he could give of himself to whatever beautiful thing you would become next. You would grow and bloom without him, but he’d become the dirt you lived in if he could. The earth that would cling to your roots. That would steady you in a storm and give you nutrients and water. And if he could, also, he’d be the sun you reached for. The warmth and light of your days.

Arthur feels like he’s in a grave of his sad musings. Buried beneath his longing.

“You’re shivering,” you say, and Arthur huffs a laugh.

“M’fine,” Arthur says, a reflection of your earlier lies so that your answering breath is full of disbelief- at his and your own deceit.

It’s soft enough of a sound not to leave the confines of the tent, but sharp enough it cuts through him.

There’s movement on your side. Across the imaginary line Arthur’s drawn between you that starts and ends with the blanket he’s shoved between you. The furs rustle. Scrape against the canvas of the tent walls as said furs are adjusted. You’re tugging a thread, and Arthur’s drawn taut like he’s stitched to the other side. The one you’re intent to reach, but Arthur cannot tell this in the dark.

Arthur stills, waiting for the tent flap to open, for you to order him out.

Instead, cool fingers wrap around his wrist. A light touch. Searching.

An invitation of the silent sort.

Of the kind that he doesn’t deserve.

Carefully, Arthur takes your hand in his, like it’s the last thing in the world he has the right to hold.

He stops trembling.

He thinks, if he looks hard enough, he can find the shape of your smile in the darkness.

Eventually, you move closer. A careful, but purposeful drift. Like the tide when the sea meets sand. Settling into him like you’re meant to be there. Like there’s comfort to be found in him.

He should tell you the truth.

Arthur agonizes for what must be hours as you sleep beside him. Soothed into rest with the abnormal heat of him. Your soft breathing is like a balm to his senses. Still, he worries. What if you reach for him in your sleep?

He could protect you from everything. But what of himself?

His thoughts are reckless. He knows it but he cannot help them.

Aside from all his troubles he allows himself the indulgence of daydreaming. What would it be like, to hold you in his arms like this for the remainder of his nights? How much easier would it be to bear the weight of the crown, if every evening he could retreat into your embrace? Wasn’t a kingdom better led by a well married King?

Arthur mulls. If there was one thing he would ask his father, it might be this.

The fire outside dims. The garrison retreats into the inn. The cold nip of a spring night bites at the edges of the tent, crystallizing along its edges with late frost.

Arthur falls asleep, you in his grasp, in his thoughts, in his heart.

|||||

You wake comfortably nested in Arthur’s warm embrace. One of his heavy arms slung over your waist, his chest at your back- pressing and retreating with drawn breaths of sleep. His long legs are folded into the crook of yours, as though you’ve found this familiar nearness for a lifetime before now. Beneath the furs, you allow yourself a few moments of waking bliss. Your eyes closed against the dark beyond the tent flap. The cold that seeps in when you lift your hand to grasp a blade of frost covered grass just beyond the fabric wall.

The night presses in. The only light from the lanterns glowing on the stable. It must be near dawn, but not quite. Carefully, you extract yourself from Arthur. It’s like coaxing a vine of clematis away from its trellis.

Arthur’s fingers curling around you with a small grumble of displeasure- more of a growl with his voice coarse from sleep. But it's worn to near nothing with his exhaustion. The sound shudders out of him and into you where you’re still pressed to him within the small confines of the tent- barely able to crouch without your crown skimming the fabric walls.

It shakes something up in you. A memory of slow days with Silas. Long mornings made more so with love making. Silas’s sighs of pleasure were more a sensation than something you can hear- especially now. Barely able to pluck them out of your memories with this much distance between you and those moments.

Arthur’s solid- beneath your pressing hands as you pitch off the bed roll and towards the tent flap. The heat emanating from him like some part of him senses your desires on an unconscious plain of awareness. Promising comfort. Strength and purpose. With haste, you remove your touch from him, trying to force your mind to less scorching thoughts.

The urge to relieve yourself is great, and you leave the tent with a swirl of disappointment that you may not share such closeness with Arthur for the remainder of the trip. The air is even colder, compared to Arthur’s great warmth. It bites at your face and hands, and you wrap yourself up in Arthur’s fleece lined coat that he’d offered as an additional covering for your rest.

You cast one last look at your dozing companion before you depart. Most of the furs have been flung from his overheated frame. One hand rests close to his sword, the other reaching beyond his head- to where you stand. In sleep, his expression is less troubled than in his waking hours. The pinch between his blonde brows smoothed to near nothing. The set of his jaw looser with his breaths. His shoulders slack and unguarded.

You remember the first time you witnessed his rest. Passed out in the clearing beside the plot of elvium. When you’d taken his sword and hidden it- not the one he carries now. That one was more intricate and beautiful. It suited him more somehow than the simple, practical blade he carries on this journey. You wonder what he’d done with the former. Perhaps it wasn’t his.

The call of nature tugs more insistently, and so you leave the sleeping guard.

The inn is surprisingly quiet given how late the garrison had drunk and feasted themselves into a combined stupor. Still, you don’t dare venture inside, instead opting for the familiar forest that surrounds the yard.

You wander ten paces into the woods, then find a tree to answer the call. When you’re done, you wander in a little further, your eyes having adjusted better to the darkness, and what light the half moon provides where she lays near the horizon. By habit, you scour the surrounding trees, making note of which types are most prevalent, then your gaze finds the forest floor. Searching for forageables.

A creeping mass of chickweed blankets some of the ground. Stellaria media. Its small, white ten petalled flowers mimicking the stars they gaze upon through the forest canopy.

You collect some, and use your dress as a makeshift cloth to carry them. It could be useful for skin rashes, eaten plainly, or added to stew. You chew some immediately, to ward off the cramps that have clawed in your lower stomach. The pain had been part of what roused you. Your courses announcing their impending appearance.

On your return, you spot a small grouping of scarlet cups. Their bright red bowl shapes are nearly covered by leaf litter, but you grab the rotten branch they perch upon for a closer look. With better inspection, you note the edges of the fungi are frayed and nibbled. A mouse had reached them before you. They might have sold as pretty table decor had they been intact. You put them back where you’d found them.

By the time you’ve made your way back to the edge of the forest, dawn has arrived. Soft, pale light glows across the tree lined horizon and blooms upon the inn and you spot a Hawthorn shrub a few yards away.

Within its branches, one of the innkeeper’s sons grabs handfuls of fresh leaves and buds, taking turns adding them to a basket, and shoving them in his mouth. It’s the eldest- the one that had minded Critter in the stables when you’d arrived yesterday.

“Bread and cheese,” you say on your approach, if only to announce your presence, and the boy’s head snaps to you, his mouth caught mid-chew as his hands still. He looks ready to bolt, likely expecting a soldier in your stead, but your amused smile must soothe him, because he simply nods and returns to his task.

From behind the trunk, its bark rough and scaly with age, a smaller face peers up at you. One of his younger brothers, shyer than a field mouse, regards you carefully.

“Mother taught us,” the boy says once he swallows, holding out a handful for you to take. Apparently he’d been taught his manners well by her too. Quietly, you chew the nutty flavored buds as he works. Every so often, he offers a bunch to the smaller child.

“Before she died,” he adds, and you reach for the fresh growth just out of his reach, and add more to his basket, which earns you a smile from his grief stricken look.

The younger one chews, unaffected by the turn in subject to sorrow. Perhaps he was too young to remember, or too preoccupied with assessing strangers for threat to care.

The older boy glances at your own collection, and then to the path from which you’d come, and nods in approval.

“Cheken-wede,” he says, “We used to feed it to our hens, before this lot ate them all,” the boy shakes his head with disgust as his chin tips to the inn.

As though remembering himself, he brushes his hands on his ragged shirt, and rounds to face you more completely. The smaller one steps up behind him, like an ever vigilant shadow.

“Did you sleep well? Do you need anything? I can get more firewood. Breakfast will be ready right soon. I’ve fed your horse and brushed him down,” the questions are loosed rapidly, his eagerness to please one of their first true guests in god knows how many suns is evident as he waits for your answer.

“Yes, thank you,” you offer, about to ask after the firewood when the boy interrupts. Despite the rising sun, the frost is still holding fast to the sparse clumps of grass in the yard.

“Did you know his teeth are soft?” the boy asks, something too grown in his look, a seriousness that betrays his young years. The littler one smiles up at you, the gaps in his teeth offered with a growing ease at his older brother’s pleasant eagerness to be of your service.

Confusion marks your face, so the eldest boy continues, chin tipping to the stables.

“I mixed his oats with water,” the boy tells you, speaking of Critter.

You shake your head. “No, that was thoughtful of you.”

The boy nods solemnly.

“Most horses would be meat with a mouth like that,” the boy tells you, and you cringe, unable to explain that Critter is not your horse, but it might give away yours and Arthur’s fib. So instead, you play at ignorance, but resolve to look after Critter more closely going forward.

The boy leans towards you, his voice dropping to a whisper as his gaze scours the inn for any company that could overhear him.

“But I know he belongs to the King, so I won’t spill, promise,” the boy says and your brows nearly approach a vertical position with your shock. Critter bore no branding. The only evidence that could align with the boy's conclusion is that he’s a well kept horse. Well fed and minded. It’s clear whoever runs the stables at the castle cares much for its horses.

“What makes you say that?” you ask, worried suddenly if the child has made this connection with such ease. What if the garrison had taken notice too?

“He’s got the King’s crest on his shoes,” the boy says with a casual shrug, “I cleaned them last night.”

You’re a bit dumb struck. You’d expected a brush down. A meal or two for Critter. Not a complete service. However the stables had been empty aside from Critter, and based off the boy’s industrious hands with the Hawthorn tree- it made sense.

Perhaps he hoped for more supplies as you’d tipped him yesterday, if he went beyond your expectations. Perhaps he didn’t wish to be idle. In any case, you want to return to the tent to inform Arthur, and gather the supplies as a trade off for this secret.

The boy’s smile turns proud at your surprised expression.

“I was going to apprentice in Lebfordshire. Before the war,” he says, looking a bit sad as he speaks.

“John. The farrier,” you supply, and the boy's face brightens once more.

“Aye! You know it?”

You nod.

“We will travel there today,” you admit.

The boy’s grin widens, his voice going up a pitch.

“Take me with you!” he whisper-shouts, latching onto one of your arms so that you overcorrect to avoid spilling the chickweed. He releases you with a quick apology, but gathers up his basket, throwing his younger brother over the other shoulder with an unhappy squawk of protest from the smaller child, and darts off to the inn with a gleeful laugh. Calling back to you with joy bright in his voice.

“I’ll ask Papa!”

Cringing, wondering if Critter’s kingly relationship will be held over your head to endear you to this newfound task, you hope that Arthur won’t mind the added company on your journey as you make your way to the campfire in the center of the yard.

Soft snoring comes from yours and Arthur’s tent as you wash the chickweed with the supplied bucket of water. Debating whether to wake Arthur, when one of the side doors to the inn swings open.

You expect the innkeeper, or his eldest, instead a soldier stumbles out and pisses on the wall.

Irritation lances through you and you chew your next bite of chickweed a little harder. Chasing it with the sweeter Hawthorn leaves as you work through preparing a part of your breakfast.

The soldier disappears back inside, to your great relief. A few moments later, through another side door, another child emerges. The middle one, his hands full of steaming mugs. Hurrying, as though under duress, he spots you across the yard, and makes a beeline in your direction.

“Gruel,” the boy says, placing the mugs on a stump that’s a makeshift stool and now a table.

“Thank you,” you say and the boy- the second oldest- his shoes more worn than the older’s, as though they were passed down, sways where he stands- looking apprehensive at the inn. When it’s clear to his approval, he swivels back to you, his voice lowered to a whisper much like his older brother’s.

“Is it true?” he asks, eyes wide and eager upon yours as you reach into Arthur’s supply bags for an apple.

Producing your small blade, you slice pieces of the fruit into your mugs. The boy watches thoughtfully for a breath, before his eyes find you with rapt focus.

“Is he really the King’s horse?” the boy asks, and you still, worried all over again for yours and Arthur’s farce.

The boy bends to align his face with the angle of your lowered head, his expression pleading.

“I won’t tell a soul, promise,” the boy urges and you tip your chin, just once, but it’s enough for a grin the same bright shade as his brother’s to cleave his face.

“You truly musn’t tell,” you whisper back, trying to impart seriousness in your stern look and the boy nods with his entire body.

“I promise!” before he darts back to the inn. Disappearing inside with a skip in his step, leaving you to wonder if you’ve just salted the roots of yours and Arthur’s journey.

Dread coils in your gut, enough that although you add herbs and spice to the gruel, your appetite wanes.

Would Arthur be upset? Would he even have the chance to be- if the children couldn’t keep this secret?

Would the garrison believe him to be one of their new ranks- would they even respect it given their allegiance to Vortigern? Given Arthur’s apparent affluence in his position, and their thieving, scrounging ways. Arthur has clear favor with the new King, while they desperately cling to the rotten memory of the former. The disparity may be too great to bridge.

Caught in your dark musings, you lift your head to find three pairs of eyes watching your gruel enhancing work. The innkeeper’s sons peer at you from the stables, their own mugs steaming below their rapt faces.

They look torn between remaining where they stand- likely out of their father’s warning- or seeking your company.

With a resigned sort of sigh, you beckon them over. The youngest and oldest stumble forwards, while the second retreats just as quickly into the stables and out of sight. Eagerly, they place their mugs aside yours and Arthurs just as their brother joins them- the supplies you’d given them yesterday held out to you. A few apples, a bundle of cheese. You lift your hand- but only to push the offered supplies back, instead reaching into yours and Arthur’s pack once more.

Methodically, you slice fruit, cheese and dried meat into the gruel. Theirs are more watery than what’s been given to you and Arthur. It makes something tug in your chest as you season each one. If your knife cuts the wedge of cheese and dried meats with clumsiness, and extra large chunks fall waywardly into the children’s, then it’s merely a coincidence.

The brothers watch, the youngest aligned to your side. His boots are nearly falling apart, but have been carefully wrapped with cloths, likely by his brother’s care. The youngest eagerly hands you more supplies and you feel loath to refuse him, even as their mugs nearly overflow.

The oldest smiles happily, which makes you believe his father has agreed to the travel arrangements while the second pockets their supplies, with a cautious look back to the inn’s upper floor where the soldiers rest. The windows betray no sound or movement, to your relief.

Apparently, it's to the children’s comfort as well, because the middle boy whispers conspirationally. The way he looks at you makes him look nearly as young as the little boy at your side. Like he still believes in fairy tales with his whole heart.

“Are you a princess?”

A soft laugh escapes you, before you dole out the mugs. The boys eat like they don’t need to breathe, but their attention remains on you, as though hungry for stories as much as the food.

Scooting Arthur’s mug closer to the warm stones around the fire so it will keep warm, you shake your head and the children deflate slightly.

From within the tent, a burst of movement and noise comes. It’s not the sound of a man coaxed to consciousness. You can tell Arthur rouses with haste. Akin to when Silas would wake to the crack of thunder. Before he’d slip from your bed to check on the animals.

For a few moments, you’re drawn back to your wedding night. The sky had threatened rain all day, and the storm had arrived, fierce and loud, in the early morning. Only shortly after you and Silas had collapsed into your new married bed. Your feet sore from dancing, yours and his bodies succumbing to exhausted sleep, only after Silas had assured your nervous self away from the thought of consummating your marriage with a gently amused laugh.

“We’ve the rest of our lives for that. Rest now, my sweet wife.”

And then the thunder rolled in, rousing you from sleep as your new home illuminated with lightning. Silas has slipped from your side, a kiss pressed to your crown as he murmured his soft farewell.

“I’ll be in your reach once more, my love.”

You’d stood at the door, the one that Silas had only just carried you across its threshold. The rain pelted the ground, splashing against your bare feet as Silas ran to the barn. Your breath caught in your chest as the air shook with wind and sound.

How easily Silas threw himself into the chaos, to offer his calm to those that were afraid. How your own anxiety at the thought of venturing out into that wild stirred nature made you shake like an unweathered seedling.

You knew then you’d love him. That perhaps, you yet did. Like a seedling bursting from its pod, but still remained buried beneath the soil. Unseen, untouched by sunshine. But knowing it was there. That it was something to reach towards because it’d had it once before. In another life. Where it grew and bloomed and had the chance to turn to seed.

Thank you for reading!! Please engage if you enjoyed- likes, comments and reblogs mean ✨ e v e r y t h i n g ! ✨Thank you dear reader! ^_^ 💖💖💖

||||

|||

Thank you for reading!! Please engage if you enjoyed- likes, comments and reblogs mean ✨ e v e r y t h i n g ! ✨Thank you friend! ^_^ 💖💖💖

You moved in silence. Not quietly. No, you were trained to be better than that. Hugging the shadows- weaving through them like you were born of darkness, you navigated the narrow hallways of the ship with stealth and speed. Gaze trained down the sight, ears straining for any sound aside from the creak of metal as the ship swayed in the sea, you trace Ironhead’s footsteps. Inwardly cringing at the singular blood trail marking the only other sign he’d been this way. The bodies. Dark puddles are still pooling beneath them. Killed by blade as no gunfire had split the air yet. At least not down here. How the rest of the team fared above your heads- feet of solid metal between you that destroyed any hopes of consistent comms- would be seen on the other side of this hallway.

The one that Ironhead was trying to clear- whether he realized you were behind him when you were meant to be in front was also yet to be seen. By his take no prisoners tactics and the fact you were to rendezvous with him on the deck and that you hadn’t heard even a whisper of combat down here in his violent wake- it meant Will was moving with haste. Probably for what he thought was your sake.

Unfortunately your boarding of the ship hadn’t gone to plan. The fierce swell was shit luck in the first place.The beginning of a storm had forced the rest of the team to navigate the patrol boat to another position when you’d already climbed the ladder and cleared the railing. Their shouts to you were lost to the wind and waves. You were meant to have Ironhead directly behind you- he was supposed to be your cover while you gathered your bearings and decided the best path into the depths of the hull.

Left to your lonesome, a hostile found you while you were stripping off your wetsuit in a dark corner. By some small whisper of luck in your favor as the rain blanketed down in nearly opaque sheets, you’d noticed him before he had a chance to react. Incapacitating him before he could alert the others to your presence. Still, he’d managed a brutal fist to your mask in the scuffle before your knife found its mark. Shoving the blade past his tac vest while blood coated your teeth.

The comms had cracked the moment before you’d descended into the guts of the ship.

“Front to rear, disappear boys-Magic,” Benny’s voice drawling in your ear indicating the mission remained the same despite the change in course. The timeline was FUBAR’d but you’d trained enough to push forward alone. 

“Got your six, Magic,” Ironhead affirms to you over the comms as though to answer your internal debate of whether to wait for some sign of him near the original meetup or to push on. There was no opportunity to inquire which side of the ship Will had boarded- whether and where the rendezvous point had changed as hostiles blanketed the deck. Clearly he was somewhere less infested with them if he dared to use his comms with his voice but his vantage point deemed the assurance necessary. Odds were high he could see you but you couldn’t him. 

Based on the footsteps surrounding you- boots heavy on metal above and approaching from ahead on the deck- you couldn’t linger anywhere up here for long without being discovered. All you could do was spare a few seconds to click your comms button in acknowledgement. Not daring to use your voice should you give your position away.

Three taps then you pushed forwards. The hatch into the ship was darker than the moonless night that kept your presence here a secret. Some anxiety clawed through you while your night vision goggles adjusted to the darkness when the ship’s depths swallowed you. Closing the hatch behind you- you inwardly cursed- realizing the first hostile’s contact with your face had compromised not only your ability to breathe through your nose but also the function of your mask. The goggles were glitching. Shoving them up your head- you were forced to wait a moment longer for your natural vision to adjust.

Fuck, maybe you should have waited for Will instead of slinking around essentially blind. It wasn’t unsurprising this ship operated with red lights only. Trying to escape the neighboring country's awareness of its unwanted presence in their waters. But it made it a bitch of a time for you to navigate towards the goal set for you. Reach the research lab at the heart of the hull and gather whatever intel it contained. 

The good news was no alarms sounded as you moved. The team up above would extract you if needed however security measures seemed scarce below deck compared to what Pope, Benny and Fish were dealing with. Recalling the blueprints of the ship’s layout- you locate the next set of stairs that will take you deeper into the belly of the steel beast. Still wishing you had Ironhead with you. A weapon of a man that would be the quick blade finding its way between plated armor with his sharp honed senses and skills. Will would locate the lab like he’d built the ship himself. Would pass silently through these walls like a ghost. Only realizing your partner was not a spirit haunting your steps- but leading them when you find the first prone hostile at the bottom of the stairs.

Blood stains the ground, fills the mask covering the hostile’s face. Will’s work was never pretty and always efficient.

The first promising hatch appears after a disappointing set of storage rooms and utility closets. The entrance to a lab- a room fit for changing into research uniforms. Lab coats, lockers, sign in and out sheets. Entering swiftly, you sweep the space corner to corner before moving towards the door on the other side.

This has to be the lab.

There’s a creak of metal unlike all the rest of the heaving ship. Sharper. Closer before a flurry of movement explodes behind you.

Your mask is ripped off the top of your head and your head is yanked back with it. A wise opponent uses the shifting gravity of the ship to their advantage- pulling you with the sway of the swell so that your ability to correct is now at a massive loss. Gravity takes over your ability to aim your weapon before it's knocked out of your grip. The possibility to react in any shape or form is reduced to a burst of surprise and panic. Your fingers reach for your knife- slick with blood from the first hostile- you get a hold but the slippery sense of a battle about to be lost before it had hardly begun slithers into your awareness. Some untrained part of you fills with agony. Fuck, you were better than this. Shame and guilt competes for your focus- the one you’d drilled into seeking and achieving your survival. Before you can get a sense of bearing- strong arms lock around yours. 

“S’me, Magic,” Ironhead growls into your head- keeping his own tight to yours so you can’t bash him with it out of trained reaction. The very one he’s coached into you when you performed drills of this kind of attack on your six. Ironhead knows well enough your next fallback move. Sidesteps your boot before it can land on his own while your brain catches up with his words. Adrenaline breaking through to register him as friendly while he locks down your blade with his iron grip.

“Fuck, Ironhead,” you hiss when Will releases you as soon as your voice leaks out recognition and disregard in equal measure. If the sea you operated in now was made of swear words you could empty it now through your mouth in just a few seconds. And perhaps vacate your gut too as it revolts to realize you could have just compromised not only the mission- but Will’s life.

That cold, blue gaze is serious while he evaluates your destroyed mask in his gloved hands. How he manages to already disengage from the thought of you shooting or stabbing him while your body jolts with the action he’d dismantled you from in less than an instant must be the reason he’s Captain.

Compartmentalize. Separating action from emotion. 

You could have shot him. 

Beaned your fucking Captain. 

Slid a blade beneath his ribs and then had to explain why to his fucking brother. 

Benny would have killed you. If you all would have even survived.

And Will seems to have tracked all of this and yet gives away nothing. Not a crumb of feeling found in his eyes for your own to feed on. Not a flicker of consideration as to where you both could have ended up. The blue of his gaze darker than the sea you just ascended from.

Embarrassment that you hadn’t initially seen him in your scope out of the room, that you hadn’t reacted in time to his attack- surges through your frame in replacement of the shock of his ambush. Unsure if you wanted his blood spilled more than you wanted your unease to disappear if only to save you the lecture. Ironhead preoccupies himself with your broken gear while you bend and collect your rifle, trying to focus on something else than the mixture of energy in your frame.

There’d be time to discuss it later. Of course you knew he’d bring it up eventually. At least he wouldn’t be a dick about it like Redfly.

We’re learning for next time so we don’t make the same mistakes.The ones which could have landed you both dead.

Will always operated from a team perspective where Tom always put you on the spot. “You’ll get everyone killed! Use your fucking head next time if we’ll be so fucking lucky.”

Ironhead lets you have a moment longer of introspection, apparently unconcerned with being discovered as he examines your smashed mask. It was odd now that you thought about it. The absence of security. A nagging sense that something wasn’t right about any of this creeps into your awareness.

The mission must go on despite your reservations about your usefulness to it. You were here despite that poor performance and may well be less of a burden to Ironhead and his team.

Examining the room, you note an empty locker.The sound from earlier echoes in your mind. The scrape of metal when Will had made himself known to your awareness. Familiar with the sharp screech of it. How many times had you heard it in the wake of Benny’s fights when you all crowded into the locker room to patch him up?

“Is this where you were fucking hiding?” you ask, unable to disguise the laughter as you marvel at the size of the metal container. It was only a little bit larger than the lockers you were used to in the community center gym and the military base. How Will managed to cram himself inside of it- and exit it with speed as he’d done when he’d attacked you- was a mystery.

Turning to Will- who even amidst the red light and shadows- fills the space like he refuses to let one atom of himself disappear. The broadness of him is accentuated further by the amount of gear he dons. The swivel of his shoulders reminds you of how Benny commands himself in the cage. Like he owns every inch of his being. Can provoke every firm muscle of his impressive frame to action. You’ve trained with the older Miller often enough to know the violence he possesses. Restrains. The strength of him held back- only unleashed for the sake of his profession.

You can’t help but wonder what Will would be like if his mission were of a different sort- a sexier one.The wide expanse of Will’s chest beneath his tac vest, his towering height all held against you just moments ago is suddenly a sense memory you can’t ignore. Heat pulses through you.

What the fuck is going on? No, no, no, *not* the fucking time- you try to tamp down the thoughts that cause heat to bloom in your belly and between your thighs. 

“Worked in a pinch,” Will replies- a slight curve to his lips when he looks at you-his smirk blotting out your thoughts. You’d have to pinch yourself for this dreamy consideration of him. You’re almost tempted when your eyes meet for a heartbeat too long. An ache thrumming through you that has nothing to do with the way he just manhandled you into not debilitating him and yet everything to do with his hands on you.

Although Will’s gaze grazes your mouth for a moment- his eyes flick away and evaluates the swelling across your nose. It must be quite bad, you think, because his brow furrows and his jaw ticks over. 

“I thought you were here already,” Will says, unable to hide the worry in his tone. He hadn’t heard your comm contact. The taps lost to the torrential rain as he searched the vacant rendezvous point. His heart slamming in his mouth the entire way here because he thought you’d been captured. Teeth gritting over his fear. Swallowing panic and sliding blade into skin with an efficiency he thought he’d lost in recent years with his age. But you’d appeared. Like Magic, he thinks, smiling to himself despite the serious place his mind had just visited. 

As though sensing his dark considerations, you attempt to brighten the mood while searching for anything useful in the lockers. Most of them are empty.

“I make it a habit to appear at critical moments,” you say, self deprecation always got you a small smile from the Captain. Perhaps it reminded him of Benny’s humor. Either way it was effective at sliding past Will’s iron defenses.

“Like a bunny,” Will says and you lift a brow as he runs a hand down his face. Sweat beads upon his brow- the bowels of the ship are warm and the fear that had driven his form down these halls with murderous intent had brought its own heat. If you weren’t suffering from the same adrenaline rush in this tin can you’d think he looked feverish.

“Out of a hat,” Will adds, miming a magician pulling a rabbit from a top hat. It’d become an integral team signal as part of your call sign due to your ability to emerge in tight spots of combat as victor. Something they all likened to magic, the superstitious lot that they were. 

Benny called you his good luck charm for his fights. He’d only started winning consistently when you joined the team- which you thought was linked to his training becoming condensed. Will as his coach had to be shared with you now- ever since Will decided your combat skills would be brought up to his standards.

When you weren’t on contract work, watching Benny fight or practicing tactical drills- you trained with Will. Recalling being with him in the cage produced a new wave of heat in your body. A burn in you that longed for the fuel he provided. Those golden smiles, gifted to you when you got a skill down. His gritted off, near breathless “Good girl,” offered after he taps out on the mat. Doling praise with what you believed was no thought to the way your brain short circuited at the words- but Will was nothing if not observant. Your body stilling beneath his- breath hitching beneath his hands before you flustered through a half assed response.

Ironhead shuffles where he stands and you inwardly slap yourself for staring at him. For fuck’s sake, he was your Captain- you’d be right to remember that important fact especially up to your throats in a mission. Shifting back to the task at hand instead of gathering around the proverbial water cooler- fuck- you could use a cold shower right now- clear the sweat pricking at your spine where it meets your tac vest. Wash away the thoughts of Will and what he’d look like if he kept it on while he– 

Will interrupts the path of your ruined mind.

“You came down the port side stairwell?” Will asks, the words strained through his teeth, fingers clenched around your mask so that the leather of his glove squeaks. You notice his own mask is missing. The claw mark across his cheek means someone else had removed it for him. Forcefully.

You nod and Will sighs heavily, shoulders descending a fraction before he shuffles whatever is weighing down his regard and straightens his spine.

“Alright, well-let’s get moving,” Will says, discarding your mask and gesturing with his rifle to the door of the lab. Positioning yourself parallel to it, you wait for Will to follow suit- noting his breathing is ragged where he hovers behind you.

The blood trail from the hallway- connecting all his kills from the first- dots your thoughts with its dark sheen. Staining your attention- How could you have forgotten to check if he was okay?

Before Will can command you to breach you turn to him.

Why he doesn’t immediately chew you out for ignoring the tactical advance but instead you find his blue gaze roving your face- and you know it isn’t to examine the swelling because his eyes linger on your lips.

“You okay?” you query and Will seems to emerge from a fog, blinking away his break in focus to nod.

“M’fine,” he grits out, chin tipping to the door beyond you and the thick cords of his neck are revealed behind the fabric of his buff. The lift of his sharp jaw reveals that distracting stretch of tensing muscles that jerk and twist with his silent order. Throat bobbing when he swallows thickly like the air had turned to paste between you. Blue gaze implores you, something pained behind it.

Get moving.

The only place you want to move is towards him. To shove your bruised face into the crook of his neck where a firm shoulder meets his tactical vest and then skin. Sheening with sweat and sea water. Will leans towards you- just a fraction- as though drawn in by your unspoken musings. The scent of him- of salt and gun smoke and iron- collides with the goal of the mission.

Whiskey Tango Foxtrot.

What. The. Fuck.

While you weren’t as experienced as Will- as the rest of the team- you were always professional. Constantly aimed to uphold the honor of your oaths and respect the authority of your Captain. 

But something was wrong.

Very wrong.

Sure- you had a lot of thoughts about Will before this moment. But you’d trained very hard to be proficient at your work- and to maintain boundaries amidst your team. If you entertained more intimate thoughts about Will on your time off- in your bunk and dreams- that was your own business. You’d managed to work alongside him for six months without trespassing into less professional territory. Sure there were long looks when you thought the other wasn’t looking. Maybe you stared at his hands while he cleaned his gear. Maybe he stared at your ass when you ran the ten training miles every morning. Maybe you enjoyed doing combat drills with him- or when he showed you some of Benny’s signature cage moves at the gym. Maybe you enjoyed Will’s blue eyes upon you more than you would admit. His firm hands on your thighs and arms when he pulled and pushed you into a submissive hold- always gentle- afraid to inflict harm when all he wanted was to make you laugh beneath him. Maybe you enjoyed when he used his Captain voice for trivial things- and not in the asshole way that Tom used his.

Will was kind, aware of his authority- and never made you feel less than. 

And that’s how you wanted to keep things.

But something was happening between the two of you.

And it got worse when you breached the lab.

It was darker than the hallways when you entered. Flicking your moonbeam on- it casts more light on your situation but not as much as for Will when he follows. In a heartbeat Ironhead clears the corner and maneuvers towards a laptop on one of the stations.

Yanking his glove off, his fingers clatter over the keys while his gaze cements itself on the screen like it owes him something. Taking up a post and hovering by the next exit- you try to look out for hostiles while Will gathers intel.

Ironhead’s sharp curse comes before an alarm blares. The room flashes between blinding white and ominous red while a siren wails in what feels like your brain with how loud it wanes and lifts. Gunfire erupts somewhere far away. Footsteps clang overhead. Will grips your arm, hauling you back to the locker room.

Figuring his plan was to work your way back the way you’d come in- you make for the hallway but Will’s grip tightens, forcing you to turn to him.

“What’s wrong?” you ask, searching his frame for signs of injury. Finally you notice the stain over his thigh- dark with blood- no weapon or shrapnel remaining but a nasty gash along the outer side of his leg.

Will’s face contorts in pain- head swivels back to the lab and the data stick in his grip. His hands tremble- fisted knuckles white. 

“We need to go,” you urged him on, he hadn’t even limped earlier- the wound couldn’t be that bad yet and you’d seen him lose more blood than this on previous missions. Footsteps thunder down the wall- an echo of angry thuds against metal. The echo of them hollows out and meets itself as they make their way closer. The other hallway would sound the same in a few mikes. It was time to get the fuck out.

“Can’t,” Will growls through a tight, near constant shake of his head- his gaze torn away from the oncoming hostiles and while his word didn’t sound like defeat- his voice held a quality you’d heard only one time before when icy blue eyes landed on you.

The night at the bar just off base. When a fellow recruit had tried to feel you up despite you turning him down. Freshly a part of the team- you were used to fighting your own battles and were about to give the stupid asshole an earful and likely fistful of your wrath. Hadn’t expected Will to snap upright from his seat at the bar and cement the handsy idiot in his sights the second the fool’s hand grazed your thigh.

Certainly hadn’t expected the bit off, “Excuse me, sweetheart,” directed towards you before Will’s fist snapped out and connected with the guy’s teeth. Will had moved like lightning. Used all the space provided in the crowded bar- mindful to keep himself between you and the unfortunate target in his hands. The man’s head was guided forcely against the edge of the bar and then the stool Will had sat on- enough for the smacks to draw pained grunts and a group of onlookers. Not enough damage though. Not to Will’s standards as he shoved the man’s throat into the crook of his elbow- the offending hand of the creep now twisted at a brutal angle behind his back. A series of pop’s as bones crushed beneath Will’s grip joined a distressed squealing- conveniently covering up whatever dangerous words Will hissed into the man’s ear before he was released. Ran off to the parking lot never to show his face in front of you again.

There’d been a protectiveness that had shook through Will’s polite words to you before the violence.Vibrated through you now at his growled “Can’t” but confusion bled in just as well.

“It’s time to disappear, bunny,” Will says with a tight shrug of his shoulders before he holsters his rifle and shoves you against the lockers.

“What the fuck-” you wanted to ask what he meant, but Will crowds against you. Twisting you around and pressing you further into the locker before cramming himself in after. Will tugs the door closed with a sharp squeak just as the horde of footsteps reaches the hatch to the changing room. 

In the last few seconds available, Will wraps an arm around your waist and props you upon one of his legs, forcing you to sit higher into the locker as he wedges himself at the door he holds closed. Afraid you’ll both topple out if he doesn’t make adjustments. Your back is to his chest- your chest to the wall of the metal box. Will’s arm is like a cage around your middle- anchoring you to him and while usually you’d be panicking over the small space- something about Will’s touch keeps you grounded. It helps that he's chosen the emptiest locker. There’s more room to breathe than you expected in the tight conditions.

But the group at the door makes you both hold your breath as their breach is called out. You try to turn your head to get your sight on the only exit but Will’s voice husks out against your head where his is thrust against it.

“Don’t move,” Will commands. It’s an order. He uses his Captain voice but it lands on your personal radar given the low, gritted off quality of it. Your very personal radar as his knee lifts a little higher while he tries to grab his weapon. Wedging his thick thigh between yours. Placing pressure on your core in a way that you didn’t dare admit when his head was smashed against yours so hard you were sure he could hear your thoughts. 

Both you and Will stood paralyzed. Breaths held against your potential discovery. The knowing that neither of you had a weapon in position to aim let alone shoot pressing on your minds. But one of Will’s guns was pressing against you. A hard bulge against your ass. 

Once most of the horde of hostiles dispersed and it was almost silent in the locker room and adjoining lab for a few mikes- you dared to wiggle into a more comfortable position. Will’s thigh that was pressed between yours became your leverage and you hoped it wasn’t the injured one when your legs tightened around it.

Will groaned behind you at the action. A low sound that rumbled from his chest and into yours even through the tac vests. It didn’t sound painful but you tried to give him as much space as the crammed box allowed. Which was essentially nothing. Less than nothing even. You were stuck in the locker- “nut to butt'' as it were. Will’s hulking form curled around yours as he attempted to use most of his size as a shield should anyone think to check the lockers. The hostiles outside the thin piece of steel shout curt orders. Will stares them down as they sweep the space again.

A masked guard stalks the line of lockers you hide in. Will’s body tenses against yours every time the man moves closer. All his firm muscle held against you poised to burst forth and inflict harm if necessary. Fearing the worst- what if one of you got stuck in the process of exiting the locker- or collapsed out of it- the hand not grasping Will’s arm around your waist reaches backwards to brace against Will.

You're searching for him- not tac vest or weapon or comms- you need Will. To steady him and yourself. First, your fingers find dense fabric and foam- the edges of his tac vest so you aim lower. The cool metal of his magazine clip meets your hand next. Carefully, quietly you venture further. Needing to feel his skin against yours for no good reason other than if you were about to be shot to bits in a metal box- you wanted Will to know you cared. And if you couldn’t use your words- you could use touch.

Finally you feel the heat of him- the skin across his hip against your fingers brings some small measure of relief. But there were some mysteries about the Miller man that you’d yet to discover.

Will was ticklish.

At your glancing touch his hips stutter against you in surprise. Will’s breath bursts against your ear in a bitten off chuckle- nearly drawing blood from his lip to prevent himself from the involuntary reaction. There’s a hitch of his breath and a hiss to reflect it.

The prowling guard stalks the other side of the room now. Will dares to speak. Barely giving voice to his words with the proximity of you.

“What are you doing?” Will asks and you can’t help the shiver at the way his voice has dropped even though he barely puts sound to it.

Your fingers touch him more firmly- wrapping around the curve of his hip as though to press him more properly to where he was rooted against your own hips.If you were going to die like a sardine in a can- you may as well get to know your neighbor a little bit better. Squeezing what you can hold- you hoped some small feeling might transfer to Will. Some sense of care and appreciation that he was here with you. Maybe imminent death was making you so bold, you didn’t really know what had overcome you. Feeling up your Captain before being punctured by lead wasn’t exactly on your bucket list but the feel of Will being so close was like a drug. And your fingertips on his bare skin felt like a breath of fresh air.

“Are you trying to get us killed?” Will asks when your fingers find his tac belt. Curiously, the gun you thought was against your ass was holstered at his side. What you supposed had shifted in Will’s attempts to squeeze you both inside this box with haste had stayed in place the entire time. Which meant that wasn’t a hard weapon against your ass. It was Will. 

Fuck, you couldn’t blame him- your thighs squeezing over his to get some relief from your precarious thoughts. A tightness and swirling in your belly and lower- that familiar tugging of need growing. It made sense being so close. Will was attractive and based on the looks you’d caught him taking when he thought you weren’t paying attention- you were too. At least to his liking and now you were pressed against him in a less than professional position and you both were reacting in accordance. Something about this discovery and your preoccupation with it should have set off alarm bells. Any other day it would have. But instead it spurred you. A compulsion to feel more of Will drives your hand further behind your back, closer to where you’re flush against him.

Your fingers leave his hip and find the coarse hair of his happy trail. Will’s stomach flexes beneath your touch as though to meet them. His breathing rasps out behind you- his body jerking against yours like he’s sensitive. God, you could make him feel so good- take him right along the path of pleasure if he’d only allow it. Let down that guarded persona of his that never lets him get close to anyone. The only person you’d ever truly seen him let down his defenses for was Benny but you supposed he never built any up for his brother anyways.

“Fuck-” Will curses behind you and you can’t help the way your thighs tighten, drawing another curse from the back of his throat. The hand at your waist hauls you further into him while his hips lift to meet your aching core.

Will’s breath bursts against your neck as he presses his head against yours.

“You need to stop before I fucking come in my pants,” Will husks, but he’s left the order out of his words. The way his fingers dig into you indicates he wishes for the opposite. 

“What the fuck is wrong with us,” you say and Will’s hand snakes up your tac vest to cover your mouth, his chest forcing you further into the wall while he stills both your movements with his weight. It further proves to you that if he’d truly wanted to he could have put an end to your attentions. 

The guard’s footsteps approach but fade until they disappear completely along with the rest.

Will’s fingers gingerly lift from your face, careful to avoid your swollen nose before he speaks- voice catching on grit.

“Neurotoxin,” Will says and your blood chills but not for nearly as long as it should when his hand cements itself against your side once more, pulling you into him while he inhales your scent. Face pressed against your crown- Will allows himself to enjoy one last moment of closeness before he plans to haul you out of the locker and off this fucking hellship.

“Which one?” you ask, your voice wavering with fear so that Will surfaces from his need to hold you close for a moment to grasp your fear instead. He would take it from you- that shiver of anxiety he feels against him- he’d turn it into something good. Make you feel nothing but good. With his hands, his mouth, his cock…have you trembling against him in pleasure.

“Aphrodisiac,” Will replies bluntly, “Don’t know exactly the one but it feels like when we ran into it during the Cobol mission.”

You hadn’t joined the team at that point. It was a job they didn’t discuss- but that was the same for a lot of their missions. The after effects were still being felt in the shifting dynamics of their relationships. There was a closeness about them all that seemed accentuated.

The only good news about this was that Will was alive. They’d survived that job and now he was pressed up against you in a way that felt too good to be true. So maybe this toxin wouldn’t kill you. But the thought of exiting the locker and separating yourself from him felt like it would be worse than death.

Maybe you could convince Will to stay a while longer…

Divert his attention- just enough so you can truly grab hold of it.

“What are they doing out there?” you ask because Will blocks your vision. Ever vigilant gaze never left the slats that allow him to observe the going ons beyond the feel of you against him. The guards have dispersed. There’s one or two posted outside the changing room but he could take care of them in a heartbeat.

The danger had passed.

“We should pop smoke,” Will admits, but you pop the button on his tac pants instead. Will tries to remember how to breathe when your fingers fumble with the zipper. 

If he was in his right mind he’d be squeezing his way out of the locker and kicking ass. But mind clouded with the toxin- all he can focus on is the feel of your ass against him. The sweet, agonizing pressure as you mindlessly grind against his thigh. Over and over and over. He doesn’t even care about the stab wound on his other one. Doesn’t feel any pain when you’re attached to him like this. 

“Will it kill us?” you ask, fingers scraping over his tac belt like you’re stalling and he resists the urge to push your hand lower.

“No,” Will’s quick to answer, to reassure, and your hand stills at the word before you draw it away- like you’ve interpreted it as his refusal. Will almost chokes at the loss of your touch,  “It’s meant to temporarily destabilize. Non-lethal tactic There’s ways to stop its effects.” Will manages to grit out most of that with some composure- but then you shove yourself back on him harder- further. Restraint clambers against the intense urge to take care of you and not in a professional way.

“Like Magic?” you joke, the insinuation clear in your phrasing. Your relieved laughter strikes him in his chest. You were probably scared, he inwardly chides himself for not trying to communicate the situation sooner. He thinks it was the first mark in the post side staircase. The hostile had ripped his mask off before stabbing him. Will had felt the effects begin shortly after that as he traversed the ship. Fever, distraction, an aching need in his groin all centered on you when you appeared. The blood loss wasn’t helping but it certainly hadn’t hindered the stiffness of his cock where it nestled against you. 

Guilt storms through Will. Floods his senses but less than if he’d been sober. He was your Captain- he was supposed to take care of you. Make you feel supported and safe- and instead he was acting like a horny teenager- rutting against you when he should be offering words of solace- safety-

“Toxin only activates if there’s a seed- a pre-existing attraction-” Will says, although he isn’t sure if he’s making the situation better or worse by admitting his feelings towards you. He was your Captain for fucks sake. And now the reason you found yourself nearly out of your mind trying to seek pleasure against his thigh. 

“Fuck, m’sorry,” Will grunts out, hips arching against you to find some sort of reprieve from the loss of your hands exploring touch. 

“S’okay,” you slur, the bulge of him pressing against your core in a way that reduces all your thoughts to wondering how well you could take him. How much he could stretch you over his cock-

“M’sorry,” Will repeats three more times- a stress induced tic of his OCD presenting itself alongside the need to remove all the fabric between the two of you. You were so close- just a few layers away and he could sink himself inside of you. 

“S’not your fault, Will,” you return- wondering why he blames himself for becoming susceptive to a weapon of war when it was your attraction that had rooted the issue in the first place. Your hands had returned to grasping his- the one he wrapped around you to haul you into him further. Afraid to continue your exploring for fear this was only a product of brain chemicals gone awry- that Will didn’t truly want to see this to its natural end as much as you did. There was nothing for him to apologize for- if anything it was you that should.

“Fuck-,” Will curses when you brace your hands against the locker wall to push back against him even more, unable to resist rubbing on him when his hands reach further down- gloved fingers wrapping around your thighs. The shake in his arms betrays his need- all of his frame surrounding you surging with desire.

“Please, Will,” you had every intention of apologizing- of accepting your role in this chemical undoing of sorts- of relieving Will of his guilt for leading you here when he had no way of anticipating this threat. Instead this begging is what your mouth forms- the words you’d bitten back for what feels like ages when Will’s hand slides between your thighs. Offering pressure that makes you want to burst with his sure application.

“Please, what, sweetheart,” Will asks, anguished when your fingers find his bulge and presses back, “Please- fu-ck-ing what,” Will’s words stutter as your hand wraps around him.

“Tell me to stop, sweetheart” he grits out as he ruts against you harder, seeking friction as your fingers slide inside his tac pants while his fingers rub between your legs like his next lungful of air needs to be full of you. Stained by the way you gasp and moan and tremble for him. His name mixed into your pleas so sweetly that he almost misses that you’re referring to him informally. Not Captain, not Ironhead. Will.God, the way your lips wrap around his name is better than he could have ever imagined.

“Tell me to stop.” Will begs the order, hard voice turning over the words into seriousness when he continues,  “I never imagined it being like this,” Will stutters out, his words regretful even as he surges to meet your closing fist around his achingly hard cock. The fabric around him is damp with precum. The ability to close your hand hindered by the awkward angle that you attempt to hold him by and the thickness of him. Fuck, you didn’t want to stop- you wanted to keep going forever.

“Want you,” so fucking badly, Will agonizes, “Think of you like this all the fucking time,” Will breathes into your crown, the heat of him around you- the delving of his fingers against your tac belt a torture. The sincerity of his words ricochets around your mind, finding the parts of you that you tried to shield and shattering them.

Will had imagined this too? You weren’t alone in your daydreaming and longing?

Will’s hand stills between your legs- his mind clambering over his restraint- still addled by the drugs. He held his breath for a little more clarity- all the hostiles were wearing masks to avoid the effects.

“Tell me what you want,” he breathes out, head lolling back to slam against the locker when you squirm against him- caught between seeking the hardness in his pants and the pleasure his hand had been a moment ago- whining at the loss of his attention..

God, he needed to get you both out of here and off this fucking ship.

But how the hell was he supposed to do that when he was quite sure you’d collapse the moment he ripped himself away from you? If he was honest, he thinks he’d fall from the separation too. Useless as an empty mag. Cobol had left him feeling like an open wound. Tearing himself away from Fish felt less like picking at the scab of their feelings and more like turning himself into one giant, raw nerve. Fighting their way out of that clusterfuck while under the influence of the drug had been a mistake- it's a miracle they all made it out alive. 

Will didn’t want to risk your life like that. So he’d risk your friendship instead. He could take care of you- get you through this mission and if things were awkward after- then so be it. At least you’d be alive to hate him. He’d given plenty of orders as Captain that his team didn’t like- what was one more. Dread fills him even as the path becomes clear. What was one more order if it saved lives? What if it was yours?

“Tell me,” Will orders and you keen at the command in his voice.

“Please, Will,” you beg once more and he can’t help the jerk of his hips at the eager sound you make whenever his thrusts force you further into his hand.

“Use your words,” he orders although he isn’t sure how long he’ll be capable of using his.

“Wanna feel full, please” you slur, hips grinding your ass one long pass of his cock that threatens what he thinks may be the limits of his sanity. You’re so far lost in the toxin that you don’t care how loud you’re being. Whines and gasps bursting from you in equal measure and Will wants to hoard them. Carve them into his memory to pull forth on lonely, long jobs when you won’t be there. Because you’ll be safe. Far away from places like this and people with their weird bioweapons. 

Will lifts one hand up to your face- covers your mouth- careful to avoid pressure over your swollen sinuses. Muffles the sharp gasp you make when his fingers slide beneath your tac pants and between your folds. Finding your entrance, Will thrusts two fingers inside you. 

It’s heaven. Bliss. Will’s hand working you towards an orgasm that slams through you faster than you’d have thought possible. Will works you through it like he loads a weapon. Efficient, thorough, maintains the same sensible pressure and pattern of movement that lets him hit his mark until he brings you upon another one. Forces you over the edge with calculated ease. Like he’s known your body for a lifetime. Your release pulses through you.

It’s so close to the first it feels like the same. Walls closing around him, your slick dripping down his hand and your body tensing and relaxing against his in waves until he’s brought you to so many that you lose count. Will keeps track. Noting how they blend and stutter through each other until he’s flooded you with so much oxytocin that the drugs don’t have the same effect as before. 

Slumping in his arms, held up by his strength and your shaking thighs over his- you realize he’d only used his hand. Found a spot you’d never managed on your own with it too. 

“Fucking hell, Ironhead,” you say, realizing with fierce guilt that you’d been using his real name instead of his call sign when under the influence. Will huffs a breath laugh, leaning heavily at your back before he carefully removes his hands from you. Even without the effects of the drugs you note it still feels like loss. 

Before he can retreat entirely- escape in true Miller fashion- how many times had he left a Morales houseparty or barbeque without even a goodbye- you press your ass backwards into his lap in an attempt to return the favor he’d bestowed upon you. Will chokes through another laugh- one hand stroking your side in some measure of reassurance.

“Don’t worry, bunny,” Will murmurs, “You’re magic made my problem disappear too.” he says and a rush of heat surges through you alongside a sense of disappointment that you’d missed his release whilst caught in the thralls of your own. Retracting your hands- you sort out your clothes before Will leans against the door- pausing to regard you for a moment.

“Magic?” Will says, and you meet his gaze, “Nothing has to change if you don't want it to,” Will says and something in your heart cracks and bursts for how considerate he’s being. 

“We can forget this ever happened-” Will continues and you can’t see his features fully in the shadows but something in his face still flashes with pain when he speaks.Enough that you begin to doubt he found his relief- maybe he’d only lied to get you both moving on to extraction. Maybe he only did what needed to be done so he could finish the mission- maybe it was just another example of your lack of skill and experience compared to him. 

Imposter syndrome claws its way past your post release haze. What if Will would never want to work alongside you again? With a strained smile you gesture at the exit as best you can in the tight quarters.

“Take the lead, Captain,” you say, trying to maintain your typical sass, but voice catching in your throat. If there was one thing about Will- he respected a hard out so when he doesn’t move to exit- you use the only ammunition you have left. 

Good ol’ fashioned self deprecation.

“This is where the Magic happens, what a SNAFU, huh?” you warble out the pathetic joke but Will flinches. 

Situation normal, all fucked up.

Usually he’d laugh at your quip- but you can’t even look him in the eye. Leaning on the door he collapses out of the space- taking up position at the hallway exit while you clamber out of the locker. Scouting for hostiles, Will debates how much he’s fucked up.

The only comfort of it all was at least you had a clear head to live and have regrets. If he had to live with this- he would. Another count on his list- a body count he didn’t want in this way.

The comm cracks.

“Ironhead, Magic, status report,” Fish’s words are laden with worry.

“Data’s secured, Magic is with me. It was a clusterfuck, Fish,” Will heaves out, not realizing the irony of the last word until your burst of laughter bounces off his back. 

“Roger, Ironhead. Rendezvous on twelve is clear,” Fish replies, his voice lighter than the first contact. Will leads the way through the hull, up to the deck to the railing where Fish waits. The grim look on both your faces forces Fish to restrain his curiosity but once you’ve descended the ladder, he dares to throw Will a pensive look.Shaking his head in reply, Fish sighs.

And that’s how it was between you for a while. Things were weird. Santi and Benny didn’t know what to make of the shift. Fish seemed to garner a sense of exactly what sort of shit you came up against in the guts of the ship. At the end of a training set, breathless and on the edge of sleep deprivation- Will tells you about Cobol. Suddenly, his closeness to Fish made sense. Your worry deepened that what you had done had overstepped even more boundaries than you were originally aware but Will reassured you away from it. Something in the tone of his voice suggested he and Fish had drifted away from each other. Perhaps Will’s reaching Captain, his OCD, Fish’s addiction and then family… whatever it had been had been done and dusted long before your arrival.

What had transpired between you and Will was well from over. Although the doctors reassured you the toxin had long been eliminated from your systems- sparks of it seemed to burst between you. Heat flushing your being at his closeness. Within his gaze- a respect that never faltered. It was overwhelming although you tried to keep up appearances of being unaffected.

If Will wanted to tow the status quo then you would too… even if it hurt. Even if you think he wanted more too.

A few months later- in the bar off base- well beyond any potential lingering effects of the toxin- you sip a coke while trying to keep your attention on the TV that’s playing Benny’s fight. Pretending you didn’t search for his cornerman in the shadows beyond the fencing until the fighters pause for a break and you realize it wasn’t Will like you expected- but Fish.

The stool beside you scrapes across the floor before Will settles beside you.

“Pretty terrible hiding spot if you’re trying to avoid me,” Will says and the bubbles of your soda strike your nose so that you cough. Will takes the opportunity to drag your stool closer to his- until you’re nestled between the wide splay of his thighs. 

“I’m not avoiding you,” you retort with a smile- and Will returns it, that lopsided grin causing a different bubbling inside you. Relief and heat bursting as they collided because you had been avoiding him. Afraid that although he treated you exactly as before the mission- that something would be fundamentally altered between you. But here he was- still Will, and you were still you.

“I was waiting for a critical moment,” you explain and Will nods.

“A good place to appear,” you continue, leaning closer to the golden haired man,  “You know the kind. Dark, cramped, difficult to get out of.”

“I think I know a place,” Will says, thumbs lifting from the edge of the stool to rub circles on your thighs- lips playing over a smile he attempts to contain.

“You do?” you query, playfully and Will’s face splits on a wide grin. 

“It’s good in a pinch,” he says with a casual shrug of his henley covered shoulders. He hadn’t looked away from you once- not even to see if Benny was winning. His hand squeezes your thigh as though to imbue meaning on his next words.

“You know I got your six, right?” Will asks, the smile gone, replaced with that seriousness which strikes in your chest.

You nod in response, unable to put words to the reply when your throat is thick with emotion. 

“Good girl.” Will says with a wink, a gleam in his eyes before that lazy smirk appears once more.

|||

Climbing the creaking stairwell of the inn, you’re all too aware of Arthur’s presence in your wake. The sore ankle slows your ascent. Pain hinging every other step so that the innkeeper is forced to wait by the door to your room. Arthur treads carefully behind, adjusting his pace to accommodate yours, one hand lifting to your elbow when you sway off balance once you reach the landing.

“Careful, love,” Arthur says softly, his hand coming to rest on your lower back as you approach the innkeeper. The old man worries a thumb at the brim of his felt cap, standing idly until you arrive and he unlocks the door.

Warm, humid air meets you like an invitation into the little room- only large enough for a bed barely bigger than your own, and a narrow tub. A healthy amount of steam filters up from its surface, and one of the innkeep’s sons empties the last bucket of hot water into it before they take their leave as you and Arthur get settled.

Arthur places your bags at the end of the bed before his attention is drawn to the window. The night beyond is dark, but quiet.The garrison has not yet arrived.

The room is lit with a few candles on the side tables and a little stool beside the tub. Their flames flicker, seeming to grow brighter whenever Arthur nears. The shadows deepen where the light cannot strike, making the room feel even smaller.

It’s warm and insulated, like the pockets of lichen coated embers you extract from your vest, and place carefully on a night stand.

Arthur draws the curtains before he drops his weight onto the bed. The worn frame creaks under his weight, and he lifts the cover to cringe at the straw poking through the cushion. Stuffed with old hay, he adjusts the bedding with a brusk sigh. Apparently he’s used to better accommodations. Nevertheless his back meets the threadworn blanket with a weary exhale.

His legs remain in their boots, cast out over the edge of the bed, long enough his feet still meet the worn floorboards. Arthur makes no move to strip, his arms coming up to cross over his wide chest. Blue eyes shuttering closed while you maneuver around him. Stepping between his splayed legs which he adjusts to give you more space to pass. Diligently, you ignore the way his leathers splay over the width of his thighs, trying to ignore the lack of privacy screen between the bed and tub.

Digging through your pack, you extract a wrapped bundle of herbs and a small glass tincture bottle. They weren’t on Arthur’s list, but they’re herbs you want to use to see if they’ll calm his magically complicated aura.

Rising, you grab a few clean cloths left by the innkeeper. Arthur cracks one eye at your movement, tracking your hand that lifts the care bundle out to him.

Arthur lifts a brow.

Heat entirely separate from the steaming bath floods through you.

“I prepared these,” you offer, staring at the curled leaves of the sage and mugwort because Arthur makes no move to collect them. Hurrying to explain, lest he be distrusting, despite giving no indication presently or prior, your words loose from your mouth like a habit.

“It’s sage. To reverse spells, if that’s what’s causing your ailment. And mugwort. It aids in transitions. If your magic is tethered, it may give you a clear dream to reveal the true nature of what it’s tied to,” you say, holding out each bundle of dried plant matter for Arthur’s consideration.

Both of his eyes are open now, and he listens aptly, tired gaze flitting between the objects you hold out to him and your face.

“This,” you say, lifting the amber bottle, uncorking it and allowing its floral scent to fill the space where the steam hasn’t crowded in, “Is feverfew and honey, with crushed sage and mugwort, for you to take by mouth in order to get the full effects.”

Arthur remains still, although his head has lifted slightly from where it had fallen in his lounging state. Still, he makes no movement, and you’re caught, frozen- unsure of what to make of his expression. Weariness claws at his features, eyes half lidded like he’s on the cusp of sleep, but his gaze remains sharp. It cuts from you to the tub for one long moment before his shoulders lift slightly. Only as much as it takes to readjust his crossed arms and his blonde crown flops back to the cushion.

Arthur shimmies his frame further into the mattress, like a cat getting comfortable in a pool of sunlight.

“Ladies first,” Arthur says, eyes snapping shut like it’s an order, one that he expects no protest to, as though this is the way of things.

The only betrayal of his collected front is the quirk of lips at your small squawk, remembering your bath from this morning. You were trying to be polite. The herbs would be more effective with the hottest water available and that would require him to bathe first.

You manage a half explanation of this before Arthur adamantly shakes his head, chin tucking to his chest, brow furrowing and jaw set, although an amused smile flits over his face despite his stern words.

“You’ll have to drag me in, if you wish to have your turn after mine,” Arthur says, arms held tightly on a laugh he attempts to contain behind a mirthful grin. Despite his closed eyes, his expression still achieves its intended effect.

Perhaps, you’re grateful for it, because heat burns through your being at the vision he’s created, and you stare at him a moment longer before you relinquish your noble offer that he’s made decidedly less so.

“Right,” you say, somewhat tersely, placing the herbal bundle on the stool but the cloths are tossed at Arthur. Just hard enough for them to strike his side but they mostly land on the bed. It’s playful, but gets your point across that Arthur’s refused your hospitality. The one thing he could have had all to his own by your invitation- paid for by his own coin- and he wouldn’t even allow you this.

Arthur laughs, bright and full despite his exhaustion, but his eyes remain closed as he gathers the towels to him. Ever the chivalrous gentlemen, stubbornness aside.

“Don’t fall asleep while you wait,” you say, and Arthur hums thoughtfully but it wavers just on the edge of awareness so that when you strip, you think he’s already fallen into unconsciousness before you’re done.

The heat of the water feels like it reaches your bones. Any aches from travel are worn into nothing. The injuries at your ankle, wrist and throat are dulled to a corner in your mind, instead of hogging the forefront of your awareness that erodes your thoughts.

Once you’ve scrubbed the sweat from your skin, you lean against the back of the basin, settling until the water laps at your shoulders. You should step out and allow Arthur his turn. Propriety attempts to take root, but then you glance at Arthur, and any sense is ripped away.

Arthur’s still lying on the bed, arms crossed over his chest but looser now. His sleeves are drawn up to his elbows with the heat of the humid room. The bend of his arms collapsed to his sides with his exhaustion.

His breaths are drawn out and even, filling the space.

Long exhales, deep, grounded. Not tight and short like a man at the ready, but heavier and lasting.

For a moment you close your eyes, and listen.

It had been many years since you’d heard a man breathe like this.

Since before the war.

Since Silas.

The memory catches in your chest- like a thorn. Silas had once breathed like this in your home. This same slow and unguarded way.

You hadn’t realized how much you missed this sound.

Of rest. Of trust. Of comfort.

Your throat ached- and not just from your injuries. Swallowing your grief, you let yourself bathe in the moment for a few more breaths. Your own hitching in your chest, the surface of the bath rippling as you try to contain the wave of emotions as they hit. Like waves against shore, guided by the moon in an endless onslaught. A tide of grief in your being that sometimes floods you unexpectedly.

You let it wash over you until the largest of the waves passes. Until you settle. You linger in the shallows for a little bit more.

Just long enough to imagine there’d never been any years between you and this sound. That Silas had stayed. That you hadn’t found silence as your companion for so long.

The words drift out of you. Quiet. Quieter still with your injured voice. Quiet enough that your breath barely moves the bath water.

“Do you think it’s better to have someone- someone kind, who cared even if they’re gone, or to have never known them at all?”

The room is silent in the wake of your grieved murmur. You let the words out like steam, only expecting them to hit the rafters, not Arthur’s ears.

You dare a glance at your sleeping companion. Arthur’s eyes are still shut, his body betraying no awareness beyond his slumber.

There’s no answer. You shut your eyes again, wondering what use your musings would have even if they’d been heard. Would they only serve to speak to your loneliness, the ache that sits like a wound inside of you? And what expectations would you have of Arthur- to know what to do with that, if you hadn’t the slightest idea at all. There weren’t salve or tinctures to be made. There wasn’t any herb or flower you could grow to ease this pain.

The steam barely curls from the bath’s surface, and still you sit in your quiet anguish.

Until Arthur shifts and his voice cuts through, low and rough.

“Would it be better?”

Arthur hasn’t moved much, but his head is turned to you now, blue eyes on you like he’s trying to find you in a storm. Like your edges are blurred. Like he’s plucking his answer from the rain drops.

His gaze drifts from you as he throws his head back, like he hadn’t meant to look upon you in such a vulnerable moment. Like gazing upon your truth made him shy, and not your nakedness.

His eyes meet the peeling plaster of the ceiling like he’s tracing a map. His jaw works, like he chews on stones before he speaks.

“I don’t know. I only know the ache.”

His voice is coarse. Raw and low like he’s confessing. His hands clench into fists over his heart, like he steels himself against an enemy. Like there were some sort of weapon to be grasped against the foe that is love.

As though he never meant to fight it at all, his hands fall loose to his tunic.

The silence grows, until he speaks again, almost more to himself.

“I know better now,” Arthur says, his tone bitter over the word, like time has betrayed him, “That even if I was waiting for someone that couldn’t be taken from me- it wouldn’t matter. My life was never mine to keep like that.”

You still. The bath water laps at the edges of the tub as you rearrange yourself inside it. Within Arthur’s confession.

You knew all too well how loved ones could be taken away. Some remnant of your past must inhabit your features, something unguarded and awful, so that Arthur winces when he spots it blooming in your being. Like an invasive vine, wrapping around your strong foundation until it blots out the light, draws the moisture and chokes the nutrients from the soil, so that you’re forced to bend. To rot under it.

Arthur’s jaw flexes. So hard it must hurt, his voice tightening around his words, but he doesn’t stop.

“Even if I wanted y– someone- to stay by my side- it wouldn’t be allowed. Not with what waits ahead. I have to stop believing those kinds of stories are meant for me. I won’t have the choice to keep y– her.”

Arthur corrects his words, but not his gaze where it lances to you from the ceiling. Arthur stares like you’re the story he isn’t supposed to believe in. Every line of his face etched with the unfairness of longing for you at all.

You’re lost to that place you went during the meal downstairs. The one that carves your face with longing and hurt. That draws you from the present with Arthur so that you don’t notice his transgressions within it. In his words, his expression.

The herbalist swallows. It feels like nettles in your throat. Tearing through the words you draw up from where they’re buried in what feels like the center of you.

You should say something. Tell him what he says isn’t true. That fate always leaves room for love. And that it was worth it to keep- even if only fleetingly.

“Perhaps it isn’t about being allowed, but that she chooses to stay anyway,” you say, because what else is there? You’d stayed when Silas left to fight to close the gate opened to the Darklands. When animals the size of mountains were hauling themselves out of the sea to render destruction upon Camelot and surrounding lands.

You’d waited for his return. You’d waited and waited and waited. All your hope in this task. All your love. And the answer arrived in a cloth wrapped piece of him. A severed ear, inscribed with a rune by your own hand so that you’d never be able to mistake it for another’s. It was morbid. It was a strange relief. A closing of a chapter that had been inscribed with blood.

You weren’t supposed to love a Mage. That’s what had been decreed under Vortigern’s reign. Like it was a choice. Like even if it had been- like you’d have decided otherwise. Like it was obvious. Like your husband was a monster, and you caught within his spell.

You’d stayed. Despite the outcome. Despite it all- it still mattered. The love you’d shared. That you’d lost. You’d held on. With a fierce grip. A conviction.

This is mine. You can’t take it away from us. Not truly.

Arthur huffs out the barest of sounds. Not quite a laugh, not when you look so shattered. His gaze rips from you- aching, longing. Tortured.

He knows his place in the pain that strikes through you. The agonizing position he has in your grief that you’re not even aware of.

Arthur wishes he could gather it up, take it all from you and slaughter it as he had Vortigern with Excalibre. But even that was not enough.

Too late.

The Dark Lands. The mage’s tower. The weight of hundreds of Mage’s bracelets up his arms.

The Mage’s appreciation. Her grief. Yours.

The Mage’s vow.

She’d told him his wounds would never fester for what he’d done for her friends. That venom would never slice through his veins. Cause anything more than visions. Shite as they were, she was right. The black pools of her eyes swirled with conviction when she swore to him that poison would never reach his heart before it neutralized.

Arthur swallows, his throat tight. Your words have cut closer to the truth than he wants to admit.

It’s an echo of the Mage’s solemn advice.

A shade of what he’s learned in this new life.

We all look away. That’s the difference between a man and a King.

Still, there are things he doesn’t want to admit.

Arthur stirs from where he lays at last as you take your leave of the bath. He pivots away from you, to offer some semblance of privacy as you rise from the cooling water.

Tugging at his shirt to free it from his trousers while you towel dry and dress before you pluck the herbal pouch from the stool. Arthur’s most of the way through getting undressed when you start dropping herbs into the bath. Fabric shedding from him like the steam coaxed him into dropping his defenses.

You don’t mean to look- but Arthur catches your wayward glance in the reflection of the water.

You avert your gaze so sharply he almost smiles. Arthur had grown up where modesty was a veil lifted with enough coin. Nudity never shocked him but your refusal to look was amusing. The restraint is almost more intimate than if you had.

You busied yourself with your herbs. They crush easily in your fist. Scattering pieces across the water’s surface, hoping its heat was still enough to draw out all their healing properties. Their scent rises immediately- bright, sharp and familiar.

For a breath, you’re transported to your garden last summer. When you’d plucked these leaves from the crown of your most impressive sage, before stringing them up to dry. You let the familiar memories occupy your mind, hoping the mundane aspect would quell your interest in your companion who was steadily approaching nudity. It’s not like you’ve never seen a naked man before- you inwardly chide yourself, feeling like when you were newly wedded to Silas. When he’d felt like a strange, alluring creature.

Aiming to achieve neutrality in your expression, you finish dropping the herbs with a focused nod like you’re studying your garden for pests, when Arthur appears.

There’s a flash of pale thigh, with a heavy dusting of coarse blonde hair covering it, along with a towel held strategically for your sake while you whirl on your heel towards the bed before he steps in and lowers himself into the tub.

Climbing into the bedding, you fuss over your positioning while water sloshes as it shifts around Arthur’s frame. The tub creaks as he wrestles his broad self into the narrow basin, before his voice joins it. Arthur adds his own protest.

“You didn’t use these for your turn,” Arthur says, plainly, fingers twirling a stem of mugwort across the bath’s surface, his gaze pinning you as you shove the empty herbal bag into your pack. Perhaps, you use a little too much force, keenly aware of Arthur’s noticing of your habits, and your noticing of him.

“They’re for you,” you offer, carefully avoiding his unvoiced question and his uncovered body when you meet his gaze with your own. It’s an enormous chore, with how his broad chest rises above the surface of the water, his long legs affording little space for the rest of him.

Distracted by the way his arms hang over the edge of the tub, like he reclines on a dais, and not within a waterlogged cask, your words are stuttered, “They’ll alleviate the pull of your magic.”

“They would aid your injuries too,” Arthur says, eyes flicking to the bruises across your throat, pinning you with unflinching steadiness.

“Why not then?” Arthur asks, his tone doesn’t sharpen, but it strikes precisely.

“My thoughts strayed,” you say, with a decidedly casual shrug that becomes discordant when Arthur takes up the soap and drags it across his chest. The suds fall down the rises and dips where the plane of muscle meets the strong curve of his shoulder, along with rivets of water. You attempt to adjust your stare, to admire the doorframe beyond him. It doesn’t help that the candles seem to have grown brighter, making Arthur easier to regard.

He’s all strong lines in the soft light. Tight, efficient movements as he washes, the soap bubbles and coiling vapor rising from the bath blurring his edges only a little.

Arthur makes a thoughtful hum that seems to shake the air of the room, gone thick with steam once more, his gaze lingering on you. It’s strange how the stream rises around him, when the water had been lukewarm when you left it.

Truly, it was too hot in this room. The herbal laced vapor was rolling off the surface of the bath- not that you were looking there in particular- no, certainly not at where the water met Arthur’s torso. The rippling rises and dips of muscle and solid flesh. The soap lather and water dripping from his form as he methodically cleans his upper body.

You unfold and fold the remaining towels, preoccupied with them while Arthur washes himself before his voice comes again. Forced into a level of quiet you can pretend you don’t hear as he splashes water over himself to rinse off.

“You deserve care too.”

The basin creaks again, as Arthur settles further into the water, his head dropping back to rest on the edge of the basin.

Once again, the sound of his deep breathing fills the room.

Steady. Drawn. Alive.

Closing your eyes against the ache forming in your heart- the one that yet craves this sound the way you do food or air. Another slosh of water drives your vision to him once more, curious when he’ll take up the tincture.

Arthur settles further into the water, the cords of muscle in his thick neck jump through a pleased sigh that you try to scrape from your memory before it has a chance to take root. It’s like trying to clear ivy. Whatever you try to remove, climbs back and threatens to choke you of breath. Truly, it wasn’t possible to be this attractive? And yet Arthur was.

His gaze is heavy within eyes half closed as the heat and herbs soak their way into his body. Exhaustion clings to his features, and yet, he’s still handsome within it.

You’re perched on the end of the narrow bed, but you haven't moved towards the pillow. You haven’t turned away from him either. Your eyes flicked across him, small glances, never lingering but always finding their way back. It carried more weight than a stare.

Arthur’s lips quirk.

“I’m not going to drown.”

You stiffen, caught. To Arthur’s amusement, you recover quickly.

“What if you fall asleep? You’ll waste my herbs,” you say, bristling slightly, like this is your first and only concern.

Arthur’s smile deepens.

“Is that what you care for?” His tone dips with his exhaustion, but carries a spark beneath. He’s the match, and you’re the fuel. It’s in the way your fingers fuss over the bedding, like you search for something to do with the restless energy gathering inside you.

Arthur spots the fluster within you with experienced ease. The blazing quiet you’ve adopted, yet busy focus. Your attention flitting over him like a moth dancing around a flame. The familiar trance of arousal seeping into your expressions, as bright and clear to him as his next breath. Familiar only because of his past, and not for the way he yearns to hoard it upon you now- his first glimpse of it on you, and what he hopes to all the gods won’t be the last.

Arthur can’t help it. He drops his voice low. Allows a bit of grit to enter it so the rough quality makes your breath hitch.

“The herbs?” Arthur asks, a smirk playing over his handsome face as you collect yourself at an impressive speed. Still, he sees the ways your thighs clench beneath the pillow you grasp like a shield.

Your chin lifts, brow following, your eyes carefully pinning his like nothing exists below them. Not the water clinging to the wide expanse of his chest. Not the way it laps at his ribs. Definitely paying no mind to how his fingers trace absently across the surface of the water, chasing a clump of floating mugwort. The flexing of his arms, his skin a map of veins and sheening dampness over valleys of firm muscles.

“Do you believe they are easy to come by?” you ask, securing him with a challenging look as you gesture at the space, “Whilst we venture for days to retrieve some?”

Arthur allows himself a low chuckle, broad shoulders twisting in the narrow basin, arms sloughing in and out of the water to rest on the edges of the tub. The position is careless, a stretching sprawl, but his gaze isn’t. Your own falters at his new position. Something he takes as a victory, if the slight curve of his lip is indication.

Reaching, Arthur’s fingers dance over the small bottle of tincture. Tearing your gaze from him, you follow the movement, thankful for the distraction.

“The mother of herbs,” Arthur muses, before he lifts the glass for his regard. In the dark amber, he sees the shape of the brothel he grew up in. The women brewing mugwort in their ale to regulate their courses. He’d become too accustomed to the bitter flavor, so much so that when he’d attended taverns that brewed without it, he’d thought their ale too sweet and bland.

“Aye,” you hum in agreement, “It will make your dreams clear.”

Perhaps this is why he’d been inflicted with an abundance of nightmares throughout his life, Arthur ponders. It’d only been since he’d lived in the castle, that his dreams had eased. But then again, the last time he slept he’d been plagued once more with wicked visions. The last time- Arthur can’t truly recall when he’d slept properly.

Arthur’s gaze slides from the tincture to you, thoughtfully. Like he’s at odds whether he should take it or not. There’s something like suspicion in his eyes for a blink, but it’s like he’s gazing at someone else in your place. You shuffle under his regard, suddenly serious compared to the moments that led you here, before his expression shifts and settles on his decision.

Arthur twists the lid, the wax seal cracking beneath his fist before he tips the vial to his lips. His head tipped back, you’re allotted the thick expanse of his throat, moisture and a light sheen of sweat clinging to his skin as he drinks. Truly, the bath is too hot.

With a cringe, Arthur swallows. You’d mix more honey into it next time, you think as Arthur places the empty vial down and settles into the water once more.

Steam rolls off the bath’s surface in thick pillars. If you weren’t so preoccupied with the man within it, you’d have thought it unnatural. How the water had gained heat again.

But, distracted as you were, the thought only arrives when the center of Arthur’s broad chest begins to glow.

Arthur’s attention snaps to the orb of blue light in an instant. It grows steadily, like the heart of a candle. Burning hottest, growing taller, it rises and spreads from him like a rose blooming. The brightness illuminates his deep frown, like he’s just set eyes on an old rival. One hand reflexively raises to swat at the burst of magic, like he’s extinguishing a flame.

For a breath, it disappears. Flitting into nothing like it was never there, and Arthur seems unhurt by the contact. Still, your interest is immediate and you sit straighter upon the bed.

Arthur rearranges himself within the tub, suddenly restless, one hand rubbing at where the magic had appeared. His knees drawn up as he pitches forward, shoulders curling inwards and breaths heavier than before. Closer together, like they are trying to meet each other before the first has even left his mouth.

“Does it pain you?” you ask, and Arthur’s focus where it was pinned to the water that’s begun to churn around him, cuts to you with a tight shake of his head.

Arthur’s voice is ragged when he speaks, as though he’s run the entire way to arrive here. There’s sweat beading on his brow. His cheeks and tips of his ears flush a deep red. The blush runs furiously down his throat to where his chest meets his hand- pressing into where his ribs meet at the center.

The magic spurts from behind his fist. Bright bursts of blue light like sparks from a fire spray from around and within his fist like he’s trying to hold onto water that is both wave and flame.

“It feels strange,” Arthur admits and you can’t help how your hands twitch. Your herbalist mind is storming to the forefront of your thoughts.

An unnatural plume of steam bursts from the water, now shivering with heat as though on the cusp of boiling.

When the next flare of his magic comes, it glows like a branding iron. Red hot and angry. Different from before. It spears out in jagged lashes of raging flame.

The crimson light cuts up his throat and across his ribs, as though it were flames straight from hell. Arthur startles, like his heart was its fuel.

Arthur’s hand slams into his chest, like he can smother it. The water hisses as it bubbles over the edges of the tub and sloughs onto the floor.

“Arthur!” you cry, jolting upright and forwards.

“Stay back!” Arthur shouts, his voice harsher than he likes, but it serves its purpose with how you still. A few yards from him, your shock and concern rampant in your features as Arthur presses one hand to the blaze at his chest, the other like a vice around the rim of the tub, like he’s trying to anchor himself.

“Doesn’t it burn you?” you ask, voice pitched somewhere near enough to panic that Arthur unlocks his jaw if only to assuage your fear. His entire body fights the onslaught of chaotic magic. Every muscle tense. Every breath looks like he rips it from the thick, humid air around you.

“No,” Arthur says with a tight shake of his head to accompany his answer, his gaze flicking to yours, and for the first time since you met, you see something like fear in his storming eyes, “But perhaps it will burn you.”

Despite the warning laid before you, the healer instinct that feels as though it’s carved in your bones, flares. Especially when it appears as though this magical flourish does hurt him.

“What do you feel?” you ask, voice only slightly calmer than before as you try to contain your composure.

Arthur grinds out a curse as his chest bows upwards, pulling him further upright as the red light flares from his skin. His shoulders are pulled back and Arthur winces from the strain. It’s as though the blood hued flame is attempting to burst from his heart and into the room around you.

You need to help.

Provide aid.

Anything.

If you cannot approach, you will use your vision. You latch onto this thought like it's a climbing pole, and you the stringy bean seedling shivering in a storm. Grasping for steadiness so you don’t snap and collapse.

Within the swirl of bright red magic you focus your attention. Beneath it lies the blue flame magic that you believe belongs to Arthur. It’s dim and struggling against the burning fury of the magic that invades.

And beneath that, his skin. Smooth, unblemished flesh. No gaping hole where his heart should be. There’s no blisters. No scorch marks.

Small relief shores itself up against your anxiety as Arthur growls out something between a curse and a hollow laugh. There’s no humor in it, not when his teeth clench with every slam of his fist into his chest.

“Like war,” Arthur says, air drawn sharp across his teeth as he hisses. The red magic rages against his touch. The water froths and surges like he sits in a river made of rapids. Some droplets spray out at you, and your answering hiss as the water sears your skin makes the next meeting of Arthur’s fist to his chest harder. Like he puts all the force he can muster into the action.

“It’s not mine, this,” Arthur says, gesturing at the tantruming crimson flare. His determined eyes meet yours like he needs you to believe this, and you dare a step forward. Arthur tracks the movement, that same fear clashing in his expression at your renewed approach.

You edge closer despite the plea he puts into the look thrown at you before he’s thumping his chest again. Like he’s wrestling smoke. Like he’s grasping at the threads of his own magic with his contorted fist.

Like he might be losing by the sharp inhale he draws as he tries to cage the power surging in his chest.

He’s flushed a deep red everywhere the magic touches, flame like bloody tendrils licking up his skin before they’re forced away beneath his hand.

“Let me help,” you say, coming to the side of the tub, your boots held carefully out of reach of the splashing water that pours over the floor.

“No,” Arthur snaps, hard and immediate, like a blade shoved into stone. His fever bright eyes meet yours with surprising clarity. This close, you can see the pulse at his throat. It slams beneath his jaw, strong and quick. “We don’t know what it is. I won’t let it hurt you too.”

“And what if you pass out?” you counter, suddenly all too aware of how your own sweat has soaked through your garments. The room is choked with hot steam. If it won’t burn him, the possibility of him going unconscious with the temperature makes your heart race. How would you collect him from the boiling water before he drowned?

Arthur falters, body trembling with effort to reign in the magic that rages beneath his fist.

Eyes squeezed shut, Arthur’s breath meets the rippling water with a ragged sound. It’s pained- not with uncertainty- but of what he knows. And what you do not.

Still, he wages against the magic, willing it to settle. For his own to take ground. Your nearness throws his fear to a dark place, one that not even the fierce bright light of this invading magic can reach.

Somehow, it grounds him. The water bubbles less. The steam thins. The red light fades. A blue one joins it, and they curl around Arthur’s fist like flame around fuel. Eventually, they settle into the likes of flame on an ember. Crawling along the seams of his fingers, glowing only every so often. Seemingly with the same rhythm as Arthur’s breaths- now drawn out and calm.

When Arthur opens his eyes, he finds your searching gaze, your hands fisted in your dress. Aching to do something. Anything. Your gaze scouring him like you’re trying to diagnose, but coming up vacant of knowledge beyond what you can see.

He decides something then, his free hand releasing the bath, now dented with the imprint of his grip. He straightens, still trembling with effort, as his fingers graze yours.

“Hold my hand.”

Your shock grows when his touch thrums with power. What’s his and not his. His touch is rough and hot. Impossibly so. When you don’t recoil, his grip tightens. Firm around yours, like he’s anchoring himself to your simple touch.

“I will pull yours away,” Arthur explains as your hand folds into his, “If her- if it’s power turns against you.”

Arthur brings your hand to him, your knees meeting the ground as you kneel beside the tub.

Carefully, he lays your fingers on the side of his chest, as though he’s assessing the contact, before he gently pulls your hand to center.

His chest is hot like his hand. Hotter than any fever you’ve felt before. Concern pulls your mouth into a grim line.

Arthur takes a steadying breath. It gathers beneath your fingertips, vibrations shivering up your arm. The air stutters over your skin as Arthur braces for the next moment. He keeps his hand held carefully over yours, grip firm like he’s giving you room to flinch or afraid you’ll slip away, but he lets you guide the movement.

With care, you trace the place at his sternum, where the magic rests. Faint blue glows at your touch, as though to meet it. The blue flame encircles your searching fingers, as though it senses you. As though it lives and breathes. There’s no pain or discomfort that you feel, only a soothing chill that counteracts the fiery warmth of the rest of Arthur.

“That feels good,” Arthur says, voice wavering like he’s unsure if he should admit it, but there’s slack in his shoulders now. His body is less tense, and he allows himself to sag into the tub wall, but his gaze remains vigilant on where your hand meets his skin. Like he can threaten the surging magic into submission if he keeps glaring. His hand twitches upon yours, as though he’s prepared to snatch your fingers away in a blink.

“Describe it,” you say, pressing slightly harder, until the planes of muscles beneath your fingers reply. Arthur’s chest is firm. He doesn’t wince or inhale sharply. Despite the heat that coursed through here, his nerves are responsive.

Arthur swallows as you lay your hand flat. The solid thrum of his heart meets your palm. It’s strong and stable. Not too fast, too weak or too slow.

“I haven’t felt a woman’s touch in ages,” Arthur says, earnest and raw. You still at his admittance, a smile twitching over your lips despite the circumstances.

Arthur’s heart pulses quicker beneath your hand, and his fingers tighten over yours as he lets out a shaky laugh.

“Ah, you meant the magic,” Arthur says, flushing red for entirely different reasons than the power you’re trying to sense.

You’re close now. All your focus upon him as his hand envelops yours. His thumb brushes over your knuckles, an endearing caress of habit although you’re unsure if he intends to soothe you or himself.

The blue light ebbs and flows around your hand and wrist, matching the thrum of Arthur’s heartbeat. It laps at your touch, coiling around you as though trying to claim you within it. The touch is soft and fluid, like water between your fingers.

Arthur’s voice comes, rough and caught on his exhaustion- undoubtedly heavier now with all the efforts to contain the red invading magic that still glows deep within his chest. Like a festering wound. It sits too near his heart.

“It feels like a tide of fire,” Arthur says, “When it’s mine, it feels like cold waves, washing out the flames before they can burn.”

“But when it’s… hers,” you query, gently, remembering Arthur’s words from before and using them in this moment. Pressing both with your fingers, and your curiosity.

Arthur hedges. Stiffening, like he’s spoken too much, but yet he inhales, and begins to put his breath into more words.

“When it’s, hers,” Arthur grinds out the word like a curse, but before he can continue, the red magic that had been dormant begins to spike like thorns beneath your fingers. The blue light fractures as the opposing blaze grows. The water in the tub surges as though it was caught in a storm.

Arthur’s grip tightens on yours instantly, but when he moves to pull your hand away, the blue light rushes forwards. Coiling around your hand, easing the prickling heat of the red flame like a barrier. Shielding you from its harm and Arthur stills alongside you. Both of you are captivated by the war that is a clash of lights within his chest, like water smothering flame.

Your eyes flash to Arthur’s. A little shocked, a little wild. He’s yet looking at you through the rising steam that’s heavy with the scent of sage and feverfew. The red magic recedes, the blue taking its place once more. It all glows off the solid edges of him, despite his trembling.

You realize you’re leaning closer than before. Your hand held beneath his, still pressed firmly to his chest. Your own heart beats as wildly as his, but you’re the only one partial to this knowledge.

Still, his thumb brushes your hand once more, something unspoken shared between you. Like he knows you’re as affected as him. His touch is slower this time. Unhurried. Deliberate.

It makes your breath hitch and the pulse in your wrist jumps beneath his touch.

The lights have grown dim, within his chest, and from the candles. It makes his blue eyes look shadowed. Dark and full of something you haven’t seen directed at you this wholly since Silas.

His eyes flick down to your lips, his own opening as though he’s about to speak, before he tears his gaze away with a small shake of his head. A smile pulls at his mouth as he allows a soft laugh, not for you, but at himself.

You should remove your hand. Truly, there wasn’t much else you could do now except mull over what you’ve witnessed and hope that something Silas taught you could help guide your treatment of this complicated magical problem. But yet, your hand remains pressed to Arthur’s chest, and something warm and dangerous burns within you. Entirely separate from what burns in his heart, but nonetheless, you shove it down deep where you can pretend not to notice it or your noticing of Arthur’s noticing.

Arthur seems to do the same, looking away from you like it takes effort to do so. His voice is low when he speaks.

“Earlier,” Arthur says and your fingers twitch in his hand when he swallows, your gaze following the way his throat works before he continues, “The kiss.”

You still, not because you’re surprised at the change in subject, but because you don’t want Arthur to perceive any movement of yours as retreat. If anything, your hand presses further into his chest, as though prompting him to keep speaking.

Arthur does. His gaze cutting from where it landed on his sword, propped beside the tub at a safe distance should he have needed it, to find yours.

He stares at you with meaning- like he needs you to know this next part like he needs that sword to be Excalibre. Like he needs to find Blue. Like he needs to know what’s happening to his magic.

Like it matters.

“I know what I took,” Arthur says, and your mind traces the press of his lips to yours as easily as your next breath- which is scraped from the air that's gone thick between you. The memory is clarified with its nearness, with his nearness now. The shock of it. The heat. That he’s brought it up once more.

Arthur watches your mouth open- the way your breath stutters over your tongue, unable to form thought beyond the distance between your face and his and the very full lips that you can’t stop staring at all of a sudden.

They’re pink with blood, and the warmth of the steam and heat of the water. Healthy. Alive. Your healer mind is catapulted to usefulness as you try to wrangle some vestige of sense back into your thoughts.

He isn’t apologizing. It’s a confession of sorts. Of regret. Of an ache you spot in his look as he regards you. Of one that’s reflected in you.

Want.

Pure, undistilled desire.

Your breath stirs between you, shallow and uneven, like you’ve taken too many cups of Sigrid’s tea. But you’re not tired- you're wild with energy. With need.

“Arthur,” his name tumbles out of your lips on a whisper, just loud enough for Arthur to register the wrecked quality of it.

It seems to undo him, with how his grip tightens on your hand, and for one dizzying breath, he leans into you. The water sloshes in the tub as his other hand lifts, thumb brushing your chin. Careful to avoid the bruises. The heat of him presses around you.

Your eyes close, enjoying the feel of his attention just as his breath feathers across your cheek. Warm. Shaking with his restraint.

He draws back sharply. Releasing your hand back to you, Arthur splashes water on his face as though it will put sense back into him. It feels like he’s plunged both of you into an ice cold river.

The set of his jaw is tight. Ticking through something he won’t share. His gaze shuttered behind something distant. Removed.

There’s a lash of red flame at his chest as he lets out a sigh heavy with frustration and slams his fist to meet it. The set of his shoulders is tight as he throws himself into the back of the tub. Intent to place distance between you and him, although he convinces himself it’s meant to be for you from his rogue magic.

“I’m sorry,” Arthur says, hoarse and regretful, “You should rest.”

You want to protest. To go back to the moments before. To tell him that whatever ails him, he does not need to face it by himself. But there’s something desperate in how he refuses to look at you now. Like it pains him.

And you cannot offer cure to wounds you do not know- and so you rise, knees aching from kneeling, dress slightly soaked. You press a towel into the hand that hangs off the edge of the tub- the other rubbing idly at his chest and the light that is steadily fading within.

“I’ll be near if you need me,” you say, before you take your leave and settle in the bed.

“Sleep,” Arthur says, his voice gentler than before, “Please. You should try to rest before the garrison arrives,” he says, just on the edge of an order- as accustomed and not as he was to doing so in the castle.

It takes awhile for sleep to claim you. Arthur pretends not to notice the way you squirm on the bed with that restless energy of a woman trying to hide the denial of pleasure.

And gods did he want to provide it.

Arthur waits until your breathing evens out before he leaves the bath. Careful to be silent as he dries and dresses, lest he wake you.

Slowly, he seats himself at the foot of the bed, mindful to not place himself in your orbit lest you wake and he’ll lose himself in your attention again.

After a time of listening to your soft breathing, Arthur finds his hand that had held yours pressed to the same spot on his chest. The magic is quiet now. Soothed by your touch despite the loss of it.

He should feel relief. Instead shame shores itself up inside him, like sand takes shape beneath the waves. It finds all the empty parts of him, the places he ignores, the ones he never looks at for longer than a glance- and fills it all.

And with it- tangled up like it's caught in spider silk, is desire.

Arthur tries to stare out the window, but only finds your shape in the reflection.

Would you still sleep peacefully if you knew who he truly was?

Here, afforded a room and his protection on the road, you sleep undisturbed. Yet, for how many years before had you slept unsafe? Unguarded on the King’s land. For a few heartbeats, his magic flares a vivid blue beneath his tunic. As though it felt his dismay.

His land.

Because he was the born king.

A lost Pendragon returned to take up the crown.

And you, much like his longing, would be caught up in the web of castle politics and potential tragedy if he were to reveal anything of his true identity.

Arthur sighs. His magic stutters with it. In between its absences, the opposing magic thrums. A counter heartbeat to his own. Tugging at his awareness constantly. Like a blade in his heart. Reminding him of its presence. Sharp and possessive.

Eventually, Arthur’s eyes drift shut. Lulled by your breathing into a doze that courts sleep with ease if it weren’t for the approach of light footsteps.

Arthur’s hand tightens around his sword just as the knock comes. Quietly at first, like whoever owns the fist is loath to disturb.

Arthur shifts, about to rise, when the knock against the wood sharpens.

Rap rap rap

Beside him, you startle. Arthur only manages to barely avoid the swift kick you aim at his ribs as you bolt upright. Gaze scouring your surroundings with unguarded terror as you scramble for a makeshift weapon. Hands darting to the candle as you blow it out before you lift it by the heavy base. Its clever, if not necessary as Arthur steps between you and the door, waiting at a healthy distance for you to realize him as friendly and not your enemy.

It takes too long.

Too many agonizing breaths as your mind catches up to your position.

Arthur gives his voice then.

“Easy there, love.”

The smoking candle lowers by a measure. Enough that Arthur’s confident it won’t meet his head if you swing.

“It’s all right, you’re safe. I’ll get the door.”

You nod, but Arthur doesn’t miss the fierce shake of your hands and the small apology floating out to him as you place the candle back down.

Anger alights in Arthur the likes he’s known only a scant handful of times in his life. Stalking the short distance to the offending door, Arthur yanks it open, a glare already prepared for whoever waits behind it.

The wax scraping son of the inn keeper stares up at Arthur, an apology streaming from his mouth before the door is even cracked open properly.

Arthur softens, allowing the child to stutter through his spiel with only a slight frown.

“M’apologies sir. The garrison has returned and requisitioned the entire inn. You and your wife can camp in the yard. Supplies will be provided,” the boy says, tacking on a few more apologies when Arthur releases a brusk sigh.

“S’alright lad. S’not your fault,” Arthur says, aiming for a reassuring tone but his anger for your sake makes it land somewhere too harsh still. The boy scurries down the stairwell as soon as Arthur dismisses him.

Arthur can’t help but think of Blue. A wave of worry crashing through him to meet the surging rage that presses against him. Had Blue come up against the likes of Vortigern’s ranks- who’d collected and nearly shipped off ten thousand boys to fight wars in strange lands under his orders? Their kingdom’s future was sold to the Vikings in Arthur’s absence. He’d only just found his reign in time.

But shadows remained. Scars. Footholds for the nefarious. Like this garrison. Within his own guard.

Arthur can’t help but imagine how many bloody times you’d woken in such a state. Alone and vulnerable and scared out of your mind. Whilst on his land. And Arthur couldn’t change any of it.

For one long moment, Arthur debates descending into the inn and throwing his weight around. If he didn’t give the King’s title to the garrison, then he’d give his fists and perhaps his blade. It wasn’t Excalibre but it wasn’t nothing, especially if he let his magic accompany it. Which by all recent accounts, he expects it would unleash even without the conduit of Merlin’s forged sword in his grip.

He was that out of his mind. With exhaustion. With fury. With frustration.

But then, at his back, your voice lifts, and it feels like a balm over him. Like he’s one raw wound, and your presence is the cure.

“Arthur? Do we need to take our leave?”

We.

Our.

Your wife.

Arthur takes your words and shoves them into the void in his chest. The place where his magic has come loose. Threatens to rip from him. Tethered only by what feels like sheer will.

Somehow, he’s steadier when he turns to you. Less wild edges. More gathered and calm. And you look at him as though he always has been. It soothes the searing ache. If only a little.

“Aye,” Arthur says, quietly, burying the answer in his hand as it drags down his face like he doesn’t wish to speak it. For one breath his gaze lands on the bed, and you spot the weary hesitancy as his eyes track to the window and the cold night beyond.

“We’ll stay warm,” you say, your voice brighter than Arthur expects, and vastly more certain than he feels, never having camped aside from when his father’s loyalists and the Mage had rescued him away from his uncle. Confusion leeching into his features at your surety.

“You run hotter than a fever,” you offer, with the same removed tone as Dr.Enthiel sometimes adopts when he’s diagnosing, “And it will be safer to bed together.”

Arthur digests your statement as you gather your things. Efficiently acquiring your bag and the supply packs with a casual air like you hadn’t just easily agreed to this arrangement.

Brushing past him, your voice is a mixture of playful scold and spark and just low enough for only Arthur to catch.

“You don’t need to grin that wide for them to believe our farce.”

Thank you for reading!! Please engage if you enjoyed- likes, comments and reblogs mean ✨ e v e r y t h i n g ! ✨Thank you dear reader! ^_^ 💖💖💖

|||

|||

Thank you for reading!! Please engage if you enjoyed- likes, comments and reblogs mean ✨ e v e r y t h i n g ! ✨Thank you dear reader! ^_^ 💖💖💖

|||

The point of my sword drags through the sludgy dirt as I veer toward the edge of the road. The tip of the weapon jumps over thick clumps of bright clover and wildflowers. Despite the sun now warming my shoulders, both the leafy sedge that borders the road and my tunic are still damp from the rain we woke up to this morning. My worn boots are stained with mud. The guard that follows behind me grumbles when my sword kicks up clag onto his shiny greaves. 

The uncomfortable dampness clings to my skin. It looks shinier and more bearable on the clover’s small leaves. I pretend I’m a knight who has just waded through a river, my valiant horse in tow. I imagine it’s the black steed, the horse whose harried huffs and whinnies carry back from where it draws the carriage ahead of me. The sound of the animal reaches to where I take up my post at the rear of the caravan. My irritated companion follows me as I carve ambling lines into the squelching earth.

Up ahead where the budding trees span over the rain-sodden path we journey, a fancy carriage rolls along. But that’s not what catches my attention. I can see Mama is treading in its opulent wake. In her faded aprons, the hem of her skirt is caked with mud where it’s not shredded. Her form curls around herself, as though she wishes to fade into the shadow of the fancy stagecoach. It’s as if she awaits my protection. 

A heavier, wider sword appears amongst the clovers as I skip. I bend to collect it. 

The heavy footsteps of the guard behind me stutter. Rocks kick up around my boots.

“Make haste, boy,” the guard growls. 

Mama’s head snaps to me. She watches as I lift my newly acquired sword to the grumpy goose behind me. 

Later, when we stop to rest, I will make sure to beg him for his smallest knife so that I may carve symbols into the blade. 

The guard frowns deeply as the tip of my weapon centers on his nose. 

A shiny metal fist curls around my sword, and steadies it in warning.

I tug at the pommel of my weapon. Bark scrapes against my palm.

Within his fist, my blade bends.

The twig snaps.

My deepening glare is reflected within the impatient mountain of armor that towers over me. 

Mama calls my name. She beckons me to her. I turn and dart in Mama’s direction. 

She collects me to her side, her fingers gathering in my worn shirt, and her voice falls out of her lips. I hate when Mama speaks to me like this. A shiver works its way up my spine like a serpent through the grass as I stare at the carriage wheel as it totters over stones and ruts because when Mama speaks like this it unsettles me. I shudder like my skin will shed. She’s like one of Ol’ Petyr’s puppets except she’s Ol’ Petyr. Thin, wrinkled mouth unmoving and slightly open while his little people speak and screech and sing. My friends used to be scared of his stories- but Ol’ Petyr and his strange non voice was scarier.

“Do not upset them,” Mama says without saying. A whisper of her usual voice. An edge to it that makes my gut twist and sour. 

My fist tightens around my remaining sword. 

When we first joined this band, Mama had been giddy with relief- her voice a song of appreciation that we’d found safe passage to the next city. But in a span of suns, Mama has been parsing her feelings. Whittling them down to wan smiles that don’t meet her sharp eyes. And then she began portioning our rations. 

Whenever the guard hands her a chunk of bread, she breaks off a few pieces for me to eat, then shoves the rest into her pack. Despite the hunger clawing in my belly, I know better than to ask for more. 

Mama’s behaved like this before. When we left my father during the war. 

Mama is scared.

Soon, we will take our leave, and so I make a plan of my own. 

The guard in our wake sighs tightly, his brows forever furrowed beneath his helmet. That frown etched into his features so he’s carved of an eternal anguish. I’m not sure why he and the other guards carry such heaviness when their position is one of honor and esteem. 

They protect a princess! A real princess! Although I’ve never seen her- she never leaves the confines of the carriage except for one blackened hand that passes parchment to the guards- she has extended her escort to us. Including two handfuls of guards- dark armor glinting beneath the sun and outfitted with a staggering amount of weapons.

I stare at the sword that swings at the grumpy guard’s hip. Tonight, when everyone is asleep- I will steal it. Along with a water skin, and the coin pouch from the guard that reeks of fermented wine every time he returns from the woods to piss. That one always dozes through his watch. 

Then, I will wake Mama and we will disappear into the forest. 

Mama will know which way to go. 

I tilt my head- and find Mama’s gaze scouring the road like she’s searching for a route of escape out of habit.

Shoving my sword into the knotted rope of my belt- I twine my fingers into my mother’s trembling ones and offer her a small smile when her face bends to mine.

“It will be alright, Mama,” I tell her, and her lips twitch. The lines of her eyes- widened as though it’s her natural state despite the way I know they crinkle when she laughs, and softens when she sleeps- become watery.

Her hand tightens around mine as we approach a bridge.

The water roars beneath it and my boots come to a halt before the carriage even slows.

It’s only been a few spans since we’ve joined this party, but Mama and I know the pattern this group follows.

Every passage over water- we must halt.

We must wait while the lead guard- a flame bearded mountain of a man- approaches the carriage door and confers quietly with the princess.

Sometimes it takes hours. We rest in the shade- or out of the rain- and sometimes the princess’s voice lifts more than a whisper. A song of fury and irritation bleeding into the patter of the rain that always seems to start whenever we come to these watery crossroads.

The lead guard will stiffen where he stands- and he’ll cast a worried glance at his men- before it darts to Mama and I and then it’s hastily cast to the dirt where it remains for a long, heavy moment. At first, Mama tried to converse with the guards to pass the time. But they didn’t share in our tales of travel or hopes of what life we would find in the new city- their faces set in grim or harried expressions as they waited upon their leader’s word. As though they hoped for it and loathed it all the same.

“Onwards,” he’d order after an eternity. The word husking out of his frame with some measure of relief rattling through it. The order dissipating through the ranks like smoke. Harsh at first, like they all expect otherwise, before the carriage totters forward and they all release the breath they'd been holding. Despite the warm spring air, the lead guard shakes under the weight of whatever silent burden he bears, like the next gust of wind might reduce him to dust. Like he aches for that fate instead of the one he meets when he turns, stiffly, and takes up his post at the side of the carriage. Like there's a chain around his boot, as though he cannot stray a step further from the distance that the Princess's voice may reach him.

Once, Mama had tried to cross before his permission.

The other guards had blocked her path with their spears and fierce expressions staying her steps.

Despite the lack of shackles and chains, I got the impression that we might be prisoners.

They’d invited us to their party. Promising Mama food and safe travel when they’d come across us upon the road.

So we couldn’t be- even though Mama’s posture had shifted from that moment forward.

Her steps stiff, her eyes wary. Her smile offered tightly, her voice falling to meet my ears with a fearful quality she attempted to mask behind soothing pets of my crown.

Maybe we were like Ol’ Petyr’s puppets. Invisible strings around our wrists and ankles. Our necks. I shivered. Mama clasped me to her tighter. Her movements are stilted with her fear. It's like when Ol' Petyr's characters embrace- awkward and separated by the strings that hold them up. Despite his skill, sometimes they get tangled. I imagine Mama collapsing like dead weight and a shiver worms up my spine, and I stand more rigid to meet it.

I won't let Mama fall.

“Onwards,” the lead guard growls from between his clenched teeth.

Over and over.

At a roaring river with the largest bridge I’d ever laid eyes upon spanned wide across its steep banks. A cargo ship rolled beneath our boots. It took ten breaths for it to appear on the other side.

Next, at a trickling stream that only seemed to have appeared after this morning’s rain. It was scarcely a foot bridge- and there’d been debate of whether we’d need to find a different path forwards for the carriage. To our fortune, the bridge had held its weight although it was a worrisome crossing. Even the lead guard held his breath as the wheels wriggled to the edge of the planks. 

Then, at a gurgling canal that trickled alongside fields of freshly harvested winter wheat for acres and acres before it meandered beneath the old stone bridge. Only just wide enough for the wagon to pass with a few grunted shoves of the guards when one of the wheels wedged against the stone wall.

It’s late in the day. My feet are sore and Mama limps as though a fever spot has developed on her ever swollen foot. Usually we’d have made camp by now, but there’s a haste in the guard’s steps. An urgency as though we are approaching something important. Like the end of our journey is in sight. Despite this, the guards do not look on in relieved anticipation. Instead, the crease between their brows has been carved deeper.

Their shiny crowned heads cast to where they trudge over the road- as though they damn every foot fall. At the crest of the next hill, I think I spy trails of smoke in the distance. We approach a city, despite the lack of hovels in its surroundings. Only the odd farm. A few spare travelers. Of the few that dare to lift their heads, they cast us fearful looks when they pass. The whites of the eyes like silent warnings. Like they know something we should too.

Mama’s head swivels more and more. Every slight parting in the thick tree line draws her focus- as though she wishes to flee into the dense forest.

A building overhangs the road way in the distance. Like a beacon. A lantern in the dark. Bobbing through the dark forest, beckoning safety. Somewhere solid to take a rest and recover.

I point at it with my sword.

“Mama! A tavern!” I remark brightly, hoping to improve her fearful mood- but Mama bites her chapped lip. Her trembling hands petting over my crown like a habit and I think it’s meant to soothe her more than I.

“Will we rest here for the night?” Mama asks the rear guard but he doesn’t reply. Silence expands between us like a threat. Mama’s eyes flick between the guard, the caravan and the remaining escort as though she’s tallying up our odds of escape. The distance between us and the rest and the safety of the tavern or the forest beyond it. There’s a wildness in her eyes, that solidifies when it lands on me, and makes me wish that I’d formed my plan sooner than this afternoon. Yesternoon would have been ideal, if only to spare the frightened look of Mama now. In the deep of the woods, we’d be alone and afraid as well- but something in her fear tells me we’d be better off against wolves than whatever would prey upon us further up the road.

Plodding past us, the rear guard barely lifts his head at the crowd of tavern goers that hang beneath the second level of the inn. The stone faced outcropping is aburst with noise and scents. Slurred speech and too loud laughter that teeters into heavy, muttered silence as the carriage rolls past. The thick scent of oily stew and the sour smell of bubbling ale on the night air fills me with distraction and longing. A fuzzy sort of hope rising in my chest and bursting as soon as it arrives. The barkeep regards us with wide, fearful eyes when we pause. Her maternal gaze locks with Mama’s for a blink before the mug she sets down clatters onto the table and the patron grumbles at the spilled ale.

Mama’s footsteps falter. A heavy hand clamps onto my shoulder as the guard shoves me forwards without a word.

He stares resolutely ahead- metal squeaking when I attempt to jerk away from his hold.

“Onwards,” he says but it’s hollow. Like there's a void inside of him, and it will swallow all in its path. The eyes beneath the shadow of his helm are empty. My sword clatters against his chest plate and my mother’s quiet weeping echoes in our wake.

“Please-,” she begs, her voice thin, “Let him go,” her boots scraping across the ground to follow us as though she struggles to maintain upright. Her pleas smack off the armor and steel of the guard’s set jaw. He ignores her. Pushing me forwards as the carriage continues on past the potential safe haven of the tavern.

“You have no coin,” the guard says, blunt like a strike from the flat side of his sword and Mama makes a pained noise.

We might have nothing to barter with.

But we have honor. Unlike him.

“And you have no honor,” I shriek, despite the fear toppling through my mind at the fierce grip he maintains on me. He merely shoves me forward, uncaring of my protest. Mama follows, helplessly. Like she's one of Ol' Petyr's puppets, and I'm the cross that connects to her strings.

Some of my words or the accusing quality of them seems to shear something in him. For one moment, his face falls- and the stoic seriousness is lost to an agony so horrifying that even my blood recoils inside me- my gut dropping to my boots.

Fear like a knife in my thoughts, cleaving through whatever imaginary glory I’d bestowed upon this guard and his companions when we’d first met.

They weren’t protecting us or the Princess from outside threats.

They were the threat.

 I’m herded closer to the carriage as it approaches another bridge. A grim frown within the lead guard’s flame beard greets me as the wheels stutter to a halt over the stones as my heart slams against my ribs.

Mama’s hands seek for me past the armored guard’s reach but he shoves her away with ease. A shattered sob rips through the air and my own rises to meet it. It's like ice shearing at the edge of a pond to meet the cracks webbing beneath my boot when I place my weight against the next steps that I'm forced to make.

Mama begs for them to release me- her voice verging on a wail while the lead guard’s attention is drawn into the depths of the caravan like a spell lies within. Glazed eyes track sideways from where they’d landed heavily upon me, another shiver shaking through my form at the unnatural way his gaze is pulled from me. 

I’m within hearing distance of this conversation for the first time- so is the guard that wrangles me in his painful grip but the way he refuses to look at me speaks to his prior knowing of what will be discussed. Bastard. He’s tricked us into trusting them.

The thick branch in my hand thwacks against his helm for one satisfying thrum of the metal before he wrenches it out of my grip. I screech in dismay before I begin searching for its true, metallic twin at his belt. Before me fingers can secure a knife, they’re snatched into his iron hold.

Over the sound of my desperate scrambling, a feminine voice lifts above the chaos.

The flame bearded guard nods once into the wagon depths before he turns to Mama.

“Come,” a voice like a song beckons from within the carriage. My own fight falters when Mama obeys. Tears stream from her eyes- her chin trembling as she closes the distance with stiff steps as though she does not wish to approach. Her upper body hangs heavily over her legs as she stumbles forward, like when Ol' Petyr forgets to orchestrate the whole of his puppets.

“Please let us go-,” Mama begs- her voice tight in her throat when an ink stained hand appears from the window. Blackened fingers reach to push a sweaty lock of hair from Mama’s face in what would be a tender gesture if the words that accompanied it didn’t strike fear through me like a lance. They leave a stain of shadow on Mama's sweaty skin, the ink woven through Mama’s hair.

“Leave us,” the feminine voice orders and Mama’s mouth snaps shut. As though Ol’ Petyr were coordinating her movements.

Mama turns.

Silent. Horrifyingly still everywhere except her legs as they lift and drop awkwardly. Plodding away from me without even glance back.

I stare- gawking as she strides in the direction we’d only just come. The fall of her boots is forced.

A sharp wail comes from her- a sound like when my younger sister passed last winter- and then another bursts-- louder as the distance between us grows.

“Mama!” I call out, my struggles renewed in my attempts to follow her but the rear guard’s grip only tightens and I cry out as my bones feel crushed in his cruel grip.

Mama does not turn to me.

Mama keeps walking.

“Mama!” I wail, barely louder than the ones that she makes. It isn’t words, the sound she makes. Nonsensical cries, like a wounded animal caught in the jaws of a predator.

The lead guard throws me an agonized look- as though he shares in my distress. But it’s tamped down into a determined, grim expression when the voice titters out from the darkness of the carriage.

There's no Princess in there. I know it now. Like when Ol' Petyr puts a monster in the cave. The shadows shivering with unseen evil disguised as promised treasure.

“We must make haste,” the princess says, and I expect the lead guard to give his usual order. 

Onwards. 

Instead, the blackened hand makes a dismissive gesture before it retreats back inside.

“You know what must be done,” the princess says and the lead guard nods once but it’s odd. Like he tucks his chin without his own knowing. But there’s pain in his eyes that betrays the awkward gesture. 

The rear guard behind me swallows hard. Metal squeaks and shifts as he thrusts me towards the lead guard’s waiting hands. I’m passed over like one of the letters the Princess hands to the messengers. Letter after letter, one for every hour the sun shines, until her fingers are stained with ink. 

In the process, I snatch a knife from the flame bearded guard’s belt- his shock rippling over his stony features for a blink as I shove the blade towards the break in his thigh plate and his greave.

Before I can sink it into the flesh that lies between- the voice sings from the carriage. There’s a spell in the sound of it. Woven into her words. They wrap around my thoughts. Like when Ol' Petyr stings up a new puppet, his worn fingers working over the wood and hemp with tight movements as he pulls and tightens the bonds.

“Drop it, boy,” she orders and my fingers twitch unnaturally at her words. Strung together like a lyric of a bard or chord from a lute.

A sickening wave crests through my body as the knife clatters against the stones in the ground. Everything in me had grasped onto the blade with force, with the last fight of desperate hope. But the Princess's words had rendered them useless. Like shears cutting a cord. My intention and my actions severed for her command instead.

I bend to collect the blade, but the guard is quicker. Snatching it from me and I’m hoisted into his arms before I can pivot to flee.

Thrashing, I scream- searching for my mother from this new height as the guard stalks towards the bridge.

Mama is almost out of sight.

Nearly at the bend in the road.

I shriek and shriek as she rigidly strides out of view.

By the time we reach the riverbank, my shouts are crashing into one another as I struggle to breathe past my panic.

The water is silent save for how it laps against the banks.

It’s dark even in the evening light. It's surface unyielding to my quick fearful glances.

Swift and fast and deep.

It splashes as the lead guard takes the first step into its shallows.

“I cannae swim,” I shout, clutching to the guard as he descends into the dark waves- afraid to be rid of him now. The switch from wishing to flee- to latching to him making me hiccup in fear.

The water fills my boots. Soaks up my trousers. It’s cold- near freezing with us being a bare stones throw from winter- and the guard continues to plunge us both into its depths.

“Why?” I scream and it's shrill, like a rabbit caught in a snare. My voice almost unrecognizable to myself, yet terrifyingly and recently familiar, reflected in my mother's sobs as she left me. I shriek the question on repeat, louder and louder, until I'm sure it rattles the guard's armor with the force of it, I can only hope this is to bathe and not some mage ritual that Ol’ Petyr used to puppet.

Of babes and children sacrificed for dark magic. 

The guard wrenches my trembling hands from where they clutch at his chest plate- his cold fingers and their cruel grip slipping from the water as he tries to wrangle me from his frame.

Searching for an answer, I find only his empty gaze. A hollowness echoing out of his dark eyes as he gathers my wrists in his hand while the other lifts to my face before he shoves me beneath the surface.

|||

******** |||

You never thought anyone else would see where you resided in the King’s forest. Well, at least you never hoped. The terrifying prospect of unwanted attention had hung over your head for years ever since you’d established this little sector of woods as your own. A thick rope dangling ominously in your mind. Afraid the weight of your body would one day pull the slack taught alongside the sickening crack of your breaking neck because a guard patrol would discover your illegal inhabitance. 

There would be no trial. You wouldn’t even have a chance to defend yourself before the King. Not that Vortigern would have even listened- and the new King was a mystery better left alone, you surmised despite the rumors that trickled into your ear whenever you visited the city. The townsfolk say the new crowned King was once one of them. That he’d tread in their midst and perhaps, some query, he will be a kinder King because of it. But you weren’t the sort to lay your life into the hands of another and hope for mercy. Not when the option to hide or flee remains instead. 

And so even when Vortigern's cruel reign had ended- still you’d been careful. Covering your tracks, not allowing any visitors, minding your steps to ensure you wouldn’t be followed from the city. Even the trees around your home were left purposefully neglected. The brush wasn’t cleared. The paths you chose to and from the city or the plot of elvium were always varied so that you wouldn’t tread upon one solely lest it betray your presence. 

The squat hobble of your stone cottage is tucked amidst the foliage- nearly swallowed up by leaves and shrubbery in the summer. In the colder months- the density of the fir canopy above makes it so that hardly any sun shines upon the slightly collapsed roof. Deep in the shadows of the woods, you’ve lived your secret life by your lonesome to your great relief.

It’s odd to bring Arthur here. To have another set of eyes witness the life you’ve dug out for yourself. 

Somehow, Arthur’s presence alters your perspective of your familiarity from where you rest at his back. The turn of his head- his voice- all his consideration upon you and your surroundings as you offer directions. Voice strained to be heard above the horse’s breathing as Critter carries you. He’s a good horse. Well behaved and trusting. You’re thankful for your past efforts in keeping the path maintained so that his hoof falls remain sure and safe.

This bit of forest is transformed from the rest. Whatever you could do to help it also helped you in turn. The tree branches above you glitter in the breeze with new leaves. Before their canopies were choked with thick vines. Their bases had been buried beneath rot and their dead fallen siblings. But you’d wrangled this sliver of forest into something healthier. 

Cleared out the old, useless or parasitic plants to give the rest room to breathe. It had been hard work. And you had to be careful- not wanting to alert the King’s guards to your presence. Eventually the swath of trees between your cottage and the elvium plot became less wild. Navigation was easier with the small paths you created. Escape would be too if the need ever arose. 

The forest provided the bulk of what you needed- gathering wild mushrooms and herbs to supplement what you couldn’t grow easily on your own. Between supporting yourself and your small salves business- you had plenty. Everything within a stone’s throw- or an afternoon stroll. Only ever needing to venture further for the company or patronage of other people- of which you kept your visits brief or professional. 

It had been easy to retreat into King Vortigern’s neglected woods like a secret but you never truly felt settled. Everything of immediate need could be gathered up in your arms in a heartbeat and you could flee. The only indication of your presence would overgrow and disappear back into the wild within a few seasons. 

Arthur heeds your directions towards your cottage, clicking his tongue for Critter to adopt a trot. The horse follows the command without complaint- and you grasp onto Arthur’s waist a little tighter when the speed picks up. Arthur’s riding style isn’t as fluid as you remember Silas’s being- but Silas had grown up with the animals. Some shade of guilt threatens to darken your thoughts for comparing the two men but then Arthur’s hand envelops over your own for a moment- his arm holding yours to him more securely as though he fears you may fall.

“I’m alright,” you say, sore voice barely heard above Critter’s exertions. It’d been many years since you’d ridden on horseback- many more since you’d ridden double like this- but you’d been around horses for enough years to adopt a riding style that could compliment Arthur’s easily. As novice as he was- apparent in the stiff stuttering of his hips like he nearly resisted the beast he perched upon- you could compensate well enough especially given Critter’s easy disposition. 

It takes a surprisingly small amount of time to reach your cottage compared to when you travel by foot. It nearly makes you wish you didn’t have to sell Silas’s horse when you arrived here. But keeping a horse in the King’s forest and trying to remain unnoticed would have likely meant you’d hang and Merlin would have ended up on King Vortigern’s feasting table. So by your lonesome it was. Merlin had gone to a caring new owner, and that’s all you could have hoped for to honor Silas’s legacy and life’s work. 

Your late husband had cared for the lord of your village’s horses. A nobleman by birth- Silas was never ingrained to Lord Henry De Vere of Lerbford’s employment. A large stable was maintained on your husband’s land- enough to sell and become a lord of his own if he’d so wanted- but Silas never desired power and coin. A simple man- although also a mage which complicated much under Vortigern’s reign especially towards the end of his young life- Silas only desired his loved ones be well cared for and that included you and the animals in your stable.

Once the slight thatch cottage is before you- Arthur helps you down once more. The strength within him where he holds you causes a swarm of warmth in your gut- and you realize with some giddy sense storming through your thoughts that this was something to look forward to in the coming days. Arthur’s reassuring touch and presence upon you. It feels like a gift and a curse- Silas’s touch a ghost in your memory. Arthur’s real gaze centering you within his charming focus. 

Distracting yourself- you pet Critter’s side absently while Arthur quietly admires your home. A worn down cottage sits buried in a large garden. While it’s still soil and only a smattering of newly grown greenery in the barely warm spring air- the trellis’s and willow arches you’ve built speak plainly to the dedication to your craft. You like to believe that once your garden has fully grown into itself in a few months that it covers the blemish that is the weathered cottage well. However, it’s likely that your attention is mostly for flowers and plants and not run down buildings.

Now, with Arthur’s visit- the only other person that had ever been here in all this time- you can’t help but cringe at the condition of your home especially looking upon its spareness in this Spring time. Perhaps you should have spent more time on upkeep the thatching- or repairing the chips in the clay with ashes from your woodstove. But it made such wonderful fertilizer. How could you waste it on something so silly as the walls of the cottage? Drafts be damned.

“Would you like to come inside?” you ask, tethering Critter’s reins to a fencepost that still wiggled slightly ever since you erected it. Hoping that Arthur will agree if only for the sake of removing his attention from the damage outside of your house. Not that he’d said a word- in fact he seemed more engrossed with your garden than anything else.

“Why don’t you grow the elvium here?” Arthur asks, crouched beside a bed of what would soon sprout and become your summer squash. For all appearances it was an empty plot.

“Not enough sun,” you reply and Arthur nods with consideration. The trees overhead kept you well insulated. Cool in the summer, less frozen in the snow come winter time.

When you press upon the door of the little hut- its wood slanted in its unleveled frame so that the top hinge no longer holds its anchoring- the intense scent of herbs greets you. With effort, you lift the door onto a stone that you’ve wedged against the wall so that it remains in place once Arthur follows you inside. 

Ducking his head beneath the low ceiling- made further lower with the meadows of herbs in various states of drying that you’ve strung across it- Arthur allows himself a moment to adjust to the dim light while you carefully maneuver through the small space. 

It’s one squat room- filled with your life to nearly bursting. It could well be a herbalist’s shop with all the plants and the tools of your trade that you can fit. Every surface available is covered with your work. The scent of drying herbs is intense- nearly reminding Arthur of Doctor Enthiel’s tower and its spilled potions- but somehow your home is far more inviting despite its messy nature.

The sharp cry of metal comes before you stab at the dozing coals in your wood stove. Rousing them back to life with a few spears of your poker until you find the one that glows the strongest. From a tiny shelf above the still warm stove, you grab a pouch of lichen and sap. Depositing the ember gem in its new cozy bed. Before it has a chance to smoke and catch flame, you smother it in the pocket of slightly damp moss. This will become a warm fire with a few targeted long breaths upon a bed of kindling. It would be foolish to travel without given all the rain as of late.

From the corner of your vision as you pack your travel bag with items you’ll need- a travel cloak, a spare apron you use for gardening, a few spools of thread and handful of sealing candles- Arthur remains at the door. 

Lifting a hand to stroke the leaves of a bundle of lavender that hangs beside his face- before he brings them to his nose and inhales deeply. That crisp bundle of flowers was hung the summer of your first year here- positioned near the doorway for luck. 

Something stirs in your chest to think that Arthur is the first one to admire it besides yourself. His long fingers tracing over the rope and stems where you’d secured it to the wall with a rusty nail you’d found somewhere near the road. For a moment, you're jealous of his height- how easily he wraps the rope around the metal to secure it better when it's taken you an embarrassing amount of time to install. 

The gentle King’s guard hasn’t moved from the door. As though he’s hesitant to invade your space more than he feels he has with the plot of elvium. You’d just come from the clearing- after he’d assured you he’d secured care for them in your absence. His friend, Bill Turner, who Arthur had informed you he trusted the man with his life- would mind the elvium after Arthur’s careful instruction. It had shocked you- that Arthur had already determined a solution to the problem you’d been wracking your mind to solve all morning. Who could you trust on such short notice to care for the seedlings in your sudden absence? 

Arthur’s enduring thoughtfulness strikes you in the chest even still. Your sore foot now nestled in a new boot- warm and dry and smelling of freshly tanned leather. While shoving your last blanket into your pack, Arthur regards your space. 

Serious blue eyes find the bed first- and you’re not sure how to interpret the action. If it were any other man- let alone a King’s guard- it would have made you want to crawl out of your skin. But there’s a familiarity in Arthur’s gaze.

The way his gaze sweeps the room and finds your bed seems like a force of habit. As though he expects to find someone within it. You flounder to think of a reason as to why. Perhaps his housing is communal. Perhaps he must choose a new place to lie every night in the guard’s barracks and he’s hasty to find an empty bed. Perhaps he’s used to sharing his bed- your mind wanders to this point as easily as a leaf floating upon a stream. As quickly as it arrives, you sink into a flood of thoughts to push the ones of Arthur and another away- your own bed and all the ways you’ve imagined him with you staring at you as though a bed could glare. 

The threadbare blanket in your hands is thrust into your bag. It’s been cold the last few weeks- all your spare covers have been given to the elvium plot to keep them alive. Shivering in your bed, thoughts of Arthur and his blazing smile in your mind- your hand between your thighs as heat spreads through your body before the cold will shove its way in once more to share your bed as you fall asleep.

Last night at Sigrid’s was the warmest sleep you’ve had in many months. The safest too. 

The spare fire poker you keep by your bed is where Arthur’s eyes trail next. Searching for weapons. It’s perhaps another instinctive appraisal for him. Where Arthur’s expression had been unreadable upon your bed- shoved into the corner of the clustered room- furthest from the wood stove for all the plants you’ve crowded around it in order for them to dry faster- Arthur’s mouth draws into a deep frown as he regards your improvised defense tool.

The irony of a King’s guard stood in your doorway- all your nightmares come to life- and yet you feel a surge of protection in the way he regards you next. 

“Where did you learn to do this?” Arthur asks, bringing his fingers to the curling leaves of a robust bundle of sage you’ve hung opposite the lavender.

Hammering nails into a wall haphazardly? That- you liked to believe- was your natural gift. Empowered with ancestral rage and with the throb of determination in your thumbs- all you needed was a large stick and to imagine King Vortigern’s face instead of the nail head. You muse for a moment, mind caught upon Arthur’s handsome features before you finally catch up to his meaning. 

“My husband taught me,” you say and even behind his large hand where he’s drawn it to him to inhale deeply once more, Arthur’s face blanches- gaze scouring to the door as though to make a hasty retreat.

“He’s passed,” you hurry to tack on before you wrench open the stubborn door of your wood stove with a huff once more. A tightness to your action that makes Arthur believe he’s overstepped his inquisitiveness.

When you reach inside the ashes- carefully plucking out another glowing ember and placing it inside a new pocket of lichen and bark- you only realize Arthur’s silence once the shifting golden light is concealed. Silas has taught you to always bring a spare source of flame. Arthur’s distracting presence had almost made you forget. Tucking the precious satchel into your shirt alongside the first one where it won’t be crushed during travel, you startle at Arthur’s speech.

“I’m sorry,” Arthur says, voice tinged with something you can’t place in the dark surroundings. 

When Sigrid mentioned you’d lost your family- Arthur didn’t think as far as to marriage. Not that he didn’t consider you of the marriageable sort- and not that he did in any sense. 

Arthur internally slaps himself. The Princess and her selfish escapades had marriage on his mind more than it ever had been. If he was quite honest- he’d never even considered it for himself until recently. When it’d been thrust upon him without his any say in the matter. And even if the Princess and him had never crossed paths- he’s only now realizing that being wedded would have become inevitable with his new role. A talk of an heir would undoubtedly cross Goosefat’s lips at some point if not already his mind before Arthur had even been crowned.

Arthur drags a hand down his face. Gods, he was making a mess of everything. Whether he intended to or not it felt as though simply his presence alone contaminated everything near to him. 

A memory of their conversation drifts back into his awareness. You’d shared that you had befriended a few mages- that they’d taught you magic so you could help others. 

“Your husband-,” Arthur starts, biting back his words until your face- so open and sweet where you crouch at the wood stove- makes them fall out anyways, “He was a Mage?” 

You nod. It’s only the slightest tip of your chin. It reminds Arthur of your first meeting. When he found your illustrious little plot in his forest alongside the rabbit snares and your guilt was written upon your features without even a word.

It’s dangerous to admit such things. Even still. King Vortigern’s cruelty is a twisted weed around you and he can tell it has thorns without needing to see them. It’s in the way you deflate. Arthur wishes he could tug the reign of Vortigern from you. Rip it away even if it turned him to shreds. He’d undo the past- all of it- even if it meant he never knew you. If only to spare the heartache that sits plain upon your face so that Arthur can’t help the way his own rises to meet it.

“When our marriage was arranged- I was scared,” you admit, with a smile that wavers alongside your gaze- your mind traveling backwards. 

“Of course I knew of him in passing,” you say, sweeping the ashes by the stove out of habit and the stir into the air like your memories, “But my family lived on the edges of our village, and he lived in the stable master’s house,” you continue, “I didn’t even know what he looked like. We’d never met before our wedding day.”

“He was handsome,” you say with a small chuckle and Arthur notes the way you fluster through the next words, “Of course, that’s not the most important thing. He was kind,” you continue with an affectionate smile. 

“I had on my best dress. A worn thing that looked like rags compared to what he wore-,” you say with a small laugh, “But the way he looked at me-,” you recall, a soft sigh tittering against your words. 

“Like I was prettier than a sunset. I felt like the luckiest woman in our village after that,” you say, smiling softly like the light of yours and Silas’s love still shines upon you and Arthur shares in your smile. 

“He was a fortunate man,” Arthur replies, something serious in his look that makes you realize yourself and how you’d become lost in both the memory of Silas and the way Arthur’s looking at you now. It’s nearly the same as standing at the altar within Silas’s warm gaze.

“We better get on with it,” you say, hurrying to collect your things. 

Arthur helps you mount Critter once more- the accompanying strength in him that you were looking forward to during the days to come is like a stone thrown into a still pool. It shakes something up in you. There’s a thick layer of grief over the surface of you that Arthur’s kind presence has sent a ripple through. The weight of your feelings that grow for him sinks into what feels like the center of you. An echo of loneliness- an emptiness that hollows out of you and fades whenever he’s close. Whenever the creases of his cheeks deepen as he smiles upon you in that soft, gentle way.

The fact you’ll return to the village where you met your first love- to a life you left behind- for Arthur to witness yet another home where you once lived and yet you know little about his own drives the conversation as you follow the road towards the cemetery. 

“We must stop here for a moment,” you say as you tether Critter to the iron gate at the entrance to the little copse of markers by the church. A small crowd gathers at the front of the looming building. Whispered prayers are offered to a row of coffins that are being loaded onto a cart. It’s the one marked for Potter’s hill- where the dead that society deems unworthy are buried in unmarked graves. The tearful crowd betrays the idea that these souls aren’t worth more than the coins they lacked in their pockets when they met their ends. A cry lifts from them- a woman collapses in another’s arms when the coachman tuts and the cart jolts forward. 

Despite all your current errands and delays- you wish to help- and to your surprise Arthur deviates from the main path and pushes through the crowd.

Pulling a water skin from his fur coat- Arthur extends it to the woman’s friend- who stares at him warily before her gaze lands on you. She’s covered in grime- her clothes ragged- and her distressed friend could be her twin sister with the same bedraggled appearance. The pinched concern on your face matches hers.

“It’s clear water,” Arthur insists and the woman finally accepts with a tentative nod before she uncorks the lid and trickles the water into the distraught woman’s mouth. Slowly, she drinks,as though she loathes to, her breath stuttered through her sobs.

“Thank ye,” the friend says, “Her husband,” the woman tips her chin to the cart that rolls away. Something in your chest thrums an answering song to the grieved woman’s onslaught cries of pain- a mournful tune to match the one that spills out in front of you.

“She works herself up like this- I keep picking her up,” the woman says with a pained sigh, her arms locking around her friends trembling shoulders as though she’s afraid if she releases her- her friend will fall apart. Dissolve into the dirt beneath them if only to share in the ground of her husband’s final resting place.

“I have smelling salts,” you say, procuring a package you keep on hand. Extending a tin towards the friend and she eyes it with a smidgen of distrust.

Crouching, you leave it upon the cobblestone before turning to Arthur- realizing there’s no more aid to offer. Arthur’s solemn gaze is soft on the scene in front him.

The bereaved woman snaps free of her friend's grasp. Snatches the tin before the lid is clawed open and her next inhale is drawn deeply from the contents as though she’s desperate for anything to soothe the ache in her soul.

“Cedar,” the woman sobs through the word so that it’s drawn out on a hiccuping exhale.

“I hope it brings you some ease,” you say with an understanding look, some part of you knowing that what wounds her will never lose its sting in its entirety. 

“I hope-,” the woman stutters through her words- eyes fierce upon you and Arthur, “That you never lose h-him,” the woman says,  her wet gaze fierce upon Arthur beside you as though she sees someone else in his stead. 

Arthur shuffles underneath her statement but he tips his head in solemn acknowledgment as the woman’s cries rear up once more. He doesn’t reject her assessment of your coupling and neither do you. Allowing this grieved woman some belief in living pairings is the least you can offer in the wake of her loss.

The friend gathers her up once more- and they cling to each other as though the world collapses around them. The past is before you- the memories of Silas’s loss as fresh as when they first were felt. When you wished the world would end for all as it had for you.

Arthur’s hand on your arm brings the heart breaking scene back into focus, his gentle touch pushing you away and back towards the path. Quietly, you follow the ruts in the mud that the cart’s wheels have left in its wake. Avoiding puddles from the earlier rain with Arthur’s careful insistence. The gray and white tombstones float past you. Stories and stories for so many lives reduced to carved names and dates. What lay between them now a marker for so much loss. What tales could each stone hold?

Searching for distraction- for an anchor in the sea of your own grief comes back as a great flood in your thoughts- you turn to Arthur.

“Where did you live before you joined the King’s guard?” 

Arthur seems to startle at your inquiry. 

Wandering through the sprawl of tombstones and beneath tall, impressive oaks- you follow the main path towards the family tombs while Arthur chews your question.

A ripple of shock had tracked his features at your question- as though he’s surprised you care to know anything of him at all- and you fear with all the dramatic events as of late that you’ve failed to show your care for him as he has of you.

The length at which he takes to reply makes you fear that you’ve tread into dark territory. For anyone to become a King’s guard it is a trial- let alone under King Vortigern’s reign. And for Arthur- sweet as he is, perhaps his former living conditions were so deeply awful that he would choose to live and work beneath the wrath of the evil King in their stead.

“If you do not wish to share-,” you start to tread back upon your steps but Arthur shakes his head with a small chuckle. 

Arthur sighs- deciding he will land somewhere on the truth if not the entirety of it.

“I grew up in Londinium. A street rat like Theo,” Arthur replies, something guarded in his eyes when he speaks, but his demeanor remains calm if not his spine rigid as he strolls beside you. The hand at your elbow- that’s navigated you away from soaked boots- twitches and his other hand unfurls from a fist he seems to find as soon as it's released. Over and over- a tension in his form that he holds like it anchors him to the present.

“You’ve come a far way,” you say, “From the streets to the King’s guard.”

Arthur nods, gaze reflective while he scans the surroundings. Like he’s looking for an escape route, you fear. 

“It’s there-,” you point at a cluster of raised tombs beyond the next rise, where you intend to meet Eleanor’s sister, Helen, and Arthur sighs- his breath held for a pause before he continues.

“Aye,” Arthur says, his voice calm but an underlying emotion carries through it, “It was challenging, but I would not trade it for anything.” Arthur says with a fond smile.

“I do not pretend to understand,” you offer with a soft gaze, “It must have been difficult,” you add as you crest the hill and regard the ornate family tombs that are nested below. 

“It taught me resilience. I learned how to survive in a world which is often unforgiving,” Arthur says with a shrug of one broad shoulder but the casual action is betrayed when his gaze travels somewhere far away- landing on a hard stare.

“Yet you speak with fondness,” you say, Arthur’s thumb rubbing at your arm in a soothing way- and you think it’s less for you than himself. Still, a flurry of motion in your gut rises to meet his touch.

“I had family,” Arthur says, and his voice carries pain that threads his speech to his throat and you cannot fail to notice his use of past tense.

Swallowing hard, Arthur continues, “Society may have shunned them but to me they were everything,” Arthur says on a heavy breath that rattles out of him. Like he’s releasing a burden. Rolling his shoulders, Arthur lets his head fall back and regards the gloomy sky for a long moment.

“They protected and cared for me. They were kind when they didn’t have to be,” Arthur says, “When the world gave them every reason not to be- they chose love,” Arthur says.

“It sounds like you were raised with a lot of that,” you say, and Arthur nods with eyes that blink rapidly. Arthur swipes at his face, his head thrust into his elbow- the one hand still gently grasping your arm as though he’s scared you’ll still wander off from him. But you’re no longer consumed with your own grief- but the one that envelops him so clearly. Whatever happened to Arthur’s family must have been horrible. And yet he still chose a profession to protect- to align himself with the values bestowed by the people that loved him so.

“Indeed, I was,” Arthur says with a smile that he directs to the heavens, “I owe them more than I could ever repay.”

“Thank you for sharing that with me,” you say, lifting your hand to grip Arthur’s- offering a squeeze that he returns with a warm smile.

In the reverent quiet of this end of the cemetery- where wealthy families lay their loved ones to rest in ornate opulence- a strange sound lifts above the marbled stone. Echoing off the tombs- it’s the sound of a man grunting in pleasure.

Arthur’s hand on yours tightens- his gaze ripping away from you to ascertain the sound. Heat flushes through you when you realize it’s the noise of love making- if not rather one sided. There’s no answering moan from his partner- no manly or womanly cries of returned pleasure.

Arthur strides down the hill- having released your hand- he moves with purpose. There’s something dark in his face- like he’s recalling a terrible experience. 

“Arthur-,” you call, hurling after him because in all the chaos of this day you’d forgotten to inform him of Eleanor’s sister’s- Helen’s- profession. No one would assume these things happen in the resting places of their loved ones- not unless you went looking. 

Which Arthur was doing with an intense focus- running to each tomb to thrust his ear upon the cold, smooth stone- ears straining to locate the source of the muffled groaning.

“Wait-,” you call but Arthur has found the tomb from which the sounds originate and he shoves at the stone door with little care for the inhabitants privacy before disappearing inside. 

“Get off of her,” Arthur shouts as you hurl yourself in his wake- the infinitely dark tomb betraying little of the scene in front of you until a woman’s cursing bursts forth. 

Her offended shriek ricochets off the stone walls with such force it might chip them. The man’s grunting halts- a surprised yelp in its place and a scraping sound of wood against stone to accompany it.

“What the fuck, mate?” The man spits- although it sounds like he’s being choked of breath.

Helen curses up a storm with the same thick accent as her sister. With enough air to her speech to fill the small tomb thrice over with her aggravated swears. 

“Who the feck are ye? If ye want a turn you have to wait! If ye want to watch ye have to pay!” Helen screeches at Arthur who glares at the man in his grip.

“Arthur!” You exclaim and the sliver of sunlight he’s allowed in illuminates the silhouette in front of you. Arthur’s curled over the man- his elbow is shoved against the man’s throat as he scrabbles against a casket. 

Helen is righting her dress with tight, efficient movements. The most pissed off woman in the world glares at the back of Arthur’s head.

“Let me go-“ the man pleads- eyes darting fearfully between you, Arthur and Helen. 

A small fist from Helen’s direction collides with Arthur’s spine. Helen may well have stricken the wall for all it does to move Arthur who grunts but doesn’t release the man in his fierce hold. Blue eyes burn with anger- his entire frame focused on the stranger with an intensity that turns the air to paste.

“Ye heard him-,” Helen insists and Arthur shoves the man out of his grasp and into the wall with a snarl. 

“You don’t deserve that-,” Arthur says, his gaze alight with fury on the man, his voice cast back to Helen who reels- affronted. 

A flurry of fists colliding with Arthur’s sides and spine once more but he ignores her. The impacts barely seem to register given her skeletal arms and slight hands. They’re curled into combat nonetheless- her anger matching Arthur’s. Ricocheting higher when he doesn’t respond except to glare darkly at the client that hurries to right his clothes and gather his things.

“And whose youse- who’s yous to say how I earn my coin-? Are you going to pay for that lay that ye ruined?” Helen screams at Arthur before her gaze lands on you as Arthur moves to stand between you and the man that takes his leave with haste. 

Hurrying to scramble out of the tomb- the man leaves with an unhappy series of grumbles.

“I’m sorry,” you offer to Helen who softens at your appearance although she casts a deadly look at Arthur when he settles at your side- glaring past you to the exit with his arms crossed and his jaw ticking a silent anger.

“He didn’t know-,” you try to defend Arthur and Helen huffs- disheveled and indignant for her lost customer.

She’s a wisp of her sister. Hollow cheeked and messy haired. There’s none of Eleanor’s subtle elegance. The clothes Helen wears look like she’s robbed a grave and donned the occupant’s outfit. The smell is adjacent- even thicker in the stale room. 

Quickly, you produce Eleanor’s gift for her frustrated regard. As though she’s a child, her eyes- so inset in her skull and dark beneath- brighten at the parcel in your palm.

“A present!” she exclaims, collecting the item with pale fingers with dirt beneath her nails. Unlike the Wolf’s Den, these tombs have no access to free water to bathe. Helen is alone- fucking on graves- and although her chosen profession must be lucrative for as long as her sister has worked the brothel, Helen has worked here- there’s none of Eleanor’s luxury despite this.

“From Eleanor,” you say with a bright smile that Arthur can’t seem to share. 

Helen ignores your ruffled sentinel and instead rubs the salve on her grimy skin. A fresh citrus and floral scent fills the choked space that smells of rot and sex.

“My customers will hate this,” Helen says but she releases an indulgent sigh. Closing her pale, vein webbed eyelids as though she’s transported to a place far, far away from where she stands.

“They like to pretend I’m one of them. Stench and all,” Helen says, ticking her head back to the caskets behind her with a gleam in her eye when Arthur flinches. 

“Ohhh,” Helen says with a playful grin to you, “He doesn’t know?” and you shake your head in affirmation.

Despite his usually calm demeanor, Arthur’s distress is clear. Although he tries to tamp down his reactions- it’s evident that he’s disturbed. You don’t blame him. When you first learned of Helen’s- acclivities- in this cemetery- you were alarmed. 

The solitary location. The lack of access to water to clean or drink. The quality of clients that attend- it still makes you lose sleep at night. Helen catered to mourners- comforting the recently widowed with plenty of concealed locations within the cemetery. She also entertained clients with darker desires. Some men paid more if she pretended to be dead. This is what Arthur and you had intruded upon- and to Arthur’s credit by all appearances it didn’t appear consensual. 

His reaction was formidable- and you wonder, now aware of his upbringing, how often he’d witnessed such brutality and violence that his own answered to meet it so immediately. 

The way he’d swiftly descended into the dark tomb like there were worse fates than death. Like he was the grim reaper intent on delivering said agony- still made you shiver.

“I forgive him,” Helen says with another indulgent whiff of the salve Eleanor had gifted her. The nostalgic scent carries her to a place where her heart is more lenient. But still, her pockets are emptier than they would have been due to Arthur’s interference- and although you think Helen keeps her appearance so severe to appeal to her clients- you worry at her frail state nonetheless. 

Reaching into your pouch- you produce a water skin and a parcel of food you’d brought from home. It’s not a lot- but it's more than nothing. Guilt lingers, and you offer a little more to ease her strife.

“Along the far end of the lot, near Potter’s Hill- there’s a plant about to bloom before the next full moon. Only for a day so move with haste when you see it. Wavy leaves, a dark purple flower that looks like a spade. It will attract flies and smell of rotting meat,” you inform Helen and she nods earnestly.

“Aye, it looks like a tongue. I thought they’d chucked someone in the swamp on the other side of the fence instead of burying them because of the hard ground,” she says, recalling that lonely spring morning, “I dinnae know it only stays for a day- I plucked one last year and went back the following week- but it was gone-,” she says with a sad smile, “How do I keep them?”

“Soak them in oil- the slick I gave you last- do you still have some?” 

Helen nods.

“One or two blooms should give a potent smell that will last you the year.”

Helen barks a laugh.

“Ye dinnae know how foul my clients are- it’ll last me a month if I can gather the whole field,” Helen says and you try to smile but the thought of it all is staggering.

“Thank ye,” Helen says with a meaningful look. 

Arthur shifts his weight and focus on your conversation breaks to a rustling sound outside before a different man’s face appears in the opening to the surface. 

“Time to go,” Arthur says, something distant and business-like in his tone which Helen seems to appreciate, throwing you a suggestive raise of her brow.

“I’m sorry,” Arthur says, a handful of coins slides onto a ledge by the exit before he disappears outside. 

Helen casts her gaze to you with a happier smile.

“Take care,” you say and follow Arthur while Helen ushers the strange man inside. 

Leaving the tombs behind, Arthur’s discomfort fades in the length of time it takes to reach Critter. 

Pressed against his back once more, you hold onto Arthur’s waist while he directs Critter to the main road. Arthur’s stiffer than he was before— his solid frame held upright like a rod is attached to his spine. By the time Critter meets the fields on the edge of the city, Arthur relaxes in your embrace.

|||

The afternoon passes with your arms wrapped around Arthur. The sun hides behind gathering grey clouds and the canopy of a forest only just grown in with its leaves.

The gentle sway of the ride presses your face to the soft suede of Arthur’s jacket. His muscles bunching and rolling as he tugs the reins. 

Eventually, he and Critter find an easy rhythm. Enough that Arthur’s arms list at his sides, against yours. Offering a comfortable warmth and weight that reminds you of when you rode astride Silas. Those long,endless evenings where the fields glowed with fire bugs and the long gaze of the summer sun. Where the village you rode towards now yawned and stretched in its sleepy way. 

Before the war. 

Before everything changed. 

If Arthur notices the way your hands clench around him, like you’re trying to keep him at your side the way you’d clutched to Silas before he left to join the other Mage’s fight against Vortigern, he doesn’t say anything. 

A cold drizzle makes you straighten. Draws you away from the past. The forest you pass through thins, the freshly budded leaves barely covering the road. A branch slides over your cowl, nearly tugging it from your crown. And then another grazes your face. A leaf smacks your hand as you shield yourself from the sudden onslaught of foliage.

“Arthur?” you ask, but his arms don’t correct Critter who has taken a sharp descent away from the road and into the ditch. Critter loyally steps amidst the trees while you struggle against their branches even with Arthur seated before you.

Leaning to the side, you try to look beyond the broad expanse of Arthur’s shoulders– perhaps another traveller intends to pass. Arthur slides the opposite way, and Critter obeys. More leaves and branches slide over Arthur’s form, and you duck to avoid them.

The road ahead is clear. Confusion slaps you as another branch whips past Arthur’s form and you curl into him, legs raising to balance against Arthur’s sudden turn. 

Except Arthur’s weight bears into your leg further like he’s about to topple off Critter.

“Arthur!” your hands grasp at his sides, all your strength pushing forwards as you try to both anchor him to Critter and in search of his arms. They hang listless, and you grope along their firm length until you find his limp hands, tugging the reins to correct Critter’s path through the trees.

“Wake up, Arthur, please,” you beg and the man stirs in front of you. 

Strong fingers clasp yours as he startles into consciousness. Arthur pulls at the leather in your grip, and Critter comes to a stop with a huff. A shake of his mane as though he doesn’t wish to accept Arthur’s apologies.

“M’sorry,” Arthur says, words slurred with sleep- exhaustion, before he releases your hands and with less grace than any of you can hope for, including the beast he dismounts, Arthur slides from the saddle, leaving you to take his place.

Arthur leaves one hand upon Critter like a quiet apology, steadying himself, the other dragging a path down his face as he tries to wipe the last remnants of his slumber from himself. It does little to remove the dark shadows beneath his eyes, or how they crease with tiredness.

“There’s an inn ahead,” you offer, and Arthur’s worn gaze lifts to yours, uncertainty and consideration mixing in his expression before he shakes his head. There’s still more hours of sun left to travel with.

“You need rest,” you implore and Arthur sighs tightly, your sore voice wearing him further.

You need rest too.

“We need our wits about us. The road is dangerous,” you say before casting a look about you, “The forest, as well. Will you accept a warm meal? Perhaps a bath?” 

Arthur’s gaze falls to the pack of supplies he’s brought. He should refuse, however, he’s not one for wilderness, and the thought of attempting to light a fire when he’s used to matches, candles and torches makes him cringe. 

“As you wish, but I’d prefer to walk for a while,” Arthur says before he grabs the lead and guides Critter back towards the road. The horses steps are more sure than Arthur’s. 

“I’m sure our loyal steed will appreciate the respite,” you say, dismounting even as Critter walks and falling into a gentle step behind Arthur. The landing wasn’t as elegant as you’d hoped, your new boots unusual to you, and you’re grateful to Arthur’s turned back. Still, he looks up to where you’ve just sat with a smirk as though expecting you there, before finding you at his spine with a small look of surprise.

“Where’d you learn how to do that?” Arthur says with a deepening crease of his cheek, like you’ve just told him a most amusing secret.

“Another life,” you say, with a small smile, but a lance of grief spears it to your face for a moment too long, and Arthur spots this. The remainder of the walk is spent in silence, until the back of your heel begins to feel warm. Pausing you settle on a rock, pulling off your boot and procuring your salves.

Arthur ties Critter to a branch, as you apply an ointment to the blister that has begun to form before carefully wrapping it with a piece of cloth. When you’re finished, you catch Arthur’s stare- a crease between his brow at the bruise across your ankle.

“You do not heal with haste,” Arthur says, blinking away his focus as though he’s intruding with it. 

“Some of us do not live in courtly abundance,” you state, as Arthur procures a package from his supply bag. Unwrapping it carefully he offers you a slice of dried meat and a wedge of aged cheese.

“We’re nearly there,” you say, nodding towards the seam of smoke curling above the trees in the distance.The sun peers from behind a dark cloud and the jagged edge of the treeline. The air is growing colder.

“Eat,” Arthur says, but there’s no order in it, just gentle hope. Like he’s used to putting wordless pleas into his voice. Like he’s courted a woman towards appetite before.

“Join me,” you say, taking the offered food, your fingers brushing his, and that same sparking tug alights at the touch. The one that speaks to intertwined magic, and the longing that pulls in your gut. Somehow they feel both separate and the same.

Just like you suspected, Arthur acquiesces. The drizzling downpour has maintained, and you’re grateful for the warmth he provides when he settles beside you. There’s a mindful amount of space between you, but Arthur casts his elbows to his bent knees, heat pouring from his frame as he blocks the wind from your form.

Carefully, Arthur carves pieces of meat, cheese and a slightly bruised apple with a small blade. Passing them to you as he works thoughtfully. It stings your throat to chew and swallow, and despite this, there’s always another piece for you no matter how long it takes to finish the last. He must be eating the gristle or rinds to maintain the same pace as you. Not wanting to rush you until you’re full.

Perhaps it's your years spent isolated, but the words arrive into the air between you before you have a chance to lock them in your thoughts.

“You eat like a lady,” you say and to your surprise, which lessened the more time you spent with him, Arthur laughs softly.

“Aye, I’ve been told the same often,” Arthur admits with a smile that curves not only for you, but for the ones he’s amused before.

“I do not mean to insult-,” you say, and Arthur shakes his head.

“S’not,” Arthur says, a seriousness crossing his face like he wants you to know he means his words, “Least not where I’m from.”

“You said you had a family” you inquire gently.

Arthur’s blade pauses where it worries over the bruised apple, like he’s considering the edge of truth.

Of what harms and what heals.

“I was raised in a brothel.”

Arthur offers this directly, his voice bearing no hesitancy, as though he hedges himself in advance for your reaction. The silence shifts. Like you’re both considering the weight of his words. 

Arthur turns to you stiffly, unsure where it will land. There’s something worried in him, like he’s unravelling a threaded tapestry with the smallest of tugs. Like he’s piled up stones that an entire kingdom is poised upon. Like he’s waiting for a landslide to erupt in the quiet between you.

“The women there worked harder than most Kings ever had,” Arthur continued while you chewed his words, “They taught me to notice things. Be polite. Wait your turn. How you take up space tells others what you think of them.”

Arthur passes you another slice of apple. It has pieces missing. The flesh of what he offers you is unblemished while he eats the bruised ones. Like he only wants the best for you. Like it doesn’t matter what it takes from him.

“You were loved,” you say and Arthur nods once, solemnly. A lifetime of grief flies across his face- like a sparrow crossing the sea, with nowhere to land but your words are like ships, offering safe harbor.

“Aye,” he says, “Even if no one else thought I was worth the trouble,” Arthur says, a smile tugging at the corner of his lips.

“And raised quite well, if I may say,” you remarked, and Arthur nods deeper with a building laugh. It shakes a layer of grief from him, if only momentarily.

“Aye, you may. They would love to hear you say it,” Arthur says with a fond look. “Not many would believe it, but they taught me everything worth knowing.”

You believed it. Arthur was honest and kind when the world was not. When it rewarded the opposite. 

Behind you, Critter lifts his head from where he’d been snuffling the grass to peer down the road. It narrows before rounding a curve by a stone ridge. 

A small garrison patrols towards you, its banners sun faded and tattered but unmistakably in Vortigern’s colors. 

Arthur tracks the horse’s focus before the fleet of men’s armor and drunken conversation can be heard. Arthur stands, quickly packing away your supplies before he offers his hand.

When you stand, you move to pull your hand away but Arthur tightens his grip, his other hand moves to your lower back, gently pushing you towards Critter.

“Up you get.” Arthur says, eyes still locked on the garrison while he grabs your waist. 

You’re lifted up onto Critter, and Arthur only releases you to press a blade into your hand and then the reins.

“If they draw their swords, you ride,” Arthur says, looking imploringly upon you and the approaching garrison.

“Arthur-,” you start to protest- but his ice blue eyes cut to yours, as he draws Critter behind him, placing himself in the way of the potential threat. 

Your hands tighten on the reins, your heart thrumming in your ears.

“Promise me that you will,” Arthur says, using the last few moments to wait for your reply while the garrison spreads wide across the road, blocking the way forward. Arthur's intense attention upon you like he waits to find your sincerity.

“I will,” you say, nodding tightly, although your breath is held in your chest so that it aches to think of leaving Arthur behind with this potentially fearsome lot.

“Good girl,” Arthur says, before his head swivels back to the road, and your breath is caught all over again as you draw your cowl upon your crown. Something unnamed burns within you, quiet embarrassment joining for being distracted at a time like this.

One of the guards strides forth. He bears King Vortigern’s old colors and banner. The rest of them stare through slatted helmets. Their black leathers and crested helmets remind you of a murder of crows. You could only hope you would fare on luck’s side. 

“Good afternoon, lads,” Arthur calls out, offering a jovial wave that looks friendly aside from the tightness to his frame. Like he’s ready to snap into place- like a blade finding the space between armor and skin.

“Afternoon, to you,” the guard says gruffly. He’s older than Arthur. His black mask shoved upside his head to reveal his unimpressed face within his leather cowl. Unshaven, his mouth and leathers dripping with grease and reeking of ale. He’s plump like a fall pheasant, with all the peacocking as he surveys you and Arthur. 

He eyes Arthur’s clean coat, the weight of the saddlebags with interest. 

Arthur sees it but maintains a friendly smile.

Arthur’s hand tightens on the lead when the man’s gaze slides up your form. First, your boots, then a lazy path up the shape of your leg beneath your cloak which you pull firmly around yourself until finally he meets your gaze with a syrupy smile.

“Afternoon, miss” he says, slurring and sleazy and you nod once before you carefully turn your gaze to his men. They stand side by side, some with flag banners, others spears. None of them with horses, but a fierce front nonetheless. They've closed most of the distance between you and them. Your breaths meet each other quicker than before at the realization.

“What can we do for you?” Arthur asks, no longer smiling. There’s a pulse in his jaw as he glares at the guard, although he tempers it by stepping further to your side as the man stumbles with the effort of looking up at you, drunk as he is, and his slick gaze falls back to Arthur, slightly annoyed.

There’s disregard where he stares between Arthur’s face and his jacket- like he thinks both are too good for Arthur.

“What can you do for us?” The guard parrots and his men laugh, his accent more rural than Arthur’s so that it comes out more like “Wot carn yoo doo for oos?”, the last word drawn out until he laughs like he’s telling a joke. 

“Aye,” Arthur says with a curt nod.

“Hmmph,” The guard says, a disgruntled hiccup of a sound.

“Where yous headed?” he asks, and Arthus nods towards the garrison and the road behind them. 

“An inn, down aways,” Arthur offers, allowing some of his former friendliness to line his voice. You’re not sure if the weariness astride it is another farce, or a genuine reflection of Arthur’s worn state.

The guard nods, strolling towards Critters rear, although his eyes are trained on you. 

Arthur lifts a hand to the back of the saddle, leaving it there, casually blocking the man’s intended target. 

The garrison shuffles, a rippling squeak of leathers and weapons, and Arthur’s other hand comes up to rest on his belt buckle, clearly displeased at his attention being torn in both directions. His focus remains locked on the guard that’s closest to you.

You stare resolutely at the ground, tense. Fingers clasped tightly around the blade in your cloak, like it might steel your nerves. The guard’s armor clangs as he inspects the supply bags.

“You dinnae need supplies,” the guard remarks before he strolls back towards Arthur, securing him in his swimming sights.

Arthur shrugs, his hand that rested upon the saddle behind you now coming to your thigh. He pats it twice, before he grasps it firmly near your knee.

“Aye, we dinnae need supplies, but a warm hearth out of the rain to recover from our travels,” Arthur says before his hand slides higher. 

You resist the urge to clench your thighs.

A small breath through your nose makes Arthur’s lips quirk.

Arthur hugs your leg into the crock of his arm. You manage to look shy beneath the guard’s leering stare. It’s less pretending to be reserved than the very real feeling of Arthur’s fingers digging into your upper thigh and his frame hanging off your form. Like he needs as much of himself to be pressed against you. 

Possessive. Protective of the leg that the guard is transfixed with.

The guard’s captivated by Arthur’s brazen touch, licking his grease covered lips before smiling knowingly. 

“I would not keep a man from the comfort of his wife,” the guard says with a suggestive laugh before he regards the direction you’ve come from and your overfilled saddlebags once more.His laughter cuts off on a derisive sound.

“We don’t get a lot of wealthy folk with days worth of camp supplies round here,” the guard says, pinning Arthur with a searching stare. Arthur pats your leg again, holding his smile.

“We enjoy the fresh air, and the lack of servants. My wife is shy, you see,” Arthur says and you avoid the guard’s gaze as a few men in the garrison remark lowly among themselves.

“So why are you going to an inn, with all tha’ food if yous don’t like having neighbors?” the guard implores, and Arthur’s smile thins.

“Ran into some bad luck last week. Another patrol turned us back from a dry tavern. I cannae let my bride go hungry. Thought it best to be prepared,” Arthur’s grip on your thigh softens. 

Brushing your leg with his thumb, he casts one adoring look up at you, like you raise and set the sun and moon. It’s enough to convince the guard of his farce.

Wealthy man.

Charitable husband.

Just on the right side of soft to not be a threat.

“She’s quiet,” the guard says, like he’s throwing bait. Arthur doesn't flinch, like he's been expecting this, despite the way you twitch in his grasp.

Arthur’s eyes cut to his- bright, sharp, but his smile remains. It’s tighter across his face than when it was directed at you, like he’s baring his teeth at the guard.

“She’s had a long journey. And I’ve kept her busy,” A few of the garrison chuckle amongst themselves at Arthur’s words.

He lets them land where he’s intended before adding, ”My bride prefers the comforts of an inn and I’ve promised her a bath,” Arthur says, something folding into his smile when you shift slightly on the saddle. 

Your eyes pinned to the ground just beyond your boot that Arthur now grasps and pushes gently. Unable to make eye contact with anyone at what Arthur has insinuated. 

The first guard opens his mouth- but another, older guard barks from the line.

“Let them pass, Carrick. You were a young fool in love once.”

Carrick scowls, but throws up a hand at his men, who step aside.

Arthur gives a gracious nod, nearing a bow of his upper body, before he turns to you. Grip tightening on your boot, Arthur removes your foot from the stirrup to place his own, and you shift back to make room for him, expecting him to mount Critter as before but Arthur merely stands, pulling you towards him by your thighs.

Critter shifts, and Arthur overcorrects- at least you think so at first. 

Blue eyes center you, as he leans into you.

And then further.

Your breath catches.

Arthur’s lips graze yours. Softly. Like an apology. Like he’s aware he’s not supposed to be here. His mouth finds the curve of yours with practiced ease. Like you’ve shared a lifetime of kisses before this moment.

Arthur takes up your surprise with his hand, lifting to your face, his thumb brushes your jaw. Fingers collecting your startled edges into something believable as he pulls away, lifting your chin so that your gaze meets his.

A few within the garrison holler lasciviously.

Arthur pulls away slightly- his gaze drops to your lips for a breath. Long enough you half think he might kiss you again before blue eyes cut to yours with a meaningful expression. Subtle enough some might mistake it for adoration.

“Let’s go, my love. My undivided attention awaits you,” Arthur says, head lowering closer to yours as he leans further into you once more. This time to whisper some loving words as a doting husband might, but instead he whispers guidance for your next moments. He must have felt you tremble amidst the kiss- and assumed it was fear of the garrison going back on their decision.

“Don’t look back once we pass,” Arthur whispers, his lips ghosting over the shell of your ear where it’s tucked into your cowl before he’s stepping back down and replacing your leg in the stirrup. The absence of him before you replaced with the leering eyes of the garrison, you grasp at your cowl, thrusting yourself further into it.

Playing along only as much as Arthur’s actions have caused a stirring within you, your hand reaching out to brush his fingers when you hand him the lead. Arthur takes it without a glance back at you. You suppose it’s for the best, flustered as you feel, your hands clenching around the reins for a different reason than when the guards had first approached.

Arthur guides Critter past the garrison at a slow trot. You stare at the back of his golden crown until you’re past the stone ridge. Until your breathing settles. Your heart is still thrumming in your chest like a bird in a cage. Arthur doesn’t turn around until you’ve met the next curve in the road, his shoulders dropping tension when he rounds on a long sigh.

“Are you alright?” Arthur asks after scouting the road behind, your own gaze snapping to the empty road as soon as he’d rounded himself.

You nod, lips still remembering the feel of his against them, your chin still warm with the coarse brush of his beard.

“You w-were convincing,” you offer, words stammering out but bright with the rush of what Arthur had just managed.You’re not sure if you mean Arthur’s kiss, or his ability to skirt the guard’s suspicions.

“I’ve had practice,” Arthur says with a shrug, wide shoulders and expression still tight with disregard for the previous interactions.

You lift an eyebrow, curious. Unsure of what Arthur has decided your meaning was.

Arthur meets it with another shrug.

“Some people fancy a bedding like that,” Arthur says, memories tracing back to his years at the brothel. You’re not sure if you want to clarify if he’s had firsthand experience or if it was something he learned from the women who raised him.

“How did you know- that we shouldn’t look back?” you ask instead, and Arthur’s face becomes serious.

“I didn’t,” Arthur says with a half shrug, “I knew what he expected of me. A man with money- power- he wouldn’t flinch. Wouldn’t look over his shoulder because he thinks nothing behind him could hurt him. The world falls in line for men like that. And that includes a patrol garrison and his woman. The world steps out of their way. There’s no need to fear when you believe everyone is meant to kneel for you.”

Arthur shakes his head, something like disgust flitting over his handsome features, but somehow it doesn’t look ugly on him, perhaps stern, but you decide it suits him, “I don’t think that way. But I’ll play the part if I have to.” Arthur says it resolutely, like he’d have met every blade between you and the garrison with all his strength if they’d seen through his act. Like he wouldn’t have thought twice about it.

The herbalist sat, captured in thought, her brow furrowing.

“Is that how I looked to you,” you ask, “Like a woman that will fall into line behind a man like that?” You mean the man Arthur acted as. The one that believes everyone is meant to kneel for him. Arthur’s stiff words repeating in your mind, His woman.

Arthur gapes- caught off guard- mouth moving around silent words he desperately tries to collect while his head shakes fiercely. Like he would banish the thought in your mind before it could have even arrived.

“No,” Arthur says, fists twitching over the lead before he thrusts it towards you. When you accept it, Arthur shuffles his weight over his feet, suddenly anxious that he’s offended you.

“Good,” you reply, “Because I didn’t see a man expecting me to follow. I saw you making room for me to go forward.”

Arthur’s gaze flicks to yours, suddenly hesitant yet his chin tucks to his chest, affording you the top of his golden crown, accepting your appraisal of him with a deep nod until he meets your look full force, lips curving as he smiles mischievously.

“However, I recall you nearly following me into a river,” Arthur says with a sideways glance.

It’s your turn to gape- scowling. Mock affront and a sliver of embarrassment vying for estate in your features and feelings.

“I should have let you drown,” you muse, playfully dark and Arthur laughs. Bright and indulgent like he can argue your statement by the sound alone. The stutter of your heart agrees.

“You wouldn’t,” he remarks confidently with a smug smile. The dimple in his cheek is folding like he has more to say. A tease of words he tucks into his smile. But he only chews on them thoughtfully as he stares up at you fondly.

Your eyes meet the road ahead, suddenly all too aware of Arthur’s attention. Your thoughts meet the task you’d signed up for and you shake your head softly.

“No, I wouldn’t,” you admit, quieter, almost like you hope he won’t hear you, but it’s unlikely, because Arthur’s awareness never leaves you, not completely,  “You’re someone worth saving.”

Arthur’s smile shifts- breaking for a brief moment, before it returns, somehow brighter than before.

“That’s not how most people see me,” Arthur says, cocking one eyebrow in some measure of disbelief.

And yet, some had. 

The women that raised him.

Goosefat. Bedivere. Rubio.

The Mage. 

His father.

And now you.

“Well, then most are fools,” you remark with a too casual shrug, boot tucking into Critter’s sides so he trots forwards. Eager to place more space between you and the garrison, and the way your words speak to your feelings.

Arthur follows, his laugh reaching you before his words. The clouds above break, revealing the brightest stars of twilight. They blink like the spark in Arthur’s playful eyes.

“Still, you shouldn’t follow me into rivers.”

“Then follow me to the inn. I do desire that bath,” you call backwards, Arthur’s soft chuckle thrown into the approaching night before his boots meet the dirt at a quicker pace in your wake.

“As you wish.”

|||

Thank you for reading!! Please engage if you enjoyed- likes, comments and reblogs mean ✨ e v e r y t h i n g ! ✨Thank you dear reader! ^_^ 💖💖💖

|||