Archive of Our Own

“Think of it as a compliment to your beauty, if you like.” Tristan called out, making his tone mocking, as though all this was merely amusing to him. “The fairest that Arthur could find, saving Guinevere. And he would miss her more than you.”

And then, with the instinctive timing of the true archer, Tristan stepped away from the bedchamber door in time to avoid the violent impact of something flung at it from inside the room - from the clatter, quite possibly Galahad’s breastplate.

Not that denting that item would matter much, at least not for the next several weeks. Galahad would not be in armour again any time soon.

And all the fears that thought brought with it, Tristan could and would bury down inside himself. There was no one else in the corridor to see him, but still he kept his face stern and impenetrable as ever, as he crossed his arms and leant once more against the door lintel.

“I am going to have to see you eventually, Galahad,” he pointed out. “Or else undertake this mission blindfolded.”

Abruptly, the door in front of him was flung open. He had to fight not to take a reflexive step backwards.

“If you even begin to laugh…” Galahad threatened, hissing.

Tristan surveyed the sight of him.

No, he still didn’t feel like laughing at all.

Galahad had emerged from his room clean-shaven, bereft of the thick fuzz of beard that usually protected his face. The last time Tristan had seen him without it, it would have been when Galahad was not yet old enough to grow it in, and perhaps that was why now, without the beard, he seemed so much younger. Even with the beard people had called him ‘pretty’ although never to his face, certainly never twice.

His curls he hadn’t shorn, though, and they fell thick around his face, down to his shoulders.

It was a discomfiting beauty, in some ways. After all, if ever Tristan saw a wild rose as he rode out, or the pure white of an unspotted convolvulus, he would think of how the full bloom came as the last moment before the flower was blown and fading away to death.

And Galahad could not wear his armour any more - now, rather than his usual carapace of chainmail and solid metal, Galahad was dressed in a flowing gathered tunic, not unlike what Roman slaves wore, or Celtic ladies, and his was gathered in with a jeweled kirtle which fell snugly over his hips. His eyes were lacquered, the way boys sometimes made themselves up in brothels, especially those in seaports with foreign customers.

Nothing about Galahad now looked edged or hard, instead all soft and yielding and somehow slender despite his muscle.

Nothing, except the glint of the teeth in his frown.

“I look ridiculous.”

“You look like a kept boy,” Tristan corrected. “Which is all exactly as it should be.”

He sounded a little gruff as he spoke, but then he often did, and he thought perhaps Galahad – in his fury and discomfort – hadn’t noticed.

Tristan did not allow himself to walk away then, but stayed and spoke of preparations. He wouldn’t have anywhere to escape to, after all, once they were away on their mission.

Their mission, which was in its way straightforward; a delegation far south to Opiso, a kingdom rich in many goods but – or so Arthur seemed to be hoping – in want of fine British wool, British copper and tin and other trade items for which they might make exchanges, not least for their wealth of medical knowledge, their oils and dried herbs and stone pigments, and their wonderful spices. Trade with Britain would mean Britain could trade the goods on with the Saxons; a finer defense than a sword, in Arthur’s thinking, and Opiso’s own fleet might see the value of protecting Britain’s interests from the threat from the Iberian peninsula.

All that, Tristan saw as reasonable enough and would not dispute. Let others strategize and plan, and rely on the fidelity and truth of kings. There would always be wars and men would always die in them, and they were all liars to the last

Galahad – who was himself only likely to speak of the gods when he wished to annoy the Christians at court - had accused Tristan once of believing in nothing at all. Tristan had told him in reply that such a belief – or lack of it - was the greatest and most liberating there could be, and had laughed to watch the boy’s troubled frown.

When Arthur had declared that Tristan would be his ambassador to Opiso, however, then Tristan had wanted to speak up, to argue the designs of his commander for once – not because he doubted the plan, no doubt Arthur having concocted as good a scheme as any – but because it was also announced that his companion in the matter would be Galahad.

In Opiso, custom dictated that meetings of peace, undertaken from friendly intentions, required each ambassador to bring with them a lover - someone cherished, not merely a bed-warmer - to symbolize their own intention to keep the meeting free of bloodshed.

“And you do not keep lovers, Tristan,” Arthur had pointed out gently, having called them both to his council chambers for instruction. Gawain had been there before them, and looked weary and doubtful; Tristan suspected the man had been trying to sway Arthur from this course already. “And it would be as well for us if your companion was capable of holding their own in a fight, and they must be someone I trust, as well as someone the Opisans will accept as a warrior’s consort. That leaves me with two of my wife’s shieldmaidens and Galahad, and Guinevere claims her maidens cannot be spared now she nears her time for our child.”

“You wish to send me for months, to sea and overland and to meet with a great King,” Galahad had said then – never one to reflect before speaking or rally orderly opinions - his voice already rising, and his face flushed through to his ears, “in the guise of Tristan’s fuck piece?”

He had said Tristan with as much disgust as any word in the sentence.

“I wish it,” Arthur had told him calmly. “And I very much hope that in your loyalty to me, you will do as I ask. I would not make this an order. I leave it to your choice.”

And of course, once Galahad, backed into a corner with nice words, had grudgingly agreed to go, Tristan could scarcely start to protest and beg for his own escape.

“They will tear each other apart, and argue fatally with themselves before they agree with the Opsians,” Gawain muttered once more, but Arthur affected not to hear.

And then it had begun.

For two weeks preparations had been made for travel – for the travel the two of them alone, save a serving girl – and then Galahad had locked himself in his bedroom with the new clothes and a razor, and now here he was, remade.

“If I’m to look like this,” Galahad said now, folding his arms. “Then you can at least wash your horrible hair before we leave.”

“Who will spare a glance to me, next to your beauty?” Tristan pointed out, one eyebrow raised.

To speak the truth and have no one hearing it know you spoke truly; now there was a skill in concealment worthy of any scout.

“I hate you,” Galahad informed him, and went back into his room, slamming the door.

That was exactly as it should be too. Tristan did not allow himself to lean back against the wall or thud his head against the stone, or even to sigh, not until he was away and back in his own quarters, and wondering wildly if he could escape the court and his oaths and all of it, and ride out and make it to the farthest north before dawn.

-

It was a dreary road from Arthur’s court to the port at Londinium. Tristan rode ahead, keeping his eyes on the horizon where he could, and his hawk Mab above their path where he could not. Galahad had a sword belt on, having sworn he’d not ride without it until they embarked, but even with both of them armed properly, and the few staves and knives amongst those helping with the baggage train behind, they were easy targets.

Galahad had barely spoken since they’d made their farewells. Although he’d been allowed his sword, he otherwise had to be dressed as ‘consort’ – the word they’d all fallen into using, apparently talking of ‘lover’ between them too ridiculous for anyone to manage – and although he had a heavy, hooded travelling cloak on over it all, his resentment smoked like damp peat.

A merry company indeed, Tristan thought, and wished he could kick his heels in irritation and send his horse cantering away from the lot of them.

Tristan had dreamed, often, of being a warrior alone, roaming free. That had been his plan for life after his discharge from Rome’s taskmasters, not a march to Sarmatia and a hearth in a squat, cold village as all the others seemed to yearn for. He had planned to follow the path of the great Alexander, over the plains of Indus and beyond, to the world where was the sun was born. He’d heard of holy men, there, who lived in caves and spoke to no one, and who had found the secret of eternity in silence.

That had all sounded very fine.

And then Arthur had decided that it was his destiny to unite Britain, and no one’s plans had turned out as theorized.

People only made life difficult, and all too often painful.

-

“My Lord,” the captain of the ship said, nodding to Tristan as they boarded. “You’ll find your cabin near the prow, and a fine roomy lodging for yourself and your companion it will be.” He leered slightly in speaking.

Tristan gave only a curt nod of his own in reply. One or two of the crew were staring at Galahad, who was following behind over the gangplank, sword belt no longer to be seen, his long robe gathered up in his hands, radiating fury.

“One moment,” Tristan said, and went back ashore, beckoning.

Blinking, Galahad managed to execute a turn and came down again after him. On the dock the sailors and servants loading their goods exchanged glances.

Tristan went over to his horse and pretended to be much concerned with a small matter of alteration in her tack.

“You do not have to do this,” Tristan said under his breath. “Galahad. You can stay here. Tell Arthur we argued. Or stay in this city, and when I come back we will meet up and Arthur can believe you were with me.”

For a long moment, Galahad stared at him, frowning.

“What do you...? How…? And what would you do? What about your need for a consort to bring to Opiso?”

Tristan shrugged. “I would say it was the serving girl, or find a sailor. It makes no matter since it is all a lie anyway.”

Galahad, still frowning, shook his head. “And what about your protection? Such as them could not be a sword at your back.”

“You seem likely to be a sword in my back if you hate me any harder than you do now. And we must share a bed on that boat, for I certainly do not intend to sleep on the floor to share your blushes.”

For a moment, Galahad blinked. Tristan was struck again by how differently the emotions played on his face with his smooth jaw and darkened eyes. Confused as he was, he looked almost innocent.

Of course, Galahad was young, many years younger than him. Tristan could too easily forget that.

“I don’t like you, Tristan, as well you know.” Galahad coughed, but had the spirit to keep his gaze firm through the words. “But you are my shield brother, and you have saved my life countless times, and we share loyalty to Arthur. My place is by your side, and if this is how that must happen, I will bear it.”

Tristan finished re-buckling the saddle, and turned away, nodding, sure that he ought to feel relieved, and not as though a great weight of rocks was resettling on his shoulders.

(Or a nest of hot rope coiling through his belly, knowing they would bed together, now, for sure)

They boarded, and in their cabin Galahad paced up and down for a while before sighing, as if resigned, and lying down on the bed, curling up with his face to the wall.

“You must now go out and supervise the loading of our wares and throw your weight about,” Galahad mumbled. “Whereas I, weak dependent, can do nothing but rest. Perhaps there is something in all this.” He pulled a blanket over his shoulders.

Tristan snorted, but the point was correct, and he strode out on deck to shout and make much of himself. Who knew what might happen on the voyage south? It would be as well for no one to think getting on the wrong side of him – or his – was worth pursuing.

Galahad had spoken rightly – they had ridden too long in the same company for uniting in mutual defense to be new or alien. But they had never been friends. That said, Tristan did not consider himself a friend of any of them, at least not how Bors had been with Dagonet, or Lancelot with Arthur – and weren’t those examples salient reminders of how friendship could only mean loss, in the end?

Galahad, by contrast, was friends with everyone else, especially Gawain, and had been close with Lancelot - had instantly fallen into hero-worshipping him when first arrived from Sarmatia, young and impressionable and seeing in Lancelot’s dashing air and fast-lived life perhaps a model for himself.

“Tristan disapproves of us,” Lancelot had joked once, deep in his cups, when Tristan had come upon them in the yard at the fort, surrounded by wine and with the local women thick around them like flies to souring butter.

Tristan had grinned; he and Lancelot were never close, not friends as others were friends, but they had understood each other. “If all this is the last thing you wish to have done, should you die tomorrow,” he’d said, “then I wish you well of it. I am going to the stables.”

“He won’t die tomorrow!” Galahad had piped up, instant and insistent and horrified.

It had been Lancelot on scouting duty the next day, Tristan had forgotten and neither he nor Lancelot had cared or thought anything of it.

But Galahad had been young and green and – Tristan thinks now – more than a little in love with his heroic friend – and when the next evening Lancelot had come back to the safety of the fort wearied with fighting and with a dagger wound in his arm, Tristan had been surprised to see Galahad staring fury at him, as if Tristan had been the one to wield the blade.

Lancelot didn’t like men in his bed – Tristan wondered sometimes, despite himself, quite how and when Galahad had discovered that. And then presumably Galahad had needed somewhere else to put all that bright-burning attention, and if perhaps then Tristan might have had a chance to gain a different understanding with the boy, he had found it more amusing – cruelly amusing – to offend and enrage Galahad instead.

More amusing. Less terrifying than what might have come with deeper companionship.

For no good thing can last in this world.

Easier and safer to be alone, and if at times Tristan could have wished to let Galahad closer to him – Galahad who was brave and idealistic, and graceful and skilled with his eyes and hands, and chasing towards being Tristan’s equal at the bow - far better that Galahad was already putting distance between them.

A lot of years ago, that decision, and Tristan himself had been young and stupid, and not seen how small choices became deep valleys in the world, over time, and impossible to climb out of, until it seemed now that Galahad hated him most truly.

After the great battle against the Saxons, when Tristan had been lying wounded on the field, Galahad had been the one to find him. Galahad, crying for Lancelot, who was lost to them, lost to him forever. Tristan had held the boy then, in his pain and grief – no more than he would have done for any man on a battlefield - and he’d thought since that Galahad had only resented him the more for their having seen that moment.

Not wishing to be the cause of further pain – weary himself with his wounds – Tristan had tried to be at least unthreatening; to talk to Galahad even less and show he would not approach on that shared time between them. But that seemed to have been the wrong decision too, for there was still that dark fire in Galahad’s eyes whenever their gazes met across Arthur’s table.

Perhaps Galahad needed distractions – he had chased many women and caught all of them with their willing delight, as far as Tristan knew, but never a man, since Lancelot. And never a true, cherished lover, not ever.

Tristan and Galahad were alike in that.

And now they, unprepared and unrehearsed, had to play at love with each other.

In no rush to re-enter the cabin, Tristan found occupation on deck for a while after the ship had set sail, and then consulted with the captain about their course, until finally the dinner hour came and he went to raise Galahad to come to the table below-decks.

“No thank you,” Galahad mumbled at him as Tristan stood in the doorway, waiting. “Not now.”

Tristan closed the door again in irritation. He’d offered a fair chance at escape – if the boy would take this mission, let him take it and face it.

Already, the thought of being closeted with him overnight was making Tristan’s skin itch. He’d hoped to use the meal as a time to establish their played identities, to make some divide between what they aped and what they were.

“You can’t hide from sight for the whole trip to the Middle Sea,” Tristan said, returning once more to the cabin a few hours later, after his own meal, with a bowl of stew and some bread, which he’d somehow found himself assembling. “And if your stomach troubles you, eat. They say it’s the only way through it.”

On the bed, Galahad rolled onto his back and looked up at him, blinking. For a moment Tristan’s gut clenched; the boy was weeping blood, like starving children did before they died.

But it was only normal tears, and kohl, running.

“The Romans took me by ship from my family,” Galahad said, huskily. “And my mother and father made me promise to…” he closed his eyes and beat one fist against the bed. “The last thing they ever said was to beg me to be a warrior, and worthy of our gods and ancestors, and I’m here and I’m shaved and scented and in a toga hanging off your arm and they would…” He made a half-roar of anger and abruptly rose, scrubbing the back of his hand over his eyes. “And here I am weeping like a woman, making such a strong, bold argument for my own worthiness. They would not countenance this.”

Tristan cleared his throat. “Well. I do not understand your behaviour,” he said, keeping his voice flat despite the strange pain accosting him at seeing Galahad hurting, and Galahad whipped round, eyes blazing.

“I never had parents,” Tristan continued. “Not back home, either. Not that Sarmatia was my home, or certainly not where my own ancestors came from.” He sighed, and put down the stew on the table. “I have nothing to be worthy or unworthy of, except myself.”

Galahad got up from the bed, moving more slowly now, and stood so they were facing each other. “Who raised you then?”

“No one. I raised myself.” Tristan gave a dark laugh. “You have to have noticed that I’m not like you others. That I’m not Sarmatian. I was a child, wandering, that’s the first thing I remember. I was coming from somewhere, and I didn’t know where I was going. And I worked here and there, got a bed sometimes - sometimes had food. I spoke to birds and rabbits more than to people. And then one day I was in a village at the time when the Romans came to collect their knights, and I asked to be taken, and the commander laughed and brought me with him.”

Tristan had not meant to speak any of that, or for so long. The knight he was brought with – Bedivere – died before Galahad even arrived in Britain, and no one else knew that story, though he presumed they must guess part of it.

He had probably never spoken for so long to Galahad in his life.

“I’m sorry,” Galahad began.

“I didn’t tell you that because I wanted your sympathy!” Tristan spat out the words, furious with himself for having given into the impulse to have spoken so at all. “There is your food, eat it or don’t.”

He went back out onto the deck, heart thumping in his chest.

-

That night, when returning to the cabin could no longer be postponed, when Tristan could feel the chill of the air on the water and knew that staying out would only hurt him in his body, even if returning would hurt in his mind, he tip-toed into a dark room and carefully took off his boots, then felt his way onto the edge of the bed, listening for the even breathing that showed Galahad was safely asleep. Satisfied, he slid under the covers, staying carefully at the very edge of the mattress.

Lying back at last, Tristan stared into the darkness behind his own eyelids, and tried not to hear or smell Galahad, tried not to think about his warmth any more than he would that of a horse – though a horse he would have stroked, and murmured comfort to, and so best not to think of that either.

He’d opened a box in his mind which he had never intended to, with his speaking earlier, and when his mind started to drift into sleep he felt that he could smell the mist on the mountains, and half-burnt, half-raw rabbit such as he’d hunted and cooked when he been a child who had nothing, nothing except…

Tensing where he lay, he shocked himself out of the dream and bit so hard at his own lip that he bled, and that was distraction too, and a cheap and welcome one.

Turning onto his side, so that he and Galahad were back to back, he thought about his sword drills, each one of them, step by step – the grace and efficiency in destruction which, if all things must be destroyed, had long formed his only kind of comfort – and allowed no other distraction until sleep came.

-

The serving girl, Mary, brought them breakfast from the galley, knocking on the door to preserve their privacy, which made Tristan start the day with a snort of laughter as he summoned her in.

She opened their shutters, letting in daylight, and Tristan sat up in bed scratching at his hair, just in time to see the whole lithe length of Galahad move and flex as he stretched and yawned where he lay before sitting up also.

Lifting his knees to conceal his arousal at the sight, Tristan sighed again.

Lust could be for life, or for bodies or for death. It was nothing special, nothing more than animal.

The girl gave over a large bowl of pottage, and ran away. Tristan, with a grab over the edge of the bed, took the bone spoon from his belt on the floor, and threw Galahad the reticule to which he’d had to relocate his own possessions for his new manner of dress.

Tristan drew a line across the middle of the bowl, demarcating territories of breakfast.

Galahad said nothing, only blinking sullenly and settling in to eat from his half. He’d cleaned his face sometime before sleeping, though not quite enough, leaving a few dark streaks on his cheeks, which also had regrown hair and would need tending for the sake of his role, though Tristan was damned if he’d be the one to point it out.

Besides, as beautiful as Galahad was, Tristan liked to see the warrior in him. To see him looking fierce and strong, and much less breakable.

Still not speaking, which was strangely easy, they ate and then rose, and put on their outer clothes again, and splashed water on their faces. Then Tristan made for the door.

“Are you to emerge today?” he asked. And then, when Galahad frowned, he raised his hand in a gesture of truce. “I had planned to spend the day practicing on deck with my sword. It occurs to me that you cannot do that, presently. So perhaps, after I have worked a while, another combat? A game of tafl?”

“You have game pieces?”

“They are easily fashioned – a bag of pebbles will meet our needs and they use those for ballast. I can mark a board.”

“Well then, yes. Yes, that would be better – anything would be better – than staring at the water.”

Like he had at the time after his family disappeared over the horizon, Galahad didn’t say. Tristan felt the image hang between them anyway.

For the first time, he wondered about the depth of feeling that Galahad – and Gawain and Bors – must have had for Arthur and the country they’d been sent in bondage to serve, if they had chosen in the end to stay rather than find those homes again.

Galahad’s eyes were on him now, expectant.

“Well, I will see. It might not be… I will see.” And Tristan left the cabin, stumbling even as he fumbled his words.

He had known another language, before the Sarmatian, Latin and British tongues which came after. But there was no one to speak it to, and it was rusty with under-use.

Attachment lead only to despair. He knew that, or ought to.

To find a way to occupy time with Galahad that wasn’t like to lead to mutual murder, however, was only sensible, and Tristan did locate some pebbles, suitable for the two tones of the defending and attacking pieces of a tafl board. Then, though disgusted with his own lack of decisiveness, he idled on the deck a while, talking to the captain and one of the sailors, discussing courses and weather. He did his drills, and sharpened his sword.

Galahad did not emerge.

Tristan walked around the full perimeter of the ship. He visited Mab and crooned at her, stroking her feathers, but she could feel his skittishness and shuffled and snapped at him, as if to say his troubles was none of hers to solve.

When the sun was high overhead, he intercepted Mary bringing bread and hard cheese to the cabin, along with a fresh jug of wine, and took them in himself.

Galahad was bending over their small table, scratching out a grid into the wood with his dagger. His cheeks were shaven smooth again, and his kohl re-applied, more neatly than before.

“Haven’t jumped overboard then,” he said easily enough, seeing Tristan standing there watching him.

“Apparently not.” Tristan stepped forward and set down the food, and then the pebbles. Galahad smiled at him.

There was no way to avoid Galahad on this ship or on this mission. Tristan was going to have to live with the situation, and store the need for distance against the future. If they both survived the mission – if not brought down by agents of Arthur’s enemies, or strolling bandits, or whatever wild animals they had in Opiso, and he had heard tell of giant cats and water monsters made of rock – then back in Britain Tristan could alienate him again – would have to.

For now, though, he sat opposite the boy and cut his bread for him.

-

“You aren’t dying, I promise you. It passes.” Galahad was smirking as he patted the damp rag over Tristan’s forehead, and well he might be, Tristan thought, to find that in the midst of the storm it was Tristan of the two of them whose constitution quavered.

He was intending to say something cold and biting in reply, but other urgent matters overcame him, and once he’d uncurled from doubling over the bucket, Galahad was taking it away and then rubbing at his back.

Sharing a bed, in the literal meaning of the words, for now a full sennight, had softened the shells around both of them, and small touches had become common between them in a manner too insidious for Tristan to find a way to halt even before he’d been brought low, beginning somewhere with someone pushing someone else over to stop snoring, and leading them here, now, with Galahad’s palm pressed warm against Tristan’s spine.

And how warm, and how terribly pleasant it was.

Galahad, in all his finery and with such a sweetly concerned look, looked as much as he ever had like the dear ‘consort’ he was supposed to be.

“You have no idea how disgusting you smell at the moment,” Galahad said now, cheerfully. “But you’re never exactly fragrant. Sleeping in horse dung rarely does much for a man.”

“Wait till you’re being tracked by hunting men and dogs.” Tristan lay back on the bed and closed his eyes, sighing. “Then you’ll wish to smell of anything but yourself.”

For a while there was silence.

“When were… You were hunted?”

Tristan kept his eyes closed, and swore internally. He was too ill to think straight, to keep a rein on his tongue.

“When I was a boy,” he said as calmly as he could. “As I spoke of before. Vagrant children, in some places, are demons to be cast out.”

“Not in Sarmatia!”

“What do you remember of Sarmatia, Galahad? Is any of it from your head or merely things Bors and Gawain and Lancelot have told you, over and over, and not real memories that they have either, because they too were children when they left?”

“I remember my family, “ Galahad said, in a small, stern voice that told Tristan at once that, really, he did not. Oh, the day of parting might hang on in his mind, and perhaps a song or the sense or smell of a particular place, but not the real full world of it, not the society that would or would not stone a wandering child to drive it out.

Another long silence. Tristan drifted asleep, woke feeling ill and found Galahad still there, and then the comforting pressure on his lower back once more as Galahad touched him.

When Galahad spoke, his voice was soft, as if the words had been carefully considered. “What were you going to do with your freedom, after Britain?”

“Go east,” Tristan told him. It could do no harm to speak of that now, really, and any distraction was welcome. “Further east. East and east until there is nothing more and you fall off the edge of the Earth.”

“And there to go to Hades and fight something, I suppose?” Galahad smiled, but his tone was sad. “Perhaps it was as likely a plan as any of the rest of ours.”

“Tell me a story of Hades,” Tristan suggested, disliking the pensive expression, which looked likely to lead to more confessions. “You aren’t as good a bard as Gawain, but Gawain I forgot to bring.”

Galahad blinked at him for a moment, nonplussed, and Tristan lay back once more, telling himself he didn’t care if Galahad took offence at the request or its phrasing and left.

Then, Galahad cleared his throat. “Shall I tell you of Odysseus, born to be a wanderer? He had been at Troy, and after the sack he had taken to the sea with all his men in their ships, and set his prow for home…” Galahad shifted his position on the bed, folded his long pale legs up under him. “But he waited a while on Calypso’s isle of Ogygia, for she had fallen in love with him…”

There was a long way to go in that tale before Odysseus reached the Underworld, Tristan knew, but perhaps it would be no bad thing to listen to the whole, keeping both sickness and other thoughts at bay.

Galahad’s voice was soft and true, and, it turned out, really he told stories better than Gawain did, when free of Bors shouting at him to put more fighting in the tale ‘and less of your shitting poetry about feelings!’

Galahad spoke softly of Odysseus’ wife Penelope, and her devotion, and her years of hopeless hope, and Tristan was transfixed.

-

“Hah! I win!” Galahad sat back from the board and folded his arms, obnoxious as a sulphur hot spring. “Sixteen games to fifteen, now - I draw ahead!”

Tristan raised his eyebrow, looking about the deck at those whose attention had been grabbed by Galahad’s gleeful cry.

Galahad gave him half a withering look, and then stood up, exaggeratedly back into his character, and went to Tristan’s side with the movements of a cat, and tangled his fingers into Tristan’s hair, tugging at his braids.

“I have beaten you, lover,” Galahad murmured, not quite softly enough not to be overheard. “And what shall my reward be?”

Then, leaning in to whisper in Tristan’s ear, for them alone. “Besides knowing I am the mightier than you, and the stronger and the better warrior, of course.”

And that - that was what drew the heat up into Tristan’s face, too fast to hide.

Impossible, then and there, to try to wrestle Galahad down, to seek a fight or the terrible, shameful struggle he wanted, and that was one reason he’d shifted the location of their games onto deck. In the cabin, the insults and the heat of combat - even the combat of pieces of stone on the tafl board - had lead too often too close to real fighting.

The two of them had always competed. At swords, archery, knife-throwing and the rest they’d measured themselves against each other. Tristan had enjoyed it, if he was honest, had found pleasure in beating a worthy opponent when he could, and stimulus to improve himself when he could not.

It had been competition, merely, nothing affectionate, or not that he’d thought. He had never realised what it was he was wanting, underneath.

Not until being stuck on a ship for weeks, and with Galahad ordered to be his.

And with Galahad closer, and easier to see, somehow, here like this.

With Galahad, who had nursed him when he was ill, who had more than once, now, woken him from a nightmare with soft words and warm arms, and received the same in return.

Tristan feared greatly now where they might find themselves in the dark – what he might do, or betray, by accident or lack of caution. At least for the day’s pursuits, staying on deck, in the glare of the southern sun and the full view of the crew, was by far the better choice.

Except, of course, that Galahad now made a game of it all, of inhabiting his role as Tristan’s consort and also secretly being so awfully much himself, and teasing Tristan – though the boy could not know how much of a tease it truly was.

“Let us play again,” Tristan said now, making his voice cold and without interest. “And you will see that I will level our scores.”

Galahad sat back down opposite him, pouting prettily. A fine show for the sailors, Tristan thought, and made himself tear his gaze away and look out over the wide empty sea, glittering in every direction, a fitting part of this world he had found himself in where all was upheaved - a desert of water.

-

The night before they were due to arrive in the port of Thyroe, Opiso’s legendary capital, the captain of the ship held a feast on deck in their honour, and Galahad appeared dressed in a robe Tristan hadn’t seen before – a robe in shades of green including one as deep and emerald as his eyes - and sat at Tristan’s side in full flow of his role, intermittently clutching at Tristan’s arm and hiding his face modestly when the talk grew rough, as if he didn’t tell some of the filthiest jokes at every table he normally joined.

Tristan could have borne that, more or less, but Galahad was weary and bored, it seemed, and took it into his head to continue his game of playing two parts at once, and moved to holding Tristan’s hand under cover of the table and trying to arm wrestle him whilst betraying nothing of it on his face.

Tristan pushed back at him, furious, and Galahad gasped into his ear, laughing and grinning – how red and wet and sweet his lips looked, set against bare cheeks - before straining back again.

Staring at his plate, Tristan wondered if this was Hades, if perhaps he’d drowned the first night of the storm and this had been his torment ever since.

He cast a glance at Galahad, at the glow of his face by the lanterns and in the moonlight from above, at the tiny marks on his cheeks where his stubble would come back in, rough, until eventually he was grizzled again as one of the hill tribes and twice as surly, and the bright dark merriness of his eyes, which Tristan knew now had more beneath them than any man might guess.

Yes, the brightest flowers ended their bloom. But didn’t that make it more urgent to touch them while one could?

At the beginning of this journey, he might have threatened to break one of Galahad’s fingers to try and end this behaviour.

Now he licked his lips and spoke softly.

“Please,” he said, quietly. “Enough.”

Galahad broke away, blinking at him, and then – suddenly and inexplicably – flushing over his whole face and neck.

“Of course, of course,” Galahad was murmuring, meek as milk. “My apologies. I was being foolish.”

Relieved, Tristan turned his attention back to his food. He’d brought Mab’s perch close to the table for this meal, and he fed her scraps of goat from his fingers, throwing a few in the air for her to catch, to the amusement of the sailors.

There was still more food to come, and considerably more wine, when Galahad rose from the table.

“Excuse me, my Lord,” he said to Tristan, without looking at him, half-bowing, and went away over the deck towards the cabin.

“The boy has no head for his drink,” Tristan said casually laughing, and brought the table’s attention back to Mab, his own head seething.

Just because he had refused Galahad’s stupid game, to go off in a temper!

In his anger, he drank more than he might have done otherwise – not to inebriation, he never did that, and was too seasoned a drinker to do so accidentally, but to the point where noise seemed easier than silence, and his body was too warm and his skin itched.

He came back to the cabin without bothering to try and be quiet, and was irritated again to find the lamp extinguished and Galahad not still awake and ready to be shouted at.

Shedding his boots and outer jerkin, he made to climb into bed.

It was cold under the covers. There was – he searched out in the darkness – there was no one else there. Galahad was not in bed, not waiting there for him awake or asleep.

“Galahad?” he whispered into the darkness, except it was louder than a whisper, and ragged.

What if the boy had stumbled past the cabin? What if he had truly been drunk? What if he had fallen and hit his head? Or gone overboard?

Cold worry, icy fingers through his guts like a wind high on the Urals, screwing tight.

Tristan tried to go to the cabin window to open the shutters and look at the other side of the deck, and fell over a pile of baggage.

The pile of baggage yelped, and then hit him.

“Galahad? What…?” Relief rapidly subsumed the anger. “What are you doing on the floor?”

“Trying to sleep until you stepped on me.”

“But why…?”

Oh.

The thought came to Tristan at once, would have come quicker, no doubt, if he hadn’t been blurry with drink.

Galahad had perceived his wanting, and been offended by it. Galahad had left the table because of his disgust with Tristan, and had gone to sleep on bare boards under one thin blanket, rather than risk sharing a bed again.

“I…” Tristan would not apologise. There was nothing wrong with him, nothing wrong with wanting what he did, whatever Christians or Romans said. If Galahad disliked the idea, Tristan would not defend it or press it, but he would not apologise.

Only know himself to be three kinds of fool.

The fool, the fool who thinks he is not a fool and the fool who believes that others may share his idiocy.

“I am sorry to wake you,” he did say, and made his way, awkward, back to the cold bed again. His head ached, and his heart was worse, and he was a fool, a fool, a fool…

-

Delightful, to have to make land in a new country, as a representative of your sworn liege King, with many tasks to fulfill, and in the interests of those tasks to need to convince in the role of the lover of a man who hated you, and yet you yearned for, and wished you did not.

Tristan looked around the port at Thyroe, and wondered if he ran to another ship now, where it might take him, and whether it would even matter if it was away from here, and from Galahad’s tired, sad face.

Galahad had made himself prettier than ever for the arrival, in another new robe – purple and lilac - and with his eyes yet more expertly done, but Tristan could see the lines around them, and the shadows that were nothing to do with paint.

He had to offer Galahad his hand as they disembarked, and Galahad had to take it, but would not meet his eye.

“It is an honour to be introduced to your heart’s dearest, Sir Tristan,” said the potentate who met them at the dock – a Governor Ryn - in what Tristan knew to be the formal and accepted manner of the country, speaking the words in a strange accented Latin – not that Tristan’s was any finer. “I greet you in the name of Junia, King of Opiso, and with your permission I will escort you to her palace.”

And so, soon enough, they were installed in two bright, airy rooms, which seemed to sway under Tristan’s feet even though he was no longer at sea.

The rooms were one room, really – they connected via a wide arch – but there was a bed in each and a certain sense that they were intended for different manners of occupant, the one further from the main door to the corridor being more highly decorated and with a burnished hand mirror and combs laid out, and more places for clothing; here Mary placed Galahad’s bags and trunk.

Galahad lay down on his bed at once, curled away towards the wall, and Tristan had no excuse to go to him at all.

He washed his face and neck with the water provided, and found it scented with crushed rose petals. He held one in his hand a while, studying the progress of the brown bruising across the pale surface.

Then the men came up with Mab and he saw to settling her on her perch near his window. Once she’d had time to understand that this was where they were for a while, he’d let her free to explore. As he petted her head, she kept a beady eye on him, looking vaguely displeased.

“Quiet now, little sister,” Tristan told her, in the words of the language that he assumed must have been his parents’, the words of a people and country he had no name for, some of the few words that stayed - that would always stay. He leant a hand against the wall and allowed his shoulders to curl in for a moment, sighing.

This warm land, with the windows open to sunshine and the scent of strange fruit trees and wonderful spicy smokes, could not have seemed further from the mountains of the wild north eastern steppe. But to be pulled back was the work of a moment of his mind.

Perhaps it could not be outrun, perhaps not ever, not at all.

And if he could not escape that feeling, then perhaps it would be as bad with Galahad, and even this moment now soon a memory of pain he’d be eternally cursed to revisit.

There was a knock at the door and he turned, calling a formal welcome. In came the same governor who’d first met them, with explanations and plans.

Tristan was to be given the rest of this day to recuperate from the journey, he learned.

He would have far rather gone to the battleground of the court at once, anything to keep from thinking.

But that chance would not come for two days – the King was busy with overseeing the final preparations for the Orellian Games, the governor said.

“And King Junia greatly hopes you might attend – and with your heart’s dearest of course - to see our revelry.” Governor Ryn smiled. “It is our festival in honour of the mother goddess Ysis, and of great importance to all the people of Opiso.”

“Then it would be our privilege to attend,” Tristan said smoothly.

With more bows, the governor was gone, and then the rooms were silent again.

Tristan looked over at Galahad, and considered for a moment what it would be like, trying to sleep or rest now, in this room, with his consciousness of Galahad being so close by, and so disappointed in him.

“Mab needs exercise, and my horse too,” he said shortly, and mostly in the direction of Mary the servant girl, who blinked and paled at being addressed. “I shall ride out beyond the city walls to that green hill to the west,” he gestured at the view, “and fly her. If they send supper before I return, keep some for me under a plate.”

When he moved to loose her, Mab made a harsh cry like a cackle of laughter.

-

Having gained the summit after what would have been under other circumstances a pleasant ride – peaceful, if there’d been any peace in his mind - Tristan stayed on the hill a while, letting Mab fly and return to him, and taking in the wide vista of the elegant white-brick city laid out before him. The palace was on its own hill, rising from the centre, and all too visible, a constant reminder of all he still had no solution for.

There were olive trees on the slopes of the hill and when finally, with the sky turning red and purple, he started to go back to the city, he got off his horse to lead her, walking along to better enjoy the scent of the leaves. In this manner he came to the western gates, where he remounted to travel through the streets to the centre and the royal palace.

He was about half of the way back when a clamour of voices and some loud bangs distracted him, and he realised that some kind of brawl was taking place down the nearest alley. This would have had little interest enough for him, and he was going to ride on, when he heard a cry, and in the language of the Celts of Guinevere’s tribe - a fierce and foul oath regarding an opponent’s ancestry.

Who else in the city could speak that tongue? And besides it had sounded like Galahad’s voice.

Could not be, must not be, but it had certainly…

Tethering his horse and fixing Mab to the saddle pommel, the better to be unobtrusive, Tristan made his way down the street quickly, and came upon them, the three men – Galahad holding off two others, for it was Galahad, dressed in some of Tristan’s spare clothes, wielding as a staff a wooden pole that looked likely to have recently held up someone’s washing, and with a fixed mad grin that spoke too easily of the glee in violence Galahad would always deny.

The fight appeared friendly – as much as it could – more showy than desperate, and there was a fascinated audience, many visibly placing bets on the outcome, but danger or not, this was not something Tristan’s ‘heart’s dearest’ could be seen to be doing, would rapidly betray their real status and jeopardize the whole mission if anyone official caught them.

Tristan’s presence, of course, could greatly increase the risks of exposure, and he took care to stand back from the front of the crowd, waiting until the fight had concluded – Galahad, panting, his staff broken, trying to persist with fists and feet and to the amazement of the spectators, succeeding in taking down one of the men that way before his friend finally got Galahad to the ground.

Galahad was a fury still, even in defeat, ungracious and clearly seething to fight again. To Tristan’s relief, though, no one took him up on it, the people dispersing to whatever evening activities were usual – to a meal, no doubt, and Tristan was more than hungry for his own now.

He moved to waylay Galahad as the boy tried to sneak away, and grabbed him silently, pushing him up against the nearest wall, a palm to his mouth before he could protest.

And then thought, suddenly, of how Galahad might take that action – felt, indeed, his own body’s quickening wish to be the opponent in the fight Galahad sought – and stepped back, heart beating too fast.

“What were you thinking?” he hissed, trying to dissolve all else in anger.

Galahad half snarled at him, all frown, all rage - more than beautiful when he was like this, shimmering in deadly viciousness.

“We have suffered much to get this far,” Tristan continued, hissing, “and we are not going to lose it all for one man’s whims. Whether or not I have displeased and offended you, you have no right to risk our mission from Arthur in this manner.”

Galahad’s eyes widened; he gaped at Tristan for a moment before another lip-curling scowl moved over his face, and a look of disgust.

“You think, do you,” Galahad said urgently, barely managing to whisper, “that I cannot stomach your rejection? That a mere word from you will leave me low? That I am suffering, simply because you do not want me? I am here because I am sick of acting the perfumed weakling, that is all!”

Now Tristan could blink and find bemusement in his turn. “Rejection?” he repeated, confused. “I did not… You dislike my interest, that is what has…”

His mouth dried up. He became aware, again, of how close they were standing, even though no longer pressed together.

“Your interest?” Galahad’s face had changed. Something else there now, beyond the familiar pattern of disregard.

Some kind of hopeless hope?

All Tristan’s life, since his childhood that was no childhood at all, he had been practicing for the moment when he would walk away from connection, from affection, from the risk of pain. When he would deny his own foolishness and break free.

“I thought you had discovered my desire for you, and been displeased by it, since you dislike me,” Tristan said now, failing himself and his schemes, and fast, and with his heart in his mouth in eagerness to say the words.

“I never… Disliking you has never been one of my problems,” Galahad told him, half with a laugh, half with a shout, and his smile was open - dreadfully, wonderfully open - on his lovely face. “Well, I mean, of course you are a terrible and entirely irritating person, but…” As his voice grew softer, Galahad looked up again from under his lashes.

Tristan took a step backwards, suddenly afraid although it was too late for that now, and at once Galahad pursued him, until they were against the opposite wall of the alley and Tristan with his back to it, Galahad swarming in after and bracing arms either side of him, fierce.

This, oh yes, oh this…

Galahad leaned in – Tristan’s heart pounding faster, his body getting warm, his muscles tensing as the blood rushed through him.

“No,” Tristan murmured. “We cannot, not here.”

Drawing back, Galahad ducked his head, sighing and biting at his own lips. Tristan could touch that mouth, now, could try, could…

“I suppose you prefer me silken and smooth and gilded?” Galahad was saying.

“I have never seen you to better advantage than in my braccae and my tunic,” Tristan told him firmly, and then felt the extraordinary surge of his own blush, thankfully most likely hidden from Galahad in the gathering dark – and they desperately needed to get back to the palace before someone came looking for them.

There was half a smile on Galahad’s face again.

“But here, in this land, you must play your part and I mine, and we must move from this place now,” Tristan insisted.

He led the way back to his horse and comforted a peevish Mab before mounting, then held out an arm to swing Galahad up behind him on the saddle. They travelled swiftly through the houses, and Tristan deposited him again only one street from the palace, ready to climb back over the fallen wall via which he’d apparently escaped.

-

Coming back into their rooms having stabled his horse, Tristan found Galahad reclining on the further room’s bed, once more in the robe of heather purple, clean and relaxed and with his eyes lined in elegant black, and without any sign of what he had been doing all afternoon.

“My Lord,” Galahad said, rising, looking at him with burning interest, as if another fight was all ready to be unleashed.

And oh, Tristan wanted to go to him and…

But a man on a king’s errand must keep his wits about him, and that meant eating when it was time, and doing nothing too speedily.

Tristan smiled in return, as much as he dared, and Galahad’s face reflected something so warmly back to him that he had to struggle again to stick to his course.

“Our evening meal?” Tristan made himself suggest.

“As you wish,” said Galahad, gathering his robe to move elegantly to the table as any courtesan, but with a smirk and a gleam still in his eye. He looked as happy as he ever had to play his part – and might that really be because he had been assured that Tristan did not, for himself, need Galahad to play it?

How long had Galahad been thinking on the state of the relationship between them?

Tristan summoned a servant from the corridor and requested food. There was scarcely time to commence a new game of tafl – no need to abuse the table here, for there was a squared board laid into it with cunning marquetry of differently coloured woods – before there was a knock at the door and trays of dishes piled high were brought through, steaming hot and fragrant.

“How wonderful, for I am very hungry indeed.” Galahad smiled wickedly and licked his lips.

“I suppose you think you’re very charming, too?”

At the words, Galahad bit his lip. There was a hesitation Tristan had not expected and then that smaller, softer smile again.

“I hope to be.”

Why not kiss him now? Why not throw all the food to the floor and bend Galahad back over the table and see if that would earn a push back in return? Why was Tristan not doing those things at once?

“You tend to manage to hit your targets,” Tristan pointed out gruffly, and helped himself to the rainbow coloured rice.

He did not manage to eat very much, probably less than he needed to stay at optimum fighting fitness, but to have consumed anything seemed a grand achievement now, with Galahad so close and with so much yet to be settled between them.

So much – so many things – which might happen, which might yet be undertaken.

Galahad, Tristan was pleased to see, scarcely did any better by the meal, and was soon pushing back his plate and leaning away in his chair, one hand idly palming over the region of his stomach and oh yes, to watch Galahad soothe himself with touch was quite a fine thing in itself.

Tristan took a final sip of wine, and set the up down, wiping his lips with the back of his hand.

“Well,” he said slowly, “we might…”

“If you suggest the tafl board,” Galahad said firmly, “I may either scream or attack you with this meat skewer.”

Parts of Tristan heated sharply.

But he had this much – had this wonderful possibility – and Galahad would not understand more, so let this be enough.

“No tafl, then,” Tristan said, and stood up from his chair.

Galahad rose, and they were facing each other.

Galahad was hard, and now he was standing it tented his robes obscenely, and Tristan could barely breathe with looking.

He was hard too, but the braccae and the belted tunic above forgave rather more.

“You are looking at me,” Galahad said. It didn’t quite sound like a complaint, but it was plaintive, his voice cracking. “You are always looking at me and I never know what is wrong to make you stare the way you do.”

“Nothing wrong,” Tristan managed, and moved, and they were chest to chest again, and suddenly kissing fiercely, lips and teeth and tongue, like they might eat each other, and perhaps it only felt as it did because he never usually allowed himself to touch anyone, but…

“Idiot, idiot…” Galahad was murmuring, and pushing and butting into the kiss like a calf, and it wasn’t clear which of them he addressed – there was possibly a case for them both. His hands spanned over Tristan’s shoulders and down his sides, raking up sensation and smoothing it back like stroking the hide of a horse against the grain, and Tristan could only moan and grunt as an animal might, and try and press closer still.

No doubt that Galahad was the more experienced of the two of them with making love – Tristan had seen him with enough women to be sure of that – and yet he was shaking too, Tristan realised, and moving rough and uncoordinated as Tristan couldn’t help but be.

When they had kissed so long as to need to break for air, and Tristan’s knees felt weak, he moved backwards to the bed despite the tumbling sensation in his belly at the thought of what might happen there, and Galahad followed in step, and they lay together, mouths finding their way back into contact as if no other instinct existed.

Tristan took care of himself on a regular basis, much as he re-braided his own hair or took the strigil to himself in the heated Roman baths at Arthur’s court. This, now, his cloth-covered cock nudging irregularly against the firm strength of Galahad’s thigh, felt nothing like what he could do to himself. He could not have believed that so much feeling could come from so little touch.

And he could feel Galahad too, against him – what a difference that made - and how Galahad’s cock jumped and pressed from what Tristan did to him, from the work of Tristan’s tongue in his mouth and Tristan’s hands against Galahad’s long whipcord body, which was still sheathed in all this gossamer fabric which did nothing to help with keeping heat in or out, and which was soaked now, in places, with wonderful musky sweat.

They had twisted and rolled all over the bed, and eventually it happened that Tristan was on his back, Galahad a solid, hot weight above him, and all Tristan’s skin seemed to be burning and sparking with it, with this. He ought to ask, he thought, what Galahad wanted to do, really, what it was that he liked…

…and then Galahad might ask him. Galahad might tell him what to do, what he wanted, what orders he had for Tristan and…

Galahad’s mouth was at Tristan’s neck, and he licked at a cord of muscle before biting down, just, with the edges of his teeth, and Tristan’s whole being froze for an instant, and he was coming, hard, helplessly, where he lay, into his braccae with sudden hot wetness.

“Did you just…?” Galahad drew back and up, frowning.

Hard to think, or speak, but Tristan was aware of blushing. “I regret that I am not…”

“Hey. Nothing wrong.” Galahad leant in, kissed him quickly and lightly again on the mouth. “Nothing wrong.” His voice was hushed, like it might have been in the sanctuary of his gods.

“Galahad, you are…”

Easier to find Galahad’s hard cock with his hand, and try to show how he felt, than speak words he was accustomed to use only in oaths.

Galahad chuckled slightly. “I am many things,” he said. “I am wearing this ridiculous outfit, which has been utterly ruined unless they have ways of washing here that I have never heard of, and I am…” he took in a sharp breath. “I am quite filthy with how much I want you. If I was a woman I would be slick as a mouth.” He chuckled again. “But you wrinkle your nose at that, for you do not like to lie with women.”

“I have…” Tristan swallowed, and reached to push his other hand through Galahad’s curls. That earned him a breathless gasp; the boy was still so hard, and so ready. “Many years have passed since I have touched anyone this way. But I will confess, it has been a long time that I have wished to do this with you.”

Though only days for which I have admitted it to myself, he might have added, but that much no doubt Galahad could guess.

A small cry greeted his words, and Galahad was pressing urgently into him, mouthing at his shoulder and pressing in his forehead, bracing against Tristan’s cupping hand between his legs, and Tristan rallied his loose reflexes to grip more tightly and move a little, and soon his handful was suffused with hot and damp, and the robe now most undoubtedly beyond rescue.

For a while Galahad was speechless, panting, and Tristan held him, keeping his weight a blanket against his own body.

“I have known women, and often,” Galahad muttered at length, still breathless. “And men, sometimes.”

Tristan stiffened.

“But,” Galahad added, and kissed his temple. “I never thought of any of them twice. And I find I am always thinking about you. And not only,” and he laughed softly, “because you are wretched and provoking and my equal at the bow.”

“Your superior at the bow,” Tristan corrected, and kissed him hard, wondering, desperate.

-

The sleep that followed the loving bled into the sleep of the night. At one point Tristan stumbled up to relieve himself, and at one point the bed was shifting and cold as Galahad did the same, but they did not speak again until dawn, when the horns at the gates of the city were sounded, and Mary entered with their washing water.

Which was sorely needed, both of them having fallen asleep still sticky, and with their clothes now marked and crusted.

“If only it were cold enough for a fire in which to dispose of all this! I wouldn’t wish to sully the laundresses eyes,” Galahad said ruefully, when he’d peeled his way free of his robe and was inspecting it ruefully. As usual in the morning he was growing in some of his beard, and his hair was wild as if Tristan’s hands had had all the force of a gale.

Galahad paused then and met his eye, grinning almost shyly, and Tristan realised he’d been staring.

“I suppose,” Galahad said slowly, and with some consideration, “that those who are lovers help each other to wash.” And he held out a sponge in Tristan’s direction.

Tristan had never dared to hope so much. He almost fell over his own clothes to move to where Galahad stood, and finally shook free of them, and realised that it was the first time they had been naked together.

Galahad was staring too, now.

In one corner of Galahad’s room, abutting the wall with the window, there was a part of the floor recessed below the level of the rest, lined with glazed tiles and with an open drain to the outside. Galahad was standing in this dip, and when Tristan came to join him there was just space to stand side by side, if they stood quite close.

Galahad’s eyes had dropped and he’d become quiet. They were both flushed, inescapably in view, and they took turns with the sponge silently.

Too much warriors to back down, but not brave enough to meet each other’s gaze through this intimacy – that, Tristan supposed, made sense.

It was wonderful, though, and new and thrilling, to caress someone else and yet have it be careful and care-taking rather than rushed and hungry. To clean and soothe, and to catch each gasp and pleased sigh.

“We can’t undo our good work,” Galahad said at last, and with a helpless chuckle, finally looking up again. He’d been surveying where, between them, in the smallest of gaps, they were both hard again, and liable to make a new mess.

“Then you will stay clean,” Tristan told him, and went to his knees.

Galahad cried out, staggering back to lean against the nearest wall. His cock swelled as Tristan drew it into his mouth, and leaked a bitter fluid.

Tristan put one hand to Galahad’s hip and the other to his own cock, stroking fiercely. He’d heard the women at camps speaking of this, of when men demanded it and what they might bargain to have it. Few of them had spoken as though delivering the deed was any pleasure at all – though Bors’ wife had grinned, he’d noticed – but though he would have done it simply as a gift he found it sent him wild and hot as being touched there himself. Galahad’s hands were in his hair, tugging at his braids, and his beard was rubbing at Galahad’s thighs, and in his mouth – in his mouth – Galahad pulsed and shook and came for him.

At the taste, Tristan came into his own hand, and needed only to pour a little more water for that to disappear as well. He took a swig from the jug after.

“You do not want to spit it out?” Galahad’s chest was heaving as if he’d been running, and pink and sweating – perhaps they would need more washing anyway, despite Tristan’s efforts – and when he spoke he coughed and had to clear his throat.

Tristan grinned at him, and licked his lips.

Moaning, Galahad put his hand to his still-slick cock as if to quell it.

“The energy of youth,” Tristan remarked, and knelt down once more, nothing loath.

Either side of him, Galahad’s toes curled against the tile.

-

They had to leave their rooms eventually – I might be at risk of dying if we don’t, Galahad had said with an exhausted amazement, before pushing Tristan’s head away and going to dress. The noon found them, therefore, at the city market, wandering and exploring, exclaiming over what they found.

“I saw one of these once before!” Galahad said with delight, darting to a stall with orange and yellow fruit piled high. “A trader had one, dried, and it smelt…” he reached out and picked one up, putting it to his nostrils and inhaling before sighing happily.

Both dressed according to their roles, Tristan had the purse. He purchased five of the fruits – three orange and two yellow, they were very cheap – and they moved on.

By working their way back to the harbour, they found the river which exited through it, and by pursuing that a little upstream – Galahad complaining wearily about his robes again, as they passed along dusty paths made through the reeds – they came to a pleasant prospect where to sit and eat the food from the market. They had a pot of hot-spiced meat and rounds of flat bread, and something sticky and honey-smelling that Galahad had looked at wistfully and the fruit.

Tristan had not, before, been able to indulge one he loved. It was surprisingly gratifying.

In this case, however, not all was a success.

‘Pfah! That is not at all as I imagined.” Galahad looked up with a grimace from his yellow handful, the fruit sliced up with Tristan’s knife.

“I like this one,” Tristan handed over an orange slice of the fruit he had chosen. “Let me try yours.”

Soon he was spitting and grimacing too, and Galahad laughing gleefully, eyes shining.

“I should like to take one of the yellow ones back and trick Bors into trying it,” Tristan said, when he could make his tongue work – it felt like it had shriveled. “But I doubt they’ll last the journey.”

He looked up. Galahad was staring away over the water, chewing at his lip.

“Many things might not last that journey,” Galahad said, and looked back, frowning. “You and I, like this… We were never like this in Britain.”

“Weren’t we?”

“You talk in riddles again!” Galahad had some of the thick fruit rind in his hand and he flung it down the bank. “You always talk in riddles, as though clarity would be some sort of exposure.”

“It would be,” Tristan said, and then held out his hand in apology. His stomach, strained over the food, had gone tense with Galahad’s words, and he felt as though a cloud had appeared in this, the clearest of skies. “Galahad, I…” He twisted and tore the rind in his own hands. It released little sprays of liquid, sparkling in the sunshine, and sore where it landed on his skin.

“Do you remember,” Galahad said, leaning back to rest almost horizontally on the path, resting on his elbows, “when I found that wolf cub?”

“Many years ago, but yes, indeed. We had been hunting, and we found a den half torn apart and two cubs, one dead, one shivering.”

“I wanted to save the cub, and you…. You half sneered at me, laughing. You said small creatures needed things no man could give.”

“That… I meant to prepare you. To ease the hope that might have hurt you, soon enough.”

“Which did hurt me, soon enough, when the poor thing died.”

“Yes?” Tristan stared at him. He’d been reaching out to Galahad all day, but now his hands felt pinned, and touch impossible.

He had thought the boy foolish, that day with the cub. But he’d been protesting more against that part of himself that also wished to care for the creature, to tend and nurse it and rail against nature, for all he knew how that ended.

Protesting against the part of him that even then had wanted to reach out for Galahad and offer everything.

Galahad turned to meet his gaze. “It died, but it died warm, in my arms, quietly. And you acted as though that small comfort was something to be ashamed of. I cannot… I do not know how that Tristan, and you, have been the same person all this time.”

Tristan closed his eyes for a moment, and listened to the rushing river and a bird crying out in the distance. This hot, foreign land seemed as far from Britain, and further yet from Sarmatia, as the gap between all he had said and all he had secretly felt, all the years Galahad had known him.

“Perhaps I envied you your ability to care freely, to give freely and without concern. To gamble your heart on a small thing, and be open to grief. I… I had built a wall around my own heart like Hadrian against the Picts, and long before I met you.”

He looked up at Galahad again, and had to swallow hard.

“And Hadrian’s Wall fell, and so did mine. Walls hurt those who build them the most, in the end.”

“I wish you had ridden out sooner,” Galahad murmured, “from behind those walls of yours. I could have needed someone like you, these many years.”

And he rolled onto his four limbs and crossed the distance between them on hands and knees, and kissed Tristan, tasting sharply of the strange fruit.

“I am here now,” Tristan told him earnestly. “Afraid and without a strategy, but here, and I will not leave you until you tell me to.”

Galahad threw one leg over him, and came down, and with all their appetites sated for a while it was smooth and slow and idle, and lazy in the sunshine.

-

Come the evening, Tristan rode back to the green hill and let Mab fly and his horse graze, and returned again to the palace without any unexpected meetings along the way, to eat their evening meal and play tafl with Galahad for a while, until they were level at twenty three games apiece.

Then Galahad leant back in his chair, stretching his arms above his head, his whole body rippling in one sinuous movement like a cat, and Tristan raised his eyebrows, trying not to chuckle with affection or gasp with wanting.

“From what we have learned so far,” he said as dryly as he could. “I think removing our clothes should be the next course of action.”

“Much as I hate to follow your orders in anything…” Galahad said, laughing.

He meant it as a joke, of course, but Tristan couldn’t help but think of the reverse, of how Galahad might order him.

He fairly ripped his clothes from his body, and soon they were rolling on Tristan’s bed together, skin to skin, which was another new and entirely magnificent sensation.

“Shh, I will be your equal in any skill but scowling, I swear it,” Galahad said, when Tristan had tried to halt him in a path down Tristan’s body.

Galahad’s mouth was so red and open, and then hot – so hot – and sliding and wet. Tristan couldn’t help trying to sit up, half fighting the sensation.

“Stay! Where are your manners?” Galahad teased, pressing him down with an arm over his hips.

Tristan moaned before he could close his teeth on his lips to stop it, and Galahad had to feel and taste and see the way it made him twitch, the evidence of his enjoyment spilling from him.

“Tell me to stop if you want me to, Tristan?” Galahad said, slowly, with that wondering hush in his tone again.

And he placed his arm once more over Tristan’s hips, pressing down hard.

“Stay,” he murmured, reverent.

Tristan kicked his heels and scrunched his eyes closed, feeling himself on fire, but kept his hips down, obedient.

“Look at me,” Galahad demanded. “Tristan, look, please.”

The expression in Galahad’s eyes made Tristan want to close his own again – intense, burning, gentle… he was hard between his legs and breathless in his chest and aching over his heart, and his eyes burning, but Galahad wanted him to look, and so he did, as Galahad in turn held his gaze and slid his mouth once more over the head of Tristan’s cock.

One of Galahad’s arms stayed pinning him in place. The other moved to find his hand, and held on, intertwining their fingers.

Tristan gripped back and flew.

-

“I don’t know that word you said, before,” Galahad was murmuring, as they lay and simmered down, Galahad curled up against Tristan, his head resting on Tristan’s chest, his hands idly raking in the hair there. “What does it mean?”

Tristan had been speaking without thinking, spilling endearments as his happiness grew too large to hold within him.

But he knew the only thing Galahad could mean, for Galahad was as fluent in Sarmatian and the words of the Celts as he was, and had already demonstrated he had as good a knowledge of the more profane Greek.

“Tristan?” Galahad repeated, and he sounded sleepy himself.

Tristan could pretend to be asleep, to be drifting away, unhearing.

To be safe, behind his walls.

He took a deep breath.

“I don’t know, exactly,” he confessed, feeling each word strange and angular and important in his mouth. “It is a language I used from before I knew who I was, or where I was going. A language only of my people.” He took another breath, shuddering. “But I mean it to say that you are loved, that I will cherish you.”

Galahad smiled, but not easily – there was a frown there too, and he lifted his upper body to look down on Tristan’s face.

“If you don’t know those people, and don’t remember them, and were alone, how would you know those words?”

Clever boy, Tristan thought, and suddenly the ache in his chest was back, and he had thought his walls were fallen but this, this was the moment, and it hurt like some part of him crumbling.

“When I was alone, at first, I was not alone. I had a little sister. I think she was my sister.” He was fighting now, not to let his voice tremble. “She was all I had, and I was all she had. But I was not enough. I couldn’t feed her – I could barely feed myself, but I could eat roots and bark, and she could not – and when I found other people they would cast us away, throw stones, even when she was thin, as thin as a dandelion seed, and then…” He cleared his throat. “And then I was alone.”

Galahad was staring at him, face aghast. Then he reached down, and stroked the side of Tristan’s face, very gently.

“Small creatures need things no man can give,” Galahad said. “A wise man told me that once.”

Tristan reached out in turn, and pulled Galahad’s head down, until they were forehead to forehead, and breathing.

“I love you,” Tristan said, in the language he’d never forgotten - or that was what he’d thought he said, and even if he hadn’t, even if no other person in the world would understand those words as such, he could see that Galahad heard him.

-

The Orellian Games of Thyroe, for all their splendour, were hard to take in when Tristan could sit in a chair with Galahad beside him and be allowed – even ordered, considering their mission – to hold his hand and stroke his arm and make much of him throughout. They were to the edge of the grand box where the royal family sat, but in it nonetheless, and as they watched the athletes and the dancers there were servants who brought them fruit and wine and small cakes. Tristan fed Galahad pieces of the sharp, sweet orange fruit with his fingers, and Galahad licked up the rivulets of juice, holding his eyes, and smirked like he’d bested Tristan at the archery butts.

At one point in the games, displays with bow and arrow did take centre stage, and Tristan dragged his attention to them, interested, and thought he’d found many points to consider in improving his own skills.

“See that man’s stance, how he holds his supporting arm?” he said to Galahad at one point, leaning over but without taking his eyes off the archers. “That is more of what I feel you should be doing when you shoot.”

He had spoken softly enough for no one around them to hear, but he was aware of Galahad tensing all the same.

Now Tristan did turn to look, and tried to read Galahad’s face, to divine the root of the anxiety there.

“Things will change – things have changed,” Tristan said slowly. “But I hope to still be… challenging my skills against yours, for many years to come. Mighty warrior,” he added, in a slang of the Celts that surely no one around could know.

He could see from Galahad’s expression, the surprise and pleasure written across it, that his guess at the trouble had been correct. He might have yet some distance to cover in reassuring him that – whilst he enjoyed Galahad enrobed as ‘consort’ in many ways – he desired him all the more as the Galahad he had always known; prickly and fierce and hairy as a bear cub.

Although, perhaps, a little less prickly than they had been with each other.

“I always wanted you,” Tristan murmured again, soft. He could say that, it was safe to say that, and only the truth. “That was why I was so afraid of it.”

Galahad eyes welled up. He leant in, his mouth finding Tristan’s.

There was a ripple of noise from the seats beside them. Tristan twisted, alarmed, his hand going automatically to his sword, and saw King Junia raising her golden goblet in salute, smiling at them both. She turned and embraced her Queen, and the applause picked up and ran through the whole crowd, until the vast stadium was echoing with approval.

Lust could be for life, or for bodies or for death, Tristan thought. And it was animal, and it was nothing so marvelous.

But perhaps, from it, marvelous things might yet appear.

The trade agreement was negotiated the next day, and after several hours closeted with ministers, bookended by royal audiences, Tristan and Galahad could leave the palace with the future of Arthur’s Britain one step more assured.

“And tomorrow we sail,” Galahad said, surveying their rooms on their return to them that evening.

He went over to the cupboard where his clothes had been stored, and shook out the last of the robes, which was primrose yellow with a buttery underlayer. “I will not say I will miss these clothes, but they are very…” he set the garment down and came over to Tristan, and put Tristan’s hand against his thigh, where the silk of that day’s gown was warm and slippery. “They have,” he continued, and gasped a little as Tristan moved his hand, “certain agreeable qualities.”

“No need to entirely dispose of them,” Tristan pointed out, and grinned at him. “Although I look forward to once more having the sight of your beautiful knees on a regular basis.” He cried out, ducking Galahad’s hand, and laughed.

“If it’s my knees you want, you can undress me and go on your own knees to look,” Galahad told him.

Tristan growled, and hurried to obey. He removed his own outer clothes, leaving only the braccae – Galahad had not allowed him to be naked, not yet – and worked fast to get the robe removed, which suddenly seemed only an awful impediment.

Then Galahad was entirely, gloriously naked, his cock filling and darkening, his skin smooth and pale as – although Tristan was not about to say it – it generally was whether he shaved or not.

It was easy to fall to his knees, and when Galahad’s hands went into his hair, caressing and tugging gently, bringing him in, he moved to visit all along Galahad’s legs with his mouth, kissing at the ball of his ankle and the side of his knee, and the increasingly musky skin on the inside of his thigh.

“Turn around,” Tristan suggested. Galahad frowned, confused, but did so, and Tristan nibbled at the underside of the luscious curve of his arse for a while, and then placed his hands carefully to pull the cheeks apart, and went in to the centre with his tongue.

The shout Galahad made must have been audible across the palace. He took a shaking step forward, moving out of Tristan’s reach, and gasped, bending over.

Relentless, Tristan followed, shuffling on his knees, and - after a moment to ensure Galahad was not seriously attempting to get away - leant in again.

“Oh fuck… fuck… Tristan!” Galahad had never been like this before, never quite so vocal or pleading, and that was most entirely wonderful, but even better when after a while Galahad dragged them a little forward again, and bent over to brace his arms on the edges of the bed, which presented his behind more fully in Tristan’s face and spread the cheeks more besides, and he was wanton, wanton, asking for it, and Tristan was so hard he might go off from nothing more than this.

But then, moments later, Galahad was pulling away in earnest, and when Tristan looked up he saw him bright red and panting and almost wild in his eyes.

“Get on the bed, undress and get on the bed,” Galahad demanded. “Please, Tristan.”

Tristan scrambled to obey.

Then Galahad was walking through to Tristan’s room, away from him, and for a moment there was a sharp coil of real worry through Tristan’s body, before Galahad stumbled back again, something in his hand.

“That is a trade sample, and intended as a gift for Guinevere,” Tristan pointed out, somewhat amazed that he still had the power of speech.

“Guinevere didn’t drag herself here and spend a month in skirts,” Galahad spat back, and uncorked the small bottle of scented oil. “And I want you inside me more than anyone has ever wanted anything in life.”

Tristan failed to come up with further objections. Possibly not least because he was struck dumb by the sight of Galahad working oily fingers into himself for long, gasping moments before striding back to the bed.

Tristan had not quite believed it until all of a sudden it was happening. Galahad straddling him, reaching back to hold Tristan’s cock in place and then slowly, slowly trying to get it into his body.

“Push down,” Tristan suggested, hoarse. His hands were trembling, playing over Galahad’s chest and sides in an attempt to keep from flipping the over and driving in, which neither of them would prefer but might be quicker, at least.

“Have you…?”

“I do it to myself, sometimes, when I have time,” Tristan told him. “Perhaps, another night, you could do it to me?”

“Oh fuck, oh fuck!” Galahad’s body tensed, and he put a hand to his cock – in order, Tristan realised with a shiver of amazement, to keep from coming.

“Yes, that, absolutely that,” Galahad muttered. “But now….” And he worked and grimaced, and finally Tristan was sliding into his tight grip of heat, and they were joined.

Galahad cried out like he was lost, afraid, and Tristan caught his hands and held on, and then Galahad started moving, riding him, and Tristan had to close his eyes and yet couldn’t bear to.

At some point, Galahad came down and towards him, shifting to mouth blindly at Tristan’s nipples, murmuring sweet and profane words together, and obviously the angle change had helped him find that place which Tristan knew could feel so perfect, for he gasped again and trembled, shuddering, trying to move his hips yet more rapidly, desperate.

It took all Tristan had ever learnt of self control to hold himself together until Galahad was finally at his climax, spilling hot between them as he moaned, biting at Tristan’s arm once more. And then Tristan released and it was glorious, beyond anything, and then… then wrapping up together in limbs and blankets, and then sleep.

-

“Home tomorrow,” Galahad pointed out, half asleep, when Tristan had risen in the night to clean them and was gently wiping his stomach and between his legs.

“Home,” Tristan echoed. He thought of Britain, of the cold and the rain and the small court that was nothing like Thyroe or the reputed wonders of the east.

And he thought of his shieldmates, and the world they were trying to build, and the jokes with Bors and Gawain’s songs, and the long green valleys to ride through, familiar more than anything else had been in his life.

He thought of Galahad, at his side, in the day and in the night.

“Home,” he said again, and smiled, and then laughed, amazed, just a little, and smiled some more.

-