October second short story (Patreon)

Crying your eyes out behind a bush in the castle's garden was not how you planned to spend your afternoon. Yet here you are, watering the plants with your tears.

"Mordred?"

Wide, perplexed gray eyes peer at you over the bush. You stare back up at Galahad, sniffling pathetically. You haven't heard him approach over the sobs and whimpers you've been fruitlessly attempting to muffle into your damp sleeve.

Galahad carefully pushes aside the boughs overflowing with purple flowers, sending adrift a heady, sweet waft. As his boots come into view before you and it becomes clear he won't merely pass you by, you're seized by a sudden, overwhelming embarrassment that almost makes you forget you're upset. You can't see yourself, but you can take an educated guess at the kind of pitiful image you must make. Puffy, blood-shot eyes, tear-streaked cheeks and, the worst of it all, a disgustingly snotty nose. You angle your face away even though Galahad already saw it as mortified heat creeps up your neck.

"What happened?" he asks as he kneels in front of you on the grass. 

"Do you truly care?" you retort thickly.

His reply is immediate: "Yes." As the word sinks in, permeating the charged silence that stretches between you too, Galahad looks as nonplussed as you feel. He clears his throat. "You're a fellow knight of the Round Table. Of course I stopped to check on you. It's only demanded of us."

The corner of your mouth twitches up in a watery smile. "Is it?" Is this truly all there is to it, or simply what he tells himself to keep his conscience clear?

"Yes," he says roundly and studies your face. "So, what happened?"

At his questions, the troublesome memories of the morning come unbidden. You were summoned to assist Sir Kay in smoothing over some affairs with various local nobles. When things didn't go their way, however, they turned to pettishly taking out their frustration on you, by attacking your family name and questioning your abilities as knight of the Round Table. Kay had done his best to comfort you afterward, but you were left discomfited by the whole thing so you came for a walk in the Royal Garden, hoping it'll soothe your nerves. It did, until it didn't; and that's to blame on the loudly gossiping pair of courtiers, one of which was the noble with the most biting remarks.

"I...heard some less than pleasant things said about my person," you explain, swallowing past the lodge in your throat. 

A flash of sympathy passes over his pinched face. You sniffle again, the sound disgustingly loud in the quiet. Galahad reaches into his doublet and proffers a handkerchief of dainty white which makes you balk. You'll utterly ruin the poor thing. You accept it hesitantly, whispering a weak thank you and blowing your nose as silently as you can.

"Were you eavesdropping?" he asks.

The tone isn't entirely accusatory, but it strikes a nerve in you, like hitting the wrong note in a song. Especially after having to hear a haughty courtier call you conniving snake behind your back. Especially since you don't know for certain how much of a snake Galahad himself still considers you.

"I wasn't!" you protest, voice breaking halfway.

He looks like he'd very much like to stuff the words back in his mouth. And perhaps the snot-filled hanky too, if only that'd stop him from saying such clumsy things.

You hang your head, fidgeting with Galahad's handkerchief. One of its corners is embroidered with a lavender branch, Corbenic's symbol. "I haven't been having a great day, that's all. Here," you give back his hanky. He takes it, then frowns. You're about to apologize for its soggy state when Galahad says:

"Your hand." His own shoots out and freezes just above yours, slender fingers grazing feather-like over your skin, a brush akin that of butterfly wings. It ripples up your arm, amplified into an electric shock that travels all the way to your toes. When you don't pull back he ventures farther, sliding his fingers over the back of your hand, pressing a thumb against the soft, meaty base of your palm. Your pulse spikes, your breath hitches.

"You're injured."

You peer down at your hand and see that he is indeed correct. A long cut crosses your palm diagonally, as if someone had taken a knife and carved out one of the lines that traverse the skin there. It was no knife, but no less sharp: in your haste to hide, you've swiped your hand right across a thorny branch. It hurt like something awful, but you were too busy with crying till your head throbbed to care very much for the cut.

"I can heal it," Galahad offers, angling your hand towards his face. You don't trust yourself to speak so you merely nod.

He glances up at you and reaches out to your face deliberately, as if approaching a scared animal. You suppose you resemble one with the way your heart races and your muscles all tensed up in anticipation. He gently swipes a thumb under your eye, collecting the tears gathered there. Then he takes your injured hand in both of his, calloused like a warriors yet tender like that of a healer, and murmurs a prayer to the Lady of the Lake. You can't make out the words, but the unintelligible muttering soothes you like a lullaby. His lips move slowly, reverently, their motion hypnotizing. You can't help but wonder how it'd feel to have those lips press against your palm, if it'd tingle the same way the magic makes it tingle as it stitches the skin back together.

"Done."

Your eyes fill with violet gray as Galahad looks up from your hand. Catching you gawking at him. Like the scared animal that you are, you panic as one thought, almost primal, overcomes any other rational sense: get away. You jerk back, trying to put some distance between you, only to belatedly realize that his hands are still holding yours. Upon pulling, not only does Galahad not let go, but squeezes, further anchoring himself to you. You sprawl backwards on the grass and he follows, toppling over you like a fell tree.

If you were merely an outside observer, you might have found this comical. But it's hard to laugh when you feel like you're about to combust. You feel breathless, but it's not Galahad's weight crushing down on you - he's caught himself on his elbows, flushed against you yet not pressing down. Your chests thump against each other with short, erratic, frantic breaths and hearts competing to see which can race faster. His pupils have dilated, biting hard into the soft violet of his eyes. You can see reflected within your face, small and panicked and just as wide-eyed. 

Minutes, hours, even days might have passed. Time seems to stretch and coil in strange, elusive ways as you both stay frozen, as if you've sprouted roots like the bush next to you, staring at each other. As the initial alarm subsides, your pulse doesn't calm down, but something in Galahad's expression shifts. Or perhaps it's always been there, hidden underneath the shock of being unceremoniously demolished. His eyes appraise your face as if they see it for the first time, with fervid focus. His head droops towards yours and your noses brush, hot skin against hot skin. A small, helpless sound, between a gasp and a whimper, coming from the back of your throat, escapes you as anticipation prickles your skin. It startles Galahad and breaks whatever trance bewitched you. He jumps to his feet, fumbles through the bush, pushing aside ambushing boughs that seem to want to block and entice him to stay, and stops on the flagstone path, half turned away from you.

His faces blazes as red as the Pendragon banner. "If you're alright now," Galahad says, clipped, short-winded as if he'd just finished running laps around the Castle, "I'll take my leave."

He storms off before you can reply, as if surfing the crest of some great wave, moving quickly and tempestuously. You're left dazed in his wake, as if that same wave had crashed over you. Trying your best to marshal your thoughts as you run a thumb over the faint line that remains where he's healed your cut. In a couple days, it'll be as if it were never there. But you know that this horribly beautiful, splendidly awful feeling that he stirs within will remain like a scar that won't heal - that you don't want to heal.