[Open Post] ..hell yes i mind..

[lanselos_du_lac]

It's been a long while since Lancelot felt this way: angry and adrift, too overwhelmed and in his own head to determine how best to manage it. (If Susan were here, it would be simple -- but the fact that his Susan is gone is part of the problem.) His anger is a hot stone at his center, a roiling mess, a weapon without a target. He still feels that he would like to smash something, start a fight, find some way to externalize everything all the things he could not bring himself to say to the Galahad who is far older than he ought to be, the quiet king of a quiet kingdom.

A fulfilled purpose. A completed quest. A long chain of manipulation and events that dragged Lancelot along in its wake, and that (in this other time, he has to acknowledge, not his time and not now) led only to the ruin of everything Lancelot had cared for. And for what? It makes him furious to think that the price of the Grail was Galahad's joy, Galahad's self, and that that price was somehow being paid long before Galahad was even born.

That's just the start of it; there is more, much more, and it feels like it will keep spooling out without ceasing.

His impulse, as ever, is to stalk off to his room and stay there until he feels he can manage himself. (He thinks, not for the first time, of himself ten years older and outwardly angry, angry enough that everyone sees it, fears him or dreads his company. A man who lashes out. He does not want that future, but this possibility has always been somewhere just under the surface; he's always known it. Sometimes it has worked for him, with him, but he knows that it is dangerous and there is no one in this place that he would want to bear witness to it.) If this were Camelot, that is what he would do.

Since he can't figure what to do, he settles for a middle ground. It's been a long while since he felt like getting very deliberately drunk, but that appeals just now, and so he heads for one of the smaller bars, just off the main corridor.

^{[Note: All are welcome! Those who care for Lancelot and/or those who also wish to fistfight God are particularly welcome.]}

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[timebethine]

"Have hope for Arthur. He is not yet lost. Britain is not yet lost. The tale that has been set down of thy history has not yet come to pass, and may never come to pass." He tilts his head against Lancelot's forehead. "I must imagine fate like a pomegranate, rich with many seeds; although all spring from the same fruit, some flourish, and others wither, and where there was one, there may yet be many. Thou art sprung from the same fruit as Sagramore's Lancelot, but not yet the same seed. Thou wilt grow into something wondrous and strange, and flourish where his seed has faltered."

[lanselos_du_lac]

"My sweet love," he says softly. Then he kisses him, deeply -- because he can, and because he wants to, and because he can choose to do so.

[timebethine]

Laertes pulls him in, gathering him up and holding him--not as though he's something on the verge of breaking, but as though he's strong enough to bear it.

[lanselos_du_lac]

After a long moment, Lancelot pulls back just enough to properly look at him. He brushes Laertes' cheek. Softly, he says, "I thank thee."

[timebethine]

"Come back with me. Stay a while--we have a bed for a guest, or thou canst sleep between us, an thou wouldst. Let thy humors settle."

[lanselos_du_lac]

He nods. "Since Susan is not here, that would be welcome," quietly. "Let me help thee carry those."

[timebethine]

"Ay, here." Laertes shuffles off the bags hooked over his left arm, then redistributes the ones on his right so that he's balanced again. "Need'st thou aught, besides direction?"

[lanselos_du_lac]

Lancelot takes up the bags, then takes Laertes' hand again. "I need nothing else. Lead on."

[timebethine]

After a long moment of walking in silence, Laertes says, low, "Wilt thou tell me of Arthur? The man thou lovest?"

[lanselos_du_lac]

"Aye," still quiet, "what wouldst thou know?"

[timebethine]

"What thou lovest. Tell me a story not of the king, but of the man." He swings open the door of the cabin and sets down his bags on the kitchen table. There, he starts taking out fruits and arranging them in bowls, and setting an occasional errant jar of beans on the spacious pantry shelf.

[lanselos_du_lac]

Lancelot is silent for a few moments as he unloads things from the bags he has carried and arrays them on the table for Laertes to put away. Eventually, he says, "There was a time, when I had not been at Camelot for very long, that Guinever was away for a brief while to visit her family. She and I had not yet... well. Let us say I had not touched her. Things were easier, I think, with Arthur then, before we had erred. I suggested to him that we two should go hunting, just us. He so rarely got time away from court to enjoy himself, and things were quiet."

Once he has the bag emptied, he comes to lean against the counter to watch Laertes work. "At first, he said he could not do it. Neither Merlin nor Kay -- especially Kay, I think -- wanted him away from court, even for just a day or two. They always insisted it was dangerous. Arthur was ever inclined to defer to them. I kept at him, though, and made preparations, and eventually he felt a bit bad that I did so much work and he at last told them that we would be going."

[timebethine]

"I'm glad thou didst." The fruit goes in bowls on the table; the cheese wheels (still in their wax) go in a ceramic box with a lid that's very obviously of Laertes's own making. He lines up dried goods: flour and oats and barley and beans, peas and lentils and nuts. He's stolen a mortar and pestle on this expedition, and those take pride of place on the counter (lovingly sanded and oiled until it shines). "What happened, on thy hunt?"

[lanselos_du_lac]

He smiles a little, "We did not go far -- just far enough to feel we were away from court. We were only hunting small game, fowl, the sort of thing that doesn't take a hunting party and few hounds. We rode out, and once we were out of the castle town it was like a weight came off of Arthur. He has a way of... there is a light in him. It can be seen at court, now and again, but when he is allowed to be someone simple, to be only himself, it's as if a bright lamp has been unshuttered. We hunted, we laughed, we drank-- when he was here, that day, it was much the same. We could speak freely with one another, and he could be glad and... cease, in a way, to be king for a time. We took some small pheasants, had a very nice campfire meal. We spoke of things that did not matter, or we made jokes about things that did. There are very few people I have felt I could speak freely with, without worry of misstepping or being misunderstood. Before I came here, it was most often only Arthur or Bors."

[timebethine]

And that ease came to an end, when Lancelot began his affair with Guinevere--it must have weighed on all three of them, the pain of keeping a secret (of being a secret) from those who loved them best. Even Arthur, Laertes thinks, must have suffered; how much it would have ached for him, if he had seen Sagramore hiding an affair with someone that he, too, adored! "And Guinevere?" says Laertes as he hangs up the empty bags on their hook. "Tell me of the most joyous of thy days with her."

[lanselos_du_lac]

He moves to sit in one of the chairs, "In truth? Many of them were joyous with her." Lancelot gives a thoughtful pause. "If she was feeling well, if things were well, then any time one might spend with her was joyous. She was gentle and bright, much of the time. As I think on it now, it seems to me that at least her ladies knew of our love. I know others did, but-- she must have made an effort. We would go out riding, on good days. I had an excuse to be with her and her ladies, as I was the Queen's Champion. Often, on these days, we were eventually left to our own devices somewhere in the wood or the clearing."

A little pause. Then, after a long breath. "Laertes, she was beautiful. I cannot tell you how much. She and Arthur both were like a bolt in me. But even outside of that-- if she was happy, there was no way anyone could look at anything but her. She was so often joyful with me, that I cannot tell you of any particular time. I loved her. I loved making her look that way."

[timebethine]

Laertes comes over to him, and stands behind his chair to wrap his arms around Lancelot's shoulders. "I would thy days could have been spent hunting with him, and riding with her. I would thine could have been an ordinary love, and not ..." The long silence that follows encompasses the decades of intrigue and deception, the treason, wars both civil and foreign, and ultimately the loss of those Lancelot loved best in all the world.

[lanselos_du_lac]

Lancelot reaches up to set his hand over Laertes' wrists, and leans into him. "Aye," he says, quietly, "but-- now I am here, and I may have that sort of love with thee."

[timebethine]

"Careful," says Laertes, gently chiding. "Loving me means a hundred tasks. I might set thee to laying bricks, or helping me lay electrical wires from the mansion."

[lanselos_du_lac]

He twists a little, to kiss Laertes' jaw, "I was made for tasks. I mind that not at all."

[timebethine]

"A hundred tasks," says Laertes solemnly, and he kisses Lancelot's temple in turn. "We have fields to till ere spring is over, that we might plant in time to reap. A peasant's life is labor--but his heart is his to give where he will."

[lanselos_du_lac]

"I have seen folk tilling fields, but I've not done it myself. Thou'lt need to teach me."

[timebethine]

"Nor have I--I'll need to learn."

[lanselos_du_lac]

"Thou canst learn anything, I think."

[timebethine]

"As canst thou. As can anyone."