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When Arthur awoke this early morn, Lancelot was already gone from his arms. He was sitting with the others when Arthur hastily dressed and joined them. Arthur tried to catch his gaze, but Lancelot avoided it.
It made Arthur’s heart ache.
Surely, the knight understood what Arthur tried to convey last night. Perhaps the emotions confused the stoic warrior or made him uncomfortable. Or worse…
He didn’t feel the same and wanted to insert some distance between them.
They’d not had a moment alone to speak on it. And even if they did, Arthur wasn’t good with words. Not when he felt this much.
Too much.
But he needed this awkward distance gone between them. Whether or not Lancelot felt the same, they were friends. He must know that Arthur would do anything for him.
As they hiked through the forest, Arthur walked close enough to the knight to bump his shoulder, sometimes his arm or hip. Sometimes, their hands accidentally-on-purpose touched. And when these small connections finally made Lancelot look his way, he met the knight’s eyes and quirked a corner of his lips.
Lancelot’s silvery gaze glittered as his own mouth lifted in turn. He bumped Arthur’s shoulder in return, hard enough to knock him to the side a step.
Arthur immediately shoved him back two steps, using his greater bulk.
Wolfe snorted from behind them, clearly entertained by their back and forth. Arthur turned and shared a look with his brother. Rui was smiling at him too. She gave a small nod, as if in encouragement.
Emboldened by their approval, Arthur wrapped an arm around Lancelot’s shoulder and tugged the man into his side for a brief moment before releasing him again. It was a clear gesture of affection and possessiveness, proudly displayed for anyone who witnessed it.
Lancelot knew it too, if the startled look he gave Arthur was any indication. He staggered off stride, surprised.
Arthur was not brave enough, just yet, to yank him in for a searing kiss. But he wanted to. He wanted everyone to know, especially Lancelot himself, that the knight was his.
But Lancelot had to choose him too. When he was fully his own man again. When he was strong again.
This was why Arthur put one foot determinedly in front of the other, marching toward the object that could break them apart. He wanted Lancelot to choose him the same way he chose the knight.
Not as the king a warrior followed.
Not as the comrade a friend tried to save.
But as the man Lancelot loved.
The way Arthur had always loved him.
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Lancelot didn’t know what to make of Arthur.
For a man who supposedly loved him, if the words he heard in his mind had not been a figment of his imagination, Arthur was in a jolly good mood on their way to recover the means of their imminent separation.
Lancelot scowled, staying one step behind Arthur now, instead of walking side by side, shoulder to shoulder.
It was his preferred location relative to the other man, the better to protect Arthur’s back and to admire his taut, muscular posterior.
It was also his place out of habit. Lancelot felt strange walking beside Arthur, as if they were equals. As if they were…partners.
No wonder Arthur kept bumping into him. Neither of them were used to this.
So, he fell back into his usual position. The better to avoid Arthur’s gaze as well.
He couldn’t look into the man’s eyes now without seeing what he saw last night. It was just…too much. And those confounded emotions threatened to overwhelm him whenever he lost himself in the king’s stormy blues.
Lancelot himself marched toward the hidden amulet the way a man shuffled toward his own execution. And not the quick and relatively painless kind. The drawn and quartered, torture for days on a rack then staked through the arse and left in the sun to fester and rot and get picked apart by vultures kind.
