Archive of Our Own ^beta

You never know what is enough unless you know what is more than enough!

Never question the judgement of fair maidens laying fine mantles about your shoulders and leading you off, is what Gawain would say, but Gawain isn’t here and Agravaine thinks perhaps the castle might simply have limited spare bedchambers. 

It isn’t that he has an aversion to Dinadan. Dinadan is a fairly charming fellow, in fact, and makes for unfailingly good company. But there’s something-- Agravaine shifts awkwardly, fiddles with the ties on the fur-lined surcoat their hosts have provided. Dinadan is terribly perceptive, is the something; it’s easier to bear in groups, riding four astride or gathered round a table. But in moments of isolated quietude (which Agravaine already finds difficult to exist in) he feels a terrible, silent eye upon him. Dinadan knows a man even with a helmet on or at a distance-- it’s a real talent. Agravaine thinks perhaps he sees right through the metal, and now, perhaps, sees right through clothes and flesh, clean through to a weak and cowardly heart.

They are changing into fine clothes, laid out in the chamber, in preparation for a feast. Dinadan is humming to himself as he pulls on his stockings, taking his time. Agravaine dressed so hurriedly that now he is sitting on a little settle and watching. He feels like he is doing something wrong, something not allowed, and isn’t sure why. Dinadan has pulled up the bottom of his surcoat, to tie up his stockings, revealing a thin band of naked thigh. Dinadan isn’t terribly handsome, Agravaine thinks, maybe petulantly. 

“You’re very quiet this evening,” Dinadan says in a casual manner, letting the furry edge of his surcoat fall back down over his leg. A disappointment and a relief.

“I suppose,” Agravaine replies tersely. He feels terribly tense.

 “Where goes our garrulous instigator? Have you a grim affliction?” Then Dinadan frowns, suddenly serious. “You aren’t taken with some fair maid, are you? I’ll slay myself if I must hear another acquaintance pontificate on love. My blood will be on your hands, sir.”

“Peace,” Agravaine says. He has to resist gritting his teeth. It feels terrible to be still but Dinadan is still leisurely pulling on his shoes, with a curious half-glance. The sun is setting outside and sending orange beams through the window which make the room prickly and hot, even on a mild spring evening. “Maybe I have tired of your jesting.”

“Of course. You gain no merriment from me; it was simply a coincidence that you wept with laughter this morning when I read aloud my new ballad concerning the defeat of King Mark by Sir Dagonet. No, you’ve no maiden to sulk for.” This last pronouncement was made with a sort of satisfied certainty, as if this was only right and proper and the way of the world.

Against his better instincts (which rarely won out) Agravaine felt himself becoming prickly. “I could have a maiden if I liked.” 

“But you must not like,” Dinadan observed. “Since you don’t have one. As you just admitted by failing to refute my statement.”

“Ah,” said Agravaine. His mind felt slow and sludgy, like half melted snow slushing down a mountain stream, picking up dead leaves and dirt as it pushed sadly along. “I can’t be bothered with such nonsense. I’ll take a wife when I care to and not waste my time courting and pining.”

“You’re no fellow to weep beside a well, or tie favours to your lance.”

“Quite so,” Agravaine agreed quickly, which he regretted immediately as Dinadan was surely driving at something and it was probably a joke at his expense, or worse, an observation.

“There’s a word for fellows like that but I’m afraid it isn’t polite,” Dinadan said with a triumphant little smile. “No, sir, don’t get your blood up, let not your face grow red, I jest, you know, I only jest.”

But his face was red, terribly red, and he knew with terror that he was about to say something, potentially a lot of it, when a gentle rap on the door alerted the return of the ladies. There were to be led off and feasted. “Who that has a house of glass, is wrong to cast stones,” he said quickly, and leapt to the door, yanking it open before Dinadan could reply. His face was still burning. The ladies must see it. He feels like a marked man.

The feast is probably excellent, though cannot match the splendor of Camelot. Agravaine doesn’t notice. He eats rather little and everything that he does eat tastes like nothing. Dinadan is seated several seats down, and Agravaine isn’t looking at him. He isn’t looking at him out of a terrible fear that he will be caught looking at him, which seems like it would be an event so dreadful as to hasten in the fall of man and the day of judgement. 

“The room is too warm,” he says, when Mordred pokes him in the side and demands to know what he’s being odd for. The second time Mordred pokes him he says he is tired. The third time he says he is sick of being poked. Technically all of these things are true. 

Their host is some sort of lord, and if Gawain or Lancelot or someone were here the lord would probably have a strange challenge or the castle a sinister mystery. Agravaine suspects their little party is not important enough for such things, however, so there are merely being fed and clothed for the night. Just as well. He doesn’t want to spend the evening kissing some stranger's wife or hurling spears at things or having beds come alive and try to kill him, or whatever new nonsense it was this time. This is why he will never be a good knight, says The Voice of Gawain. The Voice of Gawain doesn’t actually sound like Gawain, or even say what Gawain would say, necessarily, but is nonetheless The Voice of Gawain.

The Voice of Gawain likes to say things like “well why don’t you have a maiden, then?” and “if you are a sodomite you don’t seem terribly dedicated to the lifestyle,” and “maybe the maidens and the sodomites just don’t want you.”  

It is especially saying all of those things at the moment. The table had been cleared and Dinadan is playing on his lute. He has quick, strong fingers and a dreamy, satisfied expression on his (plain, Agravaine pointedly recalls) face. Their hosts and companions are smiling delightedly. Mordred rolled his eyes.

Agravaine resolves to believe that he is simply tired, and when Mordred has had a few days to rest (he seems to flit from injury to injury with the sort of persistent bad luck that might make another young man give it all up as a lost cause) they will all part company. Perhaps he will go back to Orkney for a time (he will certainly not) or perhaps, perhaps…

“You’ve taken rather pale, Mordred,” says their cousin Yvain. He’s one of their most pleasant relatives, not quite famous enough to be hateable but still a very handy person to have around. Agravaine has given up on trying to dislike him. He is filled with a surprising sense of appreciation now.

“It’s only my face,” Mordred argues. Though a proper knight now, he is still young enough to be on guard against the indignity of being sent off to bed. But he really does appear to be flagging somewhat. 

“We’ve all had some adventures today,” Dinadan says mildly. “Most of us did it without having been bled like Easter lambs the day before.”

The lord is already charmed by Dinadan, probably, and he is quick to agree that they all should rest and be made well. The fair ladies conduct them back to their chambers, lay out fresh shirts to sleep in and perfumed water to wash their faces and hands. 

Agravaine makes sure they fetch a leech to look at Mordred, who says he is perfectly well, but only once, which means he really would like to see some medicine and tending, so he must feel fairly wretched. But-- the old medical man assures him-- healing quickly. The doctor says something about the wonders of youth and Agravaine cuts him off with a perfunctory rude remark and stalks off.

He’s oddly reluctant to return to the bedchamber, comfortable and well appointed as it is, feels himself warm at the memory of the orange sunset-heat. But there isn’t anywhere else for him to be, and the lord only knows what he’d say if he met someone wandering the corridors and had to explain-- well he wasn’t sure what he had to explain. 

Dinadan is sitting up, scribbling away at something which will no doubt delight and amuse. Agravaine barely acknowledges his greeting, sets to the task of dressing himself for bed with grim efficiency, staring fixedly at the wall and gritting his teeth. The quill keeps scratching away, but even without its stochastic drone he knows he is not being watched. Nevertheless, the shirt which falls to his knees still leaves him feeling exposed. 

“This,” Dinadan says triumphantly, “will be what finally does it. Gets me exiled permanently from Cornwall, that is.”

“You aren’t charming,” said Agravaine. Why has he said that? Sometimes his mouth opens before he even knows what its going to do. “You aren’t charming me. So stop trying. Don’t put on a show when it’s-- there’s no audience around.”

He dares to turn around. Dinadan is looking, to his surprise, bemused and even a little offended. “I only mean…”

Dinadan shakes his head. “A man can’t make his jokes? A man can’t treat a companion in a friendly manner without being after something? I’m not trying to charm you. Good lord, I’m not Gawain. ”

This last was said with a rare show of feeling, and now at least Agravaine is on familiar ground. “I hope you aren’t insulting my brother. I’ll have your fool head if you are, I swear it--!”

But Dinadan only spreads his palms placatingly. “Oh, please, give it a rest, just for the night. Aren’t you tired?”

“I won’t tolerate my family to be insulted,” he says, but suspects it to be an empty threat. 

“And what about myself? Have you not insulted me?” 

Suddenly feeling rather brutish, Agravaine realizes that he has. “Well, then-- I suppose we are at peace.”

“I’m amenable,” Dinadan is cheery again. “You know I really don’t have designs. I’m afraid I put you on edge before.”

“It’s just your nature to say such things.”

“A man can’t change his nature,” Dinadan agrees, something strangely sympathetic in his voice. “You don’t have to want, you know.”

“Hah?” He’s got a sinking, panic-like feeling. He wants to beg Dinadan not to saw anything else, stop now before it’s too late.

“You don’t have to want maidens,” Dinadan says patiently. “Or wives. Or-- the alternative.”

It’s like he’s possessed by something, the way he speaks without ever having intended to.“But I do.”

Damning. The Voice of Gawain will make much of this. Agravaine wants to break something. He wants to leave. He wants and that’s the whole stupid problem.

Dinadan quirks his head. “But you haven’t?”

At least he isn’t putting words to the thing. The Lord be thanked for small mercies. There is no chance of prevaricating, and he was never terrible good at that anyway. “I’ve not-- There hasn’t been occasion.” His company has not been requested, he means, says Voice of Gawain. Yes, thank you, he responds petulantly. Thank you so much for your help. 

How humiliating. He can’t even be a sinner correctly, and now Dinadan knows. He’ll probably write a poem about it, and then Agravaine really might go and try to kill him, and probably get all cut up for his troubles. Dinadan can be a devil on the field, when he really tries, it’s just he so rarely does, but Agravaine still remembers-- 

It’s not like he hasn’t seen plenty of terribly impressive feats of arms in his life. There's no cause to be impressed.

“You’ve really gotten terribly down about it, haven’t you?” Dinadan is peering at him. Agravaine might as well be standing here naked, how he is laid bare before that gaze. 

“I neither need nor want your pity,” he manages, summoning all the tatters of his pride and making for the bed. Perhaps he can lie there and pretend to sleep and pray for Gabriel to blow his blasted stupid trumpet. “Go back to your silly songs.”

“Oh, come off it,” Dinadan says dismissively. “You’re a fine enough fellow, in many respects anyway. Good profile, when you aren’t scowling. Like that, stop doing that. There, see? Oh, come over here, then.”

He does come over here then, mutely obedient but internally alight with shameful anger and other things undeserving of naming. Dinadan is dressed except his shoes, which are discarded, and he pats the place beside him on the low couch. It isn’t a terribly wide couch, and when Agravaine sits, they are nearly touching.

“It’s early enough in the evening,” Dinadan says casually, “we could have occasion.”

“Occasion to-- oh,” he almost chokes on air, letting out an awkward strangled sort of sound. Lord but what an unseasonably warm evening.“Oh.”

“I mean that I’d use my hand,” Dinadan explains, as if this were all quite regular and casual sort of talk. “I’m not an overly regular or sophisticated practitioner. But I think it might do you some good being touched in a friendly way-- if you’d like.”

So this is how it happens? Agravaine thinks. Just like that? They’re sitting so close together and he is terribly afraid of what might come next but he wouldn’t get up for anything. “Ah-- yes-- if you mean-- alright.”

Dinadan nods, agreable. “I do this sometimes with friends who are morose or need wound up. They talk of love less after, and it’s something to do on dull evenings or rainy mornings. We’re sort of friends I think, aren’t we?”

“Funny position for enemies to be in,” Agravaine says, probably with an expression of pure dumbstruck stupidity. 

“Oh, you’d be surprised the stories I hear… but I don’t like to gossip.”

“That’s a lie,” Agravaine says. Dinadan loves to gossip. Agravaine probably does too, which is how he knows. “I-- If you’re playing some joke on me, if this is a mischief I’ll--”

Dinadan grimaces. “That’d be a rather nasty thing to do to a fellow. If your opinion of me is so low, maybe we aren’t friends after all. I must insist on you having some faith in me.”

I have faith in you , Agravaine doesn’t say, because Dinadan would certainly laugh, but he does lean in and kiss him. 

“Oh,” Dinadan says against his mouth, sounding surprised but not displeased. “Alright.”

But Agravaine is already pulling away. “What do you mean alright?” 

It sounds terribly huffy, because he’s completely out of breath for some reason, and he feels how flushes his face is, practically feverish and certainly quite unbecoming. If only he’d dowsed the light, then Dinadan wouldn’t see him so affected, and he wouldn’t have to see Dinadan looking at him quizzically. “I mean that I wasn’t expecting you to go for a gentle close-mouthed kiss as your opening action, but was by no means opposed to it, was even somewhat charmed.”

“Charmed,” Agravaine repeats, insulted, but also sort of fluttery. Mortifyingly, he wants to be charming. If he were a strong sort of man he would remove the part of himself that wanted, like hermit-monks who lived on top of pillars and whipped themselves a hundred times a day, eating nothing but God’s love. Instead he mumbles something like “I do want you to touch me,” despite the fact that he’s fairly well established that sentiment, because he hasn’t the courage for anything else.

“I’m amenable to accommodating that,” Dinadan replies primly.

“Right,” Agravaine says. Neither of them move. 

“You’re terribly tense,” says Dinadan in a conversational manner. 

“Am I?” Whatever prurient interest had been sparked was rapidly giving way to confused irritation, so this comment came out sounding rather sharp.

“Yes, see, right there, your eyebrows are drawing together, recalling to mind a cobra raising it’s hood. I can’t imagine why.”

“Oh, you can’t?” Agravaine exclaims, huffing. Here they are, pressed together in a private little room, himself dressed in only a linen shirt, having been told that-- that something was going to happen and here something was, not happening. He has a feeling he is being played a joke upon, and that makes his whole body itch like he is about to do something regrettable.   

“Well, I can imagine many things, certainly, I’m a very imaginative fellow. What I mean is that I-- mm!”

The truncated phrase being due, of course, to the sudden reassignation of the mouth. It could not be said that Agravaine is a particularly practiced or skilled kisser, but forcefulness and enthusiasm makes up the difference, at least in terms of conveying his point. Dinadan quickly recovers from his surprise, leaning into the embrace with, if not equal fervor, than at least polite mirroring.

“You were doing it on purpose, weren’t you?” Agravaine asks, breathless, when they part some long moments later. “To make me so irritated that I--!”

Dinadan laughs, as if delighted. “You were thinking too much.”

Somehow, during the kissing, hands have rather moved about. This is something Agravaine was only passively aware of before now, but is rapidly becoming the focus of his attention. He wants to make some witty reply to Dinadan, whose long, quick hands have settled lightly-- teasingly--? On his thighs, slipping under the hem of his shirt. But all he can think about is, well, hands, there, possibly moving other places, and how hot and wet another mouth could be, and how strangely nice it was for it to be so. 

His own arms are thrown rather prudishly about Dinadan’s upper back. Perhaps he aught to move them. Perhaps he aught to move more in general, but in what manner? What comes next? Agravaine can’t bring himself to ask. Dinadan surely knows but won’t say, the bastard. 

“You’re still rather tense,” Dinadan says, and, as if in a soothing motion, begins rubbing his thumbs in little circles, pressing down on the inside of Agravaine’s thighs, where the skin is pale and soft and, it turns out, very sensitive. He shivers, exhaling sharply. 

He wants to press more closely together, to move, but isn’t sure if he should. Dinadan has certainly done this before, he said as much, what did the other people do at this juncture? Suddenly Agravaine is thinking of who those other people were. Dinadan is a very friendly fellow. He has a great deal of friends.

Almost assuredly Lancelot was one of them, but this thought he quickly smothers, because this is a direction he does not let his mind ever go. He certainly is not imagining it now, with Dinadan’s fingers moving up his thighs.

“You don’t wear braies to bed? Even when you’re sharing?” Dinadan asks curiously, as he has now moved past where even the shortest pair would fall.

“I-- uh-- no,” Agravaine says, but it comes out gaspingly. 

“You just find it more comfortable in only a shirt, I suppose?” His tone is so casual and conversational that Agravaine could become very irritated if he weren’t rather distracted.

“I--suppose I-- ah!” is the best he can manage. This is because, completely without ceremony, Dinadan’s hands have slipped down between his legs to grasp him. The sensation is so sudden and the flesh there so tender that it is painful, and he lets out a startled and rather unmanful yelp. 

“Oh, of course,” Dinadan says, and his hands immediately retreat. Agravaine makes a disappointed little noise he would certainly deny making later. He will probably deny all of this later, actually. Dinadan is looking about distractedly, humming. “You wouldn’t have--? No, you wouldn’t-- ah, well. Not an issue.”

Agravaine looks on in dumb astonishment as Dinadan slips his fingers into his mouth. It should be off putting, gross even, but he finds he is watched with naked interest.

“I can do that-- do that for you.”

“Hm? No, whyever would you?” Dinadan asks, finishes licking his fingers and blinks at Agravaine in mild bemusement.

Right, of course, why would he. What a strange and stupid thing to suggest! How strange and stupid Agravaine was to suggest it. 

Despite his efforts, the sudden humiliated despair must have shown on his face, because Dinadan gives a little sigh and makes a sympathetic noise. “I think you’re still rather nervous. Oh, come here, then.”

Agravaine is about to protest that he is sitting practically as near as can be already, but Dinadan has reached out with his clean hand, buried it in the soft, curly hair at the base of Agravaine’s neck, and pulled him forward so his face rests upon the breast of Dinadan’s damascene silk surcoat.

“You know Agravaine,” he says, pitying, “I suspect that at heart you are a romantic.”

And then the warm, wet pressure of Dinadan’s fingers between his legs cut off any sharp remark which might have followed. In it’s place, a soft gasp and involuntary shiver. The touch is firm but not rough, and Agravaine is distantly surprised to feel himself relaxing against it. His mouth falls open against flower-printed silk which rises and falls with Dinadan’s silent, even breaths. His thighs press together as if to trap Dinadan’s hand there, and the tight-closeness sends a violent shiver up his body. It verges on painful, and Agravaine must whimper or call out something terribly pathetic and shameful--

“Come, shush, you’re alright,” Dinadan says lightly. “You’re holding up just fine.”

The effect of his words is so obvious and immediate that he chuckles softly, and Agravaine screws his eyes shut tighter against shameful reality, hurls himself deeper into insensible sensation.

Dinadan keeps murmuring comforting nonsense in a tone which is terribly patronizing, but Agravaine can’t stand to think of that now so foolishly he believes all the gentle soothing praise, presses himself into it.

For a period of time that may be a minute or may be a month, Agravaine is blissfully unaware of the world and his position in it. Dinadan has such clever, callused fingers, and Agravaine sees with terrible clarity that he will never again be able to see him strum and play at his lute without thinking of this moment and going all--

“Do warn me, won’t you?”

“I-- Ahh--!”

Rueful laughter ringing in his ears. “Or don’t, whatever suits. Alright there?”

Alright being a relative state, he supposes all his limbs are still attached. Instead of saying that he says something like “uhm,” or "o-- oh--” or otherwise unintelligent. His body feels so strange all over, tingling and drained and confused. He is sitting slumped against the low wooden rest of the couch, eyes still closed tightly against the existence of the world outside the couch.  

After an indeterminate span of time, a damp cloth is pressed into his hands. 

“So you can clean yourself off,” Dinadan says, when Agravaine only blinks at him dumbly.

“Ah. Ah! Yes.”

“Well,” says Dinadan, sounding like he’s far away, “do you feel so different now?” 

“Do you think you’ve proven a point?” Agravaine asks. He wants to stay here, warm and half asleep, isolated from the resentments of the past and the novel shames of the future. In the morning he will have to look Dinadan in the eyes, unless he gauges them out which he might briefly consider. His or Dinadan’s, either way.

“I’m sure I have,” Dinadan says gently. “But I don’t yet know what point I have proved. Good night, Agravaine.”

“Good night.”