fic: Blacksmith's Apprentice
Morgana goes to order a new dagger from Tom the blacksmith, for three reasons. The first is that she’s lost her old one, somewhere in the forest, she supposes, secondly Tom’s work is of excellent quality, and thirdly, she knows he is discreet.
When she steps into the smithy, an unknown young man meets her eyes, bent over a glowing piece of iron. Dark hair curls damply around his face. “Is Tom there?” Morgana asks.
“I’ll get him for you, my lady,” the young man says, voice low and very soft.
Tom tells her that it’s his new apprentice - a nephew, very talented boy.
When Morgana walks back to her chambers she finds herself thinking about the curve of the blacksmith’s apprentice’s smile. It’s odd, that a man should do this to her, a blacksmith’s apprentice, hardly more than a boy. It’s been some time since any of the girls in the castle caught her interest, even.
She dreams about him, and she can’t tell what kind of dream it is. It has that too sharp, real feeling of her nightmares, but there is nothing sinister about it. It is only her own hands, cupping the blacksmith apprentice’s face, moving one thumb to the corner of the brilliant smile.
She asks him what his name is, when she comes to fetch her new dagger.
“Wyn, milady,” he answers, and when Morgana holds her hand out to him in a sudden moment of fancy he doesn’t kiss it like she expected, but takes it in his own, in a firm grip. Wyn’s hand is hardly bigger than Morgana’s, fingers slim but firm and strong, palm warm and calloused.
Tom returns with the dagger, polished and gleaming. Morgana likes the weight of it, reassuring in her hand. She pays Tom for the material and the work, then looks again to Wyn, who’s gone back to tending the fire. “You’re new to the city, are you not?” she says. “There will be a feast after the tournament the day after tomorrow. Half the city’s coming. You should as well.”
Wyn looks up from the fireplace with a smile and Morgana feels her own lips quirk upwards of their own accord. She leaves, wonders.
---
“Oh,” says Morgana, “oh,” as Wyn says: “When I was little, my father called me Gwen,” and draws his shirt over his head and drops it on the grass, revealing that his chest (no, her chest) is wrapped up hard with old bits of linen. They left the feast a little while ago. Morgana can still hear the low thrum of singing closer to the castle, but here, in the gardens, they’re alone and Morgana reaches out to draw her fingers from Wyn’s collarbones down over her hidden-away breasts. She shivers.
“I thought you were a boy,” Morgana says on a soft breath, admiring Wyn’s decidedly female waist, the beautiful lines of her slim upper body, her strong arms, muscled from work. “It was odd, confusing. I couldn’t understand how the gaze of a boy could do such things to me.”
Wyn’s been looking nervous but determined since she started to unlace her shirt, but now, her tentative smile blossoms like the sun in spring.
“I couldn’t stop watching you, milady,” she says, voice low and husky. And then she takes Morgana’s hand and places it on her bound breasts, nods to Morgana’s questioning look. Morgana carefully unwraps the bandages, peeling off layer after layer, revealing more perfect warm brown skin, then splays her fingers over Wyn’s left breast, cupping it in her palm. Wyn shivers, then curls one hand around Morgana’s neck to draw her so close that she can feel her soft puffs of breath against her lips. Wyn’s eyes are wide open and Morgana watches the small shifts of colour in them, the dark curl of her eyelashes, and she’s looking down - towards Morgana’s mouth, she realises - and it is such a small step to angle her head and press their lips together. It still feels like something shifting in the air between them, like wheels turning in Morgana’s chest.
It’s a tentative kiss, at first, then Wyn tangles her hand in Morgana’s hair, nails scratching over her neck, and Morgana kisses her deeper, forcefully, and tumbles them both down on the damp grass.
Later, they’re lying on Morgana’s gown spread out like a blanket on the grass without a care in the world about stains, still breathless both. It’s reckless, this, the King’s ward naked in the gardens with a blacksmith’s apprentice who would no longer be allowed to be one if she was seen here. But all of Camelot is otherwise occupied tonight.
“Have you always wanted to do blacksmithing?” Morgana wonders, letting her fingertips ghost over the calluses on Wyn’s palms.
“Yes. When I was very little, when my father kept me in the smithy when he worked, I’d watch how he tamed the fire and worked the steel, and how he turned heavy metals into the most graceful things and sharpest swords, and all I wanted was to learn how to.” She stills Morgana’s hand, threads their fingers together, continues: “Tom’s daughter, Gwen, couldn’t take over the smithy, even if he’d been teaching her in secret for years and found her skilful. So Gwen left Camelot and Tom’s nephew Wyn took her place.”
“And so you got your rightful place, mastering metal and fire.”
Wyn kisses her in answer, rolling over on top of Morgana and tangling their legs together. The summer night is cool on their skin, still moist with sweat. Wyn spreads Morgana’s hair out like a dark halo over the dress and grass under them, and whispers: “I’ll show you everything I know.”