Merlin fic: Call It a Knight (Elena/Gwaine)
Title: Call It a Knight
Pairing: Elena/Gwaine
Rating: R
Word count: ~2200
Summary: Gwaine is drunk and then he meets a woman. She’s really pretty. Really, really pretty.
Warnings: none
Disclaimer: Merlin is owned by the BBC and Shine. No copyright infringement intended.
Note: Part 2 of the Weird Pairing Experience-Merlin edition!
Gwaine never was the kind of man a woman would want as a son-in-law. He wasn’t the kind of person someone imagined living their old days in a house by the forest with. And he definitely wasn’t the kind of knight princesses yearned for from the top of their towers. He was a Knight of Camelot, yes (capital letter intended), and a good one at that: he’d saved his fair share of damsels in distress, but he was definitely not the shining-armour type that freed princesses from dragons.
Unless princesses dreamed of knights who drunk their arse off in a tavern in the middle of the week. To be honest, Gwaine wouldn’t say no to this kind of princess.
Well. In the state he was in, he wouldn’t say no to anyone. He would regret not saying no in the morning, there was no doubt about it, but if there was anyone willing to sleep with him right now, he wouldn’t say no. The fact that he was in no shape to have sex with anyone-that he was in no shape to get up, let alone get it up-didn’t occur to his alcohol-addled mind.
All things considered, Gwaine was lucky that he hadn’t been thrown out of the Rising Sun yet. Half-asleep on his chair, his cheek stuck to some grimy substance on his usual table, and his hand firmly closed around his drink, Gwaine was on the right track to spend the night here and to get yelled at by Arthur when he’d inevitably get late to training in the morning. Arthur always got a very unattractive shade of puce when he yelled at Gwaine during training, and showing up late, hung-over, and stinking of all the vile things Evoric never took the time to clean from his tavern after midnight would no doubt make the Kingly Prat a shade of purple that was wont to clash with the red of his cape.
Gwaine might not be the fairy-tale kind of knight, but he was still a Knight of Camelot and sometimes (mostly when he was sloshed) felt the impulse to act knightly (or what his brain at the time deemed knightly). Why he suddenly felt that keeping Arthur from turning into the very unbecoming version of himself he was when he yelled at Gwaine was the knightly thing to do was a mystery for the ages. All Gwaine knew was that he had to go back to his chambers right away, and if it wasn’t exactly a life-or-death situation, it might as well have been.
The problem was that at the exact moment his body chose to straighten itself from his bench, something-someone?-hit the back of his head in an almost as painful manner as the way Percy hit his arm when he considered Gwaine’s latest joke too insensitive. (Gwaine’s man-love for his best mate was true, but sometimes Percy really tested it.)
Gwaine yelped (perhaps not as knightly as he could have) and got up at once. His intense headache prevented him from brandishing his long sword, and it was certainly a good thing, because if he had, it might have run through the very lovely young woman that was standing behind him. (Well in front of him now that he’d turned around, but she’d been behind him a moment ago, and damn! was she pretty.)
‘What deeply terrible foul was that? Where is the miscreant that dares attack a Knight of Camelot? Let him come forth!’ Gwaine thundered at the same time the lady said, ‘Oh my god, I’m so sorry! I hope I didn’t hurt you. I’m so clumsy-well, I used to be even clumsier, so I guess it could be worse, but-oh my god, I’m so sorry!’
It took some time after that for Gwaine to realise what exactly was going on (mostly because his head was still pounding fiercely, but a little bit because she was really pretty and also, babbling like a loon.)
First, he gathered that at least half of the pain gnawing at his skull had not been caused by the hit to his head, but was the beginning of a hangover. (Was it the first time his hangover began before he’d left the tavern? Was it even possible to get hung-over while still drunk? Did it mean Gwaine possessed a bit of magic? Should he worry about that?) Second, he processed what he’d just said to the lady, and realised that instead of the three well-spoken sentences he’d intended to let out, it was actually more grunts than words that had spouted out of his mouth. Third, it came to his attention that it was actually her (or at least the mean-looking riding crop she was waving around) that had so painfully been acquainted with his head.
‘Slow down, lady!’ Gwaine said loudly enough to cover her continuous jabbering, and this time the rasp in his voice was an obvious clue that he was actually saying the words and not something akin to: harrumm grmm grhm. His muddled reflexes notwithstanding, he managed to grab her riding crop and prevent the decimation of the tavern’s clientele she was bound to start, gesticulating like this with such a sharp object in her hand.
Gwaine also managed to quiet her, and he was momentarily taken aback by the sudden silence (or maybe it was by how pretty her eyes were when she was looking at him so attentively.) He cleared his throat and said the first thing that came to his mind (which was not very clever and didn’t make a lot of sense, but it was expected, with a mind only working at half speed), ‘Are you a damsel in distress?’
Her pretty, pretty eyes widened at the question, and after a few seconds of looking at him like he’d sprouted another head, she let out a snort.
‘Don’t mock me!’ Gwaine protested, a little bit offended. ‘I’m a Knight. It is my duty to help damsels in distress. But I can’t very well do it if I don’t know who’s a damsel in distress and who’s not, can I? It’s only natural to ask.’
‘You’re absolutely right,’ she answered, and she sounded serious, but there was something a bit off with her smile. ‘Have you asked everyone here if they’re damsels in distress? It wouldn’t be right to miss any.’ Her eyebrows were raised and her mouth was a bit quirked, and ah! that was what was wrong with her smile: she was still mocking him, the little scamp!
‘Don’t mock me! I’m a Knight,’ Gwaine said, and was assaulted by a weird feeling of déjà-vu.
‘I’m not mocking you, I promise. This is very serious business. You don’t want damsels to stay in distress when you could have done something about it!’
And with these words, she dropped her riding crop on his table, took him by the arm and pulled him towards the nearest occupied table, at which sat three middle-aged men Gwaine often saw at the Rising Sun. He thought one of them might be the city’s butcher.
‘Hello,’ the lady said to them, breaking up what seemed to be a very passionate conversation about fleas. ‘This young man with me is a knight of Camelot. His name is…’ She trailed off and looked at him inquisitively. (Her eyes were very pretty.) Gwaine took maybe two seconds too long to realise he was supposed to say his name.
‘I’m Gwaine,’ he said somewhat dumbly. He then added, ‘I’m a Knight of Camelot,’ not at all redundantly (she’d forgotten to say the capital letter). ‘What’s your name?’ he asked her, remembering belatedly he was supposed to be a bit of a charmer.
She ignored him and turned back to the three men. ‘Gwaine here, like I said, is a Knight of Camelot, and would like to know if any of you considered yourselves to be damsels in distress?’
There was a blank during which the men just looked at them, dumbfounded, before they burst out laughing deep belly-laughs, their eyes watering and their fists hitting the table. Gwaine didn’t really care: the lady was still holding his arm in her hand, which was very pretty, as pretty as the rest of herself, and Gwaine would definitely find another word for pretty when he was sober (or maybe he’d just ask Elyan).
The lady pulled him to another table, where the same scene took place, then another one, then another one. At some point her hand left his arm to settle on his wrist, and that was quite nice too: skin on skin. Their search for a damsel in distress was very thorough, but when it finally came to an end, it turned out to be unfortunately vain. Not Old Aymerick, nor Phillibert the stable boy, nor any of the others seemed to qualify. Gwaine was not surprised: damsels in distress very rarely took the form of drunk and balding tavern patrons. There had been a glimmer of hope when they’d reached One-Eyed Marcella, but she’d laughed at them as much as the others before returning to her enormous tankard.
They ended up sitting at Gwaine’s table, where his pint had stayed loyally waiting for him, making friends with the lady’s riding crop. The lady didn’t seem to think too much of it, as her first action once she was seated was to grab Gwaine’s tankard and take a few swallows of his drink, before belching in a very un-lady-like manner. Gwaine certainly couldn’t go on calling her “the lady” (be it in his head or anywhere else) if she decided to act like that.
‘You never answered my question,’ he began, trying not to get too distracted by how pretty she looked with her upper lip covered in ale-foam and her eyes dancing with glee.
‘I’m definitely not a damsel in distress, I can assure you,’ she said very solemnly. Gwaine spared a moment to be relieved that she was in no sort of danger before remembering this wasn’t the question he wanted answered.
‘I meant, what’s your name? Also, you’re very pretty.’ She was pretty, but Gwaine didn’t intend to blurt it out like this. He was used to being way smoother with the ladies, but he’d already decided she wasn’t a lady. She was something entirely different, and it fascinated him.
She snorted again, and a bit of ale-foam flew from her lip to a spot just next to Gwaine’s elbow.
‘Thank you, Gwaine. I see you’re as chivalrous as would be expected from a Knight of Camelot.’ (Gwaine really liked that she didn’t forget the capital letter anymore.) ‘I guess Arthur did something good with your lot, after all.’
Gwaine wanted to note somewhere in his head that she seemed to know Arthur, but wasn’t sure of what to do with the information, or if he would even be able to remember it in the morning. Also, she still hadn’t told him her name.
She was sipping at his pint now, looking at him from behind the rim of his tankard, her eyes wide and so, so pretty. He wanted to say something, he did, but all words had left him. He tried to remember what his evening was like before she barged in it, what his life was like.
‘I was going to go back to my chambers,’ Gwaine blurted out, with as much thought in the brain-to-mouth process as everything else he’d said that night. It made her snort again, and even if it was mocking, Gwaine had come to like a little too much the sound and the way her upper lip pulled up a little bit when she did it.
‘You’re not one to beat around the bush, are you? My Knight in Shining Armour!’ Her smile spread from ear to ear, and her eyes were even prettier now, and Gwaine only just understood what she’d thought he was implying. He didn’t know why he hadn’t been implying it on purpose, but he was still happy with this new development.
‘I’m definitely not a Knight in Shining Armour,’ he answered instead of something witty and charming, ‘at least not one with capital letters.’ She was looking at him dubiously, and he felt obligated to explain. ‘I’m just a Knight of Camelot. I train and fight, and help Arthur on his ridiculous quests, and sometimes I save a damsel in distress or two, but to be a Knight in Shining Armour, you’ve got to be more…proper. The kind of knight that is not at the tavern every night. The kind mothers want their daughters to marry. Princesses get captured by dragons to get delivered by that kind of knight.’
There was a weird feeling in his chest, and normally he would have attributed it to the alcohol, except he didn’t feel that drunk anymore. He had his last sip of ale before they went on their damsel-search, and hadn’t had access to it since. It was an unforeseen development but not an unwelcomed one. (At least there would be no problem getting anything up.)
‘Well, time for a promotion, Sir Gwaine!’ she declared with gravity, as she let the tankard (now empty) hit the table. ‘Because my name is Elena, and maybe I don’t fancy getting out of my way to meet up with a dragon right now, but I am a Princess-yes, with a capital letter-and I do think you’re really pretty too.’
She got up and collected her riding crop, and before Gwaine had time to do or say or think anything, she was extending her free hand to him with something in her eyes more than prettiness, something that made Gwaine really want to follow. He wouldn’t have followed anyone the way he wanted to follow her.
He took her hand in his, and if he arrived late to training in the morning, Arthur could very well turn blue with anger for all Gwaine cared.
(or here on Ao3)
Pairing: Elena/Gwaine
Rating: R
Word count: ~2200
Summary: Gwaine is drunk and then he meets a woman. She’s really pretty. Really, really pretty.
Warnings: none
Disclaimer: Merlin is owned by the BBC and Shine. No copyright infringement intended.
Note: Part 2 of the Weird Pairing Experience-Merlin edition!
Gwaine never was the kind of man a woman would want as a son-in-law. He wasn’t the kind of person someone imagined living their old days in a house by the forest with. And he definitely wasn’t the kind of knight princesses yearned for from the top of their towers. He was a Knight of Camelot, yes (capital letter intended), and a good one at that: he’d saved his fair share of damsels in distress, but he was definitely not the shining-armour type that freed princesses from dragons.
Unless princesses dreamed of knights who drunk their arse off in a tavern in the middle of the week. To be honest, Gwaine wouldn’t say no to this kind of princess.
Well. In the state he was in, he wouldn’t say no to anyone. He would regret not saying no in the morning, there was no doubt about it, but if there was anyone willing to sleep with him right now, he wouldn’t say no. The fact that he was in no shape to have sex with anyone-that he was in no shape to get up, let alone get it up-didn’t occur to his alcohol-addled mind.
All things considered, Gwaine was lucky that he hadn’t been thrown out of the Rising Sun yet. Half-asleep on his chair, his cheek stuck to some grimy substance on his usual table, and his hand firmly closed around his drink, Gwaine was on the right track to spend the night here and to get yelled at by Arthur when he’d inevitably get late to training in the morning. Arthur always got a very unattractive shade of puce when he yelled at Gwaine during training, and showing up late, hung-over, and stinking of all the vile things Evoric never took the time to clean from his tavern after midnight would no doubt make the Kingly Prat a shade of purple that was wont to clash with the red of his cape.
Gwaine might not be the fairy-tale kind of knight, but he was still a Knight of Camelot and sometimes (mostly when he was sloshed) felt the impulse to act knightly (or what his brain at the time deemed knightly). Why he suddenly felt that keeping Arthur from turning into the very unbecoming version of himself he was when he yelled at Gwaine was the knightly thing to do was a mystery for the ages. All Gwaine knew was that he had to go back to his chambers right away, and if it wasn’t exactly a life-or-death situation, it might as well have been.
The problem was that at the exact moment his body chose to straighten itself from his bench, something-someone?-hit the back of his head in an almost as painful manner as the way Percy hit his arm when he considered Gwaine’s latest joke too insensitive. (Gwaine’s man-love for his best mate was true, but sometimes Percy really tested it.)
Gwaine yelped (perhaps not as knightly as he could have) and got up at once. His intense headache prevented him from brandishing his long sword, and it was certainly a good thing, because if he had, it might have run through the very lovely young woman that was standing behind him. (Well in front of him now that he’d turned around, but she’d been behind him a moment ago, and damn! was she pretty.)
‘What deeply terrible foul was that? Where is the miscreant that dares attack a Knight of Camelot? Let him come forth!’ Gwaine thundered at the same time the lady said, ‘Oh my god, I’m so sorry! I hope I didn’t hurt you. I’m so clumsy-well, I used to be even clumsier, so I guess it could be worse, but-oh my god, I’m so sorry!’
It took some time after that for Gwaine to realise what exactly was going on (mostly because his head was still pounding fiercely, but a little bit because she was really pretty and also, babbling like a loon.)
First, he gathered that at least half of the pain gnawing at his skull had not been caused by the hit to his head, but was the beginning of a hangover. (Was it the first time his hangover began before he’d left the tavern? Was it even possible to get hung-over while still drunk? Did it mean Gwaine possessed a bit of magic? Should he worry about that?) Second, he processed what he’d just said to the lady, and realised that instead of the three well-spoken sentences he’d intended to let out, it was actually more grunts than words that had spouted out of his mouth. Third, it came to his attention that it was actually her (or at least the mean-looking riding crop she was waving around) that had so painfully been acquainted with his head.
‘Slow down, lady!’ Gwaine said loudly enough to cover her continuous jabbering, and this time the rasp in his voice was an obvious clue that he was actually saying the words and not something akin to: harrumm grmm grhm. His muddled reflexes notwithstanding, he managed to grab her riding crop and prevent the decimation of the tavern’s clientele she was bound to start, gesticulating like this with such a sharp object in her hand.
Gwaine also managed to quiet her, and he was momentarily taken aback by the sudden silence (or maybe it was by how pretty her eyes were when she was looking at him so attentively.) He cleared his throat and said the first thing that came to his mind (which was not very clever and didn’t make a lot of sense, but it was expected, with a mind only working at half speed), ‘Are you a damsel in distress?’
Her pretty, pretty eyes widened at the question, and after a few seconds of looking at him like he’d sprouted another head, she let out a snort.
‘Don’t mock me!’ Gwaine protested, a little bit offended. ‘I’m a Knight. It is my duty to help damsels in distress. But I can’t very well do it if I don’t know who’s a damsel in distress and who’s not, can I? It’s only natural to ask.’
‘You’re absolutely right,’ she answered, and she sounded serious, but there was something a bit off with her smile. ‘Have you asked everyone here if they’re damsels in distress? It wouldn’t be right to miss any.’ Her eyebrows were raised and her mouth was a bit quirked, and ah! that was what was wrong with her smile: she was still mocking him, the little scamp!
‘Don’t mock me! I’m a Knight,’ Gwaine said, and was assaulted by a weird feeling of déjà-vu.
‘I’m not mocking you, I promise. This is very serious business. You don’t want damsels to stay in distress when you could have done something about it!’
And with these words, she dropped her riding crop on his table, took him by the arm and pulled him towards the nearest occupied table, at which sat three middle-aged men Gwaine often saw at the Rising Sun. He thought one of them might be the city’s butcher.
‘Hello,’ the lady said to them, breaking up what seemed to be a very passionate conversation about fleas. ‘This young man with me is a knight of Camelot. His name is…’ She trailed off and looked at him inquisitively. (Her eyes were very pretty.) Gwaine took maybe two seconds too long to realise he was supposed to say his name.
‘I’m Gwaine,’ he said somewhat dumbly. He then added, ‘I’m a Knight of Camelot,’ not at all redundantly (she’d forgotten to say the capital letter). ‘What’s your name?’ he asked her, remembering belatedly he was supposed to be a bit of a charmer.
She ignored him and turned back to the three men. ‘Gwaine here, like I said, is a Knight of Camelot, and would like to know if any of you considered yourselves to be damsels in distress?’
There was a blank during which the men just looked at them, dumbfounded, before they burst out laughing deep belly-laughs, their eyes watering and their fists hitting the table. Gwaine didn’t really care: the lady was still holding his arm in her hand, which was very pretty, as pretty as the rest of herself, and Gwaine would definitely find another word for pretty when he was sober (or maybe he’d just ask Elyan).
The lady pulled him to another table, where the same scene took place, then another one, then another one. At some point her hand left his arm to settle on his wrist, and that was quite nice too: skin on skin. Their search for a damsel in distress was very thorough, but when it finally came to an end, it turned out to be unfortunately vain. Not Old Aymerick, nor Phillibert the stable boy, nor any of the others seemed to qualify. Gwaine was not surprised: damsels in distress very rarely took the form of drunk and balding tavern patrons. There had been a glimmer of hope when they’d reached One-Eyed Marcella, but she’d laughed at them as much as the others before returning to her enormous tankard.
They ended up sitting at Gwaine’s table, where his pint had stayed loyally waiting for him, making friends with the lady’s riding crop. The lady didn’t seem to think too much of it, as her first action once she was seated was to grab Gwaine’s tankard and take a few swallows of his drink, before belching in a very un-lady-like manner. Gwaine certainly couldn’t go on calling her “the lady” (be it in his head or anywhere else) if she decided to act like that.
‘You never answered my question,’ he began, trying not to get too distracted by how pretty she looked with her upper lip covered in ale-foam and her eyes dancing with glee.
‘I’m definitely not a damsel in distress, I can assure you,’ she said very solemnly. Gwaine spared a moment to be relieved that she was in no sort of danger before remembering this wasn’t the question he wanted answered.
‘I meant, what’s your name? Also, you’re very pretty.’ She was pretty, but Gwaine didn’t intend to blurt it out like this. He was used to being way smoother with the ladies, but he’d already decided she wasn’t a lady. She was something entirely different, and it fascinated him.
She snorted again, and a bit of ale-foam flew from her lip to a spot just next to Gwaine’s elbow.
‘Thank you, Gwaine. I see you’re as chivalrous as would be expected from a Knight of Camelot.’ (Gwaine really liked that she didn’t forget the capital letter anymore.) ‘I guess Arthur did something good with your lot, after all.’
Gwaine wanted to note somewhere in his head that she seemed to know Arthur, but wasn’t sure of what to do with the information, or if he would even be able to remember it in the morning. Also, she still hadn’t told him her name.
She was sipping at his pint now, looking at him from behind the rim of his tankard, her eyes wide and so, so pretty. He wanted to say something, he did, but all words had left him. He tried to remember what his evening was like before she barged in it, what his life was like.
‘I was going to go back to my chambers,’ Gwaine blurted out, with as much thought in the brain-to-mouth process as everything else he’d said that night. It made her snort again, and even if it was mocking, Gwaine had come to like a little too much the sound and the way her upper lip pulled up a little bit when she did it.
‘You’re not one to beat around the bush, are you? My Knight in Shining Armour!’ Her smile spread from ear to ear, and her eyes were even prettier now, and Gwaine only just understood what she’d thought he was implying. He didn’t know why he hadn’t been implying it on purpose, but he was still happy with this new development.
‘I’m definitely not a Knight in Shining Armour,’ he answered instead of something witty and charming, ‘at least not one with capital letters.’ She was looking at him dubiously, and he felt obligated to explain. ‘I’m just a Knight of Camelot. I train and fight, and help Arthur on his ridiculous quests, and sometimes I save a damsel in distress or two, but to be a Knight in Shining Armour, you’ve got to be more…proper. The kind of knight that is not at the tavern every night. The kind mothers want their daughters to marry. Princesses get captured by dragons to get delivered by that kind of knight.’
There was a weird feeling in his chest, and normally he would have attributed it to the alcohol, except he didn’t feel that drunk anymore. He had his last sip of ale before they went on their damsel-search, and hadn’t had access to it since. It was an unforeseen development but not an unwelcomed one. (At least there would be no problem getting anything up.)
‘Well, time for a promotion, Sir Gwaine!’ she declared with gravity, as she let the tankard (now empty) hit the table. ‘Because my name is Elena, and maybe I don’t fancy getting out of my way to meet up with a dragon right now, but I am a Princess-yes, with a capital letter-and I do think you’re really pretty too.’
She got up and collected her riding crop, and before Gwaine had time to do or say or think anything, she was extending her free hand to him with something in her eyes more than prettiness, something that made Gwaine really want to follow. He wouldn’t have followed anyone the way he wanted to follow her.
He took her hand in his, and if he arrived late to training in the morning, Arthur could very well turn blue with anger for all Gwaine cared.
(or here on Ao3)