Archive of Our Own ^beta

Lancelot found the queen in her chambers shortly after the hunt. She was dressed in her nightclothes, her shoulders temptingly exposed. Her dark skin gleamed against the weak evening light coming through the window, and a few candles helped illuminate the room, making her skin shine.

Gwen was facing away, looking down with one hand resting on her forehead. Lancelot entered the room and hesitantly, uncertain about the appropriateness of the moment, with only he and a woman, the queen, in the far corner of the room and bed, near the nightstand.

"Did you call for me, my queen?"

"Yes," she replied faintly, without adjusting her posture. "I called you, Lancelot."

She rose. The white dress with lace edges revealed her legs beneath the sheer fabric. The tips of her breasts were ghostly visible. Lancelot averted his gaze, clenching his fists.

Gwen had a look of sadness in her eyebrows. Her face was weary. Her mascara had run down her cheeks. Her lips were lightly colored with red lipstick, earrings of the same color in her ears, and her cheeks were similarly painted. The thought of it being a natural blush never crossed the knight's mind.

"You don’t look well, my queen," Lancelot said, sad and holding his steps to avoid going closer to her.

Not in the position she was in, with the high status of queen and all her responsibilities. Out of respect for Arthur, as king, and even more as a friend.

"Lancelot, where is my king? My husband?" she asked, her voice hoarse. Still wet. Swollen. "I see he’s returned from the hunt since you’re here."

Lancelot took a few steps forward, his head bowed, but he didn’t approach the solitary figure in the room.

"He’s fine. He’s removing his armor. He’ll probably go to the tavern afterward to celebrate his hunt. I’m sure he’ll come to you soon, eager for your company."

He raised his eyes when Gwen laughed, a controlled sob. Her steps approaching him more than he himself was. Her beautiful figure, though sad, was radiant, making his heart stop. His chest heaved with heavy, difficult-to-swallow breaths.

Gwen was as beautiful as she had been years ago. The years seemed to flee from her as if she were a plague. Her brown, sad eyes glimmered amber against the light and the distance between them.

He heard her gulp before she spoke.

"How long has he been removing his knightly attire? How long has Merlin been helping him with that, after the hunt?"

He averted his eyes from that sad expression so close, a proximity that Gwen seemed to deliberately offer for him to look closely at her. His own features contorted.

"I don’t know," he replied with a sigh.

"Don’t lie to me, Lance. You are my closest friend," she smiled. "Well, with my friends betraying me behind my back, I suppose you are actually my best friend."

He looked at her again, struggling to endure those eyes and keep his hands clenched, digging his nails into the thick skin of his palms.

A sickly trace of a failed smile emerged and disappeared as quickly as it came before finally continuing. "My best man."

"My queen..."

"Gwen. I am Gwen."

"Gwen..."

"Is Arthur betraying me, Lance?" the queen demanded, her voice faltering.

Perhaps this was the most fragile moment Lancelot had allowed Gwen to see him. But Lancelot regretted little, nostalgic for the days they had spent together as a couple, before briefly leaving and returning to find Gwen in a relationship with Arthur after being presumed dead.

An empathetic look at the queen. Now with their bodies very close, in front of the bed, beside the table set for a romantic dinner.

"Maybe he has stopped," he said, his voice strained.

She leaned forward, losing strength, making Lancelot move his hands to support her. She came even closer, just a centimeter away, her breath lightly touching his face and her skin burning beneath the fabric of her shoulder where the queen's hand sought support.

"He said he loved me."

"I know."

"So I am right. He is dishonoring me with my best friend. With Merlin?" The sobs did not come; they were trapped in her throat, making the words tremble as they came out. But her eyes were already flowing rivers and oceans, without stopping.

"I’m sorry. By the time I realized it, it was too late."

She pulled him closer, her hands wrapping around Lancelot’s neck. Her chest against his cold steel, her perfume shaking and penetrating her most faithful and honorable knight. Her breasts pressing against the man’s chest. Hesitant and very awkward to offer a response to the act, fearing what might happen, what she might take advantage of the touch.

"Please, I beg you to hold me, Lance. Please."

Gwen tightened her embrace, trembling.

Lancelot had never wanted to hear Guinevere’s pleas. He never wanted to see her tears or a broken heart, not even when it would give him a chance. But seeing and hearing her, he embraced the queen.

Strong, steady, secure. He held her around the waist but with his hands resting on the upper part of her soft back. Not very attentive to the touch of linen along the way, while he buried his nose into the woman’s soft and warm skin trembling in his arms.

They breathed each other's scent for a long time. Finding comfort and offering it willingly and with an open heart. Even through the fabric and steel, his back was becoming damp from the scent. The makeup previously prepared for Arthur was now running on his clothes.

Gwen now rested sweetly on his shoulder. And what had started as a miserable support became a gentle and satisfying embrace, bringing a little peace to troubled and restless minds. The queen sighed warmly against his neck, moist even, sending shivers down his spine, reaching his core, making him struggle against a groan that partially escaped.

He tightened, against his own will, the queen’s body against his, making her moan sleepily in his embrace.

"Take me tonight, Lance."

His hearing buzzed. Gwen was too weak to think about what she had said, Sir Lancelot thought, as he struggled against his own desires. As his touch, pulling her closer, became even gentler and firmer. As his mind battled against the sensation of her full, soft breasts and hard nipples against his strong chest.

Gwen did not understand how strong his desire was, how he had to clench his fists uncontrollably against his skin, leaving scars, during banquets, honors, and speeches. How he struggled to see Arthur as a friend and not a thief, an opportunist, as if it were a sin to marry a single woman.

"Be quiet, my lord," as her voice dulled his ears with honey, sugar, and lust. Grace.

"You are a queen," Lancelot said, his voice surprisingly strained. So masculine and composed, now somewhat the opposite. "You will be hanged if they find out."

Gwen laughed, less mournful and more playful in her own misfortune. She tightened her embrace, briefly, as if in jest.

"I don’t care."

"No," he said, regaining strength and pulling their chests apart.

She looked at him with furrowed eyebrows in her confusion, not understanding why he was refusing. With no empathy for his twisted face. She was becoming a true queen, Lancelot thought, sighing with his hands on the attractive woman’s shoulders.

"I won’t let you die. Especially not because of me. I can offer you comfort, a friendly shoulder. I would give my life for you. But I don’t want you to give yours for me."

She smiled in her pity. She slid her hands to the knight's elbows, lowering them and moving closer to him.

"Lancelot. I am dead," she said, startlingly as if it were an uninteresting fact. "And alone. I never wanted to be what I am now. Every day I sit on a throne as a trophy of the king. I have books I don’t understand to be learned, and a fragile, unfaithful man by my side every night to support, without receiving the same support in return."

Her face was close, with her mouth curled in disdain, her tender, lively, and mocking eyes contrasting with the resentful and tearful gaze of the knight. The next words were accompanied by minty breaths against his pale skin while she carried a disdainful smile.

"I'm lonely, betrayed in splendor, hunted by these walls. I pray every day for strength to endure one more day while I hear yet another tattered story. This kingdom is not my home. These walls bear the betrayals and deaths of innocents who are burned in public squares, and I can't even open my mouth to disagree. I can’t even look away from the hangings -"

Lancelot quickly sealed her lips with a kiss.

He pushed her back, holding her shoulders. He was desperate in his touch, and Gwen welcomed him gladly, entwining herself around his neck, pulling him closer, still sweet and gentle, just as Lancelot remembered her. Her hands were tender, always ready to offer affection and to trace dances and patterns on his face.

If she had been depressed back then, she would have given such care anyway, he remembers, and he himself would have stopped her from putting herself aside, just so he could listen. Now, they are on opposite sides.

Lancelot is sad, Gwen is in need.

The kiss deepened. Their tongues remembered an old, joyful waltz, as exasperated in their tenderness as in the past. Their breathing was steady but lacked rhythm and intensity. They sucked, licked, gasped, and smiled now and then.

When they broke apart, it was because they had reached the wall instead of the bed. Gwen laughed as Lancelot let his head fall defeatedly between her neck and collarbone. Sensing the changed soap smell, he noticed Gwen’s hands caressing his long hair.

He smiled against her brown skin, so soft, so familiar.

"I missed you," he said with a sigh.

"I've always been here, Lance," she replied tenderly. "Watching you while you bowed to Arthur. Pretending not to notice your furtive glances in my direction while I openly held my husband's hand."

Lancelot stood up, his hands resting on the lady's waist. He pressed their foreheads together.

"Are you trying to make me jealous?" he asked.

She shrugged, teasing him.

"It’s been a while since I felt desired... it would be nice to hear something like that, I suppose."

Her laughter faded due to the lack of response or the way Lancelot’s eyes softened more and more on hers.

"Lance? You’re making me blush."

She tried to push one of his shoulders away with a limp hand, but Lancelot moved it, placing one of his hands that rested on her waist on the queen’s brown cheek.

"I love you."

She looked at him in surprise, her eyes wide, lost in the deep brown of Lancelot’s eyes, which seemed to never leave hers.

A proud and sad smile appeared on the knight's lips.

"I never stopped loving you and wanting you back, despite serving the king and you." The tips of his fingers brushed the roots of some strands, inadvertently touching the nearby red earrings. "Every mission I completed was with thoughts of the throne you sit on, the crown adorning your head, and your gentle words directed at your subjects."

"Lance..."

She was lost, the knight concluded, as he wiped away a tear that had rolled down the woman’s face with a kiss, drinking her in. When he kissed her again on the lips, Guinevere embraced him, trembling, more intensely than in the summer of their courtship.

More forsaken than when they were together.

The kiss became saltier, slower in its passage. The hands on the queen’s back elicited sighs and tearful moans. As he descended to her neck, with the wall supporting his hair against her dark skin, Gwen writhed in waves beneath him, running her hands down his back and pressing herself against him.