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“So,” Mordred says when Morgause finally, finally leaves. “I'm not sure how to say thank you for. Uh. The thing you just did.”
Gawain, who is exactly as tired as Mordred sounds, leans back against the doorframe. “Well, you could start with, ‘Thank you Gawain, my sainted brother, for distracting our mother so I could get my latest hookup out the window.’”
Mordred rolls his eyes but does say “Thank you Gawain, my sainted brother, for distracting our mother so I could get my boyfriend out the window.”
“No problem! Any time. — wait, boyfriend?”
Mordred is blushing more furiously than Gawain can remember since he was what, ten? “Yeah.”
“So......” and this is probably a bad idea but Gawain has never once in his life had a bad idea actually turn out badly and it's, like, fine.
“— he's Catholic, like seriously Catholic, it's complicated, I don't want to talk about it and I double don't want to talk about it with my slutty older brother, can I please just go to sleep now.”
Gawain looks at the door and looks at Mordred — his face still flushed bright red — and sits down on the bed next to him, pulls Mordred into a hug that he squawks at but, after a moment of performative tenseness, settles into.
“So how long has this been going on for?”
“...a couple of months? Sorry, I didn’t want to make a thing out of it until we were more sure — and, uh, you don’t like him and I was hoping I’d be able to break the news when I had something else to share it with, which I totally would have been if it weren’t for fucking Mom —”
There’s only one serious Catholic who Gawain knows well enough to not like but he puts that aside, because if Mordred has been dating a serious Catholic for a couple of months, “Wasn’t going to yell at you about it, I was just wondering whether to recontextualize the thing last week.”
“Oh god,” Mordred says into Gawain’s shoulder. “I was drunk, and Gaheris is a menace — and I do mean it, Catholic sexual ethics are inhuman and frankly evil, it’s not just that I’m —”
Gawain knows Mordred too well to try to look at his face right now. “Yeah,” he says, “I know it’s not just that. But.”
Mordred is opening his mouth to argue, Gawain can feel the tension gathering in his shoulders, and then he stops and pushes his face harder into Gawain. “Seriously, though, I need to sleep.”
“Mhm,” Gawain says noncommittally, and doesn’t let go until Mordred does.
Galahad doesn’t comment when Mordred wears short sleeves, doesn’t stare meaningfully at Mordred’s forearms or ask what happened or acknowledge the existence of the marks on his skin in any kind of way. Mordred, in turn, wears short sleeves and pushes up the sleeves of his jackets when it’s hot out, and gradually stops glancing over at Galahad's face when he thinks Galahad is looking somewhere else, and gradually stops tensing up when Galahad takes his hands.
Galahad does, sometimes, run his fingertips up and down Mordred’s forearms when they’re cuddling. Doesn’t say anything, just counts the ridges (five on his left arm, eight on his right, thirteen total) and pets Mordred’s hair and lets Mordred press his face into Galahad’s shoulder.
“Why do you keep doing that.” Mordred’s voice is muffled because his face is smushed into Galahad’s shoulder and therefore harder to read than usual, but he’s still mostly relaxed.
“It’s a nice texture. I can stop.”
Mordred does something with his body language that would probably be more legible if they could look at each other properly. “...you don’t have to,” he says finally. “It’s. Kind of nice?”
Galahad hums instead of trying to find words, doesn’t quiet his hands even though he feels vaguely like he should.
“I can never tell what you’re thinking,” Mordred says, quieter and still muffled. “— that’s not a complaint, you don’t have to tell me.”
“Honestly I was noticing that thirteen is a Fibonacci number.”
“..........oh my god,” and Galahad doesn’t have to look at Mordred’s face to know what expression it has, which has to be some kind of milestone. “That’s not fair. How am I supposed to respond to that when I’m already as smushed on you as I can possibly be.”
I love you too, Galahad thinks, and collects Mordred closer still. He’s very warm; he moves pliantly where Galahad moves him and stays where he’s put. “I’m sure you’ll think of something.”
Mordred was pretty sure Galahad had fallen asleep until, seemingly out of nowhere, he says, “This might be a personal question,” and that opening has literally never been a sign of anything good but Mordred nods anyway, “but why is Agravaine your favorite brother.”
There’s a long and slightly awkward pause, in which Galahad doesn't move his head from Mordred’s chest and Mordred debates whether to give the flip but easy answer or the true but deeply awkward answer, before he says “Are you asking because he was a dick to you, or because he was a dick in your earshot, or are you just curious, or...?”
“In my earshot, if it’s important.”
“It doesn't change the answer or anything? I just wanted to know whether to yell at him about it. Uh, do you want the jokey but easy answer or the true but long and kind of soul-bearing answer?”
Galahad opens his eyes and looks up at him. “The true but long answer. Unless you want me to say the easy answer in which case go ahead with the easy answer.”
Which, yeah, okay, Mordred had known when he asked what response he would get. “Okay. So — this isn’t the entire reason, the entire reason would involve way more talking about college than I ever want to do again, but it’s a decent illustration of the reason — when I was nine and he was seventeen, I fell out of a tree and cut myself really badly on a rock. Really badly, bleeding everywhere and our mom was screaming badly, I was definitely gonna need stitches. And so our mom started panicking and got out her phone to call 911 and I started screaming, because I,” how to put this, it isn’t that Galahad hasn’t already seen the marks on his arms but people are always weird about how young Mordred was when he started cutting, fuck it, “had some scars on my thighs already that I didn’t want doctors to see and I really really did not want to go to the hospital.”
Galahad is watching him, face expressionless as ever but eyes soft insofar as Mordred can read them.
“So I was screaming No hospitals, no hospitals, please no hospitals over and over again, and my mom was literally in the middle of dialling 911 when Agravaine comes out and says ‘I’ll take him to the emergency room’ and picks me up and puts me in the car — I’m still screaming — and buckles me in and closes the door and starts driving.”
Galahad is glaring, now, not particularly at Mordred. Mordred doesn’t try to read that, just keeps talking instead.
“And as soon as the doors are closed he says ‘hey, it’s fine, no hospitals, there’s a vet tech who owes Gawain a favor,’ and he drives me to some guy’s house on the other side of town and I get my leg stitched up, and then he gets us both ice cream, and then he drives us back home and tells Mom he’ll deal with the insurance company so she doesn't have to. And two days later he comes into my room and tells me he won’t tell anyone about the scars unless I say it’s fine and I don’t have to worry about it.”
“Oh,” Galahad says, very quietly.
“Yeah.” Mordred takes a deep breath, moves his hand from Galahad’s back to the back of his neck. “And that’s why Agravaine’s my favorite brother. Because he’s an asshole but he’s also the one person in my life who I can trust to stick up for what I actually want over what he thinks is good for me, and that’s important actually.”
“Oh,” Galahad says again, a different kind of quiet, which Mordred takes to mean that he’s gotten the subtext. He isn’t looking at Mordred, in a different way than the way in which he usually doesn’t look people in the eye. Mordred doesn’t push it.
Agravaine debated for a day or so whether it was worth bringing up at all, and if so how to do it, and (because it’s Mordred, and Mordred hates when people try to talk around their actual point) what he settled on was “I notice you’ve been wearing more jackets the last few months.”
Mordred jumps and tenses up, and then goes deliberately relaxed again when he realizes who this is coming from. “Yeah,” he says, less an agreement than a challenge. “I have.”
A pause, in which Agravaine doesn’t say anything, waits for Mordred to get his words in order, because if he just pretends he didn’t notice how Mordred is half-prepared for a fight then probably there won’t be one.
“It’s not just about keeping my arms covered,” Mordred says finally. He looks back down at his laptop screen rather than continuing to look at Agravaine. “Honestly it’s not even mostly about keeping my arms covered, he’s fine about my arms. Mostly it’s about — you remember when I was fourteen and hadn’t gotten my GED or moved out yet and still had tits and I didn’t want to admit I had a physical form but also didn’t want to admit I didn’t want to admit I had a physical form — it’s like that but on fewer meta levels.”
Another silence, not because Agravaine doesn’t have anything to say but because long experience has taught him that Mordred will make whatever mental jumps he needs to make faster if you don’t talk than if you do.
“I don’t think — I don’t know. I knew when I decided to date a traditional Catholic the kind of relationship I was signing up for, you know, and I have ever had a relationship before and it’s not like it’s a surprise to me and it’s not like people don’t get to decide all they want to do is cuddling and it’s not like I have any room to complain about it, yes I know how that sounds, and it’s not like it’s a surprise that he wouldn’t want to —” and Mordred cuts himself off again.
Mordred, Agravaine remembers very abruptly, had been groped in the hallways in middle school. It had been a joke. The punchline had been that anyone might want to touch him. “Have you thought about —”
“If the next sentence out of your mouth includes ‘therapy,’ ‘medication,’ ‘diagnosis,’ or otherwise interacting with the medical or psychiatric system in any kind of way, I swear to fucking hell I will end you.”
Agravaine has no doubt that Mordred means every word of it. “I wasn’t going to,” he says, and waits as Mordred deflates like a leaky balloon, rage giving way to exhaustion. “I have in fact met you and knew you while you were in college. Actually I was going to ask if you were sure you wanted to be dating a tradcat, given all of,” and he waves a hand, “this.”
Mordred bites his lip, holds his teeth there for a few seconds before answering. “...I want to be dating Galahad. — he saw my scars and he didn’t anything about hotlines or, or suicide watch, he didn’t say anything at all, when he finally did say something it wasn’t until after I’d asked and it was about Fibonacci numbers, I told him about the vet tech incident and he just agreed that you were good for me, it’s — nobody does that, even you were freaked out by it, I don’t deserve him, I don’t,” and he cuts himself off yet again with a frustrated sound.
Agravaine puts a hand on Mordred’s back, unsure what else there is to do; Mordred’s shoulders curl inwards so he removes it, and doesn’t say out loud that Mordred hasn’t been this touchy about physical contact since before he started binding.
“He’s worth it,” Mordred says after a moment. “He’s so worth it. I just — have to deal with my issues. So he doesn’t have to.”
“Mmm,” and instead of arguing, Agravaine says, “You can borrow my jackets if you want.”
It’s not impossible. It’s not even that hard. All Mordred has to do is keep his fucking mouth shut, not spill his stupid inadequate pointless feelings all over Galahad, and keep a lid on it. He can do that, he can get a twitter or something for getting his breakdowns all over everywhere, he can scream about pro-lifers somewhere where his Catholic boyfriend will not have to hear it, it is not that hard.
It’s not impossible, it’s not even that hard, he’s just an impulsive spiteful person who can barely keep his mouth shut at the best of times, but he needs to keep it together, needs to keep his idiot mouth shut, needs to not hurt Galahad, not because Galahad is the most perfect person the world has ever known but because he’s good and he likes Mordred for some reason even if he’ll barely touch him and because that’s what you do if you love someone, you don’t hurt them, even if it’s hard — which it isn’t, Mordred is just terrible at this — and even if you want to rage about the world you don’t make them deal with it.
He can keep it together. Him being dysphoric isn’t even the Catholic church’s fault, really. He goes back to atheist forums like he did when he was twelve and a baby antitheist only just figuring out that it is wrong to hurt people even when God does it and rages about Humanae Vitae; he hatereads way more trad blogs than is in any way a good idea; he reads Miranda Selmys and writes non serviam non serviam non serviam on his leg in ballpoint pen and plays We Know The Devil and tries not to think about Venus and Galahad and Galahad and Venus and fails.
He can keep it together. He can not spill this all over Galahad, he can keep his rage where he won’t hurt anyone with it. He can keep it together.
Mordred does not, in fact, manage to keep it together. It is possible that he fails to keep it together harder than he has ever failed at anything in his life before, which is saying a lot.
And he doesn’t get to apologize, because Galahad leaves, and really, what else does Mordred deserve?
Three weeks go by in which Galahad doesn’t go back to Mordred’s house, doesn’t call, doesn’t text, and would have blocked his number if he had received more than one text from Mordred or if it hadn’t said ‘Are you okay?’ and nothing else. Three weeks go by in which Galahad sees the Orkney brothers only in passing when he avoids Gareth in a grocery store; three weeks go by in which his roommate Percival asks him every few days how he’s doing and refuses to take a flat and insincere ‘fine’ for an answer. Three weeks go by in which Galahad is tempted to check Mordred’s twitter and does not; three weeks go by in which Mordred is probably raging against God for Galahad’s refusal to talk to him, as if he’d had no hand in his own words.
After three weeks and two days there's a knock on the door to Galahad’s dorm room, which means it isn’t Percival, which means that it’s almost certainly Mordred. (He knows, objectively, that a square of fabric under his shirt doesn’t have enough weight for the weight to be comforting; he takes a moment to breathe anyway.)
“You can come in,” he says, not sure if he means it or not but equally unsure what else there is to say. He feels vaguely like in order to move he would have to pilot his body by remote control like a mecha suit; he doesn’t pilot himself up from the bed or look up at Mordred as the door opens and then closes with a click, which is fine because Mordred will understand, and even if he didn't it isn’t like it matters anymore whether Mordred understands, except for how apparently it does.
“I,” Mordred says, and stops, and takes a deep breath and says “I wanted to say I’m sorry. For what I said three weeks ago.”
Galahad blinks once, twice, and still doesn’t look up. He doesn’t bother to have a tone of voice when he says “You haven’t changed your mind.” He hasn’t, Galahad knows he hasn’t, people don’t come around to agreeing with you about something this important to them just because they miss you and Mordred in particular certainly doesn’t.
“No, I haven’t,” Mordred agrees, which is weird because Mordred hates when people apologize for things they aren't sorry for. “I’m — not sorry for believing what I believe, and I’m not sorry for saying out loud that I believe what I believe.”
Galahad would usually have feelings right now he’s pretty sure, but the idea of having feelings about anything, let alone the kind of feelings he had three weeks ago, sounds exhausting. How do people who have feelings all the time live like that.
“But I am sorry for yelling at you,” Mordred says, and his voice is different now in a way that Galahad doesn’t know how to interpret. “And I’m sorry for making it about you, because it shouldn't be about you, and I’m sorry for taking it out on you, because you shouldn’t have to deal with my —” and he gestures at nothing in particular. “The problem wasn’t what I do or don't believe about God, it was that I didn’t treat you well, and I'm sorry for that.”
“....oh,” Galahad whispers before he can stop himself. Maybe he does have feelings.
“And. Um. I made you something? I know you have one already but I wanted to — anyway.” There are footsteps and then crinkling paper; Galahad looks up, notes the long-sleeved shirt in May, then looks down at Mordred’s hands.
He isn’t sure what he was expecting Mordred to be holding — maybe some kind of food? — but it definitely wasn’t a rosary.
“It’s beautiful,” he says, and takes it. It is beautiful, smooth red Hail Mary beads and white Our Father beads on knotted cord; it’s cold to the touch.
“The beads hold heat so it’s easier for you to keep your place,” Mordred says, and then, without appearing to breathe between words, “You don’t have to keep it, obviously, I know you already have one it just felt appropriate considering why I’m here, and I didn’t get it blessed because I don’t know any priests and it felt kind of like I’d be overstepping, and —”
“You’re rambling,” and Galahad still doesn’t bother to add a tone of voice but one leaks through a little anyway. “I’m going to keep it. Sit down?”
Mordred sits down. When Galahad glances up at his face, he’s almost-but-not-quite smiling. “Missed you,” he says. “I’m sorry again.”
Galahad pauses, and then turns and smushes his face into Mordred’s shoulder, which is Mordred’s gesture so Mordred will definitely understand what it means. “I missed you too.”
“You don’t have to,” Mordred says, for the third time in as many minutes. “Seriously, you don’t have to, I don’t want you to feel like you have to, I’ll be fine, if this is some kind of ‘lust is venial but self-hatred is mortal’ thing —”
“I know I don’t have to.” The weight of red and white beads around his neck; the ceramic still cool to the touch. “And I know that you know that I don’t have to. And also I’m fairly certain that if I made this decision about what I thought would be best for you and not about what I wanted, you’d have approximately none of it.”
For once in their lives it’s Mordred who’s lost for words. Galahad takes the opportunity to push him down against the mattress; Mordred goes where he’s pushed and stays where he’s put but his face doesn’t change until Galahad hits him and his whole body loosens, eyes falling shut and head falling back.
“You can hit harder than that,” Mordred says after he’s given a moment to catch his breath, and “ah —” when Galahad takes him up on the offer, and then coherent speech gives way to sharp gasps and breathy punched-out sounds.
Galahad’s clothes stay on, he’d decided that beforehand. At some point Mordred’s shirt comes off (he has two long surgical scars on his chest and two of the ridges on his arms have been reopened) and Galahad can leave bite marks on his shoulders and scratches on his chest and hit him and watch the bruises bloom, can watch the way his muscles shift under his skin as his back arches. It’s good, good in a way he hadn’t expected; he’d known this would be good for Mordred but he hadn’t realized he’d enjoy it so much himself, and it’s sooner than he was hoping before he has to take a step back and stop.
Mordred’s eyes are closed and his breathing is ragged. Hail Mary, full of grace, Galahad thinks, and touches the beads of the rosary around his neck and runs the long-familiar words through his head until he trusts himself enough to curl up at Mordred’s side.
“Crossed a line?” Mordred’s still breathing hard but he’s opened his eyes now.
“Near occasion of crossing a line,” Galahad says, and puts his head on Mordred’s shoulder. “You’re incredible.”
“Mmm,” Mordred says, and pulls him closer. “Mostly I’m very floaty. You’re very good, did you know that?”
A tiny smile, hidden in Mordred’s skin. “I did.” I love you too.