Disclaimer: Sadly for me, I do not own Merlin. Curse you, BBC.

"Can you imagine growing up in the place?"

It was Lancelot's first night in Camelot castle. Arthur had promised him a room for as long as he wanted or needed, and while Lancelot had plans to seek out somewhere to live by himself, in the mean time he was happy to accept what was on offer. The room was spacious and furnished, and after the day they had had fighting against Morgana he was exhausted and happy to lay his head wherever he could.

Gwaine, on the other hand, was too excited to let him.

"Lancelot! Don't pretend like you're asleep on me." Gwaine stood over where Lancelot had slumped in a chair. He reached over and tapped Lancelot on the forehead.

"Gwaine," Lancelot replied groggily, batting the hand away and blinking up at his assailant, "I'm not pretending. I am actually falling asleep."

"You don't want to check out what the castle has to offer? See the sights and wonders of our King's abode?"

Gwaine was practically hopping from foot to foot, and for the briefest of moments Lancelot felt the urge to acquiesce. He'd known Gwaine for a matter of days but their friendship had been instantaneous; something about Gwaine drew him in despite all of his guards. But he knew that there would be time to spend together later. Presently, Lancelot could feel the weight of every limb as if they were made of iron. It was an effort just to keep his eyes open as he spoke.

"Another time. Tomorrow. I promise." Lancelot wrenched himself up from the chair, and ignoring Gwaine's pleading look he made it over to his bed in one lumbering movement. He began to remove his chainmail, hoping it might prompt Gwaine to go to his own chamber.

"We could be dead by tomorrow." Gwaine apparently didn't get signals.

"Why would we be dead by tomorrow? Are you planning on depriving me of sleep until I keel over?" Lancelot sat down on the edge of the bed and stared expectantly at Gwaine. Gwaine looked somewhat like a wounded puppy, but he watched as Lancelot yawned involuntarily and passed a hand over his eyes, and relented.

"Fine," he muttered. Lancelot smiled.

"Thankyou Gwaine. You know you're welcome to come back whenever. Just, once I've had some sleep."

"Bah," Gwaine responded with a flick of the wrist as he turned and retreated to his own chamber, leaving Lancelot to the comfort of his bed.

The following day, Lancelot repaid Gwaine's visit and found that Gwaine was staying in a room much the same as his. It was roughly the same size, and had the same red drapery with a matching red and gold rug. The bed was similar if not identical in size and comfort, the chair and table set were of a similar if not identical make and model, and the view was similarly (although not quite identically) of the front courtyard.

Lancelot was thus rather bewildered to watch as over the days and weeks, Gwaine seemed to develop something of a fixation with Lancelot's room instead.

On their second day at the castle, Gwaine stopped in to conduct a comparison of their respective furniture, which Lancelot figured was fairly normal.

"Stocking up on complaints," Gwaine had said with a wry smile and a nose tap, and Lancelot had laughed, although what differences there might have been to complain about eluded him.

After that, it was never anything starkly unusual, or at least never anything that Gwaine couldn't somehow justify in his own charming way. But it still seemed apparent to Lancelot that Gwaine's visits slowly began to grow more and more lacking in the validity or necessity he made them out to hold.

The next day it was to borrow a book, the following day to inspect Lancelot's shield and enquire after who had cleaned it for him. But the ensuing visit that Wednesday was to inspect Lancelot's fireplace for safety measures, and after that it was to carry out a quick sound test to see if Lancelot's room had better acoustics than his (and despite Lancelot's best efforts, he never did manage to get a reason for this out of Gwaine).

It became evident to Lancelot, around the time that Gwaine wanted to see if Lancelot's walls produced a better bounce off a ball than his own, that for some reason Gwaine must have started inventing reasons to spend time in there.

This was not troubling in itself – Lancelot looked forward to Gwaine's appearances no matter the cause, finding very quickly that it was Gwaine's company above all else that he preferred to fill his free time with both in and out of the castle. Not to mention the fact that he particularly enjoyed being fed the more outlandish lines Gwaine produced to justify stopping by.

No, it was the sheer curiosity that threatened to overwhelm him. Gwaine was an assortment of oddities to Lancelot, but much of the time it was just behaviours and beliefs that Lancelot wasn't used to, and he found riddling them out to be pleasing.

This was not like that. This was just inexplicable oddness. Lancelot had to know why.

The afternoon that Gwaine had come and performed a rather perfunctory search for a chicken that had somehow gotten loose from the kitchens, albeit with most of the searching being done from the comfort of one of Lancelot's armchairs and interspersed between a long chat and a cup of tea, Lancelot stood alone in the centre of his chamber and conducted a brief survey of the place. He walked from one side to the other, not entirely sure what he was looking for but confident that he must be missing something crucial, some hidden quality his chamber had that he had somehow overlooked.

He inspected the windows and the upholstery, the vaulting on the ceiling and the interior of the fireplace; he knocked on his shelves and kicked his bedpost and carried out all manner of inspections on the various possessions he had acquired until finally he collapsed into his chair in a cloud of annoyance and confusion.

And then a voice from behind him called "Lancelot! Come and see this!" and he didn't need to turn around to know it was Gwaine.

"Come and see what?"

"No, words cannot do it justice. You need to come and see."

Lancelot swivelled in his chair to see Gwaine's head poked around the side of the doorframe, and smiled at the sight of Gwaine's eager grin. Any troubling thoughts over his quest of interior inspection dissipated, and he eagerly followed his friend out of the room.

"Lancelot!"

Lancelot rolled over and squinted in the darkness. He could see a figure hanging off the doorframe.

"Gwaine? It's late."

"Yes. Yes it is." Gwaine swung forward into the room. "And I have had a truly marvelous evening, I assure you." He landed with a thud on the end of Lancelot's bed. Lancelot pushed himself up, and vaguely wondered where he had left his shirt.

"I can tell," Lancelot said with a grin lost to the gloom. He reached over to his dresser and fumbled with a box of splints, finally managing to strike one. He held it to a candle, and as the flame caught a warm glow spread into the room. Lancelot noticed that Gwaine appeared to have torn a sleeve, but other than that he looked no worse for wear. No brawling this evening, then. That was always good.

"Not that I don't appreciate your company," Lancelot continued as he shook the splint until the flame snuffed out, "but is there any particular reason why you felt the need to come visit me at this hour, Gwaine?"

"Well, I like this room."

The thought occurred to Lancelot that perhaps in his inebriated state, Gwaine might finally let loose the reason behind his fascination. He raised a calculating eyebrow. "This room? I wasn't aware that it was significantly different to yours."

"Not the room. The contents of the room."

"The contents?"

"Yes." He leant forward, and placed a hand firmly on Lancelot's arm. "The contents, Lancelot." He stared for a second or two at Lancelot, as if trying to convey something very, very important, and then released his grip. "Also, at the current point this room is closer to me than my own. You see?"

"Right." Lancelot sighed inwardly. The common notion that wine brought truth failed to account for the fact that for every kernel of wisdom there were five rounds of nonsense. "Gwaine, can you pass me my shirt? It's hanging over the chair."

Gwaine shook his head vigorously. "I don't think so. I'd prefer… I'm going to sleep here if that's ok."

Before Lancelot could respond, Gwaine leant across him and blew out the candle, before collapsing in a heap by Lancelot's side.

"Gwaine?" Lancelot poked the man. No response was forthcoming.

"Really," Lancelot muttered as he lowered himself back down onto the pillow. Left to his own thoughts in the quiet and the dark, he was alarmed to find that all of a sudden he had become achingly aware of the man in his bed. His heart was beating faster than it really should have been, and every time Gwaine shifted in his drowsy sleep and brushed against him, Lancelot felt like his skin was buzzing.

Lancelot sighed. He didn't want to deal with that right now. So he closed his eyes and slowed his breathing, and felt his heart rate gradually return to normal. Weariness crept into his mind and dulled the whirring of his thoughts. The anxiety ebbed away, and was replaced by simple feelings of comfort from the presence beside him as he fell into sleep.

"Lancelot?"

"Mmm?"

"Why am I on your bed?"

"You wanted to sleep here. Last night."

"Did I?"

"You don't remember? Not terribly surprising, considering the state you were in. You told me you were staying and were out like a light."

"Ah. I don't suppose I mentioned why?"

"Why you wanted to sleep here? You said you liked my furniture."

"Sorry?"

"My furniture. Well, something to that effect. You were very emphatic about how much you liked the contents of my room."

"Oh."

"Oh? Does that mean something to you Gwaine?"

"No. Definitely not. I'm going back to my room now, if it's all the same to you."

"Alright."

"Lancelot?"

"Mmm?"

"Do you always sleep shirtless in the presence of others?"

In the days that followed Lancelot did his best to act normal around Gwaine, but having had the man asleep in his bed beside him had done something to Lancelot's usual composure. He felt ruffled and out of sorts, and though he knew exactly the reason for it he didn't want to dwell on such miseries.

And so he tried to focus on Gwaine's visits, when Gwaine would come in to show off a new pair of shoes or demonstrate his orange juggling abilities or ask Lancelot to recount what had happened during the morning hunt or find out if Lancelot had ever heard of Thomas the Bard, because Gwaine had heard that the man had beaten someone at plate twirling, and Gwaine had always felt he had an aptitude for such an art and wanted either lessons or a battle, Lancelot wasn't entirely sure.

Weeks went by without any sudden revelation on Lancelot's behalf, and Lancelot was beginning to consider that Gwaine had simply lost his marbles and was just very good at concealing it most of the time.

It was four in the afternoon and Lancelot had been reading by the fire when the door swung violently open and Gwaine flung himself inside. He slammed the door immediately shut and leant against it, ear pressed to the wood, pausing like this for almost a minute before standing upright and turning to face Lancelot.

"Evening," he said jauntily, tipping a non-existent hat to the bewildered knight.

"I'm hoping," Lancelot said slowly, putting down his book, "that you have some kind of an explanation other than you deciding that this is the prime way of announcing your presence to others."

Gwaine laughed. "If I was trying to start a trend in unique social greetings you'd be the first to know, I promise." He strode over to stand in front of the fire. "I'm hiding. From a girl."

Lancelot felt his happiness over Gwaine's appearance deflate ever so slightly, as it tended to do whenever Gwaine brought up women.

"Why is that? So unlike you, Gwaine," he responded drily, and Gwaine laughed.

"She's in love with me. No idea why," he said with a wink, and Lancelot couldn't help but grin as he leant back in his chair. Gwaine continued. "She's new working at the castle. Been bringing me my meals these past few days whether I ask her to or not, appearing left right and centre like some kind of elf. It's startling, quite frankly."

"And you're not interested at all?" Lancelot hated himself for letting that slip out. He wasn't sure if he'd used a casual enough tone, wasn't sure if he wanted to hear the answer.

"Not my type," Gwaine replied airily. He clapped Lancelot on the shoulder. "Don't have time for a woman in my life when I've got you, do I?"

Lancelot blinked. "Um," he said, but Gwaine was already off across the room and poking his head out the door to check.

"All clear," he muttered, and smiled at Lancelot. "Thanks dear."

Lancelot had long understood that flippancy was Gwaine's bread and butter. But there had been something in Gwaine's expression before, some microscopic change that Lancelot had barely processed before it was gone. Lancelot wanted to push past it, as he always did when something Gwaine did or said gave him pause, gave him something to hope for.

False hope, always false hope, Lancelot told himself, as he usually did.

But this time, it was just too much.

It might have been the lack of sleep he'd had, the exhaustion from that morning's early training session, or perhaps that the weight of all his unspoken thoughts had been pressing upon him for so long that he could finally bear no more. For whatever reason, Lancelot felt himself losing his grip on his usual centre of calm as a multitude of feelings fought to free themselves, feelings he was so used to forcing back down. He stood up, moving without thought as if in a dream.

"Gwaine!"

Gwaine stopped, and turned back to face Lancelot.

"Mmm?"

Lancelot stared at him, his mind in a state of chaos as he struggled to isolate what exactly he wanted to say. There were so many things to articulate, so many important things, but the fear that had kept these things bottled up for so long was just as strong now.

So Lancelot went for the one thing he felt he might be able to ask without losing his footing on solid ground.

"What is it about my room?"

Gwaine's eyebrows shot up in genuine surprise. "I'm sorry, what?"

"My room, Gwaine. You're in love with it. I know you make up reasons to be in here, and that night you stayed here you told me it was something to do with the contents. I don't understand and the curiosity is driving me insane." Lancelot was almost yelling. He knew he shouldn't be this worked up over something so stupid but there was no stopping himself now. "So please, for the love of God, would you put me out of my misery and tell me!"

There was a pause as they stared at each other. And then Gwaine exhaled, long and loud, his eyes cast downward. The merriment that had underpinned his every movement just seconds ago vanished without a trace. That fast and dramatic a change in someone as lively as Gwaine seemed almost shocking to Lancelot; more so, as it was his simple question that had caused it.

"You're right, of course," Gwaine responded tiredly. "About my making reasons up." He put a hand against the wall to lean on, and then decided better of it and righted himself again, all the while staring at the floor.

Gwaine looked so uncharacteristically defeated that Lancelot couldn't help but stare. He felt his worked up confusion and annoyance all but leave him. "I don't understand," Lancelot gently admitted.

Gwaine looked up. His face was set in resolve, and the hardness that had returned to it had him looking more like his natural self again. "I suppose I can't avoid it forever." He ran a hand through his hair, and turned away from Lancelot. "It's you, Lancelot. Not the room. You spend far too much time in here is all."

Lancelot wasn't entirely sure how to respond. He felt as if he had been struck. "Me?" he asked quietly. He saw Gwaine nod.

"The way you-" He stopped, as if to gather his thoughts, and then started again. "When I'm with you I'm…confused, I suppose. I'm nervous and jittery and I feel like I'm about to fall apart every time you so much as glance in my direction. And you'd think that would be a bad thing but I can't get enough of it. It's like you're…intoxicating to me." He paused, and then cleared his throat. "Please don't make me say any more of this stuff."

Gwaine still had his back to Lancelot, and at that moment Lancelot would have given the world to just see his face. He knew he needed to say something, but it felt as if all the oxygen had left the room and the only thing he found himself able to force out was a quiet, "Oh."

"You couldn't have picked a better word than "oh"?" Gwaine finally turned to face Lancelot, his expression one of exhaustion. "That doesn't answer a whole lot for me."

Lancelot tried again and found himself able to speak, although not quite with the gravity he had hoped for. He was having some difficulty processing what had just happened, so instead he went a different route. "Gwaine, why didn't you just say you wanted to spend time with me? Surely that would have been the rational option on the table."

"I guess I thought that might have seemed…out of the ordinary…" Gwaine trailed off, the look on his face betraying just how ridiculous he knew that sounded. He shrugged. "The benefit of hindsight is not something I had, nor the clarity of unaffected thought. Your fault, really."

"Well," Lancelot muttered, the brief flash of amusement he felt over this doing little to slow the violent beating of his heart.

"Lancelot?" Gwaine said slowly. "This isn't doing a lot to put me out of my misery,"

"Well," Lancelot repeated, and the chaotic babble of his thoughts gave way to the one realization that he knew with absolute certainty. "I have been unutterably and inexcusably idiotic."

"Just now?"

"From the day we got here."

"If you say so." Gwaine was staring at Lancelot, and Lancelot could tell that he was waiting for some kind of clarification.

"I should have figured it out," Lancelot continued berating himself. "It certainly would have saved the two of us a lot of torment."

"Well I know why that would be true in my case," Gwaine replied, finding himself mildly amused despite everything else, "but are you trying to tell me that the sheer curiosity of why I was so fascinated with your room has been causing you undue pain and suffering on a level that could be equated with torment? Because I apologise, but really Lancelot, that is verging on pitiable."

"No, that's not what I…well, yes. Sort of. But not entirely. That's not really it." He frowned.

Gwaine shook his head slowly, staring at Lancelot in utter confusion. "I really don't know what you're saying, Lancelot."

"The thing is," Lancelot began, and stopped. He didn't know how to explain himself, didn't know if he possessed the strength and the calm to get it all out in any coherent form. Gwaine was good with words, the most charismatic person Lancelot had ever met, even when - as in this instance - what he had to say might cause himself pain.

Lancelot was a man of thought, to the point where living in his head could blind him to reality. He understood that about himself and still it tripped him up regardless, just as it had now. Lancelot knew that sometimes pure thought fell short, and something more substantial was necessary.

So he covered the distance between them in two strides, coming to a halt inches from Gwaine. Gwaine was staring at him, a mix of confusion and defiance in his expression that made him seem so strangely vulnerable Lancelot couldn't bear it.

They collided, and as Lancelot pressed his lips to Gwaine's he tried to convey what he had failed to articulate; everything that Gwaine and his silly visits meant to Lancelot, and the frustration he had felt for so long over so many things, and the fact that for all their differences and all their misunderstandings and all their time-wasting arguments over the stupidest of topics, for once they were in exactly the same place.

Lancelot finally drew himself from Gwaine and took a step back so as to see the man better. "You see?" he asked, his hands resting on Gwaine's shoulders.

"Ah. Yes. Yes, I think I do," Gwaine said, and a smile broke over his features. "We're idiots, you and I."

"That's the essence of it," Lancelot replied, and laughed. "Would you like me to brainstorm some excuses for your spending time in here in the future?"

"I was thinking of taking 'there's a bobcat roaming the halls intent on exacting revenge on the knight that slew its brother' for a spin," Gwaine replied, grinning up at Lancelot. "What do you think?"

Lancelot rolled his eyes. "I think that just might do it."

"Bobcat it is then," Gwaine agreed, and kissed him.