Title: Midsummer Night's Dream

Author: smilingsoprano

Rating: T for innuendo and a little kissing.

Pairings: Jon/Zahir.

Summary: Zahir has a rather confusing dream about his knight-master.

A/N: The italicized text is taken from Bottom's speech upon being un-translated in Shakepeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, which inspired the fic. Slashy. Written for Goldenlake's made of win fic competition, SMACKDOWN.

Zahir opened his eyes slowly, every muscle in his body aching and stiff. He groaned, attempting to find a more comfortable position on his bed. Who knew the King would still have that much dexterity with a sword? He had expected a man soft from years of ruling and not doing, slow and gentle. Instead, he'd been beaten within an inch of his life and left with the admonition to "go home and practice."

I have had a most rare vision.

The weary squire blinked as he struggled out of sleep. Bits and pieces of something—a dream or nightmare, some strange string of images—floated to the surface of his consciousness. He sorted through them, trying to piece them together into something coherent.

I have had a dream, past the wit of man to say what dream it was: man is but an ass, if he go about to expound this dream.

There was the king, his knight-master, his black hair soaked through with exertion, his impossibly blue eyes glittering with competitive fervor. His sword sliced through the the space where Zahir had been no more than a moment before, a steel streak in the crisp evening air, making shining patterns in the gathering dusk. In a movement too quick to follow, it slid along the length of Zahir's weapon, catching at the hilt and completely disarming him. Following through, Jon leaned in, pinning him against the rough wooden wall which surrounded the practice yard.

"Surrender?" he whispered.

Methought I was–there is no man can tell what.

Zahir swallowed hard, feeling acutely the pressure of Jon's hand around his throat, where his heartbeat pulsed with startling rapidity. He couldn't remember when the king had removed his shirt—or, for that matter, where his had gone—but he was aware of their bare chests, slicked with sweat, pressed together. He looked his knight-master in the eye, chin raised defiantly.

"You haven't won yet," he replied.

Methought I was,–and methought I had,–but man is but a patched fool, if he will offer to say what methought I had.

The dream slipped away after that, fragmented and incomplete as he came fully awake, but Zahir could still feel the rasp of Jon's beard along his jaw, the firm grasp of his hands, the softness of his lips as he went about teaching his squire to lose with grace.

He sat up with a gasp, clutching his head in his hands, muttering frantically to himself as he tried to banish the images. That was not how practice had gone yesterday.

The eye of man hath not heard, the ear of man hath not seen, man's hand is not able to taste, his tongue to conceive, nor his heart to report, what my dream was.