on this fridayest of fridays i am thinking about a handwavey ‘in a far off land a long long time ago’ kind of thing where…
john is a lord/prince/knight/whatever you want from a noble family and gale is his squire/servant/whatever you want. they’re friends, kind of, in a way. at least gale thinks so. all squires spend all day every day with their knights, and all squires sleep at the threshold of their knights’ chambers, but gale is the only one in the castle who has a nice straw pallet to sleep on, and he’s the only one who can mouth off without getting punished for it. john just laughs or shoves him or pets him like a little plaything, which gale feels like he should resent more than he actually does. of course most of the time he’s well aware of the divide between them—there are his duties, for one, and if john’s in a bad mood he can get snappy and act like a rich dickhole, and the other knights/lords almost always treat gale shittily.
so one night john’s out carousing or whatever with gale waiting on him and they return to the castle to find the entire noble family and staff killed and gale’s immediately like, you have to leave. now. and john says, “i need you to come with me,” all wild-eyed.
“that’s impossible,” gale says. “you’ll make your own way,” and john says, “i can’t. i can’t do that.”
“you can. just because you’ve never been alone—“
“—and neither have you,” john says. “i’m ordering you to come with me.”
and even tho orders have no meaning anymore bc everything they ever had is gone, gale gives a short nod. lifelong habit and all. they come up with a plan to switch places bc nobody looks too closely at a servant: gale cuts his long hair off and they trade clothes and john rides behind him into unknown lands. they have to keep up this charade for months while wandering (for money? revenge? whatever) and eventually john starts to chafe under it. he’s not used to this, being treated like shit on a shoe. in private, they resettle into their roles but john starts drinking more and making more and more snide comments, bc some nasty part of him wants gale to remember his place.
finally one night gale snaps. they get back to the room and john starts to flop down onto the bed but gale yanks him back up by the collar and drops him on the floor like, “who the hell do you think you are?”
“who do you think you are?” john asks hotly. “i outrank you, i’m your lord, i own—“
“you own nothing. you sleep on a stone floor. you have no land, no money, no family, no home,” gale states in a cold voice. he gets a handful of john’s hair in a fist. it’s been growing out for the first time since he was a boy, unruly and tangled. “and look at you now: you’re kneeling at the feet of your lowly squire. so i’m asking you again—who do you think you are?”
and john is—hot for it?? maybe he’s just drunk. strong mead out in the countryside, that’s for sure. he says, “fuck you,” and wrenches out of gale’s grip and crawls his way onto his sad little pallet and waits until gale is asleep before humping the straw out of it. obviously the next morning they pretend nothing happened. the mead, john thinks again. yeah.
anyway. etc etc struggle with power imbalances and probably a part where john is fucking into gale like, “i still have this, don’t i—say it—i own this,” and both of them take turns choking for it aaaaand the end.
kianamaiart
dailybridgerton
snowghoul
tangentwithtanner
s-u-f-j-a-n-s-t-e-v-e-n-s
