Line of Sight
By Kay
Disclaimer: Ahhh. No.
Author's Notes: David/Christopher SLASH of the mature kind, so there's your warning! There's mud! And battles! And mad, passionate, it not very graphic or even descriptive sex! Erm. Okay. Yeah.
I hope it's okay... (hides) Post!Series, so everything's messed up, anyway. Thank you so much for reading-- I hope you like it.
Christopher walks just a little behind David's line of sight in battle.
It's a relief. It's a guilty surge of gratitude, but David feels it nevertheless whenever he notes that the golden mud-streaked hair is out of his vision. It's harder, somehow, to be a hero in front of the others. Harder to be a general. They've seen him in times of doubt and darkness, in the beginning and before he learned how to use Galahad's sword as though it had been attached to his fingers for all eternity. And, to be further honest, he doesn't like the idea of killing the way he does now in front of Christopher. He doesn't want to see the reaction that would follow, the look in his eyes.
David's still a bit of a coward, after all.
They don't speak about it, either, and that's an even bigger relief. Christopher keeps his silences better than his bad jokes, David finds as the years go onward, and they share a tent in camps that's filled with companionable quiet and banter when the air grows too stale. Christopher knows how to slow him down, knows the selfish intricacies of his brain, and when David stumbles in after a battle with blood still singing in his veins and ragged gasps leaking out of his lungs, it's Christopher who makes the first move and drags him tight against his body.
David finds shaky, crushing redemption in it. He shouldn't; he knows that and it blackens the shame inside each time it happens. But Christopher seems to get it, seems to understand, and he walks behind David in the battles and waits for him in the tent afterwards, and doesn't complain about how David still feels like he's attacking when he makes love, the purple marks on his shoulders and the swelling of his bottom lip for days afterwards. The mud streaks in his hair grow thicker with David's fingers, and Christopher never looks at him the way the others do, not like he's a General, or a God, or even a man. He looks at him like he's still sixteen and gangly, still making mistakes and scared out of his mind (and maybe David pushes even harder because that makes him angry, but he'll never admit he looks for it specifically in these moments after knowing they're alive).
It all changes when they're back at Daggermouth, of course-- Christopher follows Etain like a lost puppy, if with something flatter in his face, something restrained. And David meets with Jalil and discusses the war calmly, as though he's not secretly waiting for the next assignment, as if he doesn't dread these long weeks where he can't sleep and the tension snaps his muscles painfully each day.
But then they'll be out again, where Christopher walks behind and David can't see him, can't wait to touch his face again once it's back in his sight.
End