Serenading Gawain

You’ve been working on this song for weeks. You need it to be perfect – or at the very least, not make you look like an utter fool.

You’ve written songs before, composed tunes you’d hum with confidence and made up lyrics you’d repeat with pride (there are those that you can extend less grace to, though, but that’s not a very helpful thought right now). Few of those songs felt as urgent or portentous as this current one – many were created only for yourself to listen to, poured bits of yourself too intimate, as one might into a journal they keep under lock and key – but this, this one song has a lot riding up on it.

How to tell Gawain you like him? That you wish you were more than friends? The answer seems to lie within the question – you could simply say the words, and yet you felt you needed to do more. Put it all into song.

You’ve been exchanging musical scores and lyrics – some half-finished, unpolished – seeking the other’s honest opinion. You’ve gushed over each other’s work and lent help where inspiration faltered. It feels only natural to want to share these feelings through song, too.

And so you’ve done it. You wrote the song, scratched it all, wrote it again, rinse and repeat.

You’re left with what you thought were the best bits, a paper folded neatly in a pocket within your vest, kept against your too-quick beating heart. You’ve got your lute in your case, waiting to be taken out and plucked, and you have Gawain before you, smiling and excited to hear the new song you said you have for him.

“You’ve been all hush-hush about it,” he says, placing an index against his lips and wiggling on the spot. “Now I’m really curious.”

You give a weak chuckle, one hand unwittingly raising to brush against the vest – to the bit of your heart that seeped out, ink blotches on paper in the shape of words and notes. “Oh, it’s just this little thing...it’s rather silly, actually.”

“Don’t say that! Well, unless it’s meant to be silly. Like those jesters’ songs. Oh, I heard this one–”

You gladly allow him to get swept up in the tangent. Your fingers are so clammy, you can hardly imagine strumming the lute’s chords.

“Anyway,” he sheepishly sidles back up to the initial subject, “you were about to sing your new song. I won’t interrupt again, promise. Let’s hear it!”

“No, no,” you stall. “Talk some more if you want.”

“Nooo, come on, let me hear it, let me hear it, let me-”

You stop his eager chanting, putting up your palms in surrender. Your own mind’s chorus, far more anxious – You never should have said anything, Oh Goddess – is harder to shush. “Alright, alright.”

When you first set your mind to it, you loved the idea. Thought how much he’d enjoy it, how romantic it would be. How you’d lay your heart bare and swoop him off his feet like those serenading heroes, all at the same time.

You’re not those serenading heroes, though. Your fingers quiver as you take your lute out of its casing and tune it. Each discordant note makes you inwardly wince. Meanwhile, Gawain makes himself comfortable atop your bed, expectant.

You stand before him, instrument in hands, heart ready to burst out through your chest, through the paper in your vest, and take a deep breath, in and out – a waft of his sweet perfume fills your lungs – and start strumming.

Your melody begins slow and mellow. Your fingers know it well; you could play it in your sleep by now. Gawain listens, swaying to the rhythm, his full and intent attention focused on you, gaze traveling from the hand round the lute’s neck to your face.

You open your mouth, but only a groan comes out. “I don’t think I can do this.”

“Imagine I’m not here,” Gawain says. “Turn around!”

You face the other way and begin anew. You open your mouth –

And catch Gawain’s reflection in the mirror. “This isn’t working,” you helplessly say.

Gawain looks about your chamber, scouring for a solution, lips thoughtfully puckered. “Aha! I know.” He skitters across your four-poster bed, drawing the velvet curtains all about himself.

“Alright, I’m no longer here!” His gleeful, disembodied voice calls out. “Now sing your heart out.”

“Just...please don’t peek until I’m done.”

“Promise.”

You brush the tips of your fingers against your wildly-beating heart, feeling for the edges of the paper, pluck up your courage and try again.

This time you, you don’t stop. You strum on, singing gently the lyrics that expose you, so thoroughly, so vulnerably, pretending there’s only you and the lute and the music to stand witness to this confession.

Once done, you remain frozen, waiting. Barely hearing anything over the rush of blood in your ears, a frantic tune so unlike the tender melody you sang, humming doom.

Maybe he hates it. Maybe he’s gathering the words right now to gently let you down, maybe he won’t ever talk to you again. Oh, what if he felt the same but the song was so horrible it convinced him he doesn’t anymore?

Fearfully, you approach the bed. Your progress is arrested by something hurling towards you – not a jeering pillow, as you dreaded, but Gawain himself, cheeks flushed, eyes bright.

He throws his arms around you. When you fail to reciprocate the hug, stunted beyond reaction, he pulls back, a tad concerned. “Did I come out too quickly?”

“No. No. I just, I didn’t expect…” You swallow, finding yourself less eloquent in speech than song, “Does this mean then that you do feel the same?”

Gawain nods, looking even more radiant than the summer sunshine that falls across his smiling face. He twines his fingers with yours, bringing up your hand to kiss the back of it.

“I too,” he says, “am most ardently in love with you.”