Merlin: Age Ain't Nothing But A Number (R)
Title: Age Ain't Nothing But a Number
Author: mad_maudlin
Fandom: Merlin
Pairing: Arthur/Merlin
Rating: R
Spoilers: Assume all episodes
Warning: mild bloodplay
Summary: It was all going so well, and then Arthur found out Merlin's secrets. Both of them.
A/N: Written for kinkme_merlin
Age Ain't Nothing But A Number
by Mad Maudlin
It wasn't fair. Merlin had tried, dammit. He'd drank every noxious potion Gaius brewed for him; he paid honest money for the piglets and chickens and occasional lamb; he'd memorized the symptoms of fourteen different rare and horrible skin conditions to explain why he had to go out with gloves and hats and spectacles made of smoked glass. He'd spent over a year getting to know Arthur as a man, a good and honorable and occasionally prattish man, as opposed to a particularly tempting hors d'oeuvre.
And then an outlaw warlock had staked him to a tree.
He looked at the good, solid length of yew protruding from his chest, trying not to breath too much. It had missed his heart completely, which was a small blessing; he was stuck, which was not. The stake was too wide at the end to just push it all the way through, and he didn't have enough leverage in this position to pull it out, and it hurt like a bitch. Black fluid was oozing out around the edges of the hole, and Merlin's one consolation was that Arthur was still drugged out of his mind with a sack over his head and wouldn't see this.
"Mrrrrln?"
Or perhaps not.
He looked up from the stake to see Arthur standing blearily among the charred corpses of Tauren and his accomplices, still in his ruined nightshirt. His eyes were still rather too dilated, but he was walking forward with sure steps in spite of the uneven ground, which meant he was taking in every moment of this. Merlin decided to have a go at keeping it casual. "Hi," he said, giving a little wave that made his chest twinge again. "Give us a hand, will you?"
Arthur shook his head and walked away again, one hand pressed against his eyes. Okay, no help from that quarter.
Merlin took a deep breath (but not too deep, because it would only suck more ichor into his lung that he'd have to hack up later, like a cat with a hairball) and tried to call his magic. Burning the warlocks had taken a lot out of him, and for a moment he thought he'd emptied the well; but then, with a tremendous squeal, the stake came loose--not out all the way, but loose enough that he could jiggle it out of the tree, at least. Without that support, he collapsed to the forest floor, but another good lurch managed to get the stake out completely.
The world started doing that scary spinny thing it wasn't supposed to, and he shut his eyes briefly against it. He tried magic again, but no, not happening; he'd need to feed again before he could so much as light a candle. Which was ever so convenient with a gaping great hole in his thoracic cavity and no living things in reach except the one human he absolutely could never touch.
Who, when Merlin opened his eyes again, was reaching for the ichor-covered stake with a furrowed brow. "Don't touch it," Merlin blurted, and felt the chest wound gurgle sickeningly.
Arthur, who had crouched a few yards away, froze but didn't pull his hand back. "Why?" he asked in a raw voice. "What is that stuff, witch blood?"
"It's ichor," Merlin said, using as little breath as he could to avoid another disgusting sound. "If you've got any open wounds on your fingers, you could be infected."
"Infected, right," Arthur said, "and become a zombie warlock, just like you."
"Not a zombie," Merlin said, and let his head fall back against the bole of the tree. "Vampire."
He heard, without looking, Arthur stand up and walk away. Pace around a bit. Poke a few of the burnt corpses. Wander into the woods, and then fiddle with Merlin's pack, the one he'd dropped at the edge of the clearing when he found the warlocks' camp. Walk back. Unexpectedly, a glass vial hit him square in the forehead, and Merlin opened his eyes to find him medication sitting in his lap. "If it helps," Arthur said, though he still sounded coldly furious. "And I'd like to point out I have always said that stuff smelled like blood."
"Just a drop," Merlin said, and managed feebly to uncork the vial. The potion tasted terrible, but thank god and Gaius and the new age of science, it gave him just enough strength to mend the sucking chest wound so he could talk properly. He wiped at the ichor on his skin with his shirt, then started struggling out of it.
"Human or animal?" Arthur asked. Merlin kept trying to peel out of the ruined shirt. Arthur went back and found Tauren's sword and then pointed it at him. "Human or animal?"
"I hate to point this out," Merlin said through his shirt, "but that's not really going to help--"
Arthur took a step forward and fitted the point of the sword under Merlin's Adam's apple, one small lurch away from a neat decapitation. "Answer me. Human or animal?"
Merlin swallowed. "I drink whole blood from animals," he said. "But the potion needs one drop of human blood to be effective. Gaius makes it for me, so I don't know who the donors are for sure."
The sword dropped, and Merlin finished peeling the shirt off and threw it after the stake. Then he slumped backwards again, utterly exhausted by the simple movement.
Arthur was now looking at him like some sort of insect on display--ironic considering his predicament of a few moments ago. He seemed particularly enchanted by Merlin's intact skin. "I thought vampires were all sort of...rotty looking," he finally said.
Merlin chose not to take that bait. "Most of them are. Perks of being a magician, though."
"You can pass for one of the living," Arthur said, half-statement and half-question.
"That's actually Gaius's work," Merlin said. "He wrote to me to say he'd invented a treatment--just one drop of human blood. It's not perfect, but it's...better than the alternative."
"You mean murder?" Arthur asked.
"I mean staying chained up in Hunith's root cellar while she fed me on rats and old bandages," Merlin said. "Why d'you think I risked coming to Camelot, if I had any better options?"
Arthur's brows knit for a minute. "Hunith's not really your mother, is she?" he asked slowly.
Merlin smiled. "Baby sister, actually. I...it happened during Uther's first big purge. Made it easier to hide from the knights, but in the long run..."
Arthur stood up and walked away again. Merlin let him go, and tried to tell himself it didn't matter if Arthur came back--he'd known this had to happen eventually, that one day the charade was going to slip. He'd almost mastered making the potion by himself, anyway. He could go back to Ealdor and Hunith could go back to collecting bandages for him. They'd have a few good years before they'd have to move on and he'd have to start introducing her as his grandmother...
But surprisingly, Arthur came back. "You're nineteen," he said. "You told me yourself."
"That's right," Merlin said.
"You've been nineteen since the year I was born," Arthur said.
Merlin nodded.
"That makes you thirty-nine, you ignorant git."
Merlin nearly laughed. "Age is nothing but a number, my boy," he said, and only regretted it a little at the twisted-up look on Arthur's face. "Anyway, I look nineteen. I feel nineteen. I've been hiding the cellar so long I might as well still be nineteen. You've heard me try to talk to Gwen, right?"
"I always just thought you were sheltered," Arthur said.
The looked each other in the eye and managed to keep a straight face for all of ten seconds. Then they were laughing like drains, and Arthur's had a hysterical edge to it and Merlin's chest still ached sharply from the splintered bones he didn't have the strength to fully mend, but still. They were laughing together. It was a start.
Eventually the laughter quieted, though, and Arthur looked around at the blackened corpses, looking grave again. "You saved my life."
"It's a nasty habit of mine," Merlin said. "It might be easier if you didn't have the self-preservation instinct of a retarded moth, though."
"Hey," Arthur said, looking hurt. "I'm trying to make a point here, which is that you...came. Alone."
Merlin shrugged. "I was tracking you by scent. Bit hard to explain that one to the knights."
"You took on like six warlocks at once," Arthur added more stringently. "How is that a self-preservation instinct at all?"
"The difference is," Merlin said, "you only think you're going to live forever, Arthur. I know I am."
Arthur made a pained face, and suddenly reached out to jab Merlin in the chest, directly on the spot where the stake had gone in. "Forever, right," he said viciously. "I know how to kill a vampire, Merlin. That was a lucky shot."
"Technically, it would've been luckier if he'd actually hit the target," Merlin said tightly. Mostly it was pain bothering him; partly, at least. The good whiff of hot living blood under Arthur's skin wasn't helping matters, though.
Nor did Arthur coming even closer, until Merlin could practically hear his blood rushing through his veins. "Then why haven't you gotten up yet?"
Merlin swallowed and turned his face away, partly from the smell and partly because he found it hard to look Arthur in the eye for this bit. "The more I use magic, the more often I have to feed," he explained. "I only brought the one dose of medicine with me and...and I used a lot of magic just now."
Arthur held his position, breathing shallowly, and when Merlin brought himself to look up again he saw Arthur was watching him with a level of intensity normally reserved for war strategy, chess games and sharpening his sword. It pinned him in place as surely as the stake had. "You could've kept one of the warlocks," Arthur said quietly.
"No," Merlin said, even though he sort of could have--the blood of a warlock would replenish his magic even faster. But Arthur had been so still and there had been so many of them and Merlin had been so angry.... "I don't feed off humans."
"But you'll set them on fire," Arthur said.
"They were trying to kill you," Merlin pointed out.
"What's the difference?"
Merlin sighed. "The difference is, if I feed, I could infect one of them without meaning it. It's how I...anyway, I just don't."
"Why not?" Arthur asked again. "You said yourself you need human blood to li--to, er, continue. And you could always burn the body before it...came back."
Merlin shook his head. "A human being isn't an animal. I'm not going to hunt them both the same. It's the only way I can prove I'm not a total monster."
Arthur sat back on his heels and looked away for a minute, giving Merlin a chance to subtly suck in a few clean breaths of air. But then Arthur looked back at him with the eyes like stakes. "What if you didn't have to hunt him, though?"
"What?" Merlin asked. He knew he sounded dim but he really didn't know where this was going.
"A human isn't an animal," Arthur echoed. "A human can make a choice. To give something freely."
Everything fell into place and Merlin shook his head. "Arthur, no. Absolutely not."
Arthur's mouth turned down sharply at the corners. "Merlin, you'll never make it back to Camelot like this, and leaving you here would be a poor thanks for saving my life."
"What if I infect you?" Merlin asked. "What if I make you like me? Arthur, what if I can't stop?"
"I trust you," Arthur said, laying a hand lightly on Merlin's wrist. It burned like a brand, like an offering, like hellfire. "I mean, you've been my manservant for a year and you've managed not to devour me yet."
"Moth," Merlin said weakly, but he couldn't look away from Arthur's eyes. "Suicidal, retarded moth."
"The warlocks tied their horses a few yards away," Arthur said firmly. "If you can walk a few yards, I'll tie you into the saddle and we'll be home by morning."
Merlin swallowed, and thought about refusing again, but this was Arthur, who always got his way in the end. "They had a goblet and a knife for the ritual where you were tied up," he said instead, hating how his voice wavered. "Bring it here."
Arthur frowned. "Can't you just--"
"We're doing this the safe way," Merlin said, even though he knew the safest way was not doing it at all. "Cup. Knife. Or I'll gladly wait here until morning."
Arthur looked supremely offended to be given an order, but he still got up and went back to the crude altar to get the cup and the knife. Merlin took deep breaths and thought fleetingly about how far he could get crawling, and how he'd ever be able to look Gaius in the eye after he broke the one rule he'd sworn to follow while under Uther's roof. Except it's not really breaking, he told himself. I promised never to hunt. We never said anything about taking up a free offer, or he'd never get the potion made.
And Arthur trusted him. What a farce. At the moment, Merlin scarcely trusted himself.
The cup was old, heavy silver, beaten into a million tiny facets that caught the moonlight. The knife was made of bronze, and serrated, not meant for a clean or painless cut. It would have to do. Arthur knelt in the space between Merlin's splayed legs, the cup caught between his knees, and Merlin took the knife and pressed the point into the blue vein of Arthur's left wrist. Arthur swallowed down whatever noise of pain he might've made when the bronze broke the skin, and even flexed his fingers gently to keep the blood flowing as the cup began to fill in messy drops. The smell made Merlin tremble, but somehow Arthur's trust weighed on him, keeping his hands steady. When the cup was barely half-full, he put the knife aside and took Arthur's other hand, pressing the ball of his thumb against the wound. "Keep the pressure on it for a bit," he said. "It'll stop the bleeding."
"That's it?" Arthur asked, and his voice sounded a bit husky, as he looked at Merlin's hand wrapped around his own.
"I just need to get to the horses, right?" Merlin said. "And close that wound for you. That's all I need."
"Right," Arthur said, nodding slightly. He didn't move until Merlin let go of his hands. "Right, of course."
Merlin hoisted the cup up and paused, the animal instinct of his inhuman nature warring with all the promises he'd made and fears he'd harbored and truths he'd come to believe. Arthur was watching him, eyes slightly widened, looking almost--nervous? Which was absurd. Merlin took a deep breath and told himself he was going to throw it back like brandy and get it over with.
Instead he sipped, just a bit at first, like it was a rich new food he wasn't sure he could stomach. That first taste was the taste of Arthur, of the sweat on his skin and the air in his lungs and the oily trace of the poison the warlocks had used to keep him pliant while they brought him here. Merlin breathed in the smell of it and swallowed again; the blood clung to his teeth and tongue, and he tasted Arthur's anger and betrayal, his worry and confusion, his fear--Merlin had braced himself for that, but he realized it wasn't exactly a fear of him, which was unexpected. He tasted old desire there, which nearly floored him, and a naive trust as solid and stupid and strong as oak planks. The third swallow, a great greedy gulp, and he could practically feel every beat of Arthur's heart, the devotion that would make him Albion's greatest king, the pride that still made him a prat, the loneliness so profound he probably wasn't even aware of it. And then the cup was nearly empty, and Merlin was turning it and licking at the side to get every last drop, not because it was fresh hot blood but because it was Arthur, totally Arthur, and it made Merlin fall in love with him a little all over again.
When he lowered the cup, Arthur was staring at him with dark eyes and an open mouth, not looking nearly as grossed-out as Merlin expected. He licked his lips and tasted Arthur there again. "Thank you," he said, wondering if Arthur had any idea what he'd just done.
Arthur answered that question by surging forward and kissing him. The fact that Merlin's mouth tasted of his own blood didn't seem to put him off; he threw his arms around Merlin's neck and leaned into him, pressing him back against the tree. Merlin found himself clutching Arthur back, feeling through the tears in his nightshirt for smooth hot skin and the scrapes and scratches that currently marred it. Then lower, until he found Arthur's bare legs, bare arse, all the clenching jumping muscles as he squirmed into Merlin's lap and "Oh shit!"
That somewhat broke the spell. Arthur tore his mouth away blinking wildly, then followed Merlin's gaze down to where he was basically straddling one thigh. "What is it?" he asked, bewildered.
"I," Merlin stammered, "I didn't know I could still do that."
Arthur huffed incredulously and reached down to palm Merlin's erection through his trousers, and oh god yes he could so do that and he'd forgot just how good it felt, how much it felt. He jerked into the touch helplessly, and Arthur rubbed down against his thigh in response. "Feels real enough to me," Arthur said. "Just please don't tell me you're a virgin, too."
"Hah, yeah, no," Merlin said breathlessly. "Remember, I was looking up girl's skirts before you were born."
"Oh god," Arthur said with that pained look on his face, and his laughter was still kind of hysterical, but he was laughing and not running away or going for the sword again, and Merlin felt a completely inappropriate calm settle over him from somewhere far away. He clutched Arthur's hips and pulled him closer, so Arthur was completely straddling his lap; Arthur braced his left arm against the the tree for balance, next to Merlin's head, and Merlin knew before he'd even looked that Arthur hadn't kept enough pressure on the knife wound and it was bleeding sluggishly again, inches away from Merlin's mouth.
He looked at the dark beads of blood, which glittered in the moonlight, the shade of red closest to black. Merlin sort of suspected that his first hard-on in twenty years had carbonated his reasoning skills slightly, but Arthur's trust in him--unshaken even on the revelation that Merlin was a magician and also dead--it was like a kind of armor, giving him strength he didn't know was possible. He turned his head and pressed his closed lips against Arthur's arm, closing the wound with a little flicker of magic to keep it clean, and then licked the blood away with a long, lazy swipe of his tongue. It tasted of Arthur, of love and need and want, and Arthur made a high-pitched noise and ground his cock against Merlin's through his trousers.
"You like that," Merlin said, somewhat bemused.
Arthur ducked his head slightly, the closest a prince could ever get to looking shy. "Yeah," he said, then more firmly, "Yes." He looked up, and whatever else he was going to say got slightly derailed. "God, Merlin, your eyes..."
It was Merlin's turn to feel a twinge of unease--he knew what his eyes looked like when he'd been doing magic or drinking fresh blood--but Arthur just kissed him again, and again, and then he was nuzzling Merlin's jaw line and then kissing down the tendon of his neck, and then he was biting him, a sucking kiss that would leave a mark on anyone with a proper pulse, and it was Merlin's turn to laugh a bit madly and thrust up against Arthur. Only you, he thought, but didn't yet dare voice it. Only Arthur Pendragon gives a hickey to a vampire.
He managed to get his trousers partway down, and they kissed and groped and rutted against each other until Merlin felt Arthur spill himself with a muttered oath. Merlin finished a few moments after, and then they both leaned against the tree, Arthur gasping and Merlin softly breathing in the hot living smell of him. He had a tree root pressing against his bare arse and it was nearly sunrise and Arthur was not going to be able to ride back to Camelot until they found a pair of trousers, but Merlin found it difficult to care about those details compared to the man in his arms.
Eventually Arthur pulled back a bit and frowned. "You didn't..." he said vaguely, and gestured down at the mess on Merlin's bare thigh.
"I did," Merlin said. "Believe me, I did--just--I don't think there's much point in my shooting anything, is there?"
"Guess not," Arthur said vaguely. He yawned and didn't even bother to look ashamed of it, but he did study Merlin's face carefully. "Are you good to ride?"
"Yeah," Merlin said. "I've got a change of clothes in my bag, too. Shirt for me and trousers for you."
"Good." And now for the first time, well, ever, Arthur looked really uncertain; he reached out and laid a hand over Merlin's chest, as if testing for a heartbeat he wasn't going to find. "Can we...I mean, obviously we're doing that again when we get home."
Merlin laced his fingers with Arthur's and kissed his knuckles. "Of course, sire. I'll be your servant until the day I die."
"But--oh." Arthur's eyes widened when he realized what Merlin meant, and then they laughed again, voices echoing into the night.
Author: mad_maudlin
Fandom: Merlin
Pairing: Arthur/Merlin
Rating: R
Spoilers: Assume all episodes
Warning: mild bloodplay
Summary: It was all going so well, and then Arthur found out Merlin's secrets. Both of them.
A/N: Written for kinkme_merlin
Age Ain't Nothing But A Number
by Mad Maudlin
It wasn't fair. Merlin had tried, dammit. He'd drank every noxious potion Gaius brewed for him; he paid honest money for the piglets and chickens and occasional lamb; he'd memorized the symptoms of fourteen different rare and horrible skin conditions to explain why he had to go out with gloves and hats and spectacles made of smoked glass. He'd spent over a year getting to know Arthur as a man, a good and honorable and occasionally prattish man, as opposed to a particularly tempting hors d'oeuvre.
And then an outlaw warlock had staked him to a tree.
He looked at the good, solid length of yew protruding from his chest, trying not to breath too much. It had missed his heart completely, which was a small blessing; he was stuck, which was not. The stake was too wide at the end to just push it all the way through, and he didn't have enough leverage in this position to pull it out, and it hurt like a bitch. Black fluid was oozing out around the edges of the hole, and Merlin's one consolation was that Arthur was still drugged out of his mind with a sack over his head and wouldn't see this.
"Mrrrrln?"
Or perhaps not.
He looked up from the stake to see Arthur standing blearily among the charred corpses of Tauren and his accomplices, still in his ruined nightshirt. His eyes were still rather too dilated, but he was walking forward with sure steps in spite of the uneven ground, which meant he was taking in every moment of this. Merlin decided to have a go at keeping it casual. "Hi," he said, giving a little wave that made his chest twinge again. "Give us a hand, will you?"
Arthur shook his head and walked away again, one hand pressed against his eyes. Okay, no help from that quarter.
Merlin took a deep breath (but not too deep, because it would only suck more ichor into his lung that he'd have to hack up later, like a cat with a hairball) and tried to call his magic. Burning the warlocks had taken a lot out of him, and for a moment he thought he'd emptied the well; but then, with a tremendous squeal, the stake came loose--not out all the way, but loose enough that he could jiggle it out of the tree, at least. Without that support, he collapsed to the forest floor, but another good lurch managed to get the stake out completely.
The world started doing that scary spinny thing it wasn't supposed to, and he shut his eyes briefly against it. He tried magic again, but no, not happening; he'd need to feed again before he could so much as light a candle. Which was ever so convenient with a gaping great hole in his thoracic cavity and no living things in reach except the one human he absolutely could never touch.
Who, when Merlin opened his eyes again, was reaching for the ichor-covered stake with a furrowed brow. "Don't touch it," Merlin blurted, and felt the chest wound gurgle sickeningly.
Arthur, who had crouched a few yards away, froze but didn't pull his hand back. "Why?" he asked in a raw voice. "What is that stuff, witch blood?"
"It's ichor," Merlin said, using as little breath as he could to avoid another disgusting sound. "If you've got any open wounds on your fingers, you could be infected."
"Infected, right," Arthur said, "and become a zombie warlock, just like you."
"Not a zombie," Merlin said, and let his head fall back against the bole of the tree. "Vampire."
He heard, without looking, Arthur stand up and walk away. Pace around a bit. Poke a few of the burnt corpses. Wander into the woods, and then fiddle with Merlin's pack, the one he'd dropped at the edge of the clearing when he found the warlocks' camp. Walk back. Unexpectedly, a glass vial hit him square in the forehead, and Merlin opened his eyes to find him medication sitting in his lap. "If it helps," Arthur said, though he still sounded coldly furious. "And I'd like to point out I have always said that stuff smelled like blood."
"Just a drop," Merlin said, and managed feebly to uncork the vial. The potion tasted terrible, but thank god and Gaius and the new age of science, it gave him just enough strength to mend the sucking chest wound so he could talk properly. He wiped at the ichor on his skin with his shirt, then started struggling out of it.
"Human or animal?" Arthur asked. Merlin kept trying to peel out of the ruined shirt. Arthur went back and found Tauren's sword and then pointed it at him. "Human or animal?"
"I hate to point this out," Merlin said through his shirt, "but that's not really going to help--"
Arthur took a step forward and fitted the point of the sword under Merlin's Adam's apple, one small lurch away from a neat decapitation. "Answer me. Human or animal?"
Merlin swallowed. "I drink whole blood from animals," he said. "But the potion needs one drop of human blood to be effective. Gaius makes it for me, so I don't know who the donors are for sure."
The sword dropped, and Merlin finished peeling the shirt off and threw it after the stake. Then he slumped backwards again, utterly exhausted by the simple movement.
Arthur was now looking at him like some sort of insect on display--ironic considering his predicament of a few moments ago. He seemed particularly enchanted by Merlin's intact skin. "I thought vampires were all sort of...rotty looking," he finally said.
Merlin chose not to take that bait. "Most of them are. Perks of being a magician, though."
"You can pass for one of the living," Arthur said, half-statement and half-question.
"That's actually Gaius's work," Merlin said. "He wrote to me to say he'd invented a treatment--just one drop of human blood. It's not perfect, but it's...better than the alternative."
"You mean murder?" Arthur asked.
"I mean staying chained up in Hunith's root cellar while she fed me on rats and old bandages," Merlin said. "Why d'you think I risked coming to Camelot, if I had any better options?"
Arthur's brows knit for a minute. "Hunith's not really your mother, is she?" he asked slowly.
Merlin smiled. "Baby sister, actually. I...it happened during Uther's first big purge. Made it easier to hide from the knights, but in the long run..."
Arthur stood up and walked away again. Merlin let him go, and tried to tell himself it didn't matter if Arthur came back--he'd known this had to happen eventually, that one day the charade was going to slip. He'd almost mastered making the potion by himself, anyway. He could go back to Ealdor and Hunith could go back to collecting bandages for him. They'd have a few good years before they'd have to move on and he'd have to start introducing her as his grandmother...
But surprisingly, Arthur came back. "You're nineteen," he said. "You told me yourself."
"That's right," Merlin said.
"You've been nineteen since the year I was born," Arthur said.
Merlin nodded.
"That makes you thirty-nine, you ignorant git."
Merlin nearly laughed. "Age is nothing but a number, my boy," he said, and only regretted it a little at the twisted-up look on Arthur's face. "Anyway, I look nineteen. I feel nineteen. I've been hiding the cellar so long I might as well still be nineteen. You've heard me try to talk to Gwen, right?"
"I always just thought you were sheltered," Arthur said.
The looked each other in the eye and managed to keep a straight face for all of ten seconds. Then they were laughing like drains, and Arthur's had a hysterical edge to it and Merlin's chest still ached sharply from the splintered bones he didn't have the strength to fully mend, but still. They were laughing together. It was a start.
Eventually the laughter quieted, though, and Arthur looked around at the blackened corpses, looking grave again. "You saved my life."
"It's a nasty habit of mine," Merlin said. "It might be easier if you didn't have the self-preservation instinct of a retarded moth, though."
"Hey," Arthur said, looking hurt. "I'm trying to make a point here, which is that you...came. Alone."
Merlin shrugged. "I was tracking you by scent. Bit hard to explain that one to the knights."
"You took on like six warlocks at once," Arthur added more stringently. "How is that a self-preservation instinct at all?"
"The difference is," Merlin said, "you only think you're going to live forever, Arthur. I know I am."
Arthur made a pained face, and suddenly reached out to jab Merlin in the chest, directly on the spot where the stake had gone in. "Forever, right," he said viciously. "I know how to kill a vampire, Merlin. That was a lucky shot."
"Technically, it would've been luckier if he'd actually hit the target," Merlin said tightly. Mostly it was pain bothering him; partly, at least. The good whiff of hot living blood under Arthur's skin wasn't helping matters, though.
Nor did Arthur coming even closer, until Merlin could practically hear his blood rushing through his veins. "Then why haven't you gotten up yet?"
Merlin swallowed and turned his face away, partly from the smell and partly because he found it hard to look Arthur in the eye for this bit. "The more I use magic, the more often I have to feed," he explained. "I only brought the one dose of medicine with me and...and I used a lot of magic just now."
Arthur held his position, breathing shallowly, and when Merlin brought himself to look up again he saw Arthur was watching him with a level of intensity normally reserved for war strategy, chess games and sharpening his sword. It pinned him in place as surely as the stake had. "You could've kept one of the warlocks," Arthur said quietly.
"No," Merlin said, even though he sort of could have--the blood of a warlock would replenish his magic even faster. But Arthur had been so still and there had been so many of them and Merlin had been so angry.... "I don't feed off humans."
"But you'll set them on fire," Arthur said.
"They were trying to kill you," Merlin pointed out.
"What's the difference?"
Merlin sighed. "The difference is, if I feed, I could infect one of them without meaning it. It's how I...anyway, I just don't."
"Why not?" Arthur asked again. "You said yourself you need human blood to li--to, er, continue. And you could always burn the body before it...came back."
Merlin shook his head. "A human being isn't an animal. I'm not going to hunt them both the same. It's the only way I can prove I'm not a total monster."
Arthur sat back on his heels and looked away for a minute, giving Merlin a chance to subtly suck in a few clean breaths of air. But then Arthur looked back at him with the eyes like stakes. "What if you didn't have to hunt him, though?"
"What?" Merlin asked. He knew he sounded dim but he really didn't know where this was going.
"A human isn't an animal," Arthur echoed. "A human can make a choice. To give something freely."
Everything fell into place and Merlin shook his head. "Arthur, no. Absolutely not."
Arthur's mouth turned down sharply at the corners. "Merlin, you'll never make it back to Camelot like this, and leaving you here would be a poor thanks for saving my life."
"What if I infect you?" Merlin asked. "What if I make you like me? Arthur, what if I can't stop?"
"I trust you," Arthur said, laying a hand lightly on Merlin's wrist. It burned like a brand, like an offering, like hellfire. "I mean, you've been my manservant for a year and you've managed not to devour me yet."
"Moth," Merlin said weakly, but he couldn't look away from Arthur's eyes. "Suicidal, retarded moth."
"The warlocks tied their horses a few yards away," Arthur said firmly. "If you can walk a few yards, I'll tie you into the saddle and we'll be home by morning."
Merlin swallowed, and thought about refusing again, but this was Arthur, who always got his way in the end. "They had a goblet and a knife for the ritual where you were tied up," he said instead, hating how his voice wavered. "Bring it here."
Arthur frowned. "Can't you just--"
"We're doing this the safe way," Merlin said, even though he knew the safest way was not doing it at all. "Cup. Knife. Or I'll gladly wait here until morning."
Arthur looked supremely offended to be given an order, but he still got up and went back to the crude altar to get the cup and the knife. Merlin took deep breaths and thought fleetingly about how far he could get crawling, and how he'd ever be able to look Gaius in the eye after he broke the one rule he'd sworn to follow while under Uther's roof. Except it's not really breaking, he told himself. I promised never to hunt. We never said anything about taking up a free offer, or he'd never get the potion made.
And Arthur trusted him. What a farce. At the moment, Merlin scarcely trusted himself.
The cup was old, heavy silver, beaten into a million tiny facets that caught the moonlight. The knife was made of bronze, and serrated, not meant for a clean or painless cut. It would have to do. Arthur knelt in the space between Merlin's splayed legs, the cup caught between his knees, and Merlin took the knife and pressed the point into the blue vein of Arthur's left wrist. Arthur swallowed down whatever noise of pain he might've made when the bronze broke the skin, and even flexed his fingers gently to keep the blood flowing as the cup began to fill in messy drops. The smell made Merlin tremble, but somehow Arthur's trust weighed on him, keeping his hands steady. When the cup was barely half-full, he put the knife aside and took Arthur's other hand, pressing the ball of his thumb against the wound. "Keep the pressure on it for a bit," he said. "It'll stop the bleeding."
"That's it?" Arthur asked, and his voice sounded a bit husky, as he looked at Merlin's hand wrapped around his own.
"I just need to get to the horses, right?" Merlin said. "And close that wound for you. That's all I need."
"Right," Arthur said, nodding slightly. He didn't move until Merlin let go of his hands. "Right, of course."
Merlin hoisted the cup up and paused, the animal instinct of his inhuman nature warring with all the promises he'd made and fears he'd harbored and truths he'd come to believe. Arthur was watching him, eyes slightly widened, looking almost--nervous? Which was absurd. Merlin took a deep breath and told himself he was going to throw it back like brandy and get it over with.
Instead he sipped, just a bit at first, like it was a rich new food he wasn't sure he could stomach. That first taste was the taste of Arthur, of the sweat on his skin and the air in his lungs and the oily trace of the poison the warlocks had used to keep him pliant while they brought him here. Merlin breathed in the smell of it and swallowed again; the blood clung to his teeth and tongue, and he tasted Arthur's anger and betrayal, his worry and confusion, his fear--Merlin had braced himself for that, but he realized it wasn't exactly a fear of him, which was unexpected. He tasted old desire there, which nearly floored him, and a naive trust as solid and stupid and strong as oak planks. The third swallow, a great greedy gulp, and he could practically feel every beat of Arthur's heart, the devotion that would make him Albion's greatest king, the pride that still made him a prat, the loneliness so profound he probably wasn't even aware of it. And then the cup was nearly empty, and Merlin was turning it and licking at the side to get every last drop, not because it was fresh hot blood but because it was Arthur, totally Arthur, and it made Merlin fall in love with him a little all over again.
When he lowered the cup, Arthur was staring at him with dark eyes and an open mouth, not looking nearly as grossed-out as Merlin expected. He licked his lips and tasted Arthur there again. "Thank you," he said, wondering if Arthur had any idea what he'd just done.
Arthur answered that question by surging forward and kissing him. The fact that Merlin's mouth tasted of his own blood didn't seem to put him off; he threw his arms around Merlin's neck and leaned into him, pressing him back against the tree. Merlin found himself clutching Arthur back, feeling through the tears in his nightshirt for smooth hot skin and the scrapes and scratches that currently marred it. Then lower, until he found Arthur's bare legs, bare arse, all the clenching jumping muscles as he squirmed into Merlin's lap and "Oh shit!"
That somewhat broke the spell. Arthur tore his mouth away blinking wildly, then followed Merlin's gaze down to where he was basically straddling one thigh. "What is it?" he asked, bewildered.
"I," Merlin stammered, "I didn't know I could still do that."
Arthur huffed incredulously and reached down to palm Merlin's erection through his trousers, and oh god yes he could so do that and he'd forgot just how good it felt, how much it felt. He jerked into the touch helplessly, and Arthur rubbed down against his thigh in response. "Feels real enough to me," Arthur said. "Just please don't tell me you're a virgin, too."
"Hah, yeah, no," Merlin said breathlessly. "Remember, I was looking up girl's skirts before you were born."
"Oh god," Arthur said with that pained look on his face, and his laughter was still kind of hysterical, but he was laughing and not running away or going for the sword again, and Merlin felt a completely inappropriate calm settle over him from somewhere far away. He clutched Arthur's hips and pulled him closer, so Arthur was completely straddling his lap; Arthur braced his left arm against the the tree for balance, next to Merlin's head, and Merlin knew before he'd even looked that Arthur hadn't kept enough pressure on the knife wound and it was bleeding sluggishly again, inches away from Merlin's mouth.
He looked at the dark beads of blood, which glittered in the moonlight, the shade of red closest to black. Merlin sort of suspected that his first hard-on in twenty years had carbonated his reasoning skills slightly, but Arthur's trust in him--unshaken even on the revelation that Merlin was a magician and also dead--it was like a kind of armor, giving him strength he didn't know was possible. He turned his head and pressed his closed lips against Arthur's arm, closing the wound with a little flicker of magic to keep it clean, and then licked the blood away with a long, lazy swipe of his tongue. It tasted of Arthur, of love and need and want, and Arthur made a high-pitched noise and ground his cock against Merlin's through his trousers.
"You like that," Merlin said, somewhat bemused.
Arthur ducked his head slightly, the closest a prince could ever get to looking shy. "Yeah," he said, then more firmly, "Yes." He looked up, and whatever else he was going to say got slightly derailed. "God, Merlin, your eyes..."
It was Merlin's turn to feel a twinge of unease--he knew what his eyes looked like when he'd been doing magic or drinking fresh blood--but Arthur just kissed him again, and again, and then he was nuzzling Merlin's jaw line and then kissing down the tendon of his neck, and then he was biting him, a sucking kiss that would leave a mark on anyone with a proper pulse, and it was Merlin's turn to laugh a bit madly and thrust up against Arthur. Only you, he thought, but didn't yet dare voice it. Only Arthur Pendragon gives a hickey to a vampire.
He managed to get his trousers partway down, and they kissed and groped and rutted against each other until Merlin felt Arthur spill himself with a muttered oath. Merlin finished a few moments after, and then they both leaned against the tree, Arthur gasping and Merlin softly breathing in the hot living smell of him. He had a tree root pressing against his bare arse and it was nearly sunrise and Arthur was not going to be able to ride back to Camelot until they found a pair of trousers, but Merlin found it difficult to care about those details compared to the man in his arms.
Eventually Arthur pulled back a bit and frowned. "You didn't..." he said vaguely, and gestured down at the mess on Merlin's bare thigh.
"I did," Merlin said. "Believe me, I did--just--I don't think there's much point in my shooting anything, is there?"
"Guess not," Arthur said vaguely. He yawned and didn't even bother to look ashamed of it, but he did study Merlin's face carefully. "Are you good to ride?"
"Yeah," Merlin said. "I've got a change of clothes in my bag, too. Shirt for me and trousers for you."
"Good." And now for the first time, well, ever, Arthur looked really uncertain; he reached out and laid a hand over Merlin's chest, as if testing for a heartbeat he wasn't going to find. "Can we...I mean, obviously we're doing that again when we get home."
Merlin laced his fingers with Arthur's and kissed his knuckles. "Of course, sire. I'll be your servant until the day I die."
"But--oh." Arthur's eyes widened when he realized what Merlin meant, and then they laughed again, voices echoing into the night.