Merlin: Dream A Little Dream (NC-17)
Title: Dream A Little Dream
Author: mad_maudlin
Fandom: Merlin
Pairing: Arthur/Merlin
Rating: NC-17
Spoilers: None
Warning: Dubcon, rimming, dark!Merlin
Summary: Arthur wants this to be a dream.
A/N: Written for kinkme_merlin; the prompt asked for possessed!Merlin, but that's not explicit in the text.
Dream a Little Dream
By Mad Maudlin
Merlin's gone missing, and Arthur is annoyed.
Or at least, he was annoyed before dinner, when there was no one to help him dress and all his irritated queries turned up was someone's vague idea that Merlin had perhaps gone riding. What business did Merlin have riding? Arthur hadn't given him leave to ride anywhere. Merlin didn't even like riding.
After dinner, with no manservant in sight, Arthur had called someone else for his bath but insisted that the tub--as well as the ashes in the fire, the debris of his lunch and his soiled clothes--be left for Merlin to clean up himself. If he ever returned. Arthur had slumped in front of the fire, half of him thinking that he really should just sack the idiot--again--and this time there would not be any last-minute sympathetic backsies. The other half, the quieter one, was beginning to wonder just what had happened to the idiot, and whether everything was quite all right.
At some point, both halves fell asleep.
Arthur wakes up to the sound of his door opening, to smoldering coals in the fire and a draft, and before he remembers that he's annoyed he thinks oh, thank god and has to remind himself it's only for practical reasons. Merlin's standing in the doorway, just standing, not even excusing his behavior--there are damp spots on his trousers and dead leaves caught in his hair, like he's been rolling around on some forest floor and only just remembered his job. "Where've you been, then?" Arthur asks, not sounding quite as annoyed as he was aiming for. Because he is annoyed, after all. Righteously.
"Out," Merlin says in a queer hollow voice, and as he steps into the room the door shuts behind him. It takes a moment for Arthur to realize Merlin kicked it--must have kicked it, because he certainly didn't push it with his hands but Arthur wasn't watching his feet so he must have kicked it. But for a moment it looked like it shut on its own, and the hairs on the back of Arthur's neck stand on end.
"What do you mean, out?" Arthur demands, climbing to his feet. "Am I keeping you from your busy social calendar, then? What with needing you to do your job?" He starts to fold his arms across his chest, and it's not because Merlin is staring at him so strangely, it's because he's annoyed. But Merlin suddenly strides forward and puts his hand on Arthur's chest, just where the laces of his shirt stop, and he's so cold Arthur gets gooseflesh. "Where have you been, Merlin?" Arthur asks again.
"Out," Merlin says, again, and smiles at little distantly. Arthur doesn't get a chance to point out that this is not an answer, because the cold hand on his chest is suddenly fisting his shirt and Merlin's other hand, just as cold, is on his neck, and they are kissing. It's not like the few times they've messed about--or more than messed about--before; those had been friendly and clumsy and usually the result of too few women plus two much wine and song. Merlin's hands may be freezing but his mouth is hot, and wet, and he sucks and laps at Arthur's lips until they part with a shocked little gasp and then he's inside, tasting bitterly of dirt and fog, all wet heat stroking. No one has ever kissed Arthur like this, so demanding, and at first he's not sure if he likes it, not sure if he should.
He grabs Merlin's shoulders to steady himself, brushes the leaves from Merlin's hair and feels them crunch into needle-sharp fragments in his hands. Merlin suddenly makes a growling noise, like nothing Arthur's heard from him before, and wrenches his mouth downwards to leave sucking kisses on Arthur's jaw and neck. "Merlin," Arthur tries to say, but oh, god, he is liking this, rather a lot, "Merlin, if you're trying to keep from getting sacked..."
The next thing Arthur knows he is being shoved backwards, knocked off his feet by an incredible pressure. He's been punched before, charged, knocked aside by a lance, but there's no painful center of force here, no blow to brace against. This is more like being thrown from a horse, the terrible moment when you realize that you are not in control anymore, the moment when you're flailing at the air. It's like that, and then Arthur is up against the wall, the same even weight pinning him flat, as if gravity had suddenly decided to change itself round just for him.
Merlin is still standing where he was, still with that same queer smile, almost a silhouette with the low fire behind him. But his eyes, oh, god, his eyes--his eyes are glowing, just like the smoldering coals, amber on the edges and a deep, pulsing red in the middle.
"Are you going to sack me, sire?" Merlin says, with a curiously stilted intonation.
Arthur swallows and licks his lip, tastes Merlin on them, all over him. "Merlin, what are you doing?" he asks, means, What are you?
Merlin steps forward and puts those cold hands on Arthur's chest again. "I live to serve you, sire," he says, and kisses him again, somehow even more demanding than before. He rocks his hips against Arthur's, against the half-mast erection that fear hadn't totally wilted, and Arthur's a little disgusted with himself that it still feels good.
This time, when Merlin releases his mouth to nip at his jugular vein, Arthur swallows and says in his most commanding voice, "Merlin, I demand that you stop this." Except it comes out more like "st-aaahhh!" when Merlin bites down, hard, at the same moment he presses the heel of his palm down on Arther's cock, a mixture of pleasure and pain that makes Arthur wonder why he wants it to stop. Oh, right, the glowing eyes. Arthur squirms in place, trying to raise his hands or legs to drive Merlin back, but the motion only pushes his cock harder into Merlin's cold hand.
Merlin lifts his head again, glowing eyes half-lidded, mouth wet and full and debauched. "What is it you want, sire?" he asks. "Tell me, and I'll give it to you."
"I want you to release me," Arthur says, trying again for calm command.
Merlin smiles that distant smile again. "Release?" he says. "I think I can arrange a release."
He doesn't make any other motion, but it can't possibly be a coincidence that in the next instance Arthur's clothes unravel themselves and fall to the ground in a mass of wool and linen threads. He yelps when his unprotected skin meets the cold wall, and again when Merlin's cold hands clamp down on his hips, but his cock is now sticking straight out and fully erect so he supposes, in a way, this counts as release. "That wasn't exactly what I had in mind," Arthur says, unable to keep his voice from breaking somewhere in the middle.
"No?" Merlin asks, sounding not at all repentant while his thumbs sweep up and down the blades of Arthur's hipbones. "I'm sorry, sire. Let me make it up to you."
No, Arthur wants to say, stop this, let me down, but what comes out is roughly along the lines of "Guh," while Merlin applies his hot mouth and freezing hands to Arthur's chest, teasing his nipples up into sensitive points while keeping their bodies pressed hip to hip, giving Arthur just enough friction to gasp on as he writhes against the invisible net that holds him up. Then Merlin is sliding lower, forcing Arthur's hips to still while he leaves a series of obscene red marks in a crescent below his navel, and then--then--
"Tell me what you want, sire," Merlin says, from his knees, luminous eyes locked on Arthur's.
"You know what I want, you idiot," Arthur pants, trying to make it a snarl.
Merlin smiles and cocks his head to one side, a foreign-seeming motion that sets Arthur's nerves on end. "I don't think I do, sire. I think you have to say it."
It is a dream. It must be a dream. Arthur has fallen asleep before the fire waiting for his idiot manservant and this is all some twisted dream brought on by too much mustard at dinner or something. And if it is a dream, then Arthur is allowed to say, "Your mouth."
"I'm sorry, sire?"
Arthur tears his eyes away from Merlin's glowing ones. "Use your mouth," he says again, almost growling it.
"What, like this?" And then Merlin is sucking him deep, impossibly deep and hot, with a wicked ripple of tongue that makes Arthur's whole body bow outwards, straining away from the wall to get even deeper into that mouth. A dream, he thinks, and a mostly good one, if bizarre.
Until Merlin pulls back, forcing Arthur flat again with no more effort than it took to smooth a creased sheet. "Or did you mean like this?" Merlin asks, and with cold hands behind Arthur's knees he suddenly lifts up, and Arthur's feet leave the ground so it's only the steady and inexplicable pull of the wall holding him up at all. He yelps again, inarticulate from shock, as Merlin pushes his legs up until his knees are practically in his own face--those cold hands are freakishly strong and Arthur feels paralyzed in their grip.
Then he feels it, against his arse, the same sucking kisses and little nips, and he would say it now, he'd say no, he's say I thought this was supposed to be a good dream. But Arthur can't move, can't breathe, can only hang suspended by mysterious forces while Merlin spreads his cheeks and starts licking, cold fingers and hot mouth trading places. It ought to be disgusting, it ought to be wrong, but Arthur hasn't got the breath to say so when he can feel need radiating up his spine, when his cock throbs in time with the ever-bolder thrusts of Merlin's tongue. He would be grinding down onto his face, if his bones hadn't melted away. He'd be spreading himself wider if he could move at all.
Instead he whimpers, pathetically, obscenely, unable to catch a breath and keep it, while Merlin methodically opens him up. Soon it's not even whimpering, it's keening, horrible ragged sounds that he can't swallow back no matter how much they shame him. And when Merlin stops--thank god, damn you-- Arthur is trembling in every muscle, even though he's not doing a thing to hold himself up.
"What do you want, sire?" Merlin whispers, mouth wet and red against Arthur's ear. "Tell me."
"You," Arthur gasps, unable to stop himself.
Merlin reaches down to cup Arthur's balls in one hand. "Tell me, sire."
"Want you," Arthur moans.
"Say it," Merlin says, and he squeezes, just enough to send more pleasure-pain rocketing through Arthur's trembling body.
"Fuck me," Arthur says, screams, sobs; he wants it to be a curse and he wants it to be a plea and he wants it, oh, God help him, he wants it, and Merlin smiles again, that smile that isn't really Merlin, or at least not the Merlin he knew; and he is hot and cold all over when he thinks that obviously he didn't know Merlin at all, obviously.
But Merlin lifts Arthur's legs again, just as effortless, molding him into position, and Arthur barely hears Merlin's trousers fall before Merlin's in him, hard and fast and blunt. And this must a dream, a terrible, wonderful dream, because it's never been this good before and it's never hurt this much before, and granted, Arthur's experience in this position is fairly limited, but he doesn't think he normally makes these sounds, these raw animal gasps that he can't hold in. Every thrust pushes out another one, and another, until Arthur is just moaning long mindless vowels while Merlin takes him, takes everything, and stares at him with those great burning eyes.
Arthur feels himself falling towards orgasm, and he's barely aware that he can move his legs again when he draws them tighter around Merlin's body, pulling him closer, tigher, further in. Merlin's been almost silent until now, but he spares one hand to pull Arthur's head down, until their foreheads are pressed together and depth perception goes out the window. Arthur's eyes try to cross for a moment, and his field of vision those amber rings coalesce into a flame, a great bonfire coming from somewhere deep inside Merlin's eyes. And then he speaks a single word:
"Mine."
And Arthur is coming, and coming, and coming, and thinking, yours, yours, yours--
He awakens in bed, sheets pulled up to his neck, and his head it fogged with sleep and something else. A lanky silhouette moves in front of the fire, and it could only be one person, but Arthur has to ask. "Merlin?"
The silhouette pauses and doesn't look Arthur's way. "Go back to sleep," Merlin says. "Everything's taken care of."
"You..." Arthur chases his own memories through what feels like greasy wool packed in his brain. "You were gone."
"I'm right where I mean to be, sire."
Arthur lays his head back on the pillow, but he hears Merlin cross the room, open the door and shut it. The lock clicks.
The lock clicks.
Arthur shoves down the bedclothes, heedless of his own nakedness; all the red welts are there, and his legs ache, and his arse, in a too-familiar way. He staggers to the door and yanks on it with all the strength he can muster, but it's not just locked, it's sealed, as if someone had mounted a handle on a stone wall just for a laugh. "Merlin!" Arthur shouts, pounding on the unyielding wood. "Merlin!"
From somewhere outside the room, he hears the first scream.
Author: mad_maudlin
Fandom: Merlin
Pairing: Arthur/Merlin
Rating: NC-17
Spoilers: None
Warning: Dubcon, rimming, dark!Merlin
Summary: Arthur wants this to be a dream.
A/N: Written for kinkme_merlin; the prompt asked for possessed!Merlin, but that's not explicit in the text.
Dream a Little Dream
By Mad Maudlin
Merlin's gone missing, and Arthur is annoyed.
Or at least, he was annoyed before dinner, when there was no one to help him dress and all his irritated queries turned up was someone's vague idea that Merlin had perhaps gone riding. What business did Merlin have riding? Arthur hadn't given him leave to ride anywhere. Merlin didn't even like riding.
After dinner, with no manservant in sight, Arthur had called someone else for his bath but insisted that the tub--as well as the ashes in the fire, the debris of his lunch and his soiled clothes--be left for Merlin to clean up himself. If he ever returned. Arthur had slumped in front of the fire, half of him thinking that he really should just sack the idiot--again--and this time there would not be any last-minute sympathetic backsies. The other half, the quieter one, was beginning to wonder just what had happened to the idiot, and whether everything was quite all right.
At some point, both halves fell asleep.
Arthur wakes up to the sound of his door opening, to smoldering coals in the fire and a draft, and before he remembers that he's annoyed he thinks oh, thank god and has to remind himself it's only for practical reasons. Merlin's standing in the doorway, just standing, not even excusing his behavior--there are damp spots on his trousers and dead leaves caught in his hair, like he's been rolling around on some forest floor and only just remembered his job. "Where've you been, then?" Arthur asks, not sounding quite as annoyed as he was aiming for. Because he is annoyed, after all. Righteously.
"Out," Merlin says in a queer hollow voice, and as he steps into the room the door shuts behind him. It takes a moment for Arthur to realize Merlin kicked it--must have kicked it, because he certainly didn't push it with his hands but Arthur wasn't watching his feet so he must have kicked it. But for a moment it looked like it shut on its own, and the hairs on the back of Arthur's neck stand on end.
"What do you mean, out?" Arthur demands, climbing to his feet. "Am I keeping you from your busy social calendar, then? What with needing you to do your job?" He starts to fold his arms across his chest, and it's not because Merlin is staring at him so strangely, it's because he's annoyed. But Merlin suddenly strides forward and puts his hand on Arthur's chest, just where the laces of his shirt stop, and he's so cold Arthur gets gooseflesh. "Where have you been, Merlin?" Arthur asks again.
"Out," Merlin says, again, and smiles at little distantly. Arthur doesn't get a chance to point out that this is not an answer, because the cold hand on his chest is suddenly fisting his shirt and Merlin's other hand, just as cold, is on his neck, and they are kissing. It's not like the few times they've messed about--or more than messed about--before; those had been friendly and clumsy and usually the result of too few women plus two much wine and song. Merlin's hands may be freezing but his mouth is hot, and wet, and he sucks and laps at Arthur's lips until they part with a shocked little gasp and then he's inside, tasting bitterly of dirt and fog, all wet heat stroking. No one has ever kissed Arthur like this, so demanding, and at first he's not sure if he likes it, not sure if he should.
He grabs Merlin's shoulders to steady himself, brushes the leaves from Merlin's hair and feels them crunch into needle-sharp fragments in his hands. Merlin suddenly makes a growling noise, like nothing Arthur's heard from him before, and wrenches his mouth downwards to leave sucking kisses on Arthur's jaw and neck. "Merlin," Arthur tries to say, but oh, god, he is liking this, rather a lot, "Merlin, if you're trying to keep from getting sacked..."
The next thing Arthur knows he is being shoved backwards, knocked off his feet by an incredible pressure. He's been punched before, charged, knocked aside by a lance, but there's no painful center of force here, no blow to brace against. This is more like being thrown from a horse, the terrible moment when you realize that you are not in control anymore, the moment when you're flailing at the air. It's like that, and then Arthur is up against the wall, the same even weight pinning him flat, as if gravity had suddenly decided to change itself round just for him.
Merlin is still standing where he was, still with that same queer smile, almost a silhouette with the low fire behind him. But his eyes, oh, god, his eyes--his eyes are glowing, just like the smoldering coals, amber on the edges and a deep, pulsing red in the middle.
"Are you going to sack me, sire?" Merlin says, with a curiously stilted intonation.
Arthur swallows and licks his lip, tastes Merlin on them, all over him. "Merlin, what are you doing?" he asks, means, What are you?
Merlin steps forward and puts those cold hands on Arthur's chest again. "I live to serve you, sire," he says, and kisses him again, somehow even more demanding than before. He rocks his hips against Arthur's, against the half-mast erection that fear hadn't totally wilted, and Arthur's a little disgusted with himself that it still feels good.
This time, when Merlin releases his mouth to nip at his jugular vein, Arthur swallows and says in his most commanding voice, "Merlin, I demand that you stop this." Except it comes out more like "st-aaahhh!" when Merlin bites down, hard, at the same moment he presses the heel of his palm down on Arther's cock, a mixture of pleasure and pain that makes Arthur wonder why he wants it to stop. Oh, right, the glowing eyes. Arthur squirms in place, trying to raise his hands or legs to drive Merlin back, but the motion only pushes his cock harder into Merlin's cold hand.
Merlin lifts his head again, glowing eyes half-lidded, mouth wet and full and debauched. "What is it you want, sire?" he asks. "Tell me, and I'll give it to you."
"I want you to release me," Arthur says, trying again for calm command.
Merlin smiles that distant smile again. "Release?" he says. "I think I can arrange a release."
He doesn't make any other motion, but it can't possibly be a coincidence that in the next instance Arthur's clothes unravel themselves and fall to the ground in a mass of wool and linen threads. He yelps when his unprotected skin meets the cold wall, and again when Merlin's cold hands clamp down on his hips, but his cock is now sticking straight out and fully erect so he supposes, in a way, this counts as release. "That wasn't exactly what I had in mind," Arthur says, unable to keep his voice from breaking somewhere in the middle.
"No?" Merlin asks, sounding not at all repentant while his thumbs sweep up and down the blades of Arthur's hipbones. "I'm sorry, sire. Let me make it up to you."
No, Arthur wants to say, stop this, let me down, but what comes out is roughly along the lines of "Guh," while Merlin applies his hot mouth and freezing hands to Arthur's chest, teasing his nipples up into sensitive points while keeping their bodies pressed hip to hip, giving Arthur just enough friction to gasp on as he writhes against the invisible net that holds him up. Then Merlin is sliding lower, forcing Arthur's hips to still while he leaves a series of obscene red marks in a crescent below his navel, and then--then--
"Tell me what you want, sire," Merlin says, from his knees, luminous eyes locked on Arthur's.
"You know what I want, you idiot," Arthur pants, trying to make it a snarl.
Merlin smiles and cocks his head to one side, a foreign-seeming motion that sets Arthur's nerves on end. "I don't think I do, sire. I think you have to say it."
It is a dream. It must be a dream. Arthur has fallen asleep before the fire waiting for his idiot manservant and this is all some twisted dream brought on by too much mustard at dinner or something. And if it is a dream, then Arthur is allowed to say, "Your mouth."
"I'm sorry, sire?"
Arthur tears his eyes away from Merlin's glowing ones. "Use your mouth," he says again, almost growling it.
"What, like this?" And then Merlin is sucking him deep, impossibly deep and hot, with a wicked ripple of tongue that makes Arthur's whole body bow outwards, straining away from the wall to get even deeper into that mouth. A dream, he thinks, and a mostly good one, if bizarre.
Until Merlin pulls back, forcing Arthur flat again with no more effort than it took to smooth a creased sheet. "Or did you mean like this?" Merlin asks, and with cold hands behind Arthur's knees he suddenly lifts up, and Arthur's feet leave the ground so it's only the steady and inexplicable pull of the wall holding him up at all. He yelps again, inarticulate from shock, as Merlin pushes his legs up until his knees are practically in his own face--those cold hands are freakishly strong and Arthur feels paralyzed in their grip.
Then he feels it, against his arse, the same sucking kisses and little nips, and he would say it now, he'd say no, he's say I thought this was supposed to be a good dream. But Arthur can't move, can't breathe, can only hang suspended by mysterious forces while Merlin spreads his cheeks and starts licking, cold fingers and hot mouth trading places. It ought to be disgusting, it ought to be wrong, but Arthur hasn't got the breath to say so when he can feel need radiating up his spine, when his cock throbs in time with the ever-bolder thrusts of Merlin's tongue. He would be grinding down onto his face, if his bones hadn't melted away. He'd be spreading himself wider if he could move at all.
Instead he whimpers, pathetically, obscenely, unable to catch a breath and keep it, while Merlin methodically opens him up. Soon it's not even whimpering, it's keening, horrible ragged sounds that he can't swallow back no matter how much they shame him. And when Merlin stops--thank god, damn you-- Arthur is trembling in every muscle, even though he's not doing a thing to hold himself up.
"What do you want, sire?" Merlin whispers, mouth wet and red against Arthur's ear. "Tell me."
"You," Arthur gasps, unable to stop himself.
Merlin reaches down to cup Arthur's balls in one hand. "Tell me, sire."
"Want you," Arthur moans.
"Say it," Merlin says, and he squeezes, just enough to send more pleasure-pain rocketing through Arthur's trembling body.
"Fuck me," Arthur says, screams, sobs; he wants it to be a curse and he wants it to be a plea and he wants it, oh, God help him, he wants it, and Merlin smiles again, that smile that isn't really Merlin, or at least not the Merlin he knew; and he is hot and cold all over when he thinks that obviously he didn't know Merlin at all, obviously.
But Merlin lifts Arthur's legs again, just as effortless, molding him into position, and Arthur barely hears Merlin's trousers fall before Merlin's in him, hard and fast and blunt. And this must a dream, a terrible, wonderful dream, because it's never been this good before and it's never hurt this much before, and granted, Arthur's experience in this position is fairly limited, but he doesn't think he normally makes these sounds, these raw animal gasps that he can't hold in. Every thrust pushes out another one, and another, until Arthur is just moaning long mindless vowels while Merlin takes him, takes everything, and stares at him with those great burning eyes.
Arthur feels himself falling towards orgasm, and he's barely aware that he can move his legs again when he draws them tighter around Merlin's body, pulling him closer, tigher, further in. Merlin's been almost silent until now, but he spares one hand to pull Arthur's head down, until their foreheads are pressed together and depth perception goes out the window. Arthur's eyes try to cross for a moment, and his field of vision those amber rings coalesce into a flame, a great bonfire coming from somewhere deep inside Merlin's eyes. And then he speaks a single word:
"Mine."
And Arthur is coming, and coming, and coming, and thinking, yours, yours, yours--
He awakens in bed, sheets pulled up to his neck, and his head it fogged with sleep and something else. A lanky silhouette moves in front of the fire, and it could only be one person, but Arthur has to ask. "Merlin?"
The silhouette pauses and doesn't look Arthur's way. "Go back to sleep," Merlin says. "Everything's taken care of."
"You..." Arthur chases his own memories through what feels like greasy wool packed in his brain. "You were gone."
"I'm right where I mean to be, sire."
Arthur lays his head back on the pillow, but he hears Merlin cross the room, open the door and shut it. The lock clicks.
The lock clicks.
Arthur shoves down the bedclothes, heedless of his own nakedness; all the red welts are there, and his legs ache, and his arse, in a too-familiar way. He staggers to the door and yanks on it with all the strength he can muster, but it's not just locked, it's sealed, as if someone had mounted a handle on a stone wall just for a laugh. "Merlin!" Arthur shouts, pounding on the unyielding wood. "Merlin!"
From somewhere outside the room, he hears the first scream.