Fic: (im)mortality, Merlin/Being Human crossover
Mitchell can’t put an age to this man. This boy? He looks - Mitchell almost thinks timeless but that is frankly a ridiculously literary word, and no one is timeless nor ageless, definitely not the humans and not even the vampires. Mitchell is frozen in time, like a photograph, he’s been told, trapped forever at the human age where he got turned, and all his kind are similar to him - they’ve got distinct ages.
The outsticking ears on this boy give him the look of a kid, his dark brown has no grey in it, and the shape of his face could be anything from a twenty to a forty-year-old’s. And his eyes hold a weariness of years, of decenniums - perhaps, perhaps even centuries.
The man’s name is Merlin, he says as he sits down opposite Mitchell. They’re in a dingy pub where he’s kind of hiding from Herrick, who’s been keeping an uncomfortable close eye on him ever since he let that girl escape.
They drink each other in, gazes steady, face to face, and this Merlin seems mostly human in appearance and smell except for that underlying something a little like fire, in the place where werewolves smell like animal and earth and vampires give off the metallic tang of blood.
“What are you?” Mitchell asks, taking hold of Merlin’s wrist.
“You’re cold,” Merlin remarks instead of answering the question. Mitchell keeps watching him, waiting. Merlin shrugs, says: “Okay then, but not here. I’ve got a room three blocks away, if you want to talk.”
Chatting a bloke up in a pub and leaving with him is maybe too morally dubious for this neighbourhood, for this time, but Mitchell doesn’t care. He’s done worse, and he’ll no doubt do it again.
It’s November, late evening, cold and dark and in this area the streetlights are few are far between, their light glinting of the empty wet streets. Mitchell shivers, turns the collar of his coat up and rubs his hands together. He feels Merlin’s presence next to him, solid, warm, quiet.
Merlin leads him up three rickety stairs in an old building, to a small room with a faded wallpaper with a dark green fern print. There’s no window and not room for anything but a bed, a desk and a chair, but it’s blessedly warm.
Merlin kicks a pile of dirty clothes into a corner, moves a pile of books, smoothes out the quilt and sits down cross-legged on the bed. Mitchell shrugs his coat off and is about to take the chair when Merlin laughs and tells him to come here. He does, sits down opposite Merlin and goes back to looking at his ageless face and thinking about the double-ness of him.
He thinks that this is the kind of place where no one hears you scream, and if they do, they don’t come to your aid, and Merlin’s blue eyes are more trusting than they should be. He could do anything. That fiery smell of Merlin - Mitchell imagines what it would taste like, in his blood, maybe burning hot like chilli, or as metal and ashes. And he doesn’t want to kill anymore, but this time it’s not only his conscience that’s telling him not to, it’s a small niggling instinct warning him off.
“Are you human?” he asks.
“Well,” Merlin says. “Mostly. A little too magical and a little too immortal, but otherwise, yes I am. You aren’t, are you?”
“I was once,” Mitchell says and Merlin looks at him with (too much) understanding.
“It takes some lifetimes to get used to it,” Merlin says, shimmying out of his old corduroy jacket and throwing it across the room. “When you start out as one of the others and then you aren’t, and it’s so easy to let the whole world slip away from you because you’re not bound by it like the mortal humans.”
“Is there nothing at all that could kill you?” Mitchell asks and Merlin’s face changes with the deepest sorrow Mitchell has ever seen and he can’t stand it, so he cups Merlin’s face with both his hands and kisses him until Merlin closes his eyes and kisses him back. He thinks they both imagine it’s like oblivion, though it can never be, oblivion doesn’t exist for the likes of them.
Not until now, with Merlin’s sorrow seeping through his kiss and keeping his hands moving across his back, has Mitchell understood how much that one thought he always keeps shoved away at the back of his mind actually means to him. He doesn’t age, he won’t just go to sleep to never wake up again, but there are… other ways. Mitchell knows that there is an end for him if he needs it, one he doesn’t want, but at least one that is possible: a stake to the heart, blood and pain most likely, and then only ashes blowing up into the air, and then nothing, nothing at all.
Not for Merlin. Mitchell bites down on Merlin’s lower lip, not hard enough to draw blood but hard enough to make Merlin’s eyes snap open, predatory with want, and then his eyes turn golden (this is the colour of the fire Mitchell can sense in him). All the clothes they were still wearing are suddenly gone, as Merlin narrows his eyes little.
His skin is hot on Mitchell’s, so much that he for a fleeting moment imagines that he could wrap himself in Merlin and that it would make him warm. They’re lying chest to chest and their hearts are beating against their ribcages, against each other, Merlin’s thudding twice or thrice in the time between Mitchell’s slow heartbeats, hammering on like a human’s (or a bird’s). When they move against each other it feels, for a moment, almost worth not dying for.
The outsticking ears on this boy give him the look of a kid, his dark brown has no grey in it, and the shape of his face could be anything from a twenty to a forty-year-old’s. And his eyes hold a weariness of years, of decenniums - perhaps, perhaps even centuries.
The man’s name is Merlin, he says as he sits down opposite Mitchell. They’re in a dingy pub where he’s kind of hiding from Herrick, who’s been keeping an uncomfortable close eye on him ever since he let that girl escape.
They drink each other in, gazes steady, face to face, and this Merlin seems mostly human in appearance and smell except for that underlying something a little like fire, in the place where werewolves smell like animal and earth and vampires give off the metallic tang of blood.
“What are you?” Mitchell asks, taking hold of Merlin’s wrist.
“You’re cold,” Merlin remarks instead of answering the question. Mitchell keeps watching him, waiting. Merlin shrugs, says: “Okay then, but not here. I’ve got a room three blocks away, if you want to talk.”
Chatting a bloke up in a pub and leaving with him is maybe too morally dubious for this neighbourhood, for this time, but Mitchell doesn’t care. He’s done worse, and he’ll no doubt do it again.
It’s November, late evening, cold and dark and in this area the streetlights are few are far between, their light glinting of the empty wet streets. Mitchell shivers, turns the collar of his coat up and rubs his hands together. He feels Merlin’s presence next to him, solid, warm, quiet.
Merlin leads him up three rickety stairs in an old building, to a small room with a faded wallpaper with a dark green fern print. There’s no window and not room for anything but a bed, a desk and a chair, but it’s blessedly warm.
Merlin kicks a pile of dirty clothes into a corner, moves a pile of books, smoothes out the quilt and sits down cross-legged on the bed. Mitchell shrugs his coat off and is about to take the chair when Merlin laughs and tells him to come here. He does, sits down opposite Merlin and goes back to looking at his ageless face and thinking about the double-ness of him.
He thinks that this is the kind of place where no one hears you scream, and if they do, they don’t come to your aid, and Merlin’s blue eyes are more trusting than they should be. He could do anything. That fiery smell of Merlin - Mitchell imagines what it would taste like, in his blood, maybe burning hot like chilli, or as metal and ashes. And he doesn’t want to kill anymore, but this time it’s not only his conscience that’s telling him not to, it’s a small niggling instinct warning him off.
“Are you human?” he asks.
“Well,” Merlin says. “Mostly. A little too magical and a little too immortal, but otherwise, yes I am. You aren’t, are you?”
“I was once,” Mitchell says and Merlin looks at him with (too much) understanding.
“It takes some lifetimes to get used to it,” Merlin says, shimmying out of his old corduroy jacket and throwing it across the room. “When you start out as one of the others and then you aren’t, and it’s so easy to let the whole world slip away from you because you’re not bound by it like the mortal humans.”
“Is there nothing at all that could kill you?” Mitchell asks and Merlin’s face changes with the deepest sorrow Mitchell has ever seen and he can’t stand it, so he cups Merlin’s face with both his hands and kisses him until Merlin closes his eyes and kisses him back. He thinks they both imagine it’s like oblivion, though it can never be, oblivion doesn’t exist for the likes of them.
Not until now, with Merlin’s sorrow seeping through his kiss and keeping his hands moving across his back, has Mitchell understood how much that one thought he always keeps shoved away at the back of his mind actually means to him. He doesn’t age, he won’t just go to sleep to never wake up again, but there are… other ways. Mitchell knows that there is an end for him if he needs it, one he doesn’t want, but at least one that is possible: a stake to the heart, blood and pain most likely, and then only ashes blowing up into the air, and then nothing, nothing at all.
Not for Merlin. Mitchell bites down on Merlin’s lower lip, not hard enough to draw blood but hard enough to make Merlin’s eyes snap open, predatory with want, and then his eyes turn golden (this is the colour of the fire Mitchell can sense in him). All the clothes they were still wearing are suddenly gone, as Merlin narrows his eyes little.
His skin is hot on Mitchell’s, so much that he for a fleeting moment imagines that he could wrap himself in Merlin and that it would make him warm. They’re lying chest to chest and their hearts are beating against their ribcages, against each other, Merlin’s thudding twice or thrice in the time between Mitchell’s slow heartbeats, hammering on like a human’s (or a bird’s). When they move against each other it feels, for a moment, almost worth not dying for.