Kink Me! #31

[merlinkinkmeme]

Kink Me! #31
Closed to new prompts!Welcome to Kink Me! Merlin #31! :D

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Re: Fill: Something Unpredictable, 2/?

[anonymous]

Dappled light filtered through the oak’s leaves to flit over a face that was sharper, more angular than Merlin remembered. Arthur was brown as a berry, skin so tanned he was glowing with it. He’d changed out of his grey suit, and the white t-shirt he was now wearing made his shoulders look rounded with muscle in just the way Merlin’s weren’t.

Above the neckline of the shirt, Merlin could see hints of fresh skin where Arthur had burned in the sun. The surface had long since blistered and peeled in patches along the back of his neck, and was now glossed over with a sensitive, shiny pink.

He stared at it, fascinated, while Arthur looked out over the garden. It’d whiten in a little round spot if Merlin pressed into it with his fingertip. Under the shirt Arthur probably looked like an irregularly spotted giraffe, patched in pink against the gold of his tan.

Several long moments passed while Merlin studied Arthur’s profile, then the relaxed sprawl of his body as he leaned back on his arms with feet dangling over the ladder. He tried to work out what had changed. Not much, really. Only that everything had lengthened and broadened and become more.

It was Arthur- he’d never not recognise him- but it was also someone whom he didn’t really know. A new Arthur with years of life and experiences Merlin hadn’t been a part of. Merlin suddenly felt as thought he might have trespassed by coming to hide out in the tree house without asking.

He licked his lips, the skin tasting dry. “How’d you know I was here?”

“Checked all the holes you could’ve fallen in first,” Arthur said.

“Bloody ha ha.” Merlin closed his eyes and turned his face into the flesh of his arm, grinning. “So what’d mum want, anyway?”

“Dunno, but if the food on the plate she was holding was piled any higher we would’ve had to get a permit to have it on the premises.”

Merlin snorted, appallingly glad to have gotten away before he was forcefed posh wedding food by his ever worrying mother, cheek-pinched by little old ladies (he hadn’t actually seen any, but there were bound to be gaggles of them somewhere comparing brands of purple rinse and lying in wait for people deemed in need of being fussed over, which always seemed to be Merlin) and had his eardrums assaulted by whatever people the age of Arthur’s father and his new bride listened to these days.

“Was pretty upset when she couldn’t find you. In tears, almost. Merliiiiiiiin, she was crying out,” Arthur said, then wailed in a pretty convincing falsetto, “Where’s my little Merliiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiin.... it was pitiful, really. You’re a horrible son.”

Merlin laughed, lashing out and catching Arthur’s thigh with a light kick. “Fuck off, idiot.”

“Fuck off, idiot,” Arthur aped, catching Merlin’s ankle, pushing on it till Merlin’s knee gave way and folded, then pulling a WFF face and mock-punching him on the leg.

And there. There it was: a hint of the Arthur who’d propelled himself so high in the riverside tyre and rope swing that he’d broken the branch it was tied to and gone into the drink with the tyre, rope, branch and all, then had come up sputtering and laughing like a lunatic.

Re: Fill: Something Unpredictable, 2/?

[anonymous]

♥ ♥ ♥

I love what you're doing with this.

Re: Fill: Something Unpredictable, 2/?

[anonymous]

soooo good anon!

Re: Fill: Something Unpredictable, 2/?

[anonymous]

F5F5F5F5F5F5F5

Re: Fill: Something Unpredictable, 2/?

[anonymous]

I recently read a lovely piece of advice/opinion on modern AU characterisation, the gist of which was that there is even more pressure to have mod AU versions of Merlin and Arthur "in character" as otherwise they are just random people named Merlin and Arthur. If I were writing a textbook on this topic, here is where I would excerpt your bit about Arthur and the tyre swing, point to it and say, "There! There is a beautiful, clever moment of canon Arthur in a modern AU!"

Which is all a very roundabout way of saying, I am LOVING THIS COMPLETELY.

Re: Fill: Something Unpredictable, 2/?

[claudine]

That last paragraph in contrast to the rest of this is so excellent. Wonderful literary device and I can imagine them as children so clearly! Loving the prose so far.