Rheged Part 10
He raised his eyes as if compelled, and met Arthur’s intense blue gaze once more, but again, he couldn’t begin to try to understand what he saw there.
Merlin couldn’t hold that gaze for long though. Instead he forced himself to focus on Mythryrn and his companions properly, asking about magic, about the structure of Rheged's court, magic’s place in the kingdom, and Myrthyrn, who had magic himself, seemed delighted to discuss it with him, even as he gently probed Merlin as to the extent of his own abilities. If it was indeed true that he could slow time, call down the elements, defeat the great sorceress Nimueh, destroy the mighty and terrifying Morgause and thwart Morgana Pendragon, all with little more than a thought.
It seemed his reputation truly had spread, and grown massively in the telling.
He didn’t know how much Arthur was listening to, didn’t know if he worried about him hearing or not.
Did he fear Arthur would become nervous of his strength, of his status among other magic users? Or did he pray his king would be proud of his powers, proud to be bound in destiny with a creature like him? Both. Both.
When Arthur and Gwen finally rose to leave though, Merlin found he was genuinely startled. He’d sunk so deeply into the conversation that he’d managed to put his own turmoil aside, and he was immeasurably grateful for that.
Surely, he thought desperately, it could never be this bad again?
This had to have been the worst ordeal… the first public event afterward; the first sight of Gwen and Arthur so unshakeably united. Even the obvious fact that they were leaving early, probably eager as ever for time together alone, couldn’t do too much to dampen his enormous relief.
Merlin stood with everyone else, and watched as the king and queen graciously bade goodnight to Myrthyrn and the other Rhegedians, and, nodding at the company, began to move toward the side door in the chamber. Neither of them looked directly at Merlin, yet still he watched them go; Gwen’s slender strength, Arthur’s broad back, feeling again that strange dyspeptic mess of relief and regret and jealousy.
He sighed lightly, but he was aware of Myrthryn at his side, still fascinated by him; intent on his every move. And he realised that Arthur hadn’t addressed one word to him all evening.
He felt his chest tighten, the insane emotion of the day, suddenly all there, in the lump lodged in his throat. It was... the anticlimax of it... that the acknowledgement of their link, the tie they’d formed, should have brought them no closer at all, possibly even driven them further apart...
It felt no different, that was the thing. There was no mysterious binding of minds; no sudden magical ability to read Arthur’s thoughts or emotions, no tangible reward at all, for the thing that they’d done. The only difference was Merlin’s own acceptance of how he truly felt, and that … that was no gift.
When a hand pressed against his back and he heard Gwaine’s soft voice against his ear breathing, “I share their enthusiasm to get to a bed,” he couldn’t begin to understand his emotions.
Gratitude was pre-eminent though, that he had someone he loved too.
He turned slightly and let one side of his mouth lift in an acknowledging smile. But compulsively he took one last look at the door and the king and queen disappearing through it to be alone. He found he needed that image to brace him; force himself back to normality and the future he had to begin with Gwaine.
When he looked though, it was to find that Arthur had stopped at the door, and was looking back at him. At them. He was frowning again, brows down, his full, wide mouth held in another of his assesing pouts.
Merlin’s breath caught. He held Arthur’s burning stare helplessly for what felt like hours, but knew was just moments. Then Arthur blinked, and turned away; disappeared at last from sight, out the door.
Merlin took a deep breath, but it was too late for his peace of mind now.
He managed to function well enough to disentangle himself from the Rheged delegation with a promise to talk again at some point the next day, and to leave with Gwaine for his bedchamber.
But beyond that, he was lost.
He had intended to do all he could to refocus on Gwaine, shake off his newly acknowledged feelings for Arthur as pointless and destructive; push himself instead toward a partnership that he knew made him happy, that he could trust in, that would cause no havoc or destruction.
He’d intended to wrestle his joining with Arthur to the back of his mind, make it as irrelevant to his everyday behaviour as it clearly was to Arthur. And Arthur had helped him - by ignoring him, by focussing so naturally and completely on Gwen, so clearly the person he wanted to devote his attention to, and spend his nights with.
But then at that last moment, he’d turned, and sought out Merlin, and looked at his unity with Gwaine the way he always had before, with that brooding discontent.
And Merlin was caught again. Just by those seconds of attention. Interest.
It was pathetic.
He didn’t try to stop Gwaine coming to his chambers. He let him undress him and slide into bed with him. He lay with him naked. But when Gwaine reached to have him, he pulled back, even though he knew Gwaine would believe the slickness in him was still his own spending.
Because... he couldn’t help it. Because much as he despised himself for it, he couldn’t bear to have Arthur’s seed supplanted. Not even by Gwaine, whom he loved. Not yet. Not until all of it was gone. Absorbed into him.
Not until he was just Merlin again, not the Merlin Arthur had wanted even for that short time. So, he let Gwaine stroke him and worship him, listened numbly to his whispered words.
“He’s right. You’re so beautiful. And I’m the luckiest bastard in Albion and beyond. Let me…just let me…”
And Merlin did let Gwaine move him into one of the positions he’d learned on his travels; head to toe, each sucking at the other; ecstasy reached together.
He tried, did all he could, never to think of blond hair and broad shoulders and a full, soft mouth and a long, pink-gold cock.
When he fell asleep, exhausted and huddled against Gwaine’s wiry, muscular body he knew he hadn’t succeeded, but maybe he’d taken the first steps to healing.
~~~~~~~
Gwaine was gone before sunrise; not because their relationship was any secret, or because Bran minded, having been brought up in the Old Religion himself, but because Gwaine knew Merlin still felt apprehensive about it all - that everyone now knew both about his magic and his love for a man.
Merlin had lived under camouflage for so long, he always felt more comfortable with discretion.
But from the moment he opened his eyes with a jolt of panic, as memory set in, as he recognised that it had been real and not some fever dream, Merlin’s thoughts were focussed obsessively. Not on his lover who’d held him so tenderly the night before, but on the man for whom he’d lived his life since coming to Camelot.
The man to whom he was now irrevocably bound in some unknown, arcane way; the man to whom he’d apparently always been tied.
But then Kilgarrah had never lied about the most important things, had he?
He hadn’t let himself think too much on it the night before, obsessed instead by the human guilt of the act they’d performed. But now he focussed there with a kind of dazed greed - the aspect Arthur had seemed to feel made the union between them impossible to avoid.
According to the Old Religion, they were now tied together even beyond death. For eternity.
No escape.
Yet strangely that was the part that frightened Merlin least.
In this life, Arthur would never be his, but he knew that he would never truly want to be separated from him for long; couldn’t imagine any more a life or an afterlife where Arthur wouldn’t be welcome, the focus of his being.
It was the now that terrified him.
He had to get over it, had to forget and leave it alone as Arthur was doing. Their tie was completed now; he had a link to Arthur no other being had, and he should be glad of it. But he had to leave the rest behind.
The problem though was doing it, not just wishing it.
His reflection, as he shaved, looked wan and hollow. His eyes, he thought, looked shocked, like a man fresh from the battlefield. And yet no one else seemed to have seen anything amiss the night before, and after a while he managed to calm the frantic grinding of his thoughts again.
He climbed into the bath Bran had prepared for him, without allowing himself to think on it, all that he was washing away with the hot, blissful water. And when he finally left his chambers, dressed in his white tunic and a blue jacket, he felt almost detached, ready for the day and the beginning of forgetting.
When he came to the corridor that led to Gaius’s rooms though, he almost succumbed. It was so tempting to do what he used to do; go to his oldest friend and tell him everything; look for answers and absolution. But he resisted the temptation. No one else should know. No one else would ever know.
It was between Arthur and him; their guilty misdeed. Their murky secret.
He headed instead for the library, aiming to continue the project he’d had to stop when Arthur sent him on his embassy to the Druids. There were so many books now no longer forbidden, locked away through Uther’s years and Arthur’s early reign for fear they would fan the flame of sorcery, and yet too valuable to destroy just in case the defence of knowledge was ever needed against the Pendragons’ magical foes.
And there were the ones too, unknown to everyone, all that time, in the concealed room in which Merlin had once unleashed a goblin. Now they were open to Merlin; this, one of the many wonderful new freedoms of Arthur’s now enlightened reign. There was so much to learn; so much to understand. For all his own personal losses and turmoil, it felt like the dawning of the new age of which he’d dreamed and for which he’d fought and sacrificed for so long. And Merlin could lose himself in that joy.
He worked for an hour or so under Geoffrey’s half suspicious, half fascinated eye, then he couldn’t stand the less than subtle scrutiny a moment longer. Geoffrey was one of the many who still looked at Merlin as if a doddering old lady had turned into a battle-hardened warrior in front of their eyes.
They had an image of him forged through years of his cheerful, bumbling presence and now… now they were still struggling to accept that he was a powerful sorceror; powerful enough to be appointed to the king’s Council. And all their fevered picturings of warlocks and mages had been turned on their heads.
Merlin knew that when it came down to it, he was bit of a disappointment in the fear and trembling stakes.
Yet he also knew people were frightened of him; servants he once used to pass the time of day with, now bowed their heads and scuttled by him. But people in Camelot had been schooled to fear and detest magic for so long, conditioned to lash out at it just to survive. It was a lot to ask to expect to be treated as an old friend, even if he hadn’t also become ‘Sire’, with his own room and his own manservant. He often felt lonelier now than he had when he’d been hiding who he was, every day.
He sighed and decided to head for the practice fields to see if Gwaine or Percival or Leon were still there. Gaius, he decided regretfully, was still out of bounds if he wanted to focus on getting back to normal and not obsessing over…things.