Cups and Saucerers - Chapter 20 of 22
Previous Chapter
Chapter Summary: Finally Merlin and Arthur get it together. But why is Merlin in such a dreadful hurry?
He gulped when Merlin backed him towards the counter and pressed their lips together in a desperate, messy kiss. Merlin wasn’t gentle. Although his lips were soft, his tongue was insistent, probing. Arthur held on to Merlin’s hair and responded in kind. Fire snaked out of his belly, coursing through his veins, visceral and irresistible. He pulled Merlin closer, closed his hands around the firm mounds of his buttocks, rubbed their crotches together, so that the contact made his heart stutter and he couldn’t help letting out a moan of longing.
A little later
Cups and Saucerers tea shop, Cambridge. 8.15am.
“All right, Linda, thank you so much, now back you go,” said Merlin, hustling her into a white leather jacket. Everyone jumped when she suddenly winked out of existence. “Haven’t got time to explain, everyone, sorry. Here.” He tugged Morgan to her feet and thrust an envelope into her hands. “Read this. It’s got it all in.” She opened her mouth, as if to ask a question, but he carried on talking over her.
“Make sure Mordred gets the deeds,” he said. “Moore I mean. I’m giving him the tea shop. It was his mum’s, after all.” He spun Morgan round, pushed her into Leon’s arms, and then pressed a hand onto Leon’s back to steer them out through the door.
He seemed in a tearing hurry to herd everyone out of the tea shop, and Arthur wondered at his haste.
“Sorry, folks, but right now you need to leave,” he said, placing a blanket round Kara’s shivering shoulders and manhandling her towards the exit.
“Merlin, what’s going on?” said Gwen. “I’m happy to go, but what do you mean, Mordred gets the deeds? Are you leaving Cambridge? What’s happ…”
“What’s the big hurry?” Arthur said, when Merlin thrust Gwen’s coat and umbrella at her and practically shoved her through the door, still talking. He closed it behind her, locking it and turning the sign on the door to “closed”, and plastering his back to the door with a relieved sigh.
Merlin still looked manic. “We haven’t got much time,” he said, “and I need to talk to you, but first I need to do this.” He strode forward and grabbed Arthur round the waist. Arthur felt himself hardening. Despite his lack of sleep, the adrenaline, the JD, despite everything, his body responded to the slightest touch from Merlin.
He gulped when Merlin backed him towards the counter and pressed their lips together in a desperate, messy kiss. Merlin wasn’t gentle. Although his lips were soft, his tongue was insistent, probing. Arthur held on to Merlin’s hair and responded in kind. Fire snaked out of his belly, coursing through his veins, visceral and irresistible. He pulled Merlin closer, closed his hands around the firm mounds of his buttocks, rubbed their crotches together, so that the contact made his heart stutter and he couldn’t help letting out a moan of longing.
“Arthur,” said Merlin, breaking away, his voice half way between a laugh and a sob. “God. Arthur. You don’t know how long I have waited for this. But we have to talk. Please, come to my room upstairs. We’ve got an audience.”
He gestured at the window where enquiring customers were peering through, wondering when the tea shop was going to open. Arthur barked out a surprised laugh and was rewarded by a crinkly-eyed grin from Merlin. He was tempted to say “fuck it, let’s put on a show for the nosy bastards,” but found his pulse quickening at the thought of being alone with Merlin.
“We don’t have much time,” said Merlin, pulling him close for another kiss when they entered the tiny upstairs bedroom. “I have to tell you something.” He gently released his hold and fetched an ordinary-looking envelope with a date and time on it.
“I don’t belong here, Arthur,” said Merlin, handing him the envelope with a solemn expression on his face. “Some time in the next hour or so I will wink out of existence, and I’ll be transported back to London in 2014. Believe me when I say I don’t want to leave you. I swear. God. Arthur, I want you so much. But soon I’ll be gone. That’s what I mean when I say time’s running out.”
Arthur felt suddenly cold, despite his arousal and burning desire, and he shivered.
“So soon?” he whispered, touching Merlin’s cheek with his own so that their stubble rubbed, raw and tender. “But I only just found you, Merlin.” His throat felt tight with the injustice.
Merlin’s eyes filled with tears when he nodded.
“Come and find me,” he said, his voice tremulous, mouth turned down. “Come and find me in London. Not now, not next week, you have to wait, Arthur. I’m so sorry. You have to wait. God knows, I know it won’t be easy…” He faltered for a moment and Arthur remembered how long Merlin had been waiting.
Merlin swallowed, jaw set firm. “This envelope contains the details of my last jump, the one I made to be with you today. Please, after the date on this envelope, please come to me, come and find me. Please, Arthur.”
He sounded so lost.
Arthur nodded. He couldn’t refuse Merlin anything. Merlin’s lips were dark and full when he spoke, his intent voice sparking the desire in Arthur’s loins. Arthur’s body thrilled at it. He wanted to fall to his knees and drink Merlin in. Merlin could be reciting the shipping forecast and he would have the same effect.
“The clock is ticking,” he was saying, “But we have now.” Merlin’s hands burrowed under Arthur’s clothes. Merlin hissed at the contact, Arthur’s skin juddered. “So hot,” Merlin said, voice faltering. His lips brushed Arthur’s and he moaned into Arthur’s mouth.
Arthur had never felt an attraction this intense, had not known it was possible for someone’s touch to raise maddening tingles along his skin, to ignite his lust with a single word, a breath.
He pushed Merlin against the door, lips and tongues meshed together. He tugged at Merlin’s shirt to gain better access to that pale, firm skin. Groaning in pleasure when Merlin grasped his buttocks, he pulled him in, grinding their groins together as they kissed.
His shirt was off now. Merlin’s breath ghosted across his chest in tiny gasps as he mouthed Arthur’s nipples, tongued his navel.
Hard and straining against the fabric of his jeans, he moaned when Merlin fumbled to release his belt. He bent, grasped Merlin under the arms and pulled Merlin to his feet, then lifted him so that his legs snaked round his waist. Arthur walked him to the bed and settled him on it.
“Driving me crazy, Merlin,” he said, “with your magic fingers and tongue. I want you so much. All of you. I want to dive in and drown. I’ve never wanted anyone like this. Let me… please… aaaah…” he leaned forwards and pressed their crotches together with a deep sigh.
Merlin’s eyes fluttered closed and his neck arched into Arthur’s hungry mouth.
“God, Arthur, yeah, please.” He said. He sounded as wrecked as Arthur felt. His words, the tone of his voice conjured a ball of desire, a knot of agonised need in Arthur’s gut. Merlin ran a long finger down Arthur’s jaw. Arthur felt like purring at that touch. “I am clean. And immortal. You can’t hurt me, and I can’t hurt you.”
“Lube?” he said falteringly.
Merlin flashed him a grin and his eyes glowed gold for a moment. “Don’t need it. Just get in me, Arthur. I want to feel you sliding inside me. We don’t have time to prep. Just…. Please...God, I need you inside me, now Arthur. Don’t be gentle. I can take it.” Merlin was thrashing about under Arthur’s weight, in a desperate attempt to get his own trousers off. Arthur’s pulse was singing in his ears, his cock painting wet spots inside his pants.
The sensation as he slid into Merlin was of intense sweetness. He could hardly bear the heat.
Merlin cried out.
“All right?” said Arthur, stopping, heart thudding.
“God, yes, don’t stop. Just. Arthur.”
Arthur gently put a pillow under Merlin’s hips, and pressed all the way in. Then, propped on one hand, the other splayed on Merlin’s chest, he began to pull and thrust in time to the inner rhythm of his heart.
Merlin shivered and trembled beneath him, strung out, tense and quivering. So close. So close. His pale skin was drawn tautly round the lines and angles of his neck. Moaning, lips apart, eyes closed, neck exposed, Merlin’s beauty, his strength and vulnerability took Arthur’s breath away. He wanted this moment of complete surrender to last forever. There was nothing, no-one more perfect in this world.
Fighting to still the tremor in his thighs, Arthur shook with it, So close, so close. He wrapped his free hand round Merlin’s prick. “Come for me Merlin,” he breathed, pulling and twisting gently.
Merlin’s eyes flew open, glowing gold. “Arthur,” he gasped, scrabbling at the bedclothes with his hands, clenching and squeezing around him. Merlin juddered in his hand. Wet heat mingled with a warm, musky scent spurted through Arthur’s fingers onto Merlin’s belly. So good, so good.
As Arthur's pleasure built, their eyes locked, a sweet tension growing in his core and flooding his muscles so that he cried out with the joy of it. His seed pulsed into Merlin, filling him, claiming him. Arthur pushed and crowded as deeply into Merlin as he could fit, pressing as far as he could go. This was his home, his belonging, his rapture; he had never felt so bound to another.
“Merlin,” he breathed in wonder.
For a long time while he lay listening to the frantic thud-thud- of Merlin’s heart, he couldn’t speak, couldn’t move.
He noticed a subtle change in Merlin’s breathing and lifted his head. Merlin was staring at him, biting his lip.
“Come and find me, Arthur?” he said. He caressed Arthur’s head. “Promise me you will come and find me. In 2014. Promise?”
“I promise,” said Arthur. He would do anything. Merlin was his. He’d marked him now.
Merlin nodded, smiling gently, his hand still in Arthur’s hair.
But then his expression changed. “No,” he said, “No, not now, it’s too soon! I don’t want to go yet…”
His back arched. He cried out, as if in pain, and with a faint “pop”, Merlin winked out of existence.
Arthur was alone.
“Merlin?” he said, and then with a rising sense of panic, more loudly. “Merlin? Come back!” He padded over to the door and pounded on it, heart thundering. “Merlin!” he yelled.
The muted sounds of King’s Parade filtered gently through the windowpane., but there was otherwise no reply. He shivered in fear and loss.
“No!” he whispered, remembering what Merlin had said. He understood now Merlin’s earlier frantic haste.
The air felt suddenly cold against his naked skin. Merlin’s clothes lay scattered about. Tears pricked his eyes. He felt wrung out. Empty. Bereft. Trembling, he fell back onto the bed. He hugged the covers, Merlin’s discarded clothes to himself, and breathed in the sweet, masculine scent of their mingled heat and desire.
To find and lose Merlin so abruptly felt so unfair. It felt so wrong to be alone among the cooling covers. The universe must hate him.
Time passed. He couldn’t say how long.
After a while, he picked up the envelope Merlin had given him. It lay, on the floor, discarded and forgotten in the heat of their passion. The date on it was August 1st 2014.
Ten years in the future.
Ten minutes would be hard. Ten hours would be painful. Ten days would be torture. But ten years? Ten years without Merlin? How would Arthur manage without those smiles to warm him on cold days, and oh God, that sparkling touch that sent chills racing up his spine? It was wrong for them to be apart, just wrong. His eyes blurred so that he could no longer see the words.
“Merlin,” he whispered, heartbroken. “Merlin, you complete bastard.”
He felt so wretched, angry and hurt. Merlin, the selfish git, had claimed Arthur, possessing him so thoroughly that he would never recover, sucking him in, opening up and welcoming him into a glorious and irrevocable bond.
And then he vanished without warning.
He hated Merlin so much.
Screwing up his face into a mask of pain, he swept his hand across the nightstand, smashing half-filled glasses and cheap alarm clock onto the floor in a tangled heap, and roared. Then he curled up into a ball and cried like a baby.
Eventually, he dried his eyes and picked up his phone.
“Morgan?” he said, voice still shaking.
But it was Leon’s voice he heard. “Arthur, are you OK?”
“No. I mean yeah, but Merlin’s - Merrill’s - shit, this is so confusing.”
“She’s asleep at the moment, mate,” said Leon, and a tiny bit of Arthur must still be functioning all right, because it was jumping to all sorts of conclusions about Leon and Morgan, and trying to blurt them out to him through the fog of grief and pain. “I’ll pop round,” Leon added. “You sound like you could use a mate.”
“Thanks,” said Arthur.
He swallowed his anger and talked himself down. It wasn’t Merlin’s fault. The wait would hurt, so much, but the hope of seeing Merlin, being with Merlin at the end of it would have to be enough. There was no other choice.
Because, after what they had just shared, he couldn’t imagine touching anyone else in the same way.
He sighed and started to clear up the room.
Next Chapter
Chapter Summary: Finally Merlin and Arthur get it together. But why is Merlin in such a dreadful hurry?
He gulped when Merlin backed him towards the counter and pressed their lips together in a desperate, messy kiss. Merlin wasn’t gentle. Although his lips were soft, his tongue was insistent, probing. Arthur held on to Merlin’s hair and responded in kind. Fire snaked out of his belly, coursing through his veins, visceral and irresistible. He pulled Merlin closer, closed his hands around the firm mounds of his buttocks, rubbed their crotches together, so that the contact made his heart stutter and he couldn’t help letting out a moan of longing.
A little later
Cups and Saucerers tea shop, Cambridge. 8.15am.
“All right, Linda, thank you so much, now back you go,” said Merlin, hustling her into a white leather jacket. Everyone jumped when she suddenly winked out of existence. “Haven’t got time to explain, everyone, sorry. Here.” He tugged Morgan to her feet and thrust an envelope into her hands. “Read this. It’s got it all in.” She opened her mouth, as if to ask a question, but he carried on talking over her.
“Make sure Mordred gets the deeds,” he said. “Moore I mean. I’m giving him the tea shop. It was his mum’s, after all.” He spun Morgan round, pushed her into Leon’s arms, and then pressed a hand onto Leon’s back to steer them out through the door.
He seemed in a tearing hurry to herd everyone out of the tea shop, and Arthur wondered at his haste.
“Sorry, folks, but right now you need to leave,” he said, placing a blanket round Kara’s shivering shoulders and manhandling her towards the exit.
“Merlin, what’s going on?” said Gwen. “I’m happy to go, but what do you mean, Mordred gets the deeds? Are you leaving Cambridge? What’s happ…”
“What’s the big hurry?” Arthur said, when Merlin thrust Gwen’s coat and umbrella at her and practically shoved her through the door, still talking. He closed it behind her, locking it and turning the sign on the door to “closed”, and plastering his back to the door with a relieved sigh.
Merlin still looked manic. “We haven’t got much time,” he said, “and I need to talk to you, but first I need to do this.” He strode forward and grabbed Arthur round the waist. Arthur felt himself hardening. Despite his lack of sleep, the adrenaline, the JD, despite everything, his body responded to the slightest touch from Merlin.
He gulped when Merlin backed him towards the counter and pressed their lips together in a desperate, messy kiss. Merlin wasn’t gentle. Although his lips were soft, his tongue was insistent, probing. Arthur held on to Merlin’s hair and responded in kind. Fire snaked out of his belly, coursing through his veins, visceral and irresistible. He pulled Merlin closer, closed his hands around the firm mounds of his buttocks, rubbed their crotches together, so that the contact made his heart stutter and he couldn’t help letting out a moan of longing.
“Arthur,” said Merlin, breaking away, his voice half way between a laugh and a sob. “God. Arthur. You don’t know how long I have waited for this. But we have to talk. Please, come to my room upstairs. We’ve got an audience.”
He gestured at the window where enquiring customers were peering through, wondering when the tea shop was going to open. Arthur barked out a surprised laugh and was rewarded by a crinkly-eyed grin from Merlin. He was tempted to say “fuck it, let’s put on a show for the nosy bastards,” but found his pulse quickening at the thought of being alone with Merlin.
“We don’t have much time,” said Merlin, pulling him close for another kiss when they entered the tiny upstairs bedroom. “I have to tell you something.” He gently released his hold and fetched an ordinary-looking envelope with a date and time on it.
“I don’t belong here, Arthur,” said Merlin, handing him the envelope with a solemn expression on his face. “Some time in the next hour or so I will wink out of existence, and I’ll be transported back to London in 2014. Believe me when I say I don’t want to leave you. I swear. God. Arthur, I want you so much. But soon I’ll be gone. That’s what I mean when I say time’s running out.”
Arthur felt suddenly cold, despite his arousal and burning desire, and he shivered.
“So soon?” he whispered, touching Merlin’s cheek with his own so that their stubble rubbed, raw and tender. “But I only just found you, Merlin.” His throat felt tight with the injustice.
Merlin’s eyes filled with tears when he nodded.
“Come and find me,” he said, his voice tremulous, mouth turned down. “Come and find me in London. Not now, not next week, you have to wait, Arthur. I’m so sorry. You have to wait. God knows, I know it won’t be easy…” He faltered for a moment and Arthur remembered how long Merlin had been waiting.
Merlin swallowed, jaw set firm. “This envelope contains the details of my last jump, the one I made to be with you today. Please, after the date on this envelope, please come to me, come and find me. Please, Arthur.”
He sounded so lost.
Arthur nodded. He couldn’t refuse Merlin anything. Merlin’s lips were dark and full when he spoke, his intent voice sparking the desire in Arthur’s loins. Arthur’s body thrilled at it. He wanted to fall to his knees and drink Merlin in. Merlin could be reciting the shipping forecast and he would have the same effect.
“The clock is ticking,” he was saying, “But we have now.” Merlin’s hands burrowed under Arthur’s clothes. Merlin hissed at the contact, Arthur’s skin juddered. “So hot,” Merlin said, voice faltering. His lips brushed Arthur’s and he moaned into Arthur’s mouth.
Arthur had never felt an attraction this intense, had not known it was possible for someone’s touch to raise maddening tingles along his skin, to ignite his lust with a single word, a breath.
He pushed Merlin against the door, lips and tongues meshed together. He tugged at Merlin’s shirt to gain better access to that pale, firm skin. Groaning in pleasure when Merlin grasped his buttocks, he pulled him in, grinding their groins together as they kissed.
His shirt was off now. Merlin’s breath ghosted across his chest in tiny gasps as he mouthed Arthur’s nipples, tongued his navel.
Hard and straining against the fabric of his jeans, he moaned when Merlin fumbled to release his belt. He bent, grasped Merlin under the arms and pulled Merlin to his feet, then lifted him so that his legs snaked round his waist. Arthur walked him to the bed and settled him on it.
“Driving me crazy, Merlin,” he said, “with your magic fingers and tongue. I want you so much. All of you. I want to dive in and drown. I’ve never wanted anyone like this. Let me… please… aaaah…” he leaned forwards and pressed their crotches together with a deep sigh.
Merlin’s eyes fluttered closed and his neck arched into Arthur’s hungry mouth.
“God, Arthur, yeah, please.” He said. He sounded as wrecked as Arthur felt. His words, the tone of his voice conjured a ball of desire, a knot of agonised need in Arthur’s gut. Merlin ran a long finger down Arthur’s jaw. Arthur felt like purring at that touch. “I am clean. And immortal. You can’t hurt me, and I can’t hurt you.”
“Lube?” he said falteringly.
Merlin flashed him a grin and his eyes glowed gold for a moment. “Don’t need it. Just get in me, Arthur. I want to feel you sliding inside me. We don’t have time to prep. Just…. Please...God, I need you inside me, now Arthur. Don’t be gentle. I can take it.” Merlin was thrashing about under Arthur’s weight, in a desperate attempt to get his own trousers off. Arthur’s pulse was singing in his ears, his cock painting wet spots inside his pants.
The sensation as he slid into Merlin was of intense sweetness. He could hardly bear the heat.
Merlin cried out.
“All right?” said Arthur, stopping, heart thudding.
“God, yes, don’t stop. Just. Arthur.”
Arthur gently put a pillow under Merlin’s hips, and pressed all the way in. Then, propped on one hand, the other splayed on Merlin’s chest, he began to pull and thrust in time to the inner rhythm of his heart.
Merlin shivered and trembled beneath him, strung out, tense and quivering. So close. So close. His pale skin was drawn tautly round the lines and angles of his neck. Moaning, lips apart, eyes closed, neck exposed, Merlin’s beauty, his strength and vulnerability took Arthur’s breath away. He wanted this moment of complete surrender to last forever. There was nothing, no-one more perfect in this world.
Fighting to still the tremor in his thighs, Arthur shook with it, So close, so close. He wrapped his free hand round Merlin’s prick. “Come for me Merlin,” he breathed, pulling and twisting gently.
Merlin’s eyes flew open, glowing gold. “Arthur,” he gasped, scrabbling at the bedclothes with his hands, clenching and squeezing around him. Merlin juddered in his hand. Wet heat mingled with a warm, musky scent spurted through Arthur’s fingers onto Merlin’s belly. So good, so good.
As Arthur's pleasure built, their eyes locked, a sweet tension growing in his core and flooding his muscles so that he cried out with the joy of it. His seed pulsed into Merlin, filling him, claiming him. Arthur pushed and crowded as deeply into Merlin as he could fit, pressing as far as he could go. This was his home, his belonging, his rapture; he had never felt so bound to another.
“Merlin,” he breathed in wonder.
For a long time while he lay listening to the frantic thud-thud- of Merlin’s heart, he couldn’t speak, couldn’t move.
He noticed a subtle change in Merlin’s breathing and lifted his head. Merlin was staring at him, biting his lip.
“Come and find me, Arthur?” he said. He caressed Arthur’s head. “Promise me you will come and find me. In 2014. Promise?”
“I promise,” said Arthur. He would do anything. Merlin was his. He’d marked him now.
Merlin nodded, smiling gently, his hand still in Arthur’s hair.
But then his expression changed. “No,” he said, “No, not now, it’s too soon! I don’t want to go yet…”
His back arched. He cried out, as if in pain, and with a faint “pop”, Merlin winked out of existence.
Arthur was alone.
“Merlin?” he said, and then with a rising sense of panic, more loudly. “Merlin? Come back!” He padded over to the door and pounded on it, heart thundering. “Merlin!” he yelled.
The muted sounds of King’s Parade filtered gently through the windowpane., but there was otherwise no reply. He shivered in fear and loss.
“No!” he whispered, remembering what Merlin had said. He understood now Merlin’s earlier frantic haste.
The air felt suddenly cold against his naked skin. Merlin’s clothes lay scattered about. Tears pricked his eyes. He felt wrung out. Empty. Bereft. Trembling, he fell back onto the bed. He hugged the covers, Merlin’s discarded clothes to himself, and breathed in the sweet, masculine scent of their mingled heat and desire.
To find and lose Merlin so abruptly felt so unfair. It felt so wrong to be alone among the cooling covers. The universe must hate him.
Time passed. He couldn’t say how long.
After a while, he picked up the envelope Merlin had given him. It lay, on the floor, discarded and forgotten in the heat of their passion. The date on it was August 1st 2014.
Ten years in the future.
Ten minutes would be hard. Ten hours would be painful. Ten days would be torture. But ten years? Ten years without Merlin? How would Arthur manage without those smiles to warm him on cold days, and oh God, that sparkling touch that sent chills racing up his spine? It was wrong for them to be apart, just wrong. His eyes blurred so that he could no longer see the words.
“Merlin,” he whispered, heartbroken. “Merlin, you complete bastard.”
He felt so wretched, angry and hurt. Merlin, the selfish git, had claimed Arthur, possessing him so thoroughly that he would never recover, sucking him in, opening up and welcoming him into a glorious and irrevocable bond.
And then he vanished without warning.
He hated Merlin so much.
Screwing up his face into a mask of pain, he swept his hand across the nightstand, smashing half-filled glasses and cheap alarm clock onto the floor in a tangled heap, and roared. Then he curled up into a ball and cried like a baby.
Eventually, he dried his eyes and picked up his phone.
“Morgan?” he said, voice still shaking.
But it was Leon’s voice he heard. “Arthur, are you OK?”
“No. I mean yeah, but Merlin’s - Merrill’s - shit, this is so confusing.”
“She’s asleep at the moment, mate,” said Leon, and a tiny bit of Arthur must still be functioning all right, because it was jumping to all sorts of conclusions about Leon and Morgan, and trying to blurt them out to him through the fog of grief and pain. “I’ll pop round,” Leon added. “You sound like you could use a mate.”
“Thanks,” said Arthur.
He swallowed his anger and talked himself down. It wasn’t Merlin’s fault. The wait would hurt, so much, but the hope of seeing Merlin, being with Merlin at the end of it would have to be enough. There was no other choice.
Because, after what they had just shared, he couldn’t imagine touching anyone else in the same way.
He sighed and started to clear up the room.
Next Chapter