Fic: Merlin: Hope Is A Waking Dream
From the day she meets Merlin, Gwen wants. She isn’t sure what, precisely. His understated bravery draws her to him like a moth to a candle. At the feast for Lady Helen, when Merlin pushes the Prince out of danger’s way, Gwen looks at him and thinks that this is what courage looks like. A slim country boy in plain clothes, standing unafraid and unassuming next to the Prince, seemingly unaware of the kingdom’s gratitude that’s about to settle on his shoulders. This isn’t fine, hollow words like gallantry, chivalry and knights’ duty; this is real.
First it’s Merlin’s bravery. Then it’s the way he smiles, broad and open, and laughs with her. Merlin’s laugh is warm and light, neither insinuating nor mocking. It’s just so easy that Gwen lets herself go without stopping to think. Laughing with Merlin, whenever they meet, letting her small touches linger a moment too long. It never feels improper, only natural. It’s the gossip that surprises her into realising that she’s been openly flirting with Merlin. She, who usually pays so little attention to the servants’ advances that the gossip would’ve been abundant if her mistress wasn’t the King’s ward. She’s flirting. Nobody says anything to her face. She hears snatches of conversations when she walks into the kitchens or turns a corner. Have you seen? The Prince’s manservant and the lady Morgana’s maid… Mostly it gets used as a prelude to raised eyebrows and whispered insinuations about the prince and the ward, beauty seeking beauty, a sharp tongue another.
Merlin is never one thing only at any given moment. That’s the best description Gwen can come up with - Merlin is all layers and odd angles. Gwen spends her days among the court, caring for the lady Morgana, and she’s used to layers, half-hidden intrigue, most things being something more or less than what they seem. But the people of the court, she thinks, are carefully crafting their layers and small deceptions, holding their facades in place with stiff, brittle resolve. Merlin simply is, one facet of him sliding into another, faraway and straightforward, insightful and better than Gwen at putting his foot in his mouth, brave and fragile.
Burning in poisoned fever Merlin is just that, she thinks, brave and fragile, heroically falling apart. The prince calls him stupid and idiotic and unforgivably stupid, and refuses to let Merlin die for him. Gwen listens and for perhaps the first time she sees in the heir to Camelot no hint of smug superiority, only righteous anger coloured with worry. Arthur goes off to save him but Gwen stays, refusing to leave Merlin’s bedside even when Gauis tries to send her away. Morgana stops by, letting her gaze linger for a moment on Merlin’s shivering figure under the blankets. She tucks an escaping strand of hair behind Gwen’s ear and lets her hand fall to Gwen’s shoulder in an almost-caress.
“I will do fine,” Morgana says. “Stay and care for him. But promise me you’ll sleep some.”
Arthur is in the dungeon for daring to endanger himself for the life of a servant when Merlin wakes and Gwen kisses him, crying and filled to bursting with emotion from seeing him dying and breathing and stopping and opening his eyes again. It’s too much in many ways and she gets embarrassed. Merlin blinks, slow and surprised. Gwen rests her fingers on Merlin’s collarbone, feels the hollows on each side of it, and doesn’t regret.
The days after Gwen sees little of Merlin, just glimpses of a tiredness that swings between an almost elegant sparseness of movements and extreme clumsiness. Gwen tends to Morgana, who dreams too much, sleeps too little and clings to Gwen like an anchor in the night. Gwen thinks about that kiss as she rubs small soothing circles on Morgana’s skin, trying to put her to sleep. When Morgana finally dozes off Gwen stays next to the bed, fastening loose threads on one of Morgana’s embroidered dresses. She wonders when she became more maidservant of the court than blacksmith’s daughter. She wonders about Morgana’s nightmares. She asks herself when she stared to feel shaken by Morgana’s pallor, and what the difference is between the moments when Morgana’s beauty makes her lose her breath and the fluttering Merlin causes. She makes a stitch for each unanswered question. Eventually she falls asleep curled on the edge of Morgana’s bed, still dressed.
In the morning Gwen goes to ask Gauis for more sleeping draught. She knocks and enters the physician’s quarters to find Merlin sitting cross-legged on the working table, his back to her and his head bowed.
“Gauis isn’t here?” Merlin makes a small surprised movement at the sound of her voice, and turns around, slides down from the table. There’s nothing to explain what he’s been doing. The tabletop is empty and it’s the first time Gwen’s seen it so.
“No. He went off on an errand, something about a child with a broken ankle. Do you need him?”
“The lady Morgana has trouble sleeping. I came to fetch more of the draught Gaius prepares for her.”
“He’ll want to make a new batch, and he won’t be back for some hours. I think there’s a small bottle left somewhere, though. It should help you for today,” Merlin says and smiles at her, sympathetically. When he goes to rummage in the cupboards she follows closely behind, taking the chance to satisfy her curiosity about their contents without Gaius there to lift his eyebrows in disapproval. So when Merlin inclines his head to read the label on a bottle she hardly needs to reach out to trace the long exposed line of his neck. Merlin stills. Gwen thinks that perhaps she’s just overstepped a line, that her intent here is more unmistakable than in the kiss on Merlin’s would’ve been deathbed.
Then Merlin tilts his head a little more, letting Gwen continue mapping out his neck with her fingers. It’s so pale, the skin so improbably soft, not at all like it’s been exposed to the harsh sun over the fields for years. She tangles her fingertips in the uneven curls at the nape of this neck, slips them down to the vulnerable spot by his ear where the neck meets the jaw line. She can feel his shallow, shaky breathing. Then all hesitation is gone in the blink of an eye, like a decision’s been made, and Merlin turns and kisses her. It’s a soft press of lips, tentative and exploring, giving and taking, licking and nibbling. Their mouths are joined and there are electrifying points of contact - Merlin’s hands holding Gwen’s face, Gwen’s fingers travelling between Merlin’s neck and collarbones. Gwen expects Merlin to press them close, but he doesn’t, and she allows him to keep that sliver of air between their bodies. Perhaps it’s better like this, each touch of skin on skin heightened into concentrated sensation.
Gwen smoothes her hands down over Merlin’s shoulders, feels a shiver, and Merlin drops to his knees in front of her, taking the hem of her skirts and looking up as if asking for permission. Gwen shudders and feels heat working it’s way up her body, and maybe she nods or maybe Merlin just understands anyway. Merlin’s fingers are gentle, smooth, nimbly tracing patterns up her calves and thighs. Then there’s butterfly kisses pressed to her knees, the inside of her thighs and Gwen flutters and barely breathes, twisting one hand in her skirt and the other in Merlin’s hair. The edge of a shelf is sharp against the small of her back and her knees tremble. Merlin’s fingers are... oh. She says come here and draws him up for another kiss but Merlin’s fingers stay where they are, in small tantalising movements that are drawing Gwen’s nerves to the surface of her skin. She starts to pull his shirt up because she needs his skin on hers, needs him as revealed as she is. But Merlin stops her, holding both her hands in a sure grip.
“Gwen, we can’t.”
“Don’t say you’re worried about my honour,” she says, because it would be such a Merlin self-sacrificing thing to worry about and she doesn’t care about honour, not between them.
“No. But we can’t,” Merlin says and for an instant Gwen is furious at him for being so distant, for all the layers and the inscrutability, for not opening to her even like this when they’re sharing breaths. Then Merlin kisses her knuckles and the inside of her wrists, with a look on his face that reminds Gwen uncannily of Morgana waking from a dream she refuses to talk about. She feels her eyes water so she closes them and throws all this feeling into a kiss, an attempt to claim Merlin, make him hers even though she knows she cannot. Even if Merlin is hers in this moment he’s always unreachable, parts of him unseen and untouchable. Merlin’s fingers move and press and twist against her, and Gwen makes a sound into Merlin’s mouth and trembles against him for a long moment. Merlin’s arms hold her up. His cheek is touching hers, his breathing warm on her ear and if they weren’t so close she wouldn’t hear the whisper.
“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry…”
Merlin’s voice is hoarse and light, breaking and dissolving into nothing. Gwen can’t bring herself to say don’t be, there’s nothing to be sorry about, because maybe there is. Merlin might be whispering forgive me Gwen, now, but she lets the words get lost in the distant sounds from the courtyard and strokes the lines of Merlin’s neck one more time.
A week later the prince goes hunting with only Merlin for company. They return when darkness has fallen already and the king has posted guards to keep watch for them, and everybody knows that it’s only a matter of hours before the knights will be sent out into the night. But the prince returns, with a story about bandits (no need for a search party, the outlaws found their just death), his own bravery and Merlin’s surprising skill with a crossbow. It’s odd how Merlin looks more relaxed, coming from a deadly fight with bandits, Gwen thinks and then changes her mind. Merlin stands taller, prouder than before, filling the space next to the prince Arthur.
Late that night she comes upon them in a hallway. Arthur has an arm around Merlin’s waist, in an unmistakable belonging sort of way and Merlin’s half turned to him, face lifted up, one hand cupping Arthur’s jaw. It’s a frozen tableau, just a glimpse of a moment that does not belong in a hallway of Camelot but that happens to be there anyway. And so is Gwen. They look at her, Arthur surprised (and if he’d been anyone but a prince he’d look guilty for being caught) and in Merlin’s eyes bright happiness give way to sad compassion when they meet hers. Gwen turns and walks the other way. She thinks, carefully, about embroidery. About the small golden stitches on Morgana’s favourite dress, each one following another, forming complex patterns.
FIN
And here, the next part of this 'verse: windy side of the law, Merlin/Arthur. Secrets will out, Merlin should know. She has too many of them.