FIC: "The Most Unnatural of the Sexual Perversions," Merlin/Arthur, NC-17
Contrary to what most of the servants seem to believe, Arthur doesn't actually prance around naked with Merlin in the room, nor does he require Merlin to dress him, aside from fastening the occasional clasp that Arthur can't reach, or helping him in and out of his fussier formal wear. So this is unexpected to say the least.
"Wait. Wait, wait, wait. Does that mean you've never..." Merlin asks, forgoing any attempt at tact because, well, what the hell is wrong with these damn royals?
"Of course I have!" Arthur protests, looking affronted and maybe just a little embarrassed. "Just... not with another person. Per se."
Merlin slumps into the nearest chair, the one beside Arthur's bed where he sometimes sits when he's trying to wake Arthur in the morning, or convince him to go to bed when he's too wound up, or when they end up talking about this or that until Merlin realizes his feet are aching, or, well. A lot of the time, actually.
"I'd never have guessed," he says, and it comes out sounding exactly as baffled as he feels. "I assumed you. You know. All the time. What with you being--"
"The Crown Prince?" Arthur supplies in a careful monotone.
Merlin blinks up at him. "I was going to say all handsome and strong and brave and, and, you, but I suppose the crown alone does it for some."
"Precisely," Arthur says, and finally moves from the exact spot where he'd been standing a minute ago, when they were kissing. And to think, Merlin had assumed at the time that that would be the weirdest part of this evening. He sits down on the edge of the bed, in front of Merlin, careful to avoid letting their knees touch. "My father reached the same conclusion. For my fourteenth birthday I received my first real armor, an estate near the northern border, and... this," he concludes awkwardly, glancing down.
Merlin can't help but follow his gaze. He can’t see through Arthur's trousers, obviously, but the newfound knowledge of what’s there makes Merlin's stomach turn uncomfortably.
"Right. And I suppose there's no way to, I don't know, get around it?" Merlin asks hopefully. Because if Arthur felt compelled to confess all this to him four minutes into the most epic snog of Merlin's existence thus far, he feels safe in assuming that Arthur would be in favor of other activities that might involve said equipment. So to speak.
Arthur gives him a particularly disbelieving glare. "Gee, Merlin, I'd never thought of that. Whatever would I do without your piercing intellect?"
"Oh, shut up," Merlin snaps, without much bite. In a way, Merlin's sure this is just an extension of his perpetually and inexplicably bad luck, but then he looks at Arthur's pale face, the little wrinkle between his brows deepening, and feels an unbidden swell of affection and longing and deep, terrible sympathy. "Right. Well. If there's nothing to be done then I guess there's no point in discussing it."
Arthur's head drops between his shoulders and he stares quite pointedly at the stone floor. "Certainly," he says quietly. A second later, he's up and moving towards the window, his back to Merlin. "If you'll take my sword back to the armory on your way, you can go for tonight," he says in a frighteningly accurate impression of the implacable prince Merlin came to work for three years ago.
"Go? What are you-- You're taking it back, then?" Merlin asks loudly, feeling a hot bubble of rejection rise up in his chest. "Well, then I'm taking back what I said before. The part about you being brave. I was obviously wrong."
Arthur turns and stares at him, like perhaps Merlin really is mentally deficient after all. "Merlin, have you suffered a head injury that's escaped my notice? I can't do anything other than, you know, from before."
"Kiss?"
"Yes, that," Arthur says, as though it's something shameful.
It's a moment before Merlin can parse out the pearl of important information mired in Arthur's clear-as-a-swamp communication style, but when he does work it out, it's so stupid and typical that Merlin seriously considers trying to punch him again. "It's a good thing I like kissing, then," is what he actually says.
"Only that? Only ever that? Come on Merlin, you may act like a girl but I know for a fact you are familiar with the more base urges.”
“So?” Merlin says, because honestly, this entire conversation has veered from bizarre and unexpected to completely bloody ridiculous. “Your cock isn’t actually the part of you I’m in love with, but it’s good to know you hold me in such high regard.” Before Arthur can balk and argue any more, Merlin crosses the room and shuts him up with his mouth.
*
Merlin isn’t complaining. He wakes up in Arthur's bed most mornings, sleep warm and comfortable, with Arthur half-crushing him more often than not. He gets to learn all the little parts of Arthur that weren’t visible before. The way he pores over Camelot’s dense treaties and legal codes when he can’t sleep, and the care with which he puts them away in the drawers beside his bed. The soft expression he gets when he looks at his mother’s crown, tucked in a dark wood box beneath his bed.
But even at their most intimate, when Arthur's feeling indulgent and happy, drunk on wine or a successful hunt, the belt is like a wall between them, keeping them apart in the most literal sense, if not the most important. It’s not all that obtrusive physically, at least not as far as Merlin can tell, but he can’t imagine having leather straps and a metal plate with a lock that close to one’s bits can possibly be comfortable, no matter how ornately engraved it is. It doesn’t help that Merlin is barely twenty, and sometimes thinks he will literally pass out from the sheer want Arthur kindles in him, the hot, itching, animal need to feel and fuck and, just, god. Merlin may actually dislike Uther more for this than for his stance on magic.
“It’s alright, you know. I won’t be angry,” Arthur murmurs into the shell of Merlin's ear before biting down gently on the thin skin there.
“What?” Merlin asks, lust-addled and slow, his hips grinding steadily against Arthur's broad, muscular thigh.
“If you want to finish. And you do,” Arthur tells him, sounding almost smug in his offer.
“That’s not fair,” Merlin responds quickly. They’ve never really discussed this before, not explicitly anyway in four months worth of mutually unsatisfying groping.
Arthur snorts. “Life’s not fair. And anyway, it’s my problem, not yours, and I’m telling you to just-do it,” Arthur says, and, as if to encourage Merlin's obedience, slides his hand down Merlin's naked torso and between his legs.
“Shit, Arthur, stop, stop,” he pleads desperately.
“No, I don’t think I will,” Arthur counters, the rough pads of his fingers brushing the thin skin beside his cock.
“I said stop,” Merlin snaps, and Arthur freezes. “I don’t want to. I don’t want to, to use you like that. It’s not right.”
“Merlin, when have I ever done something I didn’t want to just to make you happy?” Arthur asks, and although Merlin can actually think of quite a few occasions, he decides to take the point at face value. “I like having you here, in my bed, in my-- I love you, and when I’m king, I plan to spend at least the first month of my reign fucking your brains out, assuming you have any to begin with, but right now I just want you to shut up and let me get you off, or so help me I will put you in the stocks to do it.”
“You love me?” Merlin asks.
Arthur rolls his eyes. “Yes, you imbecile, but that wasn’t really the message I was hoping to convey.”
“Arthur, I have to tell you something.”
“I know, you told me the first night. I remember. I do occasionally listen to the words coming out of your face, though I usually regret it,” Arthur says, hand sliding none-too-discretely back down Merlin's side.
“No, no, not that,” Merlin says, “I mean, that too, but-Arthur, I can take off the belt. If you want me to.”
Arthur gives him an understandably disbelieving stare. “Riiiight,” he says slowly. “That’s very noble of you, but unless you’ve a key or a magic wand, I don’t think there’s-”
“I do.”
“Are you insane?” Arthur snaps. “My father will notice it’s gone by morning, and if he catches you with it, gods, Merlin.”
“No. I meant. Not a key, I don’t have the key, but I can…” Merlin sighs and cups Arthur's face between his hands. He kisses him, once, hard, and pulls away. “I can do magic. To take it off. If you like.”
To his credit, Arthur doesn’t react in any of the vague and horrifying ways Merlin has imagined. He gets the same Serious expression he always gets when he’s being lectured by his father over something Arthur feels he should have already known.
“We’re going to discuss this,” Arthur says carefully.
“I know. I know, Arthur,” Merlin says, rolling away onto his back and preparing for the inevitable hailstorm of questions and accusations, “and please, please believe that I’d never do anything to harm you, or the king, but-”
“But first you’re going to prove it by getting this bloody hunk of metal away from my cock before I decapitate you with my bare hands,” Arthur says, with a look in his eye that backs up the threat.
“Are you-Shouldn’t we talk first? You need to understand that-“
“No. No, I really don’t,” Arthur says, sounding almost hysterical. “What I need is for you to open this thing, and then open your legs, not necessarily in that order, or I swear to you I will drag you to my father’s chambers myself and tell him about how I’ll never be able to sire an heir because your incompetence allowed my bollocks to explode.”
“Right. Off,” Merlin babbles, brain struggling to maintain enough blood to work out what spell to use. Only, before the words have formed in his mouth, Merlin feels a surge of magic wash up from his gut, followed by the metallic snick of a lock falling open.
“What do you know, he can obey orders,” Arthur says, and pins Merlin to the bed with his entire weight.
As it turns out, Arthur is as irritatingly good at sex as he is at most everything else he sets his mind to. Or perhaps Merlin is just too turned on and grateful to care, but either way, it is the best two or three minutes Merlin has ever spent naked, and god, if he’d only known he would have offered sooner.
“God, oh god, Arthur,” he finds himself muttering, as Arthur works himself into Merlin's body, huge hands holding Merlin's thighs apart as Arthur fucks him up the bed and damn near into the headboard.
“You don’t-don’t know how much I’ve wanted, wanted,” Arthur says, trailing off into a series of sloppy, wet kisses to Merlin's collarbone. “Fuck-love,” he grunts sort of stupidly into the sweaty skin of Merlin's neck. And just like that, Merlin's done, clenching and arching up, coming all over his chest in messy, slick spurts. Arthur follows a few seconds later, his eyes squeezed shut as his hips grind in and in and in, barely even moving as he pulses inside Merlin's body.
After, long after, when they’ve finished cleaning each other up and Merlin is all but certain he’ll live to see another sunrise or two, Arthur props his head up and looks down at Merlin, where he’d been on the verge of falling asleep.
“How long?” Arthur says softly, curiously.
Merlin sighs and goes over the speech he’s been crafting since his third day in Arthur's service. “Since I can remember. My mum says I started moving things with my eyes when I was a baby, and when I was six I once-”
“I mean, how long have you known you could get it off, if you wanted to?”
“Wanted to? Arthur, I always wanted to, I just wanted to keep my head on long enough to reap the benefits. And… And I could have all along, apparently. That wasn’t even a spell, I think I just willed it to go away so forcefully that my-my magic obliged. For once.”
Arthur seems to mull this over for a moment, before sinking back against the pillow, his face too close for Merlin to see properly without going cross-eyed. “Well. Next time you find yourself… willing, you have my permission to use whatever means necessary.”
Merlin laughs, more relieved than anything, almost giddy with the prospect of having this, having Arthur in all the ways he wants him, but also at the almost floating feeling of a burden lifted, something dark and secret dragged out into the light.
“Right. And I suppose this will be added to my chores otherwise? Muck the stables, polish your armor, scrub your boots, commit treason to keep Arthur’s cock happy.”
“Well, I can’t technically order you to break the law. But I can ask you to. For me,” Arthur says, his voice a low rumble that vibrates Merlin's chest.
“Yeah. And you never know, I might just do it,” Merlin says, fully expecting the thump he receives on the back of his head, and the kiss that follows it.
The End
"Wait. Wait, wait, wait. Does that mean you've never..." Merlin asks, forgoing any attempt at tact because, well, what the hell is wrong with these damn royals?
"Of course I have!" Arthur protests, looking affronted and maybe just a little embarrassed. "Just... not with another person. Per se."
Merlin slumps into the nearest chair, the one beside Arthur's bed where he sometimes sits when he's trying to wake Arthur in the morning, or convince him to go to bed when he's too wound up, or when they end up talking about this or that until Merlin realizes his feet are aching, or, well. A lot of the time, actually.
"I'd never have guessed," he says, and it comes out sounding exactly as baffled as he feels. "I assumed you. You know. All the time. What with you being--"
"The Crown Prince?" Arthur supplies in a careful monotone.
Merlin blinks up at him. "I was going to say all handsome and strong and brave and, and, you, but I suppose the crown alone does it for some."
"Precisely," Arthur says, and finally moves from the exact spot where he'd been standing a minute ago, when they were kissing. And to think, Merlin had assumed at the time that that would be the weirdest part of this evening. He sits down on the edge of the bed, in front of Merlin, careful to avoid letting their knees touch. "My father reached the same conclusion. For my fourteenth birthday I received my first real armor, an estate near the northern border, and... this," he concludes awkwardly, glancing down.
Merlin can't help but follow his gaze. He can’t see through Arthur's trousers, obviously, but the newfound knowledge of what’s there makes Merlin's stomach turn uncomfortably.
"Right. And I suppose there's no way to, I don't know, get around it?" Merlin asks hopefully. Because if Arthur felt compelled to confess all this to him four minutes into the most epic snog of Merlin's existence thus far, he feels safe in assuming that Arthur would be in favor of other activities that might involve said equipment. So to speak.
Arthur gives him a particularly disbelieving glare. "Gee, Merlin, I'd never thought of that. Whatever would I do without your piercing intellect?"
"Oh, shut up," Merlin snaps, without much bite. In a way, Merlin's sure this is just an extension of his perpetually and inexplicably bad luck, but then he looks at Arthur's pale face, the little wrinkle between his brows deepening, and feels an unbidden swell of affection and longing and deep, terrible sympathy. "Right. Well. If there's nothing to be done then I guess there's no point in discussing it."
Arthur's head drops between his shoulders and he stares quite pointedly at the stone floor. "Certainly," he says quietly. A second later, he's up and moving towards the window, his back to Merlin. "If you'll take my sword back to the armory on your way, you can go for tonight," he says in a frighteningly accurate impression of the implacable prince Merlin came to work for three years ago.
"Go? What are you-- You're taking it back, then?" Merlin asks loudly, feeling a hot bubble of rejection rise up in his chest. "Well, then I'm taking back what I said before. The part about you being brave. I was obviously wrong."
Arthur turns and stares at him, like perhaps Merlin really is mentally deficient after all. "Merlin, have you suffered a head injury that's escaped my notice? I can't do anything other than, you know, from before."
"Kiss?"
"Yes, that," Arthur says, as though it's something shameful.
It's a moment before Merlin can parse out the pearl of important information mired in Arthur's clear-as-a-swamp communication style, but when he does work it out, it's so stupid and typical that Merlin seriously considers trying to punch him again. "It's a good thing I like kissing, then," is what he actually says.
"Only that? Only ever that? Come on Merlin, you may act like a girl but I know for a fact you are familiar with the more base urges.”
“So?” Merlin says, because honestly, this entire conversation has veered from bizarre and unexpected to completely bloody ridiculous. “Your cock isn’t actually the part of you I’m in love with, but it’s good to know you hold me in such high regard.” Before Arthur can balk and argue any more, Merlin crosses the room and shuts him up with his mouth.
*
Merlin isn’t complaining. He wakes up in Arthur's bed most mornings, sleep warm and comfortable, with Arthur half-crushing him more often than not. He gets to learn all the little parts of Arthur that weren’t visible before. The way he pores over Camelot’s dense treaties and legal codes when he can’t sleep, and the care with which he puts them away in the drawers beside his bed. The soft expression he gets when he looks at his mother’s crown, tucked in a dark wood box beneath his bed.
But even at their most intimate, when Arthur's feeling indulgent and happy, drunk on wine or a successful hunt, the belt is like a wall between them, keeping them apart in the most literal sense, if not the most important. It’s not all that obtrusive physically, at least not as far as Merlin can tell, but he can’t imagine having leather straps and a metal plate with a lock that close to one’s bits can possibly be comfortable, no matter how ornately engraved it is. It doesn’t help that Merlin is barely twenty, and sometimes thinks he will literally pass out from the sheer want Arthur kindles in him, the hot, itching, animal need to feel and fuck and, just, god. Merlin may actually dislike Uther more for this than for his stance on magic.
“It’s alright, you know. I won’t be angry,” Arthur murmurs into the shell of Merlin's ear before biting down gently on the thin skin there.
“What?” Merlin asks, lust-addled and slow, his hips grinding steadily against Arthur's broad, muscular thigh.
“If you want to finish. And you do,” Arthur tells him, sounding almost smug in his offer.
“That’s not fair,” Merlin responds quickly. They’ve never really discussed this before, not explicitly anyway in four months worth of mutually unsatisfying groping.
Arthur snorts. “Life’s not fair. And anyway, it’s my problem, not yours, and I’m telling you to just-do it,” Arthur says, and, as if to encourage Merlin's obedience, slides his hand down Merlin's naked torso and between his legs.
“Shit, Arthur, stop, stop,” he pleads desperately.
“No, I don’t think I will,” Arthur counters, the rough pads of his fingers brushing the thin skin beside his cock.
“I said stop,” Merlin snaps, and Arthur freezes. “I don’t want to. I don’t want to, to use you like that. It’s not right.”
“Merlin, when have I ever done something I didn’t want to just to make you happy?” Arthur asks, and although Merlin can actually think of quite a few occasions, he decides to take the point at face value. “I like having you here, in my bed, in my-- I love you, and when I’m king, I plan to spend at least the first month of my reign fucking your brains out, assuming you have any to begin with, but right now I just want you to shut up and let me get you off, or so help me I will put you in the stocks to do it.”
“You love me?” Merlin asks.
Arthur rolls his eyes. “Yes, you imbecile, but that wasn’t really the message I was hoping to convey.”
“Arthur, I have to tell you something.”
“I know, you told me the first night. I remember. I do occasionally listen to the words coming out of your face, though I usually regret it,” Arthur says, hand sliding none-too-discretely back down Merlin's side.
“No, no, not that,” Merlin says, “I mean, that too, but-Arthur, I can take off the belt. If you want me to.”
Arthur gives him an understandably disbelieving stare. “Riiiight,” he says slowly. “That’s very noble of you, but unless you’ve a key or a magic wand, I don’t think there’s-”
“I do.”
“Are you insane?” Arthur snaps. “My father will notice it’s gone by morning, and if he catches you with it, gods, Merlin.”
“No. I meant. Not a key, I don’t have the key, but I can…” Merlin sighs and cups Arthur's face between his hands. He kisses him, once, hard, and pulls away. “I can do magic. To take it off. If you like.”
To his credit, Arthur doesn’t react in any of the vague and horrifying ways Merlin has imagined. He gets the same Serious expression he always gets when he’s being lectured by his father over something Arthur feels he should have already known.
“We’re going to discuss this,” Arthur says carefully.
“I know. I know, Arthur,” Merlin says, rolling away onto his back and preparing for the inevitable hailstorm of questions and accusations, “and please, please believe that I’d never do anything to harm you, or the king, but-”
“But first you’re going to prove it by getting this bloody hunk of metal away from my cock before I decapitate you with my bare hands,” Arthur says, with a look in his eye that backs up the threat.
“Are you-Shouldn’t we talk first? You need to understand that-“
“No. No, I really don’t,” Arthur says, sounding almost hysterical. “What I need is for you to open this thing, and then open your legs, not necessarily in that order, or I swear to you I will drag you to my father’s chambers myself and tell him about how I’ll never be able to sire an heir because your incompetence allowed my bollocks to explode.”
“Right. Off,” Merlin babbles, brain struggling to maintain enough blood to work out what spell to use. Only, before the words have formed in his mouth, Merlin feels a surge of magic wash up from his gut, followed by the metallic snick of a lock falling open.
“What do you know, he can obey orders,” Arthur says, and pins Merlin to the bed with his entire weight.
As it turns out, Arthur is as irritatingly good at sex as he is at most everything else he sets his mind to. Or perhaps Merlin is just too turned on and grateful to care, but either way, it is the best two or three minutes Merlin has ever spent naked, and god, if he’d only known he would have offered sooner.
“God, oh god, Arthur,” he finds himself muttering, as Arthur works himself into Merlin's body, huge hands holding Merlin's thighs apart as Arthur fucks him up the bed and damn near into the headboard.
“You don’t-don’t know how much I’ve wanted, wanted,” Arthur says, trailing off into a series of sloppy, wet kisses to Merlin's collarbone. “Fuck-love,” he grunts sort of stupidly into the sweaty skin of Merlin's neck. And just like that, Merlin's done, clenching and arching up, coming all over his chest in messy, slick spurts. Arthur follows a few seconds later, his eyes squeezed shut as his hips grind in and in and in, barely even moving as he pulses inside Merlin's body.
After, long after, when they’ve finished cleaning each other up and Merlin is all but certain he’ll live to see another sunrise or two, Arthur props his head up and looks down at Merlin, where he’d been on the verge of falling asleep.
“How long?” Arthur says softly, curiously.
Merlin sighs and goes over the speech he’s been crafting since his third day in Arthur's service. “Since I can remember. My mum says I started moving things with my eyes when I was a baby, and when I was six I once-”
“I mean, how long have you known you could get it off, if you wanted to?”
“Wanted to? Arthur, I always wanted to, I just wanted to keep my head on long enough to reap the benefits. And… And I could have all along, apparently. That wasn’t even a spell, I think I just willed it to go away so forcefully that my-my magic obliged. For once.”
Arthur seems to mull this over for a moment, before sinking back against the pillow, his face too close for Merlin to see properly without going cross-eyed. “Well. Next time you find yourself… willing, you have my permission to use whatever means necessary.”
Merlin laughs, more relieved than anything, almost giddy with the prospect of having this, having Arthur in all the ways he wants him, but also at the almost floating feeling of a burden lifted, something dark and secret dragged out into the light.
“Right. And I suppose this will be added to my chores otherwise? Muck the stables, polish your armor, scrub your boots, commit treason to keep Arthur’s cock happy.”
“Well, I can’t technically order you to break the law. But I can ask you to. For me,” Arthur says, his voice a low rumble that vibrates Merlin's chest.
“Yeah. And you never know, I might just do it,” Merlin says, fully expecting the thump he receives on the back of his head, and the kiss that follows it.
The End