World Comes Tumbling (2/3)
Melt You Down | Part One
Arthur wakes after two fragmented hours of sleep to the sound of someone pounding on the door to his flat. He grabs his gun before he even stands, jumpy from his run across the facility and through the town, and walks through his flat as silently as possible to look through the peephole on the door and sees Morgana on the other side, wretched and pale, the way she only is after a bad dream. He opens the door.
“You have ten minutes to pack whatever’s most important to you,” she says, and shoves past him. “Stupid, stupid, stupid, we didn’t know until I dreamed it just now.”
“What did I do wrong?” he asks, knowing it shouldn’t be the most important question, but if Morgana is here looking like that, saying that, it means that he got caught.
Her face crumples and she hugs him tight like she hasn’t since her father died. “Wasn’t your fault, Arthur, I promise, I should have seen before. We should have figured it out.”
“What happened?”
“Pack.” She shoves him gently, and he finally remembers to put the gun down. “Where’s your radio? I need to talk to Merlin.”
Merlin, who he promised to radio in the morning to say he was safe. “On the coffee table. Morgana, what happened?”
“Listen while I talk to him. Pack, Arthur, I was serious about the ten minutes. Your father has people on the way.”
Arthur goes into his bedroom and leaves the door open while he pulls on jeans and a clean t-shirt. Morgana mutters at the radio until there’s finally a tone and a voice on the other end. “This is the Dragon, what’s the matter?”
“This is Fay, and I’m sorry, but you’re getting more company tonight.”
“You’re on Wart’s radio. Is he okay?”
“For now. He’s packing. I’ve got a transport spell but you need to open your wards. We don’t have time to get him to a safe location.”
“If I open them--”
“If Uther knew where the safehouse was to monitor the wards he would have gone in there guns blazing already. Please, Dragon.”
“I’ll work on it. Tell me what happened.”
Arthur finds a backpack he hasn’t used since a hiking trip three summers ago and starts throwing things into it. Clean pants, shirts and trousers, as much money as he can find stuffed in drawers and pockets while he curses himself for using credit most of the time. “We missed a layer of security,” Morgana is saying from his living room. “Apparently whenever one of the cell doors down there is opened it automatically resets all the security systems. It doesn’t matter so much during the day, when the doors are open sometimes to give them food and … other things, so of course we didn’t notice and that basement isn’t even mentioned in the security files Wart has access to.” Not your fault, she’s reminding him as clear as if she were looking right at him. “But we opened that cell door and it reset all the cameras we put on maintenance mode.”
That means he’s been caught running down some very damning hallways--through some of the wards, even. Arthur takes a second to fight down panic and looks around for more to pack. His mobile is useless, his ID won’t do him any good, his laptop would be helpful but too easy to trace. He leaves the picture of his father he has on his dresser and stuffs in the only one he has of his mother before going to the bathroom and putting in shampoo and a toothbrush, reassuringly normal things like he can convince himself he’s going on a camping trip.
“--just reset the wards so only he can get through,” Merlin is saying when he comes out of the bathroom and goes to stare at the bedroom again. There must be more in his life that he cares to bring.
“Don’t you need a piece of his essence to do that--oh.” Morgana looks up at him as he goes by and smirks, which makes everything just a bit more normal. “Have you got enough space there?”
“The house is as big as it needs to be.” There’s a pause. “I’ll be waiting. If I haven’t seen my crystal glow in ten minutes I’m going to assume you’re compromised and shut the wards down until I hear further. Clear?”
“Clear.” She flips the radio off and turns to look at Arthur. “Do you have everything? I can’t promise they won’t break anything you leave behind.”
“Clothes, toothbrush, my mother’s picture. Morgana, what is he going to do? He won’t have me arrested, because of the scandal, and he won’t kill me because I’m his son.”
She stands and takes his hand. “He didn’t kill Nimueh. He didn’t kill Gaius.”
Arthur thinks of the basement he was in tonight, and the nightmares he knows he’ll have when he can get a full night’s sleep again. He doesn’t have magic, but that doesn’t matter; of course his father would lock him up with the other traitors. The Dragon, who probably won’t last too much longer, skin like paper and mind half-gone while he rambles on about destiny and the other half of Arthur’s soul. Nimueh, who still looks surprisingly young and who grabbed his arm through the bars and told him how much he looks like his mother and then told him that he has to end it and kill his father before anything worse can happen. Balinor, who mostly just watched but asked them to give a message to his children. And Gaius, four years older but ten years frailer, who hugged Arthur and Morgana but barely said a word. “Get the others out,” he says.
“Right now I’m just worried about you.” She hugs him again. “I’m going to have to do as he does. If he throws you to the wolves, I talk about how you betrayed us and I hate you for it. If he says you died, I promise I will wear a fabulous hat for your funeral. Don’t believe anything about me that you don’t hear through the radio.”
“I won’t.” Arthur clutches at her shamelessly and drops his backpack to do it. “I love you. Be careful.”
“Don’t do anything rash,” she counters, and shoves him away. “You’ve got to go. I need time to get away. Pick up your bag and stand still. Completely still, I mean it.”
Arthur picks up his bag and closes his eyes while she chants words in that language that always slips from his mind no matter how much he tries to remember the words. He feels the magic wrap around him, even though Morgana always insists that he shouldn’t and he’s imagining things. It isn’t like Merlin’s rush of power that one night, not inside him and burning through his veins, but it makes every inch of his skin tingle while the world around him feels more and more disconnected. For a second, there’s a moment of terrifying emptiness, even the magic seeping away, and then it’s like something reaches out and grabs him, pulls him, and he finds himself staggering, knees weak, into someone’s arms.
“I’ve got you, I’ve got you, I’ve got you,” says Merlin, and Arthur thinks, a bit dazed, that this is them coming full circle. Merlin’s arm is at his waist and he’s pulling Arthur’s head onto his shoulder and even after two years he remembers how warm Merlin is, how he feels like he would snap like a twig until you realize just how much power there is in him. He keeps his eyes closed and breathes. After a while, Merlin speaks again. “The transport spell’s a bit disorienting the first time.”
That’s his cue to put himself back together, so Arthur gets his weight back properly on his feet and straightens slowly, a bit dizzy. They’re in some sort of dim shed, and it’s nearly dawn outside the window. Merlin looks tired, and not just from one night of being woken repeatedly for emergencies. “Thank you,” he manages, and clutches the strap of his pack a little tighter.
He expects Merlin to lead him to the safehouse immediately and to leave him to himself for a while. It’s what he would do, especially on so little sleep and considering how little they know each other. Instead, Merlin squints at him and his hands twitch like he’s going to reach out again. “Are you okay?”
Arthur doesn’t pretend to misunderstand. Merlin isn’t talking about the transport any longer. Still, that doesn’t mean he wants to talk about it. “I’m better off than most people who come here are,” he says, and looks away.
“Come inside. We’ll get you sorted.”
Merlin leads the way, and Arthur follows.
*
Merlin staggers into the kitchen around noon to find Arthur sitting at the table, clutching a mug of coffee that has long since gone cold, if the sludge in the pot is anything to go by. He doesn’t look any better than he did when he first appeared in the shed, wide-eyed and exhausted like every other person they’ve ever rescued. “How long have you been up?” he asks, putting the coffee machine to rights to start another pot.
“I think I slept an hour or two.”
Merlin winces. He may not know Arthur’s expressions, for all he’s imagined them in their few short conversations, but he knows his voice, and how unnatural it is for him to sound that flat and quiet. “Where’s everyone else?”
“Gaius is still sleeping. Or at least I haven’t seen him this morning.” He still hasn’t looked at Merlin. “Freya and Mordred went out to the lake after breakfast to practice meditation in the fresh air.” Merlin wishes he’d thought to warn Mordred of Arthur’s arrival before he came out of his room this morning; he’s heard the thoughts of other refugees, but Arthur’s thoughts must be like a shout this morning. No wonder they’ve gone outside. “I’m sorry. I’ve made things more difficult.”
“Arthur, no.” Merlin doesn’t know he has an impulse to check until he’s already kneeling beside Arthur’s chair, holding his arm and twisting to meet his eyes. He hadn’t imagined this, this instant connection that he thought was just adrenaline and attraction mixed into something strange. His magic is reaching right along with his hands, but at least he has the control to hold that back. “Everyone knows that you’re on our side, and you went through hell last night.”
“Not like your sister, or Gaius, or Mordred.”
“No.” He manages to pry his hands off Arthur and goes back to the coffee pot to hide his blush. “Not like them. But you had to run for your life from your own father last night, Arthur. Nobody is going to discriminate because you don’t have magic. That would make us just as bad as--”
Neither of them finishes the sentence. Neither of them has to. “Thank you. I’ll find a place to move on as soon as I can.”
Merlin shakes his head, but doesn’t look to see if Arthur is watching him do it. “People know what you look like. Most everyone else can hide as long as their escape doesn’t get as publicized as Freya’s was, but people know you. Give it time. We’re in no hurry to be rid of you.”
“Your father asked us to tell you and your sister that he loves you, and he’s sorry,” Arthur says suddenly, and looks up at him when he starts, still terrifyingly blank. He shouldn’t look like this, and Merlin doesn’t know how to make it better. He can’t even hurt at the message that should be reducing him to tears, because it’s too easy to remember that the message was brought by someone whose father sent police after him last night. “I meant to tell you last night. I should have.” He looks back at his cold coffee. “They’ll probably tell you again over the radio, but I thought it was the sort of thing that should come in person.”
Gaius picks that moment to shuffle through the door, still more tired and frail than Merlin has seen anyone, and he freezes when he sees Arthur. “My boy, what are you doing here?” he asks, voice choked, and Arthur bows his head so quickly it looks like he’s falling, shoulders shaking.
Merlin wants to reach out for him again, but Arthur must want a familiar face and Gaius certainly must as well. He gives Gaius a nod, gives Arthur’s arm one last fleeting touch, and leaves the room before his coffee is even finished. They can have their privacy.
The next few days are some of the most uncomfortable that he’s spent in the safehouse. Gaius, after a day of looking shaky and jumping at every noise, proves to be friendly and kind, and everyone takes to him immediately. He spends hours on the radio to Morgause and Alice detailing procedures and chemical reactions that make Merlin sick just to overhear, examines Mordred thoroughly and takes over his training, chats amiably with Gwen and Lancelot, and joins Freya at her evening meditation. Merlin finds himself liking the older man immensely where he’d thought he would resent him for not being his father.
Arthur is something different entirely. It isn’t that the others don’t like him, though Freya and Mordred certainly don’t trust him. It’s that he seems to think himself unwelcome, no matter what Merlin and Gaius say to the contrary, and acts accordingly. When he’s not in his room or eating or (very rarely) chatting with Gaius, he’s out on the grounds. He doesn’t go beyond the wards, mostly just sits out in the woods, but it worries Merlin.
It doesn’t help that Arthur seems to have put him permanently on edge. Even without the wards, he has an ability to sense Arthur’s presence that would embarrass him if Arthur didn’t seem just as attuned to him. They have a disconcerting habit of looking up at the same time when they’re at a distance or in a group, and Merlin thinks he could probably close his eyes when Arthur is in a room and know every time he moves. It isn’t even magic, because his magic’s never done it, and he suspects that Arthur feels it too.
On the third day, Gwen corners Merlin while Gaius is with Freya and Lancelot and Mordred are playing catch in the backyard. “You need to talk to Arthur.”
“He won’t talk, and I don’t know what to say.”
She looks out the kitchen window and he follows her gaze to see Arthur walk off into the woods. Again. “Lancelot and I haven’t wanted to mention, but it’s in the papers and he deserves to know. Pendragon’s said that he was killed in one of the raids, defending his father’s company.”
Merlin winces, and thinks Arthur would probably rather be remembered as a traitor than as the excuse for all of Albion to go on a witch-hunt for those responsible. “I’ll talk to him. Could you bring some papers tomorrow when you come? We don’t get television here.”
“Go on, then,” says Gwen, and shoos him out of the house.
Arthur’s waiting for him, of course, just outside of Mordred’s range, which he has an uncanny ability to sense and avoid. That probably endears him to Mordred more than anything else could. “You want to talk to me,” says Arthur.
Merlin has a hundred stupid things he wants to say, about how he wants Arthur to believe they want him here, and how none of it is his fault, and how scared he is of whatever this thing is that they don’t acknowledge, but only because neither of them seems able to do anything about it. It’s best, though, to start with the practical. “We’ve had some news about what your father is saying happened to you.”
“Tell me.”
Gwen or Gaius would probably be better at telling him, but he won’t talk to either of them, not properly. He won’t talk to Merlin either, but he hasn’t walked away yet, at least. “He’s saying you died that night,” Merlin says as gently as he can manage. Arthur just gives him a tight nod. “But he says that you died defending Pendragon Corp from the raid.”
Arthur takes a shaky breath. “I thought at least that he would let me have--I don’t know, a car crash, or something. Something not related at all, if he refused to cause a scandal and say I wasn’t on his side. He gave Nimueh that much, at least.”
Merlin lifts his hand and lets it drop again when Arthur actually flinches back. “He’s trying to make you angry. Flush you out.”
“Yes, well, it’s working. He’s--” Arthur lets out a strangled noise, whirls, and punches a tree.
He only does it once, but Merlin grabs his hand before he can do it again anyway, inspecting the scrape and knowing what shape the bruise will be before it starts to appear. He’s not always a good healer, but he wills his magic into Arthur’s hand anyway, closing skin and soothing the rattled bones. This much he can do.
After a second, Arthur gasps, and Merlin keeps his eyes on the healing skin of Arthur’s hand so he can pretend he doesn’t know that Arthur’s crying.
*
When it airs, Gwen and Lancelot download the footage of Arthur’s memorial service onto their laptop and bring it to the safehouse.
Everyone starts backing away the second Arthur has it in his hands, like they’re afraid he’ll explode. Everyone except Merlin, who just watches with his head cocked to the side, biting his lip and waiting to see what Arthur will do. “Let’s make popcorn and all watch it together,” he says, just to see Merlin smile, and is rewarded when his face lights up.
Freya excuses herself, but Gwen makes popcorn while the rest of them settle in the living room with the laptop where they can all see it. Arthur doesn’t know if Merlin sits next to him for comfort or just because it’s a good view, but he’s grateful either way.
The crowd at his funeral is massive and eerily silent. His father stands next to a closed (and hopefully empty) casket, straight-backed and dry-eyed, with Morgana next to him. Morgana, as she promised, is wearing the kind of hat they always used to make fun of in old films, and she’s crying as the camera pans over her.
It’s outside, at the park he always played in as a child, and hundreds, perhaps thousands, of people are standing there, enough so it’s hard to see a scrap of grass on the recorded broadcast. Nobody is screaming, though many are crying. Many have signs, too, both anti-magic and pro-magic. Uni mates, co-workers, acquaintances, strangers, and, most surprisingly, what seems like most of the underground. They’re there to send a message, to be certain, but Arthur doesn’t know for whom.
There’s no priest. Arthur wouldn’t have wanted one if he had died, but it means that his father runs the proceedings, and the second he opens his mouth on the recording Arthur wants to run. His father knows how to sway a crowd; nothing he does would be excused, were it otherwise. He knows how to make his evil and his cruelty sound reasonable and right, and Arthur knows that this situation will give him all the ammunition he needs to take the sorcerers down.
Whatever he set out to do, though, he fails. Perhaps it’s that the crowd is reeling with grief and surprise. Perhaps they don’t believe him. Whatever it is, though, almost no one starts cheering while he speaks against sorcerers, the danger of them, how they’ve taken away everything he’s ever loved, how magic must be removed from the world. Things he’s said a hundred times to cheering crowds leeave nothing but silence. When he finally finishes, he looks disconcerted.
Morgana, in the hat that Arthur can’t stop laughing at, steps up next, clutching a handkerchief delicately in her hands. “Arthur would hate this, all this fuss and bother. He believed in doing things, not talking about them. So I’m not going to talk long. I’m going to tell you that this won’t last long. This is enough.” For a second, Arthur wonders if she’s going to tell them the truth right there, although if Morgause and the rest of the underground are doing their job a rumour got passed through that crowd. Instead, Morgana dabs at her eyes, giving the camera her best side, before straightening her shoulders and looking out. “We’re going to find a cure, so we can stop this.” She holds out her hands, milking the drama for all it’s worth. Arthur snorts and throws popcorn at the screen, which gets him a scandalized look from Gwen and Lancelot. “This fighting has gone on long enough. Please, if whoever is kidnapping the volunteers is out there today, stop before someone else gets hurt.”
The crowd, as he watches, erupts into angry murmurs, even a few shouts. If there’s a rumour spreading, it hasn’t spread fast enough.
There’s more to Morgana’s speech, if he knows her, maybe enough to goad a riot (perhaps that’s what the underground was there for), but Uther steps forward and steers her away from the microphone.
From there, it’s a joke, full of speeches from people who have no idea who he is. Leon gives an elegy he would be proud to have, even if it’s about the wrong person. Given a chance, he thinks he could have brought Leon to their side. That’s Morgana’s job, now, if she chooses it.
The broadcast was an hour, and by the end everyone but Merlin and Arthur has found an excuse to be elsewhere. Arthur has spent the last half hour playing a game with himself to see if he can identify those in the crowd who have figured out that it’s all a lie. It’s more than he would have thought, and not just sorcerers. “We’re going to beat him soon,” Arthur says when the broadcast finally ends. “Three years ago that crowd would have been out for blood. A sorcerer wouldn’t have even made it into the park.”
“It will be good to go back,” says Merlin, looking down and picking at a loose thread on his jeans. “I sometimes think Freya might stay here. She likes it here, and that’s fine. But I need to go back. I need to help, if it’s ever safe.”
“You’ll be more use than me,” says Arthur, because it’s the truth. “Nobody will trust me.”
“We’ll need everyone.” Merlin must know it sounds like a platitude, because a second later he elbows Arthur. “You can be my assistant. Fold my letters for me and stick them in envelopes and all that.”
Arthur looks to the side to find Merlin looking serious, probably waiting to see if his joke went over well. He knows that they’ve all been walking on eggshells around him since he arrived, but this is different. “Speaking as someone who’s had an assistant,” he says in as disdainful a tone as he can muster, “I can tell you that the job is more sending e-mails than letters, these days. You really must move with the times.”
Every smile he gets from Merlin feels like a reward, because for all they’d talked a few times before he came to the safehouse, he’d never heard Merlin happy or relaxed before. This one is brief, but at least it’s there for a second before Merlin goes serious again and turns more fully to meet his eyes. “Are you going to be okay?”
“Yes. Not quite yet, but I will be.” He shrugs and sits up to shut the laptop. “It’s not like I didn’t know long ago that my f--that Uther isn’t a very nice man.” Arthur forces a smile and knows it doesn’t fool Merlin because neither of them can seem to fool the other. “I suppose I can’t call him my father any longer. Arthur Pendragon is dead.”
“You’ve got a better family here,” Merlin says, unexpectedly fierce, and Arthur almost shivers at the tone. Merlin doesn’t need golden eyes to sound like he has power. “If you don’t want his name, you don’t have to keep it.”
Arthur makes his tone as obnoxious as he can because he doesn’t quite know what to do with himself. “What, Merlin, going to invite me to be your brother?”
Those seem to be the magic words to transform Merlin from someone who could bend the universe to his will with a blink to a skinny man a few years younger than Arthur who looks more tired than anyone has a right to. “No,” he whispers. “But we’re family.”
Someone clears their throat at the door to the living room and both of them whip around at once, spilling what’s left of the popcorn all over the floor. “I’m sorry to interrupt,” says Gaius in the same dry way Arthur remembers from years worth of scoldings and scrapes, eyebrows raised. “I thought you two ought to know, though. We’ve had word from the city, about … the other three, who I was placed with. Morgause wants to speak with you, Merlin.”
Merlin lunges out the doorway, skidding on stocking feet, before Arthur can begin to react. Arthur just looks at Gaius. “It isn’t good news, is it.”
“You know that already,” says Gaius, and turns to follow Merlin.
*
The news isn’t as bad as it could be. Merlin repeats that to himself over and over while he tells everyone else at the safehouse what Morgause told him, even though it makes Mordred give him pitying looks with every repetition. “Chances are we’ll still be able to find Balinor and Nimueh wherever they’ve been moved,” he says when a look around proves that everyone is looking shaken even though they were expecting half the news. “He hasn’t killed them. That’s only to the good. And with Fay there we do have a better chance than we otherwise might to get to them.”
“The Dragon was old,” says Gaius, who shouldn’t be comforting anyone. He’s doing well, though, and taking the news better than the rest of them. “He wouldn’t have lasted long anyway. These past few years, he’s barely been holding on.”
Merlin nods at him, even though it doesn’t really help. “There’s going to be a vigil, in the city. For everyone who knows the Dragon didn’t just disappear when the persecution got to be too much. Morgause says they’re going to start spreading rumours. About him.” He sneaks a glance at Arthur, who just looks back. “About you. The whole city is going to be wondering by tomorrow, and the newspapers will have picked it up by the day after. Unless Pendragon still has enough friends in the government to tamp it down quickly, they’re going to take quite a hit. Even if it can’t be proven.”
Ever since Arthur transported in, Merlin can’t stop the sense that they’re close to something. Pendragon can’t last long without his heir apparent, and with a man who has more damning evidence against him than any other free and out of sight. He’s always reminding himself not to get his hopes up, that chances are he’ll be living in this house until he’s fifty and too tired and worn to go back to the city. This, however, feels different. For all Arthur is miserable and shaken, his presence here means that some sort of tide has changed, and looking around at his friends he can almost see them figuring it out as well.
“There’s another rescue scheduled for next week. Nothing high-security, we can’t even risk the children’s ward again quite yet, but someone, at least,” he adds when the news seems to have sunk in enough. It isn’t the same as saving the Dragon, but it’s a reminder that there are still plenty of others. “We’ll have to get ready for more company. Till then, business as usual. I just wanted to make sure we all knew about the Dragon.”
He didn’t know the Dragon, not really. But every child with magic in Albion heard about him for a long time, the strongest Seer anyone had seen in centuries and a little bit mad with it. His mother told him when he was thirteen that his father met him a few times (and then, it seems, spent years upon years locked up with him) and that he’d talked about Merlin, called him by name. Of all those left in high security he’s perhaps the one that least matters to those in the safehouse, but he certainly matters to Albion. If the word gets out …
Gaius interrupts the silence between them all before it drags on too much. “Mordred, it’s time to practice putting up your shields again. Let’s go outside so you’ve just got me to concentrate on.”
“My father’s expecting us for dinner,” says Gwen, taking Lancelot’s hand, and that’s everyone’s cue to make excuses and separate to think about whatever it is that they need to think about in the wake of all this.
Merlin isn’t sure what he needs, but he walks out into the woods after Gwen and Lancelot go, leaving Freya reading a book in the living room and Arthur still sitting in the kitchen. He finds a spot just inside the wards and does stupid little magic tricks like he hasn’t in years until he feels a little bit calmer.
Arthur finds him, of course, after about an hour. He shouldn’t expect anything different. “I feel like an idiot asking,” says Arthur when he gets close enough, “but are you okay?”
“If we had to lose one of them, I’m almost glad it was him,” he admits. “But that’s just because of you and me. For the movement? It would have been nice to have the Dragon.”
“We’ve got you, though.” Merlin snorts. Arthur sits down on the ground a few feet away from him. “No, really. I am who I am and so people wouldn’t tell me much that they thought might get back to my--to Uther, but that doesn’t mean I don’t listen. People whisper about you like the kids used to whisper about the Dragon for the first few years after he disappeared.”
“I never asked to be a legend.”
“Merlin.” Merlin tries not to grin at the way Arthur drawls his name. “You found out your sister got cursed and went to a clinic where someone sent her off to Pendragon Corp. Instead of giving up and counting her as lost as hundreds of other families have, you found a ragtag group of the maddest people in Albion, broke her out, and started a revolution. I would argue that you did actually ask to be a legend.”
“I didn’t start it,” he tries, even though he sort of did. Morgause was the one with the dreams of being the first to break someone out of the facility, Gilli was the one who hated Pendragon Corp so much he would do anything to bring it down, Alice was the one with the knowledge and connections, Fay (he knows her real name and has for years, but still can’t remember to call her by it) was the one with the security codes, but Merlin was the one with someone he wanted to get out enough to bring them all together.
Arthur arches a disbelieving eyebrow, and Merlin thinks that this is how he’s meant to be. Not closed-off and halfway to shattered and reeling, but someone who’s a bit of an arse, but funny and noble and wanting to fix everything that’s wrong with the world. “People are going to rally behind you,” he insists.
Merlin tosses a bit of leaf matter at him. “Not just me. People on Uther’s side will think I’m just another sorcerer tricking them. When his own son comes out of hiding and tells them all what he’s done? That will get them.”
“Together, then,” says Arthur, and Merlin stretches his hand out because it feels right in a moment that suddenly seems to mean a lot more than it did a second ago. Arthur takes it, but he doesn’t shake it and let go. He holds on.
“Tell me this isn’t just me,” Merlin blurts. The hum of magic, the whole world around him seems to have gone quiet, everything but Arthur’s pulse pressed against his fingers, the backbeat to his own. He’s back in a nondescript hallway at two in the morning with a stranger holding him, but this time they’re on the same side.
Arthur squeezes a little tighter. “Two fucking years,” he says, and pulls Merlin forward across the space between them until he sprawls into Arthur’s body, catches his face in his free hand, and kisses him.
Like everywhere else, they seem to have the disconcerting ability to know exactly where the other one will be in just a second. Arthur tilts his face and Merlin is already in the right place, and when Merlin dares to think to tease Arthur’s mouth open Arthur’s lips are already parting, releasing a gasp of air into the kiss. He wants everything, wants to wrap Arthur in himself and his magic and never have anything but this, Arthur’s mouth and the taste of the ridiculously posh toothpaste he brought with him and the clutch of a warm strong hand around his.
“Inside, we’ve got to take this inside,” he manages, and Arthur pulls away to gasp into his shoulder. “Anyone could walk by like this.”
They stand in a fumble of limbs, and don’t let go of one another the whole walk back.
*
Nobody interrupts them on their way into the house and upstairs, though Arthur knows Mordred at least must know where they’re going and that Gaius and Freya probably didn’t miss their clasped hands. He doesn’t think that Merlin sees any of it. He just stares at the ground in front of them while he walks with an expression of intense concentration that would be funny if it weren’t a little bit worrying as well.
When they get to the top of the stairs, Arthur stops and keeps Merlin’s hand so he’ll stop too. “You’re upset. We don’t have to, you know.”
Merlin drops his hand, and for a second Arthur prepares to apologize for misinterpreting the situation, but then Merlin grabs his face in both hands and presses their foreheads together. “I want to, of course I want to, Arthur. It’s all just …”
Arthur would nod if he had any interest whatsoever in moving. He knows what it is. “Overwhelming,” he offers. “If you’re sure, then.”
“You make me feel like I’m about to be ravished of my maidenly virtue.” Merlin backs away a step and catches Arthur’s hand again, pulling him past the doorway to his own mostly-empty room and to Merlin’s, which is filled with late-afternoon sunlight and less messy than Arthur would have expected. “Well, this is it.”
“Shut up,” says Arthur, and shuts the door.
It’s unbearably silent for a moment. They both know where this is going, though they haven’t quite hit the point of no return yet, but it’s hard to know where to start. Merlin smiles and speaks. “I need to ward the room. If it were night and Mordred was in his room, that’s one thing, but people tend to sort of … broadcast, and he’s having enough trouble as it is.”
Arthur is torn between amusement and horror, but he nods and watches Merlin’s eyes go molten. He doesn’t bother wandering around the room sketching runes and making marks in bright red lipstick that will stain wood grain (which he’s still bitter about even if he knows logically he’ll never go back to that flat). He just stares around and the tingle of magic that Arthur always feels present at the safehouse intensifies until his skin prickles with it. “God, that feels odd.”
Merlin gives him a sharp look and lets the magic go. “So you do feel it when we do magic. I’d wondered. Not many people without magic of their own are sensitive.”
“I didn’t. Or at least less, until you--” Until Merlin had showed him for half an instant what it would be like to really have magic, but to bring that up means bringing up the gun he threatened Merlin with that night, and he doesn’t want that.
Of course Merlin knows, though, and he knows not to say anything comforting. Instead, he wraps his arms around Arthur’s shoulders and pulls him in for another kiss, this one deeper than their shaky exploration in the woods. Arthur puts his hands at Merlin’s hips and pushes back, teases at Merlin’s mouth with little licks until he huffs out a laugh and opens, tangling his tongue with Arthur’s, slick and sweet. He feels a bit dazed, a bit desperate, wants everything from Merlin but doesn’t know what to do first. He pushes his hands up under Merlin’s loose t-shirt, just to feel the smooth expanse of skin.
Merlin pulls away first. “Clothes, we’ve got to get our clothes off.”
“Right,” says Arthur, and starts pulling at Merlin’s shirt, tugging through Merlin’s laughter until he can get it off entirely, throw it somewhere out of sight and run his hands over the exposed skin. Merlin is thin, all ribs and elbows and skin so pale he can almost see the veins, but there’s strength, too, and the lines of a tattoo on his shoulder that Arthur will have to investigate later. For now, though, he puts his mouth to the notch of Merlin’s collarbone, tasting the salt of his sweat and feeling his breath flutter while he shoves at his trousers.
“Fuck, Arthur, I meant you too,” says Merlin, and Arthur feels the vibration of it against his lips before he pulls away and kicks off his shoes and socks as quickly as he can, grabs his shirt at the hem and almost rips it pulling it over his head. He wants to unwrap Merlin like a present, but he wants skin, too, and hopefully there will be time for that later, so he strips to his boxers and looks around to find Merlin transfixed, halfway out of one shoe. “You’re so--”
“You obviously can’t be trusted to undress yourself,” says Arthur, feeling a bit mad, and manhandles Merlin to the bed, dumping him on it and moving to tug at his shoes, his socks, so he can take his trousers and pants off in one tangled mess and then bend to press a kiss, a marker, to the jut of a hipbone, to the spot just below his navel.
Merlin curls a hand around his neck and pulls so gently Arthur barely feels it, but he nods, pulls away barely long enough to shed his boxers, and gets onto the bed, aligning his body with Merlin’s, pressed half on top of him, faces just an inch or two apart. Merlin’s eyes are wide and dark and very blue, not a hint of magic in them. “Here,” he says, and kisses Arthur again, lets Arthur press him into the pillows with the sun spilling across them, lets him run his hands feverish and fast across Merlin’s skin.
Arthur worries for a few seconds that he’s too rough, too fast, too desperate, because Merlin feels thin and so tentative underneath him, but if Merlin wanted to stop him, it would be as easy as blinking. He wrenches his mouth away, and quirks a smile when Merlin actually makes a protesting noise. That quite neatly answers that question. “Don’t hold back,” he says.
For a second, Merlin looks confused, but then he smiles, because of course he understands. “I won’t if you don’t.”
He meant to make this first time soft and sweet when he thought about it (and he has been thinking about it, even when Merlin’s only memory of him was the cold metal of a gun and a heated exchange of words and it was stupid to think about it), but it’s hard to remember that now when everything in him is crying out for more, faster, now.
There will be time to touch and lick every inch of Merlin’s skin later, time to find out where he’s ticklish and what will make him arch from the sheets, time to feel his hands everywhere. Now, he’s more desperate for the connection than he is to be gentle, and this time when he kisses Merlin, he takes a bruising hold of his hip and pulls them together, Merlin’s hard cock dragging against his.
Merlin bites down on his lip and when he presses his palm to Arthur’s back his skin tingles, the feeling following wherever his hand moves, like he’s marking Arthur with his magic. It isn’t the same as being filled with it, but it brings back the edges of the feeling, an echo. Like he could rule the world and lose himself to it at the same time. Arthur gasps into the kiss and rolls them, getting his hands under him until he can hover over Merlin and push their hips together.
Their skin is getting slippery when Merlin pulls away from his mouth to scatter kisses on his jaw and face and neck, arching up off the bed and leaving little jolts of magic wherever he touches. “I want you to fuck me,” he whispers in Arthur’s ear, and Arthur thrusts without meaning to, smiling when Merlin smiles at him because he can’t help it.
“Yes, please,” he whispers back, just to feel Merlin shiver and to watch his eyes go gold while a drawer beside the bed creaks open and a little bottle of lube deposits itself in Arthur’s hand.
*
“Eager,” says Arthur, waving the lube in Merlin’s face, and Merlin can’t keep the slightly mad grin from stealing across his face. It’s been a while since he was with anyone, and even then it was just uni one-night-stands where he had to be careful with himself and his magic. This doesn’t feel like that. Arthur doesn’t feel like that. Arthur’s face goes slack with desire every time Merlin lets his magic loose even a bit, and it’s a temptation just to give in to his urges and drench Arthur in his power--not to do anything, but just to feel it in them both.
“Come on.”
Arthur slicks his fingers, eyes on Merlin’s the whole time, and it’s more of a rush than Merlin could have imagined, seeing him there above him. He remembers Arthur’s strength, the grip of his hand against Merlin’s throat, the steadiness of his body, but feeling it like this, all of it channeled into hips and hands and kisses, it’s dizzying, its own sort of magic. “May I?”
Merlin arches, feels around for a pillow and settles it under his hips. “Go slow. It’s been a while,” he warns, and watches Arthur’s face soften as he shuffles down the bed, making a path down Merlin’s body with slippery fingers and kiss-swollen mouth.
Telling him to go slow, Merlin discovers within moments, was a mistake, because Arthur is both breathtakingly tender and a hideous tease as he coaxes Merlin oh-so-slowly open. He kisses and licks his way up Merlin’s cock, mouths at his balls, swirls a finger at his entrance until he’s hitching his hips in tiny helpless movements, and only presses it inside when Merlin puts a hand in Arthur’s hair. He’s bursting with too much magic, and it might sting, but Arthur just hums around the head of his cock and presses inside, slowly, so slowly.
It’s like a dream, the late-afternoon light moving slowly across the bed, catching in Arthur’s hair and warming their skin to feverish heat, Arthur inside him with one finger, with two, with three, stroking his stomach with his other hand while Merlin tosses his head to the side, mouths I love you to the air and hopes that Arthur wasn’t looking, because it’s too soon but it was hard enough to stop the sound of the words; he couldn’t hold back the shape of them. “I’m ready,” he moans when he can manage it.
Arthur slides his fingers out carefully, slicks his cock as he moves back up the bed, kissing just the same erratic trail up as he did back down and making Merlin grin because of course he would remember something as small and silly as that. He moves Merlin’s legs to clasp around his hips, hands slippery where he touches, and nudges his cock at Merlin’s entrance. Merlin rocks into it, encouraging him.
“Okay, okay,” says Arthur, and pushes in. It’s just on the right side of too-much, and Merlin gasps with every inch of it, wanting to move and wanting to freeze in equal measure. They pause when Arthur’s seated as deep as he can go, and Merlin wants to squirm. Instead, he catches Arthur’s eye, and they just watch each other for an endless second. “Don’t hold back,” Arthur murmurs again at the end of it.
“Move,” says Merlin, and Arthur draws out and thrusts in, and again, and again, harder as Merlin gets used to the stretch and the ache and the wonder of it. He lets his power free, because nothing that’s part of him could possibly want to hurt Arthur, and instead of spreading through the room as it has when he’s let it out before, it curls around Arthur, wrapping him in gold and soaking in. Arthur lets out a fraught noise and reaches out blindly for Merlin’s hand, moving faster and harder and the magic is humming happily around them both, not doing anything but reflecting their own pleasure back on them. Merlin holds Arthur’s hand and his gaze and moves to meet every thrust, hard and dizzy with it.
“Close, I’m close,” Arthur chokes out after a while, or maybe Merlin only feels the increasing desperation.
“Come on, then.” Merlin passes an extra bolt of power through their joined hands, watches Arthur’s eyes bleed into gold for a flicker of an instant before he squeezes them shut, shouting out his release as Merlin arches until he’s resting his weight on his shoulders, the echo of Arthur’s pleasure through his magic making him scramble to fist his own cock and come in two pulls, splashing hot between them as Arthur locks his knees to keep from collapsing and starts to pant.
It takes Merlin too long to remember how to drop his legs from Arthur’s hips, to put himself at the right angle so Arthur can draw out, careful and slow and leaving him feeling odd and empty, but too big for his own skin at the same time, while his magic draws back within his body. He pulls weakly on their joined hands, toppling Arthur on top of him and losing what little breath he’s managed to keep.
“Are you okay?” Arthur manages to ask, muffled in Merlin’s shoulder.
Merlin gives his hair a caress, unthinking. “Yes. We’ll sleep now. Talk about it later.”
Arthur’s breaths only take a minute or so to go deep and slow, almost at the edge of snoring, and Merlin squirms until some of the weight is off his chest, magic almost purring in contentment as he curls against Arthur and goes to sleep still holding his hand.
It’s dark when they wake up and they’ve probably missed dinner, but no one will bother them after the afternoon they all had and Merlin doesn’t much care anyway. They make love again in the dark of the room, just their hips and hands pushing together, moonlight weak but there enough for Merlin to see Arthur’s eyes always on him, the tendons of his neck standing out when he comes.
After, Arthur rolls him to his side and traces the lines of his tattoo with fingers and tongue, getting to know every line in the light that Merlin manages to conjure for the purpose. “It’s just a branch,” says Arthur at last, sounding puzzled. “It doesn’t look finished.”
Merlin looks over his shoulder and smiles. “A friend of mine was a tattoo artist. Might still be. But anyway, he was too broke to do it for free, and I wanted a whole tree, spread over my back.” Arthur traces a finger down his spine. “Yes, like that. But I didn’t have the money for the whole thing, so he did the branch for what I could spare, and I started saving up for the whole tree. Was about halfway there when Freya …”
Arthur turns him back over, kisses him slow and soft. “You should look him up when we get back.”
Merlin rolls his eyes and doesn’t say that he thinks they’ll have bigger things to worry about, when Pendragon Corp is taken down. Instead, he catches Arthur’s hand in his and traces the lines of Arthur’s palm with one finger. “You’ve heard one of my stories. Now I want one of yours.”
After looking too serious for a second, Arthur tells him a story about Morgana telling him about the Frog Prince when he was a child and Arthur kissing a frog, which Morgana then gleefully informed him would give him warts, thereby earning the nickname that they use on the radio channel. Merlin laughs, and tells him about uni scrapes and his mother and chasing away Freya’s first boyfriend when he made her cry. Arthur tells him about running away when he was eight and sleeping on Gaius’s couch the first time he got pissed because his father locked him out and Morgana’s habit of getting him in trouble at every turn.
It’s nearly midnight by the time both of them are hungry enough to get out of bed, Merlin muttering cleaning spells over them and the sheets while they get dressed, and they sneak downstairs quietly enough to fool absolutely nobody, laughing and arguing about stupid little things while they make cheese on toast and eat it standing over the stove. Merlin knows that in the morning there will still be the Dragon’s death to worry about, and the next rescue, and everyone staying with them already, but for now he’s content to tease Arthur about kissing frogs and hold his hand, ready to drag him upstairs and back to bed when they’re ready.
Part Three
Arthur wakes after two fragmented hours of sleep to the sound of someone pounding on the door to his flat. He grabs his gun before he even stands, jumpy from his run across the facility and through the town, and walks through his flat as silently as possible to look through the peephole on the door and sees Morgana on the other side, wretched and pale, the way she only is after a bad dream. He opens the door.
“You have ten minutes to pack whatever’s most important to you,” she says, and shoves past him. “Stupid, stupid, stupid, we didn’t know until I dreamed it just now.”
“What did I do wrong?” he asks, knowing it shouldn’t be the most important question, but if Morgana is here looking like that, saying that, it means that he got caught.
Her face crumples and she hugs him tight like she hasn’t since her father died. “Wasn’t your fault, Arthur, I promise, I should have seen before. We should have figured it out.”
“What happened?”
“Pack.” She shoves him gently, and he finally remembers to put the gun down. “Where’s your radio? I need to talk to Merlin.”
Merlin, who he promised to radio in the morning to say he was safe. “On the coffee table. Morgana, what happened?”
“Listen while I talk to him. Pack, Arthur, I was serious about the ten minutes. Your father has people on the way.”
Arthur goes into his bedroom and leaves the door open while he pulls on jeans and a clean t-shirt. Morgana mutters at the radio until there’s finally a tone and a voice on the other end. “This is the Dragon, what’s the matter?”
“This is Fay, and I’m sorry, but you’re getting more company tonight.”
“You’re on Wart’s radio. Is he okay?”
“For now. He’s packing. I’ve got a transport spell but you need to open your wards. We don’t have time to get him to a safe location.”
“If I open them--”
“If Uther knew where the safehouse was to monitor the wards he would have gone in there guns blazing already. Please, Dragon.”
“I’ll work on it. Tell me what happened.”
Arthur finds a backpack he hasn’t used since a hiking trip three summers ago and starts throwing things into it. Clean pants, shirts and trousers, as much money as he can find stuffed in drawers and pockets while he curses himself for using credit most of the time. “We missed a layer of security,” Morgana is saying from his living room. “Apparently whenever one of the cell doors down there is opened it automatically resets all the security systems. It doesn’t matter so much during the day, when the doors are open sometimes to give them food and … other things, so of course we didn’t notice and that basement isn’t even mentioned in the security files Wart has access to.” Not your fault, she’s reminding him as clear as if she were looking right at him. “But we opened that cell door and it reset all the cameras we put on maintenance mode.”
That means he’s been caught running down some very damning hallways--through some of the wards, even. Arthur takes a second to fight down panic and looks around for more to pack. His mobile is useless, his ID won’t do him any good, his laptop would be helpful but too easy to trace. He leaves the picture of his father he has on his dresser and stuffs in the only one he has of his mother before going to the bathroom and putting in shampoo and a toothbrush, reassuringly normal things like he can convince himself he’s going on a camping trip.
“--just reset the wards so only he can get through,” Merlin is saying when he comes out of the bathroom and goes to stare at the bedroom again. There must be more in his life that he cares to bring.
“Don’t you need a piece of his essence to do that--oh.” Morgana looks up at him as he goes by and smirks, which makes everything just a bit more normal. “Have you got enough space there?”
“The house is as big as it needs to be.” There’s a pause. “I’ll be waiting. If I haven’t seen my crystal glow in ten minutes I’m going to assume you’re compromised and shut the wards down until I hear further. Clear?”
“Clear.” She flips the radio off and turns to look at Arthur. “Do you have everything? I can’t promise they won’t break anything you leave behind.”
“Clothes, toothbrush, my mother’s picture. Morgana, what is he going to do? He won’t have me arrested, because of the scandal, and he won’t kill me because I’m his son.”
She stands and takes his hand. “He didn’t kill Nimueh. He didn’t kill Gaius.”
Arthur thinks of the basement he was in tonight, and the nightmares he knows he’ll have when he can get a full night’s sleep again. He doesn’t have magic, but that doesn’t matter; of course his father would lock him up with the other traitors. The Dragon, who probably won’t last too much longer, skin like paper and mind half-gone while he rambles on about destiny and the other half of Arthur’s soul. Nimueh, who still looks surprisingly young and who grabbed his arm through the bars and told him how much he looks like his mother and then told him that he has to end it and kill his father before anything worse can happen. Balinor, who mostly just watched but asked them to give a message to his children. And Gaius, four years older but ten years frailer, who hugged Arthur and Morgana but barely said a word. “Get the others out,” he says.
“Right now I’m just worried about you.” She hugs him again. “I’m going to have to do as he does. If he throws you to the wolves, I talk about how you betrayed us and I hate you for it. If he says you died, I promise I will wear a fabulous hat for your funeral. Don’t believe anything about me that you don’t hear through the radio.”
“I won’t.” Arthur clutches at her shamelessly and drops his backpack to do it. “I love you. Be careful.”
“Don’t do anything rash,” she counters, and shoves him away. “You’ve got to go. I need time to get away. Pick up your bag and stand still. Completely still, I mean it.”
Arthur picks up his bag and closes his eyes while she chants words in that language that always slips from his mind no matter how much he tries to remember the words. He feels the magic wrap around him, even though Morgana always insists that he shouldn’t and he’s imagining things. It isn’t like Merlin’s rush of power that one night, not inside him and burning through his veins, but it makes every inch of his skin tingle while the world around him feels more and more disconnected. For a second, there’s a moment of terrifying emptiness, even the magic seeping away, and then it’s like something reaches out and grabs him, pulls him, and he finds himself staggering, knees weak, into someone’s arms.
“I’ve got you, I’ve got you, I’ve got you,” says Merlin, and Arthur thinks, a bit dazed, that this is them coming full circle. Merlin’s arm is at his waist and he’s pulling Arthur’s head onto his shoulder and even after two years he remembers how warm Merlin is, how he feels like he would snap like a twig until you realize just how much power there is in him. He keeps his eyes closed and breathes. After a while, Merlin speaks again. “The transport spell’s a bit disorienting the first time.”
That’s his cue to put himself back together, so Arthur gets his weight back properly on his feet and straightens slowly, a bit dizzy. They’re in some sort of dim shed, and it’s nearly dawn outside the window. Merlin looks tired, and not just from one night of being woken repeatedly for emergencies. “Thank you,” he manages, and clutches the strap of his pack a little tighter.
He expects Merlin to lead him to the safehouse immediately and to leave him to himself for a while. It’s what he would do, especially on so little sleep and considering how little they know each other. Instead, Merlin squints at him and his hands twitch like he’s going to reach out again. “Are you okay?”
Arthur doesn’t pretend to misunderstand. Merlin isn’t talking about the transport any longer. Still, that doesn’t mean he wants to talk about it. “I’m better off than most people who come here are,” he says, and looks away.
“Come inside. We’ll get you sorted.”
Merlin leads the way, and Arthur follows.
*
Merlin staggers into the kitchen around noon to find Arthur sitting at the table, clutching a mug of coffee that has long since gone cold, if the sludge in the pot is anything to go by. He doesn’t look any better than he did when he first appeared in the shed, wide-eyed and exhausted like every other person they’ve ever rescued. “How long have you been up?” he asks, putting the coffee machine to rights to start another pot.
“I think I slept an hour or two.”
Merlin winces. He may not know Arthur’s expressions, for all he’s imagined them in their few short conversations, but he knows his voice, and how unnatural it is for him to sound that flat and quiet. “Where’s everyone else?”
“Gaius is still sleeping. Or at least I haven’t seen him this morning.” He still hasn’t looked at Merlin. “Freya and Mordred went out to the lake after breakfast to practice meditation in the fresh air.” Merlin wishes he’d thought to warn Mordred of Arthur’s arrival before he came out of his room this morning; he’s heard the thoughts of other refugees, but Arthur’s thoughts must be like a shout this morning. No wonder they’ve gone outside. “I’m sorry. I’ve made things more difficult.”
“Arthur, no.” Merlin doesn’t know he has an impulse to check until he’s already kneeling beside Arthur’s chair, holding his arm and twisting to meet his eyes. He hadn’t imagined this, this instant connection that he thought was just adrenaline and attraction mixed into something strange. His magic is reaching right along with his hands, but at least he has the control to hold that back. “Everyone knows that you’re on our side, and you went through hell last night.”
“Not like your sister, or Gaius, or Mordred.”
“No.” He manages to pry his hands off Arthur and goes back to the coffee pot to hide his blush. “Not like them. But you had to run for your life from your own father last night, Arthur. Nobody is going to discriminate because you don’t have magic. That would make us just as bad as--”
Neither of them finishes the sentence. Neither of them has to. “Thank you. I’ll find a place to move on as soon as I can.”
Merlin shakes his head, but doesn’t look to see if Arthur is watching him do it. “People know what you look like. Most everyone else can hide as long as their escape doesn’t get as publicized as Freya’s was, but people know you. Give it time. We’re in no hurry to be rid of you.”
“Your father asked us to tell you and your sister that he loves you, and he’s sorry,” Arthur says suddenly, and looks up at him when he starts, still terrifyingly blank. He shouldn’t look like this, and Merlin doesn’t know how to make it better. He can’t even hurt at the message that should be reducing him to tears, because it’s too easy to remember that the message was brought by someone whose father sent police after him last night. “I meant to tell you last night. I should have.” He looks back at his cold coffee. “They’ll probably tell you again over the radio, but I thought it was the sort of thing that should come in person.”
Gaius picks that moment to shuffle through the door, still more tired and frail than Merlin has seen anyone, and he freezes when he sees Arthur. “My boy, what are you doing here?” he asks, voice choked, and Arthur bows his head so quickly it looks like he’s falling, shoulders shaking.
Merlin wants to reach out for him again, but Arthur must want a familiar face and Gaius certainly must as well. He gives Gaius a nod, gives Arthur’s arm one last fleeting touch, and leaves the room before his coffee is even finished. They can have their privacy.
The next few days are some of the most uncomfortable that he’s spent in the safehouse. Gaius, after a day of looking shaky and jumping at every noise, proves to be friendly and kind, and everyone takes to him immediately. He spends hours on the radio to Morgause and Alice detailing procedures and chemical reactions that make Merlin sick just to overhear, examines Mordred thoroughly and takes over his training, chats amiably with Gwen and Lancelot, and joins Freya at her evening meditation. Merlin finds himself liking the older man immensely where he’d thought he would resent him for not being his father.
Arthur is something different entirely. It isn’t that the others don’t like him, though Freya and Mordred certainly don’t trust him. It’s that he seems to think himself unwelcome, no matter what Merlin and Gaius say to the contrary, and acts accordingly. When he’s not in his room or eating or (very rarely) chatting with Gaius, he’s out on the grounds. He doesn’t go beyond the wards, mostly just sits out in the woods, but it worries Merlin.
It doesn’t help that Arthur seems to have put him permanently on edge. Even without the wards, he has an ability to sense Arthur’s presence that would embarrass him if Arthur didn’t seem just as attuned to him. They have a disconcerting habit of looking up at the same time when they’re at a distance or in a group, and Merlin thinks he could probably close his eyes when Arthur is in a room and know every time he moves. It isn’t even magic, because his magic’s never done it, and he suspects that Arthur feels it too.
On the third day, Gwen corners Merlin while Gaius is with Freya and Lancelot and Mordred are playing catch in the backyard. “You need to talk to Arthur.”
“He won’t talk, and I don’t know what to say.”
She looks out the kitchen window and he follows her gaze to see Arthur walk off into the woods. Again. “Lancelot and I haven’t wanted to mention, but it’s in the papers and he deserves to know. Pendragon’s said that he was killed in one of the raids, defending his father’s company.”
Merlin winces, and thinks Arthur would probably rather be remembered as a traitor than as the excuse for all of Albion to go on a witch-hunt for those responsible. “I’ll talk to him. Could you bring some papers tomorrow when you come? We don’t get television here.”
“Go on, then,” says Gwen, and shoos him out of the house.
Arthur’s waiting for him, of course, just outside of Mordred’s range, which he has an uncanny ability to sense and avoid. That probably endears him to Mordred more than anything else could. “You want to talk to me,” says Arthur.
Merlin has a hundred stupid things he wants to say, about how he wants Arthur to believe they want him here, and how none of it is his fault, and how scared he is of whatever this thing is that they don’t acknowledge, but only because neither of them seems able to do anything about it. It’s best, though, to start with the practical. “We’ve had some news about what your father is saying happened to you.”
“Tell me.”
Gwen or Gaius would probably be better at telling him, but he won’t talk to either of them, not properly. He won’t talk to Merlin either, but he hasn’t walked away yet, at least. “He’s saying you died that night,” Merlin says as gently as he can manage. Arthur just gives him a tight nod. “But he says that you died defending Pendragon Corp from the raid.”
Arthur takes a shaky breath. “I thought at least that he would let me have--I don’t know, a car crash, or something. Something not related at all, if he refused to cause a scandal and say I wasn’t on his side. He gave Nimueh that much, at least.”
Merlin lifts his hand and lets it drop again when Arthur actually flinches back. “He’s trying to make you angry. Flush you out.”
“Yes, well, it’s working. He’s--” Arthur lets out a strangled noise, whirls, and punches a tree.
He only does it once, but Merlin grabs his hand before he can do it again anyway, inspecting the scrape and knowing what shape the bruise will be before it starts to appear. He’s not always a good healer, but he wills his magic into Arthur’s hand anyway, closing skin and soothing the rattled bones. This much he can do.
After a second, Arthur gasps, and Merlin keeps his eyes on the healing skin of Arthur’s hand so he can pretend he doesn’t know that Arthur’s crying.
*
When it airs, Gwen and Lancelot download the footage of Arthur’s memorial service onto their laptop and bring it to the safehouse.
Everyone starts backing away the second Arthur has it in his hands, like they’re afraid he’ll explode. Everyone except Merlin, who just watches with his head cocked to the side, biting his lip and waiting to see what Arthur will do. “Let’s make popcorn and all watch it together,” he says, just to see Merlin smile, and is rewarded when his face lights up.
Freya excuses herself, but Gwen makes popcorn while the rest of them settle in the living room with the laptop where they can all see it. Arthur doesn’t know if Merlin sits next to him for comfort or just because it’s a good view, but he’s grateful either way.
The crowd at his funeral is massive and eerily silent. His father stands next to a closed (and hopefully empty) casket, straight-backed and dry-eyed, with Morgana next to him. Morgana, as she promised, is wearing the kind of hat they always used to make fun of in old films, and she’s crying as the camera pans over her.
It’s outside, at the park he always played in as a child, and hundreds, perhaps thousands, of people are standing there, enough so it’s hard to see a scrap of grass on the recorded broadcast. Nobody is screaming, though many are crying. Many have signs, too, both anti-magic and pro-magic. Uni mates, co-workers, acquaintances, strangers, and, most surprisingly, what seems like most of the underground. They’re there to send a message, to be certain, but Arthur doesn’t know for whom.
There’s no priest. Arthur wouldn’t have wanted one if he had died, but it means that his father runs the proceedings, and the second he opens his mouth on the recording Arthur wants to run. His father knows how to sway a crowd; nothing he does would be excused, were it otherwise. He knows how to make his evil and his cruelty sound reasonable and right, and Arthur knows that this situation will give him all the ammunition he needs to take the sorcerers down.
Whatever he set out to do, though, he fails. Perhaps it’s that the crowd is reeling with grief and surprise. Perhaps they don’t believe him. Whatever it is, though, almost no one starts cheering while he speaks against sorcerers, the danger of them, how they’ve taken away everything he’s ever loved, how magic must be removed from the world. Things he’s said a hundred times to cheering crowds leeave nothing but silence. When he finally finishes, he looks disconcerted.
Morgana, in the hat that Arthur can’t stop laughing at, steps up next, clutching a handkerchief delicately in her hands. “Arthur would hate this, all this fuss and bother. He believed in doing things, not talking about them. So I’m not going to talk long. I’m going to tell you that this won’t last long. This is enough.” For a second, Arthur wonders if she’s going to tell them the truth right there, although if Morgause and the rest of the underground are doing their job a rumour got passed through that crowd. Instead, Morgana dabs at her eyes, giving the camera her best side, before straightening her shoulders and looking out. “We’re going to find a cure, so we can stop this.” She holds out her hands, milking the drama for all it’s worth. Arthur snorts and throws popcorn at the screen, which gets him a scandalized look from Gwen and Lancelot. “This fighting has gone on long enough. Please, if whoever is kidnapping the volunteers is out there today, stop before someone else gets hurt.”
The crowd, as he watches, erupts into angry murmurs, even a few shouts. If there’s a rumour spreading, it hasn’t spread fast enough.
There’s more to Morgana’s speech, if he knows her, maybe enough to goad a riot (perhaps that’s what the underground was there for), but Uther steps forward and steers her away from the microphone.
From there, it’s a joke, full of speeches from people who have no idea who he is. Leon gives an elegy he would be proud to have, even if it’s about the wrong person. Given a chance, he thinks he could have brought Leon to their side. That’s Morgana’s job, now, if she chooses it.
The broadcast was an hour, and by the end everyone but Merlin and Arthur has found an excuse to be elsewhere. Arthur has spent the last half hour playing a game with himself to see if he can identify those in the crowd who have figured out that it’s all a lie. It’s more than he would have thought, and not just sorcerers. “We’re going to beat him soon,” Arthur says when the broadcast finally ends. “Three years ago that crowd would have been out for blood. A sorcerer wouldn’t have even made it into the park.”
“It will be good to go back,” says Merlin, looking down and picking at a loose thread on his jeans. “I sometimes think Freya might stay here. She likes it here, and that’s fine. But I need to go back. I need to help, if it’s ever safe.”
“You’ll be more use than me,” says Arthur, because it’s the truth. “Nobody will trust me.”
“We’ll need everyone.” Merlin must know it sounds like a platitude, because a second later he elbows Arthur. “You can be my assistant. Fold my letters for me and stick them in envelopes and all that.”
Arthur looks to the side to find Merlin looking serious, probably waiting to see if his joke went over well. He knows that they’ve all been walking on eggshells around him since he arrived, but this is different. “Speaking as someone who’s had an assistant,” he says in as disdainful a tone as he can muster, “I can tell you that the job is more sending e-mails than letters, these days. You really must move with the times.”
Every smile he gets from Merlin feels like a reward, because for all they’d talked a few times before he came to the safehouse, he’d never heard Merlin happy or relaxed before. This one is brief, but at least it’s there for a second before Merlin goes serious again and turns more fully to meet his eyes. “Are you going to be okay?”
“Yes. Not quite yet, but I will be.” He shrugs and sits up to shut the laptop. “It’s not like I didn’t know long ago that my f--that Uther isn’t a very nice man.” Arthur forces a smile and knows it doesn’t fool Merlin because neither of them can seem to fool the other. “I suppose I can’t call him my father any longer. Arthur Pendragon is dead.”
“You’ve got a better family here,” Merlin says, unexpectedly fierce, and Arthur almost shivers at the tone. Merlin doesn’t need golden eyes to sound like he has power. “If you don’t want his name, you don’t have to keep it.”
Arthur makes his tone as obnoxious as he can because he doesn’t quite know what to do with himself. “What, Merlin, going to invite me to be your brother?”
Those seem to be the magic words to transform Merlin from someone who could bend the universe to his will with a blink to a skinny man a few years younger than Arthur who looks more tired than anyone has a right to. “No,” he whispers. “But we’re family.”
Someone clears their throat at the door to the living room and both of them whip around at once, spilling what’s left of the popcorn all over the floor. “I’m sorry to interrupt,” says Gaius in the same dry way Arthur remembers from years worth of scoldings and scrapes, eyebrows raised. “I thought you two ought to know, though. We’ve had word from the city, about … the other three, who I was placed with. Morgause wants to speak with you, Merlin.”
Merlin lunges out the doorway, skidding on stocking feet, before Arthur can begin to react. Arthur just looks at Gaius. “It isn’t good news, is it.”
“You know that already,” says Gaius, and turns to follow Merlin.
*
The news isn’t as bad as it could be. Merlin repeats that to himself over and over while he tells everyone else at the safehouse what Morgause told him, even though it makes Mordred give him pitying looks with every repetition. “Chances are we’ll still be able to find Balinor and Nimueh wherever they’ve been moved,” he says when a look around proves that everyone is looking shaken even though they were expecting half the news. “He hasn’t killed them. That’s only to the good. And with Fay there we do have a better chance than we otherwise might to get to them.”
“The Dragon was old,” says Gaius, who shouldn’t be comforting anyone. He’s doing well, though, and taking the news better than the rest of them. “He wouldn’t have lasted long anyway. These past few years, he’s barely been holding on.”
Merlin nods at him, even though it doesn’t really help. “There’s going to be a vigil, in the city. For everyone who knows the Dragon didn’t just disappear when the persecution got to be too much. Morgause says they’re going to start spreading rumours. About him.” He sneaks a glance at Arthur, who just looks back. “About you. The whole city is going to be wondering by tomorrow, and the newspapers will have picked it up by the day after. Unless Pendragon still has enough friends in the government to tamp it down quickly, they’re going to take quite a hit. Even if it can’t be proven.”
Ever since Arthur transported in, Merlin can’t stop the sense that they’re close to something. Pendragon can’t last long without his heir apparent, and with a man who has more damning evidence against him than any other free and out of sight. He’s always reminding himself not to get his hopes up, that chances are he’ll be living in this house until he’s fifty and too tired and worn to go back to the city. This, however, feels different. For all Arthur is miserable and shaken, his presence here means that some sort of tide has changed, and looking around at his friends he can almost see them figuring it out as well.
“There’s another rescue scheduled for next week. Nothing high-security, we can’t even risk the children’s ward again quite yet, but someone, at least,” he adds when the news seems to have sunk in enough. It isn’t the same as saving the Dragon, but it’s a reminder that there are still plenty of others. “We’ll have to get ready for more company. Till then, business as usual. I just wanted to make sure we all knew about the Dragon.”
He didn’t know the Dragon, not really. But every child with magic in Albion heard about him for a long time, the strongest Seer anyone had seen in centuries and a little bit mad with it. His mother told him when he was thirteen that his father met him a few times (and then, it seems, spent years upon years locked up with him) and that he’d talked about Merlin, called him by name. Of all those left in high security he’s perhaps the one that least matters to those in the safehouse, but he certainly matters to Albion. If the word gets out …
Gaius interrupts the silence between them all before it drags on too much. “Mordred, it’s time to practice putting up your shields again. Let’s go outside so you’ve just got me to concentrate on.”
“My father’s expecting us for dinner,” says Gwen, taking Lancelot’s hand, and that’s everyone’s cue to make excuses and separate to think about whatever it is that they need to think about in the wake of all this.
Merlin isn’t sure what he needs, but he walks out into the woods after Gwen and Lancelot go, leaving Freya reading a book in the living room and Arthur still sitting in the kitchen. He finds a spot just inside the wards and does stupid little magic tricks like he hasn’t in years until he feels a little bit calmer.
Arthur finds him, of course, after about an hour. He shouldn’t expect anything different. “I feel like an idiot asking,” says Arthur when he gets close enough, “but are you okay?”
“If we had to lose one of them, I’m almost glad it was him,” he admits. “But that’s just because of you and me. For the movement? It would have been nice to have the Dragon.”
“We’ve got you, though.” Merlin snorts. Arthur sits down on the ground a few feet away from him. “No, really. I am who I am and so people wouldn’t tell me much that they thought might get back to my--to Uther, but that doesn’t mean I don’t listen. People whisper about you like the kids used to whisper about the Dragon for the first few years after he disappeared.”
“I never asked to be a legend.”
“Merlin.” Merlin tries not to grin at the way Arthur drawls his name. “You found out your sister got cursed and went to a clinic where someone sent her off to Pendragon Corp. Instead of giving up and counting her as lost as hundreds of other families have, you found a ragtag group of the maddest people in Albion, broke her out, and started a revolution. I would argue that you did actually ask to be a legend.”
“I didn’t start it,” he tries, even though he sort of did. Morgause was the one with the dreams of being the first to break someone out of the facility, Gilli was the one who hated Pendragon Corp so much he would do anything to bring it down, Alice was the one with the knowledge and connections, Fay (he knows her real name and has for years, but still can’t remember to call her by it) was the one with the security codes, but Merlin was the one with someone he wanted to get out enough to bring them all together.
Arthur arches a disbelieving eyebrow, and Merlin thinks that this is how he’s meant to be. Not closed-off and halfway to shattered and reeling, but someone who’s a bit of an arse, but funny and noble and wanting to fix everything that’s wrong with the world. “People are going to rally behind you,” he insists.
Merlin tosses a bit of leaf matter at him. “Not just me. People on Uther’s side will think I’m just another sorcerer tricking them. When his own son comes out of hiding and tells them all what he’s done? That will get them.”
“Together, then,” says Arthur, and Merlin stretches his hand out because it feels right in a moment that suddenly seems to mean a lot more than it did a second ago. Arthur takes it, but he doesn’t shake it and let go. He holds on.
“Tell me this isn’t just me,” Merlin blurts. The hum of magic, the whole world around him seems to have gone quiet, everything but Arthur’s pulse pressed against his fingers, the backbeat to his own. He’s back in a nondescript hallway at two in the morning with a stranger holding him, but this time they’re on the same side.
Arthur squeezes a little tighter. “Two fucking years,” he says, and pulls Merlin forward across the space between them until he sprawls into Arthur’s body, catches his face in his free hand, and kisses him.
Like everywhere else, they seem to have the disconcerting ability to know exactly where the other one will be in just a second. Arthur tilts his face and Merlin is already in the right place, and when Merlin dares to think to tease Arthur’s mouth open Arthur’s lips are already parting, releasing a gasp of air into the kiss. He wants everything, wants to wrap Arthur in himself and his magic and never have anything but this, Arthur’s mouth and the taste of the ridiculously posh toothpaste he brought with him and the clutch of a warm strong hand around his.
“Inside, we’ve got to take this inside,” he manages, and Arthur pulls away to gasp into his shoulder. “Anyone could walk by like this.”
They stand in a fumble of limbs, and don’t let go of one another the whole walk back.
*
Nobody interrupts them on their way into the house and upstairs, though Arthur knows Mordred at least must know where they’re going and that Gaius and Freya probably didn’t miss their clasped hands. He doesn’t think that Merlin sees any of it. He just stares at the ground in front of them while he walks with an expression of intense concentration that would be funny if it weren’t a little bit worrying as well.
When they get to the top of the stairs, Arthur stops and keeps Merlin’s hand so he’ll stop too. “You’re upset. We don’t have to, you know.”
Merlin drops his hand, and for a second Arthur prepares to apologize for misinterpreting the situation, but then Merlin grabs his face in both hands and presses their foreheads together. “I want to, of course I want to, Arthur. It’s all just …”
Arthur would nod if he had any interest whatsoever in moving. He knows what it is. “Overwhelming,” he offers. “If you’re sure, then.”
“You make me feel like I’m about to be ravished of my maidenly virtue.” Merlin backs away a step and catches Arthur’s hand again, pulling him past the doorway to his own mostly-empty room and to Merlin’s, which is filled with late-afternoon sunlight and less messy than Arthur would have expected. “Well, this is it.”
“Shut up,” says Arthur, and shuts the door.
It’s unbearably silent for a moment. They both know where this is going, though they haven’t quite hit the point of no return yet, but it’s hard to know where to start. Merlin smiles and speaks. “I need to ward the room. If it were night and Mordred was in his room, that’s one thing, but people tend to sort of … broadcast, and he’s having enough trouble as it is.”
Arthur is torn between amusement and horror, but he nods and watches Merlin’s eyes go molten. He doesn’t bother wandering around the room sketching runes and making marks in bright red lipstick that will stain wood grain (which he’s still bitter about even if he knows logically he’ll never go back to that flat). He just stares around and the tingle of magic that Arthur always feels present at the safehouse intensifies until his skin prickles with it. “God, that feels odd.”
Merlin gives him a sharp look and lets the magic go. “So you do feel it when we do magic. I’d wondered. Not many people without magic of their own are sensitive.”
“I didn’t. Or at least less, until you--” Until Merlin had showed him for half an instant what it would be like to really have magic, but to bring that up means bringing up the gun he threatened Merlin with that night, and he doesn’t want that.
Of course Merlin knows, though, and he knows not to say anything comforting. Instead, he wraps his arms around Arthur’s shoulders and pulls him in for another kiss, this one deeper than their shaky exploration in the woods. Arthur puts his hands at Merlin’s hips and pushes back, teases at Merlin’s mouth with little licks until he huffs out a laugh and opens, tangling his tongue with Arthur’s, slick and sweet. He feels a bit dazed, a bit desperate, wants everything from Merlin but doesn’t know what to do first. He pushes his hands up under Merlin’s loose t-shirt, just to feel the smooth expanse of skin.
Merlin pulls away first. “Clothes, we’ve got to get our clothes off.”
“Right,” says Arthur, and starts pulling at Merlin’s shirt, tugging through Merlin’s laughter until he can get it off entirely, throw it somewhere out of sight and run his hands over the exposed skin. Merlin is thin, all ribs and elbows and skin so pale he can almost see the veins, but there’s strength, too, and the lines of a tattoo on his shoulder that Arthur will have to investigate later. For now, though, he puts his mouth to the notch of Merlin’s collarbone, tasting the salt of his sweat and feeling his breath flutter while he shoves at his trousers.
“Fuck, Arthur, I meant you too,” says Merlin, and Arthur feels the vibration of it against his lips before he pulls away and kicks off his shoes and socks as quickly as he can, grabs his shirt at the hem and almost rips it pulling it over his head. He wants to unwrap Merlin like a present, but he wants skin, too, and hopefully there will be time for that later, so he strips to his boxers and looks around to find Merlin transfixed, halfway out of one shoe. “You’re so--”
“You obviously can’t be trusted to undress yourself,” says Arthur, feeling a bit mad, and manhandles Merlin to the bed, dumping him on it and moving to tug at his shoes, his socks, so he can take his trousers and pants off in one tangled mess and then bend to press a kiss, a marker, to the jut of a hipbone, to the spot just below his navel.
Merlin curls a hand around his neck and pulls so gently Arthur barely feels it, but he nods, pulls away barely long enough to shed his boxers, and gets onto the bed, aligning his body with Merlin’s, pressed half on top of him, faces just an inch or two apart. Merlin’s eyes are wide and dark and very blue, not a hint of magic in them. “Here,” he says, and kisses Arthur again, lets Arthur press him into the pillows with the sun spilling across them, lets him run his hands feverish and fast across Merlin’s skin.
Arthur worries for a few seconds that he’s too rough, too fast, too desperate, because Merlin feels thin and so tentative underneath him, but if Merlin wanted to stop him, it would be as easy as blinking. He wrenches his mouth away, and quirks a smile when Merlin actually makes a protesting noise. That quite neatly answers that question. “Don’t hold back,” he says.
For a second, Merlin looks confused, but then he smiles, because of course he understands. “I won’t if you don’t.”
He meant to make this first time soft and sweet when he thought about it (and he has been thinking about it, even when Merlin’s only memory of him was the cold metal of a gun and a heated exchange of words and it was stupid to think about it), but it’s hard to remember that now when everything in him is crying out for more, faster, now.
There will be time to touch and lick every inch of Merlin’s skin later, time to find out where he’s ticklish and what will make him arch from the sheets, time to feel his hands everywhere. Now, he’s more desperate for the connection than he is to be gentle, and this time when he kisses Merlin, he takes a bruising hold of his hip and pulls them together, Merlin’s hard cock dragging against his.
Merlin bites down on his lip and when he presses his palm to Arthur’s back his skin tingles, the feeling following wherever his hand moves, like he’s marking Arthur with his magic. It isn’t the same as being filled with it, but it brings back the edges of the feeling, an echo. Like he could rule the world and lose himself to it at the same time. Arthur gasps into the kiss and rolls them, getting his hands under him until he can hover over Merlin and push their hips together.
Their skin is getting slippery when Merlin pulls away from his mouth to scatter kisses on his jaw and face and neck, arching up off the bed and leaving little jolts of magic wherever he touches. “I want you to fuck me,” he whispers in Arthur’s ear, and Arthur thrusts without meaning to, smiling when Merlin smiles at him because he can’t help it.
“Yes, please,” he whispers back, just to feel Merlin shiver and to watch his eyes go gold while a drawer beside the bed creaks open and a little bottle of lube deposits itself in Arthur’s hand.
*
“Eager,” says Arthur, waving the lube in Merlin’s face, and Merlin can’t keep the slightly mad grin from stealing across his face. It’s been a while since he was with anyone, and even then it was just uni one-night-stands where he had to be careful with himself and his magic. This doesn’t feel like that. Arthur doesn’t feel like that. Arthur’s face goes slack with desire every time Merlin lets his magic loose even a bit, and it’s a temptation just to give in to his urges and drench Arthur in his power--not to do anything, but just to feel it in them both.
“Come on.”
Arthur slicks his fingers, eyes on Merlin’s the whole time, and it’s more of a rush than Merlin could have imagined, seeing him there above him. He remembers Arthur’s strength, the grip of his hand against Merlin’s throat, the steadiness of his body, but feeling it like this, all of it channeled into hips and hands and kisses, it’s dizzying, its own sort of magic. “May I?”
Merlin arches, feels around for a pillow and settles it under his hips. “Go slow. It’s been a while,” he warns, and watches Arthur’s face soften as he shuffles down the bed, making a path down Merlin’s body with slippery fingers and kiss-swollen mouth.
Telling him to go slow, Merlin discovers within moments, was a mistake, because Arthur is both breathtakingly tender and a hideous tease as he coaxes Merlin oh-so-slowly open. He kisses and licks his way up Merlin’s cock, mouths at his balls, swirls a finger at his entrance until he’s hitching his hips in tiny helpless movements, and only presses it inside when Merlin puts a hand in Arthur’s hair. He’s bursting with too much magic, and it might sting, but Arthur just hums around the head of his cock and presses inside, slowly, so slowly.
It’s like a dream, the late-afternoon light moving slowly across the bed, catching in Arthur’s hair and warming their skin to feverish heat, Arthur inside him with one finger, with two, with three, stroking his stomach with his other hand while Merlin tosses his head to the side, mouths I love you to the air and hopes that Arthur wasn’t looking, because it’s too soon but it was hard enough to stop the sound of the words; he couldn’t hold back the shape of them. “I’m ready,” he moans when he can manage it.
Arthur slides his fingers out carefully, slicks his cock as he moves back up the bed, kissing just the same erratic trail up as he did back down and making Merlin grin because of course he would remember something as small and silly as that. He moves Merlin’s legs to clasp around his hips, hands slippery where he touches, and nudges his cock at Merlin’s entrance. Merlin rocks into it, encouraging him.
“Okay, okay,” says Arthur, and pushes in. It’s just on the right side of too-much, and Merlin gasps with every inch of it, wanting to move and wanting to freeze in equal measure. They pause when Arthur’s seated as deep as he can go, and Merlin wants to squirm. Instead, he catches Arthur’s eye, and they just watch each other for an endless second. “Don’t hold back,” Arthur murmurs again at the end of it.
“Move,” says Merlin, and Arthur draws out and thrusts in, and again, and again, harder as Merlin gets used to the stretch and the ache and the wonder of it. He lets his power free, because nothing that’s part of him could possibly want to hurt Arthur, and instead of spreading through the room as it has when he’s let it out before, it curls around Arthur, wrapping him in gold and soaking in. Arthur lets out a fraught noise and reaches out blindly for Merlin’s hand, moving faster and harder and the magic is humming happily around them both, not doing anything but reflecting their own pleasure back on them. Merlin holds Arthur’s hand and his gaze and moves to meet every thrust, hard and dizzy with it.
“Close, I’m close,” Arthur chokes out after a while, or maybe Merlin only feels the increasing desperation.
“Come on, then.” Merlin passes an extra bolt of power through their joined hands, watches Arthur’s eyes bleed into gold for a flicker of an instant before he squeezes them shut, shouting out his release as Merlin arches until he’s resting his weight on his shoulders, the echo of Arthur’s pleasure through his magic making him scramble to fist his own cock and come in two pulls, splashing hot between them as Arthur locks his knees to keep from collapsing and starts to pant.
It takes Merlin too long to remember how to drop his legs from Arthur’s hips, to put himself at the right angle so Arthur can draw out, careful and slow and leaving him feeling odd and empty, but too big for his own skin at the same time, while his magic draws back within his body. He pulls weakly on their joined hands, toppling Arthur on top of him and losing what little breath he’s managed to keep.
“Are you okay?” Arthur manages to ask, muffled in Merlin’s shoulder.
Merlin gives his hair a caress, unthinking. “Yes. We’ll sleep now. Talk about it later.”
Arthur’s breaths only take a minute or so to go deep and slow, almost at the edge of snoring, and Merlin squirms until some of the weight is off his chest, magic almost purring in contentment as he curls against Arthur and goes to sleep still holding his hand.
It’s dark when they wake up and they’ve probably missed dinner, but no one will bother them after the afternoon they all had and Merlin doesn’t much care anyway. They make love again in the dark of the room, just their hips and hands pushing together, moonlight weak but there enough for Merlin to see Arthur’s eyes always on him, the tendons of his neck standing out when he comes.
After, Arthur rolls him to his side and traces the lines of his tattoo with fingers and tongue, getting to know every line in the light that Merlin manages to conjure for the purpose. “It’s just a branch,” says Arthur at last, sounding puzzled. “It doesn’t look finished.”
Merlin looks over his shoulder and smiles. “A friend of mine was a tattoo artist. Might still be. But anyway, he was too broke to do it for free, and I wanted a whole tree, spread over my back.” Arthur traces a finger down his spine. “Yes, like that. But I didn’t have the money for the whole thing, so he did the branch for what I could spare, and I started saving up for the whole tree. Was about halfway there when Freya …”
Arthur turns him back over, kisses him slow and soft. “You should look him up when we get back.”
Merlin rolls his eyes and doesn’t say that he thinks they’ll have bigger things to worry about, when Pendragon Corp is taken down. Instead, he catches Arthur’s hand in his and traces the lines of Arthur’s palm with one finger. “You’ve heard one of my stories. Now I want one of yours.”
After looking too serious for a second, Arthur tells him a story about Morgana telling him about the Frog Prince when he was a child and Arthur kissing a frog, which Morgana then gleefully informed him would give him warts, thereby earning the nickname that they use on the radio channel. Merlin laughs, and tells him about uni scrapes and his mother and chasing away Freya’s first boyfriend when he made her cry. Arthur tells him about running away when he was eight and sleeping on Gaius’s couch the first time he got pissed because his father locked him out and Morgana’s habit of getting him in trouble at every turn.
It’s nearly midnight by the time both of them are hungry enough to get out of bed, Merlin muttering cleaning spells over them and the sheets while they get dressed, and they sneak downstairs quietly enough to fool absolutely nobody, laughing and arguing about stupid little things while they make cheese on toast and eat it standing over the stove. Merlin knows that in the morning there will still be the Dragon’s death to worry about, and the next rescue, and everyone staying with them already, but for now he’s content to tease Arthur about kissing frogs and hold his hand, ready to drag him upstairs and back to bed when they’re ready.
Part Three