[FIC] None of Them Ours (Arthur/Merlin; NC-17)
Author/Artist: suntipped
Title: None of Them Ours
Pairing(s)/Character(s): Arthur/Merlin
Rating: NC-17
Summary: Merlin comes to Camelot as part of a traveling troupe of actors. Because he's so young and pretty, he's always cast to play the female roles-standing on stage in skirts, tightly-laced bodices, bows and all-and it makes Arthur sort of crazy.
Warnings (if any): sex, crossdressing
Total word count: 8,738
Original prompt number: 92 - Submitted by treacle_tartlet
Disclaimer: This story/artwork is based on characters and situations created and owned by the BBC and Shine TV. No money is being made and no copyright or trademark infringement is intended.
Author's/artist's notes (if any): This fic was so much fun to write! I totally have a thing for stories with Merlin in a dress, so it was exciting to see this as a prompt. Apologies for any random anachronisms that might be found.
Beta(s): igniteus ♥
None of Them Ours
-
History repeats itself. Somebody says this.
History throws its shadow over the beginning, over the desktop,
over the sock drawer with its socks, its hidden letters.
I know history. There are many names in history
but none of them are ours.
-- Richard Siken, "Little Beast"
-
Morgana finds him sulking at the top of the tallest tower.
"Uther will kill you if you miss the show tonight," she says idly, picking up a dirty square of greasy fabric from the ground and throwing it at him.
Arthur catches it with the sharpened tip of the sword in his hands-its blade shines brilliantly in the light, having been polished at least six times over by this point in his desperation to avoid the bustle of the castle below.
It's been unbearable, these three days since they've started preparing for the festivities. An utter headache to so much as set foot down in the corridors, what with the entire household hurrying about, carrying around great wooden beams like they're gearing up for battle. His father has the whole castle staff running around, on edge, fussing over carpets and needlessly dusting at ancient tapestries-just this morning alone, Arthur's been snapped at on three separate occasions by the cook, a tailor, and a flustered-looking maid struggling with an over-large bundle of sheets.
"Thank you, Morgana. Please take your cue to leave now."
Her voice takes on an accusing tone. "You weren't in the courtyard this afternoon to welcome our guests."
"Prior engagement," Arthur says mildly, holding up the sword, then gesturing to the eight others gathered haphazardly on the ground by his feet.
"They've traveled an extraordinarily long way, if you care. They came with all sorts of things, more than a dozen horses packed full with costumes and belongings, and of course no one's realized that the stables are going to be a nightmare, even if they're only staying in the castle for a few hours before they move down to the lower town and-"
"Oh, I do care," Arthur cuts in, dry. "I care very, very much."
Morgana glares at him for a few minutes more before giving him up as a thoroughly lost cause. She turns somewhat haughtily on her heel, flinging her shawl over her shoulders.
"Don't be late tonight," she warns as she leaves, and he makes sure she can see the exaggerated roll of his eyes.
-
Arthur's late.
He deliberates for a long while over not showing up at all, glancing out longingly at the dark green woods outside the windows of his chambers and almost aching for the feel of a horse beneath him, a crossbow in his hands, the cool forest at his side-but at the very last minute he does decide to go, figuring he'd rather suffer through a few hours of tedium rather than incur the king's wrath tonight. They'd first heard about the traveling troupe of actors passing through Camelot from one of the gossiping court ladies a week ago, and Uther, in a fit of whimsy, had summoned them up to perform at court tonight. Arthur is restless, irritated, jerking his arms into the stiff, embroidered clothes laid out on the bed, and it takes his harried manservant a full ten minutes to arrange the crown into his hair.
The banquet hall has been dimmed with soft light when he arrives, and small platters of food are laid out in front of the nobles. There's a heavy wooden stage in the middle of the room directly opposite the high table. Beams have been propped up to swing a thick red curtain down across the platform, sectioning off the view.
Arthur slips into his seat on the right of Uther's throne just minutes before a man steps out from the behind the curtain, clears his throat, and announces that the show is about to begin.
He catches Morgana's smirk. And sighs.
The story that's played out tonight is simple and slightly predictable. A peasant comes on stage, dressed in stolen knight's armor, and rescues a delicate, dark-haired princess from bandits in the woods (at which point Arthur realizes with distinct horror that this is going to be not just a play, but a love story) and falls smitten while hiding his true identity from her. They journey back to her castle and kingdom, where she learns of his deception from some farmers and shuns him, betrayed. The man is left to rot in the dungeons. But in the end, the princess plans to defy her family and steal away with him in the middle of the night-they're reunited passionately in the forest, but a guard chases after them and the peasant is killed before they can make their escape. At the last scene, the princess is left weeping, touching her lips to her dead lover's in one last embrace.
Arthur hears a loud sniff from one of the ladies seated to his right, followed by the sound of several handkerchiefs being discreetly blown.
"How beautiful," someone sighs.
Throughout the rapturous applause of the audience, he flicks a few short appraising looks up at the princess now standing alone on the stage. She's not bad-looking, he supposes. Far thinner than he'd normally like, all sharp bones and wintery skin, dressed in skirts of gold and red. But there's something about her face-pretty even through the tears-and her eyelashes that fan long shadows across her face, strangely mysterious.
It's interesting. Different, and maybe even pleasant. The other actors appear from the behind the screen and when they dip down in a humble bow, Arthur catches sight of the pale, elegant curve of the girl's neck.
"It was all right," he admits off-handedly to Morgana later, walking from the hall to their respective chambers. Behind them, the servants are quick to begin dissembling the stage, and the actors have already started preparing for their leave from the castle.
"Come again?"
He scoffs at how smug she sounds. "I only said all right. Suppose it could've been much worse. Didn't muck up anything too badly, did they? And the. . . princess. Whatever. She was good."
Morgana turns to him and raises an eyebrow.
Feeling defensive, he says, "What?"
"Really?"
"I'm allowed to have an opinion, you kn-"
"No, I mean-weren't you ever taught anything, Arthur?" Morgana shakes her head, laughing a little. "That's not a girl. Women have never been allowed to perform on a stage; it isn't considered decent. Only men can seek to be actors." She sounds a bit resentful at the last part.
Arthur stops, caught off his guard, sure that he's heard wrong.
"What are you talking about? That's-that was definitely a girl."
He casts his gaze around, gesturing with his hands in example: to the court ladies drifting down the corridor in their bright rouge and rustling skirts, to several fair-haired maids scuttling along behind them.
"I promise you that it wasn't."
Arthur flushes. "It was."
"What, because you're the expert?"
"I know the difference between a woman and a man!"
All the same, annoyingly, doubt suddenly snags at the edge of his mind.
"Good night, Arthur," Morgana says, and heads for the staircase to her chambers with a half-exasperated, half-amused wave of her hand, leaving him to the heat steadily blooming in his cheeks and a riot of sudden, frighteningly confusing thoughts.
And that's how it begins.
-
His dreams are shockingly filthy.
In the middle of the night he wakes, burn-hot and feverish, drenched in sweat and god knows what else-and he can't seem to get his hands on himself fast enough, turning to press his face harshly into the pillow, biting his lip to keep from making noise. His eyes are squeezed so tightly shut that he sees tiny stars in the blackness, but still he knows, of course he knows, what he's thinking about, what he's been burning with all evening until it finally has risen up unsuppressed in his sleep. The dream is blurry at the edges; if he focuses, he can make out the shapes in it, and they're nothing but obscene. If he focuses even more, he sees things that are wicked and full of sin, things that would make even the most depraved men blush and look away. Angled, dark jaws. Soft touches that turn into hard edges. Half-conscious but too frantic to feel fully ashamed, he ruts against the sheets and comes fast and hard, mind full of the still-vivid images-of skin and colored lips and a frilly white corset tightly laced over sharp, sharp ribs-and it makes him feel desperate and rash. Groaning into the mattress, he wonders what all of it would feel like, laid out under his hands. How good it would be. How much he unexpectedly, and certainly, wants.
-
For the next few days, Arthur can't stop thinking about it.
It wouldn't be a problem if he never had the possibility of seeing that girl-boy (and the more he questions it, the more it hurts his head)-again. He could have shoved it away, locked it up in some cobwebbed corner of his mind. But Arthur hears from the kitchen staff that the actors are to set up and perform in a local tavern for a few weeks, maybe even longer, if their plays prove to be popular among the townsfolk, and it takes a great amount of determination not to find some flimsy excuse for walking down there right that very moment to look.
His mind keeps drifting to things in the form of questions. Is it uncomfortable? How old is he? Does he like it? Laced up, being swathed in all those skirts, with a wig of hair draped down to the waist? All dolled up, kissing other boys-?
He goes hot all over, at that last one.
Every slender boy who passes in the courtyard makes him blink and startle. Arthur nearly jumps out of his skin when a dark-haired squire runs by on dreary Tuesday morning and accidentally brushes his sleeve against his arm.
"Watch where you're going," he yelps to an empty corridor.
The clouds above the city rumble ominously, doing nothing to improve his mood.
Three days, five rain-soaked, aborted training sessions with the knights and four unbearably boring council meetings later, Arthur gives in. Maybe something inside him just cracks.
It takes less than a minute to find out which tavern it is from one of the scullery maids, and then he's stomping through the rain with a plain hooded cloak over his head and gritted teeth, the blood beneath his skin so close to boiling, despite the chill.
The place itself has been cleaned up a bit, with tables pushed closer together and an empty space cleared out as a stage area for the actors to use at the back. After sidling quietly up to the counter and eavesdropping on a nearby conversation for a bit, he learns that tonight's performance hasn't started yet-that the troupe's probably scattered somewhere on the upper floors of the inn upstairs, in one of their rented bedrooms that also double as makeshift dressing rooms.
Arthur doesn't go up with the intention of walking in on anybody. He really doesn't. But one of the doors on the second floor hangs slightly ajar, and he's just curious, just exhausted, just wants to see whether or not that burning curiosity inside of him can be quieted if he looks, for a moment, just looks. He nudges it open.
At first glance it seems empty. Stepping cautiously in, he see a stack of chairs, some propped-up mirrors, a small bed, and piles of multicolored clothes in various states stacked upon it. Mismatched, random knickknacks litter the floor, along with many painted pieces of lopsided wood that must act as props.
"What the hell d'you think you're-"
He whirls around on instinct and catches someone's wrist in a steely grip, twisting the entire arm back and pinning it before he registers the cry of pain, the dark mess of hair.
It's the boy. Him. The hair is still that same black shade, perhaps dyed to match his wig, cut neatly and curling damply over his forehead. He's wearing a normal pair of breeches and a too-long shirt, but there's gaudy color smeared along one cheekbone and he's sputtering indignantly, trying to writhe out of Arthur's grasp.
Arthur lets go mostly out of surprise.
"Ow! Crazy lunatic," the boy mutters, massaging his arm and looking at him darkly.
"You-sorry. You startled me," Arthur says, blinking.
"You're the one in my room!"
He looks at him properly, all up close now. It's definitely him; Arthur recognizes that startlingly familiar face, the slenderness of his body, so different now but so obviously the same. He can easily see why they'd choose him in particular to play the part of a woman on the stage-he's thin and his bones are so delicate-looking, skin flushed with a fair pink tint. There's a small tube of some red and shimmery substance in his hand; it looks like it could have been taken from the collection of make-up vials and brushes Morgana keeps in her rooms. Arthur stares at it.
Pointedly, the boy clears his throat.
And apropos of nothing Arthur blurts out:
"Do you enjoy it?" Before fighting back the instinct to wince.
The boy looks unsettled, bemused, still rubbing at his elbow. "What?"
Arthur brings his hand up, waves it through the air. "Doing-that. It."
"Er, doing what?"
"Kissing men," he bites out in a harsh cough, and oh, god, it's like watching a landslide. The words have burst out of his mouth before he can stop them.
There's a static sort of silence.
". . . Um?"
Arthur shuffles his feet, gaze still fixed on the little stick of rouge clutched in the boy's hand.
"Wow, you're serious."
Arthur makes a noise.
"I." When he swallows, the bone in his throat bobs a bit and Arthur can't help watching it, hypnotized. "Um, I guess? I mean, yeah. It's weird because it's on stage in front of everyone, but. I-I don't mind it." And then with a shaky laugh, "Uh, all right. Why am I telling you this? Who are you, anyway?"
Arthur just gives what he hopes is a very noncommittal shrug, and looks around the room, and then accidentally meets the boy's eyes for the first time. They're soft and sweet as bluebells.
"I'm Merlin," the boy offers.
Suddenly he can't handle this. Can't understand what drove him here in the first place, and he's instantly afraid he's already given too much away. Afraid that someone, everyone, has already seen him come to this place-so careless, he thinks bitterly. God, he'd been utterly careless.
He turns quickly to go, heart pounding like a hard drum in his throat.
"Wait," the boy calls out from behind him, voice full of confusion. "Do I-have I seen you somewhere before?"
"No," Arthur says curtly, and leaves.
-
There's an important treaty to settle with Mercia over an issue that's come up about trading rights, and it takes up a full dawn-to-dusk day of Arthur's time. Uther himself sits quietly at the throne while his son paces the floor for hours and hours, trying patiently to negotiate with a table of stubborn council members who don't start to reach any sort of agreement until most of the castle has gone to bed. By the end of it, Arthur's throat is hoarse, his legs are sore, and something fast and angry thrums in his veins.
He calls for a servant to saddle his horse up for a ride, and the servant has the nerve to look disapproving.
"It's very late, sire," the man says, making no move to comply.
He shouts for a stable hand to do it anyway, but is informed that they've all gone home for the night.
Arthur gnashes his teeth together and stalks out the courtyard himself, only to find that it's raining even harder than it has been all week. Still, he fights through the slew of water to drag himself down the deserted, mud-soaked roads, fuming in his head at everything-the court, his father, the household, the entire bloody kingdom.
It's not until he's there that he looks up and realizes he's walked, unconsciously, down to that same tavern again.
The sound of raucous laughter drifts through the rain, and he wrenches the door open with a half-frozen arm, pitching himself at a dark unnoticed table in the back and letting out a deep, controlled breath. There's satisfaction to be had in the fact that no one has turned to stare, yet; the drenched clothes and hair plastered to his forehead probably have done something to hide who he is.
Ten minutes later, nursing a large tankard of mead, Arthur admits that he's feeling slightly better. He raises his eyes to the stage for the first time, watching where the last bits of the night's performance are being acted out. It's a roaring comedy, by the looks of it.
That boy, Merlin, is on stage with his wig and rouge and all, batting his eyelashes and looking far too comfortable flouncing around in a white and pink frock-playing the part of a rich, very flirtatious lady. Three other actors pretend to vie eagerly for her attention while their wives (played by men also, Arthur assumes, but none of them are nearly as convincing at it) chase angrily around behind them. The audience hoots and howls. Even Arthur snorts to himself.
And then.
And then. Merlin flashes a coy smile at the three suitors and slips up his skirts for a half-second, just enough to reveal a tease of some silky undergarment, a pale ankle, a flash of black garter-and Arthur feels himself choke on the liquid in his throat, barely avoiding asphyxiation.
Nobody else seems to have much noticed.
"Fuck," he mutters under his breath, thick and hoarse.
And he repeats it, later, still cold and soaked with rain but warmed with something else, when the show has ended with a flourish and the tavern is loud with hearty drinking and he's moved out of his seat, up the stairs. He lingers in a dark shadow on the second floor landing. Arthur's heart is pounding like mad because this isn't all right, this is crazy and perverted and not all right at all, but goddamn it all because he wants-
He wants.
The actors comes rushing up the stairs not minutes later, flushed with laughter and happiness at a successful performance, still in full costume. Merlin and his ridiculous pink skirts are in the midst of them and Arthur watches as his fellow actors clap him on the arm and then disperse off into their own rooms, presumably to change. Before the boy can reach for the doorknob to his own room, however, Arthur steps forward and pulls him around by the shoulder.
"Wh-"
He looks frightened, but then recognition flares in his eyes and it's replaced by something like relief, or amusement. "Oh, it's you. Hello again."
Arthur opens his mouth but finds he has nothing to say.
"Did you like the play?" Merlin wants to know.
In response, Arthur only tightens his grip on Merlin's shoulder and shoves him a few steps down the hall, into a small, cramped little alcove half-hidden from view.
The boy goes easily, stumbling over the hem of the dress, but his lips quirk into a friendly smile. "Hey, I figured out where I know you," he says conversationally, looking curious but not alarmed at all at being cornered. "Remembered seeing you up at the castle, few nights ago. Prince Arthur, yes? That's what they said you were called, when I-"
"Shut up."
Merlin's smile fizzes a little. ". . .Excuse me?"
"Shut up," Arthur growls, hoarse, and crowds him back into the wall a bit too forcefully, a hand coming up almost of its own will to smudge at the garish red color smeared across Merlin's mouth, his cheekbones. And then a third time, voice almost breaking on the syllables, "Sorry. Shut up. Just."
He feels dizzy. Out of control with this.
Merlin's lips look so soft, and Arthur leans in slowly before tracing the supple contours of them with his own mouth, mapping them out. He pulls away after a scant seconds. They are soft. The boy shudders, staring with wide eyes.
He means to let go, to make some excuse and run out of there as fast as he possibly can. But his feet seem rooted to the ground.
Arthur doesn't know who moves first, then, but one of them must do so, because all of a sudden there are hands everywhere-hands tugging at his waist, hands yanking at the stupid layers of Merlin's skirt and pushing them up and up and up, clawing at the material until he hits hot bare skin somewhere, and he impatiently shoves all of the lace aside. Merlin is gasping, steadying his wrists on Arthur's shoulders as he leans back for balance, the tangled mess of his wig tipping precariously until Arthur wrenches it off altogether, throws it to the ground. He makes a helpless mewling noise when Arthur's teeth latch onto fleshy skin just behind his ear.
Fuck, fuck, fuck.
"You're pretty," Arthur mumbles, going so delirious, hands firmly clenched in the skirts, and he can't help but press forward, edge his knee in between Merlin's legs and crowd his way in. "So pretty. Like a girl. Better than a girl." He mouths it into Merlin's skin, bites at the lobe of his ear and watches it churn deep pink. "A filthy tease, you know that? You can't go and flaunt it like that, all night, up on stage. You can't just do that."
"No," Merlin pants out, strained, as he stumbles to not fall forwards now, grasping at Arthur for leverage. "Why," gulps wildly at air, "why not?"
Arthur answers honestly, in a wretched whisper-
"It drives me crazy."
Merlin sputters a laugh against his shoulder, or perhaps he's just running out of breath. "Yeah?" And he lets out a soft moan when Arthur wrestles a hand into the hair at the nape of his neck, says, "Maybe that's what I was going for."
As a reply, Arthur just moves his other hand underneath the skirts, rustling, reaching for naked skin. God, he isn’t thinking, isn't engaging the sensible part of his brain at all-but he wants it badly, more than anything. There are prickly hairs on Merlin's legs instead of smooth soft ones, and it makes him falter. But for a moment only. His fingers creep higher and higher, and then they touch something hard and wet, familiar and terrifying at the same time.
"You ever done this before?" Merlin whispers, breathing hard and uncertain.
Arthur squeezes his eyes shut and leans forward. Anyone can walk by right now and see. Anyone. They're not even completely out of sight, and he'd be easily recognizable, having not even bothered with a cloak to throw over his head; he's probably been seen already. A drop of rainwater from his still-damp hair drips down onto Merlin's shoulder, and he licks it up, feeling the boy shiver.
"Tell me," he whispers, "to stop," with a hand moving slow but firm circles under Merlin's dress. He wants to lose himself in this raw, filthy feeling, in the smell and the presence of this stupid boy dressed up like a girl, face painted so innocent; wants to know his secrets, wants to drag them out of him one by one, tear open that dress and unwrap every last mystery, every answer to the fire-storm of questions and heat inside him. "Merlin. Please. You have to tell me to stop."
"Stop," Merlin groans, and Arthur's heart pitches out of his chest for a brief moment, faltering, "s-stop and I'll kill you."
The terrifying desire flares up headily again and sets everything alight. It's not so different from being with a girl, really-Merlin's just taller, stronger (not even by much, though, so that hardly counts), and he's got a cock, yeah, one that Arthur's hand is currently wrapped around, tugging roughly at. He's beautiful, with that cherry-kissed mouth wide open, neck bared. It's even better than being with a girl, Arthur realizes with a feverish kind of delight, feeling the boy shake apart when he curls an ankle around Arthur's calf and moans, coming quickly right there into Arthur's hand.
"God-"
Arthur brings his hand up to his face, after he's done, mesmerized by the sticky white mess all over his palm.
"Shit." Merlin is cursing quietly to himself, looking mortified. He's trying to straighten his skirts, eyes blown very wide, as if in disbelief over what's just happened. Shaking. "Um." Reaching for Arthur in an aborted movement, bringing his hands up and then down again. "Do you-do you want me to-am I supposed. . ."
Slowly, Arthur opens his mouth to suck in one of his own fingers, cautiously tasting the come cooling on his hand. It's bitter. Not what he'd expected.
Merlin looks like he's ready to faint.
His hair is a mess; Arthur doesn't remember grabbing at it so hard, but it's stuck up in all different directions, and there is red powder stained all over his face and neck. The skirts are all rumpled. After a minute Arthur pulls himself away, turning to the side and listening to the sound of their breathing in the unnaturally silent hallway. His composure comes back to him in degrees, despite his still-uncomfortable arousal.
"I need to leave."
"What?" Merlin sweeps his eyes down to Arthur's trousers. "But-"
"This shouldn't have happened. Do you understand?"
"I don't usually do this-this kind of thing," Merlin says, looking upset.
Arthur throws him a glance, angry and irritated. "If you tell anyone," he hisses, shoving back into Merlin's space for a second, startling him, "if you tell anybody about this-that we-"
Merlin's eyes narrow, whereas they'd been wide with shock a moment before.
"What do you want?" Arthur says finally.
"What? What are you talking about," Merlin says, confused, and then stutters. "You want-you want to pay me off?" His face goes stony in less than a second. "I'm not some tart, your highness."
Arthur looks pointedly down at the frilly pink dress, hanging loosely off his shoulders.
"Much," Merlin adds hastily.
His skirts rustle with the fast, indignant rise-and-fall of his breathing.
It's so ridiculous, then, that Arthur can't help but let out a little laugh.
Merlin's lips quirk up the tiniest bit. "What?"
Arthur shakes his head.
“What?” Merlin presses, insistent.
"You're just."
Arthur loosens his grip but doesn't step back, sweeping his gaze down Merlin's sweat-shivered body, all the frills and laces adorning it. "A crazy man. Why do you do this," he whispers, mostly to himself, leaving off the implied to me, but something in his voice might give it away anyway.
He shakes his head again, runs a finger lightly down Merlin's arm.
Merlin grabs it, unexpected and abrupt, bringing the hand up to his face and pressing a tentative kiss to the knuckles.
"I don't-" he pauses, thumb stroking absently over Arthur's fingers. "I don't think I quite know what you mean, sire."
"And you're a liar as well."
Merlin laughs now, too.
"We have another show tomorrow night," he says suddenly, and offers up a small, hopeful smile. Flicks his eyes up to Arthur's face. "Will you be here?"
Arthur wants to gape at his audacity, at the boldness of the question, but all that comes out is a strangled, ragged breath, ghosting out between their faces. Merlin just looks so earnest about it, too. And maybe that, he thinks dismally, is answer enough already.
He spends the rain-splattered walk back to the castle in a daze.
-
The next evening is clear, with only a light breeze to stir the skies. Arthur decides to go, and then not go, and then go, and then winds up with such a headache over it that he's halfway out the castle doors already before he lets himself deliberate any more about it.
"Taking a stroll," he calls out to Morgana when he passes her in the courtyard. She raises her eyebrow at the dark cloak pulled over his head but says nothing.
The show's already started by the time Arthur gets down there, so he just sits at the back again and watches. Quiet and inconspicuous.
Merlin finds him ten minutes after their performance ends.
"Enjoying yourself?" Asks a quiet voice at the side of his ear.
"Quite bored, actually," Arthur drawls in response.
He hears an amused huff.
"Come upstairs."
Arthur turns his head at that with eyebrows raised, finding himself face-to-face with a furious blush.
"If you want," Merlin adds in a murmur, eyes cast downwards. His cheeks are bright red at his own forwardness.
It's a stupid question. Of course Arthur wants.
Merlin's room is messier than he remembers-Arthur has to pick a careful path across the clothes flung across the floor, and he nearly loses his balance anyway when Merlin hops up onto the bed and shakes his skirt to the side, bending down and exposing a wide strip of pale flesh in the process of unbuckling his shoes.
He stands there, awkward, until Merlin looks up and smiles quietly from underneath his eyelashes.
The mattress is lumpy and uncomfortable when he moves to sit on it, but Merlin takes no time at all to turn to face him and slide one arm up Arthur's chest, to the opening in his shirt, and onto bare skin. He's pleasantly warm.
Their first kiss this time is less fervent, more hesitant-Arthur can taste the caution in Merlin's mouth-but he presses forward still, unable to quite stop himself. Merlin grows bolder at that, bringing his leg up to rest on Arthur's thigh.
With no small amount of struggle, they manage to get Merlin's skirts off ("No one can work these things," Arthur growls at the laces after getting them into a hopeless knot; Merlin rolls his eyes, bats his hands away, and unravels the ribbons with a deftness that makes Arthur sputter a bit) and the layers of the fabric fall away, pooling onto the bed beneath them. Arthur crawls up between Merlin's flushed, unwrapped legs.
He traces the hard edges of Merlin's corset, the angles where it digs little red marks into his ribs. Tugs on it. "How do you even breathe with this?"
"I dunno. Experience."
"Will you-will you leave it on?"
Merlin's smile is a wicked grin, unraveling slowly across his mouth-and Arthur has to have it, has to taste that again; he leans down and Merlin lets him in. Lets him hook his fingers around the bone-hard material, listen to the soft hitch in Merlin's breathing. Lets him bite at the little silk bows in Merlin's hair and inch his other hand down low.
Back in the corner of his mind, Arthur realizes that this should feel wrong, that this should be wrong, this abominable desire-but who cares? Who is watching? The rest of him is too busy to think of that when it's buzzing with pleasure as Merlin does some shrewd thing with his fingers down Arthur's trousers and every vein in his body is singing with a fast, heady chant of this boy, this mystery, this-Merlin, Merlin, Merlin.
His body is an entire land, new and bold and undiscovered. Arthur is hungry for it all.
-
"I really don't do this," Merlin murmurs into Arthur's shoulder blade, later, calm in the dark room with moonlight glinting through the only small window. His fingers are spread across Arthur's chest like bird wings. "Invite strangers into my bed. I don't. Ever."
"So you've said."
"Just wanted to make it clear. I'm not that easy, all right?"
"Are you implying that I am?"
"Are you?" Merlin sounds curious, not accusing.
"I can do whatever I want," Arthur hedges. He opens his arms wide. "I'm royalty."
Merlin snickers. "Yeah, you aren't arrogant about that fact at all."
"And you really can't say things like that to my face."
"Royally arrogant-?"
Arthur kicks at him, and Merlin rolls out of the way, and they fumble into a sheet-mussed wrestle until they almost fall off the bed. He kisses at Merlin's jawline, tender, tilting his head sideways off the mattress.
Eventually, sometime in the dark of the early morning, they say goodbye with looks and half-smirks, teasing and sincere all at once. Arthur nods once before slipping out the door. And the see you soon lingers in the air, completely unspoken yet very, very loud.
-
It gets to be a bit habit-forming.
Addictive, Arthur thinks. Like gambling. Like the strong-smelling potions that Gaius the physician always warned him to stay away from as a child, because they'd take you, change you, keep you crawling back for more and more and more.
Merlin is like that.
"You've had this look on your face lately," Morgana comments at court one morning. "It makes you come off a bit mad."
Arthur just grins, which has the effect of unnerving her entirely.
He takes to finishing his dinners early-unless there's a feast he can't excuse himself out of-and heading to the stables right after sunset, where he pretends to saddle his horse for any stable hands who might be watching, and slips away as soon as they're not. It's always dark by the time he gets to the tavern for the show, but he prefers it like that. Each night, afterward, despite the fact that Arthur takes extra caution to disguise himself, Merlin finds him easily; he pulls Arthur up the staircase to his room and there they stay, not leaving until nearly sunrise.
Sometimes all they do is kiss, gasp against each other for hours. Sometimes Merlin lets Arthur unwrap him, inch by inch, like the sweetest delicacy.
Once, he shows up when it's not a performance night, and Merlin is dressed in plain brown trousers and a loose jacket, face scrubbed clean of any color. He blinks, uncertain, makes a movement toward the closet and asks which one of the dresses he should put on-what does Arthur want him in?-but Arthur grabs his wrist, steers him over to the bed and they touch each other like on any other night, just without the skirts or pretenses. Privately Arthur likes this just as much. He realizes that Merlin is beautiful even unadorned, and feels an alarming sweep of something grand and selfish in his chest that's absolutely disproportionate to the short time they've even known each other.
Arthur learns things about Merlin in degrees, in notches, in little threads of fabric that quietly weave themselves together for a comprehensive whole.
He knows that Merlin's from a small town miles away from the kingdom. That he grew up with only his mother. That he likes the color red, but hates tomatoes. That he'd intended to head up to Camelot for work, originally, but stumbled across the acting troupe on the way and was convinced by them to stay and take on a part. That Merlin loves traveling, that he loves the idea of remaining anonymous, of playing into a role.
Why, though, Arthur doesn't know. An air of mystery still lingers about him. A quietness. A singular intensity that Arthur can't seem to be able to extract with anything as simple as touch or taste, and it makes him crave for something he can't name; makes him wrap his arms around Merlin when they're alone and whisper stupid, possessive and sentimental things into his ear-desperate for anything that'll break through those walls, and absurdly satisfied when something does manage to do so.
-
But all good things come to an end. Arthur knows this. War has at least taught him that.
For anything, there are always too many sacrifices-too much that stands in the way.
Merlin is subdued one night, not smiling his usual wry, teasing grin when Arthur arrives. He's changed out of costume already and is standing in conversation with some other actor, the both of them dressed their ordinary, slightly faded clothes. Arthur raises his eyebrows and makes to head for the stairs, but Merlin catches up to him and pulls him back. "Do you think. . . Maybe we shouldn't, tonight," is all that he says.
Something in Arthur's throat immediately tightens. "Why?"
Merlin leads him over to a shadowed space at the top of the stairs-the same alcove where they'd first touched and kissed, where the torchlight doesn't quite stretch. He leans against the corner of the wall and looks like he's hesitating over something, brow furrowed and half in the darkness.
"What is it. Merlin."
"It's," Merlin begins, and stops. Begins again. "We're going to Mercia in two days."
"What?"
"Us. The troupe. We're leaving Camelot, moving on to the next crowd."
There's loud, riotous laughter coming from somewhere in the rooms below; the sound travels up through the wood and carries itself through as a hollow echo.
Arthur doesn't understand it. He refuses to.
"But you don't have to go," he says, feeling like he's pointing out the obvious.
Merlin looks at him like he's crazy. "You're asking me to stay? In Camelot?"
"I'm-well, obviously you'll stay," Arthur says, still uncomprehending. "Won't you?"
Merlin's lips twist, but not in a happy way. He toes at the ground and doesn't meet Arthur's eyes. "I can't. You don't understand."
"Then tell me."
Merlin shakes his head stubbornly and ducks away, heading swiftly down the hall.
"Tell me," Arthur demands, trailing close behind.
"Stop following me."
"You don't get to tell me what to do, Merlin."
"Oh-but I suppose you do?" They've reached Merlin's door. Merlin whirls around to block it, but Arthur grabs the handle and topples them both inside.
"Why wouldn't you stay?" Arthur presses, throwing the door shut behind them. He reaches a hand for the fabric of Merlin's tunic, crowding the boy into the wall.
"I have my reasons."
"No, you don't. You're lying."
"You don't know anything about me!" Merlin shouts, looking frustrated.
"What don't I know about you-"
"I have secrets, all right? Look, I have these terrible secrets that anyone would run from-and nobody can know about them-that's why I joined these actors in the first place," Merlin blurts, shoving at Arthur's arms. "Because we don't stay anywhere. We keep on going, and we don't settle in one place. And it's safe. It's safer this way."
"That's a coward's way out," Arthur growls. He gets his leg in between Merlin's, preventing his escape. "You can't plan to flee from your own life forever."
"You don't get it! This is my life. This is-"
"It could be here," Arthur argues loudly over him. "You wanted to come to Camelot in the first place. And here you are. So just stay."
Merlin lets out a bitter, mirthless laugh. "Stay for what?"
Arthur ignores the way that stings, feels like a whip straight across his chest.
"You could be anything. Find work as-I don't know-an assistant, an apprentice somewhere. Come up to the castle as my manservant."
"Your manservant," Merlin says flatly. His eyes are cold and narrowed.
"Fine, a squire, or-whatever, if that offends you too."
"I told you, I just can't."
"Why? What's your secret, then? Your big scary secret that no one can know?"
"I can't tell you."
"I won't let go until you do," Arthur threatens, gritting his teeth. He watches the glare in Merlin's eyes grow angrier and angrier, feeling a shameful sense of gratification at the reaction. "You're not even half a match for me, you know? It's a little pathetic. I could take you down on even my worst day-"
"You don't know what I'm capable of," Merlin snaps.
"Yeah, what're you going to do?" Arthur sneers, equally sour. "Flutter your eyelashes at me?" He knows it's cruel, knows it's low, but he doesn't stop. "Pretend like you wouldn't stand on a stage and lift your skirts for a room full of men-"
"Here," Merlin yells, and struggles to free his hands, bringing them palms up. "Here, you wanted to see? Look-I'll show you-if you want to know so goddamn badly, I'll show you-"
Nothing happens for beat.
One, two.
And then in an instant Arthur's skin is burning hot.
Arthur sees nothing, at first. He's focused on the sudden unnerving color of Merlin's eyes, which have turned an inhuman, melted gold.
But then he sees it: the bright blue fire resting in the center of Merlin's palms. The heat sparks flying off of it in waves, and the other flames that have sprung up of their own volition and are licking red and orange and blinding white, dancing all around the room.
Arthur jumps back and spins wildly about.
"I can do more," Merlin whispers, voice unsteady. A hand comes up to wipe at the sweat on his face. "So much more. It's always been this way. I can turn water to wine, move things, break open the ground, stop time if I want to. . ."
He's standing right in the middle of the fire. The flames don't even seem to touch him.
"You're. You are. I should-" Arthur can't even bring himself to place it into words.
"Should what?" Merlin asks, quiet.
He bites back the bile in his throat. He feels sick to the bone. "You're a sorcerer. I should arrest you. Kill you. I should strike you down where you stand."
"Then do it," Merlin says simply.
Arthur doesn’t move.
Merlin's smile is bitter and sad. "S'why I can't stay-with you, with anyone, anywhere. But especially with you, Arthur Pendragon. Especially not here. You get it?" He looks suddenly very old, far more ancient than his years. Like he has witnessed history a million times over, seen every possible world grow before his very eyes, and this is always how it ends.
His gaze is blue once more when he looks up, and there's regret inside of it.
"Go live your life, Prince Arthur."
-
Arthur can't sleep. Can't close his eyes. His chambers are too hot. His bed feels too itchy, too hard, too horrible. He cannot begin to reconcile the image of coy, blushing Merlin in all his silly skirts and rogue on stage with the idea of magic, of evil-that word itself chokes him. It's meant for treacherous, dark figures and cackling old thieves. Not a bright-eyed boy who leads Arthur into his bed every night, who laughs with the ease of a child. Not one who dresses up in frills and flowers for the fun of it and kisses like the world's going to end if he doesn't.
There is some huge disconnect, like this discovery has rendered a physical crack in the earth; it is a chasm between two worlds, growing smaller yet more steep at the same time. Arthur feels displaced. Everything stops making sense.
-
Two days pass. Throughout, it's always there, trying to edge into the back of his thoughts: the idea of Merlin. Merlin lying to him. Merlin and his secret.
Arthur goes to court and attends daily council meetings, and now that the weather is fine and warm, he trains with his knights in the afternoon for hours on end. He goes on a real hunting excursion for the first time in ages. At the end of the day, Arthur is satisfyingly exhausted-enough so to fall unconscious straight away, bypassing any sharp, confusing thoughts that might still be lingering in his mind.
He dreams of nothing, and is both disappointed and relieved by this.
A while before dusk on the second day, one of Arthur's attending chambermaids asks him for a few hours' leave from her work. She and her family have planed to go see that traveling acting troupe off-the local townspeople have all been very taken with their performances, and they want to bid a humble good-bye as they take the roads out of Camelot.
"When?" Arthur asks, forcing his voice into as normal a tone as possible.
"They're making last preparations now, my cousin says."
Arthur waves her off. "Go."
She bows at him, grateful for his permission, and closes the door behind her as she leaves, leaving him alone.
For the first time in two days he sits in complete silence.
It forces things at him that he isn't ready to face.
As swirls of the early evening light loop through the open windows of the room, Arthur shuts his eyes against the outside world. He stays like that for an immeasurable amount of time, seconds or hours or eternities, he wouldn't know. When he opens them again, the answer to all of his thoughts from the past few days seems to just surface: brand-new, beautiful, crystalized. It comes as an acceptance, as a familiar truth that he hadn't truly thought of before but now exists like it never could have been anything else.
Arthur picks it up. Inspects it thoroughly.
Gives in.
-
His chest hurts-everything pounds painfully-he's running wild and desperate and faster than he's ever run, not stopping for breath.
The figure is sitting removed at the side of the building, in the dirt, knees bent and head bowed low. It couldn't be anybody else.
"Merlin!"
Arthur screeches to a halt, gasping for air.
"Don't leave. Don't."
Merlin lifts his head and stares at him. Around him, his fellow actors are saddling up horses, hitching wagons and throwing things into sacks. A small bundle of what must be Merlin's own possessions lies in the dirt beside him; Arthur takes it as a sign of hope that it isn't already loaded on with the group's other things.
"What if you could stay?" Arthur says breathlessly. He curls his hands in the fabric of his trousers, panting. "What if you could?"
Nobody in the vicinity notices him, as they're all busy wrapping their own things and fitting props, costumes, and food into the wagons. Merlin just looks wary.
"Listen to me," Arthur insists, as he grasps at a stitch in his side. "I'm not my father. I'm not. I wouldn't ever let anything happen to you. And I promise-I promise you, Merlin, that when I'm king," and here he swallows, proud that his voice doesn't waver, "When I'm king, things will be different in Camelot."
"You're fooling yourself if you think words mean anything, Arthur."
"What do you want then?" Arthur asks, desperate. "I'll give you anything you want. My honor. All that I have to offer you; it's already yours. Your everything."
Merlin's lip trembles, and he blinks hard down at his tucked-in feet. His eyes are wide, and he looks like he doesn't know what to say to that. But he settles on a wretched,
"And what about my magic?"
Arthur sinks to his knees. Traces a finger around the hook of Merlin's thin wrist.
"How powerful are you, anyway?" he asks quietly.
Merlin's silent.
Arthur nudges his leg gently.
"I don't know. I don't know what I could do," Merlin says, after a long pause in which they only sit there low to the ground and watch the people around them. Swallows. "Raise mountains. Drain the ocean. Kill people-"
"You wouldn't do that," Arthur says. And he knows it, firmly. Knows that Merlin wouldn't.
Merlin squeezes his eyes shut. When he opens them again, they're wet. "No," he relents.
Arthur touches him gently as he takes a shuddering breath.
Merlin wipes at his eyes.
"Things will be different," Arthur tells him quietly.
"When, Arthur? In ten years? Twenty? I'm hardly going to be here, walking around with the fear that my head could still be landed onto a plate any day of my life," Merlin says. He sounds exasperated.
"Then come back," Arthur declares. "It won't take ten years."
Merlin shakes his head, but it's only half-hearted.
Arthur leans his head slowly toward Merlin's, until his forehead touches to the other boy's neck. "I have this plan," he confesses in an almost-whisper. Their surroundings fade away. "No, listen-I know what I want. You, mainly. But I also want justice for Camelot; I want things to be right, and I want you to be there to see it. I want to be a good king, Merlin, and I need you there. You silly, silly man."
"And when did you think of this grand plan?" Merlin interrupts.
Arthur smiles. "Tonight. On the way down here."
Merlin huffs. But he doesn't say anything.
"Give me three years. Four, at most," Arthur whispers. "Please come back."
"You're going to change the entire kingdom in four years?"
"For you," Arthur says, honest.
"Why?" Merlin looks genuinely confused.
"Don't ask me that," Arthur rolls his eyes, but he's partly serious underneath it. "You know the answer. And you should know that the fact that you have magic doesn't matter-well obviously it matters, but not in the way that you think." Arthur pauses, his forehead still touched to Merlin's skin. "You're a mystery, still, but I intend to unravel all of you. I want all of the time in the world for that. Because you're you and because you're mine, Merlin-and you have to promise me that you will come back."
"You know," Merlin swallows, clearing something out of his throat. "This is stupid. You know it's not like I can be your queen, right?"
Arthur raises his head and pretends to study him.
"You could dress as one, though. . ."
Merlin's glare is absolutely deadly.
"All right, all right," Arthur laughs loudly at the affronted look on Merlin's face, and then turns his face carefully to duck for a quick, inconspicuous kiss at his shoulder. "No, not my queen, I don't think. You'd be something better."
The blush that creeps onto Merlin's cheeks is lovely.
"Just promise that you'll come back," Arthur repeats. He feels like he's clinging to this like this is his last breath, his salvation. "That's all. Promise me."
A little wind gusts around the corner, stirring the nearby horses and lifting the hairs on Arthur's neck.
"Promise."
Merlin looks at him for a long while.
Someone close but far-off calls to him, tells him to get a move on already. They turn away without a second glance. It'll be dark soon, and the other actors are ready to leave any minute now.
"God help me," Merlin groans softly, and then pushes to his feet, but not before making an abrupt turn on the spot and staring Arthur dead-on in the eye, smiling a bit, his quick, quiet, "Yes, I promise," almost getting lost in the flurry-almost, almost, but not quite.
Arthur stands alongside the townsfolk and watches Merlin ride off, watches his silhouette blur into an exploding sunset that will soon fade into brilliant black. He stays there until nightfall and walks all the way up to the castle thinking about a future date, four years exactly past today, and knowing with dead certainty that Merlin will be here in Camelot. Standing on the corner of a road waiting for him. Wearing splendid colors, a cloak that will fan richly out across the fine wood of the great halls. Arthur imagines what Merlin will say, what he will look like-how sweetly he will smile, and how his lips will again taste. He concentrates on committing it all to memory so that he'll be able to get every single detail right.
This isn't the destiny that the age-old prophecies predicted for him, perhaps, but it's the one that he wants; it's the one that he's chosen. It's worth everything.
The lingering, ruby-red light of the sunset follows Arthur the whole way back to the castle.
-
END
Title: None of Them Ours
Pairing(s)/Character(s): Arthur/Merlin
Rating: NC-17
Summary: Merlin comes to Camelot as part of a traveling troupe of actors. Because he's so young and pretty, he's always cast to play the female roles-standing on stage in skirts, tightly-laced bodices, bows and all-and it makes Arthur sort of crazy.
Warnings (if any): sex, crossdressing
Total word count: 8,738
Original prompt number: 92 - Submitted by treacle_tartlet
Disclaimer: This story/artwork is based on characters and situations created and owned by the BBC and Shine TV. No money is being made and no copyright or trademark infringement is intended.
Author's/artist's notes (if any): This fic was so much fun to write! I totally have a thing for stories with Merlin in a dress, so it was exciting to see this as a prompt. Apologies for any random anachronisms that might be found.
Beta(s): igniteus ♥
None of Them Ours
-
History repeats itself. Somebody says this.
History throws its shadow over the beginning, over the desktop,
over the sock drawer with its socks, its hidden letters.
I know history. There are many names in history
but none of them are ours.
-- Richard Siken, "Little Beast"
-
Morgana finds him sulking at the top of the tallest tower.
"Uther will kill you if you miss the show tonight," she says idly, picking up a dirty square of greasy fabric from the ground and throwing it at him.
Arthur catches it with the sharpened tip of the sword in his hands-its blade shines brilliantly in the light, having been polished at least six times over by this point in his desperation to avoid the bustle of the castle below.
It's been unbearable, these three days since they've started preparing for the festivities. An utter headache to so much as set foot down in the corridors, what with the entire household hurrying about, carrying around great wooden beams like they're gearing up for battle. His father has the whole castle staff running around, on edge, fussing over carpets and needlessly dusting at ancient tapestries-just this morning alone, Arthur's been snapped at on three separate occasions by the cook, a tailor, and a flustered-looking maid struggling with an over-large bundle of sheets.
"Thank you, Morgana. Please take your cue to leave now."
Her voice takes on an accusing tone. "You weren't in the courtyard this afternoon to welcome our guests."
"Prior engagement," Arthur says mildly, holding up the sword, then gesturing to the eight others gathered haphazardly on the ground by his feet.
"They've traveled an extraordinarily long way, if you care. They came with all sorts of things, more than a dozen horses packed full with costumes and belongings, and of course no one's realized that the stables are going to be a nightmare, even if they're only staying in the castle for a few hours before they move down to the lower town and-"
"Oh, I do care," Arthur cuts in, dry. "I care very, very much."
Morgana glares at him for a few minutes more before giving him up as a thoroughly lost cause. She turns somewhat haughtily on her heel, flinging her shawl over her shoulders.
"Don't be late tonight," she warns as she leaves, and he makes sure she can see the exaggerated roll of his eyes.
-
Arthur's late.
He deliberates for a long while over not showing up at all, glancing out longingly at the dark green woods outside the windows of his chambers and almost aching for the feel of a horse beneath him, a crossbow in his hands, the cool forest at his side-but at the very last minute he does decide to go, figuring he'd rather suffer through a few hours of tedium rather than incur the king's wrath tonight. They'd first heard about the traveling troupe of actors passing through Camelot from one of the gossiping court ladies a week ago, and Uther, in a fit of whimsy, had summoned them up to perform at court tonight. Arthur is restless, irritated, jerking his arms into the stiff, embroidered clothes laid out on the bed, and it takes his harried manservant a full ten minutes to arrange the crown into his hair.
The banquet hall has been dimmed with soft light when he arrives, and small platters of food are laid out in front of the nobles. There's a heavy wooden stage in the middle of the room directly opposite the high table. Beams have been propped up to swing a thick red curtain down across the platform, sectioning off the view.
Arthur slips into his seat on the right of Uther's throne just minutes before a man steps out from the behind the curtain, clears his throat, and announces that the show is about to begin.
He catches Morgana's smirk. And sighs.
The story that's played out tonight is simple and slightly predictable. A peasant comes on stage, dressed in stolen knight's armor, and rescues a delicate, dark-haired princess from bandits in the woods (at which point Arthur realizes with distinct horror that this is going to be not just a play, but a love story) and falls smitten while hiding his true identity from her. They journey back to her castle and kingdom, where she learns of his deception from some farmers and shuns him, betrayed. The man is left to rot in the dungeons. But in the end, the princess plans to defy her family and steal away with him in the middle of the night-they're reunited passionately in the forest, but a guard chases after them and the peasant is killed before they can make their escape. At the last scene, the princess is left weeping, touching her lips to her dead lover's in one last embrace.
Arthur hears a loud sniff from one of the ladies seated to his right, followed by the sound of several handkerchiefs being discreetly blown.
"How beautiful," someone sighs.
Throughout the rapturous applause of the audience, he flicks a few short appraising looks up at the princess now standing alone on the stage. She's not bad-looking, he supposes. Far thinner than he'd normally like, all sharp bones and wintery skin, dressed in skirts of gold and red. But there's something about her face-pretty even through the tears-and her eyelashes that fan long shadows across her face, strangely mysterious.
It's interesting. Different, and maybe even pleasant. The other actors appear from the behind the screen and when they dip down in a humble bow, Arthur catches sight of the pale, elegant curve of the girl's neck.
"It was all right," he admits off-handedly to Morgana later, walking from the hall to their respective chambers. Behind them, the servants are quick to begin dissembling the stage, and the actors have already started preparing for their leave from the castle.
"Come again?"
He scoffs at how smug she sounds. "I only said all right. Suppose it could've been much worse. Didn't muck up anything too badly, did they? And the. . . princess. Whatever. She was good."
Morgana turns to him and raises an eyebrow.
Feeling defensive, he says, "What?"
"Really?"
"I'm allowed to have an opinion, you kn-"
"No, I mean-weren't you ever taught anything, Arthur?" Morgana shakes her head, laughing a little. "That's not a girl. Women have never been allowed to perform on a stage; it isn't considered decent. Only men can seek to be actors." She sounds a bit resentful at the last part.
Arthur stops, caught off his guard, sure that he's heard wrong.
"What are you talking about? That's-that was definitely a girl."
He casts his gaze around, gesturing with his hands in example: to the court ladies drifting down the corridor in their bright rouge and rustling skirts, to several fair-haired maids scuttling along behind them.
"I promise you that it wasn't."
Arthur flushes. "It was."
"What, because you're the expert?"
"I know the difference between a woman and a man!"
All the same, annoyingly, doubt suddenly snags at the edge of his mind.
"Good night, Arthur," Morgana says, and heads for the staircase to her chambers with a half-exasperated, half-amused wave of her hand, leaving him to the heat steadily blooming in his cheeks and a riot of sudden, frighteningly confusing thoughts.
And that's how it begins.
-
His dreams are shockingly filthy.
In the middle of the night he wakes, burn-hot and feverish, drenched in sweat and god knows what else-and he can't seem to get his hands on himself fast enough, turning to press his face harshly into the pillow, biting his lip to keep from making noise. His eyes are squeezed so tightly shut that he sees tiny stars in the blackness, but still he knows, of course he knows, what he's thinking about, what he's been burning with all evening until it finally has risen up unsuppressed in his sleep. The dream is blurry at the edges; if he focuses, he can make out the shapes in it, and they're nothing but obscene. If he focuses even more, he sees things that are wicked and full of sin, things that would make even the most depraved men blush and look away. Angled, dark jaws. Soft touches that turn into hard edges. Half-conscious but too frantic to feel fully ashamed, he ruts against the sheets and comes fast and hard, mind full of the still-vivid images-of skin and colored lips and a frilly white corset tightly laced over sharp, sharp ribs-and it makes him feel desperate and rash. Groaning into the mattress, he wonders what all of it would feel like, laid out under his hands. How good it would be. How much he unexpectedly, and certainly, wants.
-
For the next few days, Arthur can't stop thinking about it.
It wouldn't be a problem if he never had the possibility of seeing that girl-boy (and the more he questions it, the more it hurts his head)-again. He could have shoved it away, locked it up in some cobwebbed corner of his mind. But Arthur hears from the kitchen staff that the actors are to set up and perform in a local tavern for a few weeks, maybe even longer, if their plays prove to be popular among the townsfolk, and it takes a great amount of determination not to find some flimsy excuse for walking down there right that very moment to look.
His mind keeps drifting to things in the form of questions. Is it uncomfortable? How old is he? Does he like it? Laced up, being swathed in all those skirts, with a wig of hair draped down to the waist? All dolled up, kissing other boys-?
He goes hot all over, at that last one.
Every slender boy who passes in the courtyard makes him blink and startle. Arthur nearly jumps out of his skin when a dark-haired squire runs by on dreary Tuesday morning and accidentally brushes his sleeve against his arm.
"Watch where you're going," he yelps to an empty corridor.
The clouds above the city rumble ominously, doing nothing to improve his mood.
Three days, five rain-soaked, aborted training sessions with the knights and four unbearably boring council meetings later, Arthur gives in. Maybe something inside him just cracks.
It takes less than a minute to find out which tavern it is from one of the scullery maids, and then he's stomping through the rain with a plain hooded cloak over his head and gritted teeth, the blood beneath his skin so close to boiling, despite the chill.
The place itself has been cleaned up a bit, with tables pushed closer together and an empty space cleared out as a stage area for the actors to use at the back. After sidling quietly up to the counter and eavesdropping on a nearby conversation for a bit, he learns that tonight's performance hasn't started yet-that the troupe's probably scattered somewhere on the upper floors of the inn upstairs, in one of their rented bedrooms that also double as makeshift dressing rooms.
Arthur doesn't go up with the intention of walking in on anybody. He really doesn't. But one of the doors on the second floor hangs slightly ajar, and he's just curious, just exhausted, just wants to see whether or not that burning curiosity inside of him can be quieted if he looks, for a moment, just looks. He nudges it open.
At first glance it seems empty. Stepping cautiously in, he see a stack of chairs, some propped-up mirrors, a small bed, and piles of multicolored clothes in various states stacked upon it. Mismatched, random knickknacks litter the floor, along with many painted pieces of lopsided wood that must act as props.
"What the hell d'you think you're-"
He whirls around on instinct and catches someone's wrist in a steely grip, twisting the entire arm back and pinning it before he registers the cry of pain, the dark mess of hair.
It's the boy. Him. The hair is still that same black shade, perhaps dyed to match his wig, cut neatly and curling damply over his forehead. He's wearing a normal pair of breeches and a too-long shirt, but there's gaudy color smeared along one cheekbone and he's sputtering indignantly, trying to writhe out of Arthur's grasp.
Arthur lets go mostly out of surprise.
"Ow! Crazy lunatic," the boy mutters, massaging his arm and looking at him darkly.
"You-sorry. You startled me," Arthur says, blinking.
"You're the one in my room!"
He looks at him properly, all up close now. It's definitely him; Arthur recognizes that startlingly familiar face, the slenderness of his body, so different now but so obviously the same. He can easily see why they'd choose him in particular to play the part of a woman on the stage-he's thin and his bones are so delicate-looking, skin flushed with a fair pink tint. There's a small tube of some red and shimmery substance in his hand; it looks like it could have been taken from the collection of make-up vials and brushes Morgana keeps in her rooms. Arthur stares at it.
Pointedly, the boy clears his throat.
And apropos of nothing Arthur blurts out:
"Do you enjoy it?" Before fighting back the instinct to wince.
The boy looks unsettled, bemused, still rubbing at his elbow. "What?"
Arthur brings his hand up, waves it through the air. "Doing-that. It."
"Er, doing what?"
"Kissing men," he bites out in a harsh cough, and oh, god, it's like watching a landslide. The words have burst out of his mouth before he can stop them.
There's a static sort of silence.
". . . Um?"
Arthur shuffles his feet, gaze still fixed on the little stick of rouge clutched in the boy's hand.
"Wow, you're serious."
Arthur makes a noise.
"I." When he swallows, the bone in his throat bobs a bit and Arthur can't help watching it, hypnotized. "Um, I guess? I mean, yeah. It's weird because it's on stage in front of everyone, but. I-I don't mind it." And then with a shaky laugh, "Uh, all right. Why am I telling you this? Who are you, anyway?"
Arthur just gives what he hopes is a very noncommittal shrug, and looks around the room, and then accidentally meets the boy's eyes for the first time. They're soft and sweet as bluebells.
"I'm Merlin," the boy offers.
Suddenly he can't handle this. Can't understand what drove him here in the first place, and he's instantly afraid he's already given too much away. Afraid that someone, everyone, has already seen him come to this place-so careless, he thinks bitterly. God, he'd been utterly careless.
He turns quickly to go, heart pounding like a hard drum in his throat.
"Wait," the boy calls out from behind him, voice full of confusion. "Do I-have I seen you somewhere before?"
"No," Arthur says curtly, and leaves.
-
There's an important treaty to settle with Mercia over an issue that's come up about trading rights, and it takes up a full dawn-to-dusk day of Arthur's time. Uther himself sits quietly at the throne while his son paces the floor for hours and hours, trying patiently to negotiate with a table of stubborn council members who don't start to reach any sort of agreement until most of the castle has gone to bed. By the end of it, Arthur's throat is hoarse, his legs are sore, and something fast and angry thrums in his veins.
He calls for a servant to saddle his horse up for a ride, and the servant has the nerve to look disapproving.
"It's very late, sire," the man says, making no move to comply.
He shouts for a stable hand to do it anyway, but is informed that they've all gone home for the night.
Arthur gnashes his teeth together and stalks out the courtyard himself, only to find that it's raining even harder than it has been all week. Still, he fights through the slew of water to drag himself down the deserted, mud-soaked roads, fuming in his head at everything-the court, his father, the household, the entire bloody kingdom.
It's not until he's there that he looks up and realizes he's walked, unconsciously, down to that same tavern again.
The sound of raucous laughter drifts through the rain, and he wrenches the door open with a half-frozen arm, pitching himself at a dark unnoticed table in the back and letting out a deep, controlled breath. There's satisfaction to be had in the fact that no one has turned to stare, yet; the drenched clothes and hair plastered to his forehead probably have done something to hide who he is.
Ten minutes later, nursing a large tankard of mead, Arthur admits that he's feeling slightly better. He raises his eyes to the stage for the first time, watching where the last bits of the night's performance are being acted out. It's a roaring comedy, by the looks of it.
That boy, Merlin, is on stage with his wig and rouge and all, batting his eyelashes and looking far too comfortable flouncing around in a white and pink frock-playing the part of a rich, very flirtatious lady. Three other actors pretend to vie eagerly for her attention while their wives (played by men also, Arthur assumes, but none of them are nearly as convincing at it) chase angrily around behind them. The audience hoots and howls. Even Arthur snorts to himself.
And then.
And then. Merlin flashes a coy smile at the three suitors and slips up his skirts for a half-second, just enough to reveal a tease of some silky undergarment, a pale ankle, a flash of black garter-and Arthur feels himself choke on the liquid in his throat, barely avoiding asphyxiation.
Nobody else seems to have much noticed.
"Fuck," he mutters under his breath, thick and hoarse.
And he repeats it, later, still cold and soaked with rain but warmed with something else, when the show has ended with a flourish and the tavern is loud with hearty drinking and he's moved out of his seat, up the stairs. He lingers in a dark shadow on the second floor landing. Arthur's heart is pounding like mad because this isn't all right, this is crazy and perverted and not all right at all, but goddamn it all because he wants-
He wants.
The actors comes rushing up the stairs not minutes later, flushed with laughter and happiness at a successful performance, still in full costume. Merlin and his ridiculous pink skirts are in the midst of them and Arthur watches as his fellow actors clap him on the arm and then disperse off into their own rooms, presumably to change. Before the boy can reach for the doorknob to his own room, however, Arthur steps forward and pulls him around by the shoulder.
"Wh-"
He looks frightened, but then recognition flares in his eyes and it's replaced by something like relief, or amusement. "Oh, it's you. Hello again."
Arthur opens his mouth but finds he has nothing to say.
"Did you like the play?" Merlin wants to know.
In response, Arthur only tightens his grip on Merlin's shoulder and shoves him a few steps down the hall, into a small, cramped little alcove half-hidden from view.
The boy goes easily, stumbling over the hem of the dress, but his lips quirk into a friendly smile. "Hey, I figured out where I know you," he says conversationally, looking curious but not alarmed at all at being cornered. "Remembered seeing you up at the castle, few nights ago. Prince Arthur, yes? That's what they said you were called, when I-"
"Shut up."
Merlin's smile fizzes a little. ". . .Excuse me?"
"Shut up," Arthur growls, hoarse, and crowds him back into the wall a bit too forcefully, a hand coming up almost of its own will to smudge at the garish red color smeared across Merlin's mouth, his cheekbones. And then a third time, voice almost breaking on the syllables, "Sorry. Shut up. Just."
He feels dizzy. Out of control with this.
Merlin's lips look so soft, and Arthur leans in slowly before tracing the supple contours of them with his own mouth, mapping them out. He pulls away after a scant seconds. They are soft. The boy shudders, staring with wide eyes.
He means to let go, to make some excuse and run out of there as fast as he possibly can. But his feet seem rooted to the ground.
Arthur doesn't know who moves first, then, but one of them must do so, because all of a sudden there are hands everywhere-hands tugging at his waist, hands yanking at the stupid layers of Merlin's skirt and pushing them up and up and up, clawing at the material until he hits hot bare skin somewhere, and he impatiently shoves all of the lace aside. Merlin is gasping, steadying his wrists on Arthur's shoulders as he leans back for balance, the tangled mess of his wig tipping precariously until Arthur wrenches it off altogether, throws it to the ground. He makes a helpless mewling noise when Arthur's teeth latch onto fleshy skin just behind his ear.
Fuck, fuck, fuck.
"You're pretty," Arthur mumbles, going so delirious, hands firmly clenched in the skirts, and he can't help but press forward, edge his knee in between Merlin's legs and crowd his way in. "So pretty. Like a girl. Better than a girl." He mouths it into Merlin's skin, bites at the lobe of his ear and watches it churn deep pink. "A filthy tease, you know that? You can't go and flaunt it like that, all night, up on stage. You can't just do that."
"No," Merlin pants out, strained, as he stumbles to not fall forwards now, grasping at Arthur for leverage. "Why," gulps wildly at air, "why not?"
Arthur answers honestly, in a wretched whisper-
"It drives me crazy."
Merlin sputters a laugh against his shoulder, or perhaps he's just running out of breath. "Yeah?" And he lets out a soft moan when Arthur wrestles a hand into the hair at the nape of his neck, says, "Maybe that's what I was going for."
As a reply, Arthur just moves his other hand underneath the skirts, rustling, reaching for naked skin. God, he isn’t thinking, isn't engaging the sensible part of his brain at all-but he wants it badly, more than anything. There are prickly hairs on Merlin's legs instead of smooth soft ones, and it makes him falter. But for a moment only. His fingers creep higher and higher, and then they touch something hard and wet, familiar and terrifying at the same time.
"You ever done this before?" Merlin whispers, breathing hard and uncertain.
Arthur squeezes his eyes shut and leans forward. Anyone can walk by right now and see. Anyone. They're not even completely out of sight, and he'd be easily recognizable, having not even bothered with a cloak to throw over his head; he's probably been seen already. A drop of rainwater from his still-damp hair drips down onto Merlin's shoulder, and he licks it up, feeling the boy shiver.
"Tell me," he whispers, "to stop," with a hand moving slow but firm circles under Merlin's dress. He wants to lose himself in this raw, filthy feeling, in the smell and the presence of this stupid boy dressed up like a girl, face painted so innocent; wants to know his secrets, wants to drag them out of him one by one, tear open that dress and unwrap every last mystery, every answer to the fire-storm of questions and heat inside him. "Merlin. Please. You have to tell me to stop."
"Stop," Merlin groans, and Arthur's heart pitches out of his chest for a brief moment, faltering, "s-stop and I'll kill you."
The terrifying desire flares up headily again and sets everything alight. It's not so different from being with a girl, really-Merlin's just taller, stronger (not even by much, though, so that hardly counts), and he's got a cock, yeah, one that Arthur's hand is currently wrapped around, tugging roughly at. He's beautiful, with that cherry-kissed mouth wide open, neck bared. It's even better than being with a girl, Arthur realizes with a feverish kind of delight, feeling the boy shake apart when he curls an ankle around Arthur's calf and moans, coming quickly right there into Arthur's hand.
"God-"
Arthur brings his hand up to his face, after he's done, mesmerized by the sticky white mess all over his palm.
"Shit." Merlin is cursing quietly to himself, looking mortified. He's trying to straighten his skirts, eyes blown very wide, as if in disbelief over what's just happened. Shaking. "Um." Reaching for Arthur in an aborted movement, bringing his hands up and then down again. "Do you-do you want me to-am I supposed. . ."
Slowly, Arthur opens his mouth to suck in one of his own fingers, cautiously tasting the come cooling on his hand. It's bitter. Not what he'd expected.
Merlin looks like he's ready to faint.
His hair is a mess; Arthur doesn't remember grabbing at it so hard, but it's stuck up in all different directions, and there is red powder stained all over his face and neck. The skirts are all rumpled. After a minute Arthur pulls himself away, turning to the side and listening to the sound of their breathing in the unnaturally silent hallway. His composure comes back to him in degrees, despite his still-uncomfortable arousal.
"I need to leave."
"What?" Merlin sweeps his eyes down to Arthur's trousers. "But-"
"This shouldn't have happened. Do you understand?"
"I don't usually do this-this kind of thing," Merlin says, looking upset.
Arthur throws him a glance, angry and irritated. "If you tell anyone," he hisses, shoving back into Merlin's space for a second, startling him, "if you tell anybody about this-that we-"
Merlin's eyes narrow, whereas they'd been wide with shock a moment before.
"What do you want?" Arthur says finally.
"What? What are you talking about," Merlin says, confused, and then stutters. "You want-you want to pay me off?" His face goes stony in less than a second. "I'm not some tart, your highness."
Arthur looks pointedly down at the frilly pink dress, hanging loosely off his shoulders.
"Much," Merlin adds hastily.
His skirts rustle with the fast, indignant rise-and-fall of his breathing.
It's so ridiculous, then, that Arthur can't help but let out a little laugh.
Merlin's lips quirk up the tiniest bit. "What?"
Arthur shakes his head.
“What?” Merlin presses, insistent.
"You're just."
Arthur loosens his grip but doesn't step back, sweeping his gaze down Merlin's sweat-shivered body, all the frills and laces adorning it. "A crazy man. Why do you do this," he whispers, mostly to himself, leaving off the implied to me, but something in his voice might give it away anyway.
He shakes his head again, runs a finger lightly down Merlin's arm.
Merlin grabs it, unexpected and abrupt, bringing the hand up to his face and pressing a tentative kiss to the knuckles.
"I don't-" he pauses, thumb stroking absently over Arthur's fingers. "I don't think I quite know what you mean, sire."
"And you're a liar as well."
Merlin laughs now, too.
"We have another show tomorrow night," he says suddenly, and offers up a small, hopeful smile. Flicks his eyes up to Arthur's face. "Will you be here?"
Arthur wants to gape at his audacity, at the boldness of the question, but all that comes out is a strangled, ragged breath, ghosting out between their faces. Merlin just looks so earnest about it, too. And maybe that, he thinks dismally, is answer enough already.
He spends the rain-splattered walk back to the castle in a daze.
-
The next evening is clear, with only a light breeze to stir the skies. Arthur decides to go, and then not go, and then go, and then winds up with such a headache over it that he's halfway out the castle doors already before he lets himself deliberate any more about it.
"Taking a stroll," he calls out to Morgana when he passes her in the courtyard. She raises her eyebrow at the dark cloak pulled over his head but says nothing.
The show's already started by the time Arthur gets down there, so he just sits at the back again and watches. Quiet and inconspicuous.
Merlin finds him ten minutes after their performance ends.
"Enjoying yourself?" Asks a quiet voice at the side of his ear.
"Quite bored, actually," Arthur drawls in response.
He hears an amused huff.
"Come upstairs."
Arthur turns his head at that with eyebrows raised, finding himself face-to-face with a furious blush.
"If you want," Merlin adds in a murmur, eyes cast downwards. His cheeks are bright red at his own forwardness.
It's a stupid question. Of course Arthur wants.
Merlin's room is messier than he remembers-Arthur has to pick a careful path across the clothes flung across the floor, and he nearly loses his balance anyway when Merlin hops up onto the bed and shakes his skirt to the side, bending down and exposing a wide strip of pale flesh in the process of unbuckling his shoes.
He stands there, awkward, until Merlin looks up and smiles quietly from underneath his eyelashes.
The mattress is lumpy and uncomfortable when he moves to sit on it, but Merlin takes no time at all to turn to face him and slide one arm up Arthur's chest, to the opening in his shirt, and onto bare skin. He's pleasantly warm.
Their first kiss this time is less fervent, more hesitant-Arthur can taste the caution in Merlin's mouth-but he presses forward still, unable to quite stop himself. Merlin grows bolder at that, bringing his leg up to rest on Arthur's thigh.
With no small amount of struggle, they manage to get Merlin's skirts off ("No one can work these things," Arthur growls at the laces after getting them into a hopeless knot; Merlin rolls his eyes, bats his hands away, and unravels the ribbons with a deftness that makes Arthur sputter a bit) and the layers of the fabric fall away, pooling onto the bed beneath them. Arthur crawls up between Merlin's flushed, unwrapped legs.
He traces the hard edges of Merlin's corset, the angles where it digs little red marks into his ribs. Tugs on it. "How do you even breathe with this?"
"I dunno. Experience."
"Will you-will you leave it on?"
Merlin's smile is a wicked grin, unraveling slowly across his mouth-and Arthur has to have it, has to taste that again; he leans down and Merlin lets him in. Lets him hook his fingers around the bone-hard material, listen to the soft hitch in Merlin's breathing. Lets him bite at the little silk bows in Merlin's hair and inch his other hand down low.
Back in the corner of his mind, Arthur realizes that this should feel wrong, that this should be wrong, this abominable desire-but who cares? Who is watching? The rest of him is too busy to think of that when it's buzzing with pleasure as Merlin does some shrewd thing with his fingers down Arthur's trousers and every vein in his body is singing with a fast, heady chant of this boy, this mystery, this-Merlin, Merlin, Merlin.
His body is an entire land, new and bold and undiscovered. Arthur is hungry for it all.
-
"I really don't do this," Merlin murmurs into Arthur's shoulder blade, later, calm in the dark room with moonlight glinting through the only small window. His fingers are spread across Arthur's chest like bird wings. "Invite strangers into my bed. I don't. Ever."
"So you've said."
"Just wanted to make it clear. I'm not that easy, all right?"
"Are you implying that I am?"
"Are you?" Merlin sounds curious, not accusing.
"I can do whatever I want," Arthur hedges. He opens his arms wide. "I'm royalty."
Merlin snickers. "Yeah, you aren't arrogant about that fact at all."
"And you really can't say things like that to my face."
"Royally arrogant-?"
Arthur kicks at him, and Merlin rolls out of the way, and they fumble into a sheet-mussed wrestle until they almost fall off the bed. He kisses at Merlin's jawline, tender, tilting his head sideways off the mattress.
Eventually, sometime in the dark of the early morning, they say goodbye with looks and half-smirks, teasing and sincere all at once. Arthur nods once before slipping out the door. And the see you soon lingers in the air, completely unspoken yet very, very loud.
-
It gets to be a bit habit-forming.
Addictive, Arthur thinks. Like gambling. Like the strong-smelling potions that Gaius the physician always warned him to stay away from as a child, because they'd take you, change you, keep you crawling back for more and more and more.
Merlin is like that.
"You've had this look on your face lately," Morgana comments at court one morning. "It makes you come off a bit mad."
Arthur just grins, which has the effect of unnerving her entirely.
He takes to finishing his dinners early-unless there's a feast he can't excuse himself out of-and heading to the stables right after sunset, where he pretends to saddle his horse for any stable hands who might be watching, and slips away as soon as they're not. It's always dark by the time he gets to the tavern for the show, but he prefers it like that. Each night, afterward, despite the fact that Arthur takes extra caution to disguise himself, Merlin finds him easily; he pulls Arthur up the staircase to his room and there they stay, not leaving until nearly sunrise.
Sometimes all they do is kiss, gasp against each other for hours. Sometimes Merlin lets Arthur unwrap him, inch by inch, like the sweetest delicacy.
Once, he shows up when it's not a performance night, and Merlin is dressed in plain brown trousers and a loose jacket, face scrubbed clean of any color. He blinks, uncertain, makes a movement toward the closet and asks which one of the dresses he should put on-what does Arthur want him in?-but Arthur grabs his wrist, steers him over to the bed and they touch each other like on any other night, just without the skirts or pretenses. Privately Arthur likes this just as much. He realizes that Merlin is beautiful even unadorned, and feels an alarming sweep of something grand and selfish in his chest that's absolutely disproportionate to the short time they've even known each other.
Arthur learns things about Merlin in degrees, in notches, in little threads of fabric that quietly weave themselves together for a comprehensive whole.
He knows that Merlin's from a small town miles away from the kingdom. That he grew up with only his mother. That he likes the color red, but hates tomatoes. That he'd intended to head up to Camelot for work, originally, but stumbled across the acting troupe on the way and was convinced by them to stay and take on a part. That Merlin loves traveling, that he loves the idea of remaining anonymous, of playing into a role.
Why, though, Arthur doesn't know. An air of mystery still lingers about him. A quietness. A singular intensity that Arthur can't seem to be able to extract with anything as simple as touch or taste, and it makes him crave for something he can't name; makes him wrap his arms around Merlin when they're alone and whisper stupid, possessive and sentimental things into his ear-desperate for anything that'll break through those walls, and absurdly satisfied when something does manage to do so.
-
But all good things come to an end. Arthur knows this. War has at least taught him that.
For anything, there are always too many sacrifices-too much that stands in the way.
Merlin is subdued one night, not smiling his usual wry, teasing grin when Arthur arrives. He's changed out of costume already and is standing in conversation with some other actor, the both of them dressed their ordinary, slightly faded clothes. Arthur raises his eyebrows and makes to head for the stairs, but Merlin catches up to him and pulls him back. "Do you think. . . Maybe we shouldn't, tonight," is all that he says.
Something in Arthur's throat immediately tightens. "Why?"
Merlin leads him over to a shadowed space at the top of the stairs-the same alcove where they'd first touched and kissed, where the torchlight doesn't quite stretch. He leans against the corner of the wall and looks like he's hesitating over something, brow furrowed and half in the darkness.
"What is it. Merlin."
"It's," Merlin begins, and stops. Begins again. "We're going to Mercia in two days."
"What?"
"Us. The troupe. We're leaving Camelot, moving on to the next crowd."
There's loud, riotous laughter coming from somewhere in the rooms below; the sound travels up through the wood and carries itself through as a hollow echo.
Arthur doesn't understand it. He refuses to.
"But you don't have to go," he says, feeling like he's pointing out the obvious.
Merlin looks at him like he's crazy. "You're asking me to stay? In Camelot?"
"I'm-well, obviously you'll stay," Arthur says, still uncomprehending. "Won't you?"
Merlin's lips twist, but not in a happy way. He toes at the ground and doesn't meet Arthur's eyes. "I can't. You don't understand."
"Then tell me."
Merlin shakes his head stubbornly and ducks away, heading swiftly down the hall.
"Tell me," Arthur demands, trailing close behind.
"Stop following me."
"You don't get to tell me what to do, Merlin."
"Oh-but I suppose you do?" They've reached Merlin's door. Merlin whirls around to block it, but Arthur grabs the handle and topples them both inside.
"Why wouldn't you stay?" Arthur presses, throwing the door shut behind them. He reaches a hand for the fabric of Merlin's tunic, crowding the boy into the wall.
"I have my reasons."
"No, you don't. You're lying."
"You don't know anything about me!" Merlin shouts, looking frustrated.
"What don't I know about you-"
"I have secrets, all right? Look, I have these terrible secrets that anyone would run from-and nobody can know about them-that's why I joined these actors in the first place," Merlin blurts, shoving at Arthur's arms. "Because we don't stay anywhere. We keep on going, and we don't settle in one place. And it's safe. It's safer this way."
"That's a coward's way out," Arthur growls. He gets his leg in between Merlin's, preventing his escape. "You can't plan to flee from your own life forever."
"You don't get it! This is my life. This is-"
"It could be here," Arthur argues loudly over him. "You wanted to come to Camelot in the first place. And here you are. So just stay."
Merlin lets out a bitter, mirthless laugh. "Stay for what?"
Arthur ignores the way that stings, feels like a whip straight across his chest.
"You could be anything. Find work as-I don't know-an assistant, an apprentice somewhere. Come up to the castle as my manservant."
"Your manservant," Merlin says flatly. His eyes are cold and narrowed.
"Fine, a squire, or-whatever, if that offends you too."
"I told you, I just can't."
"Why? What's your secret, then? Your big scary secret that no one can know?"
"I can't tell you."
"I won't let go until you do," Arthur threatens, gritting his teeth. He watches the glare in Merlin's eyes grow angrier and angrier, feeling a shameful sense of gratification at the reaction. "You're not even half a match for me, you know? It's a little pathetic. I could take you down on even my worst day-"
"You don't know what I'm capable of," Merlin snaps.
"Yeah, what're you going to do?" Arthur sneers, equally sour. "Flutter your eyelashes at me?" He knows it's cruel, knows it's low, but he doesn't stop. "Pretend like you wouldn't stand on a stage and lift your skirts for a room full of men-"
"Here," Merlin yells, and struggles to free his hands, bringing them palms up. "Here, you wanted to see? Look-I'll show you-if you want to know so goddamn badly, I'll show you-"
Nothing happens for beat.
One, two.
And then in an instant Arthur's skin is burning hot.
Arthur sees nothing, at first. He's focused on the sudden unnerving color of Merlin's eyes, which have turned an inhuman, melted gold.
But then he sees it: the bright blue fire resting in the center of Merlin's palms. The heat sparks flying off of it in waves, and the other flames that have sprung up of their own volition and are licking red and orange and blinding white, dancing all around the room.
Arthur jumps back and spins wildly about.
"I can do more," Merlin whispers, voice unsteady. A hand comes up to wipe at the sweat on his face. "So much more. It's always been this way. I can turn water to wine, move things, break open the ground, stop time if I want to. . ."
He's standing right in the middle of the fire. The flames don't even seem to touch him.
"You're. You are. I should-" Arthur can't even bring himself to place it into words.
"Should what?" Merlin asks, quiet.
He bites back the bile in his throat. He feels sick to the bone. "You're a sorcerer. I should arrest you. Kill you. I should strike you down where you stand."
"Then do it," Merlin says simply.
Arthur doesn’t move.
Merlin's smile is bitter and sad. "S'why I can't stay-with you, with anyone, anywhere. But especially with you, Arthur Pendragon. Especially not here. You get it?" He looks suddenly very old, far more ancient than his years. Like he has witnessed history a million times over, seen every possible world grow before his very eyes, and this is always how it ends.
His gaze is blue once more when he looks up, and there's regret inside of it.
"Go live your life, Prince Arthur."
-
Arthur can't sleep. Can't close his eyes. His chambers are too hot. His bed feels too itchy, too hard, too horrible. He cannot begin to reconcile the image of coy, blushing Merlin in all his silly skirts and rogue on stage with the idea of magic, of evil-that word itself chokes him. It's meant for treacherous, dark figures and cackling old thieves. Not a bright-eyed boy who leads Arthur into his bed every night, who laughs with the ease of a child. Not one who dresses up in frills and flowers for the fun of it and kisses like the world's going to end if he doesn't.
There is some huge disconnect, like this discovery has rendered a physical crack in the earth; it is a chasm between two worlds, growing smaller yet more steep at the same time. Arthur feels displaced. Everything stops making sense.
-
Two days pass. Throughout, it's always there, trying to edge into the back of his thoughts: the idea of Merlin. Merlin lying to him. Merlin and his secret.
Arthur goes to court and attends daily council meetings, and now that the weather is fine and warm, he trains with his knights in the afternoon for hours on end. He goes on a real hunting excursion for the first time in ages. At the end of the day, Arthur is satisfyingly exhausted-enough so to fall unconscious straight away, bypassing any sharp, confusing thoughts that might still be lingering in his mind.
He dreams of nothing, and is both disappointed and relieved by this.
A while before dusk on the second day, one of Arthur's attending chambermaids asks him for a few hours' leave from her work. She and her family have planed to go see that traveling acting troupe off-the local townspeople have all been very taken with their performances, and they want to bid a humble good-bye as they take the roads out of Camelot.
"When?" Arthur asks, forcing his voice into as normal a tone as possible.
"They're making last preparations now, my cousin says."
Arthur waves her off. "Go."
She bows at him, grateful for his permission, and closes the door behind her as she leaves, leaving him alone.
For the first time in two days he sits in complete silence.
It forces things at him that he isn't ready to face.
As swirls of the early evening light loop through the open windows of the room, Arthur shuts his eyes against the outside world. He stays like that for an immeasurable amount of time, seconds or hours or eternities, he wouldn't know. When he opens them again, the answer to all of his thoughts from the past few days seems to just surface: brand-new, beautiful, crystalized. It comes as an acceptance, as a familiar truth that he hadn't truly thought of before but now exists like it never could have been anything else.
Arthur picks it up. Inspects it thoroughly.
Gives in.
-
His chest hurts-everything pounds painfully-he's running wild and desperate and faster than he's ever run, not stopping for breath.
The figure is sitting removed at the side of the building, in the dirt, knees bent and head bowed low. It couldn't be anybody else.
"Merlin!"
Arthur screeches to a halt, gasping for air.
"Don't leave. Don't."
Merlin lifts his head and stares at him. Around him, his fellow actors are saddling up horses, hitching wagons and throwing things into sacks. A small bundle of what must be Merlin's own possessions lies in the dirt beside him; Arthur takes it as a sign of hope that it isn't already loaded on with the group's other things.
"What if you could stay?" Arthur says breathlessly. He curls his hands in the fabric of his trousers, panting. "What if you could?"
Nobody in the vicinity notices him, as they're all busy wrapping their own things and fitting props, costumes, and food into the wagons. Merlin just looks wary.
"Listen to me," Arthur insists, as he grasps at a stitch in his side. "I'm not my father. I'm not. I wouldn't ever let anything happen to you. And I promise-I promise you, Merlin, that when I'm king," and here he swallows, proud that his voice doesn't waver, "When I'm king, things will be different in Camelot."
"You're fooling yourself if you think words mean anything, Arthur."
"What do you want then?" Arthur asks, desperate. "I'll give you anything you want. My honor. All that I have to offer you; it's already yours. Your everything."
Merlin's lip trembles, and he blinks hard down at his tucked-in feet. His eyes are wide, and he looks like he doesn't know what to say to that. But he settles on a wretched,
"And what about my magic?"
Arthur sinks to his knees. Traces a finger around the hook of Merlin's thin wrist.
"How powerful are you, anyway?" he asks quietly.
Merlin's silent.
Arthur nudges his leg gently.
"I don't know. I don't know what I could do," Merlin says, after a long pause in which they only sit there low to the ground and watch the people around them. Swallows. "Raise mountains. Drain the ocean. Kill people-"
"You wouldn't do that," Arthur says. And he knows it, firmly. Knows that Merlin wouldn't.
Merlin squeezes his eyes shut. When he opens them again, they're wet. "No," he relents.
Arthur touches him gently as he takes a shuddering breath.
Merlin wipes at his eyes.
"Things will be different," Arthur tells him quietly.
"When, Arthur? In ten years? Twenty? I'm hardly going to be here, walking around with the fear that my head could still be landed onto a plate any day of my life," Merlin says. He sounds exasperated.
"Then come back," Arthur declares. "It won't take ten years."
Merlin shakes his head, but it's only half-hearted.
Arthur leans his head slowly toward Merlin's, until his forehead touches to the other boy's neck. "I have this plan," he confesses in an almost-whisper. Their surroundings fade away. "No, listen-I know what I want. You, mainly. But I also want justice for Camelot; I want things to be right, and I want you to be there to see it. I want to be a good king, Merlin, and I need you there. You silly, silly man."
"And when did you think of this grand plan?" Merlin interrupts.
Arthur smiles. "Tonight. On the way down here."
Merlin huffs. But he doesn't say anything.
"Give me three years. Four, at most," Arthur whispers. "Please come back."
"You're going to change the entire kingdom in four years?"
"For you," Arthur says, honest.
"Why?" Merlin looks genuinely confused.
"Don't ask me that," Arthur rolls his eyes, but he's partly serious underneath it. "You know the answer. And you should know that the fact that you have magic doesn't matter-well obviously it matters, but not in the way that you think." Arthur pauses, his forehead still touched to Merlin's skin. "You're a mystery, still, but I intend to unravel all of you. I want all of the time in the world for that. Because you're you and because you're mine, Merlin-and you have to promise me that you will come back."
"You know," Merlin swallows, clearing something out of his throat. "This is stupid. You know it's not like I can be your queen, right?"
Arthur raises his head and pretends to study him.
"You could dress as one, though. . ."
Merlin's glare is absolutely deadly.
"All right, all right," Arthur laughs loudly at the affronted look on Merlin's face, and then turns his face carefully to duck for a quick, inconspicuous kiss at his shoulder. "No, not my queen, I don't think. You'd be something better."
The blush that creeps onto Merlin's cheeks is lovely.
"Just promise that you'll come back," Arthur repeats. He feels like he's clinging to this like this is his last breath, his salvation. "That's all. Promise me."
A little wind gusts around the corner, stirring the nearby horses and lifting the hairs on Arthur's neck.
"Promise."
Merlin looks at him for a long while.
Someone close but far-off calls to him, tells him to get a move on already. They turn away without a second glance. It'll be dark soon, and the other actors are ready to leave any minute now.
"God help me," Merlin groans softly, and then pushes to his feet, but not before making an abrupt turn on the spot and staring Arthur dead-on in the eye, smiling a bit, his quick, quiet, "Yes, I promise," almost getting lost in the flurry-almost, almost, but not quite.
Arthur stands alongside the townsfolk and watches Merlin ride off, watches his silhouette blur into an exploding sunset that will soon fade into brilliant black. He stays there until nightfall and walks all the way up to the castle thinking about a future date, four years exactly past today, and knowing with dead certainty that Merlin will be here in Camelot. Standing on the corner of a road waiting for him. Wearing splendid colors, a cloak that will fan richly out across the fine wood of the great halls. Arthur imagines what Merlin will say, what he will look like-how sweetly he will smile, and how his lips will again taste. He concentrates on committing it all to memory so that he'll be able to get every single detail right.
This isn't the destiny that the age-old prophecies predicted for him, perhaps, but it's the one that he wants; it's the one that he's chosen. It's worth everything.
The lingering, ruby-red light of the sunset follows Arthur the whole way back to the castle.
-
END