Chapter Text
Arthur finds Merlin at dusk. Or rather, Merlin finds him. After his near talk with Giaus, Arthur had in fact fled to his rooms. He just did not think he could manage a conversation with anyone else that strayed anywhere close to normal. Already when he passed Morgana in the hall, Arthur had had the insane urge to confide everything in her. Merlin. The magic. The way it slips and slides off Arthur’s skin. The warmth it leaves behind. He had had a feeling then, just as they passed, as Arthur was raising his head, and Morgana was lowering hers, as Morgana’s eyes dipped past his face,that she, in fact, already knew everything. That everyone did. That it was written, clear as day, on Arthur’s face. And there was no way, none at all, that he could hide.
“Morgana,” he had fumbled, not quite looking her in the eye. With his gaze fixed firmly on her forehead, Arthur could not miss the rise of her brow, or the quirk of her lips, or the way that she said nothing to him at all. Arthur fled.
Merlin comes bursting into Arthur’s rooms several hours later, after Arthur has stood, and sat, and stood again. After he has laid himself out on the bed, and then drawn himself back off it once more. After he has eyed the bath and flinched at his armour and found nothing at all that could tether him.
It happens like that. A burst. One moment Arthur is alone, and the next the door is swinging wide enough to bounce back off the wall and Merlin is there. He is already halfway through some sentence or another, and Arthur cannot quite tell if he is talking to him or just talking, or if, in fact, this is all the same thing – if Merlin is always talking and expecting Arthur to be listening and somehow he is.
“– fucking half-bred, shit-stained, bastard!” Merlin explodes into the room, bringing the temperature from calm to roiling. He kicks at the door, stalks inside, and comes up abruptly when he sees Arthur.
“Um, hi,” Merlin says, seemingly trying to step back into the shadows of the doorjam. It takes Arthur a moment to figure out why. Then he takes in the entirety of Merlin’s appearance.
Merlin stands before Arthur on the flagstones, arms crossed defensively over his chest like he is fresh off the fight and ready to rope Arthur in too. There is dirt and muck on his tunic, and hay clinging to the legs of his pants. The skin around his right eye is bloomed and bloody and there are several long scratches down the side of his face. Arthur stares at him, incredulous.
“What did you do?” he says. Already Merlin looks petulant, and at Arthur’s question, he draws further in on himself.
“Nothing,” he says, defensively, though it is plain to Arthur that this is not the case. Arthur stares. Merlin fidgets. Arthur’s gaze is drawn to Merlin’s hands. The knuckles are bruised and bloody. Arthur can see the split of skin where Merlin’s flesh peaks through.
“You’ve been fighting,” Arthur says, though this much is obvious.
Merlin runs his stubborn tongue over his thankfully still intact teeth. The muscles of his arms stand out stark against the mud beneath the roll of his sleeves, and Arthur finds himself wondering, momentarily, when they got so defined. When was it, he wonders, that Merlin could begin fighting and Arthur would fear for his opponent?
For a moment, it seems like Merlin will say nothing, like he will keep his jaw clenched and let no words slip through it. But then.
“He had it coming,” Merlin grits, eyes fixed on a point somewhere to the left of Arthur’s head, and then nothing else.
This draws Arthur up. Merlin is, or has not been, shy of shouting about injustice, about bringing it to light and demanding Arthur do something about it. He had entered the room mid-rant, but upon seeing Arthur had drawn up short. Why?
Carefully, Arthur takes a step toward Merlin. He wants to see the worst of it, what Merlin has endured, but he does not want Merlin to know. Not yet. Not just yet. Instead, he distracts with another question.
“Who?” A muscle in Merlin’s jaw jumps. He is still looking away.
“No one,” he says, pointlessly, but he cannot seem to stop himself from turning his head to meet Arthur’s gaze.
“Merlin,” Arthur says, low with intention, not so much a command as a request, though he could make one. “What happened?”
It seems Merlin, despite his best efforts, is compelled by Arthur’s words. He takes a moment, rolling his response against his teeth, but then he lets out.
Breaking their gaze, Merlin’s eyes once more slide to a point to the side of Arthur’s face. After a moment, he mutters, “He said you weren’t worth the hay he’d roll you in.”
Arthur blinks, not understanding. “Who?” he says, just as Merlin turns back from him, finally lowering his arms and again looking Arthur in the face.
“The new stablehand,” he says, and then, “I’m sorry, Arthur, but he’s terrible! He’s been going after the girls and some of the boys and he says the most heinous things, just when none of the nobility are listening, and he keeps looking at me funny.”
Arthur feels something cold drop into his stomach. He knows what’s coming. What Merlin has done. What he has risked.
“So you used magic?” Arthur says, already resigned. Merlin, already ratcheting back up into a good rant, stops and blinks at him.
“No,” he says, blinking. “I punched him in the fucking face.” Then, “Twice, actually, and I got him a few more in the gut after he went down. One of his friends pulled me off and, well.” He gestures to his eye, which is quickly blackening. “Still though,” he adds, brightly, “It shut him up for a minute.”
It takes Arthur a minute to process, to understand what has happened. “So,” he says, slowly, after he has gotten his bearings, “You were defending my honor? Like I’m what, some kind of fair maiden?” He does not know if he should be thankful or offended. He thinks he’s offended. Merlin rolls his eyes.
“Please,” he says, once he catches sight of the annoyance on Arthur’s face. “You basically are some fair maiden.” Then his voice drops, and his tone turns solemn. All of a sudden it is still between them in the room. “And I have sworn on my life to defend you.”
Something hot and heavy bursts in Arthur’s stomach, blooming like Merlin’s bruised eye. He cannot think, cannot process, does not know how he will speak.
“Let me look at that,” he hears himself say, gesturing to Merlin’s hand, and is impressed by the relative calm of his voice. It hitches up, just a bit, at the end. But he thinks Merlin has missed it. He hopes.
Merlin rolls his eyes, glancing down at his bloody knuckles and wiping them on his shirt. “It’s fine,” he says, “Arthur, really, I won’t get blood on the linens.”
Arthur feels something drop in his stomach, sinking into the fiery roil and engulfed. It is imperative, somehow, at least this once, that Merlin understands him.
Stealing himself as he does not even before the gravest battles, Arthur takes a step toward Merlin.
“I’m not worried about blood on the linens,” he says, and it comes out soft and sure and dangerous. Somehow, Merlin meets his eyes. There is a beat.
“I know,” Merlin says, deep and grave and understanding, just as Arthur’s resolve begins to waver and he nearly looks away. “And I didn’t hit the stablehand because of how he looks at me.”
The words fall into the air between them, not so much hanging as resonating. It is the bravest thing Arthur has ever done, continuing to look Merlin in the eyes.
Merlin does not falter, does not drop his gaze. With eyes on Arthur, he carefully closes the space between them.
“Here,” he says, holding out a hand. The blood on his knuckles has begun to dry and crack. Arthur cannot look away. Before he can think too much about it, Arthur takes a hold of Merlin’s hand.
The result is immediate. The moment Merlin’s fingers meet Arthur’s, Arthur feels another rush of heat exploding in his chest, roiling and rioting and adding to the warmth already barely contained by his breastbone. He cannot help himself. He gasps. They are so close. Merlin notices it.
He was doing something important, Arthur thinks, as the rolling ball of fire impossibly continues to grow, as the great beast born from it curls and coaxes in his stomach.
“Merlin,” he breathes, and cannot even stop the desperate whine that slips out at the end, the way the name falls from his mouth like he has held it precious on his tongue. This is important too.
“I need,” he says, and can’t quite believe he is going to say it. That he will admit it. That there is something to admit. Merlin is looking at him, his blue eyes threatening fire, and Arthur needs to know. Now. He needs to know now. Just what has grown, so unbidden, between them. If the source is Merlin the magic, or Merlin the man. If there is really, truly, any difference between them. Arthur needs to know, at last, what it is they have left to lose. Who Merlin is to him. Resolutely, with the strength of a prince, Arthur continues. “I need you to use magic on me.”
Arthur feels Merlin take a breath rather than hears it. Warm air washes his face and Merlin’s hand rises and falls subtly in his own. Merlin is looking at Arthur like he is crazy, and Arthur thinks that whatever affliction he has, Merlin has too. That they are both crazy, and just now putting it to words.
“Your father would kill me for doing that,” Merlin says, as though he has not been using magic on Arthur, willy-nilly, for years.
“He’d kill me for asking for it,” Arthur says, ruefully, fighting the urge to bring a hand up to the back of his head and palm his neck. He is embarrassed, and somehow ashamed, and he desperately needs to know. He needs to know what Merlin’s magic feels like, what all of it feels like, when he is not holding back, or bartering it to salves and tonics, when he is not letting it bleed out into the bath or fade as flames into the air. When it is him, fully him, just Merlin and Arthur, and nothing else in the world, not a single bit of it, matters at all.
Merlin looks at Arthur for a slow minute. His hand is still in Arthur’s grasp, but it is like they have both forgotten about it, like there is nothing except the moment building between them to pay attention to. Just when Arthur is sure he has shown his hand too early, that he indeed has a hand to show, Merlin raises his chin.
“Alright,” he says, and then, “get on the bed.”
It is an echo from days earlier, a command as much as a request, and Arthur feels himself powerless to stop it. He does not know what Merlin is planning, what he will do. All he knows is that he is under his command.
Arthur does not drop Merlin’s hand. It seems silly, after everything, to not lead him to the bed, to not pull Merlin along behind him like he has been following Arthur for all these years, dogging his footsteps and worming his way in until Arthur did not know how he would ever be rid of him. If he would want to. Sometimes, deep, deep in the night in the depths of Camelot's darkest winter, Arthur admits to himself that he does not want to.
Arthur leads Merlin to the bed and does not think too much about what he is doing, dropping Merlin’s hand only when he must settle atop the covers. Merlin stands over him, considering, head tilted to the side.
“It might be easier,” he says, “if you close your eyes.” But Arthur doesn’t. He doesn’t. Instead, he raises his chin just enough that his gaze can lock with Merlin’s. He can see the apprehension and edging on fear in his eyes. Arthur really is asking for a lot – asking for magic in the kingdom of his father.
So often (though few might admit it) Arthur thinks of others. He thinks of his father, and Morgana, and his people. He is beholden to them in a way he cannot explain, can not even himself, truly, understand. If Arthur is anything, then he is Camelot’s. He is hers to rule, hers to lead, hers to bring forward into a bright new future. But if he is Camelot’s, well. Then Arthur is Merlin’s too.
Merlin is in his bath, in his bread, in his armor. He is raising Arthur from bed in the morning and folding him back into it at night. He is dogging Arthur’s every step and, if not quite hanging on his every word, then he is certainly listening. Arthur does not, all of a sudden, know when it happened. But it has. And it does. And now it has led to this.
Merlin is still standing above him, looking suddenly boyish and uncertain, and the sight sends a sharp pain through Arthur’s stomach. They were so young, he thinks, before all this began.
“What should I do?” Merlin asks, bloody hands still held at his sides. He has not yet made a move.
“What can you do?” Arthur asks, voice practically caught in the column of his throat.
Merlin shrugs. “Lots,” he says. And suddenly he is a man again. Arthur can still see the boy, still see Merlin, but now he can also see the shape of who the boy will become, just what Merlin is so quickly growing into. Merlin continues.
“I could make you float. Make you freeze. Make your hair grow to your toes.” The ghost of a smile threatens his lips. “I think I could even turn you into a frog,” he says, “But I don’t know if I could turn you back again.” There is a shrug, an admittance. “The last guy came back green.”
“Merlin!” Arthur hisses, before he can stop himself. Somewhere, his father is rolling over in his bed and does not know why he cannot sleep peacefully. “Did he insult my honor, too?”
Merlin flashes a grin. “Don’t be silly,” he says. “He tried to kill you.” And then he lays a hand on Arthur’s stomach.
It is instant. It is total. It is catastrophic. Arthur feels the burn rising from beneath Merlin’s hands, feels it shooting through his body, spreading rich and fast – like last winter when the stables burned. He feels it bright in his veins, deep in his throat, sinking to the very soles of his feet.
“What are you doing?” he asks, nearly gasping. Above him Merlin falters, makes to draw away.
“Nothing,” he says, “I haven’t started.” His fingers flex like they are about to move. Arthur grasps his arm at the wrist. He does not quite dare take Merlin’s hand. Merlin settles.
“Try something,” Arthur says, daring himself. Merlin nods.
Merlin does not go slow. He does not ask Arthur to brace himself. They are too far gone for that, both of them. Instead, he parts his lips, raises his head, and pushes a few embered words past the cage of his teeth. Arthur feels Merlin’s hand on his stomach begin to grow hot, hot, hot. Feels his own skin responding – the way the burn races his spine to his scalp and washes down to the tips of his toes.
Merlin’s magic rushes over Arthur like a summer storm, when the sky has been threatening to burst for hours and the first onslaught of rain finally touches down. Arthur is scorched, and covered, and completely alight. He does not know if he will come out of this the same. He does not know if he wants to.
Inch by inch, Arthur feels himself rising from the mattress. He feels the soft give of the comforter beneath his hands, then the brush, then the absence. He feels heavy, and then light, and then lighter than air. He feels Merlin’s magic on every inch of his skin, echoing in every part of his body. It is hot, and terrifying, and strikingly familiar. It is every time Merlin has ever touched him – every time he has helped Arthur into his armor or out of the bath. It is meeting Merlin in the marketplace. It is taking Merlin’s hand.
“Tell me,” Arthur gasps, caught in the glow and the heat and the sweet and the low. “Tell me you feel it too.”
It is hard to make out Merlin’s face against the shine, hard for Arthur to blink the stars from his eyes. But when he does, he sees Merlin looking at him, something hungry and hollow on his face.
“Arthur,” he says, voice a plea or a warning. Arthur does not know which of them is braver, which will break first.
Merlin, it turns out, is braver. He does not break so much as resolve.
“Arthur,” he says again, and this time his voice is deep and familiar. “Don’t offer something out of reach.”
Arthur does not know what to say – just what he is offering. But he is offering it. He is offering it. And well, if Merlin is brave and a servant, then Arthur must be brave and a prince. He must brace himself, even as there is nothing but air to position himself against. He must feel the magic coursing through his veins. He must feel the heat of Merlin’s hand before the incantation was cast. He must reach for Merlin.
It is hard. To close the distance between them. Hard to move past the years and the months and their stations. There has been so much time passed between them. They both have so much left to lose. But Arthur is brave. He is the prince. And he is going to be king.
Arthur’s hand finds Merlin’s. Merlin’s fingers are still suspended above Arthur’s body, and when Arthur grabs them from the air it is like it is a surprise to them both. Like neither of them, even after all this time, after everything that has passed, spoken and not, have managed to see it coming. But Arthur has. He has. If not in the years, then certainly in these past weeks, when Merlin has been made a man in front of him.
The move unsteadies Merlin and he shifts forward, bringing himself close. Arthur takes his chance. He tugs. Merlin comes tumbling down on top of him and as his concentration shakes, so does his hold on Arthur. They both go crashing to the bed.
Merlin may be a sorcerer, but Arthur is a warrior. He may have been useless in recent drills, but he has been drilling since he could first walk, since before he could hold a sword. He has been taking men down in the dirt and been taken down in the dirt, rising and then doing it all over again, rain or shine, sun or storm.
The move is as familiar to him as waking – as sleeping – as breathing. Arthur gets Merlin around the waist before Merlin can make out what is happening, flipping Merlin over deftly on the mattress and pinning him to the covers. Arthur is proud, suddenly, of his might and his muscle, of the way the vice of his hands clasps the expanse of Merlin’s wrists. He is proud of the way the weight of his body settles into Merlin’s stomach, for the give of Merlin’s skin beneath his fingers. He takes a moment to look down into Merlin’s face.
A moment. Arthur only has a moment. Because then it is Merlin who is moving, Merlin who is getting him around the waist, Merlin who is kicking and rolling and pinning Arthur to the mattress, hands held high above his head and body pressed into the covers, Merlin who is panting above him, face flush and familiar. How often, Arthur wonders, could it have come to this? How close have they nearly come?
Merlin’s face is close to Arthur’s. Arthur can make out the roll of his breath as it spills from his lips, can feel Merlin’s inhale and exhale on his face and against his ribs, where Merlin’s legs bracket his body. He can feel the rampage of his heart in his chest, the moment when Merlin leans down, inching perceptively closer.
“Easy,” Merlin breathes and Arthur must gasp it down on his own inhale, must take the offered breath into his own lungs, pass it back into the air.
There is the moment of shared breath, the moment of shared air. Arthur can see nothing but the rise of Merlin above him, nothing but the broad expanse of his shoulders, the ridged run of his muscles. He is looking at Arthur like he has just seen him, like Arthur lies new before him.
No. He is looking at Arthur like he has always looked at him, and Arthur is just now realizing what it might mean. Perhaps, Arthur thinks, as his pulse beats wildly in his wrists and Merlin’s hands tighten around them, there has always been this between them. Perhaps it has always been offered. Always been an option. Perhaps Arthur, after all this time, is the last to know. About the magic. About Merlin. About the man he is becoming. Who he, in fact, already is.
Arthur thinks of this, all of this. He considers Merlin the magic and Merlin the man. Can no longer find the seam between them. He thinks of Camelot, and his father, and his people. And then he thinks nothing at all as Merlin lowers his head and presses his lips to Arthur’s.
The kiss (for that’s what it is) hits Arthur like a bolt. It is every blow he has ever caught, every lance he has ever taken. It is not those things at all. But rather, sure and sweet and blinding. A request and a question and a promise. It is Merlin in the hallway, embers in his eyes. It is Merlin in the yard, laughter in his throat. It is Merlin in his rooms, lightning at his fingertips. It is Merlin. It is Merlin.
It takes Arthur a moment to remember himself, a moment for the burning mass of flame in his chest to recede just enough for Arthur to remember to kiss back, but when he does, he does not know how he will ever be able to stop.
It’s just. It’s just that he has not been kissing Merlin for so long – that it has been days and weeks and, it seems, years, when he could’ve had his hands on Merlin’s skin. It is just that Merlin has grown a little, and learned a lot, and is now pinning Arthur to the expanse of his bed and Arthur (though he thought he might) does not mind at all. It is just that Arthur has seen Merlin a boy. And now he wants to know the man.
Merlin’s hands are on Arthur’s body. They are painting his skin with little trails of flame, traveling down his arms and up his face and tangling in his hair. They are skimming down his sides and grabbing hold of his hips and driving Merlin’s body against his own. They are no longer on his wrists. No longer securing his hands to the bedboard.
Arthur goes to move his hands, to touch Merlin as Merlin is touching him. He wants to claim and be claimed, to come away from this marked. To never come away from this at all. Only, he cannot move his hands. Arthur tries. He flexes and pulls, rolls and fidgets. But his wrists stay stuck fast, seemingly secured now by Merlin’s magic alone. Somehow, in the blinding light of the kiss, Arthur has stopped being able to tell the difference.
The realization hits Arthur like the kiss – low in his belly. He groans, bowing his body from the bed so he can get to more of Merlin. So that he can touch him and be touched by him and come out of this completely changed, if he comes out of it at all.
“Easy,” Merlin breathes once again, bringing his mouth down to drag his lips across Arthur’s jaw, to leave a blazing trail down the column of his neck. Arthur had not realized that the curling whine was coming from him. But it must be. Because there is the flash of Merlin’s teeth against Arthur’s neck and the sound is bitten off at the base.
Merlin’s magic is everywhere – running wild along Arthur’s skin, tangling in his hair, pinning his hands to the bed. It is bright and sharp and sweet and low. It is every time Merlin has ever said Arthur’s name, every time their names have ever been said together.
Arthur can hear it now, like the rise of some strange, far off chorus. Arthur and Merlin. Merlin and Arthur. It rises in his chest, sets his skin ablaze. He is hearing it now, and he is hearing its echoed past, and he is hearing it too, somewhere off in the distant future, off and out in strange, new lands that Arthur knows he will never set foot in. Once and future, a voice is saying in Arthur’s ear, though he cannot quite place it. Different sides of the same coin. And then it is saying nothing at all as Arthur releases Merlin’s name on a gasp, as he feels the rise and the surge and the rush of Merlin’s magic take him completely.
After, when they are lying in Arthur’s bed and Arthur is wondering how he will ever order Merlin to make it again, how they will ever leave it for enough time for it to be worth it, Arthur thinks, maybe, just maybe, with Merlin at his side and Merlin’s magic in his veins, he will make a good king. He does not say it. Does not speak it out loud. Swears it instead on the column of Merlin’s neck, presses it into the altar of his skin. Merlin’s magic settles over them in a gentle rush. His breath quiets against Arthur’s chest. The room is warm and still. There are still a few hours until morning.
“When I am king,” Arthur says, sure and true into the dark, and Merlin covers his hand with his own.
“I know,” Merlin says. “I know.” And he does.
Merlin and Arthur fall asleep just as the gray light of morning threatens the windowsill. Tomorrow Arthur will have drills, and be terrible at them, and Merlin will put him back together again. Sometime, in the not so distant future, Arthur will lead armies. Sit on a throne. Make good on his promise. For now, he will feel the ebb and flow of Merlin’s magic, will hold his body tight against his own. Sleep. And in the morning he will thank, then fire, the stablehand.