Chapter Text
Right at the edge of Fort Albion—location: middle of bumfuck nowhere—there’s a saloon named Avalon, and behind its bar, Spring serves the drinks.
Sometimes the desert spits out things that get stuck in its teeth—stubborn things, things that refuse to be swallowed up, refuse to be drunk dry.
They stumble out of the arid land, past the long shadows of the tall cacti, and tumble in places like Avalon with a warm wind at their back like a sickly cough. Good riddance, the desert thinks.
This is how Merlin arrives on the porch of Avalon: an unwanted expectoration, with sand clinging to his everything like spit.
He takes off his wide-brimmed hat to hit it against his thigh, days of dust rising in a cloud around him. When he bends to take off one of his boots, he nearly falls on his ass in the process and hops, catches himself on the rickety railing while more sand falls on the weathered planks.
His horse gives a high whinny from where Merlin tied it to the trough, and he shoots a glare in its direction. “Shut it, Kil.”
The loud creak and groan of the swinging doors make him cringe when he enters.
Inside, the grimy windows block the harsh sunlight, only letting it in diffused and pale, and it takes Merlin’s eyes a moment to adjust to the warm gloom.
Avalon looks like it was built in haste by drunk men in the middle of a moonless night with old planks salvaged from ten different buildings. It shakes every time a gust of wind comes from the desert, and smells like sawdust, whiskey, leather, and wax.
Merlin twists his hat in his hands and makes his way to the bar at one end, between the tables, conscious of the thud of his boots, the way grains of sand roll and crunch under his heels, the scrape of the chairs against the floor as he moves them out of the way.
The barman only looks amused, doesn’t say anything even as Merlin sits on one of the stools with a grimace as more sand and dust fall around him.
“Um,” he says, eloquently.
“What’s it gonna be?” The man looks at Merlin with wide, unblinking blue eyes, up and down, and Merlin shifts on the stool, tries not to wince or cough as half a desert falls off his coat.
“Water? I mean—water, please.”
The man nods and turns around to grab a glass—rolled up sleeves and brown shirt tucked inside a blue waistcoat and dark pants. Not a trace of sand or dirt anywhere on him. Merlin wants to reach out and push his grimy hand between the man’s shoulder blades to dirty him up.
The water he’s served is brown.
“Don’t think too much about it,” the man says. “You get used to it after a while.”
He swipes the edge of the bar with his fingers to catch a few spilled drops. Snowdon lilies bloom across the wood, delicate and clustered, and Merlin looks at their unfolding petals as he takes a sip and tries to ignore the grit getting stuck in his teeth.
“Merlin Emrys,” he says once he’s drunk half of the water.
“Arthur Pendragon.” They shake hands. Blue spring gentians fall between their fingers when Merlin lets go. “What brings you to Avalon?”
“I’m here for my sister,” Merlin says, then takes another look around the dim, empty room. “Perhaps you know her? Freya? Freya Emrys?”
Tiny beams of light come through clean spots in the window and dapple Arthur’s fair hair, shift over his shoulder, his hand as he raises it to rub at his cheek. Merlin wraps his fingers around his glass, tight and sweaty. “Perhaps it’s best if I introduce you to my sister, first,” Arthur says.
Outside, the desert coughs again, harsh and blistering against Avalon’s bones, a groany-rattly sound of protest. A red poppy flourishes in Merlin’s water.
“Absolutely not,” Morgana Pendragon says with a derisive snort. She sits in her room on Avalon’s second floor—in a corner filled with shadows that swallow the light coming from the side window—brushes a few grains of sand off her immaculate black dress with the back of her hand. “She’s bound to me.”
“She’s under contract,” Arthur says from where he’s leaning on the dresser beside her, arms and legs crossed. Daffodils raise their trumpets in the basin behind him. “So goddamn dramatic, Jesus.”
“Which makes her mine,” Morgana Pendragon says with emphasis, ignoring his comment.
“I’m gonna have to talk to her.” Merlin grinds his teeth and tries not to move too much on his chair, not to spill more sand on Morgana Pendragon’s rug than he already has.
“She’s on a job. She’ll be back tomorrow.” She gives him a once over, scrunching her nose. “I guess you can stay here tonight.”
Merlin casts a quick glance at Arthur. “I... don’t have any money.”
Morgana Pendragon flashes her teeth, feral and white like her skin, a knife-like gleam in the dark. “I’ll just take the fee from Freya’s wages, shall I? I’m sure she won’t mind.” She flips her long, black hair over her shoulder and a shadow follows the movement, stretches over the dresser. The daffodils wither and die.
Arthur rolls his eyes and brushes the dead flowers off to the floor with a careless hand.
“She’s not that bad,” Arthur says once they’re both back at the bar downstairs. “Morgana. She just—likes to act like she’s the fucking queen of everything because everybody in town works for her.”
“Even you?”
“Yeah.” Merlin must look shocked because Arthur laughs. “It’s just business,” he says. “She’s a bit of a conqueror, our Morgana. Father would be proud.”
“Do you hate it?”
Arthur downs a shot of liquor then smiles, says, “God, yes,” and slips a full tumbler between Merlin’s hands.
Arthur’s fingers stay soft and dry over Merlin’s for a heartbeat. Merlin holds his breath.
From the balcony, Merlin can see the stretch of Albion’s main road: a bank, the sheriff’s office, a general store, a forge, a few houses. All of them as weathered and odd looking as Avalon—patchworked and sewn together, with sand creeping on their porches and through their doors. The sun’s high and vicious, the air so dry it’s a miracle the whole town hasn’t caught fire.
Beyond the buildings, over the tall saguaros, the flat and sandy-pale desert looms, its skin cracked and dry like it’s tearing itself apart in hope it’ll catch some rain, some relief from the sky. Thirsty, it says while the sun laughs. Hungry.
Merlin has no idea, cannot see, what has brought Freya here.
She shrugs beside him, stretches her legs out and crosses them on the railing, the leather of her breeches creaking and stiff, and the metal of her hip-strapped guns clinking.
“It makes you forget,” she says. “This place.”
Merlin looks down at her—at her brown, braided hair over her shoulder, her face ocher under her hat. At the long lazy line of her body and the way she twists her mouth when she talks.
He doesn’t recognise her.
“You come here,” she continues, “or I guess places like this one, I’m sure there are others. Places that stand at the edge of something, you know?” Merlin hums, but no, no he doesn’t know. “You come here and you sort of… forget. Before. What it was like.” She waves her hand and shrugs again. “And you stay.”
They keep quiet. Merlin tries to—to get it. Somehow. See what she sees when she looks out at the town. It makes little sense to him.
“No, I’m sorry,” he says pushing himself off the wall. “But since when do you even know how to shoot a gun?”
She giggles, and he sees the girl he knew all those years ago in the way she squints her eyes and sticks her tongue at him between her teeth. “I learned a few tricks since we saw each other last, brother.”
“But—gun for hire? Really?”
“Hey, a girl’s gotta eat.”
Merlin grimaces. “It’s so—”
“They call me The Black Beast, you know? I got myself a poster and everything.”
“Oh, God.”
“It’s just a job, Merlin.” She takes out the revolver strapped to her right hip and twirls it around her fingers, backward and forward—the gleaming-clean metal catching the sun and sparkling—with deadly casualness. She pushes the brim of her hat up with the muzzle, blows on it with a wink, then puts the revolver back in its holster with a grin.
With her other hand she holds a glass of dirty-brown water, fingers leaving damp traces in the condensation, and she raises it to Merlin like a toast. The water is crystal-clear when it touches her lips.
“I’m not coming with you,” she says, and wipes her chin with the back of her hand. “In case that wasn’t clear.”
The sun is high. So hot and violent in its shine it melts on the skin like butter and it tastes like it too, when licked, like butter and fire.
“How did you get here?” Arthur asks as he slides a glass of whiskey across the bar to lend right into Merlin’s waiting hand, mushrooms sprouting in the wet trail it leaves behind.
“I followed the river.” Merlin takes a sip of his glass. The liquor is only slightly clearer than the water he’s been served so far in this saloon, but the way it burns down his throat echoes the boiling heat outside, brings a strange but fragile balance to his senses.
Arthur hums and continues to wipe the bar.
Merlin watches the way the muscles in his forearms move, the tanned skin. Even from where he’s sitting, Merlin knows Arthur’s hands are rough and calloused. They’d feel nice, he thinks, on his skin. It’d be good to be touched with hands like that.
He picks up his hat from where he left it on the stool next to him and tips it over his eyes to hide his face.
“When are you leaving?” Arthur darts a look his way, stays very still.
“When Freya changes her mind.”
Arthur nods while Avalon shudders. He plucks a mushroom off the counter and pops it into his mouth, scowls, and spits it on the floor. “Don’t eat those.”
Every night, the saloon fills up.
The mucked-up windows thin out the sunlight, but none of the weak rays make it to the far corner where Morgana Pendragon sits in a black pit like a starless sky. Around her, Avalon’s the same shade of warm, worn brown as the first time Merlin stepped into it.
Head buzzing and heavy with the sounds of people drinking and gambling around him, Merlin downs another glass of whiskey. Their snakeskin boots hiss and rattle as they drag on the floorboards, thumps like cattle herds as they howl with laughter, like coyotes scenting prey, wild and ferocious.
The room’s thick with smoke—the drinkers and players nothing but ghostly silhouettes through the haze—and it pools on the ceiling in silvery-grey strands. A man built like a brick shithouse with thighs like tree trunks stands on a table to suck smoke into his mouth while his friends cackle and hoot. A giant siphoning the clouds.
“Fee-fi-fo-fum,” Merlin mutters.
“Get your fat ass off my table!” Arthur’s voice comes like an empty echo, a shout underwater, and Merlin jerks his head from side to side. Everything’s muffled and distorted, and the room lists to the side as if it’s being blown away by the desert wind, finally. Gotcha, the desert thinks.
No one will ever find their bones.
Freya’s wrong wrong wrong, he thinks, this town isn’t living on the edge of anything, it’s just waiting to be pushed. It’s a suicidal town.
Someone laughs and Merlin laughs and then he chokes and coughs and takes a sip and the giant is up again, sucking in clouds.
Then, Merlin’s outside, stumbling over his own feet, the blasted sun bright and painful in his eyes without his hat to protect him.
All around Avalon, the saguaros cast their long shadows. They shift around him like they don’t want his feet to touch them. He stamps around trying to catch them, anger flashing bright inside of him.
“Fuck,” he yells. “You motherfucking—Think you’re too good for—”
He’s staring at the sky on his back, bright blue and cloudless, the tall arms of the cacti stretching, closing in above him. Get out, they say in their high voices that catch the ears in the same way their spins dig into skin, getoutgetoutgetoutgetout.
Ugh. Whiny, spiky little assholes.
“You get out,” he slurs and hits the ground with his fist. “I’m not done here.” He can’t leave yet. He wants to, but—he can’t.
Hands grip him under his arms and haul him to his feet, then an arm goes around his waist and he’s leaning against someone, being dragged back, away from the cacti.
“Come on, Merlin,” Arthur says, fist tight in Merlin’s shirt at his side.
“They don’t like me.” Merlin turns his face into Arthur’s shoulder—can’t help it—and breathes in his smell. Sun-drenched grass and mountain river water.
“Yeah, they’re prickly bastards alright,” Arthur says.
Merlin snorts. “I can’t believe you just said that. That was terrible.”
“I’m full of surprises.”
“Everything here hates me.” He can’t even get away from all the dust that clings to him like a second skin.
Arthur’s hands tighten on him and pull him closer. There’s sweat along his hairline and harebell buds inside his collar. “Not everything,” he whispers. The harebells unfurl.
At the beginning of time there was a greedy god who stole the Sun. He plucked it out of the sky like a ripe berry while his brothers and sisters slept, and swallowed it. When the other gods discovered his theft they tore the Sun out of his stomach, hung it back in the sky and, as punishment, bound the god’s body under it.
All the water and blood in his veins turned into sand and dust. His skin shrivelled and dried and cracked. Sharp teeth gnawed at his bones. He was left for eternity to stare up at what he had wanted to keep for himself—thirsty and angry and bare and wide open—while the Sun bore down on him, insensate and relentless.
“We’re standing in the belly of a trickster god, Kil,” Merlin says as he brushes his horse’s flanks. Sometimes the desert spits out things that get stuck in its teeth. But sometimes, it also swallows them whole. It plays tricks on the mind. “I’ve got to get out of here.”
The saloon doors creak and moan, but when Merlin looks up, no one’s there.
When Arthur comes to him, it’s with a soft knock on the door. “I—I don’t—dammit.”
“It’s okay.” Merlin grabs at Arthur’s waistcoat—hand leaving dirt over the blue silk—and pulls him into the room.
Merlin’s already half undressed, ready for bed, and he shivers when Arthur’s fingers—those wonderful calloused fingers, those strong, wide hands—skim across Merlin’s collarbone then down to hold onto his arm.
Merlin lets the curtains fall over the window to hide the glare of the light.
The desert protests, roars of wind beating on Avalon’s walls while the cacti wail with shrill and urgent voices.
Merlin ignores them all, only holds Arthur’s face between his hands and kisses his lips. They open under his, easy and wet, and his mouth tastes like a year’s first rain.
Merlin tumbles them onto the bed in a cloud of dust and sand and messes Arthur up, dirties him exactly like he’s wanted to since he first saw him.
The water tower behind Avalon is always thirsty.
Don’t touch it, they say in town, in the saloon, around the card tables or at the bar, don’t touch it or it’ll drink you dry. People go out back to take a piss, stumble, steady themselves with a hand on one of the beams, and are found later, flat on their asses, with cracked lips and throat so dry they can’t even speak—only sand comes out of their mouths.
Arthur says they don’t have enough whiskey to fill up all those poor bastards, so. Don’t touch the goddamn tower.
When Merlin goes looking for Freya, he finds her sitting in the round, dense shadow under the tower, her legs stretched in front of her with only her boots poking out in the sun, caked with mud. She wrings her hair, water droplets falling on the cracked ground—round, tiny puddles sucked in fast. Dark, wet strands cling to her face.
“That feels better,” she says with a smile. “Thank you.”
She is nothing like the girl Merlin used to know.
The last time they were together, she was this shy little slip of a girl, with kind, bruised eyes and fragile hands. With a heart that wouldn’t have dreamed of hurting anyone.
“What?” she says when he’s been staring too long. She taps the ground beside her, but laughs when he hesitates, and says, “It’s fine, Merlin.”
She combs her hair with her fingers. Her hands aren’t fragile at all.
The air under the tower is damp and smells like seaweed.
“You’ve changed,” he says.
“You have too.”
“Not like you.”
“Well,” she says, “like I said. Places like this one make you forget. They change you. It’s good to be this far from everything else. It’s like you suddenly have space to stretch yourself, you know?”
Merlin reaches out and twirls a wet lock of her hair around his finger. “Did you feel so trapped? Before?” He swallows, lump in his throat. Maybe he’s failed her somehow.
“Yes,” Freya says, gentle, leaning into him until she can bump his forehead with hers. “It wasn’t your fault.” As she pulls back, she stretches her arms over her head then wide to the side. “We make our own stories here. And oh, Merlin, you’ve always had the most interesting stories of all.”
“I still don’t get it,” he says. He doesn’t remember her being this much of a brat, but then again, that’s what sisters are supposed to be. He thinks he’s missed this, though the memories are so distant, now, especially here, and she feels like a stranger when he looks at her.
“That’s because you don’t belong here. You have to find your own place.” She winks at him and makes a fingergun. “Bang.”
It goes on.
Every day, Merlin drinks at the bar, lets the cool burning taste of the liquor drag him through the sweltering afternoons while Arthur works—cleans glasses, serves customers, grows ivy over the shelves behind him. Merlin once spends an hour picking honeysuckles and foxgloves from under the tables.
Every night, Arthur comes to Merlin, and Merlin closes the curtains over the bright, barren land prowling like a hungry beast beyond the tall saguaros, heat coming out of it in waves, in time with Arthur’s breath on Merlin’s neck.
Arthur’s everything the desert isn’t: fresh, cool, and vibrant. He holds Merlin in the strong circle of his arms and legs, smelling of ripening green meadows and makes Merlin dream of dark skies full of stars.
Merlin stays awake after Arthur falls asleep, stares at the ceiling and thinks that maybe he could stay, learn to love this place like Freya does. Make his own story. But as soon as the thought crosses his mind, he feels sick to his stomach. The longer he stays, the more he knows he has to go or risk being swallowed up, buried alive.
getoutgetoutgetoutgetout
He nuzzles into Arthur’s shoulder and tries to ignore the wailing of the cacti and how rough the sand on his sheets is.
Freya brushes dust from Merlin’s shoulders.
“I can’t seem to ever get rid of it all,” he says.
“Yeah,” she says. “It kind of really dislikes you.”
He grabs her wrist. “I have to get out of here. This isn’t the place for me.”
“Merlin, I can’t—”
“If it’s because of your contract, we can—”
“No. No that’s not—” She takes a deep breath. “I like it here. I belong here. Can’t you see? You’re too focused on this thing that you—You’ve got it all wrong.”
Something twists in Merlin’s gut at the thought of leaving without her, leaving alone. It’s wrong somehow, bitter under his tongue, with an urgency pulling at his lungs like he knows he’s making a mistake but helpless to make himself stop.
“But—”
She looks at him with something knowing in her eyes, something a bit sad, too, like regret, or longing. “I’m not going with you,” she says again with a hand on his cheek. “But Merlin, you don’t have to be alone.”
“She won’t change her mind,” Merlin says while Arthur wraps himself around him—leg over his hip, mouth kissing at his jaw.
“I’ll come with you.” It’s so soft, so low, barely more than an exhale along Merlin’s neck, but it lights him up from the inside, settles the quivering panic that’s been thrumming inside of him since he first set foot in this town.
“Yes,” he says. “Yes.”
“Is that a challenge, Mr Emrys?” Morgana Pendragon’s eyes are steel and joy at the same time. Her smile is a ravenous beast and were she less civilized, Merlin would be its dinner, he’s certain. “First, you threaten to take away my gunslinger, then you want to rob me of my own brother?”
“They do not belong to you.” Merlin squares his shoulders. Morgana Pendragon lounges on a sofa, comfortable in her own gloom while he sweats in the suffocating air of the room, shirt clinging to his back, lips salty and hair plastered to his temples.
“They are under contract.”
“Contracts can be broken.”
“Not without a price.” Merlin stares at her, clenches his jaw and doesn’t flinch when a shadow caresses his cheek. Morgana Pendragon’s smile gets wider, wolf-like. “A duel, I think,” she says.
“Fine.”
As soon as the door closes, Arthur pushes him against it, fists the fabric of Merlin’s shirt and crowds him, face twisted tight with anger. “Why the fuck did you do that for?” he says with another shove that makes Merlin wince and take a sharp breath.
Jesus, fuck him. Merlin’s trying to help him here.
Arthur groans in frustration, shoves Merlin one more time and lets him go. He paces the room, stops, opens his mouth like he’s about to say something, then paces some more. Thistles are opening everywhere, piercing Merlin’s mattress and pushing open the drawers of his dresser, spiky heads falling on the floor.
“Do you—Can you—Fuck, Merlin, do you even know how to shoot a gun?”
“Fuck you, Arthur. Of course I do. Not as well as my sister, apparently. But I can fucking point, aim, and shoot.”
Arthur looks at him and Merlin doesn’t know how to read his face, there’s guilt, or fear, something brittle under the anger. “You didn’t have—It’s not your responsibility to—”
Merlin takes a few steps and grabs Arthur. He rubs his shoulders, leaves dusty handprints all over his shirt, then up along the sweat of his neck. Arthur never complains about the dirt, about the way Merlin leaves traces of himself all over him.
“It’s done,” Merlin says, and kisses Arthur, pushes against his mouth until he feels him huff and give up.
Arthur drops Merlin onto the bed and Merlin stretches out, opens his legs and cocks an eyebrow at Arthur, his moment ruined when he has to reach behind his back to pick a thistle.
Arthur goes to the window to close the curtains against the sun, sticks his head out first and yells, “Shut your goddamn mouths,” to the cacti.
Merlin giggles and pitches the thistle at Arthur’s head.
The sun is at zenith and Morgana Pendragon’s shadow covers half the town. Merlin stands at the other end of the main road in the blinding, scorching light, heat beating down on him, lapping at his skin.
Everything, even the dust, holds its breath.
The rules: two opponents, equally weaponized, stand at a distance of one-hundred paces from each other. They must each have a second. An opponent’s second must hand him or her their weapon and be made witness of the outcome of the duel. At noon, one must die.
“No need for theatrics,” Morgana Pendragon had said. “First blood should be sufficient, I think. Freya shall be my second.”
“I’ll be Merlin’s,” Arthur had said, staring her down.
Arthur looks at his pocket watch and shows it to Merlin: one minute.
“I can barely see her.” Merlin pulls his hat lower and peers into the darkness where Morgana Pendragon stands waiting with Freya at her side, wide-brim hat on and gleaming revolvers like small stars in the night sky.
“Yeah,” Arthur says. “No theatrics my ass.”
Five seconds.
Merlin raises his gun, cocks the trigger.
Noon.
Arthur shoots.
The bullet sings through the air, its voice like the sound of drums, like the crowing of joy before crossing the finish line knowing that yes, yes, this has been won. It echoes in the town, the desert, makes the sky tremble and the sun blink, for one brief moment, with incredulity.
Six strands of black hair fall to the cracked earth, then take flight as ravens. They fly away with strident cries.
The desert doesn’t speak. The saguaros are silent. The sun blinks again, uncertain. The water tower is still thirsty. Avalon is still standing.
“Arthur!” Morgana yells, stamping her foot. All her shadows have cowered under her skirts. She is so small.
Arthur throws his head back with a laugh, whoops and flings his hat in the air. The noon sun hits him just right and he seems made of light, like he might expand and bloom, spill over everything, and Merlin has never seen something as beautiful as the strong line of his jaw, the long line of his throat, victory all over him like a mantle.
Green grass grows under their feet, spreads out over the road like ripples in the water. It climbs over Avalon and clings to its walls while primroses and saxifrages, spiked speedwells and heather-bells sprout and grow and bloom all over it.
Arthur grins at Merlin. “Showed her,” he says, and laughs some more.
“So you’re leaving.” Freya sits on the bar and twists around to grab herself a glass of brown water, running her finger around the rim.
“I am,” Arthur says. He touches her glass. Cuckoo flowers open up in the clear water, and Freya smiles at him then drinks, pale, pink petals sticking to her lips, like kisses.
“Good,” she says. “About time.”
Avalon shakes under a gust of wind and Merlin shivers in the heat. It’s time to go.
Just before they leave, she calls their names. She hops off the bar and raises herself on her tiptoes to kiss Merlin’s cheek, then Arthur’s. Her lips are cool and wet on Merlin’s skin. “Don’t look back,” she says. “You just—keep going. And don’t look back.”
“I’ll come back to see you,” Merlin says.
She gives him this small, sad smile. “Maybe. Take care of yourself, brother.”
The wind is a hot, arid breath at their backs and the clumping of their horses’ hooves a dry, dull sound over the cracked earth.
getoutgetoutgetoutstaygetoutstaystay, the occasional cactus says.
It lasts until the wind calms down and the sand dunes in front of them stretch all the way to the horizon and nothing else. It lasts for a lifetime and for a heartbeat.
It lasts until the desert opens up like a cracked egg, with a loud groan and a whimper, a pain-filled, relieved exhale.
Good riddance, the desert thinks even as its sandy spine is no more, just a large lake with grey waters that glitter in the light, rolling, green hills tumbling to its banks.
It sings, the lake, fills the air with its voice, a tinkling sound that says comecomecome.
It makes you forget, this place, Freya had said.
“Oh my god!” Merlin turns to Arthur with a jolt. “You bloody, arrogant arsehole. You cheated!”
Arthur lets his hat fall in the grass with a roll of his eyes, shaking his head of the sand. “I wasn’t about to let you fight this battle for me, Merlin. Don’t be an idiot.” He jumps off his horse and takes off his coat, letting it drop to the soft, pillowy grass. “Besides, Morgana cheated first.”
Merlin jumps down as well, hat falling off in his haste. “Liar. You didn’t think I could win.” He takes off his coat, slips off his suspenders, then pulls off his boots, biting back a moan at the feel of the soft ground under his bare feet.
“It wasn’t your battle. Yet, as usual, you made it yours.”
Merlin pokes Arthur in the chest. “I had it under control.” Arthur scoffs. “I came for you, you ungrateful arse!”
“Took you bloody long enough!”
Arthur pulls at Merlin’s belt buckle until his revolvers fall to the ground with a clink of metal, and grabs at the top of Merlin’s trousers. He crushes blue spring gentians over Merlin’s hips.
Merlin kisses him, then—sloppy and messy with it—and they fall to the grass, flowers and vines and fungi sprouting all around, opening up, bright in their colours and scents—awake and alive.
The lake vibrates with excitement. It loves beginnings.
Merlin holds Arthur’s face between his hands, slides his nose along his and peppers his cheeks with kisses. Arthur can’t stop smiling and laughing into Merlin’s mouth, keeps Merlin’s body close.
Merlin smiles too, happiness pulsing inside him like a breathing, living thing, and he licks at his lips to taste it. Sun-drenched grass and mountain river water. A year’s first rain. Honeysuckles and primroses and blue spring gentians.
“I’m glad you came, Merlin,” Arthur whispers against Merlin’s lips and Merlin wants to ask him what he tastes there, on the tip of Merlin’s tongue. If it tastes like euphoria and years of dusty loneliness falling off him.
“That was an interesting story,” Arthur says. “But I can’t believe you made Freya a gunslinger and not me.”
“Shut up,” Merlin mumbles, then softer, with fingertips brushing Arthur’s eyelids, “Time to wake up, sire.”