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”I can’t believe we’re snowed in,” Mordred muses absently mindedly as Merlin stares out of the window, his eyes attempting to follow the paths of flakes as they saunter their way downwards.
“It’s cold. Come away from the window,” comes the familiar voice, and it’s nearly enough to warm him, the sound of it nestling in his chest and spreading out to his limbs. Merlin turns his head from the torrential downpour, opting instead for the view of his boyfriend laying lonely in a cocoon of blankets and pillows.
There are no lights, save for the fire crackling in the fireplace and the dull twinkling of their Christmas tree, colored wrapping littering the floor underneath it from where they tore into their presents. Merlin always felt the damn thing took up too much of their sitting room, but Mordred insists every year that they need one.
“The Christmas holiday is the only one I celebrate,” he’d say. “It was the only one that my mother ever cared about, because it always brought my father home.” And every damn time Merlin would agree, simply because it makes Mordred happy.
Pulling his new sweater closer to his frame, Merlin steps down from the windowsill, taking one last glance to the dancing snow flakes before crawling into his boyfriend’s opened arms. “You’re freezing,” Mordred says, moving one of the heavier blankets around the both of them, pulling them closer together. “I can’t believe the heat’s gone out,” his hands are rubbing up and down Merlin’s biceps now, attempting to create friction in hopes of heat. “Of all things to go out, why’s it got to be the heat?”
Merlin watches as Mordred does everything he can to warm their bodies, his eyes studying the planes of his face, counting each eyelash, committing to memory each mole and freckle as if he’ll never be able to lay eyes on this man again.
Merlin nearly lost him earlier this year, and it’s taken a toll on him. It’s taken a toll on them both. They’d had a particularly bad bout with each other, and Mordred had stormed out of the house in a fury.
It was three hours after that Merlin got a phone call that Mordred had been hit by an eighteen wheeler carrying holiday tensile.
Mordred fought for his life for the better part of a week, but Merlin’s determination kept Death away. Merlin had stayed at his bedside the entire time, leaving for nothing. He’d grown a bit scraggly, and the nurses had to take just as much care of him as Mordred. But they managed.
“I could hear your voice,” Mordred told him a while after he’d been released from the hospital. “I heard you crying, I could feel how sad you were. And I knew.. I knew I had to make it back, I had to win. I couldn’t just leave you.”
They vowed never to hide anything from the other anymore. Secrets meant pain, and there was no way Merlin was going to let an old relationship come between them again. He wasn’t going to lose Mordred.
He’d fight Death with tooth and nail while buck naked, if that’s what it takes. Nothing is going to take Mordred from him again.
Ever since, sometimes Merlin gets lost in blue eyes. He never realizes when it happens until he’s coming back to, and Mordred is staring back at him with a sheepish grin.
But this time Merlin knows, he’s fully aware of himself as he cups Mordred’s face, tracing over each scar, memorizing their shape, their feel. He drags a thumb over pink lips, and then it’s suddenly very hot, their mouths moving together but against each other, a battle of peace as they wrap themselves together, one layer after another until it’s impossible to differentiate between them.
Somewhere off in another room of the house that awful Godfather clock goes off, dinging it’s way into the new hour.
Merlin pulls away for just a second, breathing labored and heavy, face contorted in a warm smile as he breathes out, “Merry Christmas, Mordred.”