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Merlin is halfway through doing it for the third time before he realizes he really has no idea what it is, precisely, that he is doing.
He stops, shifting back on his heels, trying not to pinch his knees into either side of Arthur’s rather wide, bare thigh, which he is currently straddling. “What exactly is the aim of this, again, Sire?”
A blur of blond turns sluggishly to allow a glare, but Arthur doesn’t even follow through on opening his eyes to complete the effect. “Well, don’t stop,” he deigns to articulate. “M’pretty sure that’s the main point.”
Merlin looks down at the smooth wooden rod in his hands and briefly considers smacking Arthur’s rubbed-pink skin with it. It would serve him right for acting so entitled all the time and expecting everything to go his way without any effort, not to mention for having nothing going on in his head and then having the gall to treat manservants as though they’re idiots.
“It would help,” Merlin says testily, deciding to forgo the smack and continuing to roll out Arthur’s back like so much shortcrust pastry dough, “if I knew what it is I’m supposed to be accomplishing.” He rolls the thing up the side of Arthur’s ribcage, digging into the slats of bone buried under all that meat, making it all the way up to the reflective glint of sweat-darkened underarm hair before Arthur flinches under him. Merlin is eighteen years old; it is so easy to feel mad with power. “Or is it just that you like the way it feels?”
Arthur tries to elbow him in the face, but Merlin is perched far too high, grinning victoriously down at his spoiled prince squirming in either pain or the discomfort of a tickle—it doesn’t matter which, really. He does so enjoy getting to see Arthur’s composure break.
A deep breath sends Arthur’s hips up in such a way that Merlin has to lean back in order to avoid unwanted contact. The royal hips are covered merely by a small drying sheet, and so Merlin finds himself moving with very careful awareness of their exact location in relation to his body. After a calculated exhale, Arthur replies, sounding slightly more present. “This is, what, the third time I’ve had you do this? And you’ve only now developed an inkling of curiosity?”
Merlin doesn’t fancy explaining that each time has been increasingly uncomfortable and confusing, that the tingling in his hands and shortness of breath only just reached a point where he felt the need to inquire, in hope that the whole thing might actually be deemed unnecessary so he can climb off immediately. Nor does he want to explain that his tongue used to stick dryly in his throat whenever he had to wash Arthur’s skin, towel him off, dress him, or rub a strange small wooden rod all over his body. It’s a problem he has gotten over, and there’s no need to bring up the past. “Just tell me already.”
There’s a muffled sound from where Arthur’s face is buried in his arm. Merlin withholds the pressure he was putting on Arthur’s lower back muscles, always so sore from him swinging around a sword all day. “What?”
Arthur shifts enough to show a lazy pout, then mumbles, “It’s for protection against witchcraft.”
It’s a near thing, but Merlin manages not to drop the rod outright to land on Arthur’s rear. “Oh,” he says, stomach dropping. He looks again at the wood, at the stinging red sprawl across his palms and fingers. It’s a strange sensation, but not altogether horrible. If the wood repels magic, though, that would explain why this process hardly hurt at all the first time, when he’d barely had any reason at all to use his magic yet. Now, nearly a year into his employment at the castle, his magic had touched Arthur a hundred times over. Sometimes a dozen times a day, depending on how many deadly situations his prince woke up deciding to thrust himself headfirst into. If scrubbing this wood—rowan wood, most likely, now that he thinks of it—all over Arthur’s skin is removing any magical touch from his body, then he is undoing his own spells. Or erasing any lingering impression his spells have left on Arthur’s body. Which means that, most of the time, his magic lingers on Arthur’s body in some way. Like a mark. And now he’s undoing it.
Ah, well, at least it wasn’t the other thing, the thing he won’t exactly put words to and really didn’t want to be the reason his skin is crawling with Arthur splayed out so languidly—and pinkly—beneath him.
“Let me get this right,” Merlin says, continuing his ministrations despite the twinge, despite some uncertainties about whether it’s dangerous to be removing his own protective magic when other people’s malicious magic might sneak in once it’s gone. He’s putting two and two together in his head, and even four and four. “Once every three months, on the new moon after a major festival, you get rubbed with a rowan stick to…protect you from witchcraft.”
Arthur blindly lifts a hand to point a finger at the canopied top of his bed. “And drink the ale. Don’t forget the ale.”
The rowan ale, which had given Merlin a mild stomach ache when Arthur had teasingly coaxed him into trying some last summer, after which Arthur had enjoyed laughing in his face about being so thin and gangly and girlish that a sip of spirits made him faint.
Merlin bites the inside of his cheek, feeling put upon. He is irritated by the accumulation of mild inconveniences inflicted upon his person by this stupid ritual, as well as by its apparent failure to actually prevent magic from touching Arthur in the first place. As far as he can tell, all he is accomplishing is undoing work that he’ll likely have to redo again. It’s like being asked to tidy up a room that he’s just going to mess up again tomorrow. Plus, Arthur gets a nice full-body rubdown out of it without enduring the embarrassing vulnerability of asking for one.
The only way forward is to attack. “Okay, so, special wand. Special potion. Special moon-y time. How is this,” he says, pausing with the rod resting against the softest, narrowest part of Arthur’s waist, “not witchcraft?”
With a jolt, Arthur props himself up on his elbows. “Of course it’s not witchcraft,” he says incredulously.
Mildly, Merlin shifts off of Arthur’s leg so he’s not pinned in place any more. Arthur’s glistening with sweat, shiny and clean from his earlier bath, beautifully flushed and softened from his prescribed witchcraft treatment, and really, it’s not fair that Merlin has to deal with him and how he looks and all the confusing ways it makes Merlin feel. But Merlin won’t let it get the best of him. “All…right,” he agrees with notable skepticism.
Arthur looks at Merlin, really looks at him, as though he’s in one of his rare actual thinking moods. “I’ve been doing that since before I can remember. Since I was a baby, surely.”
Merlin imagines baby-Arthur. It would have been much easier and less confusing to take care of a baby instead of a full-grown, utterly foolish, terribly masculine and compelling prince of a man so naked and…there. His thought of baby-Arthur is a short-lived one.
“My father’s the one who reminds me to do it,” Arthur says, not entirely conclusively. “And Gaius…”
Merlin snaps to attention, realizing he’s treading on dangerous ground by drawing attention to the fine line between magic and medicine. To him, there is no real difference that he can feel, but Gaius’s profession and life depend on the fact that some people perceive one. “I’m sure it’s not witchcraft,” he says, going for an air of dismissive indifference. “But I hardly think getting rubbed with a stick four times a year is an effective means of protection against witchcraft. Doesn't it seem a bit…” He feels Arthur’s eyes follow as Merlin looks up at the canopy, scratching his chin and pretending to search for the right word. “…Childish?”
Somehow, this perhaps overwrought charade leads to Arthur knocking him flat onto his front with a single careless shove. “Childish, I tell you,” Merlin gasps as Arthur laughs, there on the bed beside him, just a foot or two away, as a lover might be. Without bidding or reason, Merlin’s eyes flicker down and observe that the drying sheet is still draped over part of Arthur’s body, and his hips are still pressed firmly into the bed. Merlin suddenly feels it would be prudent to mirror the pose and stop looking at Arthur’s rear. Or his hair-dusted chest. Or his round shoulders. His eyes are troublesome, too. At least the self-satisfied smile on his lips is enough to make Merlin remember that he is irritated with Arthur.
“All right,” Arthur says, never one for a plain, ‘You were right.’ “I obviously need to replace these outdated witchcraft-protection measures with something more effective.”
Just please, not too effective, Merlin thinks, recalling the sting in his hands, the stomach ache, and the odd empty feeling of knowing he’s scrubbed his own magic off from where he’s pretty sure it’s meant to be. “Obviously,” he echoes agreeably.
Arthur looks into his eyes, and it’s rather hard to look away. “You—you’ve saved me from magic once or twice, in your own odd way.”
Merlin’s not sure whether he’s choking on the egregious understatement or the rare show of sincere acknowledgment for him having a capable bone in his body. It’s something, though. He can’t quite get a word out. “Once or twice,” he eventually wheezes, weakly.
The grin that overtakes Arthur’s face is sudden and sharp as a blade. “Come on, then,” he says, getting up with infuriating ease and grace, even while holding a cumbersome sheet around his middle. “I shall knight you as my official witchcraft protection…protection-er. Person.”
“Protector?” Merlin sputters to cover the turmoil of emotions fighting for control of his brain. “How much of that ale did you have?”
“Come on,” Arthur commands, clearly having great fun in pulling Merlin across the bed by the heel of his boot. “Kneel.”
He sounds like a child begging a friend to play along in a make-believe game. But it still makes Merlin’s stomach fluttery—at being included, or something. Merlin lets himself drop pitifully onto the floor he was dragged to, briefly checking his trouser situation and thanking himself for choosing his darkest breeches that morning.
“Here.” Arthur swiftly pulls the cup of ale from thin air, or so it seems. All Merlin knows is that suddenly, there’s a cold cup being pressed to his lips, and he’s being told to drink. Arthur is still grinning; if it weren’t for that easy smile, Merlin doesn’t think he could make himself swallow. It’s just a make-believe game. He can take a minor stomach ache if it’s just a game, if he never has to rub Arthur again, if he doesn’t have to navigate the confusing mental labyrinth of being told to use magic to undo magic on a body that practically vibrates with magic in a way that’s beyond all understanding.
But as Merlin takes the smallest sip possible from what Arthur is pouring into his mouth, the smile drops suddenly from Arthur’s face. Taken aback by the unspoken deal being broken, Merlin spits the rest back into the cup and coughs. Arthur blinks a few times and then turns to set the cup on a table. The skin of his back is still red with friction.
There’s a new smile when he returns, rowan rod in hand. It’s a quieter smile. It’s one of Merlin’s favorite smiles.
“Repeat after me.”
“Repeat after me,” Merlin echoes without really thinking.
Arthur makes a grimace, acknowledging the joke Merlin’s not even sure he consciously made. Imperiously, he taps the top of Merlin’s shoulder with his makeshift sword. “I solemnly vow…”
“I solemnly vow…” that nothing could touch a hair on your head without me feeling it as surely as I feel my own pain, Merlin thinks, leaning into the burning touch on his shoulder.
“…To devote myself to serving your will…”
“…To devote yourself to serving my will…” Merlin jokes, just to try to wrest some control over the way his whole body is pounding like a heartbeat as he kneels here, before his prince, face inches away from the fist holding that dreadful sheet up.
Arthur lets the improvisation slide with a mere quirk of his mouth. After all, they are just playing. “…And to remain loyal…”
Merlin sways closer, drawn in by the tang of Arthur’s sweat, mouth drowning in spit. “…And to remain loyal…” More loyal than any of your knights ever could be, I suspect.
“…And to protect you from all witchcraft…”
“…And to protect you from…all witchcraft…” Merlin’s eyes sting with holding back—something. The urge to bite. The urge to get close enough to smell how deep the magic has seeped into Arthur’s pores. The urge to taste. And to protect you from myself.
The rod touches his other shoulder, barely stinging at all, before it drops noisily to the floor. “Until the end of my life,” Arthur finishes, sliding his freed hand into Merlin’s hair and just—holding him there, at the jut of his hip, and nowhere else.
“Until the end of your life,” Merlin murmurs, barely aware of his words, lost to the utterly confusing sensation of Arthur’s fingers clutching his hair.
They stay there for an eternity. Or at least, Merlin has the distinct feeling that he could stay here for an eternity, face pressed into Arthur’s hip, fingers scratching at his scalp, brain blissfully too clouded to know what any of this is supposed to mean.
Arthur pulls away so suddenly that Merlin sways, blinded for a moment. “I hereby dub thee official witchcraft protector Merlin,” Arthur says hoarsely, already crawling beneath the covers of his bed and toasting Merlin’s health with the ale he somehow managed to grab once again.
“Erm. Thanks,” Merlin says, struggling to his feet and making his way to the door, taking a hint or making an escape, or maybe both.
Once on the other side of the threshold, Merlin collapses against the heavy door, legs giving out before he even realized they were quaking. He curls up, rests his head upon his knees, and breathes. For all that he has an ancient dragon telling him what to do, and a beloved mentor guiding him in his studies, and a mother encouraging him to find his place in the world, nobody ever gave him a single clue about what to do about falling in love.