Work Text:
“Come here, Merlin?”
Merlin pivots from where he is stoking the fire and bows flippantly. “As my queen commands.”
“Oh, stop that. Can you imagine me commanding anyone?” She turns to Arthur who is sitting at his desk, watching the scene unfold before him with fond amusement, and wags her finger exaggeratedly. “Don’t answer that.”
Merlin chuckles. “Is there anything further you require, your Majesties?”
“Somewhere better to be?” Arthur teases, eyebrows raised.
“As a matter of fact, yes,” Merlin says, scowling at Arthur impertinently.
“Really?” Arthur replies drily. “Meeting someone?”
Merlin turns bright red. “Um.”
Gwen gasps, clapping her hands together, her face a mix of shock and joy. “Merlin, that’s wonderful! How could you not have mentioned? I need every detail, at once. Oh, but of course, you must go to her–” she groans, conflicted. “Tomorrow, then. We shall all dine together, and you will tell us everything.”
“I’m sure the King is not the least bit interested in my love life,” Merlin protests.
“Don’t be absurd, Merlin! I am dying to hear about a woman brave enough to attempt courting you.”
Gwen crosses the room to punch him on the arm. “He did not mean that,” she says to Merlin, smiling sweetly. “Tomorrow, then?”
Merlin nods. “Tomorrow.” He sweeps out of the room, the door banging shut behind him. Arthur stares at the space he was just occupying for a few long moments.
Gwen is pacing, wringing her hands. “Gosh, I can’t believe it! The whole time I’ve known Merlin I’ve never known him to entertain a courtship with anyone. I always thought he was–” She trails off.
“What? Thought he was…” Arthur prompts, strangely eager to hear the rest of her sentence.
She moves to stand between his legs, perching on the edge of the desk. He looks up at her face – kind, inviting – and places his hands on her hips.
“I don’t know. Too devoted to you, I suppose,” she says, fiddling with his lapels.
Arthur splutters. “Devoted? Merlin?”
She gives him an unconvinced look. “Come, Arthur, you must know how highly Merlin regards you.”
Arthur feels his cheeks heating, looks down at his hands on her hips to avoid her gaze. “And what has that got to do with his lack of experience courting?”
“Well, all I know is that he has definitely had offers before, and yet I do not know that there have been any dalliances. Well, apart from the one.” Arthur looks up at that, and she blushes. “Anyway. I think it’s nice, and I’m glad for him,” she says, trying to end the conversation just as Arthur feels it’s getting interesting.
“Oh come on, don’t leave me in suspense, my love,” he teases, moving his hands down to caress the sides of her legs. “You said you knew of a dalliance, and then you turned bashful. I know you liked him, once. You can tell me.”
“It was nothing,” she insists. Arthur waits, and sure enough: “A kiss – I kissed him. He never reciprocated my feelings, I know that. It was when he drank the poison – when you saved him. I thought he was going to die, and then he didn’t. So I kissed him.” She is lovely like this, flushed and squirming. “It was a very long time ago.”
Arthur picks up her hand, kisses her palm. She cups his cheek, moves her other hand to rest on his shoulder. “It was. And you are certain he did not reciprocate your favour?” Truthfully, he cannot imagine there is a man in all of Albion who would not love his wife.
She giggles, seemingly unhurt by this apparent rejection. “Arthur, he was obsessed with getting the two of us together! He took every opportunity he had to talk you up to me. Hardly the actions of a man in love.”
Arthur inclines his head in acknowledgment – but he knows Merlin. “Maybe they were. How noble, to cede the woman you love to the would-be king, so she can rise above her station and lead a great life.”
Gwen smiles at him, her brown eyes indulgent. “You truly are a soft-hearted romantic. It’s unfathomable to me, sometimes.”
Arthur is not sure whether to feel complimented or insulted. “What is?”
She takes her hand from his face and taps her chin in thought, eyes twinkling. “Hmm, let’s see – the way you speak to Merlin, for starters.”
“Do you not hear the way Merlin speaks to me?”
“Okay fine, you’re as bad as each other.”
“So you admit defeat?”
She sighs. “If I must. Come, claim your spoils,” she teases, leaning down to kiss him. Arthur is on her in seconds, pulling her into his lap, and she laughs as they kiss, open-mouthed and warm.
-
When they are finished and abed, a thought strikes him and he can’t help but vocalise it. “Do you think Merlin is untouched?”
“Arthur!” Gwen squeals, sounding genuinely scandalised.
Arthur turns onto his stomach to face her. “What? You said you had never heard of him having dalliances.” He waggles his eyebrows suggestively.
Gwen is pensive for a moment, looking up at the bed curtains. “I should think he is just… Discreet. Private.”
Arthur has heard that code before. “What, courtesans, then?” he asks, but the image does not sit right.
“Perhaps. I don’t know. I haven’t ever really thought about it,” she admits, and then bites her lip, as if struck by a notion. “Although… I did think that he and Sir Gwaine, maybe–”
“Sir Gwaine?” Arthur’s mouth drops open.
Gwen’s eyes narrow. “You are not so naive as that, I should hope, husband mine.”
“Please, I would not put a thing past Gwaine, you know that. But Merlin?”
Gwen shrugs. “It was just a hunch, really. And he never said he was meeting a girl. I said that, and he didn’t correct me.”
Arthur is stunned. “Now that you’ve said that, I feel as though I must reassess every interaction I have seen between the two of them.”
“Well, don’t do that just yet. He did not say it was not a girl. We’ll hear it all tomorrow night anyway.” She kisses the top of his head, then turns her back to him. “Sleep, my Lord. All of this can wait.”
Mind racing, Arthur attempts to obey.
-
Arthur wakes with the sun, feeling as though he has not slept at all.
He can’t stop thinking about it, is the thing. Like it or not, the floodgates have opened, and all of these heretofore unthinkable thoughts are now plaguing him.
Merlin and Guinevere, as they were when Arthur was still the Prince, kissing. That’s one of the thoughts. Merlin and Sir Gwaine, touching one another in the same intimate ways Arthur touches his wife. That’s another one. Him touching Merlin. Merlin touching him.
And that’s something else he has come to realise – Merlin does touch him. Frequently, in fact. Daily. Innocuous touches, even clinical, but still. He has felt Merlin’s hands on his body so many times that it is unfortunately all too easy to let his imagination run wild and turn those innocent touches into something… decidedly less so.
Merlin no longer wakes nor dresses him – since he and Guinevere married, Arthur has taken to waking early and dressing himself, so that Guinevere’s handmaiden will not be made uncomfortable. Arthur feels incredibly grateful that this is the case this morning in particular.
He is, unsurprisingly, aroused. He could wake Guinevere, but something about lying with her when he knows he is not this way because of her – or, well, not just because of her, feels dishonest. He lies there, trying to think of something that will dampen his passion, when all of a sudden he hears the door thrown open, in a way he knows all too well.
He sits up, whisper-shouting to avoid waking Gwen. “Merlin?”
“Sire,” Merlin pants, “forgive my intrusion, but something terrible has happened. You need to come with me.”
Thank the Gods for small mercies, Arthur thinks, and then springs into action.
-
“So I take it you weren’t on a date last night?” Arthur asks, breaking the silence as they wander through the dark, dank crypts in search of – apparently – a rogue pixie.
Merlin had explained, as they rushed from the bedchamber and down the many stairs, that Gaius had noticed suspicious magical activity in the castle, and upon investigation (some spellwork, Arthur assumes) they’d found a rabid pixie hiding in the crypts. Arthur, continuing the now well-practiced ruse that he did not know about Merlin’s magic, did not ask any follow-up questions. They would need to capture it, Merlin said, offering no explanation for how they would be doing that; although the cage he was brandishing was an answer in itself.
“Hmm?” Merlin answers distractedly, eyes scanning the space around them.
“Last night. You said you had to leave because you were meeting somebody. You were going to have dinner with Guinevere and I to tell us about it.”
Merlin groans. “Bugger. I forgot I agreed to that.”
“So you are courting someone, then?”
“Not as such, no,” Merlin admits.
Arthur keeps pressing, disturbingly desperate to know for certain so that he can picture it more clearly, or, less likely, never think of it again. “But there is someone you would like to court.”
“Sort of.”
“Is it Sir Gwaine?”
“Sir Gwaine?” Merlin’s face is, Arthur’s sure, an exact mirror image of his own when Guinevere had posed the same question.
“Guinevere suggested–”
“Gwen thinks that Gwaine and I–”
Arthur feels strangely offended on Gwaine’s behalf. “What’s wrong with Sir Gwaine? He’s a gallant knight. You could do far worse.”
“Nothing is wrong with Gwaine,” Merlin says, slowly, like Arthur is missing something obvious. “Do you want me to court Gwaine? How would that look, exactly?” Arthur can picture all too well how it would look. That’s sort of the problem.
“I don’t see why it would be any different than if you were courting a woman,” Arthur says, attempting to sound assured and worldly, though in truth he has very little in the way of comparison.
“Right,” Merlin agrees sarcastically, reading Arthur’s mind in that awful way he sometimes does. “Because there are so many men married to other men in Camelot.”
“Who said anything about marriage?” Arthur says, jostling Merlin laddishly with his elbow. “I know I call you a girl sometimes, but I am aware you’re not actually a maiden,” Arthur jokes. Merlin says nothing. Arthur stops still. “You’re not. Are you?”
“Why is that any of your business?” Merlin replies through gritted teeth.
“It’s not, of course. I’m sorry.” They carry on walking, saying nothing, footsteps echoing, their shadows flickering in the torchlight; but Arthur can’t help himself. “You know, if you were. Um. You know. Untouched,” he stammers, wrong-footed, cheeks warm, “there are places–”
“Gods, Arthur, I know what a fucking brothel is! Can we not talk about this?”
“I just,” Arthur continues, attempting to salvage the conversation, “I know you’ve had offers. Guinevere mentioned–”
“Do you two often sit around and talk about my lack of a love life, then?” Merlin hisses furiously, speeding ahead, refusing to catch Arthur’s eye.
“It had never come up before last night, actually.”
Merlin chokes out a humourless laugh. “I think that’s worse, somehow. You don’t even think of me as a man, do you? I’m just a servant. Just a piece of the furniture you like to throw things at.”
Arthur frowns, hurt. He reaches out to catch Merlin’s thin wrist, tugging him backwards. “That is not how I think of you at all,” he says quietly, looking beseechingly into Merlin’s eyes.
“No?” Merlin says, his blue eyes flaring dangerously, almost gold in the torchlight. “How do you think of me then?”
“Increasingly, I think of you naked.”
Merlin deflates instantaneously, freezing in place. “What?”
“You heard me,” Arthur says, heart pounding wild and out of control in his chest.
“Obviously I did not. Because that would be a mad thing to have heard.”
“I’ve offended you.”
“Offended,” Merlin repeats, mouth opening and closing in disbelief. He makes an aborted little motion, as though intending to move, but then halts, puts down the cage and hangs his torch in a bracket. Arthur does the same, bracing for a confrontation. Merlin starts pacing, head in his hands. Arthur leans against the wall, waiting him out.
“Okay,” Merlin begins, after a few minutes have passed. “You must be ensorcelled. Or I am. That would explain all of this.”
“When could I have possibly been ensorcelled? I have not been alone for more than a single minute in…” Arthur does the calculation in his head. “Three days? And I was not thinking about any of this until last night. Well, not actively, anyway.”
“Gods,” Merlin moans despairingly. “Don’t say anything more, I cannot take it.”
“I’m sorry. I never meant to cause you any distress. If you wish to leave my service, I will of course find another position for you within the castle, and provide–”
“Leave your service? Are you kidding?”
“Why would I jest about such a thing? It is clear that my being attracted to you makes you uncomf–MPH!” He is being kissed. Merlin is kissing him. Arthur is frozen for a moment, shocked, before he grabs Merlin’s waist and kisses him back.
Imagining it, it turns out, is not the same as actually being kissed by Merlin. In real life Merlin is clumsier than he was in Arthur’s head, though that should not really be a surprise. Their noses bump against each other, the angle not quite right until Arthur moves slightly and then it is. Merlin flings his arms around Arthur’s neck, opens his mouth a little more and then it’s amazing. Arthur doesn't know how long they stay locked together before Merlin pulls away, breathing hard.
“Fuck. I should not have done that,” Merlin mutters. All of the colour drains from his face. “Oh, no. Oh, no no no. Shit.”
“What?”
“Gwen.”
“Gwen,” Arthur repeats, and then suddenly feels as though he is about to vomit, or faint. “Right. That’s who you have feelings for.”
“What? No– well,” Merlin pauses, sucking in a breath, “Gwen is your wife! She is the Queen! She’s my best friend! And I just kissed you! Her husband! The King! Oh fuck. I’m a horrible, horrible person.”
“I thought I was your best friend,” Arthur hears himself say.
Merlin looks up at him, eyes bulging with genuine bafflement. “I don’t think that is the point to dwell upon!”
“Quite right,” Arthur nods, and then puts on his best King voice. “Look, let’s just, erm, deal with this somewhat serious magical threat, and then I’ll talk to my wife. And then you’ll come to our chambers for dinner, and we’ll all talk, the three of us.” Arthur cannot think of a single thing he would like to do less.
“Right. Let’s do that.”
-
They do not speak, except to shout instructions at one another (“Duck!” from Arthur, “There!” from Merlin), until the pixie is captured. Arthur pretends not to see Merlin’s eyes flashing gold, nor to hear Merlin muttering in another language.
“So, that’s that dealt with,” Arthur says, staring at the ugly creature. He resolutely does not want to know what Merlin will do with it.
“Seems like it. I’ll just go and take this to Gaius, then,” Merlin replies, waving the cage to demonstrate, before clearly realising what he is doing and stopping, smiling sheepishly. It is very endearing.
“You do that. And I’ll talk to Gwen.”
Merlin gulps. “About that. If you want me to talk to her, I will. I kissed you, after all. So I should be the one to take responsibility.”
Arthur sighs. Self-sacrificing fool. “She’s my wife, Merlin. I’ll speak to her. Just come by later.”
Merlin nods. “Later. All right.” He hesitates. “Look, if you are planning to banish me, could I ask for a week’s notice? Just so I can get some things together.”
“You’re not going to be banished, Merlin.” Arthur valiantly fights the urge to roll his eyes.
“I’m not?” Merlin asks, blue eyes huge and shining. Arthur reaches out, strokes his thumb along Merlin’s cheekbone. It hits him, then, that he has wanted to do that for a long time.
“How am I meant to keep kissing you if you’re no longer in Camelot?” Arthur murmurs, smiling gently.
Merlin sniffs. “You need to stop saying things like that.” He steps away from Arthur, grabs his torch from the wall.
“Okay,” Arthur relents, drawing back. “Later.” He flexes his hand, exhaling, before resting it upon the pommel of his sword.
Later.
-
Arthur stands outside the bedchamber with one hand on the door, hesitating.
“Everything all right, my Lord?” one of the guards stationed in the corridor asks.
“Everything is fine, Gareth.” He turns, an idea coming to him suddenly. “If you could maybe, erm, leave your post for a little while, that would be, erm, appreciated.” He sounds like a squire more than a King, but Gareth smiles knowingly.
“Of course, your Grace.” He bows, low and severe, and then leaves.
Arthur inhales shakily, then opens the door.
Gwen swivels in her seat at the dressing table, grinning broadly at him before leaping to her feet and crossing the room to kiss his cheek. “There you are,” she says. “I was starting to think you had gone missing. Alice was about to send for the guards.” She moves back to her seat, fiddling with her earrings.
Alice giggles behind Gwen’s armoire.
“Could we have the room, please?” Arthur says, his voice the tiniest bit tremulous. Alice curtsies and is gone a moment later. Arthur thinks of Merlin, in contrast – how he has never once done as Arthur asked without comment – and feels his heart contract at the thought of how terribly this could all end.
He moves to stand behind Gwen, who catches his eye in the mirror and then swivels. She grasps his chin, tilts his face down to meet hers, her eyes brimming with concern. “What’s wrong? Where were you?”
“There was a pixie in the crypts. I went with Merlin to capture it.”
“Is Merlin okay?” she asks. Arthur nods. “And you captured the pixie?” He nods again.
“Okay. What’s wrong, then?”
“We sort of. Kissed.”
“What?” Gwen laughs. Arthur grimaces, and she stops. “What?” she asks again, much more sombrely, dropping her hands.
“I don’t know,” Arthur says, despondently. “What we discussed last night, I sort of– brought it up? And he admitted that he was not out with anybody last night, he was trying to deal with the pixie on his own, but I asked whether he was courting anybody because I thought you would want to know.”
Gwen stares at him, unimpressed, but she does not interrupt. He continues rambling, unable to stop now he’s started. “So I asked, and he said he wasn’t but that there was somebody he should like to be courting, and then I asked about Gwaine, and that was obviously not what he expected me to ask, so I explained that you thought there was something between them. And then he got upset that we had been talking about him, and, I think implied that we thought of him as some sort of eunuch, so then I told him that actually, I had thought about him naked.”
Gwen blinks, but stays silent. “And then he thought that I had been enchanted, because I couldn’t possibly mean that, and I told him I did mean it and then he kissed me. And I kissed him. And then we stopped, because he didn’t want to hurt you – you’re his best friend, he said, by the way. And, obviously, I don’t want to hurt you either. So that’s what happened.”
Gwen goes and sits on the bed. Arthur stands, conflicted for a few moments, and then sits beside her.
“I feel as though I should be more surprised,” Gwen says, finally, voice flat, eyes fixed on the rug.
“What?”
“I mean, it seems kind of.” Arthur feels the bed move as she shrugs. “I don’t know. Obvious. Inevitable, even.”
“Guinevere, I–”
“Arthur. It’s. Well it’s not fine, but I’m not... I don’t know.” She exhales loudly, frustrated. “I’m hurt that you did not share these feelings with me, although I think maybe that is because you did not know yourself. Am I right, in that?”
Arthur nods, leans his head on her shoulder. She sighs again, strokes his hair. “Gods, you can be so stupid sometimes.”
“I told him I would not banish him, but I have made it clear he can leave my service and we will find another position for him. If that is what you desire, I will make it happen.”
“Don’t be an idiot. He’s my best friend, I don’t want him going anywhere. And I can’t stand the thought of separating the two of you, you would be positively awful without one another. Another reason why I do not find myself altogether shocked.” She is still stroking his hair. They sit together for a moment in the loaded silence.
“Was he a good kisser?” Gwen asks, and Arthur freezes.
“You’ve kissed him, have you not?” he says, unsure whether this is an acceptable reply with the ground beneath them so unsettled.
“I kissed him. He didn’t kiss me.” Gwen sits up, abruptly, and looks into Arthur’s eyes. He looks back and does not detect fury or devastation, which is undoubtedly a positive sign. “Tell me,” she orders. “I want to know.”
“Yes. He was– it was a good kiss.” Arthur pauses. She smiles at him, encouraging, almost coy. “He has nice lips,” Arthur adds, confessionally.
Gwen nods. “He does. They’re sort of–”
“Girl-ish?”
She laughs, agreeing. “Yes. Rather plump.” Arthur can hear her breathing. He draws closer to her, puts his mouth against her throat. Her pulse is hammering.
Arthur forgets how to breathe. “Are you– do you enjoy thinking about him? About him and I kissing?”
Guinevere nods again, still breathing hard, cheeks flushed. “Well. You’re you, and he’s. Well. It’s a nice image.”
Arthur is hard.
“He is untouched,” he murmurs.
“Fuck, really?” Gwen exclaims, vulgar in her shock. Then she stills. “Oh,” she says, softly. “He’s in love with you. That’s why he has never courted anyone. He loves you.”
“He does not love me! He can hardly stand me most of the time!” Arthur protests.
“Neither can I, but I love you,” Gwen says, and Arthur has to kiss her, then. A short, urgent press of lips. She draws back. “It’s all right if he does love you,” she says quietly, their foreheads pressed together. “Or if you love him. He’s very lovable.”
Arthur exhales.
“I don’t know,” he says, not willing to admit to anything as terrifying as love without incontrivertable evidence that it is reciprocated. “Maybe it’s nothing to do with love. Maybe it’s the other thing.” He waggles his fingers in his best approximation of sorcery.
Gwen’s eyes narrow. “The other thing?”
“The magic thing.”
Gwen clambers off the bed, her usual grace shattered. “You know about that?”
“Of course I know about it!” Arthur says, deeply offended.
“Did he tell you?”
“Of course he didn’t,” Arthur scoffs. “Did he tell you?”
“Sort of,” she admits, and Arthur’s heart does a funny little leap. He has spent years rationalising Merlin's secret-keeping – convincing himself that it's fine, understandable, even, that Merlin has not confided in him – but it stings to a degree he was not expecting to know that Merlin has confided in somebody else, even more so that the somebody else in question is his wife.
“Really?”
“Arthur, he marched up to the King and confessed to try and save my life after being here for what, a month?” Arthur feels, not for the first time, incredibly stupid. “That’s part of why I loved him so much. He was so brave.” She lowers her voice, speaking almost to herself. “He is so brave.”
“He was brave. He was also an idiot. My father would have…” He finds he can’t finish his sentence.
“I know,” Gwen soothes, coming to stand before him, petting his cheek comfortingly. “How did you find out, then?”
“He lit a fire right in front of me without a splint,” Arthur snorts. “Probably a year after we met.”
Gwen’s face turns suddenly hard. “You’ve known, all this time, then? And yet you would force him to continue lying? To live in fear, when you know that magic is not evil?”
Arthur frowns. “Guinevere. There has not been a single magic-related execution since I became King. Camelot has established diplomatic relations with the Druids, and with other kingdoms that allow the practice of magic. Those are the first steps to overturning the ban. You knew that, surely?”
“Oh,” Gwen says contritely, blushing. “That’s all right, then. Does Merlin know about this?”
“Merlin attends every council session with me and he writes half of my speeches, of course he knows,” Arthur says dismissively.
“This is Merlin we’re talking about,” Gwen reminds him.
“Oh Gods. He doesn’t know.”
“Okay,” Gwen says, her planning face on. “Here’s what we’ll do.”
-
There is a tentative knock on the door. The fact there is a knock at all is a terrible sign.
Arthur sighs, already giving up the night as a lost cause.
Gwen glares at him. “Come in, Merlin,” she calls.
Merlin hovers, sheet-white and trembling, in the doorway. “My Lady,” he stammers.
Gwen smiles encouragingly, gesturing to the spot across from her at the table. “Come, sit.”
Merlin does. He has turned vaguely green, now. Arthur looks to his wife, who looks back at him with barely veiled disdain, but nonetheless begins the speech they had spent the morning preparing. “You know you can tell us anything, right, Merlin?” she asks, voice kind and gentle. She takes his hand where it lies, shaking, on the table. “You are our dearest friend. There is nothing you could say that would ever change that.”
Merlin bursts into tears. “I’m so sorry!” he sobs. “I never meant to cause any problems. I swear, I am more than content just being around you both and knowing that you are happy together. That’s all I’ve ever wanted. I love you both so much and I just–”
“Wait, Merlin,” Arthur tries to interrupt, feeling that their plan is going swiftly south.
“I just can’t believe I was so selfish and so pathetic as to do this! And that’s why I think it would be best if I took my leave of Camelot for a while–”
“Merlin,” Gwen attempts, worried now.
Merlin carries on, hardly pausing to even breathe. “Obviously I wouldn’t go forever, I couldn’t stand to be apart from either one of you for too long, but I know you must need space if you are ever to forgive my trespass–”
“Merlin, would you shut up?” Arthur blurts out. “You’re not going anywhere, as I told you already.”
“I don’t think that’s your decision to make, Arthur,” Merlin says, sounding like a kicked dog.
Arthur sighs, puts his head in his hands. “Guinevere, would you tell him?”
“Merlin, we love you, you idiot.” Gwen declares. “We don’t want you to go anywhere. Neither of us. We want you to stay right here, with us.”
Merlin sniffs, frowning. “I don’t understand then. What was all that about how I could tell you anything?”
“We meant about the magic, Merlin!” Gwen cries exasperatedly.
“You– WHAT?” Merlin yells, mouth falling open.
“You know all of those meetings with my council have been about lifting the ban, right? You do know that?”
Merlin gawks at them. “No! Well. I suppose I might have stopped listening in council, a bit.”
Arthur sighs. “Merlin, you are truly the most incompetent manservant in all of Albion.”
Gwen elbows him, hard. “That’s why we’ll be offering you a new position.”
“A new position?”
“How does Court Sorcerer sound?” Gwen beams.
“Of course, you’d have to actually listen during meetings,” Arthur adds.
Merlin stares hard at Gwen, and then at him. “Is this a joke? Are you joking?”
Gwen joins Arthur in sighing. She looks to her husband, raises an eyebrow. He nods. She gets up, yanks Merlin out of his chair, throws her arms around his neck and starts kissing him, quite vigorously. Arthur watches, enthralled.
Once again, reality beats his imagination. He sees the moment Merlin surrenders and melts into it, hands tightening around Gwen’s waist, sees her spine arch as he pulls her close. Arthur swallows.
Merlin pulls away first, eyes searching for Arthur over Gwen’s shoulder. “So you spoke to your wife,” he says, voice low, almost ragged.
“I did,” Arthur says magnanimously. “To great effect, as you can see.”
“Seems like it,” Merlin says, smiling at him conspiratorially. Gwen summons Arthur from his seat with a crook of her finger, and once he is out of his chair she tugs him along by his collar.
She manhandles him until he and Merlin are stood shoulder to shoulder. Once she is happy with their positioning, she sits back down, grabs her goblet and pours herself some wine. She looks up at Arthur. “Now, you’ve seen us kiss. I’ve no doubt Merlin has seen you and I kiss hundreds of times.” Merlin fidgets. “I think that makes it your turn.”
“As my queen commands,” Arthur says. He moves closer until he and Merlin are toe to toe. He scans Merlin’s face for any sign of discomfort, any indication that this is not what he wants, and is relieved to find there only a desperate hunger that seems to match his own.
“Today, boys,” Gwen directs. Merlin grins, and Arthur leans in. It’s just as good as their previous kiss – better, even, with Merlin’s hands buried in his hair, and Arthur’s tongue teasing the seam of Merlin’s lips until he opens up, making this wonderful keening sound in the back of his throat. Arthur cannot believe they have not been doing this the whole time.
He pulls back to look at wife, who is sitting there, mouth dropped open, eyes pitch dark. “Bed,” she proclaims, standing up.
Merlin looks at her, and then back at Arthur, eyebrow raised warily, as if doubting the invitation. Arthur nods at him, dizzyingly quickly, then tugs him along with an arm around his waist. “Bed,” he confirms.
-
The bed, it turns out, is big enough for three, even without magic.
“By the way,” Merlin says once they are done, his dark hair tousled and his lips bright and bruised. “There’s sort of this prophecy about how we’re meant to bring about Albion’s golden age.”
“Uh-huh,” Arthur yawns, maybe the most content he has ever felt; fingers tangled in Gwen’s hair, a lover, warm, on either side of him. “We’ll get to that bit later.”