Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

The morning air was magical. Crisp, pale blue stretched overhead. There wasn’t a cloud in sight. The day was shaping up to be so gorgeous, so poetically antithetical to the murk and dankness of the Grey that Merlin decided, on a lark, to do something about it.

“What’s this?” Arthur asked when Merlin laid out a simple set of rough wools and hardy leathers. It was the sort of outfit typically saved for treks into the forest rather than winding, torpid days poised upon the throne.

“We’re going on a hunt.”

Arthur’s eyebrows climbed high. “But you hate hunting.”

“Damn right. That’s how good of a friend I am.”

“But… I have kingly duties.”

“I’ve cleared your calendar.”

Arthur’s smile was almost as sunny as the skies awaiting them outside.

Despite his usual aversion to the very practice of killing for sport, Merlin couldn’t help but bask in this most perfect of days, this most perfect of companions. Even though imperfection saturated everything he and Arthur ever did together: replete with tripped toes, guffawing laughs, fingers prodded into ribs, and playful swats to the head. Accusations of being a girl, accusations of rotund bellies.

Cool, chilled air filled the lungs. The skies wore their best colors. The senses sang and unfurled, expanding like a sail cradling a breath of wind after ages mired in the doldrums.

It felt like old times, just the two of them… and the blasted crossbow. Because they actually had to hunt on their hunt, apparently.

“Why did you dress up this excursion as a ‘hunt’ if all you wanted to do was hike about, chattering on like a nosy housewife, and dump me into a pond?”

Merlin tried not to snicker at the squelching burp of Arthur’s single soggy boot. “I wasn’t even standing near you!”

“Magic, then,” Arthur blustered. “You used magic.”

“If I’d used magic, you’d be soaked head-to-toe, not just your leg up to the knee.”

When Arthur felled an impressive stag, Merlin’s salty scowl at needless death morphed into a startled yelp of laughter when Arthur scooped him into his arms and swung him around and around in celebration. It was a fine creature, antlers tipped with too many points to count, almost certainly destined for a high perch on the castle walls. Merlin snickered and simultaneously pleaded for release.

For a moment, feet firmly settled on solid ground, Arthur’s arms still looped around him, the ache to rake his hands into tousled locks, to curl and clutch and bring their mouths together nearly sent Merlin reeling. It was a pull he’d not felt in some time, locked away as it’d been as he’d supported Arthur through the fallout of his broken engagement — foreign kings flooding Camelot with missives waxing poetic about their daughters, gossip criticizing Arthur’s ability to romance a lowly servant of all things, and other knocks to his character and virility. But now, standing amongst the whistling leaves, breeze ruffling fabrics and hair, he felt freer than he had in months. More himself.

From the looks of it, Arthur felt similarly. Though without the driving desire to mold their lips together, clearly.

Naturally, their little moment was interrupted by the arrival of a fanged creature. The swing of its spiked tail missed them by inches, sending both hurtling to the ground.

When Arthur reached for Excalibur, Merlin placed a hand over his wrist.

“What—?”

“Let me.”

Arthur shook his head in confusion. “Let you what?”

Merlin beamed. “Let me.”

It was liberating… rising to his feet sans distraction, stepping forward without the need to provoke a turned head or loss of consciousness. With a sweep of his arms, Merlin vanquished the beast, lyrical words poised on whispered lips. When nothing remained but flitting ashes mingled with tumbling snowflakes, Merlin turned to find Arthur sitting in the grass, face smeared with earth and features hollowed in genuine shock.

Overcome with sudden sheepishness, heart fluttering, Merlin averted his gaze. He toed at a shell of bark and coughed awkwardly.

Arthur’s lips split into a beaming smile, eyes crinkled at the corners. “That was….”

“Ostentatious,” Merlin admitted, cheeks flushing. “Yes, sorry.”

“Sorry?” Arthur echoed with a chortle. “Merlin, that was brilliant.”

Merlin looked up, stunned speechless. A jitter of pleasure zinged up his spine as Arthur approached, expression one part awestruck, one part pleased. He couldn’t help but mirror Arthur’s grin with a dopey one of his own. “Yeah?”

Arthur’s fingers mussed Merlin’s hair with easy affection. “I don’t suppose you could harness a fraction of that power to carry my stag back to the castle?”

Merlin nodded, unable to stop smiling. “At your service,” he said, voice too bright to be as nonchalant as he’d intended.

“Merlin at my service,” Arthur parroted, as if testing it out on his tongue. “No, that doesn’t sound right.”

Merlin snorted as Arthur knelt to retrieve his fallen crossbow. “Enjoy it while it lasts.”

“Oh, I’m enjoying it immensely,” Arthur confirmed with a light punch. He knew how much Merlin hated when he did that, but it was gentle and teasing, and for once Merlin didn’t hate it at all.

When Merlin incanted the stag into a drifting hover over the forest floor, Arthur shook his head. “It’s treason that you’ve made me haul so many kills home when you could have done this all along.”

Merlin held up a finger. “First, it would have been treason to float your kills home. Pick your side of the law, Arthur.”

“Treason is flagrantly and purposefully inconveniencing your poor king!”

Refusing to take the bait, magnanimously letting ‘poor king’ go without comment too, Merlin held up another finger. “Second, you hauled your kills home? You? When did you ever abase yourself low enough to shoulder such a demeaning task on your own?”

Arthur tilted his head, silent for a telling length of time as he visibly searched his memories for an instance. Exactly. “The boar,” Arthur cried finally, punching the air as if crowing in victory. “I helped with the boar.”

“Because I was bleeding and unconscious!”

“And I would have appreciated a hover charm as I towed the unconscious bodies of my surprisingly heavy manservant and that villainous boar,” Arthur said, as if that proved his point rather than Merlin’s.

“You’re a contrary prat.”

“And you’re an inconsiderate idiot.”

On their walk home, the backs of their hands brushed every few steps.

George met them at the gates with a summons for Arthur to attend council for a matter of grave concern. At Merlin’s alarmed look, George amended, “Financial concern.”

The fatigue of Arthur’s face at the prospect of financial anything sent Merlin to snickers. Arthur’s eyes said: ‘I hate you.’ Merlin batted his sweetly in return.

His day in the woods had worked like a dream. It’d been too long since Arthur let loose with such sunny abandon. Merlin was grateful to have given him this respite, however fleeting, from the toils of kingship.

When Arthur waltzed through the door an hour past dusk, cupping his shoulder with a frown, face still smudged with soil and hair carrying debris from the forest floor, he blinked stupidly at the sight of Merlin folding a linen against the side of a steaming tub. “You didn’t need to wait up.”

“You’re wearing half the woods on your head, Arthur. A bath was the least I could do.” Merlin stepped aside to reveal a hearty meal. “And dinner. Which would you prefer first?”

“Bath,” Arthur replied emphatically. “Definitely bath.”

Divested of his soiled hunting gear, Arthur sank into the aromatic water with a rumble of pleasure. “By the gods, that’s amazing. Only you know how to get it the exact temperature.”

“It’s magic.”

Arthur snorted as if appreciating the joke, then his eyes shot open. “Wait… all this time?”

Merlin nodded.

Arthur rolled his eyes. “Of course, it was.” He attempted to unstopper the oil with one hand whilst stabilizing the bottle with the other, but a grimace pulled at the corners of his lips and he stopped.

Come to think of it, Arthur had landed hard when he’d crashed to the ground to avoid that monster earlier. Merlin snatched the bottle from Arthur’s grasp with a commanding: “Let me get that, you gimp.”

The scent of vanilla and something warm with hints of cinnamon and spice filled the chambers as he poured a generous dollop into his palms and rubbed them together. Arthur hummed when Merlin’s hands met his back, golden skin pearled with water droplets.

“By all that’s holy,” Arthur moaned, head tipping forward. “I’ve missed your massages. You ran away the last time I tried to solicit one.”

“I know. I’m sorry.”

Arthur cursed under his breath when a particularly resilient knot refused to come loose. “Ow,” he said when it finally released, marble hardness chipped out with chisel.

“You carry too much weight on your shoulders.”

“Armor is heavy, Merlin.”

“You didn’t wear armor today.” Merlin jabbed a retaliatory knuckle into his spine. “And I’m not talking about armor, you clotpole.”

Arthur huffed. “And, gods save me, I missed your stupid, insolent mouth.”

‘I love when you mouth off at me.’

Merlin pressed his lips together.

Arthur’s head dipped lower under Merlin’s ministrations. “You have this ability to humble the unhumbleable, you know that?”

“Unhumbleable is not a word,” Merlin rasped.

“Neither is clotpole.”

When he reached Arthur’s mottled shoulder, Merlin whispered a muscle-relaxing charm into the angry bruising. Tension locked across Arthur’s shoulders at the sound of unfamiliar words pressed to his skin, but melted alongside a bone-deep sigh of gratitude as the healing incantation worked its magic.

“Treason to hide that skill too,” Arthur murmured shakily.

“Go ahead and try it before the council,” Merlin challenged.

“You try me.”

Next, Merlin drew Arthur’s hand out of the water. Crystalline eyes watched as Merlin applied gentle pressure down each digit, rolling the base, kneading outwards towards the calloused tips.

“The creature today… that was incredible.”

“It pays to have a powerful sorcerer at your side.”

Arthur’s teeth worried his lower lip. “The questing beast. That was you, too.”

Merlin’s gaze darted up. “Yes.”

“And Cornelius Sigan.”

“Yes.”

“And the undead army.”

“Which one?”

“All of them.”

“Mostly me.”

“And the sea monster?”

“And the hydra,” Merlin offered, wondering if Arthur would—or even could—list the full entry of persons, creatures, and magics from which Merlin had saved him.

“All those perils… and never any credit.”

Merlin shrugged, lightly tracing the tendons branching across the back of Arthur’s hand.

“I was a blind fool,” Arthur said.

“You saw what you wanted to see.”

Arthur twisted his hand to twine fingers between fingers in a startlingly fluid move. “I didn’t see you.”

Merlin jarred at the unexpected handhold, giving it an experimental tug only to feel Arthur’s clasp tighten. “But you did see me,” he protested. “Why else did you not sack me within that first week like so many of my predecessors? Why did you choose to listen in those instances when I needed you to?”

“Why did I throw things at your head? Why did I smack you around and call you an idiot?”

“Because you’re a prat. We already know that.”

Instead of the expected riposte, sharp and witty or purposely dense and brutish, a sharpness drew across Arthur’s features. “You loved him.”

That sent Merlin jolting backwards. Arthur’s grasp turned into a vice, locking him in place, disallowing him inches let alone full retreat. His skin went white where Arthur’s fingers dug in.

“You slept with him,” Arthur accused, fire in his eyes. “I know that much already. But I think you also loved him. He loved you.”

“I….” Merlin twisted his hand in Arthur’s slippery grip, wrenching and wrangling, but Arthur held fast. “Please, Arthur.”

“Do you love me?”

“Don’t,” Merlin begged, breathless.

“The mark on your neck that night. The fingerprints shadowing your arms and back. They were his, weren’t they? It’s why you could barely look at me for weeks after. You weren’t viciously attacked. Quite the opposite, in fact.”

A dry sob racked Merlin’s throat, building alongside the maelstrom swelling in his heart.

“His lips put them there. In a very literal sense: my lips put them there. It’s why you wouldn’t touch me for days after, isn’t it? I thought you were disgusted by me, though why all of a sudden, I couldn’t fathom. You weren’t disgusted. Or reviled. You were thinking of him… imagining your hands on his body in a way you couldn’t place them on mine, because I was your king. And I was an engaged man.”

“Arthur,” Merlin pleaded.

Arthur’s eyes fell shut, squeezed and scrunched. “I can’t stop imagining you two together. You and… me. But not me. My face, my body. My mouth on yours; tasting and savoring. The twist of my fingers in your hair. Your body laid bare beneath mine, thighs spread to welcome me in. The picture it paints… it drives me mad.”

Arthur’s words sent Merlin grappling for orientation, for a grasp on reality, because everything told him he was dreaming. Tumbling through rings of time and dimensions yet again. Insanity a flavor, hysteria a color. This couldn’t be real. His Arthur wouldn’t say such things.

Hands still locked, fingers intertwined in a mimicry of something unerringly intimate, Arthur ghosted a kiss to the delicate skin of Merlin’s inner wrist.

“And I hate him for it,” Arthur breathed. “I hate that he doesn’t have to imagine these things deep into the night, sometimes inadvisably amidst a boring meeting. He doesn’t have to steal a whiff of your intoxicating scent when you lean in too close and wonder how it might translate to taste. All he has to do is unlock that memory. Your body is a tangible entity to him. And it’s not fair. Why should he know you in these ways when you’ve been mine far longer than you were ever his?”

“I’m not—”

“You’ve always been mine, Merlin.” Arthur’s voice smoothed out, soft as silk. “Just as I suspect I’ve always been yours.”

Discombobulation tore through Merlin like torrent winds, ripping the fabric of him to shreds, scouring his soul. Because it wasn’t possible. In a time away from time, he remembered thinking with full confidence that if his Arthur — this Arthur — had ever felt anything, he would have known.

“But… but Gwen—”

“Why do you think she could never commit to me? Never pushed for a date? She said it herself the day she asked to be freed from our engagement. I might love her, but I was in love with someone else, though she wouldn’t say whom.”

“That’s not what you sai—”

“I didn’t say everything.”

With a jerk to their clasped hands, Arthur hauled Merlin forward. Careening half into the tub, Merlin gasped as his free arm plunged into the water, fingers scrabbling across the slippery opposite wall before hooking on the edge of a jutting seam.

“Tell me you loved him,” Arthur demanded.

Their faces were close. Too close. A wet hand caressed his cheek, fingertips whisper-soft as they skated upward, carded into the hair at Merlin’s temple, then traced along the sensitive shell of one ear.

“Tell me you could love me.”

An embarrassingly plaintive sound escaped Merlin’s lips.

Arthur's forehead pressed to Merlin’s. Their breaths mingled, noses glanced. Merlin’s tenuous hold on the seam slipped, and he sank further into the water, further into Arthur.

“Sometimes, I think I remember dying in your arms. I think… I know I loved you. I just didn’t realize it. Now, after all that’s happened, I know I did. I do.”

Arthur’s hand skimmed through Merlin’s locks before settling at his nape, tickling the fine hairs there.

Tears burned at the seams of Merlin’s eyes.

“It’s always been you, Merlin. The one constant in my life. The one who challenged me to climb higher. Ever higher.” Arthur’s fingers flexed against the tender skin of his neck, sending Merlin to uncontrollable quivers. “The one who held me in his arms as I died; whose face is the only one I’d wish to see at my end. The most devoted of them all.”

When Arthur’s lips brushed his, it took a moment for Merlin to realize it wasn’t accidental, an inadvertent graze visited by two faces hovering in tight proximity… but they were there. Hesitating briefly, as if not certain how to read Merlin’s frozen immobility, before pressing harder with an air of conviction, endeavoring to coax reception with a light suck to the jut of Merlin’s lower lip.

Soft and plaintive though it was, the touch rocked Merlin to his core; upset his sense of up and down, his concept of Arthur. This Arthur. Who had to go and rewrite everything Merlin thought he knew. Who was now kissing him so sweetly he could cry. His magic sang, tingled at that perfect point of contact. Merlin couldn’t help but answer Arthur’s feathered kiss with a languid caress of his own.

Arthur drew away after a moment, eyes closed. For a hanging beat, he lingered, visible concentration writ across his face, eyelashes a fan across his cheeks.

In those endless seconds, the edge of the tub excavated into Merlin’s ribs. The dull pain of it was… necessary. An anchor to reality. Since the latter had a habit of shifting on him, the confirmation of here and now was vital.

Arthur licked a line across his own bottom lip. “Is that…?”

“That?”

“That… tingle. Is that your magic?”

“You can feel that?”

Arthur’s eyes slitted open, drunken sapphire peering past pale lashes. “I can taste it.”

When Arthur pressed against Merlin’s mouth again, Merlin surged forward with a frantic sound, hands skidding across water-dappled skin, fingers grappling for purchase. Arthur had perhaps meant the resumption of their kiss to be as soft and sweet as his words; he might have expected to take and keep the lead. Merlin couldn’t manage anything so coordinated as delicacy or restraint. Or surrender. Not after Arthur’s beautiful words had clenched around his heart much like his fingers had around Merlin’s hand.

Gasping against his lips, Arthur matched Merlin's amplification of touch with vigor, giving back as good as he got, nipping, sucking, and tasting with a confidence and purpose that belonged to this Arthur alone. He was a bold kisser.

A bloody mastermind. His thumb stroked the curve of Merlin’s ear again, the dulcet touch shaking loose another wanton moan because his ears were entirely too sensitive. As if waiting for that parting of lips, as if hoping his touch would incite exactly this, Arthur licked a single, slick sweep into the cavern of Merlin’s mouth. The exquisite, wet tickle of it sent torrents of shivers down Merlin’s spine. Merlin opened his mouth with a delicious shiver to accept a second delving stroke, to meet him in the middle—as he always did—in a twisting, twining dance.

As their kiss grew increasingly heady, Arthur pawed at Merlin’s jerkin and roughly yanked at his belt in an attempt to gain access beneath. Merlin was still pinned against the lip of the tub, however, and dangling partway in, so Arthur failed on all counts. “Get these off,” he demanded against Merlin’s lips.

“You’d need to let go of me,” Merlin returned, words equally as muffled.

“Never.” Arthur wrapped his arms around Merlin and heaved him into the tub. Bathwater slung over the sides, displaced by the addition of a second mass, cascading onto the flagstones with a monstrous splash.

Merlin resurfaced, expelling a spluttering yowl, prepared to insult Arthur back to his earliest ancestors. The sight that met him extinguished the words on his tongue. Arthur was mess — hair resembling a great tentacled beast, lips aggravated red, neck striped with the accidental scrape of a wayward fingernail — and wearing the most beautiful smile Merlin had ever seen.

“Now that my clothes are saturated, it’s going to be infinitely more difficult to peel them off,” Merlin pointed out, feigning an owlish scowl.

Arthur's grin gentled into something soft and… important? The nervous edge of his gaze brought Merlin to attention. Arthur’s fingers closed around the strap of Merlin’s belt once again, neither pushing nor pulling. Just… holding.

Sweet-smelling plumes of steam rose around them.

“I’m sorry for what I put you through.”

“For what? The thrown cups and pillows?” Merlin joked. “The former always came at me with middling aim, and the latter never hurt when it hit its target.”

“For not listening to you that day. For dying in your arms like that.”

Something in Merlin's gut shifted loose, hung limp and broken within the listing structure of him. “You know… you were right.”

“About the soup being yellow? No, I wasn’t. I knew it was green. I enjoy the way your eyes flare when you get all riled up.”

A snort escaped Merlin, because he knew it. “No… you were right about him. I loved him. But you’re my Arthur. The strands of our lives are inextricably woven — our story the only one I want to live — and I wouldn’t trade you for anything in this world. Or beyond. It’s always been you, Arthur.”

A startled expression swept across Arthur face before his lips twisted into a crooked grin. “So you do love me?” As if the zeal of his answer to Arthur’s kiss hadn’t demonstrated exactly that.

“Pfft. I can’t stand you.”

Arthur barked a laugh. “My mistake.” He dragged Merlin forward by the hold on his belt to ghost a kiss against his lips. “I can’t stand you either.”

Their kisses settled like the bathwater enveloping their bodies, ripples glassing out into effervescent stillness; warm, comfortable, and encompassing.

After a time, Arthur whispered, “You mentioned peeling off some of those onion layers.”

Merlin huffed a chuckle against Arthur’s lips. “We are a little lopsided, aren’t we?” He backed away to wrestle his sopping boot off.

And not a moment too soon. The door swung open.

“Princess, Sir Goldwine is refusing to comply, and I drew the short end of the stick, so I’m meant to ask what level of force we’re allow—”

Gwaine blinked at the sight before him: Arthur naked in the bath, knee to knee with a fully-clothed and dripping Merlin, the latter in the midst of muscling his damp boot off. He absorbed the scene in due stride, as anyone with any experience with Arthur and Merlin learned to do — and, really, this wasn’t even the strangest scenario in which he’d found them — before a salacious grin spread across his face.

“But if I’d known you were necking with Merlin, I would have said the traitorous swine could spend the night in the dungeon.”

Gwaine, of course, meant it as a joke. Inventing new ways to mortify Arthur was his favorite pastime. The more Arthur sputtered and stammered and blushed, the greater the victory.

Instead of his usual aggressive deflection, however, Arthur only coughed gruffly while Merlin ducked his head, ears so hot he feart they might melt off. It wasn’t as if either of them could object with the usual: ‘it’s not what it looks like!’ For the first time, it was exactly what it looked like.

Gwaine’s brow arched acrobatically, eyes instantly twinkling.

“Thanks for knocking, Gwaine,” Arthur snapped. “And in what way is Sir Goldwine not complying?”

“Sir Goldwine?” Merlin asked, looking between the two of them.

Arthur canted a peevish look at Gwaine. “Never mind. I’ll be there shortly. Keep him contained.” Then, to Merlin, he said, “Goldwine has been caught committing fraud.” At Merlin’s skeptical look, Arthur raised his hands. “It’s true! Obviously, there’s no love lost between us, but Geoffrey uncovered everything. We were going to escort him to the border to let him figure out how to survive without a shilling to his name… but it sounds like he’s putting up a fight.”

Leaving his soggy boots and jerkin in puddle beside the tub, Merlin helped Arthur into a dry tunic and trousers. When he leaned forward to straighten Arthur’s collar, he pressed a kiss to Arthur’s neck.

“Mmm,” Arthur purred. “Should we just let Goldwine rot in the dungeon for a night?”

“Is that what you want?” Merlin asked, tasting the hollow of Arthur’s clavicle. He couldn’t believe he could do this. Have this.

“Ask me what I want.”

“I just did.”

“Ask me again,” Arthur prompted in a strangely anticipatory tone.

Merlin rocked away, though his fingers stayed wound in the fabric about Arthur’s neck. “What do you want, Arthur?”

A sly smile tugged the corners of Arthur’s lips. “You. All of you. Everything whispered beside that hearth in the kitchens of Alnwick where Idra supposedly couldn’t hear. I want everything we’ve never done and everything we can do now that we’re together. I want it all.”

Merlin’s stomach dropped to his feet at the mention of Alnwick and Idra – two names he’d never mentioned – of licentious plans and their spot at the hearth. For a frantic moment, the notion that the wrong Arthur stood before him, somehow returned to him, sent Merlin’s equilibrium listing. He’d meant it earlier. He loved the other Arthur, but this one was his, heart and soul, mind and body. He’d been his since the beginning, bond strengthened with each brush with death, moment of honesty, and shared laugh.

When his gaze flew to Arthur’s face, searching for the long lost and never forgotten, however… the face of his king peered back, the right scars in the right places, a knowing lilt shining through bright eyes.

After an interminable beat, Merlin found his voice. “How did you…?”

“Remember when you shoved my hand down your shirt?”

Merlin's mouth opened to claim he’d done no such thing… until he recalled the night on the pitch when he’d pressed Arthur’s palm to his scar in hopes that whatever visions it imparted might convince Arthur to believe him.

“Yes,” he said haltingly.

“True serum: you gave me something that night.”

“Something? What… like a disease?”

Arthur cast a sardonic roll of the eyes. “Very much like a disease.”

Merlin’s heart launched into a pitter-pattering staccato.

“After you forced that connection, I occasionally get a… visitor. In my dreams.”

Horror crashed into Merlin like the foaming arch of a wave. “Pax?”

Arthur snorted, shaking his head. “Arthur. The other Arthur.”

Merlin gaped, unblinking because he didn’t think he remembered how to blink. Or breathe. “The other Arthur comes to you in your sleep?”

“Sometimes.”

“He sometimes comes to you in your sleep and… does what exactly?”

“Talks.”

“About us?” Unease filtered through Merlin’s veins at the prospect.

“Not directly, no.” It was unsettling how calm Arthur was acting when Merlin was veritably jittering in place. “He seemed quite concerned with not revealing too much about your rapport with him, but… well, he’s a blusher, isn’t he? I asked if he had any insight as to why you’d kissed me that night. It didn’t take a genius to link the marks on your neck to his red cheeks.”

Probably about as red as Merlin’s face right now, judging by the fog of molten heat eclipsing his entire upper half.

“That’s why you requested the sleeping draught.”

“The stuff doesn’t work,” Arthur grumbled.

A knock sounded at the door. Not Gwaine this time. Or, perhaps, a more conscientious Gwaine who didn’t need the image of the King of Camelot and his manservant ‘necking’ seared into his corneas.

“Would you like me to come along?” Merlin asked faintly, reeling.

“Can you promise not to curse Goldwine’s intestines into spewing incontinence again?”

“If he insults you again… no promises.”

“Good thing you weren’t there earlier,” Arthur harrumphed as he headed towards the door. “Stay here, Merlin. Dry off and mind the fire. This should be quick.”

In the silence of Arthur’s quarters, in the wake of too many revelations to count, too many emotions to balance, Merlin fought to breathe.

Arthur returned his feelings.

The other Arthur occasionally visited this Arthur in his sleep.

Arthur had kissed him. Somewhat obscenely. And meant to kiss him. Again… somewhat obscenely.

Oh, and Arthur returned his feelings.

He thought about his Prince Arthur; he thought about his King Arthur. What made them different? Either of them? All of them? Their memories? Now that Arthur had this limited access to the other’s, this odd temporal connection to a time and experiences that weren’t his own, it almost felt as if… he had both.

When Arthur returned, Merlin was still madly pacing; everything resolves, nothing resolved.

“I gave you very simple instructions,” Arthur said, keen eyes noting the damp rumple of Merlin’s tunic. “Dry off and keep the hearth.”

The latter of which had extinguished into wisps of smoke and glowing embers.

“You’re like a child, Merlin. Honestly.” Arthur frog-marched Merlin towards the hearth. “Build the flames high, because it’s freezing as mountaintop snow in here.”

“That was fast,” Merlin noted, pulling flames from nothing, scattering them across the logs until they kept.

“I had motivation to return,” Arthur said.

Merlin twisted about.

Arthur’s hands settled on his hips. “I have a question for you. A request, actually.” His hand slipped beneath the hem of Merlin’s tunic, skated across the plane of his back and settled in the small of it. His lips skimmed Merlin’s ear, and he whispered: “I’m going to legalize magic in Camelot. Will you help me?”

“W—what?” Merlin’s voice came out thin and reedy.

Arthur kissed the outer shell of Merlin’s ear. “You heard me.”

Words evaded him. Instead of trying to wrangle some into a semblance of order, Merlin flung his arms around Arthur's neck and kissed him deeply. Any semblance of a conversation, let alone answer, extinguished as Arthur opened his mouth to accept the fervent touch. Bodies met, hands roved, and knees knocked as they shuffled across the flagstones. Palms snaked under tunics, fabric climbed torsos and fell into puddles in their wake. They plunged onto the mattress with laughter. Merlin tried to upend Arthur, intent on peppering his body with touches woven with lips and tongue and fingers, but ended up flat on his back, because Arthur was Arthur, and Merlin was a twig.

Deft fingers defeated the knot of Merlin’s trousers. Merlin’s hands went to the laces of Arthur’s to do the same, but Arthur twined his fingers through Merlin’s and wrenched his arms overheard, pinning them against the pillows.

“Uh-uh,” Arthur chided, eyes sparkling. “You’ve already touched this body. It’s my turn to catch up.”

“I’ve never touched this body,” Merlin protested.

“You’ve pawed at a variation of it. Which is more than I’ve garnered, so you’re just going to have to lie back and let me get as thoroughly acquainted with every inch of you as you’ve been with me.”

Merlin's groan of frustration morphed into one of an entirely different nature when Arthur dipped his head to nuzzle a line of kisses down his neck. Arthur’s mouth was wickedly talented, all artful tongue, hot breath, skimming teeth, and scintillating suction. By the time he moved from collarbone to nipple to scar, the flat of his tongue pressed to that diamond symbol of everything Merlin had lost and regained, Merlin had devolved into a gasping, writhing mess of shivers and need.

“Please,” Merlin gasped. And what was he pleading for? More? Less? It all felt like too much. His nerves felt frayed, zinging with magic of both a supernatural and earthly breed, riddled with intermittent tremors and the jolting shock of arousal.

Arthur huffed a breathy laugh into the divot of Merlin’s navel when the skin beneath his lips quivered, goosebumps building across naked planes. Merlin squirmed in Arthur’s grasp, cock painfully hard.

Taking pity on him, Arthur circled a hot, wet lick around the head of Merlin’s weeping cock. Merlin cursed and shuddered and fought not to thrust upward, because he had no idea whether Arthur had done this before. Heavens knew he and the other Arthur had never got the chance to use their mouths, and it would stand to reason that the King of Camelot had likely never kneeled for any man.

When Arthur's mouth sank around the head of Merlin’s cock and took him breathtakingly deep, however, the satyric rumors about squires serving knights seemingly proved themselves true. Profoundly true, Merlin thought as Arthur’s nose met his belly, throat swallowing around his length with a wet, positively debauched sound. Staggeringly true, he amended as Arthur settled into a skillful cadence that had Merlin releasing sounds he’d never known he could make.

“I—Arthur, I want….”

Arthur hummed in agreement, pulling off with a sloppy sound that sent yet another spear of incendiary heat to Merlin’s cock. He released both of Merlin's hands, one going to Merlin’s cock to resume the abandoned cadence of his mouth, the other hovering palm up. “I’ll be needing that oil.”

The bottle of vanilla oil smacked into Merlin’s outstretched hand so hard he recoiled with a yelp.

Arthur chuckled. “Keen, aren’t we?”

“Just… I need you inside of me.”

A litany of shivery curses fell from Arthur’s lips. “You can’t just… say things like that. Fuck, Merlin.”

“Please,” Merlin rallied right back at him. “I need you, Arthur. I’ve needed you for so long.”

The sound Arthur made rattled Merlin to his bones.

One-by-one, Arthur’s slick fingers quested inside, pumped and dragged, scissored and stretched. His focus paired with the mounting stretch of battle-calloused fingers delving into the sheer tightness of his entrance cooled Merlin enough to feel less like he teetered on the edge of release and more… aching. Ready. Full of need and love and anticipation this thing – this man – he never thought he’d have. His Arthur.

When Arthur aligned his cock, prepared to press inward, Merlin captured his face in his hands. Sure fingers carded through golden locks to angle his head up… because Merlin needed to see his face, to know that this was his Arthur. His Arthur. Merlin feathered a kiss to the scar from the chimera. He nuzzled each worry line; both those about his eyes and next to his mouth. His fingers skimmed the puncture mark of the hydra, tips tracing the circle of the sea monster’s suctions.

“It’s me,” Arthur said gently.

A smile grew at the corners of Merlin’s lips at the memory of that same assurance passing between himself and the other Arthur. His palm drifted to the center of Arthur’s chest where there was no scar to match his own. He was now the sole bearer of it.

“I know,” Merlin said. “And I love you.”

A sweet, strangely vulnerable smile fell across Arthur’s face.

When Arthur's cock bore inward, slow and controlled, the pulsing stretch of it brought tears to Merlin’s eyes. Tears of overwhelm and love. A lucid feeling of calm spread through him as Arthur drew flush, fully seated, fully connected.

Again.

For the first time.

Arthur withdrew once, as achingly slow as that initial breach, the drag of it against parts of him rarely touched otherworldly, before he thrust back in with purpose, punching a gasp from lips slackened with pleasure. Merlin’s legs clenched around Arthur's thighs as his body yielded to his increasingly powerful strokes, welcomed and kept him, in and in, again and again. He felt so full; his body poised on the razor-sharp edge of oblivion with each ensuing thrust.

On one stroke, Arthur’s cock brushed that special place inside, rendering Merlin into a writhing, gibbering mess. He cursed and begged Arthur to do it again. And again. And harder. And don’t stop.

As if Arthur could stop. From the glint of his eyes, gone internal, and stuttering rhythm of his hips, he was getting close. He took Merlin’s cock in his hand and continued thrusting until the tug behind Merlin’s navel gave an almighty pull. At that crest, lips brushed once, twice, because that was all they could manage in that stuttering, hammering moment. Merlin fell over the edge first, spilling white pearls over his belly with a cry, followed after a flurry of wild thrusts by a gasping Arthur.

In the boneless, sleepy aftermath, Merlin held his breath. Because now that he and Arthur had done this deed—tethered their bodies in this binding way—would this world, too, get wrenched from him? Wasn’t that what happened whenever he managed to earn Arthur’s unerring love and yoked his body and soul to this man?

Merlin didn’t realize he’d curled into himself, hands clutched in his hair, waiting in terror for that great tearing shift in his gut… until he felt Arthur’s arms wind around him.

Arthur kissed his nape. “I’ve got you, Merlin.”

And just like that, his long-held breath released. Merlin spun in place and cupped Arthur’s cheek. “Do you?” The thrumming beat of their hearts had not quite come down from that greatest of sprints.

Arthur nipped at his palm. “You’re stuck with me, I’m afraid.”

“I should hope so,” Merlin huffed. “I’ve crossed enough dimensions and timelines to prove that even in death, ‘stuck with me’ is the only answer I’d accept.”

“For once, your stubbornness is a virtue.”

“For once? My stubbornness has saved your sorry arse more times than you can count.”

“Oh, I know,” Arthur said dryly. “I’ve spent many waking hours trying to count them all.”

“And?”

“I lost track at sixty-five.”

Merlin’s guffaw foundered under Arthur’s answering kiss.

“Will it always be like this?” Arthur asked, chuckling against his skin.

“Which part? The mind-blowing sex? Or the banter and barbs?”

“I meant the latter, but now I’d like to add the former to the table.”

“Is that all you want on the table?” A shiver scampered up Arthur’s body, tickling all the parts where Merlin was pressed to him. Oh, teasing him was going to be fun.

“I like the way you challenge me,” Arthur confessed. “I don’t ever want to lose that.”

Merlin stroked Arthur’s arm, a skimming sweep up and smoothing caress down. “You won’t. I’ll always be here to call you a dollophead or prat. Or flick you in the ear when you’re being either of the above. Just as I’ll be here to support, bolster, and protect you through Camelot’s trials and tribulations.”

“As you’ve always done.”

“Always. Now, go to sleep. And drape those prolific tentacles you call ‘limbs’ all over me, if you please.”

Arthur sniggered into Merlin’s shoulder. “I only ever drape on you, you know. In all my years of sharing bedrolls with knights on cold campaigns, I have it on good authority I’m renowned for keeping all arms and legs to myself.”

“Your unconscious knew before before your conscious ever came to its stubborn senses.”

“I guess destiny has a sense of humor.”

Merlin nestled into the cocoon of Arthur’s arms. “That, she does. She’s been fraternizing with Peace too much.”

Arthur brushed his lips against Merlin’s. “I’m glad.”

Me too, Merlin thought, tasting Arthur’s breath.

And there, basking under the brilliant caress of Arthur’s beaming smile, lit with the illumination of a thousand suns, Merlin knew he would never know the Grey again.