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3
Arthur shakes Merlin awake in the dead of the night looking so distraught Merlin’s certain someone’s died.
“What?” he gasps, shooting up to a seat. “Who—Arthur? What’s wrong?”
Arthur’s grip digs painfully into his shoulder. His eyes sear through the darkness into Merlin’s.
“Tell me what happened,” he pleads, and Merlin’s stomach jolts. Judging by his hysterical expression, Arthur already knows.
“Arthur…”
Arthur shakes, voice cracking. “Is it what I think?”
Merlin studies him. He realises he’s brought his own hand to clutch at Arthur’s wrist, where it still rests on his shoulder. Makes himself let go.
“What do you think happened?” he asks slowly.
The noncommittal response seems to confirm Arthur’s fears. A tortured sound escapes his lips. He lets go of Merlin suddenly, as if just noticing he’d grabbed him.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” he whispers, stricken.
Merlin looks to check the others are still asleep, hunching in on himself, trying to become as small as possible. “Please don’t be angry with me,” he tries, sounding pathetically weak to his own ears.
“Merlin.” Arthur shakes his head; keeps shaking it, seeming unable to stop. “I didn’t know. I didn’t know, I couldn’t—I don’t—why didn’t you tell me?!”
He doesn’t look angry, he looks—sick. Merlin’s almost forgotten that Arthur is Arthur. Clearly the only one he’s angry with is himself.
“Because I knew you’d feel horrible,” he mumbles, gesturing to Arthur as proof.
Arthur makes that disgruntled sound again, sliding a hand into his fringe and pulling hard. “You knew I… and what about you, Merlin? What about how you feel?”
Merlin’s got nothing to say to that. What about his feelings? They’ve never been worth taking into consideration before.
While he struggles to figure out how to respond, Arthur spirals. “I don’t understand,” he croaks. “I don’t understand why I’d hurt you like that.”
The answer, of course, is that he never would. The answer is that it’s solely the fault of Merlin and his own blasted magic.
“To be fair,” he says flatly, “it didn’t, er… hurt.”
The joke doesn’t land. He feels his plastered-on smile droop. He’s so tired. He wishes Arthur would just let him go back to sleep.
Arthur looks horrified at the comment, so Merlin sighs and tries a new approach. “You weren’t in your right mind.”
“I can’t have been. I would never—”
“I know,” Merlin cuts him off, clipped.
“I’d never take advantage of someone like that.”
What Merlin hears is, I’d never dream of putting my hands on you.
He sighs once more, growing wearier by the second. “Arthur, I know. Let’s just drop it. Please.”
Arthur tangles his other hand in his hair, twisting relentless knots. He gives Merlin a wretched look, eyes shining.
“Can you ever forgive me?”
And how is Merlin meant to forgive him, when Arthur’s done nothing in the first place to necessitate forgiveness? The only person Merlin can forgive for this is himself, and that’s not happening anytime soon. He put them both in that situation. He let Arthur do it knowing it wasn’t truly Arthur choosing to do so, because that’s just how bad Merlin wants him.
He shuts his eyes against a rush of guilt. Opens them and resists the urge to reach out and pluck Arthur’s hands from his hair before he pulls it all out. Pinches his lips into a poor excuse for a smile, one he knows won’t fool Arthur, but it’s all he can manage at the moment.
“Already have.”
It feels the way most things he says to Arthur feel: like a lie.
2
Arthur wakes in a private little slice of a camp sectioned off by a row of bushes, with an immediate and urgent sense that Merlin is in danger. That feeling is quickly displaced with emotions ranging from confusion to alarm when he sits up and looks down to find himself wearing the outfit of a town bumpkin.
A very petite town bumpkin.
The sky tells him it’s early, not yet dawn. He gets to his feet and prowls along silently until he spies Merlin slumped against a tree trunk, asleep in the midst of many people Arthur does not recognize.
Arthur looks around warily as he approaches, overcome with sudden certainty that whatever situation they’ve found themselves in is a distinctly unfavourable one.
Merlin’s head droops to his chest like his neck’s broken. Arthur kicks him awake, burning with humiliation when Merlin gapes up at him in his poor excuse of an outfit.
“You better have a damn good explanation for this, Merlin.”
Merlin’s chest heaves. He looks at Arthur like he’s never seen him before.
“Fine,” snaps Arthur, “then I’ll just carry on kicking you.”
He does, until Merlin makes a strangled noise and staggers to his feet. “I tried to stop you!” he cries.
It’s then that Arthur becomes aware of a gap in his memory that he is unable to fill. He sneers unkindly.
“What d’you mean? You’re talking gibberish!”
Merlin looks hard into his face. Relief clicks onto his own. “Arthur,” he says at last, voice thick. “You’re back!”
He explains, and as he does Arthur is able to picture snatches of the previous day in his mind. He knows what Merlin tells him is true. The worst has come to pass.
Camelot is lost.
And there’s something—else. Something Merlin’s not telling him. Something sitting heavy on Arthur’s lungs, something, something, he doesn’t know, it’s just out of his line of vision—but he feels it tense between them, something that frightens him out of his skin.
“You.”
A woman with a long braid and sculpted arms comes to stand before Merlin, propping her hands on her hips. Arthur didn’t know smugglers were so pretty.
“We leave as soon as the horses are watered.” Her sharp eyes flicker to Arthur, back to Merlin. Her frown deepens. “Are you… alright?”
“We’re great, thanks,” says Merlin with a bright fake grin, and starts to turn his back to her. But she steps closer, looking between them once more.
“I thought I heard something last night,” she says slowly, watching Merlin’s face.
Arthur watches too. He sees Merlin go beet red. Sees his lips part and a hint of fear in his eyes as they widen.
“No,” says Merlin quickly. “I mean—no, I didn’t. We didn’t hear anything, did we?”
He looks to Arthur, raising his eyebrows in desperation. Arthur shakes his head automatically.
“Hm.” She gives Arthur a dubious once over, all but confirming the feeling in his belly that tells him she suspects him of some sort of wrongdoing. “Well, if you’re ever in trouble…”
“No,” Merlin repeats, ears splotchy and pink. “No, it’s not… everyone's fine, really. Nothing like that. But. Yeah. Thanks.”
The gap in Arthur’s memory feels more like a canyon now: vast and unknowable. He can’t work out what it is he missed. Why this woman is looking at him that way. Looking at Merlin with pity. Why Merlin won’t look at him at all after that, won’t say a word.
Why he feels as though he’s done something unforgivable.
Before Arthur can ask what all that was about a gruff man comes along and calls him a simpleton, and from then on he’s largely occupied with fighting off Southrons and failing to conceal his identity and helping get Isolde to safety. But in the recess of his consciousness a warning bells blares, chanting wrong wrong wrong, and Arthur knows that voice never lies. Something has gone terribly wrong, something beyond the obvious, beyond Agravaine and his deception.
Round the dying campfire that night, Merlin tells Arthur he’s honest and brave and truehearted. Assures him there are others who feel the same. He wears an uncommonly serious look and still won’t hold Arthur’s gaze.
Arthur glances over at the couple dozing in each others’ arms, then back at Merlin.
“What did Isolde overhear last night?” he asks, voice low.
Merlin shifts uncomfortably. “Nothing. Just… trust me, yeah? You’ve plenty to worry about as is.”
It’s certainly true, but it doesn’t explain the words Merlin had said when Arthur woke him this morning. I tried to stop you, he’d implored.
Tried to stop what?
Arthur doesn’t have to waste much more time guessing, for when he dreams that night it all comes back to him. A betrayal beyond anything he could’ve imagined.
1
Merlin’s done it. The impossible. Something that’s never before been accomplished, despite his many enduring years of patience, trials and tribulations.
He’s rendered Arthur submissive.
Turns out all it takes is a simple spell. The right words in the right language in the right order. It’s not a spell Merlin’s ever used before, god no. Desperate times and all. It’s one he wasn’t so keen to produce, truth be told, because as entertaining as Arthur is traipsing after him in his scraps of clothing, all eager effort and earnest manners—Sorry, Merlin. No, you’re right. Probably should learn to think before I speak—what’s the point when Merlin can’t enjoy it fully, not when he’s too damn worried about keeping the man alive? When he knows Arthur’s not in his right mind, knows that it’s his own doing; and sure, he also knows it was absolutely vital of him to perform said spell in order to get Arthur out of Camelot and preserve his life, but the knowledge doesn’t do much to ease Merlin's guilt. It eats at him as the hours pass, as they make their way north through the woods and fall in with Isolde and Tristan.
After Arthur’s rubbed down their horses and rinsed their dishes and accidentally tumbled into the river in the process and sat by the fire to dry, Merlin finally gets him nestled in snug alongside a fallen tree trunk with a thin blanket and his own knapsack for a pillow, then he gets himself settled, too.
Arthur’s elbow jabs him in the ribs.
“Arthur.”
“Sorry, Merlin! Sorry. I can’t seem to get comfortable.”
Merlin sighs, rolling to face him. The king squirms to pull his blanket up around his shoulders, but his sandaled feet spring free from the bottom as he does, so he tugs the blanket back down to cover them then repeats the process four times over. Merlin sighs again. Murmurs,
“Still cold, turniphead?,” poking a sliver of bare midsection that’s become exposed.
Arthur wriggles closer, shamelessly pressing along Merlin’s side to siphon his body heat.
“A bit. I know it’s my fault. But you’re so nice and warm.”
Merlin huffs. The wonders never cease. He gives Arthur a bemused look and Arthur patiently observes him right back, smiling softly as if he shares in the joke. As if he believes Merlin would never keep him out of it.
Merlin knows each feature of his king’s face quite perfectly by heart. Each line and crease and shade and scar and size and shape and freckle. But this particular expression is new. Open and sincere. Merlin’s had all day to get used to it and has decided he just can’t. Though it’s appealing on Arthur, of course it is—Arthur is incontrovertibly attractive now matter how he scowls or pouts or shouts or snores.
Even changed like this, he’d had Merlin’s back. I agree with him, he’d said; like an idiot, of course, but just like Arthur—Arthur himself; the brash, pushy, wonderful man Merlin is proud to call his best friend—he hadn’t been afraid to step into the conversation when he sensed it needed redirection. I’m very annoying. Following Merlin blindly.
Behind them now, the firepit sizzles and dies. Merlin closes his eyes and thinks a quick spell to help keep them warm. Relaxes his limbs, the cadence of his breath.
One of Arthur’s legs nudges against his own. Arthur’s legs. They’re something else, more often than not concealed by trousers, but in these ratty shorts the round hard bulge of his muscles is unavoidable.
Merlin shudders, trying to shake it.
“You’re shivering.” Arthur turns his head into Merlin’s shoulder and hums. “Are you cold too, Merlin?”
He speaks with an unbearably soft voice the real Arthur never uses, and Merlin absorbs the words straight into his skin. The vibration made by Arthur’s throat.
He hopes the spell wears off soon.
“I’m fine. Try to go to sleep.”
Arthur hums once more then falls silent. Merlin spends the next several minutes convincing his body he’s in the clear. Once Arthur’s breath slows and evens, Merlin turns his back to him, shifting to put space between them.
He’s afforded mere seconds of peace, then Arthur copies him, rolling to his side. He scooches close and aligns their legs and brings an arm over to pull Merlin close against his front.
Merlin barks an astonished laugh. “Arthur.”
He feels Arthur’s forehead press into the back of his neck. “This is better,” he mumbles. “Mmm.”
He wriggles his hips and swipes a brisk hand down Merlin’s chest. Merlin squeezes his eyes shut, trying to trick himself calm. Better indeed. It’s inarguably better than, say, being beaten to a pulp on the training field. He feels vaguely responsible for not warning Arthur to be careful on the slick rocks by the riverbank, and therefore responsible for Arthur becoming wet and cold in the first place. He tries very, very hard to remember how tired he is.
Arthur sweeps his hand lower, rubbing Merlin’s jutting hipbone, then he tucks it firmly into Merlin’s lap, shoving it between his thighs. Merlin jerks fiercely and goes from semi-hard to so stiff it aches in the span of a second, his excited dick filling and twitching against Arthur’s wrist through his breeches.
“Whoa!” he cries, pushing at Arthur’s arm. Arthur just burrows in and puts his lips to Merlin’s ear.
“This is the warmest spot,” he declares, placidly pleased with the discovery. His hand slides to cup Merlin’s straining erection.
“Arthur,” Merlin chokes, shoving at him weakly. “Holy… hey, you, you can’t do that, okay? Stop, stop, oh my god, just—”
A sound rumbles from deep within Arthur’s chest. He pulls Merlin flush to him, continues to stroke his fingers in a slow, torturous drag.
I’m entirely in your hands.
“It’s you who’s in my hands now,” murmurs Arthur, reading his thoughts.
Merlin claws at his wrist, but Arthur doesn’t budge. Merlin’s entire length fits in his large insistent palm. It’s disgraceful, it’s terrifying, it’s intense and incredible and the sole thing Merlin desires above all else: Arthur in his basest form, Arthur for Merlin’s pleasure, Arthur allowing Merlin to pleasure him in return. An awful want that bloomed years and years ago and never fully went away, despite Merlin’s best attempts to snuff it. My pleasure.
He’s always carried a torch for Arthur. Anyone with half a brain can see it, he knows.
Anyone who’s not Arthur.
When it comes to Merlin, Arthur holds naught a matchstick.
Arthur would never, ever do this.
Merlin bucks suddenly. “Arthur, stop.”
Arthur’s voice dribbles into his ear like liquid silk. “But you’ve not finished,” he protests, a hairsbreadth from plaintive.
I’ll try harder in future.
Is that what this is? Did Merlin make Arthur to feel as though he owes him? Like this is required of him? Or is he just acting on instinct, naturally aroused by the approximation of another warm body?
“You know, Merlin—” Arthur’s hand slips beneath Merlin’s waistband, softly petting the wiry hair at his crotch— “I’ll admit I’m not feeling entirely myself today.”
Merlin lets out a loud whoosh of air as Arthur’s fingers dip lower and loosely circle his weeping cock.
“But I know I want this.” Arthur starts to jerk him sloppily, whispering all the while. “I’ve dreamt of you, Merlin.”
Merlin moans at this; at the feel of Arthur’s erection rocking into his backside.
“I remember,” Arthur continues, quite sure of himself. His deep, gorgeous, velvet voice Merlin so loves. “In my dreams I touch you. See what it makes you do. Just like this.”
He pauses and looks down along their twined bodies, as if remembering to check for results. “It’s leaking,” he says with gentle reverence.
“Oh god.” Merlin pushes back into Arthur, forward into the secure clutch of hand, finally losing it, hips snapping. “You’ve no idea what you’re saying right now…”
Arthur drops his head back down to mouth hotly at the slope of Merlin’s shoulder where it peeks from his scarf. “I think you’re close,” he decides.
“Yeah,” gasps Merlin, writhing. “Fuck, I’m gonna, I’m gonna—”
All the words he knows leave him, body releasing in profound waves that Merlin rides with ecstasy; the kind that sours to despair moments after it’s run its course.
Sure enough, he’s hardly finished when the stark horror of what they’ve just done—what Merlin just let Arthur do—hits him like a brick. “Oh god,” he moans again.
Arthur lets go of Merlin’s spent cock to instead seize his thigh, gripping him tight as he ruts into Merlin’s bum. He comes not a minute later, grunting as Merlin lies there slack with shock. Merlin feels Arthur’s wetness seep through the seat of his trousers and his own cock gives a weak twitch, for this is surely the thrill of its lifetime, and also he thinks he might possibly cry.
Arthur stays curled around him for a long time, catching his breath. Merlin keeps still and hates himself. He’s ruined everything. It happened too fast. It wasn’t enough. It’s all he’ll ever get.
He tried to stop him.
Eventually Arthur produces a cloth from Merlin’s bag, carefully wiping up as much of their mess as he can. Merlin doesn’t look. He can’t bear to see the innocent smile that he knows graces his face when he musses Merlin’s hair sweetly and says, sounding sleepy and blissful,
“Told you it’s my pleasure.”