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The future and the past are one in the same.
Time is not linear. There is no cause and effect.
The first time he experiences endlessness, it is disorienting. He's running barefoot through thicket and brush and wet grass toward the lake, wind drying the streaks on his face, and he's diving, diving, arms outstretched like he's reaching for everything he'll never be able to keep.
He hits the water and it's as if the world spins one hundred and eighty degrees until he's upright, swimming toward the surface, lungs burning. The air he gulps is the same and everything else has changed. Most of the trees have been cut down, there are horrendous metallic noises far off into the distance, and a deep sense of exhaustion pervades his bones.
Merlin wakes like a shot in the dark, bolt upright, tee shirt plastered to his body with sweat.
Arthur rolls onto his side and drapes an arm across Merlin's thighs.
"You alright?"
Dirty blond hair is splayed over one of their grey-green pillows and the duvet has bunched round Arthur's waist. Merlin has never been so moved by the simplicity of the man's beauty; never been so grateful for the fingers curled against his hip, lazily drawing patterns onto cotton briefs.
"Mm, yeah, go back to sleep."
Merlin runs a shaky hand through his hair and burrows back into the cocoon of their bed. He watches the moon roam across the sky until his eyelids feel heavy. Arthur, just at the edge of sleep, pulls him close. Their breathing evens out as the deep dark blue is drained from the sky to give way to dishwater grey.
x
He's falling asleep on the sectional sofa to the strains of an acoustic cover of The Lumineers' Ho Hey and then they're screaming at each other from either end of a freezing cold corridor.
Arthur's got his hands on his hips and the waning moon affords them less light than the torches affixed to the stone walls.
"You're undermining my authority. How many times have I got to tell you, Merlin?"
"I don't care. I'm not going to let you do this alone!" his throat is raw. "You're being unreasonable. Let me go, please, I won't—"
"I won't have you hurt," Arthur says, so quiet that Merlin's shouting drowns it out. He wants to add, "I couldn't stand to have you hurt," but he doesn't, and neither does his servant.
That's where the conversation ends, because Arthur turns his back and Merlin is too angry to follow him. Merlin aches head to toe from a day's worth of scrubbing floors. He looks down to find his hands calloused, grease-stained from polishing chain-mail and battle weapons.
They go to bed alone. (Nearly everything important goes unsaid.)
They ride out the next morning together. (In silence.)
x
It's pouring rain and he's stretched out on his bed reading a text on rare healing herbs. Beneath the roar of the steady downpour, when it's quiet enough, he can hear Gaius puttering about or tinkering with glass vials. The smell of freshly baked bread wafts through the kitchen and into their quarters. He realizes idly that he hasn't eaten since breakfast.
Merlin rises to fetch some warm bread—maybe a fat gob of butter if he's lucky—and he feels the earth shift just as tangibly as he can feel magic amongst the Druids.
He blinks and there's sand beneath his toes, warm sun on his bare shoulders. When his eyes adjust to the burst of daylight, Arthur comes into focus: red swim trunks, a waxed board tucked under his arm, sunglasses leaving his expression unreadable.
"Come on!" Arthur shouts over the roaring waves.
Merlin wills himself forward until Arthur's free hand clasps one of his and they wade into the cold water.
His head is spinning, full to bursting.
It's like living two lives in the span of one.
x
When does it end?
When does it begin?
x
They're moving toward the bed without breaking contact. Arthur presses against him until they're flush and fingers grasp at the hem of a Death Cab for Cutie tee shirt.
Empty wine bottles and discarded socks litter the path they've trod toward the bedroom. Half-empty containers of Thai sit coagulating on the kitchen counter while the television hums its white noise in the background.
It isn't until Arthur's teeth and tongue drag across his partner's shoulder, collarbone, pectoral muscle that Merlin remembers to breathe. He lays his hand on Arthur's jaw to nudge him up, to press their lips together.
"This is it," Merlin says. It's all he can say, over and over. "This is it. This is it."
Arthur draws their lips together, slants and angles them so that he can move his body over Merlin's to cover him, whole, complete.
"Yes," he says. It's all he needs to say.
"Yes," Merlin echoes.
When his muscles tense and his mind is blissfully empty for those few blackout seconds, he's spinning, spiraling, falling away and Arthur doesn't even know it. Doesn't even register it. Doesn't feel absolutely replete of something he can only keep hold of when time allows.
The part of Merlin's brain in charge of rational thought seems so far removed, separated from his control as if through a thick haze, and he can't stop it from happening. He can't.
Not even when Arthur's forehead is pressed against his own, their fingers laced on the mattress, bodies undulating in tandem.
x
He's half dressed and staring out over Camelot's hearth-dotted landscape. It must be sometime past midnight, because the only noise he can hear is the shuffle of Arthur rearranging the bedclothes.
"Must I go?" he asks quietly.
The question is absurd. The answer is always the same.
"Merlin, you know I want..."
Want, but can't.
He can still feel the bruise of Arthur's bite across his bare chest.
Merlin shuts his eyes tight, tight, until a strong pair of arms wrap around his torso from behind. Arthur presses his lips to Merlin's neck but doesn't kiss; they stand there sharing warmth until one of them feels sufficiently apologized to and the other feels as if he's sufficiently apologized.
It's never the clear blue day that weighs on them, or the hunts (even in the deep of winter), or the meals they eat in separate quarters. It's always the moment before sleep; the solipsistic isolation in the most vulnerable of states. Each wants the other, whole, entire, and each knows better than to want.
So they share Arthur's bed before sleep (when they can).
And they fight to forget (when they can't).
x
Does it end?
Does it begin?
x
There is no way to control it. No way to find that singular moment in which one life becomes the former or the latter.
All he knows for certain is that Arthur is his love, once and future, before and after.
It is bearable—wonderful, everything he could ever want—when Arthur's body is pressed against the cradle of his hips, back to chest, vinyl record spinning soundlessly in the dark.
It is gutting when he wakes on a sack stuffed with hay, toes cold, muscles sore.
There is no way to ameliorate it. No way to ground himself.
x
He watches Arthur die in his arms on an expanse of green, green grass and sees the light leave his eyes. He launches the boat, sets the fire, walks the earth.
He weds Arthur on a brisk day in November. Red and orange leaves swirl at their feet in the middle of Hampstead Heath. They exchange vows, simple gold bands, and words that can never be erased from their history, or the earth, or the arc of time.
x
Long live the Queen!
I've left the adoption forms on the kitchen table.
x
I love—
x
—me too.
x
Each new day heralds a new age.
Each new age heralds a new day.
He loves and loses in equal measure, and it is always, always worth it.
What Merlin never understands—what Kilgharrah means (always meant) in telling him that Arthur will return when the need is greatest—is that it is his own need which calls Arthur forth from the Lake of Avalon. It is his own need that is so great, so powerful, the Once and Future King can neither escape nor deny it.
Because he feels it, too.
It is always them, together, two sides of the same coin.
The coin spins, spins, spins and never stops.