Fic: Never Pay the Reaper With Love Only [3/3]
Title: Never Pay the Reaper With Love Only [3/3]
Rating: NC-17
Pairing: Merlin/Arthur
Word count: ~19,000
Prompt: The Incredible Hulk (2008).
Summary: "You think they're making Merlins," Morgana commented very quietly.
Arthur registered that it was Merlin, pale and gaunt under a black hoodie, body moving into action at the sight of his dark lashes blinking and his Cons making a swift exit.
He ran, dodging the chair that he'd tossed out of the way in the act of standing, leaving himself logged on and just not caring.
Arthur ran a hand through his hair and looked frantically between the ends of the corridor, glancing down the stairs but - damn him, when did he get so fast? - Merlin had vanished.
But vanishing and disappearing were two different things.
*
Merlin ran and didn't stop until he'd reached a back door that he knew gave with a quick press of the shoulder and a foot in the right place. He wasn't leaving Camelot until the morning; he needed somewhere to hide.
"What is the meaning of-"
Merlin stared up from kneeling on the kitchen floor as Gaius paused in the doorway, dressed in a nightshirt, wielding a hardback copy of a history of dissection in medicine.
"Boy, you look terrible."
"Light reading you have there," Merlin responded with a shaky grin. Coming from a doctor, terrible meant quite a bit. Merlin settled for a glare in response to Gaius' next comment and sat down at the kitchen table, dropping his bag by his ankle and taking the tea shoved in front of him within a minute. Gaius was nothing if not efficient, Merlin would grant.
"How long are you here for, then?" Gaius asked resignedly, sitting opposite him and raising an eyebrow in pre-emptive disapproval.
"Not long," Merlin answered, mouth quirking in a half-smile that was part apology. "Gaius- my mum. They're not-" Merlin tightened his hand around the cup and shook his head.
"They watch her," Gaius answered gently, "any contact you make would be noticed. But beyond that, they do nothing. Between us, we can make sure of that at least."
Merlin heard the steel in Gaius' voice and saw the thin line his mouth made, looking over his cup to meet the retired professor's eyes. "Thank you." Then it registered and he frowned: "Who's 'we'?"
Gaius gave him the look that mildly suggested he was an incurable idiot. "Morgana. Arthur. Sometimes, I suspect, General Fey, for all of your scientific disagreements." Gaius sighed and nodded, "whatever it suits your self-pity to believe, lad, you have allies here and always will."
Merlin felt his throat burn at that, trying hard not to make too much of the way Arthur had been helping protect his mother - his mother had always liked him, always fed him too much - and was saved by answering when the doorbell rang.
Gaius shot him a panicked glance and gestured; Merlin moved - no point in running outwards if they were surrounding the place.
He heard a voice downstairs and had to work to control his heartbeat on realising that it was Arthur. Of course he'd know.
The cupboard was also tiny. But if it was that or be caught and bottled in formaldehyde, Merlin would suffer getting cosy with musty spare bedding. Or even worse, involving Arthur and his sheer nobility in the mess they'd made.
*
"I should wish that he had," Gaius answered, all the while nodding to Arthur, who pointed at himself and then the house.
He glared when Gaius shook his head.
"I'd imagine that he'd be very easily spooked," Gaius told him, accompanied with an eyebrow.
Got that bloody right, Arthur thought, wondering how the on-flight supper was on his pointless flight, the one he was missing as he stood at Gaius' door. If tracking Merlin down and flushing him out in Camelot didn't work, Arthur considered, he could just show up in Edinburgh and get this ridiculously noble notion of self-sufficiency out of Merlin's system then. It was like he'd forgotten they were stupid and co-dependent and quite bluntly, Arthur didn't like it.
But Gaius was guarding the door and telling him to be smarter than that.
"Thank you, Gaius," Arthur said loudly, then leaned in, "is he going to the bus stands?"
"I'd say so," Gaius nodded, tacking on, "disturbing my rest at this time of night."
Arthur concealed a grin and walked away.
*
Merlin watched Gaius unhelpfully just stand there as he clambered out from among the pots, pans, ironing board and bedding.
"I swear that was bigger when I was younger," Merlin gestured back at the cupboard with a glare.
"When you were seven and the red pot was your favourite hat," Gaius deadpanned. "Or when you were fifteen and wearing inadvisable collars and you'd run away from your poor mother?"
Merlin rolled his eyes, then walked to the window facing the front. Kneeling in case he was seen, he pressed fingertips against the cold sill and looked outwards. There, headed towards the end of the street, he could see a familiar coat with the collar turned up against the rain.
And really, he'd known it'd come to this when he'd chosen to hide at Gaius' house, not in any number of much more random, untraceable places.
Merlin swallowed, looked at Gaius and began, "I-", before shaking his head and grabbing the backpack.
It was selfish, it was stupid, and once he'd ran out into the rain away from sense and the sensible plan, there was no way back. Once he'd had even a close sight of what he'd been missing like a limb, of Arthur the way he remembered him but not quite, but certainly not like that photo he'd been carrying for eleven months, he'd known there was no going back. Because what was different, what made Arthur older, a little rough-edged and wild-eyed, was what made Merlin run, run and keep running across roofs and strange surfaces: the missing of the other. And now that they were close enough to feel the link tug and pull, it couldn't be ignored.
For the second time in a night, heart hammering just within the safe range, Merlin bolted.
*
The bus stands. He could get there by car, have a stake out, wait for a scrawny bastard trying to be inconspicuous. Edinburgh. He could fly in the morning, be Dragon and really surprise him.
Either way, he was finding him. Within days - days that weren't weeks, weren't months, weren't indeterminate years of Not Knowing and clenching fists and playing nice with his father for the scraps of information he could glean. Days that weren't never because Merlin wasn't dead and he'd seen proof of it for himself.
It should have made him feel better, even patient, but it didn't because Arthur really wasn't a very patient person and to be walking home - to sleep, to get up and eat toast and other mundane things - with Merlin right there in Camelot made him even less patient.
And it was still bloody raining. He could really do with a walk that wasn't in the dead of night or the rain.
Arthur was quite unhappily settling into his own morose thoughts when he stiffened and paused, hearing hurried footsteps slapping the pavement in the rain. He clenched his fists and turned, glancing around the suburban street with its polite little houses and well-marked out hedges.
Which was when Merlin appeared out of the darkness between two dim streetlights, running towards him with all the melodrama and flailing limbs of a fourteen year old girl and Arthur's feet were moving of their own accord to meet him.
And then, then, days turned into five steps, turned into pulling Merlin against his chest to make sure he was really there (not that hugging him had ever been useful in ascertaining that - see above: scrawny). Damp backpack straps scraped at Arthur's chin as Merlin's hands scrabbled for purchase on Arthur's back and the rain kept falling, but not against Arthur's left cheek because that he found pressed against Merlin's. And then it was really the only natural thing, to kiss him on the middle of a deserted street getting soaked and with the taste of rain in their mouths.
*
Merlin pulled back with a grin, heart racing for a reason that he could categorically call good for the first time in months.
Arthur wasn't a fan of the pulling back, planting a hand on the back of Merlin's neck and pulling his forehead forward to clash against his own with a shake of his head.
"You need to come with me-"
Merlin thought about all of the objections he could and likely should make, then realised he'd made them all moot and void when he hadn't just let Arthur walk away from Gaius' house.
"You're here for the data, right?" Arthur asked, blinking and rubbing Merlin's neck in circles through the hoodie.
Merlin nodded, not trusting himself to speak. It was contact, it was another human and it was Arthur.
"Well, you need to come with me," Arthur answered stubbornly, "I have the last copy at the house."
*
Arthur watched surreptitiously as Merlin followed him into the house a few steps behind. Merlin paused in the doorway of the bedroom, hesitating - neither going in or walking past.
As Arthur booted up the laptop and retrieved the hidden flash drive that the data was stored on, preparing to upload it to a backup server that he could tell Merlin about, he waited for it.
"It'd be best if I disappear."
"Great. Where we going?" Arthur didn't look up from the laptop.
*
Merlin looked at Arthur and blinked. "Are we going to argue about this?"
Arthur still didn't look up from the laptop. "Probably. I'll put the kettle on."
They moved to the kitchen silently. Merlin ran a finger along the kitchen table, remembering when they'd gone to get it, which had gone about as well as the two of them and their domestic dysfunctions ever could (we're building whole new gene therapies, we'll manage a bloody table; no, really, Ikea's fine; I have a partner, do I still need a wooden chair?; oh God, I made you buy Ikea; yep, you're never getting rid of me - you know too much).
Arthur moved around the kitchen, seeing to the kettle with a thorough concentration that jarred against the shreds of normal they'd managed to stretch. Merlin noticed with too much relief that things were still in the same place, even if Arthur had gotten used to making for himself when it had always been Merlin who'd made tea before. The soft, occasional sounds of Arthur's bare feet on the kitchen floor made Merlin consider grabbing a laptop, shoving on a playlist the way they'd always filled the kitchen with noise before. Looking at the layers of dust on the player dock by the microwave, he decided against it: it seemed they'd gotten used to glimpses of a quieter life.
Arthur glanced over his shoulder, as if he'd suddenly thought of something to say and break the silence, but looked back to stirring in the sugar.
Merlin braced his side against the table and fidgeted with the pen on it. He wanted to believe he could still stand in bare feet in their kitchen, but the wood hard against his hip bone was saying otherwise. From the way Arthur was taking ten billion years to make a cup of tea, scrabbling gracefully for one of their three teaspoons in the cutlery drawer (Merlin expected him to have lost them and emerge with a fork), Arthur no longer believed either of them could fit in the house. He wondered if anyone else had seen how deliberate every action Arthur took had become, how carefully thought out - Morgana, Gwen, Merlin thought. It had been at the edges of Merlin's vision since the rain: the way Arthur tugged up the collar of his jacket and hunched his shoulders, that was new; the way the house hadn't changed except for Arthur stripping it to the minimum, that wasn't new, but it was different.
Before he'd just been a lazy git living with a messy git- less stuff, less stuff to pick up off the floor. This felt like walking into a house half-left, half a sales pitch and half a museum with shadows for valuables. The pen dropped from his hand.
"Of course," Merlin heard the tin clack of the plastic biro lid on the table as though from a distance. "Of course it was you."
Arthur froze, fingers half extended in mid-air and on the edge of the steaming cups. He turned and braced both hands, palms flat, against the edge of the work surface and met Merlin's eyes. "Yes. Do you still want the tea?"
*
Arthur wondered if he'd just fucked absolutely everything up when Merlin froze and appeared to be shaking, if the lines of his shoulders were anything to go by. But then he laughed. He laughed and he looked up through a grin and through eyes that were actually watering and he walked across the kitchen - and Arthur was the one that froze.
Merlin put a hand on either side of Arthur and grinned close to him, "Of course I want the bloody tea you bloody prat."
Arthur grinned slowly and swallowed. "I don't care what Gaius says, you've got a mental affliction."
Merlin nodded and grinned and sat at the table. "Probably. Took up with you, didn't I?"
Before Arthur could reply, his phone rang. They glanced at each other, Arthur shrugged and picked it up. "Morgana."
*
"Get the hell out of there," Morgana hissed down the line, "they know he's there- you need to leave."
Arthur muttered a quick thanks, closed the phone and moved to the bedroom. He shoved the laptop into his bag and threw Merlin his backpack.
"They're coming?" Merlin asked, mouth a thin line, and Arthur wanted to take two minutes they did not have to smooth a thumb over it, even with the knowledge that it wouldn't make the bitter edge leave.
"They're coming."
"One thing-" Merlin shuffled a little uncertainly on his feet, then moved quickly to the living room and returned with the photo of the four of them. "I was looking for the other one, but-"
"Already in mine," Arthur grinned across the room, and they moved.
"Oh-"
"-fuck," Arthur finished, nodding grimly and blinking into the search light that flickered on as they open the front door, cars rolling up the road with tanks, as if it was an enemy army they had to subdue, not Merlin and Arthur.
Arthur's eyes flickered to Merlin's, which were flickering down to his watch. Concentrating on the sound, Arthur could hear it beeping quickly and pulled Merlin back into the house.
There was a shout and the circus ground to a halt - Arthur twitched the living room curtain and felt his stomach flip unpleasantly.
"What is it?" Merlin asked, back flat against the wall and sweat breaking out on his forehead.
"My father," Arthur answered flatly, "he seems to want to talk."
Merlin and Arthur shared a look.
"How long do you need to calm down?"
Merlin looked at him and Arthur blinked at the thing in his eyes - the alien there that was very much not Merlin but was entirely him all at once. "I'm not going back, Arthur. That's not how this ends."
Arthur swallowed and looked out at his father, waiting expectantly, and the men arrayed behind him with the guns and the tanks but still just men at the end of it all.
He looked at Merlin and saw that he knew it.
"They're out the back?"
"They've got it covered," Merlin answered grimly, gesturing upwards and mouth twisting at the parody of all the action films they'd ever watched in his voice.
The thing they were both trying hard not to say stampeded through Arthur's head: if they wanted out of there together, in one piece and uncaptured, they only had one way out.
"I don't want you to do this," Arthur ground out for the simple reason that it felt like it needed to be said: Merlin eleven months before would have taken it as read, Merlin now needed that little bit more reassurance that Arthur wasn't exactly like the men on the outside, wasn't asking this because he wanted to see it happen.
"I don't want to do this," Merlin answered with a nod that implied he'd got Arthur's point.
"How long do you need to get angry?" Arthur asked, tugging him into a bruising kiss as the search lights intruded through the windows and they heard the helicopters above.
Merlin took off the backpack and handed him it. "You'll know."
Arthur guessed that he would, turning and walking forward to the front door as Merlin moved to the kitchen in the back.
He realised his hands were shaking when he sat the bags by the door, bracing his forehead against it and keeping his hand hovering above the handle.
He thought about Merlin, the way he could see his body silhouetted in the doorway of the kitchen. Merlin stood, fists clenched and head bowed, feet shoulders' width apart and bracing for an impact that wouldn't come from the outside. He remembered Morgana, holding onto a doorframe in a violet dress, eyes haunted by things she hadn't yet done, and Gwen, looking at him sadly as she put the last of her bags in her silly toy car to drive to Edinburgh - to leave because the military had left her no option to stay.
And then Arthur remembered his father by his side and Merlin winking on the chair at the end of the beginning.
They were none of them fighters except now that they had to be; Arthur turned the handle and walked out into the glare.
*
Merlin, standing rigid between their breakfast bar and the Ikea table, was panicking.
He'd never actually chosen to change before, never willingly offered his control up to his bloodstream with here, have it, let me smash things now. It was a process he'd put quite a lot of time into slowing, suppressing, stopping. To be casting his eyes around his kitchen and willing that beat at his wrist - the mechanical sound that merged with the pulse until they were one and the same - to speed up, to break the barrier-
He didn't know how.
It'd always been beyond him, why it happened. Yes, he got angry, he panicked, his heart rate increased, but no more so than a normal human being. It wasn't quite as precarious as it seemed. On the edge between pissed off and beyond control, there was a trigger, one that made the former the latter and left Merlin with nothing to do but hold on.
The lights threw themselves in the windows and he could feel Uther Pendragon's portable army circling, shifting, a behemoth unsteady on still feet and waiting for the sign. He could feel Arthur's every step closer to them, walking among them with head held high - just like always, just like when they were whole seas apart.
There had to be a way.
*
Arthur took two steps onto the spookily silent front garden and focused on his father. His father who likely wouldn't actually kill him, regardless of the many, many guns and lethal phallic looking things pointed in his direction by scary, silent people.
As Arthur looked at his father, his features drawn tight and hands too loose, too limber, trying not to shift between his feet and waiting, it sunk in at last that they'd been leaking words and losing common ground for as long as Arthur could remember.
His father had tried, after his mother, to raise him. But his parentage had been an incidental fact, never quite following to the emotional tie it should have granted, his father too much the servant of the military he loved more. He and his father were two who could not stand in the same place at once - not even if they wanted to, not even if they tried. And as of his father trying to kill Merlin, Arthur no longer had reason to try.
Looking at his father, standing uneasy on the front garden of the house Merlin and Arthur had chosen, Arthur saw his father realise it, too.
Coldly, Arthur wished he'd waited until after the dramatic escape to finally wake up to the fact that Arthur wasn't coming home.
Uther Pendragon looked him in the eye, shadows under his eyes erased by the white lights, gradations in his voice flattened by the static of the crowd. "You won't stand aside."
Arthur raised his chin and let his hands settle at his side. "No."
Uther blinked, then raised an open hand.
*
It was the ultimate in cosmic injustice: months of trying to suppress his other self and Merlin couldn't find the fury when he needed it.
He'd methodically gone through everything in his life that had ever pissed him off: Victoria tube station on rare London trips, his father's occasional card or letter, supposed to fix twenty-odd years of not being there, the looks when he'd walked down the street with Arthur, the way Shelley Andrews had laughed at his misguided Valentines card in primary four-
It wasn't working, none of it, not even the humiliating, the infuriating- nothing, not until he ran to the front room to see Arthur backing slowly towards the door, men not carrying tranq guns moving forward slowly and Uther Pendragon just standing there, watching, signaling them on.
His heart shuddered, beating against his ribcage like an insistent, vengeful fist.
*
Arthur kept his eyes on the men, kept them stepping as he stepped, kept the pattern, just like he'd been taught.
Five steps from the door, five steps from the bags, thinking please God Merlin hurry the fuck up, hating himself for the thought, he heard it.
So did the men, guns with laser sights focusing on the window to the living room. The window was shattered by canisters of gas already streaming smoke as Arthur watched, feeling a grabbing hand on his upper arm and jerking his elbow back into someone's - anyone's - nose.
It was a scream. Raw, mid-range, ripped from the throat, it came through the jagged edged window and summoned Arthur through the door while the men with guns decided they had a more important target than him.
Arthur froze in the doorway of the living room, watching Merlin's body rage and twist through the thin veil of gas and raising his collar against it.
Merlin's bare feet grew, his trousers shrinking back and back to below the knee. His clenched fists opened, closed, exploded in size. His back arched and when his upper body fell back to the floor, the weight caused the sofa (not Ikea) to jerk into the air.
Arthur stood upright, paralysed, parallel with the vertical edge of the doorframe as his heart hammered and he was terrified to take a breath.
Merlin - it had to still be Merlin, somewhere, or else what had Arthur been fighting for for eleven months? - knelt on the carpet like a sprinter at the start of a race, head bowed and heaving chest tucked under a smooth, large ridge of a back that looked more akin to Atlas, to a mountain, than to the wraith Arthur knew.
Arthur didn't move, hearing the men outside moving, willing one of the two of them to break the paralysis because they had seconds. No more.
Merlin looked up, eyes a gold colour Arthur had never seen, narrowed in anger and upper lip arching in a snarl.
Insistently, uncompromisingly, Arthur ordered his brain to remember that they weren't in the lab and that he and Merlin had, this once, chosen this.
Merlin lunged, an avalanche of flesh that broke the remaining shell of the window and a significant part of the wall attached to it. The skin, Arthur noted, grabbing the bags, repelled bullets along with being a shade of green. Distantly, he realised that that was very cool, but then felt an arm - no, a hand - around his hips, picking him up.
His father's voice rose, ordering everyone, anyone, all of them, to stop shooting while Arthur tried to hold onto the two bags and bit back complaints about the angle at which he was being picked up and carried like a rag doll.
Merlin snarled, using his free hand to kill a tank with his fist, and Arthur saw the air around them blur.
*
It was hours later when the world settled and Arthur was able to slip from his position sitting in the crook of Merlin's folded arm to the ground. Looking around with a swallow, Arthur realised that he had no idea exactly how far they'd traveled, only that they were a strange assortment of smells and that he had, at one point, passed out for a few hours thanks to the knock out gas at the house. Sniffing his coat, he felt his eyes widen because fuck, that was salt water.
Merlin settled his weight cross-legged on the damp floor and gave him an unblinking, expectant look. Arthur ran a hand through his hair.
"Well, it's a cave," he started, looking up at Merlin. He didn't mean to sound ungrateful, but really, it was hardly the Hilton.
There was a low rumble in Merlin's over-sized, green throat that Arthur took to mean, don't complain, ungrateful bastard.
That was something Arthur hadn't really realised - along with the fact that the French press hadn't been exaggerating with the 'leaps miles at a time' stuff: Merlin was green. Literally green, like he'd signed up for Wicked or been dropped in a vat of bad chemicals or been covered in grass stains uniformly. Green. It was really weird.
And unlike normal-Merlin, the hulking-great-badass-Merlin seemed content to do girlie shit like stare at the stars and the moon and the clouds. Arthur didn't know what to do with that except pace - until another low groan and glare told him in no uncertain terms to stop it.
A somewhat patronising - and heavy - pat at his head made it clear that he wasn't to start pacing again anytime soon.
Arthur glared. "Just because you've got a couple of stone on me right now is no excuse to be superior. Every litter had a runt," Arthur reminded him primly, "and you were still it."
There was a snort.
Arthur sighed, rubbing his hands together and folding them between his knees. He blinked, pursed his lips and let out a slow breath. He could fill the silence with anything, with updates about all the people Merlin would want to know about, with small talk or by making up names for the stars, but his mouth wouldn't shut up, kept tripping him up by saying things he really meant. "You know, people are supposed to go through this awkward stage where they tick boxes to land at boyfriend. Or girlfriend."
Merlin, eyes still that unsettling shade of light gold, kept staring outwards.
"So I've heard, anyway," Arthur muttered, then grinned. "I was about to make a crack about this being a shit date even by our standards, but really. Cave. View. Moonlight. People pay for this crap."
There was a raised eyebrow - an eyebrow as thick as several of Arthur's fingers and in terrible need of maintenance. And oh yes, one that stood dark against the aforementioned green skin. That look Arthur knew; he knew because they'd both learned it from Gaius before they'd ever met and Arthur was better at it.
It was new and strange, Merlin being the one to protect him with physical force, Merlin being the stronger. But they were still the same, Arthur realised. They still functioned in halves.
"We never really did dates. Never really needed them. Only ever called you 'partner', even back at the start."
He leaned forward and fixed his eyes on the distant trees, not even asking where they were because they'd figure that out.
Merlin leaned forward and mirrored him.
*
He was never sure if he woke up or if being boiled down to himself brought him to an awareness of already being awake: in the limited experience he had of the moment of waking from the transformation, it always slipped away into oh, shit, I'm half-naked and cold and there's rodents and strange walls and where the fuck am I.
No rodents, this time. And apparently, if he were dragging Arthur with him, his other self made more of an effort with the lodgings. They were in an honest-to-God cave, one that looked out over hills and forest and scared Merlin a little because wild, unknown places like that didn't exist in the near vicinity of Camelot. Or else surely Arthur would have dragged him camping or hiking or trekking or shagging in that direction before then - he'd dragged him to the Highlands. And the Pentlands. And over half of Wales because Merlin had mentioned that ten generations back, he had Welsh blood or something. That hadn't been an invitation to commune with the hills far from wifi because unlike Arthur, Merlin hadn't really been great at turning off his internet dependency.
All of which was a good way to avoid the guilt already creeping through his stomach, watching Arthur sleep against the wall of the cave, his hair tastefully damp and sweeping across his forehead, coat wrapped around him tight. It was a good way to avoid waking him to the fact that he was now just as On The Run as Merlin.
Arthur stirred of his own accord as Merlin dug socks out of his backpack, slipping his feet into the Cons that had miraculously survived everything they'd been chucked through of late.
It was only when Arthur stood up and stretched, looking a little bit mank but in a hot way, that Merlin realised all of his limbs were about as reliable as overcooked pasta for standing on. Arthur helped, like always, by pointing out that, "Fuck, Merlin, you look like a heroin addict."
Merlin settled for a glare, taking the offered coat from Arthur and standing with a violent exhalation of breath. Still, he didn't complain about the coat, or the hand under his elbow as they made their way down the hills to wherever they'd come to a halt.
*
"What the fuck is that?" Arthur asked, staring at the gigantic thing that had just appeared on the horizon.
"I'd say it's an exemplary example of fifteenth century architecture with fascinating remnants of its twelfth century origins, and that we shouldn't be fooled by its nineteenth century renovations," Merlin rattled off in a deadpan between gasps as they stopped on the dirt track.
Arthur looked at him, then spied the damp, trampled leaflet Merlin was clutching in one hand, cuffing him round the head with a grin and promptly stealing it, curling his lip up while he attempted an accent. "Cheeky bugger. Chateau de Pierrefonds. What a pile of piss. Don't suppose we can beg a room off them for the night?"
Merlin grinned crookedly and stole the leaflet back. "I'd give the Beast a couple of rounds if he tried to lock you up."
"Bastard," Arthur shot back, laughing despite himself. "This horribly touristy little map says there's a town nearby."
*
They stumbled into the pretty, expected town of Pierrefonds an hour and a half later, detaching from each other slowly and having a low volume argument about hotels.
Merlin lost, but Arthur had to concede that that was partly because he was also beginning to lose the ability to stay awake.
He threw him a look of concern and debated dumping him on a bench while Arthur sorted out rooms in the hotel they just happened to be walking past. He decided that it was close enough, dumping Merlin on a chair in the hallway and taking a breath.
*
Merlin sometimes found himself in awe of Arthur, a fact not depreciated by the way that Arthur was currently doubled in his vision. He had a way with people that was downright terrifying, if useful.
He did what he was told, for once, and stayed sat on the ridiculously plush chair while Arthur walked up to the desk, completely refusing to acknowledge that he looked filthy and scruffy, breaking out the smile that had, once upon a time, made him drop expensive science equipment.
*
Speaking in terribly, terribly polite English, with a self-deprecating smile when he attempted French, Arthur shook his head and mentioned something about tequila and he doesn't drink much with regards to Merlin, dropping enough hints of a stag night gone wrong and saying that a quiet room, as quiet as you have would be lovely. All of which translated to: please don't think we're anything but harmless, wayward, feckless boys, who want nothing more than to sleep off dreadful hangovers and really, we won't be any trouble, and really, have you seen the colour of my credit card?
Arthur paid with a debit card, flashing the credit card to one of his front accounts incidentally, before retrieving Merlin and pushing him into the beige lift.
"You speak fluent French," Merlin muttered against his neck, seemingly having requisitioned Arthur's left side for structural support.
Arthur didn't really mind, slipping a hand into his own coat pocket, currently swamping Merlin's skinny frame and tugging him in the direction of the room. "I do - but this was less suspicious. Come on, you, get in."
*
The last thing Merlin remembered, he'd been letting Arthur push him into a room that seemed entirely off-white and he'd been falling onto stupidly soft sheets - really, hadn't Arthur realised they were on the run?
"I highly doubt anyone is looking for us in France," Arthur said with a raised eyebrow, sitting at the table by the window in the room. "Or if they are, they'll be spread so thin searching half of the rest of Europe that we can slip through the net. If they know you could have come this far, their search radius is beyond what they have space to cover. "
Merlin blinked at the delicately patterned ceiling and sat up. "But, your credit card- cameras-"
"The cameras only matter if anyone checks them," Arthur answered calmly, "and by that point, we'll be far away. I paid with a debit card that has a very small amount of money in the account-" Merlin snorted, well aware of what Arthur considered 'a very small amount of money', "and hence, is disposable. The same can be said for several other accounts I hold in false names."
Despite his initial panic, Merlin had to admit that all of that sounded eminently sensible.
And then it sunk in and he blinked, looking between Arthur and the curtains closed against the afternoon sun and the turkey sandwich in front of a showered Arthur, dressed in clothes that must've come from his conveniently packed bag. Arthur, who was calmly telling him that he wasn't going anywhere. Ever.
"So-" Merlin curled fists in the quilt and swallowed, shaking his head. "Wait- you could- your father-"
Arthur moved smoothly from the chair and sat on his knees on the bed, eyes utterly calm and level, only a single ripple as he clenched his jaw enough to show any tension. Merlin looked up at him, unable to do much of anything else with him sitting right there and staring. "Merlin, understand that I have been planning this meticulously for a very long time. Even before you showed up on that bloody forum."
Merlin looked down at his curled fists and blinked again, then looked up and found Arthur's somewhat worried eyes staring down at him. "Well, if you're going to be organised about it-"
Arthur grinned and ducked his head, slipping a hand to flat across the back of Merlin's neck and jerking their foreheads together with a laugh.
"So is this when I apologise for ruining your life and nearly killing you?" Merlin asked, feeling Arthur's breath hot on his neck and his quiet laugh in his shoulders.
"Only if I get to apologise for ruining your DNA and your life," Arthur shot back, mouth curving into a crooked smile.
"No, I don't think so," Merlin answered firmly, pushing Arthur's shoulders back lightly, enough to look him directly in the eyes as he said it, said that he didn't blame him, and saw him nod.
"Enough angst has been had," Arthur said very seriously before looking at Merlin, who shook his head, both of them laughing without meaning to.
Merlin casually grazed his lips across Arthur's forehead, feeling Arthur's hands on his hips as he sat up on the bed and extended a foot out of it. "Hey-" Arthur frowned, tugging him back, "where-"
"Shower," Merlin rolled his eyes, putting a hand solidly on Arthur's collarbone and looking at him, "I'm almost certain that I absolutely stink."
Arthur looked between the bed and the shower with slightly narrowed eyes, then between the table and the shower door.
"You'll be able to see me the whole time."
They froze and Merlin swallowed. He'd meant it as a joke, a potentially filthy joke, but that wasn't quite the tone it'd come out. Arthur smiled softly, seriously, telling Merlin everything he'd ever need to know about the previous eleven months.
Wordlessly, Merlin moved off the bed and into the shower, leaving the door to the bathroom open.
"Here," Arthur tossed him a plastic bag, which Merlin caught while accidentally dropping his towel as he left the bathroom. Arthur snorted, Merlin threw him a look, noting with a smirk that his pupils had dilated in the process.
"What's this?" Merlin asked, sitting on the edge of the bed he'd woken up in, "and tell me you put the Do Not Disturb sign up on the door."
"I did, and I wasn't sure which you wanted-" Arthur nodded to the bag, "I went out to the shop across the road while you were asleep."
Merlin pursed his lips, suppressing a grin. "There's a sports shop across the road?"
*
Arthur carefully kept his expression nonchalant and his posture relaxed as Merlin held up the extra-extra-large dark blue running trousers and the pairs of more normal-sized khaki combat trousers, with the option to tie the leg up at the knee. He'd thrown in a couple of tee-shirts and jumpers while he was at it.
"And second-hand army stuff," Arthur answered, still nodding calmly and very carefully not saying exactly how fraught that ten minute trip had been- it'd been right across from the hotel and necessary, he knew, but still.
"Thanks," Merlin said quietly, fingering the strap of the watch and putting it on wordlessly.
Arthur sat on the edge of the bed next to him, watching him fumble with the watch strap and quickly dancing fingertips across the inside of Merlin's wrist to fasten it for him.
"Thanks," Merlin repeated, lower, looking up with not a hint of a joke and Arthur's breath caught.
They leaned forward, foreheads against each others' yet again because it was the easiest place to start - because it was how a sudden, triumphant, end-of-experiment hug had turned into a kiss the first time - and Arthur could hear Merlin's breath speeding up. He smelled like the hotel shampoo, like the artificially minty toothpaste in the bathroom, like everything else normal and expected, a fact that caught Arthur off guard and amazed him because it was so absolutely normal. Arthur ran a hand up Merlin's bare upper arm, feeling the newly-toned muscles there and seeing Merlin's lips part slightly at the contact.
Merlin tilted his head up, his chin and nose and jaw rubbing against the lines of Arthur's own, his chin resting for a beat on Arthur's and the tip of his nose against the underside of Arthur's eyebrow. Arthur placed a hand flat on his bare collarbone, fingers curving around his shoulder, tugging Merlin down without moving him back, tugging him down so their mouths lined up and met.
Arthur felt Merlin thread a hand through his hair behind his ear, catching his lower lip between his own, his other hand insistently tugging at the hem of Arthur's t-shirt. Arthur helped with that because really, it was only fair, what with Merlin practically straddling him in nothing but a towel - a towel that Arthur could predict would be on the floor relatively quickly.
They fell backwards, Arthur turning to pin Merlin to the bed, Merlin groaning while he kissed down his neck, his head tilting back and off the edge of the single bed while his hands moved for purchase on Arthur's upper back. Arthur put his knees on either side of Merlin's hips and tugged him up, Merlin's hands pushing at Arthur's waistband and working at his jeans.
Arthur let him, toeing off the jeans when they got to his knees and feeling his fingers slip through Merlin's damp hair when he tried to pull him closer. Merlin grinned and reached down into Arthur's boxers, Arthur fully aware that he'd let out an obscene and undignified noise when Merlin's hand closed around his cock, balancing his head on Merlin's shoulder and finding the corner of the towel still stubbornly in between them with a harsh, "Fuck."
The towel landed beside the bed somewhere, but Arthur had ceased caring, trapping Merlin between his spread hands and knees. Merlin grinned up at him and tugged him down to mouth at him- no tongue, just insistent, quick meetings of Merlin's mouth and Arthur's, before Arthur moved one of his hands from flat on the bed to on Merlin's forehead, moving his mouth to cover Merlin's and slipping his tongue inside it.
Arthur felt Merlin's hand fall away, felt him run ragged, unkempt nails up and down Arthur's side, but that was okay because Arthur didn't intend to be finishing anytime soon. He let his full weight fall down onto Merlin, getting an oomph out of the other man and a pat on his arse for his trouble. Arthur moved a hand between them, pushing down firmly on one of Merlin's hip bones and moving so that oxygen was going to have to work to get between them.
"What now?" Merlin grinned, eyes close to Arthur's.
Arthur grinned slowly, moving so that one of his legs was between Merlin's thighs, Merlin's eyes locked onto his and throat working as Arthur's leg moved across his cock -
And then the watch began to beep.
Merlin groaned and this time, Arthur wasn't so pleased about taking the credit.
"We could ignore it," Arthur said in a tone of full reasonableness.
To which Merlin gave him a look.
Arthur sighed, pressing his lips together and looking down at Merlin. Merlin, lips swollen, skin flushed, naked beneath him, with his hands held together over his head by one of Arthur's hands. "I'd really quite like to shag you," Arthur continued, blinking down at Merlin, who drew him another hateful glance.
Then his eyes narrowed.
"What?" Arthur asked, quick, clipped and suspicious, deciding that until that dangerously familiar look was explained, Merlin was staying exactly where he was: pinned safely beneath Arthur. The naked part was unfortunate, but Arthur was right there, he'd be warm enough.
But apparently, months of running and whatever else it was Merlin had been doing had given him quite a bit more lower body strength. He moved his legs and wrapped them around Arthur's waist, rolling them so that Merlin was the one on top in a move that impressed Arthur with its sheer acrobatics, which he duly said to Merlin while letting go of his wrists, because really, what was the point now.
Merlin grinned and leaned forward, shifting so that his legs ran parallel on top of Arthur's and his mouth was against his. Then he pushed up and off of Arthur to move lower until he was running his tongue over Arthur's hipbone, his hand pulling down Arthur's boxers, Arthur's hand fisting in his hair as Merlin pulled the boxers off and threw him a glance before mouthing his balls while wrapping a hand around his cock and throwing a leg over both of Arthur's just above the knee, his elbow resting on Arthur's abdomen, Arthur too busy thinking increasingly less coherent thoughts about how Merlin's mouth should move up (it did), and how his fist should move faster (it did). His back arched and jerked under Merlin, pinning him quite effectively so that he could only arch and jerk against him-
Until the watch began beeping. Insistently.
This time Arthur groaned, gulping and hitting the back of his head against the bed. Repeatedly.
Merlin winced and blinked, moving up to lie next to Arthur. "Sorry."
Arthur turned on the bed and narrowed his eyes. "So what you're saying is that the gamma makes you even more of a cocktease than before?"
That surprised a laugh out of Merlin, who rolled his eyes at the ceiling. "I don't remember much teasing - in fact, I think we were both disgracefully easy."
"Come on," Arthur said with a sigh, "move over to the other bed."
Merlin raised an eyebrow at him. "Just because the room has two single beds doesn't mean we have to pretend to be on a sodding school trip, you know."
Arthur drew him a look and rolled out of the bed. "One bed for dirty people and dirty things, one bed for sleeping. I've got this all systemised, Merlin." Arthur looked at him, doing his level best to pout.
"Yes. I see that," Merlin answered dubiously, nearly tripping over Arthur's boxers and other items of discarded clothing on the short walk between the beds. As he lifted the covers and slid into the (slightly larger than average) single bed, Merlin looked up at Arthur from under his eyelashes. "You sure you don't want me to-?"
Arthur sighed, sending a glare to the ceiling and shaking his head at Merlin in a slightly martyred way. "Best not to risk it. And I'd take care of myself, but apparently, I turn you on too much just by mere proximity-"
Merlin snorted. "We could always try phone sex from opposite sides of the room. Your voice has a habit of saying things that make me wonder why I bother."
Arthur felt Merlin curve around him and put a hand on his lower back to press him closer as he spoke. "Next you'll suggest instant messenger, you hussy," he replied, amused.
"Wouldn't be the first time," came the sleepy, smirking response.
*
Merlin woke up in the middle of the evening with a topic already on his mind, waiting patiently for the heat of his glare to wake Arthur up and enjoying the body heat until it did.
Arthur's voice blurred into coherence somewhere between 'whayoulookingwha-' and 'we should eat.'
Merlin continued to glare, then moved a few inches away to raise an eyebrow at an optimum distance. "Speaking of instant messenger."
It took approximately six seconds for Arthur to understand before he grinned from the other side of the hotel bed. "It was actually kind of fun."
"Fun, you prick?" Merlin rolled onto his side with a groan and tried not to think about why the mattress had a natural dent that his hip fitted into beneath him. "I wanted to punch you. 'Two sides of the same coin' my arse."
Merlin felt his mouth grin without his permission as Arthur laughed at the ceiling. "I was proud of that one. Honest to God, I was. I thought it was made of spiritual bullshit just to throw you off."
"What about 'it is but the truth-'"
"'-that our two paths lie together'?" Arthur turned onto his own side and grinned so wide that Merlin worried he'd split his jaw. "These two players on WoW were having a complete boot-licking session before they tried to kill each other - you should have seen this guy's avatar, you'd have pissed yourself laughing, Merlin, I swear - and there was this path nearby. He thought he was being deep."
He was lying down, so his jaw couldn't technically drop, but he stared at Arthur and blinked. "You chatted me up on IM using lines you got off of World of Warcraft?" Merlin narrowed his eyes as something else occurred to him and kicked Arthur's shin lightly across the short distance between them in the bed. "And what the fuck? You used capital letters, you bitch. Of course I wasn't going to know."
Arthur laughed again, grabbing his arm as Merlin reached out his other arm to push back, all of which ended up the way it had done back in the before, with Arthur on top of him, knees pressing against his thighs and fingertips of one hand branching out from behind Merlin's ear through his hair.
*
Epilogue
/Unicorn: G, you sure about Stark Industries?
Smithyson: I'm sure.
Shiny Demon: What's with the forward slash, u?
/Unicorn: If you're sure.
/Unicorn: Very clever. Artistic license.
Shiny Demon: I rather liked it. Must run - work. Will keep you informed.
Merlin looked away from the IM window with Shiny Demon and Smithyson long enough to shout at Arthur's retreating back and waving hand.
"-just because we're in bloody Italy!"
The door closing was Merlin's answer. He grinned crookedly and shook his head, loading up the program that would decrypt the data that Arthur had had Gwen encrypt in the first place, knowing that the best way to keep it safe was to destroy it to all but those possessing the cypher.
Ten minutes later, Arthur came back with a box of fresh pasta and a smirk.
Merlin frowned, "I thought you were going for pizza."
Arthur tutted, sitting the pasta on the table and motioning at the chair. "We must have variety in our diet, Merlin."
"Here was me thinking 'variety' meant a change of crust," Merlin shot back, watching as Arthur glared and then stood up with a hissed expletive, taking his laptop out of his bag and flipping up the lid. "Not to nag, but if I'm not allowed my laptop at the table-"
"-you're not and we've had that arrangement for years," Arthur retorted, typing quickly and tapping impatiently, glaring whenever a pop up declared a new bid. "I'll put it away in a minute, but the auction on that centrifuge finishes in four minutes."
Merlin leaned over to watch the dial count down.
END
Thank you very much for reading. :)
Rating: NC-17
Pairing: Merlin/Arthur
Word count: ~19,000
Prompt: The Incredible Hulk (2008).
Summary: "You think they're making Merlins," Morgana commented very quietly.
Arthur registered that it was Merlin, pale and gaunt under a black hoodie, body moving into action at the sight of his dark lashes blinking and his Cons making a swift exit.
He ran, dodging the chair that he'd tossed out of the way in the act of standing, leaving himself logged on and just not caring.
Arthur ran a hand through his hair and looked frantically between the ends of the corridor, glancing down the stairs but - damn him, when did he get so fast? - Merlin had vanished.
But vanishing and disappearing were two different things.
*
Merlin ran and didn't stop until he'd reached a back door that he knew gave with a quick press of the shoulder and a foot in the right place. He wasn't leaving Camelot until the morning; he needed somewhere to hide.
"What is the meaning of-"
Merlin stared up from kneeling on the kitchen floor as Gaius paused in the doorway, dressed in a nightshirt, wielding a hardback copy of a history of dissection in medicine.
"Boy, you look terrible."
"Light reading you have there," Merlin responded with a shaky grin. Coming from a doctor, terrible meant quite a bit. Merlin settled for a glare in response to Gaius' next comment and sat down at the kitchen table, dropping his bag by his ankle and taking the tea shoved in front of him within a minute. Gaius was nothing if not efficient, Merlin would grant.
"How long are you here for, then?" Gaius asked resignedly, sitting opposite him and raising an eyebrow in pre-emptive disapproval.
"Not long," Merlin answered, mouth quirking in a half-smile that was part apology. "Gaius- my mum. They're not-" Merlin tightened his hand around the cup and shook his head.
"They watch her," Gaius answered gently, "any contact you make would be noticed. But beyond that, they do nothing. Between us, we can make sure of that at least."
Merlin heard the steel in Gaius' voice and saw the thin line his mouth made, looking over his cup to meet the retired professor's eyes. "Thank you." Then it registered and he frowned: "Who's 'we'?"
Gaius gave him the look that mildly suggested he was an incurable idiot. "Morgana. Arthur. Sometimes, I suspect, General Fey, for all of your scientific disagreements." Gaius sighed and nodded, "whatever it suits your self-pity to believe, lad, you have allies here and always will."
Merlin felt his throat burn at that, trying hard not to make too much of the way Arthur had been helping protect his mother - his mother had always liked him, always fed him too much - and was saved by answering when the doorbell rang.
Gaius shot him a panicked glance and gestured; Merlin moved - no point in running outwards if they were surrounding the place.
He heard a voice downstairs and had to work to control his heartbeat on realising that it was Arthur. Of course he'd know.
The cupboard was also tiny. But if it was that or be caught and bottled in formaldehyde, Merlin would suffer getting cosy with musty spare bedding. Or even worse, involving Arthur and his sheer nobility in the mess they'd made.
*
"I should wish that he had," Gaius answered, all the while nodding to Arthur, who pointed at himself and then the house.
He glared when Gaius shook his head.
"I'd imagine that he'd be very easily spooked," Gaius told him, accompanied with an eyebrow.
Got that bloody right, Arthur thought, wondering how the on-flight supper was on his pointless flight, the one he was missing as he stood at Gaius' door. If tracking Merlin down and flushing him out in Camelot didn't work, Arthur considered, he could just show up in Edinburgh and get this ridiculously noble notion of self-sufficiency out of Merlin's system then. It was like he'd forgotten they were stupid and co-dependent and quite bluntly, Arthur didn't like it.
But Gaius was guarding the door and telling him to be smarter than that.
"Thank you, Gaius," Arthur said loudly, then leaned in, "is he going to the bus stands?"
"I'd say so," Gaius nodded, tacking on, "disturbing my rest at this time of night."
Arthur concealed a grin and walked away.
*
Merlin watched Gaius unhelpfully just stand there as he clambered out from among the pots, pans, ironing board and bedding.
"I swear that was bigger when I was younger," Merlin gestured back at the cupboard with a glare.
"When you were seven and the red pot was your favourite hat," Gaius deadpanned. "Or when you were fifteen and wearing inadvisable collars and you'd run away from your poor mother?"
Merlin rolled his eyes, then walked to the window facing the front. Kneeling in case he was seen, he pressed fingertips against the cold sill and looked outwards. There, headed towards the end of the street, he could see a familiar coat with the collar turned up against the rain.
And really, he'd known it'd come to this when he'd chosen to hide at Gaius' house, not in any number of much more random, untraceable places.
Merlin swallowed, looked at Gaius and began, "I-", before shaking his head and grabbing the backpack.
It was selfish, it was stupid, and once he'd ran out into the rain away from sense and the sensible plan, there was no way back. Once he'd had even a close sight of what he'd been missing like a limb, of Arthur the way he remembered him but not quite, but certainly not like that photo he'd been carrying for eleven months, he'd known there was no going back. Because what was different, what made Arthur older, a little rough-edged and wild-eyed, was what made Merlin run, run and keep running across roofs and strange surfaces: the missing of the other. And now that they were close enough to feel the link tug and pull, it couldn't be ignored.
For the second time in a night, heart hammering just within the safe range, Merlin bolted.
*
The bus stands. He could get there by car, have a stake out, wait for a scrawny bastard trying to be inconspicuous. Edinburgh. He could fly in the morning, be Dragon and really surprise him.
Either way, he was finding him. Within days - days that weren't weeks, weren't months, weren't indeterminate years of Not Knowing and clenching fists and playing nice with his father for the scraps of information he could glean. Days that weren't never because Merlin wasn't dead and he'd seen proof of it for himself.
It should have made him feel better, even patient, but it didn't because Arthur really wasn't a very patient person and to be walking home - to sleep, to get up and eat toast and other mundane things - with Merlin right there in Camelot made him even less patient.
And it was still bloody raining. He could really do with a walk that wasn't in the dead of night or the rain.
Arthur was quite unhappily settling into his own morose thoughts when he stiffened and paused, hearing hurried footsteps slapping the pavement in the rain. He clenched his fists and turned, glancing around the suburban street with its polite little houses and well-marked out hedges.
Which was when Merlin appeared out of the darkness between two dim streetlights, running towards him with all the melodrama and flailing limbs of a fourteen year old girl and Arthur's feet were moving of their own accord to meet him.
And then, then, days turned into five steps, turned into pulling Merlin against his chest to make sure he was really there (not that hugging him had ever been useful in ascertaining that - see above: scrawny). Damp backpack straps scraped at Arthur's chin as Merlin's hands scrabbled for purchase on Arthur's back and the rain kept falling, but not against Arthur's left cheek because that he found pressed against Merlin's. And then it was really the only natural thing, to kiss him on the middle of a deserted street getting soaked and with the taste of rain in their mouths.
*
Merlin pulled back with a grin, heart racing for a reason that he could categorically call good for the first time in months.
Arthur wasn't a fan of the pulling back, planting a hand on the back of Merlin's neck and pulling his forehead forward to clash against his own with a shake of his head.
"You need to come with me-"
Merlin thought about all of the objections he could and likely should make, then realised he'd made them all moot and void when he hadn't just let Arthur walk away from Gaius' house.
"You're here for the data, right?" Arthur asked, blinking and rubbing Merlin's neck in circles through the hoodie.
Merlin nodded, not trusting himself to speak. It was contact, it was another human and it was Arthur.
"Well, you need to come with me," Arthur answered stubbornly, "I have the last copy at the house."
*
Arthur watched surreptitiously as Merlin followed him into the house a few steps behind. Merlin paused in the doorway of the bedroom, hesitating - neither going in or walking past.
As Arthur booted up the laptop and retrieved the hidden flash drive that the data was stored on, preparing to upload it to a backup server that he could tell Merlin about, he waited for it.
"It'd be best if I disappear."
"Great. Where we going?" Arthur didn't look up from the laptop.
*
Merlin looked at Arthur and blinked. "Are we going to argue about this?"
Arthur still didn't look up from the laptop. "Probably. I'll put the kettle on."
They moved to the kitchen silently. Merlin ran a finger along the kitchen table, remembering when they'd gone to get it, which had gone about as well as the two of them and their domestic dysfunctions ever could (we're building whole new gene therapies, we'll manage a bloody table; no, really, Ikea's fine; I have a partner, do I still need a wooden chair?; oh God, I made you buy Ikea; yep, you're never getting rid of me - you know too much).
Arthur moved around the kitchen, seeing to the kettle with a thorough concentration that jarred against the shreds of normal they'd managed to stretch. Merlin noticed with too much relief that things were still in the same place, even if Arthur had gotten used to making for himself when it had always been Merlin who'd made tea before. The soft, occasional sounds of Arthur's bare feet on the kitchen floor made Merlin consider grabbing a laptop, shoving on a playlist the way they'd always filled the kitchen with noise before. Looking at the layers of dust on the player dock by the microwave, he decided against it: it seemed they'd gotten used to glimpses of a quieter life.
Arthur glanced over his shoulder, as if he'd suddenly thought of something to say and break the silence, but looked back to stirring in the sugar.
Merlin braced his side against the table and fidgeted with the pen on it. He wanted to believe he could still stand in bare feet in their kitchen, but the wood hard against his hip bone was saying otherwise. From the way Arthur was taking ten billion years to make a cup of tea, scrabbling gracefully for one of their three teaspoons in the cutlery drawer (Merlin expected him to have lost them and emerge with a fork), Arthur no longer believed either of them could fit in the house. He wondered if anyone else had seen how deliberate every action Arthur took had become, how carefully thought out - Morgana, Gwen, Merlin thought. It had been at the edges of Merlin's vision since the rain: the way Arthur tugged up the collar of his jacket and hunched his shoulders, that was new; the way the house hadn't changed except for Arthur stripping it to the minimum, that wasn't new, but it was different.
Before he'd just been a lazy git living with a messy git- less stuff, less stuff to pick up off the floor. This felt like walking into a house half-left, half a sales pitch and half a museum with shadows for valuables. The pen dropped from his hand.
"Of course," Merlin heard the tin clack of the plastic biro lid on the table as though from a distance. "Of course it was you."
Arthur froze, fingers half extended in mid-air and on the edge of the steaming cups. He turned and braced both hands, palms flat, against the edge of the work surface and met Merlin's eyes. "Yes. Do you still want the tea?"
*
Arthur wondered if he'd just fucked absolutely everything up when Merlin froze and appeared to be shaking, if the lines of his shoulders were anything to go by. But then he laughed. He laughed and he looked up through a grin and through eyes that were actually watering and he walked across the kitchen - and Arthur was the one that froze.
Merlin put a hand on either side of Arthur and grinned close to him, "Of course I want the bloody tea you bloody prat."
Arthur grinned slowly and swallowed. "I don't care what Gaius says, you've got a mental affliction."
Merlin nodded and grinned and sat at the table. "Probably. Took up with you, didn't I?"
Before Arthur could reply, his phone rang. They glanced at each other, Arthur shrugged and picked it up. "Morgana."
*
"Get the hell out of there," Morgana hissed down the line, "they know he's there- you need to leave."
Arthur muttered a quick thanks, closed the phone and moved to the bedroom. He shoved the laptop into his bag and threw Merlin his backpack.
"They're coming?" Merlin asked, mouth a thin line, and Arthur wanted to take two minutes they did not have to smooth a thumb over it, even with the knowledge that it wouldn't make the bitter edge leave.
"They're coming."
"One thing-" Merlin shuffled a little uncertainly on his feet, then moved quickly to the living room and returned with the photo of the four of them. "I was looking for the other one, but-"
"Already in mine," Arthur grinned across the room, and they moved.
"Oh-"
"-fuck," Arthur finished, nodding grimly and blinking into the search light that flickered on as they open the front door, cars rolling up the road with tanks, as if it was an enemy army they had to subdue, not Merlin and Arthur.
Arthur's eyes flickered to Merlin's, which were flickering down to his watch. Concentrating on the sound, Arthur could hear it beeping quickly and pulled Merlin back into the house.
There was a shout and the circus ground to a halt - Arthur twitched the living room curtain and felt his stomach flip unpleasantly.
"What is it?" Merlin asked, back flat against the wall and sweat breaking out on his forehead.
"My father," Arthur answered flatly, "he seems to want to talk."
Merlin and Arthur shared a look.
"How long do you need to calm down?"
Merlin looked at him and Arthur blinked at the thing in his eyes - the alien there that was very much not Merlin but was entirely him all at once. "I'm not going back, Arthur. That's not how this ends."
Arthur swallowed and looked out at his father, waiting expectantly, and the men arrayed behind him with the guns and the tanks but still just men at the end of it all.
He looked at Merlin and saw that he knew it.
"They're out the back?"
"They've got it covered," Merlin answered grimly, gesturing upwards and mouth twisting at the parody of all the action films they'd ever watched in his voice.
The thing they were both trying hard not to say stampeded through Arthur's head: if they wanted out of there together, in one piece and uncaptured, they only had one way out.
"I don't want you to do this," Arthur ground out for the simple reason that it felt like it needed to be said: Merlin eleven months before would have taken it as read, Merlin now needed that little bit more reassurance that Arthur wasn't exactly like the men on the outside, wasn't asking this because he wanted to see it happen.
"I don't want to do this," Merlin answered with a nod that implied he'd got Arthur's point.
"How long do you need to get angry?" Arthur asked, tugging him into a bruising kiss as the search lights intruded through the windows and they heard the helicopters above.
Merlin took off the backpack and handed him it. "You'll know."
Arthur guessed that he would, turning and walking forward to the front door as Merlin moved to the kitchen in the back.
He realised his hands were shaking when he sat the bags by the door, bracing his forehead against it and keeping his hand hovering above the handle.
He thought about Merlin, the way he could see his body silhouetted in the doorway of the kitchen. Merlin stood, fists clenched and head bowed, feet shoulders' width apart and bracing for an impact that wouldn't come from the outside. He remembered Morgana, holding onto a doorframe in a violet dress, eyes haunted by things she hadn't yet done, and Gwen, looking at him sadly as she put the last of her bags in her silly toy car to drive to Edinburgh - to leave because the military had left her no option to stay.
And then Arthur remembered his father by his side and Merlin winking on the chair at the end of the beginning.
They were none of them fighters except now that they had to be; Arthur turned the handle and walked out into the glare.
*
Merlin, standing rigid between their breakfast bar and the Ikea table, was panicking.
He'd never actually chosen to change before, never willingly offered his control up to his bloodstream with here, have it, let me smash things now. It was a process he'd put quite a lot of time into slowing, suppressing, stopping. To be casting his eyes around his kitchen and willing that beat at his wrist - the mechanical sound that merged with the pulse until they were one and the same - to speed up, to break the barrier-
He didn't know how.
It'd always been beyond him, why it happened. Yes, he got angry, he panicked, his heart rate increased, but no more so than a normal human being. It wasn't quite as precarious as it seemed. On the edge between pissed off and beyond control, there was a trigger, one that made the former the latter and left Merlin with nothing to do but hold on.
The lights threw themselves in the windows and he could feel Uther Pendragon's portable army circling, shifting, a behemoth unsteady on still feet and waiting for the sign. He could feel Arthur's every step closer to them, walking among them with head held high - just like always, just like when they were whole seas apart.
There had to be a way.
*
Arthur took two steps onto the spookily silent front garden and focused on his father. His father who likely wouldn't actually kill him, regardless of the many, many guns and lethal phallic looking things pointed in his direction by scary, silent people.
As Arthur looked at his father, his features drawn tight and hands too loose, too limber, trying not to shift between his feet and waiting, it sunk in at last that they'd been leaking words and losing common ground for as long as Arthur could remember.
His father had tried, after his mother, to raise him. But his parentage had been an incidental fact, never quite following to the emotional tie it should have granted, his father too much the servant of the military he loved more. He and his father were two who could not stand in the same place at once - not even if they wanted to, not even if they tried. And as of his father trying to kill Merlin, Arthur no longer had reason to try.
Looking at his father, standing uneasy on the front garden of the house Merlin and Arthur had chosen, Arthur saw his father realise it, too.
Coldly, Arthur wished he'd waited until after the dramatic escape to finally wake up to the fact that Arthur wasn't coming home.
Uther Pendragon looked him in the eye, shadows under his eyes erased by the white lights, gradations in his voice flattened by the static of the crowd. "You won't stand aside."
Arthur raised his chin and let his hands settle at his side. "No."
Uther blinked, then raised an open hand.
*
It was the ultimate in cosmic injustice: months of trying to suppress his other self and Merlin couldn't find the fury when he needed it.
He'd methodically gone through everything in his life that had ever pissed him off: Victoria tube station on rare London trips, his father's occasional card or letter, supposed to fix twenty-odd years of not being there, the looks when he'd walked down the street with Arthur, the way Shelley Andrews had laughed at his misguided Valentines card in primary four-
It wasn't working, none of it, not even the humiliating, the infuriating- nothing, not until he ran to the front room to see Arthur backing slowly towards the door, men not carrying tranq guns moving forward slowly and Uther Pendragon just standing there, watching, signaling them on.
His heart shuddered, beating against his ribcage like an insistent, vengeful fist.
*
Arthur kept his eyes on the men, kept them stepping as he stepped, kept the pattern, just like he'd been taught.
Five steps from the door, five steps from the bags, thinking please God Merlin hurry the fuck up, hating himself for the thought, he heard it.
So did the men, guns with laser sights focusing on the window to the living room. The window was shattered by canisters of gas already streaming smoke as Arthur watched, feeling a grabbing hand on his upper arm and jerking his elbow back into someone's - anyone's - nose.
It was a scream. Raw, mid-range, ripped from the throat, it came through the jagged edged window and summoned Arthur through the door while the men with guns decided they had a more important target than him.
Arthur froze in the doorway of the living room, watching Merlin's body rage and twist through the thin veil of gas and raising his collar against it.
Merlin's bare feet grew, his trousers shrinking back and back to below the knee. His clenched fists opened, closed, exploded in size. His back arched and when his upper body fell back to the floor, the weight caused the sofa (not Ikea) to jerk into the air.
Arthur stood upright, paralysed, parallel with the vertical edge of the doorframe as his heart hammered and he was terrified to take a breath.
Merlin - it had to still be Merlin, somewhere, or else what had Arthur been fighting for for eleven months? - knelt on the carpet like a sprinter at the start of a race, head bowed and heaving chest tucked under a smooth, large ridge of a back that looked more akin to Atlas, to a mountain, than to the wraith Arthur knew.
Arthur didn't move, hearing the men outside moving, willing one of the two of them to break the paralysis because they had seconds. No more.
Merlin looked up, eyes a gold colour Arthur had never seen, narrowed in anger and upper lip arching in a snarl.
Insistently, uncompromisingly, Arthur ordered his brain to remember that they weren't in the lab and that he and Merlin had, this once, chosen this.
Merlin lunged, an avalanche of flesh that broke the remaining shell of the window and a significant part of the wall attached to it. The skin, Arthur noted, grabbing the bags, repelled bullets along with being a shade of green. Distantly, he realised that that was very cool, but then felt an arm - no, a hand - around his hips, picking him up.
His father's voice rose, ordering everyone, anyone, all of them, to stop shooting while Arthur tried to hold onto the two bags and bit back complaints about the angle at which he was being picked up and carried like a rag doll.
Merlin snarled, using his free hand to kill a tank with his fist, and Arthur saw the air around them blur.
*
It was hours later when the world settled and Arthur was able to slip from his position sitting in the crook of Merlin's folded arm to the ground. Looking around with a swallow, Arthur realised that he had no idea exactly how far they'd traveled, only that they were a strange assortment of smells and that he had, at one point, passed out for a few hours thanks to the knock out gas at the house. Sniffing his coat, he felt his eyes widen because fuck, that was salt water.
Merlin settled his weight cross-legged on the damp floor and gave him an unblinking, expectant look. Arthur ran a hand through his hair.
"Well, it's a cave," he started, looking up at Merlin. He didn't mean to sound ungrateful, but really, it was hardly the Hilton.
There was a low rumble in Merlin's over-sized, green throat that Arthur took to mean, don't complain, ungrateful bastard.
That was something Arthur hadn't really realised - along with the fact that the French press hadn't been exaggerating with the 'leaps miles at a time' stuff: Merlin was green. Literally green, like he'd signed up for Wicked or been dropped in a vat of bad chemicals or been covered in grass stains uniformly. Green. It was really weird.
And unlike normal-Merlin, the hulking-great-badass-Merlin seemed content to do girlie shit like stare at the stars and the moon and the clouds. Arthur didn't know what to do with that except pace - until another low groan and glare told him in no uncertain terms to stop it.
A somewhat patronising - and heavy - pat at his head made it clear that he wasn't to start pacing again anytime soon.
Arthur glared. "Just because you've got a couple of stone on me right now is no excuse to be superior. Every litter had a runt," Arthur reminded him primly, "and you were still it."
There was a snort.
Arthur sighed, rubbing his hands together and folding them between his knees. He blinked, pursed his lips and let out a slow breath. He could fill the silence with anything, with updates about all the people Merlin would want to know about, with small talk or by making up names for the stars, but his mouth wouldn't shut up, kept tripping him up by saying things he really meant. "You know, people are supposed to go through this awkward stage where they tick boxes to land at boyfriend. Or girlfriend."
Merlin, eyes still that unsettling shade of light gold, kept staring outwards.
"So I've heard, anyway," Arthur muttered, then grinned. "I was about to make a crack about this being a shit date even by our standards, but really. Cave. View. Moonlight. People pay for this crap."
There was a raised eyebrow - an eyebrow as thick as several of Arthur's fingers and in terrible need of maintenance. And oh yes, one that stood dark against the aforementioned green skin. That look Arthur knew; he knew because they'd both learned it from Gaius before they'd ever met and Arthur was better at it.
It was new and strange, Merlin being the one to protect him with physical force, Merlin being the stronger. But they were still the same, Arthur realised. They still functioned in halves.
"We never really did dates. Never really needed them. Only ever called you 'partner', even back at the start."
He leaned forward and fixed his eyes on the distant trees, not even asking where they were because they'd figure that out.
Merlin leaned forward and mirrored him.
*
He was never sure if he woke up or if being boiled down to himself brought him to an awareness of already being awake: in the limited experience he had of the moment of waking from the transformation, it always slipped away into oh, shit, I'm half-naked and cold and there's rodents and strange walls and where the fuck am I.
No rodents, this time. And apparently, if he were dragging Arthur with him, his other self made more of an effort with the lodgings. They were in an honest-to-God cave, one that looked out over hills and forest and scared Merlin a little because wild, unknown places like that didn't exist in the near vicinity of Camelot. Or else surely Arthur would have dragged him camping or hiking or trekking or shagging in that direction before then - he'd dragged him to the Highlands. And the Pentlands. And over half of Wales because Merlin had mentioned that ten generations back, he had Welsh blood or something. That hadn't been an invitation to commune with the hills far from wifi because unlike Arthur, Merlin hadn't really been great at turning off his internet dependency.
All of which was a good way to avoid the guilt already creeping through his stomach, watching Arthur sleep against the wall of the cave, his hair tastefully damp and sweeping across his forehead, coat wrapped around him tight. It was a good way to avoid waking him to the fact that he was now just as On The Run as Merlin.
Arthur stirred of his own accord as Merlin dug socks out of his backpack, slipping his feet into the Cons that had miraculously survived everything they'd been chucked through of late.
It was only when Arthur stood up and stretched, looking a little bit mank but in a hot way, that Merlin realised all of his limbs were about as reliable as overcooked pasta for standing on. Arthur helped, like always, by pointing out that, "Fuck, Merlin, you look like a heroin addict."
Merlin settled for a glare, taking the offered coat from Arthur and standing with a violent exhalation of breath. Still, he didn't complain about the coat, or the hand under his elbow as they made their way down the hills to wherever they'd come to a halt.
*
"What the fuck is that?" Arthur asked, staring at the gigantic thing that had just appeared on the horizon.
"I'd say it's an exemplary example of fifteenth century architecture with fascinating remnants of its twelfth century origins, and that we shouldn't be fooled by its nineteenth century renovations," Merlin rattled off in a deadpan between gasps as they stopped on the dirt track.
Arthur looked at him, then spied the damp, trampled leaflet Merlin was clutching in one hand, cuffing him round the head with a grin and promptly stealing it, curling his lip up while he attempted an accent. "Cheeky bugger. Chateau de Pierrefonds. What a pile of piss. Don't suppose we can beg a room off them for the night?"
Merlin grinned crookedly and stole the leaflet back. "I'd give the Beast a couple of rounds if he tried to lock you up."
"Bastard," Arthur shot back, laughing despite himself. "This horribly touristy little map says there's a town nearby."
*
They stumbled into the pretty, expected town of Pierrefonds an hour and a half later, detaching from each other slowly and having a low volume argument about hotels.
Merlin lost, but Arthur had to concede that that was partly because he was also beginning to lose the ability to stay awake.
He threw him a look of concern and debated dumping him on a bench while Arthur sorted out rooms in the hotel they just happened to be walking past. He decided that it was close enough, dumping Merlin on a chair in the hallway and taking a breath.
*
Merlin sometimes found himself in awe of Arthur, a fact not depreciated by the way that Arthur was currently doubled in his vision. He had a way with people that was downright terrifying, if useful.
He did what he was told, for once, and stayed sat on the ridiculously plush chair while Arthur walked up to the desk, completely refusing to acknowledge that he looked filthy and scruffy, breaking out the smile that had, once upon a time, made him drop expensive science equipment.
*
Speaking in terribly, terribly polite English, with a self-deprecating smile when he attempted French, Arthur shook his head and mentioned something about tequila and he doesn't drink much with regards to Merlin, dropping enough hints of a stag night gone wrong and saying that a quiet room, as quiet as you have would be lovely. All of which translated to: please don't think we're anything but harmless, wayward, feckless boys, who want nothing more than to sleep off dreadful hangovers and really, we won't be any trouble, and really, have you seen the colour of my credit card?
Arthur paid with a debit card, flashing the credit card to one of his front accounts incidentally, before retrieving Merlin and pushing him into the beige lift.
"You speak fluent French," Merlin muttered against his neck, seemingly having requisitioned Arthur's left side for structural support.
Arthur didn't really mind, slipping a hand into his own coat pocket, currently swamping Merlin's skinny frame and tugging him in the direction of the room. "I do - but this was less suspicious. Come on, you, get in."
*
The last thing Merlin remembered, he'd been letting Arthur push him into a room that seemed entirely off-white and he'd been falling onto stupidly soft sheets - really, hadn't Arthur realised they were on the run?
"I highly doubt anyone is looking for us in France," Arthur said with a raised eyebrow, sitting at the table by the window in the room. "Or if they are, they'll be spread so thin searching half of the rest of Europe that we can slip through the net. If they know you could have come this far, their search radius is beyond what they have space to cover. "
Merlin blinked at the delicately patterned ceiling and sat up. "But, your credit card- cameras-"
"The cameras only matter if anyone checks them," Arthur answered calmly, "and by that point, we'll be far away. I paid with a debit card that has a very small amount of money in the account-" Merlin snorted, well aware of what Arthur considered 'a very small amount of money', "and hence, is disposable. The same can be said for several other accounts I hold in false names."
Despite his initial panic, Merlin had to admit that all of that sounded eminently sensible.
And then it sunk in and he blinked, looking between Arthur and the curtains closed against the afternoon sun and the turkey sandwich in front of a showered Arthur, dressed in clothes that must've come from his conveniently packed bag. Arthur, who was calmly telling him that he wasn't going anywhere. Ever.
"So-" Merlin curled fists in the quilt and swallowed, shaking his head. "Wait- you could- your father-"
Arthur moved smoothly from the chair and sat on his knees on the bed, eyes utterly calm and level, only a single ripple as he clenched his jaw enough to show any tension. Merlin looked up at him, unable to do much of anything else with him sitting right there and staring. "Merlin, understand that I have been planning this meticulously for a very long time. Even before you showed up on that bloody forum."
Merlin looked down at his curled fists and blinked again, then looked up and found Arthur's somewhat worried eyes staring down at him. "Well, if you're going to be organised about it-"
Arthur grinned and ducked his head, slipping a hand to flat across the back of Merlin's neck and jerking their foreheads together with a laugh.
"So is this when I apologise for ruining your life and nearly killing you?" Merlin asked, feeling Arthur's breath hot on his neck and his quiet laugh in his shoulders.
"Only if I get to apologise for ruining your DNA and your life," Arthur shot back, mouth curving into a crooked smile.
"No, I don't think so," Merlin answered firmly, pushing Arthur's shoulders back lightly, enough to look him directly in the eyes as he said it, said that he didn't blame him, and saw him nod.
"Enough angst has been had," Arthur said very seriously before looking at Merlin, who shook his head, both of them laughing without meaning to.
Merlin casually grazed his lips across Arthur's forehead, feeling Arthur's hands on his hips as he sat up on the bed and extended a foot out of it. "Hey-" Arthur frowned, tugging him back, "where-"
"Shower," Merlin rolled his eyes, putting a hand solidly on Arthur's collarbone and looking at him, "I'm almost certain that I absolutely stink."
Arthur looked between the bed and the shower with slightly narrowed eyes, then between the table and the shower door.
"You'll be able to see me the whole time."
They froze and Merlin swallowed. He'd meant it as a joke, a potentially filthy joke, but that wasn't quite the tone it'd come out. Arthur smiled softly, seriously, telling Merlin everything he'd ever need to know about the previous eleven months.
Wordlessly, Merlin moved off the bed and into the shower, leaving the door to the bathroom open.
"Here," Arthur tossed him a plastic bag, which Merlin caught while accidentally dropping his towel as he left the bathroom. Arthur snorted, Merlin threw him a look, noting with a smirk that his pupils had dilated in the process.
"What's this?" Merlin asked, sitting on the edge of the bed he'd woken up in, "and tell me you put the Do Not Disturb sign up on the door."
"I did, and I wasn't sure which you wanted-" Arthur nodded to the bag, "I went out to the shop across the road while you were asleep."
Merlin pursed his lips, suppressing a grin. "There's a sports shop across the road?"
*
Arthur carefully kept his expression nonchalant and his posture relaxed as Merlin held up the extra-extra-large dark blue running trousers and the pairs of more normal-sized khaki combat trousers, with the option to tie the leg up at the knee. He'd thrown in a couple of tee-shirts and jumpers while he was at it.
"And second-hand army stuff," Arthur answered, still nodding calmly and very carefully not saying exactly how fraught that ten minute trip had been- it'd been right across from the hotel and necessary, he knew, but still.
"Thanks," Merlin said quietly, fingering the strap of the watch and putting it on wordlessly.
Arthur sat on the edge of the bed next to him, watching him fumble with the watch strap and quickly dancing fingertips across the inside of Merlin's wrist to fasten it for him.
"Thanks," Merlin repeated, lower, looking up with not a hint of a joke and Arthur's breath caught.
They leaned forward, foreheads against each others' yet again because it was the easiest place to start - because it was how a sudden, triumphant, end-of-experiment hug had turned into a kiss the first time - and Arthur could hear Merlin's breath speeding up. He smelled like the hotel shampoo, like the artificially minty toothpaste in the bathroom, like everything else normal and expected, a fact that caught Arthur off guard and amazed him because it was so absolutely normal. Arthur ran a hand up Merlin's bare upper arm, feeling the newly-toned muscles there and seeing Merlin's lips part slightly at the contact.
Merlin tilted his head up, his chin and nose and jaw rubbing against the lines of Arthur's own, his chin resting for a beat on Arthur's and the tip of his nose against the underside of Arthur's eyebrow. Arthur placed a hand flat on his bare collarbone, fingers curving around his shoulder, tugging Merlin down without moving him back, tugging him down so their mouths lined up and met.
Arthur felt Merlin thread a hand through his hair behind his ear, catching his lower lip between his own, his other hand insistently tugging at the hem of Arthur's t-shirt. Arthur helped with that because really, it was only fair, what with Merlin practically straddling him in nothing but a towel - a towel that Arthur could predict would be on the floor relatively quickly.
They fell backwards, Arthur turning to pin Merlin to the bed, Merlin groaning while he kissed down his neck, his head tilting back and off the edge of the single bed while his hands moved for purchase on Arthur's upper back. Arthur put his knees on either side of Merlin's hips and tugged him up, Merlin's hands pushing at Arthur's waistband and working at his jeans.
Arthur let him, toeing off the jeans when they got to his knees and feeling his fingers slip through Merlin's damp hair when he tried to pull him closer. Merlin grinned and reached down into Arthur's boxers, Arthur fully aware that he'd let out an obscene and undignified noise when Merlin's hand closed around his cock, balancing his head on Merlin's shoulder and finding the corner of the towel still stubbornly in between them with a harsh, "Fuck."
The towel landed beside the bed somewhere, but Arthur had ceased caring, trapping Merlin between his spread hands and knees. Merlin grinned up at him and tugged him down to mouth at him- no tongue, just insistent, quick meetings of Merlin's mouth and Arthur's, before Arthur moved one of his hands from flat on the bed to on Merlin's forehead, moving his mouth to cover Merlin's and slipping his tongue inside it.
Arthur felt Merlin's hand fall away, felt him run ragged, unkempt nails up and down Arthur's side, but that was okay because Arthur didn't intend to be finishing anytime soon. He let his full weight fall down onto Merlin, getting an oomph out of the other man and a pat on his arse for his trouble. Arthur moved a hand between them, pushing down firmly on one of Merlin's hip bones and moving so that oxygen was going to have to work to get between them.
"What now?" Merlin grinned, eyes close to Arthur's.
Arthur grinned slowly, moving so that one of his legs was between Merlin's thighs, Merlin's eyes locked onto his and throat working as Arthur's leg moved across his cock -
And then the watch began to beep.
Merlin groaned and this time, Arthur wasn't so pleased about taking the credit.
"We could ignore it," Arthur said in a tone of full reasonableness.
To which Merlin gave him a look.
Arthur sighed, pressing his lips together and looking down at Merlin. Merlin, lips swollen, skin flushed, naked beneath him, with his hands held together over his head by one of Arthur's hands. "I'd really quite like to shag you," Arthur continued, blinking down at Merlin, who drew him another hateful glance.
Then his eyes narrowed.
"What?" Arthur asked, quick, clipped and suspicious, deciding that until that dangerously familiar look was explained, Merlin was staying exactly where he was: pinned safely beneath Arthur. The naked part was unfortunate, but Arthur was right there, he'd be warm enough.
But apparently, months of running and whatever else it was Merlin had been doing had given him quite a bit more lower body strength. He moved his legs and wrapped them around Arthur's waist, rolling them so that Merlin was the one on top in a move that impressed Arthur with its sheer acrobatics, which he duly said to Merlin while letting go of his wrists, because really, what was the point now.
Merlin grinned and leaned forward, shifting so that his legs ran parallel on top of Arthur's and his mouth was against his. Then he pushed up and off of Arthur to move lower until he was running his tongue over Arthur's hipbone, his hand pulling down Arthur's boxers, Arthur's hand fisting in his hair as Merlin pulled the boxers off and threw him a glance before mouthing his balls while wrapping a hand around his cock and throwing a leg over both of Arthur's just above the knee, his elbow resting on Arthur's abdomen, Arthur too busy thinking increasingly less coherent thoughts about how Merlin's mouth should move up (it did), and how his fist should move faster (it did). His back arched and jerked under Merlin, pinning him quite effectively so that he could only arch and jerk against him-
Until the watch began beeping. Insistently.
This time Arthur groaned, gulping and hitting the back of his head against the bed. Repeatedly.
Merlin winced and blinked, moving up to lie next to Arthur. "Sorry."
Arthur turned on the bed and narrowed his eyes. "So what you're saying is that the gamma makes you even more of a cocktease than before?"
That surprised a laugh out of Merlin, who rolled his eyes at the ceiling. "I don't remember much teasing - in fact, I think we were both disgracefully easy."
"Come on," Arthur said with a sigh, "move over to the other bed."
Merlin raised an eyebrow at him. "Just because the room has two single beds doesn't mean we have to pretend to be on a sodding school trip, you know."
Arthur drew him a look and rolled out of the bed. "One bed for dirty people and dirty things, one bed for sleeping. I've got this all systemised, Merlin." Arthur looked at him, doing his level best to pout.
"Yes. I see that," Merlin answered dubiously, nearly tripping over Arthur's boxers and other items of discarded clothing on the short walk between the beds. As he lifted the covers and slid into the (slightly larger than average) single bed, Merlin looked up at Arthur from under his eyelashes. "You sure you don't want me to-?"
Arthur sighed, sending a glare to the ceiling and shaking his head at Merlin in a slightly martyred way. "Best not to risk it. And I'd take care of myself, but apparently, I turn you on too much just by mere proximity-"
Merlin snorted. "We could always try phone sex from opposite sides of the room. Your voice has a habit of saying things that make me wonder why I bother."
Arthur felt Merlin curve around him and put a hand on his lower back to press him closer as he spoke. "Next you'll suggest instant messenger, you hussy," he replied, amused.
"Wouldn't be the first time," came the sleepy, smirking response.
*
Merlin woke up in the middle of the evening with a topic already on his mind, waiting patiently for the heat of his glare to wake Arthur up and enjoying the body heat until it did.
Arthur's voice blurred into coherence somewhere between 'whayoulookingwha-' and 'we should eat.'
Merlin continued to glare, then moved a few inches away to raise an eyebrow at an optimum distance. "Speaking of instant messenger."
It took approximately six seconds for Arthur to understand before he grinned from the other side of the hotel bed. "It was actually kind of fun."
"Fun, you prick?" Merlin rolled onto his side with a groan and tried not to think about why the mattress had a natural dent that his hip fitted into beneath him. "I wanted to punch you. 'Two sides of the same coin' my arse."
Merlin felt his mouth grin without his permission as Arthur laughed at the ceiling. "I was proud of that one. Honest to God, I was. I thought it was made of spiritual bullshit just to throw you off."
"What about 'it is but the truth-'"
"'-that our two paths lie together'?" Arthur turned onto his own side and grinned so wide that Merlin worried he'd split his jaw. "These two players on WoW were having a complete boot-licking session before they tried to kill each other - you should have seen this guy's avatar, you'd have pissed yourself laughing, Merlin, I swear - and there was this path nearby. He thought he was being deep."
He was lying down, so his jaw couldn't technically drop, but he stared at Arthur and blinked. "You chatted me up on IM using lines you got off of World of Warcraft?" Merlin narrowed his eyes as something else occurred to him and kicked Arthur's shin lightly across the short distance between them in the bed. "And what the fuck? You used capital letters, you bitch. Of course I wasn't going to know."
Arthur laughed again, grabbing his arm as Merlin reached out his other arm to push back, all of which ended up the way it had done back in the before, with Arthur on top of him, knees pressing against his thighs and fingertips of one hand branching out from behind Merlin's ear through his hair.
*
Epilogue
/Unicorn: G, you sure about Stark Industries?
Smithyson: I'm sure.
Shiny Demon: What's with the forward slash, u?
/Unicorn: If you're sure.
/Unicorn: Very clever. Artistic license.
Shiny Demon: I rather liked it. Must run - work. Will keep you informed.
Merlin looked away from the IM window with Shiny Demon and Smithyson long enough to shout at Arthur's retreating back and waving hand.
"-just because we're in bloody Italy!"
The door closing was Merlin's answer. He grinned crookedly and shook his head, loading up the program that would decrypt the data that Arthur had had Gwen encrypt in the first place, knowing that the best way to keep it safe was to destroy it to all but those possessing the cypher.
Ten minutes later, Arthur came back with a box of fresh pasta and a smirk.
Merlin frowned, "I thought you were going for pizza."
Arthur tutted, sitting the pasta on the table and motioning at the chair. "We must have variety in our diet, Merlin."
"Here was me thinking 'variety' meant a change of crust," Merlin shot back, watching as Arthur glared and then stood up with a hissed expletive, taking his laptop out of his bag and flipping up the lid. "Not to nag, but if I'm not allowed my laptop at the table-"
"-you're not and we've had that arrangement for years," Arthur retorted, typing quickly and tapping impatiently, glaring whenever a pop up declared a new bid. "I'll put it away in a minute, but the auction on that centrifuge finishes in four minutes."
Merlin leaned over to watch the dial count down.
END
Thank you very much for reading. :)