Ancient History

[srin]

Title: Ancient History
Pairing: Merlin/Arthur, discussion of past Arthur/Gwen/Merlin/Morgana/Lancelot and assorted combinations therein.
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Adult having sex with a teenager. (For the record, said teenager is past the age of consent in the UK, where this is set.)
Length: ~5400 words.
Summary: Timing verse. In which there are memories of lives past and complications in lives present. (Modern reincarnation.)
Note: Follows All In the Timing and Sure Thing. There's a bigger, more substantial instalment in this 'verse coming someday, but in the meantime there's this.


The first few times Merlin runs into Maurice after that bizarre night when all the truths came out, things are awkward. Maurice glowers a lot while Merlin alternates between feeling compelled to cower in a way he never has before in this lifetime, and wanting to point out with shouting and expletives that he is not the one breaking laws left right and center, thank you very much. They’re distantly polite to each other if Arthur or Barbara is around and otherwise don’t speak, until one day when they somehow manage, without saying anything directly, to agree that Merlin will overlook Maurice’s questionable career while Maurice will overlook Merlin’s questionable relationship with Arthur. It’s actually quite an impressive feat of vague allusion and manly understatement; Merlin can’t help but be proud of them both. After that, things go pretty much back to normal, and Merlin decides that it’s rather easier to deal with Uther when he isn’t wielding the power of life and death.

Things with the wider world aren’t quite so easy. Merlin’s office isn’t tiny, but it’s small enough that most everyone at least knows most everyone else by name, and gossip abounds. When he comes in on Monday morning, Elaine is sitting on his desk, sipping her tea.

“So I hear someone had a date over the weekend,” she says, waggling her eyebrows suggestively.

“Um,” says Merlin.

“Joe tells me he ran into you with a charming young blond man,” she elaborates.

“Oh, ah, yes,” says Merlin, dropping his bag beside his desk and waiting for her to leave.

“So? Who is he?” Elaine asks, not leaving.

“Arthur, his name’s Arthur,” Merlin tells her, feeling distinctly uncomfortable. He likes Elaine well enough, but she isn’t the most discrete person on the face of the earth, and he really doesn’t feel a need to let the entire building know about his personal life. Not to mention the fact that these people aren’t going to understand that Arthur isn’t exactly a normal teenager.

“Hang on,” says Ramesh, at the desk behind Merlin’s. “Not that kid Arthur you were with at the market that time?”

“Er, yes, actually,” Merlin admits, fairly sure he’s blushing now.

“Seriously? How old is he?” Ramesh asks.

“Almost eighteen,” Merlin mumbles.

“You’re dating a seventeen year old?” Elaine asks, sounding distinctly unimpressed.

“Um. Yes.”

“Oh,” says Elaine, sliding off his desk. “Well.”

Elaine wanders off, and Ramesh turns back to his work, and Merlin lasts about ten minutes before he has to run outside to ring Gwen so she can tell him that he’s not actually a horrible paedophile.

“Well no, absolutely not, paedophilia's only prepubescent children,” Gwen says. “There’s another term for being interested in older adolescents, ephebophilia I think? Which might apply, although really it’s only an overwhelming preference, and you don’t have a preference, do you, you just love Arthur and he happens to be-”

“One, not helping, and two, how do you even know that word?”

“Wikipedia. And relax, Merlin, you aren’t a horrible anything. People are sure to react that way until he’s older, into his twenties probably, because yeah, it’s not the norm these days, but it doesn’t make you a bad person. Just be grateful that homophobia’s not such a problem this time?”

Gwen’s right, of course. Arthur’s filled out in the last few months, and looks like he could be at least university age now, but it’s still undeniable that Merlin’s substantially older even without discussing the exact numbers. Obviously not everyone will be as understanding as Barbara. Ultimately, Merlin doesn’t really care for his own sake - it’s awkward, certainly, and he still has the odd attack of guilt, (like this one,) but his closest friends will probably come around eventually and it frankly isn’t anyone else’s business.

But he worries how Arthur will handle it. Merlin’s not an attractive woman, so Arthur’s mates aren’t likely to laud him for his “catch”, and Arthur’s already a bit of an outsider at school, so dating a strange older man isn’t going to help… He’s Arthur, so he’ll likely brush off any teasing, but that doesn’t mean it won’t bother him. And it’s not as though Merlin will be able to sweep in to defend him, not without making things worse. Not for the first time, Merlin feels a powerful urge to bundle Arthur off some place safe where the world can’t get at him. Maybe a nice tropical island, where they can have sex on the beach, both literally and - Merlin promptly derails that mental train of thought upon realizing that it was originally one of Morgana’s horrid yet strangely compelling suggestions.

Gwen’s got a good point about the homophobia, at least. This area is liberal enough that Merlin’s never been given a hard time about dating blokes, and hopefully Arthur won’t be harassed for it either. And that is a definite advantage. Merlin remembers snatches of another incarnation, sometime in the nineteenth century, when he’d married Morgana and Gwen had married Lancelot and they all lived together in a big country house that Arthur and Morgana had inherited from their father. (Arthur was in the army and kept pissing off to India to try and reform British colonial practices, because god forbid he should ever live a quiet peaceful life. The rest of them did some campaigning for that and various other causes, but mostly they had an awful lot of orgies without Arthur. Up until he lost part of his leg in a skirmish and was forced to retire, at least, following which they did more campaigning and had an awful lot of orgies with Arthur.) It was all quite nice so long as they had the place to themselves, but any time there were guests or they went to London they had to pretend that they weren’t having a great deal of sex that was punishable by law, and that got very old very fast.

The issue doesn’t arise immediately. Arthur occasionally wants to go to the pub or the cinema, but after that first outing he doesn’t feel the need to broadcast their relationship to all observers, and mostly they stay in, taking advantage of the privacy and the fact that Arthur can spend the night now. (Barbara tells Merlin that Arthur and Maurice had a row about this, which was resolved when Arthur pointed out that sleeping at Merlin’s instead of slinking home in the middle of the night would prevent him from seeing Maurice slinking home from his night-time activities. Merlin and Maurice do not discuss this, ever.)

And spend the night he does. Fridays and Saturdays, and sometimes once or twice during the week. The regularity means that Merlin’s bed smells of Arthur even when he isn’t there, and while Merlin will never actually admit that he sleeps better as a result, he most certainly does. And when Arthur is there and Merlin has to set his alarm half an hour earlier to allow time for Arthur's personal variety of wake-up call, well, it's entirely worth it. (Merlin’s sleep shirts continue to disappear right on schedule, and he continues to refrain from comment on the subject.)

By unspoken agreement, the condoms stay in Merlin’s bedroom, and they keep their hands off each other in front of Arthur’s parents. Granted, sometimes Arthur’s more cooperative than others; when Merlin has the family over for dinner the week after the big revelations, Arthur hops up on the counter where he and Merlin had sex two days ago and it’s all Merlin can do to keep his face impartial. He thinks maybe it’s unintentional, that Arthur just likes the spot, until Barbara orders him down and he starts fiddling suggestively with Merlin’s bananas and smirking. Because he is, at times, an evil heartless bastard who likes nothing better than to see Merlin squirm. (It’s alright, though, because Arthur stays after his parents go home, and then Merlin spreads him out on the kitchen table and systemically works over each of his sensitive spots with fingers and lips and tongue until he’s the one squirming, not to mention swearing and sweating and begging.)

Still, for the most part, Arthur behaves himself, and thing continue without major incident into September. And then, one night after dinner at the Rileys’, when Arthur and Maurice are washing the dishes in the kitchen, Barbara says,

“Merlin, if I might have a private word.”

Merlin nods and follows her into the living room. It’s been a perfectly pleasant evening and she’s shown no signs of unhappiness, but Merlin can’t help feeling slightly terrified anyway.

“With school starting soon-” she begins, and Merlin breathes a large sigh of relief.

“I’m not letting him sleep over on school nights, I’ll send him home by ten o’clock - earlier, if you prefer - and make sure he isn’t neglecting his school work or his practices to spend time with me,” he recites promptly. He’s had this conversation with Arthur already, actually, although Barbara doesn’t need to know about the part where Merlin threatened to withhold sex if Arthur fails to keep up with his responsibilities. (Or the part where Arthur threatened to withhold sex if Merlin continues to “sound like my mother, god, Merlin.”)

“I - yes, ten o’clock will be fine,” Barbara says, looking rather impressed. “Good man.”

(Actually, Merlin and Maurice do talk about Arthur’s sleeping habits, exactly once. It’s the second week of September, after another dinner at the Rileys’, when Merlin says goodnight to everyone and then Maurice follows him outside.

“Thursday is Barbara’s and my anniversary,” Maurice says without preamble. “Our twenty-first. I have - plans. It would be greatly appreciated if you could see that Arthur is - occupied, for the duration of the evening. It is a week night but-”

“It’s fine,” Merlin says quickly. “Congratulations. I’ll keep him at mine.”

“Good man,” says Maurice, with exactly the same inflection as Barbara. Then they stand there for another thirty seconds or so, in awkward silence, before Maurice turns back inside and Merlin flees across the street.)

Arthur’s eighteenth birthday falls on a Tuesday. His parents take him out for dinner, and Merlin joins them at home afterwards for cake (baked by Barbara) and ice cream (supplied by Merlin, who also brings stupid paper birthday hats and delights in the fact that for once he gets to inflict comical headgear on Arthur).

Afterwards, Arthur comes home with Merlin, where Merlin gives him his gifts.

There’s an Amazon voucher from Gwen, and a copy of The Mists of Avalon from Morgana. (Giving one another wildly inaccurate bits of Arthuriana has never stopped being hilarious, though Morgana’s always made a point of finding the most disturbing possibilities.)

“Isn’t this the one where we’re siblings and we have sex at a pagan orgy or something? And then Mordred’s our kid?” Arthur asks, peering at the cover dubiously.

“That’s probably the entire reason she chose it,” Merlin says apologetically, and then brings out his own contributions, which include good translations of Beowulf and the Elder Edda - “It’s early medieval literature that’s not about us, it’ll be good for you” - as well as some rugby stuff that Barbara helped him pick out, a pair of red socks with gold dragons on them, and a claw-shaped amber pendant. Arthur’s tastes seem to change very little throughout his lives; he’s managed to acquire similar jewellery in nearly every incarnation, and Merlin’s more than happy to help in this one. Altogether it’s maybe a bit much, but it’s Arthur, and Merlin’s never exactly been prone to holding back where he’s concerned.

“Where did you find these?” Arthur demands, laughing over the socks.

“That’s none of your business. Open the last one.” The last one’s the pendent; Arthur gives the small box a speculative rattle and then rips off the paper.

“Shit, this is like… Wow. Thank you,” Arthur says, completely serious now. He fastens the pendent immediately around his neck, and goes to hug Merlin.

Merlin can feel the claw pressing into his chest, and that together with the ring on Arthur’s forefinger against his neck throws him into the visceral memory of countless other embraces in countless other lives. Merlin’s never really got used to it, the way everything he feels for Arthur is pure and present and bound to the now, but somehow also carries the echoes of bygone ages brimming over with emotion. It’s sort of ridiculous and sort of epic and Merlin wonders why he ever thought keeping his distance was a good idea.

At the weekend, Arthur’s friend Jess arrives to celebrate with him. She’s spending the night at Merlin’s house, because Merlin’s couch folds out into a bed and, according to Arthur, “My dad is possibly the only thing in existence that she’ll admit to being afraid of.” She reminds Merlin of a younger Morgana, which isn’t all that surprising, although he thinks it’s best not to mention it to Arthur.

(In at least one lifetime, Arthur and Morgana did get married, before either of them met Merlin. Merlin can recall exactly two incidents from this life: first, watching them walking through a garden together and marvelling at how beautiful they both were; second, an evening when they were all three spectacularly drunk and Arthur admitted that he’d rather like to shag Merlin. Merlin had responded by choking on his drink. Morgana had responded by saying that she was fine with them doing it so long as they were fine with her joining in. Merlin isn’t sure what happened after that, but suspects his mind is repressing it on account of Morgana currently being his sister.)

Jess greets Merlin with this: “So, you’re Mrs. Robinson, huh? It’s a pleasure.”

They’re going out to do a pub crawl, and Arthur tries to persuade Merlin to join them, but Merlin insists that they go without him. It’s rare enough that Arthur spends any time with his peers, even rarer that it’s anyone not from the rugby team, and Merlin has no desire to impose on them. (If he’s honest, he also isn’t too keen on the prospect of an evening with a teenager newly able to buy liquor, even if that teenager is Arthur.)

Arthur goes to use the bathroom before they leave, and that’s when Jess corners Merlin.

“Look,” she says, eyeing him speculatively. “You seem like a good bloke, so I’ll not dick around with you. Here’s the deal. I know where you live, yeah? So you hurt him at all - I’m not saying I think you will, mind, just - you hurt him, I’m back here quick as anything and breaking both your legs, understood?”

“Understood,” Merlin says, and then has to bite at his lips to hide his smile. Clearly Arthur’s still inspiring the same sort of loyalty he always has.

“Brilliant,” Jess says, smiling a little herself. “And, ok, he’ll never admit this but he’s, like, completely mad about Blackadder, and I can’t afford to buy him the DVDs so you should get him the set for Christmas or something, alright?”

“Thanks, I’ll keep that in mind,” Merlin says, and then Arthur comes back.

“Hey, Arthur - how are you two getting home tonight?” Merlin asks as they’re about to step outside.

“Taking the bus, don’t worry, no one’s trying to drive a car,” Arthur says, with a slightly exasperated tone suggesting that he’s had this exact same conversation with his mother quite recently.

“Why don’t you ring me instead? I’ll come for you whenever you’re ready to leave, no matter how late it is. Spare you trying to sort out the timetables when you’re pissed.”

“You don’t have to do that, we’ll be fine, I swear-”

“I want to,” Merlin insists, and Arthur pouts for a moment before relenting and saying,

”Yeah, ok, fine. Thanks.”

“Good man,” Merlin tells him. Arthur gives him a look which quite clearly says Remember that conversation about how we’re not having sex if you keep sounding like my Mum? Which is probably deserved. “Have fun,” Merlin adds quickly, plastering an innocent grin on his face and waving them out the door. He stands in the entranceway, watching them go, and hears Jess saying,

“Here, you’d better give me his number, you’re a useless drunk.”

“You just want it so you can leave him threatening voice mails,” Arthur protests.

“Nah, he’s alright, but your phone’s ridiculous and I’ll probably end up ringing your dad by mistake if I have to try to work it pissed…”

And Merlin thinks that yes, he really does quite like this girl.

Jess rings him around three in the morning to announce that Arthur’s trying to sing karaoke, and “Given that the sanctioned karaoke was two bars ago it’s probably about time to call it a night.”

When Merlin arrives to collect them, they’re sitting on a bench outside, Arthur leaning against Jess’s side and still attempting to sing under his breath.

“Everything was fine until he discovered tequila shots,” she tells Merlin, pouring Arthur into the back seat. “Granted, that’s about where my memory of my eighteenth cuts off too, so maybe I shouldn’t talk.”

“You seem surprisingly lucid,” Merlin says.

“Had to look after this one, didn’t I?”

“Can take care of m’self,” Arthur mumbles. “Once an’ future king, me.”

“Just try not to throw up in your boyfriend’s car, princess,” Jess says, and Merlin grins at her in the rear-view.

Merlin’s never seen Arthur drunk before. They’ve gone out to the pub a few times, but never with the intent of getting pissed, and they always have too many other illicit activities to occupy them at home. He doesn’t get to experience much of it now, either - Arthur falls asleep on Jess’s shoulder five minutes into the ride, and barely wakes up when they get home.

“I’ve got him from here,” Merlin tells Jess. “You’ll be alright?”

“Yeah, yeah, just want to down some water, and I know where the couch is,” she assures him.

Merlin nods, then readjusts his grip on Arthur to haul him up the stairs. This brings back memories too, but fortunately Merlin’s bedroom is much closer to the door than Arthur’s chambers were to the feast hall once upon a time. (Arthur's dopey grin and slurred thanks, though, are exactly the same.)

The following week, Arthur has a rugby match. It’s the first one Merlin’s attended since they’ve been together openly, and Merlin can’t help being a little anxious. He’d known Arthur had told Jess about them, but he has no idea if Arthur’s said anything to his team-mates. He doesn’t know whether Arthur’s going to treat him as lover or friend in front of them, not to mention how the lads themselves will react. Maurice is out of town again, and Barbara’s busy, so Merlin stands on the sidelines alone when he arrives and tries not to fidget.

The game doesn’t go well. Merlin honestly doesn’t know that much about rugby, but it’s clear even to him that Arthur’s team is making a lot of mistakes. Arthur waves to Merlin at half-time, but spends the break conferring with the team and their coach, only for the second half to go even worse. They lose, rather spectacularly. When it’s over Arthur greets Merlin briefly before stalking off to the locker room with the rest of the team, all of them looking frustrated.

A few minutes later, Arthur re-emerges wearing a clean t-shirt and shorts and an even grimmer expression. One of the other lads is right on Arthur’s heels, saying something Merlin can’t hear. Arthur quickens his steps, clearly trying to get away from him, but the guy matches his pace, keeps talking, and then grabs at Arthur’s bag, yanking it off his shoulder. Arthur stops abruptly, spins around, punches the guy square in the face, and stalks off before he can recover. The others milling around eye them both, but make no effort to intervene, and the guy doesn’t pursue Arthur further.

“Arthur, what the hell-” Merlin begins, when Arthur reaches him.

“Let’s go,” Arthur grunts.

“You hit him! He’s on your own damn team, what was that-”

“I said let’s go,” Arthur repeats, barely looking at Merlin.

“Arthur-”

“Are you coming or am I taking the bus?”

“I’m coming,” Merlin says, quashing the urge to shake him. Arthur gives a slight nod, and doesn’t speak again until they’re in the car.

“He was asking for it, alright?”

“I realize you’re upset about the match but-”

Arthur snorts. “It’s nothing to do with the match.”

“Then what-”

“Just leave it. Is there anything on the telly tonight?”

“I think ITV’s got a special on how not to punch your team-mates.” Badgering Arthur when he doesn’t want to talk rarely ends well, but then again, neither do assault charges. Arthur doesn’t respond, just glares out the window until Merlin parks.

“Are you going to invite me in?” Arthur asks, when Merlin locks the car and stands there, arms crossed.

“I don’t know, are you going to tell me what that was about?”

Arthur grits his teeth and looks like he wants to argue, but after a moment he nods again. “Fine. Inside.” They go.

“He was… Look, I’d told Percy I’m seeing someone, someone older, and they worked out it’s you, and Mike was being a complete tosser about it-”

“So you hit him?”

“So I told him to piss the fuck off and left, but he came after me and wouldn’t shut up. Asking for it, like I said. Kept saying things he had no right to say.”

“What did he say?” Merlin asks, gentler now, though he has an idea already.

“It doesn’t matter. He’d no business talking about you that way. Just… don’t tell Mum, alright?”

Merlin sighs and agrees; there’s no sense in upsetting Barbara too.

“You don’t have to tell everyone about me, you know. It might be easier if you-”

“I will not keep you a secret because other people are idiots,” Arthur says, with a finality that convinces Merlin to drop the subject.

Merlin makes them dinner and Arthur loosens up, eventually, unwinds with light-hearted griping about what went wrong during the match and steals the croutons off Merlin’s salad while they eat. He’s resilient, Merlin thinks, or at least the better of the two of them at repressing; Merlin himself is still unsettled, probably visibly so. He doesn’t like Arthur fighting for any reason, even if a small part of his heart does enjoy Arthur’s apparent need to defend his honour, and at the same time he’d quite like to do some damage to this Mike kid himself simply because he’s upset Arthur.

There’s nothing on the telly but Arthur stays around after the meal anyway, insisting on washing the dishes. Of all the unique aspects of this particular incarnation of Arthur, his persistent industriousness when it comes to cleaning remains the one that throws Merlin the most. Barbara’s trained him well, obviously, but it’s still deeply bizarre to have Arthur snatching dish rags out of Merlin’s hands instead of chucking them at his head.

“Do you remember the other times?” Arthur asks later that evening. They’re curled up on the couch, Arthur spread out across the length of it with Merlin in his lap. He has his arm over Merlin’s waist, stroking Merlin’s stomach gently, too slow to tickle.

“The other times…?”

“Other times we were, you know, us. There were other times, weren’t there, don’t tell me I’m-”

“No, you’re not crazy. There were other times.”

“So do you remember them?”

“A little. A few distinct memories, and sometimes something’ll trigger another, but it’s incomplete, sort of jumbled together. My first life, in Camelot, that’s like a dream I had last night, and one that more or less made sense. The rest… it’s snippets, like trying to remember weird dreams I had as a kid,” Merlin says.

“Why is that?”

“I don’t know. Morgana thinks it’s because a human brain can only handle so much. Two lifetimes’ worth of experiences is bad enough, and we’d go completely off the deep end if we somehow remembered everything from every life we’ve had.”

“Tell me what you do remember,” Arthur says, serious.

“God, I don’t know, it’s such a mess. A lot of it’s just these flashes without any context, like, Gwen smiling, or you and Morgana bickering, or… Well, ok, there’s this one, I have no idea when it was ‘cause we’re all naked and trying to date the clothes is the only way of telling sometimes, but we’re all naked, yeah, you and me and Gwen and Morgana, splashing around in this lake, and it’s gorgeous, beautiful day, beautiful place, and we’re all just so happy. I like that one the best, I think.”

“I think I remember that. Morgana’s got her hair short, like a boy, yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“What else?”

“There’s one, seventeenth century maybe? When people thought ruffles were a really brilliant fashion choice. We were young, like, younger than you are now, and mad about each other, only I hadn’t remembered yet and you hadn’t either and we had no idea what blokes did together, and it wasn’t like we could ask anyone so it was just a disaster. You kept laughing at me and then I started crying and… I don’t know, I hope we got it sorted eventually, but I just remember we couldn’t even manage to kiss properly or anything, and we were really too young for any of it, and it’s such a stupid one but it’s so bloody vivid.”

Merlin knows why that’s coming to mind; because it was hard then too, because it was frustrating and they had to hide and things were really only ok when they were alone and sometimes not even then. Because it was bad, then, and even with disapproving Elaine and idiot Mike, they’re so much luckier this time around.

“I remember you in ruffles,” Arthur says, “And I think… I think it must be the same life, but later, because I remember you with ruffles and an incredibly stupid hat, trying to convince me we should move to the New World.”

Merlin laughs. “Did I succeed?”

“I don’t know, probably not, I remember thinking you were an idiot.”

“You’ve always thought I’m an idiot,” Merlin says, unconcerned.

“I have not!”

“Liar.”

“Well, alright, maybe a bit, but-”

“Whatever, mate. What else do you remember?”

“I had a uniform, once,” Arthur says slowly. “I was a little older than you, I think, I was in the military and you were still too young to join but whenever I had the uniform on you kept looking at me…”

“Oh,” says Merlin, in a very small voice, heart dropping into his feet. “Yes. That time.” He does remember that, and wishes he didn’t; just thinking about it makes his stomach churn.

“Merlin? What is it?”

“Nothing, it’s nothing.”

“Tell me.”

“Don’t worry about it, it was just - not the best lives we’ve ever had, that’s all.”

“If that were all you wouldn’t sound like you want to cry,” Arthur says sternly. “Tell me.”

“It was the Great War,” Merlin says, his tone flat. “We’d grown up together that time, all of us, you, me, Gwen, Morgana, and Lancelot, and Gaius was Gwen’s uncle or something. We were a year or two apart, both too young to join up when the war started, but you lied and they believed you. You and Lancelot went, same unit, and Morgana was a nurse, and Gwen and I had to stay behind. I wanted to go with you, we both did, but they wouldn’t take me and Gaius wouldn’t let Gwen…” he trails off, shuddering at the memories. There are few things that have ever terrified Merlin so much as the sight of Arthur marching off to battle without him. Arthur’s arm tightens at his waist.

“What happened? All I can come up with is the uniform, when I was on leave I think.”

“I only remember a little. A lot of this is what Gwen and mostly Morgana have told me. You did have leave, once. You and Lancelot came home together. He married Gwen, you put your cap on me and snogged me, and a few weeks after…” He doesn’t want to say it, but Arthur’s never been one to let things lie. “A few weeks after you were both killed in France.”

“…Oh.”

“I was… I was a wreck. Getting the news, that’s one of the things I do remember…” Merlin still has no desire to discuss this, to even think about it, but now he’s started he can’t seem to stop, the words spilling out of him unbidden. “I didn’t have my memories yet, I was just a kid, and the whole world was going to hell and you were my entire life and I just… If it hadn’t been for Gwen, I don’t know what I’d have done. Morgana got leave, and she did remember, talked to us both until we did too, just so we’d know we hadn’t lost you forever, and then… That was the last time we saw her. We don’t know what happened to her, none of us remembers, but she thinks it may have been a bombing at her station…”

“Merlin…”

“And Gwen… I think I would have joined up when I turned eighteen, only I couldn’t bear to leave Gwen alone after she’d lost everyone else already. We married so it would be easier, and then… She says I died of the Spanish flu right before the armistice, suspects she did as well.”

“God, Merlin, I’m sorry,” Arthur says softly.

“I think we were meant to help, that time, to do something, but we just… We failed.”

Arthur doesn’t say anything for a long time, just kisses Merlin’s temple and keeps still until Merlin forcibly dismisses the memories and shakes himself.

“Sorry. Like I said, not our finest outing. But it’s not normally that bad.”

“It’s never easy, though, is it,” Arthur says grimly, and for a moment Merlin’s tempted to agree, to wallow, but… why?

“No. But that’s life. And hey, at least this time the fact that we’re both men isn’t such an issue, and your being too young won’t be either after a while-”

“Excuse me,” Arthur sputters indignantly, all traces of melancholy gone. “I think you’ll find my age is just perfect and you are too old-”

“Yeah, no, that’s where you’re wrong,” Merlin says, relaxing into the banter. “Morgana’s thirty-six, and Gwen’s thirty-three, so it’s definitely you that’s late to the party-”

“Oi, once and future king here. The king is never late. You lot were unfashionably early.”

“Once and future arse, more like.”

“You love my arse,” Arthur protests with mock severity. “Your life would be hollow and meaningless without my arse. And speaking of my glorious arse, it’s been, like, a week since you’ve fucked me, and that is completely unacceptable.”

“I think it’s your life would be hollow and meaningless without my cock, actually, but whatever you want to tell yourself-” Merlin breaks off, laughing, as Arthur sits up and dumps him off the couch, and carries on laughing right up until Arthur pins him to the floor and presses their mouths together.

Despite the lighter interlude, there’s an undercurrent of desperation in his kiss that Merlin can’t help echoing. Arthur’s stretched out on top of him with a thigh between his legs, hands cupping his face, sucking at his lower lip like that’ll let him swallow Merlin whole. Merlin frees one hand to tangle in Arthur’s hair and slides the other down to touch his arse, slipping his fingers along the cleft in the way that always makes Arthur whimper. Arthur does whimper, and grind his hips against Merlin’s, but he makes no effort to hurry things along. Merlin doesn’t either, just licks at Arthur’s lips and holds him close.

They’re clinging to each other, every movement a strange synthesis of urgent and slow, meant to bury painful old memories and weave fresher, happier new ones. In another dozen lifetimes, Merlin won’t remember that Arthur punched a team-mate who spoke ill of him. He won’t remember that Arthur’s last name was Riley, that his father was a thief, that his mother taught him to clean up after himself. Merlin won’t remember why he was sandwiched between his floor and Arthur’s body, or exactly what happened later, but he will remember this: Arthur’s heartbeat pounding against his own, Arthur’s hands all gentle and his mouth needy, Arthur whispering something that's voiceless and incoherent and sounds like love all the same.

Sequel: Mere Mortals