Rheged Part 6
Which naturally set Merlin off again, writhing and twisting under Arthur’s considerable weight while Arthur gasped a laugh and rode it out, until Merlin had to slump at last to exhausted stillness. Then and only then, the weight lifted off, and Arthur’s mouth pressed against the back of Merlin’s neck, then lower by an inch or two, and lower, travelling down his spine.
Merlin lay worn out and shivering under the onslaught, but how could he deny that his skin was singing with the power of the connection between them, every touch a rightness, even as he knew how wrong it was.
“I’ve never done this with a man before,” Arthur murmured, low and intimate, almost surprised. Another kiss, this time in the small of Merlin’s back, “It was always just … release. After battle. Like madness. It has to get out somehow…” Then, musingly, “You have skin like a girl.”
Merlin planted his face in the cover. He wanted to buck and fight again for that, but he didn’t have the strength, and Arthur had started to lick where he’d kissed, all up his spine, and his bones were melting. He’d knew he'd never felt like this before, not even during the best sex of his life, with Gwaine. It was as if Arthur had taken command of his senses, every touch perfect; as if Merlin had been waiting forever for each exact kiss, each touch. Forever.
He registered Arthur’s weight returning as the other man stretched out an arm, and pulled something from beneath the pillows, dropping it in Merlin’s eyeline on the bed as he rolled off to the side, then reached for it. And it was easily recognised; a small covered jar of the oily salve Gaius had created to smooth weathered skin. Merlin had mixed it often enough to know its scent instantly.
He closed his eyes tight again. More evidence Arthur had prepared the battleground before Merlin even knew the war was on; the knife and this.
He’d thought of every eventuality, like any great general. Merlin, willing or unwilling; Arthur had strategised for it.
Arthur ran the flat of his big hand down Merlin’s back then, from nape to the swell of his bottom, as if he were gentling his warhorse or his hunting dog. Treasuring them.
‘Merlin, I'm prepared to face all manner of horrors in this world, but if you think I'm sharing this bed with you...’
Merlin gritted his teeth.
What could he do? What could he say, that hadn’t already been said?
“You’ll force me then?” It came out coldly, far more coldly than he felt. Arthur stilled.
“Now you’re pretending you don’t want me to have you? Your prick doesn’t seem to agree.”
“It reacts to… to stimuli.”
“Stimuli” Arthur said dryly and stroked his back and bottom again with a hard, demanding hand, “Like looking at me.”
Merlin grimaced, unseen.
Somehow, with his face hidden like this, he managed a level tone. “So I find you beautiful. Everyone does. You’ve always known that, haven’t you, really… and all that rubbing and stuff... But... I don’t want to do this, Arthur. What ever you say, it’s betrayal.”
“You know differently, Merlin. You’re running away.”
“I don’t want it.”
“Then stop me. Come on, Merlin. You can do it with a flick of your fingers.”
“You know I promised not to…”
“Yes. And you know you’d break that in a second if you convinced yourself somewhere in that wooden skull, that you had the right of it.”
Merlin opened his mouth to deny it, closed it again. Because how could he argue against such a brutal truth?
Arthur let him keep his silence.
“If you don’t want it ... truly, if it's false, " Arthur continued relentlessly, "...it won’t form. Myrthryn told me. Both… parties have to recognise each other in the final moments; both have to want to be complete. If you don’t want instinctively it in your…your soul… if it’s not the destiny they claim it is, it won’t happen. If it’s not meant… nothing will happen. Except... we’ll have lain together once. That no one will ever know about,” he finished, voice suddenly significant with threat.
Merlin’s eyes bugged with outrage and he tried to twist underneath Arthur's weight to deliver the response to his face. “Hey!! I’m not the one holding you down am I?”
“Fine,” Arthur snapped. “So…can we get on with it? Finally?”
“I don’t seem to have a lot of choice do I? Seeing as how you’re squashing me flat to the bed, and your prick’s probing my bum?”
“I knew you’d see reason, Merlin. At last.” Arthur's voice dripped sarcastic disdain.
Merlin huffed a breath, the weird familiarity of the exchange a hurt to his heart. He’d missed that, at least, like a limb; the insulting banter they used to thrive on; the way they once understood each other so well, while other people believed they were constantly at war. Even in this insane situation, it somehow warmed him just a little.
So, when Arthur rolled off him again, he didn’t move, didn’t struggle or try to roll away. He just lay there and accepted.
Because if there truly was a choice in the end, he simply wouldn’t do it. That was it. He would accept this, this single time with Arthur, and then, when his part came, he would turn away from any magical completion of their connection. Arthur would have to accept then that it wasn't meant; that this Myrthryn had it wrong, though Merlin knew now in every cell of his body, that he had it right.
But he knew he had to resist, when the stakes were so very high. And if Arthur realised what he'd done and wouldn’t forgive; if he took it as the rejection of their absolute joint destiny it was at root, well Merlin would just have to take the consequences. It wasn’t as if he had much of a relationship left with Arthur to lose now anyway.
‘But you could have’. His treacherous mind whispered, ‘You could have everything. Everything you’ve wanted so badly, deep down.’
Arthur.
Always, always Arthur.
From the first, Merlin had known he'd belonged to him.
He’d just succeeded until now, in hiding the extent of it from himself, to spare the pain.
He was excellent at hiding.
But he could hardly deny now what had been cowering inside him all along, dragged by this, all unwilling, into the light… all those seething, selfish, disgusting feelings....
Merlin knew why he'd entombed them immediately and efficiently from the start. Because he’d known always, deep in his bones, that it was never going to happen.
Arthur would never, ever put him first; would never see him that way. Never want him like he wanted women, like he came to want Gwen.
So why acknowledge even the ghost of a wish? He’d never allowed himself. He’d never been one to cry for the moon.
And when he'd found that Gwaine loved him as more than a friend, it had all been so easy.
But if Arthur had... if he’d even glanced toward him…? Face it now.
If he had... Arthur, his golden prince, the arrogant, noble pillock he’d offered his life for over and over; lived his life for from the first…? So beautiful and glorious he sometimes stopped Merlin’s breath in his throat...
Merlin hadn’t even looked at men like that before Camelot, he realised with a kind of revelatory hysteria; before he sank his life so deeply in Arthur’s. Just like Arthur, his eyes had turned to women. Morgana for a while - a boy's idle admiration. And he’d loved Freya so quickly, so desperately, before it all became too late. But then there had been no one, just the odd fleeting fancy that barely held his interest. No one at all, for so many long, lonely, furtive years. Watching over Arthur. And now... now he found all he wanted each night was the touch of a man’s hand, a man’s skin, a man’s prick.
Gwaine, he reminded himself desperately. He was happy with him.
The sound of the wax lid popping from the neck of the jar made him jolt in nervous shock, and almost at once, Arthur’s long fingers pulled his arse cheeks apart.
Merlin’s face flushed a blazing, agonised red, but it was still buried in the bedclothes, so Arthur at least didn’t see that, though he seemed to be taking his time studying the rose of Merlin’s hole.
Merlin’s eyes squeezed painfully tight again as he waited, obediently still, feeling more physically exposed than he ever had in his life. Then at last, he heard a quiet huffed breath and Arthur’s finger stroked lightly down his cleft.
Merlin whimpered and quivered like a deerhound held back from the hunt.
Another soft huffed laugh. “Ssssh! I’ll get to it.”
The jar was thrown, lidded again, onto the bed near Merlin’s cheek, and Arthur’s slippery finger pushed at his opening. It slipped easily into relaxed, come-slick depths.
Arthur froze. Merlin gasped a short, shocked breath and squeezed his eyes closed even tighter until lights flashed behind his lids. He didn’t believe he’d ever felt shame or humiliation like it.
He’d forgotten- how could he have forgotten? - that Gwaine, his lover, had had him before his audience with the king? Had spent himself very generously indeed inside Merlin’s arse.
He felt weak with guilt over his own lack of fidelity, when Gwaine had shown so much.
And yet ...he knew that what he felt most of all in that moment, was dread that Arthur would be repelled.
A man like him would never tolerate another man’s seconds.
He heard a heavy swallow. Then, tensely, “I see you didn’t waste any time.” You slut, echoed in Merlin’s head, horrifying and gutting. He didn’t move a muscle, waiting for Arthur to pull away.
It’s for the best, he told himself. This is what you wanted.
But it wasn’t. Not remotely.
The contrast that must be ringing in Arthur’s head between he and Gwen…
But its not fair! he wanted to yell.
“He’s my lover,” he said out loud and he didn’t know if it was meant to be an explanation, an excuse or a defiant provocation.
Afterwards Merlin never understood if it was that, or sheer outrage at finding his supposed partner in legend fucked full of another man’s seed, but far from pulling away in disgust, Arthur instead, within a few devastating seconds, rolled between Merlin’s thighs, spread them with his own, shoved the large, rounded head of his prick hard against Merlin’s hole and pushed home.
Merlin let out a long, gasping moan and his mind blanked with shock, even as Arthur’s weight and momentum slid his sex in and up, all the way to the root.
Merlin’s channel, still relaxed and open and slick with oil and semen, opened to it like a scabbard to a sword.
“I think he’s going to find,” Arthur gritted, “he’s been replaced.”
There wasn’t any real pain at the brutal completeness of entry, even though Arthur's girth was significant, and his prick, he’d have been thrilled to know, was bigger than Gwaine’s. But the starbursts of stunning pleasure going off all over Merlin’s body, those were new.
He'd discovered he loved this - being taken - anyway, once Gwaine had persuaded him to try it. But this was beyond the normal physical stimulation he experienced on his lover’s cock.
Was it the shape and size of the prick now owning him?
Or the wrongness of the situation heightening every emotion?
The fact that it was Arthur - beautiful, magnificent Arthur - at long last?
Or was it that pull, the connection that had made everything between them, so right and intense from their first meeting? The whole relationship between them, everything, even the fights and the abuse; more exciting and better and more thrilling than with anyone else.
He didn’t want to think about that.
He couldn’t. He had to hold his focus. He had to.
But Arthur circled his hips, and lights went off in Merlin’s head, his pleasure spot, already sensitive from the energetic fuck with Gwaine earlier, now pressed and massaged perfectly.
"Arthur", he moaned desperately again.
Arthur at last though, seemed to be having a few problems of his own.
“Don’t… move”. He held Merlin down by sheer weight, resting on his body, every inch of his prick buried up to the balls. “God…You feel…” Panted, tense. “How...?”
“Arthur....” It sounded worshipful.
They lay perfectly still, joined physically, for long, long seconds, Arthur’s cock twitching intimately inside, then Merlin felt Arthur’s upper body lever off his back, even as his groin pressed harder still against his arse. Arthur’s weight, Merlin realised, was being held on his shins and straight arms, as he pulled his dick out very slightly and then pushed slowly back in.
They both moaned this time.
“Merlin,” Arthur’s voice was strained, forced, it sounded through gritted teeth, “Tell me. What I have to say... There’s a pledge that has to be made. Tell me the words.”
It was meant to be an order, there was no doubt about that, but Merlin thought suddenly that Arthur sounded ...young, almost nervous, as apprehensive as he'd ever heard him. It caught at Merlin’s heart as effectively as anything ever could. Because any chink in Arthur’s carapace of invulnerability had always melted him. And maybe Arthur was frightened too by what they were doing. Frightened of magic, of eternity.
Arthur had gone this far, hunting down this ultimate destiny he believed he had to pursue, and Merlin had it in his power now to stop it, this part of it at least; crush the possibilities.
“Tell me,” Arthur said again but he was asking now as much as demanding.
And Merlin had never had the will to turn from that simple thing; Arthur asking him for help.
He found the words ready on his tongue and he didn’t really know how. Absorbed somehow from the books the Druids had allowed him to see? Or perhaps they were carved in his brain, ready for just this.
He reached out a shaking hand and curled it around Arthur’s braced and straining wrist for comfort. Arthur drew a quick, audible breath.
“You …say… Arthur …this is… We can’t…”
“Tell me!”
“I… you… say…you say...‘I… Arthur Pendragon… son of Uther, king’…’” Merlin managed haltingly, voice thick with tears, and Arthur, after a tiny pause, began.
“I, Arthur Pendragon,” and his voice was firm and quiet, no sign of doubt; even the strain on his body barely audible. “Son of Uther, king,”
Merlin swallowed, staring blindly at the bedcovers under him. He used to wash Arthur’s covers, launder them. “Claim… claim ….Merlin, son of Balinor… as my completion.”
“Claim Merlin, son of Balinor...” A tiny hesitation, “...as my completion.”
“I forge… and seal this union... with my seed.”
Arthur drew another deep, deep breath then continued as confidently as he’d recited the coronation oath; as certainly as he’d pledged himself to Gwen and then crowned her queen himself. “I forge and seal this union with my seed.”
Merlin closed his eyes tight. He was so afraid.
It wont work anyway, he thought cravenly. If it’s not meant or its just...superstition. Or if either one of us rejects it …if we aren’t ready for it at our core. If I reject it…
But if they weren’t ready now, when would they ever be, in this life?
Merlin knew Arthur would never try again, and Merlin himself would take every step anyway, to make sure it never again got this far. It was now, or not at all, and he would have to let Arthur go of his own volition.
It was too soon, and it was too late.
For safety, for peace, to preserve the faith and solidarity that had pervaded the heart of Camelot since the new king retook the throne and married a servant queen for love.
To save Arthur from himself. Yet again.
To Part 7