Title: Chain Mail
Fandom: Merlin
Pairing: Arthur/Merlin
Rating: R
Word Count: 1,125
Warnings: sex (yay!)
Prompt: chainmail sex (even more yay!)
Summary: See prompt.
Author's Note: I wrote this anon-ally, and it was the first real!pr0n I'd summoned up in eons. And then I decided there was no reason not to put my name on it. XD omg, check that creative title. It's just bleeding inspiration.
CHAIN MAIL
Mail is like a second skin for Arthur, like a coating of mercury that grounds him, weighs him down and keeps him safe. He has a kind of affection for it, but all the same he’s grasping at the edging of the neck to pull it over his head as he bursts into his bedroom-an endless day of drills is an endless day of drills, and Merlin can make it up to the armor later.
Speaking of Merlin, Merlin is standing there, thoughtfully touching his chin, and not helping at all.
Arthur clears his throat extremely loudly, and Merlin persists in ignoring him, gazing at him with a vague sort of approbation. Arthur’s mouth gets a bit dry from all the throat-clearing, at which point he loses his patience, gives up, and starts drawing the mail off, avoiding his ears and muttering “Fat lot of good you are” in Merlin’s direction.
“Wait,” Merlin says, rejoining concrete reality all at once. “Leave it on.”
Arthur lets the chain mail fall back into place, if only because he needs to clear his line of vision in order to stare incredulously at his manservant, who is insane.
“Leave it on for what?” he demands, and then Merlin comes very close and sets his hands on Arthur’s hips, and Arthur’s mouth goes from a bit dry to arid.
“Three guesses,” Merlin says, “and the first two don’t count,” and kisses him, wetly and with a great deal of characteristic clumsiness. Merlin’s mouth is soft and no more apologetic than the rest of him, and it’s not just the weight of the armor that makes Arthur’s knees wobble where he stands.
Merlin smoothes his hands down Arthur’s sides, and the rings clink like jewelry.
“Might hurt you,” Arthur manages, because apparently pronouns have ceased to be necessary. “Broken rings…”
Merlin snorts, fists both hands in the mail delightedly, and hauls Arthur back towards the bed. “Give me a little credit.”
Arthur is about to utter a stunningly brilliant retort when the backs of Merlin’s knees hit the mattress, and Arthur’s momentum carries them both over the edge.
Some part of Arthur is strangely reserved from all of this, as if a corner of his mind has deemed it simply too surreal and has resolved to analyze it from a distance instead. Merlin’s hands have suddenly become a great deal defter, about which Arthur will have strong words with him when those hands aren’t making short work of his trousers and then ghosting down his thighs just beneath the bottom row of rings.
He would start now, but he can feel a deep, low groan building in his throat, and if he parts his lips and frees it, Merlin will take it as a compliment.
Damn Merlin. Damn Merlin and his hot fingers burying themselves in Arthur’s hair, and damn Arthur’s own traitorous hands, which are peeling Merlin’s clothes off, and damn Merlin’s tunic, which gets tangled in the neckerchief so that Merlin laughs, his narrow torso jumping, his cheeks pink and his eyes bright when Arthur tugs him free.
This is a disaster on many levels, but at least it’s a disaster that tastes like Merlin’s collarbones and sounds like his breath catching as Arthur’s teeth and tongue leave a telling red mark behind.
Merlin demonstrates an aptitude for multitasking that he has never shown in his servant duties, kicking his boots off as he reaches for-
“Not the armor grease!” Arthur growls, and Merlin pouts up at him attractively.
“What do you suggest, then, Sire?”
Arthur climbs over him to fumble in the drawers at the bedside, and just as his fingers have grazed a jar of much safer oil, he feels something wet and warm and destructively good against the tip of his cock, and so much of his brain explodes that it takes him a long moment to realize it’s Merlin’s tongue.
Decided, Arthur abandons the oil and starts licking his own fingers, which, combined with Merlin’s ministrations, wipes his mind completely clean. The mail is cold against his legs, and Merlin’s hands are warm on his knees, and he can’t help groaning as he scrambles back to push the first slick finger into Merlin, which he only does now because he’d never have lasted at that rate.
Merlin makes a quiet whimpering noise, and his neck stretches, and his eyes press shut, and he squirms on Arthur’s hand. His legs are too damned long-Arthur sometimes swears that Merlin must be all limbs and no body, and this is fast becoming one of those times-but then he wraps them around Arthur’s back and actually crosses them at the ankles, which is either adorable or ludicrous or most likely both.
Arthur rushes after that. He doesn’t mean to, and he tries, through the blinding haze of need and now and Merlin’s sunless skin, to make sure he isn’t hurting the mad, stupid boy, because Merlin probably wouldn’t tell him if he was, or he’d just push his hips further into it, the usual moth-to-flame impulse. But Arthur understands that, these days; he’s thrown himself on pyres for less.
And when he pushes into Merlin, it’s all worth it, all the awkward angles and the soft scrape of mail against his bum, the rings spilling over Merlin’s waist, the tightness, the ache of heat and desperation, the way they both gasp, and the way Merlin’s eyes go dark and wide.
Neither of them holds out long, and Arthur chokes to climax with a shudder, burying his face in Merlin’s neck, and Merlin arches his back and follows, hands clenching in Arthur’s hair. They just breathe for one moment, then two, their chests knocking together, and Arthur regains enough dizzy awareness to remember that he never considered the aftermath. This is going to be the most painfully embarrassing-
“Get off,” Merlin says, and shoves him, and then Merlin has tipped him onto his back and is snuggling into his shoulder.
Arthur blinks, swallows, and wrinkles his nose a little at the tuft of dark hair tickling at his neck.
“You’re going to get an imprint,” he cautions, “on your face.” He traces a vague circle on Merlin’s available cheek for emphasis.
“Shut up,” Merlin says.
There is a pause.
“…Sire.”