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“Stay,” Arthur says. It is a request, not a command; his face is stoic, a mask, unbroken, but his eyes are bright and pleading, and Merlin’s heart aches at the sight of him.
“I can’t.” Merlin has never wished more for his words to be a lie.
The Underworld is no place for a son of the harvest goddess, but he has come to love this cold, dead kingdom and its heir, this man more suited to the sun and the light than the darkness and grief his father festers in. Merlin thinks he may love Arthur more than he ever loved the sun itself, the warmth of it on his body as he tended the earth, gathered the crops with his mother.
They had called him Kore above, before; a cruel joke at his expense, nineteen and still untouched, until Arthur held him in his arms and took him to his bed. He’d been gentle, considerate, even sweet, all in stark contrast to the arrogance and bravado he’d worn when they’d first met; when they kissed, it was like basking in sunlight, and Arthur’s touch set him aflame with a passion he hadn’t known he possessed.
If Merlin had wanted him, coveted him from their first meeting, then it was in that moment he had fallen in love, and now his body burns with anguish at the knowledge they will have to separate, perhaps never see one another again.
“What if you could?” Arthur’s eyes are saying please, and Merlin wants to beg him not to do this to him, that this is hard enough without false hope.
“I can’t,” Merlin repeats. “My mother needs me—the land needs me, Arthur. The world is dying.”
“But what if there was a way?” Arthur asks, as Merlin’s eyes drop from Arthur’s to his cupped hands. “A loophole, so you didn’t have to go?”
The prince holds an open pomegranate, its seeds as bright and bloody as the red Arthur wears, and it strikes Merlin that he is hungry; he does not remember having eaten since he arrived here and he does not know how many moons ago that was.
He also does not remember feeling hunger in that time.
Merlin sucks in a breath. He knows exactly what Arthur is offering him, what will happen if he eats the seeds his mouth waters for: an eternity in the dark, cold Underworld, where he will never see dawn or dusk again, where he will never feel the grass beneath his feet and the wind against his skin and the sun on his back, where his mother will never roam.
But he knows what else the pomegranate means, for his mother—more than the simple harvest goddess they mistake her for—has taught him all she knows; it is the only fruit that will grow here, in this dead world, and it is the fruit of their queen. It means an eternity with his prince, his love, his erastês; it means they will be joined forever, one whole in two halves.
“Not all of them,” Merlin says.
Arthur’s mask cracks: a hopeful smile falters before it can even truly begin and his brow furrows briefly; Merlin wonders if they are not already whole, if he can read Arthur with such ease.
“How many?”
His prince eyes him warily, as if he suspects Merlin is planning to walk out and never return; Merlin wants to eat the entire pomegranate, press his smeared lips to Arthur’s cheeks and nose and mouth and promise he’ll never leave.
“Six,” Merlin answers.
“Half the year down here,” Arthur says, “and half the year up there.”
“Half the year with you,” Merlin corrects, “and half with my mother. I can’t leave her, Arthur. She needs me.”
Arthur smiles softly and he brings one hand to cup Merlin’s face; the unspoken as I need you hangs between them, but Arthur is already pushing a pomegranate seed between Merlin’s lips. He feeds them to him, one-by-one, and Merlin breaks the flesh of each one as they pass between his teeth, the sweet and sharp taste coating his tongue as he swallows.
He has eaten the fifth when Arthur kisses him, possessive, and feeds the sixth and last seed into his mouth, while a fire starts at the base of Merlin’s spine and in the pit of his stomach. He has barely swallowed the seed when he returns the kiss with a passion, with the same fire that fills his body; he wants Arthur to take him again, to mark him with teeth and nails and love, so he may leave the Underworld with some trace of his lover still on him.
But there is not enough time; the psychopomp, their messenger god, waits on the banks with the ferryman to return Merlin to his mother, before Hunith kills the world in her despair that she has sent her son into hiding only for him to never return.
“I want—” Merlin starts when they part, chasing Arthur’s mouth, but Arthur grips him by the shoulders and holds him at arm’s length.
“So do I,” Arthur says, and Merlin notices how flushed his cheeks look, how swollen his lips are. “But if you don’t go now, I don’t think I can let you leave.”
Merlin’s pulse races and it only makes him want Arthur more, but he nods his understanding and Arthur gathers him into an embrace, wraps his arms around Merlin’s waist and holds him tightly. Merlin burrows his face in Arthur’s neck and breathes him in, tries to hold onto the scent of him.
“When you come back, erômenos,” Arthur promises, his voice a pleasant rumble against Merlin’s ear. “We’ll have time for that… and other things too.”
Merlin’s heart aches with what he knows now to be love and he presses frantic kisses to Arthur’s cheek between a litany of, I love you, I love you, I love you, whispered into his ear.
“Come back to me,” Arthur says when they part, and Merlin hears I love you and I need you and don’t leave me.
“I’ll come back,” Merlin says, smiling. “I have to, now. But I have one request.”
“Anything.” It comes out more breathlessly than he thinks Arthur intends and that knowledge alone is more precious than any gift Arthur could bestow upon him.
“Don’t forget about me in the meantime.”
For the first time since they have met, Arthur throws his head back in genuine laughter, body shaking with mirth.
“Merlin,” he says, his smile wide as he presses one last kiss to Merlin’s knuckles, “I don’t think I could forget about you if I drank from the river Lethe itself.”