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“Oh no I see
a spider web, and it's me in the middle;
so I twist and turn…”
—Coldplay, Trouble
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A soothing rhythm – tap tap tappity tap, tap tap tappity tap – swirls around Arthur’s head, easing him out of sleep. Slowly, slowly… layer by layer… the warmth is peeled back. The noise grows louder, blurring into one sonorous note; until he is teetering on the edge, in the no-man’s-land between reality and Dreamworld. Lines begin to blur. Coherent thought slides out of his reach. The note is still humming in his ears when they grasp the words: deep, guttural, snapping something under his ribs—
“Deffro, draig bach.”
The words echo; catch him as he spirals downward. Their touch is sudden and solid, jarring into his spine. Arthur jolts. Heat flares in his heart, sails outward in one great rush, coiling around his lungs. Squeezing. Hands claw at the coverlets as his arms jerk and twitch, jerk and twitch, jerk and twitch like a puppet with severed strings.
Falling... thought I was falling am I falling thought I—
“Deffro.”
The command drills into Arthur’s skull. Red surges across his vision. Blood red. Blood… like his blood, and he can – can hear it. Hear it... singing, itching, burning as if it were oil lit by a torch. Burning—
“Deffro!”
Arthur’s eyes snap open. The note ends, smoothing out into its old rhythm (tap tap tappity tap) now he is awake. Bleary-eyed, Arthur blinks at the figure at the end of his bed. A standing figure, a tall silhouette, drumming gaunt fingers against the bedpost.
“M’rlin?” Arthur’s voice is thick with sleep. “Is th… tha’ you?”
Tap tap tappity tap, tap tap tappity tap.
Arthur moves. He throws back the furs and blankets, swings his feet onto the floor, is mid-lunge for his sword when—
“Orwedd yn ôl.”
—his body slams into an invisible wall. From Arthur's lips bubbles a tormented hiss. The wall is pressing into his front – torso, shoulders, throat, face – driving him back as he twists and squirms and swears until he is too giddy to resist, too needy for a gulp of air…
Tap tap tappity tap, tap tap tappity tap.
…and when that moment comes Arthur sags backward onto the mattress, breaths heavy and pain-ridden, the ceiling of his four-poster bed spinning like it does after every Yuletide feast. Spikes of pleasure lance through him, odd when coupled with the pain and the sensation that his spine is sewn to the sheets.
To his left the drumming stops.
Merlin moves, his footfall too loud in the gloom and quiet. Out of the corner of his eye Arthur sees him glide through a shaft of moonlight. Shadows flicker across gold-tinged eyes and cheekbones; tint his face an eerie shade of blue.
“You escaped,” Arthur grinds out, teeth gritted. His blood is still burning under the skin, burning and itching, but he cannot scratch when he is paralysed by Merlin’s words and Merlin’s eyes. They run over him: the golden halo of hair, the stubborn Pendragon jaw, the sleepshirt that has ridden up at the waist to reveal a strip of smooth skin.
“Your father’s always been obtuse,” Merlin says. “Some shackles, a door, and some guards weren’t going to stop me.”
Arthur swallows and huffs out a humourless chuckle. It is cut off as soon as Merlin takes another step towards him.
“What d’you want?” Arthur’s voice is hoarse; clinging to all the princely authority it can find. “Why are you doing th—?”
“Daliwch eich tafod.”
“Wh-what have I – I – I—”
The vowels morph slowly into choked noises. Arthur’s eyes, already starting to look a little wild, swing to meet Merlin’s, the phrase what are you doing? imprinted in the blue of his irises. Merlin cocks his head to the side, features neutral, until the noises die. Then he sits on the bed, crossing his long legs on the coverlets. The knees of his breeches are scuffed, his right side coated in dirt and dust from the dungeon floor.
“I know what you’re thinking,” Merlin says, and even in English the words are edged with the hissing quality of Dragontongue. “That I swore to you that I would never abuse my powers.”
He picks up Arthur’s hand, warmed by the fire in his blood, and folds it in both of his own. “Times change,” he says. “Patience wanes. And I’m not a knight, Arthur. My word…isn’t my sacred bond.”
He drags his thumb, the skin cool, smooth and dry, over Arthur’s knuckles and the fingers jerk and twitch, jerk and twitch, jerk and twitch and reach, reach for him—
—reach.
And Arthur moans. Smiling, the Dragonlord’s gaze roves over his prince: at the eyes losing focus, the jaw slackening with each second. Arthur is watching his hand, watching its response to his manservant, his face flitting between relief and longing and thinly veiled fear until he murmurs:
“You… you don’t… you never had to…”
Merlin reaches for his other hand.
“…make me,” Arthur manages. “Never… had to do this—”
“But this way I know.” Merlin explores the hills and valleys of Arthur’s hands, warrior hands littered with old scars and roughened by sword hilts and horses' reins; slides his thumb across the smoother plains and fields. “I know you are truly… mine. In every sense of the word.”
Arthur does not respond straight away, lost in the motions of Merlin’s thumb and the heady bliss his touch alone brings. “Wh… what d’you mean?”
“I want you to claim me as your lord. Then we will be one, always – even in death. And Uther will be powerless.”
Arthur struggles through the drunken whorl of thoughts in his head, hunting for composure and grace even as another part of him, something bare and ancient and stripped down to mere instinct... oh, how it longs to bathe in the connectedness and belonging and - and purpose Merlin's touch provokes. His distant mouth opens and from his traitorous tongue rolls a choked “no, I - I thought we… I meant something to you.”
“You do,” Merlin replies. He is twisting Arthur’s ring in circles, the motions of his thumb deft and lazy and more mesmerising to Arthur's unfocused eyes than the moonlight shimmering across the silver band. “That’s why I came.”
“We could find another way," Arthur muses, weary. But the words are unforgiving to Merlin's ears; for he clasps Arthur's hand tighter, makes him jolt from the shot of lightning that ripples through his veins and then speaks with words that spool from his silver tongue as feverish, shuddering things:
"There is no other way. Uther will never let us be... I'd kill him if he didn't mean so much to you, but you make everything - everything so complicated."
“Mer—”
“Daliwch eich tafod!” Merlin snaps to silence him. Beneath his thumb Arthur’s pulse quickens. “I wanted us to run away, but you were too noble for that. I wanted to kill them all, Gods be damned but – something told me you wouldn’t be - be impressed and I can’t have you hate who I—”
Merlin breaks off suddenly. His breathing is as laboured as Arthur’s and he closes his eyes for just a moment; tries in vain to collect his scattered thoughts and wiles.
“Just let me have you.” Merlin's thumb picks up its pace, dancing across those valleys and hills and plains and fields until Arthur’s hand is shaking in his, the fingers splayed towards his dirty jacket, feebly clenching and unclenching and that pulse, oh Arthur’s pulse is wild—
(Duh-dum, duh-dum, duh-dum)
“Puh…puh—”
“No.”
“—please.”
(Duh-dum duh-dum duh-dum)
“No!” Merlin growls. He tightens his grip. Brittle nails prick at Arthur’s quivering hand, connected to a quivering arm and a quivering torso and his head is thrown back, eyes glossy and pained and fluttering shut…
Merlin leans closer.
“Just let me have you,” he repeats, softly… oh so softly. His fingers join the dance now; trace the lifelines and heartlines on Arthur's palms. “We can be one, as destiny dictates. Truly whole. Just imagine…”
(Duh-dumduh-dumduh-dum)
“No,” Arthur mumbles, without conviction. “M’rlin, please…”
“Hm?”
“…stop.” Arthur’s voice is strained, the word melting into a moan as his hands snake around Merlin’s wrists. “Puh-puh-please stop. Now. N-nuh—”
“It's just a little pain, Arthur. And once we are bound there will be no more." Merlin's voice grows louder; the tap tap tappity tap of his fingertips on Arthur's forearms more frantic, harder, deeper. "No more! There will be glory and triumph and love to fling in Albion's face. In your father's bastard face! And then he will not prevail. He will not take you from me! Let him dare—”
“—stop!”
Merlin stops.
Arthur does not stop trembling. He is still sprawled on the bed, ribbons of that white-gold hair plastered to his forehead with sweat; eyes scrunched shut but twitching under closed lids, chest heaving as if he has fought a round in a tourney. Merlin guides his hands down smooth underarms, past the web of veins in the wrists, over the heels of Arthur's palms until he has reached the valleys and hills and plains and fields he so loves.
“Do this for me.” Merlin’s thumb starts to move again, languorous, teasing. Arthur whimpers. "Let go. Rhwymo gyda mi, draig bach," Merlin adds, and Arthur's hands lock around Merlin's. No longer reaching, the fingers unable to jerk and twitch, jerk and—
(Duhdumduhdumduhdum)
—twitch, jerk and twitch and reach only claim take find—
“Rhwymo gyda mi!” Merlin screams, his face so close to Arthur's that spittle flecks the planes of his cheeks. Scrabbling for patience, he tilts his head to the right, wheezing breaths brushing the sweet sweat on Arthur's jaw as he croons, breathless, into his ear: "Oh little dragon..."
The voice is low, sing-song, as if his prince is no more than a child. But the words are too close to Arthur, he knows; oh so close, digging deep into his soul—
—and beneath him Merlin feels Arthur's blood boil, burn, roar in his body for its lord. It is sloshing in his heart, a storm-ridden ocean of crimson. It is pulling back his eyelids, making him see with gold-flecked eyes. It is pounding at his temples, pounding, pounding, pounding with desire need oh Gods lust pounding pounding pounding—
Burning.
“…won’t you obey your lord?”
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