#bottomarthur

It was like a sickness—the chronic type, rather than the acute, in the way that the feeling never left him. He woke up with it aching in him, and carried it, simmering, throughout the day—to council meetings and training sessions and all through dinner. It itched under his skin. Sometimes, when the feeling of it grew too great, he would pull Merlin into a quiet alcove and put his mouth on him until Merlin came, biting on his fist, and only after that did Arthur feel he could go on again.

Usually, however, the relief came late at night, once all the candles had burned low, in the form of Merlin’s body sinking slowly into his, holding him down, stretching him open. Merlin’s tongue on his throat was like a tonic for the fever that had raged in him all that long, long day, and when Merlin’s teeth scraped against him, Arthur could feel the smile against his skin. He couldn’t help but smile, too.

sickness @merthurmicrofic // animals @merlinbingo

READ ME:

This is a cage. It is a beautiful cage, in the realm of the Sidhe—but a cage is a cage. Trust Sophia. Do not trust Grunhilda. And you recognise your writing, Elena, so most importantly: trust yourself.

READ ME:

This is a cage. It is a beautiful cage, in the realm of the Sidhe—but a cage is a cage. Trust Sophia. Do not trust Grunhilda. And you recognise your writing, Elena, so most importantly: trust yourself.

P.S. You can also trust in the Lord.

I have hidden these pages in my book of hours, which Grunhilda insists I read from every day. She won’t think there is anything amiss if, for some reason, she decides to stay and watch my studies and prayers. I assume I am the one reading this, and that I understood my own coded message. If not, then…God help me, I suppose.

I am a prisoner of the Sidhe. I didn’t realise at first—I didn’t even realise I was in their realm; layers of enchantment have been worked upon me ever since I left father in Gawant, so that every morning I wake up and believe I am visiting an old family friend. I have no cause to question this belief, until I find the note I hid in my dressing table.

Grunhilda cannot be trusted. This is painful to learn (every day, when Sophia reminds me, this is the part that hurts the most).

Ah, Lady Sophia! She is, I believe, a friend. At least—helping me out of my predicament is in alignment with her own motives, whatever they may be. She wants to be free of this beautiful prison too, I suppose.

She visits every day, clasps my hands in hers, then her eyes flash a fiery red and she reminds me:

‘You’re in a cage, Elena; a beautiful cage, in the realm of the Sidhe, and you are not safe. Remember. Remember...’

And the truth washes over me with a sickening crash, and Sophia holds me as I sob like a child, and she kisses the tears from my cheeks. And she tells me we do this every day—that we have been repeating this for weeks, because she wants to help me. I wrote a short reminder, which I hid in my dressing table to read every morning, to try and soften the blow of this revelation—I don’t know if it works or not, as I cannot remember from one day to the next how I take the news.

But today, Sophia told me to write all of this down so that I can read it and remember tomorrow morning, once Grunhilda leaves me to study—so that I will be ready when the warning bells start to ring, and she comes to collect me from my rooms. She will help me clear the enchantment when we are safely away, but there will be no time when she arrives. She wants me to be ready to escape together, back to the lake, and then onwards into the mortal world.

The Sidhe are planning something truly awful. She has explained it—but it is too terrible and unbelievable to commit to pages that I will have to read alone, or worse, with Grunhilda nearby. Sophia will tell me, yet again, when we are away.

So. Good morning, Elena.

Merlin can feel destiny breathing down his neck, down all their necks. His skin is screaming with it—every muscle, tendon and fingernail tense. Everything is going wrong, and he is utterly powerless to stop it.

Arthur is quiet for a long moment, beside him, before he answers Mordred. "I wish I knew."

He turns from the cell.

Merlin follows.

He has to do something. He has to try and fix this, before—

But it's like trying to talk underwater, asking Arthur to listen. He can't hear Merlin, because for all this time he's been kept in the dark, and now Merlin's standing in front of him, choking to death on the panic, the dread that's settling like silt in his veins and slowly filling his lungs.

"Arthur—"

"It's my decision. Mine alone, Merlin." Arthur is troubled too, he can tell. Exhausted. Grieving, blind-sided by Mordred's betrayal. But he doesn't know. He doesn't know what Merlin knows, that this is the beginning of the end: that if Kara is executed, and Mordred turns against Arthur, his fate—their fate, together—is all but decided.

Blood pounds in his ears, hot and wild with fright. "Please."

"What would you have me do?" Arthur demands, whirling to face him, voice sharp with frustration, desperation. "I have to uphold the laws of Camelot!"

Merlin swallows. It's all rising up in him, a decade-long bile of secrets and sacrifices, and hope, and horror—

"Exile her. Exile them both."

"Merlin, I can't just—"

Something in Merlin snaps, or breaks loose, because he just—he can't fucking do this. He can't watch Arthur die. He can't. "Arthur. There's more, alright, there's so much more to this than you know. I can—I'll tell you about it. I'll tell you everything—"

Arthur's gaze locks on him, eyes wide, and he looks—frightened, or lost. Merlin is shaking.

"Please," he repeats, choking on it; realises suddenly he's crying. "Please, Arthur."

"Alright." It's a murmur, low in the dwindling space between them, as Arthur steps away from the window, towards him, hand hesitant but reaching. "Alright, tell me."

And Merlin does.

IDC i will always be a morgana defender she NEVER did anything wrong!!!! she only wanted to feel accepted :(

It wasn't surprising that Merlin's attire hadn't come up as of yet. Merlin's life had been thrown so upside down recently that for a while he could scarcely acknowledge what his own name was, let alone give space for aesthetic concerns. From the moment his crew had been called out to check in on a man passed out along the riverbanks, expecting a drunk, and finding instead a very familiar blonde head and aquiline nose, Merlin's heart had both frozen and exploded, caught high in his throat and never settling back down.

There was Arthur's confusion, and Merlin's joy, but there was also grief and anger and panic and a change that Merlin had spent his centuries praying for and now that he was here, entirely did not know what to do with. He hated the fear in Arthur's eyes when a car drove by on the road, the sorrow when he read through Merlin's history books, the insecurity when he quietly asked Merlin what he was to do in a world that no longer needed kings.

So Merlin's mind is understandably distracted as he dresses, pulling on an oversize sweater that was a gift from a coworker, his favorite flowy maxi skirt, a loose scarf for the early fall chill. And really, it was Arthur's fault too, for he had something to say about the ring in Merlin's lip and the length of his hair and the size of his platform boots, and yet nothing about his dress. But when they left Merlin's terrace house with Arthur charging out the front door and insisting that Merlin was lagging behind, as always, Merlin thought no more of his clothes than what he always wore off-duty.

And how could he, when it felt like the sun had finally returned after an endless winter? He knew the terror of being a man out of time, he saw it reflected so clearly in Arthur's eyes. He was prepared to protect Arthur against it all, to feed him the world in bits and pieces, morsels he could swallow.

Arthur didn't want a morsel. He was wide-eyed at indoor plumbing and email and matcha lattes and antibiotics and travel documentaries and Duolingo and breadmakers. He insisted Merlin take him to the local cafe, the thrift stores, the library, the high-end shops, the parks. He was ravenous (at times literally, when anything containing the taste of vanilla or citrus was involved) to take in the world that fate had thrust him back into.

Merlin could never deny his king anything. Every time Arthur smiled at some new flavor or appliance or disease now neutralized, Merlin felt the sun reflect its warmth on him, too. And it was impossible not to smile back.

Even when he was being a brat.

is this anything

If pain's endless

Your obsessions a thousand thousand

I cut the red thread again and again,

你的执念万千千千，我把红线折折剪剪。

just hold me tighter—

don’t fall into the whirlpool of fate.