the bed on which they lay. (i, ii, iii of five)
TITLE: the bed on which they lay. /parts 1, 2 and 3/
(Read also: Five Times Merlin and Morgana shared a bed, And the One Time They Had Sex).
Pairing: Merlin/Morgana.
Word Count: 4400~
Rating: NC-17
A/N: Split into two uploads, for the sake of length. This is times one and two and three. [Title from Missy Higgins' Sweet Arms of a Tune]
1.
He’s younger now than he is at the end of the story, at the end of their time. His fringe sticks up in all directions, and his ears still seem too big for his head, and she doesn’t for the life of her yet understand the neck-scarf thing.
He’s standing there in her doorway, a sleeping draught resting uneasily in his graceless hands, explanations falling from his mouth as he tries to ignore the way her long, tangled hair sticks sweaty to her reddened face.
She wonders if she should tell Merlin, that she had a nightmare. If she should just rest her head against the ageing wood of her creaking door and close her eyes and fumble words onto his shoulders. So he can carry the weight of her problems. So she can sleep.
But propriety sticks its neck out, as it will, as it has. It pushes Morgana’s tired body upwards and her lips together and her head from out of the clouds. Tells her that they’re nowhere near friends, and there’s no way he’d want to do that.
(God. She couldn’t be more wrong.)
So she just sticks her hand in his, as gentle as she can, rescuing the small vial from within his sweaty fingers.
“Thank you, Merlin”
The lilt in her Irish mumble says it's a dismissal. He thinks. But then she’s staring at his neck-scarf, with an expression that falls between exhaustion and amusement and haphazard, wanton, new-found desire. And he can’t bring himself to leave just yet.
“Did – did I wake you? I – Gaius told me it was urgent. Perhaps he heard you?”
“I doubt he heard my screaming from the other end of the castle.”
Her voice comes out harsh and cracked and curt just, god, totally wrong. He wants to stay. She wants him to stay. Her head’s still reeling from the nightmare, and she likes everything about Merlin, and actually, she’s sort of just throbbing with loneliness. All around her body. She wants him to stay, for as long as he can.
So she mutters a light apology, and gives him a smile, and steps a little closer, her hand resting heavily on the door again.
“I couldn’t sleep anyway…you know – “
“Nightmare?”, Merlin cuts in, that heavy mid night clumsiness falling through his sentences now, and he only catches himself after a long silence, as he adds, “Gwen, um, tells me ‘bout it. A bit. Not every time, or anything. It must be awful.”
“Yeah…look, Merlin –“
And then she just, sort of, runs her eyes over Merlin’s face quickly, catching herself on the turn of his sharp cheekbones, and the shape of his embarrassed lips - as he starts to bow his head towards her, as he prepares his legs for a getaway.
And then she kind of, sticks her tongue half-heartedly through her teeth, and stretches her face into invitation, and grabs just the smallest bunch of his tunic lightly, the fabric all thinning and new to her gray eyes, sans jacket.
“Would you like to stay?”
“Stay?”
“Yeah, um. For a bit. A drink or something, yeah?”
“I-in your room?”
His eyebrows curl into uncertainty, because he knows Uther would send him to the stocks for all of winter if he found out. And she’s so beautiful and tired and magical and there are moments when he’s utterly terrified of her. Already.
But she undoes herself from the tangle she has in his shirt, and whispers her hand quickly down the length of his torso, and looks at him like they need each other a lot, her hair all every where, and her face all red.
The drinks are forgotten, the moment he runs his funny fingers over her bed curtain. He's positioned himself across the room from her, maintaining distance. It was a stupid idea, he thinks. He should hold her, he thinks.
But he’s always too slow. And she’s always too fast. And he’s barely made a noise, his mouth hanging open and his muscles all tensed before she just comes walking towards him. And he curses the flinch he lets shudder through the both of them as she stops inches from his nose, uneasy breath whispering across his face until she lets her long neck, and her awkward head fall into the crook of her shoulder.
“I’m so tired”, comes muffled, with a half giggle-sigh-hum sort of thing, breathed into his shocked chest, still and quiet until he sighs, and tangles a hand somewhere in her hot, sweaty hair. His other hand swings by his side, and his torso keeps swaying from the pressure of her strange body pressed awkward against his, and eventually, his chin comes down to the top of her head.
“We’re sort of friends, right?”
She breathes a laugh, moving a little closer, tugging at his shirt, all sorts of tenderness shooting between them. All sorts of forbidden.
“Will you stay?” she replies.
There’s something about Merlin. There’s something about Merlin, here, in her room, all lit by the moon and his magic and her. There’s something really good about it, something she forgets eventually.
“You must be tired”, she says, nodding towards the suitcases under his eyes, as she crawls under the cool covers. There are so many youandIyouandIyouandI fantasies, so many pleas between them.
So he kicks off his scuffed boots, and tugs off his socks and settles on her bed, all upside down and far away and awkward. His feet kick the pillow near her head, and she laughs.
“You dollophead…come here –“
His long limbs are all arranged, and his head is all light on the feather pillow next to her, and for a moment he thinks he should kiss her, and she thinks she should kiss him. It’d be fine in the morning.
(He doesn’t kiss her. Not then. Not at the start. She doesn’t kiss him. But she curls an ankle around his foot and he tugs absent-mindedly on the hem of her nightgown sleeve and they don’t talk about it – not ever – but she misses his warmth for weeks.)
2.
She hasn’t forgotten, not a bit. Her body droops with tiredness, and her hands ache with magic, and she can’t even breathe around Uther she’s so terrified. But she’s not forgotten the way Merlin looked at her, shadowed by the clothed tent in the druid camp – like he understood her, like he felt what she felt. She’s not forgotten the droop of his flowers, or the rapid, panicked assurance that he’ll look after her – surrounded by rocks and fog and soldiers. She’s not forgotten the pattern they formed around each other on her bed, all those months ago.
So when she catches him in an alcove one afternoon, her hand curled gentle around his forearm, it’s to say – i’llmakeituptoyou.
“You saved my life, Merlin, I’ve gotta do something!“
“That was – Morg – that was nothing – “
“I’m going to take you out…”
He catches her excited gaze then, lip between his teeth and brows furrowed and eyes serious because this is ridiculous. Because he didn’t really do anything heroic. Because he doesn’t know how long this tenderness can last between them, before she uncovers every last thing about him – and escapes. Because he loves her a lot already and Arthur says he can’t – everyone says he can’t.
“I just want to spend some time with you…”
He never listens to Arthur anyway.
He meets her that night, hooded by her hair and a large satin cloak, and skulking in the shadows with a grin on her face. It’s the happiest he’s seen her in months, and he can’t bring himself to ruin it with truths. He’s far too terrified and cowardly and in love to tell her everything. So he plasters a reflective smile instead, and lets the nerves take over the guilt.
“Won’t people notice you?” he asks, as they tug open the creaking door, and let the warmth and the smell and the sound of dozens of drunken jokes drown their cold bodies in the entrance to the tavern. She saunters through the crowd. “I mean, you’re not exactly blending in.”
Morgana’s still underneath her cloak, and she turns around with a pout as she leads him quickly to a corner of the room, light muffled by sillouhettes.
“Merlin. I’m underneath a cloak!”
“O-oh.”
“Plus”, she adds, with the pout still hanging on her lip, the raised eyebrow visible in the partial darkness, “everybody here’s blind drunk. We’ll be fine.”
He doesn’t believe her. She knows he doesn’t believe her. So she sets out to prove it, tongue through her teeth.
Her hood slides off the top of her cocked head by the third ale. He’s sort of swaying in his wooden seat a bit, because he doesn’t hold alcohol down particularly well, and she shakes her finger in his direction and shouts you work too hard across the table.
And then there’s more alcohol.
And Merlin’s half-leant against the frame of a giggling Morgana, his stance an attempt at antagonism as he tries to tug her cloak away from an enthusiastic buyer, slurring that’sMorgana’s and buggeroffyeah? and threegoldpieces?! until she grins into his thinning jacket and tells him to just get more drinks, okay?
And then there’s even more alcohol.
And Irish tones fall in lilts and hiccups through Morgana's voice, as she tugs at her maroon dress and giggles polemics and proclamations and courtly secrets to the crowd drawing larger around them, so tight and loud and happy that the couple can barely draw breath.
And then she's pulling on his hand, the skin around their necks all flushed and red and heaving as she clears a path through the crowd, and picks up her skirts, and throws him a curtsey. Her slender, playing, fraught hands catch his thin waist as the peasant tune drowns the drunken raucous of the tavern, and she watches happily as he steps with an almost-confidence around the floor. The rest of world's kind of half there, a nebulous picture of blurred couples, and even the feet stumbling against her slippers shoot nothing more than a numb jolt through her nerves - softened by profuse, jumbled apology. But the music beats against her heart, and his arms are somewhere near her hips, and his laughter's blowing down her structured hair.
She supposes there'll be consequences or something in the morning - when they sneak back to the castle, when she faces Uther. Everyone's noticed. The ward and the servant, all alcohol and abandon, stumbling towards the innkeeper and demanding a key. Please.
But she's caring less and less about what people think these days - particularly the king - and so her arm wraps tighter around his elbow and her laughs become louder as he pokes the metal key blindly around the door, and they half-carry each other into the room.
It's just a bed, large and old and probably uncomfortable, and a small window, and really - she's not sure she doesn't want to leg it back to her echoed chambers, and her feathered bed. And then Merlin breathes this laugh, giddy with relaxation, feet propped against the yellowed pillows and head half hidden behind a wooden frame, and Morgana decides she prefers the company. There's a tenderness almost cemented between the two of them, and she likes to think he'll look after her forever. So she makes her way over to the bed, tripping on her own feet until she reaches the edge of the mattress.
"God, too much alcohol..." he mutters to her back, watching as she throws her shoes across the room and turns to face him.
"No such thing!"
"We're gonna be in so much trouble -"
She pulls herself onto the bed now, feet tapping against the material at his chest and fingers playing with the hem of his pants.
"Do you really think this is so wrong?"
Merlin raises his eyebrows, and gestures to them. He thinks it's wrong that he hasn't told her about him. He thinks it's wrong that she's a lady and he's a servant and that's wrong. But actually, really, truly, he never wants to leave this bed. 'Course - he doesn't say that, doesn't say a thing.
So she heaves herself up, and lets some sort of smile slip across her face as she clambers towards him.
"Are you afraid?" she mumbles, hand near his torso. "Are you?"
"Morg - "
"Are you scared he's gonna put you in the stocks? Are you worried about people finding out?" Her tone's fallen into downright sassiness now, and she picks through their fears with a careless enjoyment. Areyouareyouareyou??
He grins right back as she taunts him, swinging a leg absent-mindedly over his stomach and throwing a breathy laugh towards his face. His arms are pinned down by her hands - all fumbled and strong and tickling at his skin, and a curtain of dark hair sweeps across his face. They're vaguely aware that's she technically straddling him, her silk gown flying against a patch of pale, uncovered skin. He shifts slightly underneath her - a crooked smile still hanging on his face as she raises a hand and shuffles slender fingers through his growing fringe.
She thinks maybe she should kiss him now. Let his mouth fall against hers, all his secrets tumbling through her body.
But she doesn't. She's terrified of them sometimes.
"You shouldn't be afraid..." she whispers, breath warm against his face, bracketing the hypocrisy with a smile.
But he knows her better than that, already. He knows she's tired, and frightened, he knows she thinks he's hiding something. He knows this can't last long. So he nods, quells courage and pulls his heavy head up to meet hers, pressing his lips gently to the corner of her mouth.
The alcohol, and his body make her blush, and she's frozen there against his mouth until he tugs his lips away, and falls back against the mattress. She release her grip on his shoulder, trailing her hand down his chest until it meets her own leg.
"We seem to be making a habit of this", she slurs, in a mumble.
"What?"
"You know - sharing a bed..."
"I guess we are."
Morgana half-falls off him now, with a clumsiness reserved for alcohol alone, and he grabs hold of her wrist until she's regained some sort of stability upon the mattress, away from him. She's not touching him now, and he's not touching her, but their eyes run over each others' lips until they're too tired, and the world's too blurred.
And god, she doesn't talk about it. She won't talk about it - but she misses his mouth for months.
3.
Next week he'll poison her. And she'll hate him, god, forever.
Next week he'll hate her too.
But not this week. This week she shows up at his door, hair longer around her silken waist, feet tapping the floors, asking him if she can come in for a bit?
"Is it a girl?"
She's settling herself at the corner of his small bed now, playing with the bracelet on her wrist and training her eyes cautiously on his face.
"Is what a girl?"
"All of this. The grumpy..."
"Why would it be a girl, Morgana?"
"Oh! Stop it! You've been sulking for weeks - even Arthur's noticed. Were you rejected?"
She can see the joke hit him from across the room. Just - whack him across the head and press his chest into the dirtied wall behind him, and she feels a pang. He might be the only thing she still cares for here, and now he's got his arms around his legs and his furrowed brow in her direction. They, neither of them, ever get it quite right.
But she swoops across the room within an instant, pressing her warm side up against his, nudging his shoulder with her chin and mumbling excuses.
"Sorry - it - I was joking. You do look sad though."
He wonders if he should tell her about Freya, dying by the lake - his sobbing mouth in her hair. He wonders if she'd help. He wonders if it'd just be awkward, crying on the shoulder of the woman he adored about a woman he adored.
"Look, I'm your friend aren't I?" she cuts in, again, her hand somewhere near his. "I'm your - something. I just wanted to make sure you were okay."
"Course I'm -"
"And if it is a girl - you can tell me, you know? I mean, it wouldn't be weird or anything - between us. You can talk to me - "
"Why didn't you come earlier then?"
It slips out of his mouth before he can stop it, and he hates every word in the sentence. So bloody selfish. He knows how much she's going through - but he's lonely and angry and tired, and he's taking it out on her.
Her hair sways around his knees as she starts to get up - jumbled apologies and excuses and insults running past her lips, and he only works up the courage to stop her when she's almost standing, back straightening and toes bumping his. She wanted something different than this, she thinks.
His hand curls around hers, and he tugs her down to meet him, gently until she's crouched against his legs, his fingers against the pads of her palm.
"That was rude", he mumbles.
"Yes, it was."
"I'm sorry."
"Are you gonna tell me then?"
A million things almost fall out of his mouth, as she untangles her hand and rubs her eyes with a finger or two. But he thinks the better of it - or something, and just shadows a hand around the curve of her hair.
"I'm fine..."
"Yeah, me too."
She smiles at him then, inches from crying, and puts a hand to her face. Resting her elbow a moment on his knee, she examines him before leaning forward and pressing a kiss to his cracked lips. It's hard and quick and friendly and she lets her head rest against his furrowed brow then, absent-mindedly avoiding his gaze until his nose rolls down upon hers and he kisses her back. Once or twice, maybe four times, plucking at her lips with a fervent sort of affection.
And then he's a little bit breathless, and she's tugging at the hair towards the nape of his neck, leaning forward in her crouch. Nose squashed against his, stance a little unstable, clumsy by osmosis she looks at him straight and lets her hair curtain their faces. Maybe she sobs.
"I'm fine too..." she mumbles, breath warm on his cheek, eyes wet and so sincere he's really inclined to believe it. She's fine. He's fine. The whole world is just fine.
And then she tugs at his waist - curling her hands into his threadbare tunic and pulling him closer, settling her lips upon his. Her weight falls briefly into his lap, as she stumbles out of her crouch, and his silly fingers are all tangled in the strands of hair near the small of her back. The kisses are longer now, and her tongue lashes quick against his lips, and there's no feasible circumstance in which this can be seen as friendly condolence. She's straddled in the crook between his legs and his torso, and his hands are making half-patterns against the silk of her dress. Really, if they think about it, they've wanted this forever. They've wanted each other forever, and it's something along the lines of love or lust or electricity or magic that runs between their rocking bodies, warmer and closer and hard against each other.
He bites at her lip as she moves to stand up, something like a whimper or a moan falling from his abandoned mouth. And she smiles, pulling him upright and discarding the sash around her waist as she bites him right back. She's sidled closer, and there's a sharp intake of breath and a giggle and a sigh as their feet stumble on each other and she pulls her teeth away from his mouth and his groin presses against her thigh.
He raises his arms slow above his head, as she pulls Merlin's shirt off his chest - raking a hand over his torso and fumbling her lips over his cheekbones, against his eyes, around the curve of his ear. Merlin's fingers work deftly at the ties at her back. He's undressing her blind, as she maps his face with brushes of her lips, and there's a dim fascination at the work of hands she always took for clumsy, graceless, frenetic.
"Done this before then?" she asks, a shift in her breathing as he manages to loosen part of the dress, and she reaches her hands above his to help.
It's more about tugging really, than any sort of elaborate deconstruction, and soon enough the dress lies in a green heap on the floor, and Morgana's working at his breeches, stumbling back against his hard mattress. Uneven floor boards, and knotted ties and itchy bedsheets heed progress and romance and he's half-terrified she'll get up and leave, storm through the castle in her shift. But she nips at his chest and nods against his skin as he gives up on his own pants and works at her undergarments. His tongue slides against the edge of the fabric against her chest, laid breathless on his bed, and he pushes the whole thing up and over her head - his face against her arched breast and his hands sliding across her thighs.
"Not like this -" he answers eventually, a smile against her skin. And then he bows his lips onto the dip between her breasts, their legs hanging off the side of the small bed.
He supposes he doesn't really have time for nerves, because she's flushed and naked and breathless beneath him, so he flicks a tongue over her nipple, pebbling underneath his ministrations, and runs a hand roughly down her side. Her hand catches his when it reaches her arse, and she brings his fingers to her front, demonstrating rhythm as she tangles their feet together and knocks her head against the pillow. He's still got his pants hitched somewhere around his lower body, and she runs a toe along the hem of them while he bumps his chin against her ribcage, and dips his tongue in her navel, and grazes his teeth along the wide curve of her hips and meets his fingers with his nose at the apex of her legs.
And god, but he's so much better than she expected, ringing waves of pleasure out of her with his tongue and his teeth and his fingers until she sobs against the pillow. This is never going to happen again, she thinks. Never ever. It's all she's wanted and now she's overwrought with this ecstatic melancholy, because she's magical. And she knows, this is going to end.
So she pulls him up, moments away from orgasm, rips away his pants with an almighty tug and kisses her right off him, her tongue deep in his mouth. Merlin's so caught in her moans that he barely notices when she flips against him, turning him over and pushing him hard into the pillow. He mutters something like, "You - Morg - so beautiful", and she gives a wry smile at the half-sentence, kissing at his neck in thanks, biting slow and determined in a path across his chest. Nipping until the blood rushes to the surface of his skin so he'll remember her, when this is over.
He catches her gaze, briefly, her mouth against the dip of his pelvis, and brushes a strand against her head. He knows, he knows too, he's trying to say. He can't tell her why, but he knows. And she curves her face towards his outstretched hand, clambering up and placing his grip on her waist, as she sinks onto his hard, hard length. Her hands play some sort of magic on his chest, and their backs arch in relief and they're so wrapped up in each other they can barely breathe, making a haphazard rhythm with their moans, and the jolt of his unsteady bed legs. He can feel the sting of her bracelet - full of magic - graze against his hips and suddenly he's talking.
"T-there's something I need to tell y-you"
In the haze, it seems like the right thing to do, so deep in her she can probably sense it, and his mouth hangs open in preparation. But she pushes his secret back down his throat with her tongue, her breasts thrusting against his chest, and she groans a shut up into his mouth. Her forehead knocks against his, and he can feel her gasps - hear them breathed against his open lips and he moves his hips up to meet hers insistently once, or twice, and so hard that they lose count until they're crashing on each other and he's pressing his fingertips into the small of her back, throwing their bodies against their climaxes.
She climbs off him, like last time, breathless and clumsy, and collapses in the small space on the bed next to him, still stretched against the aftershocks of her orgasm. His hand rests somewhere near her thigh, and she turns her face towards his body. She thinks he's going to say that he loves her now, and she'll probably tell him she doesn't deserve it.
So instead she leans up on her elbow, and examines his body, long and naked and familiar.
"Did I do that?"
Her fingernails point blunt at his chest, hanging just above it, following a path of new bruises.
And he breathes a laugh, and nods at her, silent and still and she readjusts herself - hands on either side of his body as she kisses along his skin, pressing soft lips to where her teeth had been.
"I love you, you know", he mumbles, when she reaches the side of his waist. So quiet she can barely hear it, and so tender she can barely continue, but she just keeps moving, face against the bedsheets and body curling over his until she can etch a yeah, me too, into his skin with her mouth. And she misses his body for a year.
TBC
