This is my first Merlin fanfic and it shall be updated every Monday, fate willing. THERE WILL 98% NOT BE A SEX SCENE IN THIS STORY AT ALL. I AM SORRY. It's rated for language and some dark/possibly triggering content. Mentions of murder, self-harming thoughts, death, and the whatnot will be in this story. I'm sorry if it's not very good. But there are lots of good fics out there! I can recommend some if this one is icky.
Reds Like Blood and Blues Like Sky
Chapter One: Ice-Blue Anger
The first step towards solving a problem, his counselor always said, was admitting you have one.
"Merlin Emrys is my problem," Mordred says aloud to his empty dorm room every morning. His cat, Druid, looks at him with curious eyes but says nothing, not that Mordred expects him to. Mordred's brand of crazy is less 'the animals can talk to me, wheehee' and more 'shoot you dead, you fucker, I will fucking shoot you dead.'
He neglects to share this with his therapist, who thinks he's just shy.
Fucking shy. Seriously?
The counselor is full of it, as are most of the people he's supposed to see, but he managed to get the school to allow Druid into his room as a sort of animal therapy, and Mordred is more or less grateful for that.
He doesn't wear grateful well. It's a bit too small for his pride, and it's not the kind of thing that stretches in the wash.
It doesn't make sense to him, that he should be grateful to someone he pays. Loyalty, like nearly everything else, can be bought after you inherit the huge trust funds that fall on you after the murder-suicide the paper screams about neatly knocks out both your parents.
Emrys cannot be bought. At least, so Mordred thinks. He hasn't tried, and he's desperately afraid that if he does, the one thing left pure in his life will fall over like the last domino in the stack.
They met in a class for fucking wizards, if you could believe that. Harry Potter wannabees, Mordred had supposed, and he had died laughing when one kid showed up in a full purple robe with a fucking grey beard that went down to his waist.
Mordred has a major, but he's forgotten what it is. It's probably Political Science or some shit. Generally, he takes the classes he feels like going to and skips the ones he is required to attend. Folklore 230: Real Magic from the Age of Sorcery was something that did not factor into his major, his future plans, his sex life, his inevitable time in prison, or his cat. There was really no reason to be there.
Except then Mordred found out that there was real magic, that fucking magic EXISTED, like the stories his Mum used to read to him about wizards and maidens when he was too young to read them himself and open enough to ask her to sit down and read them to him.
And in the first class, the professor said 'take a deep breath, focus the power in your inner core' and the kid next to him somehow set his desk on fire.
And he hadn't jumped or cried or fallen back. Instead, he'd laughed, pure and sharp like a sword and so bright it was almost painful to hear, and he'd looked up with eyes the color of bluebirds and Mordred thought, 'Fuck.'
Merlin. Fucking. Emrys.
As queer as a three-dollar bill, with a goofy smile and goofier ears. Bow-legged and clumsy, and always always always with paint splattered haphazardly on his pants. A clever nose and smiling eyes ('When Irish eyes are smiling,' he thinks stupidly, then mentally slaps himself), cheekbones so sharp you could hold someone hostage with them.
He's so fucking INNOCENT, so much that it takes his breath away with a sort of Christmastime wonder, when maybe Santa IS real, and the reindeer ate the carrots you left for them.
He stares at him all the time, and he always tries to think of a reason for it. "I'm watching for his technique, because he's a better wizard then I am," is his tried and true excuse. This is technically true because Emrys is the best in the class, bar none, and even the professor looks startled to hell when he carelessly makes flowers sprout out of his sleeve and gives one to every kid in the class (even Mordred, a pink stock flower, and he almost shrieks when he mind immediately replies with "You will always be beautiful to me" and god he could just fucking shoot himself).
That's bullshit, though, and Mordred has absolutely no tolerance for bullshit, not even his own. The only things he can really tolerate are Emrys, his lesbian ex Morgana, and his cat.
Tolerate is a loose word with Morgana. He likes her best when she's parading around in a criminally short skirt and fuck-me pumps, and when she's smoking or eating, so he doesn't have to hear her fucking annoying voice. She hangs on to every syllable of every word, drags them out to the point of stupidity, because she thinks it makes her sound sophisticated. She attends rallies for Global Warming and the Environment, but carries around her ermine purse with the chinchilla lining whenever she can. There isn't even anything in it. Like any intelligent person who goes to school in a city, she keeps her valuables in her pockets.
She calls him 'Mormor' or 'Morling' when she wants to piss him off, and Mordred always wants to respond with something like 'Sometimes I wish we were still dating, because I could just fuck you when I didn't want to hear you talk.' He doesn't, and he's not sure why.
"Reeeeallllyyyyyy, Morling," she draws at one such encounter, her ankles crossed and a long french cigarette dangling artfully from her fingertips. "You're innnnterested in Emryssss?"
'Jesus fuck, stop talking,' he thinks, but instead says "No."
Mordred is a fucking awful liar, which is why he never lies. He has an embarrassing habit of rubbing the back of his neck every time he says something untruthful, which is why he prefers the lie-by-omission. Even now, he realizes that his hand is drifting upward and he has to awkwardly pretend to be smoothing down the collar of his black leather jacket. It doesn't fool Morgana, though. She's a crocodile in prada stilettos.
"He's sweeeeet, I guessssss. Really naiiiivvveeeee. Not your tyyyype at alllll."
"Hn," says Mordred. He doesn't really have a 'type', at least not with lovers. Apparently his type with friends is 'annoying as shit', if current company factors in.
"Pretty suuuuure he's alreeeady getting busyyyyy with Arthuuuuur, though. If you knoooow what I meeeean." She winks. Her makeup makes her look like a hooker.
Suddenly there's a flash of crippling rage, so white-hot it hurts, because how the fuck DARE she say something like that about Emrys. How the fuck DARE she. He stands up, his eyes narrowed and one hand already going for the knife slid into his boot. "He's not like that," he hisses, leaning closer to her. The smoke in his eyes makes him want to smack the cigarette out of her hand.
"Whateverrrrr," she says, blinking languidly. Mordred has never hated a single person more in his life. He's madder because he doesn't even know what to say to her-"Emrys would never go for a douchebag like your brother", or "He's so fucking PURE, you idiot, you can't even understand", or "He's too good for you, for me, for anyone", or "He has to be a virgin, nobody with a smile that big has had to deal with feeling fucked raw from the night before", or "Sometimes I wish he smiled just at me with those blue eyes", or "He's perfect", or "I really like his hands", and fuck it, these don't even make sense anymore.
"Look, Morgana, don't you have some hookers to one-up somewhere?" He's almost embarrassed by how weak it sounds.
"Haaave you evennnn taaaalked to himmm?" she hums.
'He thinks I'll always be beautiful to him,' he thinks immediately, then hates himself all the more. "Look, does it matter?" he murmurs sullenly. "Nice guys don't go for boys like me."
"That's true," Morgana says pensively, and Mordred is so relieved that she's forgotten to do her stupid voice that he doesn't respond for fear of resurrecting it. "But it doesn't mean you don't want him to try."
"I am not interested in him," he says firmly, then cusses out loud when he feels his hand on his neck.