Title: To Protect and To Serve
Author: Ansela Jonla
Fandom: Merlin
Rating: 15
Characters: Arthur, Merlin/OMC
Beta: Maslab
Warnings: non-con/extremely dubious consent (depending on how you read it)
Summary: Arthur wants to know who Merlin is sneaking out to see, but some secrets aren't always pleasant to uncover.
Word count: 2150
Notes: Written for the hc_bingo prompt sexual extortion: to protect someone else. My first attempt at a Merlin fic.
oOo
Arthur sighed as Merlin slipped from shadow to shadow, feet slapping noisily on the flagstones. After all this time, the idiot still didn't know how to move silently, even in such an easy environment as Camelot. With rather more stealth, one hand holding tight to his sword to stop the metal of the sheath rattling with every move, Arthur followed his servant down the dark corridor, both of them ducking behind pillars whenever they heard the loud footsteps and clanking armour of an approaching guard patrol. Thankfully Merlin didn't look round - and Arthur was sure he'd told him to be aware of his surroundings at all times when doing things like this - or he'd have spotted his unwelcome companion. He'd have to take Merlin on some more hunts - there were rumours of great herds of deer crossing through the forests to the north which would be suitable if they were true - and see if he couldn't knock some sense about this sort of thing into that empty shell of a head.
It was even easier following Merlin through the lower town, where there were even more things to hide behind and cast shadows over his face, and Arthur smirked as he realised that his servant still had no idea he wasn't alone. Merlin had been acting weird all week. Even weirder than usual, anyway. He'd denied having a girl in the lower town - although Arthur found it hard to believe that any girl would choose Merlin over him - but Arthur didn't believe him. Not when he was sneaking out of the castle every night, and not returning until after dawn had crept over the land.
Merlin crept up to one of the few doors still lit up and knocked lightly on the thin wood. The angle was wrong for Arthur to see who answered, and no one spoke as Merlin entered the house, and so Arthur's curiosity wasn't yet sated. How was he to properly tease Merlin if he didn't know what this girl looked like, at the very least? Arthur carefully slipped into the thankfully empty pigpen that separated this house from the next, and he crouched under the window. A voice in his head whispered that this was wrong, but he quickly silenced it - it was his right to know what his servant was up to.
Arthur carefully looked through the window, quickly ducking back down out of sight as soon as he realised that another man, the girl's father probably, was in there with Merlin and facing the window. It would be one thing for Merlin to realise that Arthur was there - after all, he was Arthur's to command as he wished, not the other way around - but he didn't feel like explaining himself to some unjustifiably irritated peasant. Not that he would have to - he was the Prince, and this man was just a commoner. Probably.
He wasn't dressed like one though, Arthur noted as he risked another look into the room. The stranger's back was to him now, seated in a chair by the solid-looking table, and Merlin was out of sight somewhere. Green velvet covered broad shoulders and a thick black cloak, its hem decorated with gold and silver threaded flames, hung from a hook by the door. This man's clothes wouldn't look out of place at court, and now Arthur thought about it, there was something familiar about that grey-streaked golden hair that fell over the stranger's shoulders.
"How long are you going to keep coming back, boy?" the stranger muttered. Arthur frowned at the familiar voice. He'd heard it before, but he couldn't remember where from. "How long are you going to keep protecting that worthless, murdering prince of yours?"
Arthur barely stifled a shout, determined to hear more before he gave his presence away. He didn't need protecting, especially not byMerlin, the most useless servant in all of Camelot. He heard Merlin mutter a quiet answer, but couldn't catch the words that made the stranger laugh mockingly in response.
"Such a mouthy little whore, aren't you? Does Arthur permit such impudence when he beds you?" Arthur grimaced at the thought; there was absolutely no way he'd be interested in someone as scrawny and male as Merlin. "Stop looking at me like that; I could kill you in a heartbeat, so get those thoughts out of your head."
The slapping sound of flesh meeting flesh and the thud of a body hitting something drew Arthur to look through the window once more. The stranger was looming over Merlin now, pinning him to the narrow bed with one hand on his skinny throat, while the other fumbled with Merlin's trousers. His own were already around his ankles, and Arthur gulped as he realised exactly where Merlin had been before, what he'd been doing before then.
"Why do you protect him, boy? Is he that good in bed? Better than me?" The stranger didn't seem to want an answer as he penetrated Merlin, his hand still clamped around the servant's throat. "I'm going to kill him anyway. You must know that already. But it's no more than he deserves. He's a murderer. Do you know how many of my people he's killed? How many he's sent to the butcher's block simply for using the tiniest bit of magic in order to survive? Or do you simply not care that your precious prince is a monster?"
Arthur crept away from the window, away from the accusations. The man - a visiting lord from the west, he recalled now that he'd heard him speak some more - was an assassin sent to kill him. More than that, he was a sorcerer from his speech. He should return to the castle and fetch some guards to deal with this menace. Or wait until morning and confront the man at court, after searching his rooms at the castle and this house.
Arthur dismissed the thoughts of what he 'should' do. He saw no reason to drag a loyal servant's name and reputation through the mud - and his own with it - over something like this. If he got others involved, then Merlin would be executed for consorting with sorcerers and as incompetent as Merlin was, Arthur didn't feel like training another servant to take his place. He kind of liked things the way they were.
Sword drawn, Arthur kicked in the door of the house. The wood splintered under his boot and slammed against the wall of the house with a bang. The sorcerer's head snapped round to confront the intrusion, shock and anger written all over his face. His free hand swung up and he began to incant what Arthur assumed was a spell. The prince prepared to dodge as much as he could in the tiny room - the whole house was smaller than his quarters for God's sake; how could anyone live like this? - hoping it would be enough.
The sorcerer didn't get chance to finish the incantation. Merlin's punch to the jaw, as weak and ineffective as it looked, was enough to stop him mid-word, allowing Arthur to finish his charge across the room.
Arthur's left hand slammed into the sorcerer's chest and his right held his sword to the traitor's throat. The force and angle of his charge separated the sorcerer from Merlin, who started gasping as soon as the grasping hand left his throat. Arthur didn't wait for the sorcerer to speak - they always either begged for their life or tried to cast one last piece of foul magic anyway; he couldn't risk the latter and wasn't feeling merciful enough to even listen to the former - before he drove his sword forwards and down, striking the wooden wall behind the traitor and sticking there with the strength of the thrust.
He left the sorcerer pinned to the wall by the blade, spasming around the cold steel before finally falling still in death, and turned to Merlin, who was still gasping for breath on the narrow bed. Merlin had retreated into the corner where the bed met the wall, drawing his legs up to his chest and burying his face in his knees, and it took Arthur a couple of seconds to realise that his servant was crying. Not full-on wailing and screaming and clutching to Arthur for protection and use of a handkerchief, thankfully - Arthur never quite knew how to deal with it when women did that - but the tears were there, sliding down reddening cheeks.
Hooking a hand under Merlin's arm - ignoring the flinch his touch provoked; he didn't want to think that his own servant was scared of him - Arthur pulled him to his feet and guided him to the table, gently pushing Merlin into a chair with his back to the body still hanging from the wall. Arthur dipped a cup in the bucket of water hanging over the small stove and placed it in front of Merlin, who'd curled up on the chair in the same way as he had on the bed, then went to deal with the remains of the sorcerer.
He carefully pulled his sword from body and wall - wouldn't do to damage a good blade after all -, catching the corpse as it fell and laying it on the bed out of the way. Merlin's shoulders had stopped shaking by the time Arthur turned round again, and his quiet sobs had given way to noisy hiccups. By the time he'd finished cleaning his sword, even that noise was gone, and Merlin was sipping silently from the cup. Merlin jumped as Arthur sheathed the sword, and he looked round with defiant, puffy eyes.
"You have something on your face," Arthur couldn't resist saying. Trails of snot ran from Merlin's swollen red nose and down his upper lip. He looked pathetic, in Arthur's opinion, even more so than he normally did.
"Thanks," Merlin muttered. He smiled weakly and sniffed, rubbing at his nose with his sleeve, spreading the mucus over red cheeks. Arthur rolled his eyes at the sight.
"Oh, for heaven's sake, can't you do anything right? You're getting snot all over your face." chided Arthur, pulling a handkerchief from his pocket. "Here, use this. And you can wash that properly before you give it back to me. On second thoughts, you can keep it. Using your sleeve is just disgusting."
"Thanks," Merlin repeated, this time with a more sarcastic bite. "Wait... keep? You're not going to..." he waved his hand in the vague direction of the castle and made some sort of motion that Arthur guessed was meant to mean the executioner's axe.
"Have you executed for consorting with a sorcerer?" Merlin's almost unnoticeable flinch and the flush that made the skin of his neck and forehead match his cheeks and nose confirmed Arthur's guess. "Of course not." Arthur pulled Merlin to his feet again since he'd stopped crying - and if he was as much of an arse as Merlin claimed he was, he'd use that little fact to tease him for at least a week, but he wasn't and so he wouldn't; he'd drop it after a day or two instead - and finished the cup of water. "You were the bait in a very clever trap for a suspected sorcerer. That's what I'll tell my father if he asks, anyway."
Merlin smiled, a little more strongly this time, and stuffed the hankie in his pocket as he let Arthur drag him from the hovel, leaving the sorcerer's body behind. Arthur groaned as he realised that he'd have to wake his father up to tell him what had happened - a highly edited version of it anyway; no need to admit it had all been an accident after all - and that he'd need to dispatch guards to fetch the body to be burned.
And he'd need to watch Merlin for a few days, make sure he was okay. It was the least he could do for a servant who'd traded his own body for the safety of another. With that thought in mind, he pulled Merlin a little closer as they walked through the streets back to the castle, hooking his arm over thin shoulders and whispering plans to raid the palace kitchens - a joint venture, of course, since Merlin was so clumsy he'd wake the kitchen boys up if he went alone - once they returned, for mulled wine and leftover meats to tide them over until breakfast time.