BLOOD BATH
Arthur could have kissed Merlin for his thoughtfulness.
Almost.
It had been a welcome relief, though, to come in after the day he'd had, and find a hot, deliciously-scented bath waiting for him in the middle of his bedchamber, courtesy of his clumsy manservant, Merlin.
The water felt heavenly to his tender, battle-worn muscles. It was warm and fragrant, infused with lavender, mint, and something that smelt distinctly like citrus. Despite this, he was still caked in hard, stale swamp mud, and he could still taste the bitterness of blood on his tongue, a harsh reminder of the fight he'd just lost.
Arthur wasn't accustomed to losing. He was the crown prince of Camelot; he'd worked harder in the field of combat than any man twice his age.
He never lost.
But today, he'd been beaten by a man – no, not a man exactly; a something – he'd never encountered before; and beaten with an ease that suggested the being could have achieved the same level of victory blindfolded.
The prince never liked to admit when he was outmatched, but Eric Northman – if that even was his real name – he wasn't afraid to say, was more than even he could handle. The fact that he wasn't entirely human didn't help matters, but Arthur had gone up against his fair share of magical creatures and the like in his lifetime and still managed to come out on top.
No, Eric was something different altogether.
Eric was an enigma, and one that Arthur wasn't so sure he wanted solved.
He stretched one of his aching pectorals and groaned, tilting his head back until it came to rest with a dull thud against the rounded rim of the tub. He would be a while healing after the day's frivolous activities. The muscle strain alone would take days to repair, not to mention the puncture wound on the under side of his neck.
As if on cue, the pain on his neck throbbed back into existence, raging like a fire across his skin. Arthur remembered the feeling vividly, as Eric Northman's teeth cut into his flesh; the searing intensity as enamel breeched his pale, protective human shell, and the shock of it.
It wasn't like Arthur hadn't been bitten before: he had, plenty of times, but by creatures that were quite distinctly not human. Eric, however, was a walking, talking, carbon copy of everything being human entailed – to Arthur, at least.
Only he wasn't human; he couldn't be.
And now, Arthur's thoughts had taken a turn that was far too fantastical to be comfortable. Humans that weren't really human; men that bit other men and drank their blood like water – it was ludicrous; the sign of someone who'd no doubt lost a grip on reality.
Arthur closed his eyes, hard, so that the creases in his forehead actually hurt as they were forced together, and pushed all thought of the great and mysterious Eric Northman from his mind.
He was going to enjoy this moment of serenity that Merlin had created for him, and he was most definitely not going to think of any fair-haired men with chiseled jaws and eyes so cold they could freeze a forest fire in its tracks.
He was most definitely not going to think of Eric Northman.
Arthur had just about accomplished this task when there was a creaking from the other side of the room. He cracked one eye open a fraction and saw that the door was half open, letting in a crisp draft that chilled every inch of his exposed skin right down to the bone.
"Merlin," he whined, turning his head away from the door with a disgruntled huff of hot air. "Must I always remind you to close the door after you enter?"
There was no response, not even the sarcastic half-laugh, half-snort that Arthur had become used to hearing from his manservant whenever he was issued with an order that was beyond the obvious. Arthur was tempted to say something derogatory about Merlin's apparent diminishing intellect, or lack thereof, but stopped the thought dead in its tracks when a shadowed silhouette of a man was cast in his general direction.
Arthur sighed and draped his head back further over the edge of the tub, eyes closed to block out the dappled light that was coming in through the crack in the doorway. He shivered as another blast of cold air touched his skin.
"Bloody hell, Merlin!" he exclaimed. "Do you want me to catch a cold? Because I swear to you, if I do, you'll be…"
His voice trailed into nothing as a heavy weight landed in the water opposite him. He didn't need to open his eyes to know it wasn't Merlin, though he did, anyway. It wasn't wise to rid oneself of one of the most important senses, especially when he was in the room.
Eric Northman stared at him across the small channel of water, mouth split in a disgustingly knowing grin.
A very red, very feral, knowing grin.
"What have you done?" Arthur gasped.
Eric chuckled. "Well, hello to you, too, Arthur Pendragon."
As he spoke, a small trickle of claret oozed out of his mouth and down the side of his jaw, where it pooled for a moment on the edge of his chin, before dripping into the warm bathwater, soiling it like it was a droplet of poison.
"Whose blood is that?"
Eric licked his lips: one long, slow movement that froze Arthur's blood in his veins.
"Its Merlin's, isn't it?"
No answer came, just another wide smirk that told the prince all he needed to know. His manservant, his friend, was gone. He felt sick, and clutched uselessly at his stomach with one hand, while the other gripped the side of the tub for support.
Eric leaned over, his naked leg touching Arthur's due to the confined space. His skin was ice cold, like snow on the mountaintops, and it made Arthur break out in goosebumps.
He turned his head away from the frigid breath that ghosted over his face, gagged at its horrid, deathly scent as it wafted around him like the bad perfume of an old maiden.
"If it's any consolation, your friend was quite tasty."
It was Arthur that snarled. The sound surprised him more than Eric, he was sure of it, though the other gave him the satisfaction of drawing back slightly, so that his breath puffed harmlessly into the air around them; his eyebrows shooting into his hairline.
Northman's shock was short-lived. The emotion had barely registered on his face before he was grinning again, teeth and fangs sparkling like rosy jewels with the remnants of Merlin still firmly fixed to their glossy exterior.
Eric let out a sharp, bark of a laugh as he asked, "And what are you going to do to me, Pendragon? Are you going to kill me?"
Arthur shuddered from beside him. The water, which had grown quite cool in the minutes since Eric's untimely entrance, rippled with the movement.
Eric leaned real close again; his pink lips a mere hair's breadth away from the prince's.
"I dare you to try," he murmured.
When Arthur did nothing but glare murderously across the void, the pale man laughed in an uncharacteristically loud, booming way, and then stood abruptly. His gloriously toned, disrobed body glistened with beads of tainted water, from the top of his shoulders to the knobble of his knees and beyond.
The water wasn't the clear, luminescent substance it should be as it rolled down the perfect panes of Eric: it was coloured a deep, frightening scarlet.
It was coloured with Merlin's blood. And it was all around Arthur.
He jumped, and his eyes flew open.
Eric was gone.
His blood-soaked body was gone.
The blood was gone. It was all gone.
Arthur let out a long, shaky breath. It was just a dream. All of it: Eric, the blood, Merlin, was just a figment of his imagination – his over-active imagination.
He slumped back down in the tub, let the now cool water envelope him as he struggled to get his bearings. He had Eric on the brain. Not only was he thinking about him while he was awake, but apparently he was now dreaming about him, too.
Arthur was going rather rapidly insane.
He caught a waft of lavender from the side table resting at the head of the bath. Of course! It was the lavender that was behind his hallucination! And who had put the lavender in his bathwater in the first place?
"Bloody Merlin!"