dashed to pieces
merlin/arthur; pg
written for the prompt:
All night I stretched my arms across
him, rivers of blood, the dark woods, singing
with all my skin and bone "Please keep him safe.
Let him lay his head on my chest and we will be
like sailors, swimming in the sound of it, dashed
to pieces." Makes a cathedral, him pressing against
me, his lips at my neck, and yes, I do believe
his mouth is heaven, his kisses falling over me like stars.
-Richard Siken, "Saying Your Names"
x
The thing about power is that it always comes full circle by the end. With give there is take and now the boy is a man is a tired vessel of something that made his eyes glitter golden once, made his skin radiant and his laughter so real. Arthur can do nothing but watch (and sometimes he cannot even manage that).
The world around them is not crumbling; no, it is the world in between. It starts with Merlin and his long nights awake, followed by his weary smiles of, There is no rest for the wicked, and, It's fine, Arthur. He feels it is deserved, what with all the blood on my hands, but the two of them haven't done anything alone in years and Arthur is not about to let him start.
Neither of them finds rest in sleep anymore and if Merlin spends all hours of the night looking into the crystal (searching, always searching these days), then Arthur looks at Merlin, tries to see through his cloaks and his skin to search for something other than the bitter end racing to meet them. It is never easy and some days it feels as if there is little else; after all, he is all brittle bones these days, has been this way for some time.
The nights when Arthur sits awake by his side, there are lines on Merlin's face, fine creases above his brow and near the corner of his mouth where it curves. In many ways, time has not touched him. Rather, it is ageing of a different kind, the kind that comes with seeing and knowing and waiting for it to unfold.
It draws nearer by the day, he whispers one night, close to Arthur's neck, a prophecy in a kiss in a prophecy, and he is talking of what he always talks of these days but Arthur doesn't want to dwell upon that.
He goes on with, You need to be stronger than this, need to not waste your time, and does not add on me but it is there nonetheless, unspoken and hanging and Arthur ignores it as he always has. The age-old urge to tell him to shut up returns (only now, he half-considers adding please) but they both know Merlin wouldn't listen. Merlin never listens.
From lashes to frowns, Arthur traces the lines with his fingers, tries to erase them with his hands and his mouth and every word of every prayer he has ever known because then, perhaps, it will not draw so near. (Even now, aimlessly, he hopes.) He kisses them until he is hollow inside and still they do not disappear.