Here comes the slash here comes the slash (HEY there, baby, baby! You are my...whatever.)
Eeep! This chapter comes with warnings! Do not read if you have an issue with two boys kissin' and snugglin', though I promise nothing I write will ever be graphic and hopefully it's done tastefully enough so as not to offend. Also, there is a section (in italics!) that has to do with self-mutilation (in the past-it's a memory, don't be confused!)-under no circumstances do I endorse it, it's all a part of Merlin's road to recovery...
29 May 2010, 20:03
Fingers play against his temples, stroking the flushed skin of his cheeks and tangling in his hair. Merlin sighs and lets Arthur press him against the door, gently and firmly, so heavy and perfect and so incredibly Arthur.
Merlin has thought about Arthur's mouth often in the past few months, how it would feel, how he would taste, how their lips would touch, soft like a butterfly, and how the world would fall into place around them.
He never expected it to be like this.
Arthur's kiss is soft and searching and oddly clinical, as if he is using Merlin as an experiment in a laboratory. Merlin realizes then that Arthur has never been with a man, never really passed that stage of schoolboy awkwardness and dares in the locker room. Normally he is disgusted when men treat him like this, as a test of orientation. But this is Arthur, and Merlin will let Arthur learn before he is taught.
His hands rest lightly on Arthur's chest, curling against the fabric of his t-shirt as he holds himself still for Arthur's Kiss.
He opens his heavy eyes, just to watch. His whispery breath catches as it slips between the gaps in the kiss, and his heart skips a bit in his tight chest. Arthur's eyes are shut, softly, long lashes beating like the wings of a hummingbird, beating like his heart beneath Merlin's fingers. His brow is drawn as brows are often drawn, in earnest, and Arthur breathes a word that Merlin feels more than hears, and it is his name:
"Merlin..."
Merlin shakes. His fingers contract against Arthur's heart, pressing against it, pouring himself into it.
"Ar..."
Arthur steals the word from his lips. Merlin shudders against him, and he can't take any more of this or he's going to die, right there against the door with Arthur's hands on either side of his head. He draws away, but Arthur presses his cheek to Merlin's fluttering pulse and breathes sweetly into the hair curling against his ear. His broad hand smoothes over Merlin's shoulder and down his arm, pausing there. It plays idly with his fingers and strokes over his hot palm before slipping under the sleeve of his shirt with the barest of brushes.
Merlin gasps and jerks away, crossing his wrists against his chest. Arthur reaches for him, but Merlin holds him back with his posture. Arthur falters, his hooded eyes widening and then falling in a strange emotion. He stumbles away, turning from Merlin as his back gives a jerky shiver.
Merlin drops to his knees, his fingers frantically tracing the scars of his past like a rosary. He watches Arthur shake, the planes of his back calling out to Merlin who cannot answer them. Merlin cringes against the wall, memories swirling before his eyes until he's eighteen again, left and abandoned and staring at the empty room around him with the slam of the closing door still echoing in the closed hall.
Merlin is suddenly cold.
The mirror frightens him.
He no longer knows himself, the pasty haunted face with the dripping eyes and the frown slashing through his lips. He raises his hands before him, staring at their palms and the water running down his fingers. They tremble in the air, wavering like flames before his spinning head.
The light is blue and white and bright black around him, and he is afraid of it. He wants the dark and the peace, and he is so confused. He doesn't know how, but he's here, and this is where it will come to a close.
The razor smiles cruelly in the light, smiles like the empty faces of the missing people who should have been there for him. He can't see them now, but he can feel them, whispering like gossamer threads against his skin, touching their cold hands to the bare skin of his back and stomach.
"Why?" he asks, and speaking makes the world turn around him again. The blade shivers in his fingers and the first blood flows, heat spreading up his arm. He cries out silently, sagging against the painfully white counter.
It doesn't hurt, but the warmth startles him. He expected it to be colder, colder than the frost that is his skin.
He wants to feel, and the warmth curls in his chest.
His vision flickers and his hands falter against his skin. The pristine countertop is doused in red, the walls and floors and ceiling of blue and white and black closing around him like a cell. The mirror bends before him and he sees himself again, blue eyes and white skin and black hair, the colors of the cell he fears. The red should be a comfort but it makes him sick and he shakes in the mirror.
"No," he breathes, the blade clattering to the floor and the red washing out his vision. He doesn't want this, doesn't want to feel, doesn't, doesn't, doesn't.
There is dark, and it hurts him.
He thinks of his mother.
20.11
Arthur breathes hard, his hands clutching his hair tightly as his shoulders heave.
He... and Merlin... and then….
Arthur can hardly think, standing there in Merlin's dark and cluttered study with the photographs hanging on hooks like blocks of meat in a carving shed.
He can hear his friend—and oh God, who is Arthur kidding with friends—crying, loud desperate sobs that make him feel guilty, uncomfortable, and strangely quivery all at once. He wants to comfort Merlin… no, he wants to leave… no, he wants to grab him and kiss him again, hard and demanding and force some response out of him.
Arthur wants, but he doesn't know what he wants.
The broken thoughts and Merlin's sobs bring him to the floor, and he falls forward until his forehead scrapes painfully against the knobbly carpet. His hands move from his hair to his eyes and then he is crying too, choking on silent, heaving gasps that wrack his frame and scrabble at his chest with sharp talons.
Why, why, why is everything so damn complicated?
20.17
Merlin hears Arthur leave, broad-shouldered and fair and bashful and ashamed and still coughing on his air as he dashes the wetness from his cheeks. Merlin doesn't move from his tight knot against the wall. The door shuts behind Arthur, and the last of the evening light escapes around the closing frame. Merlin stays on the floor, his hands clasped tightly to his chest and his knees drawn up to protect them.
Arthur leaves, and Merlin is left. Alone in the dark that he can't bring himself to chase away, though there is a light switch inches above his head.
Why do they always leave?
All he wants is for someone, somewhere, to love him enough to stay.
He can't speak the words, but he feels them all the same.
Don't go, don't go, don't go, don't go, don't go, don't go, don't go.
1 June 2010, 15.29
Arthur can't play.
The notes sit heavily in his stomach with the guilt and the fear, and he slams his fist into the wall as they pound in his sick head.
He can't do this.
He can't.
2 June 2010, 23.49
He can't do this.
He can't.
He is afraid of the dark and the silence and he steeps himself in it because he is no longer comfortable with feeling safe. He could easily lose himself in the light and warmth, but he knows that when it's taken away from him again the brief exposure to color will make it so much harder to readjust to the monotonous grayscale of life.
When you let down your guard you get hurt.
Missing someone hurts so fucking badly.
4 June 2010, 17.27
New message!
Message Merlin Emrys:
where we had coffee.
17.56
It's raining in the park. Merlin shivers on the bench where they met for the second time, his face turned sideways and hidden between his knees and his folded arms.
He hates the cold.
He's always cold.
Icy water caresses his neck, slipping around the edges of his wool sweater and over his collarbones. The droplets on his face feel like tears.
He hears footsteps, not the rapid, quick shutter of a Londoner caught in the rain but the hesitant, dragging steps of someone caught between two hard scenarios . He drops his arm slightly, and there is Arthur, dark against the sky, his hair plastered to his forehead and his eyes red-rimmed and bloodshot. Merlin's breathing hitches, and he moves his trembling hands to cover his face as real tears join the ones made by the rain.
Arthur draws in a shaking breath, rustling as he sits next to Merlin. He folds his hands over and over again in his lap and his hair drips steadily onto their pale backs. Merlin shudders, the cold and the tears and the loneliness eating into his soul. He coughs through his silent tears, and Arthur shifts towards him.
"Merlin…."
And he is being drawn against a chest, covered in a drenched trenchcoat that's freezing but warm and Arthur nonetheless. Arthur wraps his arms around Merlin and pulls his legs up onto the bench, trapping Merlin in his embrace and shielding him from the elements and the pain. Merlin cries and Arthur touches him softly at his back, his cold neck, his soaked hair.
They stay like this for some time, tangled on a park bench, before Arthur begins to shiver too. Merlin is led to Arthur's sterile apartment where the soaked trenchcoat stains the whiteness of the kitchen floor. He allows Arthur to strip him of his sweater and shirt, and then to gently tuck him into the large white bed. Arthur crawls in beside him and pulls him into his arms again, holding him there with his heat and his gentle hands and the soft words he whispers into Merlin's hair that mean nothing and everything at the same time.
Merlin is mumbling something into Arthur's damp shoulder, his lips moving against the skin like a fumbling kiss. A warm hand cups his jaw, slipping over his mouth so that Arthur can read the words that can't be said aloud just yet.
Don't leave, don't leave, don't leave, don't leave….
"Never," Arthur promises.
Merlin's heart squeezes almost painfully. I need you.
Fingers wrap around his wrist, stroking over the scars there. Merlin tenses, but he doesn't pull away. Not this time. "Yeah," Arthur says quietly to his hair. "I'm here."
Arthur explores the raised marks that brand Merlin with his pain, and the loving touch makes him feel like crying again. He does, just a bit, but Arthur catches his tears with his fingertips and dusts them away like the bad memories that they are.
"Shh..."
When he falls asleep, he is not alone for the first time in far too long.
OH-HO. That could have been drawn out more, but I like my boys together, yup yup.
Well, I revealed a bit of Merlin's life for you all! MUAHAHAHAAH now you can stop BADGERING me about it! But seriously, never do. I love the badgering. Badger badger badger away!
*Knits casually* It's a snow day today! It's hilarious how freaked people get about a two inches of snow in the Piedmont. In Montreal you go to school even when there's two feet of snow. American wusses...it's beside the point that I'm wearing about ten quilts and peering out at the snow with a frosty expression. Brrr.
One more day of Hell before the hols, here's hoping that there is a delayed opening tomorrow so that I won't have time to sit my exams! Pray with me!