Sorry it took a while - but finally here's the new chapter!
They made camp in companionable silence. Merlin caught four rabbits in the forest, and Arthur presented a loaf of bread. They shared a pungent red wine Arthur had purchased with the bread at a tavern a day ago. There was no need for idle conversation.
When Merlin made to several feet away from him at dinner, Arthur beckoned him closer. As they ate, they bumped knees and elbows, but neither moved to put distance between them.
Now that Arthur had done what he'd fought against doing for the past weeks, there was no undoing it. He would not waste time on regretting it. He didn't feel ashamed or confused. He felt… protective. He wanted to shield Merlin from any more pain, including the pain Merlin obviously expected from Arthur.
Arthur would never be cruel, not to Merlin, not deliberately. But he didn't need to be, because the situation was cruel enough. Arthur felt a knot of sorrow form under his ribs. He knew how briefly this thing between them would last. It had to be brief, for Merlin's
own good if not for the sake of Arthur's honour. But that made him all the more greedy for every moment of it.
He'd heard the troubadours sing of love. He understood the notion of courtly love, had seen some of his friends pine for their beloveds. Arthur had never met a woman who made him lose his head like that. But he could lose his head over Merlin. Perhaps he already had.
And you are my perfection, Merlin had said. That infant bud of sorrow grew just a little more.
It was dark when they finished dinner, and with no plate or cup to fill his hands, they felt wrongly empty when Merlin was only a breath away. Arthur slipped an arm round Merlin's waist, relishing the slender solidity of him. When Merlin did not object, Arthur pulled him close. They had not talked about what had happened, and Arthur's sense of duty pushed him to rectify that.
He cleared his throat. "If you were a woman, I would already before your father on bended knee."
Merlin was silent for a moment. "Have you ever touched a man before?"
"No, never."
"But you've wanted to."
"It's wrong in the eyes of God," Arthur said firmly, to explain himself. "I cannot regret you Merlin. I will never regret what happened today. But we cannot take this further."
Merlin tensed in his arms as if wanting to argue, but he didn't. Arthur stroked his thumb along Merlin's side in a soothing gesture. When Merlin did speak, it was slowly and with an oddly calm voice. "When I was thirteen and in the sanctity of the confessional, I told our priest that I felt desire for men."
Arthur's hand stilled. A worm of fear crawled in his stomach.
"He told me I was possessed, he told me he would pray for guidance to free me from the creature. For a week, I was terrified. I wondered what I could have done to be vulnerable to such an attack. I wondered if I was truly as weak and worthless as my brothers had always claimed, deserving of their hatred and my father's coldness. Why else would such a creature have chosen me?"
Arthur breathed into Merlin's hair, feeling a murderous anger for the sake of the young boy.
"The following week, when I returned to confession, eager to hear the priest explain how he would save me, he made me follow him to his chambers. There, he made me undress, and he forced me to kneel. He tried to put his cock into my mouth."
Arthur growled. "I'll kill him," he vowed.
Merlin huffed with a bitter laugh. "You're too late, Lion. The man is already dead, gone in an epidemic of fever that struck my father's castle while I was on the road with the army.
"Merlin…"
"Fear not. I was no fool, not even at thirteen. I let the priest taste my dagger, and I told him what he could do with his cock and his creature. He threatened to tell my father I lusted after men. I threatened to carve off his staff and eggs in his sleep. You could say it was a stalemate."
Arthur could not stop a smile at the thought of young Merlin acting so boldly. "I wished I'd seen that. You must have scared the piss out of the man. But I hope you are content to leave my staff and eggs where they are."
Merlin's hand strayed onto Arthur's thigh. "As long as they serve me well."
Arthur chuckled, but a tingle went down his spine. After witnessing Merlin's attack on the outlaws, he had no doubt that the archer could be deadly.
Merlin sighed. "I believe there is a God, but what He thinks of my desires, or those of any man, no one can tell. I'm done listening to priests on the matter."
"Merlin-"
Merlin pulled away, his words angry and passionate. "No! I told you, Arthur. I do not break faith with those who do not broke faith with me. God broke faith with me. He took my mother, left me in a house of enemies. He ignored my prayers for help, night after night when I was only a boy. And his own priest wanted to sate his own lust, not save my soul. I care not for God's law! Or man's either. There should have been laws of decency, laws of conduct, laws of family that protected me when I was young, but there were none. No law saved your sister from a husband who is a monster, nor helps her now. So what allegiance should I have to man's law's? Should I believe it more of a crime for us to love each other than the harm my brothers did to me without any fear of retribution from my father? Never!"
Arthur felt his pulse thud for what Merlin had endured, but he knew it changed nothing. "You mayn't believe that you and I lying together is wrong, Merlin. But that doesn't change the fact that it is despicable in the eyes of everyone else."
Merlin's jaw only set more stubbornly. "Then we must not be caught."
"Do you think it would not be obvious? If we were lovers in a lord's castle or in a company of knights?"
Merlin got a calculating gleam in his eyes. "Not if well done. One or both of us could wed-"
Arthur groaned and covered his face with his hands. "Bloody Hell, you thought this through."
"So what? The right kind of wife, one only interested in hearth and babes, maybe a little dim of mind, separate chambers. My father has a small holding, four hundred acres, in Avalon. I've been trying to talk to him into letting me take it over. He says I have not the experience, nor will he send me without a wife, but perhaps in time he will allow it. In a place like that-"
Arthur pulled Merlin tight, a stab of foreboding going through his heart. "Please, Merlin. You chill me to the marrow with fear for you when you talk like this. You will bring yourself to ruin."
Merlin stilled and snuggled deeper into Arthur's arms.
"We have another six, seven day's' ride ahead. Let me have you, hold you, for this long, Merlin, and let us be content with our fate. I won't waste time fighting about what mayn't be. Can you do that?"
"Yes," Merlin answered. He sighed bitterly, but raised his lips to meet Arthur's.
The desperate need with which Merlin pushed against Arthur's chest, as if they might never have this again, meant he acknowledged every word Arthur had said, even if Merlin himself would not admit it.
They lay their bedrolls next to each other that night and made love again, stroking each other to sweet release, indulging in endless kisses. It would have to be enough, Arthur told himself. Enough to last a lifetime.