PART FOUR – BETWEEN HAMMERS

Our heart exists between hammers

Father wants me to go into politics, Arthur writes to Merlin as the summer heat brings London near melting point. It is nothing new, of course - he always said that was his intention, and that is why I was sent to Cambridge to study law rather than art history, which would have been my choice (had I had one) – but this is where he believes everything is falling into place for me. I have an aptitude for political life, he claims, and where he gets that idea I do not know. For once he seems pleased with me; an occurrence so rare as to make me nonplussed. Perhaps I am reading the signs wrong – and Merlin, if "aptitude" means that he believes my political creed to be the same as his own, should I not be offended rather than flattered?

It is true, however, that I seemed to impress the French ambassador favourably at a reception yesterday – or could it be that I was in tails and had rather a lot of champagne that made my cheeks blush and my youthful eyes sparkle, and he is fond of, shall we say conversant young men? Or promising, perhaps? Can you picture me, Merlin?

Arthur puts the pen aside and leans back in the chair, rubbing his hands over his face. His sleeves are rolled up and his hair is damp; the air in the room doesn't stir despite both windows being open. The tone of his letter is humorous, but he feels depressed - he is not cut out for politics. Uther sees what he wants to see; he wants confirmation that he made the right choice in sending Arthur to Cambridge to study for the bar. And yesterday's reception was rather - humiliating is a strong word, but Arthur senses he was put on display, that Uther wanted for someone to notice Arthur and offer to take him under his wing. This, gentlemen, is my handsome son, a Cambridge law student who needs to refine his political thinking...

Arthur shudders in the heat and pushes the memory out of his head, replacing it with the image of Merlin's face.

He sits up straight and picks up the pen. Time to stop pretending.

I miss you.

I miss the constellation of freckles on your left cheekbone. I miss the little crease between your mouth and chin, the one you have to straighten out with your fingers when you shave. I want to put my tongue there. I want to kiss the little dip below your bottom lip until you are half-crazed with frustration from almost being kissed on the mouth. I want to see that dimple appear below the corner of your mouth, the one that says "kiss here".

I'm sorry, Merlin; I seem to be in a soppy mood tonight. As I can't do what I would love to do, I am kissing the letter instead, here:

XXX

And when you have kissed the same spot, please burn the letter.

xxx

Of course I can picture you, Merlin thinks as he reads. He can see Arthur cut a dashing figure at the Embassy reception, all charm and smiles and golden hair, taking some sequin-covered old dragon's hand and touching his lips to her knuckles to please his father and the dragon's keeper husband. He has no trouble imagining Arthur in crisp, immaculate black and white with a champagne flute in his hand, throwing back his head in laughter at the particularly juicy story a colleague of Uther's is regaling them with.

When Merlin reads the last part of the letter, he closes his eyes and sighs, imagining Arthur's mouth on his skin. He misses Arthur so much it aches.

September, he thinks, touching his lips to the sheet of paper, we'll see each other in September.

And then he burns the letter.

xxx

The heat is relentless as they work in the fields; the sun burns their shoulders and makes the air shimmer. It's only marginally cooler as Merlin heads back from the farm in the evening. He washes off the day's sweat and dust in the scullery and takes the mug of ale from Hunith gratefully. She is setting supper on the table when Freya comes rushing through the door.

"Have you heard?" she says, dark-eyed and frightened. "We're at war - we're at war with Germany."

Hunith pushes a damp strand of hair from her forehead and straightens her back, resting her fists on her hips. None of them finds anything to say. The clock ticks on the mantelpiece; a cricket lands on the window-ledge and begins to chirp.

When Freya leaves, Hunith sinks down on her chair and reaches for Merlin's hand.

"Don't volunteer," she says. "I know you young men find war exciting, but... please, Merlin. Don't."

He leans over and kisses her cheek. She smells of sun on skin and faintly of sweat.

"I'll go when I have to," he says, "but not before."

xxx

It's a relief to be back at Cambridge. Reassuring. They're at war but the university buildings have stood for centuries and will continue to stand, and Merlin buries himself in words and Arthur.

Arthur is quieter these days, reads even more newspapers than usual, and occasionally talks to his father on the telephone. He is not distant, exactly; the change in him is not detachment as he seems to care about Merlin as deeply as ever, but he seems preoccupied with things he doesn't discuss with Merlin. Something has wedged itself in between them, something that was not there before. Merlin gradually withdraws, expecting Arthur to follow, to tease and coax and ask what's wrong, but when he doesn't, Merlin keeps the new distance. He has plenty of work to immerse himself in.

When Arthur asks Merlin to come out with him in Leon's motorcar, Merlin's heart leaps in his chest and he sets his books aside in a hurry. Even if it's only temporary, this is a long-awaited return to normal, to Arthur and Merlin as they were before.

They go to the oak on the hilltop, one of their favourite spots. The sun filters down through the canopy to bathe them in dappled light. Merlin sits with his back against the trunk, feeling the heartbeat of the old tree slowing down in preparation for winter. It's late September and one of the last warm days that can be expected, one of those days that pretend nothing is going to happen, nothing will change. Arthur has his head in Merlin's lap; Merlin combs his fingers through the blond hair again and again in a sleepy, hypnotic rhythm. Though the grass still smells of summer there's an undercurrent of death and decay. For a moment it all connects absolutely in Merlin's head, a single moment of clarity when everything is one and every stage logically leads to the next. Grass, sun, straw, earth, death; their young bodies rejoicing, ageing, being returned to earth.

Arthur sits up abruptly and Merlin is pulled back to the present. He makes a small noise of protest; his lap feels empty and cold without the warm weight of Arthur's head and his fingers want to continue to slide through silky hair. But Arthur doesn't grin or make a face or lean over to kiss him, doesn't even look at him. Instead he sits with his head bent and pulls up blades of grass around him, viciously, as if they offend him. Merlin watches his profile against hills and sky and trees, watches his strong, beautiful hands as they maul the grass. There's something ominous about Arthur's position, in the tension of his back and his downcast eyes, the muscle working in his jaw.

Merlin looks at him and sees fire; he watches him and sees flames.

"Merlin," Arthur says at last, pulling up a few last blades of grass and tossing them aside before he looks up. "Merlin, I'm going to enlist."

For a moment Merlin thinks he'll pass out; the world goes so still and silent around him. He has dreaded this moment. Ever since the beginning of the term he has known, because Arthur has been so different, but now that it's here he refuses to accept it.

"No," he says like the word is pulled out of him, a hook sunk painfully inside. "Arthur, no. Please."

Arthur looks away, looks out over the brown fields where the grain sleeps, awaiting spring.

"I want to do it now, while I still have a choice," he says, facing away so Merlin can barely hear him. "Sooner or later we'll all be conscripted, and I..." He turns back to face Merlin. "I know how to fly planes, Merlin. I can be of use."

"Your country needs you?" Merlin hadn't intended it to come out so sarcastically, so scathingly, but Arthur doesn't flare up. He only looks sad. And all at once Merlin understands that Arthur's mind will not be changed whatever Merlin says or does, for this is the kind of sadness that follows a difficult decision, when there is nothing left but to face what you have to face.

"It does," says Arthur simply.

His hands fall down at his sides and Merlin wants to shout at him: Why do you feel you have to save everyone? Why do you feel it's your responsibility?

But he doesn't, because he loves Arthur for it, and besides, Arthur is right. It's everyone's responsibility to have this madness end as quickly as possible. He still hates the necessity, hates the panic in his chest, hates the fact that Arthur will be taken from him, that Arthur will allow it to happen, and then he hates himself for being selfish. But I can't bear to lose him, he thinks numbly.

Without another word he gets up from the grass and walks down the hill. When Arthur calls after him, he breaks into a run.

A mile or so down the road, Arthur pulls up next to him in the motorcar. Merlin gets in without a glance at Arthur, and they drive back in silence.

xxx

The world seems to have lost its colour. The leaves are turning but Merlin doesn't see them, only sees the loss of Arthur and his own loneliness. His dreams have returned, hot and red, filled with dust and fire. Even painting them doesn't silence the roar of them in his head. The only thing that feels real is Arthur's body against his own, the two of them moving in and against each other, skin to skin, the wetness of mouths and tears and the relief of tension. Everything they do has an undercurrent of sadness and inevitability.

Arthur will be leaving in a week. The thought makes Merlin want to be sick.

They lie side by side in Arthur's bed, Arthur with his arms under his head, looking up at the ceiling. The curtains are drawn to shut out the autumn darkness.

"Before you leave," Merlin says, memorising the crease at the crook of Arthur's arm and the droplets of sweat on his neck, "I'd like something of yours." His voice is shaking.

"Anything," Arthur replies. He sounds strangled. "Name it and it's yours."

"I'd like one of your undershirts."

Without a word, Arthur gets up off the bed and pulls a drawer open, but Merlin follows and stops him with a hand on his wrist.

"An unwashed one," he says, seeking Arthur's eyes, "one that you've worn. So it smells of you."

A heartbeat.

"Merlin," Arthur whispers, and then Merlin's back is pressed against the wall and they're kissing as if the kiss is air and they would drown without it.

"Don't leave," Merlin pleads. "Arthur, please. You can still change your mind."

"No, I can't. Merlin, look at me." Arthur holds Merlin's face in his hands. "I have to do this. I won't let myself be shot down; I promise you. I'm too good a pilot for that."

Merlin wants to punch him in the face. He swallows tears and kisses Arthur again.

xxx

Cambridge is empty. Bicycles are still clattering over cobblestones, there are lectures to attend, the library is filled with books to be read and there's sunshine and church bells and beautiful buildings. In the middle of it all there's Merlin, inhabiting a ghost world, indistinct and grey, where he is the only one living.

xxx

"You can sense the structure of things, can't you," Professor Gaius says. "How they grow. The fabric of them."

He is right. Merlin can reach out of himself, stretch his magic to feel the texture of earth or rock, to feel a tree grow or a river run, all the nerves of a leaf as it trembles. People are hazier and more complex, but he can feel them, too; pain, fury, ecstasy, death. He can still see Arthur like a luminous blur at the edge of his mind.

"Yes," he says, simply. "I can be other things. I know them. But I can't change them."

"Not yet, perhaps. But you will. You are one of the few who could truly make things change, Merlin. Literally or in a more abstract sense." Professor Gaius' voice is warm. "What about... time?" he adds after a pause. He sounds hesitant, almost a little wary.

Merlin turns away sharply; he doesn't want to discuss time.

It frightens him, frightens him enough to want to push even the thought of it away. Waves of time come crashing in over him when he lowers his guard, when he dreams; waves of age and existence that he is scared to try to understand. Time is thick and slow or spins so fast it makes him dizzy, seconds and millennia harboured inside him as his heart beats to measure them. No, he doesn't want to think about time. One day it will catch up with him, and then he'll drown.

xxx

Merlin tries to write to Arthur from the train as he travels home for Christmas, with a futile wish to make it a tradition, but all he can think about is Arthur in a world of roaring engines and thumping guns, a world of adrenaline and destruction that Merlin knows nothing about.

The house is suffocatingly small. Merlin's restlessness grows, itching in his legs, and there's not even room to pace.

After breakfast on Christmas Eve he decides to take a walk in the woods. December is unusually cold this year and there's snow on the ground, an inch perhaps, not enough to cover the straggly grass that pokes up rebelliously through the blanket of white. Merlin's footprints are a rope of dark pearls trailing in the snow behind him. No chance of hiding, he thinks, of going anywhere unnoticed. For a moment he considers using magic to vanish the prints, but then scoffs. He's being ridiculous. Who would follow him, and what would it matter if they did?

He lifts the latch of the gate and passes through, closing it meticulously behind him before starting out on the narrow path that winds its way into the wood. It looks stark and bare without the ferns that border it from spring to autumn. They're blackened and withered now, dead under the powdery snow. The wintry woods have more space and air than the summer woods but less fragrance, less sounds: everything is dampened by the snow. There's a stern quality to the landscape, like a sadness. Everything is black and white, the sky is white, Merlin is the only splash of colour.

He thinks of Arthur in his aeroplane, seeing the world spread out like a map below him. He must be such a laughably easy target, so utterly, frighteningly visible there in the sky. Merlin shudders violently and hurries his steps.

The brook is iced over at the edges and near-silent in the winter hush, a thin dark snake slithering through the snow. Merlin follows it deeper into the forest and reaches a rock face where the water comes dancing from above, cascading over the lip above him. It's created a fantastic ice sculpture as the cascades have frozen into a cluster of long icicles, some white, some clear, some yellow or greenish from whatever kind of rock is underneath. It's ice on ice, layer upon layer, frozen there over days and nights. The water is still murmuring underneath, dark and trapped.

Merlin stops and stares. He had intended to sit down on the great fallen log to the side and listen to the water rush and speak, gurgle and laugh, and instead he found this eerie silence. There are no birds, no wind; everything is hushed by the blanket of snow.

He stands there in the woods and breathes, wondering if he should turn around and leave, but something about the ice castle draws him. Slowly he walks up to it, until he is as close as he can get without actually stepping into the brook. He takes off his glove and reaches out to touch the rippled surface of the ice. It's cold and slippery under his fingertips, but something is emanating from it and travelling up his arm – a tremor, a call.

Closer, Merlin. Lean closer.

Merlin does.

The silence around him is oppressive, heavy and dense. The only thing he hears is the murmur of water underneath the ice, the gurgle of it as it escapes the ice palace and hurries downstream in relief. Free.

Closer, Merlin.

He's leaning in over the brook now, so close that the tip of his nose nearly touches the ice. It's like he can feel its breath; it's radiating chill, steaming with cold.

And that's when he sees it.

There are images in the ice. All the facets and crystals are brimming with them, still or moving, broken up, fragmented, and he, Merlin, is in each and every one of them.

So is Arthur.

Merlin chokes on a small noise like a whimper, of surprise or protest or both; like an animal in pain. What he sees makes him breathe faster until his breath surrounds him like a cloud, obscuring his view. But even if he can't see the images with his eyes, he can feel them. His hands are shaking and he swallows convulsively, blinks and wills the images to go away, but when he looks, Arthur is still there. Fear breathes him in the neck but he tries to focus, tries to catch the images, one after the other.

He doesn't understand them and it brings him close to panic. He can see the image that is he and still not he, dressed in strange clothes, moving in unfamiliar surroundings… medieval. And there's Arthur, reaching out to touch his shoulder; Arthur looking into his eyes with a tired smile. Merlin's shirt is blue and his neckerchief red, he smiles back at Arthur who is sweating in chainmail. Merlin in the snow closes his eyes for a moment, and he feels it, feels the weight of Arthur's gloved hand as it lands heavily on his shoulder, the smell of Arthur, of sweat and horses and earth as Arthur smiles into his eyes…

An image of Arthur at Cambridge flashes before him, the two of them crouching to pick up books scattered across the flagstones, of Arthur in the rosy afternoon light with the pulse fluttering on his neck and the smell of hot metal… their hands reaching simultaneously for the last book: Le Morte d'Arthur.

"No," Merlin whispers. Tears are stinging his eyes and burning in his nose. "No..."

He shakes himself and gulps down the icy air, forces himself to lean back in and continue looking, only to find that the next image frightens him even more. It doesn't look like anything he has ever seen. It's a world of steel and glass and rapid movement, of vibrations that run through his body even as he stands here in the forest, of strangely shaped bridges and people in odd-looking clothes, women in trousers, and Arthur, Arthur in a suit and tie and a crisp white shirt but without a waistcoat, and the shirt collar looks strange. Perhaps they're in London, Merlin isn't sure – his gaze wanders around and yes, they're in London; he can see the dome of St Paul's in the background, across the river. And Arthur is crying. Arthur is sobbing, and there's a black hole of pain in the pit of Merlin's stomach. Everything is twisted and strange and makes him lightheaded, because it looks like this is set far into the future but they're still young, they're still young, not much older than they are today...

Merlin is dizzy now, nauseous, but he doesn't want to stop looking, not yet, he can't. He closes his eyes for a moment and when he opens them again, the image has changed.

Arthur is there, in a crown, on a throne – a king. Merlin is beside him in long red robes, and they're older now although their surroundings look medieval. Merlin has a beard; he is leaning over Arthur to speak into his ear. His hand is on Arthur's shoulder and Arthur turns his head to look up at him, his smile saying... saying that they don't need words to communicate. That smile, Merlin thinks in the snow, shows him very clearly that they are... intimate with each other.

Merlin is shivering, shaking with emotion, his stomach hot but his fingers so cold he can't feel them.

The images in the ice coincide with his dreams, but they are crystal clear where his dreams never are. His dreams hold fragments of costly red fabric embroidered with gold thread and pearls, of what he now realises is chainmail and armour; fragments of castle walls, of horses' hooves, of the twisted metal parts of that strangely shaped bridge across the Thames, although he's never before known it was a bridge. Now he sees it all as if he's taken a good few steps back to get perspective – he gets the view he was hoping that his paintings would give him. He sees what they are.

In all these images, he sees himself from the outside like in a photograph, but he is still inside himself in all the scenes, he is himself, still able to feel what he felt then... what he felt when he was...

... when he was there.

When it happened.

Merlin hears himself groan. He presses the heels of his hands to his eyes trying to blot out the images, but they're still there in his head, invading him. With a deep breath he leans back in towards the ice, focuses on another segment of it, another icicle, and plunges straight into fire.

It's a chaos of fire, fire of different kinds - there is a pyre with a dead body burning, and Merlin's eyes are stinging with grief as much as with the smoke. There is a woman burned at the stake in a courtyard. There are enormous beating wings and a creature – a dragon – breathing roaring fire; there are flames surrounding another winged shape: a plane. Arthur's plane.

Merlin jumps backwards in the snow, staggering as if he's received a blow. A wave of nausea makes him bend double and retch but nothing comes out of his mouth.

No more, no more now, please make it stop.

The world is black and white around him as he stumbles back home to the house, but his mind is filled with fire. Hunith turns around when he comes in, and exclaims at the sight of him.

"Merlin! What have you done to yourself?"

"Mother," he says, shaking with cold and exhaustion, "I think it's time you told me about my father."

Hunith goes white. Her fingers clutch at the edge of the sink.

"I'm sorry, but I have to know." Merlin's teeth are chattering. "He had magic, hadn't he? What could he do? Why did he leave us? You must tell me. I need to know."

Hunith closes her eyes and takes a deep breath. "Yes," she says. "Yes. Your father had magic."

xxx

Slowly, painstakingly, Merlin removes his paintings from the walls, places them in a corner and covers them with a sheet. He knows what they represent now: his past, his present, his future, all sharing the same canvas. The whirl of time makes him nauseous.

Gaius frowns when he sees Merlin.

"You don't look well," he says and points Merlin to the deep, red armchair he favours when he visits the professor. "Would you like some tea, or do you prefer something stronger? A drop of Scotch, perhaps?"

Merlin accepts the whisky and shudders as it burns its way down. "I need to talk to you."

As Merlin tells his story, it's Gaius who turns pale. "These dreams of yours," he says, "do you only see the past in them, or the future as well?"

"I see that bridge," Merlin replies with his head bent, rolling the whisky tumbler between his palms. "The one with the twisted metal. When Arthur is crying." God. "What does it mean, that I can see the future? And what does it mean that I've met Arthur before? Is it all destined, don't we have our free will?"

Gaius gets up from his chair and starts pacing the room. The pale winter sunlight casts a slanting, irregular harlequin pattern across the floor. "I don't know, Merlin. All I know is that your destiny seems to be bound to Arthur, now and in the future, as it has always been."

Always been? The back of Merlin's neck goes cold with apprehension. "I - I don't understand."

Gaius doesn't reply, just comes and sits down, leaning forward to poke at the fire. The clock is ticking on the mantelpiece. Time.

"So if we die in the war..." Merlin says. "No, even if we don't... when we die, we will meet again?"

"So it seems."

"Do we always forget? And have to find each other again, and find out? Does one of us always remember? Or both?"

"I don't know, Merlin."

It's Merlin's turn to pace. The sun is slipping behind clouds. He wants to rage, break something, cry perhaps, but not in front of Gaius. "Will you be there?"

"I don't know that, either. But I have been, before."

Merlin bites his lip, angry. "Are we trapped in some kind of hellish vortex of time? Why me, why us?" His voice cracks, the fire in the grate spits and flares.

"Careful with your magic, Merlin. Don't let it run wild."

"There are no answers, are there?"

Gaius looks at him kindly. "If there are, you will have to find them yourself. All I know is that you and Arthur - the two of you together - can make things change. Make them better. You can make people see reason and bring about unity and peace."

Merlin's laugh is bitter. "Oh, yes," he says, "just look at the world. We've really succeeded, haven't we? Maybe if someone had asked us. Uther Pendragon, perhaps?"

"You haven't begun yet," Gaius points out mildly. "Doubtlessly, you have a lot of work ahead of you."

Merlin sits down with his elbows on his thighs, staring into the fire. It's calm again. "Are we ever..." His voice trails off and he starts again. "Don't we ever get to live our own lives, then? Do what we actually want to do, pursue our own interests...? Don't we ever have a choice?"

"There's always a choice, Merlin."

"But..." Merlin can't accept it, can't accept that other people can live and die and be gone, like Shelley's dome of many-coloured glass, crushed at the heel of Death, whereas Merlin and Arthur... "Is it a punishment?" he whispers. "A curse? What did we do?"

"I don't know," says Gaius again, helplessly. "Perhaps you will return until you are no longer needed. I don't have the answers to your questions, Merlin."

But Merlin needs to ask one more. "If we die in the war, does that mean we failed?"

"No," says Gaius gently and puts a hand on Merlin's shoulder. "It means you did what you had to do. The only thing you could."

xxx

There is nothing, nothing glorious about war. Arthur learns this quickly. There is skill involved in what he does, a certain amount of boldness and definitely of luck, an adrenaline surge that could get addictive. But it isn't glorious.

Arthur gains the respect of the other reconnaissance pilots for his number of flights and the bold - or insane - things he will do in order to get the photographs, but what that means in practice is that he is responsible for more deaths than any of the others. Where is the glory in that?

He likes the other pilots well enough, and his observer is like a brother. They are a dedicated, easy-going bunch, several of them university students who interrupted their education to enlist, and one of them is a hell of a pianist.

The common denominator between them, apart from aeroplanes, is fire. They are all joined in their terror of burning. They awake sweating from nightmares where the cough and splutter of engines mingles with the thumping of AA guns, where they spiral down from the sky with screaming wires to die in a roar of flames.

xxx

When Merlin opens the door and sees the telegram boy he is instantly sick with dread, tearing the envelope open with fingers that are numb and clumsy.

Arrive Cambridge Sat 24 STOP Expect me pm STOP AP

The telegram flutters to the floor as Merlin leans against the wall, shaking with relief. He's an idiot. If Arthur dies, no one will send a telegram to him. Morgana would think to come and tell him, perhaps.

Merlin turns to look at himself in the mirror, wondering what Arthur will see. They haven't seen each other for months. Is he changed? Is Arthur? Do they even know each other any more?

When the knock comes at last and Merlin opens the door, his mind seizes up and freezes. Arthur is in uniform. He looks like a stranger. He is still so handsome it makes Merlin's heart stop, but there is a different set to his jaw and a new darkness in his eyes.

"Merlin," he says. The word frays a little at the end.

He has lost weight. His cheekbones, the structure of his face, make Merlin ache. He pulls Arthur inside and locks the door, making his world all Arthur again, all his senses inundated with Arthur. It's like the room has been dead since Arthur left and now leaps to life. Their clothes come off, uniform jacket, trousers, shirts and braces strewn across the floor, until they're stripped down to bare skin and human sweat and base, animal instinct.

The sex is desperate. They need to get this out of the way; they need to claim this from each other before they can talk. Merlin lets Arthur take him, sensing Arthur's need to be in control of something, even if it's temporary, even if it's only an illusion. He pins Merlin's wrists down above his head and fucks him until Merlin's eyes roll back in his head and he silences himself with magic not to scream the house down. For a moment the air in the room turns gold, but Arthur is coming and doesn't see, groaning into Merlin's neck.

They fall asleep entangled while the sweat is still drying on their skin.

Merlin dreams of costly red fabric and clanging armour, of mud and horses and fire.

It's better in the morning, when they are re-acquainted and the edge is taken off. Arthur is gentler, less frantic, and they take their time exploring each other.

"I dream in maps, Merlin," he says later as they lie side by side smoking. "I dream in patterns of fields and hills, railways and rivers, bridges east-west. I spend my days finding out how we can do the most damage, how we can kill the most people with the least possible effort. God, Merlin, war is destructive in so many ways and on so many levels."

"You spend your days saving people's lives, too," Merlin points out. "I know you. You probably go closer than anyone, do more stupidly heroic things than anyone."

Arthur laughs and shakes his head.

"There are rumours of conscription," Merlin says quietly and sits up to stub his cigarette out. "When do you think it will start?"

"Considering our losses, it'll have to be soon." Arthur sits up, too, leaning his forehead against Merlin's shoulder, running his fingertips up and down Merlin's back. "I can't stand the thought of you in the war," he says, "but if you're called up, you must promise to tell me. I have to know."

"Of course. Of course I'll tell you." And if Merlin had intended to say anything more, the words are lost in a kiss.