Merlin had calmed down considerably during the drive, though he still held onto Arthur's hand like a lifeline. When they reached the house, Arthur looked over to Merlin,
"We are here now."
"Mhm" Merlin said absentmindedly.
"I would need my hand back, if that's alright with you" Arthur teased.
Merlin let go of the hand as if burned, and hurriedly got out of the car, his red ears giving away his inside,the atmosphere started to get suffocatingly awkward with Merlin slowly and quietly following wherever Arthur led him, that is until they reached the living room with a 100 inch wall TV. Merlin's stifled snicker couldn't be mistaken for anything else.
"Anything funny Merlin?"
"No! Just some things never change."
"Like?"
"Like your tendency to show off"
"When you have money to afford luxuries, it doesn't make sense not to exploit it, peabrain"
"I am sure your eyesight will thank you in ten years!"
"Shut up Merlin!"
"Whatever you say, Your Majesty"
"Sit down while i make you tea"
"You know how to make tea! Wonders never cease"
"What did i say about shutting up? You are still as ditzy as you ever were"
This was easy, this was familiar, Arthur thought while he put water on for boiling. Talking about nothing at all with Merlin seemed to ease a knot of tension inside him that he never realized existed. He quickly and efficiently set the tray, got some biscuits out of the cabinet, and was pouring tea when the realization hit him: Merlin was sitting on his couch!
Suddenly feeling unbalanced, he had to grip the counter and take deep calming breaths. So what if Merlin was in his living room? So what if he waited for him for more than a thousand years? so what if Arthur was more than a little bit in love with him? So what? He was still Merlin! Wasn't he? It would be definitely be alright, probably… maybe!
He entered the living room with tea, more nervous than he was before he left for making it. Merlin was standing in front of the wall on the left-the one with the framed photographs from Arthur's childhood, graduation, and various parties and trips- staring intently at the pictures, as if shocked. Oh right!The others! Gwaine, Lance, Morgana, Uther and everyone else: Merlin probably didn't know they were here too.
Setting the tray on a table, he went to stand behind Merlin, and said quietly,
"Yeah, they are back too. My therapists had a field day when i told them my father was the great King of Camelot."
Merlin startled, and then turned back to look at Arthur. There was amusement in his eyes, but also vulnerability, and hope.
"You remember everything then?"
"Well i do remember you were the most terribly incompetent manservant ever!"
"Like master like servant, they say"
"Getting cheeky aren't you?"
"Well i did have a thousand years to hone my witty comeback skills"
"I guess it makes sense that you would need a thousand years to reach my level"
"Oye!I am centuries old sorcerer, you should talk to me with respect!" Merlin glared, though there was no heat behind the words.
"Come drink your tea before it gets cold ,Grandpa!"
During tea, Merlin seemed fidgety. He opened his mouth thrice to ask something, and then changed his mind. Arthur, who was initially planning to wait for him to gather the courage, eventually got tired of the nagging curiosity.
"Spit it out before you give yourself a headache!"
"How did you find out?" Merlin blurted, like he couldn't stop himself now that he had permission to ask.
"Find out about my past princely life? Dreams!"
"Dreams?" He asks incredulously.
"Yeah! Dreams. A bit anti climactic really"
"What about the others? Do they remember?"
"Gwaine said something about having weird dreams, but i am not sure if anyone else have any idea what they were in their past lives"
"Huh"
Merlin gets quiet for a while. Then he says, in barely a whisper,
"I am sorry about before, in the cafe!"
"Sorry for what?"
"The hugging and the crying, I know you don't like such things. It was inappropriate!"
Arthur is confused for a second and then...Oh! Merlin didn't know Arthur got all his letters. He thought all Arthur remembered was their past lives, and in those, Merlin hugging him might have been Arthur's wet dream, but it was never a more than that! Arthur had been living in a world where the knowledge of Merlin's love for him had been as real as breathing for so long, that he had forgotten what it felt like to live without it!
"I have to make a confession Merlin."
"Yeah? What?"
"I was 13 when i started getting dreams of my past, they eased up in a couple of years, but by the time i turned 18, i started getting dreams again, different kind of dreams" He gave Merlin a meaningful look, but he continued to stare at him uncomprehendingly.
"In the dreams, i was sitting under a tree, near a lake" Merlin's eyes started widening in understanding, " And a letter would appear on the surface of river" Merlin gasped." I can't even count how many of those letters arrived, thousands and thousands of them."
"Shit" Merlin whispered from between the fingers of the hand he had clapped on his mouth.
"And i read every single one of them…"
"Arthur…"
"So i know. I know everything. And i want you to know that i love you too"
Suddenly Merlin stood up, and instead of happy and ecstatic like Arthur expected him to be, he looked like a mixture of anger, misery, and hatred!
"Don't say that! Don't you dare say that!"
"But…"
"What would you even know! You have been fed the story of a sorry old soul, and his heartbreak and his pathetic one sided crush ever since you could think for yourself! OF COURSE you fancy yourself in love with me!" Arthur realized that the hatred in Merlin's eyes was not for Arthur, but for himself.
"That's not it .."
"Then what is it? Didn't you feel sorry for the poor sod who waited for you for a thousand years? Didn't you convince yourself that the least you could do in reward for his patience and dedication would be to love him back? Did you not grow up on letters of -Oh God!- LOVE LETTERS written to you!" Merlin voice was still full of venom, but it was all directed towards himself, and it made Arthur hurt even more.
"You were just a child, and i….Oh God! I am so sorry!" His voice a horrified whisper now.
"You are getting it all wrong Merlin! STOP IT!"
"I am sorry Arthur, but i need some space! I need to leave" Merlin started towards the door.
Blind with panic, and with the voice screaming inside his head saying "You're gonna lose him again, lose him, lose him" , Arthur reacted before he could think better, and grasped Merlin's wrist.
"Please don't go! Don't leave me again."
Something in his voice must have reached out to Merlin because he paused, and looked back at Arthur's face searchingly. Whatever he was looking for,he found it because he sighed, and then slumped his shoulder.
"I need space to think Arthur, please!"
"You can go to my room. I swear i won't disturb you. Just please don't go! Please…" His voice broke on the last word, and that seemingly broke all of Merlin's restraint as well.
"Okay… Okay"
Arthur is sitting in the living room, looking at TV but not really watching, his mind wandering centuries away, quite literally. Merlin had barricaded himself in Arthur's room for all of morning, and it was late evening now but there was still no word from Merlin. Arthur had cooked lunch but Merlin had not responded to any number of knocks on his door.
Giving up, Arthur goes to the door, and sits down with his back next to it. He figures Merlin had spoken to him for centuries, now it was his time.
"You there Merlin?"
No reply comes.
"I was dead, but i was not really dead you know? I was in heaven, or wherever it is that lake was, but i could still think, i could still feel… i could still miss you."
There's still no response from the other side of the door so Arthur goes on.
"When your first letter came, it was like a ray of hope, a connection with my best friend. I lived for those letters, and also died a little bit with them. You kept sending them, but i had no way of responding to you. You have no idea how much i hated your magic at that moment, and envied it. And while reading those letters i realized something that i had known all along, that i loved you. I loved you the way i had never loved Guinevere. I loved you the way a person should be loved.I loved you, and still do.
"You may think that I am merely 23 years old boy compared to you being millenia old, but Merlin, i wasn't dead. I was waiting too. Right now maybe i have just memories of that time i waited; and waited and waited, and then waited some more, keeping track of time just by your letters. But i lived those years as well. This body is new, but i am not. I am the same Arthur that you have saved a million times over, whose back you've washed and whose wounds you have cleaned. The Arthur you have helped dress in metal for war, and helped undress for the night. I am the same Arthur you have loved, and written letters to.
I have written to you as well, so so many times. Hundreds of letters,throwing them in water, willing them to reach you. But they never did i guess. Fucking magic!"
Arthur paused again, but there was no sound of movement on the other side. Merlin may very well be sleeping, but now that Arthur had started talking, he couldn't seem to stop.
"Why can't you believe me that i know what i am talking about. That i mean it when i say i love you. I am not a little boy, whose entire life has been traumatized by ramblings of an old wizard about how much he loved him. I have had centuries to understand my feelings as well. I know Merlin. I know!"
He sat with his head inside his knees, thats why he didn't get a chance to steady himself when the door opened, and he tumbled back, landing on his side in an awkward sprawl.
Righting himself he looked up, to find nothing. Merlin wasn't standing by the door. Right! Wizard! He looked around to find Merlin sitting in a far corner, his posture much like Arthur's was moments ago.
"You're a self obsessed prat!" Merlin sniffled. His voice was rough, like he had been crying for hours.
"Yeah?"
"Yeah! Why couldn't you tell me you loved me while you were alive!"
"I am alive now aren't i?"
"Yeah! Yeah you are" There was wonder in Merlin's voice.
He got up from the floor and came towards Arthur. As if on cue the lights turned on. Merlin drew closer and started staring at Arthur's face. Slowly, hesitantly, as if afraid Arthur might vanish from sight- or maybe he was just giving Arthur time to back away if he wanted- he raised his hand and cupped Arthur's face. He carefully caressed his cheek, featherlight, and started at him in awe.
"Your eyes! In a thousand years, i have never seen eyes like yours"
"Not even of that guy in the bar who looked like me?" Jealousy burned dark and ugly inside of Arthur.
"Prat!" Merlin said fondly, "Only you can be jealous of someone i fucked centuries ago"
"Who said i am jealous?" Arthur protested.
"You're not?" An eyebrow raised in challenge.
"Yeah! Yeah i am! You have no idea" He just didn't see the point of keeping up the false bravado.
"You don't have to be! He wasn't you"
"So you said" Oh God! Please don't let him be pouting! Please.
"Arthur?"
"Mhm?" Arthur looked up at the question, and found Merlin's eyes close, impossibly, breathtakingly close.
"Shut up" He said, before bending forward to brush his lips against Arthur's.
Arthur had kissed so many people before that he had lost count, both in this life and the previous one, but it did not prepare him for what kissing Merlin would be like. The first whisper of a touch, barely there brushing of the lips,felt like an electric shock to Arthur's system, and his hands raised of their own accord to tangle in Merlin's hair. He only had a very very small part of his brain to spare for appreciating how soft Merlin's hair were, the rest of his brain was busy in bringing him forward and pressing his lips against Merlin's, harder this time, the touch more pronounced. It did nothing to lessen the yearning inside Arthur's soul, so he pressed again and again, opened his mouth to take Merlin's lower lip in between his, sucking it softly. Merlin's moan only proceeded to make the vast black hole inside of Arthur's chest expand, and this time he bit on the lip, to hear Merlin gasp. Soon the kiss turned from chaste and barely there to desperate and needy.
At the first brush of Merlin's tongue against Arthur's lips, he felt like his knees would give out. After that it was all tangling of tongues, and invading each other's mouths, exploring each and every corner of it; it was breathless moans and choked off gasps swallowed by the other. It was whimpers and needy clutching of the shoulders and refusal to come up for air until their lungs screamed for it.
Finally Arthur moved a little back, to give himself some room to breath, but Merlin looked so lost, and his mouth looked red and bitten and absolutely ravishing that he couldn't stop himself for diving back in with a whimper of
"Oh God Merlin! Your mouth!"
Next time when Arthur came up for air, instead of backing away he buried his face in Merlin's neck, kissing the junction of shoulder and neck, and then licking it, relishing in the taste that was just Merlin! He kissed his way up his neck, to the angle of the jaw, to the ear. Merlin keened when Arthur bit on his earlobe, so Arthur did it again. He followed the path to Merlin's cheeks and kissed those cheekbones he had so often dreamed about, kissed his eyes and his nose, and then he pressed their foreheads together, his lips tantalizingly close to Merlin's and looked him in the eyes.
"Please tell me you are ready! Please tell me you're sure!"
Merlin's eyes darted from Arthur's eyes to his lips and then back to his eyes. His expression was one of open want, but Arthur had to make sure.
"You ass! I have been waiting a millenia for this! Of course i am sure"
"Yeah!" A shit eating grin appeared on Arthur's face.
"Yeah YEAH! Get on with it you fucking tease"
"As you say, my lord" Arthur said in mock imitation of the times when Merlin had called him that.
Before Merlin could respond, Arthur was kissing him again. They kissed until they couldn't kiss anymore, until their lips were sore and sensitive, then they parted only to remove their clothes layer by layer. It took a ridiculously long time because neither of them could wait for longer than a millisecond before touching the other, kissing whatever skin they could find, caressing every curve of the each other's body, learning all the angles.
They ended up in bed, naked, hands roaming everywhere, lips hungry for any and every piece of skin visible. When Merlin asked Arthur to get a move on, Arthur detached himself for a while to get lube and condom from the nightstand.
When he came back Merlin was shivering, looking panic stricken, so Arthur draped himself over him, rubbing his back soothingly.
"Don't leave me!" Merlin whispered.
"I am not going anywhere!I am here yeah? I am here!"
It took a while to calm Merlin down, and Arthur spent that time kissing Merlin wherever he could, whispering sweet endearments into his skin. When Merlin started moaning and squirming again, Arthur looked up into his eyes, and smirked.
"Ready?"
"Yeah!" He said, suddenly shy.
He wasn't shy when Arthur's fingers opened him up, when they rubbed insistently against his prostate while he sucked on the tip of his cock. He wasn't the least bit shy when Arthur entered him, his insides clutching at him, unwilling to let him go. He moaned and writhed and screamed Arthur's name over and over again, interspersed with the demands for more, harder, faster! When he came, he came with a choked off whimper of "I love you!" and that was what finally tipped Arthur over too.
Collapsing into bed, Arthur pulled out, took off the condom and tied it, throwing it across the room. He didn't even bother cleaning Merlin up as neither of them had any energy left to even move. He never expected himself to be the little spoon but when Merlin curled around him, his arms going around his waist, he decided that this was where he belonged.
First time Arthur woke up, it was due to his bladder demanding attention and his throat being absolutely parched. Loathe as he was to disentangle himself from Merlin,the need to pee won over, and he slowly unwrapped Merlin's hands from around his waist. Careful not to jostle the bed too much as to not wake him, he slid out of bed, to the washroom.
When he came out, he found out that Merlin had woken up, and was panicking.
"Arthur…" He called, sounding distraught.
"I am here...just went to the loo." He got back into the bed, and Merlin wrapped his arms around him again.
"Oh Thank God! I thought it was all a dream"
"I am here Merlin," he said for what felt like a thousandth times, but Merlin needed the reassurance, and he wondered how many times Merlin had woken up in the middle of the night, dreaming of Arthur, only to realize that it wasn't real.
"Don't leave" He whispered.
And Arthur decided that he didn't really need to drink water all that much.
Next time Arthur woke up, it was to find his bed empty. Groggily looking up, he found Merlin sitting on a table,sipping coffee and reading something.
"Morning" He mumbled.
"Morning…There's coffee on your bedside table"
"Right, the one thing you love more than me" He said moodily but Merlin just grinned, and continued to pore over the sheets of papers.
"What are you reading?"
"Nothing of significance" There it was, the mischief in his voice that made Arthur hopelessly curious.
Getting out of bed, he stumbled towards to table, looking at the different array of papers, of all types. Realization slowly dawned on him…
"These….these are…"
"The letters you wrote to me? Yeah!" Merlin said, his voice awfully amused.
"You can't read those! You weren't meant to read them!"
"And now you know what it feels like…"
"Give them back…" Arthur lunged forward but the pages just slid out of his range. He made another move for them, but they simply moved away.
"Merlin…."
"Ah! There it is! So you think my cheekbones are beautiful eh? And my smile mesmerizing!?" His voice was so smug that Arthur wanted to punch him.
"I do no such thing, these were written in a vulnerable moment"
Merlin rifled through the pages, looking for something, and finally pulled out a page.
"Here! This is the one where you apologize for calling me terrible servant! I think i will have this one framed. For future!"
"Give them back," Arthur made a move to snatch the paper again.
"What do we have here," Merlin bent forward to pick another paper, prepared to make Arthur even more flustered, and stopped short.
Arthur slowly came up behind him to read what was written on it, but he already had an idea what it said.
"I love you" It said, "I love you , i love you, i love you" and so on, the word scribbled into the margins and written between the lines, dozens of times, until the entire page was filled with it.
Slowly wrapping his arms around Merlin, he kissed his shoulder and whispered in his ear.
"I really do you know! I love you!"
Merlin visibly shivered,either because of his confession, or by the feeling of Arthur's breath tickling his ears.
"So" Arthur said, "What are we going to do about me being born again, once and future king, and all that destiny shtick"
Merlin tensed at that… and arthur almost wished he had never said anything
"I suppose we should go find Kilgharrah, and ask him about it" Merlin says, thoughtfully.
"But?" Because Arthur could definitely hear a but in there somewhere.
"But…" Merlin turns into Arthur's arms, and looked at his face grinning, "Destiny has been waiting for a thousand years! I guess it can wait a little longer."
With that Merlin bent forward and captured Arthur's lips in a searing kiss, uncaring about meaningless things like morning breath, and breakfast, and destiny.
Arthur was only too happy to oblige!
A/N: It ended! It was one of the most amazing things i have ever done! And something i never thought i would be able to do! I know its not perfect...but i am happy with it! I would be even happier if you guys leave a comment about it! Because i am like a very beginner in writing, so all criticism is welcome and very much appreciated really!