X 7 X
Afterwards, Arthur is wordless and breathless, unable to break eye contact with the man lying beside him, his Merlin, blinking sleepily at him, sated and satisfied, spoiled and utterly untouchable. His Merlin, Merlin who will never again be his.
"Stay here," Arthur says, sliding from the bed and zipping up the jeans he never made it as far as removing, just shoved down his thighs far enough to get a hand inside, too desperate to wait and Merlin too out of it to do much more than brush clumsy hands against his skin, mouth gasps against Arthur's neck and jaw and mouth, murmuring encouragements and his name and come on, Arthur, come.
"It's okay," Arthur says, even though he's not stupid enough to believe it. He's retreating as he speaks, too, backing towards the door, unable to be in the same space as Merlin and his guilt anymore. "It's...I'll get a cloth, just- stay."
Merlin smiles, full of the trust that Arthur has so completely betrayed, and Arthur flees.
X
He locks the bathroom door behind him, something he's never done before with only Merlin in the house, but he has to, and even then it isn't enough.
He turns the shower up as hot as it will go before climbing in, shutting another door between him and Merlin. It burns, but it's nothing less than he deserves.
Merlin is asleep by the time Arthur returns to the spare room, feeling filthy but as clean as he's ever going to get, teeth brushed better than they ever have been in his life as he tries to get the taste of Merlin out of his mouth; on a scale of one to ten, Arthur thinks, wiping Merlin as clean as he can and tugging his pants up over his unresponsive limbs isn't really any worse than anything else he's done tonight.
He's hell-bound anyway; if letting Merlin forget will spare him regretting what they've done, Arthur will spare him.
X
Merlin wakes up slowly, but the pain in his head is enough to make him think that waking up at all is a mistake. He doesn't remember how much he drank last night (though the headache is definitely tequila-based, he's sure of that much), but he knows it's definitely a long time since he last had as much as that.
Stupid Gwaine, he thinks, feeling whimpery and pathetic, because the git spent the whole night helping Merlin drown himself in a whole variety of booze, probably drank way more than Merlin did, but chances are he'll be feeling fine and dandy this morning. Merlin just wants to go back to sleep, even if it does mean subjecting himself once more to the kind of Technicolor crazy-person dreams he really shouldn't be having a week before his wedding.
Still, staying huddled under his blankets crying about his hurting head isn't going to solve anything; he wriggles his way from the bed, feeling a little like a fish on dry land, flopping and gasping and dying slowly and painfully, but then it kind of serves him right for not saying no to any of the drinks shoved in his hand last night.
He shoves his legs into his jeans, then sniffs at his t-shirt just the once before deciding he's not going to wear it again (it stinks of alcohol, with a subtle undertone of sweat and perfume, probably from the girl whose breasts he could have done with being less acquainted with yesterday, and Merlin really doesn't want to deal with anything more complicated that the smell of washing powder). Arthur won't mind him stealing a shirt, he figures, leaving the guest room and tapping on Arthur's door, trying to act as though he didn't spend half of last night imagining impossible confessions and kisses between the two of them.
It's not the first time he's had overly vivid dreams of him and Arthur, but then it's not like he's never dreamed of anyone else, either. It doesn't mean anything, he tells himself, waiting for Arthur to answer, even if it was a little more vivid than usual, even if it left enough of an impression that his skin is still tingling.
There's no sound from Arthur's room, not even the irritable groans Arthur makes when he's waking up, and after a moment Merlin pushes open the door to find an empty room, no sign of Arthur at all, and no one to comment as Merlin digs around to find a shirt that won't be overwhelmingly huge on him.
Fully dressed (barring socks, but if the sight of his bare feet offends Arthur, that's just tough), Merlin goes downstairs to check the rest of the house, concern rising in him as he finds more and more rooms empty.
There's a note in the kitchen, though, in Arthur's ugly, hurried scrawl, telling Merlin that he had to rush out to work but to make himself at home.
"Already there," Merlin says, thinking of his borrowed shirt and wondering how on earth Arthur managed to muster up the energy to go in to work, even if it's an emergency; he's fairly sure Arthur didn't drink as much as him, but he still had a lot.
Still, he thinks, grabbing a couple of eggs from the fridge and breaking them into a pan. Just because Arthur isn't here, it doesn't mean he can't have breakfast.
X
Morgana is curled up on the sofa when he gets in, nursing a mug of coffee so huge it's practically a bowl, mostly buried under a blanket, all the curtains closed and the lights off.
"You too, huh?" Merlin asks, a little amazed she made it from their bed to the sofa; if he'd woken up in his own bed this morning, he'd probably still be there.
"Gwen is a demon," she answers, shuffling her legs up a little and pulling back the blanket to let him sit under it next to her. "You wouldn't know it to look at her, but she is a monster. I think we should kill her."
"You're scary," Merlin says, helping himself to a gulp of her coffee. "Can we add the rest of our friends to the list as well?"
She laughs, then winces at the noise, poking her toes into his thighs until he lifts them a little to let her burrow her feet underneath. "That bad?"
"Tequila," he answers, like that explains it all, and, again, she laughs. "Sambuca, too, I think," which adds a disgusted face to her laughter. "And then there was the lap-dancer," he adds, hoping that'll amuse her further.
It doesn't, though; Morgana starts at that, looking deeply surprised. "Arthur got you a lap-dancer?" She asks, sounding almost upset by the idea, and not just in the my fiancé had a strange woman wiggling her tits in his face last night way.
"Gwaine did. Arthur..." he falters a little, not sure how to explain it, not even sure why Arthur did it. "I guess Arthur wasn't lying when he said he was really busy, because he had Gwaine organise it all in his place."
Morgana pouts, but something about her expression suggests that she's worked out a whole lot more than Merlin has. He doesn't ask, though, because experience tells him that Morgana never says more than she wants to, and what she wants to, she says.
Sure enough, instead of explaining anything, she just pouts more, tilting her head to one side and putting her coffee on the end table at her side of the sofa. "Was she pretty?" she asks.
Merlin grins, knowing exactly what this is, even if he's clueless about the rest of it. "Is there any other kind?"
"Prettier than me?"
"Only a little," he says. "Still, a little is enough. We're running away together, I only came back to get my stuff."
"Trollop," she says, but she's smiling as she leans in, his beautiful bride-to-be, and if Merlin feels guilty for his subconscious infidelity when she kisses him, it's only for a minute.
It was only a dream, that is all they will ever be, and dreams won't change how he feels.