Posted originally on the Archive_of_Our_Own at https://archiveofourown.org/
works/481851.
  Rating:
      Explicit
  Archive Warning:
      Underage
  Category:
      M/M
  Fandom:
      Merlin_(TV)
  Relationship:
      Merlin/Arthur_Pendragon
  Character:
      Merlin_(Merlin), Arthur_Pendragon
  Additional Tags:
      Reincarnation, POV_Second_Person
  Series:
      Part 7 of Summerpornathon_2012
  Collections:
      Summer_Pornathon_2012
  Stats:
      Published: 2012-08-09 Words: 737
****** Once and Future Kings ******
by qwerty
Summary
     You're waiting to throw yourself, once more, unto the breach.
Notes
     Written for Challenge Seven: Non-Penetration.
As heroic deeds go, saving the world is a pretty crap deal. Nobody ever talks
about the part where you die, cold and alone, long after the love of your life
has shuffled off his mortal coil as part of your epic world-saving quest.
Either that, or you die first, not knowing when or if you will ever meet again.
Almost easier, if you could simply lie down and let the end take you together.
No,he told you the last time, when you put forward the thought. I know you
better than that. You could never leave your people to suffer for one man.
But he's wrong. You would have given up everything for him, every time, but for
his simple faith in your nobility that you dare not break.
And the thing about second and third and fourth chances - what people these
days call reincarnation - they never work out. If you couldn't get it right the
first time, without the tangle of history and expectations confusing issues all
around, what are the odds that you'll figure out your happy ending, or that any
ending would stay happy and not get fucked up next time round?
There is a light rap on the door; only perfunctory - Merlin comes straight in
without waiting for a response, which you suppose is an improvement on the
first life, when he used to slam the door open and yank the curtains apart to
wake you.
"Is it time to wake already?" you ask, even though the horizon is still dark,
and the moon is yet high in the night sky.
Merlin pads quietly across the room on bare feet, climbing onto your bed and
tucking his slight frame into your side, his face turned trustingly into your
shoulder. It is years and lifetimes of custom and loneliness that draws your
arm about his shoulders to pull him closer. He sighs, breathes soft heat into
your neck, and the warm press of his body spreads reflexive tingling all
through your body, down to your fingers and toes with keen awareness of his
proximity.
"What is it, have you remembered something?" you ask gruffly, raising one knee
to try to hide your body's natural response to his, even despite his current
appearance - too young, far too young, barely half your age and you not yet
thirty - how did you and he end up born so far apart, with so little time
together before it came to this again? Another doomed ride round the wheel of
fortune -
You've missed something important while railing at destiny, because Merlin is
smiling sad and sweet, and leaning up to kiss the corner of your mouth;
chastely, you think until he rises to his knees and straddles you with grim
determination, and your breath stops.
Your hands are on his narrow hips, frozen in shock as he licks past your
chapped lips into your mouth with familiar bravado, grinds his small bottom
perfectly into your hard cock just the way he used to, and it takes you a
shamefully long time to stop sucking desperately at his tongue and push him
away when all your mind is filled with images of pressing him into the bed, his
slim wrists pinned over his head, and devouring that pale skin and the small
tight nipples, sucking at the delicate young flesh between his legs - you push
him away, gasping like a drowning man, "Merlin, stop! We can't."
"Arthur, I remember," he says, shaking, eyes bright and wet. "I remember, and
tomorrow... please. Let me - " He lunges for your mouth again, and he tastes of
salt and blood and thwarted love, and because you could never deny him, you
kiss him, his mouth, his eyes and temples while he chokes back silent tears and
clutches at you like a child heartbroken.
Sometime before daybreak, he lets himself be soothed. You let him jerk you off
with an uncertain grip, let him rub himself off on you, and whisper into his
ears, "Next time - next time, we'll let the future hang, and we'll lie together
under the old oak tree, or a younger one if that one isn't there anymore, and
we'll be kings of the present. Next time."
"Next time," he agrees, lying quiescent in your arms as light stains the
horizon. "This time, we kick destiny's arse and make our own future."
And you think, maybe you will. Together.
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