Posted originally on the Archive_of_Our_Own at https://archiveofourown.org/
works/2254002.
  Rating:
      Explicit
  Archive Warning:
      Underage
  Category:
      M/M
  Fandom:
      Merlin_(TV)
  Relationship:
      Merlin/Arthur_Pendragon_(Merlin)
  Character:
      Merlin_(Merlin), Arthur_Pendragon_(Merlin)
  Additional Tags:
      Alternate_Universe, Alternate_Universe_-_Supernatural_(TV)_Fusion,
      Alternate_Universe_-_High_School, Alternate_Universe_-_Fusion, Team
      Gluttony
  Collections:
      Summer_Pornathon_2011
  Stats:
      Published: 2014-09-04 Words: 1260
****** You're a Hunter, I'll Tend the Gun ******
by whirligigged
Summary
     "Arthur. If I wanted normal, I'd have gone home around the time you
     asked me to look up beheadings in the library index."
Notes
     Cleaned up for re-posting, this was written for summerpornathon 2011,
     week 5. The challenge was to find and fill an unfilled or WIP
     kinkme_merlin prompt. The prompt I chose: "Arthur/Merlin
     Supernatural!AU. When Arthur and Merlin are Sam and Dean Winchester,
     but no incest, please".
     Their ages are indeterminate here, but the characters are in high
     school and there is explicit sex.
One winter, a beast of a car purred up to the curb.
Its door slammed. The man who emerged had a face like stone, lined and grim.
Merlin took a step back, rock salt crunching under his boots. The man spared
Merlin only a first glance as he strode into the school.
The passenger door clicked. The boy who stood, scanning the empty parking lot,
was beautiful. But beauty didn't seem to account for the way Merlin's guts
twisted at the sight of him, hurting more than the January chill clawing at his
bones.
"What're you staring at?" said the blonde kid, and his accent sounded like
home.
"Just you, mate," he said. The other boy sneered at his accent until Merlin
said, "I'm not faking. Born and bred, just ask my mum."
The kid snorted and started to say something, but then the doors of the school
swung open again. "Arthur, back in the car," the man called, but Arthur was
already pulling open the door.
*
Mum disliked whenever Merlin said he just had a feeling about something, so he
didn't do that anymore.
So if he’d felt some thread of connection there, it was only because of the
coincidence—two kids from the UK, out in the sticks of western Massachusetts.
Only that.
*
Two weeks of glimpses later, of sullen hunched shoulders in the halls and
rumors about the strange new kid, Merlin spoke to him again. Arthur didn't sit
with anyone at lunch because he didn't come to lunch. Merlin found him slinking
out the side door by the dumpsters in a worn leather jacket that wasn't near
warm enough, tapping a cigarette out from a carton as he walked.
“Oh, it’s you,” said Arthur bluntly.
“Getting off-campus food?” Merlin asked. His own sensible winter coat was in
his locker. He should go back inside. Instead, he shuffled after Arthur,
shoving his hands into his pockets for what little warmth he could get.
“Library,” Arthur said, not sparing him a look.
"You’re ditching...to go to the library."
Arthur glanced over, seeming to notice for the first time that Merlin was
trailing after him. "Research to do." He slowed, and Merlin came shoulder-to-
shoulder with him. "Why, you interested?" He cocked one brow, sardonic, but his
shoulders had opened up, and yes. Merlin was interested.
*
They got kicked out because Arthur was loudly calling Merlin an incompetent for
not knowing how to work the microfiche.
*
So Merlin found himself the very normal new pastime of breaking into the public
library weekend nights to read by flashlight about property rights and
executions from last century, Arthur’s hip brushing his as he’d whisper,
Merlin, check this out.
*
"Fuck. Fuck!" Merlin yelled from the circle of salt Arthur’d poured around him,
fumbling with Arthur’s lighter.
Arthur, bleeding from the chest, shot off a shotgun in the school gym a third
time, shouting back, "Any time now, Merlin!"
Merlin set the lock of hair alight. The ghost shrieked in a column of fire, and
was gone.
Gone, but real. There was a smoking black hole in the gym floor to prove it.
All of it was real. The bedtime stories, the bumps in the night...and the
hunches. The nightmares. The things he saw from the corner of his eye. He
laughed, sick with horror, with relief.
*
Arthur watched Merlin's face intently while Merlin concentrated on smoothing
tape along the edges of Arthur's bandages and ignoring the wide expanse of skin
before him. "You always came along, and you never asked questions. I thought
you might have...guessed. Or I hoped you had."
Merlin shut the first aid box and set it back on the floor. "I kind of just
thought you were a Wiccan with a passion for colonial New England history and
petty crime?"
Merlin had insisted on tugging off Arthur's shirt to tend to the deep scratches
along his chest and shoulder, and now Arthur's arms were tangled in the
sleeves. He suspected Arthur was unable to lift his arms high enough to get it
back on, and shook his head when Arthur batted Merlin's helping hands away.
Arthur rolled his eyes and balled the shirt up, tossing it on the floor.
"Merlin, you truly are an idiot."
"I don't know. It came as a shock, but maybe I did, um. Have a feeling, or
something. Mostly I just liked having a friend," Merlin said frankly, watching
how Arthur stilled at that. He sat back on the bed beside him, gingerly,
glancing around the trailer. “Where’s your dad?”
Arthur shrugged stiffly, not successfully hiding the resulting wince. "Out.
He—we hunt things. Ghosts and werewolves, monsters. Stuff that's not human."
Merlin kicked at the first aid box. His breath felt very short. "Oh," he
managed.
"So. He's out on a hunt now. There's a vampire nest out by the old asylum."
"That seems dangerous."
"He can handle it. It's worth it. There's a whole world of shit out there that
most people don't know about, and it's our job to protect them from it all." He
grinned. "We get banged up sometimes, but believe me, they get it a lot worse
from us. Fuckers."
Stuff that wasn't human, Arthur had said. Merlin wondered what it was when you
could think about something and make it happen. What yellow eyes meant. He had
meant to ask, but he supposed now he had his answer.
Apparently, monsters got hunted.
Arthur's smile slipped. "You're freaking out."
"No."
"I've never told anyone, I. Fuck. I know it's not...normal."
He saw how Arthur's stern blue eyes looked wild now, thinking Merlin thought
him the freak.
It was easy, then, to put his hand on Arthur’s bandaged chest lightly. He felt
very calm with all that hope drained away. "Arthur. If I wanted normal, I'd
have gone home around the time you asked me to look up beheadings in the
library index."
Arthur stared. Then he wiped his mouth, knocked Merlin backwards onto the bed,
and slid to the floor between Merlin's legs.
This is what going mad feels like, thought Merlin.
Arthur was on him at once, lips stretching pink and slick around his already
hardening cock. It was so overwhelming it almost hurt, so much sensation so
suddenly, but he wouldn't have pulled away for anything.
He was aware of everything: the wet sounds of his cock filling up Arthur's hot
mouth, the chapped skin of his knuckles cracking in the cold as he gripped
Arthur's hair. The dark, bare woods on the other side of the dirty window. The
unpleasant rasp of cheap new sheets against his cheek when he threw his head to
the side, gasping—touching Arthur's face, his neck, feeling he was the only
warm thing in the world.
*
Arthur taught him about rock salt and iron. Arthur "borrowed" a car and Merlin
watched him exorcise an old textile factory in Lowell. Arthur kissed the back
of his neck while he showed Merlin how to use a Glock.
Arthur disappeared when the spring came.
*
Four years and most of a Stanford education later, a voice at the bar makes
Merlin’s stomach turn over. He turns but sees no one familiar.
*
He’s pinned to the floor of his own apartment that night, his attacker’s grin
glinting rock-salt-white in the moonlight.
"Easy there, you idiot. You'll hurt yourself." His hands fist at the front of
Merlin's shirt, hauling him close. They're both panting, sweating with exertion
in the California heat. "Got a hunt going on. You interested?"
Merlin is interested.
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