Posted originally on the Archive_of_Our_Own at https://archiveofourown.org/
works/2274315.
  Rating:
      Explicit
  Archive Warning:
      No_Archive_Warnings_Apply, Underage
  Category:
      M/M
  Fandom:
      Merlin_(TV)
  Relationship:
      Merlin/Arthur_Pendragon_(Merlin)
  Character:
      Merlin_(Merlin), Arthur_Pendragon_(Merlin), Gaius_(Merlin)
  Additional Tags:
      Reincarnation, reincarnated!Arthur, reincarnated!Merlin, Mental
      Instability, Implied/Referenced_Suicide, Implied/Referenced_Self-Harm,
      Consensual_Underage_Sex, Loss_of_Identity, Identity_confusion, POV_Second
      Person, Second_Chances, psychiatry, Lies, Secrets, Summer_Pornathon_2014
  Series:
      Part 2 of Summer_Pornathon_'14
  Collections:
      Summer_Pornathon_2014
  Stats:
      Published: 2014-09-08 Words: 2897
****** come to me, my measureless dream ******
by orphan_account
Summary
     Maybe you’re not Merlin, maybe he’s not Arthur. Maybe you don’t
     exist. In the end, it’s okay.
Notes
     Challenge 2, lies/secrets. Reincarnated!Merthur. Please heed the
     warnings. Prompt inspired by Neruda’s Entrance into Wood. The line
     marked with * is from Neruda’s Every Day You Play.
     This entry (like all others) is the initial, i.e. longer, version,
     not the 750-max-words of summerpornathon.
come to me, to my measureless dream, fall into my room where night falls—
 
They find you on the belfry.
Here for your personal safety, they say; someone found the letter underneath
your pillow and alarmed the police. They come with sedatives and kind smiles,
hiding their teeth behind their lips. When they say they understand, you laugh.
“You’ll come down now,” they say, tiptoeing closer. Fancying themselves the
tamers, you the lion. “Yeah? You will. Slowly.”
You take a slow lungful of nicotine, squint up at the sky. Same as ever:
unwavering, infinite. Only the fag smoke drifting upwards disrupts all that
godawful blue. Otherwise, no sign of change. Boring.
“Yeah, whatever,” you say. You hop down easily, shrug, tell them, “Lead the
way,” because why not?
Arthur isn’t coming today, anyway.
*
In here, the ceilings are white.
The walls, too, and the floors and clothes and beds and windows and people’s
eyes. They’re all pretending mental sterility, hiding their filth in the holes
inside of their heads amongst group breakfast/lunch/dinner, group gaming
nights, group trips, group talking/sports/expressive therapy, group anything/
everything. They probably do group drug therapy and group fucking, too, you
think idly.
Would at least be a bit more fun, that.
*
They make you speak to therapists.
“So, Javier,” the first one begins. “That—”
“Merlin,” you correct him. If they are going to talk to you about this, they
will use your real name.
The therapist looks down at the papers on his desk. Reads them. Looks up again.
“Your name is Javier.”
“No,” you say. “It’s Merlin.”
The therapist watches you. You know the moment he sees the sincerity on your
face; it’s the moment his eyes shutter. When he says, “So, Javier,” you think,
congrats; successfully wrote me off, fucker. “Did anyone tell you to do this?”
Already? You cock your head, keep your face expressionless. Clarify: “Are you
asking if I’m hearing voices?”
The therapist, mouth already open, pauses as if he’s heard something else. His
eyes narrow, and, nodding, he says, “Yes. I am asking if you’re hearing
voices.”
Already. The smile on your face is wide and bright and innocent, your eyes
round and large. “Of course I am!”
*
Apparently your own voice telling you you’d really like a piece of strawberry
cake or a can of coke doesn’t mean hearing voices but faking symptoms. Your
therapist is angry, but you just say, “You didn’t specify,” and you love
feeling like the little shit you are. For some reason that gets you a second
therapist. He doesn’t call you Merlin, either, but at least he doesn’t ask if
you’re hearing voices.
*
Your third therapist is Dr. Gaius. He is old and wears no glasses.
“What happened to the last one?” you ask lazily, reclining in your chair,
cross-legged.
Dr. Gaius raises intimidating eyebrows. “He thought your method of
communication was… problematic.”
You snort. Pulling an Archie and leading a conversation with cunt! cunt! c-c-c-
cunt! was only the beginning. Number two destroyed your plan; now you’d have to
think of another. “Oh dear,” you say, faced with these unforeseen
complications.
“Oh dear indeed,” Dr. Gaius agrees. After a look at the papers in his lap, he
says, “So, Javier. Two weeks ago, you—”
“Merlin.” You try not to sound weary as you say it. Maybe it’ll work this time.
Third time’s the charm, and all that.
Dr. Gaius pauses. “Merlin?”
“Yes,” you say. “My name. It’s Merlin.”
Dr. Gaius looks at you, long and intense. His eyes stay clear, open. Then he
just mimics you, leaning back in the chair. “So, Merlin,” he says. “I was
informed that two weeks ago, you tried to kill yourself.”
You only hear Merlin. It makes you sit up straighter, give an effort.
*
On the second meeting, Gaius seems to have established that you are in fact not
an immediate danger to other people and only an occasional danger to yourself,
and that you are not hearing voices. He’s smiling wryly as he asks, “You never
were hearing any voices, were you?”
You grin brightly back at him and resist the urge to call him a clever lad.
*
While you don’t exactly listen to Dr. Gaius, you stop scrawling sketches of
group fucking all over your therapy papers. Dr. Gaius is patient and kind, and
on the third meeting, he still calls you Merlin. He smiles at you, talks to you
like a normal person. He seems to know your kind of crazy, and he doesn’t seem
to judge you for it. He lets you pretend and seems to like you even when you
are (pretending to be) Merlin.
And, most of all, he’s honest; in this house of fakers he’s one of the few who
doesn’t fake, and you appreciate that.
So you say, “I’m not hearing voices, but I’m seeing ghosts.”
Then you tell him everything.
You tell him:
of growing up being wrong. Of your mother and father calling you Javier, and of
knowing you were Merlin. Of looking at pictures and seeing a pudgy face, green
eyes, and light brown hair, and of looking in the mirror and seeing a narrow
face, blue eyes, and dark hair instead.
of years trying to convince yourself you weren’t mad, of failing, and of
cutting open your skin to see if another person lived inside. Of wanting to cut
open your chest to see if there was a heart because you never felt it, and of
dreaming—night, and night, and night again, of an age long past and a man with
blue eyes and blond hair saying thank you, and telling you to hold him, just,
just—just hold me—
and of waking each morning with wet cheeks and a hollow chest, and of trying to
find him so you could hold him, and of never finding him, and of feeling crazy,
and of feeling alone—
of Arthur, Arthur.
Always of Arthur.
At the end, there is a long silence.
Then, gently, softly, Gaius says, “He doesn’t exist, Merlin,” and you say,
“Then I don’t exist either.”
A secret you have never told anyone: you know.
You know Arthur doesn’t exist.
It never changed a thing.
*
Arthur doesn’t exist, but Liam does. You don’t know what it means (yet), but
four weeks later, Liam is the new boy they stick into the funny farm. Seventeen
(a year older than you), he’s brown-skinned like melted caramel, has dark eyes,
and likes to play footie. Another suicide case.
At night, Liam wakes the entire ward when he wakes by screaming, crying. At
day, he speaks to no one, keeps to himself in all group activities. He’s always
writing something, and when someone tries to take a look, he edges away,
nervous, anxious.
You don’t bother with him. There’s nothing special about him except the kind of
special that got him landed here, and you all have that. The other kids all
seem to expect you to walk up to Liam to rough him up. For the month you’ve
been here, your reputation kept preceding you wherever you went, but no one has
yet cottoned on to the fact that it’s only the bullies and arseholes you like
to shut up. Liam, though, is boring, with how he pours over his books and
notepads and dodges any and every kind of social contact. He’s hardly a bully,
and while he could be an arsehole, he keeps to himself, so it doesn’t matter.
Sometimes, though, when you eat or watch TV or play cards with the other kids,
you feel a prickle at the back of your neck. When you look up, you find him
watching you. His eyes always dart away the second he sees you looking back.
*
You sit with a fat kid in the yard, one day, exchanging three fags for a pill.
You’re a master of this prison’s currency; the first two therapists stocked up
your pills nicely enough so you could survive a couple weeks exchanging them
for fags. Dr. Gaius, though, knows better, and he eyes you warily even when he
hands you nothing more but light sleeping pills that do nothing. You don’t
care. You still have about twenty pills hidden away.
A fence separates the yard from a training field. Behind it, some boys are
playing footie. You watch them. Liam’s there, too. He’s the only dark one, easy
enough to spot.
For no reason at all, you find yourself saying, “That new kid,” after a while.
The unlit fag in your mouth moves with your words. “Liam. What’s up with him?”
The fat kid snorts. “'sides the usual?”
You nod.
“Mighty bonkers, that one, Jav.”
There’s a grin on your face, crooked. “Aren’t we all?”
The fat kid’s mouth twitches. “Aye, but this one, he…”
“He...?”
“Mighty bonkers,” the fat kid repeats. Then he elaborates: “He’s in my group
therapy. Goes around insistin’ he’s white. Says he’s blond, blue-eyed. Like
some fuckin’ Aryan, all right.” The fat kid giggles.
Your mouth opens, and the fag falls to the ground. Your mouth doesn’t close
again. You freeze.
Time stills.
You feel removed, detached, like you’re looking at your body from the outside.
You see the fat kid glancing at you, probably expecting a derisive comment or
two. You watch yourself swallow, and the air is tinged green. Bitterness. You
watch yourself shrug. It’s a stiff movement. The fat kid just shrugs right
along with you, casually. “Dunno, mate. Some racist bastard must’ve fucked him
up good,” he finishes.
You watch yourself nod and get up, jerkily, as if your legs aren’t working.
The world realigns as you start running. Before you are sucked back into your
body, the last thing you see is Liam looking over, but then it doesn’t matter
anymore. You’re too preoccupied finding a loo so you can vomit impossible right
out of your throat; too preoccupied dealing with feeling your heartbeat for the
first time in your life. It’s beating inside your chest furiously, as if angry
with you that it’s been neglected sixteen years.
It hurts like hell.
*
That night at dinner, you feel the prickle in your neck again. When you look up
and catch Liam, his eyes stay where they are.
It makes you rub at your still aching chest and wonder what it actually is that
is hurting like hell.
*
It occurs to you days later, that you’ve never heard Liam speak. The prospect
of it makes you atypically jumpy, and Dr. Gaius eyes the nervous jog of your
leg during your session suspiciously. To his credit, he doesn’t say a thing.
You feel your heart beating all the time now, in terror, joy, anxiety, boredom.
It’s terrifying, and it still hurts. It’s wonderful, you think, when you pass
Liam in the corridor and you exchange quick looks. Wonderful, and entirely
crazy.
You finish up twelve fags in one go before you’ve got the guts to seek out the
fat kid. He tells you Liam is always on the rooftop after dinner, saying he’s
waiting for someone. The words you hear go from your ears to your throat, stay
there, making it hard to breathe.
(The words of your note echo in your head: I’m waiting for you, Arthur.)
Liam is on the rooftop, looking up at the sky. He doesn’t stir when the door
closes behind you. You stare at his back, and the harder you stare, the more
difficult it becomes to tell if his hair is dark or light in the setting sun.
You want to sit down beside him. You don’t want to. You stay where you are,
right at the door.
“Hello,” Liam says at last, three minutes and sixteen seconds into the silence.
He doesn’t turn around. It’s the first word you ever heard him say. It's a
perfect word.
“Hello,” you say. You feel threatened, helpless, ridiculous. You feel like not-
yourself. “You’re—you’re new.”
The curve of Liam’s shoulder moves in a shrug.
“I’m—” You hesitate. Swallow past the lump, and continue talking to Liam’s
back. “I’m Merlin,” you push out, and it feels like jumping off a cliff, giving
him your real name like that.
Liam turns his head at that, a dark lock of hair falling over the elegant slope
of his nose. It covers an eye, and from this far away, you cannot see the
other. Your feet are moving towards him before you know it, transfixed. Every
step is a heartbeat, is thunder.
You stop some way before him, where the sun slants its ray on the floor,
separating the two of you.
Liam’s silence is thick, and long, but it doesn’t feel denying. It feels
curious, and strange. Like waiting, you would say, but that thought is too
close to impossible, so you choke it.
It’s hard to choke down the next question. It wants to trip over your tongue to
spill from your lips like it’s chased by a fire. When you speak it, your voice
is a whisper; maybe, if you speak quietly, he won’t hear you. Maybe, if he
won’t hear you, he can’t give the wrong answer. “And—and what’s your name?”
Liam looks at you with eyes that are not blue.
“I think,” he says, “I think you know my name.”
*
That night, you wake up to your dark, still room. There was no dream tonight,
but still you are shaking, soaked in sweat. You understand why not a minute
later.
Liam’s scream rings like horror through the corridor, and your blood turns
cold. Before you know what’s happening, your feet are skidding over the floor,
and your heart is pounding with panic. You’re at Liam’s bedside in a second.
Liam is sitting up, head hung low, hair obscuring his face. He’s holding his
side like he’s hurt, and his breathing is something wounded and harsh. The
scene is so familiar you can’t breathe. You were here before. You weren’t. You
don’t know anymore, suddenly.
You don’t know, and still you’re terrified you’ll lose him again. But—it can’t
be. How can you lose something again, something you’ve never had? It can’t be.
It is.
Liam’s face snaps up, and he stares at you with wild eyes, and an open,
pleading mouth. When he speaks, he speaks with the desperation of someone who
spoke countless times before and has never been heard: “Merlin. Merlin.
Merlin—”
“I’m here,” you whisper, and you don’t know which version of you says it.
You’re unable to do anything but stumble forward, crouching down and touching
your forehead to his. This happened before. It didn’t. Again, you don’t know.
When Liam breathes, broken, “Just—just hold me,” you know, with absolute
certainty: this never happened before.
It’s happening now.
You hold him, at last.
The peace you feel makes you cry.
*
You remember how Liam always sits down, scribbling away in that notepad of his,
and you think, yes, this is going to work. You slip him a letter the next day.
“If you understand,” you murmur, “come to my room.”
*
Liam does, quiet like the night. He never hesitates, just wraps himself around
you like he never did anything else. Maybe he didn’t.
“Can I,” he says, hoarse, into your ear. “Merlin, can I—”
Not knowing what he’s asking for, you say, “Yes,” because this is not a dream:
the scent under Liam’s arm is not the scent of a phantom. It’s alive, sweaty,
and musky on your tongue as you lick that secret space. It’s his, even if you
don’t know what that means.
His fingers in you stir a firequake, a bright burn shuddering all the deep
places inside you apart. When his eyes catch the moonlight, they are blue. When
his skin stretches over yours, it’s an enticing umber.
When he pushes—pushes—pushes inside, your body responds from sensory memory,
like it’s done this a thousand times before: your back arches, your neck gives
away, and your toes curl through the burn, insisting on the idea of a sweet
ache. His wounded noises against your throat are skilled musician’s fingers
plucking at your heart strings. You make a sound too, long, low, shattered.
“L-Liam. Liam—”
“Say my name,” he hisses, desperate.
“I—”
“Say it.”
He’s heavy above you. Burning, big, inside. You’re full with him—
His hips circle, shove. Him in you is this: Plato’s ruptured figures realigning
smoothly in other places. His teeth, your neck; your hand, his waist—
You don’t say his name.
After, you’re pressed close together. His hand, large on your hip, is
proprietary. You don’t need to say stay with me any longer.
The blindness is gone. You see now: his skin, dark and light. Eyes, brown and
blue. He is Liam and Arthur, and neither.
Like you.
“You are like nobody, since I love you,”* you recite the words of your letter,
quietly. He buries his face in your neck, hiding. A while later, he mutters, “I
know.”
Your fingers stroke his trembling back. Dust dances like stars in the moonlight
cutting through the shutters. You kiss his hair, and his tremble stills.
Maybe you’re not Merlin, maybe he’s not Arthur. Maybe you don’t exist.
It’s okay.
You can just not exist together, now.
 
—and let us make fire, and silence, and sound, and let us burn, and be silent,
and bells.
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