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Gwen feels full and fine and easy. The fire in Arthur’s hearth crackles cozily, the last leg of chicken and roasted carrots languish on the table, and her wine goblet is a pleasant swirling weight in her hand. Merlin and Arthur bicker about something or other, but Gwen only drowsily catches bits and pieces of it.
“So. Merlin. Why don’t tell us what you did today?”
“You mean besides cleaning up the mess you made in the stables with all your hunting kills.”
“Besides that, yes. The steward told me a very interesting story.”
Gwen tips her head against the back of her chair, watching them as if they were minstrels or actors. Arthur leans back in his chair, gesticulating, and Merlin eyes him, unimpressed, the wine pitcher balanced on his hip. She likes it when they do this in front of her.
“And who exactly gave you the power to do that?”
“Ah, you did, sire. You may not have noticed, but I’m the king’s servant. I’m the highest-ranking servant in the castle.”
Oh, they do it in front of everyone, to be sure, but Gwen imagines their little squabbles and jabs have a different quality when they’re alone. She has noticed more and more that Merlin is willing to drop the veneer of servility in her presence, that his retorts gain more more honesty, more bite, than when the courtiers or even the knights are around. It makes her feel wondrously included in that precious inner circle. Arthur, in turn, feels less a need to save face in front of her, and sometimes his taunts become transparently affectionate.
“Well, I think it’s a complete abuse of your position.”
“He was a layabout!”
“You’re a layabout!”
Well. As affectionate as the two of them get.
“…and Gwen thinks so too!”
Gwen snaps out of her reverie. “What do I think?”
“That the stableboy I dismissed today deserved to go,” Merlin informs her righteously. “He was harassing chambermaids!”
“Of course he deserved to go,” Gwen says. Arthur makes a betrayed face at her, but it’s only for show. For anyone who knows him well, Arthur’s practically beaming with pride. Merlin knows it, Gwen knows it, Arthur knows it, but this is what they do, how Arthur winds down after a long day, and how Merlin burns off the frustration of an entire day on his feet.
“Merlin, have some chicken,” Gwen says, gesturing at the last bit on the table. Merlin snaps it up, and Arthur scoffs.
“My queen,” Merlin says loyally between bites.
Arthur narrows his eyes at Gwen. “Traitor,” he says, despite his poorly hid smile.
*
Later that night, after the fire has waned in the hearth, and cold air is slipping past the bed hangings, Gwen can barely hold open her eyes. Arthur’s warm against her back, not sleeping yet, apparently as lazy as Gwen, for he hasn’t moved to stoke the fire or called poor Merlin to do it. Rain plinks against the glass in the windows.
They ought to have sex. They’re meant to be having sex every night. But its been two months since the meeting with the midwife, a flustered woman who was clearly terrified of suggesting the possibility of barrenness. And the last two months of daily couplings have been difficult. Of all the things Gwen had expected married intimacy to be, mundane had not been one of them.
Anyway, she’s just settled into the blankets, which have captured warm pockets of air near her hips and breasts. She doesn’t want to move.
“That was a good pheasant,” Arthur murmurs against her shoulder. “Lord, I’m tired.”
“Me too.” Gwen turns her head on the pillow to look at him. They exchange small smiles, acknowledgment that they don’t really want to try tonight. It’s so wonderful to rest for once, here in the dark warmth of their bed with the rain in the background. She wants to lie here and drift and maybe hear Arthur talk low and soft about something.
“I liked the bard’s song during the luncheon today,” she offers, just to get him talking.
“I don’t know. Seems like he’s always singing about the same thing. First love. First kisses.”
A low rumble of thunder swells outside, and the lightning breaks thin but bright shortly after. They lie in comfortable silence for a minute more.
“Who was your first kiss?” she asks.
“I…,” Arthur clears his throat. “It was…I don’t remember.”
Morgana, probably. He’s tensed up, so she turns over, rubs her nose against his shoulder and says:
“My first kiss was a boy in the marketplace. His father was a trader, and I kissed him as a distraction so Elyan could get past and steal a toy.”
Arthur laughs softly. “How old were you?”
“Five or six, I think.”
“That doesn’t count,” Arthur says.
“What? Of course it does. I kissed his lips.”
“But you were a child. You could hardly know what a kiss meant, at that age.”
“And how old must one be to ‘know what it means’?” she asks, lifting herself up on one elbow and resting her head on her hand.
“At least…thirteen or fourteen, I should think,” Arthur declares.
“Oh really.” That would make her answer Morgana as well, but she’s not going to tell Arthur that.
“Really.”
She squints at him playfully. “Well then, I suppose my first kiss at the appropriate age would have been…” She pretends to think about it, but she’s already picked her answer. “Merlin!”
Arthur sits straight up in bed. “Merlin.”
She pats his back reassuringly. “Do you remember when he was poisoned, and you had to fetch the flower to save him? It was then. His heart stopped beating for a moment, and Gaius and I thought he had died. When he woke up, I was so happy I kissed him. I think I rather shocked him, poor man.”
Arthur laughs a little at that, but his expression turns contemplative, staring at nothing in particular. He settles back into the pillows.
“You probably stopped his heart all over again,” he says, not quite joking.
“Probably,” she agrees. Arthur appears to be making a studious examination of the bed hangings.
“You really liked him back then, didn’t you?”
The moonlight shining through the wet windows makes a swirling pattern on his cheek, rendering his face inscrutable, and Gwen watches him carefully before responding. “I did,” she says. “Back then.”
Arthur nods a little at that, and they listen to the rain tap at the windows for a bit.
Gwen searches for another question, something to bring his playful mood back. “Tell me a story. What’s the strangest hunting trip you’ve had?”
He doesn’t say anything, and she’s about to repeat the question when she notices the way he’s shifting a little under the blankets. She runs a soothing hand under the blanket, down his chest and belly and is surprised to find his cock thick and ready against the pit of his stomach. Her fingers jerk back a little.
Arthur makes a little noise, huffs a little laugh. “It’s nothing. We don’t have to….” He trails off when her fingers brush the head of his cock and then stay there. There’s something in his voice, something shy, and Gwen finds herself emboldened by it.
She plies the pads of her fingers against the head and holds it, squeezes it.
“It’s not nothing,” she whispers, and gathers her courage, spreads her palm fully over him, and rubs. Arthur’s breath hitches.
Gwen hasn’t touched Arthur here more than a few times, usually when she was helping fit him between her legs. She’s certainly never teased him this way, rubbing him with her thumb and the pads of her fingers, gripping him. She had heard kitchen girls talk about doing this to boys, but it seemed so illicit, so tawdry and incomplete—the sort of thing only unmarried people do.
She sees now that she was wrong. It feels wondrous and powerful, to stroke him harder and harder while Arthur breathes through his mouth and looks at her, wide-eyed. Gwen feels herself grow warm between her legs. She feels more lustful than she has in ages, and just from finding him unexpectedly hard.
“What was it that got you this way?” she wonders aloud. Arthur’s face does something complicated, like chagrin, and Gwen twists her wrist on the upstroke, surprising a sweet little moan out of him. Something wet actually pulses out of her at the sound.
“Will you…will you…” She yanks on him a little, feeling urgent, and Arthur has her on her back and sliding in with a happy sigh within seconds.
“Oh god, you’re so—,” Arthur says in surprise, and Gwen agrees. She’s not usually so wet.
Arthur leans down to kiss her, briefly. They don’t often kiss in bed, either; Arthur doesn't seem to like it until he's near to coming. But right now Arthur’s lips are warm and perfect against hers, pressing erratically against her top lip and bottom lip and her chin as Arthur moves over and inside her. She’s breathless, swollen, fixated on the slide of his cock in and out, of his chest brushing hers, of how her lips twinge sensitively whenever Arthur kisses them.
“You feel so good,” he whispers against her lips, and his thrusts become short and greedy, his mouth contorting. God, he’s going to come already, Gwen realizes, and the thought makes her clench and throw her legs around him.
“Yes,” she tells him. “Yes, go on.”
Arthur moans out his pleasure, slowing to a shuddering stop against her neck. Gwen holds him there, patting his head and taking shallow breaths from the weight of him. Eventually Arthur shifts onto his elbows, and looks down at her, amused.
“Well,” he says. “That was unexpected.”
“Indeed it was.” She feels she’s smiling too wide, but Arthur only grins back at her and dips his head to kiss her lips.
“Such a seductress, you are,” he murmurs.
“Me? You were the one lying there with your—.” She cannot quite utter “your cock all hard” aloud, not with Arthur three inches from her face.
“My what?” Arthur asks with a grin. “Don’t come off shy now.” His color’s a little high though, making him look boyish.
“Oh, ha.” Gwen searches for an appropriately shocking comeback. “You’re just nervous, because you don’t think I know that you lay there getting excited while I talked about kissing Merlin.”
She expects a shout of laughter, and Arthur does laugh, but in a strange, thin way that doesn’t quite cover the choking sound he makes first. He flops onto his back and stares up at the bed hangings, his eyes darting around.
“I didn’t mean to—,” Gwen starts to say, but stops as she takes in the way Arthur’s jaw is working. She feels as if her mind is moving too slowly.
“Oh,” she says faintly. “Oh.”
Arthur doesn’t say anything. The inches between them feel very long when the air rushes in to make her side cooler.
“Well,” Arthur says, “Goodnight.” He turns onto his stomach and threads his arms under the pillow, settles his head facing away from her.
“Goodnight.”
Well.
*
Gwen spends the first half of the next day bewildered. That Arthur would be excited by the idea of her touching another man—especially after everything that happened with Lancelot—well. She doesn’t know what to think. Perhaps it’s that it was Merlin? Arthur would probably never think of Merlin as a rival for her affections. Whatever Arthur may say out loud, it’s clear Arthur loves Merlin as dearly as a brother.
Or perhaps not like a brother? There were always rumors, but Gwen always put those rumors down to the meanness of gossips. She’d once tipped a bundle of clean, dry laundry back into the tub after hearing a laundress refer to Merlin as “the Prince’s pet catamite.” But she’d seen nothing to suggest that those rumors were true.
Now, she wonders. She doubts it’s actually happened, but she wonders whether Arthur’s thought about it. With Merlin. Whether he’s thought about her and Merlin together. Whether he’s thought about her, in all sorts of compromising situations.
And then, well. Gwen spends the second half of the day in a desperately uncomfortable pattern of shifting in her chair and rubbing her thighs together. Fantasizing about her husband’s fantasies. She wanders about the castle in a daze, remembering the eager hitch of Arthur’s hips, the red splotches of embarrassment on his throat.
It’s distracting. She can’t stop smiling, and then realizing she’s smiling, and then schooling her face back into a frown.
Late in the afternoon, she’s watching Sir Gawaine tell some ribald story across the room, the men around him hiding sly laughs behind their hands, and she feels a surge of resentment. They’re no doubt sharing some tale ten times more perverse than Gwen’s own thoughts, out here in the open, while Gwen is sat here trying to suppress her desire for her own husband.
Gwen sets her jaw and makes a decision. Last night had been the best sex she’s ever had. She wants more.
*
That night, Arthur’s waiting for her in his rooms, a lavish dinner of venison, peas, burdock, plums, and cherries spread out on the table. He looks nervous and hopeful, but Gwen can’t help but stare at the round-faced serving girl who’s standing in Merlin’s place. Oh god, surely Arthur hadn’t felt the need to distance himself from Merlin because of last night?
“Merlin is assisting Gaius tonight,” Arthur says.
“Oh.” Of course. A fever broke out in the lower town today. Gwen spares a moment to be ashamed that she had forgotten. She gives Arthur a wan smile, and he returns it.
Dinner is terribly awkward at first, with Arthur staring into his wine goblet while he chews methodically. Gwen takes in the stiff angle of his shoulders and wonders what he had thought of today. She gathers her courage as the servant clears away the dishes.
“Arthur?” she asks when the door closes behind the girl.
“Mmm?”
“You… you remember when I told you about my first kiss? Last night?”
Arthur’s frozen, having risen halfway out of his chair. Gwen forges on: “I was wondering if I might ask you—”
“I’m sorry,” he says shortly, sitting down and conjuring up that face he gets when he’s feeling guilty and noble. “I’m sorry about that. I won’t—”
“No,” she interrupts. “It’s all right, really. I was wondering if you would…,” she breathes hard, “…tell me what you liked about it, what you liked to think about…if that’s all right, or…”
Arthur’s face is confused and embarrassed, no doubt wondering why she's forcing the issue. “Why?”
The length of the table between them feels enormous, so Gwen rises from her chair. Arthur watches her warily as she circles the table, and moves his chair back to make room when she settles in his lap.
She steels herself. “I want to know what excites you.”
“Gwen.” His eyes close briefly, guiltily, and winds his arms around her waist. “There’s no need for that. I’m sorry if I made you feel uncomfortable. I really do like what we usually do.”
“I don’t want to do what we usually do,” Gwen says before she can think about it.
His face falls. “I’ve not pleased you.”
“No, no! I mean—” She flounders, because actually yes, there’s not been enough pleasure going around, but she doesn’t blame Arthur for that and she has no idea how to explain. She tries a different tact. “I truly enjoyed last night. It was nice to try something new.”
Arthur presses his lips together in acknowledgment. “It was.” He shifts underneath her a bit. “I liked it…when you touched me.”
“Yes,” she says. But that’s not quite what she wanted to know. She phrases her next sentence very carefully: “And you liked it when I talked about my first kiss.”
Arthur groans in a way that’s more frustration that sexual. He opens his mouth but closes it again. It’s incredibly strange to see him falter like this.
“Was it…was it the idea of it being my first kiss?” she asks. “Or…Merlin’s first kiss? The idea of our innocence?”
He blushes at that, but shakes his head ‘no’ even as he says, “Must we talk about this?”
“I want to know your fantasies,” she whispers. “I want to know what makes you…hard.” Arthur’s eyebrows go up, surprised. “It makes…it makes me want you. It makes me feel warm all over, the idea of your having illicit thoughts. Will you tell me?”
Arthur rocks against her, when she says that. He puts his lips against her collarbone and then sighs when she threads her fingers through his hair. “Tell me,” she says.
“I—.” He breathes deep and blows it out warm against her throat. “I like thinking of you kissing him. I don’t know. He’s so…inexperienced. I like thinking of you…”
“Deflowering him?” Gwen suggests, and Arthur laughs weakly.
“Maybe. Yes.”
Gwen pets his head. “What else?”
“I like thinking of him kissing you. Of his hands on you.” It sounds as if he would say more, but he stops there, and his hand roams up her bodice and plays at the lace over her breasts. She can’t get at her laces right here, but she can reach down into her bodice and pull up on her breast so that the nipple appears just over the deep neckline. Arthur’s breaths speed up, and he thumbs it.
“It doesn’t make you jealous?” she asks.
“Yes.” His thumb moves back and forth in rough sweeps over her nipple. “But not…not like…”
Oh. He’s thinking of Lancelot, and so is she, and for moment, they’re stiff against each other, uneasy. Arthur looks up at her, assessing, and something must push him to announce:
“But you and Merlin. I picture the two of you together, and it makes me burn.”
Gwen kisses him, firm and wet, delving her tongue into his mouth, and Arthur lets her, even returns it.
They couple right there in Arthur’s chair, her skirts up around her hips and one leg thrown over the arm of the chair. Partway through Arthur accidentally bites her shoulder, and she likes it so much she asks him to do it again.
*
“There is no harm in it, is there?” she asks, later, when they’ve finished and moved to the bed.
“In what?”
“There’s no harm in your…enjoying thinking about me. Me and Merlin.”
Arthur doesn’t respond at first. He sits up to fluff his pillow with a couple of punches.
“I suppose not,” he says as he settles back down. His smile when he turns to her is soft, accepting, but his eyes carry a little embarrassment.
It must be more difficult for him, she think, than it is for her. Gwen had been mad for Merlin, back in the first few months after he had arrived in Camelot, and although he is more of a friend now, she can still remember how it had felt to desire him. But Merlin is Arthur’s closest friend. It must be strange to think of him in such intimate terms. Gwen will have to help him, is all.
She’s just glad that Arthur seems all right with the idea.
*
Arthur is going to go mad.
It’s not that he’s displeased by this new turn in his relationship with Guinevere. The pressures of producing an heir have weighed like yokes upon their shoulders. It has made him angry at times, sure that if only they didn’t have to worry about children, Gwen and he would be much happier. At the very least, they would be able to touch each other without apprehension.
So this newfound pleasure is not only, well, pleasurable. It’s a relief. In the last few nights, Gwen has smiled, shuddered, and clutched at his arms. It makes him feel like a king.
On the other hand, he is now aware of Merlin’s lips.
Each new morning Arthur wakes up and remembers again that Merlin’s job is the comprehensive care of Arthur’s person and property, and that means that Merlin is constantly underfoot and constantly touching Arthur. What used to be innocent touches have become problematic. Arthur finds himself feeling stunned and dirty after being dressed in the morning, his entire body ringing in remembered brushes of Merlin’s touch as he yanks Arthur’s clothes onto his body. It’s as if Merlin’s touched him with muddy hands, and left spots that dry and itch and pull at his skin. He sits at the Round Table, feeling all those spots and remembering Gwen’s grip on his cock from last night, and finds himself with a very confusing erection.
Before this, Merlin was a comfortable presence at Arthur’s side. He was like Arthur’s right arm. Or maybe, more precisely, like one of Arthur’s old battle wounds: occasionally annoying, but a familiar part of his body. And now.
Merlin seems to have acquired his own body. And a pair of lips.
Lips that Gwen kissed. It’s absurd how little time it takes for his mind to spin Gwen’s original, innocent story into something more tawdry. He pictures Gwen sitting in Merlin’s lap, rubbing her thumb under his chin, pushing up until he consents to let his head fall back. Gwen would pull down Merlin’s stupid scarf, admire his Adam’s Apple, feel the beat of his pulse under her fingers, and stroke up and down his throat while Merlin breathed open-mouthed at the ceiling, probably aroused and nervous. Would Merlin be nervous? Arthur thinks so. And then, and then, Gwen might bend in to take his Adam’s apple into her mouth and swab it with her tongue.
“What?”
Arthur jerks, surprised. “What?”
Merlin’s narrow-eyed, a dirty pile of clothes gathered against his chest like a shield. “You’re looking at me like I used your sword to dig a ditch. What did I do?”
“Oh. Nothing. Sorry. Carry on.”
In retrospect, letting the word “sorry” pass his lips was not the best way to avert suspicion. Merlin spends the rest of the day side-eyeing him and making covert attempts to check for a fever.
It does not help that Gwen has taken to making subtle signs that she’s thinking about it, too. She’ll reach out to touch Merlin in perfectly innocent ways, just a hand to his arm now and again.
Arthur has never thought of his wife as seductive before.
At the end of the week, Gwen rides through a thick part of the forest and cuts her arm on a switch. Arthur accompanies her to have her wound seen to by Gaius, but Gaius is apparently seeing to one of the elderly nobles.
“That’s all right,” Gwen says. “Merlin can treat my wound, can’t you, Merlin?” And before Arthur can think to object, Merlin is gathering supplies with professional rapidity, and Gwen is tugging down her dress to expose her shoulder.
It’s perfectly appropriate. Gwen’s got dresses that show off far more skin, but somehow the fact of the fabric bunching over her upper arm, Merlin holding it down with one hand and brushing a salve over the cut, frowning in concentration, using careful movements so as not to pain her: it’s become something else. A fortnight ago this would have been entirely innocent.
Gwen sits there calmly batting her eyes at Arthur, and Arthur…gets hard. Standing there in Gaius’ chambers while Merlin’s fingers trail delicately over Gwen’s shoulder.
He coughs, spins on his heel, and flees.
*
Gwen arrives in their room not long after. She’s biting back a nervous smile.
“Was that too far?” she gets out, before he hoists up her skirts and takes her against the door.
“Tell me,” he pants into her ear once he’s inside her and they’ve built up a rhythm.
“Tell you what? About—oh, oh please—about what happened after you left us alone?”
Arthur moans at the thought. He knows nothing happened, can hear the invention of it in her voice, but it’s still like a jolt to his cock. “Yes, yes tell me.”
“He kissed me,” she lies. “He wasn’t very good at it. It was too wet, and I got his spit in my mouth, but he was so excited, he—” She grunts when Arthur thrusts too hard, and her head knocks back against the door. She doesn’t let him apologize, though, she gets her tongue in his mouth and moans.
“What else?”
“He pulled…pulled my dress down to my waist.” Dark color blooms in her cheeks.
“Did he take your breasts out of your corset?” Arthur suggests, sure that he’s even redder than she is. She’s heavy in his arms, the angle awkward, and his thighs are straining to manage this, but he can’t stop.
“Yes,” she whispers. “And he sucked on them like an infant.”
“Oh god.” Arthur turns his face away from her to gasp fresh air and comes. His cock slips out of her part way through, and he gets seed on her thigh and dress.
*
They clean up separately, barely looking at each other.
Arthur changes his trousers and splashes water on his face.
“I’ll see you at dinner,” he says, suddenly remembering that the squires are training right now, and that he can safely slip out and do something useful, wholesome. Something Gwen won’t be there for. And he can send Merlin to the codswainer to check on his new boots, and Arthur won’t have to look at either of them.
“Arthur,” Gwen says when he’s halfway through the door.
“There’s a training session,” he says, not meeting her eyes.
“Arthur.”
He looks up. She’s in just her shift and corset, hair winding over her shoulders, a fresh dress folded over one arm
“I didn’t—.” Gwen’s jaw clenches. “If these fantasies are to be a point of shame between us, I don’t want to continue them. I thought we said that there was no harm in them.”
“There isn’t,” Arthur says, but his eyes slip away from hers even as he says it.
She tilts her head. “It’s exciting. It’s good. But I do not want to make love to you in a way that means you cannot look at me afterward.”
Arthur feels like a cad. He steps forward and takes her in his arms. “Then we’ll stop this. I don’t want that either.”
Gwen sighs. “I didn’t mean we should stop. But if you want to stop…”
Arthur tightens his arms around her, and they clutch at each other for a long moment. “Perhaps it’s better if we didn’t,” Arthur says eventually.
“All right.”
*
And that would have been the end of it, if Merlin were not the clumsiest man to ever exist.
By way of an apology to Gwen, Arthur proposes a picnic, just Gwen and himself—with Merlin along to carry the supplies, of course. Interactions between the three of them have been stilted over the past week, and Merlin, having no idea what’s going on, has picked up a wounded-dog look that makes Arthur feel cruel.
But today the sun filters warm and gentle through the trees, with just enough of a breeze to be pleasant. Arthur’s worries seem to drop from his shoulders the further they get from the castle, and when Merlin’s horse falters on the path, Arthur gathers himself enough to mock his horsemanship. Merlin fires back a retort, but his voice is warm, and Gwen shoots a smile at Arthur over her shoulder.
They stop to eat near a fast stretch of river where the water is cold and delicious. A craggy outcropping towers up near the bank, and Arthur suddenly remembers climbing it as a boy. The vista had been marvelous: all treetops and birds and the river winding out of sight.
“Water the horses and unpack the food,” Arthur orders unnecessarily, just to see Merlin roll his eyes. “I think I know of a hidden path up to that rock. I’ll scout it and see if we can’t get up there to eat.”
“Here, Merlin, let me help you,” he hears Gwen say as he jogs into the woods. Arthur circles around the crag and spots the incline that leads up the side of the crag. It’s rocky but manageable, he thinks, even for Gwen in her skirts. The breeze up at the top will be gusty and refreshing. Feeling proud of himself, Arthur sets himself to climbing, looking forward to the moment when he looks down from the ledge and Gwen and Merlin smile up at him.
It’s then that he hears Gwen scream. It takes one full, heart-stopping moment to get back to the river, but it feels long, the world narrowed down to his sword and his feet and his sight-lines through the trees.
He emerges out of the woods, and there’s no one. Gwen and Merlin are nowhere to be seen.
“GWEN,” he calls.
“Here!”
Arthur dashes toward the river, and he catches sight of her hand, clutching at a rock, and then her head, just visible over the white of the current. She has one hand fisted in the collar of Merlin’s jacket, struggling to keep his head above water. His eyes are closed, his head lolling.
Arthur throws himself down on the rock and reaches out for both of them.
“Do you have him?” he asks, and winds one arm around Gwen’s torso.
“I have him. Pull me up.”
Arthur heaves, grunting as he gets Gwen seated upon the rock, and they both put hands under Merlin’s armpits to heave him up. The rock is slippery, covered in moss, and Gwen slides on it as they pull. Arthur drags both of them the rest of the way to the grassy bank, and they fall in a tumble.
Merlin is still as death beneath them.
“What happened?” he asks, trying to detangle himself.
Gwen trips over her skirts trying to right herself. “He fell and hit his head. I asked him to get us some water, and he fell,” she says, and points to a place on his temple where, yes, blood is pumping out sluggishly, mixing with the riverwater in his hair and running pink streaks down his face.
“Arthur, he’s— he’s not breathing.”
“Turn him on his side.”
For the most interminable moment of his life, Arthur bangs Merlin’s back with the flat of hand. Gwen holds her hands over her mouth, breathing loudly, her eyes fixed on Merlin’s face, and god, what if this is the wrong thing to do? What if it’s the wound, not the water, that’s stopped his breathing? Arthur doesn’t know what else to do. Of all the stupid ways to die. Of all the things that have happened to them, to be ended by a slippery rock, oh god, Merlin,
“Breathe,” Arthur hisses, and resorts to punching him in the back.
“Arthur, stop.” Gwen reaches for his hands, and she sounds like she’s crying. “Stop. Arthur. He’s gone.”
“No,” Arthur says, but he does. His hand goes limp against his thigh.
It’s quiet for a moment, except everything is too loud in Arthur’s ears: the rush of the river and the trees and the birds and Gwen crying.
He had walked away for only a moment.
Merlin coughs, spits up water, and coughs again. Arthur has to brace a hand against the ground to hold himself up. Eventually, Merlin’s hacking subsides into labored breaths, and he blinks up at them with astonishing calm.
“What—” Merlin croaks, but Gwen’s kissing him: a single, quick kiss that sounds a sucking noise, before she lays kisses over the rest on his forehead and cheeks and nose. “Gwen!”
Merlin’s eyes search for Arthur, confused and shocked, but then he gives a little cough, and he’s too pale, and Arthur can’t help but touch his wet hair.
“You’re a fool,” Arthur spits so that he doesn’t voice all the dangerous thoughts he’s thinking, “and you nearly killed yourself, and the Queen of Camelot had to jump in after you and endanger her own life, so she can do anything she damn well wants to you.”
Merlin looks bewildered, and his eyes scan their surroundings, looking for who-knows-what.
“You scared us,” Gwen says, voice shaking, and Merlin’s face transforms instantly, contrite and comforting.
“I’m fine,” he says, patting her hand where it rests on his chest. “What hap—.”
Gwen kisses him again.
It’s as if Arthur feels it. Her hands are on either side of his face, her breath in his mouth, and Arthur feels it like a blessing. Thank every god there is, Merlin’s breathing.
“I’m all right,” Merlin says, his voice rough, when Gwen pulls back. He pats her hand again. “I’m all right.”
“I’m sorry,” she says, crying freely and smiling at the same time.
“It’s all right,” Merlin says. He attempts a goofy grin, but it’s ruined when he starts coughing again.
Arthur’s stomach lurches uncomfortably. He clenches his fist against the desire to reach out and touch, and then feels something loosen when Gwen does it for him, untying Merlin’s neckerchief.
Gwen and Merlin are both soaking wet, Gwen’s hair dripping onto Merlin’s shiny face when she darts in to kiss his temple again. Arthur almost lost everything he loves in a goddamned river.
He thinks he’s going to be sick. He jerks to his feet, and walks in a wandering circle around the clearing.
*
For the next several hours, Gwen and Merlin lie on the grass together, waiting for their clothes to dry, and Arthur unpacks food. Gwen takes the cloth the bread was wrapped in and ties around Merlin’s head to stop the wound, and then she forces every bit of their food down Merlin’s throat. Arthur complains, loudly and at length, but he doesn’t stop her, because he wants the color back in Merlin’s cheeks.
“I just fell?” Merlin asks, more than once. He sounds ridiculously suspicious of this, considering how often he falls, trips, or otherwise meets the ground unexpectedly.
“You just fell,” Gwen confirms. “I saw it.”
“But—”
Gwen kisses Merlin’s forehead again and again and again, and Merlin stops asking. He looks between her and Arthur, confused. Nervous. Arthur doesn’t know what his own facial expression is like, but if it’s anything like he feels, it’s probably worrying. He’s caught in the middle of a trio of queer emotions: abject relief and lingering fear and a guilty pleasure. He’s got it in his head now, what it must have looked like when Gwen first kissed Merlin, all those years ago. He has a memory of his wife’s lips pressed against his friend’s, and he feels like a lecher and bad friend for replaying it again and again in his mind when Merlin’s still lying on the ground, bleeding.
Merlin recovers surprisingly fast. When she checks the makeshift bandage an hour later, Gwen says,
“Hmm. I thought the cut was deeper.”
“That’s lucky,” Merlin says. His eyes are alert, which is a good sign, but he keeps searching the trees and the grounds around them as if he were unsure of his surroundings. Arthur hopes it’s not the head injury.
Gwen ties the bandage back up, and then settles next to him on the grass, pats Merlin’s shoulder. Merlin casts a worried glance at her.
“Ah. You didn’t hit your head, too, did you?” he asks her.
“No,” she says, and bites her lip. “I’m sorry…sorry if I’ve made you uncomfortable.”
Merlin shakes his head, though, and shoots a look at Arthur. “It’s really all right. Should I object when pretty women kiss me?” He directs the question at Arthur, a queer intensity to his tone, as if he’s really asking. Should he object?
Arthur worries belatedly that he should have said something about Gwen touching him. Is that what a normal man would say? What do normal men say when their wives kiss other men? Arthur wracks his brain for something appropriately jealous.
“Er.”
Merlin looks at him, considering.
“I shouldn’t have presumed, Merlin.” Gwen frowns and blushes. “I really must apologize.”
Merlin’s eyes angle back and forth between Gwen and Arthur. “Are the two of you feeling well?”
Gwen’s shoulders collapse unhappily; she’s thoroughly embarrassed now. Arthur feels guilt surge through him. He’s the cause of all this, after all, and now Gwen is bearing the shame of his own perversions.
Merlin’s eyes are narrowed. “So if I did this…” And he lifts his hand very slowly and places it deliberately over Gwen’s hand. He looks at Arthur in question. Gwen looks at him, too, her eyes sort of wide but extremely interested, but Arthur cannot really communicate with either of them right now, because he is busy forgetting how to breathe.
It had never once occurred to him that his and Gwen’s little fantasy might be transferable to reality. But is that what this is? Is Merlin consenting to…what? What is this?
Arthur fixes his gaze on Gwen’s face. She bites her lip and lifts her eyebrows at him, nodding once.
“That—.” He clears his throat, because his voice had come out stupidly high. “That…might be. All right.”
Merlin, ludicrously, sighs and nods. He lifts himself up on his elbows. “I see.”
Arthur and Gwen exchange a look. Merlin gazes back at them, looking enigmatic and tired but oddly expectant. Arthur’s stomach does a little flip.
“So you…,” Gwen licks her lips. “You are…willing?”
“Yes,” Merlin says, and his face softens as he pulls on Gwen’s clasped hand and draws it up to his neck. “Like Arthur said, the Queen jumped into a river for me. She can have what she likes.”
“I want you to like it, too,” Gwen says, but she’s already leaning in, helplessly.
Arthur thinks he hears Merlin whisper something in response, but then they’re kissing, deeply, enthusiastically, with little wet sounds and murmurs that reach Arthur’s ears and make him shudder.
Kissing has never had a great appeal to Arthur. Oh, close-mouthed kisses are fine, and easy, but the kissing that Merlin and Gwen are doing--open-mouthed, hungry, wet--is something more difficult. He finds it almost too intimate, to exchange saliva with someone. To taste what they've eaten. To have a tongue snaking about inside his mouth. The whole experience is so carnal, so overwhelming, he often avoids it until he can feel his orgasm crawling up his spine.
Gwen and Merlin do not share his distaste. Merlin collapses onto his back and takes Gwen with him, and they lick and nuzzle and kiss with such sweetness and relish that Arthur finds himself running his own tongue along his teeth, seeking out the sensation. They seem to go on kissing for ages. Or perhaps just a few minutes. Arthur loses track, he is so transfixed.
Eventually, apparently having run out of air, Merlin turns his head to the side to suck a shaky breath. Gwen drops a kiss against his jaw.
Merlin closes his eyes briefly, looking almost pained. “Perhaps we should head back?”
Arthur can feel two sets of eyes on him, as if they want him to say something make everything not be awkward, but Arthur doesn’t know how to do that.
“Let’s head back,” Arthur says authoritatively.
The ride back is silent.
When they arrive in the courtyard, Merlin hops off his horse with unusual grace, considering his near-death.
“Merlin— ,” begins to say, and when Merlin turns round, waiting, Arthur cannot think of anything to say. Are you all right? Do you regret what happened? Do we owe you an apology?
Merlin seems to sense that he’s at a loss for words. He claps Arthur on the back and dips his head. “You can have anything you want, sire. Just wait a day or so? I need to have my head bandaged.”
Gwen makes a shocked little noise at Arthur’s shoulders, and Merlin dips a bow to them and scurries off, looking like this is the sort of thing he does everyday. What if it is the sort of thing he does everyday?
“I think I need to lie down,” Arthur says.
“Yes,” Gwen says.
*
“I need more of that mugwart potion,” Merlin says when he arrives back in Gaius’s rooms.
Gaius sighs longsufferingly. “And whom do we believe has been enchanted now?”
“Gwen and Arthur. Maybe just Gwen? But probably both of them.”
The look of disappointment on Gaius’ face is insulting. “But weren’t you with them all day?”
“I got knocked out!”
Gaius’ eyes go to the bandage on Merlin’s head. “By a bandit?”
“Er. No.” Merlin unwinds the fabric and lets Gaius prod at the cut. “I just fell.”
“You just fell,” Gaius repeats, unimpressed. “This wound looks a week old. Did you already heal it?”
“Yeah. Think I did it in my sleep.” Merlin decides to leave it at that. No sense saying something like I think I might have died. “But anyhow, I woke up and Arthur and Gwen were acting…odd.”
“Hmm. Best to brew the mugwart potion, then. I can give you something for pain.” Gaius pauses there and takes in Merlin’s face. “Is this the worst of it?”
“Physically? Yes.”
“I suppose the non-physical part has to do with the King and Queen being enchanted.”
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
*
At least, Merlin tells himself disconsolately, he can feel vindicated now. Arthur and Gwen have been acting strangely for a full fortnight now. He’d thought, initially that it had to do with the heightened pressure for them to produce an heir. Someone had brought up succession plans in the council meeting just the other day. Arthur’s jaw had worked unhappily, and Sir Elyan and Sir Leon had stared at the table. Merlin had nearly dropped his water pitcher just to cause a distraction.
That such intimate acts should be the object of public speculation makes Merlin rage. He’s become so well known for rebuking gossiping chambermaids and pageboys that they’ve started to actively avoid him in the hallways and the kitchens. When he’d overheard a stableboy relating a convoluted and graphic theory about how, exactly, Gwen became a “barren whore,” Merlin had had to close his eyes and breathe for a full minute to quiet the hot, itchy magic that reared in the back of his eye sockets. He told the steward that he dismissed the boy. He told the boy that if he ever saw his face again, he’d repeat his words to the King. It’s a believable threat, if not the one Merlin would actually carry out.
Anyhow. He’d thought the problem had been the succession. A problem, of course, but not a magical one. It was almost a relief, there being a problem for which Merlin could not possibly be responsible.
It must have made him complacent, he thinks. Today, in the half second between his foot slipping and his head hitting the rock, Merlin didn’t think, didn’t cast, didn’t even jerk at the comforting pit of elemental magic that bubbles in his stomach. Probably better that he didn’t, actually, with Gwen standing so close. But still. He’s not sure what happened when he hit his head, but Arthur and Gwen had looked well and truly shaken, so much so that Merlin imagines he must have been badly injured. He’s just glad his body didn’t glow or anything when it decided to heal itself.
The first thing he remembers properly after falling is Gwen kissing him. And Arthur, sat there, watching, eyes intense like he was watching a sword fight, breathing through his mouth.
They were obviously ensorcelled. Merlin read about a spell that causes just such a reaction a few weeks before, so he’d...humored them.
Right. 'Humored them.'
He'd blatantly taken advantage of their helpless states, was what he had actually done, but god was Gwen good at kissing, and she was so desperate, and Arthur was so still, and it has been so very, very long since Merlin's been touched by anyone.
Merlin is a terrible friend.
But that night, as Gaius’ headache remedy lulls him into drowsiness, he remembers the way Gwen had cradled him, the way Arthur had stared. There'd been a moment when he'd really thought that perhaps they did.... He grows aware of his hands curled against his thighs and how close they are to his cock. Merlin breathes in and out slowly until his erection flags.
All he has to do is wait ‘til morning, and when the friendly, sky-blue mugwart potion turns black, he’ll know for sure. He can un-enchant them and forget all about it.
*
The potion is still blue in the morning.
“Bugger.”
“Merlin, language.”
“Sorry.” It’s just. What in the hell? They’ve used this potion maybe a dozen times in the past, and it’s worked every time. If Arthur and Gwen aren’t enchanted, then…well. They just have to be enchanted. There’s no other explanation. Despite himself, Merlin's heart beats in sudden hope.
“Are you sure you made it properly?”
“I made it perfectly.” Gaius squints at him suspiciously. “Is there any particular reason why you are displeased that they aren’t enchanted?”
“I might have said some things. Not dangerous things,” he amends when Gaius eyebrows go up. “Just some inadvisable jokes that Arthur’s probably going to remember now, seeing as he wasn’t really enchanted.”
Gaius rolls his eyes. “One of these days, Merlin, that mouth of yours is going to get you in real trouble.”
“One of these days,” Merlin agrees weakly.
*
Merlin goes through six separate enchantments, potions, and spells in order to detect what might be wrong. Gaius helps, all while growing extremely suspicious.
"They seem perfectly normal to me. If you would just tell me what happened to make you suspect an enchantment..."
To which, of course, there is no good answer that Merlin is willing to give, so he babbles vaguely about odd behavior, which only makes Gaius more concerned about Merlin's mysteriously healed head wound. He's been rubbing herbs into his head to affect bruising and redness, so that it looks more recent.
It takes four days before Merlin starts to accept that it might be true.
Gwen and Arthur want to touch him. They want to kiss him. They want to bed him. Or at least, Gwen wants to and Arthur doesn’t seem to mind watching. Which. Arthur wants to watch while Gwen…. Merlin comes to a shuddering stop in the middle of a hallway as his mind floods with images but then jolts when Arthur’s helmet falls from his limp hand. It bounces all the way down a flight of stairs where a basket-toting maid nearly trips over it.
When he runs to grab it, he realizes that Arthur is standing at the foot of the stairs, watching him.
“It wasn’t deep,” Merlin says when he catches Arthur squinting at his forehead as Merlin gathers up armor.
Arthur clears his throat and scoffs, but it doesn’t hold the usual edge. “Such a delicate flower, you are.”
They hold each other’s eyes for a beat before Arthur turns and leaves.
*
That evening, he's stoking the fire in Arthur's room when the silence starts to take on an underlying intensity. Merlin finds himself too close to Gwen's hand when he pours her wine. His elbow brushes against the back of Arthur's chair and he actually starts. Arthur, weirdly, makes no comment.
Merlin goes to leave with the plates.
"Do you need anything else?" he says, the same way he always does, and winces, because his voice comes out low and intimate sounding.
Gwen is looking at Arthur.
“No. Yes,” Arthur answers, but he’s looking at Gwen, and Merlin feels his heartbeat spike. “Come back after you’ve put up the dishes.”
Merlin blinks. “Yes sire.” He leaves.
Merlin's thoughts race all the way down the stairs and all the way back up, he imagines things, impossible things, and what they might ask of him, and what he might do, and whether he really ought to agree to anything, because what if this is all wrong.
Merlin doesn’t knock, just opens the door and slips in, standing with his back pressed against the door. Guinevere looks beautiful with her hair splayed out over her shoulders, a tendril running wayward into the dip between her breasts. She’s biting her lip and breathing deeper than necessary. Her breasts rise and fall.
“What do you need?” Merlin asks.
Arthur swallows. “You said a few days ago—perhaps as a joke—that you would submit to anything we wanted from you.”
Merlin nods, and his eyes flit from one of them to the other. Gwen moves, out of the corner of his eye, until her back is pressed against a bed post. She reaches her hands behind her and holds it.
“Were you joking?” Arthur asks.
“I wasn’t joking.” He’d thought he was appeasing an enchanted person, but that doesn’t change the truth. Merlin shakes his head, and lets out the words that have been stuck in throat for days now. “Do you mean that you really want…with me?”
Arthur makes a huffing noise of laughter, and Gwen smiles and nods.
“But why?”
"Why?" Gwen repeats. Their expressions are matching embarrassment.
"For...fun, Merlin, obviously," Arthur says, but he's got one hand braced against his head as if he wants to hide his face.
"No, I mean. Why me?"
They exchange a look, but Gwen's the one who answers. "We...you're our dearest friend. And we trust you. And we."
“Merlin,” Gwen says, and Merlin’s eyes flit over to her. “What we have to ask of you…we would not want you to accept out of obligation or kindness or even out of loyalty. Only…only if you truly desire it.”
Merlin’s lips lift up at the corners. None of those things are separable, not for him, but he understands what Gwen is trying to do. “You don’t have to worry.”
“All right,” Gwen says, and looks at Arthur. Merlin does too.
“What do you want me to do?” Merlin asks him.
Arthur’s face is hard in the firelight. “Kiss her,” he says.
Merlin hesitates before he moves toward her, letting his feet shuffle. His confidence is draining out, just a bit, and his fingers shake a bit when he reaches out and places his hand on Gwen’s waist. She hasn’t moved, is still a straight line against the bed post, but she lifts her chin to him.
Merlin glances at Arthur one last time before he bends to kiss her.
*
Arthur doesn’t normally think of Merlin as manly. He’s a servant, for one, not a soldier or knight, so he doesn’t make his living by his strength. And he’s Merlin, he’s good at jokes and cleaning things and sure, he’s fought at Arthur’s side before, but that’s because he had to, not…
It’s just surprising, is all, too look at Merlin standing over Guinevere next to the bed and think, oh god, he’s a man.
With Gwen pressed against him, Merlin looks tall. And his hands look large, splayed nervously against Gwen’s sides. He’s nervous. He keeps shifting about, but then Gwen tilts her face up, and Merlin dips his head and kisses her gently, chastely, the way Arthur imagines that children kiss. They press their lips together for a breath, and then Merlin pulls back, taking in her face contemplatively. His eyes dart over to Arthur, and then he kisses her again, the same unmoving press of lips. Arthur wonders how many girls he’s kissed. One? Two? None? Arthur feels protective of him, strangely, feels good when Gwen’s arms wrap around him. But then Gwen sighs against him and reaches up to clutch his jacket.
He thinks he glimpses Merlin’s tongue, when they open their mouths against each other.
It’s unnerving and disturbing and inflaming, to watch them kiss. He knows he shouldn’t want to. And he knows that, were it literally any other man in the world, he’d want to cut the man’s heart out. And he feels that little urge to violence bubbling in his stomach, but it never overflows. It just…stirs him. It settles low in his gut. It’s wrong, for Merlin and Gwen to touch each other like this, and yet. He can’t stop them, he’s not going to stop them, it’s too beautiful.
Arthur feels a sharp prick to his finger and looks down to find that he’s been digging his nails into the wooden arms of his chair, dug so deep he’s caught a splinter.
They just kiss. That’s all that happens, they just kiss, and trail hands up and down each other’s arms, slowly, and eventually the watch bell rings.
Merlin breaks away from her, a little breathless, and Gwen lists toward him. Merlin’s looking out toward the courtyard.
He’s probably thinking, wondering, what should happen next. What if he stays.
What if he stays. What would they do?
Merlin catches his eye, and they both look away, and then Arthur looks at the ground while Merlin murmurs something to Gwen. He hears a little flesh sound—a parting kiss—and Merlin’s shuffle as he leaves and shuts the door behind him.
Arthur waits til Merlin has left to look up at Gwen
She’s wetter than she’s ever been, and he comes twice inside her before he’s sated.
*
They do it again the next night. Merlin really likes kissing, it turns out. Arthur had never really thought of kissing as something one could love or excel at, but Merlin does. It gives Arthur cause to feel guilty all over again for failing Gwen in bed. She clearly adores the play of lips upon lips, and it's humbling to watch Merlin give that pleasure to her so thoroughly.
Gwen kisses his cheeks and face, and Merlin dares kissing Gwen’s neck and shoulders. They’re holding each other so tightly, and Merlin’s hands flex convulsively on Gwen’s arms and waist.
It lasts four or five nights, the kissing. Gwen likes it, and Merlin likes it, and it’s like a relief, to come out of court and council to settle in his chair and watch them fondle one another. Gwen had taken his hand and attempted to place it on her breast, the third night, but Merlin had paused to pant against her forehead, whispering something that made her stop. Arthur didn’t ask what it was.
One of the nights they whisper things to each other, and Arthur refuses to ask about it. They look at him sometimes, but it’s fond, and the feeling he has in his stomach is fluttery and makes him shift in his chair, but it’s not jealousy, exactly. Or it is, but it’s a pleasant jealousy, if such a thing exists.
One night, they are kissing and Gwen’s hand brushes over the front of Merlin’s trousers, and he makes this noise. A cough or a grunt or something only small and artless. He blushes, but Gwen puts her hand back and says, loud enough for Arthur to hear,
“Let me?”
He’s red in the face, but he nods stiltedly. “Yeah.”
Neither of them looks his way for permission when she presses her hand up and down, and Merlin just throws himself into a kiss with her. It feels like they’re ignoring him, purposely, and it feels—
Merlin’s turned his head into Gwen’s breast, and she’s only just rubbing steadily at his groin through his trousers.
“Arthur,” she says. “Come look at him.”
Arthur obeys, as if in a trance, and finds himself beside the bed. Merlin’s not looking at him, he’s mouthing at Gwen’s neck, and she’s making sweet whispery noises. But then suddenly Gwen shifts, pushes Merlin back so that he’s properly on his back and takes her hand back to his trousers, leans down to kiss his neck.
Arthur and Merlin’s eyes catch, and Merlin looks away. He’s breathing through his mouth, and his lips move in nonsensical patterns. It occurs to him that perhaps Merlin wants something to kiss, since he likes that so much.
Perhaps Arthur should kiss him.
Almost as soon as he thinks it, something in him recoils. He can’t. He wants to, except he doesn’t want to. Merlin’s a man, after all, he’d likely taste bad.
Except that Gwen obviously doesn't think so.
Gwen’s laid her head against Merlin’s chest, watches her hand still and then wander up to the ties of his trousers. Merlin cranes his neck, watches her do it.
“May I?” she breathes.
Merlin bites his lip, and a smile works its slow way up its face. He laughs, that low little huff he does sometimes when he’s surprised, and Gwen tips her head up looks at him, and they grin at each other, completely at ease and friendly in a way that Arthur has always loved about the both of them. A way he has envied.
Arthur spends the next few minutes frozen, watching them smile and kiss and laugh, and when he comes back to himself properly, Gwen has a hand down Merlin’s trousers and a rythmic, obscene slide going on, the shape of Gwen’s hand under the fabric. Her fingers poke out, along with the head of Merlin’s cock. Eventually, Gwen settles her head back down upon Merlin’s chest, and Merlin lets his head tip back on the pillow, looking. Gwen’s head rises and falls with each breath Merlin takes.
Merlin’s mouth is moving again, opening and closing, almost like a grasping hand. Arthur feels the impulse again to put something into it.
Merlin’s obviously close to coming. The glimpses Arthur gets of his cock show it wet with precome, and Merlin’s eyes are closing, which for some reason, gives Arthur the last little push to lift his hand and place his knuckles against Merlin’s mouth.
Merlin’s eyes open on a pop, and Arthur is sure he must be red himself, but after a still moment, and a gasp, Merlin’s mouth closes round a finger joint and he sucks. It makes Arthur’s thighs tense and his cock jump in his pants, and Arthur doesn’t know where to look. Merlin’s eyes, Merlin’s mouth, Merlin’s cock wrapped in Gwen’s hand.
“Ah,” Merlin says, overcome, and jerks, and bites down, just the slightest bit.
Arthur’s hand drops away from Merlin’s lips. They all sit there, looking at each other, and Arthur’s tenting his trousers and Gwen’s breasts are heaving.
Merlin swallows, looks away from Arthur.
“I should go,” Merlin says, but he doesn’t sound so sure.
Arthur doesn’t want him to go, but he can’t think of what to say next. Or what to do next. He looks desperately at Gwen, who is always so good at knowing what to say in difficult moments.
Gwen looks…ravenous.
“Arthur,” she says, and lies down next to Merlin, their shoulders touching. Her knees lift and part, her shift slithering up to expose her thighs. Arthur moves dazedly, putting himself between her legs and leaning over, but then there’s both of them—Gwen and Merlin, shoulder to shoulder—both looking at him, and he feels frozen, nervous.
There are fingers at his laces, sudden touches that make him shudder, and before he figure out how to feel about Merlin being right there and looking at his cock, Gwen’s tugged him out of his trousers and forward, and Arthur’s fallen forward onto the support of his hands and is fucking her.
“Have you ever been inside a woman?”
Arthur stutters halfway through a thrust before he realizes Gwen isn’t talking to him.
“No,” Merlin says, and his wide eyes are flitting everywhere, at Gwen’s face and Arthur’s shoulders and down to where they’re joined. That good, cozy feeling returns again—the idea that he and Gwen are taking care of Merlin, teaching him, and it gets all mixed up with the little shame he feels from being watched like this. A fire goes up Arthur’s spine.
“A man, then?”
Arthur chokes and looks down at his wife.
“What? Am I not supposed to know about such things? It happens, doesn’t it?” She looks at Arthur and then Merlin, and Arthur’s mind almost shorts out from the implication. Gwen’s eyes gleam slyly. Arthur can’t help it; he bends to kiss her open, panting mouth.
“No,” Merlin says.
Gwen pulls her lips away from Arthur’s. “It doesn’t happen?”
“No, I’ve never done it.”
“Have you ever thought about it?”
“Gwen! ” Merlin’s voice is high with surprise, but also something else, and Arthur puts his face down into Gwen’s neck and comes.
His hips circle and stutter for a long moment as he breathes through it, and then rolls to Gwen’s side.
The fire is still roaring beautifully in the hearth, and Arthur tries briefly to remember when Merlin had risen to stoke it. There’s a silence, for a while, where they all seem to be waiting for something, or perhaps Arthur is. He has no idea what happens next.
Gwen heaves a sigh. “That was lovely.”
‘Lovely’ isn’t the word Arthur would use to describe the most licentious experience of his life, but it’s so very Guinevere to say so, that Arthur can’t help but smile.
Merlin, apparently feeling the same way, huffs a little laugh from other side of the bed. “It was. I should probably go now.”
He’s out of the bed and his laces tied up in no time, and Arthur’s almost—just a little—glad. He needs time to absorb the night.
“Must you go?” Gwen asks.
“You want me to sleep in the King’s bed?” Merlin asks, his voice edged in mirth, but Arthur can tell that the question is partly aimed at him. He opens his mouth to tell Merlin to go, but Gwen answers
“Don’t be silly, Merlin. We aren’t sending you back through the cold castle, not after…this.”
Though she stutters on the last word, Gwen sounds so sure about it, as if no one would possibly send a lover back to their own bed in the middle of the night. Arthur realizes, with a stupid jolt, that was what he had been about to do. His mind boggles momentarily at the the combination of the words “lover” and “Merlin,” but he shakes it off.
“She’s right, Merlin, lie down.”
“Gaius will notice if I’m gone.”
“Oh.”
Arthur is hit with a second realization, the utter surety that he won’t be able to look Gaius in the eye tomorrow. Wonderful.
“And, I think you’re forgetting how castle gossip works,” Merlin adds. His hair is still mussed from Gwen’s hands in it, and his clothes are even more unkempt than usual. He looks positively debauched.
“I suppose you’re right,” Gwen concedes, and pushes up onto her elbows. “Well, then. Kiss me goodnight.”
Merlin does, going so far as to kneel up onto the bed and palm Gwen’s jaw. She hums happily into it.
When they part, Arthur lets himself meet Merlin’s eyes, and gives him a nod. Probably not the correct way to say farewell, in the circumstances, but it’s what Arthur can manage. Merlin quirks his lips in return. He understands.
“Goodnight,” Merlin says, and goes.
*
Gwen finds herself thinking about sex all the time. She thinks of it at dinner, and at breakfast, and hearing land disputes, and arranging menus with the steward. She imagines new and strange things they might do, and finds herself blushing in front of her maids. She hasn’t felt like this since she was a teenager, having figured out how to rub against a pillow for pleasure. She’s been thinking, a bit, about getting up the courage to ask one of them to rub her there, the way she likes.
At midday she finds herself in Arthur’s quarters, sifting through the papers on his desk, whilst Merlin scrubs out the fireplace. They exchange smiles, and Gwen almost goes to kiss him before she wonders whether that’s all right without Arthur around. They’ve not exactly discussed the scope of this affair. Perhaps she’ll bring it up with them tonight.
But, gazing at Merlin’s shoulders as they bunch and work, Gwen realizes that it doesn’t quite feel like an affair.
“Merlin,” she says, not loud enough to carry across the room, but he hears anyway, and clambers up to cross toward her.
“My lady?”
“Does it feel odd to you?”
“Does what feel odd?”
“This. The three of us.” Gwen flaps a hand. “I ask because it…it doesn’t feel odd to me. But I think perhaps it should. Is it odd that I don’t think it’s odd?”
Merlin shrugs and smiles. “Arthur was a bit odd to begin with.”
“You know what I mean.”
“It’s private, and it’s ours,” he says, reassuringly. “And the two of you are the King and Queen. It doesn’t matter whether it’s odd. You can do what you like.”
Gwen doesn’t like to be reminded of that great inequality, actually. She looks down at her bodice and picks at the embroidery over her belly.
“Merlin, I want you to know that you…if you ever…if you met someone and wanted to...be less odd….” She can tell from his face that she’s not getting her meaning across, and she feels like a girl again, reduced to babbling.
Merlin's eyebrows are up in friendly question.
Gwen tries again: “If you met someone, and wanted to stop lying with Arthur and I, we would understand completely. Or if you had any other reason.”
“My lady,” Merlin starts, and isn’t that the awful point that he must call her so, but it’s the same way he calls Arthur ‘sire,’ and manages to make it sound like an endearment. “I’m not going to meet someone.”
“You might! You’re a handsome fellow!”
“Am I?”
“Yes,” and now Gwen has a problem, because she wants to kiss him. Merlin can tell. He’s grinning. “Don’t distract me. The point is, you might meet a girl and get married.”
“No, I won’t.”
And there, again, that mysterious assurance Merlin sometimes exhibits, as if he knows all of the future and everything in it. Gwen never knows whether it’s stubbornness, wisdom, or something else.
“Sometimes I’m not sure I know you, Merlin.”
A more timid quality steals into his expression, his sharp cheeks pulling back in hurt, or maybe longing, and Gwen simply cannot allow that to go unacknowledged. She closes the distance between them and sweeps him into a hug.
Merlin stands stiff for only a second before sighing and dropping his head against hers. “Perhaps you will,” he says. “Someday.”
She has no idea what that means, but decides not to pry, at least for now. She’ll discuss it with Arthur.
After a moment more of hugging, Merlin’s hand sweeps up her spine, deliberately slow, and Gwen remembers.
“Tonight I’m going to teach you something new,” she whispers, hot against his ear.
“I look forward to it.”
*
The sunlight beams too hot against Arthur’s face, but he feels too good and too sleepy to move. He reaches out blindly for the nearest person. Merlin, by the feel of the coarse fabric.
“Lean over me,” Arthur demands. “Block the sun.”
“Lazy,” Merlin mutters, and then does what Arthur was hoping for, and kisses him.
It’s a privilege, to be able to do this out in the open, leagues away from anyone who might see and spread gossip. It’s been a constant question in Arthur’s mind: what if they’re caught?
It would be one thing, for people to know that Arthur took his servant to bed. Some might lose respect for Arthur, but no true consequences would result. It would be another thing entirely for people to know about Gwen and Merlin. That was treason. Probably. Was it still treason if Arthur was there with them? Arthur could hardly seek legal council on the matter.
Then there was the question of children. They’d not come that far, not yet, but Arthur has a brief shining glimpse of what it might be like if Merlin were to get Gwen with child. If they had a tiny baby with dark, curly hair and huge blinking eyes. No one would suspect. And the child would undoubtedly be kind and brave and noble-hearted, worthy of whatever title Arthur might bestow. Would that be so bad?
“I like this,” Merlin announces, breaking the kiss and hovering over Arthur’s lips. “We should tire him out more often. He lets me do whatever I like.”
“He’s distracted,” Gwen says from somewhere out of Arthur’s sight.
Merlin snorts. “I can fix that.” And dives back in.
It’s still new, kissing Merlin, and Arthur’s still shocked by the taste, the sensation. Arthur has always know that Merlin’s fond of his own tongue, but now Arthur also knows that he’s prone to press it inside Arthur’s mouth as if he were fucking with it. Arthur goes embarrassingly breathless when he does it. He feels Merlin’s nose brush his cheek, Merlin’s fingers scraping at his pulse points.
Merlin breaks away abruptly, and the glaring sun pierces Arthur’s eyes again.
“Damn you, Merlin,” he says, squeezing his eyes shut, and hears Merlin’s answering laugh.
“Are there any apples left?” Merlin asks.
“Here,” comes Gwen’s voice, and her skirts flutter against Arthur’s outstretched leg.
And then—blessed shade—Gwen comes to sit against his side, blocking the sun from his face. Arthur sighs in relief. When he opens his eyes, he finds himself secured, Gwen sitting on one side and Merlin at the other, his skin cool in their collective shadow. He winds an arm around them both, one hand on Gwen’s thigh and the other on Merlin’s ribs. For a strange second, a lump threatens to rise in his throat, almost as if he would cry.
The impulse flies away when Merlin chomps a gigantic bite of apple, spraying Arthur’s face with juice.
“You—,” Arthur starts, but Gwen and Merlin are laughing and pressing him back into the ground, kissing away the juices.