"Because there was no guarantee even Lancelot could save you," she admits, now watching Arthur closely. "He risked his own life, Sire. Had you died..."
"I'd have taken him with me," Arthur realizes.
"There's no point being angry about it," Merlin interrupts the ember of rage coming alive in Arthur's chest. "You did not die. Lancelot is perfectly safe. And while he is bound to you, it is not only his strength you will share. The connection runs deep. You can sense the way his heartbeat guides your own? Yes, of course you can. And the feelings you spoke of are almost certainly his as well."
"Does he know all this?"
"Of course." Merlin arches one pale eyebrow. "It would hardly have been fair to leave him in the dark."
Arthur turns his focus inward, but this time he finds no hint of emotion beyond his own. "Why can't I feel him now?"
"He is not near enough at hand, I suspect. You need not worry, Sire. He won't have gone far. He must stay close, or the enchantment will fail."
"Then it isn't permanent? This enchantment?"
"No." Merlin leans back against the high window ledge. Over her shoulder, the sky has lost the last of its color, leaving only dull darkness behind. "I will remove the charm when I am confident of your safety."
Arthur blinks in confusion, his brow furrowing. "I don't understand. I feel fine."
"Your wounds have healed," Merlin concedes. "But that is not the whole of the danger you face. Mordred's blade was poisoned. I dare not break the spell until this too has passed."
"And how long will that be?" Arthur presses.
"Soon enough, Sire. You need only be patient."
Patience is not among Arthur's strongest virtues, but he accepts Merlin's answer. Guiltily, he finds himself torn between relief and disappointment that the connection is only temporary.
"Why Lancelot?" he asks, intimately aware of the extra heartbeat twining alongside his own. He remembers the determined expression on Merlin's face as she examined his wounded shoulder at Camlann. The determined strength in her voice as she ordered Bedivere to search out Lancelot across the enormous field of battle. No one could have doubted that Arthur was dying, bleeding out far too quickly across the filthy ground, yet Merlin had demanded Lancelot instead of someone nearer.
Merlin's left eyebrow rises sharply, but her voice is kind. "My work requires more than words and rituals, Sire. Magic is nothing without heart."
# # # # #
When Lancelot returns, the hour is gone past midnight. Arthur is alone in his chambers, servants and wooden tub gone, hearth stoked high against the night's chill. Merlin admonished him to sleep when she left, but Arthur feels as though he's been sleeping for a century. He is tired, but he's also restless, and the thought of returning to his bed is untenable.
He knows even before the sound of the knock that Lancelot has come. He can feel it in his chest, where the twin heartbeats have grown louder, and he opens the door at the first rap on heavy wood. Lancelot stands in the silent corridor, dressed as he was before. His sword hangs at his side, and his hand rests loosely around the grip. Only sporadic torchlight illuminates the hall behind him, and the deep shadows make his face severe.
"You're still awake." The disapproval in Lancelot's tone is faint but discernible. Arthur doesn't call him out for the subtle insolence. He simply stands aside, allowing Lancelot through the door and closing it behind him. Security doesn't require him to lock the door, but Arthur slides the bolt home anyway. Something tells him that whatever Lancelot has come for, it's a conversation better kept private.
"Clearly I'm not the only one who finds himself restless." Arthur crosses his arms and quirks an eyebrow in imitation of Merlin's. He doesn't intend his words as a rebuke, but neither is it Lancelot's place to chastise him.
Lancelot's back is to Arthur, his posture tight. His feelings—those Arthur can sense—are so guarded as to be opaque. There's no mistaking the fact that Lancelot is troubled, but any further is impossible to surmise.
Arthur's tone gentles when he says, "I should thank you. Merlin told me what happened."
Instead of easing the tension in those broad shoulders, Arthur's words make Lancelot turn sharply. Lancelot's cheek twitches, his jaw clenches, and Arthur abruptly recognizes the dominant feeling in the mess of borrowed emotions.
Anger. Lancelot is furious. It takes conscious effort not to startle at such unwonted rage.
"What were you thinking?" Lancelot demands, fire flashing in gray eyes.
The question borders on treason, and Arthur's perfect posture tightens. "Mind your position, Lancelot," he says, in the crisp tones that set lesser men groveling. Lancelot only looms toward him, towering over Arthur and seeming even taller than usual. Arthur holds his ground. He will not be cowed by anyone, even the very best of his knights.
"You were careless," Lancelot snaps. He's no longer touching his sword. His hands have curled into helpless fists, and his voice sharpens when he continues, "Your escort cannot protect you if you deliberately evade them!"
Arthur hadn't deliberately evaded his escort at Camlann, but he doesn't bother arguing the point. Instead he stares, confounded in the face of Lancelot's unaccustomed anger.
"You can't scold me," Arthur protests. "I am your king!"
His pricked pride is distracting enough that it takes him a moment to see the true source of Lancelot's fury. When he does, his own ruffled feathers smooth, and the fight bleeds quickly out of him.
"You're not angry at me," Arthur realizes aloud. He peers up into Lancelot's face, taking in the heavy brow, the creases at the corners of narrowed eyes, the unhappy line of his mouth. Arthur meets piercing gray eyes and says, "You're upset with yourself. Because..." His own brow furrows as he works it through. "Because you weren't at my side?"
Lancelot growls, an inarticulate sound that sends a tremble along Arthur's spine, and then he shoves Arthur against the door. Arthur's back collides with sturdy wood, and the faded hurt in his shoulder twinges. He catalogs the hurt in one part of his mind even as the rest seizes upon Lancelot. There's something helpless and furious in his knight's eyes as he holds Arthur pinned. Arthur can decipher nothing through the tumult of Lancelot's emotions, though he feels them louder than ever with Lancelot's hands on him. He doesn't try to free himself. Instead he waits, caution and stillness, for Lancelot to speak.
"You could have died." A surge of feeling matches the pain in Lancelot's voice, and Arthur aches with the honesty of it.
"I didn't," he says, wishing he could ease that hurt for both of them.
"You should have." Gray eyes flash with a fresh spike of fear. "You were mortally wounded. If Merlin hadn't—"
"But she did," Arthur cuts him off with finality. His eyes cut away, and he glimpses a golden chain at Lancelot's throat. The chain—a necklace, really—has slipped free from the collar of Lancelot's tunic, and at the end hangs a purple jewel Arthur doesn't recognize. Lancelot has never favored gems, but the incongruity isn't what stops Arthur short.
The jewel is glowing. Not just glowing, he realizes, but pulsing with a rapid rhythm.
A rhythm that matches the suddenly-racing heartbeats twining in Arthur's chest.
He reaches without thought. The gold-set gem is warm to the touch, and heavy in his hand. Arthur stares at it for several seconds, mesmerized by the intimate pulse of light. Lancelot is motionless, still holding him inescapably against the chamber door, and Arthur does his best not to think about anything beyond the bauble in his hand.
It seems an eternity later when Lancelot speaks. "If we had lost you, Sire..." He doesn't finish the sentence. Maybe he can't. Arthur's own voice is trapped somewhere, and it's with unexpected difficulty that he raises his eyes to find Lancelot watching him. The air is suddenly too thick to breathe, and Arthur is drowning in a tangle of emotions that aren't his own.
Then, in a jarring instant, one clear feeling breaks through.
Arthur recognizes the feeling: warm, sharp, fiercely
intimate, and far more complicated than the simple loyalty of friendship.
It's almost an exact match for the things Arthur feels for Lancelot, when he's alone and weak and tired of being a king.
Arthur is too startled to guard his expression as these understandings find him. Lancelot's eyes widen, and Arthur doesn't know if it's in answer to the comprehension on his face or if Lancelot is sharing Arthur's feelings in the same disjointed way. Both, perhaps. The amulet falls forgotten from Arthur's fingers, and he raises his hand to Lancelot's face.
Arthur's touch is hesitant, and hopeful, and a little bit terrified.
It's enough to snap Lancelot free of the panic freezing him in place. He jerks back as though Arthur has burned him, guiltily taking his hands off of his king. His retreat takes him to the farthest corner of the room, between the enormous desk and the narrow window behind it. He turns his back to Arthur, bracing his palms against the stone ledge. When Arthur follows, Lancelot doesn't acknowledge him except to tense where he stands.
Lancelot continues to stare fiercely out the window, even when Arthur stops beside him. The hand Arthur sets to Lancelot's arm is both thoughtless and selfish. He has no right to seek out Lancelot's private feelings. This intimacy is temporary, an uninvited side effect of Merlin's magic, and to reach for it this way is unfair. Guilt knocks into Arthur's chest. A moment later comes a stranger sensation—a subtle blur of distance—as though Lancelot is trying to guard his feelings. Building a wall between them that Arthur doesn't dare assail.
He drops his hand. His sense of Lancelot softens, but doesn't disappear. Arthur is still painfully aware of the deliberate distance Lancelot is struggling to hold between them.
"Forgive me," Lancelot says when Arthur is no longer touching him. "I know it's not my place. And you must believe, I would never..."
But he tapers off without finishing, and after an uncertain moment Arthur asks, "Never what?"
The question makes Lancelot flinch, but he lets go of the window. A moment later and he actually looks at Arthur, wounded resignation in the cloudy gray of his eyes. The wall crumbles. Only a little at first, then in a rushing cascade as Lancelot's feelings burn through.
"You are my king," Lancelot answers helplessly, and the ache beneath the words almost sends Arthur to his knees.
He keeps his footing and reaches out instead, twisting his fingers in the front of Lancelot's tunic and tugging him down into a kiss that startles them both.
It ends almost instantly, though Arthur can't figure out how to loosen his grip. They stare at each other in matching surprise, their shared heartbeats speeding frantically. Arthur has never seen Lancelot's eyes so wide, or his face so open with shock. Now he thinks on it, he can't remember ever seeing Lancelot caught off guard. In a hundred other circumstances the result could be humorous, but not here. Not tonight. Not in the painful seconds that are stretching between them, making Arthur second guess actions he never gave a first thought to.
It's Lancelot who ultimately breaks the stalemate. He moves, not in retreat, but in a possessive surge forward. He reaches for Arthur, and the roughness of his hands—one cupping the back of Arthur's skull, the other closing around his hip—ignites a thrill of heat beneath Arthur's skin. Arthur's eyes close as he's crushed against the unyielding muscle of Lancelot's chest.
There is nothing fleeting in this kiss. Arthur offers no resistance to the desperation in Lancelot's touch. His hands grasp more tightly at the dark tunic, and his lips part for the possessive thrust of Lancelot's tongue. He feels himself pushed backwards, and the edge of his desk bumps hard against the backs of Arthur's thighs, stopping and trapping him. The pommel of Lancelot's sword bangs against the wood, a jarring noise neither of them heeds. Arthur breathes a needy sound, and tilts his head for a deeper kiss.
When it ends they're both breathing hard. Lancelot's fingers gentle where they curl at the nape of Arthur's neck, but he doesn't let go. He doesn't back away.
When Arthur at last opens his eyes, he finds Lancelot already watching him.
Questions spark in that piercing stare, and there's uncertainty in the set to his jaw. Lancelot's lips are parted, and his gaze keeps dropping to Arthur's mouth before jerking quickly upwards. The hand at Arthur's hip slides back, almost tentatively, to press palm-flat over his spine, and Arthur draws a slower breath.
Disbelief mingles with a greedier sensation, and Arthur recognizes the feelings for his own. He can sense the truth of them reflected in Lancelot, in the confusing place where they're tangled up in each other, but alongside them he recognizes something more cautious. Nothing at all like regret, but a sense of duty that might send Lancelot running just as surely.
"I want you to stay," Arthur says, embarrassed at the breathless need in his own voice. Lancelot's gaze sharpens, and his fingers at Arthur's nape tighten warningly.
"We both know that would be unwise."
"Yes," Arthur agrees. He untwists his fingers from rough fabric and frames Lancelot's face with his hands. "Stay anyway?" He's never in his life wanted anything as urgently as this.
When Lancelot kisses him a third time, it is a slower, gentler kiss. Cautious exploration now, where before every touch was demanding fire. Arthur presses full against him, pleading for more without the benefit of words. With only leggings and tunics between them, there's no mistaking Lancelot's arousal. Arthur's own cock is rising just as surely, heavy and hard between his legs. If Lancelot leaves now, Arthur fears he will go mad.
He gasps when Lancelot releases his mouth in favor of tracing a line of kisses down the side of Arthur's throat. There's the grazing hint of teeth, a cautious tease only. Lancelot may want to mark him—Arthur may be able to feel the desire vividly between them—but they both know better. Even so, his mouth is maddening heat on Arthur's skin.
Arthur slips a hand into the nonexistent space between their bodies, quests downward and cups the hard heat of Lancelot's cock through taut fabric.
Lancelot breathes rough curses against Arthur's throat at the touch. His hips jerk forward, pressing his arousal into Arthur's palm and crushing him against the edge of the desk. Arthur grins and uses the same hand, awkward at this trapped angle, to fumble at the laces of Lancelot's leggings, loosening them impatiently.
The desk, huge and sturdy behind him, doesn't budge when Lancelot abruptly shoves Arthur onto his back. Strong hands hold him down, and Lancelot looms above him. Fierce fire glints in Lancelot's eyes.
"Bed, perhaps?" There is both heat and humor in his tone. "Unless you would prefer I take you right here."
Arthur's mind flashes brightly on that image, and he's tempted. But he is also desperate to make this last, and ultimately he summons breath enough to answer, "Bed. Yes."
He still feels lost when Lancelot steps back, releasing him and letting him up. Arthur rounds the desk and backs toward the bed with impatient speed, dragging his own loose tunic over his head as he moves. When he drops it carelessly to the floor, he sees Lancelot has done the same. Arthur trips, distracted by the view, and it's only by luck that he lands on the high edge of the bed instead of the cold stone floor.
There's silver hair scattered across Lancelot's bare chest, along with a patchwork of old scars, and newer bruises fading from the violence at Camlann. Firelight catches on muscle that puts Arthur's own lean body to shame, and though this is not the first time Arthur has seen Lancelot in such a state of undress, it is the first time he truly allows himself to look.
Lancelot's laces are already undone, and as he reaches the edge of the bed he unties the belt from his hips and sets his sword upright against the wall. He takes up Arthur's entire field of vision now, standing so close, and it's with difficulty that Arthur raises his eyes to Lancelot's face.
He finds Lancelot staring down at him with a hunger Arthur can feel mirrored in his chest. The feeling amplifies between them, a jolt of raw want, and Arthur can't tell if it's magic or simply a need too long ignored. He doesn't care. H
e pushes his feet off of the floor to slide properly onto the bed, scooting toward the headboard. He watches rapt as Lancelot maneuvers out of his leggings and leaves them behind, then follows Arthur onto the bed, knees dimpling the bedclothes beneath his weight.
The sight of Lancelot naked is an even headier distraction than the sight of him shirtless, and Arthur catches his own lower lip between his teeth to keep quiet. He only has a moment, seconds at most, to appreciate the view before Lancelot is upon him. Impatient hands push him down into the pillows, and then Lancelot reaches for Arthur's laces in turn, tearing them in his hurry. Arthur doesn't complain; he is equally anxious to be naked, and he twists helpfully beneath Lancelot's efforts, lifting his legs to make it easier to tear the garment away.
Lancelot breathes a satisfied sound as he throws the last vestige of their clothing to the floor. Then, instead of joining him as Arthur expects, Lancelot braces one elbow on the bed, one arm across Arthur's hips, and takes the straining length of Arthur's cock into his mouth.
Arthur's gasp is a greedy sound that shatters the quiet air. His entire body tries instinctively to arch upwards into that wet, perfect heat. Lancelot's strength keeps him steady, holds him down easily as he takes Arthur deeper. Teasing at first, then offering harder suction as Arthur's length nudges at the back of his throat. Arthur makes a more plaintive sound, and his fingers thread thoughtlessly in the soft silver of Lancelot's hair.
Lancelot draws back, tongue pressing along the underside of the shaft, then takes Arthur deep once more.
He works with a skill that might inspire jealousy if Arthur weren't so busy falling to pieces. Fortunately Arthur doesn't have enough extra space in his brain to think about Lancelot doing this with someone else. His entire world has narrowed to Lancelot's mouth on him, Lancelot's hands holding him down.
He won't last, and he tries to find the coherence to say so, but all that comes out of his mouth is a wild groan of release when sensation carries him over the edge.
Lancelot is nearly smiling when Arthur manages to open his eyes. A hint of smugness tints his fond expression as he slips upward along the bed and covers Arthur with his body. Arthur welcomes the kiss that follows, the taste of himself on Lancelot's tongue, almost as much as he welcomes the warm weight atop him. Arthur's hands slide down strong shoulders, along the smooth-muscled planes of spine and flank. Lancelot's own hands are restless, every touch edging toward frantic as he catches Arthur's lower lip between his teeth and then eases the faint sting with his tongue. His attentions rouse Arthur's ardor with overwhelming speed.
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