morgana spits a blood curdling shriek that arches her back and throws her into an upright position. curly strands of midnight hair scatter into her eyes and blur her vision like slimy tendrils of the nothingness of the nightmare she has just flown out of dripping down the length of her vision — taunting her with their remains.
she slashes at the sheets surrounding her and the glossy silk fabric that once felt luxurious seems a curse beneath her desperate claws — unable to retain a grip. she has nothing to hold on to.
the blackness appears to be spreading from morgana’s own limp ringlets to cloud her sight, threatening to pull her back into treacherous slumber. she screams again.
and again, and again.
still, there is no answer and no lifeline for morgana to catch and cling to tightly — she will sink and drown in the freezing thrashing waves of traumatic hallucinations and weak definitions of sleep if she is not saved — and just when morgana’s hollow limbs give out and she is on the verge of being forced back into her nightmare land, someone is at her side and she is alight with pulsing warmth.
a fervent, yet gentle voice rings out into the previously empty air and rips its way through the ringing in morgana’s ears to shoot straight down to her heart. morgana thrusts her arms out toward the heavenly sound and they wrap around a delicate body — licking flames around morgana’s form as she presses herself flush against it.
the words are making sense now — they repeat over and over until morgana is desensitized and she registers their meaning. “it’s me, it’s me, it’s gwen.”
gwen. “gwen!” morgana sobs. she doesn’t remember beginning to cry. perhaps it’s because she isn’t really — she is weeping hoarsely but no salty liquid swims across her blotchy vision or tears tracks down her sunken, pale cheeks.
“yes, yes, it’s me. it’s gwen.” gwen responds to morgana’s anguished attempts at embracing her and coils her own arms around morgana’s violently trembling frame — stroking her hair and rubbing up and down the flimsy sleeves of her cream nightdress. “hush. hush, sweet morgana. it’s gwen. it’s me. i am here. i am here. you are safe. i am here.”
morgana buries her face into where it meets gwen’s body, the bridge of her nose smashing into gwen’s dainty collarbone and the curve of her bottom lip indenting into the velvety skin of gwen’s chest. she inhales gwen’s scent — spicy cinnamon and bright amaryllis — and the intense warmth spreads comfortingly down morgana’s throat and fills her lungs. she still shivers with the cold and the brittle feeling the nightmares slather her with.
“gwen,” she says again, but it is really a groan, it is a desperate plea. she hasn’t the strength to pull gwen any closer but she is certain she will die if they are separated even the slightest bit.
“i know,” gwen murmurs, kissing — kissing! — the crown of morgana’s hair and caressing her carefully but with enough force so that morgana can really feel her presence. “i know, darling creature. it hurts, i know, but i am here. i am here, and i will never let you go.”
this pangs deep within morgana. “never?” she croaks.
gwen’s frame quivers for a moment as if she is contemplating a decadent laugh, then firms beneath morgana’s grasp. she kisses morgana’s head again, this time lifting it so that her lips leave a burning mark on the likely unbecoming cold sweat smeared across morgana’s forehead and whispers against the skin, “never.”
—
“arthur?”
arthur thrashes once and then jolts to life, panicking when he realizes he is being pressed flat against the matress. he cannot move. his first instinct is to slash at the force pinning him down, then —
“arthur?” again. this is familiar. it is not an intruder. “arthur?” it is merlin.
arthur’s voice is hoarse and laden with sleep and the monsters that lurk within it when he answers. “yes?”
merlin releases the pressure he had on arthur’s chest and whisks his thin, pale hand out of sight. “you were screaming.”
arthur attempts to blink tiredness and dancing spots of violence from his eyes and his whole body twitches. then it does it again. he has to grit his teeth and curl his fists to reply, “i was?”
in the dim moonlight, arthur can see merlin nod sheepishly, almost with regret for waking his master. like arthur’s disbelief is causing him to doubt himself. “you were. just mumbling at first, then speaking full words and whole sentences. you kept shaking and turning over and over. then you were screaming, and you wouldn’t stop. i was — “ merlin stops, and arthur yearns for the completion of his thought. as if merlin senses this yearning and decides to fulfill it, he finishes, “i was worried.”
arthur clears his throat and squirms away with as much nonchalance as he can muster from the dip in the bed formed from merlin sitting beside his splayed out figure. “right, well, you needn’t be. i’m fine.”
merlin murmurs something, but arthur can’t decipher it. “what was that?” he snaps. he can’t bring himself to feel guilty for the twinge of pointed malice in his tone. he has the right to be told things to his face. merlin owes him at least that shred of respect, even if he is to taunt arthur for the weakness and agony that seeps into his consciousness and across his skin like blossoming crimson from a flesh wound every night when his eyelids drop. there is no doubt that merlin sees it. he is present in arthur’s chambers each night, and it is unlikely that tonight was the first night his throaty, tormented screams pierced the midnight air.
“a nightmare, was it, sire?” merlin repeats, more loudly this time. arthur winces and turns roughly to his side and faces the window instead of his manservant. the delighted way the stars twinkle stabs his vision with the affliction and agony of what merlin is no doubt mocking him for.
“no.” arthur’s voice is clipped and raspy. “you are no longer needed.” when he doesn’t feel the rise of the bed at the removal of merlin’s figure, he adds, with bravado, “go away, merlin.” the name of the dark haired boy — yes, boy, for merlin is no more than that — that lingers still is pronounced in a sneer, one fierce enough to elicit merlin withdrawing his presence from arthur’s bedside and no doubt retiring to a secluded corner of the room. no matter the obvious disgust in arthur’s tone, merlin would never exit the chambers completely. this stings, not with pain, but with the knowledge that this man — perhaps merlin is a man, even if arthur refuses to take ownership of the fact — possesses such an undying loyalty to another man that deserves it so little.
minutes slip by and arthur feels himself drawn back into the clenched constraints of sleep, and the wicked dreams that capture him in the gloomy depths. he begins to thrash again, twisting himself into his damp sheets and warping into a tighter feeling of restriction — but this time there is a faraway knowledge that merlin will not be there to rescue him from it this time, and it is by arthur’s own specific demand. arthur has forced away the last person willing to be his savior.
a particularly deep stab — stretching directly through arthur’s body, piercing directly into the front of his chest to peek out between his shoulder blades — elicits a howl that awakes arthur on his own, and he slams himself forward into his own legs, head submerged in the coil of the sheets. arthur cradles himself and allows himself to weep broken weeps. he feels the thick and heavy heat draped over him equal to that of an aimless desert, and he is in dire need of hydration. he has not cried in nearly a year.
tears still stream down his flushed, creasing cheekbones when he jerks his head up and his words crack. “merlin?”
the response is immediate. “yes, sire?”
“come here.” another fragmented whimper. “please.”
in an instant — no doubt merlin’s usual quick and elegant lope — there is a weight gently distributed onto the edge of arthur’s bed, and he says gruffly, “it’s bloody hot in here.” he sniffs and his voice pitches off a cliff at the last word, as if merlin needed reminding that his esteemed king is crying relentlessly.
merlin, because he always is precisely in tune with what arthur wants — but what he really wants, what he really wants is — leans forward and delicately pulls arthur’s nightshirt up and over his head, ruffling his shaggy blond hair and sending a shock of electricity through the strands. arthur feels an instant, if small sort of relief to be rid of it and finishes by kicking his sheets off of his legs.
“will that be all?” merlin’s voice is soft, but it is never meek. perhaps he is aware that that is not all, nothing could ever be all. nothing could ever be enough.
“no.” arthur is torn between the consciousness that merlin doesn’t need to be informed aloud of the torture that rages in his head and the want that builds in his stomach and the desperation to hide every part of himself — especially the parts that long for everything he had ever told himself not to imagine — from merlin.
“what else, then?”
“come closer.” merlin does, and even though arthur is not looking at him he can feel the weight of that bottomless blue eyed stare and the emotions radiating off of his body. which emotions, arthur does not dare to entangle because he is afraid if he does he will not like what he discovers. or worse, he will. then, a flash of the nightmarish landscape that had only minutes ago painted across his mind reappears, and it is so painful that arthur launches himself into merlin’s arms without remaining motionless to think about what he is doing if he asks for what he wants. when merlin clutches arthur’s bare, clammy torso with an obvious avid desire to keep him there, arthur speaks, even though his wish has already been granted. “hold me.”
the wiry arms tense tighter, pulling arthur deeper into their sweet abyss. “i already am.”