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In his boisterous youth, winter had a way of driving Arthur near to insanity as the biting cold seeped into every stone in the castle and turned the training grounds inhospitable for activity. The people tended to shy away from movement as was natural, preferring to huddle near hearths when possible and only straying away from warmth to complete their duties. Servants hurried between alcoves and lords cosied up with their bedwarmers, reluctant to part from their comforts. Arthur himself never had one; he never quite liked the idea of having someone else in his bedchambers, the one place he had to himself. There were always heating bricks to warm his bed, no need for another person despoiling the sanctity of his bed.
Now, slipping under the covers sleep-warmed by his consort, Arthur can admit to himself in the privacy of his mind that there was always merit to a distinctly human bedwarmer.
Especially when they come with knobby elbows and a tendency to gravitate towards Arthur in their sleep to shove their sharp noses into his neck. “Wh’r y’been?” Comes the muffled groan. Arthur wastes no time drawing the malleable mess of limbs into his chest. There. Arthur’s body melts into the bed as the familiar weight shifts and slackens over his abdomen. The gooseflesh that had erupted as he undressed by their bedside quickly subside under the blissful warmth of their heavy blankets.
“Getting work done. Not that you would know what that involves, terrible manservant you were,” he chides with no heat at all. Merlin lifts his head at last, squinting. His hair is a terrific mess, licks of dark curls bunched together and somehow endearingly softening his sharp features. Or maybe he’s softer for other reasons entirely, Arthur muses. He trails his palm, which had been resting comfortably over Merlin's lower back, down the slope of his rump. Merlin’s eyes widen, and his returning quip never makes it past his throat.
The handful under Arthur’s inquisitive hand is soft, fleshier than usual. He would know—there is no inch of Merlin he hasn't committed to memory. Pleased with his initial findings, Arthur’s hand slips yet further down and disappears around the curve of Merlin’s inner thigh into that radiant warmth between his legs.
Merlin’s eyes have lost all focus, all dazed as a soft breath of a moan passes through his lips. When Arthur’s explorative finger finds an absence of Merlin’s heavy sac and brushes wetness instead, he quirks a brow up at his consort. “That kind of a day, is it?” Not waiting for a response, he slips the finger deeper.
Even with all the times they have lain together in this form, Merlin still cannot seem to help the whimper and the instinctive little hitch forward on his haunches when Arthur probes into his sensitive flesh. Hushing him comes like second nature, accompanied by a soothing hand petting down his flank. Eventually, he settles, and Arthur takes to sliding his finger in and out at a leisurely pace.
Eyes closed in apparent pleasure, Merlin seems to have found his voice at last. “You like it this way,” he groans, throaty and a little hoarse. Arthur makes a small sound of disagreement.
“I like every way. I think I could like you as an ogre, even.” He could not, not really. It is just the principle of arguing with Merlin that he must uphold.
Merlin laughs, and it causes him to clutch tighter around Arthur’s finger. It reminds Arthur to slide a second finger in, and beyond a small flutter of his lids, Merlin makes no protest. “You would lay with an ogre, would you?” Merlin teases. Arthur cranes his head towards Merlin’s pretty, plump lips with a silly, lovedrunk smile on his own.
“Surely we could find a dress nice enough to make you appealing in that form,” he suggests, and licks into Merlin’s mouth to deter any sort of a comeback. Merlin moans around his tongue, and gods, Arthur will never hear anything as arousing as his consort sighing his pleasure into his plundering mouth.
Around them, the warmth is building to a ridiculous degree, rivalling their hottest summer days. With an impatient hand, Arthur throws the blanket off Merlin’s back to welcome the cold air. Merlin makes a protesting sound and breaks their kiss, clenching over Arthur’s fingers reflexively as the cold races into their sweltering burrow.
“Arthur! It’s freezing!” Merlin hisses. Gold gleams in his eyes, gone within a blink, and a comfortable warmth resettles over their bared bodies. Arthur grins up at him.
“I knew you would do something about it,” he says in that stupid, arrogant tone that he knows drives Merlin up the wall. Merlin rolls his eyes, mutters something unflattering under his breath, but bears down on Arthur’s fingers still, his arousal not clearly abating in the slightest with the sudden shock of cold.
Loath to let Merlin get bored, Arthur flips them around so that Merlin’s back hits the bed and Arthur curls over him. It satisfies the purring, possessive brute residing in his chest too, as he covers Merlin's thin body entirely with his muscular build. If the doors to his bed chamber burst open now, no one could catch a glimpse of the treasure hidden beneath Arthur’s bulk. “Comfortable, my lady?” He nudges Merlin’s cheek with his nose, drawing in a deep inhale of Merlin’s lightning-sunlight-fir scent. Merlin makes another protesting noise.
“Call me a lady one more time and I will set your bollocks on fire,” he threatens. Arthur notes that his fists are completely relaxed, resting in loose curls by his head where they had landed when Arthur flipped them over.
“Whyever would you do that, my sweet,” Arthur teases. His thumb finds the swollen bud that has Merlin’s thighs tensing to snap close, only to clamp uselessly around Arthur’s hips. “You would leave Camelot without an heir of blood?” Merlin scoffs. Arthur curls his fingers up unerringly over the knot of nerves that he knows will shut Merlin up, pleased when Merlin’s breath hitches and his eyes squeeze shut in labour. He looks so attractive when irritation colours his cheeks that Arthur just cannot help but goad him along each time.
“‘My sweet’,” Merlin huffs. “I am not actually a woman, you know?” He grumbles. Arthur muffles a chuckle by ducking down to take one of Merlin’s nipples into his mouth, caring to wet it liberally with his tongue before he tugs at it gently between careful teeth. “Arthur!” Merlin exclaims. His ire is ineffectual in lieu of the arch of his back pushing his chest into Arthur’s mouth. “I said I am not a woman!”
“I heard you the first time,” Arthur agrees. He has to coax the third finger in this time, Merlin tighter than he should be with his annoyance. “Will you relax or shall I loosen you with my mouth?” He presses his thumb a fraction harder, and Merlin knocks his side with his skinny knee.
“Stop touching me there for a start!” He hisses, chest heaving. Rolling his eyes, Arthur shifts lower to rest Merlin’s thigh over his shoulder. When Merlin gets in a strop like this, he will inevitably have to do all the work. How unbecoming, really, the king serving a peasant commoner like this.
The first touch of his tongue to Merlin’s hole makes Merlin gasp, a reedy thing that sounds like it tripped out of his throat unbidden. Arthur spares no effort to deliver pleasure to his consort, welcomes the filthy drip of slick that overflows to his chin and mixes with his saliva. Above him, Merlin writhes restlessly, lost in heavy pants and the occasional pleas for Arthur. With his free hand, Arthur tangles his fingers with Merlin’s, knocking it loose from where it clutches their sheets with white-knuckled intensity.
His own prick aches and hangs heavy between his thighs, but Arthur would rather die than take his hand out of Merlin to tend to his own arousal. Servicing Merlin is a pleasure in and of itself. If there were no duties to tend to, no kingdom to run, Arthur thinks he could lose himself between Merlin’s legs for as long as Merlin would allow, and then some. Briefly, he wonders if Merlin would agree to casting some sort of compulsion over Camelot to leave them be for a few days, just so that Arthur can have his fill of his consort. They could resume their duties thoroughly sated, rejuvenated, and no one would be any the wiser.
Merlin’s soft channel alternates between tightening around his fingers and relaxing to allow Arthur’s tongue to dip inside. He laps indiscriminately, teasing at the gradually softening rim of Merlin’s maidenhead, fingers still stroking over the same place inside Merlin. A third finger slips in snugly, and Merlin’s voice breaks over a moan. Arthur takes to suckling lightly on the sensitive skin of Merlin’s thigh because it makes him proud when Merlin bears Arthur’s affection on his skin, and Merlin likes the gentle ache they radiate when he presses his fingers into them.
“Arthur,” his consort calls, needy. Blinking, Arthur’s attention snaps to him. Merlin looks wrecked, a mess. Tears glisten in his eyes and his lips are swollen with biting. “Now,” Merlin demands, and Arthur needs no further clarification to know that Merlin will throw Arthur onto the bed and take his pleasure as he wants should Arthur delay his gratification any further.
“Yes, my love,” Arthur raises their interlaced fingers and presses a kiss to the back of Merlin’s hand, nothing but reverence and adoration in his words.
His fingers slip out of Merlin easily, and he strokes himself perfunctorily with the slick already covering his hand. Heat pulses under the skin of his prick, and he hisses as his hand tightens around the girth to stave off an untimely spending. “You are,” he begins, and finds himself at a loss of words. Merlin is everything he can think of; a dream, a vision to behold, his entire world. “Mine,” is what Arthur says in the end as he rests the swollen head of his cock on Merlin's maidenhead, wet and wanting.
“Yours,” Merlin agrees, and only when Arthur’s cock breaches him does he exhale in relief. Arthur shakes his head. Merlin does not understand. It is not possession that he speaks of.
He holds their joined hands to his lips again as he sinks to the hilt. “Mine to treasure,” Arthur tries again. He rolls his hips back to thrust his cock deeper. “Mine to pleasure.” To punctuate his point, he shifts and pushes the tip of his prick into that spot that makes Merlin cry out.
“Yours,” Merlin sobs this time. His fingers dig into Arthur’s hand with how hard he’s clutching it. “I was made to—ah! To be yours, Arthur,” he manages to whimper as Arthur lavishes him with deep, powerful thrusts that force Merlin to feel each inch of his cock plundering Merlin’s warmth.
“And I, born of you,” Arthur gasps, driving himself yet deeper at the thought of it. With Merlin’s thigh nearly folded onto his chest and Arthur’s torso bearing down on him, Arthur can just barely make out the faint shadows of a distension in Merlin’s lower stomach. Drawn taut, the flat plane reveals a small bulge that Arthur’s hand drifts towards in compulsion. Right there under his palm, his manhood has carved out space for itself in Merlin’s body. He presses his hand down, and Merlin writhes.
Would Merlin’s body take Arthur’s seed and create new life, Arthur might become a maniac. He imagines himself keeping Merlin barred inside their bed chambers, unable to leave the bed as Arthur tries day after day to keep him bred with Arthur’s spend, never spending a moment off Arthur’s cock. Arthur would do anything to ensure that his consort would quicken, even if it meant keeping Merlin from the outside world until their coupling took root.
It might not even be that hard now that winter has come onto Camelot in earnest. They could shrink their whole world to their bed chamber, have Merlin summon food from the kitchen when the need for sustenance becomes unable to ignore. He might even be treated to a mellow, lusher side of his consort unburdened by the rigours of his duties and magical threats waylaid by the inhospitable weather.
Arthur’s fantasies accost him most frequently in the thick of his duties, when the lords bore him with their petty disputes and granary reports swim before his eyes in indecipherable jumbles. But it is most potent during their coupling—when Merlin is stretched around him to memory, warm and willing and so lovely—that Arthur hungers for more. He thinks that even if he could sink himself bodily into Merlin and fuse into one, he could still never have enough.
How could he, when Merlin calls to every fibre of his being like a siren lures a man to the rocks that waves break on? Swearing as sweat runs in rivulets down his chest, Arthur tries not to spend yet—it is not an easy feat when the sight of Merlin is itself an aphrodisiac, much less the exquisite heat of his sopping wet hole clutching Arthur’s prick softer than a bruised peach and smoother than silk. Maybe it is because they are of one destiny, that the higher powers tie them together so inextricably. Their destiny could not fail if they were inseparable. Arthur wishes they could actually be inseparable. His sac, heavy with seed, draws tight as control slips from his thrusting. Merlin does not appear to mind, his head lolling back as he lets Arthur punch little “unh— ung!” sounds out of his chest erratically.
“Sweetheart,” Arthur calls, a little desperate and wild as his climax approaches. “Look at me, Merlin.” His hand finds Merlin’s mound again and his thumb rubs at the button of flesh that has fattened so. With a small shout, Merlin’s head snaps up and he regards Arthur with no little need in his gaze.
“Inside, I want it, please,” Merlin moans. Echoing his plea, Merlin’s wetness clings to Arthur’s aching cock in a frantic spasm that signals his climax.
Arthur’s mouth hangs open gracelessly as he sears the ecstasy on Merlin’s face into his memory. No doubt, he would be revisiting this moment to tide him by when Merlin rides off on his unbearably long visits to the druids. It is to Merlin’s pleasure that Arthur fails to hold back any longer, and he collapses to his forearms as he buries his prick deep into Merlin, thighs flush to his arse.
His prick pumps seed into Merlin in agonisingly pleasurable pulses, and Arthur bites down on Merlin’s shoulder to ride out the bliss that threatens to overwhelm him. “Brute,” Merlin mutters, utterly spent as Arthur still spurts weakly in him.
Arthur kisses him soundly just for that. “You married this brute,” he points out, smug. Merlin scoffs again, but his heart is barely into it. Kissing him again, because Arthur hardly denies himself of his desires these days, Arthur makes to remove himself, when a leg hooks around his waist. He raises his brow, and Merlin blushes.
“Just a little longer. It feels good,” he explains, sheepish. He clenches down demonstratively, and Arthur hisses. It feels good, on the side of too much.
“Royalty is turning you indulgent and lazy,” Arthur remarks even as he lowers himself to rest beside Merlin.
Grinning impishly, Merlin resettles the blanket over their shoulders with a blink of his golden eyes. “It is as you said; winter is best spent in bed.” Arthur rolls his eyes, then draws his consort closer anyway. They have to share body heat, after all.
“What of keeping the kingdom running, mm?” Arthur questions idly. He amuses himself with tracing his gaze over the strong set of Merlin’s jaw and the softness of his eyes as Merlin prattles his heart out.
These days, when they can sequester themselves in the comforts of their big bed and see nary a soul for the foreseeable future, are few and far in between. It is why Arthur has grown to appreciate winter with its hostile cold and slow days, for when else in the year could he devote his days to his greatest ambition—becoming one with his other half?
With a squeeze to Merlin’s hip, Arthur leans in to mouth at his collarbone mindlessly. “Again?” Merlin asks, but the quiver in his voice is not of fear.
Maybe this time, Arthur could go deeper, be stuck in Merlin for good. Conjoined lovers, he muses, best get to it then.