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Chapter Text

 “You chucked over Juilliard for this?” Arthur glances at the crumpled leaflet laid before him on the polished desk. He flicks it away with a disdainful finger, as if it is an unsavoury bit of rubbish rather than an advertisement for a gig. The two, in his eyes, are very similar. Music really isn’t his forte. It all sounds pretty much like senseless noise to him, from Tchaikovsky straight down to Beyoncé. But even he can dance to Beyoncé, so perhaps it isn’t all useless cacophony. He likes a steady beat to run against in the mornings. But this band, Albion Revisited, doesn’t look like it’ll provide the requisite metronomic precision required to get his blood moving in the pre-dawn light.  More like another derivative Ren-Faire reject, like so many so-called bands in this ridiculous hamlet. Anachronistic to the hilt.

Morgana slams a hand far more elegant than indicated by her choice in chipped black nail varnish over the bit of brightly coloured detritus, shoving it back toward her half-brother with a snarl of impatience she doesn’t bother concealing. “This is my band, Arthur, you twat, and it just happens to be my life, so a little bit more respect from you is in in order. After all, I’m doing you a massive favour, here. Or attempting to, if you’d just remove your giant, over-inflated head from your posterior long enough to realize it.”

Arthur raises an eyebrow. “A favour? How is you barging in here in the middle of a conference-call demanding I allow you and your group of degenerate flophouse flatmates to play in my club meant to be a favour to me? Explain this to me. Use words I might actually understand.”

Morgana bares her teeth in a an oddly captivating grimace meant to be a smile, somewhere down deep, and leans over the desk, hands planted squarely on the painstakingly varnished surface. Bloody hell. Arthur will have to get a lacky in as soon as she leaves with a bottle of Pledge and a soft rag. He pretends to ignore her complete lack of physical boundaries, examining his fresh [and tasteful] manicure in the hazy sunlight that washes over his workspace like a corona of personal power. He had his desk placed very carefully.

“Then I’ll speak very. Slowly. Shall I?” She takes a deep breath. “Your club? Rubbish. Boring. My band? Exciting. Has more buzz than you’ll know what to do with. This gig? Cancelled, due to closure of venue. Your club? Empty every Saturday night. Why? Because my band is playing elsewhere. Do you see where I’m going with this, half-brother?”

Arthur sighs. “The Rising Sun isn’t that sort of club. It’s not a venue, Morgana. We don’t do live music.”

“And you’re failing miserably. See the connection?”

Arthur simply smiles.

"This is Glastonbury, Arthur.” Morgana continues, standing up straight, folding her arms petulantly across her exposed cleavage. She really has started dressing down. She used to be a Chanel girl. Now she looks as though her signature pieces have been bought in a furtive, gritty transaction involving a debit card across a Topshop sales counter. The accountant indicated she hasn’t used her Platinum Card in months, even though it has no limit. Even though the money is hers to spend. Her pride has always been her downfall. Or her greatest asset. Arthur can never quite decide.

He sighs. “Your point being? Spit it out, Morgana. I don’t have all afternoon.”

She laughs, dimpling, the timbre of her voice like cut-crystal even when serving up a helping of her signature derision. “My point, dear near-sibling, is that the summer crowds mob this tiny hamlet, not for Muzak paired with exorbitantly-priced booze, as you seem to think. They come here for the spirit of Glastonbury, for the sound. They come here for the music, you imbecile, or have you never heard of Festival Season?”

Arthur stares. “This isn’t Festival Season.”

“No,” Morgana agrees. “Not yet. But it will be, in three months time. And if my band doesn’t have a respectable slot on the John Peel Stage at the very least, you are going to be one very sorry little executive. This gig?” Morgana stabs a tapered fingernail at the  steadily declining scrap of bright yellow paper. “This gig is a strategic one for Albion Revisited. Some very high-profile label scouts are going to be there. Except there is no there. And don’t think I am not aware of the reasons for that, and who is  and who is not responsible. And when I say who is responsible, Arthur Pendragon, I mean you! So you are going to make it up not only to me, but to my entire fucking genius band! Is that clear?”

Arthur does his best to remain impassive. He sighs, stretching nonchalantly in his chair, enjoying the pop and crackle of his joints. “How, exactly, did you know about my involvement in the closing of The Silver Arrow? Just out of professional curiosity. I kept that little victory rather hush-hush, even for me.”

“It doesn’t matter how I know,” Morgana curls her pretty upper lip. “Suffice it to say, I made it my business to know. Consequently, I know that you not only fucked the owner of The Silver Arrow, who happens to be a contact of mine, but you caused him to fuck me. Hard. And I don’t enjoy non-consensual sex, Arthur. Therefore, you owe me. Big. And as a way of repayment, this major favour I’m doing you and your crummy little wine-bar doesn’t even come close. I’ll be milking this for months, Arthur. And you know how I like to drain something right down to the bone.”

 Arthur swallows. A bead of sweat springs out on the small of his back. Morgana has that predatory expression on her face that he knows only too well. What’s more, he respects it. Might even fear it a little bit. It tells him that there is no way he is getting out of this one, so he might as well lie back and think of England.

Morgana narrows her eyes into jewelled slits. She knows she has him just where she wants him. She can smell the stink of surrender on him as surely as a rabid dog smells fear.

“Right,” he says, rapidly recovering his poise. “Fine. I’ve thought about it, and you can have your precious little gig. But this is the only time, Morgana. I don’t want you and your scruffy little mates hanging about the place after Saturday night. This is a one night thing. Agreed?”

Morgana smiles, smug and satisfied as a cat licking feathers from her claws. “I’ll remember you said that, Arthur. Every single word. Mind you do the same.”

Arthur doesn’t watch her saunter out the door. He knows her victory-sashay only too well. It used to drive his adolescent mates completely mad, back in the day. Drove him a bit mad, too, before he discovered they were actually related. Her power over that part of him loves to reassert itself at the most inopportune moments.

“Pull yourself together, Pendragon,” he mutters, gritting his teeth. “She’s your fucking sister, for Christ’s sake. Or it least, the less-detestable half of her is.”

Goddamn Morgana. She isn’t satisfied til she leaves men trembling and inappropriately hard behind her in every room she exits. Nothing much has changed there. Arthur shifts uncomfortably in his chair. Waiting for the blood to rush back to his brain. So he can think about how royally whipped he is. Not to mention how catastrophically fucked.

Arthur has no intention on actually going to the gig. He simply wants to make certain that Morgana hasn’t vindictively trashed the place, or made plans to torch it after her bloody band exits stage left.

He would never admit it to anyone, least of all Morgana, but he feels the anxious overprotectiveness of a first-time parent towards his club. The Rising Sun is his own brainchild, the sole product of his independance. It has nothing to do with Camelot Industries, with his father’s future legacy. It’s something of his own, that he bought with his own cautiously hoarded earnings. Money his father didn’t throw at him the way he throws money at both of his children, all the while maintaining an elaborate expression of consummate, constipated disappointment. It was that particular display of facial-acrobatics that finally drove Morgana out of the mansion and straight across the Pond, but even Juilliard wasn’t far enough. Uthur approved of Juilliard. He was proud of the burgeoning talent of the latent violin virtuoso Morgana had become, seemingly overnight. Arthur himself knew that his half-sister had played for years, in secret. That she had payed for her own tutors, thinking Uther would never approve of a career-path so tenuous and frivolous.

It was her trump card.

It fell completely flat.

What she hadn’t banked on was that, however dazzling her cleverness and charm, however promising she was, no matter that she was the elder child by eighteen months, Morgana was a girl. She wasn’t the son, and therefore could never be the crown prince, the Pendragon heir. Therefore, for better or for worse, she had more leeway on her tether. A glittering career on the stage would simply be one more diamond-cluster adorning Uther’s tie-clip.

And so she had tossed it all away, gleefully. She’d taken up with a scruffy band of misfits. A literal one, as it turned out. A life on a very different sort of stage than their father had begun to covet for her, and more importantly, for himself. The Pendragon children were both trapped by their father, in one way or another. And in one way or another, they had each found an outlet.

Morgana has her band.

Arthur has his club.

His own secret, furtive little rebellion that as far as he is aware, Uther knows nothing about. Like Morgana, Arthur wants to two-finger-salute the old man: unlike Morgana, he wants to do it on the sly. He likes the feeling that he's getting away with something. Morgana likes the feeling that she isn’t. They are very different people, in the end, he and his half-sister.

Except now she's changing tactics, trampling all over Arthur’s private refuge with her tatty stripper-boots and her banged-up gig-gear. It isn’t enough to lead her own life. Her own disaster. She has to drag Arthur and his perfectly contained fantasy along with her.  He loves playing proprietor. Now Morgana is about to spoil everything. Everything. Just like she always has from the moment she arrived, a ten-year-old orphan on their doorstep. The fact that she has only ever been a half-orphan, as well as  a half-everything-else--half-friend, half-sister, half-completely-mad--changes nothing. Morgana is the bane of Arthur’s existence. He loves her, of course. Is crazy about her, and always has been. As is anyone who really knows her. Sod it, complete strangers are barmy about Morgana Pendragon in a requisitely terrified sort of way. But it doesn’t change the fact that Arthur would seriously consider strangling the life out of her if he thought he had any chance of getting away with it.

He had been banking on the fact that this new life of hers very well might save him the trouble. But now she has her noose around his neck as well. Arthur has to give the crazy bitch credit: he hadn’t anticipated that. He can feel the slipknot tightening as he parks his Jag, tossing the keys to his personal valet who’d been huddling against the brickwork, waiting in case Arthur deigned to show up. It's what he's paid to do. Arthur likes to pay people to do things. It's so much tidier than this business of favours given, favours owed. He doesn’t like red in his ledger. Morgana is a crimson tide soaking its pages. Messy. Impermeable. Acid-proof. He will never completely scrub her off. Deep down--very deep--he knows he doesn't want to. Morgana is a mess he loves to tidy up, and the task is never finished. It will finish only with her life or his.

Rounding the corner to the front entrance to The Rising Sun, Arthur is confronted by a sight he’s never seen before: a queue--more of a mob, really, truth be told, taking up the entire sidewalk beneath the subtle black awning depicting a stylized sun with emblazoned rays of light. Percival, the tallest man Arthur has ever seen, is arguing with several members of the crowd as Arthur elbows his way through to the velvet rope that has clearly been vandalized. Several raised voices overtake Perc’s unperturbed baritone. He stands with arms crossed implacably over his impressive pectorals, his massive biceps displayed to full effect. Arthur shoves down the tendril of envy that rises like a vindictive eel from the murky depths of his ego.

“What’s going on?” he asks the monolithic bouncer.

“Nothin’, boss. Just telling this lot it’s no use bribing or threatening me, they’re not getting in tonight.”

Arthur frowns, scanning the hopeful faces. “Why not? Are they barred, or something? They can’t all be barred--there’re several hundred people out here.”

“Nope. They ain’t barred.”

Arthur sighs impatiently. “Well, what, then?” he leans close. Percival leans down to accommodate the rather outrageous height difference. “We can’t exactly afford to be turning customers away, Perc. There’s a hell of a lot of red in my ledger. I want to know there’s a bloody good reason for this.”

“Club’s full,” Percival explains.

“What do you mean, full?”

He shrugs his massive shoulders. “Jam-packed to the bloody rafters, is what I’m gettin’ at, boss. I shove another body in there what ain’t yours, the fire brigade’ll be on our arses in a matter of minutes. Your call, of course. Just don’t blame me for the massive fine.”

Arthur stares. “You’re having me on.”

“Nope.”

“We have a two-thousand body capacity.”

“Yep.”

“We’ve never pulled in more than five hundred people at once.”

“I know.”

“The club’s practically empty most nights.”

“Not tonight, boss.”

“I don’t see why tonight should be any different,” Arthur grouses. “Just because we’ve got some ridiculous band on.” He turns to scan the disgruntled crowd, denied entrance to a drinking hole he doubts very much they’d be caught dead in normally, judging from the state of their chosen attire, which is anything but normal. They range in style from your average High Street hipster to more than a few gutter punks and a fair smattering of granola, Earth-Goddess types sporting white-kid dreadlocks and Birkenstocks.  Arthur is nearly blinded by the reflection of several dozen pairs of thick-framed Buddy Holly specs.

Christ, he thinks. I’m the fall guy in an ironic music video I didn’t fucking agree to star in.

“Hey dude,” one of the crunchy granola types says in an American drawl slow as molasses, clapping Arthur on the arm. “There’s gotta be room for a few more. I’ve been dyin’ to catch this band, and we were told there’d be spare tickets at the door. What the fuck, man?”

“That was the old venue,” Percival explains patiently in a voice so saturated with boredom that Arthur is certain he’s repeating himself for the umpteenth time. “The Rising Sun’s smaller.”

“The Rising Sun’s more exclusive,” Arthur corrects him, shrugging the guy’s sweaty hand from his arm. “Next time, make sure to purchase your tickets well ahead of time to avoid disappointment.”

He lifts his hands and raises his voice over the dull roar of the rest of the mob. “I’m sorry to have to turn you away, people, but the club is packed, the tickets have all been sold. I’m going to need you to clear the area immediately, as there is no loitering outside of the venue. You’re violating fire codes as we speak, and I don’t want any of you fine folks to be hurt or get yourself into trouble with the police. Come back tomorrow night, mojitos are two-for-one, and no cover charge for the ladies.”

“What’s the band tomorrow?” one of the hipsters wearing a pair of jeans so skinny he casts no shadow on the pavement asks in a tone of voice that expresses very little interest in Arthur’s reply.

“There is no band tomorrow,” he explains, irritation creeping into his voice. “Or at any other time. This is a one night thing.”

The house music drowns out the groans and jeers as Arthur steps over the mangled velvet rope and through the front doors of his club. He puts on his most dazzling smile like a swift change in costume as he nods to the bartender and tries to ignore the sinking in his stomach and the gloating laughter in Morgana’s voice that he can hear already, echoing off of the back of his skull.  Now who’s begging whom for a favour, near-brother dear? she cackles.

No one, he tells himself. Not on her life or mine.

The Rising Sun only ever looks this way in Arthur’s dreams. Packed to full capacity with people talking and laughing excitedly, the house music blaring just loudly enough to make everyone lean closer to one another, spilling drinks and buying more because the talk is making them so damned thirsty they require more and more lubrication. People so thick on the  extremely costly floating dancefloor that hasn’t so much as been scuffed by an erant Jimmy Choo that they can barely swivel their hips let alone dance with any alacrity. Granted, it’s extremely unlikely than anyone in this particular demographic can afford a pair of Jimmy Choos, even if they had the sartorial good taste to want them. But if Arthur squints his eyes and allows the strobing lights to hit his corneas just right, he can imagine that all his dreams for the place have come true. That his club, against all odds, has made it. That it hadn’t taken Morgana’s grotty little tribe to fill a place that hasn’t seen a crowd this keen since the excesses of the 1980s, a decade into which Arthur had only barely been born.

He muscles his way through the crowd and up to the bar where he quickly catches the eye of Elena, the charming but klutzy barmaid who  manages to spill every customer’s drink on their shirt-sleeves, but who Arthur can’t bear to fire. He has a soft spot for overgrown puppies, and Elena’s  exactly that--a sweet mongrel pup in human form, down to the huge paws and loving disposition. Thank Christ she mixes a mean Snakebite and Black. It keeps the kids from the business college coming back night after night, their student loan money burning a hole in their Dockers.

Tearing herself away from a more-demanding-than-usual clientele, Elena sloshes a couple fingers of whiskey into a highball glass and shoves it Arthur’s way. He downs it in one and raises his finger for another. She pours with her usual ineptitude, sloppily doubling the last dosage. Arthur mouths a tolerant thank you and allows her to get back to the clamouring customers waving impatient ten-pound notes and demanding noxious pints of cider and lager.  The fact that they’ll pull in any decent overhead tonight is down completely to sheer numbers. Not that Arthur can complain. Five thousand pints beats a hundred high-end cocktails, any way one looks at it.

He sucks back half of his drink as insurance against the jostling crowd, cradling what remains in his glass against his chest as he elbows his way toward the stage. It’s crawling with roadie-types who on closer inspection turn out to be members of the band, a fact that isn’t lost on the more rabid members of their fan-base, who lean against the stage with expressions bordering on the obsessive. Some of them even occasionally call out to various members of the band by name. Arthur stops to watch, fascinated despite himself.

“Gwaaaaaaine!” one extremely inebriated girl shrieks. “I want to have your fuckin’ baaaaabyyyyyy!”

An excessively good-looking bloke pops his head up from behind the half-assembled drumkit, grinning as he tosses back an elaborate mane of rich chestnut waves. He looks like an Ambercrombie model in his simple black  beater and low-slung jeans, well-formed muscles rippling as he fiddles suggestively with the tuning rod on his snare. “Cheers, darlin’,” he replies in a thick Dublin accent, “But I’m really not much of a family man, know what I’m sayin’?”

Arthur pushes through the door to the backstage area as the drunken girl begins describing loudly and in graphic detail an alternate service she would be more than happy to render. The Irishman seems much more interested in her second suggestion, though by the time the gig is over, Arthur predicts she’ll need scraping off the dancefloor in no fit condition for any follow-through. He’ll have to have a word with one of the bouncers to keep an eye on her. He doesn’t know how rowdy the crowd is likely to get. It’s hard to get a read on their demographic, which is varied enough to become very unpredictable. He doesn’t want anyone getting hurt, too drunk to stumble out of the way of a crushing surge of fist-pumpers and slam-dancers. There are Festival casualties every year ending up in the A&E, or so he’s always read in the papers in the days following the annual tear-down. He has to be ready for anything, especially if it might turn litigious. Litigation causes the sort of unwanted attention he is desperate to avert. He doesn’t need Uther catching wind of his little enterprise.

Which is another reason he isn’t supposed to be here tonight.

He should really finish his drink and duck out the alleyway exit. He could call a taxi and pick up his car the next morning. Though Elena’s creative measuring practices make it very hard to keep track, Arthur estimates that he’s had three drinks at the very least. He’s feeling it a little bit, which is why he actually smiles when he catches sight of Morgana applying eyeliner in the cracked mirror at the dressing table in the doorless room where she’d clearly been getting ready for the show.

“These dressing rooms leave much to be desired, arsehole,” she informs him testily.

“That’s because this is a club, Morgana, not a venue. There isn’t meant to be any dressing going on back here. It’s just spare storage.”

“It’s a bloody bollocks storage area, too,” she grouses, flinging out a hand to gesture dramatically at the jumble of equipment cases and spare gear cluttering up what remains of the space.

Arthur shrugs, leaning his head back to rest against the doorframe. “You don’t like it, you know what to do.”

She rolls her eyes, leaning in to apply a streak of silver along each eyelid, smudging it as she goes until she looks like someone’s blackened both of her eyes for her, but in a sexy, heroin-chic sort of way.  Her mouth is a cruel red pout, like a bitten cherry.  She narrows her gimlet eyes at Arthur in the mirror and winks saucily at him when she catches him staring.

“You really are the limit, you know that, Morgana?” he says, and tosses back the remainder of his drink.

He is nearly bowled over the next moment by a much more conservatively dressed woman who begins unceremoniously whipping off her dress and exchanging it for another one similar in cut but much more spangly. Arthur catches an eyeful of smooth cafe-au-lait coloured midriff and a delightful jiggle of cleavage in a black push-up bra before a headful of glorious black ringlets pops up through the neck-hole.

“I know, I know, I know! Sorry! I’m sorry!” she exclaims, wrinkling her nose as she scurries over to join Morgana at the mirror. “I couldn’t get the last two people out the door tonight, and I was late locking up!”

Morgana raises an imperious eyebrow. “Are you a mousy librarian or a rock-goddess, Gwen?” she demands coldly, handing over the eyeliner. “It’s time to decide.”

“I’m a mousy librarian when it’s time to pay the electric,” Gwen replies practicably. “A rock-goddess? Well, never, really. That’s your department.”

Morgana snatches the stick of kohl impatiently away,  tilting the other girl’s face more conveniently toward the unflattering overhead light. She executes a few terrifyingly vigorous slashes at her band-mate’s large whiskey-coloured eyes. “There. Look. Now who’s a rock-goddess?”

Gwen blinks several times, wiping away a few reflexive tears and then peers into the mirror. “Well, actually, still you, I’m afraid. But that’s much more convincing, isn’t it?”

Morgana sighs, plunging her remorselessly strong, slender fingers into the mass of curls and gives them a good mussing. “There. Now put on some lippy for fuck’s sake, we go on in ten.”

Arthur watches in a sort of intensely dreamy silence as the girls primp and gossip. Memories are being triggered deep inside of him, rising like long-drowned corpses. Pale limbs drift across the surface-tension of his mind. Now, Arthur, love--mind you don’t smear Mummy’s lipstick, she goes on in ten minutes. A waft of delicious perfume, the scent of face-powder and licorice liqueur. The damp pulse of a kiss on his temple leaving behind a sugar-frosted moue of colour. The jangle of silver bangles sliding against gold. Goodnight, poppet. Nanny will take you home now. Mummy will be there when you wake to tell you all about it...

Arthur shakes his head, stumbling back against the wall as several more people crowd into the makeshift dressing room. They take no notice of him whatsoever as his hands shake violently and his heart hammers like a kick-drum in his chest. He drops his glass with a dull thunk on the stained carpet and sucks in a few calming breaths. He squeezes his eyes shut and just focuses on their contextless conversation, willing it to anchor him back to the present like a thumb-tack pressed through the resistant thorax of a recently chloroformed specimen.

“Lance, that shirt is minging,” Morgana laughs, coughing theatrically, no doubt waving an elegant hand in front of her delicate patrician nose. “Unless you’ve a closet full of the same thing, you’ve worn it to the last three gigs at least. Don’t you ever change clothes?”

The faceless man inhales deeply. “Phew, yeah, I know. I’m sorry! I’m a bit behind on laundry.”

“Don’t look at me,” a sultry voice Arthur recognizes as belonging to Morgana’s other half-sibling [on her mother’s side, no relation to Arthur, thank Christ] Morgause, with whom she has an even more inappropriate relationship that the one she conducts with Arthur. “I don’t do laundry. I just buy new every week.”

“Which is fortunate for me,” Gwen quips jovially, “Because I do do laundry, and I can’t afford new clothes, so everything I have started out life as one of your cast-offs.”

“You can’t tell,” Morgause rasps admiringly as Arthur opens his eyes in time to see her fondling the hemline of Gwen’s dress. “This looks like a runway original.”

“It’s a Gwen original,” Lancelot purrs soppily as Gwen  blushes, turning away to fiddle with her sleeve. “This hem is a bit wonky,” she demures apologetically, “But discoball-light is very forgiving.”

“And I always told Arthur the discoball was too cheesy, even for a club belonging to him, the Tasteless Wonder,” Morgan says dryly. “I stand corrected--apparently even unforgivable cheese has its uses. And wouldn’t The Tasteless Wonder have been a far more appropriate name for this pretentious shite-hole?”

Everyone has a laugh at Arthur’s expense. No one takes any notice of him at all. For the first time in his life, he finds he is grateful for the moment of invisibility, derision aside. He doesn’t have the presence of mind to wrestle up even a modicum of offended pride. The whiskey and the  nostalgia are too busy holding him under.

“Anyone seen Himself?” Morgana asks. “He might be interested to know that we go on in five.”

“He’ll be here,” a now-familiar Irish brogue asserts as Gwaine struts into the room. Arthur’s momentary anonymity melts away as the brunette looks him up and down appraisingly. He smirks lasciviously. “Wow, for me? You shouldn’t have, gang. Flowers would’ve been fine--you’ve really outdone yerselves this year. I’m impressed.”

“Don’t be daft, Gwaine,” Morgana says sourly. “No one cares about your stupid birthday. This is just my evil half-brother, Arthur. You know, the one for whom we’re doing the favour by drumming up some business for this sad excuse of a venue.”

“I told you, Morgana,” Arthur grits out, coming back to life. “This isn’t a venue.”

“Well, sure, t’is tonight, handsome,” Gwaine says, clapping him on the back. “And thanks again, mate. We really owe ye one. We’d’ve been royally fecked if you hadn’t come through like this. It’s a bad time of year to be losing a gig, y'know? Festival season comin’ up, and what have ye.”

Arthur yelps as the man’s wandering hand grips him by the arse and gives it an appreciative squeeze. Morgana punches him soundly on the arm, and Gwaine emits his own yelp, backing away with his hands raised placatingly. “Sorry, Christ! I thought you said he was your brother. Not up for grabs, I’m guessin’?” His face falls. “So you sorry lot of arseholes really did forget me birthday?”

“Shut up about your stupid birthday!” Morgana growls.  “No one gives a fuck!”

Gwaine struts sulkily over to the mirror, where he sucks in his cheeks and does something complicated with a brush that makes his features look even more streamlined and sculpted.

“Show me how you do that,” Gwen says, fascinated.

“Ye don’t need it, doll,” Gwaine proclaims, stroking her cheek. “Look at ye. Ye’re perfect, so ye are. Like a wee queen.”

Lance clears his throat, frowning, and Gwen blushes all the more, the only woman Arthur has ever seen look demure whilst gazing at herself in the mirror and sucking in her cheeks. The sort of girl who has no idea how gorgeous she is, especially not when standing flanked on either side by Morgana and Morgause. Arthur, for one, thinks she outshines them both in her lovely, less showy way. Like a buttercup among hothouse roses. She makes the haughty half-sisters look overblown. Spoiled by the way they’ve taken beauty too far in the wrong direction. Arthur smiles at her, considering whether he should ask Morgana for her number, despite the way Lance is hovering around her like an anxious stag trying to herd a doe with his less-impressive-than-he-hopes pair of antlers.

Arthur stands up straight, tightening his abs and squaring his shoulders. When he glances at the mirror to gauge the effect and to check out the state of his hair, he freezes.

A pair of blue eyes, unfathomable as the hearts of distant galaxies, pin his in place. The rest of the face is an angular blur: Arthur can’t seem to focus on anything but the startling shade of the irises. A dark shock of hair the style of which he doesn’t even notice is the only other feature that registers. He tries to blink, attempts to unglue his eyes from their resting point, but he is paralyzed, yet again, by an overwhelming sense, not of nostalgia this time--but something more. Something deeper. The most intense deja vu he has ever experienced in his life. For a moment, feels as if his entirely life leading up to this moment has been nothing but a slightly tedious dream. An artfully crafted distraction.

“I could take you apart,” Arthur says without thinking, without knowing what he is saying. He flushes furiously, but no one hears him, thank Christ. Except for the young man in the mirror, whose eyes widen slightly before relaxing again into guarded indifference. It hurts Arthur, in some obscure way. It hurts him to be so summarily dismissed by this complete stranger. His heart squeezes, constricting painfully. He’s never felt so wrong-footed.

“There you are, you bastard,” Morgana screeches, clearly relieved,  with obvious though grudging fondness. It’s a tone of voice she’s never once used when speaking to Arthur. It’s very nearly tender, which is deeply, deeply unnerving. As if to underscore the strangeness of her response to the dark-haired enigma, Morgana flings herself into his arms, clearly relieved, and lays a giant, wet kiss on his cheek. He pats her tolerantly on the back before pushing her gently but firmly away.

Arthur feels a hot, dry lightning strike of emotion lick through him. He can’t quite identify it, and never, ever wants to. It makes him feel slightly nauseated, though that may well be the Jameson’s talking. This could all be the Jameson’s talking. Whiskey always makes him maudlin. It really shouldn’t be his drink of choice. He makes a mental note to switch over to cognac, vodka, sweet bloody vermouth--anything but whiskey. It chews on his stomach with tiny, angry teeth.

Arthur wrestles his gaze away from Morgana’s appalling display of affection. He rears back, stumbling past the stranger without accidentally grazing or looking directly at him, though he is left with an impression of height, of wiry strength and preternatural intensity. And an intrinsic awareness that seems to emanate from the lanky man like radio-waves. No one else notices Arthur leave. He shouldn’t even have been there. He’d meant to go home ages ago. He should have left when he still could.

He knows now that he can’t go yet. Somehow, everything has changed. Shifted in some frightening way he couldn’t have anticipated and can’t deconstruct.

Arthur has the sudden, overwhelming urge to get completely, ruinously, unforgivably, unapologetically shit-faced. He needs something--anything--that will rebury the ghosts rising up in him tonight. He feels their fingers on the back of his neck. It’s both soothing and completely fucking terrifying. I could take you apart with one blow. One blow...

Arthur leans against the nearest wall. He can’t stop shaking. He holds his hand up to the light and it trembles like a reed.

I could take you apart with less than that.

Chapter Text

The stage is Merlin’s kingdom, his own private Camelot.  The sea of faces in the crowd are beacons in the shadowy club, on and off and on again in the strobing light. He can only see them for a few seconds at a time. The moments of darkness seem to last forever. He is alone, suspended in deep shadow, and then he isn’t. Alone, and then surrounded by a thousand faces looking up at him. Expectantly. With naked longing. With complicated desires that alternately terrify and repulse him. They want to climb inside of him and wear him like a suit of armour. They want to pull him deep inside of themselves and never let him go. There is a hunger in a crowd like this that can never be satiated. He will never be enough to go round. Their mouths fall open and his name spills out. They sing along before his  song has even begun.  They never sing properly in time with the rhythm. Their voices are sloppy, drunken. Adoring and ravenous. A pack of wolves for the tearing feast.

Merlin hooks a threadbare guitar strap over his head, settles the instrument against his pelvis. He can feel it humming without having to strike a single chord. It licks a deep vibration straight into his groin that makes him half-hard. It purrs like a kitten, but he will make it roar like a dragon. Holding it in his arms, he will breathe fire once more.

On his subtle cue, the band launches into the first song of the set. He sings  without tossing a word or two to the crowd. He doesn’t do banter. Everyone knows this. He sings but never speaks a word. Every word he wails stands in for a thousand spoken platitudes. Hello, Glastonbury! It’s good to be here tonight. You’re a good-looking crowd. I want to fuck each and every one of you with the tender violence you deserve. Hello, Glastonbury. Eat my heart. Suck the heat from my lungs. Lick the fire from my lips and be burned.  

Arthur presses his way through the crowd, a slick of sweat blooming over him. He slides against the bare skin of other people’s exposed arms and shoulders. The crowd smells fucking brilliant. An animal aroma of anticipation underpinning the heady bouquet of personal care products almost identical to the afterfug of sex. Some people smell metallic, like overloaded circuitry. Others smell like ripe fruit split open and running with sticky juice. Arthur has to restrain himself from reaching out to stroke the napes of stranger’s necks. He wants to nuzzle the spaces behind their ears. He longs to taste the dampness gathering at the bases of their skulls. He’s never experienced anything like this before: the complete and total passion overcoming his entire senses for a crowd of strangers all gathered for one reason, with one hysterical purpose. Arthur finally understands the draw of an American tent revival. This right here is a religion is as old as they come. As old as the stones standing, listing, leaning all across this land. This is the Old Religion reborn.

And yet. Arthur doesn’t like music.

He dreads the moment it will begin, and all of these complex sensations are sent spinning away from him, destroyed in the aftershock of heavy bassline and radio-friendly chorus. Or worse, nonsensical growling and spasmic riffs too obscure for him to follow.

The band saunters onto the stage just as Arthur finally manages to wrangle a spot for himself on the right-hand side of the half-octagon platform that hasn’t been used for anything much since he’d taken over the place. It’s nothing but an empty void of darkness on any other night. Now it’s been artfully lit, machine-generated smoke drifting hazily across the scruffy boards, unfurling like a moody scarf to tendril about the mic-stands and ankles of the band members. The crowd roars in approval as Morgana and her cohorts take their places, all of them grinning and swaggering about, adjusting tuning pegs and arranging musical whatsits Arthur can no more accurately identify than he can the chambers of the human heart on a biological diagram.

The only one who remains still, unsmiling with his eyes averted, is the lead singer, the lanky figure with the uncanny eyes who’d sent Arthur stumbling from the back room like a frightened little girl. He looms over Arthur now, backlit, but still an integral part of the ambient darkness surrounding him. Arthur has a perfect vantage point. He’s within spitting distance of the bloke’s tatty shoes as he taps the levers on his pedals, fiddling minutely with their placement until they are just right. Arthur can even see the flexing of his toes in the threadbare canvas, a pair of All Stars that’ve long since seen better days. The singer is dressed in black from head to toe, the paleness of his complexion glowing like the flesh of a bioluminescent organism. Arthur does remember some things from biology class after all. Mostly that there are beings inhabiting the deep recesses of the earth that aren't like any other. Bright creatures that die in the light, taking their unknowable hearts with them.

Arthur’s own, more commonplace heart hammers out a faulty rhythm as his eyes travel up the length of the spindly body, gawping his fill whilst hiding behind one of the massive monitors about to blow out his eardrums. Arthur can feel the tension build, an unbearable pressure like the onset of a particularly explosive orgasm as the band gears up to play. The crowd stands surging on its toes, pressing Arthur painfully into the ledge of the stage. The anticipation is so potent, so tactile, Arthur feels it like something physically present, like the complex wiring of a bomb that won’t be diffused in time to save any of them.

Morgana prances into view, her priceless Strad pressed beneath the wicked angle of her jaw. She grins fiercely as she draws a searing melody from the strings, something haunting and enchanting, vaguely Celtic but without the tweeness inherent in so much of that style of music. Her pale, thin arms ripple like twisted ropes as she dirties the purity of the sound, grinding down with her bow, her black hair flying like a pennant. She always manages to look like she carts around an invisible wind-machine with her wherever she goes, like a supermodel on permanent location. She grimaces with effort, drawing her thick, dark brows together as if the music is physically painful to produce. She’s fucking gorgeous. Arthur is overcome with a hot spasm of love. This is what she was meant for. Not for stuffy gala evenings and chamber music ensembles, perfectly coiffed and bedazzled with diamonds. Morgana Pendragon is no one’s performing pet poodle. Nor is she a thoroughbred. A wild Dartmoor mare, more like. Chomping on gorse and shrieking out her displeasure on some moorland somewhere. A fire in the heart of England.

It’s not just Morgana, though. The entire band is electric.

The delicate and earnest Gwen leaning into her keyboard, her hips gyrating in a surprisingly sexual way as she bites the plushness of her lower lip, chewing her lipstick away, her skin already shining with a glaze of sweat. Arthur hadn’t realized keyboardists can play like this. Or that a seemingly demure librarian can kick up her skirt so high her naughty black knickers display themselves to such maddening effect. Her impressive bosom strains against the respectable bodice of her frock, the spangly material glittering like spilled water. The shock of soft black curls his sister had so expertly manhandled sways and bobs in the light, a  halo like the corona of a dark marigold come undone. Her deep loveliness makes Arthur ache. He doesn’t know if he wants to shag her, or to reverently kiss her hand and kneel at her feet.

Morgause, Morgana’s sultry, terrifying older half-sister and god-only-knows-what-else, stands with her strong thighs pulsing in her short leather skirt and gunslinger boots, feet planted wide and her bass slung low against her pelvis. She flings her rippling blond hair back and forth, staring down into the crowd with glimmering eyes limned liberally in black eyeliner and shimmering gold shadow, a perfect counterpart to Morgana’s black and silver bandit’s mask. She catches Arthur’s eye, and smiles, a slow, wicked, appraising grin that would terrify him if he wasn’t so busy falling under her thrall. Half of his terror of her has its roots in desire. Secretly, he knows this. The other half, well. He doesn’t think about the other half.  

Arthur can barely see Gwaine behind the towering modern sculpture of his drum-kit beyond the occasional dazzle of his smile and flip of hair complimenting the flying sticks as he attacks the skins with tireless energy and precision. Even Arthur, a musical idiot, can hear that the man’s rhythm is tight. He keeps mistaking the throb of the kick-drum for his own thundering pulse. He scans the crowd for the drummer’s baby-mama-hopeful and spies her draped bonelessly across the stage, arms outstretched, a longing amplified by her rampant inebriation practically dripping off of her.

Lance, on rhythm guitar, is quietly controlled, his face serene enough to seem nearly vacant, like a Zen practitioner perched atop a mountain peak. He is a beautiful, animate statue. Arthur has no more idea what goes on behind the deep brown eyes than he has any clue what a hound dreams about, twitching on a rug in front of a roaring fire. He and Lance are different breeds altogether. They’ve never spoken more than a few words since the guitarist and Morgana became inseparable, along with the rest. He barely knows any of them past recognising their faces and placing their names after a moment of moderate effort. Morgana has left him behind for an unknown world. Which is what she has always wanted. Tonight is the first time in years they’ve met on common ground. And it isn’t as uncomfortable as Arthur thought it would be. It’s much, much stranger, and more terrifying. And deeply, unnervingly exciting--as little as he wants to admit it to himself.

The frontman is an entirely unknown commodity. As mysterious as an imaginary friend they all seem to share. Arthur has never laid eyes on him before tonight. He’s heard rumour and innuendo. Little snippets of breathless inference. He doesn’t even know the man’s name.  They all call the man Him and He, with implied capitalization. Like he is a king or a god. Or something infinitely more subtle and powerful.

The singer hasn’t  yet begun to play. He stands silent, head bowed, fingers flexed. Waiting. Waiting. Waiting.

And then he begins.

The opening riff goes straight to Arthur’s cock. All licentious thoughts of Gwen and Morgause fade from his mind as he watches the singer’s long, tensile fingers fly over the neck of his guitar, some ancient rockabilly veteran with a worn, dragonscale-green veneer and elegant f-holes. He strums with a  lazy dexterity that curls an ache through Arthur’s groin, like a crooked finger beckoning, teasing him. He imagines the feel of those hands. The strength and surety with which they might be coaxed to touch him instead. He closes his eyes and swallows. Then opens them again. He doesn’t want to miss a  single moment.  The singer’s plush lips part, the only soft thing about the angular face, moistened by a glistening tongue-tip. Arthur’s stomach does a flip-flop, like he’s poised on the apex of the rollercoaster on Brighton Pier, about to go over. The singer leans in, eyes hooded, shadowed. His mouth falls open and the music unspools from within him. He is its source. He is the place where the music lives. Arthur understands this immediately, instinctively.

His voice is like nothing Arthur has ever heard.

He didn’t know sound could be like this.

It curls around and through him like the sinuous tail of a mythical beast. Its range is staggering, the sound filling Arthur with fire and then quenching it in the next breath.

“I’ve loved you so long

Lonely as a sword

lost in a lake

Haunted as an isle blest

only by ghosts...”

The purity and power of the man’s voice is like molten gold. It sears Arthur clean, washing him in a haze of golden light. A particularly long and sonorous note pierces him to the core: all of his armour falls away. He’s naked. Shaken. He trembles as the crowd presses closer, pulling him into itself. Arthur doesn’t resist. He allows himself to become part of their heaving, sweating oneness. He melts into them. A glorious surrender.

“Touch me with your gauntlet

Touch me with your naked palm...”

    The lyrics are crystal clear, like a reflection in a well. In it, he sees his own face, but different. A face like his but worn, full of care. Eyes that reflect a melee of clouds and summer stars. He sees a flash of silver, an unfurling of crimson cloth. He feels the surge and sway of horseflesh between his thighs. A lake glimmers in the distance, and a man laughs close to his ear. A laugh like a joyous bell. It cuts him even as it brings some deep part of him back to the surface. Arthur knows that voice. Knows it like he knows his own.

"Can’t you see?

I’ve turned to stone

Can’t you see?

You’ve turned me into stone...”

Arthur can’t look away from the man on the stage. His face is contorted as sound too beautiful to bear pours from his mouth. The sheen of sweat could be tears, for all Arthur can tell. Perhaps the singer is weeping from every part of his body, his dark hair like shed feathers plastered across his brow. He rocks his hips, stomps his feet, crowds close to the mic stand, gripping it as if it is the only thing holding him to this world. Arthur feels a strange upswell of jealousy. He should be the thing holding him safe. He should rush the stage and take this man by the hips. He would never float far. Not in Arthur’s arms. The notion is ridiculous, and hot shame wells up. Arthur’s face burns. His whole body burns. He is on fire.  He is engulfed in flame he doesn’t know how to put out.

“Break me down

Break me down

Wizard-tangled

Caught in oak-heart...”

    Long fingers slide over the neck of the guitar. Arthur wishes it was his neck. Tapered fingertips with brutally pared nails press the strings with precision while the smooth crescents of longer fingernails on the the other hand pluck and strum the strings, wringing sounds that shouldn’t be possible from the battered instrument. Arthur feels those fingers on his own pulse, taking its measure, counting its rhythm. He feels the drag and sting of them down his spine. The singer’s eyes are firmly shut. As if he can’t bear to see. As if sound is all the seeing he needs. Rivulets of perspiration glimmer, sliding down the long neck, gathering in the fine-cut hollow between his collarbones. Arthur longs to lick it clean. To make of the singer chalice and libation both.  What is he thinking? What can he possibly be thinking? He’s never used the words chalice or libation in his life. Must be the music. Must be the words. There is something so arcane about them...

“Cut me down

I’m dying here

I’ve been dying for centuries...”

    At that moment, the singer’s eyelids flutter. The eyes open, and he looks down into the crowd. Gazes into Arthur’s face as if it is a  seeing-stone.  A lick of terrified longing startles his spine. He is pinioned in place, eyes as clear and bright as sacred waters piercing the clouded blue of Arthur’s irises. He can’t look away, and yet he feels like he won’t survive this if he doesn’t. Maybe he doesn’t want to. The eyes seem, for a moment, to burn, limned in gold. Arthur is seeing more than is really there, but he doesn’t care.  He’s caught up in something. And he never wants to be let go.

“Touch me with your gauntlet, Love.

Touch me with your naked palm....”

The lyrics are meant for him alone. He feels it. He knows it. His arms are kissed cool by the sliding of forged metal over muscle.  His fingers flex in  hinged gloves. His pulse thunders against a chestplate moulded for his body alone. He feels strong fingers fumbling over him, checking each fastening, tugging on every joint. You’re ready now, Sire. Show them what a King is for. Arthur can’t breathe. His heart has invaded his mouth. His arms fly out. He grips the stage. He hangs on for all he’s worth.  Show them why you fight. For the love of Camelot.

“My time has passed me by

and yours is yet to come...”

    Arthur feels the weight of time, crushing down on him. As if he has been sleeping for centuries and has only now woken. Like a prince in an inverted fairytale roused not with a kiss, but by a song.  The only song he has truly been able to hear, to feel, since his mother sang to him the night she died. He stares up into the man’s face, and neither of them blink, though Arthur’s eyes are burning. He feels water rise in them, washing his vision clean. Leaving them bluer than before.

    The singer’s legs suddenly buckle, and he falls to his knees, crouching in front of Arthur, bringing the mic stand crashing down with him. He’s close enough for Arthur to touch. He doesn’t. He can smell his breath, sweet and herbaceous. Terrifyingly familiar. There is nothing theatrical in this collapse. There is nothing contrived. Arthur’s own knees feel the same weakness. Only the crowd clawing at him in an attempt to get closer to the singer holds him up. He feels like they would eat him alive just to touch the man in front of him. The man he could himself reach towards if it wouldn’t kill them both.

“Break me down.

Break me down...”

The final line is a whisper, but it carries. It cuts clean through.  Arthur can hear nothing else. Nothing but the rush and roar of his own blood.

“Turn me into stone.

Turn me back to stone...”

Arthur doesn’t breathe. He can’t. He might never breathe again. He stares at the face of the felled singer. The man breathes heavily, his body shaking. Every shudder goes through Arthur as well. He feels every little earthquake. Around him the crowd goes apoplectic, swaying and surging, pummeling at Arthur’s body like an insurmountable wave. It pulls him under. He is carried away, dragged into the heart of it. He is boneless. He can’t resist. He lets it happen. He can’t bear another note.  He is broken down.  Armourless. His gauntlets thrown down, palms held naked up to the light. He has been taken apart.

He doesn’t stay to the end. He catches his breath, stopping his ears against the swelling sound. He doesn’t want to hear another word tonight. He readjusts his clothing. Drinks a bottle of water in one go and then another, motioning Elena to queue another. He takes it with him, sweat plastering his hair to his forehead. His ears roar like he’s holding shells against them. He knows it’s the sound of his own blood, but it sounds like the clamour of war. He walks about, pushing through the loiterers holding drinks who would rather talk than listen, and he feels a strange distaste bordering on anger for the way they so casually ignore what’s happening fifty feet in front of them.

When he has his legs back under him, ears still roaring, Arthur makes his way to the merch table. The wall behind it is festooned with t-shirts and hoodies in various shades of grey and a few blue and red along with the traditional black. Albums are spread out along the table next to a hand-lettered pricelist duct-taped to the surface. Bowls filled with buttons and haphazard stacks of stickers and patches round out the range.

The merch kid eyes Arthur from behind a pair of thick black hipster glasses. A small, pretty lad with a chip on his shoulder bigger than he is, his hair a riotous mop of dark curls, eyes ice-shard blue and his complexion as pale as the singer’s he is no doubt trying hard to emulate. His nose is small and aquiline, his  cupid’s bow mouth slightly sour. His clothes are tight and dark, moulded to his underfed frame. A poster of a boy. Something about him rubs Arthur the wrong way. There is a guileless quality to the bright blue of his eyes that makes him seem fragile, but beneath, he is steel. The silly-looking get-up saves him from being something very unsettling indeed. There is flint in his gaze, but it's all bluster. Arthur's stomach returns to its proper place, agreeing with him. He's just a dumb kid wielding a cashbox like a weapon. Nothing more.

Arthur tries not to snort as he averts his gaze, perusing the albums. Three full-lengths, an EP, and several singles, everything available on vinyl as well as CD. Morgana has been busier than she let on--the band is clearly prolific. They’ve only been together three years, as far as Arthur can remember. He doesn’t really pay much attention when she talks about her music. He’s kind of an arse that way. He can’t help it, though, or even really explain why. Morgana knows his reasons better than anyone. He relies on that rather more than he should, but he doesn’t know how to stop. Or if he really even wants to.

“I’ll take one of each,” he tells the kid.

The kid rolls his eyes. “One of each of what, mate?” His accent is strongly Welsh, his voice low and soft. Arthur leans closer to hear.

“Of the albums, the EP, and the singles. On vinyl. And...” Arthur scans the range of clothing. “One of the t-shirts with the Tor. Red. Medium.”

The kid gathers Arthur’s purchases sullenly, tossing them into a pile in front of him. “Eighty quid,” he says.

Arthur looks at him, grinning as he shakes his head. “Try again. I can  read as well as add. Can you?”

The kid sneers, eyeing the wad of bills Arthur unfolds. “You can afford it. The band barely makes enough to break even.”

“Not the point and not my problem.”

The kid huffs a sigh. “Sixty, then.”

“That’s more like it.” Arthur unpeels four twenty pound notes and flicks them in the kid’s direction. “Keep the change, you little shit.”

His expression and tone of voice are equally unimpressed. “Wow. Like. Thanks.”

Arthur laughs, shaking his head as he walks away with his bundle of albums pressed against his chest. He nods at Elena who waves him off cheerily. Percival deals him an ironic salute as he holds open the front door. The sound of the crowd and the  raucous screel of Morgana’s violin follows him out into the night.  One last tendril of glorious vocals curls about him, trying to drag him back, but Arthur presses on into the velvet darkness, breaking the cord but still feeling its tension.  

He walks to his car, shivering in his sweat-soaked shirt. He dumps his cargo on the passenger seat and then leans against the car, tilting his head back to stare up at the sky. His heart still hammers in his chest. It hurts, but in a way he likes. As if he is so alive it might kill him. He peels the damp shirt from his back, replacing it with the t-shirt he bought. It clings to him, warming him immediately. He loves the feel of new cotton, the draping of it over damp skin. He feels like a child again, being wrapped in a towel after swimming at the beach, his mother’s hands rubbing the chill away.

Other hands come back to him now. The hands that fasten the armour. The fingers that buckle the vambraces. Vambrace. How does he even know that word? It’s not like he paid attention to history in school. Not enough for any of it to stick. And yet. There is something about the sight of a suit of armour that has always made the hair on his neck stand up. Not in fright. In recognition. Arthur runs his palm over the stiff silkscreening of the Tor on his shirt, a simple, unmistakable silhouette with the band’s name in subtle lettering along the bottom. In the foreground, he thought he’d noticed a small boat drifting towards the shore, but now that he squints at it by the light of the streetlamp, he can’t see it. Maybe it was never there after all. His mind has been playing tricks on him all night. The boat is one more mind-ghost fading with the music.

Arthur gets in the car, sobered considerably by the several litres of water he just downed. He  might drink a little more when he gets home, and he wants to arrive in one piece. He likes to drink in stages. He starts the engine, revving it a few times before peeling off into the night. The albums slide and scatter on the seat beside him. The first records he’s ever bought in his life.  He plans on drinking the bottle of single malt he’s had stashed away for a sultry night, and listening to every single one. His mother’s record player, salvaged from his father’s attic, will finally get some use. Twenty years of silence is quite long  enough. Tonight is as good a night as any to break it. Tonight is a good night for a lot of things.

Merlin curls up on the sad excuse for a sofa in the backstage area while the rest of the band bounds around, bickering while tearing down the stage and packing all their gear into the battered blue Citroën van they’ve dubbed the TARDIS for the way it miraculously manages to make room for all of their exponentially increasing shit. Along with Mordred and his boxes of merch, not to mention Mordred himself and every member of the actual band--plus a few of Gwaine’s groupies, more often than not. Merlin can’t seem to function after a gig. Performing does things to him he can’t explain. Everyone makes allowances for the way he crawls away to curl up and die somewhere after the final chord has sounded like a death knell.

His throat is raw. It’s as if he’s swallowed a box of razor-blades with a drain-cleaner chaser. Someone will come to find him eventually. Usually it’s Gwaine. He’ll haul Merlin up, his shoulder braced under the pit of Merlin’s arm as he scrabbles half-heartedly for purchase on the cobblestones leading to the getaway car. Gwaine is a good friend. He never takes Merlin personally. He just laughs and tosses his hair and muscles in where he’s needed. Just like they all do.

    Merlin feels like he’s been trampled by a herd of elephants and left for the hyenas to pick over. Fortunately there is a giant man standing guard on the other side of the door. No groupies pawing him over for a skin-souvenir tonight. Merlin has never seen a man that big before. He is both fascinating and terrifying. His name is Percival, like a knight in an old-fashioned novel. Merlin finds that moving in some inexplicable way. He felt the same way when he first met Morgana, and Gwen. Not to mention Lancelot and Gwaine. Morgause and Mordred. They all chalked it down to having been born either in Glastonbury or, in Mordred’s and Merlin’s case, Wales, to a fanciful generation who thought naming them after the great and the good, or at least the notorious, would protect them somehow. From what, Merlin can never quite decide. Perhaps simply from ordinariness, which seems to be a fate worse than any other in this world.

Though really, Merlin was never named by anyone he can remember. He just. Knew what his name was. It was the only thing  he could remember about himself, once. Hunith let him keep it when she adopted him, a touchstone to the past he could no longer access. Or didn’t want to, which was what she thought more likely. She told him it was okay to let go of the past and then gave him a future. He’s living in it. It’s still hard to believe, sometimes. And he isn’t very good at it, most of the time. She has to keep reminding him. If he could speak of such things without falling apart completely, he would tell her about how his true touchstone isn’t his name, but hers. He just has to whisper it to himself to do better than he wants to. Eventually, he hopes it’ll stick. That it’ll stop being so fucking hard.  

    “There you are,  sweetie.” Gwen’s voice is soft and soothing, just the right pitch for smoothing irritated feathers. Merlin is glad it’s her, though he isn’t sure she’ll be up to carrying him out to the van like a swooning maiden. She smiles as she sits down on the arm of the sofa on which Merlin has propped up his head. She passes him a steaming mug. “I asked the barmaid to brew this up. She even had some honey to go with the lemon.”

    Merlin takes a sip, grimacing as the heat stings and then soothes his ragged larynx. “Thanks.” He inhales the comforting scent of his special blend of herbs. Gwen has taken to keeping a bag of it in her purse for emergencies, and always seems to know when one is imminent.

    Gwen smoothes the hair back from his clammy brow, and he lets her. For some reason, he doesn’t stiffen and shy away when Gwen touches him. There is something infinitely safe about her. She is gentle and kind, with a core of fierceness that makes her such an amazing performer.

    “You were great tonight,” Merlin tells her.

    She flushes, ducking her head and smiling. “I don’t need to tell you how you were, of course. The state of your vocal chords’ll do that brilliantly.”

    Merlin lifts the mug. “This’ll fix me right up.”

    “Your Uncle Gaius is a wonder.”

    “Don’t tell him that--I’ve got him right where I want him.”

    Gwen giggles. “My lips are sealed. It went rather well tonight, didn’t it? It felt...good. Not just good. It felt. Electric. Like. Something we didn’t know was missing was finally there. I mean, not that it isn’t usually brilliant, it’s just--”

    “I know what you mean. I felt it, too. I think we all did.” Merlin pats her on the knee as she smiles gratefully. He doesn’t mind touching Gwen either, which tallies the grand total of People Merlin Doesn’t Hate Touching to three: Hunith, Gwen, and Gaius. He tolerates Morgana flinging her arms around him when she gets excited, patting her on the back until she lets go. He allows Gwaine to manhandle him about when he’s legless. He grits his teeth when strangers want to fondle him, trying his best to stay well-back from crowds. They seem to think he owes physical contact to them as well as the eye-contact he withholds. As if the music isn’t enough. As if it isn’t everything. All that he is, spilled out in front of them. No matter how he guts himself, no matter how profound the bloodletting, it will never be enough. They don’t even know what they’re hearing, most of them. Merlin tries not to let his contempt for them show. Which is where the averted gaze comes in.

    It’s worse, really, when he can see he has penetrated someone’s consciousness. Like tonight. That blond in the crowd. The one who was backstage before the show. It was all Merlin could do not to fall at his feet, into his arms. Maybe even into his bed. If that were something he was prepared to do with anyone, ever. He can’t explain what happened. He collapsed. Literally collapsed in front of the man. As if his knees were made to bend before him. It makes no sense. He was just a face in the crowd, one more droplet in the sea of the devoted. And yet, Merlin felt as though he was the only person in the entire throng who could actually hear him. For once he wasn’t singing to himself, or to the the gods, or for the dead, like he usually was.

    “Did you see him?” he asks, without realizing he is going to. “The blond. In the front, the one with the eyes, and the. Shirt.”

    Gwen frowns. “I don’t know who you mean. You and I don’t exactly have the same vantage-point. All I could see was Morgana, really. Lance and Morgause, when they popped into view. I don’t face the crowd.  Was he being an arse, or something? You should’ve told someone.”

    “No. Nothing like that. I just. Wondered who he was. That’s all.”

    Gwen’s smile turns to an expression of mild concern. “Are you alright? It’s not like you to notice. Well. Anyone, really.” She touches her cool fingertips to his brow. “You are bit warm, but who isn’t, after a show?”

    Merlin pulls his head gently away. “I’m fine. Really. Don’t worry about it. I’ll drink my tea, and it’ll be fine.”

    He takes a deep swallow. The astringency of the herbs mingles pleasantly with the mellow sweetness of honey. “This is really good.”

    Gwen smiles fondly. “You say that every time.”

    “Some things are always true and bear repeating. That’s something Gaius says, anyway, so it must be gospel.”

    Gwen’s eyes widen solemnly. “Well, yes, naturally.” She feigns crossing herself, and Merlin chokes on his tea, making a mess down his front. Good job he’s already soaked to the skin. At least the tea makes him smell nicer.

    Gwaine chooses that moment to burst in, arguing with the giant guarding the door. “Look, mate, I’m with the band. Didn’t you see me bangin’ away on me drums? And look at me, right--don’t I look like a rock god to you? What d’ye mean, not really? I’m a feckin’ god among men!  These here are my handmaidens. You can have one of ’em if ye like!”

    Gwen scurries over to defend Gwaine while possibly stopping him making a twat of himself, and one of the rogue groupies stumbles through the door. “Oooh, look, it’s  him! Wow, I can’t believe I’m back here. You were fuckin’ amazin’ tonight!”

    “Um. Yeah. Cheers,” Merlin says. “I’m a bit too wrecked for company, though, if you don’t mind.” He points to his mug. “Damage control. I can’t really talk.”

    A coy look comes over her face. “Who said anythin’ about talkin’? I can take care of you real good without sayin’ a word.”

    “Um. No. Thanks.”

    The girl, her makeup mostly melted sideways off her face, ignores him, initiating a drunken sashay towards the general direction of the sofa, one of her heels broken and giving her a comically lopsided gate. Merlin struggles to a sitting position, every muscle and tendon buckling in revolt. The closer she gets, the more obvious her dark roots and spray-tan become. Her mouth  smiles crazily, but her eyes are wild and sad.

If she touches him, Merlin will lose it.

    Just as she reaches behind her back to unzip her dress, the familiar heat and light flashes in his eyes. Merlin can feel it, though he can’t control it. He manages to do it again, catching her as she crumples, easing her as gently as he can to the carpet.

    Gwaine, having finally won his battle with the stalwart Percival, bangs into the room just as her cheek settles to the floor. She emits a little snore, her leg twitching like a dreaming puppy’s.  Gwaine looks down at her and then up at Merlin, bemused. “You really know how to slay ’em in the aisles, mate.”

    “Um. Your friend. Fainted. Sort of.”

    Gwaine cocks an eyebrow, and steps over her. “She’ll be fine. Just needs to sleep it off. I didn’t really fancy it anyway, but I’m too much of a gentleman to say no. Unlike some people I could name.”

    Merlin shrugs. “Not really my type.”

    “Who is?” Gwaine retorts, rolling his eyes. “I’m sure as bloody hell not, and I’m everybody’s.”

    “And modest, too.”

    “Hey, if you’ve got it, make sure everyone knows it!”

    “I’ll have to remember that one.”

    Gwaine laughs. “You won’t.” He reaches down to grasp Merlin by the arms, pulling him into a standing position. “Ready?”

    Merlin sways into him. Gwaine is redolent of budget cologne that always smells more expensive than it really is mingled with whiskey-sweat, a strangely winning combination. His hair tickles Merlin’s face as he gathers him in. His bare torso is tacky and warm. “What about your other friend?” Merlin murmurs.

    “She’ll keep.”

    They hobble to the back-alley exit and are siphoned out into the night. This is what always revives Merlin: the smell of Glastonbury pressing in on him, gathering him up into itself. He feels remade, breathed on by the distant, looming Tor. Gwaine tosses him unceremoniously into the back of the  Citroën, and dives in after him. Everyone else clambers in, jostling for space. Morgana and Gwen share the front passenger seat, Morgana’s perfect, bony arse perched on Gwen’s lap. They collapse into each other, Gwen’s arms wrapped around Morgana’s waist, her cheek pressed against the thin woman’s shoulder-blade. Morgause drives, as usual, sending plumes of imported cigarette smoke up into the night. Lance gets in last, next to Gwaine and his groupie in the middle. Mordred, the smallest, sits on Gwaine’s lap, but only so he can sit next to Merlin. Merlin can hear his startled, excited breathing but the kid is too nervous to speak. Merlin can see the pulse throbbing in his slender neck before averting his gaze.

Gwaine slides his arm surreptitiously between them, shielding Merlin from the fervent press of Mordred’s thigh. Merlin is grateful. He leans against the partially rolled-down window with his face and arm out in the open air. He lifts his hand against the cold current of wind, pushing his fingers into the resistance. The moon sends down a single ribbon of light. Merlin thinks about the blond man as they wind their way home through the darkness. Those eyes like a summer storm. You never know when a storm will rise, or from where. It just comes. Merlin likes to stand alone in storms. He is made for them. It’s what he is for.  He closes his eyes and falls into the blueness. It has no beginning and no end.