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The holograms of the crowd flicker in neon colours and deafen in their triumph over the two limp bodies that the Stagehands drag into the wings.
It’s a bit sad, Merlin thinks as he watches one lifeless arm fall from the side of the gurney—slim wrist pale and bloodless where there used to be fingers wrapped tightly around it only half an hour before—that he’s only happy it’s not him.
Arthur touches Merlin’s jaw with the tip of his fingers and leans over him, backing Merlin into the cold metal of the wall. He smells of herbal ointment and chemicals, of the gold paint that covers his body and shimmers faintly in the dim light of the waiting wing. Lights from the screens around them move across his skin, kaleidoscopic patterns dancing on his shoulders.
This will never be us, Arthur says, lips against Merlin’s hairline. He waits there, breath soft and fanning over Merlin’s face.
Merlin says yours like he always does. Truth wrapped in a silent agreement. He tugs on Arthur’s left nipple to hear the soft chuckle it elicits, something private and secret and only his. There are sounds and touches that no one but Merlin will ever hear or see no matter how many people are watching, or how well they think they know the way Arthur’s body move, or the sound of his voice when he speaks. This is Merlin’s greatest satisfaction, and he locks all these little private things inside of him.
He counts the minutes left before its their turn by the number of times Arthur’s chest rises and falls under his hand.
An advertisement plays on the wallscreen. It’s always the same: enter the Game, it says in clashing, vibrant colours and cheerful music, and if you win enough—if you play it right, if you please the crowd—the world will be yours. Together.
It played on the wall of their Facility’s washroom the first time Arthur kissed him.
The repercussions of that one single kiss—and the way Arthur’s hand had slipped under Merlin’s regulation shirt, to settle warm and heavy on his lower back—are what brought them here, in the waiting wings of the Arena, with a crowd cheering and watching, always, waiting for the spectacle. But it’s also the comforting weight of Arthur’s hand in his, the softness of his lips on Merlin’s shoulder as he bends down to kiss it before the Ringmaster calls their names. Merlin would have signed up for the Game a thousand times over just for these little things between them. Just so he could touch Arthur over and over again and never have to stop.
Merlin knows what they imagine when they watch him and Arthur like this: skin on skin, fingers tracing patterns along bones and muscles, the shivers and the moans, the involuntary twitches of their limbs, and the sometimes slow, sometimes frantic, hitching of their hips.
Merlin paints Arthur’s skin gold, and Arthur uses his fingers to trace green patterns on Merlin’s. And when Arthur pushes his cock into Merlin, like he does now, in one swift movement, when Merlin’s arms are pinned above him and he arches his back in an impossible bow—lets a moan pass through his lips he knows resonates in every viewer’s ears, straight down their spines—they can imagine it’s the sun claiming the grassy hills of the Earth, like two ancient deities colliding.
Like a creation myth unfolding before their eyes.
They watch Merlin and Arthur push and move together and see old worlds and fallen gods, ancient rituals made of touch, of sweat, of want. It makes them squirm in their tiny boxes, in front of their tiny screens, where they’ve never known, will never know, what it feels like to have something—someone—like this.
Someone like Arthur, who sears little kisses along Merlin’s throat, and digs his fingers into his hips. Who drags him into his lap, his cock hard and deep inside Merlin, and holds him tight, hands wide across his back like he’s never going to let go. Someone that can unravel you between their hands, and re-create you with their breath and their touch. And you let them, because it’s the most beautiful feeling in the world, and every time they do it, it’s like taking a deep breath for the first time, like opening your eyes and seeing something unmarred and untouched and unbroken.
And they’ll never know what it’s like to take all that—the way Merlin does with greediness and need—and give it back, give it all back, changed and new and beautifully familiar.
They look at their screens and see something barbaric. To Merlin, it’s the truest thing he has ever known.
They see what Merlin and Arthur do and it makes them want to mock the savage, unrefined ways their bodies move together, locked like puzzle pieces that shouldn’t fit but do, in ways they can’t comprehend. And they want it, deep in their guts, as they stare and leer, feeling shame at the base of their spine, a slow burn they can’t shake.
They want it so much.
Merlin and Arthur give it to them in a way that makes them think it’s about them, that it’s for them, and Merlin bites the inside of his cheeks sometimes to refrain from laughing at their ignorance, their entitlement.
When the crowd cheers as Arthur twists his hips and hits Merlin’s prostate, making him cry out, making his eyes water into the bright lights overhead, Arthur does it again. And again. They know how to play them. How to soften their touch and make them sigh with a longing that makes them shift restlessly on their tiny beds where they’re alone, where they don’t even know what to do with the trembling in their thighs, the heat pooling in their stomach.
Merlin and Arthur play the Game so well, give them everything they want, until they’re grateful and panting, their holograms shifting and phasing in and out in their excitement, never once realizing that it’ll never be about them. It’ll always be about how much Merlin needs to touch Arthur, and how much he needs his cock inside of him, his hands on his skin, his tongue in his mouth. How he needs Arthur to fill every single empty spaces inside of him. And how desperately Arthur needs Merlin in the same way.
But it doesn’t matter because they’ll never push the thumbs down icon on their screens, too fascinated, too disgusted and excited all at once, unable to identify the strange ache in their chests. And they’ll want more, always.
Merlin throws his head back, arms wide to his sides, shoulders almost off the ground. He cries out as he comes all over his chest, and Arthur bends down to lick at the mess, his fingers slipping and gripping in the sweat over Merlin’s ribs. He comes inside Merlin, his lips and nose smeared and salty when Merlin reaches for him, and swallows his own tastes on Arthur’s skin.
Arthur’s right; they’ll win.
Merlin thinks only two more as Arthur bites lightly at his lower lip, nuzzles his cheek with a soft smile, a please little sigh only for Merlin. And the crowd erupts into applause and cheers.
Soon, Merlin will run his fingers through Arthur’s sweaty hair, like he does now, and look into his wide blue eyes, and know there will be no one watching, no end to any of it.