Archive of Our Own ^beta

It's always, always left them both with the acid taste of regret in their mouths, burning away the last vestiges of lust... but no matter how shit they feel afterwards, every single time they forget everything the moment their eyes lock and their hearts begin pounding. They've both wondered, often, how they've managed to get away with it this long – anyone looking at them at the right moment can surely tell in an instant what they're about to do.

It started when they were students, before Arthur had realised that girls weren't just for short flings and mindless fumbles, before he'd discovered the delights of a warm smile and the same soft curves every night. It started before Merlin had met Gwaine or Lance or any of the others who could make him feel wonderful for himself alone.

It's never been about disrespecting their partners or not loving them enough. Merlin knows that his love for Gwaine is truly heart-felt, and anyone witnessing Arthur and Gwen together can see the honest romance they have together. It's more that however much they love or others love them, they cannot, physically cannot leave each other alone, and it would probably take being in another country before they'd give it up. Not that that would ever happen, since they're both far too selfish.

Why don't they just do away with the lies and deceit and be with each other properly, you might ask?

Well, in Arthur's case it's a crippling sense of duty, which, although it hadn't compelled him to get hitched to any of his father's suggestions, prodded him into declaring the first woman he felt the stirrings of love for to be his one and only. He's managed to convince himself that what he and Merlin share (although it's outlasted all of his romantic relationships so far) is mere lust, all-consuming and spine-meltingly dangerous though it is.

Merlin just thinks he isn't good enough.

He knows that he counts amongst Arthur's closest friends, that he has helped the man more times than he knows himself, that all it takes from him is a lowered eyelid and a bitten lip to send Arthur blundering for the nearest exit; but Gwen is the one who holds Arthur's heart in her gentle hands. Merlin is in no way deserving of even touching it. He'll never be captivating enough, and he's not willing to throw away something good, something easy, for a mere chance, however much they both crave their desperate liaisons. No one, surely, has done more for Arthur than Gwen.
Gwaine... Well, Gwaine wants Merlin, however much or little as he can get, and it's nice to have someone there who wants to know every part of you. Merlin can be content with Gwaine. It's easy. It's nice.

To an outsider, it looks to be teetering on the brink of ruin.

It takes a long time and a lot of heartbreak before they end up each alone on opposite sides of the planet. Having hurt the people who were blind in love and rudely cured of sightlessness, having been hurt themselves, having been left to stew in that peculiarly bitter kind of self-loathing (tainted with a lack of regret for having started it in the first place)...

Both turn to the one person they know that will still have them.
Both know themselves to be second best.
Both know themselves to be taking the easy way out.

One day after a hundred, a thousand suns have risen above and sunk below the horizon, Merlin turns to Arthur, or maybe it happens the other way about.

In his face, perhaps, or his fingers or the curve of his neck, he sees what it is he's been looking for. He's found, here, in what he had all along, the thing that all humanity strive for. The undefinable longing that he's been clinging to falls away, and for the first time in a long time, he feels at peace. Here it can be found.