Archive of Our Own

They meet in Beijing:

“Put the gun down,” Merlin says, his hair a wreck, his smile bright, because he’s twenty-two and he’ll never be younger than this, never more alive than this.

“You first,” Arthur invites.

Merlin is twenty-two, fresh out of university. He’s wearing jeans and a worn navy hoodie and his hair looks as if it hasn’t seen a comb in three days. He’s young, impossibly young, and a little bit beautiful, and he’s playing a game that he can’t possibly understand; he’s playing a game which he can’t beat Arthur at because Arthur is the best, has been doing this for years.

“Are you going to shoot me?” Arthur asks, amused. He’s moving closer, shoes clicking neatly across the floor, and he doesn’t know what he’ll do when he gets there, when the muzzles of their guns are pressed against each other’s hearts, reverent as any kiss. He rather thinks that he’ll wind his arm around Merlin’s neck and kiss him like that, kiss him slick and sultry as the Beijing summer. He’ll drag a hand through Merlin’s hair, bare Merlin’s neck to slide the barrel of his gun, cold and metallic and empty, along the beautiful curve of Merlin’s throat, and then he’ll chase the cold away with a line of hot kisses. And then he’ll push Merlin’s gun away and he’ll toss his away too, and he’ll shove Merlin up against the wall and kiss him some more, hard and desperate, because Merlin may be twenty-two and fresh out of university, but Arthur is twenty-seven and he always wants what he can’t have.

“Maybe,” Merlin says, smile going small and private, like it’s only for Arthur.

And now Merlin’s mouth is close, so close, and Arthur is supposed to burn the building to the ground, erase all evidence of his ever being here, but now all he wants is to lick into the burning heat of Merlin, suck kisses into the sharp angle of Merlin’s jaw until the pale skin goes bruised and angry – until Arthur can write himself into Merlin’s skin.

He wonders whether Merlin tastes like Arthur does, cigarettes and cold coffee and that faraway taste of ash that grows a little thicker with every year that goes by. Or maybe – or maybe there’s something purer there, maybe Merlin tastes sweeter than Arthur ever will. There’s so much outside these four white, white walls: there’s a job to be done, money to be had, a life to be lived, but right now there’s just this, and he doesn’t know who Merlin is, who he’s working for, doesn’t know how Merlin got into this life of always looking over your shoulder and checking that all your windows and doors are locked three times before going to sleep at night, but Arthur wants to know. He wants to know all of it.

“Go ahead, then,” Arthur says, low, tempting. “Shoot me.”

He doesn’t think Merlin will. Merlin is twenty-two and when you’re that young, death is so far away. When you’re that young, you’re careless with life, spinning in circles that bring you closer and closer to the edge and thinking that you’ll never fall. Merlin can wave that gun around, fingers light and intimate like it’s a part of him, a phantom limb, but when it comes down to it, Merlin loves life and doesn’t want to take it away from anyone. Not like this.

Except. Merlin shoots.

The bullet grazes Arthur’s side. He feels the pain burn through him, electric.

Merlin catches him as he falls, gentle as he helps Arthur to the ground.

“You missed,” Arthur says, hoarse, even though it doesn’t feel like it.

Merlin kisses the corner of Arthur’s mouth. He looks manic and beautiful and Arthur’s got his hand clasped around the nape of Merlin’s neck, and when Merlin kisses him, bending over him, hand lightly pressing against Arthur’s chest, it’s the easiest thing in the world, even as Arthur’s blood glosses the tile red.

“I never miss,” Merlin says, and then he’s taking Arthur’s gun and he’s gone.

Arthur watches the ceiling spin, watches the world go kaleidoscopic. He says: “Fuck.”

***

Monte Carlo is a city of imperfections.

It’s a city of elegance left to decay, but you don’t realize the sickness that the luxury has bred until you get close, and you find that everything is a painfully shiny façade, that the glittering lights aren’t meant to illuminate but to conceal, that the blur of lipstick on that glass isn’t lipstick at all but poison.

Arthur stares at the men and women through the stained glass, the colors hiding all the ugliness. The women are lovely, tall and thin and expensive, and the men are no such things, but they can afford it. They gamble and they drink and they shake hands and all the while they’re plotting each other’s deaths.

Arthur should know. They call him, when they’ve decided to play judge, jury, and executioner.

He shoves his hands into his trouser pockets and ducks out into the cold. He’s not in Monte Carlo for that, but that doesn’t mean that no one will die today. Arthur somehow leaves a trail of death behind him wherever he goes, even when he’s not the one doing the killing.

He walks two kilometers, watching the city unfold below him in an icy sheet of light, until he finds the hotel he wants. It’s an understated affair in a city where everything is lurid with grandness. He goes up three floors and knocks.

Merlin opens the door, hand hidden behind his back.

It’s been three months and Arthur’s thought about him every day. He hadn’t memorized him properly, no, because memory isn’t enough to capture the insolent curve of his mouth, the way his lashes whisper across his skin. And anyway, Arthur never got to see this, Merlin dressed in a suit that fits too well, cut narrow because Merlin is all angles that Arthur can’t possibly smooth out.

Merlin smiles at him and takes his gun from where it’s tucked into the waistband of his trousers, twirls it idly around his finger. “Of course,” he says, sounding amused and not at all surprised, although he must be, because twelve hours ago, Arthur was in Athens, with absolutely no intention of going to Monaco until Lance called him up to tell him that he had an offer for a job. Arthur declined it, because he’d worked for the mark before, had liked him, and Arthur tries not to kill people he likes.

He’d come on a whim though, not expecting to find Merlin but hoping to, nonetheless, because where you found the rich and glorious, you also found death lurking around the corner, and this place seemed like Merlin, somehow: beautiful.

“Arthur,” Merlin says, low and almost filthy, and the sound wraps around Arthur like a slick ribbon, heats him bone-dry. Merlin moves aside to let him in, tosses his gun into an open suitcase that’s full of colorful banknotes, and Arthur looks sidelong at Merlin, recognizes the languid grace in his movements, the headiness of his smile: it’s the high after a job gone well, perfectly, that brush with death that you dance away from without a scratch. It’s the reason Arthur has been doing this for eight years, this drug that he can’t get enough of, intoxicating and on some days consuming, because there is nothing, nothing, like meeting death and defeating it, twisting it around, unleashing it on someone else.

“Job went well, then?” Arthur asks, sitting down in an armchair.

Merlin angles his body away from Arthur, takes off his suit jacket. The starched crispness of his shirt wavers a bit, ruffling and then stretching taut against Merlin’s back. Merlin carefully starts on his shirt now, unbuttoning with fingers that are slower as usual, because like all the beautiful people in the world, he knows that he’s ever on display. But right now there’s no one here save for Arthur, and Arthur leans back, eyes following the slow reveal of pale skin, the lovely, lissome cradle of Merlin’s hips.

Merlin’s mouth is red, messy with kisses Arthur hasn’t given him yet, but fully intends to.

“It only took one bullet,” Merlin says, alight with the ecstasy of it. “Clean, right between the eyes. I wish they’d stop making it so easy, I’m starting to get a superiority complex.”

“Nice,” Arthur says, distracted by Merlin shrugging his shirt off.

Merlin tosses his shirt away. It ends up pooled at the foot of Merlin’s bed, a chaste scrap of white cloth cast aside because Merlin is not chaste, has never been chaste, will never be chaste.

Merlin says, “I’m good, you know.”

“I know,” Arthur says. He wouldn’t want Merlin this much if he wasn’t. “You shot me, remember?”

Merlin’s eyes go dark, intent. “You were in my way.” He’s coming closer now, taking away the space between them and Arthur’s air too, apparently, because it’s too much and Arthur doesn’t want to waste time with mundane things like breathing when there’s so much more to concentrate on, like having Merlin this close, smelling like the blandness of expensive hotel soap and the vaguest hint of cologne. And then Merlin’s knee is nudging Arthur’s thighs apart to stand between them, and it should be impossible to feel the searing heat of Merlin when he’s not even touching him, but Arthur can, knows right now that when he kisses Merlin, Merlin will taste like wine gone sour, because sometimes that’s the only brand of courage strong enough to get you through the kill.

Arthur curls his hands lightly around Merlin’s hips, thumbs the juts of them. “And now?” he asks, tilting his face up to Merlin’s, watching Merlin’s eyes shutter closed, pupils blown with want.

Merlin leans forward, against the back of the armchair, trapping Arthur. “I think,” Merlin says, mouth agonizingly close, “that right now, I’m in yours.”

And then there’s nothing left to do but yank him down, so Arthur does, yanks him down and kisses him. It’s nothing like in Beijing, soft as a goodbye; this is hard, biting, painful, and Arthur doesn’t want to stop, doesn’t think he could if he had to. They’re scrabbling at each other, nails dragging white and then branding red half-moons into each other’s skin. Merlin curves an arm around Arthur’s neck, trying to get closer, closer, even though that’s impossible, they’re as close as two people can get without melting into each other. Their bodies lock together, Merlin open and hot and beautiful, Arthur’s for the taking.

Arthur doesn’t know where to start, wants to do everything at the same time. He should do this properly, it’s been three months of thinking and thinking about how he’d go about it: he’d figured that there would be a bed involved, at least, that he’d kiss Merlin pliant, kiss him until he unwound for Arthur. And then he’d suck him off, maybe, or, no, he’d have Merlin suck him off, just to see that gorgeous red mouth stretched out around him, and maybe Merlin would complain all the while, and yes, that’s what Arthur wants, Merlin complaining even as he wraps his lips around Arthur, sucking too hard, because Merlin looks like the type who wants to be the best at everything he does. And later, Arthur would bring Merlin off with just his mouth and fingers, their foreheads pressed together, because Arthur wants to watch Merlin come undone, wants to watch him unravel.

But right now there’s no room for finesse, and maybe it’s been three months of planning, but it’s also been three months of lying awake and wanting, aching without relief. Arthur brushes a hand down the front of Merlin’s trousers, feels the sheer weight of him, watches Merlin tremble like a series of explosions until he’s positively vibrating. They find their rhythm quickly, here in the early Monte Carlo morning, tumbling onto the floor and rutting helplessly against each other. Merlin’s heels dig into the small of Arthur’s back and Arthur wants to kiss him, but he doesn’t have the patience to do it, just gasps, low and desperate into Merlin’s throat,

“I want to fuck you, have you ever been—”

“No,” Merlin says, shameless, and they stare at each other, wide-eyed, and Merlin comes.

Arthur rolls away from Merlin, gets his hand into his trousers; this won’t take long because Merlin is twenty-two, lithe and dangerous and he’s never even been fucked before and Arthur wants to fuck him, wants to be his first, wants to tie him to his bed and keep him there, Arthur’s secret, wants to kiss him until he’s gagging for it, messy with it. They’ll only take a break when they’ve got a job to do, and even then, killing is a sex all its own, hand curled lovingly around your gun, finger careful, intimate on the trigger, drawing the whole thing out, these last few precious moments of life, until it’s gone.

He’s almost there, almost, but then Merlin is shoving his hand out of the way, replacing it with his. Merlin’s hand is rough, almost too rough, and Arthur never knew that he liked it this way, but apparently he does. He likes the way Merlin tucks himself into Arthur’s side, breathing hot in his ear, whispering – something, something lewd and degrading and so, so good.

He comes into Merlin’s hand, going taut as a bow and then utterly boneless, and Merlin stretches the moment out, hand slowing but never going still. And then, at the end of it, when Arthur’s nearly aching with the painful paradox of needing Merlin to keep touching him and also needing Merlin to stop, Merlin finally extracts his hand, and, staring at Arthur, he licks a slow trail up his palm, mouth wet with Arthur’s come.

Arthur throws his forearm across his eyes. “Fuck,” he says.

Merlin laughs beside him, pleased and lazy, hooking his leg over Arthur’s. “Jesus,” Merlin says, and when Arthur opens his eyes, it’s to see Merlin propped up on his elbow, hand skimming down Arthur’s chest, pausing every so often to tuck a finger into the spaces between the buttons, striping his finger against Arthur’s bare skin.

“Next time,” Arthur says, thick with indolence.

Merlin smiles, and he looks younger with his hair rumpled like this, with his trousers wrinkled and stained with his come. “Yeah,” he says, and from anyone else, it would sound like a promise. Coming from Merlin, it sounds like a challenge.

And Arthur thinks: I’ll find you, wherever you are.

Merlin sits up, looks at the bed. The sheets look fresh and pressed, probably because Merlin hasn’t been in Monte Carlo long enough to make use of them.

Merlin says with casual cruelty, cruel casualty, “You can find your way out, I trust?”

Arthur watches as Merlin stumbles over to the bathroom, turns on the light, shuts the door behind him. The shower turns on, the water drumming hard against the tile for a minute before the sound is muffled because, God, Merlin’s naked in there, maybe even is touching himself because Merlin is twenty-two and he can still have the kind of sex that can go on for days, honey-thick, a slow burn.

Arthur gets to his feet, sore, and he’s absently trying to tug his trousers into place, sticky as they are, tucking his shirt back in. His suit jacket is rumpled – it’s a good thing he has four more just like it – and as he turns to go, his eyes catch on the suitcase filled with money so colorful it looks fake, like money from a child’s board game.

There must be fifty thousand euros in there, Arthur muses. At least.

He looks briefly towards the bathroom door, shut and locked to keep Arthur out – or maybe Merlin in.

Well, Arthur thinks, because he might be a moralistic criminal, but he’s still a criminal.

And besides – the best sex in the world isn’t enough to make him forget that Merlin shot him in Beijing.

***

Arthur is in New York when his mobile rings.

“Hi,” he says.

“I’m going to punch you in the face,” Merlin says.

“How did you get this number?” Arthur says.

“You stole my money,” Merlin says, his voice flickering in and out over the poor connection. For a moment it sounds like he’s standing right next to Arthur, voice pouring into Arthur’s ear, warm and silky, and then in the next moment, it sounds like he’s a million miles away.

“You shot me,” Arthur points out.

“And this time I’m going to punch you in the face,” Merlin says, the consonants clipped. There’s an indistinct haze of noise around him, the blur of a deep, guttural language haloing Merlin’s familiar voice: he’s at a metro station, maybe. Cairo? Marrakesh? Arthur could find out, if he thought that Merlin would welcome the sight of him.

“You’ll have to find me first,” Arthur advises, and then hangs up.

He doesn’t know when this all went to shit, when he started thinking that he could get – involved with someone like this, when he started thinking that it was perfectly okay to wake up to the thought of Merlin in a cramped shower in St. Petersburg, a long tease of pale skin marred only by paler flecks of scar tissue. He doesn’t know when he started thinking that it was perfectly okay to fall asleep in Madrid to the thought of Merlin somewhere in Brussels, tucked into bed, hand dipping low across his stomach, maybe – just maybe – touching himself and thinking of Arthur.

He is, Arthur thinks mournfully, in such deep shit.

***

Merlin catches up to him in Sofia.

He presses Arthur up against the wall of the lift, lighting up the buttons for all the floors between three and seven. He’s kissing Arthur, hands fisting in the lapel of Arthur’s coat, sliding down along the flat planes of Arthur’s chest, heating Arthur’s skin even through his cotton shirt. He tastes like smoke, Arthur thinks wildly, trying to turn them around because he doesn’t like being pinned like this, and it’s a surprise, really, that Merlin is able to pin him at all. He thinks of Merlin, sitting sullenly in the hotel lobby, waiting for Arthur to show up, going through cigarette after cigarette, long legs crossed at the ankles, clever fingers toying with his lighter.

Waiting for Arthur.

Arthur scrapes his teeth up the line of Merlin’s jaw, not as gentle as he should be, loving the way Merlin unfurls for him. He wants to know whether Merlin does this with anyone else, or if it’s just for Arthur, only for Arthur. He slips his fingers into the waist of Merlin’s trousers, reveling in the hot strip of skin.

“Come on,” Merlin says, trying to hook his leg around Arthur’s hip, trying to climb him. “Come on, come on,” he says, hurried, desperate, fingers curling too hard in Arthur’s hair. It hurts and Arthur loves it, loves it as Merlin slants his hips into Arthur’s, finding a rhythm that should be impossible to recapture after two months of not having it.

“Fuck,” Arthur says, huffing into Merlin’s ear. “God, I want to—”

“Yeah,” Merlin says, head tilting back and Arthur can’t help but kiss the stretch of white neck, can’t help but adore the trembling shift of Merlin’s throat.

Arthur runs a hand down Merlin’s spine, learning every bump. “I’m still,” Merlin says, hot into the crook of Arthur’s neck, “I’m still going to punch you in the face, you took my money, you bastard.”

“I,” Arthur says, unraveling in the heat of Merlin. The lift opens to the eighth floor and they barely have the presence of mind to stumble out of it. They make it to Arthur’s door but apparently Merlin doesn’t have the patience for Arthur to get his key out, and so they’re moving together against the door, Arthur’s bed close but nowhere near close enough. “Do you,” Arthur tries again, licking the sweat from where Merlin’s hair curls around his ear, a shade longer than it was in Monte Carlo, a shade too long. “I haven’t, with anyone else,” he manages, hauling Merlin closer, until it hurts, the way their wrists collide as they go for each other’s belts.

Merlin halts, peers at Arthur through dark, dark lashes that cast spidery shadows across his face. He looks thinner than he did in Monte Carlo, and Arthur wants to ask him what he was doing those two months, why he looks jaundiced in the dim lights of the hallway. He’s twenty-two, Arthur thinks, despairing, he doesn’t even know how to take care of himself, he’s lucky he’s not dead, and Arthur wants to take care of him, wants to – he wants to. He wants to have this, whatever it is.

But Merlin’s mouth twists itself into a beautiful, ugly line. “Don’t do that,” he says.

Arthur nods, slow. “Yeah,” he says. “Okay.”

Merlin goes to kiss him, hesitating, almost, and he’s stupid, Arthur thinks, stupid to think that anyone could want just this from Merlin and nothing else. He’s stupid if he thinks that Arthur can fuck him like this, in the toilets at bars, in a string of shitty hotels across Europe, and then just walk away. He’s so stupid and Arthur’s stupid for wanting him.

They make it into the bedroom, writhing against each other on scratchy sheets. Arthur fucks him like that, with two too-rough fingers, obscenely crooked at the knuckles, trying to stutter those lovely hitches of breath out of Merlin. He tries not to think about the practiced way Merlin’s knees bend, bracketing Arthur. He tries not think about the way Merlin rocks against him – body arching in such a beautiful, impossible way that architects could study it for years and still not be able to replicate the perfection of it – when Arthur finally pushes in, as if he’s done this before, somewhere between Monte Carlo and Sofia.

Later, when they’re getting dressed, Merlin doesn’t look at him as he says, “I’m going to be in Paris in February.”

“Okay,” says Arthur, deliberately casual.

The one o’clock shadows pool around Merlin’s smile, and then the smile is gone and Arthur is left wondering if it was ever even there. “Okay,” Merlin says, shy, maybe. He walks carefully over to Arthur, with measured steps, as if Arthur is his mark and Merlin has twenty seconds to do this cleanly. He reaches out, languid, slings a finger around Arthur’s belt loop, tugs him close.

His eyes are blue, Arthur realizes, startled, so very blue.

He wonders how many men there are, waiting for Merlin in every city. Beautiful men, because Merlin is beautiful, and beautiful women too. He wonders how Merlin chooses them: does he like a certain height? Does he even prefer men, or is Arthur an exception? Does he have all their names memorized, all their numbers programmed into his mobile, does he call them up when he gets in to whichever city it is that month, and do they let Merlin dance in and out of their lives, skipping around the world because he’s twenty-two and can do anything he wants?

Arthur is twenty-eight and he’s never felt so old.

Merlin doesn’t kiss him, just bites at the triangle of skin bare at Arthur’s open collar. “I still want my money back.”

“Spent it all,” Arthur says seriously. “Hookers in Amsterdam, so many hookers, you wouldn’t believe.”

Merlin pulls away, smiles. And then he punches Arthur in the face.

***

This is January through June:

Tangling with Merlin until they’re both fucked out, until the world around them blurs and they could be in Paris or Vienna or Rome or Moscow or Barcelona or Bangkok because all those cities look the same when Arthur is braced over Merlin, rocking over and into him, wanting to hear Merlin beg until he’s reduced to beautiful unintelligibility (and then wanting to do it again).

Merlin comes to him with blood on his hands and Arthur licks it off his fingers and Merlin laughs, wild and crazed, and they fuck everywhere – against the walls, on cheap mattresses, on the floor with Merlin complaining about the carpet burn but not unwinding his legs from around Arthur’s waist long enough for Arthur to move them to the bed.

There are new things to discover, each time. In Berlin, Arthur kisses down Merlin’s hip to find a long line of not-quite-knitted-together skin. He runs his tongue over it, careful. Merlin’s eyes are half-lidded, tracking his every movement in that way that means that he doesn’t quite trust Arthur, and Merlin threads his hand through Arthur’s hair, forces him to look up, and says, “Jealous?”

“Insanely,” Arthur says, and he sort of is. He doesn’t like other people marking what’s his.

August is Budapest. They don’t really mean to meet up, but Arthur hears that the Russian mafia is getting restless in the way that always ends up with ten people dead and the police unable to do anything about it. And he also knows that Merlin has been in and out of Hungary ten separate times in the past two years since apparently even Russian mobsters have a soft spot for Merlin.

Merlin looks very briefly annoyed when Arthur finds him in a restaurant, but then it doesn’t seem to matter, because Merlin is dragging him to the house he’s renting – small and cozy with a garden, for fuck’s sake – and peeling off his clothes. They fuck desperately against Merlin’s blue front door and then, when Arthur is trying to crawl to the toilet on legs that don’t want to work, Merlin says from the floor, “How’d you find me?”

Arthur looks at him, long and considering, and then says, “I can always find you.”

He means that Merlin is careless, because while Merlin can hit his mark from a car that’s going 145 kilometers per hour, he’s shit at the simple things, the things you’re supposed to figure out from day one, because it’s either that or getting yourself killed. He’s shit at covering his trail; Arthur could follow him across the world, if he wanted, piecing together stolen credit cards and fake passports. Sometimes, it does feel like he is following Merlin across the world.

Merlin must hear the disapproval in Arthur’s words, the You need to be more careful, because his mouth goes tight, and when Arthur comes back from the toilet, Merlin and his clothes and his gun are gone.

Arthur doesn’t stick around in Budapest. He hates it there.

And then there’s Istanbul, tucked into a tiny flat Merlin apparently vaguely remembers buying when he was nineteen and needed somewhere to hide out for a month or five, trying to shake off the memory of his first kill. It was a knife across the throat, Merlin tells him casually, nineteen years old and he hadn’t realized just how much blood there would be, not until he stood up to find it splattered everywhere, drenching the white walls red with death.

Arthur almost reaches out to – hold him, maybe, he doesn’t know. Merlin is sprawled out on the bed next to him, skin pale and glittering in the beams of moonlight that filter through the curtains, and they’re barely touching now, just at the shoulders. But when his hand curls around Merlin’s thigh, Merlin shies away, gives him an irritated look, and Arthur knows that Merlin has drawn a line: here is all the room he’ll give Arthur and no more. Merlin doesn’t want to touch him, doesn’t want to be with him, just wants to fuck him.

Arthur tucks his hand under his head and tells himself that that’s fine, he can do that. He can be whatever Merlin wants, because it’s worth it as long he gets to have this tiny piece of Merlin, all to himself.

***

It figures that the moment Arthur tells himself he can do this – this non-relationship, this thing that is everything to Arthur and almost nothing to Merlin – Merlin falls off the map for two months.

Arthur spends August in London, brushing the dust off his old life, the one he’d left when he was twenty and bright-eyed and certain that there had to be more to the world than a cramped cubicle and years that stretch out for so long that you don’t know you’re going in circles until you realize you’ve been here before, done this before, and aren’t sure if you’re coming or going.

He doesn’t like coming back to London: he remembers being sixteen and on the cusp of what he’d always been sure was greatness, living in this big, glittering city, ready, ready for something, something grand. He remembers the beating heart of it all, the people, colorful and fascinating, how thrilling the city lights had seemed at night, London, rolled out for him, for Arthur.

Now he walks these streets and all he sees are the shadows, London, shattered into tiny, nearly invisible pieces that no one could ever put back together. There, on that dimly lit street corner, is where Arthur had his first kill, a forty-year-old man who’d walked three blocks before he realized he’d been shot, and then died from the surprise, alone in an alley, surrounded by litter and shit, because this is how London looks underneath the decadence. This is how London decays.

Arthur had spent that night retching into a toilet, in a hotel that would be closed down within the month for various reasons, among them mold and the cocaine racket being run out of the basement. He’d pressed his forehead against the cool and probably filthy porcelain and tried not to look at the banknotes scattered around his knees, curling with the damp. They’d looked so neat in the suitcase when the client had handed it over, promising things that Arthur didn’t understand but knew he wanted. But strewed on the dirty bathroom floor, they looked menacing.

When morning had poured into the room, through streaky windows and tattered curtains, he’d carefully peeled the money from the floor, tucked the banknotes into his suitcase, and taken a taxi to the airport.

He hadn’t returned for five years. London will forever hold memories that Arthur doesn’t want.

That first year had been a bad one: a different city every week, always looking over his shoulder because he’d been sloppy, left so much evidence that he might as well have also left signed and dated confessions. Kills that were supposed to be clean and easy turned out to be messy, and messy kills turned out to be messier. His skin had gone raw from all the soap he’d used, carried on him, because there was always so much blood, so much blood, and it started to stain him with tattoos he didn’t want. He’d got used to eating too little and drinking too much, trapped inside a life that he’d wanted but didn’t know how to live.

There’d been a brief love affair with heroin, but that had been more stupid than naïve. Each day was one day closer to the edge, and the days were strung together like that, closer and closer and terrifying and horrible until Arthur didn’t know if he was in danger of falling or if he was already falling.

And then he nearly got killed in Kiev.

He’d fucked up a job in Ankara because the mark had changed his plans and instead of being alone he was with his daughter and Arthur couldn’t, he couldn’t, because the girl had lovely dark hair that curled around her shoulders like sleek ribbons, and she was pretty and alive and – she looked like Morgana, Morgana who Arthur hadn’t seen in two years, who probably thought that Arthur was dead. Who would be better off if she thought that Arthur was dead.

The indecision had cost him: he hadn’t yet found the accuracy that comes with proper training; he wouldn’t find it until he met Lance, a few days after his twenty-third birthday, most of which he’d spent in a Kolkata prison cell. Arthur had fired, but he hadn’t shot to kill.

That had been a mistake.

He’d left a laughably obvious trail behind him, fake names that matched up too easily, credit cards he didn’t ditch fast enough. For the first time in his life, Arthur was the mark and for all that he knew how to find people, how to kill people, he’d never learned how to lose them, how to save himself.

He’d barely made it out of Kiev; if the bullet had erred a few centimeters down and a few more to the right – well. There’d been a nasty two weeks under the care of a doctor Arthur didn’t think had quite made it through his licensing exams, but he hadn’t spent much time thinking over it, as he’d been too busy sliding in and out of a fever. Arthur had crawled back to Ankara because in this life, the only end is death, and he did what he was supposed to do two months ago: he killed the mark, collected his money, and, before leaving Ankara, he sent the daughter some flowers and a card that simply said, I’m sorry, because he was.

Arthur had quit it all, after that – he’d stopped ducking into questionable bars and taking white pills with funny names that blurred the world into soothing reds and blues, reduced hours into mere minutes, made everything deceptively simple. He’d built himself into something stronger, into someone smarter. He’d learned how to fight and he’d learned how to erase himself from the world, how to render himself invisible in the middle of a crowd. He’d patched together various aliases with dull names and duller histories, nothing so grand as Pendragon, because Arthur couldn’t afford to be grand, couldn’t afford to be noticed.

Most of all, he’d learned how to ignore the part of him that was still left behind in that shitty hotel room in London, crying and vomiting over the death of a man whose face Arthur hadn’t even really seen. He’d learned how to divorce the part of him that had sent flowers to the mark’s daughter, eighteen-years-old and the world laid out wide open before her until Arthur had come along to snatch it away. He’d learned to care only about himself because at the end of the day, you could only trust yourself. People were slippery, fickle creatures: friendships could easily be bought out, signed documents ignored. He’d learned not to ask women their names before he kissed their glossy pink mouths, and he’d learned not to look too closely at men’s faces before he outlined their bodies with his, pressing ashy kisses to their necks, and then stealing away in the dawn, the sunlight a disapproving voyeur.

He’d been twenty-two years old and he’d been so sure of everything, that this was the way the world worked, and this was how Arthur would conquer it. Life was still difficult, it would always be difficult, but Arthur had figured it out and he was finally where he wanted to be, who he wanted to be – someone of his own making, someone far more real than that sixteen-year-old boy who’d loved dearly a father who would always love his stupid company more than he would ever love Arthur.

Arthur had had it all figured out. And then Merlin shot him in Beijing.

***

Thunderstorms wash August into September and Lance sends Arthur to Buenos Aires.

The client, Lance tells him, is a well-known businessman burdened with too much money and not enough charity. The mark is the client’s soon-to-be ex-wife, who is about to uncharitably take approximately half of that burden off the client’s shoulders.

“Ah, the sacred bonds of matrimony,” Arthur says flatly.

“Indeed,” Lance says, and then informs his daughter that no, she may not have a second ice cream because Lance may be wanted in the majority of the European Union, but there is nothing so terrifying as a two-year-old who’s ingested too much sugar. Lance hurriedly herds her toward his car, just as the pink bow of her mouth curls downward and she tips into a full-blown tantrum, the incomprehensible, screechy kind that no one above the age of five can understand but everyone can certainly hear.

Arthur watches Lance disappear into the haze of an hour that isn’t sure if it’s late afternoon or early evening, and he thinks that he might want that, what Lance has, one day. He doesn’t want a tidy little house in the country, not exactly, and he doesn’t want that cramped cubicle on the twentieth floor of some building that’s all sheets of metal and glass and going home each night just to wake up and do it all over again. But he wants parts of it, like living in one place long enough for the girl at the coffee shop to know that you like your tea white and your coffee black. Like being able to walk around without worrying that someone is going to recognize you, find the fragile spots between your plates of armor and pull until the last five years crumble around you in dust that catches the light and then fades.

He wants all that; but all Arthur has is a gun strapped to his calf and a plane ticket to Argentina.

He gets in to Buenos Aires just as it’s shaking off the last of winter. He spends a week following the mark around and trying not to think about Merlin, Merlin unbuttoning his shirt, the lights of Monte Carlo limning his shoulders in gold, Merlin saying, I wish they’d stop making it so easy, because it is easy, because sometimes the art of killing is so absurdly easy.

(He also tries not to think about Merlin asleep in the Istanbul moonlight, all sooty lashes and thin fingers that are furled into fists at his heart, like he’s praying to someone, though to whom, Arthur doesn’t know. He tries not to think about Merlin in the Paris dawn, blinking sleepily and smiling a kiss into Arthur’s mouth before tucking himself closer into Arthur’s side. He especially tries not to think about sitting in the airport right before his flight out of Budapest, wondering if Merlin would call, though that was stupid because Merlin never calls.)

Friday night is the grand reopening of the Teatro Colón, and the client sends Arthur a long, convoluted message that’s partially in English, partially in Spanish, and inexplicably partially in German. Arthur can only read the bits in English – the Spanish looks like another language entirely on this half of the equator – but what it boils down to is that the client would prefer that Arthur do the job during the reopening, since both he and the mark and the rest of the Buenos Aires elite will be there, giving the client a solid alibi. The client doesn’t seem to realize the difficulties that presents: getting away from the scene quickly, for one, and this means that Arthur will have to get close to the mark, which he hates, because if he fucks up the job, doesn’t kill her in one go, she’ll have seen his face and then it’ll all be over. He can’t do this from long-range, not with a crowd of three thousand, because the odds are that he’ll kill four innocents and miss the mark completely.

Arthur crumples up the client’s note, calls Lance up to tell his voicemail exactly what he thinks of clients who hire Arthur to do what he’s best at and then tell him how to do what he’s best at, and gets insanely drunk in the hotel bar. When someone kisses him, he lets her, because under the dim bar lights and in the soft glow of too much whisky, all he sees is the pale curve of white cheek, the dark sheen of hair. And if he says, Merlin Merlin Merlin, well, it’s all right, because she’s gone by morning.

He spends most of Thursday trying to match up blueprints of what the theater looked like before the extensive refurbishments and then deciding that the blueprints are useless when he goes to go have a look in person. When Friday morning rolls around, bright and sunny, he checks in briefly on the mark only to find that she’s spending the morning in church. Arthur would find it ironic if he thought there could possibly exist a lower circle of hell than this one.

She’s a lovely girl, Arthur thinks, watching her disappear through the church doors. She’s younger than him – twenty-six to the client’s fifty – fair hair caught up in an elaborate chignon, dress a vibrant blue, and she’ll be dead within twelve hours.

He doesn’t waste time with guilt; he’s done this too many times before.

There comes a moment, though – as there always does – right before the kill, where your legs don’t want to work, where your mind starts to spin with what ifs and maybes. Where you start to picture how everything is going to go wrong, where Murphy’s Law – any assassin’s religion – suddenly becomes the enemy. Where your hands go damp with sweat, and what if the knife slips between your fingers, what if she’s wearing some ridiculous dress with layers of tulle and bows and you can’t get to the femoral artery?

Arthur finds an empty bathroom, hangs a Closed for Maintenance sign on the door, and forces himself into this most mundane of routines: he uses the toilet, goes to the sink, washes his hands of the blood he’s not yet spilled. He’s not twenty-one anymore, isn’t green and stupid with this newfound freedom that feels, some days, a lot like a prison. He’s twenty-eight and these moments of uncertainties are no longer so crippling. By the time he’s got his hands dried, he’s calm, and he’s already picturing how deep to push the knife, how quickly he can weave through the crowd and out of the theater, how long it’ll take for someone to realize what has happened. How far away he’ll be in his rental car, how long he’ll be able to drive before he ditches it for another.

He fingers the hilt of his knife and doesn’t look into the mirror; he can’t. He never can, not right before a job. That must mean something, something deeply philosophical or psychological, but Arthur doesn’t want to analyze it. He doesn’t think he’d like the answers.

Arthur opens the bathroom door.

Merlin stares back at him in wide-eyed horror.

“What,” Arthur says, but then Merlin’s hands are pushing him back into the bathroom, and it’s stupid because there’s a job, it’s all planned out, neat and orderly, and Arthur’s got a knife strapped to the flat of his hip for fuck’s sake, but when Merlin knots his hands in Arthur’s shirt, opens his mouth to Arthur’s, slick and hungry, Arthur can’t help but fall back against the wall, hands sliding up and down Merlin’s back, kissing him until the air’s chased out of his lungs and then kissing the air back in.

He hasn’t – there’d been that girl, a three-o’-clock-in-the-morning mistake that had only happened because Arthur couldn’t have who he wanted. But for two months, Arthur has gone to sleep between cold, empty sheets, wrapped in the memories of Merlin’s hot mouth and clever fingers and that fond, sweet smile that only came out when Merlin thought Arthur wasn’t looking. He’d wasted so much time trying not to pine after Merlin and then pining after him anyway, that there hadn’t been room for anything else, for anyone else.

Merlin is drawing a wet arc of kisses along Arthur’s neck, mouthing along Arthur’s collarbones to drop another kiss in the hollow between them, and it’s so tempting to think that maybe Merlin hasn’t had room for anyone else either. But that way lies madness, Arthur thinks, even though this feels like madness, wanting to slide down to his knees and take Merlin apart with long lingering touches, here in this bathroom with the opera spiraling towards its climax outside.

“Why,” Merlin says, and then interrupts himself to bite at Arthur’s shoulder, teasing a starved-sounding whine out of Arthur. “What are you,” Merlin tries again, the consonants all smoothed out into vowels.

“I’m,” Arthur says, trying to undo his shirt and Merlin’s at the same time. “Christ,” he says into Merlin’s smile as Merlin curves a sure hand around the swell of Arthur’s trousers.

Merlin drags his teeth under Arthur’s lip, nipping too hard because Merlin is never as careful as he should be, only wants to feel, and it’s lucky, that, Arthur thinks, because these days, the only time that Arthur feels anything is with Merlin. “Tell me,” Merlin says, his eyes just a hazy sliver of blue through dark lashes.

“Job,” Arthur says impatiently, and he’s struggling with the last button of Merlin’s shirt, and Merlin should look ridiculous, the way his shoulders are bare, the way the shirt is hanging off him, how obscene it all looks, except he just looks wonderful, and he’s all Arthur’s, at least for right now. Or, no, maybe that’s not right: maybe Arthur is Merlin’s, because Merlin will never be Arthur’s.

Arthur finally gets the damn shirt undone, then curls an insistent hand around Merlin’s neck, kissing him, licking into his mouth, thinking dazedly that it feels a bit like coming home. Merlin’s fingers wrap around Arthur’s wrist, and at first the touch seems like a part of it all, so Arthur lets him have it, lets Merlin lay a kiss to the arch of his palm, lets him stroke his thumb along Arthur’s pulse, skittering wildly just under the delicate skin at his wrist.

Later, he’ll think that he should’ve seen this coming.

(Later, Arthur will wonder where the hell Merlin was keeping those handcuffs.)

It’s just that Merlin is pressed up against Arthur in a long lovely line of bare skin, all pointy angles where other people would have curves, and Arthur is left gasping into his mouth, utterly helpless, as if Merlin is air and food and water, everything, as if he could just live off this – as if this is Arthur’s entire world: the close confines of these walls, the stark white lights, the mirror greedily taking in the sight of them (tangled in each other, absolutely wrecked, perfect), and Merlin, Merlin who Arthur doesn’t know, not really, but who Arthur needs. Merlin, who makes Arthur feel like maybe he’s falling in love, because it’s either that or just falling into pieces.

And so when Merlin somehow gets him turned around and somehow – somehow – slides the cuffs around his wrists in one cool, efficient snap of metal – it’s a bit of a surprise.

“Ha!” Merlin says, stepping back, looking wild and sort of psychotic.

Arthur takes it back, he’s not in love with Merlin, because Arthur doesn’t fall in love with crazy people.

“You carry handcuffs around with you,” Arthur says, which is not at all what he’d meant to say.

Merlin looks absurdly pleased, his skin flushed from Arthur’s regard, Arthur’s adoring fingers, and there’s a delicate pink cresting high on his cheeks. He looks tired and too young; there’s a bruise painted across his clavicle, one that doesn’t belong to Arthur. His hair is standing in about a million different directions and the thin skin under his eyes is smudged with shadow and he looks sort of horrible and like everything that Arthur could ever want.

“Handcuffs are very useful in many situations,” Merlin informs him. “This one, for instance.”

“I hope this is a prelude to sodomy,” Arthur says. “Because otherwise I’m going to be cross.”

Merlin just looks thrilled as he gets his shirt back on. “I’ve not got the time to properly debauch you, I’m afraid,” he says apologetically. He gets his shirt done up, and Arthur is angry, he is, he’s absolutely angry, there’s a job and the opera is about to end on a long, mournful note which tomorrow’s newspapers will compare to a death knell. He’s angry, Arthur tells himself, even as Merlin comes closer, and that’s one of Merlin’s myriad faults, he doesn’t think things out, because he’s got Arthur handcuffed and now he’s underestimating him, it would be so easy to just kick out, and Arthur could, should – except Merlin’s mouth is tantalizingly close, heating the curve of Arthur’s jaw with quick, shallow breaths, and for a deep, sweet moment, Arthur’s world narrows to just this: to just them.

“It’ll have to wait until next month in Prague,” Merlin says, and presses a kiss to the corner of Arthur’s mouth.

Arthur says, low, “You’re working for her, aren’t you? Your mark is my client.”

Merlin says, “And I’m guessing my client is your mark. Unfortunately, I can’t let you kill her. It would be unprofessional, and plus I need the money. I was robbed in Monte Carlo, see.”

“You shot me,” Arthur says.

Merlin smiles into Arthur’s cheek. Arthur shuts his eyes, breathes him in.

“Prague,” Merlin says, the word curling at the edges like a promise note, and then he reaches around to slip his fingers beneath one of Arthur’s cuffs, Merlin’s fingertips dragging hot across Arthur’s palm. “Bring these with you; they’re my favorite pair.”

“When I get to Prague,” Arthur says, “I am going to strangle you with your own esophagus.”

“I look forward to it,” Merlin says, and it’s insane, the way they’re grinning madly at each other across the bathroom, almost like the exhilaration after a spectacular kill, that thrill of skirting death, of achieving the impossible and both never wanting to do it again and needing it like air. It’s a bit like being able to fly after being told that you don’t have wings, like running when you didn’t even think you could walk.

Merlin leaves, off to finish the job and then off to Prague, where he’ll wait. For Arthur.

Arthur doesn’t know how he’s going to get out of these handcuffs; he doesn’t know if Lance is going to be annoyed that Arthur has now fucked up two jobs within the last year; he doesn’t know how he’s supposed to get out of the theater, what with his shirt unbuttoned and fluttering like some sort of cuckolded wife.

He’s angry, Arthur tells himself again, except he catches a glimpse of himself in the mirror, the way his eyes are bright and his mouth is stained with Merlin’s kisses. The way is hair is a mess, the way his collar is irreparably crinkled because that’s Merlin – always holding onto things too tightly.

And Arthur tips his head back against the bathroom wall, shuts his eyes and thinks: God help me, I’m so in love with him.

***

This is Prague:

The metal links of the cuffs wound around and through the headboard and Arthur has never been to Prague before and when he thinks back to it, a year or maybe two or maybe ten from now, all he’ll remember is Merlin braced over him, Merlin inside him, the dizzying bare heat of it all, falling asleep with Merlin’s fingers still hooked into him (I love you like this, slick and open from me, wet and leaking, you’d let me do whatever you want, wouldn’t you wouldn’t you wouldn’t you) because neither of them is very good at letting go.

And Montreal:

Merlin up against the wall, his laughs disappearing into something sweeter, something far more intimate, and Arthur pressed up against him. Montreal glitters with the October twilight, the sky a riot of violets and reds, but Arthur can’t look away from Merlin, Merlin, who’s got a hand twined in Arthur’s hair, whose fingers are light across Arthur’s wrist as Arthur slips a hot hand down the front of Merlin’s jeans, cupping, squeezing. (Someone will see, Merlin says, because they’re at a bus station, not sure where they’re going, and Arthur’s breath ruffles Merlin’s eyelashes as he says, Let them.)

And Moscow:

Peeling the winter off Merlin’s skin, the coat and the hoodie and the three shirts, and then pinning his hips to the bed, taking him into Arthur’s mouth, scraping his teeth against Merlin because Merlin likes it that way. Merlin is a study of motion, of kinetic energy, a perfect sine wave, arching and falling, toes curling, and Arthur keeps getting distracted, wanting to taste the unmarked skin at Merlin’s inner thigh, that notch at Merlin’s hip, and Merlin, Merlin, his voice gone to hoarseness (Let me fuck your mouth, Arthur, Arthur, please oh God please, until your mouth’s bruised and sticky with it and when you go outside, everyone will know and you’ll love it, won’t you?) and Arthur comes, shocked, the orgasm startled out of him.

But that’s not all, because this is Vienna:

Sleepily reaching for Merlin as Arthur heads for the toilet, their hotel room lit gold by the dawn, and when Arthur kisses him (because he has to, because he starts to count the hours by Merlin’s kisses, by Merlin’s breaths, because his bed is always a little bit warmer with Merlin in it), he finds Merlin’s mouth full of toothpaste and Merlin is laughing, trying to push him away, but Arthur decides he doesn’t care, licks into Merlin’s mouth until the toothpaste is gone (until they taste like each other).

And there’s Amsterdam:

Sprawled on the bed, bodies curved toward each other like commas that bracket blueprints of the mark’s house, his office, detailed files of where he goes, who he talks to, what he does when he thinks no one is looking. It’s Arthur’s job, but they’re both lying on their sides, the conversation sleepy in the two o’clock morning, meandering languidly from the job to their favorite movies to Arthur’s father to Merlin’s ill uncle to Arthur’s hopes to Merlin’s dreams. They fall asleep in the middle of the bed, the blueprints and folders and files and lists wrinkling underneath them, and Arthur’s hand warm on Merlin’s chest.

And spring in Cyprus:

Their little boat rocking lazily beneath them, and Merlin draped over Arthur like a starfish, murmuring into Arthur’s neck about how he wishes they could stay here forever, just like this, floating out into these blue seas that gleam gold in the sunlight. Arthur strokes circles across Merlin’s back, lets him talk himself to sleep, and then he whispers all those things that he doesn’t dare tell Merlin when he’s awake (I’d follow you anywhere and I want this, forever and quieter, because it has to be kept a secret from the sun and the water and oh, especially from Merlin, I love you).

Except. They’re at a bar in Paris:

Merlin slants a sideways look at him, blinking tiredly into the gaudy neon city lights. “Don’t fall in love with me,” he says, twenty-three and beautiful and cruel with it, too young and too beautiful to be tied down to this thing called love.

Arthur looks back at him, at his whisky-wet mouth, at the indolent curve of his back. And Arthur thinks: It’s too late.

***

Arthur calls Merlin in Mongolia.

“You’re in Mongolia,” Arthur says. “Why are you in Mongolia.”

“Maybe I’m visiting family,” Merlin says brightly.

“You’re not Mongolian.”

“I could be,” Merlin says, sounding terribly wronged. “I could’ve been raised by a sheep-herder. I could’ve grown up among sheep.”

“That would explain a lot,” Arthur says, and thinks of Merlin, lazing in the endless sea of grass, the sun wrapping him in summer warmth. Arthur is in Singapore and it’s been three weeks since that night in Copenhagen, trying to stretch the minutes into hours because they didn’t know when they would be able to meet up again.

(It’s a six-hour direct flight from Singapore to Ulaanbaatar, Arthur knows this.)

“Rumor has it that you’re taking the job in Seoul,” Arthur says.

Merlin is quiet for a moment, and that silence is in a language Arthur still doesn’t know how to read.

“I am,” Merlin says.

Arthur says flatly, “There’s a reason no one’s taken that job. It’s impossible.”

“My favorite kind of odds,” Merlin says, and how Arthur hates him when he gets like this: careless.

“The mark’s a paranoid billionaire agoraphobe,” Arthur says, tone edged with irritation. “You’ll never be able to get close enough, he’s got a team of bodyguards, all of whom have been with the family for years, he hasn’t made a public appearance in two decades, the house’s security system is attuned to—”

“It does sound difficult,” Merlin says cheerfully.

“It’s a fucking accident waiting to happen,” Arthur says.

“Probably,” Merlin agrees.

Arthur’s head hurts. “You’ll need a partner. Look, we can meet up in Bangkok and—”

“I’ve already got a partner lined up, actually,” Merlin says, casual. “Don’t worry about it. Listen, Arthur, I’ve got to go, there are marks to kill, cows to milk, sheep to herd—”

“Merlin,” Arthur says.

“And frankly,” Merlin says, voice cooling by at least five degrees – and Arthur can picture him now, his jaw held tense and the corners of his mouth curled down, young and sure (but not Arthur’s, never Arthur’s) – “it’s not any of your business.”

Arthur looks out the window at Singapore, spread out sleek and clean, a hodgepodge of light and color. A festival has spilled out onto the street outside Arthur’s hotel, all electric blues and shocking pinks.

Singapore is beautiful and Arthur’s here to desecrate it.

“You’re right,” Arthur says, and if his voice sounds distant, odd – well. It’s not like Merlin will notice.

“Shit,” Merlin says. “Arthur—”

Arthur hangs up and tells himself there’s no reason for it to hurt this much, it shouldn’t hurt this much.

Except, it does.

***

When they meet up again, it’s on a rooftop in Nairobi, underneath the stars.

It’s been two years since Beijing, Arthur thinks, watching the night douse the city. Two years of running in circles, chasing after something he doesn’t think he’ll ever reach. Two years of always being the one to watch Merlin leave, two years of being in love with someone who doesn’t know what the word means.

Arthur is twenty-nine and he’s so, so tired.

He remembers being six-years-old on Christmas morning, bursting into his parents’ room to find them inexplicably asleep at five in the morning. He remembers being appalled that they were sleeping through Christmas, it had already been Christmas for five entire hours, and he remembers what they looked like in those peaceful moments before he woke them up, on their respective sides of the bed, not touching except for where their hands were knotted loosely together as if they couldn’t bear the idea of not holding onto each other, even when they were lost to dreams.

He remembers being seven and huddled underneath a tree, cold and miserable as the storm washed the park into a blur of grey, all because his mother had woken up that morning and decided a picnic lunch was in order. He remembers exchanging doubtful glances with his father because the skies had already gone colorless with the threat of rain, and he remembers his father agreeing to the picnic anyway, leaning close to his mother and telling her very seriously that her smile was bright enough to chase storms away. (He’d been wrong, but it hadn’t seemed to matter.)

He remembers being eight, the week before his mother had died. He remembers the hospital, all sterile white walls and hushed whispers and food that tasted like dust. He remembers his father telling his grandmother to Take Arthur, I can’t leave, I can’t, what if she wakes up and asks for me, even though his mother hadn’t asked for anyone, hadn’t even woken up for two weeks. He remembers his father pressing a dry kiss to his mother’s cheek, and he remembers thinking that she’ll wake up any moment now, just like Sleeping Beauty. (She hadn’t, of course, but Arthur had waited.)

He remembers Lance and Gwen’s wedding in France, Lance’s hands trembling as he lifted Gwen’s veil, reverent, like he was unwrapping a present he didn’t think he deserved. Arthur remembers thinking that Lance was being stupid, because Gwen, Gwen had looked radiant and so happy, and when she’d lifted her face to Lance’s, it had been like a flower turning its face to the spring sun.

He remembers when Morgana would come home from university for the holidays, always dragging a new boyfriend along to wither away under Arthur’s father’s glare. It was a new one each set of holidays, and maybe even a new one each week, but the thing was that Morgana had always been truly and deeply in love with each one of them, even if she couldn’t keep their names straight. She was in love with being in love, she would tell Arthur, it was the most wonderful feeling in the world.

No one, not his father or his mother or Lance or Gwen or Morgana – no one had ever said love was like this. No one had ever told him that love was a bit like drowning, and that unrequited love was a bit like drowning and knowing with perfect clarity that no one was going to save you.

***

Merlin lights a cigarette. It flares blue-gold.

He says, “The thing is – I’m in love with you.”

The words are a little bit like the streak of electricity that is a city surrounded by desert: wrong.

Arthur says, “Tell me all the lies you like. Just not that one.”

Merlin doesn’t listen to him. He never does.

“I know it’s not what you pictured. I know you want something more – polite.”

“Polite,” Arthur says.

“Conventional, then. You want a house in the countryside and you want people to refer to us as ArthurandMerlin. You want hordes of little blond children and a wedding in the south of Italy.”

“That,” Arthur says, “is not what I want. Mostly I just want you to stop shooting at me.”

Merlin looks up at the stars. Arthur doesn’t think he’s looking for anything in particular; he’s just looking away.

“Maybe,” Merlin says quietly. “Maybe not. But it’s all the same in the end – I can’t give it to you.”

Arthur knows that. He’s always known that. Still, he says, “Why not?”

The moonlight catches on Merlin’s lashes, silvers his face. He looks almost ugly in it.

“You don’t know me at all, do you,” Merlin says abruptly. “I’m twenty-four, Arthur. And I’m not like you, I’m not – I’m not jaded to this. I love it, I love waking up in a new country every week, I love the adrenaline that runs through you after a job goes well. I love the seedy hotel rooms and the yachts and almost getting killed and knowing that I should stop while I’m ahead and not being able to. I love taking jobs I’m not sure I’ll live through and I love – I love being on my own, getting to do whatever I want. I don’t – my mother thinks I’m dead, Arthur, because that’s how I want it. Because this is everything to me.”

Merlin looks at his cigarette, the smoke curling unhappily around his thin fingers.

“I love you,” he says, sounding tired. “But it’s not enough. It won’t ever be.”

Arthur looks down at his hands. He hadn’t realized they were shaking.

He says: “I can wait. Christ, Merlin, I’ve already waited a year, ever since Buenos Aires—”

“Buenos Aires,” Merlin says, flat. “I’ve loved you ever since Beijing. Do you – do you see?”

“Beijing,” Arthur says slowly. He can’t breathe.

“It doesn’t matter,” Merlin says. “Because I hate it. I hate – I hate feeling this way. I can’t – I don’t want this. When we were in Cyprus, I passed up a job in Los Angeles and I felt like shit because I need this, it’s part of me, it is me. You – I love you but I can’t need you like that. I don’t want to.”

He shuts his eyes, lashes a dark, delicate sweep against his cheek.

And he says, “I’ll always need this more than you. And I know I’ve done it all wrong, except for a while I thought that maybe I could have both, that I could just keep everything separate. And then – you called me in Mongolia about the Seoul job and I realized that it doesn’t work like that, I can’t just tuck you away into your own compartment and pull you out whenever I fancy it.”

And he says, “I hate hurting you, but I don’t think I can stop.”

And he says, “We have to end this, whatever it is. It’s the only way.”

“End it,” Arthur says. His voice sounds odd, foreign to his ears.

(He can think of a million reasons for why he should let Merlin go.

The thing is, he doesn’t want to.)

“It’s not what either of us wants,” Merlin says. “There’s no point in making this difficult.”

“Right,” Arthur says.

“If I were someone else,” Merlin says wistfully.

“I wouldn’t want you,” Arthur says. “If you were someone else.”

Merlin gets to his feet. He says, “I know,” and, “I’m going to Seoul. I think you should go in the opposite direction. Spend Christmas in New York.”

Arthur doesn’t say anything. He can’t.

Merlin looks at him – Merlin, who isn’t Arthur’s (even when he was). “Fuck,” Merlin says, and bends down to slide his mouth against Arthur’s. He tastes like the smoke from his cigarette: he tastes like goodbye. “See you,” Merlin says.

He doesn’t mean it.

Merlin throws down his cigarette and leaves, ducking back into the building.

The cigarette is still smoldering, flickering. Arthur watches it for a while.

Then he reaches over and puts it out.

***

And these are the days after:

Day 9:

Christmas blurs into the sort of haze that can only be provided by Scotch with a nine-syllable name, and Arthur spends it in Madrid, watching the city kaleidoscope around him until the neon greens collide with the pale purples, until the alcohol is roaring in his ears, until the world shrinks to just this: his cheek against the cold tile, his hand curled around a too-empty glass, one heartbeat and then the next.

(Lance calls him. Says, “I thought you were coming over for Christmas,” and, “where are you?”

Arthur says, “I don’t know.”)

Day 19:

He calls Sophie.

He says, “How did it feel, when I told you it wouldn’t work out with us?”

“Horrible,” she says softly, voice silvered by the drowsy French night. “Like I wanted to die.”

“But you’re fine now,” Arthur says. “You got over it. You don’t love me anymore.”

Sophie doesn’t say anything.

Day 22:

His mobile rings with a job offer from Beijing.

He can’t. Not Beijing. Anywhere but Beijing.

Day 28:

New Year’s Eve is back in London, the city lit bright as the day.

Color knifes through the night sky, and Arthur watches the fireworks from his hotel room window. He has a flat here, somewhere in the mess that is London at night, but he can’t go back there. Merlin never spent any time in Arthur’s London flat, except Arthur remembers leaning against the balcony railing, Merlin’s voice pouring in from Zimbabwe or Uganda or wherever he was.

(“Tell me a secret,” Merlin says.

I love you, Arthur thinks, but, “All of my passport aliases are named after Dickens characters,” is what he says.

Merlin says, “I already knew that. You’re shit at this.”

“Tell me a secret, then,” Arthur says.

And Merlin goes quiet, so quiet that Arthur thinks the connection might’ve cut out. But he says,

“I think about you. Sometimes.”

Afterwards – in Prague, in Vienna, in Cyprus – they don’t talk about it.

It isn’t much, after all, isn’t a promise or a vow. But Arthur remembers.)

Day 42:

There’s a girl in Paris, her blue-black hair spilling into Arthur’s hands, across his wrists.

He bends her over the table in his hotel room, buries his face in her shoulder when he comes.

And if her shoulder is wet when they fall away from each other – she doesn’t say anything about it.

Day 55:

Gwaine calls him and says, “Your lad just did a quick turnaround to Shanghai. He’s back in Seoul now.”

Arthur says, “He’s not my lad.”

“Do you want me to stop tracking him, then?” Gwaine says, easy as that.

Arthur is in Vienna, trying to remember what it looked like before Merlin kissed him, there – on that bridge – before Merlin kissed him under a streetlamp, looking otherworldly, not quite real. Arthur thinks that Vienna must’ve been duller back then. Before Merlin infused it with color.

“Arthur,” Gwaine says.

(Arthur has never been very good at letting go.)

He says, “Yes. You should stop tracking him.”

And, honestly, it’s a bit like falling apart.

Day 63:

Lance tells him that he needs a break.

“I’m fine,” Arthur says.

“You haven’t fucked up a job that badly – ever,” Lance says. “Even when you were twenty-three and you didn’t know which way you’re supposed to point your gun.”

“I’m fine,” Arthur says again.

“It’ll get better,” Gwen says when Lance despairingly hands the phone off to her. “Arthur.”

“Sure,” Arthur tells her. “Of course it will.”

(The thing is – it’s been two months. Two months and nothing’s better yet.)

Day 71:

He’s on a train, somewhere between Bucharest and Zagreb. It’s three o’clock in the morning in whatever time zone Arthur’s sleep schedule is still synchronized to.

When his mobile rings, he thinks that maybe he expected this, maybe he had known this would happen as early as June, but certainly by December. Definitely by December.

Her English is shitty, but Arthur’s Korean is worse.

The words are absurdly clinical, absurdly metallic. Arthur thinks that it’s funny, isn’t it, that a nurse at a hospital would have mastered the same monotone that Arthur’s voice drops into right after a kill.

He catches a few words, like plucking raindrops out of a cloud.

He says, “I can be in Seoul by Friday.”

And if Arthur has to lock himself in a bathroom stall in the airport, has to put his head between his knees and remember how to breathe – well, it’s not as if anyone’s there to see him.

***

Four layovers, vodka that burns on the way down as well as on the way back up, so little sleep that the world starts to bleed color – raging blues, yellows as bright as the sun, and the worst of it is the reds, blood so real that it starts to look fake, reds that Arthur can’t stop seeing even when he shuts his eyes – and the huge skyscrapers that dwindle into cloudless winter skies:

For Arthur, this is Seoul.

He doesn’t remember the stretch of time between the airport and the hospital, just snatches of it: stumbling off the plane, checking his mobile because surely the hospital would’ve called him if – if anything had happened, if anything had changed between Beijing and Seoul. He must’ve caught a taxi, must’ve got to the hospital okay because now he’s here.

Two hospital beds, only one of them occupied. The white, white lights. That sickly sterile smell.

And the only thing that he can think is fuck, fuck fuck fuck they must’ve – is anyone watching why isn’t anyone here don’t they know that he’s dead—

And who will even come to the funeral, Arthur wonders, dizzy. Maybe he can get a hold of Merlin’s mother, won’t that be hilarious, she can watch her son die again, and Lance and Gwen would come, and that’s good because Gwen will know what to do about the flowers, and maybe Arthur can track down some of those men and women tucked into the corners of the world, the ones that got to have Merlin for a few days here and there because they didn’t mind watching Merlin leave, because unlike Arthur, they didn’t mind letting go.

They’ll have the funeral in Istanbul because Arthur thinks that Merlin loved Istanbul, or, no, that’s not right, he had a flat in Istanbul but that doesn’t mean he loves – no no no, he’s getting all the tenses wrong, and – shit.

The sob catches in his throat, as if snagged on a nail, and Merlin is – oh God, was – twenty-four, twenty-four, you’re not supposed to be dead at twenty-four, and none of this is fair it’s not fair how can any of this be fair?

The funeral should be in Cyprus, Arthur thinks with sudden, perfect clarity. Merlin loved Cyprus.

And because Merlin has always been difficult, it figures that once Arthur has got the details for the funeral all sorted out in his head, Merlin blinks his eyes open and says irritably, “Oh my God, what are you doing here?”

It’s been twenty-five hours since Arthur last slept. He wonders if this is a hallucination or a dream.

He wonders if there’s any difference.

“I thought you were dead,” Arthur says, accusing.

“Well, I’m not,” Merlin says, and that may be empirically true, but Merlin looks pale in this paler room, as if these stark white lights and these bare white walls have leeched all the color out of him. He’s all jutting elbows and bony knees, his skin gone to translucence, to fragility. He looks like one of the china dolls Morgana used to have as a child, the ones she was always breaking because she was never careful enough with them; Merlin looks like he’s been taken apart and haphazardly put back together by someone who didn’t quite know where everything should go.

“You look terrible,” Arthur says, and he thinks that he should go over there, there’s all this space between them, except he has to wait for Merlin to tell him it’s okay, because Merlin tells him to walk and Arthur runs; that’s all he’s ever done. It’s all he can do.

“I got shot in the back,” Merlin informs him. “Did you just come here to insult me or—”

“No,” Arthur says, and he’s so tired, it’s been three days of zigzagging across Asia because he couldn’t get a fucking direct flight on such short notice, it’s been three days of trying to remember if the woman on the phone had said he’s fine or he’s dying, three days of trying to picture all the various, horrible ways it could have gone: Merlin on his back, bleeding into the snow, Merlin’s delicate wrists being snapped by a paranoid billionaire who figured Merlin couldn’t bother him again if he didn’t have hands, Merlin’s broken body being tossed into the river, taken away with the tide and swept out to the sea.

“Arthur,” Merlin says, quiet, almost sweet, and Arthur hates everything, the whole world.

(He remembers being eight and his father whispering into his mother’s curved palm, I won’t leave you, I promise, and he remembers thinking that that was what love was.

He remembers a rooftop in Nairobi, and thinking Merlin would never understand love as Arthur did. Remembers thinking that if it were Merlin dying of a disease that had given eight-year-old Arthur more nightmares than all the monsters in the world, Arthur wouldn’t leave him.

Except – Arthur had left, hadn’t he.)

“I should’ve,” Arthur says, and he knows that now’s not the time but he can’t help it, can’t stop—“I shouldn’t have told Gwaine to stop tracking you, I should’ve told him to look closer at the job, because then we would’ve seen where you were compromised—”

Merlin laughs, tired. “Now everything makes sense,” he says. “Like you randomly showing up in Budapest.”

Arthur reaches out before he knows what he’s doing, carefully curves his hand against Merlin’s cheek.

Merlin leans into the touch, a little startled, but he looks pleased, and Arthur feels desperate, helpless, the way he does when Merlin looks at him like that, his eyes bright and his smile sweet, as if this moment is somehow separate from all the rest, as if in this moment, there’s only them, just them. As if Arthur is all Merlin could ever want, even though that isn’t true. Merlin wants the sky, wants the sun and the moon and the stars, and Arthur can’t give that to him.

Arthur says, “Budapest was your own fault. You didn’t even bother to use an alias.”

“Merlin is an alias,” Merlin says, and he pulls away long enough to lace Arthur’s fingers with his.

“No, it’s not,” Arthur says. “That’s your real name.”

Merlin looks briefly vexed and then says, “I knew you were in Bucharest. You slipped up, used the same credit card you used in Cyprus.”

And Arthur says, “I wasn’t hiding from you.”

Merlin looks intensely interested in the way they’ve twined their fingers together; he looks like he did in Nairobi, where they were under the stars instead of these bright white lights: he looks almost carefully distant, terribly casual, as if he knows that just one word from him will break Arthur’s heart (has already broken Arthur’s heart because it wasn’t just Nairobi, was it, there was Paris and Vienna and Prague and Istanbul and Budapest and the whole world, because at some point, Arthur started finding the map of his world in Merlin’s skin).

Merlin looks up, looks horribly ill and Arthur loves him, thinks that he’ll never, ever let him go.

Merlin says, “Stay with me,” and Arthur says,

“Yes.”

***

This is the rest of Seoul:

Merlin sleepily pressing the question, “How’d you find me, anyway?” into Arthur’s neck, hand stroking in time to the lilt of Arthur’s pulse, like the pitter-patter of Arthur’s heart is a song he knows all the lyrics to.

“The hospital called me,” Arthur says. “Apparently you carry my number around in your wallet.”

Merlin says, somewhat defensively, “Only because I haven’t bothered to program it into my mobile.”

“Hmm,” Arthur muses. “The woman also said you had it framed in tiny pink hearts.”

“I hate you,” Merlin informs him. “I hate you and I hate this conversation.”

“Go to sleep,” Arthur tells him, indulgent, and Merlin does. He’s probably half-asleep already when he says,

“I’m glad you’re here,”

but Arthur will take what he can get.

And later:

Falling asleep together on the too-small hospital bed because the other one is too far away, and Merlin telegraphing all the words that he doesn’t say onto Arthur’s skin, because they’re better with these slow, lingering touches than they’ve ever been at talking. Arthur is too careful and Merlin is never careful enough, but they manage to curl around each other, and when Arthur drifts off to sleep, it’s with Merlin’s breaths in his ear, too close and too warm and very, very wanted.

And in the morning:

Waking up to the sun slanting in through the blinds, the morning creeping into their dreams, and the doctor coming in to tell them that the wounds are healing nicely, the bullet went through cleanly, that they can go but Merlin should make sure he has access to a doctor because you never know, and also to take it easy for a few months in a way that mostly means the doctor would prefer that Merlin not get shot at.

Merlin says, “I have a flat in Istanbul,” and Arthur says,

“Your flat is infested with cockroaches, Merlin.”

“Only the downstairs,” Merlin mutters rebelliously, which is true, if not exactly persuasive.

Arthur says, “We’ll go to London.”

Merlin looks appalled. “I am not moving in with you,” he says.

But he doesn’t say anything else, which Arthur takes as meaning that Merlin is pleased but also too embarrassed to let Arthur know that he’s pleased. In the taxi, Merlin says with outraged dignity,

“I’m being abducted, you realize, you are abducting me against my will.”

Arthur traces the lines on Merlin’s palm, wondering if this is how their lives start.

“It could be worse,” he says. “I could’ve brought the handcuffs, but I left them in London.”

Merlin turns to look out the window, but Arthur sees the shape of his smile in the reflection.

And on the plane:

Watching Seoul drop away below them, glimmering like champagne in the sun, and Merlin slumped in his seat, looking wan in the dim cabin lights. He looks tired, here in the stale grey air of the airplane, more tired than he looked in Seoul. Arthur asks him if he’s in pain and Merlin just blinks at him, like he’d forgotten that Arthur was there.

Merlin says, “I just – I haven’t been back to London. Since I left.”

“It’ll be all right,” Arthur says, feeling utterly useless, and he feels even more useless when Merlin just presses his cheek against the cold window and shuts his eyes.

“Of course it will,” Merlin says, but the bravado is clumsy.

Arthur reaches out to – to touch him, but it’s so confusing because there had always been all these boundaries between them, lines that Merlin had drawn, lines that Arthur had got used to, but now they’re all muddled up and he doesn’t know what he’s allowed to do anymore.

He settles for his palm on Merlin’s knee, light, unsure. Merlin opens his eyes and Arthur feels startled, embarrassed, starts to withdraw his hand, tries to redraw the boundary lines in his head, but then Merlin’s hand is covering his, Merlin’s fingers curling in the spaces between Arthur’s fingers, and Arthur realizes –

two months ago, Nairobi, Merlin saying I love you –

there aren’t any boundary lines. Not anymore.

***

When they get into London, they crawl into bed and sleep for twenty-two hours straight.

And when Arthur wakes, it’s to skies that are orange with the lingering afternoon and violet with the encroaching evening. It’ll take a few days to get back into the rhythm that is London, and longer for London to feel like home. But looking around his flat – barren, really, save for the dining table, the sofa, the bed, the stack of plastic crates that does a marvelous imitation of a coffee table – he thinks that maybe, if he stays long enough, piece by piece, London could start to feel like belonging.

He finds Merlin already awake, sitting by the window in the living room. Strands of gossamer, fading sunshine catch on his hair, on his skin. He’s parted the curtains that Arthur always keeps drawn because that way he can pretend that he’s in Cairo or Moscow or Rome or Bucharest – anywhere but here.

Arthur says cautiously, “Hey.”

Merlin looks at him, blinking slowly. He’s wearing jeans and a jumper Arthur’s never seen before; his feet are bare and he looks like he could still be in university, looks at odds with the sleek, unforgiving lines of Arthur’s flat, against the outline of stiff, buttoned-up London. His hand is pressed against the window, and Arthur thinks that he looks a bit like a caged bird, grounded by broken wings.

“Hi,” Merlin says, just as cautious.

There’s tea in the cupboards; Arthur owns at least six different properties around the world and they’re all properly stocked with tea even if some of them lack basic necessities like beds and – distressingly, in his Mumbai flat – toilets. “How do you take yours?” Arthur asks, hunting around in the cupboards for the kettle.

Merlin stands, briefly silhouetted by the coming twilight. “I don’t, actually,” he says. “I don’t like tea.”

Arthur says, “I didn’t know that.”

Merlin shrugs, stuffs his hands into his pockets, and then removes them.

“It’s nice,” Merlin says. “Your flat.”

“It’s horrible,” Arthur says. “I hate it.”

Merlin’s smile is a little bit dazzling. And when it fades, Arthur still feels warmed.

Except then Merlin says, abruptly, “You should know – that nothing’s changed,” and the warmth abandons Arthur, sudden and cruel. Merlin looks at his feet, apparently and inexplicably fascinated by them. “I’m still – I haven’t changed. I still think the same thing I thought in Nairobi, and this – my being here now doesn’t change that.” He looks up, his mouth a thin line, as if he’s stuck between a smile and a grimace. “I’m not trying to be cruel and I’m not trying to be nice, this isn’t me being grateful.”

“What are you saying,” Arthur says. He thinks he should be angry, but all he feels is tired.

Merlin looks irritated. “I hate London,” he says, and now there’s an almost violent edge to his voice. “I hate it here. It’s – you told me about your dad and how you were – you were running away from something. You were running away from the life he had all planned out for you.” Merlin carefully folds his sleeves over his fingers. He looks embarrassed, and Arthur thinks how strange all this is, standing here in his London flat with Merlin, the teabag sitting out on the counter, as if all this is normal, like Arthur never robbed Merlin in Monte Carlo, like Merlin never shot Arthur in Beijing.

“You were running away,” Merlin says, soft. “I was running toward something. I – I wasn’t like you, I wasn’t running at all. I went to university and I was going – I was going to study medicine, you know.”

Arthur hadn’t known. He doesn’t know anything about Merlin, really, just the pieces Merlin lets him have: how Merlin likes to be touched, likes to be kissed; that Merlin has a place in Berlin but can only say three words in German, none of them useful; that Merlin owns one suit and approximately twenty pairs of jeans; that right before a job, he listens to trashy Europop because it’s mindless and sometimes the only way to get through a kill is by effectively losing your mind.

“Why didn’t you?” Arthur asks.

Merlin’s smile is small, faint, but real. “I’m better at breaking things than I am at fixing them,” he says. “I was happy but I was – I don’t know, it was all so normal. And I never felt normal. I had my mum and I had my friends and I was doing well in university but – it was never enough, I wanted more than that. I was good at university but I was better at this. I remember the first time I killed someone and it was terrifying and I felt guilty but it was also – it made me feel real and I’d never felt like that before, like I could do anything.”

The kettle starts to shriek like some disapproving harpy.

Merlin stares at it blankly. “And London takes all that away. It’s like I never left, it’s like I’m that stupid nineteen-year-old kid who thought that he was happy.” He looks up at Arthur and his face looks wide open, bright and luminous, terribly vulnerable, and Arthur privately thinks that he still looks nineteen because that’s the thing about Merlin: he’s not as grown up as he thinks he is.

Arthur sorts out the kettle and then goes to him. Reaches out. Hooks a finger around Merlin’s belt loop.

“I’m not done yet,” Merlin protests, but there’s a smile shadowing his mouth. He very deliberately brings his hands up, rests them lightly on Arthur’s chest.

“Of course you aren’t,” Arthur says.

Merlin slants what is probably meant to be an annoyed look at him, but it comes out pleased. “I just mean that I still hate London and I still don’t think this is going to work because we don’t want the same things and probably within a few weeks you’ll try to shoot me with the gun that you keep stashed in your underwear drawer and I’ll try to brain you with your stupid kettle.”

He ducks his head a bit, shy, almost, and peers up at Arthur through dark lashes.

Arthur tugs him closer. Slides his thumbs into the waistband of Merlin’s jeans.

“I didn’t come here to – leave you, I don’t like hurting you,” Merlin says. “And when I say I’m not here because I’m grateful – I mean that. I’m not here because you came to Seoul; I’m not trying to repay you a favor.” His voice goes hushed, intimate, breaths warm against Arthur’s mouth. “I’m here because I want to be. And I think – we should try this. See how it goes.”

Arthur looks at him and can’t look away.

Merlin’s hands tangle in Arthur’s shirt. “I’m done now,” he says irritably. “If you don’t want—”

“No,” Arthur says sharply, because how can Merlin think that he wouldn’t want this, it’s all Arthur’s wanted, has wanted for two and a half years, has wanted so long and so hard that now that he’s being offered it, he doesn’t know what to do, doesn’t know where to look first. It’s Merlin, he’s no different than he was two minutes ago or two months ago or even two years ago, but it’s not at all the same because now Arthur’s allowed to have him and how impossible it is, that Merlin should think that Arthur could ever let him go.

“I want,” Arthur says on quick snatches of breaths. “I want, I do want—”

Merlin curves an arm around Arthur’s neck, looking mollified as he says “Okay, then,” and then he’s laughing as Arthur pushes him up against the window, kisses him long and deep into the London night.

***

March thaws February’s frosts and there are moments –

waking up to find Merlin next to him, limned in late morning gold, and Arthur leans close, trying to sort out what he likes best: the fragile whisper of Merlin’s eyelashes or the pale glimmer of a shoulder peeking out from underneath the covers or his hair curling sweetly around his ear or the soft pout of his mouth or the way he smiles into Arthur’s kiss, slow as a dream (It turns out Arthur can’t choose.)

and getting caught in a thunderstorm, the skies splitting open above them, and Arthur tries to duck into a coffee shop, but Merlin’s pulling him out onto the pavement, holding him close. The world melts into a colorless sea, but Merlin’s eyes are as blue as the wide open summer skies and his skin is slick with the storm, and Arthur tucks his hands into Merlin’s collar, kisses the rain off his eyelashes (You’ll catch cold, Arthur says, sipping kisses off Merlin’s mouth, and Merlin says, Warm me up, then.)

and later, stretched out in front of the window, the rain throwing London into a halo of color, and the hours strung together like Christmas lights. Arthur’s hand is reverent over Merlin’s heart, his fingertips trying to memorize this simplest of patterns, wondering which heartbeat says I love you, which one says Stay with me. Merlin catches him at it and Arthur looks up, embarrassed, says, I was— but Merlin just drops a kiss into Arthur’s palm and presses himself along Arthur so their bodies align, and they fall asleep like that (counting heartbeats)

and dinner at Lance and Gwen’s, and even though Arthur has known Elaine for all four years of her life, brings her sweets from Madrid and dolls from Moscow, and even delivered her when Gwen rather inconveniently went into labor in Arthur’s backseat, still two kilometers away from the hospital – Elaine decides she likes Merlin best. This possibly has something to do with the fact that Merlin spins her around until they’re both dizzy, that he lets her climb all over him and then pretends that he can’t find her when she clambers onto his back. I like him, Lance says approvingly as they watch Merlin gamely sit down to a tea party and very seriously shake the paw of a stuffed bear. Merlin looks up and sees Arthur watching, grins and waves him away, and later, when they’re tucked close together in the taxi, headed for home, Merlin says, I like kids, and Arthur feels so helpless, feels like his chest is going to explode with all the words he doesn’t know how to say, so he just kisses Merlin, kisses him until Merlin understands, until Merlin’s hand soothes the line of Arthur’s jaw (and then he kisses him some more)

and going back to that old hotel-turned-crack-house that lurks at the frayed edges of London, the first time that Arthur’s been there in nearly a decade. He doesn’t know why he wants to show Merlin, just that he has to, because this is a part of him as much as the beautifully tailored suits and the shiny guns and the banknotes folded into his wallet. They go back that corner, the first place anyone ever died at Arthur’s hands, and Arthur looks for the bloodstains that have long been painted over. I hate this, Arthur says, kicking at a loose stone, turning away, thinking that this was a mistake, he hates London, he doesn’t know why he wanted Merlin to see this, these nightmares that are really memories. But Merlin catches Arthur’s fists, scrapes a kiss along his clenched knuckles, says, I want to know all of you, the polished parts and the uglier ones too, and if Arthur spends the night with his face buried in Merlin’s neck, if his eyes are too-dry in the morning and his voice hoarse – it’s a secret that they’ll both keep, slotted neatly in with all the others

and this last one, short and simple and somehow brighter than all the rest: Merlin standing in the doorway of the bathroom while Arthur is brushing his teeth, just watching him in the mirror. What? Arthur says, turning around and Merlin shakes his head, looks embarrassed. Nothing, he says, voice faltering. I just – I love you, that’s all, he says, and he looks so amazed that Arthur has to clutch him close, whispers, Say it again, and Merlin does, again and again and again until it’s ringing in their ears, until it’s all that they know

– when Arthur wishes that they could stay like this forever.

***

Except.

***

Neither one of them will remember those first three weeks.

This is what they’ll remember, in those six weeks after, how they unwound:

The way Arthur’s flat starts to feel smaller, as if the walls are bending, creeping in. He’s always hated this flat, the way the shadows lengthen across the floor, stretching the emptiness into oblivion, but it’s his flat, a snatch of air in a rotting city, a reprieve from the cacophony that is London. Arthur had thought that it was big enough for two people, but the thing is that Merlin just takes up so much space. His clothes are scattered around the bedroom floor and his towel is draped across the sofa and his battered trainers keep turning up in unexpected places, like the bathtub. He uses Arthur’s razor and is utterly defeated by the dishwasher and he’s just – always there. (It’s not a problem, of course, it’s just that Arthur hasn’t lived with anyone for so long, and it takes a while to remember how. It’s fine. This is what he wants.)

The way Merlin is never on time, and it’s not even that, it’s more like Merlin is aware of this concept called time and just ignores it completely. Arthur goes to see his accountant, whose business is just barely this side of illegal, and afterwards they’re supposed to meet up for dinner. Merlin never shows and after half an hour, Arthur gives up, goes back to his flat to find Merlin slumped in front of the television, just in his boxers. (“Sorry,” Merlin says, looking thoroughly charmed by the force of Arthur’s glare. He tugs Arthur down by his tie, slides his hands up under Arthur’s shirt. “I like this suit,” he says, nipping at Arthur’s jaw, and, softer, “don’t be angry,” and Arthur tries not to be. It’s a stupid thing to be angry about, he tells himself. It is.)

The way Merlin talks through films, the way he still doesn’t realize that Arthur doesn’t want to go out to the pubs every Friday night. The way he goes out with his old schoolmates and doesn’t invite Arthur because, “You’d find it dull,” Merlin says, dragging his hand through Arthur’s hair, “they’re all my age.” The way he eats shit for breakfast, lunch, and dinner – children’s cereal and beer and ice cream – if Arthur isn’t there to keep him properly fed, like he’s still in bloody university. The way Merlin flirts with everyone – the girl at the shop, the boy who sells him his shitty daily paper, Gwaine, when he comes over unannounced, the way he does once every couple of months. The way Merlin taps his fingernails against the tabletop as he’s reading the paper, the way he breathes, he has to be doing that on purpose.

The way Merlin snidely tells him that maybe he doesn’t always want to hang out with Lance and Gwen, the way an argument can turn from what they’re going to have for dinner to why can’t Merlin ever do the dishes anyway? The way Merlin doesn’t insinuate so much as outright say he’s bored, and why can’t they go to Paris, Merlin’s back is healed, or maybe Merlin should just go alone, it’d be nice not to be kept up all night by Arthur’s snores for a change. The way neither of them have ever had a proper relationship before and so they don’t know that there are rules to arguments, they don’t know that there are certain things that you are not allowed to say (and so they say them anyway). The way Merlin spends the night after a fight in the spare bedroom (the way the fights begin to multiply until he finally just moves into the spare bedroom).

The way they turn down five jobs between them so that they can stay here even though here is the last place they want to be. The way that Arthur starts to miss the thrill of the kill like he’d miss a hand or a leg, the way Arthur starts to realize that maybe he doesn’t want what he thought he wanted. The way Arthur starts to wonder if it really was ever love, because surely this isn’t love, watching Merlin leave, skin hot with their third argument of the day, and listening to him stumble back in at five o’clock in the morning, drunk and miserable. The way Arthur spends hours wandering London, this city that he hates, because he hates the prickly-loud silence of his flat more.

The way Merlin says coldly, two months into this mockery of a relationship, “Are you happy now? I’ve turned down two jobs, we have dinner every Saturday at Gwen and Lance’s, we live together – I suppose you’ve got what you want, haven’t you.”

The way Arthur says tiredly, “This is not what I want.”

The way Arthur buys a single ticket to Kiev.

The way the woman behind the counter pleasantly says, “Round-trip, sir?”

And the way Arthur says, “One-way.”

***

Arthur won’t remember Kiev or Belgrade or Sarajevo, these cities that slide together like blank pages in a book. He won’t remember the bar in Kiev, the air smoky with blue jazz; he won’t remember Belgrade, the cramped hotel room with too much furniture yet somehow empty all the same; he won’t remember Sarajevo, finding one of Merlin’s cheap cigarettes squashed in his pocket, lighting it and watching the rain burn.

All he’ll remember is three weeks of staring at a mobile that doesn’t ring, waiting for a call that doesn’t come.

And he wonders if this is how they break – one country at a time.

***

But this – this, they’ll both remember. Because this is Rome:

Lance owns a flat at the edges of the city, where the hills begrudge Rome her space. It’s a squat little place, with a low-hanging roof and a neglected garden that shrinks back from the road. He’d bought it long before he’d broken Arthur out of that Kolkata jail cell, probably on the run from the SAS or the SIS or whatever jumble of letters it is that haunts Lance’s past. Arthur doesn’t ask and Lance doesn’t tell; Arthur has his own secrets to worry about.

He stays for six days, long enough for his guns to find homes under his pillow, in the biscuit tin, in the vase. He goes to the market to buy food, using rusty Italian that sounds a lot like English. He meets with a minor Mafioso, is too smart with his mouth, and comes away with no job and a bruised cheek for his troubles. It doesn’t matter: he hates the Mafia. He’s mostly in Rome for the excellent wine, anyway.

On the sixth day, he lets himself into the flat and thinks that he should leave soon. Lance’s neighbor – a tiny crone of a woman with startlingly blue hair – is beginning to give him suspicious looks, and, combined with that fuckup with the Mafia eight years ago and the subsequent warrant for his arrest – Rome is hardly a bastion of safety for him.

He goes to fetch the gun out of the vase in the living room.

And stops.

“What,” Merlin says coldly, “the fuck.”

He’s sitting in a ratty armchair, wearing the same clothes he’d been wearing the night Arthur left: those jeans that are worn thin at the knees, the hoodie that’s slightly too large and must’ve been maroon at one point but has now faded into softer shades. He looks as if he hasn’t shaved in weeks and his wrists are hollow, bird-like. His eyes are impossibly blue and the pupils small, like he’s sleep-starved, like he’s been running on coffee and adrenaline and those colorful boxes of sugary cereal that he buys in bulk.

And apparently, he’s found the gun from the vase, because he currently has it trained on Arthur.

Arthur says, “That took you longer than I expected.”

“Oh, did it,” Merlin says, icy. “I’m so sorry that it took me so long to follow you across the whole bloody continent.”

Arthur says, “Did you really come all this way to shoot me?”

“I am seriously considering it,” Merlin says.

“Bad form, that,” Arthur says. “Repeating yourself.”

“If you’re talking about Beijing,” Merlin says loftily, “that was just a flesh wound. This time, I am going to shoot you in a very embarrassing location—” and his eyes touch briefly on the aforementioned embarrassing location— “and throw your lifeless body into the Tiber.”

Arthur shuts his eyes.

It’s been four weeks. Four weeks of too much whisky and hanging around for one last glass because maybe this glass will make him forget that he left Merlin in London, that he’d finally caught the one thing he’d wanted for so long only to realize that he couldn’t keep it. It’s been four weeks of wondering where they’d gone wrong, four weeks of trying to figure out why they fit so well together in Montreal and Vienna and Moscow and why they fell apart in London. Four weeks of hoping that maybe falling out of love is a bit like falling in love: sudden and unpredictable and inevitable.

Four weeks of realizing there’s no such thing as falling out of love. Not for Arthur.

Merlin says quietly, tiredly: “You left.”

He looks miserable, the sharp planes of his face gone sharper, the finer details washed away. He’s been chasing Arthur around the whole of Europe, probably spending long nights at his laptop, trying to map out Arthur’s trail. His fingers are trembling around the gun, with the unsteadiness that comes from too much caffeine and not enough sleep. He looks utterly psychotic, and Arthur suddenly realizes that Merlin’s probably sitting in that armchair because standing is too much effort.

And Arthur – Arthur’s the one who did that to him. Broke him.

“I was going to come back,” Arthur says, and somehow it’s both a truth and a lie.

“Were you,” Merlin says.

Arthur says, “You were right. It was never going to work.”

Merlin laughs, a hopeless, shattered sound. “So you left.”

Arthur sits down on the sofa, a pea green thing that should probably go out with the rubbish.

“I couldn’t stay,” Arthur says, hoarse. “We were miserable, Merlin.”

Merlin’s head snaps up; he looks blazingly angry. “And you thought the solution was to leave.” His voice is hysterical at the edges, like he’s unraveling at the seams. “Fuck you. Just – fuck you, you don’t get to just leave. You don’t get to walk away from three years of – you don’t get to treat this like some experiment that didn’t work out for you, so thanks, but no thanks. That’s not – you can’t—”

“We don’t work,” Arthur says helplessly. “You knew that, you were the one who told me that—”

“That doesn’t mean I wanted you to leave,” Merlin yells.

Arthur says softly, “Is that how it is? You can leave me in Nairobi, but I can’t leave you.”

Merlin’s mouth thins into a white line. “Nairobi was a mistake. I wasn’t—”

“It doesn’t matter,” Arthur says. “You were right. We don’t fit together.”

“Shut up,” Merlin tells him. “Just – shut up. Christ, I’m so fucked off at you right now I don’t even need a gun, I could shoot you with my brain. You have all these stupid – ideas of what love is like. You think that we have to have a house and kids and dinner at seven every bloody night. That’s not – we’re not cut out for that. That, back there? That’s not us. You and I – we’re Beijing and Monaco and Buenos Aires and Vienna and Prague. You’ve got to stop comparing us to Lance and Gwen, we’ll never fit together like them, I don’t want to fit together like them.”

Merlin’s hand is loose around the gun and he’s leaning forward, his face suffused with color, the mania softened into something warmer, something brighter. His hair is sticking up in odd tufts and he’s fighting for Arthur the way no one has before, except for maybe Lance.

Merlin says, lower, almost gentle, “This is me, Arthur. When I decide I want something, I don’t let it go.”

“I know,” Arthur says, because he does. Merlin goes after what he wants, and when he’d finally decided that he wanted Arthur, needed him, he’d stayed, hadn’t he, because it was Arthur who’d left, ultimately.

Merlin wouldn’t have left, not after Seoul.

“And I love you for it,” Arthur says.

Merlin goes still. Says, “You’ve never said it before.”

Arthur says, “Of course I have.”

“No,” Merlin says. “You haven’t.”

Arthur can’t breathe.

It’s – of course he’s said it before, of course he has, he’s thought it every day since Buenos Aires, has thought it into every moment, every kiss like a prayer, like a litany that just goes on and on and on. He counts the days by Merlin’s smiles, the hours by Merlin’s breaths, the moments by memories of discovering what Merlin looks like in each city: how Vienna makes him light up, how Moscow makes him shiver beneath the sheets. He’s loved Merlin so fiercely and for so long that he thinks that it must be ingrained into his genes because there’s no other explanation for the way he can’t stop.

Except he can’t remember saying it. London, Seoul, Nairobi – Arthur’s never said it. Not until Rome.

“It’s all right,” Merlin says. “It’s not like I didn’t know.”

Arthur looks at him, and it hurts, it absolutely aches, the frantic way he loves Merlin, vast as the seas. And Merlin lets out a strangled breath, comes to sit next to him, his thigh a soothing line against Arthur’s. He’s shuddering almost, like he wants to be closer, like he doesn’t dare get any closer.

Arthur can’t think with Merlin this close. He’s never been able to.

He plucks up an earlier thread, says: “You don’t understand. It’s not wanting what Lance and Gwen have, I want those things, I always have. And you don’t. I’m almost thirty, Merlin – I don’t want to do this for five more years. I can’t keep chasing you around the world, only to lose you each month and wonder when I’ll find you again. And if that’s the only way we work together – I don’t know how to do that.”

Merlin reaches out, fingers the sleeve of Arthur’s jacket. Arthur can almost feel his touch through the thick cotton, warm as the sun.

“I know,” he says. “But Arthur, that’s us. You keep trying to separate them out, but you can’t, they’re all tangled in each other. The guns and the suits and almost getting killed in Seoul and scaling cliffs in Athens and fucking in Paris until we’re sore with it – that’s us, right now. It won’t always be – I don’t want to do this forever either, but right now this is what I want. And maybe in a couple of years, we can have another go at the sort of permanence that you want. And it’ll be better then because we’ll both want it.”

Arthur looks at him in wonder, the way he looks utterly wrecked, and it sounds so easy, so simple.

Arthur says, “You sound so sure.”

Merlin slants a smile at him, just a crooked lift to his mouth. “I am sure,” he says. “I left you handcuffed in a bathroom in Buenos Aires and you still came after me. I tried to dump you in Nairobi and you still came to Seoul. How can you not be sure?”

Arthur can’t help his smile, can’t help how ridiculous he must look. He can’t help but smooth Merlin’s hair back, careful, can’t help but slide his teeth around Merlin’s ear as he leans in to whisper, “We’ll fuck it up again, somehow. We always do.”

“Then I’ll shoot you again,” Merlin says, easy, hand catching Arthur’s, their fingers threading together.

“You know there aren’t actually any bullets in that gun,” Arthur says, helplessly happy.

Merlin looks down at the gun, as if it’s personally betrayed him.

“You deserve to be shot,” Merlin says, petulant. “When I catch up to you again—”

“Shh,” Arthur says, and leans close to breathe Merlin in. “You’ve already caught me.”

***

Dubai goes liquid in the May heat; the summer sprawls out across the city in careless, hissing fury.

Arthur’s hotel is a smug-looking building, with white spires that disappear into the sky and gleam like washed-out marble in the sun. The windows are glassed clear and they look out over the sea, glittering blue and stretching out until it meets the horizon in a nearly invisible seam.

Arthur shares his lift with a weedy, jaundiced-looking man holding a leather briefcase. He puts the briefcase down, almost as an afterthought, nods imperceptibly at Arthur. And when he gets off on the seventh floor, he neatly steps over the briefcase, walks away with the barest shadow of a limp.

Arthur picks up the briefcase but doesn’t bother to open it. After that job in Johannesburg, four years ago, clients know better than to try to cheat him. He takes the lift down to the lobby, leans across the absurd, gold-plated counter, and says, “I’d like to check out, please. Room 1072.”

The clerk beams at him. “Ah, Mr. Plummer,” he says, looking positively thrilled. “There was a message left for you.” Arthur accepts the envelope, slides it into his trouser pocket, and settles his bill – the edges of which, Arthur notes amusedly, are gilded in yet more gold.

He takes a taxi to the airport, and it’s not until he’s on the plane, tucked comfortably into first-class, that he pulls out the envelope, smooths it out with an absent hand. He expects Lance’s neat handwriting, the careful angles and block letters screaming military just as loudly as the grim perfection that is an assault rifle in Lance’s hands. It’s not Lance’s handwriting, though: it’s just one line of messy black ink –

Grand Hyatt Beijing, May 23rd

– and if Arthur’s smile is more fond than exasperated, if his heart skips into his throat – well, there’s no one around to call him on it.

Beijing, he thinks, trying the word out on his tongue, soft as a secret. Beijing’s starry nights, kissing the summer off Merlin’s skin, unraveling him and holding him close. Beijing, catching Merlin’s mouth, that angle where Merlin’s eyes go a shade deeper, lit dark with intent. Beijing, where Merlin tastes like something new and familiar, sacred and well-loved. Beijing, where they’ll pour promises into each other’s skin, Beijing, where they’ll keep those promises, again and again and again.

The world blurs underneath him, the city melting into the sea. The blue skies pale into silver and the sun paints the clouds gold, and tomorrow Arthur will touch down in Lisbon, will catch Merlin just as he’s leaving his hotel, will press him up against the glass doors, will kiss him until he’s slick with it, until the summer monsoon sweeps them inside so Arthur can kiss him some more.

Because the thing is – Arthur doesn’t have to wait until Beijing. Not when they have the whole world.

finis