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“Harry?!” Merlin opens the door to a Harry, drenched to the skin from the steady downpour.
“I need...” Harry begins without preamble.
“I know,” Merlin interrupts and steps aside, letting Harry in. He closes the door and locks it. “Upstairs with you. I’ll fetch you some tea.”
Harry complies. Of course he does. That’s what he’s here for.
Merlin prepares their tea; two sugars and a generous scoop of milk for him, a drop of actual cream for Harry. When he carries their mugs upstairs, he finds Harry by the window in his bedroom as per his orders.
“Talk to me, Harry.”
First, Harry takes a sip of scalding drink and Merlin lets him.
“He’s been brought down for questioning again,” Harry says then.
“What for?”
“Shoplifting.”
Merlin scoffs. “Thought he’d be smarter than that.”
“And for something as ridiculous as a novelty lighter.”
They stand in silence for a moment, nursing their beverages. Harry looks miserable, would do so even if his damp suits wasn’t clinging to him like Saran wrap and his hair wasn’t becoming disheveled and ridiculously curly.
“You have to stop this, Harry,” Merlin says at last.
Harry shakes his head.
“What happened to Lee wasn’t your fault. You have to stop blaming yourself for it. And what happens to the boy…”
“Lee died because I missed something that day,” Harry cuts him off, his voice louder than necessary. “That boy’s life has taken the wrong path because I…”
“Stop it, Harry. You will stop this right now.” Merlin crowds him against the window sill. “Lee died saving our lives, as any of us would have done. You are not to blame for it. You are not to blame that his wife didn’t accept the… compensation, or whatever you might want to call it. If it were me, I wouldn’t accept it either. And you are not to blame for the choices the boy makes.”
Harry looks at him, almost pleading, but Merlin waits. He wants to hear him say it, to give voice to what he’s here for.
“Please,” he says finally, his tone very quiet. He ducks his head, gaze drifting away from Merlin.
“Of course.” Merlin’s hand goes up to cup his face. Harry’s skin is clammy and cold against his fingers. “Get a shower first. Get yourself warm.”
A tired smile inches its way onto Harry’s features. “You should have spiked this.” He holds up the mug.
“Never on a drink, Harry.”
“I know.”
“Take your time. I’ll set out your robe.” Merlin strokes his thumb over Harry’s cheekbone. “You will choose today.”
Harry frowns at that.
“You came to me, Harry. If you want this, you will choose.”
With that, Merlin leaves him to it to retrieve Harry’s bathrobe from the linen closet. It’s a luxurious thing, thick and fluffy and a deep shade of navy blue, matching the dark green one hanging from a peg in the bathroom where Merlin has left it this morning.
When he returns to the bedroom, Harry has already shed his wet clothes and disappeared to the ensuite where the shower is running. So he leaves the robe out on the bed, picks up Harry’s clothes and heads downstairs to put them in the dryer.
He takes his time, refreshes his tea and has half a cuppa before he hears the water being turned off.
There is no rush to this. On the contrary.
Of course, Harry has come here with an urge and the almost desperate need to quench it but Merlin knows him. He know him probably better than Harry knows himself. At least when it comes to this. It’s nothing they can just plunge into because the mood strikes them.
So he gives Harry the time and the space. The time to get himself cleaned up and warm and ready. And the space to do so and to come to terms with what he came here for.
It’s a routine they had fallen into shortly after the beginning, a gentleman’s agreement of the highest form.
Merlin finishes his tea, rinses the mug, then retrieves two bottles of water from the fridge. They are a little too cold for his liking but they’ll have the right temperature when they need them.
He slowly makes his way upstairs and knocks on his bedroom door.
“Come in, please.”
Harry is clad in his robe, his hair still wet and curly. He stands in front of Merlin’s closet.
“Have you made your choice?” Merlin asks, placing the water bottles on the bedside table next to the Simenon he’s currently reading.
“I think I have.” Harry doesn’t sound very sure but nods anyway.
“Show me.”
Harry steps away from Merlin’s closet where he has been pondering over the exquisite collection of accessories. He gestures at one of them.
“Excellent choice.” Merlin picks up the brown leather belt from where it’s curled neatly in its compartment in the drawer. He weighs it in his hand, runs his thumb over the smooth texture. “Havana…”
Harry nods. He knows the story, too, of course. Of how they went to the little corner store in Havana while on a mission there. Of how they ended up in bed one night after way too much rum. Of how this is the first belt Merlin has ever used on him.
“Please,” Harry says again.
“Do you want to do it here?”
“Yes.”
“Good. You know what to do.”
“Yes.” Harry steps away from him and goes over to the bed. There he strips out of his robe and drapes it over the foot end of the side he occupies when he stays over. “I’m ready.”
“You are not ready yet,” Merlin correct him. He unbuttons his shirtsleeves and rolls them up to his elbows.
He turns to Harry, letting his gaze slip over the long lines of his back, the curve from spine to buttocks to those damned long legs. Scars mark his ever so slightly tanned skin, one of them the result of an almost fatal stab to the kidney. Merlin knows the story of every one of those scars, knows their origin and the names of those who put them there. None of them mean anything compared to those he will leave on Harry.
“Bend over, Harry. Forearms flat on the bed,” Merlin instructs, says it gently even. He doesn’t need to use a rough tone with Harry.
Harry does as he’s told. The bed is actually a little too low for Harry to be comfortable in this position but it does make him arch his back in the way Merlin needs him to.
“You really want this to hurt, then.” Merlin steps up behind him, not yet touching him.
They have been through this way too often for Harry not to understand. So he reaches down, tugs his cock and balls up and closes his legs.
“That’s better,” Merlin commends. He unrolls the belt and drapes it over Harry’s lower back, carefully balancing out the buckle against the length of leather. Harry knows better than to move and have it slip off. “Why are you here, Harry?”
“For punishment,” Harry answers without hesitation.
“And what do you need punishment for?”
“Getting a man killed who was under my protection. Messing up a boy’s life.”
Merlin’s hand comes down on Harry’s bare bottom, the imprint reddening immediately. Harry doesn’t flinch. “That is not the real reason. What do you need punishment for?”
“I…” Harry hesitates and it gets him another smack. “For feeling guilty when I’m not.”
Another smack. “Better. But there is more.”
“For wanting to feel guilty.”
“There we are.” One more smack. “Now… that’s all the warm up you will get tonight. You will have twenty strokes and you will count them for me. Understood?”
“Yes.”
“Good.” Merlin picks up the belt again. He folds in half and fastens the buckle so it won’t slip from his grasp. That is not the kind of pain he means to inflict. “Let me hear your safeword?”
“Pickles.”
“Very good. Let’s begin.”
“Yes, please.”
The first strike comes without preamble and Harry flinches more out of surprise than due to the pain of the impact.
“One,” he croaks more than counts, clears his throat, then says it again.
The next two strikes come in rapid succession with barely the time in between for a proper count but Merlin likes to challenge Harry like that. Especially when he comes to him for selfish reasons.
The fourth hits Harry across the fleshy part of his upper thigh, making him go on tiptoes as he barely manages to get out the word.
“I’m sorry, love. You’ll have to stop squirming. Unless you want me to start over.”
“I’m sorry.” Harry’s voice wavers a little but he plants his feet again, readying himself for the next stroke.
He takes the next six in stride and Merlin can’t help the pride blooming inside of him along with the crimson streaks across the pale flesh of Harry’s arse.
He could go a lot harder, knows Harry can and would take it, but there is no need for it. He’ll leave him bruised enough for it to hurt for days and it will only take the briefest brush against Harry’s backside to remind him. To put him back here, naked and vulnerable and bent over like a schoolboy in the headmaster’s office, receiving his well-deserved belting.
“More.” Harry's plea tears Merlin out of his musings.
“Do you get to make demands?” Merlin runs the edge of the belt across the sanguined welts, letting gooseflesh erupt down Harry’s legs and up his back.
“No. I’m sorry.”
“You will be. Five more and then I will open the loop for the remaining five. Am I understood?”
“Yes.”
Merlin’s response is a harder stroke that Harry answers with a quivering. “Eleven.”
“You’re doing very well, Harry.” Merlin rewards him with another lash across his reddened arse.
When they reach fifteen, tears drench Harry’s words.
Merlin loosens the buckle, keeping it firmly in hand as he winds the belt around his hand to shorten it to the appropriate length.
“These will hurt more than the first. I know you can take it but if you need me to stop, use your safeword. Is that clear?”
Harry nods and has to clear his throat before he can respond. “Yes. Please continue.”
They both know Merlin will draw this out. For one, to give Harry time to assess each stroke, to figure out if he can take the next one. And two, for the pain to settle in before Merlin administers the next lash. Dealing them out rapidly would only mash them together, take away their individual impact. Neither of them wants that. They’ve done this often enough to know.
Sixteen has Harry yelping, clawing at the bedspread.
Seventeen has him on tiptoes again, twisting away from the inescapable pain.
At eighteen he stops hiding his tears.
Nineteen makes his knees buckle and he barely manages to keep himself upright.
“One more, Harry. I know you can take it. Can you take it?”
Harry nods.
“Use your words.”
“I can take it.”
“Very good.”
Once more, Harry plants his feet, stands on shaking legs, fingers curled tightly into the comforter, its name hilariously ironic at the moment.
His body gives up at twenty.
It knocks his foot out from under him and he drops to one knee at the foot of Merlin’s bed.
“Harry?”
“Thank you.”
“Can you stand up?” Merlin approaches him, not yet touching.
Harry struggles to regain his footing, barely managing to get his legs to support his weight. He sucks in a breath as his marred skin is stretched taut when he assumes the position again.
“That’s it, love. Stay like that for me.” Merlin shackles him down by draping the belt across Harry’s lower back again. “Would you like some tea?”
“Yes, please.”
It’s part of their ritual. Just like he has before, Merlin will leave him alone for a few minutes to catch his bearings.
He returns and this time, the tea is spiked.
Leaving Harry’s mug on the bedside table, he retrieves a tube of aloe ointment. He goes down on one knee behind Harry, trailing a hand down the side of his hip, barely touching Harry’s skin.
Without a word, he starts applying the lotion to the welts and bruises, carefully spreading the cooling liquid across the red streaks that already begin to turn purple and blue.
Merlin takes pride in his handiwork, in the map of pain he has painted on Harry’s skin. And he is proud of Harry taking this from him and for him and for himself.
When he is done, he rises and picks up the belt. He leaves a kiss in the small of Harry’s back.
“Get up now. Put this back.”
Harry straightens out of the increasingly uncomfortable position and winces as something in his back pops. He turns without looking Merlin in the face, takes the belt from his hands and places it back in its compartment in the closet.
“Come here, my love.” Merlin holds out a hand but Harry doesn’t take it. A little stiff-legged, he walks over to Merlin and stops in front of him.
Merlin reaches up and cups Harry’s face with gentle hands. He leans in and gives him a chaste kiss on the lips which Harry doesn’t return.
“Can you look at me?” Merlin asks quietly.
Hesitatingly Harry does, dark eyes red with tears. Gently, Merlin brushes the pad of his thumb over his cheeks to take away a few stray droplets.
“I am so proud of you, Harry,” he says and feels the heat seep into Harry’s face. “You have done so incredibly well today. You have no idea how grateful I am that you’re coming to me for this, that you let me to give this to you. Allowing me to see you like this… it’s an incredible gift. Thank you.” He kisses him again and this time, Harry responds to it, lets him in.
“I’d kill for that tea now,” Harry says when they pull apart, the faintest of smiles curving his lips.
Merlin smiles at him and let’s him go. He watches Harry as he picks up the mug, takes a sip and nods in appreciation of the amount of whiskey in it. As he does so, the pieces he has shattered Harry into slip back together again.
“Would you like to stay the night?”
Harry looks at him over the rim of the mug. “Would you mind?”
“Never.”
“Thank you.”
Merlin nods in response. As Harry finishes his tea, he turns down the bed and strips out of his clothes, placing them neatly onto the valet stand in the corner.
“You look beautiful.” Harry nods at the pair of black lace panties that stretch over Merlin’s caged cock.
It takes Merlin by surprise and despite himself, he feel heat rise into his cheeks. “Get into bed, old flirt.”
They settle down which takes Harry a lot longer as he tries to avoid any brush of fabric against his aching backside. At last, he lays down on his stomach, cradling his head down on his arms.
“Come here,” Merlin urges him, lifting the blanket for Harry to get closer.
“No need.”
“You called me beautiful,” he says, sounding like it explains everything and then some, then he adds: “Session like this, you’re on an adrenaline high… and you’re going to drop.”
It takes Harry a few moments to comply. Wincing in renewed pain, he shifts to curl against Merlin’s body, one arm draped across his stomach. Merlin returns the embrace in kind, drawing Harry against him until he rests his head on his chest.
It doesn’t take long. The first sign is Harry starting to feel cold despite the warmth of the bed as the adrenaline subsides. The next is his hands curling against Merlin’s skin as if to dig into him. The final sign is the silent tears as the emotional pain catches up with the physical.
Merlin talks him through it, tells him over and over again how proud and grateful he is. And it’s not just talk, he truly is. He loves Harry, has for so long it has become an irrevocable fact. He is devoted to him in more ways than meet the eye, he would do anything for him. And he loves him even more when he is allowed to see him like this, when he is allowed to take him apart like this. The breaking is what puts them together again.
It takes Harry longer to come down today, for his breath to even out against Merlin’s skin and his hold on him to loosen again. When he presses a soft kiss against his ribcage, Merlin knows he’s back with him again.
“So you wouldn’t take the compensation when I…?”
“No,” Merlin interrupts before Harry can finish the question. “I would do anything in my power to avenge you.”
“Ever the romantic.”
“Arthur wouldn’t like it but… revenge is mine.” Merlin leans down to kiss the crown of Harry’s head. “You do realize what you should’ve gotten a real whipping for, don’t you?”
Harry twists in his grasp to frown up at him.
“Using Kingsman resources to spy on the boy,” Merlin retorts matter of factly. “Highly unprofessional.”
Harry huffs a little laughs against Merlin’s skin. “Talk to me about professionalism next time you’re on your knees beneath my desk.”
“Ever the romantic.”