“Do you even know where you’re going?”
Merlin glances back over his shoulder and for a flicker of a moment, Arthur can see the gold that flecks his eyes and the brightness of his smile.
“Sure. Here, look…” Merlin does something with his hand–the quickest flick of his wrist–and the same gold illuminates the footsteps behind him and the path in front of him. “Don’t you trust me?”
“Of course I do… I just…” Remain ever amazed, Arthur thinks, but cannot get his lips to form the words, not with the great field open all around them, and the dark sky a wide dome above them, pinpricked with silver lights.
When he pauses, Merlin continues ahead, and Arthur finds himself suddenly small and alone, the dry autumn grass around him vast, and the sky even vaster above him. Perhaps this is what magic feels like, a great power that stretches all around and above you, and that you can only view in glimpses.
“Arthur,” Merlin says, and his hand slips into Arthur’s, pressing warmth and familiarity into Arthur’s palm, into his heart. “Does here look good?”
“Yes?” Arthur replies before he has a chance to see where Merlin’s paused, and then turns to look at Merlin, to press his forehead to Merlin’s, and brush a quiet kiss against his lips. “Yes,” he says again.
Merlin helps Arthur spread an old quilt onto the ground, then tugs Arthur to sit next to him. He has another blanket to pull over their laps when it gets really chilly outside, and a thermos of tea with honey and whiskey. He leans in to kiss Arthur’s neck, then murmurs something soft and fond there when Arthur’s hand slips under his jumper to rest against his stomach.
They kiss a few more times, and Merlin pours them tea into the one cup, which they share between kisses, until they are both dizzy and warm. The night is cold and crisp around them, the stars already brighter and more clear, and Merlin pulls Arthur’s head onto his shoulder after they stretch out on the quilt.
“I know all their names,” Arthur murmurs. “From a storybook, that my Mum used to read to me.”
“All the stars?” Merlin asks, and then slides his fingers up the length of Arthur’s arm. “Every one of them, I bet…” He traces the point of Arthur’s shoulder, then, with two careful fingertips, the line of his jaw.
When he raises his hand from Arthur’s face, he turns his hand palm up toward the sky. The world around them stills, the air a quiet hush of a breeze, and then… in the sky, the soft movements of the stars trace against the darkness of the night, a picture come to life for the briefest of moments.
“Every one of them,” Arthur replies. He watches the sky for another moment, then turns to Merlin, to see the gold-flecked blue of his eyes, and the soft parting of his lips.
He thinks first of Merlin, smiling as he walks Arthur home from work, asking Arthur to make pasta for dinner, holding Arthur’s hand as they stop at the shops; of Merlin, flickering gold and blue in his eyes when he first wakes up and before he’s ready to fall asleep; of Merlin, who laughs a little bit too loud and who loves Arthur a little bit more than Arthur ever hoped, and who is all the warmth he needs and never expected in his life.
Then, later, he thinks of magic, and the wide sky around them, and how he thinks, now, that magic must be like the warmth of Merlin’s hand in his own, and the unfurling warmth of sweet tea with whiskey.
