Sneak peek from a WIP. I am challenging myself to write a pwp under 10,000 words, and have been eyeballing a fragment in my Google Docs that involves Merlin and Arthur getting trapped in a magical cave and discovering that the only thing that will break the spell is having lots of sex. (Inspired by the Cave of Lovers in Gottfried's 'Tristan and Isolde'.) I have a couple of pages and just randomly added a little bit more to it today, so here's part of it:
“I’m going to be eaten,” Merlin moaned. “I’m going to be eaten, and my bones scattered everywhere, and the last face I’m going to see is yours, because I’ve never had anything nice since saving you from that singer.”
“You could only hope to be so lucky,” Arthur said. And then: “And you didn’t save me, I was already moving out of the way.”
Arthur jerked at his collar. Merlin considered whether it would or wouldn’t be reasonable to bite a man who had given him his cloak, but in every other quantifiable way was a twat. He had not yet decided whether Arthur was to be bitten or not, when the hand on his collar yanked at him again, this time in excitement, rather than savageness. “Look,” Arthur said, and slapped him on the shoulder. “There’s a cave.”
Merlin squinted off into the rain. “I see rain.”
“Fine, then you stay here, but I’m not going to be eaten just because you’re blind,” Arthur said, and started off into the blackness. “Are you coming?” he demanded, when Merlin did not immediately start off after him.
“Hold on, I’m thinking. Either I can stay here and be eaten, or I can be stuck in a cave with you. I’ve got to weigh my options carefully.”
Arthur rolled his eyes, and grabbed him by the tunic.
For miles there was no shape but the shape of rain at midnight; then something began to resolve out of the miasma that suggested possibly Arthur was not 100% totally wrong in this particular instance. They stumbled up to what was a marginally lighter blackness, in a night of little gradation. Arthur drew his sword, and keeping his hand bunched up in Merlin’s tunic, preceded him into it, so that he was between Merlin and whatever was in the cave.
