vanessarama

Title: Something Broken, Something Stained
Pairing: Morgana/Merlin
Rating: NC-17
Author:

vanessarama
Length: 2200 words
Summary: Morgana indulges her curiousity. A nasty little confection, a missing scene from ‘A Servant of Two Masters’.
Warnings: Non-con.
Notes: Title is from a Billy Bragg song.

Morgana sits at her table. Outwardly she is calm, but inside her something is sparking and leaping with triumph. Merlin is here, Merlin at her command, trussed like a partridge and helpless as a child. There is something intoxicating about it.

Since Morgause was lost to her, the world has felt diminished: flat and faded like a tapestry. Merlin, hanging motionless in his red tunic, is the only solid thing she’s seen in months.

She reaches out a finger and pokes his side; he makes no movement. Her hand flattens against him, almost involuntarily. He’s warm. She slides her palm over his heart to feel the thrum under the flesh. The movement pulls the neckline of his tunic down a little and she sees something redder underneath it; she peels the thin cloth back to find a huge dark bruise, angry red at the centre and purple-blue around. The rest of his skin is so pale that it seems the bruise has sucked all the colour into it. There are punctures dotting the bruise, blood welling up in sticky drops like sap as she probes.

Wounded in battle, then. It’s a wonder Arthur lets him out unarmed and unarmoured; but then Merlin is a stubborn fool and follows his master like a dog. The wound is nasty but probably not fatal, unless the bone has been shattered; possibly not even then. Merlin seems to lead a charmed life.

Morgana runs her hand down his chest to his stomach, hesitates with her thumb nudging his belt. He still hangs there limp and unmoving. She puts her other hand to his belt, spans his waist, hesitates.

He is hers. She can do whatever she wishes with him, and while she has some very interesting plans, there is no harm in a little amusement first.

Morgana’s seen naked men before - in a castle filled with fighting and working men even the king’s sheltered ward can glimpse such things. She has seen them but she’s never in her life had a male body at her disposal, to touch and stroke and even to hurt if she wishes. She could cut his clothes off and let him wake ashamed before her; she could touch and tease. She knows what’s there and how it works in theory, but there’s nothing wrong with gaining as much information as you can about your enemy - or for that matter, studying your secret weapon thoroughly before you let it loose on the world.

She cups her hand to his groin, feeling the soft give of unaroused flesh under the loose cloth.

He is so warm.

---

Merlin comes to with a horrified gasp, freezing water hitting him like a slap. He twists and thrashes like a fish on a line, his boots slipping around before he manages to right himself. The world crashes down on him as he becomes aware of three things: wetness, pain, and Morgana standing before him.

This is the end of my life, he thinks, throughout her taunting and his almost automatic responses. He thrusts all the fire and steel into his words because the rest of him is drained and weak. The pain of his injury has been worsened by his posture and his shoulders feel almost wrenched from their sockets. His magic is sputtering; he doesn’t know if he can reach it in time if she comes at him with a blade. He could try and kick out with his feet but that would require putting his weight on his shoulders and he doesn’t know if he could bear it. It’s possible the pain would knock him out.

“I’m not going to make it that easy.”

Morgana moves away and Merlin can pay proper attention to his surroundings for the first time. The hut is cold, despite the fire which burns on her hearth. Merlin’s wet clothes cling to him uncomfortably, his flesh beneath them clammy and his exposed skin goosepimpling in the chill air. Wind blows through the cracks in her roof and door.

How does she bear it? He remembers his first glimpse of her, jewels on her brow and silk floating about her; she shone out even among Camelot’s nobility, gliding through the room, a perfumed vision. Now she’s clad in black, her hair rough, her dwelling harsh and comfortless. She hasn’t been brought up to this; she obviously doesn’t know to stuff the cracks with moss and daub them over with clay and straw. Merlin imagines how homely his mother could make this place, and has to squeeze his eyes shut against the prick of tears. He shivers.

“Are you cold?” asks Morgana. “I’ve spent months in this hut, thanks to you. I wonder how you’d fare if I left you hanging there all winter.”

“I dare say I’d get on better than you have,” says Merlin.

“Of course. I forgot how hardy you must be, from that filthy village you were dragged up in.”

“You were happy to help Ealdor, Morgana. You cared about your friends then.”

“And I still do. Provided that they care about me.”

Merlin leans forward, swinging a little unsteady, his eyes fixed on her face; but before he can think of a retort Morgana walks behind him. Her feet are silent on the packed earth floor, but he can feel the warmth radiating from her body.

“I do enjoy this, you know,” she says conversationally. “It’s been so long since I’ve had company.”

“Well, if you treated your visitors better you’d have more of them.”

“Oh, Merlin. You’re right. Let me make you more comfortable.”

Morgana moves into his field of vision again.

“Let’s get you out of your wet things,” she says, and tugs at his trouser lacings. Merlin jerks instinctively away from her, but he’s weak and the pain in his shoulder flares out sharply.

“Don’t struggle,” she says. “It will just hurt you more and it won’t do any good.”

“Don’t pretend you care, Morgana.”

Her lips thin. “Once you would have believed it.”

“Once you would have meant it.”

Morgana’s nimble hands finish their work and his trousers pool around his ankles. Beneath them there’s a pair of linen braies worn to fine softness. She yanks them down too. Her eyes, though, are fixed on his.

“What are you doing?” he asks. His voice is cracked and too high.

Morgana traces the line of his brow idly, her eyes searching his face. He’d expected to be taunted, to have her humiliate him, but somehow he is more shamed by her having deliberately bared him and then paying his nakedness no mind at all.

Her eyes still on his, Morgana kneels before him and raises the hem of his tunic. Only then does she turn her eyes to the flesh she has uncovered.

---

She takes her time.

First, she looks her fill. She’s never been this close to a naked man before; this is an area where Morgause had all the expertise. If she is to wear all her sister’s power, she must know this side of it too.

Merlin’s prick stems from a tangle of black curls and hangs long, darker than the rest of his skin and reddened toward the end. A few long veins run down it, and finer ones too, delicate tracery like the lines on a leaf. At the end a shiny head is visible nestled in its soft sheath. His balls hang loose in their fleshy sack, lightly dusted with hair.

Morgana leans forward and inhales. There’s a kind of fleshiness and a little fresh sweat, with something sharper underlying it. It’s not even unpleasant. She’d expected him to smell stronger. She leans closer.

“Morgana,” he says, panic close to the surface.

“What’s the matter, Merlin?” she croons. “Don’t you want to be loved?”

She takes him gently in hand, leans forward until her lips are almost touching him, and breathes softly on his flesh.

“What does this have to do with love?” He’s trying to scoff, but the breathiness in his voice belies his scorn. Morgana smiles. His prick is lengthening, filling out in her hand. She rubs her cheek against it and he gasps.

“Please,” he whispers.

“Please what? Do you want something?”

“Please don’t.”

“Don’t?”

She opens her lips barely an inch from his flesh, knowing that he can feel the damp heat of her breath. She ghosts her lips down his length, not touching, rejoicing in the breathy whine at the back of his throat.

“Don’t you want me to touch you?” she asks, widening her eyes. “Doesn’t this feel good?”

Merlin’s hips are making tiny involuntary movements; he’s trying to push closer to her and trying to restrain himself all at once. Morgana slides a hand around his hip, over the slight swell of his buttock, digging her fingers in.

“Or are you worried I’m going to bite it off?” she asks. His flinch is delicious; the shudder goes right through him. She looks right up into his face and widens her eyes, mock-solicitous. His face is red and he’s trembling.

“Don’t worry,” she says. “I won’t mind if you bleed on me.”

And with that she puts her lips around the tip of his prick and slides her mouth down it.

Carefully, with tongue and lips and a hint of teeth, she explores; wetting the length of his shaft, pulling the skin down to let the shiny head emerge. She scrapes her teeth down it and delights in his shudder, and then she rhythmically strokes and sucks. There is something primal and delicious in it. She feels the slippery skin slide under her fingers, the hardness beneath. Resting her head against his hip, she blows softly on his wet flesh to feel the shudder in his thighs.

“Did you ever dream this would happen to you, Merlin? Having a noble lady on her knees before you?”

“I see no noble lady,” says Merlin through clenched teeth.

Morgana snorts. It’s incredible that he still tries to match her word for word even now. She nips sharply at the tender flesh and he winces.

“Nobility,” he gasps, “comes from actions and character. Not birthright.”

“Nobility comes from birthright and strength, Merlin,” she snaps. “The strong fight and the weak submit; that is the way of the world.”

“Oh Morgana,” he says, and gulps, his voice suddenly softer. “Is that what you really think life is like?”

Morgana will not have soft words from him. She puts her mouth on him again, sucking hard; he gasps but there’s a shift in his body, a subtle widening of his stance. Perhaps he’s getting ready to lash out physically; at any rate, he is trying hard to gain the upper hand. Ridiculous, that he should try, hanging there bare and wet in his shabby clothes.

Suddenly she’s bored with her game so far. She rises smoothly to her feet, keeping a hold of his prick, and puts her lips close to his ear.

“What would you know about life, Merlin? ”

She feels him quiver at the feel of her breath in his ear, and she begins to stroke him firmly and fast. His flesh is slippery and the skin slides easily over the firm shaft, as if he is clay beneath her fingers, being shaped into something new.

“Your life is useless. Your dreams are small. You’ll be Arthur’s boot-boy all your life, nothing more than a simple servant.”

“Don’t underestimate servants,” Merlin pants. He’s taut, trying to hold back. It’s so unlike what she had thought; Morgause had laughed at how men grunted and strained in their desperation to achieve completion, but Merlin shrinks from every touch of her hand as if it were red-hot.

“Servants? You? Or perhaps you mean dear Guinevere, and her pure, pure love? Don’t be fooled, Merlin. Do you really think she doesn’t do this for Arthur?” She feels his body change, tensing up; there’s a choked gasp. His eyes are screwed up like a child’s, his hands clench and unclench helplessly above the knots of rope, desperate to clutch and grasp.

“Perhaps she’s doing it for him right now,” breathes Morgana, “touching his flesh, licking him, sucking -” and with that Merlin groans and warm wetness is spilling from him, spurting a few times onto the floor. The rest pulses over and through her fingers, slipping down her hand. She glances down at the head of his prick, red and wet, and then up at his face.

Merlin should hang his head in shame, not daring to meet her eyes; but instead he’s looking straight at her, his eyes chips of ice, his jaw set. Resentment burns slow within her, that he dares to look her in the face. She thinks about pushing something inside him, making him cry out, but she’s not sure how much force might damage him and she needs him whole. Perhaps she’ll play with him some more, once the Fomorrah has taken effect. She imagines him pliant and willing, straining forward and begging for her touch, and feels a sharp stab of pleasure deep in the pit of her belly.

Morgana brings her wet fingers close to her face and sniffs them, wrinkles her nose and wipes them on Merlin’s shirtfront. She’ll push him into the dirt later, to hide it. He needs to have his face in the dirt.

She dips a cloth in water and begins cleaning his wound. Her hands touch his chest like a blessing.