Arthur—Melisande, clouded leopard
Merlin—Mysaria, banded mongoose
Guinevere—Odinel, Brabander rabbit

The viper is what sets it all in motion.

They're returning from light patrol, heading down the familiar trail through the Darkling Wood back towards the city. Arthur's riding Llamrei, reins loose in hand; Melisande is seated neatly behind his saddle on his mare's haunches, claws in the leather straps of the crupper to keep balance. Leon, Geraint, Erec, Talleas, and Carann ride ahead of him, chattering and jesting amongst each other as their dæmons do the same in their own company. Merlin lags behind, as usual, for some reason deciding to go on foot and lead his horse along instead; Mysaria perches atop his head like a very bizarre, furry hat.

Llamrei halts suddenly, her ears pinning back, shifting her weight. Arthur frowns, but before he can open his mouth to call to the others, she lets out a fearful squeal and shies, jostling him roughly in the saddle. Startled, Melisande leaps clear, landing neatly on her feet, and she sees what it is that has spooked the mare.

A viper has slithered out onto the trail, the dark green-brown body unseen against the ground. Llamrei has always been terrified of snakes; even the smallest whiff unsettled her. Either angered or startled by their intrusion onto its territory, it draws itself into a tight coil, head raised in warning, hissing. It makes a lunge for Llamrei's anxiously stamping forehooves, and she rears back, flinging her rider clean from the saddle.

Arthur lands hard on his back, the breath driven from him in a great rush, and he is abruptly inches away from the viper. He sees the muscular coils gather and tense, maw opening for the lunge, knowing that, this close, it surely wouldn't miss him.

Something rushes past his head, a streak of grey, and then there is an unholy racket of shrieking and hissing and snapping. Startled into motion, Arthur scrambles backwards and stares, propriety be damned. Mysaria has her sharp white teeth embedded in the viper's neck, just below its head so it cannot turn and bite her, refusing to relinquish her grip even as its coils lash around her. She thrashes it viciously, shaking and battering it senseless against the ground until it at last goes limp, twitching disconcertingly in its death-spasms.

"Arthur, Arthur, are you alright?" a voice says, and he startles at it, belatedly looking up at Leon's anxious face. Melisande allows Airielle to sniff at her with dignified forbearance, ensuring that she is unharmed as well.

"I…yes. I'm fine." He gets to his feet and brushes himself off perfunctorily, then turns in search of his manservant. "Merlin?"

"Here, sire," Merlin says in a small voice, colour slowly returning to his face.

Geraint's dæmon mutters a curse in a voice that is not nearly as quiet as it should've been, sounding disgusted; a few others echo him, man and dæmon alike.

Mysaria is eating the viper. Her sharp teeth tear through the scaly hide, small bones crunching, the long body pinned under her foreclaws.

Dæmons do not eat. Metaphysical and not entirely corporeal as they are, they have no need to. It does not mean they are incapable of doing so, but it isn't something approved of. It's…base. Barbaric.

Merlin doesn't meet anyone's eye as he catches Llamrei's reins and leads her back to Arthur, keeping his head down and his face turned away. Arthur thinks he must be ashamed of Mysaria's actions, but when he bends to pluck her off the ground, she keeps hold of the serpent's body, and he allows her to. The limp coil of it dangles beside his arm as she perches on his shoulder, steadily gnawing.

Once more perched on Llamrei's haunches, Melisande swats at him, and Arthur realises that he is staring at another person's dæmon. Hastily looking away, he puts a foot in the stirrup and swings himself astride, soothing Llamrei as they continue towards the city. The other knights ride ahead, this time doing it a-purpose, casting furtive glances back at Merlin; their dæmons aren't quite so subtle, outright staring at Mysaria and whispering to one another.

When Arthur glances back again, the serpent is gone, and Mysaria is once more coiled neatly around Merlin's neck. There's a smear of dark blood on his skin where her muzzle touches his cheek.

It stays with Arthur for days, though he couldn't say why, lodging in his thoughts like a burr on a saddle blanket. Finally, urged by Melisande's desire to be done with his constant puzzling over it, he tells Merlin to fetch a wineskin and another cup from the kitchens and join him for a drink before bed. A reward of sorts. Nothing more.

Merlin's an easy drunk. A cup and a half of wine, and he's giggling, tilting sideways as he tickles Mysaria. She wriggles happily against the furs spread out on the floor before the hearth, squirming on her back with footpaws kicking at the air.

"You've no head for wine, Merlin," Arthur chuckles as he reclines on his side, propped up on his elbows. Thankfully he does. Have a head for wine, that is. He's feeling warm and flushed and perhaps a touch giddy, but he's not to the point of giggling, at any rate. Tucked against his hip, Melisande hums softly, not quite purring.

"Mm, no, I do not. More, please." He holds out his goblet.

"No, no, that's enough. I'll not be carrying you back to your hovel." Arthur moves the wineskin well out of reach and confiscates the cup as well.

Merlin makes a rude noise, though he breaks off with another giggle midway through it. "Gaius's chamber is not a hovel," he protests, swatting at Arthur's shoulder.

"No, of course not." He glances towards the hearth, the ever-shifting patterns of shadow-light on the rushes and the furs caused by the flames. One hand moves to stroke Melisande absently, dragging his fingers through her fur and watching the firelight play tricks with the pattern of her spots. Of their own will, his thoughts drift down the same paths they have been treading for the past several days, no matter how hard he tries to bar their way; he feels Melisande begin to tense beneath his fingers. Her frustration prickles in the base of his skull and makes his back teeth itch.

"Don't frown."

Arthur blinks, roused from his musing. "What?"

Looking perhaps a touch more sober, Merlin repeats, "Don't frown. You, you're gonna get wrinkles. Right 'ere." He pokes Arthur's forehead between his eyebrows with a callused fingertip. "And you're gonna look just like your father."

"The horror," Arthur deadpans even as Melisande chuckles, relaxing once more. Still, he tries not to let his expression turn quite so dour.

Merlin flops back down on the furs; Mysaria scrabbles up onto his chest, spreading herself across him, a broad streak of sooty grey against his red tunic. "What are you thinking about that you're frowning so much?"

"Dæmons," Arthur replies frankly. It's of little use trying to lie to Merlin. Even somewhat drunk, he has the most uncanny way of sniffing out any attempts at dissembling, especially Arthur's. "Their nature and ours."

All at once, Merlin's expression falls; unnerved, Arthur wonders what he's said wrong. "Is it because of us? The viper?" he asks after a moment, his voice small. Blinking quickly, as if to dispel tears, he cups his hands over Mysaria, the gesture both protective and reassuring. "I know people think it's a wretched thing to do, but she's always liked eating things. Sometimes she goes hunting, but she doesn't ever really try to catch anything unless we're very hungry, but mostly she takes bits of my food instead, and I always thought that if dæmons were supposed to be like people and not animals, then they'd look like people, and she's a predator, too, so it seems worse to me to deny it because we're made certain ways for reasons and—"

"Merlin."

The young man closes his mouth sharply, looking up at him with wide eyes, and Arthur reaches over to lay his hand on Merlin's forearm. He's dangerously close to Mysaria this way, but he can't remember why that's a bad thing at the moment. "I didn't mean that. I'm not bothered by what Mysaria did." He pauses for a heartbeat. "Melisande eats with me sometimes as well. And she likes to hunt."

"Oh." Merlin grins widely, and it's like sunlight breaking through the cloud bank. He tilts his head a little further to the side to look at Melisande, propriety a meaningless word to him. "Maybe we'll teach you something, then, eh, moggy?"

Melisande chuckles and flicks her tail. "We'll see."

"For what it's worth, I think you're right," Arthur adds, retracting his hand and settling back into his earlier position. "About denying nature being worse. Dæmons are what we are, which means there's something animal in all of us, and to deny it is to deny part of ourselves. Mysaria's a predator, and there's no reason she shouldn't act like one."

He'd been trying to reassure Merlin, and yet the young man's face falls once again, his grin sliding away. "Nobody else thought so," Merlin sniffles. "In Ealdor. They all thought I was some kind of freak, that I was bad luck, that there was something wrong with me. Will…" He closes his eyes. "They always said that one day Will was gonna get killed, being around me so much."

Arthur's chest and throat tighten at the utter heartbreak in his words, and even worse, his resignation to it.

"Misery," Merlin whispers, eyes still closed. "That's what they called her." His hands tighten around his dæmon's trembling form. "Said that's what she was because wherever I went, misery went with me. Merlin and Misery. Can't have one without the other."

Melisande hisses softly, and Arthur finds himself once more reaching out to touch the other man, reassure him somehow. This time, his fingers end up in Merlin's hair, ruffling through it gently. "Don't think that. It's not true, none of it. People just can't stand anything different from them, that's all," he insists. Merlin's hair is warm and soft. The ends curl around Arthur's fingers, and he wonders if it'd grow out in ringlets if Merlin didn't cut it. He scratches his nails lightly against Merlin's scalp, and his dark lashes flutter.

For a stretch of time, they're both silent, the only sound being the snap and pop of the fire and the faint, silken whisper of Arthur running his fingers through Merlin's hair, petting him to calm like he would Melisande.

"What were you thinking about?" Merlin asks, lower and softer, no longer on the edge of tears. "What part of dæmon nature?"

"Predators." Without thinking, he lowers his voice to match Merlin's register. "And prey. What that says about the sort of people we are. Its effect on how we interact with each other, our relations." He'd been thinking about himself and Guinevere, about Melisande and Odinel, and about the difference between loving and being in love.

Abruptly, Merlin sits up, turning onto his side and propping himself up on one elbow, mirroring Arthur's own posture and no longer looking at all drunk. Mysaria slides off his chest and winds her way over to Melisande, staring into the leopardess's face with her glittering black eyes, wound tight as a bowstring. His blue gaze flits over Arthur's face, curious and searching. Merlin leans in. For a single terrified second, Arthur thinks Merlin means to kiss him, but he doesn't. No, instead, he ducks his head down and to the side, scraping his teeth along the side of Arthur's throat. Arthur gasps aloud, hands clenching around the furs, his entire body flaming up like pine pitch. Merlin does it again, a little harder, testing the skin of the prince's throat with his teeth, lingering over his pulse point. Dizzy, Arthur wonders how hard Merlin would have to bite to break the skin there, to draw blood, and if he'd lick it away once he did.

Leaning away once more, Merlin says, "I would see you."

"You see me," Arthur replies, embarrassingly breathless. And he does. Matter of fact, he thinks that Merlin might be the only person who does actually see him anymore.

Merlin gazes into his face unblinking, and his voice is steadfast and sure. "I would see all of you."

Oh. Oh.

"Merlin, I…I can't." All at once, the young man's expression cools, like steel being quenched, but before he can withdraw entirely, Arthur seizes hold of his wrist, squeezing hard enough it must surely hurt. Instead of protesting, Merlin's eyes only darken a little more, and Mysaria bares sharp white teeth. "I can't yet," Arthur amends, willing him to hear. "Not yet. There is something I must do first."

Merlin gazes at him inscrutably for another moment, then nods; Arthur drops his hand. There's a red mark on his wrist that'll like as not become a bruise. The young man sits up and manages to get to his feet, wobbling only slightly. "Goodnight, Arthur." Mysaria climbs up him like a tree to perch on his shoulder, her glittering black gaze fixed on Melisande, who stares right back up at her.

Arthur watches him go, one hand reaching up to touch the side of his neck, imagining he can still feel the pressure of Merlin's teeth there.

He spends two days trying to come up with the right words, the gentlest way to do it, and always finds himself wanting. What he's feeling isn't something so easily put into words, at least not in any kind of way that actually makes sense. No matter what angle he tries to pose it from, it falls short of the mark.

Again, it ends up being Melisande, the better part of himself, who drives him to act instead of sit about dithering. "If she understands, then she will not ask why. If she must ask, then she will never understand," Melisande informs him, having long since grown frustrated with his inaction.

"Yes, yes, alright," Arthur sighs, relenting. She's right. No matter how he might try, there is no right way of doing this. He'll have to make do with what he has, just as everyone else does. "Come along. Let's have done with this."

"Finally," Melisande grumbles, and he just barely resists the urge to catch the tip of her tail under his boot, only because he knew it would hurt him as well.

Arthur catches up to Guinevere on her way from Morgana's chambers with a basket of laundry tucked under one arm, falling into step beside her and exchanging idle greetings and pleasantries even as a flicker of guilt burns in his chest.

It's improper to stare at another person's dæmon in public. It is part of the unspoken etiquette of dæmons, especially those between a prince and a maidservant, but Arthur's long since mastered the art of looking without looking, watching in his peripheral vision as they walk. Odinel is tucked into the basket of washing Guinevere is carrying, velvety nose twitching, ears swiveling to catch miniscule sounds. His black-and-white pelt is smooth and glossy and no doubt silk-soft to the touch, not that Arthur would ever dare to find out, and his wide black eyes are bright and warm.

Odinel would never try to entice Melisande to play with him. He wouldn't nip at her tail to incite a game of chase around Arthur's chambers or call her a moggy just to get her back up. He wouldn't stalk her to try and catch her off guard when he pounced or see which of them could catch more small lizards and mice in a meadow. He would never put his teeth to her throat.

Melisande's tail lashes against his ankle, and the tiny kindling of guilt sputters out, determination steeling up his spine.

"Guinevere…" He touches her arm, bringing her to a stop. "We need to speak."

It takes him another two days to corner Merlin.

The little whelp can be incredibly slippery when he wants to be, and even if they do technically live under the same roof, it is a very large roof. However, the castle is Arthur's home. He could walk through it blindfolded, and a dæmon she might be, but Melisande still knows how to stalk her prey.

It isn't elegant, when they finally do catch him up. Deciding that the best way to drive the point home is to do so directly, Arthur merely waits in an alcove until Merlin makes one of his circuitous rounds of the castle. When the young man passes, Arthur snatches him by the scruff of the neck and hauls him by main force out of the corridor and into a linen closet, Melisande holding a squirming, protesting Mysaria by the neck, careful of her eyeteeth. He slams the door shut, closing them in the small, dim space, surrounded by the scent of clean linens, and shoves Merlin against the shelves.

"Ow, what in the hell—?"

Without stopping to explain, unable to manage trivialities like words and sentences and thoughts, Arthur wrenches that stupid, silly neckerchief out of the way, yanks open the collar of Merlin's jacket and tunic, and bites, putting his teeth to the soft join of Merlin's shoulder and neck.

Merlin hisses sharply in his ear—like Melisande, he sounds like Melisande—and his nails, short though they are, dig into the nape of Arthur's neck hard, and he snatches a fistful of Arthur's hair, yanking him up and over into a kiss.

After that, there is no speaking to be done, just hands and mouths and bodies, things to do with nails and teeth that won't kill but still leave a mark, and there, there, right there, that's it, oh, yes, please, don't stop, please, Merlin, Merlin, Merlin.

When he comes back to himself, gasping and trembling, he's half undressed and doesn't quite remember how he got that way, his arms are stinging like seven hells from the scratches laid on them, and he can taste blood. Merlin's mouth is smeared bright red, eyes blurred with pleasure. Arthur touches the tip of his tongue to his bottom lip, feels the sting. "You bit me."

"You started it," Merlin replies hoarsely. There's a livid mark on his neck, Arthur's teeth impressed against his skin. It'll be a hell of a bruise.

"And I intend to finish it." He grabs that stupid, silly scarf once more, twisting it around his fist until it pulls tight around Merlin's throat. "I would see you."

Merlin's breath comes in short, sharp pants, and when he swallows, Arthur can feel the movement of it against his knuckles. "You see me," he echoes back.

"I would see all of you." At their feet, Melisande presses her claws oh-so-lightly into Mysaria's pelt, and she bares sharp white teeth in response.

"You will."