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nyxelestia) wrote2009-09-24 12:31 am
Euphoria, Chapter 02: Dream, Brother
Title: Euphoria
Rating: R
Summary: When with his veins flooded with heroin and suppressing his magic and even when he rides on the chemical bliss, Merlin's magic still sings for Arthur. And Arthur has answered the call. Short little one-shot for now, may expand later.
Pairing: Arthur/Merlin
Warnings: prostitution, drug abuse
Episode warnings: None
Beta: ![[info]](https://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
jusmine984
Notes: This was a response to this prompt on ![[info]](https://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/community.gif){kind=small}
kinkme_merlin: Arthur/Merlin, modern!AU. Merlin is a drug addict and Arthur wants to help him to become clean. Except I suck at actual modern!AU, so it's vaguely reincarnation.
Master Post
Beginning
Chapter Notes: Chapter titles comes from the song 'Dream, Brother' by Jeff Buckley.
Listen here
Dream, Brother:
A/N: So, I've got a formula for this fic: 2H + 2AP + 1ROP = @_@
Translation: Two Honors classes, two Advanced Placement classes, one Regional Occupational Program, and one art class (my only normal class out of six!) equals lots and lots of procrastination-born fic.
Zipa-a-dee-doo-da.
Especially considering I've got an English test on The Crucible coming up, and I haven't even properly started reading the damn thing, yet! Aren't I just the model of academic success?
*coffee withdrawal eyes*
Anyway, t'is short, but hopefully, erm...I think sweet is the wrong word...
~*~
Don't be like the one who made me so old
Don't be like the one who left behind his name
'Cause they're waiting for you like I waited for mine
And nobody ever came...
~*~
“Merlin…Merlin…Merlin?”
Merlin blinked awake, then tried to blink his way to clarity at the sight of Arthur before him, in the driver’s seat. Wait, Arthur? How was he-
Oh…Right.
Home, which was now no longer home. Liquid bliss. Drake. Arthur. And falling asleep in a bloody Lexus next to the damn prat.
Oh, bloody hell. “I’m hallucinating again, aren’t I?” Merlin asked, face falling, because this was a very nice hallucination.
“Again?” Arthur asked.
Merlin nodded slowly, leaning his head back against the headrest. “You’re never real.”
“…You’ve hallucinated about me before?” Arthur asked, quietly.
Now Merlin laughed. “Of course I have.” It was why he started getting deeper and deeper into his drugs. “One time…you were in full…Camelot armor…and you threw lightning at me. In the middle of a street, too.”
At that, Arthur looked positively alarmed. “I what?!”
Merlin laughed again, finding the look on Arthur’s face rather funny. “Course it wasn’t you. Passed out, woke up in jail. Lightning was a taser, I think…the p’lice officer looked just like you!”
Aaaand the look on Arthur’s face went from alarm to horror.
“You were tasered?! What for?!”
“Mm-mm…” Merlin shrugged. “Why are you asking? You know.”
“I know?”
“You’re jus’ in my head,” Merlin said, squinting again, through the darkness of…were they in a cave? Arthur was stopped, that was for sure. Wait, no, it was a parking garage.
“No, Merlin you idiot, I’m not! Now tell me, just what were you being tasered for?”
Merlin frowned. “You’re not?”
“Tell me…we’re getting nowhere with this,” Arthur scowled.
Merlin laughed. “Think I was…I pissed on the bloke, I thin’…”
“And he electrocuted you?!” Arthur said, unbuckling his seatbelt, but leaving Merlin’s where it was.
“Soho,” Merlin said by explanation. “And I still don’t get what you’re doing here.”
“Neither do I,” Arthur muttered, but Merlin heard. He always did have good hearing. Maybe the ears?
“Then go away,” Merlin grumbled.
A moment later, Merlin laughed at the shocked look on Arthur’s face.
“I fail to see what’s so funny about this,” Arthur said, angry.
“The look on your face,” Merlin said, head falling to the side, smiling. “You’re a nice hallucination.”
And Arthur’s face fell. Which made no sense, as he was always well composed in Merlin’s head.
The prat launched forward, grabbing Merlin by the shoulders and turning him in the seat so they were facing each other. “Merlin,” he said, voice thick with tears he would never shed, grip painfully tight on Merlin’s bony flesh. “Listen to me: I am not a hallucination. This is real. You’re safe, and you’re home now. I’m going to take care of you.”
Merlin’s head fell to the other side, now, and he shrugged and mumbled, “M’kay.”
Arthur suddenly shook Merlin’s body. “Tell me what I just said.”
Merlin frowned. “You never do this.” He looked down at his arm, where a few track marks resided, most already faded with the last dregs of healing magic fighting for his sake. “What did Drake cut that with-”
“Merlin!” Arthur said, shaking Merlin again. “Look at me.”
Swallowing, mouth impossibly dry, Merlin looked up, Arthur’s eyes suspiciously bright under the pale yellow of the car light and the reflection of the headlights against the wall and back into the car. “Please, Merlin. Let me take care of you, show you that I’m real.”
Another shrug, leaning his head again. “Sure.”
Arthur looked about ready to sob at Merlin’s drugged and sluggish nonchalance. Ah, well – it would be gone when Merlin woke up. Or at least it would be a different Arthur…he hoped.
From Arthur’s pocket, some rock music started playing, and he reached in and pulled out a fancy looking cell phone – the entire front was a screen, and Merlin vaguely remembered having once been given one instead of cash, and he’d made a nice profit in selling it – and he pushed a button, slid the front up, and said, “Lance?”
Merlin frowned. Lance?
“Yea – I found him. He’s…you’ll see. Are you up there?” A pause, and possibly muttering from the other end of the line. “Gwen and Morgana there? Good. Get Gwen to draw up a bath.” Yet another pause, and Arthur’s face looked stricken with pain, again. “I just found him in a bloody flophouse, that’s why! Look…” Arthur sighed, and leaned his head against the headrest, rubbing his temples, and Merlin laughed again.
This time, the chatter from the phone seemed excited.
“Yes, that was Merlin, Gwen,” Arthur said, and since when was Gwen there?
“No,” Arthur said. “He’s high. Did you not just hear the flophouse bit? Val’s guesses were right. All of it. Now please, get the bloody bath ready – we’ll be up in a few minutes. And tell Lance to get his medic bag, and tell Morgana to review anything she knows about healing spells – we might need it.”
And with a click and snap, they were completely alone in the car, again.
Merlin smiled. “Where are we?”
Arthur looked up. “Cardiff. Home, to be exact.”
Another dopey (heh, dopey) grin. “M’kay.”
“Are you agreeing because you think you’re home, or because you think all this is shite and you’ll wake up back in the flophouse?”
Another shrug. “Doesn’t matter.” Even though Arthur was just a hallucination, he didn’t have the heart to tell him it was actually the latter.
Arthur shut his eyes in pain again, and Merlin slumped against the cold window. He heard Arthur leave the car. Then, suddenly, the window was gone, and Arthur was holding Merlin up with his shoulders, unbuckling the seatbelt, and lifting Merlin up the same way as before. Merlin curled up in those strong arms, pressing his face into Arthur’s chest (which were well muscled enough to make Merlin wonder what else Arthur did besides rugby), and sighed.
Merlin of all people knew that sometimes, living in a dream was better than facing reality. Arthur probably was a dream, but he was the nicest dream yet, and Merlin was willing to immerse himself in it just a little bit longer.
~*~
I feel afraid and I call your name
I love your voice and your dance insane
I hear your words and I know your pain
~*~
A/N: Please remember to feed the muses so the poor little author gets a break while they eat.
Next Chapter
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And I have no idea what gets me in the mood for certain things. :D But yeah, Uther and Nimueh singing lullabies to baby!Arthur is a challenge I am dreading...@_@
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I don't normally, it's just that I was listening to them once and finally managed to get the mood right so now I'm all superstitious. And it could be really sweet if done right! Have faith! (Faith, faith, faith... Bloody George Michael. Was that George Michael. Doesn't matter.)
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*i iz language geek, too!*
Seriously, I love including other languages in my fics as often as possible. All the Old English for this fandom has been a godsend (and I'm one step away from offering to the merlinxcommunity my dubious translation services right now!!).
So, yeah - Anyael, as the language is called, is 'historically' created somewhere around 2090, or at least that's its main development stage. Because of this, the language has five persons instead of the typical three, along with four genders instead of the typical two, or two+neutral.
Officially, it has no linguistic base or roots what so ever, and is basically random gibberish that an anonymous source (which we later find out is actually not-so-anonymous) put together into a language.
Unofficially, I've been popping up random vocabulary by scrambling the English words (and occasionally the words from other languages) into gibberish, and I've stolen elements from many other languages, from all across the world, and even drew inspiration from fake languages (like Tolkein's Elvish languages).
I actually have some of this stuff online, but most of that is incorrect from the stuff I've written on paper, but I'll link you once I've got it all sorted out (though that might not be a while).
*looks at post* @_@ Whoops...sorry about the fanatical raving about it...
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I've been enjoying the Old English too (even though the first time it got used in the show I thought it was Welsh), although I seem to fail at actually looking this stuff up so I just take it as it comes to me in fics. I blame a very long summer. In a way, going to uni on Monday may wake me up a bit.
After all, I have fics to write.Anyael, huh? Where's the name come from? And what're you calling the main three persons? (IIRC, there's I, You, He/She/It, We, You Plural, They. And maybe even the polite forms. Oh dear, it's all coming back.) And the four genders would be what?
I'm intrigued by how a language that's essentially gibberish (which would actually be pretty hard to do without any in-text links to other languages...) is a base language for learning later on. Or do you mean general learning, not just other languages? (Damn my nit-picking tendencies. Whyyy?) As for stealing from other languages, as I say, if it's good enough for Tolkien, it's good enough for the rest of us.
Hey, do not worry about the fanatical raving. I have done much in my time. (Some of it in comments to you, I believe.) I'm just sorry my post is all `oh yes, and what?`. I blame watching Merlin with my Dad, who has made it his quest to find at least one plot-hole every episode.
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Mine: nyxelestia@yahoo.com
I wonder if there are any language communities...like, general language...
Anywho...
When I say gibberish, I mean, the words have no linguistic roots whatsoever. Even in Ido or Esperanto, you can see roots (i.e. 'ben' always somehow means good in both of them, 'libr' for book, ect.). Here, they have no roots at all - it's just random syllables...at least, in theory.
Like, the word for 'sex' is 'artus', officially has no rhyme or reason to it, just like all the original languages waaaaaaaaaay back, like even before Latin type things - as there was no language period before that point, the words would be random syllables.
Unofficially, 'artus', is 'sutra' backwards.
It gets even more abstract, how 'to read' (zhurte) originates from me scrambling 'treasure'.
On the flipside, I do also have words which really don't have any rhyme or reason. 'Doctor' - 'shapoc' - just felt nice rolling off my tongue at the time, so it stuck. ^_^
That's what I mean by gibberish.
As for persons, the basics are 1st, 2nd, and 3rd. Now, they each usually have plural forms, and many languages include versions for addressing by gender and formality and whatnot. But it all boils down to those three.
A few have a 4th - usually meaning, 'no person' in singular form (lack of subject/passive voice), and meaning the world at large (lack of particular subject) in plural.
I have the basic first three, singular and plural, then I added a 4th...and then a 5th. In most languages (even English), third person is used to refer to objects, but in Anyael, it will only be towards people and animals (and occasionally used as a form of deference to an object, like calling a ship 'she', but that's another can of worms all together) - the 5th person will be used to refer to objects.
So, there we have the persons.
As for gender - well, this is in the future, and gender is weird now as it is, so in the future, well...:D There's male, and there's female, as most of the human population does happen to fall into one of those. There's "extra gender", meaning any specific gender that happens to fall outside male/female (i.e. third gender, both gender, specifically without gender, ect.). And then there's neutral gender - regardless of what the actual gender of the person is, you are not identifying them as such.
:D
As for what I mean by learning...well, because of the design of the language, you kind of need to know another language first. Anyael has no intrinsic subject-object-verb order, and verb tenses/conjugation is fluidic, which means there are multiple ways it can be done - but there's no set 'standard' or intrinsic system. How you do it is based on what your native language is.
But on the flipside, because it's all encompassing and so fluidic, you end up learning all the ways it can be spoken, even if you ultimately only use one system.
Like, nouns - many languages have declension (like Latin, German, Russian, ect.), many do not (English, Chinese, Spanish...). Because of the system of articles and case in Anyael, you can either 'decline' nouns, or not. A native Russian speaker will use it like that, a native English speaker will go the other way, with non-declined nouns. But because the English speaker learned about declension in Anyael, even though they don't use it in either of their languages, when they try and learn Russian, the Russian noun system will be easier for them to grasp.
Also, Anyael is so international in the future that is the default translation language - everything that is translated, i.e. a movie, has only the native and Anyael - they don't bother with anything else. :D
no subject
General language communities would end up getting specialised, like the French Community (La quartiére francaise?) or German or whatever, unless you took the linguistics route. That'd be fun, actually. I'd love it if I found a History of Language module, but seriously, what're the chances of something that shiny?
I really like your roots for your language! The word for doctor in particular sounds much closer to how original words and languages develop - what needs a name, and what sounds good? I love how reading came from `treasure`, and the sutra thing made me grin too. Oh dear.
Ooo, yeah, boiled down the pronoun thing made more sense... Sounds a bit like some of the gender languages mixed with the weirdness English and other ones come up with (eg. `she` for a ship), which I guess was what you mean by it being so useful for understanding other forms. And the genders of the future makes me think of this random line from We Will Rock You, where they announce stuff to, amongst others, `Chairmen, Chairwomen, Chair-Transexuals and Chair-Androgenous Artificially Created Lifeforms`. ...Because my brain just generates unuseful quotes like that.
Wow, so you learn the language of those around you, then this general language that helps you to understand others, no matter what they're used to? That sounds like an incredibly good idea, since it would help to avoid the problems people can have adapting to different sentence lay-outs (bloody declensions. No, bloody French). I guess starting over again from gibberish would help that (Esperanto, in my opinion, could have worked if they'd limited it to the countries that are Latin-based, except they'd never agree to that if nobody else was changing), since you don't have that expectation to understand that messes some stuff up (like Singlish, which is this version of English that barely sounds like it anymore but because we're told it's English-based, we're more confused when we don't understand).
Whoa, the brackets really built up there. I can't even do English-English (even though no such thing truly exists, IMO).
That really would help the translation industry. Would definitely help foreign cinema, no?
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