Chapter 2: Point of No Return
The silence after Nathan jerked away was a living thing. It swallowed the hum of the fridge, the faint audio from the TV. It was made of pure, crushing pressure. Merlin watched his father’s face work, the muscles in his jaw clenching and unclenching, the warm eyes now wide with a kind of animal fright. That fear was worse than anger. It made Merlin feel like a monster.
Nathan took another step back, his heel catching on the edge of the rug. He righted himself, a clumsy, flailing movement. He still hadn’t spoken. He just stared, as if seeing his son for the first time and not recognizing the shape of him.
The shame that had iced Merlin’s veins cracked. It didn’t melt into remorse; it combusted into a frantic, wild energy. If he let this moment settle, it would calcify into something permanent and unchangeable. This gap between them would become a canyon. He couldn’t let that happen. He had to bridge it, now, with whatever he had.
He moved without thinking.
He launched himself off the couch, the leather sighing loudly. In two strides he was across the space Nathan had created. His father didn’t react, still locked in that paralysis of shock, until Merlin’s body was against his, pressing him back into the wall beside the hallway. A framed photo rattled.
“Merlin, don’t—” Nathan’s voice was a choked gasp, a hand coming up to brace against Merlin’s chest.
But Merlin was beyond words. He was a current of pure need. He framed his father’s face with trembling hands, feeling the rough stubble against his palms, and crushed their mouths together.
It wasn’t a kiss. It was a collision. A desperate, messy sealing of an escape route. He could taste the coffee Nathan had drunk hours ago, could feel the shocked inhale against his own lips. Nathan’s body was rigid, a plank of tension against him.
Then, a tremor.
Nathan’s hands, which had been pushing weakly at Merlin’s chest, stilled. His fingers flexed, sinking into the thin cotton of the t-shirt. They didn’t shove. They gripped. For one second, two, they held on as Merlin’s mouth moved clumsily against his, a silent, frantic plea.
A low, wounded sound came from Nathan’s throat. It broke the spell.
He wrenched his face away, turning his head to the side, breathing ragged. “Stop. God. Stop it, Merlin.”
But his hands, those traitorous hands, were still fisted in Merlin’s shirt, anchoring him close. His hips, pinned against the wall, had shifted. Just a fraction. An unconscious, physical echo of the pressure Merlin was applying.
“You felt it,” Merlin whispered against the side of his father’s face, his voice raw and broken. “On the couch. You didn’t pull away at first.”
“I didn’t know—” Nathan choked out. “I didn’t understand what you were—”
“You feel it now.” It was half a question, half a damning statement. Merlin pressed closer, eliminating any last inch of space. He could feel the hard line of Nathan’s belt, the rapid, shallow rise and fall of his chest. He dared to move his own hips, a slow, deliberate roll that drew another one of those gut-punched sounds from his father.
Nathan’s eyes were screwed shut. “This is wrong. You know this is wrong.” The words had no force. They were a mantra, a fragile shield.
“It doesn’t feel wrong.” Merlin breathed the lie, wanting to believe it. He nosed at Nathan’s jawline, the familiar scent overwhelming his senses. This was his dad. This was safety. This was home. It had to be right. “It just feels like you.”
One of Nathan’s hands finally unlocked from Merlin’s shirt. It rose, hovered in the air beside Merlin’s head for a terrifying moment—was he going to hit him? Shove him?—then came to rest, with devastating gentleness, on the back of Merlin’s neck. A thumb stroked the shorn hair there. A father’s comfort. A lover’s caress. The contradiction was seismic.
Nathan’s eyes opened. They were glistening, full of a confusion so deep it looked like pain. He searched Merlin’s face, looking for his boy in the desperate young man pinned against him. “What have I done?” he whispered, not to Merlin, but to the room, to the universe.
“Nothing,” Merlin said, seizing on the guilt. “You haven’t done anything. This is me. It’s all me.” He leaned in again, aiming for his father’s mouth, needing to shut down the thinking, the morality, everything but the heat between them.
This time, Nathan turned his head sharply. Merlin’s lips met his stubbled cheek.
“No,” Nathan said. The word was firmer. The hand on Merlin’s neck tightened, not in passion, but in preparation. He pushed, creating a sliver of daylight between their bodies. The cool air that rushed in was a shock. “No, Merlin. We can’t.”
The ‘we’ hung in the air, poisonous and thrilling. It was an admission. However small.
Nathan used that sliver of space to slide out from between Merlin and the wall. He looked ravaged. His shirt was twisted, his hair mussed where Merlin’s hands had been. He wouldn’t meet Merlin’s eyes. He stared at the floor, his chest heaving.
“Go to your room,” he said, his voice hollow. “Just… go to your room.”
“Dad—”
“Now.” The word was a crack of sound, final and brittle.
Merlin took a step back. The recklessness was draining away, leaving a cold, sick emptiness in its place. He saw the tremor in his father’s hands, the lost look on his face. He had done this. He had put that shattered expression there.
He turned and walked down the dark hallway, his own body feeling alien and too heavy. He didn’t look back.
Behind him, he heard a single, choked sob, quickly muffled. Then the sound of the back door opening, and the soft, desperate click of it closing. Nathan had fled into the night.
Merlin stood in the doorway of his dark bedroom, the blue TV light from the living room licking at his feet. The taste of his father was still on his lips. The ghost of that hesitant grip was on his hips. He had gotten everything he’d recklessly, stupidly asked for.
And it felt like the world had ended.