You are an angel, and she is Merlin, the Boar’s Sin of Gluttony, the greatest sorcerer in Britannia. You are also her lover. And she is a workaholic.

For three thousand years, she has pursued knowledge, magic, and grand designs. She helped forge a king from chaos, battled demons, and now, in the quiet aftermath, she is supposed to be at peace. But Merlin doesn’t know peace. Her mind is a library with infinite shelves, and she is forever browsing, forever studying. Right now, she’s hunched over a glowing array of incantation orbs, her brow furrowed in concentration, muttering equations that would make a goddess’s head spin.

You watch from the doorway of her study in the rebuilt Camelot. Scrolls float around her like obedient birds. Aldan, her sacred treasure, pulses softly nearby. She hasn’t slept in two days. She probably hasn’t eaten, either. The title “Sin of Gluttony” was always ironic; she feasts only on the unknown.

You’ve tried the usual things. “Merlin, my love, come to bed.” A distracted hum is your only reply. “Merlin, you’ll strain your eyes.” She waves a hand, and the light in the room brightens. “Merlin, Gawain asked about you.” That earns a flicker of guilt in her dark mustard eyes, but then she’s right back to recalibrating a Minimum Tablet.

So, you resort to your divine technique.

You don’t make a sound as you approach. She’s too deep in her work to notice. You stand behind her chair, and then, with a thought as soft as a sigh, you let your wings manifest. They are not weapons of war here, not tools of flight. They are vast, soft, and radiant, feathers like spun moonlight and warmth.

You lean forward, and in one gentle, encompassing motion, you wrap her—and her floating orbs and scattered scrolls—in a cocoon of feathery light. Your wings curve around the chair, enveloping her completely.

“Wha—?” Her muttering cuts off. The orbs flicker and dim, their magic momentarily overwhelmed by a simpler, purer power. The scrolls flutter down to rest.

She is buried in softness and warmth. It’s a sensation so utterly foreign to her—this complete, passive, overwhelming comfort. It bypasses her legendary intellect, her Infinity magic, her centuries of defenses. It goes straight to the core of the being who has been running on curiosity and willpower for millennia.

She squirms, but it’s a half-hearted thing. “This is… highly inefficient,” she mumbles, her voice muffled by your feathers. “I was on the verge of a breakthrough regarding spatial stabilization…”

“Shhh,” you whisper, your voice a vibration she feels through the wings. “The only breakthrough required here is you, breaking through your own stubbornness.”

She huffs, but the tension begins to leak from her shoulders. The great Merlin, who faced the Ten Commandments without flinching, is being utterly defeated by cuddles. Her head lolls to the side, finding a natural hollow in the plushness. One hand, which had been gesturing precisely, unclenches and comes to rest on a downy feather.

“This is a biological reset,” she declares, her tone still trying for clinical analysis. “The warmth and pressure are triggering a parasympathetic response. It’s… unscientific.”

“It’s love,” you correct softly.

A long, slow exhale escapes her. The last of the resistance melts away. Her body, which always holds itself with poised, mysterious grace, goes completely limp against you, trusting you to hold her up. The childlike form she sometimes reverts to is not visible, but in this surrender, you see a glimpse of that ancient, weary soul finally allowing itself to rest.

“Fine,” she murmurs, her words slurring with impending sleep. “You win this round, my angel. But tomorrow… tomorrow I shall devise a counter-spell… for excessive cosiness…”

Her sentence trails off into the softest of snores. The study is silent, save for her steady breathing. The work is forgotten. The world can wait.

You smile, adjusting your wings to make her even more comfortable. Your technique, it seems, is infallible. Even the greatest sorcerer in the world is no match for the simple, winged embrace