lady_ragnell (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
lady_ragnell) wrote2011-08-16 02:44 am
lady_ragnell) wrote2011-08-16 02:44 am
Entry tags:
Request-a-Fic: Simple Math
Title: Simple Math
Wordcount: ~4,500
Summary: After Gwen and Lancelot leave, Arthur and Merlin learn to take care of each other. Sequel to For the Weary.
A/N: The last request-a-fic of this round, for![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
_aurum, with apologies for it taking so long! This turned into a sequel rather than a timestamp, as I have been meaning to write it for ages. Title is by Manchester Orchestra.
Disclaimer: I do not own Merlin.
A month after Gwen and Lancelot ride away, worn and tired and Gwen’s face tear-tracked but smiling at each other, Arthur looks up from his papers in the evening to find Merlin folding his laundry.
It’s not that the occurrence is rare. For all Merlin hasn’t been a servant for five years now, he steps into the position naturally whenever Arthur is between manservants, which is often, because they all turn out to be knight-hopefuls in the end and he doesn’t quite have the heart to keep them from it, if they’re good enough. It’s not even that he’s unusually silent, since he has learned how to stop prattling on when the occasion necessitates it and Arthur told him two weeks ago to stop asking if he’s okay and why he hadn’t told Merlin until Merlin ran across the scene entirely by accident that he was sending Gwen and Lancelot away.
It’s that for a second, all Arthur can see is the bruised rings around Merlin’s eyes, the way his bones cast shadows on his skin in the firelight, and it makes him think of Merlin laid out on his bed, pale and unmoving, back when Arthur first became king. “What?” Merlin asks when he catches Arthur looking, rolling his eyes. “I wouldn’t need to do this if you put away your own damn clothes. You know, like I do.”
“You do it with magic.” He pauses. “Why don’t you do mine with magic, come to that?”
Merlin shrugs. “Habit. What’s bothering you? You’re reading your personal correspondence, and you were smiling until you started looking at me.”
“Just thinking, is all. I haven’t reassigned Gwen’s duties yet, it slipped my mind, but nobody’s come to me about it.”
“The household pretty much runs itself,” Merlin says with another shrug, and goes back to folding a shirt.
Arthur sighs, because after all their time together he knows all too well what Merlin’s lies sound like, and he wonders how this hasn’t occurred to him before. Leon and Gwaine stepped forward as soon as they heard Lancelot was gone and offered to take on his assigned duties, but of course nobody did the same for Gwen. Camelot is far too used to not having a queen; it probably never even occurred to them, just like it didn’t to him. “No, it doesn’t.” Merlin doesn’t look at him. “Merlin. I won’t have you exhausting yourself, not again.”
Merlin finally turns around, eyes flashing gold as the laundry starts taking care of itself, and puts his hands on his hips. “Like you are, you mean? Like you have been for the past month? I’m just trying to ease a bit of your burden, and if that means talking to the cooks about feast menus and to the steward about servants and household matters, then that’s fine. Better me than you, with Bayard thinking about attacking. You’ve got other things to worry about.”
“And you don’t?” Merlin walks over to lean against the table, and he looks even more tired up close. Arthur grew used to gauging Merlin’s health and energy after his collapse; it’s a testament to how distracted he’s been that it’s taken him this long to notice. “With Morgana scheming something new and rumours that some of the Druids farther afield are swearing to her instead of to you--”
“Us,” corrects Merlin. “And yes, I have duties. It’s not like I’m neglecting them.”
“I know you aren’t. You’re too tired to have been.” Arthur rubs his forehead and puts down his pile of letters. There’s nothing new in it, anyway. “I won’t have you collapsing again.”
Merlin’s expression, which had been edging on annoyance, softens. “That was five years ago, Arthur, and yes, I’m busy, but it won’t happen again. I’m eating this time, you know that, I was sitting next to you at tonight’s feast and I was eating. Unlike you, I should mention.” His brow crinkles. “Speaking of which, cook wants me to speak to you, she said the servants have been bringing your meals back half-eaten and--”
“And that is not the discussion we’re having at the moment,” Arthur cuts in.
“It is, though. You can’t scold me for doing too much and do worse to yourself.” Arthur opens his mouth to say that he’s the king and he can do just that if he wants to, but Merlin shakes his head. “Let me do something for you, for once, instead of you fussing whenever I yawn. We all just want to help, after they …” This time he stops himself, mouth twisting up.
“You can help by not killing yourself for my sake. I would have named a noblewoman weeks ago if I’d known.” He pulls up a smirk that he knows isn’t effective. “Unless you want to be acting queen, Merlin, you girl.”
“I never thought I would be doing it forever. Just until you’d figured things out again.”
“Life continues, and it’s not as if I’m the only one who’s lost them.” Camelot’s people, who lost a beloved queen and a knight raised as a peasant, two of the greatest symbols they have that Arthur cares for them, not just for his nobles. His knights, who lost a strong brother in arms. Elyan, who lost a sister as well as a friend. Merlin, who lost two of his best friends far too soon after Gaius’s death. He remembers Merlin’s betrayed look when he understood why Gwen and Lancelot were saddling their horses all too well.
“Then I’ll give up her duties, if it’s really bothering you that much, as long as you promise to appoint someone else, not just do them yourself.”
“Yes, fine. There are a few ladies who could do it, who sometimes helped my father with it during his reign. I’ll see which of them wants to and announce it in the afternoon. Happy?”
“Somewhat.” Merlin snatches away his pile of letters. “And now you’re going to bed.” He forestalls Arthur’s objection with a raised hand. “I’m allowed to care for you too, Arthur. And if this is what I can do, then it’s what I’ll do.”
“Fine,” says Arthur when Merlin bites down a yawn, because it’s becoming clear that Merlin won’t go to bed until he does and they both need rest.
Merlin smiles, one of the first real ones Arthur’s seen in far too long--since before Gwen and Lancelot left, now that he’s thinking about it, and he curses himself for missing yet another sign that Merlin’s been unhappy. “Right, to bed, then. Both of us. And when breakfast is brought up tomorrow, you’ll eat it, or I’ll take over being your manservant again, and I think you enjoy having your meals on time and your needs anticipated.”
Arthur shakes his head, but he stands up and lets Merlin manhandle him into a nightshirt anyway, muttering as he goes, the same litany of affectionate insult that he did years ago, about how useless Arthur is for not being able to undress himself. “I’ll ask about getting a new manservant, but this time I’m going to ask the steward to interview any candidates and make sure they have no desire to be knights,” Arthur says through a yawn as Merlin turns down the bedclothes.
“Between you and me, I think the steward enjoys it. Likes letting the lads have stories like that.”
Arthur climbs into bed. “Then they can go to knight trials like everyone else. It would be good to have some stability for once. Or I’ll ask for one of the older trained servants.”
“That’s up to you. I’m glad to help as long as you need it, though.” Merlin pulls the covers up around him, fusses at them as if Arthur’s a child. Arthur can’t bring himself to object. “All I can do about Morgana and the Druids is the same as I always do.”
“It’s done well enough so far,” Arthur allows, and Merlin absently brushes Arthur’s hair out of his eyes with a smile. His hand lingers, or perhaps it just feels like it does, before he stands up and goes around the room blowing out candles. “Good night,” he says when Merlin finishes. “Get some sleep yourself.”
Merlin pauses at the door, but it’s too dark to decipher his expression. “I will. Good night, Arthur.”
He leaves, and Arthur stays awake for far too long, wondering why the feel of Merlin’s hand in his hair won’t go away.
*
Merlin realizes, about six weeks after Gwen and Lancelot leave, that Arthur does as he does. If Merlin is up late in the council chamber, still picking over a plate of dinner well after midnight and working until nearly dawn, he hears from the cook the next day that the boy who brought Arthur’s breakfast found him asleep at his table with most of his dinner gone stale and cold. If Merlin goes to the tavern with Gwaine and eats more food than he can stand before staggering off to sleep for ten hours, he wakes to find Arthur rested and the cook beaming. It’s a horrible form of blackmail, Merlin decides, and starts doing it right back.
It all leads, somehow, to them spending their late nights together at the table in Arthur’s room, or with Arthur sprawled in one of Merlin’s chairs while Merlin works on a fiddly potion, and as often as not, on those nights, to Merlin sleeping in Arthur’s antechamber or Arthur sharing Merlin’s massive bed. And, on those nights, when the candles are out and they’re finally drifting off, Arthur starts talking to him again.
It’s not that they didn’t talk before; Merlin is undoubtedly Arthur’s closest advisor, and between them and the round table knights, they do most of the country’s business. Sometime over the last several years since Gwen and Arthur wed, though, Arthur naturally started giving her his few confidences, talking to her when he needed to work through a problem. Now, though, that Merlin is at his heels nearly constantly again, such things come to him, and mostly without the hint of mockery that he got when he was Arthur’s manservant.
“One of the younger knights asked me why I haven’t sent them out after Guinevere and Lancelot today,” he says one night about two months after their departure, resting on Merlin’s bed after a long night of arguing whether or not to regulate growing magic so the soil wouldn’t run out of nutrients all at once.
“What did you tell him?” Merlin asks, blowing out the last candle. Arthur’s always a little more willing to talk if it’s dark.
“That banishing them was more than enough.” He pauses, and Merlin slides into the bed, pulling the bedclothes up around him. It still feels strange, having the heat of another body in his bed after so long. “Do you think I should have done more?”
Merlin doesn’t allow himself to dwell too long on the memory of Gwen and Lancelot, neither of them quite willing to meet his eyes, and Arthur, who just shrugged helplessly, looking more lost than he probably ever assumed he could, and didn’t say a word while Merlin forced out a goodbye. “No. They’re leaving Albion, leaving all their family and friends here, and they chose it. I don’t think there’s much worse than knowing that. Do you miss her?” It’s about even odds whether Arthur will answer that question.
“Much of the time. Sometimes I don’t have time.” He pauses. “That’s probably part of the reason why she left.”
Since he doesn’t know what to say to that, Merlin yawns and wishes Arthur an awkward goodnight, falling asleep soon after. He wakes the next morning with Arthur’s hand clamped around his elbow, and while neither of them mentions it afterwards, he feels the grip all day.
That night seems to break some previously-unnoticed dam of touch. They’ve always touched each other absently, Merlin used to dressing Arthur and Arthur used to clipping Merlin about the ears when he did something particularly annoying, but this is different. This is Arthur spending an entire council session with a hand resting between Merlin’s shoulder blades, and Merlin waking up the morning after a late night to find his head tucked under Arthur’s chin and the chambermaid with the breakfast tray turning bright red. It’s Arthur following him to his room out of habit on one of their early nights and pausing at the door like he can’t quite remember to say goodnight, and forgetting about the bed in the antechamber in Arthur’s room one night because they’re growing used to sharing a bed.
It’s also, Merlin discovers after a few weeks, completely obvious to anyone with eyes that something is going on, even if he’s not quite sure what it is himself. Gwaine catches hold of his arm one day after a patrol where Arthur had helped Merlin on and off his horse as if it was an everyday occurrence and drags him to the lower city and one of its more disreputable taverns. Then he just stares, mouth flat but eyes crinkled, until Merlin gives up and puts his head in his hands. “I don’t know,” he says, and winces at how pathetic he sounds. He’s a grown man, the Court Sorcerer for one of the most powerful kingdoms in Albion, and he feels completely at sea.
“Perhaps I ought to explain,” Gwaine replies, leaning back and smirking.
Merlin looks up at him. “It’s not that, though. It hasn’t been long since Gwen left, and anyway, we just never …”
“The whole castle is gossiping about the pair of you.” Merlin puts his head down again, feeling the back of his neck heat up. Gwaine reaches across the table and puts his hand on Merlin’s shoulder. “You don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to. It’s okay, though. Whether you are or not.”
“I need to get drunk,” says Merlin, and Gwaine lets him change the subject.
He can’t quite stop thinking about it, after that. When Leon smiles at him after he nags Arthur into going to bed early because Merlin has a legitimate reason to be awake late, when the maid who brings his lunch automatically brings enough for two and then stammers her way through an apology while explaining that she thought the king would be there, Merlin thinks of Gwaine and his smirk when he said “the whole castle.” Arthur doesn’t seem to notice a thing, of course, continuing on as if he doesn’t see the looks they get every time they walk down a corridor together.
Merlin should ignore it, he knows. It’s not the first time people have made the assumption that he warms Arthur’s bed, though most of that was before Gwen. Before, he always just sighed and made sure Arthur and Gaius, not to mention Uther, never heard the rumours. He knew they weren’t true, after all, and it didn’t bother him because people said much the same about Gwen and Morgana, at first. Now, though, it’s different. Now, they smile instead of titter. Now, Merlin is beginning to wonder, before he catches himself, what if? What if he did warm Arthur’s body, not just his bed? What if they went to sleep together every night, and woke up side by side without having to pretend they didn’t wake up touching?
He tells himself it doesn’t matter, and that Gwen’s loss is still too fresh for Arthur to begin to consider it, if he ever would in the first place. With Arthur smiling at him across the council table during meetings and wrapping around him at night, though, it’s hard not to wonder. Hard, as days pass, not to drop a kiss to Arthur’s temple when he leaves in the morning.
And it could all go on like that indefinitely, he suspects, except one morning, after a night when they hadn’t stayed up particularly late but had ended up in Merlin’s bed anyway, Merlin wakes up with Arthur already awake next to him, and watching with an expression Merlin can’t quite read. “What?” he asks. Arthur never lets him sleep more than a few minutes if he’s the one to wake first.
“You were saying my name,” Arthur replies, arching an eyebrow. “I was about to ask you the same question.”
“I was dreaming about you,” Merlin says automatically, before realizing that he was. He remembers a flash of skin and Arthur’s smile, wider than he’s seen it waking in months.
He waits for Arthur to smirk, but he just keeps staring instead. “Dreaming what about me, Merlin?”
“I … don’t really remember.” Better to play it safe, after all. “What did it sound like I was dreaming?”
Arthur watches him for just a few seconds more before shaking his head and rolling away, dropping his hand from Merlin’s shoulder on the way. He hadn’t even realized it was there. “It doesn’t matter. I’ve got to meet with Leon this morning, to discuss who should be knighted in case conflict with Mercia grows worse. I’ll see you at council.”
And before Merlin can say anything else, Arthur has pulled on his breeches and boots and left the room, almost running into the maid with the breakfast tray on the way.
*
Arthur is sitting at his table, eating dinner alone for the first time in a long time, when Merlin bursts through the door to his chambers without knocking.
“One would think that my Court Sorcerer would have a greater idea of etiquette,” he says with all the exasperation he can muster.
“You’ve been avoiding me,” Merlin accuses, skipping right past the bait he would usually take and right into the conversation Arthur doesn’t want to have. “All day.”
Of course he is, but he can’t admit that to Merlin, because he would have to explain why, and he’s not really sure why himself. He’s been doing a good job, these last few weeks, of pretending that whatever it is going on between himself and Merlin isn’t happening. He knows what he wants, and until this morning he’d thought that he was most afraid of Merlin not wanting the same. Now, though, he’s heard Merlin calling out for him in his sleep, not as if Arthur’s in danger, but as if they’re lovers, and he doesn’t know what to do. “I saw you at council, Merlin, surely you weren’t daydreaming that much.”
“You didn’t talk to me. You sat in Lancelot’s seat,” says Merlin, and Arthur winces. The empty places at the Round Table haven’t yet been filled, and he knows Merlin wasn’t the only one to note Arthur’s change of position. “It was … this morning, I’m sorry if I …”
Arthur musters as much smugness as he can manage, and knows it won’t be enough to fool Merlin. “Don’t worry, I’m quite sure a lot of people dream about me at night.”
“Arthur.”
He knows after this long that Merlin won’t be turned away when he sounds like that, and so they’ll be having this conversation now. He pushes his dinner away from him. “I’m not angry at you, if that’s what you’re worried about.”
Merlin fidgets where he stands, shaking his head slightly when Arthur invites him to the table with a gesture. Arthur rolls his eyes and stands so at least they’re on the same level. “The maids think we’re in love, you know,” he blurts just as Arthur is beginning to wonder if the silence will be endless.
Arthur forces out a laugh. “Oh? That’s not a surprise, Merlin. People have been gossiping about us for years.”
“Gwaine brought it up to me,” he continues, and Arthur winces at that. He knows that gossip about he and Merlin has been growing steadily ever since Gwen left, and even knowing that he’d done nothing to discourage it, but Merlin knowing about it all is a different matter entirely. “And I knew there were rumours before you got married--quite a few of the stable boys asked me if I bent over for you--but now … don’t you mind?”
“It’s idle gossip, nothing more,” he says carefully.
Merlin shakes his head, though Arthur can’t quite figure out why. “It’s--Arthur, you know what I’m trying to ask you. If you don’t want to acknowledge it, then just tell me so. I understand if it’s too soon after Gwen, or if it’s not something you want at all, but you could at least tell me.”
Taking the coward’s way out isn’t an option. He could pretend he doesn’t know what Merlin is talking about, but then things will continue like this, and if Merlin moans his name while they sleep again, Arthur isn’t certain he’ll be able to restrain himself. Trying to return to how things were before Guinevere and Lancelot left is an equally unthinkable solution. He can’t force the words out, though, since he has no idea what to say. “It’s something I want,” Arthur manages at last, as firmly as he’s able.
“Oh, good,” says Merlin, and then just stands there beaming at him and not doing a damn thing.
And that, Merlin being an idiot as always, is what gives Arthur the will to cross his arms and raise and eyebrow. “Something I want right now, even,” he says as pointedly as he can, and fights back a grin when Merlin’s eyes go wide. Of course he does nothing, though, leaving Arthur to roll his eyes. “Are you going to come here or not?”
Merlin glares. “Just for that, I think I should wait for you to come over here.”
Arthur starts laughing, which makes Merlin’s scowl even worse. For once, he isn’t even mocking Merlin. All he can think is that he and Merlin have gone through all their years of knowing each other bickering, so there’s no reason that this will be any different. He makes a show of sighing once he gets himself back under control. “Fine, I suppose I can this once, since you did come searching for me.”
As easy as that, Merlin goes back to beaming, and Arthur walks to him in four strides and puts his hands on his shoulders, not quite sure how to proceed. He’s thought about this, every time he woke up in Merlin’s arms, every time Merlin fussed with his collar even though Arthur’s most recent manservant is actually competent, but now that he’s within range he’s at a loss. He’s used to sweet kisses with Gwen, bending to meet her, but Merlin’s his height and certainly not Gwen, for all he used to compare them sometimes. And Merlin is no help, standing there and smiling like an idiot.
“Fine, then,” Merlin says fondly after a few seconds, and Arthur has one panicked second to wonder if Merlin has actually found the spell he’s been threatening for years that would allow him to read minds before Merlin kisses him.
It’s nothing at all like kissing Gwen, and he allows himself a moment of warring relief and anxiety before kissing Merlin back with as much force as he can because Merlin actually had the audacity to bite him in the middle of it all and he can’t let that stand. It’s not quite like they’re arguing, though with anyone else kissing him like this Arthur would assume so. Neither of them has ever backed down from a challenge by the other, though, so when they pull away, long minutes of heat and wet and Merlin’s hands clenched in his shirt later, both of them are panting and grinning, mouths kiss-bruised. “We should have done that years ago,” Arthur says, a little giddy.
Merlin raises his eyebrows. “While you were married?”
“She certainly didn’t hesitate,” Arthur snaps before he can stop himself, and winces when Merlin straightens up and wipes his mouth, looking less debauched by the second.
Instead of scolding him or worse, though, Merlin just rests a hand on Arthur’s jaw. “None of that.”
“You can’t tell me what to--”
“None of that,” Merlin repeats more firmly, and kisses Arthur on the nose of all things. “Now, you look exhausted and I think we ought to go to bed.”
Arthur glances backward at his table, where half his dinner is uneaten and there are stacks of paper to be dealt with. “Haven’t even finished dinner, and then I have Leon’s reports to read over about the patrols on the southern border and a letter from one of Bayard’s lords asking if we’ll foster his son, and either they’re being very clever or they don’t want war after all,” he says, automatically starting the evening litany of things he has yet to do that he and Merlin share nearly every night.
“Arthur,” says Merlin, grin firmly in place, and presses shamelessly close. “I said I think we ought to go to bed. Surely all that can wait for morning.”
Arthur kisses the smile from Merlin’s mouth to keep from feeling like a fool, and pulls him towards the bed when they break apart. “I suppose it can. We can’t have you overworking yourself, after all.”
He knows, with a certain sense of inevitability, that they’ll wake up hungry in a few hours, and Merlin will grumble until Arthur gets up and fetches his congealed and cooled tray of dinner, which he’ll warm up with magic even though it doesn’t taste as good that way, just as he’s done many a late night. In the morning, his manservant will come in with breakfast for two because Merlin’s arrival, probably in a state judging by his entrance, will be commented on, and he and Merlin will bicker over whether or not the missive from Mercia is an underhanded bid for peace or a blatant attempt at espionage. They’ll go to council, and Leon and Gwaine might notice something different, since they’re both more observant than they’re often credited, but nobody else will care because they all assumed it started shortly after Gwen left.
And in between all that he’ll have Merlin in his bed as usual, but with kisses and touches and maybe, if either of them works up the courage, a proper declaration that neither of them skirts around. Something suitably dramatic, no doubt, and Merlin will pretend he isn’t crying.
“Nor you,” he says, voice gruffer than he means it to be, when he realizes that he’s just standing there with Merlin watching him expectantly, and tumbles Merlin into bed.
He suspects neither of them will be terribly rested in the morning, but for once he doesn’t mind.
Wordcount: ~4,500
Summary: After Gwen and Lancelot leave, Arthur and Merlin learn to take care of each other. Sequel to For the Weary.
A/N: The last request-a-fic of this round, for
_aurum, with apologies for it taking so long! This turned into a sequel rather than a timestamp, as I have been meaning to write it for ages. Title is by Manchester Orchestra.Disclaimer: I do not own Merlin.
A month after Gwen and Lancelot ride away, worn and tired and Gwen’s face tear-tracked but smiling at each other, Arthur looks up from his papers in the evening to find Merlin folding his laundry.
It’s not that the occurrence is rare. For all Merlin hasn’t been a servant for five years now, he steps into the position naturally whenever Arthur is between manservants, which is often, because they all turn out to be knight-hopefuls in the end and he doesn’t quite have the heart to keep them from it, if they’re good enough. It’s not even that he’s unusually silent, since he has learned how to stop prattling on when the occasion necessitates it and Arthur told him two weeks ago to stop asking if he’s okay and why he hadn’t told Merlin until Merlin ran across the scene entirely by accident that he was sending Gwen and Lancelot away.
It’s that for a second, all Arthur can see is the bruised rings around Merlin’s eyes, the way his bones cast shadows on his skin in the firelight, and it makes him think of Merlin laid out on his bed, pale and unmoving, back when Arthur first became king. “What?” Merlin asks when he catches Arthur looking, rolling his eyes. “I wouldn’t need to do this if you put away your own damn clothes. You know, like I do.”
“You do it with magic.” He pauses. “Why don’t you do mine with magic, come to that?”
Merlin shrugs. “Habit. What’s bothering you? You’re reading your personal correspondence, and you were smiling until you started looking at me.”
“Just thinking, is all. I haven’t reassigned Gwen’s duties yet, it slipped my mind, but nobody’s come to me about it.”
“The household pretty much runs itself,” Merlin says with another shrug, and goes back to folding a shirt.
Arthur sighs, because after all their time together he knows all too well what Merlin’s lies sound like, and he wonders how this hasn’t occurred to him before. Leon and Gwaine stepped forward as soon as they heard Lancelot was gone and offered to take on his assigned duties, but of course nobody did the same for Gwen. Camelot is far too used to not having a queen; it probably never even occurred to them, just like it didn’t to him. “No, it doesn’t.” Merlin doesn’t look at him. “Merlin. I won’t have you exhausting yourself, not again.”
Merlin finally turns around, eyes flashing gold as the laundry starts taking care of itself, and puts his hands on his hips. “Like you are, you mean? Like you have been for the past month? I’m just trying to ease a bit of your burden, and if that means talking to the cooks about feast menus and to the steward about servants and household matters, then that’s fine. Better me than you, with Bayard thinking about attacking. You’ve got other things to worry about.”
“And you don’t?” Merlin walks over to lean against the table, and he looks even more tired up close. Arthur grew used to gauging Merlin’s health and energy after his collapse; it’s a testament to how distracted he’s been that it’s taken him this long to notice. “With Morgana scheming something new and rumours that some of the Druids farther afield are swearing to her instead of to you--”
“Us,” corrects Merlin. “And yes, I have duties. It’s not like I’m neglecting them.”
“I know you aren’t. You’re too tired to have been.” Arthur rubs his forehead and puts down his pile of letters. There’s nothing new in it, anyway. “I won’t have you collapsing again.”
Merlin’s expression, which had been edging on annoyance, softens. “That was five years ago, Arthur, and yes, I’m busy, but it won’t happen again. I’m eating this time, you know that, I was sitting next to you at tonight’s feast and I was eating. Unlike you, I should mention.” His brow crinkles. “Speaking of which, cook wants me to speak to you, she said the servants have been bringing your meals back half-eaten and--”
“And that is not the discussion we’re having at the moment,” Arthur cuts in.
“It is, though. You can’t scold me for doing too much and do worse to yourself.” Arthur opens his mouth to say that he’s the king and he can do just that if he wants to, but Merlin shakes his head. “Let me do something for you, for once, instead of you fussing whenever I yawn. We all just want to help, after they …” This time he stops himself, mouth twisting up.
“You can help by not killing yourself for my sake. I would have named a noblewoman weeks ago if I’d known.” He pulls up a smirk that he knows isn’t effective. “Unless you want to be acting queen, Merlin, you girl.”
“I never thought I would be doing it forever. Just until you’d figured things out again.”
“Life continues, and it’s not as if I’m the only one who’s lost them.” Camelot’s people, who lost a beloved queen and a knight raised as a peasant, two of the greatest symbols they have that Arthur cares for them, not just for his nobles. His knights, who lost a strong brother in arms. Elyan, who lost a sister as well as a friend. Merlin, who lost two of his best friends far too soon after Gaius’s death. He remembers Merlin’s betrayed look when he understood why Gwen and Lancelot were saddling their horses all too well.
“Then I’ll give up her duties, if it’s really bothering you that much, as long as you promise to appoint someone else, not just do them yourself.”
“Yes, fine. There are a few ladies who could do it, who sometimes helped my father with it during his reign. I’ll see which of them wants to and announce it in the afternoon. Happy?”
“Somewhat.” Merlin snatches away his pile of letters. “And now you’re going to bed.” He forestalls Arthur’s objection with a raised hand. “I’m allowed to care for you too, Arthur. And if this is what I can do, then it’s what I’ll do.”
“Fine,” says Arthur when Merlin bites down a yawn, because it’s becoming clear that Merlin won’t go to bed until he does and they both need rest.
Merlin smiles, one of the first real ones Arthur’s seen in far too long--since before Gwen and Lancelot left, now that he’s thinking about it, and he curses himself for missing yet another sign that Merlin’s been unhappy. “Right, to bed, then. Both of us. And when breakfast is brought up tomorrow, you’ll eat it, or I’ll take over being your manservant again, and I think you enjoy having your meals on time and your needs anticipated.”
Arthur shakes his head, but he stands up and lets Merlin manhandle him into a nightshirt anyway, muttering as he goes, the same litany of affectionate insult that he did years ago, about how useless Arthur is for not being able to undress himself. “I’ll ask about getting a new manservant, but this time I’m going to ask the steward to interview any candidates and make sure they have no desire to be knights,” Arthur says through a yawn as Merlin turns down the bedclothes.
“Between you and me, I think the steward enjoys it. Likes letting the lads have stories like that.”
Arthur climbs into bed. “Then they can go to knight trials like everyone else. It would be good to have some stability for once. Or I’ll ask for one of the older trained servants.”
“That’s up to you. I’m glad to help as long as you need it, though.” Merlin pulls the covers up around him, fusses at them as if Arthur’s a child. Arthur can’t bring himself to object. “All I can do about Morgana and the Druids is the same as I always do.”
“It’s done well enough so far,” Arthur allows, and Merlin absently brushes Arthur’s hair out of his eyes with a smile. His hand lingers, or perhaps it just feels like it does, before he stands up and goes around the room blowing out candles. “Good night,” he says when Merlin finishes. “Get some sleep yourself.”
Merlin pauses at the door, but it’s too dark to decipher his expression. “I will. Good night, Arthur.”
He leaves, and Arthur stays awake for far too long, wondering why the feel of Merlin’s hand in his hair won’t go away.
*
Merlin realizes, about six weeks after Gwen and Lancelot leave, that Arthur does as he does. If Merlin is up late in the council chamber, still picking over a plate of dinner well after midnight and working until nearly dawn, he hears from the cook the next day that the boy who brought Arthur’s breakfast found him asleep at his table with most of his dinner gone stale and cold. If Merlin goes to the tavern with Gwaine and eats more food than he can stand before staggering off to sleep for ten hours, he wakes to find Arthur rested and the cook beaming. It’s a horrible form of blackmail, Merlin decides, and starts doing it right back.
It all leads, somehow, to them spending their late nights together at the table in Arthur’s room, or with Arthur sprawled in one of Merlin’s chairs while Merlin works on a fiddly potion, and as often as not, on those nights, to Merlin sleeping in Arthur’s antechamber or Arthur sharing Merlin’s massive bed. And, on those nights, when the candles are out and they’re finally drifting off, Arthur starts talking to him again.
It’s not that they didn’t talk before; Merlin is undoubtedly Arthur’s closest advisor, and between them and the round table knights, they do most of the country’s business. Sometime over the last several years since Gwen and Arthur wed, though, Arthur naturally started giving her his few confidences, talking to her when he needed to work through a problem. Now, though, that Merlin is at his heels nearly constantly again, such things come to him, and mostly without the hint of mockery that he got when he was Arthur’s manservant.
“One of the younger knights asked me why I haven’t sent them out after Guinevere and Lancelot today,” he says one night about two months after their departure, resting on Merlin’s bed after a long night of arguing whether or not to regulate growing magic so the soil wouldn’t run out of nutrients all at once.
“What did you tell him?” Merlin asks, blowing out the last candle. Arthur’s always a little more willing to talk if it’s dark.
“That banishing them was more than enough.” He pauses, and Merlin slides into the bed, pulling the bedclothes up around him. It still feels strange, having the heat of another body in his bed after so long. “Do you think I should have done more?”
Merlin doesn’t allow himself to dwell too long on the memory of Gwen and Lancelot, neither of them quite willing to meet his eyes, and Arthur, who just shrugged helplessly, looking more lost than he probably ever assumed he could, and didn’t say a word while Merlin forced out a goodbye. “No. They’re leaving Albion, leaving all their family and friends here, and they chose it. I don’t think there’s much worse than knowing that. Do you miss her?” It’s about even odds whether Arthur will answer that question.
“Much of the time. Sometimes I don’t have time.” He pauses. “That’s probably part of the reason why she left.”
Since he doesn’t know what to say to that, Merlin yawns and wishes Arthur an awkward goodnight, falling asleep soon after. He wakes the next morning with Arthur’s hand clamped around his elbow, and while neither of them mentions it afterwards, he feels the grip all day.
That night seems to break some previously-unnoticed dam of touch. They’ve always touched each other absently, Merlin used to dressing Arthur and Arthur used to clipping Merlin about the ears when he did something particularly annoying, but this is different. This is Arthur spending an entire council session with a hand resting between Merlin’s shoulder blades, and Merlin waking up the morning after a late night to find his head tucked under Arthur’s chin and the chambermaid with the breakfast tray turning bright red. It’s Arthur following him to his room out of habit on one of their early nights and pausing at the door like he can’t quite remember to say goodnight, and forgetting about the bed in the antechamber in Arthur’s room one night because they’re growing used to sharing a bed.
It’s also, Merlin discovers after a few weeks, completely obvious to anyone with eyes that something is going on, even if he’s not quite sure what it is himself. Gwaine catches hold of his arm one day after a patrol where Arthur had helped Merlin on and off his horse as if it was an everyday occurrence and drags him to the lower city and one of its more disreputable taverns. Then he just stares, mouth flat but eyes crinkled, until Merlin gives up and puts his head in his hands. “I don’t know,” he says, and winces at how pathetic he sounds. He’s a grown man, the Court Sorcerer for one of the most powerful kingdoms in Albion, and he feels completely at sea.
“Perhaps I ought to explain,” Gwaine replies, leaning back and smirking.
Merlin looks up at him. “It’s not that, though. It hasn’t been long since Gwen left, and anyway, we just never …”
“The whole castle is gossiping about the pair of you.” Merlin puts his head down again, feeling the back of his neck heat up. Gwaine reaches across the table and puts his hand on Merlin’s shoulder. “You don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to. It’s okay, though. Whether you are or not.”
“I need to get drunk,” says Merlin, and Gwaine lets him change the subject.
He can’t quite stop thinking about it, after that. When Leon smiles at him after he nags Arthur into going to bed early because Merlin has a legitimate reason to be awake late, when the maid who brings his lunch automatically brings enough for two and then stammers her way through an apology while explaining that she thought the king would be there, Merlin thinks of Gwaine and his smirk when he said “the whole castle.” Arthur doesn’t seem to notice a thing, of course, continuing on as if he doesn’t see the looks they get every time they walk down a corridor together.
Merlin should ignore it, he knows. It’s not the first time people have made the assumption that he warms Arthur’s bed, though most of that was before Gwen. Before, he always just sighed and made sure Arthur and Gaius, not to mention Uther, never heard the rumours. He knew they weren’t true, after all, and it didn’t bother him because people said much the same about Gwen and Morgana, at first. Now, though, it’s different. Now, they smile instead of titter. Now, Merlin is beginning to wonder, before he catches himself, what if? What if he did warm Arthur’s body, not just his bed? What if they went to sleep together every night, and woke up side by side without having to pretend they didn’t wake up touching?
He tells himself it doesn’t matter, and that Gwen’s loss is still too fresh for Arthur to begin to consider it, if he ever would in the first place. With Arthur smiling at him across the council table during meetings and wrapping around him at night, though, it’s hard not to wonder. Hard, as days pass, not to drop a kiss to Arthur’s temple when he leaves in the morning.
And it could all go on like that indefinitely, he suspects, except one morning, after a night when they hadn’t stayed up particularly late but had ended up in Merlin’s bed anyway, Merlin wakes up with Arthur already awake next to him, and watching with an expression Merlin can’t quite read. “What?” he asks. Arthur never lets him sleep more than a few minutes if he’s the one to wake first.
“You were saying my name,” Arthur replies, arching an eyebrow. “I was about to ask you the same question.”
“I was dreaming about you,” Merlin says automatically, before realizing that he was. He remembers a flash of skin and Arthur’s smile, wider than he’s seen it waking in months.
He waits for Arthur to smirk, but he just keeps staring instead. “Dreaming what about me, Merlin?”
“I … don’t really remember.” Better to play it safe, after all. “What did it sound like I was dreaming?”
Arthur watches him for just a few seconds more before shaking his head and rolling away, dropping his hand from Merlin’s shoulder on the way. He hadn’t even realized it was there. “It doesn’t matter. I’ve got to meet with Leon this morning, to discuss who should be knighted in case conflict with Mercia grows worse. I’ll see you at council.”
And before Merlin can say anything else, Arthur has pulled on his breeches and boots and left the room, almost running into the maid with the breakfast tray on the way.
*
Arthur is sitting at his table, eating dinner alone for the first time in a long time, when Merlin bursts through the door to his chambers without knocking.
“One would think that my Court Sorcerer would have a greater idea of etiquette,” he says with all the exasperation he can muster.
“You’ve been avoiding me,” Merlin accuses, skipping right past the bait he would usually take and right into the conversation Arthur doesn’t want to have. “All day.”
Of course he is, but he can’t admit that to Merlin, because he would have to explain why, and he’s not really sure why himself. He’s been doing a good job, these last few weeks, of pretending that whatever it is going on between himself and Merlin isn’t happening. He knows what he wants, and until this morning he’d thought that he was most afraid of Merlin not wanting the same. Now, though, he’s heard Merlin calling out for him in his sleep, not as if Arthur’s in danger, but as if they’re lovers, and he doesn’t know what to do. “I saw you at council, Merlin, surely you weren’t daydreaming that much.”
“You didn’t talk to me. You sat in Lancelot’s seat,” says Merlin, and Arthur winces. The empty places at the Round Table haven’t yet been filled, and he knows Merlin wasn’t the only one to note Arthur’s change of position. “It was … this morning, I’m sorry if I …”
Arthur musters as much smugness as he can manage, and knows it won’t be enough to fool Merlin. “Don’t worry, I’m quite sure a lot of people dream about me at night.”
“Arthur.”
He knows after this long that Merlin won’t be turned away when he sounds like that, and so they’ll be having this conversation now. He pushes his dinner away from him. “I’m not angry at you, if that’s what you’re worried about.”
Merlin fidgets where he stands, shaking his head slightly when Arthur invites him to the table with a gesture. Arthur rolls his eyes and stands so at least they’re on the same level. “The maids think we’re in love, you know,” he blurts just as Arthur is beginning to wonder if the silence will be endless.
Arthur forces out a laugh. “Oh? That’s not a surprise, Merlin. People have been gossiping about us for years.”
“Gwaine brought it up to me,” he continues, and Arthur winces at that. He knows that gossip about he and Merlin has been growing steadily ever since Gwen left, and even knowing that he’d done nothing to discourage it, but Merlin knowing about it all is a different matter entirely. “And I knew there were rumours before you got married--quite a few of the stable boys asked me if I bent over for you--but now … don’t you mind?”
“It’s idle gossip, nothing more,” he says carefully.
Merlin shakes his head, though Arthur can’t quite figure out why. “It’s--Arthur, you know what I’m trying to ask you. If you don’t want to acknowledge it, then just tell me so. I understand if it’s too soon after Gwen, or if it’s not something you want at all, but you could at least tell me.”
Taking the coward’s way out isn’t an option. He could pretend he doesn’t know what Merlin is talking about, but then things will continue like this, and if Merlin moans his name while they sleep again, Arthur isn’t certain he’ll be able to restrain himself. Trying to return to how things were before Guinevere and Lancelot left is an equally unthinkable solution. He can’t force the words out, though, since he has no idea what to say. “It’s something I want,” Arthur manages at last, as firmly as he’s able.
“Oh, good,” says Merlin, and then just stands there beaming at him and not doing a damn thing.
And that, Merlin being an idiot as always, is what gives Arthur the will to cross his arms and raise and eyebrow. “Something I want right now, even,” he says as pointedly as he can, and fights back a grin when Merlin’s eyes go wide. Of course he does nothing, though, leaving Arthur to roll his eyes. “Are you going to come here or not?”
Merlin glares. “Just for that, I think I should wait for you to come over here.”
Arthur starts laughing, which makes Merlin’s scowl even worse. For once, he isn’t even mocking Merlin. All he can think is that he and Merlin have gone through all their years of knowing each other bickering, so there’s no reason that this will be any different. He makes a show of sighing once he gets himself back under control. “Fine, I suppose I can this once, since you did come searching for me.”
As easy as that, Merlin goes back to beaming, and Arthur walks to him in four strides and puts his hands on his shoulders, not quite sure how to proceed. He’s thought about this, every time he woke up in Merlin’s arms, every time Merlin fussed with his collar even though Arthur’s most recent manservant is actually competent, but now that he’s within range he’s at a loss. He’s used to sweet kisses with Gwen, bending to meet her, but Merlin’s his height and certainly not Gwen, for all he used to compare them sometimes. And Merlin is no help, standing there and smiling like an idiot.
“Fine, then,” Merlin says fondly after a few seconds, and Arthur has one panicked second to wonder if Merlin has actually found the spell he’s been threatening for years that would allow him to read minds before Merlin kisses him.
It’s nothing at all like kissing Gwen, and he allows himself a moment of warring relief and anxiety before kissing Merlin back with as much force as he can because Merlin actually had the audacity to bite him in the middle of it all and he can’t let that stand. It’s not quite like they’re arguing, though with anyone else kissing him like this Arthur would assume so. Neither of them has ever backed down from a challenge by the other, though, so when they pull away, long minutes of heat and wet and Merlin’s hands clenched in his shirt later, both of them are panting and grinning, mouths kiss-bruised. “We should have done that years ago,” Arthur says, a little giddy.
Merlin raises his eyebrows. “While you were married?”
“She certainly didn’t hesitate,” Arthur snaps before he can stop himself, and winces when Merlin straightens up and wipes his mouth, looking less debauched by the second.
Instead of scolding him or worse, though, Merlin just rests a hand on Arthur’s jaw. “None of that.”
“You can’t tell me what to--”
“None of that,” Merlin repeats more firmly, and kisses Arthur on the nose of all things. “Now, you look exhausted and I think we ought to go to bed.”
Arthur glances backward at his table, where half his dinner is uneaten and there are stacks of paper to be dealt with. “Haven’t even finished dinner, and then I have Leon’s reports to read over about the patrols on the southern border and a letter from one of Bayard’s lords asking if we’ll foster his son, and either they’re being very clever or they don’t want war after all,” he says, automatically starting the evening litany of things he has yet to do that he and Merlin share nearly every night.
“Arthur,” says Merlin, grin firmly in place, and presses shamelessly close. “I said I think we ought to go to bed. Surely all that can wait for morning.”
Arthur kisses the smile from Merlin’s mouth to keep from feeling like a fool, and pulls him towards the bed when they break apart. “I suppose it can. We can’t have you overworking yourself, after all.”
He knows, with a certain sense of inevitability, that they’ll wake up hungry in a few hours, and Merlin will grumble until Arthur gets up and fetches his congealed and cooled tray of dinner, which he’ll warm up with magic even though it doesn’t taste as good that way, just as he’s done many a late night. In the morning, his manservant will come in with breakfast for two because Merlin’s arrival, probably in a state judging by his entrance, will be commented on, and he and Merlin will bicker over whether or not the missive from Mercia is an underhanded bid for peace or a blatant attempt at espionage. They’ll go to council, and Leon and Gwaine might notice something different, since they’re both more observant than they’re often credited, but nobody else will care because they all assumed it started shortly after Gwen left.
And in between all that he’ll have Merlin in his bed as usual, but with kisses and touches and maybe, if either of them works up the courage, a proper declaration that neither of them skirts around. Something suitably dramatic, no doubt, and Merlin will pretend he isn’t crying.
“Nor you,” he says, voice gruffer than he means it to be, when he realizes that he’s just standing there with Merlin watching him expectantly, and tumbles Merlin into bed.
He suspects neither of them will be terribly rested in the morning, but for once he doesn’t mind.