Isn't it Lovely How Artists Can Capture Us?

[lady_ragnell]

Title: Isn't it Lovely How Artists Can Capture Us?
Summary: Arthur buys a painting at Gaius's antique shop, only to find that the subject is a wizard who's been trapped for over a century.
A/N: For this kinkme_merlin prompt: Arthur is an art lover or dealer or something, Merlin is a warlock/sorcerer cursed to live in a painting that Arthur acquires. My abject apologies to Forster, Wilde, Rowling, Mussorgsky, Nietsche, and anyone else I reference in this insane thing. Title from "Children and Art" from Sondheim's Sunday in the Park with George.
Disclaimer: I do not own Merlin.

It’s Morgana’s birthday, and Arthur finds himself in his godfather’s antique store because if he brings her flowers she will throw him out of her party. Gaius is having an in-depth discussion with a blue-haired woman about china patterns, however, so he wanders the store instead, poking at a book here and a vase there, acquisitions from forty years of the shop being open. Gaius’s shop is something like a cross between an attic and a black hole with slightly better indexing, all mixed up with the strong scent of herbs being burned.

There’s a display of jewelry, including a locket that looks like something Morgana might like, on a mahogany end table towards the back, and Arthur wanders there, in no hurry. It’s raining, and Gaius’s shop is always warm, and he left work half an hour early so he could shop for Morgana, so he has nowhere to be quite yet.

Arthur finds a nook with a few vases that remind him of his stepmother (in that they’re horrifying, shaped like people who are meant to be twee but mostly come across as very frightening) and steps in, only to find himself distracted by a painting on the wall. It’s in a plain wooden frame, not at all what he’s used to from antique paintings.

Mostly, when Gaius stocks a painting, it’s a landscape, but this is a portrait, which immediately catches Arthur’s interest. It’s of a young man wearing what appears to be a waistcoat, probably from the turn of the century, scrutinizing some papers on a table, not even looking close to the painter, and either the painter wasn’t very talented or the painter was extremely talented and the man was a bit odd-looking, thin and awkward with scruffy hair.

He thinks he remembers the painting from when he would spend afternoons at Gaius’s shop when he was young and between nannies and his father didn’t trust him on his own at home. He’d talked to it once or twice, much to his later embarrassment, and written a creative writing assignment for primary school about it, but he hadn’t thought of it in years. Now he feels, disconcertingly, like he’s being watched even though nobody could see him from outside the nook and he’s alone in it, so Arthur ducks out quickly and goes to look at the locket.

It’s perfect, ornate and silver and Morgana all over, so Arthur picks it up and heads for the front, but he looks back at the nook with the painting just in time to catch a flash of movement out of the corner of his eye, and he’s back before he realizes quite what he’s doing and how mad he must look. The painting, of course, is just where it was. But--

No, he’s imagining things. The man’s shoulders were always tilted that way, his chin was always dipped low (but how is it, then, that he can’t see the chin now but knows exactly what it must look like?).

“Can I help you find anything, Arthur?” asks Gaius, and Arthur jumps.

After a ridiculous moment where he almost asks if the painting has always been in that position, he brandishes the locket, swinging from a chain. “I think Morgana will like this. Hinge needs a bit of oil, though.” Gaius takes it from him and starts fiddling about with it, and Arthur coughs and gestures as nonchalantly as he can at the painting. “I remember this painting, from when I was younger. Do you have any idea who the artist is, or the subject?”

Gaius shrugs, an eyebrow climbing his forehead as if he’s already suspicious that Arthur is going to do something untoward. “It’s thought to be an amateur artist, but since it’s unsigned there’s no way to know, and the subject could be anyone.” He cocks his head. “Odd.”

“What’s odd?” Arthur asks, hoping for some confirmation that something’s not quite right.

“I could swear the last time I looked at the painting his face was less clear. Perhaps I hadn’t lit it well enough at that point.” Neither of them points out that it’s been in the same dark nook for years.

“The walls in my flat are looking rather bare.” Arthur has been meaning to find paintings or photos to cover them, since he’s always liked art even though he knows next to nothing about it, and while this painting is nothing like his usual taste, it’s stuck in his memory for years. “I think I might buy it, actually.”

Gaius’s other eyebrow climbs to join the first, and Arthur resists the urge to squirm. His father and Morgana can turn him into a mess far better, but Gaius had always had the talent for making him feel five years old again, which might be worse. “It’s not exactly your usual sort of art, Arthur.”

Arthur shrugs, and thinks about giving up, because it shouldn’t matter in the least, and doesn’t much, really. “Childhood memories,” he says instead. “Is there something wrong with it?”

“Not in the least. I’m just surprised you’re interested. I got this in an estate sale thirty years ago and nobody’s been interested since.”

“Well, I am. I’ll come by and pick it up tomorrow, when it isn’t raining.”

Arthur pays and heads off for Morgana’s birthday party, and resists the urge to go back to the nook one more time and look at the painting again. It won’t have moved.
*
Gaius has the painting packed in brown paper for Arthur by the time he comes back the next afternoon, and while he still looks bemused, he doesn’t mention it beyond politely inquiring where it’ll be put up. “Living room, probably,” says Arthur, “or maybe the hallway. I’ll have you and my father round one night after I’ve got it hung up so you can see.”

“Thank you, Arthur, I appreciate it.”

Arthur hauls the painting home on the Tube, wishing he’d thought to take a taxi because it’s near-impossible to manoeuver the picture and his briefcase, which is stuffed with financial statements from the office. He’s working seven days a week at this point on the review of a business his father wants to buy, and he knows he’s getting pitying looks for having his suit and briefcase on a Saturday.

There’s a message on his answer phone from Gwen when he gets back, reminding him that he promised her and Morgana that he would come to their flat to fix the hole one of Morgana’s friends had put in her wall during her birthday party, so he changes and goes off again, leaving the painting to be put up another time.

When he gets back to his flat late that night, it’s almost midnight, and he creeps in because Mrs. Collins next door has ears like a bat and snipes at him in the mailroom if he wakes her up coming in. He thinks he hears the soft sound of a voice, maybe her husband listening to the news as he tries to sleep, but it stops when he slips into his bedroom and he forgets about it.

Arthur takes a day off on Tuesday so he doesn’t kill one of his underlings. Not that he has before. Or even thought of it. And if his secretary says differently it’s all lies. Anyway, once he’s slept in, had several cups of coffee, and watched half a terrible home makeover show, Arthur decides it’s a good time to put his new painting up, and spends a while looking around his flat wondering where it ought to go.

His bedroom is out of the question. A nice landscape or still life, certainly, but he can’t even have pictures of his family and friends on his nightstand without feeling like he’s being watched. The hallway’s a definite possibility, especially since the painting is ... a bit unsightly. He finds a well-lit spot of wall and improvises a temporary hanging that won’t devalue his apartment before going for the painting and ripping the brown paper that Gaius had wrapped it in off.

It’s not the same painting.

Arthur blinks at it for several seconds, wondering if Gaius gave him the wrong picture by accident, but ... there’s the same frame as always, with the knot right near the lower left corner. There’s the same background. It’s even the same man in the picture. But he’s not leaning against the table scrutinizing papers. He’s caught mid-step, looking out of the painting, squinting like it’s too bright even though there’s only a dim lamp lit in the picture.

And he is looking at Arthur.

“It’s a series,” says Arthur, though Gaius would have told him if it was, since he believes in complete sets whenever possible. “He just ... he just gave me the wrong one.”

He flees to the kitchen and gulps most of a glass of water, telling himself that he’s just overtired and working too much. With those thoughts firmly in mind, he goes back to the painting--which looks just the same as always, the man bent over the table staring at the papers, serious and studious and lamp-lit.

But. As Arthur stares, unable to write off what he’d seen, he sees how tense the shoulders are, how the hair is a little messier than usual. “That didn’t work,” he says flatly, not quite sure what sort of response he’s expecting.

“Oh,” says the painting, and the man actually straightens and turns around, jaw set. “Shit.”
*
Arthur feels around for a chair and, finding none, decides it would be best if he were closer to the floor. The painting’s eyes follow him all the way down, and he never takes his eyes off it. “Morgana was right,” he manages at last.

The painting--the man in the painting--his imagination--something stares at him out of wide blue eyes. It’s strange, seeing the familiar face from a different angle--the ears sticking out farther than he’d assumed, the cheekbones sharp. “I haven’t slipped up in so long ...”

“She is going to be so smug.” She’d warned him that he was on his way to a work-related nervous breakdown, and while he has no idea why it’s manifesting itself this way, it’s quite clear what’s happened. Uther will be so disappointed. “No idea why my psychoses are manifesting themselves like this. And probably I shouldn’t be talking to you, that’s just indulging the delusion.”

“You seem to be talking to yourself more than to me,” the painting points out. “And I hate to break it to you, but I’m not a hallucination.”

Arthur waves a hand. “Of course you are, don’t be ridiculous. Paintings don’t talk.”

The painting stares at him. Arthur suspects Nietzsche would have something to say about that, though he was talking about abysses and not talking art. “I recognize you!” The only reason Arthur doesn’t point out that of course his subconscious recognizes him is because that would be redundant. If he’s going insane, he’d at least prefer to do so efficiently. “You were the little boy who wanted to be a knight, and you flipped the pages around on the book Gaius left propped up under me once. Thank you, by the way, I’d been reading those same two pages for at least three years and I quite wanted to know what happened to Mr. Bast. Not that I actually did find out, you turned to something about goblins and Beethoven. Someday I will find the rest of that blasted book.”

“Maybe someone slipped me a mickey.”

“Look, I understand that this might be a bit unbelievable, but I promise that you’re sa--that my speaking to you is not part of any psychological conditions you may have.” Arthur snorts, and the man in the painting rolls his eyes. “Of course the first person to speak to me in thirty years is a prat. Why change from pattern? Though I’ll grant you aren’t half as bad as Mordred, from what I can pick up.”

Mordred. That explains it all, and as usual, it’s all Morgana’s fault. That’s a bit of a relief. “Arthurian legend, right. My subconscious isn’t even creative.”

The man in the painting stares at him. “What does that mean? What’s your name?”

“Arthur, of course.”

There’s a pause, and then a snort, and then the man in the painting is laughing almost hysterically, pulling out the chair at the desk and collapsing into it. “It must be destiny,” he gasps out, and Arthur decides that his subconscious has a whole set of problems that his conscious doesn’t because he doesn’t find his mental deterioration particularly funny.

“I need to call Morgana’s therapist in the morning. Alvarr loves her, he’ll be glad to fit me in.”

“No, no really, listen to me, I’m sorry I’m coming across a bit mad, but I haven’t had anyone speaking to me in thirty years, this is all sort of amazing. I’m Merlin, that’s why this is all so funny.”

Arthur’s almost disappointed. He’d thought he would be more creative than that. “Right. The great medieval wizard Merlin is a Victorian gentleman barely over twenty.”

“Twenty-four,” Mer--the man--oh hell, fine then, Merlin says. “And my mother was something of an occultist. I don’t pretend to be the original Merlin. Though I can ...” He pauses, then hisses a few words in a language Arthur doesn’t recognize. The papers in the painting whirl around as if whipped by wind, and he can actually hear them move. “So Mother had a bit of a point there.”

Arthur massages his temples and wonders if he ought to call someone to take him to the hospital. “I’m insane.” He stands, ready to walk to the bedroom and drown his delusions in Scotch so he can pretend that he’s drunk and not going mad.

“Wait!” cries the man, sounding a little panicked, and Arthur pauses in spite of himself to find Merlin standing again, hand out like he could reach out of the painting and grab Arthur. “Independent corroboration.” Arthur blinks. “Call--Gaius is his name, the man with the shop? I trust him, I think. I should, after thirty years. If he can hear me and see me as well, will you admit that I’m real?”

Either his subconscious is helpfully trying to get him assistance for his condition or there is actually a talking painting in front of him. Arthur walks away to another cry from Merlin, who goes quiet as soon as Arthur picks up the phone. Normally he would never dare call Gaius, but Morgana and his father don’t seem like good options, and Gwen would just tell Morgana. He dials the number, and Gaius picks up soon enough. “It’s Arthur,” he says without preamble.

“Arthur, my boy, are you inviting me around for that dinner already?”

“It’s not that. It’s--about the painting.” Arthur clears his throat and refuses to let his voice shake.

Gaius’s voice is cautious when he answers. “What about it? Was it damaged in transit? I know quite a few conservators, but that might be expensive ...”

“No, Gaius. The painting is ... it’s talking to me.”

There’s a long silence. “I think,” says Gaius, “that perhaps I’d best come over.”
*
“This is incredible magic,” Gaius whispers.

Arthur stares at his bottle of Scotch and wonders if he should just give in and start taking swigs from the bottle. In the fifteen minutes since Gaius arrived, he’s had his independent corroboration, and that means that there’s a Victorian-era wizard named Merlin who’s been bound into a painting that is now propped up on his second-favorite chair in his living room. “Mordred was better than I gave him credit for,” says Merlin, looking somewhere between annoyed and sheepish. “I was careless.”

“How did he bind you?”

Arthur takes a swig right from the bottle and tries hard not to make a face, but Merlin shoots him a worried look anyway, which he’s been doing ever since Arthur said nothing but “magic is real?” for a few minutes. “Crystals, candles, the usual things but stronger. I’m pretty sure he left an out, but I couldn’t talk it out of him before he died.”

“When did he die?” asks Arthur, and both of them turn to look at him.

Merlin tilts his head. “Fifty years ago? I’m not sure. He didn’t speak to me for the last ten years or so. Couldn’t get what he wanted out of me so he propped me up in an attic.” He shudders. “And then I was trapped up there without anyone even knowing I was there for another twenty years before I got stuck in that estate sale, and I can’t tell you how frustrating it is not to talk to someone for this long. At least at the shop I got to hear people talking.”

“What did he have against you?” Gaius is still inspecting the frame like it might give him some answers, and Arthur desperately wants to ask exactly how long he’s known that magic exists, but then again, he’s not certain he wants to know. “This is powerful magic for a minor annoyance.”

“Professional jealousy. Personal dislike. He almost got himself arrested while we were in school and I refused to help him because though the accident was a mistake what he’d intended was worse.” Merlin shrugs. “But Mordred never did let his personal feelings get in the way of his work. If he’d thought he could use me, he would have ignored that.”

“What did he want from you, then?” asks Arthur.

“Power, of course. I’ve got ... I had, at least, quite a lot of it. I would have helped his projects immeasurably. And can you blame me, when this is the sort of thing he was working on?” He gestures at the frame around him. “I can work magic within the painting, but not outside of it, or I would have gotten out while he was still alive.”

The dangerous set of his mouth warns Arthur off asking any more questions about that, because he suspects this Mordred wouldn’t have lived long after Merlin got out. Gaius, mercifully, changes the subject. “What year were you bound?”

“In 1898, I believe. I sort of lost track.” Merlin paces back to the table and braces his hands on it, head dropping in uncanny imitation of the painting Arthur thought he’d purchased. “Everything ... everything’s changed a great deal, hasn’t it? I mean, I heard people talking in the shop, and I saw the clothes, but I was surrounded by old things.” He turns back around to gesture at Arthur’s television. “I don’t even know what that is!”

Arthur feels an unexpected twist of sympathy: everyone Merlin knows is dead, long since, and he certainly doesn’t know about televisions or computers or anything else to help him in the modern world. What will happen if they do manage to get him out of the painting? “It’s a television,” he says after a bit of an awkward silence, wishing Gaius would chime in. “Perhaps someone in the shop mentioned it?”

“Yes, I’ve heard of a television.” Merlin eyes it, apparently distracted from the matter of getting himself out of the painting. “Mordred talked about films, a bit, so I think I know what it might be like. Do you have an internet as well?”

Gaius clears his throat. “I’m afraid I can’t do anything more here tonight. I’ll do some research and get back to you as soon as I may--well, actually, Merlin, perhaps you’d best come back with me.” His raised eyebrow clearly says he thinks Arthur won’t want the painting any longer.

“I’ll get him acclimated to life in the modern world,” says Arthur, and Merlin relaxes in the corner of his eye. “Television, phones, the internet, whatever. I’m owed time from work, and this gives me an excuse to take it.” Of course, it will also make Morgana and Gwen curious and his father annoyed, but there’s no helping that, and he refuses to be his father, who probably has five years of vacation time built up at this point.

“If you’re sure ...” Gaius gives Arthur’s bottle of Scotch a significant glance, and Arthur puts it down.

“I’m sure. Unless Merlin objects.”

“Not at all. It will be a relief to be able to move around freely, and I’m curious about everything.”

“Well, then. Arthur, mind you don’t tell anyone, and I’ll get in touch with you as soon as possible about ways to get Merlin out of the painting.”
*
“So,” says Arthur that night, glancing over from the couch at Merlin’s painting propped up on his armchair. Merlin is staring in complete fascination at the news. They’ve hardly turned the TV off all day, and after Merlin’s initial “you are certain there aren’t actual people in there, aren’t you?” he’s taken to it like a duck to water.

“So,” mimics Merlin.

“What does it feel like, being in there?” The silence is long enough that Arthur starts to wonder if he should apologize or change the subject.

“I’ve sort of forgotten how it feels not to be in here. But I’m never hungry, never thirsty, never really tired but I think I slept through a year or two in that attic out of sheer boredom. And it is boring--he didn’t paint me a very interesting setting. He didn’t even write anything on the papers. I think he was hoping that I would make a magical breakthrough and he could take credit for it.” Merlin makes a quick gesture, and his eyes go tawny for a moment, something that still disconcerts Arthur whenever Merlin does magic. The papers rustle. “The frame acts as a sort of wall, and as for the front of the painting ...”

Arthur watches, fascinated, as Merlin walks forward, getting larger, until he must be an inch away from the edge of the painting. “Well?”

“I can see out, but not get through. It isn’t like glass or anything, it’s just a barrier. I’ve tried throwing every piece of magic in my arsenal at it, but nothing sticks. My magic doesn’t work outside the world he created for me. One would think he would have the decency to give me more than one room.”

“That’s got to be against the Geneva Conventions,” Arthur agrees, and then he has to spend quite a while explaining what’s happened in politics for the past fifty years, and then talking about music and films and playing Merlin the Beatles because every British subject should hear them at least once, even if they ought to have been dead before “She Loves You” ever went on the radio. It’s late before he can finally get around to the other question he meant to ask. “Who did you leave behind?”

Merlin’s ever-present grin drops, and Arthur wants to take it back. “I think I need more than one day’s acquaintance to talk about that. Maybe we’d best go to bed. You’ve had a long day.”

Arthur nods. “Fair enough. I’ll see you in the morning. Do you want the TV on?”

“Please, Arthur. That would be brilliant.”

When Arthur wakes on Wednesday, he doesn’t have the luxury of forgetting what happened the day before because he wakes up to Gaius calling, saying that he’s buried in a stack of research and can’t stop by the flat, but he’ll let them know the second he knows anything. Arthur staggers out of bed and relays the news to Merlin, who takes it quietly, and then makes himself coffee.

Finally, he goes back to the living room and stares at Merlin’s painting, just to remind himself that Tuesday was real. “Christ,” he says at last, startling Merlin out of his sprawl in the chair. “I’m living in a Harry Potter novel.”

“I tend to think of Dorian Gray, myself. Who’s Harry Potter?”
*
Having Merlin around is like having a flatmate who doesn’t pay rent or do any of the household work, but Arthur finds himself enjoying it anyway. Over the next several days, he finds himself giving Merlin a crash course in modern culture, from Harry Potter (he sits with his laptop doing work while Merlin reads the books very quickly from a stand next to him, telling Arthur when to turn his pages) to Doctor Who (they watch an episode with each of the Doctors, to be fair) to the internet, which predictably fascinates Merlin.

Through it all, there’s a running thread of question-and-answer, and while they don’t take turns exactly, Arthur suspects he’s learning nearly as much about life in 1898 as Merlin is about life in the modern world. “Yes, Arthur, we had electricity and running water. Not quite like this, but we did have it.” “If anyone ever tells you to go to 4chan on the internet, don’t do it, it’ll only end in tears. And porn.”

Gaius calls several times a day, but he doesn’t seem to be getting any closer to an answer. “If I couldn’t figure it out in this long, I doubt he will,” says Merlin on Friday night after Arthur hangs up the phone. “Sure, he’s got more books at his disposal, but I had plenty of time to experiment.”

He sounds tired and upset, but Arthur can’t think of what to say to him, so he just pats the painting’s frame as comfortingly as he can. “Well, in the meantime, I feel that it’s my duty as a British citizen to introduce you to the Sex Pistols.”

Saturday night, Morgana and Gwen come over for dinner, and Arthur apologizes to Merlin for having to hold still, but he’d told them about his new painting before he’d discovered what Merlin was and they want to see. Merlin shrugs and takes up his usual position, now hanging on the living room wall, when Morgana and Gwen knock.

“Not at all your usual sort of thing,” Morgana comments once he’s taken their coats and ushered them to sit on the couch. “It needs a new frame.”

“Gaius says it’s worth more with the original, unsightly as it may be.” Well, Gaius actually says it’s best to keep the same frame until they know whether or not it’s part of the binding.

“It is rather arresting, isn’t it?” says Gwen, tilting her head as she looks. “Feels like he’s watching you, but he isn’t even facing front.”

Arthur chooses not to answer that and brings them their wine and the pasta that he cooked while Merlin listened to an audiobook he’d dug out of a box. Morgana and Gwen chatter about their weeks and ask about what he’s done on his unexpected vacation and are just as charming as always, but Arthur can’t keep his attention on them, because their backs are to Merlin and Merlin is taking the opportunity to make faces every few seconds. He manages not to laugh, but only just, and Gwen seems puzzled and Morgana annoyed when they finally leave.

Merlin is stretching when Arthur makes it back to the living room after doing his dishes, but he straightens and fixes Arthur with an unreadable look when he comes in. “Morgana and Gwen--they’re ... are they together?”

“They are.”

“And you’re ... you don’t object?”

“Why should I?” Arthur flops onto the couch, more tired than he’d been expecting. “Morgana isn’t actually my sister, and even if she were Gwen wouldn’t be out for her virtue. I’d be more worried about it being the other way round, actually.”

Merlin clears his throat. “No, I mean ... two women. Is that ... you didn’t mention. They won’t be arrested for it or anything?”

Arthur sits up so fast he almost gets whiplash. “God, no! Sorry, should have explained that. You don’t have a problem with that, do you? I understand where you might, but I ought to warn you, there are chances that I’ll be bringing a man home if I do bring anyone home while you’re here, so if you’re uncomfortable ...”

“No,” says Merlin, and he sounds thoughtful. “I haven’t got a problem with it. Just different, is all.”

Since Merlin doesn’t seem to want to talk about it any longer, Arthur changes the subject.

The next day, his father stops by for tea in the afternoon, as he does whenever one of them can’t arrange the time for a full Sunday meal, and Merlin definitely doesn’t make faces this time, especially as Uther spent quite some time scrutinizing him before announcing that there’s no accounting for taste. “Your father is terrifying,” Merlin informs him later.

Arthur just laughs.
*
Arthur has to work, and he gets back home about a week and a half later after having left Merlin with a marathon of the Harry Potter movies queued up in the DVD player to find him in a thoughtful mood. “I wonder if you might do me a favor,” he says when Arthur asks him what’s wrong.

“What do you need? More books on tape?”

Merlin shakes his head. “It’s just--Mordred told me what happened to everyone I cared about, back then. I guess he hoped it would break me. But I want to know if he was telling the truth. When you’ve got time, can you look some people up for me in the archives?”

“Just tell me who.”

There’s a long silence, and Arthur almost thinks Merlin is going to tell him to forget about it when he says “Hunith Emrys. She was my mother. Mordred said she died in 1910, influenza. William Farmer, though that’s a common enough name that he might be hard to find. He was my best friend, and I’m hoping ... I hope Mordred was lying to me about what happened to him--said he got killed in a robbery two years after he bound me to the painting.”

Arthur winces. “I’ll look them up. Both from London?” Merlin nods. “And Will was your age?” He nods again. “Anyone else?”

Merlin takes a deep breath. “Freya Waterson. She--she married in 1902, if he was right, but he never gave me the man’s name. I don’t know when she died.” Arthur writes the name down carefully, and doesn’t ask about what she was to Merlin, because he thinks he knows and he hates how much he dislikes the answer. It’s not any of his business anyway. “We were--we were engaged. I don’t know what Mordred let everyone think, whether they thought I was dead or run off or something else. If you find that out, by any chance ... I wouldn’t like to know, really, but I feel that I ought.”

“I’ll see what I can do.”

Arthur takes the next afternoon off and spends it in the Archives trying hard not to explain why he’s looking these people up to the Archivist helping him. There are a few old photographs, all of which he gets copies of, including one of Merlin and his friend William looking stiff after their graduation from university. Mordred, depressingly enough, seems to have been telling the truth, but Arthur is able to find out that Freya married a Mr. Knightley and had two children with him before dying in 1930. She was a pretty woman, dark-haired and looking rather shy, and Arthur looks at her picture the longest. Against his better judgment, he also looks up Merlin, who was listed as missing but never dead, and Mordred, an unpleasant-looking man who apparently had articles published on the occult before his death. Arthur gets copies of everything.

Merlin receives the information and looks at the pictures without comment, even when Arthur tentatively says that one of Freya’s sons was named Merlin. “Thank you,” he says at last. “May I be alone for a little while?”

Arthur goes to bed early, and when he gets up in the morning to go to work, Merlin’s painting looks like there’s been a whirlwind through it, papers everywhere, a glass from the table shattered, even the chair broken. Merlin is curled on the floor of it, asleep with his knees tucked up almost to his chest. Arthur wishes, not for the first time, that he could reach out and touch, give him some comfort, but instead he keeps his morning activities quiet, and Merlin is still asleep when he leaves for work.

The second he gets through the door that night, Merlin calls his name, and he goes to the living room to find the room in the painting looking like always--Merlin obviously fixed it up when he woke, and Arthur decides not to mention it. “What’s up?” he asks instead, because Merlin still looks shaken.

Merlin points out of the painting and Arthur turns around to find a vase his stepmother gave him for Christmas shattered on the floor. “I managed to do magic outside the painting,” says Merlin, and Arthur whips back around to stare at him. “I’m sorry--I sort of lost my temper this morning, and then that started levitating, and when I noticed I was so shocked that it fell. You must understand, it’s been well over a century and I’ve not been able to do anything outside the frame.”

Arthur stares at the mess. “Merlin, that’s amazing. And don’t apologize, I hate that vase anyway. Hold on while I put my briefcase down and we’ll call Gaius and let him know.”

Gaius seems over the moon when Arthur phones him, and goes off muttering about spells wearing off and other things Arthur doesn’t pretend to understand. When that’s done, they turn on the television and Arthur answers Merlin’s questions about what’s going on, glad that the magic seems to have restored him to normal.
*
Merlin’s upset again in the morning, though--apparently he spent the night trying to do magic again but couldn’t manage it. Arthur flips on the television for him and goes to work, where he ends up spending much of the morning hunting down the book that Merlin mentioned being left in front of him in Gaius’s shop for so long and then the afternoon finding an audiobook version of it.

Morgana calls right before he leaves the office. “We haven’t seen you in ages. Pub tonight, or I’ll come to your flat and drag you by your ears. If you don’t come I’ll be forced to assume that you either have a new lover or a broken heart and will take appropriate action.”

“Just let me stop by my flat first, okay? I’ll meet you at seven in the usual place.”

Arthur stops by the book shop with the audiobook on his way home and shouts that he has a surprise for Merlin the second he enters the flat (before deciding that he might want to start being a bit more discreet, because Mrs. Collins has taken to leering at him in the mailroom). Merlin yelps and there’s a muffled crash, so Arthur half-runs to the living room to see if he was doing magic again.

Instead, he’s greeted by the sight of Merlin sprawled on the floor of the room in his painting, minus several layers of clothes, and a yoga show happening on the television. “What are you doing?”

“I got bored,” Merlin mutters, and levers himself to his feet. “This is actually quite calming, even if some of the positions do hurt.”

Arthur grins at him, and very carefully doesn’t think about Merlin twisted into yoga positions. “Gwen did yoga for a while--I could get some videos for you to do while I’m at work, if you’d like.” He brandishes the audiobook. “And I brought you this for that purpose as well. You mentioned a book in Gaius’s shop with a Mr. Bast in it, and I found it for you.”

Merlin stares at him wide-eyed, looking young and a bit lost for a moment. He reaches out a hand like he’d like to take it from Arthur before dropping it. “Thank you. That’s ... that’s very kind of you.”

“It’s not a problem,” says Arthur, a bit uncomfortable with the way Merlin is looking at him. “Anyway, Morgana wants me out to the pub tonight, so I’ve got to change. Do you want the book in before I go?”

“That would be wonderful.”

They barely speak before Arthur leaves, popping the first disc of Howard’s End into the player before he goes.

The pub is crowded and loud and Arthur normally loves it, but he finds himself missing his flat more as the evening goes on. Morgana mocks him mercilessly when he asks about yoga videos, and Gwen giggles as if she can’t help herself at the thought, but he doesn’t explain. He does, however, end up having more lager than he ought and finding a man named Cedric at the bar, lanky and dark-haired and with a ridiculous moustache, not at all his usual type.

At the end of the night, he bids farewell to Morgana and Gwen, who have their eyebrows raised in almost-identical expressions of disbelief, and staggers back towards Cedric’s flat. When he gets there, he finds himself pressed against a door and kissed, sloppy and smelling of cigarettes, but he closes his eyes and leans into it. A bad idea, he discovers when he starts imagining it’s Merlin he’s kissing, Merlin’s lean body pressed all down his front, Merlin’s hair soft between his fingers. Merlin, who loves Harry Potter and hates the Sex Pistols and does yoga while Arthur is out--

Merlin, who lives in a painting and can barely understand the fact that homosexuality is legal.

Arthur curses and pushes Cedric away from where he’s sucking a mark into Arthur’s neck. “I’m sorry, I’m sure you’re great, but--”

Cedric rolls his eyes. “But you’re trying to make someone jealous or something like that, right? Shit, isn’t that just my luck tonight. Go home, Arthur.”

Arthur does, uncomfortable and guilty and almost frightened of going home and facing Merlin with a love bite on his neck and stubble burn on his jaw. He’s quiet coming in, but Merlin calls out to him anyway, sounding pleased, so he goes to the living room and tries not to shuffle his feet like a schoolboy called to the headmaster. “The book is lovely,” Merlin starts, and then he pauses. “Oh.”

“I’m glad you like it,” says Arthur, staring hard at the floor. “Morgana says she’ll drop by Gwen’s videos on her way to the shops tomorrow, so you’ll have that to occupy you as well. Any luck with the magic?”

“I haven’t tried tonight. Gaius called and left a message for you, though, he’d like to come by tomorrow and try a few things, with your permission.”

Arthur nods jerkily. “I’ll tell him that’s fine in the morning.”

Merlin sighs. “Perhaps I’d best go with him.” Arthur snaps up to look at him. “It would be easier for experiments and such.”

“And who would entertain you while he was in the shop or doing his endless research or burning his sacred herbs?” Arthur asks, more flippant than he feels. “No, you’d better stay here.”

He can’t quite read the expression on Merlin’s face, even though usually he can tell Merlin’s mood easily. “Just let me know if you ever want me to leave, then,” he says.

That might be a long while. “I’d better go to bed.”
*
Gaius arrives the next afternoon soon after Morgana leaves, with a bag full of candles and herbs and crystals. Merlin approves all the items with clinical detachment and barely looks at Arthur, which has been happening all day. “Are you trying to find the out, or are you going to try brute force?” asks Merlin while Gaius lights candles and sets some herbs smoldering in a silver bowl.

“I’ve been doing research on the out--the fact that you’ve used magic this week means that you’ve gotten close to it, though we won’t know much more about it until you manage to do it again.” Arthur almost knocks over a candle and is banished to the couch while Gaius sets the candles up in a circle around Merlin’s frame. “What have you done differently?”

Merlin smiles and rolls his eyes. “What haven’t I done differently? I’ve been talking to people besides Mordred, I’ve been learning so many new things I’m practically dizzy ...”

“That’s why we’re trying brute force today. If you do magic again we might learn more about the trigger.”

Arthur watches, fascinated, while they chant in what sounds like Old English or perhaps Welsh (well, it could be Finnish for all he knows, really, he’s always been rubbish at foreign languages) and the candles flicker and an unseen wind ruffles Merlin’s hair while his eyes glow a steady gold. After fifteen minutes, the frame cracks, and Merlin lets out a yell and drops to his knees while Gaius puts a hand to his head and all the candles go out at once.

“What the hell was that?” Arthur asks, jumping to his feet and looking between them. “Are you both all right?”

“That was one hell of a backlash,” says Merlin, staggering back to his feet and leaning against his table. “I’m not getting out that way. Gaius, you okay?”

“I’m fine, my boy. Just not used to workings of this magnitude, is all.”

Arthur decides that the only thing to do is make a cup of tea, so he retreats to the kitchen to do that while Merlin and Gaius discuss what happened and why it did so, listening with half an ear and understanding next to nothing. When he comes in with two cups of English breakfast, though, one is tugged out of his hands almost immediately, and a second later, there’s Merlin, looking delighted and holding his teacup. “The crack in the frame must be allowing it,” he says, and takes a sip before he starts coughing. “Hotter than I was expecting, though. And don’t you put sugar in your tea?”

“No, just milk.” Merlin makes a face, and Arthur gives Gaius his cup and goes back to the kitchen to pour himself another. “So can you send things out now?” he asks when he returns.

Merlin concentrates on one of his many pieces of paper, eyes flashing again, and a second later it’s drifting to the floor of Arthur’s flat. He whoops, and Arthur grins at him. Gaius raises an eyebrow. “Perhaps you’d better try moving yourself out, then. The crack might have done it.”

This time, Merlin mutters under his breath while he concentrates, but a second later he lets out a yell of pain and the teacup shatters on the floor of the painting, spilling tea everywhere. “Shit, Merlin, are you okay?”

Merlin takes a few deep breaths before opening his eyes and waving the teacup back into one piece and onto Arthur’s coffee table. “Mordred put some very nasty backlash on, is all. Looks like objects can go in and out, but I can’t. It’ll have to be the out, if we can find it. Gaius, if you don’t mind, I’ve got too much of a headache to continue today.”

“Of course, I wouldn’t expect anything different. I’ll be on my way. What we’ve learned today might be vital to finding the out.” Gaius nods warmly at Merlin, gives Arthur a quick hug, and drinks the rest of his tea before he leaves.

There’s a long silence once Gaius is gone, and Arthur is unwilling to break it because he doesn’t know what Merlin needs from him. “I don’t even know what I’m going to do if I get out of here,” says Merlin at last, which isn’t anywhere close to what Arthur was thinking he might say. “I can use magic to fake a lot of things, but how am I supposed to work?”

“I’ll help you out as long as you need it,” Arthur promises, but Merlin just shakes his head. “And let’s worry about one problem at a time.”

“I really do have a headache,” says Merlin. “Do you mind leaving me for a little while?”

Arthur goes.
*
Things are tense after that, and Arthur hates it. Merlin does yoga, manipulating the electronics with magic, and Arthur tries hard not to watch because it just makes him think things that are unfair to both of them. He finishes listening to Howard’s End and requests more Forster, so Arthur brings him home a Collected Works and Merlin brings it into his painting and reads voraciously for several days, and some of it makes him blush but he won’t tell Arthur anything about it.

Gaius calls every day with lists of possible outs for Merlin to try, but none of them work, though that doesn’t seem to bother Merlin very much. Morgana and Gwen fuss over Arthur and seem worried about him, but he brushes them off with reminders that things are still busy at work. His ex-boyfriend Lance calls and tells him in a significant tone that he’s in town for a few weeks if Arthur wants to talk, and Merlin barely speaks to him that night, though he doesn’t seem angry. His father asks in exasperation what’s got him so distracted and tells him that new romances aren’t an excuse to slack off.

Merlin takes great delight in pulling various objects from Arthur’s flat inside his painting to look at them up close and figure out how they work. He even holds Arthur’s television hostage so he can’t watch a footie match, smirking all the while. “It’s not like you can watch anything of your own in there, you haven’t got electricity,” Arthur points out.

Merlin figures out a way to magic up electricity, probably just to prove him wrong.

While they rarely discuss personal matters and there are often long and awkward pauses, Merlin picks up the habit of chattering at Arthur for most of the evenings, about books and movies and what London looks like now and a hundred other things. He also takes to modern food, and Arthur gets in the habit of cooking or ordering takeaway for two. Merlin loves pizza and curry (as any proper Englishman should), but hates Thai and won’t even bring sushi into his painting. One night Arthur gets him spectacularly drunk on tequila.

Arthur isn’t a great believer in denial, and he knows that he has a crush on Merlin like he hasn’t had a crush on anyone since Sophia in university, but he also knows that Merlin doesn’t exactly have modern sensibilities, so he keeps it to himself and reminds himself at least three times a day why he’s an idiot. It doesn’t really help.

“So you can’t get out,” he blurts one night after a particularly awkward moment when Merlin had caught him staring, “but can you bring anyone else in? Could you bring me in there, for instance?”

“Why would I try, Arthur? Even if I could, chances are huge that you would be stuck in here with me, and that wouldn’t do anyone any good. This room is barely big enough for me.”

Arthur shrugs. “It was just a thought. Here, let me introduce you to popcorn.”

Merlin loves the popcorn, especially with lots of butter and salt, and he lets the subject change, but after that, Arthur catches him looking as much as he’s caught himself.

A few days later, on a Sunday, Gaius calls in excitement. “I found some of Mordred’s notes in a box of papers from the estate sale, and I might have found the out.”

“Gaius, that’s amazing,” says Arthur, and the phone disappears from his hands.

“You have an answer?” Merlin says. He’d never yelled on the phone like Arthur had thought he might. “What have you found?” There’s a pause, and he looks more sober. “That’s not--Gaius, no.” Another pause. “No. I won’t allow it.” Arthur mouths a question, but Merlin just waves him off. “Of course it’s my choice to make.” Merlin stands and walks as far into the painting as he can, and Arthur starts getting worried. “Then I’ll stay in here forever, Gaius, I can’t ask anyone to--yes, I’m sure.” Another pause, and when Merlin speaks again, he sounds a bit panicky. “No! No, you absolutely cannot. Because he’d do something stupid, that’s why not.”

Merlin hangs up on whatever Gaius says next and sends the phone back out to Arthur, who barely catches it. “Care to explain what that was about?” he asks, tone as light as he can make it.

“I’m stuck in here,” says Merlin, flat, and then he turns the radio on so loud Arthur can barely hear anything.

Against his better judgment, he leaves the subject alone and turns the music down before Mrs. Collins can start pounding on the wall.
*
Arthur calls Gaius from his office the next afternoon. “He won’t explain what the out is,” he says without preamble.

Gaius sighs. “He’s being noble, I’m afraid, though I can’t blame him in this case. Mordred’s notes made the solution quite clear, once I’d figured out the encryption. Merlin has to find someone willing to take his place.”

Arthur thinks of Merlin’s words on the phone the night before, and wonders how obvious his stupid crush is if Merlin is so worried Arthur will offer that he didn’t even want him to know. “Thank you, Gaius. You’ve been so helpful through all of this. Now, I’ve got a meeting. I’ll be in touch.”

“Don’t do anything rash,” says Gaius, and Arthur hangs up.

That night, after dinner at the pub with Morgana and Gwen, who seem worried about him, Arthur goes back to his flat and tries to think of what to say to Merlin. Merlin, however, beats him to it the second he walks into the living room. “I should have asked Gaius not to tell you,” he says, and sits down in the armchair he appropriated from Arthur. Arthur can’t blame him. The desk chair he’d moved into Arthur’s living room is uncomfortable to the extreme. “Now you’re going to do something noble and offer to take my place, aren’t you?”

“Not just yet, but I’m thinking about it. You deserve to get out of there.”

“Maybe, but you don’t deserve to be stuck here in my place.”

Arthur collapses onto the couch. “But you’re the amazing wizard, aren’t you? Chances are you could get me out once you were free.”

“I’m not taking a chance on that,” says Merlin firmly.

Arthur smiles and very carefully doesn’t look at him. “Really, Merlin, one would almost think that you like me.”

“Don’t fish for compliments, Arthur, of course I do. You’ve been so helpful, not to mention kind. I won’t repay that by sticking you in here.”

“It’s not just your choice, is it?”

“Of course it is!” shouts Merlin, and Arthur sits up to look him in the eye and finds him scrubbing at his eyes like he’s trying not to cry. “I want to get out of here, of course I want to get out of here,” he adds, much more quietly. “But Mordred has me well and truly trapped--anyone who would offer to take my place in here is much too good a person to be stuck here.”

“You’ve been in there for over a century. You deserve some freedom.”

“I won’t take yours in return.”

“Look, I’m offering--” says Arthur, and stops because he doesn’t quite know when this started being an offer for real and not just in the abstract.

“No, Arthur. Do you know what it’s like in here?” Arthur shakes his head. “I forget what actual colors look like, because everything looks painted, even out there. I’m trapped in a room that I can pace in ten steps in any direction. All I’ve got to amuse me is what I can get in and out of the crack in the frame, and you don’t have magic, so you wouldn’t have that advantage.”

The image shakes him more than he wants to admit, but it also makes him want to get Merlin out of the painting even more. “I want to help.”

“Think about this, then,” says Merlin, and he sounds like he’s at the end of his patience. “If we traded places, what am I supposed to do? You and Gaius are the only people I know, I’ve got no place to live, everyone would assume I’d kidnapped you, and ... no. That’s my final answer, Arthur.”

“But--”

“Leave it,” Merlin snaps, and for the first time he looks like the powerful wizard Arthur knows he is. “Please, Arthur. Leave it.”
*
Arthur can’t leave it. Now that he knows how to free Merlin, he thinks about it more than he should. Morgana and Gwen are more worried than ever, and even his father seems to be concerned. Gaius greets his questions with a stubborn refusal to help him. “I’m your godfather, Arthur, and Merlin asked that you not anyway. It’s his choice.”

It takes him until that Saturday to storm into the living room and plant himself in front of Merlin’s painting with his arms crossed. “I’m not doing this out of some misplaced sense of guilt or nobility,” he says, and Merlin puts his book down with a sigh and scrubs at his eyes. “I understand that this will make you uncomfortable, but--I love you, I think. I mean, I’m not sure, because how insane is this? But it sort of feels that way.”

Merlin just stares.

“I want you to be happy,” says Arthur, and shrugs, helpless. “So that’s why I’m offering. I know I’ll go stir-crazy and get bored, but I also want you to be able to see the real world again. So I want to take your place in the painting.”

After an excruciating silence, Merlin stands and walks shakily to the front of the painting and holds out his hand like he wants to touch Arthur. Arthur puts out his own hand in return and presses it to the canvas--or tries. It goes through, and he finds himself grasping at air. Merlin stares at him, white-faced. “Shit, Arthur, what did you do?”

He tries to pull back on reflex, but his hand won’t leave the painting. The only way out is forward, unless he wants to cut his hand off, and he quite likes his hand. So he steps forward again, and finds himself walking into the painting with Merlin.

Merlin stumbles back, eyes wide, and Arthur grabs his shoulder--touches him for the first time--to steady him before looking around and seeing that Merlin was right. Everything looks painted in wide brushstrokes, the colors off because nobody can ever get the shading quite right, and everything in his flat looks huge when he whirls to look past the barrier. “Oh my God.”

“You idiot,” says Merlin fiercely, and grabs Arthur into a too-tight embrace. He’s thin and bony and taller than Arthur had thought he would be, but Arthur hugs back because he’s in shock and amazed and actually on the same plane of existence as Merlin for once. “Did it never occur to you that I didn’t want you of all people to take my place because I love you as well?”

Arthur blinks. “Oh. But--” There are a million ends to that sentence: but Merlin is still in love with Freya. But Merlin didn’t even think homosexuality was legal and never gave any indication that he condones it.

Merlin doesn’t give him the chance to figure out how to finish the sentence before he kisses him, clumsy and too hard and perfect, with the kind of contagious desperation that has Arthur uselessly scrabbling at the buttons on his jacket. “Oh,” Merlin breathes against his mouth a minute later, and pulls away, eyes shining. “I think I know how to fix it, now.”

“What?”

“The out said you had to offer. It never said you had to stay. Hold on.” Merlin pulls Arthur’s head onto his shoulder and whispers a few words in the language that means magic. Then the world is rushing around him and he’s nauseous, but when he pulls away, they’re standing in his flat, and he realizes that Merlin’s eyes don’t go tawny when he does magic: they’re gold.

Read the epilogue here: http://lady-ragnell.livejournal.com/4426.html