lady_ragnell (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
lady_ragnell) wrote2010-10-15 02:08 pm
lady_ragnell) wrote2010-10-15 02:08 pm
Entry tags:
Don't Go Breaking My Heart
Title: Don't Go Breaking My Heart
Summary: Arthur sucks at relationships, and Merlin's sick of it.
A/N: Title is Elton John's (I couldn't resist). Not sure how pleased with it I am, but there were egregious typos when I posted anon and I must fix them, so it's being de-anoned anyway. For this kinkme_merlin prompt: Merlin stays single throughout Arthur's many relationships and always picks up the pieces when they fail. Bonus points for an angry Merlin, when yet another relationship fails, telling Arthur to get his act together. Even more bonus points for Arthur getting his act together with Merlin.
Disclaimer: I do not own Merlin
Sometimes, when he’s at his most uncharitable, Merlin thinks Arthur likes having his heart broken.
The whole thing would be hilarious if it weren’t so sad. Merlin’s known Arthur for seven years, since their first year at uni, and when he isn’t in a relationship, he’s mourning the end of the last relationship, whether it’s the loss of companionship or the loss of the actual person. He mopes, drinks, and there’s even some truly dreadful poetry from sixth form that Morgana has framed on the wall of her flat from when they were newly step-siblings and he was madly and unrequitedly in love with her.
The sad part is that despite the fact that Arthur’s a prat, he’s also a handsome, intelligent, occasionally charming prat, and from what Merlin’s picked up watching from the sidelines, a decent boyfriend as well. The heartache is useless (not to mention embarrassing when he freely admits that far too many of his relationships have been based on circumstance or money), and lasts a month tops, but Arthur seems to relish every minute of it.
It’s how Merlin met him, actually. As a scholarship student at uni, he had to find a job, and he had the bad luck to be picked up by the campus’s catering service and put on serving duty for a donor’s dinner during Parents’ Weekend. Everything was going well: he hadn’t spilled anything, he managed not to yell at the blond prat who was mocking one of the other servers (and if his glass was often mysteriously empty, well, that had nothing to do with Merlin. At all), and his supervisor Gwen seemed pleased with him.
Towards the end of dinner, though, a young woman came storming in wearing a yellow dress just a shade too fancy for the evening and pointed an unerring finger at the blond prat before letting loose an almost-operatic shriek of rage. “Arthur Pendragon!”
That brought the proceedings to a screeching halt as she stalked forward, and Merlin moved forward to intercept her because no one else seemed to be doing anything. “Um, miss, this is a private dinner ...”
She pushed him out of the way and grabbed someone’s meat knife off a table as she passed, before hefting her arm like she was going to throw it, and Merlin had tackled her before considering whether or not it was a good idea.
And that was how he’d ended up hauling Arthur Pendragon’s drunk ass back to his stepsister’s flat. “She,” Arthur was informing him earnestly as they keyed in, “is an evil opera-singing bitch-monster of death.”
“Ah,” said a woman from the kitchen, “I see Helen found you. Who’s this, then? Your next victim?”
Arthur had scowled. “No, my roommate. Father decided it was the only appropriate reward for his tackling Helen to give him the extra bedroom in my flat.”
The woman (Morgana, Merlin later discovered, and they’ve become fast friends ever since, mostly out of self-defense in the presence of Arthur) snorted. “Do yourself a favor, new kid, and don’t sleep with him. It will only end in tears. Mostly his.”
“I will never have a functional relationship,” Arthur had wailed, and that had been the beginning.
*
Arthur wasn’t exaggerating. Once he stopped being a prat and started playing video games and revising with Merlin, he actually turned out to be pretty fun to be around, but he had one fatal flaw: he couldn’t hold on to a relationship, and when they ended, he tended to lose it.
A week after Merlin had moved in with him (a week of moping and drinking and reminiscing over Helen’s finer qualities), he’d met Valiant, a fellow member of his rugby team, and they’d had a torrid affair before Valiant was caught cheating both on Arthur and on the rugby field, and there’d been another heartbreak. Merlin had half-drowned his roommate in alcohol like any good mate would, and then dried him out because Uther was paying half his rent as thanks for saving Arthur from the opera-singing bitch-monster of death and probably wouldn’t appreciate Merlin turning his son into an alcoholic. He’d figured Arthur was just having a bad month and taking the breakups badly as a result, but that had only been the beginning.
Next had been Lancelot (who’d actually been flirting with Merlin first, but Merlin was working thirty hours a week and doing coursework out his ears so he’d hardly had time to notice), and Lancelot was an absolutely wonderful guy (and still is one of Merlin’s best friends), but then Merlin had introduced him to Gwen and that had been that for Arthur, who went about for weeks afterwards acting like he was in a Shakespearean tragedy.
Sophia followed. God, what a nightmare that had been. Arthur had actually genuinely cared for her, for reasons Merlin still can’t fathom, just over six years later. She and Arthur had stayed together for six months while she’d systematically alienated every one of his friends but Merlin, and then she’d dropped him like a hot potato, no explanation, after a week at his beach house. Arthur, of course, had called Merlin, and though Merlin had been on a date with a boy named Edwin from one of his classes who actually talked about things other than footie and his tragic love life, he’d dropped his dinner, apologized, and run off to make sure Arthur didn’t do anything drastic and permanent.
Arthur had moped over Sophia for a painfully long time--practically the next year, actually--and then he’d met Cedric, who’d hated Merlin. Merlin had Gwen over to the flat almost constantly in self-defense, since they were fast friends by that point, and then Arthur had broken up with Cedric for Gwen, who of course told him he was an arse and refused to go to the flat for weeks. The double romantic disappointment had scared Arthur off anything more than casual dating pretty much until they’d graduated.
Six weeks after graduation, Arthur had met Morgause at one of Morgana’s parties. By the time she’d beaten him soundly at a round of tennis, he was half in love with her. Despite Morgana’s attempting to convince them both otherwise, Merlin’s futile attempts at talking sense into Arthur (Morgana was never wrong. It was something that simply had to be accepted about life), and Uther’s far-reaching disapproval, they’d dated for almost six months. Much to Merlin’s shock and Uther’s horror, Arthur had taken his business degree to work for Morgause’s non-profit, which eventually led to the breakup when he accepted a higher-paying job elsewhere.
Merlin, wonder of wonders, had almost found a girlfriend after that breakup, while Arthur was having his heartbreak--behind closed doors for once (in a new but still-shared flat, because they were creatures of habit), which gave Merlin high hopes that perhaps he was maturing. However, Arthur had hated her for no particular reason Merlin could discern, and when she’d got a job offer in the Lake Country Merlin thought it was best if their romance trailed off naturally.
Then Arthur met Vivian at one of his father’s benefit dinners. At first, they’d hated each other passionately (Merlin had wholeheartedly agreed), then they’d done other things passionately (no accounting for taste), and then they’d unaccountably decided that they loved each other passionately, and that led to a miserable ten months of Merlin’s life before Vivian had caught Arthur comforting Gwen after her breakup with Lancelot and misinterpreted.
As always, Merlin had hauled Arthur around while he got drunk, sobered him up, commiserated with him over the highs and lows of his relationship with Vivian, and told him that maybe he might try being single for a while--all for naught, because somehow Arthur had ended up dating Gwen. For a year and a half. And proposing.
And getting turned down.
*
“I will never have a functional relationship,” says Arthur, staring out the window as he’s been doing for the past two hours. “You and I are going to be alone for the rest of our lives, Merlin. We’re going to be those tragic old men who tell the children to get off our lawn. How could she have said no?”
Merlin shrugs, and very carefully doesn’t say that the only reason he’s single is because Arthur ruins all his relationships before they can even begin. “Lancelot is back in town, and you always knew that she still has feelings for him. You didn’t pick the best time to propose.”
“Is something horribly wrong with me, Merlin?”
“More than the usual?” Arthur manages to muster a glare out of his self-pity. “Seriously, Arthur, I told you at the time not to go out with Gwen, because she still loved Lance then like she loves him now, and I knew you were setting yourself up for another heartbreak. Just like I told you not to date Vivian because she’s a bitch, and Morgause because it would never have worked. And you knew they wouldn’t work out, don’t try to deny it.”
“Like you know so much about relationships.” Arthur snorts, and it’s worse than if he’d shouted. “You’ve hardly made it past the third date since I’ve met you, even with that catty Freya girl.”
The thing about best friends is that they know exactly all the worst ways to hurt you. Merlin flinches, and he knows he could cut Arthur to shreds in under thirty seconds if he wanted, after all these years. He could say Sometimes I think you get your heart broken on purpose, because it’s the only way your father knows how to be upset without being pissed off and it would be true--Arthur gets angry, he doesn’t get sad, except when one of his relationships ends, and it doesn’t take a genius to trace that back to Uther. He could say I know about relationships because you fuck all of yours up and mean it. Instead, he takes a deep breath. “I understand you’re upset, Arthur, and you have the right, but could you please remember that I’m trying to help even though Gwen is my friend as well?”
“Bloody right you’re trying to help me, she’s in the wrong here.”
“Right.” After a year of your father glaring at her, and you flirting with everyone as you do. Don’t you dare blame this all on her.
Arthur nods, and misses the words Merlin isn’t saying. “So that leads me back to my earlier question--is something horribly the matter with me?”
Merlin’s heard this question too many times for it to mean anything to him anymore, or to come up with a properly supportive response. He’s pasted Arthur back together one too many times, now, and nobody’s the villain no matter what Arthur is trying to say. “You’re dating the wrong people, is all.”
Once again, Arthur rolls his eyes. “Emrys, if you choose now to say that you’ve been waiting in the wings this whole time, I will be forced to mock you for the rest of your life.”
“I haven’t, and I never was, and don’t go taking your issues out on me. You asked for my opinion, and I gave it.” Arthur laughs, and Merlin forgets that he’s playing supportive best friend and remembers that Gwen called him crying and apologizing for hurting Arthur and Arthur hasn’t once apologized for swearing at Gwen in the middle of a restaurant when she quietly turned him down. “I’m sick of this,” he finally says aloud.
“I beg your pardon?” Arthur sits up straight.
“I spend so much time dealing with your shit that, much as I hate to say it, you’re right. I can’t have a relationship of my own because I’m always taking care of your messes. You’re twenty-five, Arthur, and you still act like you’re fifteen whenever someone dumps you, or even when you dump them. It’s time for you to grow up and get your act together.”
Merlin grabs his keys, too pissed off to even think about what this is going to do to their living arrangements and their friendship, and he’s out of the flat and on the street before he realizes that Arthur didn’t start yelling at him.
*
The thing is ... Merlin’s never actually been in love with Arthur. Nobody believes that--not Morgana, not Gwen, not Uther, probably not even Arthur himself--but it’s true. He’s read enough books to know that in his position, the best friend of a lothario, he’s almost supposed to be in love with the twat, but they went so fast from strangers to best friends that he never even had time to think about an infatuation.
He knows Arthur is handsome. He thinks Arthur’s funny and sometimes sweet and always smart. But he’s also the one Arthur called into his bedroom to check on a funny rash, and he knows that Arthur can be thoughtless and cruel and pig-headed and snobbish, and he’s picked Arthur’s heart up off the floor and dusted it off more times than he can count, almost from the second he met him, and how could anyone fall in love in those conditions? There were never any romantic illusions, and while that’s great for being in love, it isn’t so much for falling in love. They’ve never pretended with each other.
So over the years, they’ve laughed about it when Morgana gets them “his and his” towels for Christmas, and Merlin’s assured Gwen a hundred times over that really, she can have Arthur if she wants him, and Uther invites him to their Sunday dinners, but it was never actually a relationship, and there was never even any drunken sex.
However, Merlin discovers when he wakes up feeling like shit the next day on Morgana’s couch, just because they aren’t dating doesn’t mean they can’t have a messy breakup.
For one thing, he has three increasingly drunken voicemail messages from Arthur when he checks his phone--in the first, he accuses Merlin of being a drama queen, in the second he calls him an asshole and then tells him to come home so he can shout at him properly, and in the third he does something that sounds remarkably close to begging. Merlin sighs, drinks a cup of coffee while Morgana regards him with her own special breed of sympathy and amusement, and calls him back. “I told you to pull yourself together,” he says before Arthur can start berating him, “and I meant it. You’re taking me for granted and I’m stressed enough at work lately without dealing with your drama. Call me when you’re ready to act like an adult.”
Arthur sighs. “We live together, Merlin. Are you really going to move out because of all this?”
“No, but I think we’d better call off our plans for a while. I won’t be at the pub tonight.”
“Thursday has been pub night since--”
“It’s not right now, okay?” Merlin hangs up, and ignores the eighteen missed calls he gets over the course of his workday.
He goes to a different pub with Lance and Gwen after work, and when he takes a deep breath and walks into his and Arthur’s flat that night, Arthur is waiting for him. “We really need to talk about this,” Arthur starts.
Merlin sighs. “Can we not? I’m still your friend, that isn’t going to change, but we both need to stop letting your heartbreaks run our lives, and I can’t do my part of that until I get some space from you.”
“You are such a girl, Merlin.”
“I’m going to my room and reading the new book I got last week.”
*
It feels wrong being on the outside looking in on Arthur as he deals with the end of his relationship with Gwen, and Merlin would think about relenting if Gwen weren’t so wretched about the whole situation as well. And it isn’t as if he and Arthur don’t speak at all--that would be both ridiculous and petty, considering they live in the same flat. They tell each other about their days, scrawl additions on grocery lists, watch the same TV shows they’ve always watched, but Merlin walks out the second Arthur mentions Gwen’s name and spends far more time than usual with his other friends.
He even goes on a few dates, and for once there’s no one calling him halfway through with some ridiculous emergency. He kisses them at the door, and there’s no real connection, which he blames mostly on himself because he’s waiting for the other shoe to drop. Morgana gives him sad and sympathetic looks whenever she sees him, and Uther calls asking if he knows what’s wrong with Arthur, but otherwise everything feels--well, like normal life would feel for someone who doesn’t get so wrapped up in Arthur Pendragon’s love life.
Arthur seems to be coping remarkably well with the loss of Gwen, which leaves Merlin wondering uncomfortably if he’s been enabling Arthur’s moping these past seven years, but he varies between being amused, pissed off, and upset by Merlin’s distance from him. It could be just that distracting him.
After two weeks, it starts to change, with a text from Arthur: Am on your end of town for a meeting today. Coffee?
Merlin says yes, because it isn’t like he’s trying to end his friendship with Arthur, just take a couple steps back. They meet at a shabby shop that Arthur seems deeply uncomfortable in and end up both being late to their respective offices because they can’t stop laughing at the stupidest things. After that, Merlin makes an effort to make time to see Arthur, and can tell Arthur does the same--not just the things they did out of habit, either. They meet up for coffee, for the action films Arthur loves and the arty ones Merlin does, they try new kinds of take-out and go to the opera because Uther has tickets.
It takes Merlin a month to realize that he’s developed an embarrassing schoolboy crush on Arthur years after it would have been logical to do so, and it freaks him out so much that he turns Arthur down the next three times he offers a new activity. He calls Morgana to wail about it because he suspects Gwen would be more than a little freaked out by it all and she laughs at him for five minutes before congratulating him on finally catching up with everyone else. He’s doomed, he realizes, because no one is actually going to believe that he’s just now falling for Arthur and not discovering some long-held love.
And then he realizes that Arthur, king of relationships, must be aware that they’re dating. Maybe he even started it on purpose. Merlin wonders for one stupidly giddy second if that means Arthur’s finally done searching out heartbreak, and then he realizes that of course: Merlin could break his heart worse than anyone.
That doesn’t stop him from accepting when Arthur knocks on his door to ask if he wants to go to the gym, though.
*
Arthur kisses him while they’re sitting in the park feeding ducks (“Because you’re fond of ducks, Merlin, don’t deny it, and it seems like the sort of thing one ought to do at least once”), and Merlin allows it for precisely twenty-seven seconds of their noses knocking together and Arthur carding gently at his hair before pulling away and putting his hand over Arthur’s mouth to keep him from speaking or kissing him again.
“I am not going to break your heart,” he says, and it’s a warning and not a promise and he knows Arthur understands that because his eyes widen, but he doesn’t pull away. “If you’re in this, you’re in this. Don’t do it because you know how bad it would be at the end, because we’re us, and I sort of don’t see myself breaking up with you.”
Arthur opens his mouth against Merlin’s fingers--probably to say that he’s never gone into a relationship knowing that it would end and hurt when it ended, even though after Morgause and Vivian and even Gwen they both know that’s a lie--but just shuts it again without saying anything, and it ends up feeling like another kiss.
“Think about it, okay? And I’ll see you at home.”
Merlin flees and has coffee with Gwen, who wisely asks no questions, before going to the flat and finding Arthur waiting for him again. “You told me to grow up,” Arthur blurts.
After a moment, Merlin takes off his scarf and sits down, because he knows this could turn into a very long conversation. “Yes, I know. I was there.”
“So I thought, well, okay then, I would find an adult relationship and if it didn’t work out I would take it like a man, because maybe you’re right and I am a bit melodramatic.” Arthur squints at him, and Merlin bites down the impulse to crow over Arthur telling him he was right for once. “And if you think I am telling you that I realized I’ve always loved you or some shite like that, you are going to be sorely disappointed, just so you know.”
“Ditto.”
Arthur snorts, and then stops and nods. “We’ll revisit that. But the point is, you stopped talking to me like a wanker, so I thought of things to make you hang out with me again, and it occurred to me after a week or so that we weren’t so much being mates as dating, and that was working quite well for us.”
Merlin smacks him lightly upside the head, as he feels it’s his right to do whenever Arthur gets that smug look on his face. “Be serious for a minute, okay? I don’t want to do this because everyone thinks we are anyway, or because it will be easy.”
“Don’t be an idiot, Merlin, of course it isn’t going to be easy.” Arthur grabs his chin and kisses him from a very bad angle, but Merlin melts into it anyway. “But I think we can make it work. Like you said, you aren’t going to break my heart, and I’m more than okay with that.”
“Are you going to break mine?” Merlin asks, and he’s even mostly joking.
“Well, with your terribly fragile emotional--” Merlin elbows him, and Arthur grins. “We’ll have to see, won’t we? But I suspect we can carry on not breaking one another’s hearts indefinitely, if it comes to that.”
Merlin suspects that’s the closest he’s going to get to a declaration of anything until Morgana tortures something out of Arthur, so he relaxes back against the arm Arthur’s slung across the back of the sofa. “You know, I think you might be right.”
Summary: Arthur sucks at relationships, and Merlin's sick of it.
A/N: Title is Elton John's (I couldn't resist). Not sure how pleased with it I am, but there were egregious typos when I posted anon and I must fix them, so it's being de-anoned anyway. For this kinkme_merlin prompt: Merlin stays single throughout Arthur's many relationships and always picks up the pieces when they fail. Bonus points for an angry Merlin, when yet another relationship fails, telling Arthur to get his act together. Even more bonus points for Arthur getting his act together with Merlin.
Disclaimer: I do not own Merlin
Sometimes, when he’s at his most uncharitable, Merlin thinks Arthur likes having his heart broken.
The whole thing would be hilarious if it weren’t so sad. Merlin’s known Arthur for seven years, since their first year at uni, and when he isn’t in a relationship, he’s mourning the end of the last relationship, whether it’s the loss of companionship or the loss of the actual person. He mopes, drinks, and there’s even some truly dreadful poetry from sixth form that Morgana has framed on the wall of her flat from when they were newly step-siblings and he was madly and unrequitedly in love with her.
The sad part is that despite the fact that Arthur’s a prat, he’s also a handsome, intelligent, occasionally charming prat, and from what Merlin’s picked up watching from the sidelines, a decent boyfriend as well. The heartache is useless (not to mention embarrassing when he freely admits that far too many of his relationships have been based on circumstance or money), and lasts a month tops, but Arthur seems to relish every minute of it.
It’s how Merlin met him, actually. As a scholarship student at uni, he had to find a job, and he had the bad luck to be picked up by the campus’s catering service and put on serving duty for a donor’s dinner during Parents’ Weekend. Everything was going well: he hadn’t spilled anything, he managed not to yell at the blond prat who was mocking one of the other servers (and if his glass was often mysteriously empty, well, that had nothing to do with Merlin. At all), and his supervisor Gwen seemed pleased with him.
Towards the end of dinner, though, a young woman came storming in wearing a yellow dress just a shade too fancy for the evening and pointed an unerring finger at the blond prat before letting loose an almost-operatic shriek of rage. “Arthur Pendragon!”
That brought the proceedings to a screeching halt as she stalked forward, and Merlin moved forward to intercept her because no one else seemed to be doing anything. “Um, miss, this is a private dinner ...”
She pushed him out of the way and grabbed someone’s meat knife off a table as she passed, before hefting her arm like she was going to throw it, and Merlin had tackled her before considering whether or not it was a good idea.
And that was how he’d ended up hauling Arthur Pendragon’s drunk ass back to his stepsister’s flat. “She,” Arthur was informing him earnestly as they keyed in, “is an evil opera-singing bitch-monster of death.”
“Ah,” said a woman from the kitchen, “I see Helen found you. Who’s this, then? Your next victim?”
Arthur had scowled. “No, my roommate. Father decided it was the only appropriate reward for his tackling Helen to give him the extra bedroom in my flat.”
The woman (Morgana, Merlin later discovered, and they’ve become fast friends ever since, mostly out of self-defense in the presence of Arthur) snorted. “Do yourself a favor, new kid, and don’t sleep with him. It will only end in tears. Mostly his.”
“I will never have a functional relationship,” Arthur had wailed, and that had been the beginning.
*
Arthur wasn’t exaggerating. Once he stopped being a prat and started playing video games and revising with Merlin, he actually turned out to be pretty fun to be around, but he had one fatal flaw: he couldn’t hold on to a relationship, and when they ended, he tended to lose it.
A week after Merlin had moved in with him (a week of moping and drinking and reminiscing over Helen’s finer qualities), he’d met Valiant, a fellow member of his rugby team, and they’d had a torrid affair before Valiant was caught cheating both on Arthur and on the rugby field, and there’d been another heartbreak. Merlin had half-drowned his roommate in alcohol like any good mate would, and then dried him out because Uther was paying half his rent as thanks for saving Arthur from the opera-singing bitch-monster of death and probably wouldn’t appreciate Merlin turning his son into an alcoholic. He’d figured Arthur was just having a bad month and taking the breakups badly as a result, but that had only been the beginning.
Next had been Lancelot (who’d actually been flirting with Merlin first, but Merlin was working thirty hours a week and doing coursework out his ears so he’d hardly had time to notice), and Lancelot was an absolutely wonderful guy (and still is one of Merlin’s best friends), but then Merlin had introduced him to Gwen and that had been that for Arthur, who went about for weeks afterwards acting like he was in a Shakespearean tragedy.
Sophia followed. God, what a nightmare that had been. Arthur had actually genuinely cared for her, for reasons Merlin still can’t fathom, just over six years later. She and Arthur had stayed together for six months while she’d systematically alienated every one of his friends but Merlin, and then she’d dropped him like a hot potato, no explanation, after a week at his beach house. Arthur, of course, had called Merlin, and though Merlin had been on a date with a boy named Edwin from one of his classes who actually talked about things other than footie and his tragic love life, he’d dropped his dinner, apologized, and run off to make sure Arthur didn’t do anything drastic and permanent.
Arthur had moped over Sophia for a painfully long time--practically the next year, actually--and then he’d met Cedric, who’d hated Merlin. Merlin had Gwen over to the flat almost constantly in self-defense, since they were fast friends by that point, and then Arthur had broken up with Cedric for Gwen, who of course told him he was an arse and refused to go to the flat for weeks. The double romantic disappointment had scared Arthur off anything more than casual dating pretty much until they’d graduated.
Six weeks after graduation, Arthur had met Morgause at one of Morgana’s parties. By the time she’d beaten him soundly at a round of tennis, he was half in love with her. Despite Morgana’s attempting to convince them both otherwise, Merlin’s futile attempts at talking sense into Arthur (Morgana was never wrong. It was something that simply had to be accepted about life), and Uther’s far-reaching disapproval, they’d dated for almost six months. Much to Merlin’s shock and Uther’s horror, Arthur had taken his business degree to work for Morgause’s non-profit, which eventually led to the breakup when he accepted a higher-paying job elsewhere.
Merlin, wonder of wonders, had almost found a girlfriend after that breakup, while Arthur was having his heartbreak--behind closed doors for once (in a new but still-shared flat, because they were creatures of habit), which gave Merlin high hopes that perhaps he was maturing. However, Arthur had hated her for no particular reason Merlin could discern, and when she’d got a job offer in the Lake Country Merlin thought it was best if their romance trailed off naturally.
Then Arthur met Vivian at one of his father’s benefit dinners. At first, they’d hated each other passionately (Merlin had wholeheartedly agreed), then they’d done other things passionately (no accounting for taste), and then they’d unaccountably decided that they loved each other passionately, and that led to a miserable ten months of Merlin’s life before Vivian had caught Arthur comforting Gwen after her breakup with Lancelot and misinterpreted.
As always, Merlin had hauled Arthur around while he got drunk, sobered him up, commiserated with him over the highs and lows of his relationship with Vivian, and told him that maybe he might try being single for a while--all for naught, because somehow Arthur had ended up dating Gwen. For a year and a half. And proposing.
And getting turned down.
*
“I will never have a functional relationship,” says Arthur, staring out the window as he’s been doing for the past two hours. “You and I are going to be alone for the rest of our lives, Merlin. We’re going to be those tragic old men who tell the children to get off our lawn. How could she have said no?”
Merlin shrugs, and very carefully doesn’t say that the only reason he’s single is because Arthur ruins all his relationships before they can even begin. “Lancelot is back in town, and you always knew that she still has feelings for him. You didn’t pick the best time to propose.”
“Is something horribly wrong with me, Merlin?”
“More than the usual?” Arthur manages to muster a glare out of his self-pity. “Seriously, Arthur, I told you at the time not to go out with Gwen, because she still loved Lance then like she loves him now, and I knew you were setting yourself up for another heartbreak. Just like I told you not to date Vivian because she’s a bitch, and Morgause because it would never have worked. And you knew they wouldn’t work out, don’t try to deny it.”
“Like you know so much about relationships.” Arthur snorts, and it’s worse than if he’d shouted. “You’ve hardly made it past the third date since I’ve met you, even with that catty Freya girl.”
The thing about best friends is that they know exactly all the worst ways to hurt you. Merlin flinches, and he knows he could cut Arthur to shreds in under thirty seconds if he wanted, after all these years. He could say Sometimes I think you get your heart broken on purpose, because it’s the only way your father knows how to be upset without being pissed off and it would be true--Arthur gets angry, he doesn’t get sad, except when one of his relationships ends, and it doesn’t take a genius to trace that back to Uther. He could say I know about relationships because you fuck all of yours up and mean it. Instead, he takes a deep breath. “I understand you’re upset, Arthur, and you have the right, but could you please remember that I’m trying to help even though Gwen is my friend as well?”
“Bloody right you’re trying to help me, she’s in the wrong here.”
“Right.” After a year of your father glaring at her, and you flirting with everyone as you do. Don’t you dare blame this all on her.
Arthur nods, and misses the words Merlin isn’t saying. “So that leads me back to my earlier question--is something horribly the matter with me?”
Merlin’s heard this question too many times for it to mean anything to him anymore, or to come up with a properly supportive response. He’s pasted Arthur back together one too many times, now, and nobody’s the villain no matter what Arthur is trying to say. “You’re dating the wrong people, is all.”
Once again, Arthur rolls his eyes. “Emrys, if you choose now to say that you’ve been waiting in the wings this whole time, I will be forced to mock you for the rest of your life.”
“I haven’t, and I never was, and don’t go taking your issues out on me. You asked for my opinion, and I gave it.” Arthur laughs, and Merlin forgets that he’s playing supportive best friend and remembers that Gwen called him crying and apologizing for hurting Arthur and Arthur hasn’t once apologized for swearing at Gwen in the middle of a restaurant when she quietly turned him down. “I’m sick of this,” he finally says aloud.
“I beg your pardon?” Arthur sits up straight.
“I spend so much time dealing with your shit that, much as I hate to say it, you’re right. I can’t have a relationship of my own because I’m always taking care of your messes. You’re twenty-five, Arthur, and you still act like you’re fifteen whenever someone dumps you, or even when you dump them. It’s time for you to grow up and get your act together.”
Merlin grabs his keys, too pissed off to even think about what this is going to do to their living arrangements and their friendship, and he’s out of the flat and on the street before he realizes that Arthur didn’t start yelling at him.
*
The thing is ... Merlin’s never actually been in love with Arthur. Nobody believes that--not Morgana, not Gwen, not Uther, probably not even Arthur himself--but it’s true. He’s read enough books to know that in his position, the best friend of a lothario, he’s almost supposed to be in love with the twat, but they went so fast from strangers to best friends that he never even had time to think about an infatuation.
He knows Arthur is handsome. He thinks Arthur’s funny and sometimes sweet and always smart. But he’s also the one Arthur called into his bedroom to check on a funny rash, and he knows that Arthur can be thoughtless and cruel and pig-headed and snobbish, and he’s picked Arthur’s heart up off the floor and dusted it off more times than he can count, almost from the second he met him, and how could anyone fall in love in those conditions? There were never any romantic illusions, and while that’s great for being in love, it isn’t so much for falling in love. They’ve never pretended with each other.
So over the years, they’ve laughed about it when Morgana gets them “his and his” towels for Christmas, and Merlin’s assured Gwen a hundred times over that really, she can have Arthur if she wants him, and Uther invites him to their Sunday dinners, but it was never actually a relationship, and there was never even any drunken sex.
However, Merlin discovers when he wakes up feeling like shit the next day on Morgana’s couch, just because they aren’t dating doesn’t mean they can’t have a messy breakup.
For one thing, he has three increasingly drunken voicemail messages from Arthur when he checks his phone--in the first, he accuses Merlin of being a drama queen, in the second he calls him an asshole and then tells him to come home so he can shout at him properly, and in the third he does something that sounds remarkably close to begging. Merlin sighs, drinks a cup of coffee while Morgana regards him with her own special breed of sympathy and amusement, and calls him back. “I told you to pull yourself together,” he says before Arthur can start berating him, “and I meant it. You’re taking me for granted and I’m stressed enough at work lately without dealing with your drama. Call me when you’re ready to act like an adult.”
Arthur sighs. “We live together, Merlin. Are you really going to move out because of all this?”
“No, but I think we’d better call off our plans for a while. I won’t be at the pub tonight.”
“Thursday has been pub night since--”
“It’s not right now, okay?” Merlin hangs up, and ignores the eighteen missed calls he gets over the course of his workday.
He goes to a different pub with Lance and Gwen after work, and when he takes a deep breath and walks into his and Arthur’s flat that night, Arthur is waiting for him. “We really need to talk about this,” Arthur starts.
Merlin sighs. “Can we not? I’m still your friend, that isn’t going to change, but we both need to stop letting your heartbreaks run our lives, and I can’t do my part of that until I get some space from you.”
“You are such a girl, Merlin.”
“I’m going to my room and reading the new book I got last week.”
*
It feels wrong being on the outside looking in on Arthur as he deals with the end of his relationship with Gwen, and Merlin would think about relenting if Gwen weren’t so wretched about the whole situation as well. And it isn’t as if he and Arthur don’t speak at all--that would be both ridiculous and petty, considering they live in the same flat. They tell each other about their days, scrawl additions on grocery lists, watch the same TV shows they’ve always watched, but Merlin walks out the second Arthur mentions Gwen’s name and spends far more time than usual with his other friends.
He even goes on a few dates, and for once there’s no one calling him halfway through with some ridiculous emergency. He kisses them at the door, and there’s no real connection, which he blames mostly on himself because he’s waiting for the other shoe to drop. Morgana gives him sad and sympathetic looks whenever she sees him, and Uther calls asking if he knows what’s wrong with Arthur, but otherwise everything feels--well, like normal life would feel for someone who doesn’t get so wrapped up in Arthur Pendragon’s love life.
Arthur seems to be coping remarkably well with the loss of Gwen, which leaves Merlin wondering uncomfortably if he’s been enabling Arthur’s moping these past seven years, but he varies between being amused, pissed off, and upset by Merlin’s distance from him. It could be just that distracting him.
After two weeks, it starts to change, with a text from Arthur: Am on your end of town for a meeting today. Coffee?
Merlin says yes, because it isn’t like he’s trying to end his friendship with Arthur, just take a couple steps back. They meet at a shabby shop that Arthur seems deeply uncomfortable in and end up both being late to their respective offices because they can’t stop laughing at the stupidest things. After that, Merlin makes an effort to make time to see Arthur, and can tell Arthur does the same--not just the things they did out of habit, either. They meet up for coffee, for the action films Arthur loves and the arty ones Merlin does, they try new kinds of take-out and go to the opera because Uther has tickets.
It takes Merlin a month to realize that he’s developed an embarrassing schoolboy crush on Arthur years after it would have been logical to do so, and it freaks him out so much that he turns Arthur down the next three times he offers a new activity. He calls Morgana to wail about it because he suspects Gwen would be more than a little freaked out by it all and she laughs at him for five minutes before congratulating him on finally catching up with everyone else. He’s doomed, he realizes, because no one is actually going to believe that he’s just now falling for Arthur and not discovering some long-held love.
And then he realizes that Arthur, king of relationships, must be aware that they’re dating. Maybe he even started it on purpose. Merlin wonders for one stupidly giddy second if that means Arthur’s finally done searching out heartbreak, and then he realizes that of course: Merlin could break his heart worse than anyone.
That doesn’t stop him from accepting when Arthur knocks on his door to ask if he wants to go to the gym, though.
*
Arthur kisses him while they’re sitting in the park feeding ducks (“Because you’re fond of ducks, Merlin, don’t deny it, and it seems like the sort of thing one ought to do at least once”), and Merlin allows it for precisely twenty-seven seconds of their noses knocking together and Arthur carding gently at his hair before pulling away and putting his hand over Arthur’s mouth to keep him from speaking or kissing him again.
“I am not going to break your heart,” he says, and it’s a warning and not a promise and he knows Arthur understands that because his eyes widen, but he doesn’t pull away. “If you’re in this, you’re in this. Don’t do it because you know how bad it would be at the end, because we’re us, and I sort of don’t see myself breaking up with you.”
Arthur opens his mouth against Merlin’s fingers--probably to say that he’s never gone into a relationship knowing that it would end and hurt when it ended, even though after Morgause and Vivian and even Gwen they both know that’s a lie--but just shuts it again without saying anything, and it ends up feeling like another kiss.
“Think about it, okay? And I’ll see you at home.”
Merlin flees and has coffee with Gwen, who wisely asks no questions, before going to the flat and finding Arthur waiting for him again. “You told me to grow up,” Arthur blurts.
After a moment, Merlin takes off his scarf and sits down, because he knows this could turn into a very long conversation. “Yes, I know. I was there.”
“So I thought, well, okay then, I would find an adult relationship and if it didn’t work out I would take it like a man, because maybe you’re right and I am a bit melodramatic.” Arthur squints at him, and Merlin bites down the impulse to crow over Arthur telling him he was right for once. “And if you think I am telling you that I realized I’ve always loved you or some shite like that, you are going to be sorely disappointed, just so you know.”
“Ditto.”
Arthur snorts, and then stops and nods. “We’ll revisit that. But the point is, you stopped talking to me like a wanker, so I thought of things to make you hang out with me again, and it occurred to me after a week or so that we weren’t so much being mates as dating, and that was working quite well for us.”
Merlin smacks him lightly upside the head, as he feels it’s his right to do whenever Arthur gets that smug look on his face. “Be serious for a minute, okay? I don’t want to do this because everyone thinks we are anyway, or because it will be easy.”
“Don’t be an idiot, Merlin, of course it isn’t going to be easy.” Arthur grabs his chin and kisses him from a very bad angle, but Merlin melts into it anyway. “But I think we can make it work. Like you said, you aren’t going to break my heart, and I’m more than okay with that.”
“Are you going to break mine?” Merlin asks, and he’s even mostly joking.
“Well, with your terribly fragile emotional--” Merlin elbows him, and Arthur grins. “We’ll have to see, won’t we? But I suspect we can carry on not breaking one another’s hearts indefinitely, if it comes to that.”
Merlin suspects that’s the closest he’s going to get to a declaration of anything until Morgana tortures something out of Arthur, so he relaxes back against the arm Arthur’s slung across the back of the sofa. “You know, I think you might be right.”