This Charming Man (Arthur/Merlin)
Title: This Charming Man, 1/2
Pairing: Arthur/Merlin
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 11,772
Warnings: tempted suicide of a major character, death of minor characters (suicide), mentions of child abuse and incest, mental illness.
Summary: When Arthur is asked why he is going to Claymoor, all he can say is "I'm sad." Written for the reel_merlin challenge, based on the film Girl, Interrupted.
Beta: The lovely wickedtrickstah and shiningthunder while it was in progress and the wonderful, patient and thorough angelofcaffeine once it was complete.
Arthur slides a cigarette between his lips, lights it with a flick of his thumb on the wheel of his lighter. The gravel crunches beneath the wheels of the car, and his fingers press tight around the filter, the sound reminding him a little too thoroughly of Uther’s teeth - the way they ground over the ice in his scotch as Gaius told him the diagnosis, the way they pressed tight against the inside of his lips when the psychiatrist made his suggestion for treatment - so he leans forward, taps the driver on the shoulder. “Would you mind turning up the music?”
“Not at all.” He reaches for the dial, touches it up a notch, and Arthur settles back again, taking a long drag of his Marlboro, touching the window down to tap his ashes out the window. The Smiths wind their way out of the speakers. (“I would go out tonight but I haven’t got a stitch to wear. This man said, “It’s gruesome that someone so handsome should care.”) The driver keeps glancing at him in the rearview mirror. Arthur isn’t bothered. He purses his lips around the smoke that drifts from his mouth, watches it slide out the crack in the window. “What’s wrong with you?”
His eyes flick over to the reflection of the driver’s eyes. He doesn’t know the man; he once knew his father’s drivers all by name, but lately, he seemed to have trouble remembering his own. “Pardon?”
“What’s wrong with you - that you’re going to Claymoore? You look normal enough.”
“Ah.” Arthur tosses the butt out the window, watches through the side view mirror as it crashes in a spark of fire and light on the road behind the car. “Evidently, I’m sad.”
The driver chuckles. “We’re all sad.”
Arthur’s lips quirk up at the corner, tilts his head to watch the building draw up over them. From the CD player, Morrissey tells him what a charming man he is.
***
“I didn’t try to kill myself.” He corrects the receptionist. “I had a headache. I was drunk. I didn’t realize how much I’d taken.”
Alice looks at him over the rims of her glasses. “That is something to be discussed with your doctor, Mr. Pendragon. I’m sure Dr. Gaius is much more qualified to on that subject than I am.”
“I don’t understand why I couldn’t just see him from home. He’s been our family psychiatrist for years.”
“Dr. Gaius believes you would be well-suited to a rest here for a little while; you will be in a safe, calm environment where you can focus completely on your recovery, without any outside interruptions or distractions. Your file says you’d like to be a writer. Perhaps you could do a bit of that while you’re here, hm?” She smiles at him, sliding a fountain pen toward him across the desk along with the consent form she’s explained to him at length.
His eyelids lower, his jaw ticking, but he takes it up anyway, scrawling his name in unnecessarily large script at the bottom of the page and pushing it back at her without meeting her eyes.
“Excellent.” She pushes her chair back, standing. “Now that that’s squared away, I’ll have Gwen give you a little tour.” As if on cue, a small, dark-haired girl with coffee-colored skin slips into the room, nodding a little at him. Alice hands over his file. “Good luck to you, Mr. Pendragon. If you have any questions about anything, don’t hesitate to ask any of the other nurses.”
***
Gwen has a smattering of freckles across her nose. Arthur tries to count them, but she moves too quickly, flitting from room to room and gesturing with wide sweeps of her arms at the various amenities available to the patients. (“Do you follow any programs? Many of the patients do, so of course there’s access to a television. And we have an extensive library, if you enjoy reading, which I’m sure you do, since you’re a writer. And you’re allowed to decorate your room any way you like, as long as it doesn’t disturb your roommate or infringe on his space at all - and of course nothing offensive or potentially triggering for other patients.”) She finally leaves him to his own devices within a small, bleach-white room.
His bags have been deposited on his bed, and he traces their zippers, considers unpacking, but ultimately decides to dump them both onto the floor to be dealt with later. He flops down on his back on the bed, thinks about having another cigarette, but doesn’t do that either. There’s no telling how long he lies there before the door is flung open; he startles, sitting up abruptly, as a thin young man comes barreling into the room, eyes wild. “Where’s Will?”
Arthur blinks at him. “What?”
He curls his upper lip, eyebrows drawing together over bright eyes. “Where is Will? That was his bed! When I left, this was his room!”
“I have no idea to whom you’re referring.”
“Merlin, mate…” A shaggy-haired man leans against the doorframe, his hand stuffed into the pocket of his jeans. “You’ve gotta go talk to Gwen.”
Merlin turns to stare at him, silent for a long time.
“He didn’t.” He whispers, shaking his head. “He isn’t. He didn’t!” He shoves his way out of the room, shouting the name of the young nurse. He must find her relatively quickly, because there’s some indiscernible shouting and then a gutting kind of wail.
“What the hell was that?” Arthur demands, pushing himself to his feet.
“That was Merlin.” The man shakes his hair out of his face. “He got out last week - not released, mind you, just got out. Ran away, you could say. They just found him this morning.” He points at Arthur’s bed. “That is where Will used to sleep.”
“Who’s Will?”
“Will was Merlin’s best friend. But when he ran away, he hanged himself.”
Arthur’s breath punches out of him. “What?”
“Mmm. And you’ve got his bed. Unlucky, that.”
He sits back down on the edge of his bed, stares at the empty side of the room. “Where’s his roommate?”
“That would be me. I’m the one who found him, you know. And now I’m to be your roommate. Gwaine.”
He nods. “Arthur.” He tilts his head up to peer at him. “Will he - Merlin - will he be alright?”
Gwaine shrugs, moves across the room to toss himself on his own bed. “Who knows in this place, mate?”
Arthur figures that’s true enough.
***
“So tell me, Arthur.” Gaius slides his fingers together, presses them neatly on the paper stacked in front of him on his desk. “What would you like to accomplish while you’re here?”
Arthur tilts his head to the side, looks at him through his eyelashes. “I’m not certain how I’m supposed to answer that. Aren’t you supposed to be solving my problems for me?”
“No. You are here to learn skills.”
“Skills?”
“Skills.” The psychiatrist agrees. “Skills to help you learn to live happily and with ease in the world.”
Arthur frowns. “How can anyone live happily and easily in the world? It’s a heinous place.”
“Ah, that is your illness speaking.”
“What exactly is my illness, doctor?”
Gaius presses his lips together for a moment, is silent. “You will learn skills.” He repeats, instead of answering the question. “You say that the world is a heinous place. If it’s so heinous, how do so many people live such happy lives in it?”
Arthur scoffs. “Who’s happy? I don’t know a single person in the world who can call themselves that.”
Gaius sighs. “Those are the words of a very sad young man, Mr. Pendragon.”
Arthur swallows, turns to look out the window. “So what is the cure for sadness, Gaius? Can you fix me?”
“You aren’t broken, Arthur. You don’t need fixing. And even if you did, I cannot fix you. This falls completely on your shoulders. If you don’t want to be well, there is nothing I can do to help guide you toward wellness. If you do want to be well, I will do my very best to help you reach that goal. Which is it going to be?” Arthur doesn’t answer, and from the expression on Gaius’s face, he didn’t particularly expect one. “You’re a writer, yes? I would like you to spend fifteen minutes each evening detailing the feelings you’ve had throughout the day, and what caused them. When we see each other on Thursday, we will discuss them. You may go.”
***
Freya has a fey face, with large dark eyes and alabaster skin, full lips and high cheekbones. She watches Arthur as he wanders aimlessly through the sitting room, her gaze fluttering between his face and the burning cigarette in his hand. He watches her too, his eyes trained fully on her face so that he won’t look too closely at the scars twisting up her arms.
She won’t speak to him, but Gwaine has told him all about her - the way her father poured lighter fluid over her when she was eight, then tossed a match - the soft rabbit way she creeps through the hospital, permanently regressed - the fact that she will live here for the rest of her life - and he can’t help but look at her, since she looks at him, like he’s intruding on a place she has finally deemed safe, the fox worming into her rabbit hole.
His view of her is suddenly blocked by a lanky figure, and he lifts his eyes to the face of the young man - Merlin - whose expression - eyebrows lowered, lips pressed together - is hard to define. His eyes - blue, bright - rake over his face for a moment, and then he smiles, toothy, a dimple carving itself into one cheek. “Hello.”
Arthur takes a step back. “Hello?”
“I’m Merlin. I’m sorry; I don’t think I introduced myself properly yesterday.”
“No, I’d say you didn’t.”
He chuckles, dips his head. “You’re Arthur. Gwaine told me about you. You don’t snore - he likes that.”
“Er - I’m glad that makes him happy?” Arthur offers uncertainly.
He shrugs - thin shoulders beneath a thinner t-shirt. “You’re one of the normal ones, aren’t you?”
“Pardon?”
He tilts his head to the side, doesn’t answer for a long moment. “You’re very handsome.”
Arthur blinks. “I - thank you.”
“That’s why Freya looks at you. She’s afraid of you because you’re handsome.”
He frowns. “Why does that make her afraid of me?”
“I don’t know. I’m not afraid of you though. I like you.”
“You just met me. And didn’t you yell at me yesterday?”
“Oh.” Merlin drops his eyes. “That wasn’t anything to do with you. Anyway, Gwaine likes you, and Gwaine’s got good taste. Do you have grounds privileges?”
“Oh. Yeah.”
“Good.” He flashes a grin at him. “Come on.” He takes his hand, shouts to Gwen that they’re going to the garden, and hauls him off.
***
The garden isn’t particularly impressive - a single flowerbed and a large expanse of grass. Gwaine is kicking a football around with Percy; a nurse is watching carefully from a position on a bench nearby.
“Did you attempt then?” Merlin tumbles into the grass, folding his long legs in some semblance of a lotus position. He plucks Arthur’s pack of cigarettes from his pocket and has one to his lips before Arthur can protest. Instead, he holds the flame for Merlin to lean into, lighting it for him. Merlin’s long fingers curl easily around the filter, and his cheeks hollow out with each deep pull on the fag. “Suicide, I mean. You don’t have any scars or anything.” He touches his fingertips to Arthur’s arm as if in demonstration of this.
“No,” he murmurs, tracing his profile with his eyes. “I just had a headache was all.”
“Oh.” Merlin frowns at him, full lower lip pushed out. “Did someone find you?”
“No. Well, yes. I ended up being sick. When my father realized why, I was taken to hospital.”
Merlin’s eyes drop again, falling somewhere near Arthur’s hand, where it rests on his knee. “I’m sure he was very worried.”
“Yes, yes. He was quite worried.” Arthur’s lips quirk up, a breath huffing out through his nose. (“What kind of idiot are you?” Uther demanded, pushing Arthur roughly onto his back with a firm hand against his shoulder, and Arthur blinked up at him through a haze of blue, like spray paint across his retinas, the smell of vomit drifting up to him from the bin. His father shook the bottle of aspirin at him, and Arthur thought about how hollow it sounded, rattling around in his brain like that. “Do you realize what you’ve done? How could you be so stupid?”)
Merlin tilts his head at him, like a puppy trying to understand the words his human keeps saying to him. He doesn’t speak.
Arthur clears his throat. “What about you? What’s your story?”
“Ah.” Merlin looks out toward Gwaine and Percival’s football match. “Nothing so interesting as yours.” He turns a blinding smile on him. “You want to get some ice cream?”
“Where will we-?” Merlin’s on his feet, scuttling off through the tall grass. Arthur glances over at the nurse (she is busy chiding Percy for impulsively punching Gwaine right across the mouth; Gwaine is lying on his back in the grass, red-faced with laughter and blood) before scrambling up and running after him. He catches him at the edge of the woods. “Are we going to get in trouble for this?”
Merlin shrugs. “We have grounds privileges. We’re just changing the definition of ‘grounds’ a little bit.”
Arthur jerks to a halt, frowning. “I don’t have any interest in breaking the rules.”
“Oh, come on!” Merlin frowns back at him. “I do it all the time.”
“Gwaine says you’re in solitary constantly.”
“Gwaine needs to keep his mouth shut,” he snaps back. His smile returns full-force, and he wanders over closer to him. “Come on. I wouldn’t do anything that could get you in trouble. You can trust me!”
Arthur twists his mouth up, peers back toward the building. The nurse is looking around, presumably in search of them. He turns toward Merlin again. The boy’s face seems to have closed in, eyebrows low, mouth turned down. “I’m sorry; I don’t think we should.”
Merlin snorts and brushes back him, trudging up toward the garden, and Arthur follows behind. They nod at the nurse as they pass, as if they’d been doing nothing wrong, and part ways inside. Merlin drapes himself across Lance’s lap on the couch in the TV room. Arthur closes the door to his bedroom and doesn’t come out until dinner.
***
The antidepressants keep him awake, but he likes them better than the ones that make him feel sick with drowsy blankness, so he doesn’t ask Gaius to change his prescription again. By his second week, he can’t sleep at all. The bed creaks each time he tosses, rolls over, flops onto his back, then his stomach, and Gwaine eventually throws a book at him. “Keep it the fuck down; some of us do want to sleep.”
Arthur cradles his shoulder, where the meat of the book smacked him, and rolls himself off his bed, sliding his notebook off the nightstand, and creeps barefoot toward the door. The orderlies have retreated to a back corner of the office, where they crowd around a small TV, watching some watershed program. He wanders past, curls up on a corner of the couch and props the notebook on his knees. He touches his pen to the page, but between the soft murmur of the TV and the dry burn of his eyes, no words pass through him, just fuzz in his brain.
“Can’t sleep?” He jumps, turns his eyes up to Merlin, who leans over the back of the couch, smiling lightly.
“No.” He rubs the heel of his hand into his eyes. “What’re you doing up?”
Merlin shrugs, launches himself over the back of the couch and lands, all bones, on Arthur’s feet. “Didn’t try to sleep. This place is best at night, as long as they don’t catch you. Sometimes, Gwaine and I’ll sneak out through this passage they have under the building and get drunk in town. Well, we used to, before they started taking Gwaine’s clothes away - now the people in town always call the hospital when we’re about.” He rests his chin on Arthur’s propped knee, frowning. “You haven’t slept in a few nights, have you? You look very tired. I can help you with that.” He brightens, fishes into the pocket of his jeans. When he holds out his hand, two blue pills lie in his palm.
Arthur draws back a little, eying them. “What are they?”
“Valium!” He beams. “They’ll put you right to sleep if you’ve never taken them before, promise. You’ll sleep like a baby. I’ll take one too.”
“Are they yours?”
“No, they’re Freya’s, but I traded her.”
“What did she get?”
“Oh, one of my anti-psychotics.” He waves his hand as if shooing a fly. “She doesn’t like taking the Valium anyway. It gives her nightmares. But it probably won’t give you nightmares. I think Freya just has nightmares anyway because she’s Freya. What do you think?”
Arthur blinks. “About what?”
“About taking one! It’ll be fine, I promise.”
“I don’t know.” He chews his lip. “And it’ll be okay? You’ll do it too?”
“I said that, didn’t I?” Merlin grins wolfishly, and something warm unfurls in Arthur’s chest. He takes one of the pills, and the thin boy tosses his into the back of his throat to swallow it, exposing a long neck and sharp jaw, a bobbing Adam’s apple and rabbit-quick pulse. Arthur slides his own chalky pill past his tongue, winces as he pushes it dry down his throat. Immediately, Merlin has curled himself up against Arthur’s side, his fingers tapping out a cadence on his chest. “It’s okay, you know.”
“What is?”
“Being here. Well, it’s not okay but it could be worse. You could be dead.”
Arthur’s lips quirk, and his arm settles lightly against the curve of Merlin’s hip. “How do you know that would be worse?”
Merlin’s quiet for a long moment, and then he begins to laugh - a high-pitched giggle - as he noses at Arthur’s neck. “Good point. I’m certainly using that logic in the wrong place.”
He smiles. “Don’t you ever want to die?”
The laughter cuts off, like a knife through the air - swift and smooth. “Sometimes I feel like I already have.”
Arthur doesn’t know what to say that, so he doesn’t speak; instead he closes his eyes to the soft wool the medicine has begun to close over his head.
He wakes around dawn, his head cushioned on Merlin’s stomach, to Gwen shaking his shoulder and frowning down at him. Arthur loses his television privileges for the week - which is fine since he can’t say he’s watched any television since he arrived - and Merlin has to spend the day in solitary.
When Arthur asks Gwen why their punishments are so vastly different, she casts a look ripe with disappointment at the solitary room at the end of the hall as she hands out morning doses to the patients, from which Merlin can be heard loudly singing (“It’s been a hard day’s night, and I’ve been working like a dog!”). “Merlin’s a good boy, really; he just doesn’t seem to want to behave. He needs to realize that the more he acts out, the more trouble he’ll get himself into.” Her gaze sharpens as it turns back to him. “And don’t you go letting him drag you into trouble with him; he’s done that with enough of the patients. Here’s your medicine.”
Arthur tosses it into the back of his throat and wanders back toward his room.
***
“What do you write about?” Merlin’s blue eyes slide up to Arthur’s face as he brings his cigarette (stolen again from Arthur’s pack) to his lips. “Stories?”
He lifts a shoulder in a shrug, watches his red mouth close around the filter. “Sometimes.”
“Sometimes?” Merlin grins, rolls over to tuck his face in against Arthur’s thigh, his chaotic limbs curled in as close as possible to his body. Arthur is sure Merlin’s tapping his ash onto his jeans. “What’re you writing right now? Is right now ‘sometimes’?”
“No, right now I’m writing a letter.”
“A letter?” He brightens, like sunshine is suddenly backlighting his face. “Who are you writing a letter to?”
“My father.”
“Oh.” His nose wrinkles up with distaste the same way it does when he finds something amusing; Arthur is often unsure if the emotions are actually separate for him. “I thought maybe you had a prison pen pal or secret girlfriend or something.”
“I don’t know anyone in prison - except one of my dad’s old friends; she was taken in for tax evasion. But anyway, I wouldn’t write to her; I’m forbidden to even mention her around our house. And girlfriends - well, those aren’t really my thing.”
“Should’ve known.” Gwaine pipes up from where he’s cheating at the game of chess he’s playing against Lance. “Lance is the only other person who lets Merlin get all touchy like that, and Lance is gay.”
“I’m pansexual.” Lance deadpans, not looking up from the board. “It means I’ll date anyone, regardless of gender or sex or anything.”
“Including Gwen, the nurse.” Gwaine sneers.
“We aren’t dating.”
“No, just fucking.”
“Gwaine!” Merlin chides, barking out laughter. “Look at Lance’s poor red face. You’re embarrassing the boy.”
Gwaine shrugs. “We practically live up each other’s arses in this place; we’ve no dignity left for any of us to feel any sort of embarrassment about anything.”
Merlin hums in agreement, rolls onto his back again to peer up at Arthur. “Are you embarrassed to talk about fucking, Arthur?”
Hearing that word from his lips, seeing the way it forms on his mouth - with teeth pressed into a full lip - has heat flushing down Arthur’s neck. He clears his throat. “I can’t say I am.”
Merlin grins slowly (Arthur’s beginning to think it’s his default expression). “I didn’t think so. Will you write me a letter?”
He frowns. “You live down the hall from me, Merlin.”
“That doesn’t mean I wouldn’t like a letter. When you get out of here, you could write me letters from home?”
“How do you know I’ll get out first?”
“It’s not a matter of ‘first.’” Gwaine pipes up, leaning back in his chair and drawing his socked foot up onto the seat. “People like me and Merlin and Freya - we’re lifers. We’ll be here forever. You’re just one of those blokes that realized how fucked this world is, right? You tried to off yourself. That’s curable.”
Arthur doesn’t know what to say, so he doesn’t say anything. Merlin squeezes his knee. “Don’t worry, Arthur. I like you anyway.”
It hadn’t even occurred to him that being curable meant he might not.
***
“So I hear you’ve taken up company with Merlin.” Gaius adjusts some papers on his desk, peers at Arthur over the rims of his glasses.
“Are you going to tell me I need to be careful of him too?” Arthur slides down lower in his chair, huffing around the cigarette he’s working on lighting. “Because believe me, I’ve heard it. And let me tell you: I resent how much everyone seems to be worried about the company I keep here. I feel as if I’m in primary school again, being told which friends are the ‘right’ ones to spend time with.”
“That isn’t it at all, Arthur.” Gaius hauls himself out of his chair, moves around to perch across from him in the armchair designated to him for their meetings. “I am certain that you two could have some influence on each other. Of course, it is my fear that Merlin’s trouble-making tendencies will rub off on you, but perhaps your seriousness will rub off on him a little as well. Arthur,” he takes off his glasses, as any psychiatrist in any film would, “your father wanted to put you away somewhere private for a rest after your… incident. I suggested it may be better for you to be in an environment with others.”
Arthur’s brow draws together, and he shakes his head. “Why?”
“I think it will be good for you to see the experiences some of these other people have been through, to put your own in perspective.”
“I…” He presses his lips together. “I don’t understand. Are my… experiences not real?”
“Of course they’re real, Arthur.”
“Then why do they need to be put into perspective? Why can’t I feel how I feel about them? I thought you were supposed to help me deal with my feelings better.”
“I am, Arthur. Part of that process is realizing that things aren’t as bad as they seem.”
“So you’re using my - the fact that I feel sorry for these people to fix everything?” He throws his arm out in a sweeping gesture, scattering ashes across the carpet. “What about them? Do you even help them or are they just - pawns to help the curable ones?”
“Don’t be so dramatic, Arthur.” Gaius sighs, setting his glasses back on his nose. “And don’t buy into anyone’s ideas about curability. Every person here is capable of having a life independent of this hospital. It’s all a matter of effort.”
Arthur grits his teeth. “Are we through?”
The doctor eyes him for a moment, then nods. “Yes, Arthur, we’re through.”
He propels himself out of his chair with his arms, heading straight for the door. He stalks down the hallway toward Merlin’s room, finds him coming out of one of the other psychiatrist’s rooms - Morgause, he thinks - and his eyes are a dark blue, rimmed red, shining. “Merlin. Are you -?”
He shakes his head, starts down the hall, pauses, turns back toward Arthur, and throws himself at him, tucking his face in against his shoulder. Arthur stumbles back a step and catches him, petting his hair lightly while he sobs softly against his shoulder. He twists his hand in Arthur’s shirt, his voice cracking hoarsely on the edge of each word. “I don’t know why they keep telling me something’s wrong with me. I’m not so bad, right?” He lifts his head, stares up at him. “I’m - I’m not crazy.”
Arthur hushes him gently, swallowing down the bile crawling up his throat, and leads him back to his room. He reclines on Merlin’s bed, and Merlin wraps around him, resting his head on his stomach and sniffling while Arthur pets his hair.
***
“When I was little, my mum used to tell me that I was magic.” Merlin lies flat on the floor, peering up at the ceiling. His mouth twitches a little, a smile. “My dad left when I was four, and I was inconsolable - from what I understand anyway; I’m not sure how it feels to be inconsolable about an absent father. It was a long time ago, after all.” He shifts, rearranges his shoulder blades against the sharp ache of the wood floor.
Arthur taps his cigarette against the edge of his ashtray, frowning. “I have a father, and I think I’d be rather the opposite of inconsolable if he was absent.”
Merlin barks out a laugh, arching his spine a little, and he scrambles off the floor and onto Arthur’s bed when he’s made it clear enough that he is uncomfortable that Arthur wiggles over to make room for him to sit. “I’m sure you love your father.” He nicks the fag from Arthur’s hand, brings it to his mouth with the turn of an elegant wrist, the filter pressed between index finger and thumb. “He comes to visit you, doesn’t he? I’ve seen you shake hands outside of Gaius’s office. He’s a big man. Broad. You’re like him that way.”
“I’m not that big.” He scoffs, closes his fingers around Merlin’s hand and draws the cigarette over toward his mouth, sucking a drag from it. “I barely even stand as tall as him.”
“So you’re softer. That’s nothing to be ashamed of.” He shrugs. “I look too much like my dad. He was tall like me - is, I suppose. I assume he’s still alive out there somewhere. Dark. Thin. Me, basically. Once he left, I wanted to grow up and look nothing at all like him, because I wanted to be nothing like him.”
“You aren’t like him.” Arthur says quietly. “You wouldn’t desert anybody.”
“How d’you know?” He peers at him, head tilted to the side, puppy-like. “I could’ve deserted loads of people before I ended up in here.” He snorts out laughter almost before the end of the sentence. “Not that I’ve had many people to desert - just my mum, and I wouldn’t do that to her.” He pauses, and when he begins again, his voice is quiet. “I suppose I deserted Will. That was the worst thing I could’ve done. We were alike, you know. We both grew up fatherless. His was dead though - died in Iraq.”
“Did he kill himself because you were gone?”
Merlin picks at the blankets, closing his eyes for a moment; he opens them to focus them on the ceiling. “I can’t help but think so. He had trouble with people, had trouble connecting to them. We were only friends because I barge my way into people’s lives, and then I tumbled right out of his again, because I ran away.”
Arthur squeezes Merlin’s wrist. “Why did you run away?”
“I just wanted to see something other than these white walls, just for a few days.” He gestures around them. “I had every intention of coming back. I really didn’t expect the police to catch me. I suppose they thought I was dangerous, because of the psychosis. But I just wanted to spend some time in the sunshine, knowing I didn’t have to go back to a place they’re telling me I’ll never be ready to leave.”
“Why don’t you think they’ll let you leave?”
“I told you - the psychosis.” Merlin flashes a grin at him. “At any rate, Gwaine seems to think that I’ll be here forever and he’s usually right about these kinds of things.”
“What is it with Gwaine anyway? He seems so normal to me.”
“Ah,” Merlin shrugs. “He’s a sociopath. Doesn’t much care for right and wrong. Knows about them - just doesn’t care.”
“Oh.” Arthur frowns. “But… he’s so nice.”
“He is.” He laughs softly, knocking his shoulder into Arthur’s. “Sociopaths can be nice. But they have no problem with being mean too. He makes Freya cry a lot, because he calls her ‘Torch.’ Sometimes it doesn’t bother her, but for the most part, it really upsets her.”
“And he doesn’t stop doing it because he doesn’t really care that it hurts her feelings.”
“Right.” Merlin snaps his fingers, his eyes wandering. “Have you written anything since you’ve been here? Besides the letter to your father?”
“Oh. I have to write down my feelings and what makes me feel them.”
“How dull. Do you ever write about me? Do I make you feel any feelings, Arthur?”
“You’re very self-involved.” He pushes at Merlin’s arm, and laughs softly when the boy sways. “But if you must know, yes, I do write about you. Mostly I write about how irritating you are in the afternoon when I’m trying to have a nap.”
“You’re just so cute when you’re sleeping.” Merlin pinches his cheek, unfolds himself from the bed. “Come on. We have places to be.”
“We do not.”
“I promised Gwaine that you would play him in chess today. He promised he wouldn’t cheat, as long as you agreed.”
“Why should I want to play him?”
“He’s promised me his Valium if we win.”
“Why do you get to have it if I win it?”
“Because I’ll share it with you of course. And I’ve bet your anti-depressants so you might as well play so I don’t have to steal them from you if I play and lose.”
Arthur sighs. “You’re both troublemakers.”
“And you’re our favorite enabler. Is that a yes?”
“Of course it is; what else am I going to do to pass the time?”
Part Two
Pairing: Arthur/Merlin
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 11,772
Warnings: tempted suicide of a major character, death of minor characters (suicide), mentions of child abuse and incest, mental illness.
Summary: When Arthur is asked why he is going to Claymoor, all he can say is "I'm sad." Written for the reel_merlin challenge, based on the film Girl, Interrupted.
Beta: The lovely wickedtrickstah and shiningthunder while it was in progress and the wonderful, patient and thorough angelofcaffeine once it was complete.
Arthur slides a cigarette between his lips, lights it with a flick of his thumb on the wheel of his lighter. The gravel crunches beneath the wheels of the car, and his fingers press tight around the filter, the sound reminding him a little too thoroughly of Uther’s teeth - the way they ground over the ice in his scotch as Gaius told him the diagnosis, the way they pressed tight against the inside of his lips when the psychiatrist made his suggestion for treatment - so he leans forward, taps the driver on the shoulder. “Would you mind turning up the music?”
“Not at all.” He reaches for the dial, touches it up a notch, and Arthur settles back again, taking a long drag of his Marlboro, touching the window down to tap his ashes out the window. The Smiths wind their way out of the speakers. (“I would go out tonight but I haven’t got a stitch to wear. This man said, “It’s gruesome that someone so handsome should care.”) The driver keeps glancing at him in the rearview mirror. Arthur isn’t bothered. He purses his lips around the smoke that drifts from his mouth, watches it slide out the crack in the window. “What’s wrong with you?”
His eyes flick over to the reflection of the driver’s eyes. He doesn’t know the man; he once knew his father’s drivers all by name, but lately, he seemed to have trouble remembering his own. “Pardon?”
“What’s wrong with you - that you’re going to Claymoore? You look normal enough.”
“Ah.” Arthur tosses the butt out the window, watches through the side view mirror as it crashes in a spark of fire and light on the road behind the car. “Evidently, I’m sad.”
The driver chuckles. “We’re all sad.”
Arthur’s lips quirk up at the corner, tilts his head to watch the building draw up over them. From the CD player, Morrissey tells him what a charming man he is.
***
“I didn’t try to kill myself.” He corrects the receptionist. “I had a headache. I was drunk. I didn’t realize how much I’d taken.”
Alice looks at him over the rims of her glasses. “That is something to be discussed with your doctor, Mr. Pendragon. I’m sure Dr. Gaius is much more qualified to on that subject than I am.”
“I don’t understand why I couldn’t just see him from home. He’s been our family psychiatrist for years.”
“Dr. Gaius believes you would be well-suited to a rest here for a little while; you will be in a safe, calm environment where you can focus completely on your recovery, without any outside interruptions or distractions. Your file says you’d like to be a writer. Perhaps you could do a bit of that while you’re here, hm?” She smiles at him, sliding a fountain pen toward him across the desk along with the consent form she’s explained to him at length.
His eyelids lower, his jaw ticking, but he takes it up anyway, scrawling his name in unnecessarily large script at the bottom of the page and pushing it back at her without meeting her eyes.
“Excellent.” She pushes her chair back, standing. “Now that that’s squared away, I’ll have Gwen give you a little tour.” As if on cue, a small, dark-haired girl with coffee-colored skin slips into the room, nodding a little at him. Alice hands over his file. “Good luck to you, Mr. Pendragon. If you have any questions about anything, don’t hesitate to ask any of the other nurses.”
***
Gwen has a smattering of freckles across her nose. Arthur tries to count them, but she moves too quickly, flitting from room to room and gesturing with wide sweeps of her arms at the various amenities available to the patients. (“Do you follow any programs? Many of the patients do, so of course there’s access to a television. And we have an extensive library, if you enjoy reading, which I’m sure you do, since you’re a writer. And you’re allowed to decorate your room any way you like, as long as it doesn’t disturb your roommate or infringe on his space at all - and of course nothing offensive or potentially triggering for other patients.”) She finally leaves him to his own devices within a small, bleach-white room.
His bags have been deposited on his bed, and he traces their zippers, considers unpacking, but ultimately decides to dump them both onto the floor to be dealt with later. He flops down on his back on the bed, thinks about having another cigarette, but doesn’t do that either. There’s no telling how long he lies there before the door is flung open; he startles, sitting up abruptly, as a thin young man comes barreling into the room, eyes wild. “Where’s Will?”
Arthur blinks at him. “What?”
He curls his upper lip, eyebrows drawing together over bright eyes. “Where is Will? That was his bed! When I left, this was his room!”
“I have no idea to whom you’re referring.”
“Merlin, mate…” A shaggy-haired man leans against the doorframe, his hand stuffed into the pocket of his jeans. “You’ve gotta go talk to Gwen.”
Merlin turns to stare at him, silent for a long time.
“He didn’t.” He whispers, shaking his head. “He isn’t. He didn’t!” He shoves his way out of the room, shouting the name of the young nurse. He must find her relatively quickly, because there’s some indiscernible shouting and then a gutting kind of wail.
“What the hell was that?” Arthur demands, pushing himself to his feet.
“That was Merlin.” The man shakes his hair out of his face. “He got out last week - not released, mind you, just got out. Ran away, you could say. They just found him this morning.” He points at Arthur’s bed. “That is where Will used to sleep.”
“Who’s Will?”
“Will was Merlin’s best friend. But when he ran away, he hanged himself.”
Arthur’s breath punches out of him. “What?”
“Mmm. And you’ve got his bed. Unlucky, that.”
He sits back down on the edge of his bed, stares at the empty side of the room. “Where’s his roommate?”
“That would be me. I’m the one who found him, you know. And now I’m to be your roommate. Gwaine.”
He nods. “Arthur.” He tilts his head up to peer at him. “Will he - Merlin - will he be alright?”
Gwaine shrugs, moves across the room to toss himself on his own bed. “Who knows in this place, mate?”
Arthur figures that’s true enough.
***
“So tell me, Arthur.” Gaius slides his fingers together, presses them neatly on the paper stacked in front of him on his desk. “What would you like to accomplish while you’re here?”
Arthur tilts his head to the side, looks at him through his eyelashes. “I’m not certain how I’m supposed to answer that. Aren’t you supposed to be solving my problems for me?”
“No. You are here to learn skills.”
“Skills?”
“Skills.” The psychiatrist agrees. “Skills to help you learn to live happily and with ease in the world.”
Arthur frowns. “How can anyone live happily and easily in the world? It’s a heinous place.”
“Ah, that is your illness speaking.”
“What exactly is my illness, doctor?”
Gaius presses his lips together for a moment, is silent. “You will learn skills.” He repeats, instead of answering the question. “You say that the world is a heinous place. If it’s so heinous, how do so many people live such happy lives in it?”
Arthur scoffs. “Who’s happy? I don’t know a single person in the world who can call themselves that.”
Gaius sighs. “Those are the words of a very sad young man, Mr. Pendragon.”
Arthur swallows, turns to look out the window. “So what is the cure for sadness, Gaius? Can you fix me?”
“You aren’t broken, Arthur. You don’t need fixing. And even if you did, I cannot fix you. This falls completely on your shoulders. If you don’t want to be well, there is nothing I can do to help guide you toward wellness. If you do want to be well, I will do my very best to help you reach that goal. Which is it going to be?” Arthur doesn’t answer, and from the expression on Gaius’s face, he didn’t particularly expect one. “You’re a writer, yes? I would like you to spend fifteen minutes each evening detailing the feelings you’ve had throughout the day, and what caused them. When we see each other on Thursday, we will discuss them. You may go.”
***
Freya has a fey face, with large dark eyes and alabaster skin, full lips and high cheekbones. She watches Arthur as he wanders aimlessly through the sitting room, her gaze fluttering between his face and the burning cigarette in his hand. He watches her too, his eyes trained fully on her face so that he won’t look too closely at the scars twisting up her arms.
She won’t speak to him, but Gwaine has told him all about her - the way her father poured lighter fluid over her when she was eight, then tossed a match - the soft rabbit way she creeps through the hospital, permanently regressed - the fact that she will live here for the rest of her life - and he can’t help but look at her, since she looks at him, like he’s intruding on a place she has finally deemed safe, the fox worming into her rabbit hole.
His view of her is suddenly blocked by a lanky figure, and he lifts his eyes to the face of the young man - Merlin - whose expression - eyebrows lowered, lips pressed together - is hard to define. His eyes - blue, bright - rake over his face for a moment, and then he smiles, toothy, a dimple carving itself into one cheek. “Hello.”
Arthur takes a step back. “Hello?”
“I’m Merlin. I’m sorry; I don’t think I introduced myself properly yesterday.”
“No, I’d say you didn’t.”
He chuckles, dips his head. “You’re Arthur. Gwaine told me about you. You don’t snore - he likes that.”
“Er - I’m glad that makes him happy?” Arthur offers uncertainly.
He shrugs - thin shoulders beneath a thinner t-shirt. “You’re one of the normal ones, aren’t you?”
“Pardon?”
He tilts his head to the side, doesn’t answer for a long moment. “You’re very handsome.”
Arthur blinks. “I - thank you.”
“That’s why Freya looks at you. She’s afraid of you because you’re handsome.”
He frowns. “Why does that make her afraid of me?”
“I don’t know. I’m not afraid of you though. I like you.”
“You just met me. And didn’t you yell at me yesterday?”
“Oh.” Merlin drops his eyes. “That wasn’t anything to do with you. Anyway, Gwaine likes you, and Gwaine’s got good taste. Do you have grounds privileges?”
“Oh. Yeah.”
“Good.” He flashes a grin at him. “Come on.” He takes his hand, shouts to Gwen that they’re going to the garden, and hauls him off.
***
The garden isn’t particularly impressive - a single flowerbed and a large expanse of grass. Gwaine is kicking a football around with Percy; a nurse is watching carefully from a position on a bench nearby.
“Did you attempt then?” Merlin tumbles into the grass, folding his long legs in some semblance of a lotus position. He plucks Arthur’s pack of cigarettes from his pocket and has one to his lips before Arthur can protest. Instead, he holds the flame for Merlin to lean into, lighting it for him. Merlin’s long fingers curl easily around the filter, and his cheeks hollow out with each deep pull on the fag. “Suicide, I mean. You don’t have any scars or anything.” He touches his fingertips to Arthur’s arm as if in demonstration of this.
“No,” he murmurs, tracing his profile with his eyes. “I just had a headache was all.”
“Oh.” Merlin frowns at him, full lower lip pushed out. “Did someone find you?”
“No. Well, yes. I ended up being sick. When my father realized why, I was taken to hospital.”
Merlin’s eyes drop again, falling somewhere near Arthur’s hand, where it rests on his knee. “I’m sure he was very worried.”
“Yes, yes. He was quite worried.” Arthur’s lips quirk up, a breath huffing out through his nose. (“What kind of idiot are you?” Uther demanded, pushing Arthur roughly onto his back with a firm hand against his shoulder, and Arthur blinked up at him through a haze of blue, like spray paint across his retinas, the smell of vomit drifting up to him from the bin. His father shook the bottle of aspirin at him, and Arthur thought about how hollow it sounded, rattling around in his brain like that. “Do you realize what you’ve done? How could you be so stupid?”)
Merlin tilts his head at him, like a puppy trying to understand the words his human keeps saying to him. He doesn’t speak.
Arthur clears his throat. “What about you? What’s your story?”
“Ah.” Merlin looks out toward Gwaine and Percival’s football match. “Nothing so interesting as yours.” He turns a blinding smile on him. “You want to get some ice cream?”
“Where will we-?” Merlin’s on his feet, scuttling off through the tall grass. Arthur glances over at the nurse (she is busy chiding Percy for impulsively punching Gwaine right across the mouth; Gwaine is lying on his back in the grass, red-faced with laughter and blood) before scrambling up and running after him. He catches him at the edge of the woods. “Are we going to get in trouble for this?”
Merlin shrugs. “We have grounds privileges. We’re just changing the definition of ‘grounds’ a little bit.”
Arthur jerks to a halt, frowning. “I don’t have any interest in breaking the rules.”
“Oh, come on!” Merlin frowns back at him. “I do it all the time.”
“Gwaine says you’re in solitary constantly.”
“Gwaine needs to keep his mouth shut,” he snaps back. His smile returns full-force, and he wanders over closer to him. “Come on. I wouldn’t do anything that could get you in trouble. You can trust me!”
Arthur twists his mouth up, peers back toward the building. The nurse is looking around, presumably in search of them. He turns toward Merlin again. The boy’s face seems to have closed in, eyebrows low, mouth turned down. “I’m sorry; I don’t think we should.”
Merlin snorts and brushes back him, trudging up toward the garden, and Arthur follows behind. They nod at the nurse as they pass, as if they’d been doing nothing wrong, and part ways inside. Merlin drapes himself across Lance’s lap on the couch in the TV room. Arthur closes the door to his bedroom and doesn’t come out until dinner.
***
The antidepressants keep him awake, but he likes them better than the ones that make him feel sick with drowsy blankness, so he doesn’t ask Gaius to change his prescription again. By his second week, he can’t sleep at all. The bed creaks each time he tosses, rolls over, flops onto his back, then his stomach, and Gwaine eventually throws a book at him. “Keep it the fuck down; some of us do want to sleep.”
Arthur cradles his shoulder, where the meat of the book smacked him, and rolls himself off his bed, sliding his notebook off the nightstand, and creeps barefoot toward the door. The orderlies have retreated to a back corner of the office, where they crowd around a small TV, watching some watershed program. He wanders past, curls up on a corner of the couch and props the notebook on his knees. He touches his pen to the page, but between the soft murmur of the TV and the dry burn of his eyes, no words pass through him, just fuzz in his brain.
“Can’t sleep?” He jumps, turns his eyes up to Merlin, who leans over the back of the couch, smiling lightly.
“No.” He rubs the heel of his hand into his eyes. “What’re you doing up?”
Merlin shrugs, launches himself over the back of the couch and lands, all bones, on Arthur’s feet. “Didn’t try to sleep. This place is best at night, as long as they don’t catch you. Sometimes, Gwaine and I’ll sneak out through this passage they have under the building and get drunk in town. Well, we used to, before they started taking Gwaine’s clothes away - now the people in town always call the hospital when we’re about.” He rests his chin on Arthur’s propped knee, frowning. “You haven’t slept in a few nights, have you? You look very tired. I can help you with that.” He brightens, fishes into the pocket of his jeans. When he holds out his hand, two blue pills lie in his palm.
Arthur draws back a little, eying them. “What are they?”
“Valium!” He beams. “They’ll put you right to sleep if you’ve never taken them before, promise. You’ll sleep like a baby. I’ll take one too.”
“Are they yours?”
“No, they’re Freya’s, but I traded her.”
“What did she get?”
“Oh, one of my anti-psychotics.” He waves his hand as if shooing a fly. “She doesn’t like taking the Valium anyway. It gives her nightmares. But it probably won’t give you nightmares. I think Freya just has nightmares anyway because she’s Freya. What do you think?”
Arthur blinks. “About what?”
“About taking one! It’ll be fine, I promise.”
“I don’t know.” He chews his lip. “And it’ll be okay? You’ll do it too?”
“I said that, didn’t I?” Merlin grins wolfishly, and something warm unfurls in Arthur’s chest. He takes one of the pills, and the thin boy tosses his into the back of his throat to swallow it, exposing a long neck and sharp jaw, a bobbing Adam’s apple and rabbit-quick pulse. Arthur slides his own chalky pill past his tongue, winces as he pushes it dry down his throat. Immediately, Merlin has curled himself up against Arthur’s side, his fingers tapping out a cadence on his chest. “It’s okay, you know.”
“What is?”
“Being here. Well, it’s not okay but it could be worse. You could be dead.”
Arthur’s lips quirk, and his arm settles lightly against the curve of Merlin’s hip. “How do you know that would be worse?”
Merlin’s quiet for a long moment, and then he begins to laugh - a high-pitched giggle - as he noses at Arthur’s neck. “Good point. I’m certainly using that logic in the wrong place.”
He smiles. “Don’t you ever want to die?”
The laughter cuts off, like a knife through the air - swift and smooth. “Sometimes I feel like I already have.”
Arthur doesn’t know what to say that, so he doesn’t speak; instead he closes his eyes to the soft wool the medicine has begun to close over his head.
He wakes around dawn, his head cushioned on Merlin’s stomach, to Gwen shaking his shoulder and frowning down at him. Arthur loses his television privileges for the week - which is fine since he can’t say he’s watched any television since he arrived - and Merlin has to spend the day in solitary.
When Arthur asks Gwen why their punishments are so vastly different, she casts a look ripe with disappointment at the solitary room at the end of the hall as she hands out morning doses to the patients, from which Merlin can be heard loudly singing (“It’s been a hard day’s night, and I’ve been working like a dog!”). “Merlin’s a good boy, really; he just doesn’t seem to want to behave. He needs to realize that the more he acts out, the more trouble he’ll get himself into.” Her gaze sharpens as it turns back to him. “And don’t you go letting him drag you into trouble with him; he’s done that with enough of the patients. Here’s your medicine.”
Arthur tosses it into the back of his throat and wanders back toward his room.
***
“What do you write about?” Merlin’s blue eyes slide up to Arthur’s face as he brings his cigarette (stolen again from Arthur’s pack) to his lips. “Stories?”
He lifts a shoulder in a shrug, watches his red mouth close around the filter. “Sometimes.”
“Sometimes?” Merlin grins, rolls over to tuck his face in against Arthur’s thigh, his chaotic limbs curled in as close as possible to his body. Arthur is sure Merlin’s tapping his ash onto his jeans. “What’re you writing right now? Is right now ‘sometimes’?”
“No, right now I’m writing a letter.”
“A letter?” He brightens, like sunshine is suddenly backlighting his face. “Who are you writing a letter to?”
“My father.”
“Oh.” His nose wrinkles up with distaste the same way it does when he finds something amusing; Arthur is often unsure if the emotions are actually separate for him. “I thought maybe you had a prison pen pal or secret girlfriend or something.”
“I don’t know anyone in prison - except one of my dad’s old friends; she was taken in for tax evasion. But anyway, I wouldn’t write to her; I’m forbidden to even mention her around our house. And girlfriends - well, those aren’t really my thing.”
“Should’ve known.” Gwaine pipes up from where he’s cheating at the game of chess he’s playing against Lance. “Lance is the only other person who lets Merlin get all touchy like that, and Lance is gay.”
“I’m pansexual.” Lance deadpans, not looking up from the board. “It means I’ll date anyone, regardless of gender or sex or anything.”
“Including Gwen, the nurse.” Gwaine sneers.
“We aren’t dating.”
“No, just fucking.”
“Gwaine!” Merlin chides, barking out laughter. “Look at Lance’s poor red face. You’re embarrassing the boy.”
Gwaine shrugs. “We practically live up each other’s arses in this place; we’ve no dignity left for any of us to feel any sort of embarrassment about anything.”
Merlin hums in agreement, rolls onto his back again to peer up at Arthur. “Are you embarrassed to talk about fucking, Arthur?”
Hearing that word from his lips, seeing the way it forms on his mouth - with teeth pressed into a full lip - has heat flushing down Arthur’s neck. He clears his throat. “I can’t say I am.”
Merlin grins slowly (Arthur’s beginning to think it’s his default expression). “I didn’t think so. Will you write me a letter?”
He frowns. “You live down the hall from me, Merlin.”
“That doesn’t mean I wouldn’t like a letter. When you get out of here, you could write me letters from home?”
“How do you know I’ll get out first?”
“It’s not a matter of ‘first.’” Gwaine pipes up, leaning back in his chair and drawing his socked foot up onto the seat. “People like me and Merlin and Freya - we’re lifers. We’ll be here forever. You’re just one of those blokes that realized how fucked this world is, right? You tried to off yourself. That’s curable.”
Arthur doesn’t know what to say, so he doesn’t say anything. Merlin squeezes his knee. “Don’t worry, Arthur. I like you anyway.”
It hadn’t even occurred to him that being curable meant he might not.
***
“So I hear you’ve taken up company with Merlin.” Gaius adjusts some papers on his desk, peers at Arthur over the rims of his glasses.
“Are you going to tell me I need to be careful of him too?” Arthur slides down lower in his chair, huffing around the cigarette he’s working on lighting. “Because believe me, I’ve heard it. And let me tell you: I resent how much everyone seems to be worried about the company I keep here. I feel as if I’m in primary school again, being told which friends are the ‘right’ ones to spend time with.”
“That isn’t it at all, Arthur.” Gaius hauls himself out of his chair, moves around to perch across from him in the armchair designated to him for their meetings. “I am certain that you two could have some influence on each other. Of course, it is my fear that Merlin’s trouble-making tendencies will rub off on you, but perhaps your seriousness will rub off on him a little as well. Arthur,” he takes off his glasses, as any psychiatrist in any film would, “your father wanted to put you away somewhere private for a rest after your… incident. I suggested it may be better for you to be in an environment with others.”
Arthur’s brow draws together, and he shakes his head. “Why?”
“I think it will be good for you to see the experiences some of these other people have been through, to put your own in perspective.”
“I…” He presses his lips together. “I don’t understand. Are my… experiences not real?”
“Of course they’re real, Arthur.”
“Then why do they need to be put into perspective? Why can’t I feel how I feel about them? I thought you were supposed to help me deal with my feelings better.”
“I am, Arthur. Part of that process is realizing that things aren’t as bad as they seem.”
“So you’re using my - the fact that I feel sorry for these people to fix everything?” He throws his arm out in a sweeping gesture, scattering ashes across the carpet. “What about them? Do you even help them or are they just - pawns to help the curable ones?”
“Don’t be so dramatic, Arthur.” Gaius sighs, setting his glasses back on his nose. “And don’t buy into anyone’s ideas about curability. Every person here is capable of having a life independent of this hospital. It’s all a matter of effort.”
Arthur grits his teeth. “Are we through?”
The doctor eyes him for a moment, then nods. “Yes, Arthur, we’re through.”
He propels himself out of his chair with his arms, heading straight for the door. He stalks down the hallway toward Merlin’s room, finds him coming out of one of the other psychiatrist’s rooms - Morgause, he thinks - and his eyes are a dark blue, rimmed red, shining. “Merlin. Are you -?”
He shakes his head, starts down the hall, pauses, turns back toward Arthur, and throws himself at him, tucking his face in against his shoulder. Arthur stumbles back a step and catches him, petting his hair lightly while he sobs softly against his shoulder. He twists his hand in Arthur’s shirt, his voice cracking hoarsely on the edge of each word. “I don’t know why they keep telling me something’s wrong with me. I’m not so bad, right?” He lifts his head, stares up at him. “I’m - I’m not crazy.”
Arthur hushes him gently, swallowing down the bile crawling up his throat, and leads him back to his room. He reclines on Merlin’s bed, and Merlin wraps around him, resting his head on his stomach and sniffling while Arthur pets his hair.
***
“When I was little, my mum used to tell me that I was magic.” Merlin lies flat on the floor, peering up at the ceiling. His mouth twitches a little, a smile. “My dad left when I was four, and I was inconsolable - from what I understand anyway; I’m not sure how it feels to be inconsolable about an absent father. It was a long time ago, after all.” He shifts, rearranges his shoulder blades against the sharp ache of the wood floor.
Arthur taps his cigarette against the edge of his ashtray, frowning. “I have a father, and I think I’d be rather the opposite of inconsolable if he was absent.”
Merlin barks out a laugh, arching his spine a little, and he scrambles off the floor and onto Arthur’s bed when he’s made it clear enough that he is uncomfortable that Arthur wiggles over to make room for him to sit. “I’m sure you love your father.” He nicks the fag from Arthur’s hand, brings it to his mouth with the turn of an elegant wrist, the filter pressed between index finger and thumb. “He comes to visit you, doesn’t he? I’ve seen you shake hands outside of Gaius’s office. He’s a big man. Broad. You’re like him that way.”
“I’m not that big.” He scoffs, closes his fingers around Merlin’s hand and draws the cigarette over toward his mouth, sucking a drag from it. “I barely even stand as tall as him.”
“So you’re softer. That’s nothing to be ashamed of.” He shrugs. “I look too much like my dad. He was tall like me - is, I suppose. I assume he’s still alive out there somewhere. Dark. Thin. Me, basically. Once he left, I wanted to grow up and look nothing at all like him, because I wanted to be nothing like him.”
“You aren’t like him.” Arthur says quietly. “You wouldn’t desert anybody.”
“How d’you know?” He peers at him, head tilted to the side, puppy-like. “I could’ve deserted loads of people before I ended up in here.” He snorts out laughter almost before the end of the sentence. “Not that I’ve had many people to desert - just my mum, and I wouldn’t do that to her.” He pauses, and when he begins again, his voice is quiet. “I suppose I deserted Will. That was the worst thing I could’ve done. We were alike, you know. We both grew up fatherless. His was dead though - died in Iraq.”
“Did he kill himself because you were gone?”
Merlin picks at the blankets, closing his eyes for a moment; he opens them to focus them on the ceiling. “I can’t help but think so. He had trouble with people, had trouble connecting to them. We were only friends because I barge my way into people’s lives, and then I tumbled right out of his again, because I ran away.”
Arthur squeezes Merlin’s wrist. “Why did you run away?”
“I just wanted to see something other than these white walls, just for a few days.” He gestures around them. “I had every intention of coming back. I really didn’t expect the police to catch me. I suppose they thought I was dangerous, because of the psychosis. But I just wanted to spend some time in the sunshine, knowing I didn’t have to go back to a place they’re telling me I’ll never be ready to leave.”
“Why don’t you think they’ll let you leave?”
“I told you - the psychosis.” Merlin flashes a grin at him. “At any rate, Gwaine seems to think that I’ll be here forever and he’s usually right about these kinds of things.”
“What is it with Gwaine anyway? He seems so normal to me.”
“Ah,” Merlin shrugs. “He’s a sociopath. Doesn’t much care for right and wrong. Knows about them - just doesn’t care.”
“Oh.” Arthur frowns. “But… he’s so nice.”
“He is.” He laughs softly, knocking his shoulder into Arthur’s. “Sociopaths can be nice. But they have no problem with being mean too. He makes Freya cry a lot, because he calls her ‘Torch.’ Sometimes it doesn’t bother her, but for the most part, it really upsets her.”
“And he doesn’t stop doing it because he doesn’t really care that it hurts her feelings.”
“Right.” Merlin snaps his fingers, his eyes wandering. “Have you written anything since you’ve been here? Besides the letter to your father?”
“Oh. I have to write down my feelings and what makes me feel them.”
“How dull. Do you ever write about me? Do I make you feel any feelings, Arthur?”
“You’re very self-involved.” He pushes at Merlin’s arm, and laughs softly when the boy sways. “But if you must know, yes, I do write about you. Mostly I write about how irritating you are in the afternoon when I’m trying to have a nap.”
“You’re just so cute when you’re sleeping.” Merlin pinches his cheek, unfolds himself from the bed. “Come on. We have places to be.”
“We do not.”
“I promised Gwaine that you would play him in chess today. He promised he wouldn’t cheat, as long as you agreed.”
“Why should I want to play him?”
“He’s promised me his Valium if we win.”
“Why do you get to have it if I win it?”
“Because I’ll share it with you of course. And I’ve bet your anti-depressants so you might as well play so I don’t have to steal them from you if I play and lose.”
Arthur sighs. “You’re both troublemakers.”
“And you’re our favorite enabler. Is that a yes?”
“Of course it is; what else am I going to do to pass the time?”
Part Two