[Fic] weave the sunlight - for pasty_pants
Title: weave the sunlight
Author: Anonymous
Recipient: pasty_pants
Pairing(s)/Character(s): Merlin/Arthur
Warnings: None! Unless you count ridiculousness, of which there is plenty. :D Oh and Modern!AU.
Spoilers: None at all.
Rating: So low it hurts. PG.
Word Count: ~5,800
Summary: Modern!AU In which Arthur is the least romantic romance novelist in the world, and Merlin is the only person who can cure his writers' block. Arthur keeps losing control of his feet, and Merlin refuses be wooed by witticisms alone--much to Arthur's chagrin.
Author's Note: Happy holidays! I really hope you like this; I took the modern AU and cuddling on couches part of your prompt and ran with it. ♥ I'm also really sorry for the non-porn, it just didn't want to happen! Title from Bookshop Casanova by The Clientele. And thanks to 'AO' for reading through, 'A', 'P' and 'G' for betaing.
Disclaimer: This is a work of fanfiction - none of this ever happened. No copyright infringement is intended. No profit is made from this work. Please observe your local laws with regards to the age-limit and content of this work.
It's a discreet little shop, tucked away in the corner of the high street--the front painted fresh green with swirls of muted colour. Arthur can be forgiven for not noticing its existence earlier despite walking by at least once a day for the past year.
He's very glad it's here, now that he's noticed it.
The bell above the door chimes as he pushes it open, and warm earthy air fills his lungs as soon as he steps inside. He wrinkles his nose, makes a face and tries not brush up against anything.
A dark-haired man bent over a bucket of sunflowers straightens up and flashes a set of white teeth in greeting.
"What can I do for you?" he asks, wiping his hands off on a towel. He's good-looking in an unusual, mildly awkward way, though it's all secondary to the pair of ears he's sporting.
"I need some flowers."
"Well," the man says, making a show of looking around, "I dare say you've come to the right place. What were you thinking of?"
Arthur searches in his memory for flowers that Nimueh would appreciate, but comes up empty. His father would call this poor planning; Arthur calls this not giving a crap. But missing his stepmother's birthday dinner doesn't feature well in his father's eyes as it is, and Arthur is not willing to sit through another frosty family dinner without having made any reconciliatory gestures.
The man must see the indecision on his face. He laughs, the sound oddly appealing, and asks, "Well, what's she like?"
Arthur thinks. "She's nice looking, I suppose. A bit evil, mind. A complete gold digger."
The man opens and closes his mouth, looks somewhat taken aback, disapproving. "Well, you think so highly of your girlfriend."
"Girlfriend?" Arthur chokes back a laugh, "Don't be ridiculous, as if I'd ever touch that witch. She's my stepmother."
"Right. Conforming nicely to the stereotype, are we?"
Arthur glares. "Can you help me out or not?"
The man laughs again, his blue eyes crinkling at the corners with amusement. "I'll see what I can do."
Nimueh, as it turns out, loves her lily bouquet enough to forgive Arthur for the non-appearance. Arthur suffers her simpering for an evening, sits through his father's approving looks and drinks far more wine than is advisable until he fakes a yawn and pleads exhaustion.
"Arthur, darling. You must stop staying up to all hours writing those silly stories. It causes your father a great deal of stress to know you're wasting your talents like this."
Arthur risks a glance at his father, who stares stonily back. It's an old argument, one that Arthur won't be swayed on; Nimueh just likes scheming far too much to let it go. Arthur holds his tongue, an impressive feat considering the alcohol in his system, and keeps quiet while kissing the air beside Nimueh's cheek, shaking his father's hand and finally escaping into the crisp night air.
His silly stories, as she likes to put it, pay the bills and garner him the occasional pleasant review in the Sunday papers. While his readership is a little more skewed toward the middle aged female end of the spectrum than he planned when first starting out as a writer, Arthur has come to terms with the fact that it just comes with the romance territory. And while his father would much rather Arthur take over the family business, Arthur is very good at what he does and is unwilling to let his evil witch of a stepmother wear him down.
A writer's worst nightmare features rather prominently a blank computer screen, or a blank piece of paper. Arthur has considered himself lucky, in his relatively short career of using words to earn a living, to have never run out of them.
Every good streak ends at some point, and Arthur. Well, Arthur has spent the last week with his nervous fingers hovering ineffectually over his keyboard, willing words to come out to no avail.
When he shifts in his chair he fancies he can smell wafts of unpleasant body odour, having not showered in a week, and his palm encounters the product of the week's worth of stubble as he reaches up to scrub a hand over his face. His father would be horrified to see him now, disapproving no doubt of the mugs of coffee littering the desk, the balls of abandoned notebook pages, the shrivelled crisp packets. He's always considered himself a level-headed person--great under pressure, good at finding alternative solutions--but you never know your limits until you're tested, and it seems Arthur at his limits is a giant slob who can't quite function well enough to clean up after himself.
The blinking cursor is mocking him, and Arthur, for all his substantial self-control built from years of living with his father, barely stops himself from chucking his now-cold drink at it. He feels like a child throwing a tantrum when there's no one there to witness--no satisfaction, no validation and certainly no feeling better.
He groans out loud, grinds the heels of both hands into his eyes and stands up from his chair so fast he sends it crashing backwards across the room. He hasn't left the house in a week and the walls are starting to close in. His mobile rings from somewhere in the room and he knows without looking it's his agent. When he finally digs it out from pile of papers, he has fourteen messages waiting for him, all from Morgana, all regarding his missed check-in deadline. As he listens, the messages become increasingly more frustrated and terse. Arthur's in no way hiding. He's just...stalling. It's a new feeling, this aimless helpless groping for words that won't come, and he's not sure what to do for inspiration to strike again.
Morgana is a woman who at her limits is formidable indeed, she has to be, being agent to absentminded writers, and Arthur can't avoid her forever. He paces the study--four steps forward, turn, four steps back--and fists his hair. He can't stay here forever.
It's sunny outside, for the first time in days.
Arthur scowls, cursing the weather for daring to be so incongruous, himself for being an apparent useless excuse of a writer, and everything else that crosses his path just because he can.
It doesn't make him feel better. If anything, frustration morphs slowly into anger and by the time he stalks onto the high street, he's certain it radiates from him. Arthur never has handled helplessness well, and today is no exception.
He skirts around a couple of underage girls, aware of their eyes on his back as he heads away, and lets his feet move him in any direction they so desire. He's a conduit to the unconscious forces, a channel for ideas. He blanks his mind, and waits for inspiration.
He waits, and waits; passes the newsagents and the Boots and the insidiously placed kebab shop that he'd never admit to frequenting, were it not for the piles of small white plastic bags stuffed under the kitchen sink. It's a 15 minute walk from one end of the high street to the other; the sun brings out a slight sheen of sweat, adding to the layers, and still nothing. He swipes a hand through his hair, belatedly wishing he'd bothered to jam a hat on before he left, both for the warmth and for the unwashed state of his hair. His feet drag to a stop outside the flower shop, its windows bright with the clutches of flowers, green with leaves, glossy and healthy in the sun. Arthur's drawn into the humid interior before he knows what he's doing.
The man from before is once again bent over an arrangement, carefully tucking a cluster of baby's breath into the wicker basket. He looks up as the door opens, eyes lighting up.
"Back so soon?"
Arthur nods curtly, glances around at the green tilts of stems, delicate curves of petals in the small crush of space. He feels out of place, fingers curled and cold in his pockets; feels odd in his tailored but creased trousers, his ridiculously expensive shoes and his unwashed self. He watches the man shove unselfconsciously at the heavy fall of hair across his forehead--too long and in desperate need of a good cut--squinting into the sideways glint from the front window.
"Another gift for your evil stepmother?" the man says, lightly, leaning his elbows up onto the counter. Arthur barks out a laugh, both startled and pleased to have been remembered.
"Not if I can help it, don't want to give her the idea that I actually like her."
The man arches an eyebrow and shakes his head. "I can see how you wouldn't want that." His dry tone does nothing to hide his amusement, and Arthur, usually so comfortable in his own skin, shifts on the spot, unable to keep still, to settle. He doesn't know what he's doing here, doesn't know why his feet led him here.
"She liked it--the flowers, she said they were special," he offers up, liking the way the man's lips curve wider into a genuine smile.
"Well, I'm glad she's not too evil to appreciate a good bouquet."
"Trust me, she's bad enough," Arthur snorts. The man graces him with another bright smile that lights up his face, transforming it from mildly attractive to something that makes Arthur pause and blink. His long fingers look like they could be a hindrance in the manipulation of petals and delicate leaves, but he seems to have no trouble, deftly arranging the stems into place, sure in his movements. Arthur admires it in silence for a moment, then offers, "I'm Arthur."
Another flash of teeth and crinkling of blue eyes. "Merlin."
The sun's down by the time Arthur makes it home, the temperature drastically lower; he shivers in his thin shirt as he turns on the central heating, and walks in darkness to his study. The blank document is still up on the screen, but as he sits down, words come to him, flow out through his fingertips onto the screen, sentences and story taking shape. By the time he resurfaces an hour or so later, his mind is brimming with possibilities, and he has written more in one hour than in the entire week before.
He should have known ignoring Morgana's calls would be a bad idea; she doesn't take kindly to being ignored.
Her retaliation comes in the form of the ringing doorbell at an obscenely early hour of the morning. Arthur is hunched over his keyboard, eyes straining in the murky light, still frantically typing, trying to catch up with the speed of his thoughts, the words bubbling up inside that are clamouring to be put on paper.
He registers the first ring only vaguely, a little dizzy from the lack of sleep. But when the phone besides him starts to ring, the noise combined snaps him out of his zone and he looks up, bewildered and not a little annoyed.
"What?" He scowls as he opens the door without checking to see who it is first. A mistake, as it turns out.
Morgana stands on his doorstep, arms crossed and disapproval radiating from the top of her glossy hair to the tips of her boots.
"Crap," Arthur says.
And Morgana, lips pursed into a white line, says, voice clipped. "Quite."
"I think my agent is secretly plotting my death," Arthur says, on his fifth visit to Merlin's shop. He's clean-shaven and freshly showered this time, and he felt somewhat warm inside at the obvious once-over Merlin gave him when he first entered.
"Why would she do that?" Merlin mumbles absently around a mouthful of pink ribbon. He struggles briefly with the clutch of sunflowers in his hands before rolling his eyes and shoving them at Arthur with a muttered, "Here, be useful."
Arthur takes them and holds them in place while Merlin loops the ribbon twice around the stem and grabs some tissue paper from the pile.
"Because I've missed my draft deadline and keep putting her off," Arthur says. "Also, I think she may be inherently evil."
Merlin lets out a snort, eyes darting up give Arthur an obvious look of amusement. "It's a hard life you lead, surrounded by all these evil women."
Arthur scowled, sure Merlin's only teasing. "You don't even know the half of it."
"Why don't you just write the thing and stop dodging her?" Merlin asks, as if Arthur hasn't thought of that already.
"Because I'm stuck! You don't understand, writer's block is a horrible thing, it sneaks up on you when you least suspect it and bam, suddenly you're getting out 5 words a day, and most of those are adjectives."
"Is that why you spend so much of your time here? Because you're bumming off on work?"
"No, I happen to find I write better when I get home from this place."
Merlin's hands still on the tissue paper, and he smirks. "Are you saying my shop is inspiring, Arthur? Are you saying I inspire you?"
If he were not too dignified to do so, Arthur would have spluttered, instead, he just dumps the sunflowers back into Merlin's already full hands, and lies through his teeth. "What could I possibly find inspiring about this place?"
Merlin's answering smile is bright enough to rival the sun.
Arthur ends up buying a lot of flowers.
Really, a lot of flowers.
At first, the purchases are perfectly justified. Morgana deserves something in return for not actually following through with her homicidal plans, and Gwen's birthday bouquet is just par for the course. The chrysanthemum basket looks great on Arthur's coffee table, and the newest bunch of tiger lilies are very inspiring to look at when he hits a stumbling block while writing.
It's the fifth, and sixth and all the purchases that follow that Arthur finds difficult to explain. His feet, traitorous as they are, seem to take him to the flower shop at every opportunity. What starts out as quick trips to the newsagents turn into two hour debates with Merlin over which is more appropriate, Earl Grey with milk (Merlin, the uncouth bohemian) or without (Arthur, clearly). Arthur's not sure at which point down the line his life took a turn for the ridiculous, but here he is, his new favourite pastime trying to get Merlin to engage with him.
Arthur suspects he has frequented the shop one time too many when the only reaction he gets upon entering is a spare glance and a distracted smile.
"I'm a paying customer, you know," he says, leans his hip up against the side counter and watches Merlin straighten out a roll of string.
Merlin snorts, doesn't look up. "I know. This month, you've single-handedly kept me in business. Which I'm grateful for, I assure you."
"Well then," Arthur says.
"It's just," Merlin quirks his lips, as though debating with himself. "Don't you have better things to do? Aside from the obvious?"
It's a perfectly reasonable question. If Arthur were in Merlin's place, no doubt he would ask just the same, but being in his own rather inexplicable position instead, Arthur merely shrugs a shoulder and pokes a finger at a rose stem.
"Not really." What comes out is perilously close to the truth and Arthur fights the urge to introduce his face to his palm as Merlin pauses to give Arthur his full attention.
Well done, Arthur tells himself. You have his undivided attention, and you only had to sound like the world's saddest sod to get it.
Merlin's face scrunches up in sympathy, and he asks, hesitantly, "What about your friends, Arthur?"
God, now he thinks you're a friendless sod too.
"My friends aren't lucky enough to have such free schedules; they all have soul draining careers as nurses and bankers. And you're the only fri-" Arthur cuts himself off. "You're the only one I know who's just as free as I am."
Merlin grins, and Arthur's heart does that little hop-jump-stutter thing that he's beginning to come to associate with Merlin and his strange little shop.
He meets Lance and Gwen one night after work for a drink. One thing leads to another, one drink leads to... several, and before he knows it, Arthur's pouring out the entire sordid tale to them. He's horrified to find himself telling them about his attempts to get Merlin to notice him, about the way he feels all warm inside every time Merlin so much as smiles at him.
He realises, as his head droops low over his pint glass, that maybe he's a little bit infatuated with Merlin and his ridiculous green apron. He's even starting to find the ears oddly endearing. He doesn't even know how this all happened, and Gwen and Lance are of no help whatsoever because he can barely hear himself think over the sound of their uncontrollable fits of laughter.
He's glad someone finds his position humorous; he's sure it would play out rather nicely as a sub-plot in a novel, where the hero nurtures a silent but enduring love and in the end wins it over with his dashing looks and personality.
He's been witty in Merlin's presence, he's been effortlessly charming and good-humoured, he's most definitely been attractive. By the book, Merlin should have fallen straight into his arms by now, but Merlin is apparently very elusive. When Arthur says something to this effect to Lance and Gwen, however, Gwen just laughs some more and pats him gently on the arm, saying, "Life isn't a romance novel, Arthur. Witty repartee does not a successful romance make."
Arthur disagrees, but apparently his friends are all convinced he's emotionally stunted from years of Uther's upbringing, and claims he really doesn't have a leg to stand on anyway.
"Talk to him, Arthur," Lance says, looking so earnest that Arthur's immediate reaction of 'what do you think I've been doing all this time, genius?' doesn't quite make it past his lips.
"Without being witty and charming and like one of your romance book heroes," Gwen adds. "Just be yourself."
Arthur thinks that's probably good advice. Until he wakes up the next morning, and calls up Gwen on her early shift to demand, "What do you mean just be myself. I am naturally witty and charming, Guinevere."
One week before Christmas, Arthur pushes open the door to the flower shop with a greeting already falling from his lips only to realise that the person standing behind the counter isn't actually Merlin.
"Oh," he says. "Hello."
The old man blinks and smiles at him politely. "Can I help you?"
"Merlin," Arthur says. "I'm, uh. He's not here today?"
There's a look of enlightenment on the old man's face, and he laughs. "Oh, you must be Arthur. Merlin warned me you might drop by, said to tell you he's not fit for the world right now."
Arthur doesn't think anyone needs to be warned of his approach, but he asks, "He's all right?"
"Oh yes, quite all right. Though you'd never think it with all of his complaining. You'd think the boy's never caught a cold before."
Arthur leaves the shop and heads back to his house, feeling oddly offbeat--the rhythm of his day interrupted by an unexpected strain of winter flu. At the junction, his feet take him left instead of right, heading for the row of semis just at the edge of the city centre, where Merlin mentioned--once in passing--he lived.
It's not a long walk; he's staring up at Merlin's dark curtained windows, his hand raised to the doorbell before he has a chance to think through his actions. Arthur wonders idly whether Merlin cast a spell over his feet the first time they met, an evil insidious spell to take control of Arthur's movements and make him do the most embarrassing, uncharacteristic-
The door cracks open a sliver, revealing only darkness beyond. Arthur squints into it, makes out a shadowy slope of a cheekbone and the glimmer of an eye.
"Arthur?" Merlin croaks, voice hoarse almost beyond recognition. "What are you doing here?"
"Heard you were sick." Arthur states the obvious.
"I'm not sick, I'm dying."
Merlin opens the door a little wider, just enough to allow Arthur to slip though, mutters a "Come in before you let all the heat out", before slamming it shut again. His usually lanky body is swathed in a cocoon of blankets, wrapped tight from chin to feet, so that the only features visible were his mussed up hair and face. He turns his back on Arthur as soon as Arthur has stepped inside and shuffles away. Arthur follows him at a short distance into the living room, where Merlin collapses onto the sofa, drawing his feet up and curling into a not-so-little ball.
"What on earth are you doing?" Arthur asks, if only because speaking may distract him from the way his heart contracts in response to the way Merlin looks up at him, eyes unfocussed and dazed, the tip of his nose very red and the corners of his mouth tilted adorably down.
"'M cold," Merlin says, then sniffs and coughs all at the same time. Arthur's first instinct is to turn around and depart as soon as possible, because the last thing he needs is to be ill at Christmas. But then he takes a good look at Merlin's pathetic figure, huddled and shivering inside his fortress of blankets, looking distinctly like one of Arthur's waif-like but strong heroines.
At this point, Arthur suffers a mental breakdown. It is the only explanation he can think of to explain coming back to his senses to find himself peeling apart the layers and pressing a hand to the too-hot, damp skin at Merlin's lower back.
Merlin makes a startled, though still miserable, sound and Arthur huffs a, "Don't get used to this," and snuggles up close. Wraps his arms around Merlin's skinny shoulders and pulls Merlin tight against his body.
"Arthur," Merlin sniffles, wipes a disgustingly red nose on the edge of the blanket just inches away from Arthur's face. "Arthur, is this a gesture?"
Arthur tucks the blankets closer around them, trying to still the shivering in Merlin's muscles through sheer strength of will. "I've no idea what you mean."
Merlin snorts in amusement, breath bursting over Arthur's shoulder as he leans in close. "Do you like me, Arthur?" he asks.
"Shut up Merlin, of course not," Arthur says, even as the small circles he rubs into Merlin's back say yes, yes, yes.
"There's something about you, Arthur," Nimueh says, tapping her champagne glass against her perfect red lips and narrowing her eyes in speculation. "You look different. There's an air about you, but I can't work out what it is."
Half an hour into the annual Pendragon family Christmas dinner, and Arthur is already grinding his teeth hard enough to do lasting damage. It's better than the year before--where a full set of wine glasses were sacrificed for the sake of him not reaching over the table to strangle Nimueh, or possibly kill her with her own butter knife--but it's still not the improvement he hoped for with his many hours of practice finding his calm centre when is stepmother is concerned.
Arthur is also in no way aware of the 'air' of which she speaks. "I'm just enjoying your lovely company, Nimueh," he grits out. Nimueh's answering simper makes him tighten his hold on his cutlery, expending a considerable amount of energy into turning back to his plate. The night is young, and the pain shooting up the sides of his jaw doesn't bode well for a peaceful evening. He doesn't know how his father can possibly stand to live with the woman, whose vapidity and downright meanness must drive him up the wall. Uther isn't the type of man who suffers others easily. For him to have remained with Nimueh for so long, Arthur can only imagine Nimueh has her charms somewhere, very deep underneath the surface, and that's definitely one area of his father's life that Arthur never wants to touch upon.
"She's right, you know. You do look different. The last time we saw you, you were rather stressed," his father cuts in, gestures cordially with his glass in Arthur's direction. "Now you seem much better."
"Oh, you know, I was just having some writers' block trouble, nothing important." Nothing guarantees a swift change in subject like a reference to Arthur's disappointing career, and his father is nothing if not predictable. Uther forces out a smile and turns back to Nimueh, compliments her on the perfectly made roast potatoes that they all know she didn't make.
Arthur takes a deep breath and concentrates on his food, tries to think of a plausible emergency so that he can escape from this.
He doesn't see Merlin again for a week. It's not such a long time, really, but in the past weeks Arthur has rarely gone a single day without stopping by the flower shop, sometimes dropping by for a quick hello, but sometimes staying for hours. Merlin didn't seem to mind, and Arthur wouldn't have ceased visiting even if he did, probably.
But Merlin's shop closed for the holidays--its windows dark the one time Arthur drove past. And when Arthur wasn't fending off the family and all the headaches and intrusive thoughts that came with spending New Years in a blur of lights and fireworks, he was fending off Morgana, who decided the best way to get Arthur to write and not miss the extended deadline was to effectively move in with him.
Arthur can think of better ways to spend his holiday period, and if it were anyone else, Arthur would not have thought twice about shutting the door firmly in their faces. But one look at Morgana's pursed lips and the very pointy toes of her shoes stopped the words in his throat. Years of growing up with Uther also taught him when to keep silent and admit defeat, on top of the emotional stunting.
"What's wrong with you now? I thought you'd beaten the writers' block," Morgana asks, lounging on Arthur's favourite chair by the radiator, her fluffy-slippered feet up on the edge of the table opposite where Arthur sits with his laptop.
Arthur shrugs, half-heartedly hits a few keys before calling it a day. "Just not feeling it today."
"Surely it's not that difficult, Arthur. You write romance novels, they hardly require so much inner torment. Just add a few witticisms and banter-y exchanges here and there, and you'll have it ready for submission." Morgana punctuates her words with a dismissive flick of her fingers. He knows she's only teasing, trying to incite him into a frenzy of writing; he knows, because it's a trick she's used before, one that was surprisingly (or maybe not so much, considering Arthur's competitive nature) effective. Now, however, Arthur finds it hard to feel even the slightest bit indignant, her words fail to raise the expected hackles.
"Your constant presence puts me off, Morgana. Don't you have anything better to do than hound me in my own home?" Arthur says, mostly to wind Morgana up, because if his gut was correct--and it very often is--the non-forthcoming of adequate words has little to do with Morgana-related pressures and most to do with the fact that he's missing Merlin like a lovesick puppy. He has no idea how it's possible for the situation to have deteriorated so rapidly--he is usually very level-headed, after all--but Arthur is beginning to resemble one of his helplessly in love characters, and the most inexplicable thing is--he doesn't really think he minds.
The start of January is one big blur of parties, well wishes and nights that Arthur would rather forever obliterate from his long term memory. Once Morgana vacates the premises under threats of Arthur switching her shampoo for something unspeakably punishing (Arthur doesn't know what he was thinking, Morgana is surely plotting revenge already), he is free to abandon the laptop for things more pleasant. His friends, in their 'respectable' and probably soul-draining careers, rarely have the chance to let loose and celebrate, and in the whirl of new year celebration, they drag him to get-togethers and gatherings and Arthur spends most of it being charming and having fun and does not spend one second thinking about Merlin.
Rather, he spends 2 million seconds thinking about Merlin, which roughly coincides with the number of seconds Arthur spends awake.
Which is why he can be excused for thinking Merlin is a figment of his imagination when Merlin actually turns up on his doorstep one morning, looking somehow even skinnier than he did before Christmas (Arthur doesn't understand this, thinks Merlin must be some sort of freak of nature who metabolises at a superhuman rate, because he's seen Merlin eat).
Merlin's hair is even longer now--curling over his ears, miraculously making them appear normal-sized. There's a stray ray of sunlight cutting across his features as he smiles at Arthur, illuminating his eyes and contributing to the fantastical image of his sudden arrival. Arthur thinks for one absurd moment that Merlin must have command of the weather, of the sun itself, because nothing is this serendipitous; then Merlin ducks his head to escape the glare, and Arthur blinks; the spell broken.
"Hi," Merlin says. "Happy new year."
Having spent most of last night with a fun-induced headache, Arthur can't say he shares the sentiment. "What are you doing here?"
Merlin shrugs a little, smirks, and says, "Personal delivery."
Arthur looks pointedly at Merlin's empty arms, at the frayed sleeves of his too-large red jumper underneath the brown leather jacket. "You don't seem to be delivering anything."
Merlin rolls his eyes. "You have to make everything harder, don't you?"
Arthur resents that. He opens his mouth to object, but Merlin's rolling his eyes again, sunlight warming his skin, and he's stepping forward into Arthur's personal space and pulling him down into a kiss.
Arthur, in retrospect, really should have seen that one coming.
Not that he has been fantasising or even thinking about kissing Merlin (much), but the real thing is somewhat different to what Arthur was expecting. Merlin, in his haven of flowers and greenery, is all nature and grace; one simple turn of a finger presses a stem into the right position, exposes the delicate petals of the most shy of plants. He's calm and quiet, communicating benevolent mockery with a twitch of his lips or a quirk of an eyebrow. Here, now, pressing Arthur into the wall of his hallway, he kisses like Arthur feels--like a pressure cooker almost to bursting with pent up want and unredeemed thoughts. His hands move restlessly over Arthur's body--sliding to grip the bones of Arthur's wrist, around to cup the back of Arthur's head, fingers reaching to tangle in the fall of Arthur's hair.
And Arthur--Arthur is too shocked to move.
His hands remain frozen on Merlin's shoulders, where he placed them for balance in response to Merlin's unprompted manhandling, and he simply stares as Merlin lingers on pressing a kiss to his upper lip before pulling away.
"Participation is usually required in this situation, Arthur."
"I-what?"
"You'd think a romance writer would be a little faster on the uptake."
Arthur scowls, though doesn't quite stop himself from leaning forward into the heat of Merlin's body. "It's just all very...sudden."
"Well, if I waited for you to make the first move, we'd be here forever," Merlin presses in closer, slides a leg against Arthur's, hands gripping Arthur's hips as if to prevent escape. "You're surprisingly non-suave for someone who has to be good at this for a living, huh?"
That kind of slight upon Arthur's skills is completely uncalled for. "Don't be ridiculous. I am the most suave person you've ever had the good fortune to meet."
"If you're so suave, how come you're still standing here talking?" Merlin says, lips curved up in an annoyingly teasing smile that Arthur has come to like (though he has no idea why). "Because I'm reaching out here, Arthur. But I can quite easily turn around and-" Merlin starts to pull away, disentangling his legs as he speaks, and Arthur hurriedly grips his shoulders to pull him back, shutting him up with a painful clash of teeth against lips.
"Ow," Merlin mumbles against Arthur's mouth. Arthur feels the heat of his tongue as it sweeps out to survey the damage and slides across Arthur's lower lip. Then Arthur tilts his head, slides his hands down to cup the back of Merlin's arms and pulls him forward more gently, bringing their chests together, breaths together, and against all odds--things fall into place.
Later, when Merlin's lounging on top of Arthur's legs on the sofa (oddly heavy for a bloke with no fat whatsoever on his body), his hair dishevelled and mouth kissed red, Arthur runs a hand down his back under his shirt and enjoys feeling the bumps of Merlin's spine under his fingertips.
"So, you do personal deliveries for all your customers?" he asks.
Merlin offers up a toothy grin. "Oh, you know. Just for the ones I like."
Arthur glares. "And I'm the only one you like, right?"
Merlin hums, ducks his head to presses his lips against the skin at Arthur's throat, and infuriatingly doesn't answer the question. Arthur, who is absolutely secure in his own allure, digs his fingers into Merlin's side and forms restraints with his legs around Merlin's waist. "Right?"
"Arthur." Merlin half laughs, open-mouthed and gasping, wriggling to escape from Arthur's fingers. "Stop it."
"Not until you say it. 'You're special, Arthur', go on. Say it and I'll stop."
Merlin twists, breathless and glowing, all pointy chin and pointier elbows. Arthur doesn't think he's ever felt this way about another person, never let the butterflies take up permanent residence in his gut like this. But he knows why this one's different; in the cool winter light, Merlin is magical. His laughter, so remarkably boyish and unrestrained, makes Arthur want to cling on and never let go. His fictional romance leads never had anything on this.
Merlin swears under Arthur's assault, glaring through tears of pained mirth; the words, when they're finally forced past gritted teeth, are barely comprehensible, but Arthur takes it in the way they were intended and ceases.
He smoothes his hand down Merlin's back again, rides the shudders, and grins into the top of Merlin's bowed head.
Author: Anonymous
Recipient: pasty_pants
Pairing(s)/Character(s): Merlin/Arthur
Warnings: None! Unless you count ridiculousness, of which there is plenty. :D Oh and Modern!AU.
Spoilers: None at all.
Rating: So low it hurts. PG.
Word Count: ~5,800
Summary: Modern!AU In which Arthur is the least romantic romance novelist in the world, and Merlin is the only person who can cure his writers' block. Arthur keeps losing control of his feet, and Merlin refuses be wooed by witticisms alone--much to Arthur's chagrin.
Author's Note: Happy holidays! I really hope you like this; I took the modern AU and cuddling on couches part of your prompt and ran with it. ♥ I'm also really sorry for the non-porn, it just didn't want to happen! Title from Bookshop Casanova by The Clientele. And thanks to 'AO' for reading through, 'A', 'P' and 'G' for betaing.
Disclaimer: This is a work of fanfiction - none of this ever happened. No copyright infringement is intended. No profit is made from this work. Please observe your local laws with regards to the age-limit and content of this work.
It's a discreet little shop, tucked away in the corner of the high street--the front painted fresh green with swirls of muted colour. Arthur can be forgiven for not noticing its existence earlier despite walking by at least once a day for the past year.
He's very glad it's here, now that he's noticed it.
The bell above the door chimes as he pushes it open, and warm earthy air fills his lungs as soon as he steps inside. He wrinkles his nose, makes a face and tries not brush up against anything.
A dark-haired man bent over a bucket of sunflowers straightens up and flashes a set of white teeth in greeting.
"What can I do for you?" he asks, wiping his hands off on a towel. He's good-looking in an unusual, mildly awkward way, though it's all secondary to the pair of ears he's sporting.
"I need some flowers."
"Well," the man says, making a show of looking around, "I dare say you've come to the right place. What were you thinking of?"
Arthur searches in his memory for flowers that Nimueh would appreciate, but comes up empty. His father would call this poor planning; Arthur calls this not giving a crap. But missing his stepmother's birthday dinner doesn't feature well in his father's eyes as it is, and Arthur is not willing to sit through another frosty family dinner without having made any reconciliatory gestures.
The man must see the indecision on his face. He laughs, the sound oddly appealing, and asks, "Well, what's she like?"
Arthur thinks. "She's nice looking, I suppose. A bit evil, mind. A complete gold digger."
The man opens and closes his mouth, looks somewhat taken aback, disapproving. "Well, you think so highly of your girlfriend."
"Girlfriend?" Arthur chokes back a laugh, "Don't be ridiculous, as if I'd ever touch that witch. She's my stepmother."
"Right. Conforming nicely to the stereotype, are we?"
Arthur glares. "Can you help me out or not?"
The man laughs again, his blue eyes crinkling at the corners with amusement. "I'll see what I can do."
Nimueh, as it turns out, loves her lily bouquet enough to forgive Arthur for the non-appearance. Arthur suffers her simpering for an evening, sits through his father's approving looks and drinks far more wine than is advisable until he fakes a yawn and pleads exhaustion.
"Arthur, darling. You must stop staying up to all hours writing those silly stories. It causes your father a great deal of stress to know you're wasting your talents like this."
Arthur risks a glance at his father, who stares stonily back. It's an old argument, one that Arthur won't be swayed on; Nimueh just likes scheming far too much to let it go. Arthur holds his tongue, an impressive feat considering the alcohol in his system, and keeps quiet while kissing the air beside Nimueh's cheek, shaking his father's hand and finally escaping into the crisp night air.
His silly stories, as she likes to put it, pay the bills and garner him the occasional pleasant review in the Sunday papers. While his readership is a little more skewed toward the middle aged female end of the spectrum than he planned when first starting out as a writer, Arthur has come to terms with the fact that it just comes with the romance territory. And while his father would much rather Arthur take over the family business, Arthur is very good at what he does and is unwilling to let his evil witch of a stepmother wear him down.
A writer's worst nightmare features rather prominently a blank computer screen, or a blank piece of paper. Arthur has considered himself lucky, in his relatively short career of using words to earn a living, to have never run out of them.
Every good streak ends at some point, and Arthur. Well, Arthur has spent the last week with his nervous fingers hovering ineffectually over his keyboard, willing words to come out to no avail.
When he shifts in his chair he fancies he can smell wafts of unpleasant body odour, having not showered in a week, and his palm encounters the product of the week's worth of stubble as he reaches up to scrub a hand over his face. His father would be horrified to see him now, disapproving no doubt of the mugs of coffee littering the desk, the balls of abandoned notebook pages, the shrivelled crisp packets. He's always considered himself a level-headed person--great under pressure, good at finding alternative solutions--but you never know your limits until you're tested, and it seems Arthur at his limits is a giant slob who can't quite function well enough to clean up after himself.
The blinking cursor is mocking him, and Arthur, for all his substantial self-control built from years of living with his father, barely stops himself from chucking his now-cold drink at it. He feels like a child throwing a tantrum when there's no one there to witness--no satisfaction, no validation and certainly no feeling better.
He groans out loud, grinds the heels of both hands into his eyes and stands up from his chair so fast he sends it crashing backwards across the room. He hasn't left the house in a week and the walls are starting to close in. His mobile rings from somewhere in the room and he knows without looking it's his agent. When he finally digs it out from pile of papers, he has fourteen messages waiting for him, all from Morgana, all regarding his missed check-in deadline. As he listens, the messages become increasingly more frustrated and terse. Arthur's in no way hiding. He's just...stalling. It's a new feeling, this aimless helpless groping for words that won't come, and he's not sure what to do for inspiration to strike again.
Morgana is a woman who at her limits is formidable indeed, she has to be, being agent to absentminded writers, and Arthur can't avoid her forever. He paces the study--four steps forward, turn, four steps back--and fists his hair. He can't stay here forever.
It's sunny outside, for the first time in days.
Arthur scowls, cursing the weather for daring to be so incongruous, himself for being an apparent useless excuse of a writer, and everything else that crosses his path just because he can.
It doesn't make him feel better. If anything, frustration morphs slowly into anger and by the time he stalks onto the high street, he's certain it radiates from him. Arthur never has handled helplessness well, and today is no exception.
He skirts around a couple of underage girls, aware of their eyes on his back as he heads away, and lets his feet move him in any direction they so desire. He's a conduit to the unconscious forces, a channel for ideas. He blanks his mind, and waits for inspiration.
He waits, and waits; passes the newsagents and the Boots and the insidiously placed kebab shop that he'd never admit to frequenting, were it not for the piles of small white plastic bags stuffed under the kitchen sink. It's a 15 minute walk from one end of the high street to the other; the sun brings out a slight sheen of sweat, adding to the layers, and still nothing. He swipes a hand through his hair, belatedly wishing he'd bothered to jam a hat on before he left, both for the warmth and for the unwashed state of his hair. His feet drag to a stop outside the flower shop, its windows bright with the clutches of flowers, green with leaves, glossy and healthy in the sun. Arthur's drawn into the humid interior before he knows what he's doing.
The man from before is once again bent over an arrangement, carefully tucking a cluster of baby's breath into the wicker basket. He looks up as the door opens, eyes lighting up.
"Back so soon?"
Arthur nods curtly, glances around at the green tilts of stems, delicate curves of petals in the small crush of space. He feels out of place, fingers curled and cold in his pockets; feels odd in his tailored but creased trousers, his ridiculously expensive shoes and his unwashed self. He watches the man shove unselfconsciously at the heavy fall of hair across his forehead--too long and in desperate need of a good cut--squinting into the sideways glint from the front window.
"Another gift for your evil stepmother?" the man says, lightly, leaning his elbows up onto the counter. Arthur barks out a laugh, both startled and pleased to have been remembered.
"Not if I can help it, don't want to give her the idea that I actually like her."
The man arches an eyebrow and shakes his head. "I can see how you wouldn't want that." His dry tone does nothing to hide his amusement, and Arthur, usually so comfortable in his own skin, shifts on the spot, unable to keep still, to settle. He doesn't know what he's doing here, doesn't know why his feet led him here.
"She liked it--the flowers, she said they were special," he offers up, liking the way the man's lips curve wider into a genuine smile.
"Well, I'm glad she's not too evil to appreciate a good bouquet."
"Trust me, she's bad enough," Arthur snorts. The man graces him with another bright smile that lights up his face, transforming it from mildly attractive to something that makes Arthur pause and blink. His long fingers look like they could be a hindrance in the manipulation of petals and delicate leaves, but he seems to have no trouble, deftly arranging the stems into place, sure in his movements. Arthur admires it in silence for a moment, then offers, "I'm Arthur."
Another flash of teeth and crinkling of blue eyes. "Merlin."
The sun's down by the time Arthur makes it home, the temperature drastically lower; he shivers in his thin shirt as he turns on the central heating, and walks in darkness to his study. The blank document is still up on the screen, but as he sits down, words come to him, flow out through his fingertips onto the screen, sentences and story taking shape. By the time he resurfaces an hour or so later, his mind is brimming with possibilities, and he has written more in one hour than in the entire week before.
He should have known ignoring Morgana's calls would be a bad idea; she doesn't take kindly to being ignored.
Her retaliation comes in the form of the ringing doorbell at an obscenely early hour of the morning. Arthur is hunched over his keyboard, eyes straining in the murky light, still frantically typing, trying to catch up with the speed of his thoughts, the words bubbling up inside that are clamouring to be put on paper.
He registers the first ring only vaguely, a little dizzy from the lack of sleep. But when the phone besides him starts to ring, the noise combined snaps him out of his zone and he looks up, bewildered and not a little annoyed.
"What?" He scowls as he opens the door without checking to see who it is first. A mistake, as it turns out.
Morgana stands on his doorstep, arms crossed and disapproval radiating from the top of her glossy hair to the tips of her boots.
"Crap," Arthur says.
And Morgana, lips pursed into a white line, says, voice clipped. "Quite."
"I think my agent is secretly plotting my death," Arthur says, on his fifth visit to Merlin's shop. He's clean-shaven and freshly showered this time, and he felt somewhat warm inside at the obvious once-over Merlin gave him when he first entered.
"Why would she do that?" Merlin mumbles absently around a mouthful of pink ribbon. He struggles briefly with the clutch of sunflowers in his hands before rolling his eyes and shoving them at Arthur with a muttered, "Here, be useful."
Arthur takes them and holds them in place while Merlin loops the ribbon twice around the stem and grabs some tissue paper from the pile.
"Because I've missed my draft deadline and keep putting her off," Arthur says. "Also, I think she may be inherently evil."
Merlin lets out a snort, eyes darting up give Arthur an obvious look of amusement. "It's a hard life you lead, surrounded by all these evil women."
Arthur scowled, sure Merlin's only teasing. "You don't even know the half of it."
"Why don't you just write the thing and stop dodging her?" Merlin asks, as if Arthur hasn't thought of that already.
"Because I'm stuck! You don't understand, writer's block is a horrible thing, it sneaks up on you when you least suspect it and bam, suddenly you're getting out 5 words a day, and most of those are adjectives."
"Is that why you spend so much of your time here? Because you're bumming off on work?"
"No, I happen to find I write better when I get home from this place."
Merlin's hands still on the tissue paper, and he smirks. "Are you saying my shop is inspiring, Arthur? Are you saying I inspire you?"
If he were not too dignified to do so, Arthur would have spluttered, instead, he just dumps the sunflowers back into Merlin's already full hands, and lies through his teeth. "What could I possibly find inspiring about this place?"
Merlin's answering smile is bright enough to rival the sun.
Arthur ends up buying a lot of flowers.
Really, a lot of flowers.
At first, the purchases are perfectly justified. Morgana deserves something in return for not actually following through with her homicidal plans, and Gwen's birthday bouquet is just par for the course. The chrysanthemum basket looks great on Arthur's coffee table, and the newest bunch of tiger lilies are very inspiring to look at when he hits a stumbling block while writing.
It's the fifth, and sixth and all the purchases that follow that Arthur finds difficult to explain. His feet, traitorous as they are, seem to take him to the flower shop at every opportunity. What starts out as quick trips to the newsagents turn into two hour debates with Merlin over which is more appropriate, Earl Grey with milk (Merlin, the uncouth bohemian) or without (Arthur, clearly). Arthur's not sure at which point down the line his life took a turn for the ridiculous, but here he is, his new favourite pastime trying to get Merlin to engage with him.
Arthur suspects he has frequented the shop one time too many when the only reaction he gets upon entering is a spare glance and a distracted smile.
"I'm a paying customer, you know," he says, leans his hip up against the side counter and watches Merlin straighten out a roll of string.
Merlin snorts, doesn't look up. "I know. This month, you've single-handedly kept me in business. Which I'm grateful for, I assure you."
"Well then," Arthur says.
"It's just," Merlin quirks his lips, as though debating with himself. "Don't you have better things to do? Aside from the obvious?"
It's a perfectly reasonable question. If Arthur were in Merlin's place, no doubt he would ask just the same, but being in his own rather inexplicable position instead, Arthur merely shrugs a shoulder and pokes a finger at a rose stem.
"Not really." What comes out is perilously close to the truth and Arthur fights the urge to introduce his face to his palm as Merlin pauses to give Arthur his full attention.
Well done, Arthur tells himself. You have his undivided attention, and you only had to sound like the world's saddest sod to get it.
Merlin's face scrunches up in sympathy, and he asks, hesitantly, "What about your friends, Arthur?"
God, now he thinks you're a friendless sod too.
"My friends aren't lucky enough to have such free schedules; they all have soul draining careers as nurses and bankers. And you're the only fri-" Arthur cuts himself off. "You're the only one I know who's just as free as I am."
Merlin grins, and Arthur's heart does that little hop-jump-stutter thing that he's beginning to come to associate with Merlin and his strange little shop.
He meets Lance and Gwen one night after work for a drink. One thing leads to another, one drink leads to... several, and before he knows it, Arthur's pouring out the entire sordid tale to them. He's horrified to find himself telling them about his attempts to get Merlin to notice him, about the way he feels all warm inside every time Merlin so much as smiles at him.
He realises, as his head droops low over his pint glass, that maybe he's a little bit infatuated with Merlin and his ridiculous green apron. He's even starting to find the ears oddly endearing. He doesn't even know how this all happened, and Gwen and Lance are of no help whatsoever because he can barely hear himself think over the sound of their uncontrollable fits of laughter.
He's glad someone finds his position humorous; he's sure it would play out rather nicely as a sub-plot in a novel, where the hero nurtures a silent but enduring love and in the end wins it over with his dashing looks and personality.
He's been witty in Merlin's presence, he's been effortlessly charming and good-humoured, he's most definitely been attractive. By the book, Merlin should have fallen straight into his arms by now, but Merlin is apparently very elusive. When Arthur says something to this effect to Lance and Gwen, however, Gwen just laughs some more and pats him gently on the arm, saying, "Life isn't a romance novel, Arthur. Witty repartee does not a successful romance make."
Arthur disagrees, but apparently his friends are all convinced he's emotionally stunted from years of Uther's upbringing, and claims he really doesn't have a leg to stand on anyway.
"Talk to him, Arthur," Lance says, looking so earnest that Arthur's immediate reaction of 'what do you think I've been doing all this time, genius?' doesn't quite make it past his lips.
"Without being witty and charming and like one of your romance book heroes," Gwen adds. "Just be yourself."
Arthur thinks that's probably good advice. Until he wakes up the next morning, and calls up Gwen on her early shift to demand, "What do you mean just be myself. I am naturally witty and charming, Guinevere."
One week before Christmas, Arthur pushes open the door to the flower shop with a greeting already falling from his lips only to realise that the person standing behind the counter isn't actually Merlin.
"Oh," he says. "Hello."
The old man blinks and smiles at him politely. "Can I help you?"
"Merlin," Arthur says. "I'm, uh. He's not here today?"
There's a look of enlightenment on the old man's face, and he laughs. "Oh, you must be Arthur. Merlin warned me you might drop by, said to tell you he's not fit for the world right now."
Arthur doesn't think anyone needs to be warned of his approach, but he asks, "He's all right?"
"Oh yes, quite all right. Though you'd never think it with all of his complaining. You'd think the boy's never caught a cold before."
Arthur leaves the shop and heads back to his house, feeling oddly offbeat--the rhythm of his day interrupted by an unexpected strain of winter flu. At the junction, his feet take him left instead of right, heading for the row of semis just at the edge of the city centre, where Merlin mentioned--once in passing--he lived.
It's not a long walk; he's staring up at Merlin's dark curtained windows, his hand raised to the doorbell before he has a chance to think through his actions. Arthur wonders idly whether Merlin cast a spell over his feet the first time they met, an evil insidious spell to take control of Arthur's movements and make him do the most embarrassing, uncharacteristic-
The door cracks open a sliver, revealing only darkness beyond. Arthur squints into it, makes out a shadowy slope of a cheekbone and the glimmer of an eye.
"Arthur?" Merlin croaks, voice hoarse almost beyond recognition. "What are you doing here?"
"Heard you were sick." Arthur states the obvious.
"I'm not sick, I'm dying."
Merlin opens the door a little wider, just enough to allow Arthur to slip though, mutters a "Come in before you let all the heat out", before slamming it shut again. His usually lanky body is swathed in a cocoon of blankets, wrapped tight from chin to feet, so that the only features visible were his mussed up hair and face. He turns his back on Arthur as soon as Arthur has stepped inside and shuffles away. Arthur follows him at a short distance into the living room, where Merlin collapses onto the sofa, drawing his feet up and curling into a not-so-little ball.
"What on earth are you doing?" Arthur asks, if only because speaking may distract him from the way his heart contracts in response to the way Merlin looks up at him, eyes unfocussed and dazed, the tip of his nose very red and the corners of his mouth tilted adorably down.
"'M cold," Merlin says, then sniffs and coughs all at the same time. Arthur's first instinct is to turn around and depart as soon as possible, because the last thing he needs is to be ill at Christmas. But then he takes a good look at Merlin's pathetic figure, huddled and shivering inside his fortress of blankets, looking distinctly like one of Arthur's waif-like but strong heroines.
At this point, Arthur suffers a mental breakdown. It is the only explanation he can think of to explain coming back to his senses to find himself peeling apart the layers and pressing a hand to the too-hot, damp skin at Merlin's lower back.
Merlin makes a startled, though still miserable, sound and Arthur huffs a, "Don't get used to this," and snuggles up close. Wraps his arms around Merlin's skinny shoulders and pulls Merlin tight against his body.
"Arthur," Merlin sniffles, wipes a disgustingly red nose on the edge of the blanket just inches away from Arthur's face. "Arthur, is this a gesture?"
Arthur tucks the blankets closer around them, trying to still the shivering in Merlin's muscles through sheer strength of will. "I've no idea what you mean."
Merlin snorts in amusement, breath bursting over Arthur's shoulder as he leans in close. "Do you like me, Arthur?" he asks.
"Shut up Merlin, of course not," Arthur says, even as the small circles he rubs into Merlin's back say yes, yes, yes.
"There's something about you, Arthur," Nimueh says, tapping her champagne glass against her perfect red lips and narrowing her eyes in speculation. "You look different. There's an air about you, but I can't work out what it is."
Half an hour into the annual Pendragon family Christmas dinner, and Arthur is already grinding his teeth hard enough to do lasting damage. It's better than the year before--where a full set of wine glasses were sacrificed for the sake of him not reaching over the table to strangle Nimueh, or possibly kill her with her own butter knife--but it's still not the improvement he hoped for with his many hours of practice finding his calm centre when is stepmother is concerned.
Arthur is also in no way aware of the 'air' of which she speaks. "I'm just enjoying your lovely company, Nimueh," he grits out. Nimueh's answering simper makes him tighten his hold on his cutlery, expending a considerable amount of energy into turning back to his plate. The night is young, and the pain shooting up the sides of his jaw doesn't bode well for a peaceful evening. He doesn't know how his father can possibly stand to live with the woman, whose vapidity and downright meanness must drive him up the wall. Uther isn't the type of man who suffers others easily. For him to have remained with Nimueh for so long, Arthur can only imagine Nimueh has her charms somewhere, very deep underneath the surface, and that's definitely one area of his father's life that Arthur never wants to touch upon.
"She's right, you know. You do look different. The last time we saw you, you were rather stressed," his father cuts in, gestures cordially with his glass in Arthur's direction. "Now you seem much better."
"Oh, you know, I was just having some writers' block trouble, nothing important." Nothing guarantees a swift change in subject like a reference to Arthur's disappointing career, and his father is nothing if not predictable. Uther forces out a smile and turns back to Nimueh, compliments her on the perfectly made roast potatoes that they all know she didn't make.
Arthur takes a deep breath and concentrates on his food, tries to think of a plausible emergency so that he can escape from this.
He doesn't see Merlin again for a week. It's not such a long time, really, but in the past weeks Arthur has rarely gone a single day without stopping by the flower shop, sometimes dropping by for a quick hello, but sometimes staying for hours. Merlin didn't seem to mind, and Arthur wouldn't have ceased visiting even if he did, probably.
But Merlin's shop closed for the holidays--its windows dark the one time Arthur drove past. And when Arthur wasn't fending off the family and all the headaches and intrusive thoughts that came with spending New Years in a blur of lights and fireworks, he was fending off Morgana, who decided the best way to get Arthur to write and not miss the extended deadline was to effectively move in with him.
Arthur can think of better ways to spend his holiday period, and if it were anyone else, Arthur would not have thought twice about shutting the door firmly in their faces. But one look at Morgana's pursed lips and the very pointy toes of her shoes stopped the words in his throat. Years of growing up with Uther also taught him when to keep silent and admit defeat, on top of the emotional stunting.
"What's wrong with you now? I thought you'd beaten the writers' block," Morgana asks, lounging on Arthur's favourite chair by the radiator, her fluffy-slippered feet up on the edge of the table opposite where Arthur sits with his laptop.
Arthur shrugs, half-heartedly hits a few keys before calling it a day. "Just not feeling it today."
"Surely it's not that difficult, Arthur. You write romance novels, they hardly require so much inner torment. Just add a few witticisms and banter-y exchanges here and there, and you'll have it ready for submission." Morgana punctuates her words with a dismissive flick of her fingers. He knows she's only teasing, trying to incite him into a frenzy of writing; he knows, because it's a trick she's used before, one that was surprisingly (or maybe not so much, considering Arthur's competitive nature) effective. Now, however, Arthur finds it hard to feel even the slightest bit indignant, her words fail to raise the expected hackles.
"Your constant presence puts me off, Morgana. Don't you have anything better to do than hound me in my own home?" Arthur says, mostly to wind Morgana up, because if his gut was correct--and it very often is--the non-forthcoming of adequate words has little to do with Morgana-related pressures and most to do with the fact that he's missing Merlin like a lovesick puppy. He has no idea how it's possible for the situation to have deteriorated so rapidly--he is usually very level-headed, after all--but Arthur is beginning to resemble one of his helplessly in love characters, and the most inexplicable thing is--he doesn't really think he minds.
The start of January is one big blur of parties, well wishes and nights that Arthur would rather forever obliterate from his long term memory. Once Morgana vacates the premises under threats of Arthur switching her shampoo for something unspeakably punishing (Arthur doesn't know what he was thinking, Morgana is surely plotting revenge already), he is free to abandon the laptop for things more pleasant. His friends, in their 'respectable' and probably soul-draining careers, rarely have the chance to let loose and celebrate, and in the whirl of new year celebration, they drag him to get-togethers and gatherings and Arthur spends most of it being charming and having fun and does not spend one second thinking about Merlin.
Rather, he spends 2 million seconds thinking about Merlin, which roughly coincides with the number of seconds Arthur spends awake.
Which is why he can be excused for thinking Merlin is a figment of his imagination when Merlin actually turns up on his doorstep one morning, looking somehow even skinnier than he did before Christmas (Arthur doesn't understand this, thinks Merlin must be some sort of freak of nature who metabolises at a superhuman rate, because he's seen Merlin eat).
Merlin's hair is even longer now--curling over his ears, miraculously making them appear normal-sized. There's a stray ray of sunlight cutting across his features as he smiles at Arthur, illuminating his eyes and contributing to the fantastical image of his sudden arrival. Arthur thinks for one absurd moment that Merlin must have command of the weather, of the sun itself, because nothing is this serendipitous; then Merlin ducks his head to escape the glare, and Arthur blinks; the spell broken.
"Hi," Merlin says. "Happy new year."
Having spent most of last night with a fun-induced headache, Arthur can't say he shares the sentiment. "What are you doing here?"
Merlin shrugs a little, smirks, and says, "Personal delivery."
Arthur looks pointedly at Merlin's empty arms, at the frayed sleeves of his too-large red jumper underneath the brown leather jacket. "You don't seem to be delivering anything."
Merlin rolls his eyes. "You have to make everything harder, don't you?"
Arthur resents that. He opens his mouth to object, but Merlin's rolling his eyes again, sunlight warming his skin, and he's stepping forward into Arthur's personal space and pulling him down into a kiss.
Arthur, in retrospect, really should have seen that one coming.
Not that he has been fantasising or even thinking about kissing Merlin (much), but the real thing is somewhat different to what Arthur was expecting. Merlin, in his haven of flowers and greenery, is all nature and grace; one simple turn of a finger presses a stem into the right position, exposes the delicate petals of the most shy of plants. He's calm and quiet, communicating benevolent mockery with a twitch of his lips or a quirk of an eyebrow. Here, now, pressing Arthur into the wall of his hallway, he kisses like Arthur feels--like a pressure cooker almost to bursting with pent up want and unredeemed thoughts. His hands move restlessly over Arthur's body--sliding to grip the bones of Arthur's wrist, around to cup the back of Arthur's head, fingers reaching to tangle in the fall of Arthur's hair.
And Arthur--Arthur is too shocked to move.
His hands remain frozen on Merlin's shoulders, where he placed them for balance in response to Merlin's unprompted manhandling, and he simply stares as Merlin lingers on pressing a kiss to his upper lip before pulling away.
"Participation is usually required in this situation, Arthur."
"I-what?"
"You'd think a romance writer would be a little faster on the uptake."
Arthur scowls, though doesn't quite stop himself from leaning forward into the heat of Merlin's body. "It's just all very...sudden."
"Well, if I waited for you to make the first move, we'd be here forever," Merlin presses in closer, slides a leg against Arthur's, hands gripping Arthur's hips as if to prevent escape. "You're surprisingly non-suave for someone who has to be good at this for a living, huh?"
That kind of slight upon Arthur's skills is completely uncalled for. "Don't be ridiculous. I am the most suave person you've ever had the good fortune to meet."
"If you're so suave, how come you're still standing here talking?" Merlin says, lips curved up in an annoyingly teasing smile that Arthur has come to like (though he has no idea why). "Because I'm reaching out here, Arthur. But I can quite easily turn around and-" Merlin starts to pull away, disentangling his legs as he speaks, and Arthur hurriedly grips his shoulders to pull him back, shutting him up with a painful clash of teeth against lips.
"Ow," Merlin mumbles against Arthur's mouth. Arthur feels the heat of his tongue as it sweeps out to survey the damage and slides across Arthur's lower lip. Then Arthur tilts his head, slides his hands down to cup the back of Merlin's arms and pulls him forward more gently, bringing their chests together, breaths together, and against all odds--things fall into place.
Later, when Merlin's lounging on top of Arthur's legs on the sofa (oddly heavy for a bloke with no fat whatsoever on his body), his hair dishevelled and mouth kissed red, Arthur runs a hand down his back under his shirt and enjoys feeling the bumps of Merlin's spine under his fingertips.
"So, you do personal deliveries for all your customers?" he asks.
Merlin offers up a toothy grin. "Oh, you know. Just for the ones I like."
Arthur glares. "And I'm the only one you like, right?"
Merlin hums, ducks his head to presses his lips against the skin at Arthur's throat, and infuriatingly doesn't answer the question. Arthur, who is absolutely secure in his own allure, digs his fingers into Merlin's side and forms restraints with his legs around Merlin's waist. "Right?"
"Arthur." Merlin half laughs, open-mouthed and gasping, wriggling to escape from Arthur's fingers. "Stop it."
"Not until you say it. 'You're special, Arthur', go on. Say it and I'll stop."
Merlin twists, breathless and glowing, all pointy chin and pointier elbows. Arthur doesn't think he's ever felt this way about another person, never let the butterflies take up permanent residence in his gut like this. But he knows why this one's different; in the cool winter light, Merlin is magical. His laughter, so remarkably boyish and unrestrained, makes Arthur want to cling on and never let go. His fictional romance leads never had anything on this.
Merlin swears under Arthur's assault, glaring through tears of pained mirth; the words, when they're finally forced past gritted teeth, are barely comprehensible, but Arthur takes it in the way they were intended and ceases.
He smoothes his hand down Merlin's back again, rides the shudders, and grins into the top of Merlin's bowed head.