Twenty Years Later (3/7)
Part 3
Arthur felt like shit the next day. As much as he wanted to return to the bizarre dream he'd been having when he'd been massaging Merlin's feet so amazingly well that he'd been extracting satisfied little noises from him, he'd never the sort of person who could stay in bed with a hangover. He grasped around for his watch. 7:31.
Reluctantly, he forced himself to sit up. The room swam before him, and it took a few seconds of rapid blinking before he realised where he was. Merlin's bedroom. Fuck, he thought, trying to sort through jumbled memories of the night before, already guilty that he had forced his friend onto the sofa.
He padded across the room, pushed the door open a crack and took in the evidence of the mess they'd made of the living room the night before. The sofa was empty, but he could see a rumpled blanket and some pillows thrown across it, and a pair of jeans kicked onto the floor. In the background he could hear Merlin rattling around in the kitchen, and a few seconds later the smell of coffee and toast hit his nostrils. His stomach lurched, and he shot back to the en-suite, only barely reaching the toilet in time.
Nice going, you lightweight, he thought, wiping his mouth, still retching slightly. When he was able to move again, he folded his clothes on the side and turned the shower on.
Before he got into the shower, he wrapped a towel around his waist and went to peek out through the bedroom door again, which had nothing to do with the fact that Merlin might have been walking around in his boxers, if they was even what he still wore. The kitchen door was slightly ajar, and he caught sight of a bare leg before Merlin bobbed back out of sight, returning to the task at hand. Just as Arthur turned to get back to the shower, he was struck by how the tidy the living room was now: the blanket was folded neatly on top of the pillows, the discarded clothing was nowhere to be seen, and the glasses and bottles and plates that had littered Merlin's coffee table had vanished.
Must have been chucking for ages, Arthur thought. Still ,it didn't feel like I was in there more than five minutes tops.
Although this odd sense of shifting time, and things not being as they ought to be, were all almost certainly hangover induced, it reminded him a little too much of his university days, the final days of his first year, to be exact, but unlike his normal recollections, these memories were not happy ones.
He considered checking his watch to see how long he had really taken to relieve himself of last night's dinner, but at the thought of food the room started to spin again, and it was all he could do to sink down to the floor and crawl back to the shower. The water already on, he sat, groaning, under the spray, his knees tucked up underneath his chin, and his head in his arms, waiting for the urge to heave to pass.
The water from the shower was too hot, but it shook some of the inebriation from him and helped him focus on the night before. Gwen was the last person he'd expected to see, but in retrospect, after the initial shock, he hadn't felt as bad as he'd been expecting to. In a way, that one glimpse of her with Lance had helped confirm some things he'd been wondering about for a while, but, being mixed up with trying to make sense of his growing feelings for Merlin, they were things he hadn't dared hope were true.
His brain was still fuddled with all the delights a wine and whiskey hangover could offer, but as he sat under the scalding stream of water, he found he could string together a few coherent thoughts.
He and Gwen. He knew now they had mistaken each other's loss of people they'd loved for love for one another, and for a long time, it had been too humiliating to admit that despite his best attempts to make things work, to do everything properly, he had got it very wrong.
He could acknowledge now that Gwen had propelled herself into a safe, risk-free relationship with him because she had been mourning the loss of Lance. Lately, Arthur had started to consider the possibility that he had done exactly the same thing; he had still been mourning the loss of Merlin.
He'd been thinking along those lines for a while, but somehow his reasoning hadn't matched up with how he felt. He'd known he and Gwen weren't right for one another for a long time - maybe even before she left if he was being really honest - but that hadn't done a thing to stop the devastation he felt at her leaving. After last night, though, he felt as if something had changed, something had slipped or shifted, and the sense in his head was finally drawing level with the sense in his heart.
Even though he'd not said as much at the group, or to Merlin, or to - god forbid - Uther and Morgana, oddly, just the fact that all these people had been there had helped him bring his thoughts and his feelings together. It felt like two parts of him, separated for too long, had finally clicked into place, and now he was ready to move forward.
Finally, he had a sense of closure.
Arthur practically bounced out of the shower, and promptly smacked his head off the sink.
'Are you all right in there?' Merlin shouted. 'You didn't slip did you?'
'I'm fine,' Arthur called. 'Great actually. I'll be out in a minute.'
He wrapped himself up in a towel, and walked back into the bedroom to find that Merlin had let himself in.
'There're some clean clothes here,' Merlin said, pointing to a pile on the bed. 'I picked out the larger ones. Stay for a bit if you want; I've got to go to work.'
Arthur beamed widely, so preoccupied with his recent revelations that he didn't notice the pinched expression on Merlin's face. 'Thanks,' he said to Merlin, who walked out of the room without a word.
Arthur dressed quickly and went into the living room, not wanting to miss Merlin before he left. He'd hoped they could share breakfast together or, considering the state his digestive system was in, maybe just a coffee.
'Hey,' Arthur said. 'You're not going are you?'
'Sorry, I'll be late,' Merlin said, hovering at the door, frowning as he examined his car keys. 'Are you going to be sick again? Do you need a bowl or something?
Arthur shook his head. He was possessed by an urge to stop Merlin and tell him everything that he'd been thinking about, but, embarrassed by the things he could and couldn’t remember about the night before, and wondering if, really, Merlin would want to be accosted by a half-drunk moron when he needed to leave, he let it drop.
'Just, well, thanks,' he said, eventually. 'Last night ... I'm glad you were around.'
Merlin gave him an odd, twisted little smile, but he didn't move his eyes from his keys. 'Least I could do,' he said, and let himself out.
~~~
Later, that morning, when the world had just about righted itself and he felt more like a human again, Arthur realised that he still wanted to talk. He picked his phone up from the coffee table, called a cab, and then sent Merlin a text message.
Fancy some company later? Up for anything except booze.
By the time the cab arrived he still hadn't got a reply, so he sent him another message promising he'd put the clothes he'd borrowed through the wash. Over an hour later, back at Uther's, he felt his pocket vibrate.
sorry, stuff to do. clothes can wait.
Arthur stared at the screen for a few seconds. Now he thought of it, Merlin had seemed a little off that morning. Even so, he didn't think it was anything to worry about; they'd probably see each other at the weekend, and they could talk then.
~~~
They didn't see each other at the weekend, or the next week for that matter. By the time the following weekend came and went and it was getting towards Tuesday evening again, Arthur was beginning to worry.
Merlin was busy, or so he said. Not that Arthur had any reason to doubt him. He didn't think so, anyway, but with every day that passed Arthur felt more and more like Merlin was trying to avoid him, and he didn't understand why, or what he might have done wrong.
Still, he didn't think it was right to do anything just yet. For a start, he didn't really know what it was he was supposed to do. Merlin's absence was most likely nothing. He probably did have too much on, and Arthur should probably feel happier about that. After all, part of the reason Merlin had been going to the group was to try to meet new people and reconnect with the world a bit more. Now it seemed he was doing just that, Arthur couldn't help but feel a twinge of jealousy that he wasn't part of it.
Of course Merlin was polite as ever, but each time Arthur suggested they do anything, he was met with another rebuttal. He was used to hearing from Merlin a few times a day, he'd started to expect it, almost, and now that contact wasn't there any more, he realised just how much he looked forward to their bantering texts and phone calls and get-togethers, and how much all of that had come to mean to him.
Now he was instigating everything, Merlin's responses were civil, but brief. The playfulness that had been there before was gone, and although it could all be explained away if he chose to believe Merlin's version of events, the more that time went on, the harder it became for him to do that.
Arthur kept himself focused on other things. He was back at Dragonfly almost four out of every five days now. He still hadn't committed himself to any fieldwork yet, but he was there, overseeing everything. It distracted him, but not completely; and every time he came across an artefact with even the most tenuous arcane connections, his first thought was to tell Merlin. For the first week or so he had done just that, but the polite disinterest he got in response had started to put him off.
It was group night, and Arthur was deliberating over whether to go. He'd been the week before, hopeful that Merlin would be there, but he hadn't been. Still, it had given Arthur the opportunity to talk about seeing Gwen, though he'd been careful to edit out the part about being with Merlin at the time, just in case anyone drew the wrong conclusions. He'd felt a sense of relief at being able to talk to anyone about finally laying a painful part of his past to rest. There was probably a way to go yet, but he knew he'd turned a corner,
'You should be proud of yourself,' Mark, the group leader, had said. 'You've come a long way in the past few months.'
Arthur nodded. It was more than he normally shared with the group, even on Merlin-free nights, and he still wished he'd been able to share it with Merlin, but the way things were, it didn't look like that was going to happen any time soon.
Tonight, however, he ended up delaying for far too long, and by the time he'd talked himself into going he only had ten minutes for a twenty minute journey. When he reached the community hall car park twelve minutes later, he saw two things: firstly, there were no parking spaces and, secondly, Merlin's car wasn't there.
I'm here now, he thought, pushing away his disappointment. Might as well go in anyway.
~~~
Merlin stared morosely through his apartment window at the greyish drizzle outside. It was Tuesday again; over two weeks since he'd last seen Arthur. He hadn't been to the group the week before, and he'd known, since Arthur had been calling him pretty much every day, that he most definitely had, which meant he probably wasn't going tonight.
It was two weeks after they'd run into Gwen, and he was still angry. There was no getting away from it. The problem was, he'd never been good at dealing with anger; he simply didn't know what to do with it, and in the absence of anywhere to go, it tended to stay below his skin and fester.
The thing was, that wasn't all of it. As well as being fucking furious, he was disappointed with himself that it had taken so little for him to end up in the same place he'd been years before. The most galling thing about it was that this time round he had hindsight, but he'd been too stupid to take notice of it. It wasn't as if he didn't have fair warning of how he'd feel. He knew it was going to feel as if he and Arthur were meant to be together. He knew, too, that he shouldn't have let himself believe it, even for a second, but even though he knew better, he had.
Other than that, if he was being honest, on the few brief occasions where he had stopped wanting to punch walls and break things, he just felt hurt and confused. He'd let himself think that they were falling back into how things were, and he'd wanted to believe that Arthur was okay with it. It had taken Gwen's summation of her and Arthur's relationship, and its unwitting parallel with Merlin's take on the way things had been when they had been together to make him realise that friends was all he'd ever be to him. Arthur's drunken Mate has simply been the icing on the cake.
And there had been another, more final, realisation on the tail end of that one. It had taken him a week or so to figure it out. Friends was supposed to be fine. Friendswas what he and Arthur had signed up for, after all. It was what Merlin had insisted on, but at some indistinct point during the gradual, tentative escalation of their re-acquaintance, it stopped being enough for Merlin. Now, he wasn't sure he could go back, and that left him with a problem.
But it would have to wait. For the time being he could hardly think straight. All he knew, after the Gwen incident, was that he couldn't be around Arthur for a while. He felt bad that they had hardly spoken in two weeks. He missed Arthur so much of felt like a part of him was gone, but every time he got his phone out, or started to type an email, he got the same feeling in the pit of his stomach. It was like he was sinking, like he was disappearing down a plughole. It was horrible, but, even so, he knew that Arthur's inevitable rejection would be a thousand times worse. He needed to get his head together before he could face him, and right now was too soon.
He grinned at himself mockingly, perfectly aware that he had displayed far more mature behaviour the first time around. Not that the insight changed anything: he was still nowhere near being able to do anything sensible or considered. Right now, he was stuck between knowing what he wanted and knowing there was no way on earth that he could get it.
Merlin had never really trusted the strength of his feelings after he had got things so wrong with Arthur. He knew what it was supposed to mean: the churning stomach, the feeling of completeness, the inability to focus on a single thing. How you'd do anything for that person, wait for them forever if they wanted you to. Give them up if you had to. He had felt all of that, but for the wrong person, it seemed.
The odd thing was, if he told someone - anyone -that was how it was with Arthur, they would have told him - without missing a beat - that he had been in love, that he had found his soul mate. And at the time he thought that he had, until he realised that he hadn't.
If he thought too much about it, the contradictions started to drive him insane. About as opposite from the sane as you could get, actually. That he had felt something so real which, at the same time, had been proved to be so very untrue had confounded Merlin, and had been responsible in a lot of ways for the difficulties he'd had negotiating the haphazard path of his love life ever since. At the time, he hadn't even considered Arthur might feel different, but he had, and the only logical conclusion to that had been that he hadn't been in love at all. Over the years he'd made a joke of it, but the truth was that after Arthur had finished with him, he never trusted his feelings again, and since that day, he hadn't been able to tell if what he’d felt for someone was genuine or self-delusion.
Thanks Arthur he had thought many times over the intervening years. It was petty and stupid, and to be honest he was about the only person from his circle of friends from back then who could remember who Arthur was, much less what he had meant. But strangely, it had been easier - less insidiously damaging - to remember the bad times rather than the good ones. The second he went there, he was back to convincing himself they were meant to be together. And that was never going to happen. Fuck, it hadn't even been on the cards to start with.
Stop sitting there dissolving into a big puddle of angst, he told himself. You're nearly forty, for fuck's sake. Life goes on. Get your sorry arse to the group.
Even so, quite possibly because he wasn't done wallowing yet, he decided, despite the rain, that it would be an entirely sane idea to walk into the town. The rain, coupled with his residual anger at Arthur, himself, and the shitty situation in general, meant that rather than walk, he stormed his way there and arrived early enough to get a seat in the coffee shop opposite, the perfect position to stake out the hall in the event of Arthur's arrival. After two coffees, a good deal of staring, and still no sign of Arthur, Merlin stood up, left a tip and headed back across the road.
~~~
Arthur only arrived a few minutes late for the group, but by the time he found somewhere to park, it was nearly twenty minutes into the session. He could hear a single voice, in mid-flow, from behind the door. He pushed it open and saw the familiar semi-circular row, most with their back to him.
Mark caught his eye, and waved him over to the drinks table in the way that group facilitators have of conveying complex instructions with one generic hand gesture.
Arthur perched quietly on the table at the back, just out of view of the others. He settled down silently before realising that that person who was in mid-flow was Merlin.
For a second Arthur thought his heart was about to stop.
' ... it just came out of the blue,' Merlin said, his voice so soft that Arthur could hardly hear it. 'It wasn't his fault, I'm sure it wasn't, but ... well,' Merlin paused. From the angle he was sitting at there was only a small portion of his face visible, but Arthur could see that he was biting at his lower lip, 'I was so sure that was it, that was everything, and then finding out I was so wrong. Well, I've never had a successful relationship since.'
'So, you've tried?' That was Mark.
There was a bitter sound from Merlin, barely a laugh. 'Yes, I've tried,' he said, and his tone, mocking and defeated, shredded strips away from Arthur, exposing something, something he couldn't put a name to. 'Many, many times. But it always ended up the same. And it's kind of unhelpful to know that what I keep looking for - the same feeling as I had with him - probably wasn't even genuine. Because you both have to feel it, right? And believe me, I've tried telling myself that, but every time I've been with someone else and it felt like it might be the real thing, it gets screwed up because all I want, all I fucking need, is that feeling again. I'm stuck,' he said, 'and I'm not sure there's a way out of it.'
One of the group took a deep breath, preparing to speak. Arthur took his eyes off Merlin a second. Fuck. It was Greg, not a member who was renowned for his fact.
'Merlin,' he said. 'Don't take this the wrong way, mate, but it sounds to me that you still want this guy you met at University.' Greg paused, and Arthur found that he couldn't breathe. 'Is there any chance you and he could ever ...?'
'I used to wonder about that,' Merlin said, and his voice sounded so subdued that Arthur wanted nothing more than to get up and comfort him. 'But no,' Merlin said. 'There's no chance. What he said to me when it ended. I'm not sure there's any coming back from that. I don't know how someone could say those things and not mean them. I guess he might be sorry, but it's not the same thing, is it?'
'If you don't mind me asking, what did he say?'
Merlin looked down at his hands, and Arthur felt a cold thread of nausea curl through his stomach. 'Sorry. It was awful; it still is. I'm not sure that I can.'
'That's alright Merlin,' said Mark. 'You don't need to talk about anything that makes you feel uncomfortable, unless you want to.'
'It's okay,' Merlin said, with a short laugh. 'It's been so long. You'd think I wouldn't give it a second thought. It's just ... I suppose ... it was pretty bad. But if I ignore it, I guess it'll stay a monster under the stairs forever. It's just, when you've been rejected so ... well ... comprehensively by someone, it fucks with a lot of things.' Merlin paused, and took a deep breath. 'Well, okay. One minute, everything was fine, you know? It was getting to summer and he was a bit twitchy and stressed out, but I thought that was the exams and that he hated being away from his family. I tried to help out as much as I could, but even though that sometimes made him worse, he never gave me the slightest hint that I was doing anything wrong. As far as I was concerned, we were waiting till the end of term. We'd planned to spend the summer travelling around Europe, and, well,' he shrugged, 'things were supposed to happen then.'
Arthur had never heard Merlin's side of the story; he'd had no opportunity to, and hearing him describe what had happened and how he felt about it, made any justifications he might have made to himself with over the intervening years fall away like old, crumbling plaster.
'On the last day of term everything changed,' Merlin said. 'I'd been busy the night before, packing for our trip away, so I hadn't seen him. He was supposed to meet me first thing, but he hadn't shown up so I went over to his and found his door unlocked. He was sitting there, on his bed, staring into space. It didn't look like he'd slept or anything, and when I spoke it was like he couldn't hear me. I went over and, well, sort of touched the side of his face, and then he completely freaked out. He grabbed me by my t-shirt and sort of, well, threw me across the room.'
There was an intake of breath across the hall. Arthur, who was stuck in the same memory as Merlin, didn't think it was possible to feel any worse until he became aware of the tear that was making its way slowly down his cheek.
'Then,' Merlin said, 'he started screaming at me. Telling me to get out, to leave him alone, that me being there was fucking up his life. I didn't know what to say. I'd sort of guessed that despite everything he'd said he was nervous about acknowledging our relationship, but whether he was or not had never really bothered me, and I thought my reassurance was enough. I just hadn't realised to what extent the thought of it, of us, I guess, horrified him and, I suppose,' he paused, his voice cracking a little as he tried to get the words out, 'disgusted him too. I think my brain kind of shut off at that point; all I can really remember was him shouting at me to leave, and in the end I did.'
Merlin paused and breathed in deeply. From where he was sitting, in the shadowed rear of the hall, Arthur could see the blush that was spreading through his face.
'That must have been very difficult for you to share, Merlin,' Mark said. 'I can understand why you felt differently about relationships after that.'
'To be fair,' Merlin said, 'there were other things too. Even with him I was holding back part of myself, but the difference was that I was prepared to share that, with him. Good thing I didn't, I suppose,' he said, 'given what he really thought of me. I've found it hard to trust anyone since. I've tried ...'
'And have you been able to?' asked Mark.
'No,' said Merlin, his voice barely a whisper. 'No I haven't.'
The discussion turned to more practical suggestions from the rest of the group on how to approach trust, leaving Arthur reeling from Merlin’s admission.
Up until the last fortnight, he’d thought things between then had been fine. Not perfect, and certainly not what he'd have wanted in an ideal world, but, well, he could live with it. But listening to Merlin, he realised that things weren’t fine at all, and it seemed Arthur had been making things a whole lot worse for him by trying to pick up from where they’d left off. Or at least where he thought they’d left off. Except that he’d got that very, very wrong.
All of Merlin’s behaviour, especially recently: his avoidance of Arthur since that night two weeks ago; how he sidestepped any sort of intimacy, however well-intentioned; his refusal to discuss their break-up. It all made a horrible sort of sense now.
Every time Arthur tried to force things back to where he wanted them to be, because he wanted Merlin in his life so fucking much and - being the most honest he’d been since they’d run into each other again - because he was terrified of losing him again, Merlin had kept him at arm's length. Admittedly in an affable, Merlin-y kind of way, but now he thought about it, the evidence had been there. He just hadn't been willing to see it.
But there it was. Merlin might have been willing to forgive Arthur for the things he’d said to him, but he hadn’t forgotten, and it looked like it was still eating away at him. And no wonder. No matter what he might have thought was going on at the time, those words had still come out of Arthur's mouth, he'd still shoved Merlin away hard enough to see him crumple across the floor.
Arthur closed his eyes and the memory of that day flashed up in front of him.
‘Get away from me. You make me feel like a freak. Everything’s fucked up and crazy when you’re around. I can’t stand it. I can’t stand being around you for a second longer. Everything’s wrong about this. Everything’s wrong about the two of us. I just want to go back to normal, and I can’t do that if you’re here. Just get out. GET OUT,’ he’d screamed.
‘But I said you could take as long as -‘
‘Just get out,’ Arthur had shouted, ‘I never want to see you again.’
Merlin had pushed himself to his feet, wincing in pain, and Arthur had pulled him up by the arm and shoved him roughly out of the door.
It took six long weeks for Arthur to realise that Merlin had nothing to do with what was happening to him, but by then Merlin - who in that time, Arthur had come to realise was the best thing ever to happen to him - was long gone. He’d tried to contact him, to say he was sorry, to beg his forgiveness, hoping that Merlin's promise, made months ago, in the weak dawn light as he had smiled and run long fingers up Arthur's body, from his thighs to his collarbone, still stood.
Don’t worry, Merlin had said, smiling. He'd said the same thing, more or less, made the same gentle, unobtrusive reassurances throughout the course of their short-lived relationship. Take as long as you need; just don’t worry about it. It doesn’t matter if you decide you don’t want this. I’ll still be here for you. I’ll still be your friend. Just take your time.
Arthur remembered that smile, and that he had given one back to Merlin just before he’d kissed him, and it had been just as sleepy and contented and reflective of the peace and rare, uncomplicated wonder of the moment. He had missed those moments almost as soon as Merlin had gone. He'd craved them for months after. He still did.
'Arthur.'
It took him a few seconds for him to realise that Mark was talking to him. 'Arthur? You can join us now.'
Arthur pushed himself up off the table, looked around the room and exchanged a quick, brutally honest glance with Merlin.
'When did you get here?' Merlin hissed, as Arthur walked alongside him to an empty chair.
Arthur sat down and stared at a point on the floor in front of him. He should have said something, but the shock of what Merlin had to say meant he hadn't reacted quickly enough.
The rest of the group was excruciating. He kept his head down mostly, but every time he looked up he found himself staring into Merlin's furious, betrayed face. It was all he could do not to stand up and walk out, and he could tell from the twitches of Merlin's legs and restless movement of his hands, that it was all he could do too.
Eventually, it ended. Merlin shot up and closed the distance between his chair and the door in a matter of seconds. This time, however, Arthur had been expecting it, and had sprung out of his chair the second Merlin did. Even so, they were halfway down the road before Arthur drew level with him.
'You arsehole,' Merlin said, wheeling around. He was shaking. 'You heard all of that didn't you? You fucking arsehole. Get the fuck away from me.'
'Merlin,' Arthur said. 'I was late. Mark stuck me at the bloody back. The second I figured out what you were talking about, I knew I should say something, or leave, or, well something, but ...'
'But?' Merlin said. 'But what, Arthur? But you were having too much fun listening? But it felt kind of good knowing what a thorough job you'd done?'
'No! That's not it at all,' Arthur said, looking down and noticing that Merlin's fists were clenched. 'I'm sorry I embarrassed you. It was wrong, I know, but I couldn't help wanting to listen. You were talking about us ---'
'There is no us, Arthur,' Merlin said, 'and you're damn fucking right it was wrong.'
'We should talk about this,' said Arthur. 'We're friends aren’t we?'
'Are we?'
'Of course we are. I mean ... I thought ... Aren't we?'
Merlin just stared at him. Arthur had only seen him angry one or two times, and they had been in the distant past, but he knew that look of desperately controlled rage, and how it simmered so close to the surface it almost permeated the air around them.
Arthur frowned. 'I'm not sure what's going on, he said. 'I know I fucked up just then, but that doesn't mean I haven't tried to be a good friend. Better than I was, anyway. I thought that was working. I thought we were okay again.' He looked down at his hands. 'I thought it was what you wanted.'
'What?' said Merlin, stepping so close to Arthur that he could feel the intermittent warmth of Merlin's breath against his face. 'You thought I wanted to be your pet project while you got your life back together? You thought I wanted to make you feel good about yourself? This has nothing to do with what I want, Arthur. I didn't enjoy being your experiment then, and I sure as fuck don't want to be your project now. I don't want to be patronised, or be your mate, or get to stand by see everything I wasn't good enough for paraded around in front of me.'
'What do you mean wasn't good enough?' Arthur said.
'Don't pretend you don't know,' Merlin said. 'You made it perfectly clear that the thought of us having sex made your skin crawl so much that couldn't bear the sight of me anymore.'
'That's not why ---'
'Save your breath,' Merlin said. 'I'm pleased you were able to figure out that you preferred girls, really I am ---'
'Hang on, that's not even true ---'
' --- but if it's all the same to you, I'd really rather you gave it a rest, and while you're at it, you can stop flirting with me too. I'm sure you have other ways to get your ego stroked, why don't you exploit one of them?'
Arthur stared at Merlin open mouthed. He felt sick. He had expected Merlin to be angry, but this ... this had come out of nowhere, and he had no idea how to deal with it.
By the time he'd come up with a response, Merlin was a tiny figure, far away in the distance, and this time Arthur didn't have it in him to follow.
Part Four
Arthur felt like shit the next day. As much as he wanted to return to the bizarre dream he'd been having when he'd been massaging Merlin's feet so amazingly well that he'd been extracting satisfied little noises from him, he'd never the sort of person who could stay in bed with a hangover. He grasped around for his watch. 7:31.
Reluctantly, he forced himself to sit up. The room swam before him, and it took a few seconds of rapid blinking before he realised where he was. Merlin's bedroom. Fuck, he thought, trying to sort through jumbled memories of the night before, already guilty that he had forced his friend onto the sofa.
He padded across the room, pushed the door open a crack and took in the evidence of the mess they'd made of the living room the night before. The sofa was empty, but he could see a rumpled blanket and some pillows thrown across it, and a pair of jeans kicked onto the floor. In the background he could hear Merlin rattling around in the kitchen, and a few seconds later the smell of coffee and toast hit his nostrils. His stomach lurched, and he shot back to the en-suite, only barely reaching the toilet in time.
Nice going, you lightweight, he thought, wiping his mouth, still retching slightly. When he was able to move again, he folded his clothes on the side and turned the shower on.
Before he got into the shower, he wrapped a towel around his waist and went to peek out through the bedroom door again, which had nothing to do with the fact that Merlin might have been walking around in his boxers, if they was even what he still wore. The kitchen door was slightly ajar, and he caught sight of a bare leg before Merlin bobbed back out of sight, returning to the task at hand. Just as Arthur turned to get back to the shower, he was struck by how the tidy the living room was now: the blanket was folded neatly on top of the pillows, the discarded clothing was nowhere to be seen, and the glasses and bottles and plates that had littered Merlin's coffee table had vanished.
Must have been chucking for ages, Arthur thought. Still ,it didn't feel like I was in there more than five minutes tops.
Although this odd sense of shifting time, and things not being as they ought to be, were all almost certainly hangover induced, it reminded him a little too much of his university days, the final days of his first year, to be exact, but unlike his normal recollections, these memories were not happy ones.
He considered checking his watch to see how long he had really taken to relieve himself of last night's dinner, but at the thought of food the room started to spin again, and it was all he could do to sink down to the floor and crawl back to the shower. The water already on, he sat, groaning, under the spray, his knees tucked up underneath his chin, and his head in his arms, waiting for the urge to heave to pass.
The water from the shower was too hot, but it shook some of the inebriation from him and helped him focus on the night before. Gwen was the last person he'd expected to see, but in retrospect, after the initial shock, he hadn't felt as bad as he'd been expecting to. In a way, that one glimpse of her with Lance had helped confirm some things he'd been wondering about for a while, but, being mixed up with trying to make sense of his growing feelings for Merlin, they were things he hadn't dared hope were true.
His brain was still fuddled with all the delights a wine and whiskey hangover could offer, but as he sat under the scalding stream of water, he found he could string together a few coherent thoughts.
He and Gwen. He knew now they had mistaken each other's loss of people they'd loved for love for one another, and for a long time, it had been too humiliating to admit that despite his best attempts to make things work, to do everything properly, he had got it very wrong.
He could acknowledge now that Gwen had propelled herself into a safe, risk-free relationship with him because she had been mourning the loss of Lance. Lately, Arthur had started to consider the possibility that he had done exactly the same thing; he had still been mourning the loss of Merlin.
He'd been thinking along those lines for a while, but somehow his reasoning hadn't matched up with how he felt. He'd known he and Gwen weren't right for one another for a long time - maybe even before she left if he was being really honest - but that hadn't done a thing to stop the devastation he felt at her leaving. After last night, though, he felt as if something had changed, something had slipped or shifted, and the sense in his head was finally drawing level with the sense in his heart.
Even though he'd not said as much at the group, or to Merlin, or to - god forbid - Uther and Morgana, oddly, just the fact that all these people had been there had helped him bring his thoughts and his feelings together. It felt like two parts of him, separated for too long, had finally clicked into place, and now he was ready to move forward.
Finally, he had a sense of closure.
Arthur practically bounced out of the shower, and promptly smacked his head off the sink.
'Are you all right in there?' Merlin shouted. 'You didn't slip did you?'
'I'm fine,' Arthur called. 'Great actually. I'll be out in a minute.'
He wrapped himself up in a towel, and walked back into the bedroom to find that Merlin had let himself in.
'There're some clean clothes here,' Merlin said, pointing to a pile on the bed. 'I picked out the larger ones. Stay for a bit if you want; I've got to go to work.'
Arthur beamed widely, so preoccupied with his recent revelations that he didn't notice the pinched expression on Merlin's face. 'Thanks,' he said to Merlin, who walked out of the room without a word.
Arthur dressed quickly and went into the living room, not wanting to miss Merlin before he left. He'd hoped they could share breakfast together or, considering the state his digestive system was in, maybe just a coffee.
'Hey,' Arthur said. 'You're not going are you?'
'Sorry, I'll be late,' Merlin said, hovering at the door, frowning as he examined his car keys. 'Are you going to be sick again? Do you need a bowl or something?
Arthur shook his head. He was possessed by an urge to stop Merlin and tell him everything that he'd been thinking about, but, embarrassed by the things he could and couldn’t remember about the night before, and wondering if, really, Merlin would want to be accosted by a half-drunk moron when he needed to leave, he let it drop.
'Just, well, thanks,' he said, eventually. 'Last night ... I'm glad you were around.'
Merlin gave him an odd, twisted little smile, but he didn't move his eyes from his keys. 'Least I could do,' he said, and let himself out.
~~~
Later, that morning, when the world had just about righted itself and he felt more like a human again, Arthur realised that he still wanted to talk. He picked his phone up from the coffee table, called a cab, and then sent Merlin a text message.
Fancy some company later? Up for anything except booze.
By the time the cab arrived he still hadn't got a reply, so he sent him another message promising he'd put the clothes he'd borrowed through the wash. Over an hour later, back at Uther's, he felt his pocket vibrate.
sorry, stuff to do. clothes can wait.
Arthur stared at the screen for a few seconds. Now he thought of it, Merlin had seemed a little off that morning. Even so, he didn't think it was anything to worry about; they'd probably see each other at the weekend, and they could talk then.
~~~
They didn't see each other at the weekend, or the next week for that matter. By the time the following weekend came and went and it was getting towards Tuesday evening again, Arthur was beginning to worry.
Merlin was busy, or so he said. Not that Arthur had any reason to doubt him. He didn't think so, anyway, but with every day that passed Arthur felt more and more like Merlin was trying to avoid him, and he didn't understand why, or what he might have done wrong.
Still, he didn't think it was right to do anything just yet. For a start, he didn't really know what it was he was supposed to do. Merlin's absence was most likely nothing. He probably did have too much on, and Arthur should probably feel happier about that. After all, part of the reason Merlin had been going to the group was to try to meet new people and reconnect with the world a bit more. Now it seemed he was doing just that, Arthur couldn't help but feel a twinge of jealousy that he wasn't part of it.
Of course Merlin was polite as ever, but each time Arthur suggested they do anything, he was met with another rebuttal. He was used to hearing from Merlin a few times a day, he'd started to expect it, almost, and now that contact wasn't there any more, he realised just how much he looked forward to their bantering texts and phone calls and get-togethers, and how much all of that had come to mean to him.
Now he was instigating everything, Merlin's responses were civil, but brief. The playfulness that had been there before was gone, and although it could all be explained away if he chose to believe Merlin's version of events, the more that time went on, the harder it became for him to do that.
Arthur kept himself focused on other things. He was back at Dragonfly almost four out of every five days now. He still hadn't committed himself to any fieldwork yet, but he was there, overseeing everything. It distracted him, but not completely; and every time he came across an artefact with even the most tenuous arcane connections, his first thought was to tell Merlin. For the first week or so he had done just that, but the polite disinterest he got in response had started to put him off.
It was group night, and Arthur was deliberating over whether to go. He'd been the week before, hopeful that Merlin would be there, but he hadn't been. Still, it had given Arthur the opportunity to talk about seeing Gwen, though he'd been careful to edit out the part about being with Merlin at the time, just in case anyone drew the wrong conclusions. He'd felt a sense of relief at being able to talk to anyone about finally laying a painful part of his past to rest. There was probably a way to go yet, but he knew he'd turned a corner,
'You should be proud of yourself,' Mark, the group leader, had said. 'You've come a long way in the past few months.'
Arthur nodded. It was more than he normally shared with the group, even on Merlin-free nights, and he still wished he'd been able to share it with Merlin, but the way things were, it didn't look like that was going to happen any time soon.
Tonight, however, he ended up delaying for far too long, and by the time he'd talked himself into going he only had ten minutes for a twenty minute journey. When he reached the community hall car park twelve minutes later, he saw two things: firstly, there were no parking spaces and, secondly, Merlin's car wasn't there.
I'm here now, he thought, pushing away his disappointment. Might as well go in anyway.
~~~
Merlin stared morosely through his apartment window at the greyish drizzle outside. It was Tuesday again; over two weeks since he'd last seen Arthur. He hadn't been to the group the week before, and he'd known, since Arthur had been calling him pretty much every day, that he most definitely had, which meant he probably wasn't going tonight.
It was two weeks after they'd run into Gwen, and he was still angry. There was no getting away from it. The problem was, he'd never been good at dealing with anger; he simply didn't know what to do with it, and in the absence of anywhere to go, it tended to stay below his skin and fester.
The thing was, that wasn't all of it. As well as being fucking furious, he was disappointed with himself that it had taken so little for him to end up in the same place he'd been years before. The most galling thing about it was that this time round he had hindsight, but he'd been too stupid to take notice of it. It wasn't as if he didn't have fair warning of how he'd feel. He knew it was going to feel as if he and Arthur were meant to be together. He knew, too, that he shouldn't have let himself believe it, even for a second, but even though he knew better, he had.
Other than that, if he was being honest, on the few brief occasions where he had stopped wanting to punch walls and break things, he just felt hurt and confused. He'd let himself think that they were falling back into how things were, and he'd wanted to believe that Arthur was okay with it. It had taken Gwen's summation of her and Arthur's relationship, and its unwitting parallel with Merlin's take on the way things had been when they had been together to make him realise that friends was all he'd ever be to him. Arthur's drunken Mate has simply been the icing on the cake.
And there had been another, more final, realisation on the tail end of that one. It had taken him a week or so to figure it out. Friends was supposed to be fine. Friendswas what he and Arthur had signed up for, after all. It was what Merlin had insisted on, but at some indistinct point during the gradual, tentative escalation of their re-acquaintance, it stopped being enough for Merlin. Now, he wasn't sure he could go back, and that left him with a problem.
But it would have to wait. For the time being he could hardly think straight. All he knew, after the Gwen incident, was that he couldn't be around Arthur for a while. He felt bad that they had hardly spoken in two weeks. He missed Arthur so much of felt like a part of him was gone, but every time he got his phone out, or started to type an email, he got the same feeling in the pit of his stomach. It was like he was sinking, like he was disappearing down a plughole. It was horrible, but, even so, he knew that Arthur's inevitable rejection would be a thousand times worse. He needed to get his head together before he could face him, and right now was too soon.
He grinned at himself mockingly, perfectly aware that he had displayed far more mature behaviour the first time around. Not that the insight changed anything: he was still nowhere near being able to do anything sensible or considered. Right now, he was stuck between knowing what he wanted and knowing there was no way on earth that he could get it.
Merlin had never really trusted the strength of his feelings after he had got things so wrong with Arthur. He knew what it was supposed to mean: the churning stomach, the feeling of completeness, the inability to focus on a single thing. How you'd do anything for that person, wait for them forever if they wanted you to. Give them up if you had to. He had felt all of that, but for the wrong person, it seemed.
The odd thing was, if he told someone - anyone -that was how it was with Arthur, they would have told him - without missing a beat - that he had been in love, that he had found his soul mate. And at the time he thought that he had, until he realised that he hadn't.
If he thought too much about it, the contradictions started to drive him insane. About as opposite from the sane as you could get, actually. That he had felt something so real which, at the same time, had been proved to be so very untrue had confounded Merlin, and had been responsible in a lot of ways for the difficulties he'd had negotiating the haphazard path of his love life ever since. At the time, he hadn't even considered Arthur might feel different, but he had, and the only logical conclusion to that had been that he hadn't been in love at all. Over the years he'd made a joke of it, but the truth was that after Arthur had finished with him, he never trusted his feelings again, and since that day, he hadn't been able to tell if what he’d felt for someone was genuine or self-delusion.
Thanks Arthur he had thought many times over the intervening years. It was petty and stupid, and to be honest he was about the only person from his circle of friends from back then who could remember who Arthur was, much less what he had meant. But strangely, it had been easier - less insidiously damaging - to remember the bad times rather than the good ones. The second he went there, he was back to convincing himself they were meant to be together. And that was never going to happen. Fuck, it hadn't even been on the cards to start with.
Stop sitting there dissolving into a big puddle of angst, he told himself. You're nearly forty, for fuck's sake. Life goes on. Get your sorry arse to the group.
Even so, quite possibly because he wasn't done wallowing yet, he decided, despite the rain, that it would be an entirely sane idea to walk into the town. The rain, coupled with his residual anger at Arthur, himself, and the shitty situation in general, meant that rather than walk, he stormed his way there and arrived early enough to get a seat in the coffee shop opposite, the perfect position to stake out the hall in the event of Arthur's arrival. After two coffees, a good deal of staring, and still no sign of Arthur, Merlin stood up, left a tip and headed back across the road.
~~~
Arthur only arrived a few minutes late for the group, but by the time he found somewhere to park, it was nearly twenty minutes into the session. He could hear a single voice, in mid-flow, from behind the door. He pushed it open and saw the familiar semi-circular row, most with their back to him.
Mark caught his eye, and waved him over to the drinks table in the way that group facilitators have of conveying complex instructions with one generic hand gesture.
Arthur perched quietly on the table at the back, just out of view of the others. He settled down silently before realising that that person who was in mid-flow was Merlin.
For a second Arthur thought his heart was about to stop.
' ... it just came out of the blue,' Merlin said, his voice so soft that Arthur could hardly hear it. 'It wasn't his fault, I'm sure it wasn't, but ... well,' Merlin paused. From the angle he was sitting at there was only a small portion of his face visible, but Arthur could see that he was biting at his lower lip, 'I was so sure that was it, that was everything, and then finding out I was so wrong. Well, I've never had a successful relationship since.'
'So, you've tried?' That was Mark.
There was a bitter sound from Merlin, barely a laugh. 'Yes, I've tried,' he said, and his tone, mocking and defeated, shredded strips away from Arthur, exposing something, something he couldn't put a name to. 'Many, many times. But it always ended up the same. And it's kind of unhelpful to know that what I keep looking for - the same feeling as I had with him - probably wasn't even genuine. Because you both have to feel it, right? And believe me, I've tried telling myself that, but every time I've been with someone else and it felt like it might be the real thing, it gets screwed up because all I want, all I fucking need, is that feeling again. I'm stuck,' he said, 'and I'm not sure there's a way out of it.'
One of the group took a deep breath, preparing to speak. Arthur took his eyes off Merlin a second. Fuck. It was Greg, not a member who was renowned for his fact.
'Merlin,' he said. 'Don't take this the wrong way, mate, but it sounds to me that you still want this guy you met at University.' Greg paused, and Arthur found that he couldn't breathe. 'Is there any chance you and he could ever ...?'
'I used to wonder about that,' Merlin said, and his voice sounded so subdued that Arthur wanted nothing more than to get up and comfort him. 'But no,' Merlin said. 'There's no chance. What he said to me when it ended. I'm not sure there's any coming back from that. I don't know how someone could say those things and not mean them. I guess he might be sorry, but it's not the same thing, is it?'
'If you don't mind me asking, what did he say?'
Merlin looked down at his hands, and Arthur felt a cold thread of nausea curl through his stomach. 'Sorry. It was awful; it still is. I'm not sure that I can.'
'That's alright Merlin,' said Mark. 'You don't need to talk about anything that makes you feel uncomfortable, unless you want to.'
'It's okay,' Merlin said, with a short laugh. 'It's been so long. You'd think I wouldn't give it a second thought. It's just ... I suppose ... it was pretty bad. But if I ignore it, I guess it'll stay a monster under the stairs forever. It's just, when you've been rejected so ... well ... comprehensively by someone, it fucks with a lot of things.' Merlin paused, and took a deep breath. 'Well, okay. One minute, everything was fine, you know? It was getting to summer and he was a bit twitchy and stressed out, but I thought that was the exams and that he hated being away from his family. I tried to help out as much as I could, but even though that sometimes made him worse, he never gave me the slightest hint that I was doing anything wrong. As far as I was concerned, we were waiting till the end of term. We'd planned to spend the summer travelling around Europe, and, well,' he shrugged, 'things were supposed to happen then.'
Arthur had never heard Merlin's side of the story; he'd had no opportunity to, and hearing him describe what had happened and how he felt about it, made any justifications he might have made to himself with over the intervening years fall away like old, crumbling plaster.
'On the last day of term everything changed,' Merlin said. 'I'd been busy the night before, packing for our trip away, so I hadn't seen him. He was supposed to meet me first thing, but he hadn't shown up so I went over to his and found his door unlocked. He was sitting there, on his bed, staring into space. It didn't look like he'd slept or anything, and when I spoke it was like he couldn't hear me. I went over and, well, sort of touched the side of his face, and then he completely freaked out. He grabbed me by my t-shirt and sort of, well, threw me across the room.'
There was an intake of breath across the hall. Arthur, who was stuck in the same memory as Merlin, didn't think it was possible to feel any worse until he became aware of the tear that was making its way slowly down his cheek.
'Then,' Merlin said, 'he started screaming at me. Telling me to get out, to leave him alone, that me being there was fucking up his life. I didn't know what to say. I'd sort of guessed that despite everything he'd said he was nervous about acknowledging our relationship, but whether he was or not had never really bothered me, and I thought my reassurance was enough. I just hadn't realised to what extent the thought of it, of us, I guess, horrified him and, I suppose,' he paused, his voice cracking a little as he tried to get the words out, 'disgusted him too. I think my brain kind of shut off at that point; all I can really remember was him shouting at me to leave, and in the end I did.'
Merlin paused and breathed in deeply. From where he was sitting, in the shadowed rear of the hall, Arthur could see the blush that was spreading through his face.
'That must have been very difficult for you to share, Merlin,' Mark said. 'I can understand why you felt differently about relationships after that.'
'To be fair,' Merlin said, 'there were other things too. Even with him I was holding back part of myself, but the difference was that I was prepared to share that, with him. Good thing I didn't, I suppose,' he said, 'given what he really thought of me. I've found it hard to trust anyone since. I've tried ...'
'And have you been able to?' asked Mark.
'No,' said Merlin, his voice barely a whisper. 'No I haven't.'
The discussion turned to more practical suggestions from the rest of the group on how to approach trust, leaving Arthur reeling from Merlin’s admission.
Up until the last fortnight, he’d thought things between then had been fine. Not perfect, and certainly not what he'd have wanted in an ideal world, but, well, he could live with it. But listening to Merlin, he realised that things weren’t fine at all, and it seemed Arthur had been making things a whole lot worse for him by trying to pick up from where they’d left off. Or at least where he thought they’d left off. Except that he’d got that very, very wrong.
All of Merlin’s behaviour, especially recently: his avoidance of Arthur since that night two weeks ago; how he sidestepped any sort of intimacy, however well-intentioned; his refusal to discuss their break-up. It all made a horrible sort of sense now.
Every time Arthur tried to force things back to where he wanted them to be, because he wanted Merlin in his life so fucking much and - being the most honest he’d been since they’d run into each other again - because he was terrified of losing him again, Merlin had kept him at arm's length. Admittedly in an affable, Merlin-y kind of way, but now he thought about it, the evidence had been there. He just hadn't been willing to see it.
But there it was. Merlin might have been willing to forgive Arthur for the things he’d said to him, but he hadn’t forgotten, and it looked like it was still eating away at him. And no wonder. No matter what he might have thought was going on at the time, those words had still come out of Arthur's mouth, he'd still shoved Merlin away hard enough to see him crumple across the floor.
Arthur closed his eyes and the memory of that day flashed up in front of him.
‘Get away from me. You make me feel like a freak. Everything’s fucked up and crazy when you’re around. I can’t stand it. I can’t stand being around you for a second longer. Everything’s wrong about this. Everything’s wrong about the two of us. I just want to go back to normal, and I can’t do that if you’re here. Just get out. GET OUT,’ he’d screamed.
‘But I said you could take as long as -‘
‘Just get out,’ Arthur had shouted, ‘I never want to see you again.’
Merlin had pushed himself to his feet, wincing in pain, and Arthur had pulled him up by the arm and shoved him roughly out of the door.
It took six long weeks for Arthur to realise that Merlin had nothing to do with what was happening to him, but by then Merlin - who in that time, Arthur had come to realise was the best thing ever to happen to him - was long gone. He’d tried to contact him, to say he was sorry, to beg his forgiveness, hoping that Merlin's promise, made months ago, in the weak dawn light as he had smiled and run long fingers up Arthur's body, from his thighs to his collarbone, still stood.
Don’t worry, Merlin had said, smiling. He'd said the same thing, more or less, made the same gentle, unobtrusive reassurances throughout the course of their short-lived relationship. Take as long as you need; just don’t worry about it. It doesn’t matter if you decide you don’t want this. I’ll still be here for you. I’ll still be your friend. Just take your time.
Arthur remembered that smile, and that he had given one back to Merlin just before he’d kissed him, and it had been just as sleepy and contented and reflective of the peace and rare, uncomplicated wonder of the moment. He had missed those moments almost as soon as Merlin had gone. He'd craved them for months after. He still did.
'Arthur.'
It took him a few seconds for him to realise that Mark was talking to him. 'Arthur? You can join us now.'
Arthur pushed himself up off the table, looked around the room and exchanged a quick, brutally honest glance with Merlin.
'When did you get here?' Merlin hissed, as Arthur walked alongside him to an empty chair.
Arthur sat down and stared at a point on the floor in front of him. He should have said something, but the shock of what Merlin had to say meant he hadn't reacted quickly enough.
The rest of the group was excruciating. He kept his head down mostly, but every time he looked up he found himself staring into Merlin's furious, betrayed face. It was all he could do not to stand up and walk out, and he could tell from the twitches of Merlin's legs and restless movement of his hands, that it was all he could do too.
Eventually, it ended. Merlin shot up and closed the distance between his chair and the door in a matter of seconds. This time, however, Arthur had been expecting it, and had sprung out of his chair the second Merlin did. Even so, they were halfway down the road before Arthur drew level with him.
'You arsehole,' Merlin said, wheeling around. He was shaking. 'You heard all of that didn't you? You fucking arsehole. Get the fuck away from me.'
'Merlin,' Arthur said. 'I was late. Mark stuck me at the bloody back. The second I figured out what you were talking about, I knew I should say something, or leave, or, well something, but ...'
'But?' Merlin said. 'But what, Arthur? But you were having too much fun listening? But it felt kind of good knowing what a thorough job you'd done?'
'No! That's not it at all,' Arthur said, looking down and noticing that Merlin's fists were clenched. 'I'm sorry I embarrassed you. It was wrong, I know, but I couldn't help wanting to listen. You were talking about us ---'
'There is no us, Arthur,' Merlin said, 'and you're damn fucking right it was wrong.'
'We should talk about this,' said Arthur. 'We're friends aren’t we?'
'Are we?'
'Of course we are. I mean ... I thought ... Aren't we?'
Merlin just stared at him. Arthur had only seen him angry one or two times, and they had been in the distant past, but he knew that look of desperately controlled rage, and how it simmered so close to the surface it almost permeated the air around them.
Arthur frowned. 'I'm not sure what's going on, he said. 'I know I fucked up just then, but that doesn't mean I haven't tried to be a good friend. Better than I was, anyway. I thought that was working. I thought we were okay again.' He looked down at his hands. 'I thought it was what you wanted.'
'What?' said Merlin, stepping so close to Arthur that he could feel the intermittent warmth of Merlin's breath against his face. 'You thought I wanted to be your pet project while you got your life back together? You thought I wanted to make you feel good about yourself? This has nothing to do with what I want, Arthur. I didn't enjoy being your experiment then, and I sure as fuck don't want to be your project now. I don't want to be patronised, or be your mate, or get to stand by see everything I wasn't good enough for paraded around in front of me.'
'What do you mean wasn't good enough?' Arthur said.
'Don't pretend you don't know,' Merlin said. 'You made it perfectly clear that the thought of us having sex made your skin crawl so much that couldn't bear the sight of me anymore.'
'That's not why ---'
'Save your breath,' Merlin said. 'I'm pleased you were able to figure out that you preferred girls, really I am ---'
'Hang on, that's not even true ---'
' --- but if it's all the same to you, I'd really rather you gave it a rest, and while you're at it, you can stop flirting with me too. I'm sure you have other ways to get your ego stroked, why don't you exploit one of them?'
Arthur stared at Merlin open mouthed. He felt sick. He had expected Merlin to be angry, but this ... this had come out of nowhere, and he had no idea how to deal with it.
By the time he'd come up with a response, Merlin was a tiny figure, far away in the distance, and this time Arthur didn't have it in him to follow.
Part Four