Twenty Years Later (4/7)

Nov 19, 2010 14:53

Part 4

Merlin went straight from the group to the railway station, and then into Central London to the nearest crowded bar he could find.

Every time he closed his eyes he could see Arthur's face, rigid with shock. Later he would have to think about what he said and figure out the damage, but for now all wanted to do was cancel it out as quickly as possible.

He leaned against at the bar and cast his eyes around, trying to figure out who might suit his purposes. It didn't take long for someone for approach him, a man in his mid-twenties, with a predatory, almost feral glint in his eyes. Perfect.

'I presume you're not here for the ambience,' Merlin said.

The man smirked and raised an eyebrow, implying what, exactly, he was there for.

'I'm ---' he stared to say.

'Forget about the formalities,' Merlin said. 'They're not necessary. Want to get out of here?'

He got the smirk again, but that was all Merlin needed really. Minutes later they were in a cab on their way to the man's house, and Merlin was on his way to forgetting about Arthur, for a few hours at least.

~~~

He woke up in an unfamiliar bedroom in the early hours of the morning. He eased himself up carefully, wincing at the stiffness in his limbs. Looking down, he saw that his wrists and hips were covered in red marks, some of which had already turned into bruises. Just as well he couldn't have given a fuck about what the guy had wanted to do, or how he wanted to do it. He was just relieved, when he saw the empty condom packets thrown around the room, that he hadn't completely thrown caution to the wind.

The man from the night before was snoring. Merlin touched the side of his face softly and whispered a few words to ensure he continued to sleep, at least until he had gone. Under his fingers, the man shifted and Merlin could sense that when he woke up he was going to have a blinding hangover. He whispered another couple of words to try and ease the discomfort he would feel on waking; the give and take that he had discovered with magic meant that the consequence would likely be that he would feel worse - his muscles were already screaming in protest - but under the circumstances he felt that it was the least he could do.

It was too early for trains, so Merlin dressed and quietly called a cab. It was just before five when it arrived; he needed coffee and pastries, so the driver dropped him at the 24-hour petrol station. Mercifully, the taxi driver kept whatever conclusions he might have drawn to himself. Merlin was not so lucky with Viv, the petrol station girl, which was made worse by the fact that he was a regular customer there.

'Good night, Mr. Emrys?' Viv grinned, staring pointedly at his neck. 'Meet someone nice, did you?'

Merlin pulled his collar up as high as it could go and tried to remember if he had any polo necks in his wardrobe. 'I wouldn't go that far,' he mumbled, sifting through his pockets for the little change he had after the taxi had cleaned him out.

'Just a bit of fun then? Good for you,' she said. 'Did you and that blond guy split? He hasn't been in here for coffee and muffins for a few weeks now.'

It was at that point that Merlin was sorely tempted to use his magic to end her shift permanently, but he settled instead for grabbing his coffee and stale pastries and getting the fuck out of there.

On the short walk back to his apartment, he realised that he had forgotten exactly how shameful walks of shame actually were. Of course not everyone had Viv with her zero tact and social skills to contend with, but he imagined it would be pretty bad even without her, and he didn't even feel that pleased with himself. Now he thought about it, he didn't feel much at all, but that was no surprise; he was not so lacking in insight that he didn't know he was exercising control over the things that couldn't hurt him, because he had no control over the things that could.

~~~

Arthur had stood in the rain and stared after Merlin long after he had disappeared from view. Then he had driven back to Uther's and spent the rest of the evening in his room.

Merlin's anger was understandable, and he could see why he hadn't wanted to talk about the past, and what Arthur had done. He could see, too, why despite Merlin's best attempts, it had become too difficult, but whilst he knew he deserved pretty much everything Merlin had to say, there was still something about their exchange that didn't quite make sense in his head.

Merlin had said something like he wasn't good enough for Arthur, but the way he had always understood it, things were the other way around, if anything. He'd assumed that the reason Merlin wanted to be friends was because he didn't think his and Arthur's relationship was worth revisiting.

At two a.m. Arthur was still awake. He'd considered all the options: contact Merlin later that day; contact him later that week; cut his losses and walk away. But what he really wanted to do was to go over there right now and talk things out until he was sure that everything was out in the open. He was aware that given the lack of sleep and his highly emotional state, his judgment was probably not at its best, but his instinct that this was absolutely the right thing to do was so strong that almost before he knew what he was doing, he was in his car and on his way over to Merlin's.

Clearly I need to have a serious fucking talk with my instincts, Arthur thought, nearly three hours later, as he sat in his car, freezing his arse off. He was just about to head back home when he saw a tall, familiar figure appear at the end of the street, swigging coffee out of a large, disposable cup.

Despite his impatience for it earlier, now another confrontation was looming, it took all the will Arthur possessed to get himself out of the car, onto the pavement and moving towards Merlin.

'This is a really bad idea,' Merlin said, wiping crumbs away from his mouth. 'Go home.'

'We should talk,' Arthur said. 'And since I'm here, and we're both awake, we might as well do it now.'

'Now?' Merlin said. 'Do you have any idea what time it is? Do you even own a watch?

Arthur shrugged. 'Now's as good a time as any.'

'Don't you think we said everything that needed saying earlier?' Merlin said.

Arthur took a deep breath. 'I didn't,' he said. 'And I'm not sure you did either.'

'Really?' Merlin bit out. 'You know me that well do you?'

'I think so,' Arthur said, not entirely sure where he was going with this. 'I know you reacted in the way you did because of the circumstances. I know you're not that person.'

'Are you sure about that?' Merlin said, and Arthur winced at the bitterness in his laugh. 'Look at me, Arthur. Isn't it obvious where I've just been?'

Arthur didn't say anything. He knew that Merlin was trying to get him to react, trying to get him so angry that he would leave, but instead of feeling angry or jealous, he just felt oddly protective. For all he knew, Merlin's actions could have been calculated to hurt him, but since he'd had no idea Arthur would show up, he was willing to bet that they were more likely borne out of a deep unhappiness and frustration and vulnerability, and the last thing he was going to do was to make him feel bad about that.

'Yes it is,' Arthur said. 'But it doesn't make any difference to why I'm here.'

'Oh,' Merlin said, deflating a bit. 'Oh. Okay then. So what do you want to talk about?'

Arthur didn't know where to start. 'I want to understand why you think I'm the one that didn't want you,' he said, ignoring Merlin's derisive snort. 'I know I was a shithead of unbelievable proportions, but afterwards I did everything I could to let you know how sorry I was, and how much I wanted you back.'

'What?' Merlin said. 'Are we talking about the same break up here? The last I saw of you, was you chucking me out of your room and telling me you never wanted to see me again.'

‘Why didn’t you answer my letter?’ Arthur blurted suddenly, all his notions of sensitivity flying out of the window.

‘What fucking letter?’ Merlin snapped, looking genuinely suspicious. 'What the hell are you talking about?'

‘I wrote to you, about six weeks into the summer break. And don’t pretend that you didn’t get it, because I hand delivered it to your house, since you were ignoring my calls.'

‘I was in Ireland that summer, you know that.’

'Well, I know that now, don't I?' Arthur snapped back at him. He was really tired now, and starting to lose his patience. 'It took me bloody hours to drive to Gloucester just to find you weren't there. When I didn't hear from you after that, and I couldn't find out where you'd disappeared to, I assumed, eventually, that you didn't want to know.’

'I didn't get a letter,' Merlin said, through his teeth.

‘Well,' Arthur said, 'someone did. Don’t tell me you didn’t have mail when you got back.’

For the first time Merlin stopped sounding angry and just looked confused.

‘I did get mail. But there was nothing from you, I swear.’

‘Right, if you say so,' said Arthur. He didn't really buy it, but the hours without sleep, and the worry and nausea that had been eating away at him all suddenly took their toll, and he sagged with exhaustion. 'I'm going home now,' he said, 'you should get some rest too. Look, I just wanted you to know how much I regretted everything I said, and that I want to make things up to you, if you'll let me. For what it's worth, I meant everything that I wrote,' he paused, deliberating up till the last second about the final, most important part of what he had to say, 'and I still do.'

Merlin didn't say anything, but he nodded, and the distrust wasn't in his eyes anymore. He still looked wary, but he'd listened, and that was more than Arthur had hoped for.

~~~

Merlin let himself into his apartment and narrowly avoided the urge to slam the door.

His curtains were still open from the day before, and the first stirrings of dawn outside, though faint, were enough for him see where he was going. In any case he doubted whether he would have wanted the light on even if it had been pitch black. A car started up outside, and he walked over to the window, staying just far enough away that he could see out, but remained out of sight. He watched until Arthur reached the end of the street, turned right and disappeared. Then, ignoring the painful stretch of his limbs and the pounding in his head, he walked to the bathroom, threw his clothes into the corner and switched the shower on.

Arthur always used to complain about how long Merlin took in the shower. Having spent the year after A levels working abroad, he was a year older than most of the other students, and had opted to rent a small bedsit close to the university, rather than the rooms on campus where Merlin and his other friends lived. When he asked Arthur about it, he had wrinkled his nose at the thought of communal kitchens and bathrooms, though he had never minded Merlin coming over to use his kitchen, or washing machine, or watch TV. He hardly complained about the bathroom either, just the length of time he spent in there.

I need that long, Merlin told him once. I get most of my thinking done in there. Arthur had chucked a towel at his head, and told him to find a more energy efficient way to exercise his brain. Merlin had taken absolutely no notice, and continued to abuse the facilities as and when he wished.

It was the same now; water had always helped him to reflect, whether he wanted to or not. He sank down onto the floor tiles, hunched under the spray. The dawn was changing rapidly into daylight, bringing the welts and bruises from just hours ago into sharp focus. They covered his body in an angry, cryptic pattern, temporarily overwriting the invisible damage that lay inside of him. For a second, he saw those other, secret scars glow white, creating a brief palimpsest. He had the strongest feeling that his magic was trying to tell him something, but the most frustrating thing about knowing so little about that part of him was that he might never know what that message was. He had never had anyone to teach him, and with the exception of the few books and objects that, over the years, he had found to be helpful, he had made do with trial and error. There was no reason to expect that this would be any different.

Unable to look at his marked skin any longer, he pulled his legs up to his chest, covering up as much of himself as he could. Last night hadn't made any difference. He still wanted Arthur, and after their most recent exchange, he could now add mystified to the numerous other feelings Arthur inspired in him. He closed his eyes, rested his head on the tops of his knees and stayed there.

When he was ready to move again it was mid-morning. He wrapped himself in a soft bathrobe and called Lisa at the office, asking her to reschedule his appointments for the next few days. Then he set about the business of trying to sort his head out.

The first step involved the person he needed to speak to the most: his mother, the world-renowned parenting expert, Hunith Emrys-King.

Merlin would not have described his relationship with his mother as complex, but his reasons for keeping it as straightforward and harmonious as it was most certainly were. His Dad had died when he was seven, and he'd watched his mother torn apart by guilt that he had predicted his own death, but she had dismissed it as nonsense. There had been nothing that her friends and family had been able to tell her that made things any better. She knew that no one blamed her, but it didn't erase the fact that she might have prevented what happened had she only paid attention to her husband's occasional predictions . Merlin, wrapped up in his grief too, had watched her become more and more withdrawn until the day when, unexpectedly, she turned a corner.

Hunith's uncle, Gaius, had come over for tea. He and Hunith had been talking in hushed tones while Merlin had been out of sight, playing quietly behind the sofa, trying to see how long he could keep his lego bricks in the air before, inevitably, they came crashing down to the floor.

'What a lovely boy,' Gaius had commented. 'No trouble at all; he's a credit to you, Hunith.'

Merlin let his bricks float gently down to the carpet. He stuck his head over the top of the sofa at the adults, and saw Hunith look out from under her straggly fringe, and smile. It was the first smile Merlin had seen since his Dad had died.

Gaius nodded back at her encouragingly and suggested, very gently, that she might consider working with children. Within weeks she had found herself a job offering advice to new parents; eventually it would grow to the thriving business it was today.

Even at that young age, Merlin hadn't missed the connection between his behaviour and the start of his mother's recovery, and from that day he vowed never to be any trouble at all. If anything ever went wrong, he dealt with it himself or called on one of his friends. Hunith never suspected anything other than what she saw, so when, as she had done in the prefaces of many of her books, she referred to him as a golden example of how a parent could enable a child to deal with things by themselves, he never contradicted her. The downside of the situation he'd help create was that he never had a mother who was there for him when he needed her, but the upside was that she didn't know that and, the way he saw things, he would much rather any relationship with his mother than - as had been on the cards when he was seven - none at all.

These days, Hunith divided her time between New York, Sydney and, very occasionally, Gloucester. She always had her secretary send Merlin her calendar one month in advance, so he knew she was in New York this week. Never much of one for sleep, he imagined she'd be getting up just about now.

'Hunith Emrys-King,' said a familiar, rather sleepy voice on the end of the phone. 'Who is this?'

'Hi Mum, it's Merlin,' he said, and waited for the pause.

'Oh. Merlin,' she said. 'What are you doing calling so early? Is there a problem with the house?'

'No, that's all fine,' Merlin said. Although he knew that it was a long time since she'd been the vulnerable woman from his childhood, years of keeping even the most innocuous things from her made it hard for him to get the words out. 'Actually Mum, it's about me. Something's happened. I, er, I need to talk to you about it.'

There was silence on the other end of the phone for a few seconds. 'Darling,' she said. 'This isn't like you; you were always so good at dealing with your own problems.'

She soon headed off on a tangent about her latest series of lectures, and the reception they'd had so far. Merlin frowned. He'd kind of expected this but, for the first time in years, he needed her.

'Mum,' Merlin said, hating how he had to raise his voice to get her attention. 'I need you to listen to me. I need you to stop being an expert and start being a parent. I need to you be my mother.'

'I'm sorry,' Hunith said, after an intake of breath and a stunned pause. 'It's just, well, you've always been so self-contained. I'm not used to you needing me.'

'It's okay,' Merlin said, his old, irrational, childhood fear that he'd upset her rearing up just when he didn't want it to. 'Forget I called. I'm sure I can ---'

'Merlin, no,' said Hunith sharply, making him feel like he was little again. 'I want to know what's been happening; I want to help, if I can. Tell me everything.'

So, Merlin told her. From the time he'd met Arthur, right up until the episode outside his house that morning.

'I'd kind of made up my mind that I'd be better off without him even as a friend, but after the last day or so,' he said, finally. 'I don't know what to think.'

Hunith made a thoughtful sound. 'It's funny about that letter, isn't it?' she said. 'You did get mail,' she said. 'I left everything in your room, for when you got back from Ireland. It was mainly postcards, but there was definitely a letter.'

'What? I never saw it. Are you sure?'

'Positive. You had letters and postcards. Quite a few actually. I suppose they might be in the loft now, after that big clearout I did a couple of years ago. If I'd known you were seeing someone then ...'

'Well, it doesn't mean he did write. Or that he wrote anything worth reading,' Merlin said.

'If that's the case, love, if you really didn't care, then why are we even talking about it?'

'What?' Merlin was caught off guard. He wasn't sure what exactly Hunith was getting at, but it sounded like she was preparing to make a point he didn't want to hear.

'Well,' she said, 'you've been talking like you doubt every single thing that this Arthur says, but you're no fool, Merlin. If you really believed that, then I've no doubt he'd be out of your life by now, yet he isn't. What's that about?'

'I don't know,' Merlin said. 'It's just difficult, I suppose. Maybe things would be better if he just wasn't there anymore,' he said without much conviction.

'And was it?' she asked gently. 'He was out of your life for a long, long time. Was that better?'

For a second, Merlin seriously considered ending the call. He'd had the strongest sense that he needed to talk it through with her, but now he was getting close to articulating what he felt and what he wanted, it was too close. It was too real.

'No,' he said, forcing the words outy. 'It was worse. Since he's come back to me,' - fuck, what was he even describing it like that? - 'it's like I've only just realised how bad it's been without him.'

'But you're still keeping him at arm's length,' Hunith said. 'From what you've said, you want to know what he thinks about you two, but each time he's tried to tell you, you've backed off. I don't quite understand what you're trying to achieve here, love.'

'I don't want to walk away,' said Merlin, in a small voice. 'Not really. But I can't see a way that his side of things could ever be what I wanted to hear, so I don't know what to do.'

'So want him around, but only exactly where you want him to be? Merlin.'

'No! Well ... maybe, a little bit.'

'And what if Arthur does want you back? It's not fair on him, is it? Keeping him in limbo like that?'

'That's not what I want,' Merlin said, but as the words came out of his mouth he realised that he'd been so careful of his own feelings that he'd hardly considered Arthur's at all.

'You can't leave things like this forever,' Hunith said, on a roll now. 'You need to stop running. Arthur shouldn't have said what he did, and he hurt you horribly, but it sounds like he genuinely regretted it and he's trying to make things right. You should let him have his say.'

'Mum. There's no point: he isn't interested.'

'Well, I'm sorry love, but how do you know that? Have you asked him?'

'No.' Merlin glared at his mother down the phone. 'Not everyone is as direct as you,' he added.

'Well, you have to be in my line of work,' she said. 'And I wouldn't be surprised if it helped if you were too.'

'Maybe,' Merlin said. It might have been hard to hear, but Hunith had made him realise that he had been so busy reacting to the situation that he'd overlooked the consequences: in his haste to escape from the pain he was feeling, he was running away from the person who meant the most to him.

~~~

'Quelle su-fucking-prise,' said Morgana. 'You haven't told him any of this.'

Arthur gave her a slightly defiant look, which he would have made more obvious, had she not insisted she took the afternoon off work to keep him company.

'Well Morgana,' he said, 'in case you hadn’t noticed. I have actual proof from a divorce court that I’m no good at relationships, so on top of the fact that he made it clear that he didn't want anything more than friends, and it was down to me that things fucked up in the first place, do you wonder why I didn’t?'

'You’re full of shit,' Morgana said. 'You think one failed relationship means all that? Wake up D, what fucking century do you live in?'

'And like you’d know?' Arthur shot back. 'You’ve been in perfect coupledom with Leon practically since he was legal.'

Morgana stiffened, and glared at him through narrowed eyes. 'You don't know a single thing about me and Leon,' she said. 'You don't know how many times we’ve nearly split, how many times I’ve been on the phone to the solicitors, how many times he has. You don't know how many nights I’ve spent awake, driving myself mad that I’ve held him back from things he might have wanted to do. Do you really think we've never had those conversations? But you know what, Arthur? The difference between you and us is that we believe in each other and we’re prepared to fight for each other.’

'Not the only difference I hope,' Arthur snapped, but there wasn’t much sting in it. She had a point, and if Merlin had shown the slightest bit of interest in him, then he would have been there on the front line with Morgana and Leon, but he hadn’t.

'Look, Morgana,' he said, 'I know what you're saying, but I can’t fuck it up. Not with him. But I don’t know what to do. He can barely stand to be around me as it is.'

'Well,' Morgana said. 'It seems to me that if he wasn't telling the truth about wanting to be friends, then you weren't either.'

'And how do you work that out? All I've been doing is trying to be friends. I've been trying to make up for the friend I wasn't back when it mattered.'

Morgana gave him her you stupid boy look. 'No you haven't,' she said. 'You've been pretending that you want your friendship back, but you don't. You want him back.'

'Shut up, Morgana.'

'Give me one good reason why.'

'Because I bloody hate it when you're right,' he said, eventually.

'Well,' Morgana said, far too smugly for his liking. 'At least you can take one positive thing from this, I suppose.'

'Oh? And what could possibly be positive about this whole sorry situation?' Arthur said.

'Arthur,' Morgana said, covering his clenched fist with the gentle touch of her fingers. 'From what you've told me, it seems that Merlin's just as dissatisfied with friendship as you are. You need to talk to him.'

After speaking to his mother, Merlin spent until the late afternoon drifting in and out of a restless doze. When he woke up, he dressed in the first clothes he found, and soon after that was in his car and, purposefully not over-thinking it, on his way to Gloucester.

It took the better part of the night to go through the loft. He found the little bundle of post eventually, but it was as he remembered: nothing from Arthur. Even though he'd been telling himself that there was probably no letter anyway, he was disappointed, but there was something else too: he wasn't ready to give up just yet.

Surprised with himself, but remembering that not over-thinking was what had got him here in the first place, Merlin decided to go with his instincts, and look somewhere else.

His room seemed like the only likely place it would be, so he started off there. I didn't take long to go through pretty much everywhere, but he couldn't find anything. He knew there was one way he could find out for sure, the only problem was that he needed something of Arthur's to help him.

Needing a piss, and starting to question what he was even doing there, he stalked off into the bathroom. As he dried his hands, he caught sight of himself in the mirror above the sink. He was wearing Arthur's t-shirt; the one he borrowed after the water fight. He hadn't even realised he'd been wearing it. Perhaps I won't examine that too closely, he thought to himself.

He sat in the middle of his floor holding the t-shirt loosely in his hands, and closed his eyes. He tried to remember when he'd come back to the house after that summer in Ireland. It was hard for the first minute or so, just fluttering, disparate images, nothing to anchor him. He dug his hands into the soft fabric, muttering the words of the spell over and over, willing himself to remember the time again, trying to connect him and Arthur to the same place. It was only when he cradled the shirt to himself, when he held it to his chest that, all at once, things changed, and it was almost like he was back in time again.

He saw himself walk into the room, and he remembered what it had been like. Ireland had been a break, and he'd been grateful for it. For short periods of time, seconds really, he'd been able to forget what had happened. He'd been able to plan, to change his degree, his university, to make plans to take himself away from the pain of that last year, but even though Arthur had never set foot there, coming home had brought it all back.

He remembered walking back into his room. The house had been empty; Hunith was abroad with Owen, her husband of only a few months, and despite her attempts to make it homely and welcoming, it hadn't quite worked with no one else there. He'd seen his mail waiting for him, and rather than being a reminder of how much he'd been missed, he'd felt angry because all the time he'd been away, he'd been hoping against hope that there might have been something - anything from Arthur. He'd only looked through the first few postcards, but he'd been so disappointed that before going through them all, he'd raised his hands and sent the whole lot flying into the air.

Now, as a spectator, he could see where every scrap of correspondence had gone. Most were on the floor, a couple were on his bed, one or two had even lodged themselves his bookshelf. Merlin blinked, and ran the scene over in his head again. He could see it now: two postcards and a letter had slid to the back of his desk and disappeared from view.

He pulled the desk out, but found nothing at all. Still, if he concentrated very hard, he could still feel something of Arthur there, connecting with the shirt he held in his hands. Kneeling down on the floor, Merlin focused everything he had and tried to locate any traces of Arthur. It was hard, but after a few minutes he started to get a very faint hint. It was coming from behind his desk, but it felt lower, as if from under the floorboards.

Unfortunately, finding out meant pulling up a substantial area of floor. Hunith had all the floorboards replaced about ten years ago, most of them being in such disrepair that it was only a matter of time before someone tripped or fell and hurt themselves. Merlin was sure that he had dropped hundreds of pounds of change through them over the years; a couple of letters didn't seem beyond the realms of possibility.

There had better bloody well be something down here, Arthur, Merlin muttered, as he pulled the wood up to reveal what seemed to be mainly a lot of dust below.

It wasn't long till he found what he was looking for. He could see Arthur's scratchy handwriting on the yellowed, dust-spotted envelope and reached it easily. The other postcards were next to it, but right now he wasn't in the slightest bit interested in anything else that could have ended up there.

He grabbed a jumper from his mother and Owen's room and, still holding onto Arthur's t-shirt, headed downstairs, excited and apprehensive, to see what it was Arthur had wanted to say all that time ago.

Dear Merlin

I've got a lot to say to you, but first of all I'm going to say that I'm really, really sorry, just in case you chuck this away after the first few lines.

I'm not sure if you want to hear from me. I tried calling you all summer but either you're not there or you're not answering my calls, so I thought I'd try writing.

I said some really terrible things to you, and I'm sorry. As much bullshit as it seems, I didn't mean any of it, but I didn't realise quite what was going on until I was back home. It turns out I've been suffering from acute stress, or at least that's what my doctor tells me. The thing is, over the last month or so of term, I felt like I was going slowly mad. I kept seeing things. Sometime they'd just be in the wrong place, but sometimes they'd actually move in front of my eyes. And that wasn't all of it. There would be odd smells too. Nice ones generally, but just ... odd .. like they shouldn't have been there. Crazy shit like that. And no one seemed to notice but me.

I would have told you, but I was embarrassed. Things were going so well, that the last thing I wanted to do was to fuck it up and have you dump me for being weird. The last few days of term were really crazy, and that's when I lost it, and that's when I started to think you were part of it too. I know now, it was because you were there all the time. I know now that you seemed to be ignoring all the crazy stuff because it wasn't really happening. But at the time it seemed different. That's why I freaked out at you. I thought you were causing it, and it was all your fault. Now I'm rational, that bit makes no sense, and I am so sorry for what I did. I didn't know what has happening to me, and I was frightened of what it meant, and worst of all, I was frightened that I might lose you. Right now it seems that's happened anyway. I've been an idiot, I know.

The day after I got home, my father practically marched me into the doctors and made me talk about what had been happening. Apparently being away from home and having exams and all that was a bit too much, and that was how my brain responded to it. I spent about a week in bed just sleeping, and since then I've just been trying to relax, and keep healthy, and it's worked. Things are calmer, and I'm not imagining things any more. I'm coming back to uni next term and want to see you again so much. I know you thought that I was uncomfortable with us being together, and maybe for the first day or so I wasn't sure where that's where my heart was, but the only reason I held back was that I wanted to be sure I wasn't going mad. As you know now, that didn't quite go according to plan, and I ended up losing it so badly that I actually thought you were the cause of it. I'm stupid. I know.

Now I'm writing to you, it's actually really hard to put what I'm feeling into words. Even if I sat here all day I still probably wouldn't get it right, but for what it's worth, I miss you a completely stupid amount. I know I made a massive mistake - massive mistakes, really - and I'd do anything to put it all right. I know I'm asking a lot for you to even consider talking to me after what I did and what I said, but I didn't know what was happening to me, I assumed it was something it wasn't and I blamed you. Wrongly. Now I'm away from there it's obvious you had nothing to do with it, it was just that we spent almost all of our time together and, fuck, I miss that so much.

You said to me more than once that no matter what happened with us, you'd always be my friend. The only thing that's keeping me going right now is that might still be true.

I'm sorry I pushed you away, I can't stand being without you.

Yours, always

Arthur

Merlin read the letter through again, but there was so much there that was so heartfelt that he only half-comprehended it. That, and the realisation that he may, inadvertently, have had a considerable hand in what had happened to Arthur. Truly exhausted now, he kicked his shoes off, grabbed a blanket, and settled down on the sofa for the best night's sleep he'd had in a long time. He wouldn't realise it until morning, but he fell asleep holding tight to Arthur's shirt.

Part Five

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