Map Our Escape
Title: Map Our Escape
Summary: Arthur feels tied down and unhappy with his life, so he throws a dart at a map--and ends up in Ealdor.
A/N: Title and beginning quote from "Street Lights" by The Bay State. From this prompt on kinkeme_merlin: Arthur's had enough and needs to get away from Uther, his bossy sister, his overbearing fiance/girlfried etc etc. So he literally sticks a pin in a map and sets his sat nav to the co-ordinates... Guess who lives in the very house in the little village he winds up in.
Disclaimer: I do not own Merlin.
"Let's leave right now
This town is holding us down ..."
~
It begins with a map.
From the very beginning of Camelot Enterprises, when it was a two-bit software design dream in the garage, Uther Pendragon has had a huge map of Britain that takes up most of a wall in whatever office he’s in, every village and town carefully marked out.
Arthur has stared at it steadily through every scolding he’s ever received from his father. Back when he was a child standing in the garage and his father would pull Arthur into his lap afterwards to show him the towns he’d visited, the towns he wanted to visit, and now when he’s told yet again that he’s nothing without hanging on Uther’s coattails, that his job is on the line if they lose the Mercia account, that Morgana never let him down when she worked with him, that Sophia will never marry him if he keeps fucking up, Arthur searches out the names of towns while nodding and trying to look contrite--tiny Cornish villages, towns in the Lake Country, he’s looked at them all over the years. Today he’s lingering over Kent.
“You will do whatever it takes to make Bayard at Mercia listen to you, is that clear?” Uther finishes, and Arthur tunes back in, tearing his gaze away from Skegness.
“Yes, Father,” says Arthur, even though he has nothing to do with the actual software, as he’s in the Finance department.
“Good. See that you do. Now, I have a meeting with that dreadful Nimueh woman from Avalon Software. I expect progress when I return.” Uther sweeps out of his office.
Arthur stares at the map of Britain, at all the places he’s never been because they aren’t strategically important to the business. He thinks of how much he hates accounting for this huge corporation and how terrible he is with computers. He thinks of Morgana, who actually escaped to run a charity in Edinburgh and calls once a week to tell him he isn’t doing enough with his life. He thinks of Sophia, and the ring he keeps meaning to buy.
There, in front of him, is everywhere he’ll never get to explore, because Sophia isn’t the sort to want to rent a caravan and take a vacation in the wilderness, and he’s expected to spend the rest of his life with her.
And that’s the beginning of the idea.
*
“I’ve been thinking of taking a little trip,” Arthur says to three different people that week.
His father barely looks up from his papers. “Unless it’s to the conference in New York, I don’t want to hear about it for the next six months, or perhaps you’ve forgotten that we have a massive release coming up soon.”
He can almost hear Morgana’s smirk over the phone. “Missing me that much, Arthur? Well, good. I’ve been wanting to introduce you to Gwen and Lance for ages. But don’t you dare bring that harpy of yours along with you.”
Sophia claps her hands. “Oh, Arthur! You can take me to Paris! When can we go?”
“It’s just a thought,” he tells all three of them, and steals a dart from the next pub he goes to with his rugby mates and keeps it in his pocket.
*
“I cannot believe that my own son can’t do his job competently,” shouts Uther, winding down from the end of a rant that Arthur has ignored while thinking wistfully of the Highlands. “If your standard of work does not improve ...”
“Of course,” says Arthur. “Aren’t you late for your lunch meeting with Nimueh?”
“I want those figures by tonight,” Uther snaps, and then he’s out of his office again in a whirl of Armani jacket and overstuffed briefcase.
I don’t want this, Arthur thinks, finally, after years of pretending he wanted to follow in his father’s footsteps. He doesn’t want the office with a view of the whole of London and a flat with a picture of his late wife on the mantelpiece as the only decoration. He doesn’t want Sophia and her low-cut dresses and her society connections. He doesn’t want Uther, Sophia, and even Morgana telling him at least once a week what a disappointment he is.
Arthur pulls the dart out of his pocket, closes his eyes, and heaves it at the map. When he opens his eyes, the dart is quivering, stuck somewhere in Wales, and he walks over to pull it out and catches the name of the village where it landed: Ealdor.
Before he can second-guess himself, Arthur grabs a piece of paper and a pen and scribbles a quick note for his father: I quit. He leaves his cell phone on top of the note and almost runs out of the office, feeling freer than he has in years.
After a quick journey by taxi back to his flat and an even quicker job of packing up the few things he wants to bring with him, Arthur runs to the car he hardly ever uses and starts up the engine and the sat nav and programs in the coordinates that will lead him to Ealdor.
Out of a bit of superstition, he puts his birthday after the decimal point on the latitude and his mother’s on the longitude, and then he puts the car in gear.
*
Arthur barely pays attention to the radio as it hums in the background, just listening to the voice on his sat nav tell him where to turn. He tries periodically to program it to speak in the young lady’s voice, but it’s always been that of an older man, a bit scratchy and amused, and phrasing things like he’s Yoda or something. “In two kilometers, your path diverges to the left.”
It only takes an hour for Arthur to stop reflexively waiting for his cell phone to start ringing, and when the sun starts going down, he stops at a market for the last of the summer fruits and a loaf of fresh bread and eats it while he drives. He spends the night curled up in his backseat in a car park, and it’s uncomfortable, but he doesn’t care. He could afford a hotel easily, but he wants to go as long as he can without using his accounts, because he wouldn’t put it past Uther to be watching him through his wallet.
The next day, it pours, and the roads are terrible, and Arthur thinks about holing up in an inn for a few days, but even though there’s nothing for him in Ealdor, just the village’s name is keeping him going, and he doesn’t want to give up on his adventure until he’s had it.
By the time Arthur arrives in Ealdor, which proves to be tiny and surrounded by sprawling fields, it’s dark, and he’s wet and covered in mud from shifting his car out of a puddle he got stuck in. The sat nav keeps telling him where to turn (“Turn right in fifty meters, your journey will soon be at an end”) and finally, Arthur’s pulling up outside a little cottage, looking snug and warm and lit up, and he realizes he’s got no clue what the fuck he’s doing.
The door opens before he can admit that he’s an idiot and turn around to slink back to London with his tail between his legs, and then someone’s shouting over the rain and running towards him with an umbrella. “Will? You didn’t have to--”
Arthur rolls down his window when the stranger gets close. He’s a few years younger than Arthur, rail-thin and dark-haired, and his eyes widen when he catches sight of who’s sitting in his drive. “I think perhaps you’d better come inside.”
*
Somehow, in between Arthur saying “No, sorry, I must be lost” and “Honestly, I can’t impose like this,” he’s bundled inside and deposited on a worn leather sofa with a crocheted afghan over his shoulders and a hot mug of tea between his hands. “You don’t have to do this,” he says helplessly.
“You can’t go anywhere else in this weather, especially not like that. You’ll get pneumonia. Where are you heading?” The dark-haired man, whose fey face is made far more human by his ears, is perched on a rocking chair beside the roaring fire.
“Here, actually,” says Arthur, because he’s too tired and bewildered to lie.
The man cocks his head. “You know someone in Ealdor? I can give you directions wherever you’re going.”
“No, I ...” Arthur shakes his head and feels like an idiot. “I threw a dart at a map, and then my sat nav took me to your house.” The man doesn’t say anything. “I was ... I suppose I was hoping there’s an inn or something.”
“Not in Ealdor. Most people just come here to stay with relatives. My mum ...” The man swallows, and Arthur realizes again how fragile and tired he looks. “My mum would take people in for a night or two sometimes. Temporary farm workers and the like. If you want to stay ...”
“I can’t possibly--”
“No, please,” says the man, and Arthur has just enough time to wonder why he wants so badly for Arthur to stay before he starts blushing. “I’m sorry. It’s just ... I’ve more food than I could possibly eat right now, and my--and there’s a room empty. I won’t murder you in your bed or anything.”
“If you’re sure ...”
“I am.”
“I’m Arthur.” He puts the mug down and holds his hand out, and the man shakes it. “And I’m sort or at loose ends right now, so I’m glad I ended up at your place.”
“I’m Merlin, and it sounds like you’ve got a story to tell.”
*
Two hours later, Arthur is staring at an unfamiliar ceiling in a painfully neat room that is nonethless obviously not a guest room. There are too many familiar touches for that--a few pictures on the bureau left next to a jewelry box and a wooden barette, a sachet of lavender under the pillow, a child’s drawing next to the window.
Merlin’s mother’s room, he realizes when he’s almost asleep, but he doesn’t realize until the next morning when he wakes up sore from travel and stress and an unfamiliar mattress what that means--the state of the room, Merlin’s careful use of the past tense, his tense and tired face, his mention of too much food in his kitchen ... Arthur dresses faster than he has in years and rushes down the stairs. Merlin is standing at the stove with eggs frying, head hanging and shoulders tense. “When did it happen?” Arthur asks, and Merlin turns around.
“It wasn’t a surprise,” he says, which isn’t an answer. “We were prepared. She was in hospital for months.”
“Merlin.”
“The funeral was the day before yesterday.”
The day before yesterday, while Arthur was throwing a dart at a map and leaving behind his life. He can hardly breathe. “I’m so--”
“Don’t say it. I’m glad you showed up.” Merlin smiles, small but real. “She took in more than one bedraggled traveller on nights like that, when people got lost. It was my way of honoring her, and it means a lot more than saying a few stupid words or wearing black. And maybe she sent you my way so I wouldn’t be alone last night.”
Normally, Arthur would dismiss that without a second thought, but everything seems a bit surreal, Merlin’s little cottage, the smell of lavender lingering in his nose, the ridiculous chance of it all. “Maybe,” he allows.
Merlin hands him a plate of eggs and presses him onto a stool at the counter. “What will you do, now that you’re here?”
“I don’t know. I can’t just go back to London. Morgana would have me in Edinburgh, but she would also tell me she told me so every few seconds.”
“You work in finance, right?” Arthur nods. “My uncle--well, not my uncle really, but close enough, but his name’s Gaius. He owns the shop in town--it sells pretty much everything, but he was trained as a chemist, and he says the ledgers are a right mess. Maybe, if you wanted something for a week or two, he might hire you on to balance them?”
Arthur, to his own surprise, finds himself saying yes.
*
Life in Ealdor is slow and quiet, and while Arthur knows he would be bored within a month, it feels perfect. Within three days, he’s established a routine: he spends the day at Gaius’s shop, fixing up the finances and occasionally gently giving a few suggestions about stock and ordering, and the evening with Merlin, who doesn’t leave his property. “They’ll smother me in pity. Let me know if someone starts talking about a different scandal, and then I’ll come out.”
He learns that Merlin is doing graduate work in Cardiff and will be leaving for the semester in three weeks, closing up his mother’s house until he can figure out what to do with it. He learns about Merlin’s mother, and his friend Will who spends part of his afternoons at Merlin’s house. He spends the nights in Merlin’s mother’s room.
On the fifth day, he calls Morgana. “Who is this?” she asks the second she picks up the phone.
“It’s Arthur.”
She lets out a shaky breath. “Where the hell are you? What were you thinking, running off without telling anyone, without even taking your phone? Uther says you quit! Sophia called me, Arthur, you know I hate that bint!”
“I had to get away. I just ... I couldn’t do it anymore.”
Morgana’s never run from anything in her life, and he knew she wouldn’t understand, but he also knew that he had to tell someone where he is before they called the police. “So you disappear?” Her voice goes shrill.
“I’m in Wales.”
There’s a pause. “Wales.”
“Yes.”
“Arthur, are you completely mad?”
“I don’t want to have this discussion, Morgana. I just wanted to let everyone know that I’m healthy and safe. You can tell Father and Sophia both to go to hell.” Arthur hangs up on her demands that he give her more information and turns around to find Merlin watching him. “I don’t know what to do,” he admits, the first time he’s allowed himself to think it.
“We’ll figure it out,” says Merlin.
*
When Arthur’s been in Ealdor for a week, Merlin kisses him. He’d called his father that afternoon and listened through the shouting before reiterating that he does not intend to return to Camelot Enterprises and his father can do what he wishes about that. Then he’d called Sophia and told her to find someone else.
After all that, it’s hardly a surprise when Merlin stops him in the middle of a story about Morgana with a hand on his knee and kisses him. Arthur responds immediately, like he’s been doing it for years, and Merlin feels like Sophia never did, like he slots perfectly against Arthur, like if they pressed together right there wouldn’t even be a molecule of space between them anywhere.
When he pulls away, Merlin’s eyes look gold in the evening light. “You could leave any time you want,” says Merlin, like they’re in the middle of a conversation Arthur missed the beginning of.
“I don’t want,” he replies, because he doesn’t know much right now, but he does know that he doesn’t want to leave Merlin, not when he’s just found this. “But if you want me to go ...”
“No, of course not. I just ... of course I want you to stay. Just not if you’re only here because you can’t think of anywhere else.”
Arthur kisses him again, because he doesn’t know how to answer that.
*
The next day, Arthur drives to the nearest town and buys himself a new cell phone, and then he spends the rest of the day in Merlin’s garden on the phone to various connections in Cardiff and its environs asking about jobs. He even calls Morgana again, but she just scolds him until he gives up and rings off.
“Cardiff?” Merlin asks when he comes in for dinner, greeting him at the door with a cup of tea and a kiss. “Arthur, you really don’t have to ...”
Arthur doesn’t know how to say it out loud, to tell Merlin that he’s the only thing Arthur’s got at the moment that he wants to hold on to, and that he wants to be uprooted and Cardiff is as good a place to go as anywhere else, and that he’s glad his dart landed in the middle of Wales and not anywhere else. “It’s a city that’s neither Edinburgh nor London,” he says instead. “But it’s a big city. If you don’t want to see me, if you’re just ...” If you’re just doing this because of your mother, tell me before I actually fall in love with you, but that’s an unspeakably cruel thing to say, so he trails off.
“This is crazy. We’re going too fast ...” Merlin pauses and closes his eyes. “Yes. Yes, come to Cardiff.”
The next morning, Morgana calls, and, tone frosty, tells him that there’s a non-profit she sometimes works with in Cardiff that’s just getting big enough to want a full-time worker devoted to its finances and fundraising. “It’s not glorious, and you’ll be paid a pittance, but it’s good work.”
Arthur looks across Merlin’s bedroom to find him still waking up, patting the bed next to him in confusion for a moment. “Send me the name.”
*
It ends with a map.
Three months later, when Arthur and Merlin finally give up and admit that paying the rent on two flats was a stupid plan, the first thing Arthur puts up on Merlin’s wall when he moves in is a huge map, just like Uther’s, but this one has tacks in it, places they’ve visited on weekends when Merlin didn’t have much coursework and Arthur didn’t have extra work to catch up on.
Merlin grins at him and hands him the dart. “So. Where next?”
Arthur closes his eyes and throws.
Summary: Arthur feels tied down and unhappy with his life, so he throws a dart at a map--and ends up in Ealdor.
A/N: Title and beginning quote from "Street Lights" by The Bay State. From this prompt on kinkeme_merlin: Arthur's had enough and needs to get away from Uther, his bossy sister, his overbearing fiance/girlfried etc etc. So he literally sticks a pin in a map and sets his sat nav to the co-ordinates... Guess who lives in the very house in the little village he winds up in.
Disclaimer: I do not own Merlin.
"Let's leave right now
This town is holding us down ..."
~
It begins with a map.
From the very beginning of Camelot Enterprises, when it was a two-bit software design dream in the garage, Uther Pendragon has had a huge map of Britain that takes up most of a wall in whatever office he’s in, every village and town carefully marked out.
Arthur has stared at it steadily through every scolding he’s ever received from his father. Back when he was a child standing in the garage and his father would pull Arthur into his lap afterwards to show him the towns he’d visited, the towns he wanted to visit, and now when he’s told yet again that he’s nothing without hanging on Uther’s coattails, that his job is on the line if they lose the Mercia account, that Morgana never let him down when she worked with him, that Sophia will never marry him if he keeps fucking up, Arthur searches out the names of towns while nodding and trying to look contrite--tiny Cornish villages, towns in the Lake Country, he’s looked at them all over the years. Today he’s lingering over Kent.
“You will do whatever it takes to make Bayard at Mercia listen to you, is that clear?” Uther finishes, and Arthur tunes back in, tearing his gaze away from Skegness.
“Yes, Father,” says Arthur, even though he has nothing to do with the actual software, as he’s in the Finance department.
“Good. See that you do. Now, I have a meeting with that dreadful Nimueh woman from Avalon Software. I expect progress when I return.” Uther sweeps out of his office.
Arthur stares at the map of Britain, at all the places he’s never been because they aren’t strategically important to the business. He thinks of how much he hates accounting for this huge corporation and how terrible he is with computers. He thinks of Morgana, who actually escaped to run a charity in Edinburgh and calls once a week to tell him he isn’t doing enough with his life. He thinks of Sophia, and the ring he keeps meaning to buy.
There, in front of him, is everywhere he’ll never get to explore, because Sophia isn’t the sort to want to rent a caravan and take a vacation in the wilderness, and he’s expected to spend the rest of his life with her.
And that’s the beginning of the idea.
*
“I’ve been thinking of taking a little trip,” Arthur says to three different people that week.
His father barely looks up from his papers. “Unless it’s to the conference in New York, I don’t want to hear about it for the next six months, or perhaps you’ve forgotten that we have a massive release coming up soon.”
He can almost hear Morgana’s smirk over the phone. “Missing me that much, Arthur? Well, good. I’ve been wanting to introduce you to Gwen and Lance for ages. But don’t you dare bring that harpy of yours along with you.”
Sophia claps her hands. “Oh, Arthur! You can take me to Paris! When can we go?”
“It’s just a thought,” he tells all three of them, and steals a dart from the next pub he goes to with his rugby mates and keeps it in his pocket.
*
“I cannot believe that my own son can’t do his job competently,” shouts Uther, winding down from the end of a rant that Arthur has ignored while thinking wistfully of the Highlands. “If your standard of work does not improve ...”
“Of course,” says Arthur. “Aren’t you late for your lunch meeting with Nimueh?”
“I want those figures by tonight,” Uther snaps, and then he’s out of his office again in a whirl of Armani jacket and overstuffed briefcase.
I don’t want this, Arthur thinks, finally, after years of pretending he wanted to follow in his father’s footsteps. He doesn’t want the office with a view of the whole of London and a flat with a picture of his late wife on the mantelpiece as the only decoration. He doesn’t want Sophia and her low-cut dresses and her society connections. He doesn’t want Uther, Sophia, and even Morgana telling him at least once a week what a disappointment he is.
Arthur pulls the dart out of his pocket, closes his eyes, and heaves it at the map. When he opens his eyes, the dart is quivering, stuck somewhere in Wales, and he walks over to pull it out and catches the name of the village where it landed: Ealdor.
Before he can second-guess himself, Arthur grabs a piece of paper and a pen and scribbles a quick note for his father: I quit. He leaves his cell phone on top of the note and almost runs out of the office, feeling freer than he has in years.
After a quick journey by taxi back to his flat and an even quicker job of packing up the few things he wants to bring with him, Arthur runs to the car he hardly ever uses and starts up the engine and the sat nav and programs in the coordinates that will lead him to Ealdor.
Out of a bit of superstition, he puts his birthday after the decimal point on the latitude and his mother’s on the longitude, and then he puts the car in gear.
*
Arthur barely pays attention to the radio as it hums in the background, just listening to the voice on his sat nav tell him where to turn. He tries periodically to program it to speak in the young lady’s voice, but it’s always been that of an older man, a bit scratchy and amused, and phrasing things like he’s Yoda or something. “In two kilometers, your path diverges to the left.”
It only takes an hour for Arthur to stop reflexively waiting for his cell phone to start ringing, and when the sun starts going down, he stops at a market for the last of the summer fruits and a loaf of fresh bread and eats it while he drives. He spends the night curled up in his backseat in a car park, and it’s uncomfortable, but he doesn’t care. He could afford a hotel easily, but he wants to go as long as he can without using his accounts, because he wouldn’t put it past Uther to be watching him through his wallet.
The next day, it pours, and the roads are terrible, and Arthur thinks about holing up in an inn for a few days, but even though there’s nothing for him in Ealdor, just the village’s name is keeping him going, and he doesn’t want to give up on his adventure until he’s had it.
By the time Arthur arrives in Ealdor, which proves to be tiny and surrounded by sprawling fields, it’s dark, and he’s wet and covered in mud from shifting his car out of a puddle he got stuck in. The sat nav keeps telling him where to turn (“Turn right in fifty meters, your journey will soon be at an end”) and finally, Arthur’s pulling up outside a little cottage, looking snug and warm and lit up, and he realizes he’s got no clue what the fuck he’s doing.
The door opens before he can admit that he’s an idiot and turn around to slink back to London with his tail between his legs, and then someone’s shouting over the rain and running towards him with an umbrella. “Will? You didn’t have to--”
Arthur rolls down his window when the stranger gets close. He’s a few years younger than Arthur, rail-thin and dark-haired, and his eyes widen when he catches sight of who’s sitting in his drive. “I think perhaps you’d better come inside.”
*
Somehow, in between Arthur saying “No, sorry, I must be lost” and “Honestly, I can’t impose like this,” he’s bundled inside and deposited on a worn leather sofa with a crocheted afghan over his shoulders and a hot mug of tea between his hands. “You don’t have to do this,” he says helplessly.
“You can’t go anywhere else in this weather, especially not like that. You’ll get pneumonia. Where are you heading?” The dark-haired man, whose fey face is made far more human by his ears, is perched on a rocking chair beside the roaring fire.
“Here, actually,” says Arthur, because he’s too tired and bewildered to lie.
The man cocks his head. “You know someone in Ealdor? I can give you directions wherever you’re going.”
“No, I ...” Arthur shakes his head and feels like an idiot. “I threw a dart at a map, and then my sat nav took me to your house.” The man doesn’t say anything. “I was ... I suppose I was hoping there’s an inn or something.”
“Not in Ealdor. Most people just come here to stay with relatives. My mum ...” The man swallows, and Arthur realizes again how fragile and tired he looks. “My mum would take people in for a night or two sometimes. Temporary farm workers and the like. If you want to stay ...”
“I can’t possibly--”
“No, please,” says the man, and Arthur has just enough time to wonder why he wants so badly for Arthur to stay before he starts blushing. “I’m sorry. It’s just ... I’ve more food than I could possibly eat right now, and my--and there’s a room empty. I won’t murder you in your bed or anything.”
“If you’re sure ...”
“I am.”
“I’m Arthur.” He puts the mug down and holds his hand out, and the man shakes it. “And I’m sort or at loose ends right now, so I’m glad I ended up at your place.”
“I’m Merlin, and it sounds like you’ve got a story to tell.”
*
Two hours later, Arthur is staring at an unfamiliar ceiling in a painfully neat room that is nonethless obviously not a guest room. There are too many familiar touches for that--a few pictures on the bureau left next to a jewelry box and a wooden barette, a sachet of lavender under the pillow, a child’s drawing next to the window.
Merlin’s mother’s room, he realizes when he’s almost asleep, but he doesn’t realize until the next morning when he wakes up sore from travel and stress and an unfamiliar mattress what that means--the state of the room, Merlin’s careful use of the past tense, his tense and tired face, his mention of too much food in his kitchen ... Arthur dresses faster than he has in years and rushes down the stairs. Merlin is standing at the stove with eggs frying, head hanging and shoulders tense. “When did it happen?” Arthur asks, and Merlin turns around.
“It wasn’t a surprise,” he says, which isn’t an answer. “We were prepared. She was in hospital for months.”
“Merlin.”
“The funeral was the day before yesterday.”
The day before yesterday, while Arthur was throwing a dart at a map and leaving behind his life. He can hardly breathe. “I’m so--”
“Don’t say it. I’m glad you showed up.” Merlin smiles, small but real. “She took in more than one bedraggled traveller on nights like that, when people got lost. It was my way of honoring her, and it means a lot more than saying a few stupid words or wearing black. And maybe she sent you my way so I wouldn’t be alone last night.”
Normally, Arthur would dismiss that without a second thought, but everything seems a bit surreal, Merlin’s little cottage, the smell of lavender lingering in his nose, the ridiculous chance of it all. “Maybe,” he allows.
Merlin hands him a plate of eggs and presses him onto a stool at the counter. “What will you do, now that you’re here?”
“I don’t know. I can’t just go back to London. Morgana would have me in Edinburgh, but she would also tell me she told me so every few seconds.”
“You work in finance, right?” Arthur nods. “My uncle--well, not my uncle really, but close enough, but his name’s Gaius. He owns the shop in town--it sells pretty much everything, but he was trained as a chemist, and he says the ledgers are a right mess. Maybe, if you wanted something for a week or two, he might hire you on to balance them?”
Arthur, to his own surprise, finds himself saying yes.
*
Life in Ealdor is slow and quiet, and while Arthur knows he would be bored within a month, it feels perfect. Within three days, he’s established a routine: he spends the day at Gaius’s shop, fixing up the finances and occasionally gently giving a few suggestions about stock and ordering, and the evening with Merlin, who doesn’t leave his property. “They’ll smother me in pity. Let me know if someone starts talking about a different scandal, and then I’ll come out.”
He learns that Merlin is doing graduate work in Cardiff and will be leaving for the semester in three weeks, closing up his mother’s house until he can figure out what to do with it. He learns about Merlin’s mother, and his friend Will who spends part of his afternoons at Merlin’s house. He spends the nights in Merlin’s mother’s room.
On the fifth day, he calls Morgana. “Who is this?” she asks the second she picks up the phone.
“It’s Arthur.”
She lets out a shaky breath. “Where the hell are you? What were you thinking, running off without telling anyone, without even taking your phone? Uther says you quit! Sophia called me, Arthur, you know I hate that bint!”
“I had to get away. I just ... I couldn’t do it anymore.”
Morgana’s never run from anything in her life, and he knew she wouldn’t understand, but he also knew that he had to tell someone where he is before they called the police. “So you disappear?” Her voice goes shrill.
“I’m in Wales.”
There’s a pause. “Wales.”
“Yes.”
“Arthur, are you completely mad?”
“I don’t want to have this discussion, Morgana. I just wanted to let everyone know that I’m healthy and safe. You can tell Father and Sophia both to go to hell.” Arthur hangs up on her demands that he give her more information and turns around to find Merlin watching him. “I don’t know what to do,” he admits, the first time he’s allowed himself to think it.
“We’ll figure it out,” says Merlin.
*
When Arthur’s been in Ealdor for a week, Merlin kisses him. He’d called his father that afternoon and listened through the shouting before reiterating that he does not intend to return to Camelot Enterprises and his father can do what he wishes about that. Then he’d called Sophia and told her to find someone else.
After all that, it’s hardly a surprise when Merlin stops him in the middle of a story about Morgana with a hand on his knee and kisses him. Arthur responds immediately, like he’s been doing it for years, and Merlin feels like Sophia never did, like he slots perfectly against Arthur, like if they pressed together right there wouldn’t even be a molecule of space between them anywhere.
When he pulls away, Merlin’s eyes look gold in the evening light. “You could leave any time you want,” says Merlin, like they’re in the middle of a conversation Arthur missed the beginning of.
“I don’t want,” he replies, because he doesn’t know much right now, but he does know that he doesn’t want to leave Merlin, not when he’s just found this. “But if you want me to go ...”
“No, of course not. I just ... of course I want you to stay. Just not if you’re only here because you can’t think of anywhere else.”
Arthur kisses him again, because he doesn’t know how to answer that.
*
The next day, Arthur drives to the nearest town and buys himself a new cell phone, and then he spends the rest of the day in Merlin’s garden on the phone to various connections in Cardiff and its environs asking about jobs. He even calls Morgana again, but she just scolds him until he gives up and rings off.
“Cardiff?” Merlin asks when he comes in for dinner, greeting him at the door with a cup of tea and a kiss. “Arthur, you really don’t have to ...”
Arthur doesn’t know how to say it out loud, to tell Merlin that he’s the only thing Arthur’s got at the moment that he wants to hold on to, and that he wants to be uprooted and Cardiff is as good a place to go as anywhere else, and that he’s glad his dart landed in the middle of Wales and not anywhere else. “It’s a city that’s neither Edinburgh nor London,” he says instead. “But it’s a big city. If you don’t want to see me, if you’re just ...” If you’re just doing this because of your mother, tell me before I actually fall in love with you, but that’s an unspeakably cruel thing to say, so he trails off.
“This is crazy. We’re going too fast ...” Merlin pauses and closes his eyes. “Yes. Yes, come to Cardiff.”
The next morning, Morgana calls, and, tone frosty, tells him that there’s a non-profit she sometimes works with in Cardiff that’s just getting big enough to want a full-time worker devoted to its finances and fundraising. “It’s not glorious, and you’ll be paid a pittance, but it’s good work.”
Arthur looks across Merlin’s bedroom to find him still waking up, patting the bed next to him in confusion for a moment. “Send me the name.”
*
It ends with a map.
Three months later, when Arthur and Merlin finally give up and admit that paying the rent on two flats was a stupid plan, the first thing Arthur puts up on Merlin’s wall when he moves in is a huge map, just like Uther’s, but this one has tacks in it, places they’ve visited on weekends when Merlin didn’t have much coursework and Arthur didn’t have extra work to catch up on.
Merlin grins at him and hands him the dart. “So. Where next?”
Arthur closes his eyes and throws.