Fic: Where Legends Lie - Part 3
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7
Merlin walked through the door into Arthur’s room, trying to avoid splashing hot water from the overflowing bucket over himself. The prince was sitting on his bed and staring out the window. Merlin walked over to where he’d set the bath down earlier and poured the water into it, heaving a relieved sigh as he stretched out his aching arms. It had taken seven trips down to the well to get enough water to fill the tub, and Merlin had heated each bucketful with magic before he’d entered Arthur’s chambers.
He sidled towards the door, hoping that Arthur would just let him leave. But the prince stood up from the bed and frowned at him, holding out his arms so that Merlin could undress him. Merlin stepped back into the room and mentally cursed the prince, and Uther, and royalty in general for not taking the time to learn how to take their own armour and their own clothes off. It was pathetic, really.
Arthur stared impassively forward as Merlin began to undress him. Merlin had done it on several occasions now, but the sight of the prince’s skin slowly appearing as he removed each piece of clothing was something he hadn’t yet gotten used to. It was different to how he’d undressed other men - with them, it had always been about getting bare skin against each other as fast as possible, so they’d been rough and careless as they stripped.
This was slower, partly because Merlin really didn’t want Arthur naked in front of him right now, but also because he enjoyed the simple act of undressing Arthur. He liked the way the prince looked straight ahead, as though he was trying not to notice that his armour and his clothes were disappearing. He liked the way Arthur’s head jerked with annoyance if Merlin accidentally brushed his cold fingers over exposed skin, or the way Arthur swallowed if Merlin leaned in too close. But most of all, he liked Arthur’s body itself - the way the sun caught his hair and made it gleam, the pale gold of his chest, the way his breeches looked when he didn’t have a shirt hanging loose over them. There were scars on Arthur’s skin, pale lines that Merlin wanted to run his fingers over. Arthur was an ass, sure, but his body was beautiful. It didn’t have that soft, polished edge that Merlin always saw with the men in magazines; that look that had never seemed quite real. Arthur’s body looked as though it had been used and as though he knew how to use it. It was the body of a fighter and the body of a prince, and Merlin hadn’t wanted anything so badly in his life.
He pulled off Arthur’s belt and laid it on the table before turning back to Arthur. He bumped his hand against the prince’s arms to get him to lift them up. Arthur scowled at that, but Merlin ignored him, because if the man was going to act like a child who needed to be undressed, then Merlin was certainly going to treat him like one.
Merlin stepped closer and pulled at the hem of Arthur’s shirt, lifting it up until he could see the golden skin of Arthur’s waist. He pulled it over Arthur’s head, tugging it off and throwing it aside, trying to keep himself from staring too intently at the prince’s body. He focused instead on the soft bumps of Arthur’s collarbones and the long line of his neck - safe places to look, Merlin thought. But despite that, Merlin could feel heat sparking through his veins and he had never gotten turned on by a neck before; what was wrong with him?
Arthur had noticed his hesitation now and was frowning at him, his red lips parted, and Merlin could tell that he was about to make some scathing remark and he really didn’t need that right now. So he stepped quickly forward and reached for the laces of Arthur’s breeches, fumbling over them because his fingers were freezing and who put laces on trousers anyway? There seemed to be far too many strings and not enough holes and Merlin could feel Arthur’s gaze boring into the top of his head, so it probably wasn’t all that surprising when Arthur made an exasperated sound and pushed Merlin’s hands aside.
Merlin moved backwards and looked at the ground, willing himself to keep his eyes firmly fixed on the stone floor until he heard the splash of water and Arthur’s contented sigh.
Then Merlin moved over to the side of the tub and let himself look at the prince, because the man was half submerged in the water anyway and Merlin didn’t think that too much could go wrong when all he could see of Arthur was his chest.
Only it soon became apparent that when Arthur had said Merlin would be bathing him, he really meant bathing him, because as soon as Merlin made his reluctant way over to somewhere near the edge of the bath the prince nodded at the soap, as though he was expecting Merlin to pick it up and use it.
Merlin blinked, looking from Arthur to the soap and back again, because Arthur was joking, right? He’d read a whole lot of books on the medieval world and not one of them mentioned men bathing each other. Merlin would have remembered something like that.
He picked up the soap and dragged a stool over so that he could sit behind Arthur, his knees hard against the side of the bath and his hands hovering above Arthur’s shoulders.
“In your own time, Merlin,” Arthur said shortly, without turning around, and Merlin felt a surge of irritation. It was Arthur’s fault. He ought to know how to bath himself, so that Merlin didn’t have to sit here watching water drops sliding from his hair and down his back. He pushed hard on Arthur’s shoulders and the prince slipped suddenly down the side of the bath until his head was beneath the water. He emerged a second later, spluttering wildly, and Merlin felt a tiny jab of satisfaction.
“Merlin!” Arthur said, twisting his body around to glare at him.
Merlin shrugged. “You need to be wet, sire,” he said, and then winced, because it sounded like he was quoting bad porno dialogue, and he really didn’t need to be thinking about porn, bad or otherwise, when Arthur was sitting naked before him.
Arthur pushed his dripping fringe out of his eyes and slid back around, a scowl still fixed upon his face. “Get on with it, then,” he said, and Merlin picked up the soap and started to lather it over Arthur’s back, his fingers brushing lightly over Arthur’s skin. The prince’s muscles were tight and hard, as though he hadn’t relaxed in months. Merlin frowned, dipping the tips of his fingers into the water and pressing them against Arthur’s shoulders, trying to work out the knots in his muscles. There was silence for a while, the only sound the splash of the water around Arthur’s waist and the soft chatter of the birds outside. Merlin had almost forgotten what he was doing when he heard Arthur give a contented groan and relax against the side of the bath, his shoulders pushed back against Merlin’s hands.
Merlin froze. Christ, that sound. It was like it had driven straight into his chest and set something on fire, because Merlin had thought he was doing a pretty good job of pretending he wasn’t massaging a naked Arthur Pendragon, until Arthur made that noise. As soon as he’d heard the moan, everything had suddenly come flooding back in, as though someone had shut off all his filters. He could feel the way the prince pressed back against him, every time Merlin skimmed his fingers over the man’s skin, and how he could almost see the shape of him beneath the rippling water, and the feel of his muscles beneath his fingers, hard and tight and smooth. It was too much for him; he’d never been this intimate with someone without it leading to sex. He could feel his stupid body realising that, the heat spreading through his belly until he was hard and straining against his breeches. Shit.
Merlin lifted his hands from Arthur’s back and tried to slow his breathing. He needed to get out of here, and soon.
“Hair,” Arthur said, swivelling around to look at Merlin, oblivious. He frowned at Merlin’s vacant expression.
“My hair. Wash it. Honestly, Merlin, it isn’t hard, even for someone like you.”
Merlin felt his breath catch as he heard Arthur’s voice, and it wasn’t fair. His cock was pressed uncomfortably hard against his breeches and he just wanted to leave. Why couldn’t Arthur wash his own stupid hair? The whole situation would have been almost funny if Merlin wasn’t so painfully hard. He took a deep breath and pressed his fingers into Arthur’s hair, trying not to notice the way the strands caught against his fingers and how soft it felt, all wet and soapy from the bathwater. Arthur shifted slightly and Merlin looked down to see that the prince had the soap in his hands, and was sliding it up the inside of his thighs. Fuck. Merlin whimpered softly, watching Arthur’s hands disappearing beneath the water, moving higher up his body to wash some place that Merlin couldn’t quite see. Arthur hummed in annoyance, pulling his head forward, and Merlin realised that he’d been twisting his fingers into the prince’s hair. He cupped some water in his hands and poured it over Arthur’s hair, then picked up a towel from beside the bath and handed it over to Arthur.
“Done,” he said, and shut his eyes as Arthur climbed out of the bath, so that he wouldn’t see the water running over his body, leaving smooth wet tracks across his skin.
“Merlin,” Arthur said, and Merlin opened his eyes to see that the prince was standing with his towel slung low over his hips, glaring imperiously at Merlin. “My clothes,” he snapped.
Merlin stood carefully to his feet and walked over to the cupboard, pulling out a tunic and breeches. He held them out for the prince, hoping that Arthur would put them on himself and that he wouldn’t look down at Merlin’s trousers, because the evidence of his arousal was probably far too clear.
Arthur looked at him with a curious expression, his hair dripping water down his face. One drop slid over the corner of his lip and he opened his mouth to it, almost unconsciously, and then lifted a thumb to his lips to wipe it away. Merlin gritted his teeth, hands balled at his sides and veins sparking with heat, and stared at his feet, willing himself to stay motionless.
“Is there something the matter, Merlin?” Arthur asked, his voice low. An odd noise burst out of the back of Merlin’s throat, something between a squeak and a groan. Arthur stared at him, nonplussed, and Merlin flushed.
“Nothing, sire,” he managed. “Gaius needs me for -“ he waved a hand vaguely, hoping that Arthur would interpret the movement as something plausible that Gaius might need him to do, “- so could I go?”
Arthur stared at him for a moment longer, eyes narrowed, and then nodded. “Very well,” he said, and Merlin bolted for the door before he’d even finished.
Merlin walked fast through the castle with his head full of Arthur - of the prince lying half-submerged in the bath with water streaming off him, his head tipped back and the long, golden line of his throat exposed; of Arthur, stroking himself languorously towards the edge with his bottom lip caught between his teeth and his eyes fixed on Merlin’s. Merlin stuffed a hand to his mouth and bit down hard on one knuckle, trying to close his mind to the images.
He turned the corner too quickly, eyes downcast, and almost collided with one of the maidservants walking along the passageway. “Sorry,” he managed, his voice sounding off, and he could feel her puzzled gaze following him as he hurried onwards.
He had to - had to find something else to focus on, that was it. He would just go back to his room, lock the door and think very, very hard about something other than Arthur. Merlin gave a tiny smile as he remembered that Will had been fiddling around on his computer in the days before he’d left. He had downloaded a whole folder of videos that Merlin hadn’t planned to look at, ones that Will had found on the very filthiest parts of the internet. Ones that seemed - from what little Merlin had seen of them when he’d opened the folder to see what Will had done - to consist of golden-haired men doing all sorts of wonderful things to each other.
Merlin nodded to himself as he rounded the corner into the passage where Gaius’ chambers were. He had ten percent of his battery left, and by god, he was going to watch porn.
He didn’t return to Arthur’s chambers after that, instead slipping into the feast late, when everyone had had too much wine to notice. He kept his eyes averted from Arthur’s table though, just in case. Gwen smiled at him when he walked through the door and he made his way over to stand beside her.
“Classy,” he said, nodding at one of the nobles, who had just fallen backwards off his chair while trying to explain a jousting technique to the man sitting beside him.
“They aren’t all as bad as him,” she said with a laugh, and Merlin looked around the rest of the room. She was right - most of the men were still upright, at least, though Arthur was slumped at such a precarious angle that Merlin had a feeling he’d be tipping off his seat at any moment. Merlin watched in amusement as the prince slid lower, then looked around with a surprised expression, like he couldn’t understand why his face was suddenly in line with the tabletop.
“Arthur’s gone,” he said to Gwen, and she looked over at the king’s table, puzzled.
“No he hasn’t,” she replied. “He’s still there.” Merlin shook his head.
“He’s sloshed.” Gwen blinked at him, and Merlin gave a half-exasperated laugh. “He’s drunk,” he explained. They both watched as the prince said something to Uther, who roared with laughter and waved his goblet enthusiastically in the air. Arthur wobbled in his seat, looking suddenly away from his father and fixing his gaze upon Merlin.
“Merlin!” he called, beckoning wildly. Merlin made a face at Gwen.
“Duty calls, my lady,” he said, bowing. She laughed, waving him away with her hand. Merlin grinned and started to make his way through the hall towards the prince, but he had only managed a couple of steps when one of the knights - Bedevere, he thought the name was - reached out and grabbed his arm. Merlin thought he saw Arthur’s eyes narrow across the room.
“Let go,” he said, trying to pull himself out of the man’s grip. Bedevere swayed, but kept his hand firmly around Merlin’s wrist.
“You’re pretty,” he said, his words slurred. Merlin blinked in surprise, pausing in his attempts to extricate himself from the knight’s grip. Bedevere leaned closer, his face inches from Merlin’s own. “Like to get your pretty mouth around - “ Merlin never did find out what exactly Bedevere wanted to put in Merlin’s mouth, however, because at that moment the knight was interrupted by Arthur’s fist sinking into the side of his face.
“Arthur, no!” Merlin said, grabbing the prince by his tunic to stop him from leaping on top of Bedevere. “What the hell are you doing?”
“S’filthy,” Arthur said, tugging against Merlin’s grip and swaying dangerously. “Merlin doesn’t - you wouldn’t… hands off my servant,” he finished, waving his arm at Bedevere.
Merlin frowned. “Come on, you prat,” he said. “You’ve had enough wine tonight.” He hauled the prince’s arm over his shoulders and pulled him away from where Bedevere lay. He gave the knight an apologetic glance as he turned away, because it really wasn’t Bedevere’s fault that Arthur was so damn possessive, and then he stopped as he almost ran straight into Uther.
“What is the matter?” the king asked, looking from where Bedevere was getting unsteadily to his feet to Arthur, who was leaning heavily against Merlin and smiling to himself.
Merlin swallowed. “Arth- uh, the prince is drunk, sire,” he said quietly.
Uther stared at him for a moment, his gaze intense, and then barked out a laugh. “Carry on, then,” he said, motioning for Merlin to keep walking. He turned to talk to some of the other nobles and Merlin heaved a sigh of relief.
“Come on,” he said to Arthur, helping the man out of the hall and into the passageway.
As soon as they were out of the main hall Arthur seemed to decide that he’d had enough of walking, because he pushed himself away from Merlin, leant against the wall and slid down it till he was sitting at its base. “Siddown,” he said to Merlin, patting his hand clumsily against the stone next to him.
“Arthur, no,” Merlin said. “Get up, we’ve got to get you to bed.” But Arthur simply pouted up at him, his lips shining red with wine, and stayed where he was. Merlin peered down at the prince. He didn’t think there’d be any way he could get him back upright again when he was in this state.
Merlin sighed.
“Stay here,” he said to Arthur. Arthur nodded, and Merlin made sure that the prince looked like he was going to stay put for the time being, then walked back towards the feast. It didn’t seem as though Arthur would be moving for a while and Merlin figured he may as well get started on rehydrating him as soon as possible, because he didn’t think that Arthur with a hangover would be particularly pleasant to deal with in the morning.
He entered the hall, picked his way through the knights and the nobles who were strewn about in various states of intoxication, then grabbed up a jug of water off the closest table and left again, walking quickly back down the passageway to Arthur. The prince was in the same spot that Merlin had left him, but he had tipped over sideways and was now lying on his side with his back pressed against the wall. He grinned up at Merlin when Merlin bent down beside him.
“Sit up,” he ordered, setting the jug down a safe distance away before wrapping his arms around the prince and pulling him upright. Arthur didn’t complain, instead resting his head heavily against Merlin’s shoulder and relaxing in Merlin’s grip. Merlin could feel the prince’s body limp against his, like he had been struggling to holding himself together and had stopped trying the moment Merlin had touched him. The idea of that - of Merlin being able to control the prince like this, of the prince feeling so secure in Merlin’s arms - shouldn’t have sent a flood of warmth through his veins, but it did. Merlin swallowed, moving quickly backwards as soon Arthur looked like he was going to stay upright on his own.
“Smell nice,” Arthur mumbled, frowning as he felt Merlin let go of his arms. Merlin blinked, surprised. Was that an actual compliment? Arthur must have had more to drink than Merlin had thought.
“Here, drink this,” he said, starting to hand the jug over to the prince. He stopped when Arthur reached for it and missed by several feet, his hands closing on empty air and the familiar pout returning to his face as they did so. Merlin rolled his eyes and held the jug up to the prince’s lips himself.
“Your hand-eye coordination is terrible,” he commented. Arthur didn’t answer, instead opening his mouth and drinking the water Merlin tipped into it. Merlin watched the prince’s lips on the edge of the jug, and tried not to stare at the bob of Arthur’s throat as he swallowed. He pulled the jug back from Arthur’s lips when the prince had drunk a third of it and settled down beside the man, leaning his back against the wall. They sat in silence for a while, listening to the sounds of the feast echoing down the passageway.
“You didn’t have to punch Bedevere,” Merlin said eventually. He glanced sideways to see Arthur staring at him, his cheeks flushed with the wine and his eyes glassy.
“He was - wasn’t right,” Arthur mumbled. “Mine. You’re mine.” And with that he tilted sideways again, his face pressing against Merlin’s shoulder and his eyes drifting closed. Merlin sat there with Arthur’s body warm against his and Arthur’s words pulsing through his mind and his heart beating hard within his chest, because even though he knew that Arthur meant that Merlin was his servant, nothing more, it was still close - so close - to what he’d always wanted to hear Arthur Pendragon say to him. And even though this Arthur Pendragon wasn’t the king Merlin had dreamt of, he still found a small part of himself wishing that Arthur had meant those words anyway.
By the time he got Arthur back to his chambers it was almost two in the morning. Merlin was tired, he could feel sleep dragging at his limbs and sinking heavy through his veins. He wrestled Arthur’s limp form onto the bed, pulling off the prince’s boots and his jacket but leaving the rest of his clothes in place, because he’d already undressed the prince enough today. Arthur woke in a mess of flailing limbs while Merlin was tucking the sheets around him and Merlin wrapped his hands around the prince’s wrists, the tips of his fingers brushing against the soft, pale skin at the base of Arthur’s palms, holding him steady until Arthur slipped back into sleep. Even then Merlin didn’t leave, instead sitting in the chair beside the bed and looking at the prince. He looked different like this, with his face relaxed into sleep - cheeks flushed, lips slightly parted and his blonde eyelashes grazing against his cheeks. With his legs tangled in the sheets and his arm hanging over one side of the bed, he could almost have been any boy - one from Merlin’s time, perhaps, who he’d taken home and shagged the brains out of and left sleeping in his bed while he went out to the kitchen to make breakfast.
But at the same time, he knew that Arthur wasn’t any boy. He was Arthur Pendragon. Even if he wasn’t destined to be the greatest king Camelot would ever have, it still wouldn’t change the fact that he was something special. He wasn’t like all the other men Merlin had met - he didn’t act like them, he didn’t think like them, and even with his face pressed against the pillow and his hair sticking out all over the place, he was still more beautiful than any man Merlin had seen before.
Merlin pressed his head against the back of the chair, closing his eyes and listening to the sound of Arthur’s slow breathing. He could feel something like affection thudding inside his chest, deep and warm, and he knew that if he didn’t do something about it, it would worm into his heart and be impossible to get out. But he was tired. He could feel his mind drifting away from him, until his breathing slowed to match Arthur’s and there was nothing but darkness.
He woke hours later, neck sore and body weary, and snuck out of Arthur’s room as the sky was cracking dawn and the town below the castle was slowly shaking itself awake. When Arthur came barging into Merlin’s room three hours later with a scowl on his face that suggested the water Merlin had given him had done nothing for his hangover, Merlin stayed quiet and didn’t mention the previous night. Arthur didn’t need to know that Merlin had helped him to bed, nor that he’d sat beside the prince all through the dark, just to make sure that he was okay. It was a little bit silly and a little bit sentimental, and it was something that Merlin didn’t need to share. It would be his secret, one that he could look back on when he was old and grey and living in some tiny nursing home in Ealdor. It would warm him, the knowledge that there were some nights when Arthur Pendragon needed him there. That there had been a night when Merlin had been able to sit beside the prince and no one had told him that it wasn’t his place, or that he didn’t belong.
Arthur didn’t get any better as the day wore on. He had meetings with his father that he had to grind his way through, and by the time he arrived back in his chambers in the late afternoon he had dark shadows under his eyes and a scowl pressed across his face. Merlin had fetched some potion or other from Gaius to try and lift the prince’s spirits, but judging by Arthur’s face as he downed it, it tasted as bad as it smelled, and it had done little to improve Arthur’s mood.
“Fetch me my lunch,” he snapped as he walked into the chambers.
Merlin looked up from where he’d been putting the last of Arthur’s clothes away and frowned. There was something in the way that Arthur acted after he’d talked with Uther that didn’t seem right to Merlin. Merlin didn’t know all that much about fathers, but from what he’d seen of the king, Uther spoke to Arthur like he did his knights. There was, he knew, something very wrong in the way Uther treated his son. Maybe it was the way Arthur would always come back to his chambers with his head bowed and a fierce frown on his face after he’d had a meeting with Uther. Maybe it was the way Merlin saw Arthur’s face light up when Uther praised him, as though the man’s praise was something rare, something to treasure and something to hold on to and remember through all of his father’s rage and anger and disappointment.
Sometimes, when Merlin walked into the room and saw Arthur flopped down across his bed like he didn’t ever want to get up again, he would have to resist the urge to comfort the prince. It was an odd feeling, because most of the time he was torn between annoyance and exasperation whenever he saw Arthur, but there was something in Arthur’s face at those moments that made Merlin want to tell him that there were people in the world who would love him, completely and utterly and without fail, and that there would come a time when he would have the love of his people and of his queen. That love would fill him up, Merlin knew. That love would be enough.
But Merlin couldn’t tell him that, because he wasn’t the one Arthur needed. It wasn’t him who needed to hold Arthur close and convince him that there was one person in the world for which he didn’t need to try, that he could be the worse person he could possibly be and Merlin still wouldn’t leave. That wasn’t Merlin’s place.
He left the room quietly, bringing a plate up from the kitchen and setting it down on Arthur’s table. Arthur was sitting on the edge of his bed, staring at his hands with the firelight flickering over his bent head.
“Arthur,” Merlin said hesitantly.
He knew that Arthur was just tired and hungover and probably needed to sleep more than anything else, but Merlin could see something else in his face and he couldn’t just leave it be. Will had always said he had two emotion glands where everyone else had one.
“Are you okay?” he asked, and Arthur looked up at him. Merlin could see that he was on the verge of telling Merlin to go and clean things, to stop being so girly, but something stopped him.
“I’m fine,” he said shortly, getting up from the bed and walking over to the table. He didn’t sit down, though, instead standing with his hands clenched against the back of the chair.
Merlin shook his head. “You’re not,” he said quietly. “I know - “ he paused as Arthur turned to look at him.
“I know what it’s like, having one parent,” he continued. He knew what it was like to have two hands raising him instead of four, two hands holding him on his first bicycle and two hands clasped tight around him on the days when his magic felt too big for him to contain within himself. He knew how those hands were always chapped from dishwashing liquid and the cold and the strain of having to do everything, all the time, with no one to take over. It was a tiny, sad feeling, one that never really went away. It felt as though you weren’t quite whole.
Arthur had his head bowed now, his finger running over the wood of the chair, a soft scrape that echoed around the quiet room. Merlin stepped forward, reaching out for Arthur’s shoulder, but as his hand brushed against Arthur’s skin the man shrugged him away.
“I don’t need your sympathy,” he said sharply. “I am the prince, Merlin. You are a servant. What need could I possibly have for sympathy?”
Merlin stared at him, feeling the words cut though him. You are a servant. He knew what it implied - that he was nothing, that he was worth nothing. That his words didn’t count for anything.
“You’re right,” he said quietly. “You’ve no need for it at all.” And he walked out the door before Arthur could say anything more, feeling the prince’s gaze heavy against him as he left.
Merlin spent the rest of the day in his room, with his ipod headphones stuck firmly in his ears and the volume turned as low as he could get it, to save the battery. He’d locked the door, but he didn’t much care if Gaius saw anyway. Gaius had seen Merlin pull worse things than an ipod out of his backpack.
He sat on his bed, his arms wrapped tightly around his knees and his head tilted back against the wall behind him. It was stupid, he thought. He seemed to end up storming out of Arthur’s chambers far more often than he should, especially considering that the man was an ass and Merlin had known that all along. Merlin knew men like Arthur - they were the men you watched in clubs when you’d had too many pink drinks and they were the men you ground up against on the dancefloor, with a hot press of bodies around you and the sound of the bass throbbing heavy in your ears. Men like Arthur were the ones who you knew not to get close to, because they thought that everyone wanted to get close to them, that everyone wanted them. They put up barriers and didn’t let anyone past them, and, until now, Merlin had never really wanted to try.
He’d tried with Arthur, though. He didn’t even talk to Will about his father, mostly because Will had been beside him since he was about five and he knew just as well as Merlin did how Merlin’s mother would get that look on her face, sometimes, like she was being stronger than Merlin knew how to be. Will had been there through Merlin’s hard times, but Merlin had never really talked to him about it. Will had known his father, if only for a little while, but Merlin had never known his at all.
He could use the spell, he supposed, if Gaius ever found it. A spell like that would open the whole of time up to Merlin. He could meet his father, he could see his mother as she was with her husband by her side. He could slide into the future - this future - and see Arthur as he’d always imagined him to be, with a crown on his head and a queen by his side.
Merlin pushed himself upright from the wall, his thumb sliding over his ipod to pause the music. There was an idea. He could learn the spell when Gaius found it and slip into Camelot as it was in Arthur’s reign. He wouldn’t stay there for long - just for a moment, a few hours at most - but enough that he could see if that Arthur was anything like this one.
There was a tap on the door and Merlin yanked the earphones out of his ears, pushing them beneath his bedsheets and flicking his hand at the door to unlock it. Gaius poked his head around the edge of the door and frowned at him.
“Arthur wants you, Merlin,” he said, and Merlin sighed. Unless he got fired, he was going to have to keep on being Arthur’s servant until Gaius found him a way home and Merlin wasn’t going to let that get to him. Arthur was hungover and pratty and a complete ass, most of the time, and Merlin was just a manservant, nothing more. He wasn’t going to let his feelings get mixed up in this. Feelings were messy.
“Coming,” he said, grabbing his ipod from beneath his sheet and tucking it into the front pocket of his backpack. Gaius looked pointedly away as Merlin did so.
“I don’t want to know,” he said, noticing Merlin’s questioning glance. Merlin shrugged. It was probably safer that way.
Arthur didn’t apologise, but then Merlin had never really expected him to anyway. He didn’t seem to realise that Merlin had feelings, though whether that was because his previous servants hadn’t cared how the prince had treated them, or because all the men Arthur surrounded himself with never showed any, Merlin didn’t know.
He couldn’t understand the prince. Sometimes, it was as though they were friends. The times when Arthur came in after a long day of patrols and Merlin had his supper laid out on the table, and Arthur would look at Merlin with an odd expression on his face, like he was both grateful and surprised at the same time. Or in the spring, when Merlin picked flowers for Arthur’s chambers because no matter how often the prince protested, Merlin knew that no one hated flowers. And besides, he had walked in once to see Arthur with his head bent over the vase, smelling them, though Arthur had thrown the vase at his head when Merlin had suggested that that was what he’d been doing. For every moment when Arthur was an ass there was one where he was almost nice to Merlin, and even though it had been months now since he’d met the prince, Merlin still couldn’t quite understand it.
The summer, when it came, was long and hot. It was, Gaius said, the hottest they’d had in years, and on more than one occasion Merlin found himself longing for airconditioning.
The nights stretched out almost endlessly, and Merlin had taken to lying on the stone floor to stave off the worst of the heat. There was something about that heat that smothered him. Perhaps it was the way he could smell the town by the end of the day, as though it was a living thing that had been left out to swelter in the sun. Perhaps it was the way his clothes stuck to his body whenever he was out on patrols with Arthur, his hair damp and matted and sweat rolling down the back of his neck.
“Can’t we stop?” he’d asked Arthur on the worst of the days, a burning morning at the height of summer when the sun was huge and hot in the sky and they’d been riding for hours through the open fields. Arthur looked over at him, his face golden in the sunlight and his eyes screwed up against the glare. He was wearing his chainmail, the heavy press of metal curving his shoulders until he was half-bent in the saddle. It didn’t look at all comfortable, Merlin thought.
“We can’t stop, Merlin, we’ve only been going for an hour,” Arthur scrubbed the back of one hand over his forehead, leaving a streak of dirt across his skin. Merlin frowned. It hadn’t felt like an hour, not when every second had been spent with the sun beating hard upon their heads.
“Can’t we stop anyway? We’ll get heatstroke if we continue on like this.” Merlin didn’t wait for an answer, instead sliding down out of his saddle and tugging his horse’s reins over its head, leading it towards the stand of trees at the side of the field they’d been riding through. Arthur swore and turned his horse about, spurring it until it was walking alongside Merlin.
“We aren’t stopping,” he said firmly. Merlin reached out a hand and tethered the horse’s reins to the closest tree before collapsing with a sigh in the long grass at its base.
“I am,” he said. If they didn’t die from heat, they’d probably get really awful sunburn and die of skin cancer or something. God, Merlin missed sunblock.
Arthur was still astride his horse, staring down at Merlin like he wasn’t sure whether to yell at him or join him.
“Come on,” Merlin said, stretching his limbs out and feeling the soft tickle of grass brushing against his forearms. He hadn’t lain on the grass like this since he was young, unless he counted the times when he and Will had ended up flat on their backs after trying out some spell or other in the field behind Will’s house.
Those days usually started with Will running into Merlin’s room and saying ‘I bet you can’t…’, and they ended with Merlin walking triumphantly home with his limbs covered in bruises and his heart full with the knowledge that yes, he could.
“You’re impossible, Merlin,” Arthur said, swinging one leg over the saddle and jumping down from his horse. “Really, the worst servant I’ve ever had,” he continued as he tethered his horse alongside Merlin’s. Merlin grinned lazily up at him.
“’M not so bad,” he said. “I’ve saved your life.” It was true enough, even if Arthur didn’t know about it half the time. Arthur knelt down in the grass beside him. He paused for a second as though he was unsure, but then Merlin reached out a hand and sent him tumbling over onto his back with a surprised yelp.
“Awful servant,” he muttered, but there was a tiny smile pressed across his mouth as he said it. Merlin closed his eyes and let his mind wander a little, until his head was filled with the feel of the grass and the soft, steady sound of Arthur’s breathing and the heat of the day, diluted by the cool shadow of the trees but still swirling warm around his body. He could hear the soft snuffling of the horses and the high calls of the birds, but beyond that the world might have been empty. Merlin wondered what it would be like if there was nothing but him and Arthur and this field. They’d get along alright, he supposed, when they weren’t bickering with each other.
“Where are you from, Merlin?” Arthur asked suddenly.
Merlin blinked at him. “Ealdor,” he said, because he’d had this conversation with Gaius and it turned out that there was an Ealdor here too, a tiny cluster of houses and fenced-in paddocks on the edge of Cendred’s kingdom. Merlin thought that he might like to see it someday, to discover what his home was like in the centuries before his own, when it still had more forest than concrete and the main road was nothing more than a beaten down line of dirt through the centre of the village.
“Cendred’s kingdom,” Arthur said thoughtfully. “Did you like it there?”
Merlin thought about that. He had liked it, yes, in the way that any boy liked a home with a roof and a mother and enough grass in the backyard to run around on with a friend, but it hadn’t felt like the place that he was supposed to stay. It had for Will - Merlin could see him sinking into Ealdor as he grew older, deciding which bars he liked the best and which he wouldn’t set foot in for all the beer in the world, complaining bitterly about the state of the buses and yet glaring fiercely at anyone from Camelot who dared to do the same thing. Will fit there, as though he’d been born Ealdor-sized, in just the right shape to be able to wedge himself tightly into that world.
Merlin didn’t know where he fit anymore. He had loved Ealdor because it was his birthplace, it was in his veins, but there was something about Camelot - about this Camelot - that felt right. Merlin didn’t know which world was his own anymore.
“Yes,” Merlin said simply. “But I like it here too.”
He thought he caught the briefest curve of a smile, before Arthur turned his face away.
It was only when they rose from the ground some time later, clothes grass-stained and smelling of earth, that Merlin realised. Perhaps it had been the heat, or the way the world had seemed to drop away for a little while as they lay there, but for those few moments in the grass, they hadn’t argued at all.
Merlin tried not to think about the time passing. When he wasn’t with Arthur, he spent his days talking to Gwen, or helping Gaius out when the old man was buried beneath his work. It was easier to pretend that he’d only been in Camelot for days when he was busy - when he was sitting beside Gwen in the courtyard of the castle, or when he was trying to remember which of Gaius’ potions he was meant to be giving to which noble.
There were things that didn’t change at all as the months went by. Arthur was still nothing like the king that Merlin had imagined him to be, Uther remained cruelly intolerant of magic, and Gwen was still far too sweet and good and kind to everyone. Merlin sometimes wondered whether she wasn’t the one who was supposed to be the queen after all, but then again, he didn’t think that there were many other Guineveres around Camelot.
But there were other things that changed a lot, especially after the incident with Morgana. When they’d found her in the forest, Merlin wanted to believe that she’d escaped from captors. He needed to believe her, because the legend was a lot harder to stomach when you knew each of its characters. Morgana wasn’t a bad person, not like the story had made her out to be. She was a good woman, Merlin knew, but one who had seen all of Uther’s cruelty and his destruction and decided that it was something which she would fight against with every fibre of her being. It put her against Arthur too, because Arthur played a part in his father’s rule, and there would always be some part of his reign which he would have learnt from Uther, and a part of him which could not cast aside the other man completely. Arthur would grieve when Uther was dead, Merlin knew. It was impossible to see the truth of one man’s nature when you were so connected to him.
But Morgana was not Arthur, and she had found hatred for the king - perhaps even more than he deserved from her, because she had not grown up knowing what it was like to hide her magic from him. She’d stumbled across it in the night time, unsuspecting, and in the day she had sat at Uther’s table and he had shown her love. There was no betrayal from him towards her - she might have suspected what his reaction to her magic would be, but she couldn’t know for sure. It was funny, Merlin thought, how similar their positions were and yet how different they were in the ways they had decided to act. Morgana had turned away from the Pendragons, while Merlin still held onto the hope that there was something worth saving within that family.
Merlin found that as the days grew shorter and summer drew to an end, he began to lose track of how things had changed. He could remember the legend, of course, because its story was pressed into his brain, but he couldn’t see it anymore. He tried to imagine King Arthur, sometimes, when it was the middle of the night and he was curled beneath his sheets, listening to Gaius’ snoring echoing around the chambers. He couldn’t seem to picture him clearly, though, and Merlin began to think that soon, when he imagined King Arthur, he’d see his Arthur, the prince. He would be older, the years lined across his skin, but he would still have that crooked smile that broke across his face when Merlin was least expecting it, the one that he tried to clamp down on the edges of, because princes weren’t meant to laugh with their servants. He would still have that serious blue gaze he turned on Merlin when he was trying to explain something, and he’d still be a bit of a prat.
Hunting was a routine thing for Arthur, something that was squished in between all of the weekly patrols and the meetings with Uther and the training sessions he held with the knights. At first, Merlin had thought that it was a way of keeping strong, of making sure that he kept in form and that he could use weapons that he didn't have to swing through the air with both hands. But after he'd been out with Arthur on several hunts, he began to realise that it was something more than that.
Arthur liked hunting, Merlin realised - not the killing part, but the focus of it, the way it was just him and the trees and the faint traces of animals that had passed by, a steady, almost imperceptible trail you could follow until you found its source. Arthur - impatient, headstrong Arthur - was always his quietest on the hunt, and there was a sense of calm surrounding him while he was focused on the forest that even Merlin, stumbling over all of the tree roots in sight, couldn't quite puncture.
Merlin supposed that that was why Arthur had turned from the usual trail at the end of that morning and instead of heading back towards home, he had instead started towards the tiny tavern Merlin could see nestled in the valley below them.
“Arthur, we're supposed to be back for the delegation visiting this afternoon,” Merlin said, but Arthur didn't slow.
“We've got time for a pint of mead,” he said and pushed on ahead before Merlin could remind him that the last time he tried a pint of mead, he ended up passed out on Merlin in the passageway.
The tavern was small and smoky, with wooden tables at which what looked like half of the mercenaries of Camelot's outlying regions were seated. Arthur, of course, was completely oblivious to the odd stares that they were getting as they made their way over to a table.
“Stop fidgeting, Merlin,” he said, and Merlin turned back to Arthur, peeling his eyes away from the glare of a particularly sullen-looking fellow over by the bar.
The bartender was a friendly looking lady, who - to Merlin's amusement and Arthur's disgruntled disbelief - seemed more interested in Merlin than in the prince. Merlin wondered if she was a little blind - Arthur was gorgeous, firstly, and secondly, he certainly wasn't dressed like a peasant.
Merlin looked over at Arthur's expression as the woman walked away and grinned, even though he knew that the woman would have stood a better chance with Arthur, peasant though she was, than with Merlin, because Merlin didn't think that anyone other than Arthur - or someone who was like him in every single way - would attract his attention.
It felt nice when she tried, though, and Merlin grinned at Arthur as he waited for the lady to return with their mead.
“What?” Arthur asked with a grumpy frown. “Stop grinning like an idiot, Merlin, she's only a barmaid.”
Merlin resisted the urge to whack Arthur across the face with the wooden tray lying on the edge of their table.
“You're in trouble then,” he replied. “You'd think her standards would be lower than most of the girls you're aiming for.”
It was a low blow, one that Merlin wouldn't usually have made, but comments about where he - and where people like him - stood in the order of things hit closer to home than Arthur knew, because Merlin hadn't been born into this system and he could see its unfairness better than most.
Arthur seemed to recognise that after a moment, because his scowl softened out of his face.
“You're right,” he said, and Merlin opened his mouth to say something - probably to ask Arthur whether he was feeling alright, because he never admitted that Merlin was right - when there was a loud bang from the door and everything went to hell.
Merlin wasn't sure how he ended up throwing plates at anyone within ten feet of him, or how Arthur ended up punching several shrieking men in the face, and he certainly had no idea who the dark-haired man with the chest that looked like it had been carved by god was. He tuned all of that out, the way he did with most of his battles in Camelot, and tried to focus on protecting Arthur as best he could, hoping that the rest of it would just sort itself out. It usually did, in the end.
When the dark-haired man ended up on his back with a knife buried deep in his thigh, however, Merlin felt a wave of that sick, familiar unease he always felt when someone got hurt, because he didn't know if it was always supposed to end up that way, or whether it had somehow been his fault.
“We have to help him, Arthur,” he said, after he'd knelt down beside the man and bound his wound as best he could. Arthur stared down at him. Merlin knew that he must look a sight, kneeling beside the man with his hands wet with blood and his clothes heavy with dust from the fight.
“The man saved my life,” Arthur said, nodding, then lifted him as well as he could and turned towards the door.
Merlin thought that it probably wasn't all that necessary for Arthur to announce to the whole tavern who he was and where they could find him, though. He understood - well, sort of - Arthur's desire to get acknowledgement for saving the bartender, but he didn't think that issuing what was basically an open invitation for anyone wanting to get back at the prince to come right on in was quite the way to do it.
Merlin didn't say anything, though, because comments like that usually sparked a whole lot of bickering and it was still a long way back to the castle. The man slung over the back of Arthur's horse was pale now, and Merlin knew that he needed Gaius' help, as soon as he could possibly get it.
Part 4