TAKEN (What's yours is Mine) - 1/6
Taken
*
“Will you be requiring anything else Mr Dubois?”
The question hung in the air as Arthur stared fixedly at the email in front of him and the rest of the room wavered in the background of his consciousness.
“Sir?” their assistant pressed again and this time Arthur registered the sound of George’s voice. For the last ten minutes he’d been ignoring him pretty much beyond the knowledge that the stubborn man had been talking.
“That will be all, George,” Arthur said, waving his hand in dismissal and ignoring however long it took George to follow his orders. It wouldn’t have been long; the man was ridiculous when it came to the chain of command. It drove Merlin crazy.
Arthur sighed and leant forward on his desk, idly rubbing the sleep from his eyes. The computer screen in front of him blurred as he blinked blearily at it.
Time had slowed to a minimum rate in the last fortnight and his gaze hovered over the small calendar in the bottom corner.
The fourteenth. Two more days.
Closing his eyes for a moment Arthur slumped back in his chair and absorbed the quiet hum of the air conditioner and the faint rumble of cars going by outside.
Life was quiet of late, and if there was one thing he abhorred, it was a quiet life. It was not a life he had been bred for. Hell, running a business - even a private ‘security’ business - was not a life he had been bred for. But it was the life they had chosen, or been forced to choose. He still wasn’t entirely certain which was correct, even after going on two years, or a little less than that, really, where the business was concerned. But it had been more than two years since he’d had to throw everything he had away and run for it. Taking Merlin with him and Merlin alone, leaving everything else behind - his flat in the Citadel, his job, his team, his friends. His father.
He’d had to leave without warning and for good and he didn’t regret it for a moment. As long as he had Merlin with him. It was only during these little trips Merlin made that the doubt crept into his mind, and not all of it had anything to do with the fact Merlin’s little trips were his boyfriend running off to break the law where Arthur couldn’t see. Running off to hide their tracks from the very people Arthur had left behind.
But really, doubt or not, the only thing that truly worried him when Merlin was away was the fact that he missed him. He missed him with a yearning longing he still wasn’t over. Two and a half years on, it was still terrifyingly all-consuming.
Which lead him to periods where nearly nothing happened at work and nothing happened at home and it all served to drive him even more stir crazy.
And no amount of phone sex or dirty emails could satiate the burning need for his boyfriend.
It really did worry him sometimes, the desperation by which he needed Merlin. It was as if all those feelings he’d never experienced during college or university had been kept in storage that only Merlin, being the criminal he was, could unlock.
It really was altogether ridiculous, Arthur thought, and stared at the screen, accusingly. It didn’t waver or change, Merlin’s last email still staring back at him from the screen. Arthur scoffed at it quietly before opening a new email and typing out quickly before he got too sickened with himself.
I miss you.
He clicked send and shut down the tab before sitting back in his chair
Two more days, he thought quietly to himself. It was only two more days and then things could go back to the way they should be.
*
Merlin had a love-hate relationship with the airport. For one, it had planes - and planes were both irritating and amazing. No matter how often he flew, he never got over the view out the tiny little windows. The stretch of cloud cover, the fading colours as the sky changed.
People were different on planes as well. There was nothing quite like the knowledge that you were going to be cramped up next to someone you didn’t know for hours on end to bring a deep sense of connection with people.
He always got the talkers sitting next to him, which he didn’t mind, because Merlin himself loved to talk. He loved people, stories, characters.
He hated the food, however; he hated the plastic wrapped blankets and the cramped toilet. He hated the forced sweetness from the hostesses. He hated the moment the plane left the ground and started climbing and climbing and climbing and that moment his brain spluttered in half hearted terror - we’re not going to make it, we’re gonna fall.
He had nothing against the rest of the trip, the something-something thousand feet of airspace and the bump as the tyres hit the landing strip. He didn’t even have anything against take off itself. It was that moment of oh-god-something’s-going-to-go-wrong as the plane levelled out mid air that got to him.
He blamed Will. It was entirely Will’s fault, Will and his love of air-crash documentaries.
Realistically, his only problems with flying only ever came back to the fact he wasn’t driving the plane. Nearly everything else about it he loved.
Airports on the other hand were something different.
Talking to people at the airport was paramount to suicide. No one wanted to talk to you, there was always a line and everything always had this faint air of futility - I’ll never reach the ATM in time. Don’t these moron’s know I have a flight in twenty minutes? - But there was no better place for people watching.
And people watching was Merlin’s favourite.
The baggage carousel was by far the best part of his trip, usually. Not only because it allowed him the luxury of making off with someone else’s luggage on those trips where he had been running and running fast, with no chance to take anything with him bar the clothes on his back and a prayer to anyone listening. But that had been before, before Arthur had caught him, before the business and the Knights and the knowledge of what it felt like to have Arthur Pendragon’s lips against his skin.
A long time ago indeed.
Since then, the baggage carousel was entertaining on one of two conditions:
1. Arthur was standing behind him bitching and moaning,
2. Arthur was standing behind him glowering and sulking.
The airport had lost quite a lot of its charm these days.
As did a lot of Merlin’s life.
These days, or rather specifically today - all he really wanted to do was get back home - home to Arthur, if the whinging git wasn’t at their apartment.
He’d bloody well cut his trip short two days because he missed the blond prat. But what was worse was the fact he’d barely slept a wink the entire two weeks he’d been gone and it was ridiculous.
Today, the baggage carousel with its holidaying lovers barely keeping an eye out while they fondled, or the irritated businessmen staring the machine down like the furore of their stare would spit out their bags a little faster, or the stressed parents talking their children down from trying to climb up on the conveyer belt were severely less interesting than they should be.
Right at that second he was one of the boring, intense people who stared into nothing trying to remember what suitcase they packed and whether or not they’d actually tied that ribbon to the handle like they’d planned to or not.
He just really wanted to get home. Or to the office. Arthur would be at the office. Glancing down at his watch Merlin smiled softly. 11:39. He could call Arthur and warn him and Arthur could pop over to Cath’s and get a couple of sandwiches and be back almost perfectly. Then they could eat and Merlin could pretend that he hadn’t missed him and then they could go home and go to bed.
Smiling to himself, Merlin rocked on his heels and jumped forward as he spotted the bright blue suitcase Arthur had bought him.
He bloody didn’t need a ribbon to spot it.
*
Arthur was lazily reading a brief that had been sent through for an extraction in Mercia City when he heard the phone shrill downstairs at George’s desk. While the man took his job very seriously there was little they were actually paying him for. Really his only job was to warn Arthur and Merlin who exactly they were about to talk to - whether or not it was over the phone or in person. He had access to Merlin’s database and little else, but he was persistent and frighteningly reliable and Arthur was thankful for him, more often than he was frustrated. He spent most of his time being annoyed with the man, but that was purely out of a reliable annoyance with Merlin that carried over. In truth, Arthur was glad for the break between himself and the world Merlin had dragged him down into. It was a layer of protection Arthur wasn’t going to argue against when realistically he was listed as an enemy of the State. After five years in the Knights, the elite Secret Service of Albion, betraying your country and running off with a criminal was enough to get you Blacklisted. Everything Merlin had done in the last two and a half years had been to make sure that list didn’t get Arthur thrown into Albion Penitentiary and never come out.
So Arthur never complained about George.
Except when the man intercepted Merlin’s calls first and told Arthur it was someone else so he made a fool of himself.
“A Mr Wright for you, sir,” George’s voice called through the intercom a moment later, just as a file popped up on Arthur’s screen. Opening it he scanned the man’s information with a lazy eye for a moment - magical weapons, beta-grade -- before he picked up.
“Mr Wright, always a pleasure, Arthur Penn speaking,”
“Oh Mr Penn, I assure you, the pleasure is all mine, ” Merlin’s unmistakable voice echoed out of the handset and Arthur smiled despite himself.
“That’s it; I’m firing George before you get back.”
“Hahahaha, come off it, Arthur. It’s fun.”
“I’ll tell you what’s fun: me changing the locks.”
“You do remember the part where the locks are voice activated and you know nothing about code, right?”
“I hate you. You’re impossible, I don’t know why I put up with you.”
“Pffft, I’m amazing and brilliant and you know it.”
“I can find other amazing people.”
“No one is as amazing as me, Arthur. No one. Besides, you’d never be able to hire anyone. I’m better at dealing with people than you are.”
“You are not.”
“I am, I have a criminal track record that says I’m brilliant.”
“It says you’re delusional, narcissistic and emotionally unbalanced is what it says.”
“Shut up, it does not.”
“How would you know?”
“Because I know everything you wrote on me, Arthur. Everything.”
“Have you been hacking into my files again, Emrys?”
“Please, I left a backdoor the first time. I don’t even need to hack anymore. Besides you haven’t touched those files in years.”
“Remind me again why I’m in love with you?”
“Because, you prat, you love my ingenuity.”
“You don’t have any.”
“I have bucket loads.”
“You do not.”
“Well if I don’t then what do you call your 25 minute warning to go get me something to eat, then?”
“This is where I bring up that ‘delusional’ statement again,” he said with a smile, the feel of it broadening as Merlin huffed, indignant and amused on the other end.
“Forget why you put up with me, why do I put up with you?”
“Because you’re insane and narcissistic and emotionally unbalanced.”
“And awesome. Don’t forget awesome.”
“We’ve been through this - “
“Well if I’m not awesome then neither is my taste in men.”
“There are exclusions to every rule.”
“Oh I know, Gwaine was excellent in bed - “
“I’m still changing the locks when you get back.”
“Then you’ve got fifteen minutes starting now and you’ll still have time to get me something from the deli.”
“What on earth are you nattering on about?”
“I’m at the airport, you clot,” Merlin sighed and Arthur sat up far too quickly.
“You’re what?”
“Well, technically, I’m in the line waiting for the car to come around. So I’m almost not at the airport. But I’m back, anyway. In Camelot. And I’m hungry.”
“I thought you weren’t free until day after tomorrow?”
“Well I’m just more efficient than you, Arthur. Awesome, remember? And I might have missed something back at home, you know. I don’t know what it is anymore because you’re clearly thick as six bricks and don’t appreciate me.”
“I’ll show you appreciation, all right.”
“Well good. Just make sure you let George know not to interrupt this time, cause last time it was really hard to look him in the eye for a while. He’s far too intense. We should hire him out as a fence, he wouldn’t even need to know any martial arts or lift any weights to intimidate people into buying or selling, he could just stare people down and they’d tell him anything.”
“You are insane. I missed you.”
“Oh, I think this is my curtain call if you’re about to get soppy, Arthur.”
“I thought you missed me?”
“I did, but you’re gonna make me all sappy and the driver doesn’t need that. He’s supposed to think I’m a snobby rich bastard, part of the mob or something.”
“You’re a private consultant for the underbelly of Albion, Merlin, you are a part of the mob.”
“Shush, you’ll blow my cover.”
“Idiot,” he said fondly and he could still imagine Merlin grinning brilliant enough his whole face crinkling into the smile.
“Never. You should get going. I want a chicken salad from Cathy before I even consider blowing you, that’s how hungry I am. Airport food is shite.”
“And yet you’ve spent a good portion of your life in planes.”
“Running away from you. I don’t need to do that anymore, now do I? So don’t deny me Cath’s homemade mayo. I have missed it so.”
“Were you pining for sandwiches?”
“And cock, but mostly sandwiches. OK, we’re about to go under the bridge and I’ll lose you. Run along, Pratface. See you soon.”
Arthur couldn’t wipe the smile off his face as the phone beeped and Merlin hung up. After two weeks abroad, it was immediately soothing to know Merlin was back. It was the same, time after time. It didn’t matter how long they were apart - knowing that Merlin was gone, out of his reach was debilitating, like the world was just slightly off axis. A part of him was irrational, always, never ending - waiting for the moment that would tell him Merlin wasn’t coming back. That the world he’d left behind for Arthur was too much, that Arthur was too little and he was never going to see Merlin again. So much had changed in the last two and a half years, even beyond what had changed prior to that. So much of his life had been centred around Merlin, what Merlin meant to him. Could mean to him.
And even after two and a half years together, there was always a part of him that worried, that waited; that felt this indescribable joy and possessiveness whenever Merlin came back. This feeling that erupted in his veins, that pulsed and made smiling far too easy as he held him.
Merlin Ambrose had made a life for himself manipulating the world and people around him, but Arthur never ceased to wonder if Merlin had ever possibly considered he could manipulate someone into feeling the things he made Arthur.
Arthur had worked for the Knights since the moment he had been old enough to qualify, two months after he finished his degree in criminal science at Albion University of Technology. He’d worked hard to get where he’d been and when he had been going through the baby cases during his probation he’d come across a diamond scam, a young thief who had stolen two and a half million pounds worth of diamonds out of the private residence of Vivian White. The woman’s father was a bully and she herself rather stupid. Taking the case made Arthur feel like he’d stepped in a proverbial landmine. There was something about it, though, he couldn’t quite let go of and never had.
He had followed the trace of the thief with the balls to steal from Vivian White and over the course of his own career in the Knights he managed to follow Emrys up the criminal ladder. By the time Arthur was sanctioned into Team Cappa, eighteen months after he first found Merlin in his files, the heads of department were practically begging Arthur for the files of everything he’d found.
Emrys had become notorious and Arthur had gotten himself a reputation for getting the job done well and fast.
Except for Merlin - or Emrys, as he’d been known; Arthur hadn’t been able to get his hands on Merlin at all.
Every time he’d get close, Merlin would dance out of his grasp. Sometimes in the minutes it took to get the team situated around the building they’d been sure Merlin had been in. And sometimes he had been. Sometime’s he’d been in a building Arthur had just been researching. But whatever the case, it all came to the same conclusion. Arthur became obsessed with Merlin, Merlin became obsessed with Arthur and they danced around each other for nearly four years.
Then Merlin had saved his life and it all unravelled around them.
A little over a year later, it was Arthur saving Merlin’s life. In that one fateful night everything changed. Merlin asked Arthur to come with him, and strangely enough, Arthur had.
He still couldn’t quite figure out why, why he had, why Merlin had become more to him than anyone else in his life. Why Merlin’s life was worth more than his career, than his father’s warped expectations, more than the law.
But it had and he’d run and together they’d never stopped.
They had spent six months running, leaving trails all over the place and then, then one day Merlin had answered a phone call and the tightness around his eyes had almost disappeared. He’d looked at Arthur and this smile had spread across his face and it had made butterflies erupt in Arthur’s gut he couldn’t banish.
They’d gone home after that. Back to Camelot. Hiding right under their nose, Merlin said, had always been the best place to hide. And it had been. Merlin had contacts, serious contacts, and Arthur had slotted into his world like he belonged there. And he figured he did.
Pendragon Security and Consulting had been built up around them and was a business front only in Merlin’s world, Merlin’s world of lies and magic, danger and adrenaline.
Arthur had spent his entire life training himself to fight for the law and in the end he’d wound up using every single one of those skills and morals he’d honed over the years for the opposite team and he didn’t regret it at all.
Not when it came to the truth. Not when it came to Merlin.
Smiling happily he pulled his wallet out of the drawer and practically bounced on his heels down the stairs. George eyed him, his lips in a solid frown as he walked across the room towards the front doors and freedom.
“I take it you had good news, sir?” he asked. Arthur laughed.
“Merlin’s back, George. I’m getting lunch. Won’t be long.”
“I’ll hold the fort, sir,” George replied, somewhat amiably and Arthur wondered for a moment whether the man was looking forward to having a somewhat affable workplace for the next few weeks or so. It was possible, really, while it wasn’t really his intention, he was standoffish and rather arrogant quite a lot of the time and easily disagreeable unless Merlin was there as mediator. There were reasons, he supposed, George often still called him ‘Mr Dubois’.
Still, for today, at least, Arthur was smiling as he exited PSC, looking forward to the rest of the day.
*
There was a surprising lack of traffic on the trip back from the airport, which, after talking with Arthur, Merlin was grateful for. He spent the entirety of the trip watching the scenery pass by almost hungrily, mentally ticking off each corner and landmark as they neared the Citadel and the small shop with it’s top floor office in the alleyways behind the quadrangle. He ignored the driver and spent the entire trip silent. By the end his leg was bouncing up and down with his mixed enthusiasm and anxiety. Fishing fifty quid out of his wallet he passed it through to the driver and slid out of the car before waiting for change. The building was quiet as per usual and Merlin’s mixed emotions sort of dulled themselves in the wake of being back, back on fixed, solid, familiar ground. Humming to himself quietly he hop skipped up the last of the footpath to the door, dragging his suitcase along behind with little care for what was in there. He travelled enough that they never bothered with duty free and any of the expensive wines he’d have bothered purchasing cheaper he could get for next to nothing anyway. A small suggestion to his next client could get him an entire case on top of his usual charge and they’d still smile when he handed over the goods. That was his charm. Or PSC’s charm, these days.
George looked up with his usual solemn fair as Merlin pushed his way inside and wheeled his suitcase to a stop beside the desk.
“Good trip, sir?”
“Simple enough,” he shrugged, leaning his elbows on the counter and hoping that George wasn’t going to bring up the smudges under his eyes. Arthur would, but Arthur was demanding and authoritative and would be more likely to kiss both of Merlin’s eyelids before he told Merlin off for not sleeping. As annoying as Arthur could be at times, right that second Merlin was sort of looking forward to it.
“Is he back?”
“It appears you surprised him rather well,” George replied, nodding back towards the door.
“He has yet to return with your food order.”
“Ah, right,” Merlin smiled in spite of himself. “I’ll be upstairs. Send him up to me, yeah?”
“As you wish, sir,” George replied idly watching as Merlin abandoned the suitcase and bounded up the stairs. The office was studiously organised as he petered out to a stop in the doorway. Arthur’s desk was as pristine as ever, the countertop of the bookcase that ran along the back wall was perfectly clean and the books were no doubt in alphabetical order. When Arthur got pedantic, he really went all out. It usually happened when Merlin went away and Arthur got anxious and when Arthur got anxious his control streak got out of control. It was cute, really, knowing how restless his boyfriend got knowing there was nothing he could do, and really, with this job there was nothing Arthur could have done short of getting himself seen. If that happened they were fucked, and proven by his sheer loyalty, Arthur clearly didn’t want to go back to that life. He couldn’t. Not now, not after all this. Merlin had corrupted him in the worst possible way. A Knight of Albion, tarnished by the criminals he’d been chasing. Merlin had turned Arthur Dubois dirty. He’d turned him into one of the most successful consultant criminals; the elusive Pendragon’s talents had done quite a fair amount of damage in the way of the right type of criminals and the wrong type of cops. But at heart, Arthur was a romantic, he was a knight in shining armour, the good guy, and Merlin loved him. There was nothing short of a bullet between the eyes Merlin wasn’t willing to take to ensure Arthur was safe, and really, that was still irrevocably terrifying.
Smiling softly to himself as he wandered over to Arthur’s desk he took in the empty in-tray and the pristinely clean desktop and he sat down in Arthur’s chair. No matter how much effort Arthur put in to satiating his cleaning streak, Merlin was sure that nothing really work related happened while he was away. Arthur had mentioned the week before about a request to help get a whole lot of gold bullion out of Caerleon with a rather identifying insignia stamped on each brick, but that would be an easy fix and Gwaine would be willing to wait it out. That sort of job was best on the down low anyway. It was slow money, but it was hard money and good in a tight spot, shipped out bit by bit. Besides there was nothing Gwaine or Arthur could have done about it anyway. Melting down gold the normal way took time and effort and money and it always lead with the danger of splashing yourself up your arms to all hell and everyone involved in the job Merlin knew, was really actually quite attractive. It’d be a sad day to see Gwaine or Percival burnt up those gorgeous forearms because they couldn’t wait a week and have Merlin do it. It was simple for Merlin, with magic it was easy, containable and pretty much a job for an afternoon.
Beyond that, Merlin had made sure George knew they weren’t taking on jobs unless they were dire and if that was the case, forward it primarily to Gwaine and Percy. Arthur didn’t know, or he pretended not to know and everything went on smoothly. The whole purpose of the Pendragon alias was to keep Arthur safe and thankfully the prat knew enough to keep himself to himself while Merlin was away, on another continent adding to their false trail. Leading his own Emrys alias, the alias every part of Arthur’s old team knew Merlin by, further away from Arthur, safely in Camelot.
Merlin slumped back in Arthur’s chair and braced himself on the desk with his feet, crossing his ankles and sighed as his body started to unwind. Despite being in the air for god knows how long, stuck sitting in business class, legs cramped because no matter how much he paid, he always made up for it by being tall. He’d been sitting for hours but the seats on the plane weren’t leather and they weren’t ergonomic and they weren’t Arthur’s, smelling faintly of his sweat and aftershave. Merlin let his eyes slip closed. Even being this close to Arthur was calming in a way his thousand pound a night hotel suite’s had never been. It was a good thing he was home two days early, because he was bloody well going to spend the entirety of it in bed. Hopefully keeping Arthur there with him. His magic was good for something and it always liked being involved with Arthur as much as Merlin did. When they’d been running around each other in circles, Arthur intent on putting him in prison and Merlin determined to not let that happen, spells he’d put on Arthur had seemed to either a) last twice as long or b) half as long, dependant on how little time Merlin needed to put between himself and the crack level team of secret agents the government had protecting it’s best interests.
He was closer to sleep than he’d like when his instincts kicked in, and it was instinct alone that warned him the person that was climbing the stairs wasn’t Arthur and it certainly wasn’t George.
Merlin sat up, eyes flashing open, his legs tangling as he made to pull them down from the desk just as the door to the office was thrown open.
Merlin caught sight of stringy blond hair and a beard before he threw himself sideways and toppled the chair, just in time for the waterglass on Arthur’s desk to explode in a shower of glass slivers and the rapport of a gun.
Crouched behind Arthur’s desk he had a clear line of sight to the backdoor and his chance at escape, but he also had a good five metre gap where whoever was in the doorway would have a clean open shot.
In that moment he had no idea how bloody stupid they’d been in designing the layout of the bloody office, but he suddenly very aware of the fact their offices needed rearranging. Which given his situation felt very much as hysterical as it was.
“Come now, Mr Dubois, I’d heard you were not a man to cower behind furniture like a coward.”
The man’s voice had a low cadence, but it also had a sharp arrogance to it that came with authority. He expected to be obeyed, even by Arthur. He expected Arthur to surrender.
And it was clearly Arthur he was here for. Yet surely he’d seen Merlin before Merlin had toppled the chair. He’d certainly had enough time to see for himself that Merlin had dark hair, which made Merlin want to laugh.
“I don’t take well to waiting, Dubois,” the man called again. It was darker, this time and Merlin took another moment to just breathe. Catch his breath a little and calm the fierce pounding in his chest as he crouched behind the desk. He needed to get a grasp on himself before he lost it completely, because something was happening, something dangerous and he needed to get on top of it and quickly.
Merlin took another deep breath and held it for a moment before widening his eyes in half concealed terror and let it out in a long shaky exhale.
“I’m not Mr Dubois,” he called out. He could hear the man take another heavy step forward.
“What?”
“I’m not Mr Dubois,” he said again. “Don’t shoot me. I’m standing up.”
His knees cracked as he unfolded from his crouch and stood up, using the table as a lever. It was far easier to see the layout of his predicament then. The leader was standing three steps from the desk, a semi-automatic in one hand and a flash of annoyance in his eyes.
“Who are you then, boy?” he snarled, walking forward again. His cronies, three middle aged men in suits spilled into the room behind him. Each of them packing, but they gave off an air of confidence that didn’t just come with a gun. He could sense it in them even from across the room, the power they held just under their skin. For those who didn’t know what they were seeing, it would be impossible to tell. But for Merlin… Merlin knew.
He knew first hand exactly what they were hiding.
“Who?” the leader snarled again, this time pressing the barrel of his gun against Merlin’s temple and in true form he flinched, as any good person would.
“M-Merlin Emerson.”
“And who are you, Merlin Emerson, that you curl up in Dubois’ office chair when he’s not here?”
“I’m his business partner. I work for him.”
“You work for him, or is he your partner? That’s not quite clear, Mr Emerson, and really, you’re not in a position to be unclear about things.”
“We’re partners. He knows the jobs and the approach, I know the people. I talk to them, write up the contracts. I run the business side. Whatever this is about I can’t help you.”
“What were you doing in Dubois’ office?”
“Waiting for him. I was waiting. I only got back to Camelot an hour ago. I needed to talk to him.”
“Then where is he?”
“He went to get lunch. I swear.”
“Well then, let’s call him, shall we? Pull out your phone, Mr Emerson. Let’s see if Arthur can’t solve both our problems because otherwise you’re going to be in a position you’re not going to like.”
He smiled, low and menacing and yanked the scarf off Merlin’s neck. A noise caught in his throat involuntarily and the smirk in repute made him almost shiver.
Whatever this was, it was bad.
The man held the scarf out to one of his cronies.
“Take this down to Brant, give it to the mewling receptionist and turn him out on the street. He can tell Dubois what he wants to hear after he gets off the phone.”
He turned his attention back on Merlin and for a second, Merlin saw his eyes flash gold.
They were all sorcerers. At least he knew his senses weren’t lying.
Great.
“You’re going to give me your phone.”
So Merlin did.
*
“That pretty boy of yours back in town then, Arthur?” Cathy winked as she wrapped the second sandwich in baking paper, folding the corners and pulling a green marker pen out of her back pocket.
“Got back about an hour or so ago,” he smiled, thumbing a note from his wallet as she put the second sandwich in the bag and moved to the till.
“And he’s already sending you out for lunch? Lazy boy, tell him I said so.”
“You know Merlin,” Arthur smiled, handing over the note and waving away any change. “Apparently he’s missed your mayo.”
Cathy laughed and her eyes danced as he waved a goodbye. Cathy turned her gaze towards the next customer as he opened the door on the fridge and pulled out the two drinks he’d paid for. He was tucking the sandwich under his arm as his phone rang and his smile stayed put as he answered.
“I remembered the carrot this time,” he said in the phone, balancing the lot with the precision that came with the truly gifted or those with long practice.
Arthur was both.
The other end of the phone was silent for a moment and Arthur pulled it away from his ear to check. Merlin’s name was still showing steady and he pressed it back to his ear.
“Merlin, if you’ve pocket dialled me again - “ he said, his voice gruff and exasperated, still tainted enough with the fond cadence that came with a fortnight apart.
“I assure you, Mr Dubois,” a foreign voice answered and immediately Arthur’s blood ran cold. “That your… Merlin’s call was indeed intentional. However, I fear I must inform you, that he will not be accompanying you for lunch. In fact, I’ll find your friend has very much lost his appetite and if you do not listen to me carefully, it will not be the only thing your friend loses. He has an eager tongue, for one thing. I must say that I won’t hesitate to cut it out if the need arises.”
Arthur could feel his stomach fall like a rock, his blood pounding.
“I’m listening.”
“Very good. Now, I’m going to give you an hour, Arthur. I’m going to give you an hour to call in all the favours you need, because in an hour, I’m going to ask you for something, and if you don’t deliver then, well, Merlin here, is going to meet grave misfortune.”
*
Gathering information about his targets and his surroundings had become second nature to Merlin. It was ingrained in him, a founding talent imbued in him by his mother and he was forever grateful for it.
It had become extremely useful when he’d been actively causing trouble for the sake of causing trouble, and it was going to be extremely useful now, he reckoned, as he eyed the leader of the group of four standing in his and Arthur’s office. The leader was the tallest of the bunch, tall and broad, with curling dirty blond hair and a scruffy beard. He had small piercing eyes and dressed with a flair he couldn’t quite pull off. There was something unbelievable about the suit he was wearing, dark colours and heavily layered. It just didn’t quite work for him, much the same way the fake rolex on his wrist wasn’t a real rolex, but simply dressed to impress. Merlin mentally found himself naming the man Folex as he watched him stalk across the room, his gun still in hand and just close enough to the widows to be able to see outside but far enough away he couldn’t be seen. The man wasn’t an armature. He clearly thought things through. He’d come with three cronies to deal with Merlin, or as he’d planned - Arthur - and more downstairs. With George.
“The man downstairs. You didn’t hurt him did you?” Merlin asked and watched carefully, biting his lip in a show of nervous terror, as Folex turned around sharply and eyed him.
“You’ll keep quiet, boy, if you know what’s good for you. We let him go. It’s you I think you should be worrying about,” Folex snarled and nodded to one of his cronies, a heavyset man with a balding spot high on his head Merlin guessed he was the last one to know about. Balding stepped forward and smacked him hard on the jaw. The jarring pain travelled sharply up Merlin’s jawline and he whimpered, not entirely just for effect. Balding smiled, a leering grin that could shatter glass as Merlin hunched his shoulders and cradled the side of his face.
“Tie him up would you?” Folex snarled, emphasising his order with a wave of his gun. This time Merlin didn’t argue, he didn’t move unless he was guided by the two left in the room who both jumped to Folex’s commands. Balding was quick to follow, his grip tight and his movements hard and unrelenting as he forced Merlin down into Arthur’s chair once again and the second man, who grunted in affirmation before he complied to Folex’s demand, dragged the chair across the room. Grunt held it in place while Balding forced Merlin to sit. Balding held Merlin’s wrists tight enough to bruise against the arm rests on the chair. He leant his weight over Merlin and he could smell the rank odour of the man’s breath, warm and sickly sweet like rotten fruit. Every part of Merlin tried not to gag and flinch in badly hidden revulsion as Grunt moved around behind them. It didn’t take long before the man was back with a length of rope and Merlin watched as they tied each of his hands to the rests. They could have bound him magically; each of them in the room had enough magic in them for something like that. It wasn’t hard and didn’t require a great amount of talent at all. Balding probably couldn’t do much more than that with his talents, but one thing Merlin had known over the years was that even those with minimal talent had the ability to have their lives fall down around them due to things they couldn’t explain. Even those who could do little more than light a candle could do immense damage if they couldn’t control when their magic happened. Fear had a way of corrupting people.
The duo finished tying Merlin up and the man he’d nicknamed Grunt, grunted to alert Folex. Merlin watched as the man turned back to him. The sharp glint in his eyes hadn’t disappeared at all, in fact, if anything there was a fiercer gleam to it, more feral. More dangerous. It was something Merlin was familiar with, something that he’d seen more than once growing up. His childhood had not been simple, or easy. His mother had been privy to the dangers a magical child faced and had been desperate to protect him from them. They hadn’t stayed in one place for long, and each time they’d moved and Merlin had seen the pinch of fear and concern in his mother’s kind face, he’d met a selection of men with a selection of expressions. Each and every one of them, he’d learned later, had some form of magic; were hiding in one capacity or another, and each of them had been wrung out by the world. But every one of them had helped his mother, had helped her move her life from one town to another, one name to the next. They had helped her move a child that had more magic than any of them. Though they didn’t know that, otherwise his childhood might have been different again.
He wasn’t naive enough to think that they had all be saintly. They’d all been kind to a woman and her son in a similar situation, but Merlin had met a few of them when he too had turned against the society who had made him an outsider. Who had punished him, unfairly, for the gift by which he had been born. He had met a few of them and he had seen the savage glint of men who happily did more harm than good; men that enjoyed breaking the law, breaking boundaries, breaking people.
The man in front of him bore than same arrogance, that same hard won anger that had festered into something dangerous.
“What are you going to do with me?” he asked, adding the waver to his voice that he knew the man desired. He was an easy man to read, even without magic to help things along the way, and Merlin was brilliant at reading people. He had made it his craft. He was good at it, and he enjoyed it and it didn’t take an expert criminal or a sorcerer to know that his captor got off on power. If Merlin deferred to him, showed him some sort of fear, then his arrogance would take Merlin much further to controlling the situation than if he antagonised everything and tried to drive a wedge between everyone in the building. Because the leader was clearly the point of contention; things weren’t as they’d planned.
They’d planned to find Arthur here, not Merlin. Not the ‘partner’ they knew nothing of. They were running completely in the moment and in that Merlin had the advantage.
The man eyed Merlin, sharp brown eyes running up and down Merlin’s body as he stood where he’d stopped. Merlin bit his lip and he watched the tick in the man’s eye, the twitch of muscles under the skin as the man held in a smirk.
Inside, Merlin smiled.
This could be simpler than he’d hoped, really, and if he played his cards right, he could get out of the situation without even using his magic.
And that was a secret to guard with his life, because even in the underworld, where magic users were more common than anyone seemed to expect, keeping your head down was only an advantage. Because once someone knew you could light a candle with the click of your fingers then it didn’t take long before you were on the Magical Register and then you had Aredian Crewe on your tail.
Merlin had spent his entire life making sure to keep his name off the Register. His mother had spent nineteen years on the run protecting him, uprooting him and moving every time it was hinted that someone might suspect. The only time Merlin had ever made a friend, had truly settled down into a name, into a life, Will had found out. Merlin had been terrified his mother would make him leave, so they’d not told her. It had been their secret and if anything, they’d been better friends because of it.
Then one day Will, stupid, loud, toss pot Will had urged Merlin to bloody well change the channel cause he couldn’t be arsed getting up off the couch and Merlin’s mother had heard from the other room. At the time they hadn’t known she was there.
Merlin had walked Will home that afternoon and when he’d got back to the house his mother was packing his clothes into a box and everything had fallen apart.
He didn’t get the chance to say goodbye, they were gone before midnight and when they finally stopped he slept on a blown up mattress at the foot of a single bed in the attic of some share house in Escetia. Merlin had refused to let anyone talk themselves into his good graces at the next school after that. He’d been a trouble maker and the school had sent his mother an official notice, warning her if he’d kept up his act he’d have to be expelled. It had been an effort on his part to be as disrespectful as he had been and that notice had been like a reward for his efforts. But it had all been for nothing anyway because they’d had to move again shortly after.
He wasn’t entirely sure that one had been his fault.
No one had known about him, anyway. He’d made sure that no one had even known his first name. It had been the loneliest six months of his life.
“What do you want with me?” Merlin asked, fixing his attention on Folex. Folex took several steps towards him, each one measured and slow. Menacing. Merlin could almost feel the crackle of magic in the air and he quickly wondered if Folex knew about him. They knew about Pendragon, about the alias they’d created but much like his false Emrys trail, Merlin had been careful about when he moved, about when he did things. What days of the week allowed him the luxury of consulting on jobs, which days allowed him the benefit of working jobs, which days he stayed home with Arthur, and which days he helped hide magic users, helped them move house, names, lives. Helped them stay safe. Arthur helped, and Merlin was almost certain that those late nights when they worked under the cover of darkness and helped transport innocent, terrified people away from the dangers of simply what they could do was the only thing keeping his boyfriend sane. And around. Arthur was a do-gooder, he had a heart of gold and it had been love that had stolen him away from the Knights and the law-abiding world he’d grown up in. But Merlin still wasn’t entirely sure whether love was quite enough to make Arthur stay.
But the kids they helped, that gave Arthur a purpose, it gave him insight into the stories Merlin had told him during those first six months when he’d asked quietly for Merlin to tell him his story. The truth. So Merlin had, and he had seen the struggle for Arthur to understand this world had been all Merlin had known.
And it had been Arthur who had asked if Merlin would continue helping Magic users to stay safe. Stay unregistered and off the grid.
Pendragon was their alias in more worlds than just the criminal. It was an alias and a battle cry all in one and somehow these feral magic users had found Arthur through it. They were here for Arthur and Merlin still didn’t know why. Dubois had been a surname he’d left behind with the Knights. But it was Dubois they were here for.
He was determined to find out why.
“What do I want with you?” Folex repeated as he came to a stop, standing in front of Merlin. The man was tall, taller than he was anyway, but sitting down it was like staring up at a giant. It was a move to intimidate and Merlin wasn’t going to disappoint him, not if it meant they underestimated him as much as he needed them to.
“What do I need with you? Well, Merlin Emerson, right now, you’re a stone in my shoe. You’re a problem. You interrupted several vital plans we had in place and eventually you are going to pay for that. But for now, you’re going to ensure that Arthur Dubois stays in line. That’s what I’m going to do with you. And if Arthur doesn’t do what he’s told, I’m going to cut off each of your fingers and let him listen to you scream. Ok?”
Merlin flinched and watched through his eyelashes as Folex’s lips curved into a satisfied sneer.
Folex turned to Balding.
“Watch him,” he snapped before turning on his heel and stalking across the room to the edge of the window. Merlin bit his lip and watched as he pulled out a phone. Inside Merlin’s self satisfaction cheered. He wasn’t working alone, which meant whoever this was, wasn’t in charge. There were other players - which was both bad and worse, but right now, for Merlin, it was better.
He had a power struggle to play with.
He could use that.
On the other side of the room whoever Folex was calling didn’t take long to pick up and the room wasn’t quite as large as the man might have been expecting. Merlin could hear everything Folex said and he listened attentively, looking down at his lap so not to incite any sort of attention from Balding or Grunt and listen unimpeded.
Folex scowled almost immediately as the person on the other end started talking and once again Merlin had to internalise the desire to smile.
“There was a problem,” Folex said, his tone annoyed and bitter. “Dubois wasn’t here. Some kid was instead. Says he’s Dubois’ partner and Dubois shut up and obeyed damn quick when I told him to.”
Merlin watched as Folex’s shoulders tensed.
“Says his name is Merlin Emerson... well that’s what he said it was. I didn’t stutter and neither did he. Skinny, black hair, big ears - “ there was a pause then and Merlin frowned at Folex’s back as he heard Balding and Grunt snicker just behind him. It didn’t matter how old he was, his ears had decided when he was four that they were going to be bigger for his face than was the norm, and from that point on they had been a point of contention for every bully he’d ever come across, whether it had been in the school yard when he was twelve or facing a loaded sig sauer# from a sour Grunt Man who had a lot of brawn but not enough brains to realise the Point Man was conning him when he’d been twenty one and new to the game. These days, some six years later wasn’t new at all, but his ears still made him open game. His mother had always told him they made him look gangly and sweet and guileless, like a fawn or something. A helpless animal. They certainly helped when he was trying to look normal, blend in with the crowd - because no one seemed to ever suspect the bumbling skinny kid with the big ears all bright red from embarrassment. He’d made off with a priceless Faberge egg in his pocket under that ruse, biting his lip and using wide eyes and spluttering to draw more attention to himself than ever any good crook ever should.
He always got away with it.
Only this time, he thought with the first edges of concern curling in the corners of his mind, this time might be very different.
“I told you, Dubois gave in quick enough. We can make him get it instead of just getting the info. Tell me that ain’t a good plan... what? You’re sure? ... Understood.”
Merlin watched as Folex squared his shoulders and there was something about it that sent a curl of actual genuine fear go rippling down his spine, because he’d seen that stance before. Those broad shoulders and strong jaw were the exact same reactions Arthur got when Merlin told him he had to stay behind, that he would have to do exactly what Merlin told him and not know why. It was anger and frustration and confusion all rolled up into a man who was used to issuing orders not taking them. He watched, squirming against the ties around his wrists as Folex turned his head, glancing back at them. Merlin could feel his magic buzzing, rippling under his skin like static electricity. Instinctual and ready to burst into action, begging to be released - and it could be so easy. Just a pulsing blast of energy enough to knock them all out and for him to escape; only it was beyond that now. So far beyond it. There was someone else controlling everything, someone who was out for Arthur. Because it was really Arthur this was about. Merlin could escape but then it still came back to the fact these people were after Arthur and they were dangerous. They’d grown cocky, he’d gotten lax, been too caught up in those old jobs where it was just him and his goal and the rushing feel of adrenaline and magic. He’d invested too much in the fact that it could be just Arthur’s team who were after him. He’d forgotten about everyone else, enemies Arthur made working for the Knights.
Merlin watched as Folex grit his teeth and turned around completely, behind him Grunt took a step forward and Merlin tensed, wildly looking from one to the other - which is why he left his right side completely open to the stinging blow Balding dealt him as Folex gave the pair of them another short curt nod.
Merlin felt the heavy blow to the side of his head and the world blurred and tilted alarmingly quickly and he felt the chair tip on him once again and for the second time in an hour he fell backwards only this time he wasn’t conscious as he hit the floor.
Part Two
*
“Will you be requiring anything else Mr Dubois?”
The question hung in the air as Arthur stared fixedly at the email in front of him and the rest of the room wavered in the background of his consciousness.
“Sir?” their assistant pressed again and this time Arthur registered the sound of George’s voice. For the last ten minutes he’d been ignoring him pretty much beyond the knowledge that the stubborn man had been talking.
“That will be all, George,” Arthur said, waving his hand in dismissal and ignoring however long it took George to follow his orders. It wouldn’t have been long; the man was ridiculous when it came to the chain of command. It drove Merlin crazy.
Arthur sighed and leant forward on his desk, idly rubbing the sleep from his eyes. The computer screen in front of him blurred as he blinked blearily at it.
Time had slowed to a minimum rate in the last fortnight and his gaze hovered over the small calendar in the bottom corner.
The fourteenth. Two more days.
Closing his eyes for a moment Arthur slumped back in his chair and absorbed the quiet hum of the air conditioner and the faint rumble of cars going by outside.
Life was quiet of late, and if there was one thing he abhorred, it was a quiet life. It was not a life he had been bred for. Hell, running a business - even a private ‘security’ business - was not a life he had been bred for. But it was the life they had chosen, or been forced to choose. He still wasn’t entirely certain which was correct, even after going on two years, or a little less than that, really, where the business was concerned. But it had been more than two years since he’d had to throw everything he had away and run for it. Taking Merlin with him and Merlin alone, leaving everything else behind - his flat in the Citadel, his job, his team, his friends. His father.
He’d had to leave without warning and for good and he didn’t regret it for a moment. As long as he had Merlin with him. It was only during these little trips Merlin made that the doubt crept into his mind, and not all of it had anything to do with the fact Merlin’s little trips were his boyfriend running off to break the law where Arthur couldn’t see. Running off to hide their tracks from the very people Arthur had left behind.
But really, doubt or not, the only thing that truly worried him when Merlin was away was the fact that he missed him. He missed him with a yearning longing he still wasn’t over. Two and a half years on, it was still terrifyingly all-consuming.
Which lead him to periods where nearly nothing happened at work and nothing happened at home and it all served to drive him even more stir crazy.
And no amount of phone sex or dirty emails could satiate the burning need for his boyfriend.
It really did worry him sometimes, the desperation by which he needed Merlin. It was as if all those feelings he’d never experienced during college or university had been kept in storage that only Merlin, being the criminal he was, could unlock.
It really was altogether ridiculous, Arthur thought, and stared at the screen, accusingly. It didn’t waver or change, Merlin’s last email still staring back at him from the screen. Arthur scoffed at it quietly before opening a new email and typing out quickly before he got too sickened with himself.
I miss you.
He clicked send and shut down the tab before sitting back in his chair
Two more days, he thought quietly to himself. It was only two more days and then things could go back to the way they should be.
*
Merlin had a love-hate relationship with the airport. For one, it had planes - and planes were both irritating and amazing. No matter how often he flew, he never got over the view out the tiny little windows. The stretch of cloud cover, the fading colours as the sky changed.
People were different on planes as well. There was nothing quite like the knowledge that you were going to be cramped up next to someone you didn’t know for hours on end to bring a deep sense of connection with people.
He always got the talkers sitting next to him, which he didn’t mind, because Merlin himself loved to talk. He loved people, stories, characters.
He hated the food, however; he hated the plastic wrapped blankets and the cramped toilet. He hated the forced sweetness from the hostesses. He hated the moment the plane left the ground and started climbing and climbing and climbing and that moment his brain spluttered in half hearted terror - we’re not going to make it, we’re gonna fall.
He had nothing against the rest of the trip, the something-something thousand feet of airspace and the bump as the tyres hit the landing strip. He didn’t even have anything against take off itself. It was that moment of oh-god-something’s-going-to-go-wrong as the plane levelled out mid air that got to him.
He blamed Will. It was entirely Will’s fault, Will and his love of air-crash documentaries.
Realistically, his only problems with flying only ever came back to the fact he wasn’t driving the plane. Nearly everything else about it he loved.
Airports on the other hand were something different.
Talking to people at the airport was paramount to suicide. No one wanted to talk to you, there was always a line and everything always had this faint air of futility - I’ll never reach the ATM in time. Don’t these moron’s know I have a flight in twenty minutes? - But there was no better place for people watching.
And people watching was Merlin’s favourite.
The baggage carousel was by far the best part of his trip, usually. Not only because it allowed him the luxury of making off with someone else’s luggage on those trips where he had been running and running fast, with no chance to take anything with him bar the clothes on his back and a prayer to anyone listening. But that had been before, before Arthur had caught him, before the business and the Knights and the knowledge of what it felt like to have Arthur Pendragon’s lips against his skin.
A long time ago indeed.
Since then, the baggage carousel was entertaining on one of two conditions:
1. Arthur was standing behind him bitching and moaning,
2. Arthur was standing behind him glowering and sulking.
The airport had lost quite a lot of its charm these days.
As did a lot of Merlin’s life.
These days, or rather specifically today - all he really wanted to do was get back home - home to Arthur, if the whinging git wasn’t at their apartment.
He’d bloody well cut his trip short two days because he missed the blond prat. But what was worse was the fact he’d barely slept a wink the entire two weeks he’d been gone and it was ridiculous.
Today, the baggage carousel with its holidaying lovers barely keeping an eye out while they fondled, or the irritated businessmen staring the machine down like the furore of their stare would spit out their bags a little faster, or the stressed parents talking their children down from trying to climb up on the conveyer belt were severely less interesting than they should be.
Right at that second he was one of the boring, intense people who stared into nothing trying to remember what suitcase they packed and whether or not they’d actually tied that ribbon to the handle like they’d planned to or not.
He just really wanted to get home. Or to the office. Arthur would be at the office. Glancing down at his watch Merlin smiled softly. 11:39. He could call Arthur and warn him and Arthur could pop over to Cath’s and get a couple of sandwiches and be back almost perfectly. Then they could eat and Merlin could pretend that he hadn’t missed him and then they could go home and go to bed.
Smiling to himself, Merlin rocked on his heels and jumped forward as he spotted the bright blue suitcase Arthur had bought him.
He bloody didn’t need a ribbon to spot it.
*
Arthur was lazily reading a brief that had been sent through for an extraction in Mercia City when he heard the phone shrill downstairs at George’s desk. While the man took his job very seriously there was little they were actually paying him for. Really his only job was to warn Arthur and Merlin who exactly they were about to talk to - whether or not it was over the phone or in person. He had access to Merlin’s database and little else, but he was persistent and frighteningly reliable and Arthur was thankful for him, more often than he was frustrated. He spent most of his time being annoyed with the man, but that was purely out of a reliable annoyance with Merlin that carried over. In truth, Arthur was glad for the break between himself and the world Merlin had dragged him down into. It was a layer of protection Arthur wasn’t going to argue against when realistically he was listed as an enemy of the State. After five years in the Knights, the elite Secret Service of Albion, betraying your country and running off with a criminal was enough to get you Blacklisted. Everything Merlin had done in the last two and a half years had been to make sure that list didn’t get Arthur thrown into Albion Penitentiary and never come out.
So Arthur never complained about George.
Except when the man intercepted Merlin’s calls first and told Arthur it was someone else so he made a fool of himself.
“A Mr Wright for you, sir,” George’s voice called through the intercom a moment later, just as a file popped up on Arthur’s screen. Opening it he scanned the man’s information with a lazy eye for a moment - magical weapons, beta-grade -- before he picked up.
“Mr Wright, always a pleasure, Arthur Penn speaking,”
“Oh Mr Penn, I assure you, the pleasure is all mine, ” Merlin’s unmistakable voice echoed out of the handset and Arthur smiled despite himself.
“That’s it; I’m firing George before you get back.”
“Hahahaha, come off it, Arthur. It’s fun.”
“I’ll tell you what’s fun: me changing the locks.”
“You do remember the part where the locks are voice activated and you know nothing about code, right?”
“I hate you. You’re impossible, I don’t know why I put up with you.”
“Pffft, I’m amazing and brilliant and you know it.”
“I can find other amazing people.”
“No one is as amazing as me, Arthur. No one. Besides, you’d never be able to hire anyone. I’m better at dealing with people than you are.”
“You are not.”
“I am, I have a criminal track record that says I’m brilliant.”
“It says you’re delusional, narcissistic and emotionally unbalanced is what it says.”
“Shut up, it does not.”
“How would you know?”
“Because I know everything you wrote on me, Arthur. Everything.”
“Have you been hacking into my files again, Emrys?”
“Please, I left a backdoor the first time. I don’t even need to hack anymore. Besides you haven’t touched those files in years.”
“Remind me again why I’m in love with you?”
“Because, you prat, you love my ingenuity.”
“You don’t have any.”
“I have bucket loads.”
“You do not.”
“Well if I don’t then what do you call your 25 minute warning to go get me something to eat, then?”
“This is where I bring up that ‘delusional’ statement again,” he said with a smile, the feel of it broadening as Merlin huffed, indignant and amused on the other end.
“Forget why you put up with me, why do I put up with you?”
“Because you’re insane and narcissistic and emotionally unbalanced.”
“And awesome. Don’t forget awesome.”
“We’ve been through this - “
“Well if I’m not awesome then neither is my taste in men.”
“There are exclusions to every rule.”
“Oh I know, Gwaine was excellent in bed - “
“I’m still changing the locks when you get back.”
“Then you’ve got fifteen minutes starting now and you’ll still have time to get me something from the deli.”
“What on earth are you nattering on about?”
“I’m at the airport, you clot,” Merlin sighed and Arthur sat up far too quickly.
“You’re what?”
“Well, technically, I’m in the line waiting for the car to come around. So I’m almost not at the airport. But I’m back, anyway. In Camelot. And I’m hungry.”
“I thought you weren’t free until day after tomorrow?”
“Well I’m just more efficient than you, Arthur. Awesome, remember? And I might have missed something back at home, you know. I don’t know what it is anymore because you’re clearly thick as six bricks and don’t appreciate me.”
“I’ll show you appreciation, all right.”
“Well good. Just make sure you let George know not to interrupt this time, cause last time it was really hard to look him in the eye for a while. He’s far too intense. We should hire him out as a fence, he wouldn’t even need to know any martial arts or lift any weights to intimidate people into buying or selling, he could just stare people down and they’d tell him anything.”
“You are insane. I missed you.”
“Oh, I think this is my curtain call if you’re about to get soppy, Arthur.”
“I thought you missed me?”
“I did, but you’re gonna make me all sappy and the driver doesn’t need that. He’s supposed to think I’m a snobby rich bastard, part of the mob or something.”
“You’re a private consultant for the underbelly of Albion, Merlin, you are a part of the mob.”
“Shush, you’ll blow my cover.”
“Idiot,” he said fondly and he could still imagine Merlin grinning brilliant enough his whole face crinkling into the smile.
“Never. You should get going. I want a chicken salad from Cathy before I even consider blowing you, that’s how hungry I am. Airport food is shite.”
“And yet you’ve spent a good portion of your life in planes.”
“Running away from you. I don’t need to do that anymore, now do I? So don’t deny me Cath’s homemade mayo. I have missed it so.”
“Were you pining for sandwiches?”
“And cock, but mostly sandwiches. OK, we’re about to go under the bridge and I’ll lose you. Run along, Pratface. See you soon.”
Arthur couldn’t wipe the smile off his face as the phone beeped and Merlin hung up. After two weeks abroad, it was immediately soothing to know Merlin was back. It was the same, time after time. It didn’t matter how long they were apart - knowing that Merlin was gone, out of his reach was debilitating, like the world was just slightly off axis. A part of him was irrational, always, never ending - waiting for the moment that would tell him Merlin wasn’t coming back. That the world he’d left behind for Arthur was too much, that Arthur was too little and he was never going to see Merlin again. So much had changed in the last two and a half years, even beyond what had changed prior to that. So much of his life had been centred around Merlin, what Merlin meant to him. Could mean to him.
And even after two and a half years together, there was always a part of him that worried, that waited; that felt this indescribable joy and possessiveness whenever Merlin came back. This feeling that erupted in his veins, that pulsed and made smiling far too easy as he held him.
Merlin Ambrose had made a life for himself manipulating the world and people around him, but Arthur never ceased to wonder if Merlin had ever possibly considered he could manipulate someone into feeling the things he made Arthur.
Arthur had worked for the Knights since the moment he had been old enough to qualify, two months after he finished his degree in criminal science at Albion University of Technology. He’d worked hard to get where he’d been and when he had been going through the baby cases during his probation he’d come across a diamond scam, a young thief who had stolen two and a half million pounds worth of diamonds out of the private residence of Vivian White. The woman’s father was a bully and she herself rather stupid. Taking the case made Arthur feel like he’d stepped in a proverbial landmine. There was something about it, though, he couldn’t quite let go of and never had.
He had followed the trace of the thief with the balls to steal from Vivian White and over the course of his own career in the Knights he managed to follow Emrys up the criminal ladder. By the time Arthur was sanctioned into Team Cappa, eighteen months after he first found Merlin in his files, the heads of department were practically begging Arthur for the files of everything he’d found.
Emrys had become notorious and Arthur had gotten himself a reputation for getting the job done well and fast.
Except for Merlin - or Emrys, as he’d been known; Arthur hadn’t been able to get his hands on Merlin at all.
Every time he’d get close, Merlin would dance out of his grasp. Sometimes in the minutes it took to get the team situated around the building they’d been sure Merlin had been in. And sometimes he had been. Sometime’s he’d been in a building Arthur had just been researching. But whatever the case, it all came to the same conclusion. Arthur became obsessed with Merlin, Merlin became obsessed with Arthur and they danced around each other for nearly four years.
Then Merlin had saved his life and it all unravelled around them.
A little over a year later, it was Arthur saving Merlin’s life. In that one fateful night everything changed. Merlin asked Arthur to come with him, and strangely enough, Arthur had.
He still couldn’t quite figure out why, why he had, why Merlin had become more to him than anyone else in his life. Why Merlin’s life was worth more than his career, than his father’s warped expectations, more than the law.
But it had and he’d run and together they’d never stopped.
They had spent six months running, leaving trails all over the place and then, then one day Merlin had answered a phone call and the tightness around his eyes had almost disappeared. He’d looked at Arthur and this smile had spread across his face and it had made butterflies erupt in Arthur’s gut he couldn’t banish.
They’d gone home after that. Back to Camelot. Hiding right under their nose, Merlin said, had always been the best place to hide. And it had been. Merlin had contacts, serious contacts, and Arthur had slotted into his world like he belonged there. And he figured he did.
Pendragon Security and Consulting had been built up around them and was a business front only in Merlin’s world, Merlin’s world of lies and magic, danger and adrenaline.
Arthur had spent his entire life training himself to fight for the law and in the end he’d wound up using every single one of those skills and morals he’d honed over the years for the opposite team and he didn’t regret it at all.
Not when it came to the truth. Not when it came to Merlin.
Smiling happily he pulled his wallet out of the drawer and practically bounced on his heels down the stairs. George eyed him, his lips in a solid frown as he walked across the room towards the front doors and freedom.
“I take it you had good news, sir?” he asked. Arthur laughed.
“Merlin’s back, George. I’m getting lunch. Won’t be long.”
“I’ll hold the fort, sir,” George replied, somewhat amiably and Arthur wondered for a moment whether the man was looking forward to having a somewhat affable workplace for the next few weeks or so. It was possible, really, while it wasn’t really his intention, he was standoffish and rather arrogant quite a lot of the time and easily disagreeable unless Merlin was there as mediator. There were reasons, he supposed, George often still called him ‘Mr Dubois’.
Still, for today, at least, Arthur was smiling as he exited PSC, looking forward to the rest of the day.
*
There was a surprising lack of traffic on the trip back from the airport, which, after talking with Arthur, Merlin was grateful for. He spent the entirety of the trip watching the scenery pass by almost hungrily, mentally ticking off each corner and landmark as they neared the Citadel and the small shop with it’s top floor office in the alleyways behind the quadrangle. He ignored the driver and spent the entire trip silent. By the end his leg was bouncing up and down with his mixed enthusiasm and anxiety. Fishing fifty quid out of his wallet he passed it through to the driver and slid out of the car before waiting for change. The building was quiet as per usual and Merlin’s mixed emotions sort of dulled themselves in the wake of being back, back on fixed, solid, familiar ground. Humming to himself quietly he hop skipped up the last of the footpath to the door, dragging his suitcase along behind with little care for what was in there. He travelled enough that they never bothered with duty free and any of the expensive wines he’d have bothered purchasing cheaper he could get for next to nothing anyway. A small suggestion to his next client could get him an entire case on top of his usual charge and they’d still smile when he handed over the goods. That was his charm. Or PSC’s charm, these days.
George looked up with his usual solemn fair as Merlin pushed his way inside and wheeled his suitcase to a stop beside the desk.
“Good trip, sir?”
“Simple enough,” he shrugged, leaning his elbows on the counter and hoping that George wasn’t going to bring up the smudges under his eyes. Arthur would, but Arthur was demanding and authoritative and would be more likely to kiss both of Merlin’s eyelids before he told Merlin off for not sleeping. As annoying as Arthur could be at times, right that second Merlin was sort of looking forward to it.
“Is he back?”
“It appears you surprised him rather well,” George replied, nodding back towards the door.
“He has yet to return with your food order.”
“Ah, right,” Merlin smiled in spite of himself. “I’ll be upstairs. Send him up to me, yeah?”
“As you wish, sir,” George replied idly watching as Merlin abandoned the suitcase and bounded up the stairs. The office was studiously organised as he petered out to a stop in the doorway. Arthur’s desk was as pristine as ever, the countertop of the bookcase that ran along the back wall was perfectly clean and the books were no doubt in alphabetical order. When Arthur got pedantic, he really went all out. It usually happened when Merlin went away and Arthur got anxious and when Arthur got anxious his control streak got out of control. It was cute, really, knowing how restless his boyfriend got knowing there was nothing he could do, and really, with this job there was nothing Arthur could have done short of getting himself seen. If that happened they were fucked, and proven by his sheer loyalty, Arthur clearly didn’t want to go back to that life. He couldn’t. Not now, not after all this. Merlin had corrupted him in the worst possible way. A Knight of Albion, tarnished by the criminals he’d been chasing. Merlin had turned Arthur Dubois dirty. He’d turned him into one of the most successful consultant criminals; the elusive Pendragon’s talents had done quite a fair amount of damage in the way of the right type of criminals and the wrong type of cops. But at heart, Arthur was a romantic, he was a knight in shining armour, the good guy, and Merlin loved him. There was nothing short of a bullet between the eyes Merlin wasn’t willing to take to ensure Arthur was safe, and really, that was still irrevocably terrifying.
Smiling softly to himself as he wandered over to Arthur’s desk he took in the empty in-tray and the pristinely clean desktop and he sat down in Arthur’s chair. No matter how much effort Arthur put in to satiating his cleaning streak, Merlin was sure that nothing really work related happened while he was away. Arthur had mentioned the week before about a request to help get a whole lot of gold bullion out of Caerleon with a rather identifying insignia stamped on each brick, but that would be an easy fix and Gwaine would be willing to wait it out. That sort of job was best on the down low anyway. It was slow money, but it was hard money and good in a tight spot, shipped out bit by bit. Besides there was nothing Gwaine or Arthur could have done about it anyway. Melting down gold the normal way took time and effort and money and it always lead with the danger of splashing yourself up your arms to all hell and everyone involved in the job Merlin knew, was really actually quite attractive. It’d be a sad day to see Gwaine or Percival burnt up those gorgeous forearms because they couldn’t wait a week and have Merlin do it. It was simple for Merlin, with magic it was easy, containable and pretty much a job for an afternoon.
Beyond that, Merlin had made sure George knew they weren’t taking on jobs unless they were dire and if that was the case, forward it primarily to Gwaine and Percy. Arthur didn’t know, or he pretended not to know and everything went on smoothly. The whole purpose of the Pendragon alias was to keep Arthur safe and thankfully the prat knew enough to keep himself to himself while Merlin was away, on another continent adding to their false trail. Leading his own Emrys alias, the alias every part of Arthur’s old team knew Merlin by, further away from Arthur, safely in Camelot.
Merlin slumped back in Arthur’s chair and braced himself on the desk with his feet, crossing his ankles and sighed as his body started to unwind. Despite being in the air for god knows how long, stuck sitting in business class, legs cramped because no matter how much he paid, he always made up for it by being tall. He’d been sitting for hours but the seats on the plane weren’t leather and they weren’t ergonomic and they weren’t Arthur’s, smelling faintly of his sweat and aftershave. Merlin let his eyes slip closed. Even being this close to Arthur was calming in a way his thousand pound a night hotel suite’s had never been. It was a good thing he was home two days early, because he was bloody well going to spend the entirety of it in bed. Hopefully keeping Arthur there with him. His magic was good for something and it always liked being involved with Arthur as much as Merlin did. When they’d been running around each other in circles, Arthur intent on putting him in prison and Merlin determined to not let that happen, spells he’d put on Arthur had seemed to either a) last twice as long or b) half as long, dependant on how little time Merlin needed to put between himself and the crack level team of secret agents the government had protecting it’s best interests.
He was closer to sleep than he’d like when his instincts kicked in, and it was instinct alone that warned him the person that was climbing the stairs wasn’t Arthur and it certainly wasn’t George.
Merlin sat up, eyes flashing open, his legs tangling as he made to pull them down from the desk just as the door to the office was thrown open.
Merlin caught sight of stringy blond hair and a beard before he threw himself sideways and toppled the chair, just in time for the waterglass on Arthur’s desk to explode in a shower of glass slivers and the rapport of a gun.
Crouched behind Arthur’s desk he had a clear line of sight to the backdoor and his chance at escape, but he also had a good five metre gap where whoever was in the doorway would have a clean open shot.
In that moment he had no idea how bloody stupid they’d been in designing the layout of the bloody office, but he suddenly very aware of the fact their offices needed rearranging. Which given his situation felt very much as hysterical as it was.
“Come now, Mr Dubois, I’d heard you were not a man to cower behind furniture like a coward.”
The man’s voice had a low cadence, but it also had a sharp arrogance to it that came with authority. He expected to be obeyed, even by Arthur. He expected Arthur to surrender.
And it was clearly Arthur he was here for. Yet surely he’d seen Merlin before Merlin had toppled the chair. He’d certainly had enough time to see for himself that Merlin had dark hair, which made Merlin want to laugh.
“I don’t take well to waiting, Dubois,” the man called again. It was darker, this time and Merlin took another moment to just breathe. Catch his breath a little and calm the fierce pounding in his chest as he crouched behind the desk. He needed to get a grasp on himself before he lost it completely, because something was happening, something dangerous and he needed to get on top of it and quickly.
Merlin took another deep breath and held it for a moment before widening his eyes in half concealed terror and let it out in a long shaky exhale.
“I’m not Mr Dubois,” he called out. He could hear the man take another heavy step forward.
“What?”
“I’m not Mr Dubois,” he said again. “Don’t shoot me. I’m standing up.”
His knees cracked as he unfolded from his crouch and stood up, using the table as a lever. It was far easier to see the layout of his predicament then. The leader was standing three steps from the desk, a semi-automatic in one hand and a flash of annoyance in his eyes.
“Who are you then, boy?” he snarled, walking forward again. His cronies, three middle aged men in suits spilled into the room behind him. Each of them packing, but they gave off an air of confidence that didn’t just come with a gun. He could sense it in them even from across the room, the power they held just under their skin. For those who didn’t know what they were seeing, it would be impossible to tell. But for Merlin… Merlin knew.
He knew first hand exactly what they were hiding.
“Who?” the leader snarled again, this time pressing the barrel of his gun against Merlin’s temple and in true form he flinched, as any good person would.
“M-Merlin Emerson.”
“And who are you, Merlin Emerson, that you curl up in Dubois’ office chair when he’s not here?”
“I’m his business partner. I work for him.”
“You work for him, or is he your partner? That’s not quite clear, Mr Emerson, and really, you’re not in a position to be unclear about things.”
“We’re partners. He knows the jobs and the approach, I know the people. I talk to them, write up the contracts. I run the business side. Whatever this is about I can’t help you.”
“What were you doing in Dubois’ office?”
“Waiting for him. I was waiting. I only got back to Camelot an hour ago. I needed to talk to him.”
“Then where is he?”
“He went to get lunch. I swear.”
“Well then, let’s call him, shall we? Pull out your phone, Mr Emerson. Let’s see if Arthur can’t solve both our problems because otherwise you’re going to be in a position you’re not going to like.”
He smiled, low and menacing and yanked the scarf off Merlin’s neck. A noise caught in his throat involuntarily and the smirk in repute made him almost shiver.
Whatever this was, it was bad.
The man held the scarf out to one of his cronies.
“Take this down to Brant, give it to the mewling receptionist and turn him out on the street. He can tell Dubois what he wants to hear after he gets off the phone.”
He turned his attention back on Merlin and for a second, Merlin saw his eyes flash gold.
They were all sorcerers. At least he knew his senses weren’t lying.
Great.
“You’re going to give me your phone.”
So Merlin did.
*
“That pretty boy of yours back in town then, Arthur?” Cathy winked as she wrapped the second sandwich in baking paper, folding the corners and pulling a green marker pen out of her back pocket.
“Got back about an hour or so ago,” he smiled, thumbing a note from his wallet as she put the second sandwich in the bag and moved to the till.
“And he’s already sending you out for lunch? Lazy boy, tell him I said so.”
“You know Merlin,” Arthur smiled, handing over the note and waving away any change. “Apparently he’s missed your mayo.”
Cathy laughed and her eyes danced as he waved a goodbye. Cathy turned her gaze towards the next customer as he opened the door on the fridge and pulled out the two drinks he’d paid for. He was tucking the sandwich under his arm as his phone rang and his smile stayed put as he answered.
“I remembered the carrot this time,” he said in the phone, balancing the lot with the precision that came with the truly gifted or those with long practice.
Arthur was both.
The other end of the phone was silent for a moment and Arthur pulled it away from his ear to check. Merlin’s name was still showing steady and he pressed it back to his ear.
“Merlin, if you’ve pocket dialled me again - “ he said, his voice gruff and exasperated, still tainted enough with the fond cadence that came with a fortnight apart.
“I assure you, Mr Dubois,” a foreign voice answered and immediately Arthur’s blood ran cold. “That your… Merlin’s call was indeed intentional. However, I fear I must inform you, that he will not be accompanying you for lunch. In fact, I’ll find your friend has very much lost his appetite and if you do not listen to me carefully, it will not be the only thing your friend loses. He has an eager tongue, for one thing. I must say that I won’t hesitate to cut it out if the need arises.”
Arthur could feel his stomach fall like a rock, his blood pounding.
“I’m listening.”
“Very good. Now, I’m going to give you an hour, Arthur. I’m going to give you an hour to call in all the favours you need, because in an hour, I’m going to ask you for something, and if you don’t deliver then, well, Merlin here, is going to meet grave misfortune.”
*
Gathering information about his targets and his surroundings had become second nature to Merlin. It was ingrained in him, a founding talent imbued in him by his mother and he was forever grateful for it.
It had become extremely useful when he’d been actively causing trouble for the sake of causing trouble, and it was going to be extremely useful now, he reckoned, as he eyed the leader of the group of four standing in his and Arthur’s office. The leader was the tallest of the bunch, tall and broad, with curling dirty blond hair and a scruffy beard. He had small piercing eyes and dressed with a flair he couldn’t quite pull off. There was something unbelievable about the suit he was wearing, dark colours and heavily layered. It just didn’t quite work for him, much the same way the fake rolex on his wrist wasn’t a real rolex, but simply dressed to impress. Merlin mentally found himself naming the man Folex as he watched him stalk across the room, his gun still in hand and just close enough to the widows to be able to see outside but far enough away he couldn’t be seen. The man wasn’t an armature. He clearly thought things through. He’d come with three cronies to deal with Merlin, or as he’d planned - Arthur - and more downstairs. With George.
“The man downstairs. You didn’t hurt him did you?” Merlin asked and watched carefully, biting his lip in a show of nervous terror, as Folex turned around sharply and eyed him.
“You’ll keep quiet, boy, if you know what’s good for you. We let him go. It’s you I think you should be worrying about,” Folex snarled and nodded to one of his cronies, a heavyset man with a balding spot high on his head Merlin guessed he was the last one to know about. Balding stepped forward and smacked him hard on the jaw. The jarring pain travelled sharply up Merlin’s jawline and he whimpered, not entirely just for effect. Balding smiled, a leering grin that could shatter glass as Merlin hunched his shoulders and cradled the side of his face.
“Tie him up would you?” Folex snarled, emphasising his order with a wave of his gun. This time Merlin didn’t argue, he didn’t move unless he was guided by the two left in the room who both jumped to Folex’s commands. Balding was quick to follow, his grip tight and his movements hard and unrelenting as he forced Merlin down into Arthur’s chair once again and the second man, who grunted in affirmation before he complied to Folex’s demand, dragged the chair across the room. Grunt held it in place while Balding forced Merlin to sit. Balding held Merlin’s wrists tight enough to bruise against the arm rests on the chair. He leant his weight over Merlin and he could smell the rank odour of the man’s breath, warm and sickly sweet like rotten fruit. Every part of Merlin tried not to gag and flinch in badly hidden revulsion as Grunt moved around behind them. It didn’t take long before the man was back with a length of rope and Merlin watched as they tied each of his hands to the rests. They could have bound him magically; each of them in the room had enough magic in them for something like that. It wasn’t hard and didn’t require a great amount of talent at all. Balding probably couldn’t do much more than that with his talents, but one thing Merlin had known over the years was that even those with minimal talent had the ability to have their lives fall down around them due to things they couldn’t explain. Even those who could do little more than light a candle could do immense damage if they couldn’t control when their magic happened. Fear had a way of corrupting people.
The duo finished tying Merlin up and the man he’d nicknamed Grunt, grunted to alert Folex. Merlin watched as the man turned back to him. The sharp glint in his eyes hadn’t disappeared at all, in fact, if anything there was a fiercer gleam to it, more feral. More dangerous. It was something Merlin was familiar with, something that he’d seen more than once growing up. His childhood had not been simple, or easy. His mother had been privy to the dangers a magical child faced and had been desperate to protect him from them. They hadn’t stayed in one place for long, and each time they’d moved and Merlin had seen the pinch of fear and concern in his mother’s kind face, he’d met a selection of men with a selection of expressions. Each and every one of them, he’d learned later, had some form of magic; were hiding in one capacity or another, and each of them had been wrung out by the world. But every one of them had helped his mother, had helped her move her life from one town to another, one name to the next. They had helped her move a child that had more magic than any of them. Though they didn’t know that, otherwise his childhood might have been different again.
He wasn’t naive enough to think that they had all be saintly. They’d all been kind to a woman and her son in a similar situation, but Merlin had met a few of them when he too had turned against the society who had made him an outsider. Who had punished him, unfairly, for the gift by which he had been born. He had met a few of them and he had seen the savage glint of men who happily did more harm than good; men that enjoyed breaking the law, breaking boundaries, breaking people.
The man in front of him bore than same arrogance, that same hard won anger that had festered into something dangerous.
“What are you going to do with me?” he asked, adding the waver to his voice that he knew the man desired. He was an easy man to read, even without magic to help things along the way, and Merlin was brilliant at reading people. He had made it his craft. He was good at it, and he enjoyed it and it didn’t take an expert criminal or a sorcerer to know that his captor got off on power. If Merlin deferred to him, showed him some sort of fear, then his arrogance would take Merlin much further to controlling the situation than if he antagonised everything and tried to drive a wedge between everyone in the building. Because the leader was clearly the point of contention; things weren’t as they’d planned.
They’d planned to find Arthur here, not Merlin. Not the ‘partner’ they knew nothing of. They were running completely in the moment and in that Merlin had the advantage.
The man eyed Merlin, sharp brown eyes running up and down Merlin’s body as he stood where he’d stopped. Merlin bit his lip and he watched the tick in the man’s eye, the twitch of muscles under the skin as the man held in a smirk.
Inside, Merlin smiled.
This could be simpler than he’d hoped, really, and if he played his cards right, he could get out of the situation without even using his magic.
And that was a secret to guard with his life, because even in the underworld, where magic users were more common than anyone seemed to expect, keeping your head down was only an advantage. Because once someone knew you could light a candle with the click of your fingers then it didn’t take long before you were on the Magical Register and then you had Aredian Crewe on your tail.
Merlin had spent his entire life making sure to keep his name off the Register. His mother had spent nineteen years on the run protecting him, uprooting him and moving every time it was hinted that someone might suspect. The only time Merlin had ever made a friend, had truly settled down into a name, into a life, Will had found out. Merlin had been terrified his mother would make him leave, so they’d not told her. It had been their secret and if anything, they’d been better friends because of it.
Then one day Will, stupid, loud, toss pot Will had urged Merlin to bloody well change the channel cause he couldn’t be arsed getting up off the couch and Merlin’s mother had heard from the other room. At the time they hadn’t known she was there.
Merlin had walked Will home that afternoon and when he’d got back to the house his mother was packing his clothes into a box and everything had fallen apart.
He didn’t get the chance to say goodbye, they were gone before midnight and when they finally stopped he slept on a blown up mattress at the foot of a single bed in the attic of some share house in Escetia. Merlin had refused to let anyone talk themselves into his good graces at the next school after that. He’d been a trouble maker and the school had sent his mother an official notice, warning her if he’d kept up his act he’d have to be expelled. It had been an effort on his part to be as disrespectful as he had been and that notice had been like a reward for his efforts. But it had all been for nothing anyway because they’d had to move again shortly after.
He wasn’t entirely sure that one had been his fault.
No one had known about him, anyway. He’d made sure that no one had even known his first name. It had been the loneliest six months of his life.
“What do you want with me?” Merlin asked, fixing his attention on Folex. Folex took several steps towards him, each one measured and slow. Menacing. Merlin could almost feel the crackle of magic in the air and he quickly wondered if Folex knew about him. They knew about Pendragon, about the alias they’d created but much like his false Emrys trail, Merlin had been careful about when he moved, about when he did things. What days of the week allowed him the luxury of consulting on jobs, which days allowed him the benefit of working jobs, which days he stayed home with Arthur, and which days he helped hide magic users, helped them move house, names, lives. Helped them stay safe. Arthur helped, and Merlin was almost certain that those late nights when they worked under the cover of darkness and helped transport innocent, terrified people away from the dangers of simply what they could do was the only thing keeping his boyfriend sane. And around. Arthur was a do-gooder, he had a heart of gold and it had been love that had stolen him away from the Knights and the law-abiding world he’d grown up in. But Merlin still wasn’t entirely sure whether love was quite enough to make Arthur stay.
But the kids they helped, that gave Arthur a purpose, it gave him insight into the stories Merlin had told him during those first six months when he’d asked quietly for Merlin to tell him his story. The truth. So Merlin had, and he had seen the struggle for Arthur to understand this world had been all Merlin had known.
And it had been Arthur who had asked if Merlin would continue helping Magic users to stay safe. Stay unregistered and off the grid.
Pendragon was their alias in more worlds than just the criminal. It was an alias and a battle cry all in one and somehow these feral magic users had found Arthur through it. They were here for Arthur and Merlin still didn’t know why. Dubois had been a surname he’d left behind with the Knights. But it was Dubois they were here for.
He was determined to find out why.
“What do I want with you?” Folex repeated as he came to a stop, standing in front of Merlin. The man was tall, taller than he was anyway, but sitting down it was like staring up at a giant. It was a move to intimidate and Merlin wasn’t going to disappoint him, not if it meant they underestimated him as much as he needed them to.
“What do I need with you? Well, Merlin Emerson, right now, you’re a stone in my shoe. You’re a problem. You interrupted several vital plans we had in place and eventually you are going to pay for that. But for now, you’re going to ensure that Arthur Dubois stays in line. That’s what I’m going to do with you. And if Arthur doesn’t do what he’s told, I’m going to cut off each of your fingers and let him listen to you scream. Ok?”
Merlin flinched and watched through his eyelashes as Folex’s lips curved into a satisfied sneer.
Folex turned to Balding.
“Watch him,” he snapped before turning on his heel and stalking across the room to the edge of the window. Merlin bit his lip and watched as he pulled out a phone. Inside Merlin’s self satisfaction cheered. He wasn’t working alone, which meant whoever this was, wasn’t in charge. There were other players - which was both bad and worse, but right now, for Merlin, it was better.
He had a power struggle to play with.
He could use that.
On the other side of the room whoever Folex was calling didn’t take long to pick up and the room wasn’t quite as large as the man might have been expecting. Merlin could hear everything Folex said and he listened attentively, looking down at his lap so not to incite any sort of attention from Balding or Grunt and listen unimpeded.
Folex scowled almost immediately as the person on the other end started talking and once again Merlin had to internalise the desire to smile.
“There was a problem,” Folex said, his tone annoyed and bitter. “Dubois wasn’t here. Some kid was instead. Says he’s Dubois’ partner and Dubois shut up and obeyed damn quick when I told him to.”
Merlin watched as Folex’s shoulders tensed.
“Says his name is Merlin Emerson... well that’s what he said it was. I didn’t stutter and neither did he. Skinny, black hair, big ears - “ there was a pause then and Merlin frowned at Folex’s back as he heard Balding and Grunt snicker just behind him. It didn’t matter how old he was, his ears had decided when he was four that they were going to be bigger for his face than was the norm, and from that point on they had been a point of contention for every bully he’d ever come across, whether it had been in the school yard when he was twelve or facing a loaded sig sauer# from a sour Grunt Man who had a lot of brawn but not enough brains to realise the Point Man was conning him when he’d been twenty one and new to the game. These days, some six years later wasn’t new at all, but his ears still made him open game. His mother had always told him they made him look gangly and sweet and guileless, like a fawn or something. A helpless animal. They certainly helped when he was trying to look normal, blend in with the crowd - because no one seemed to ever suspect the bumbling skinny kid with the big ears all bright red from embarrassment. He’d made off with a priceless Faberge egg in his pocket under that ruse, biting his lip and using wide eyes and spluttering to draw more attention to himself than ever any good crook ever should.
He always got away with it.
Only this time, he thought with the first edges of concern curling in the corners of his mind, this time might be very different.
“I told you, Dubois gave in quick enough. We can make him get it instead of just getting the info. Tell me that ain’t a good plan... what? You’re sure? ... Understood.”
Merlin watched as Folex squared his shoulders and there was something about it that sent a curl of actual genuine fear go rippling down his spine, because he’d seen that stance before. Those broad shoulders and strong jaw were the exact same reactions Arthur got when Merlin told him he had to stay behind, that he would have to do exactly what Merlin told him and not know why. It was anger and frustration and confusion all rolled up into a man who was used to issuing orders not taking them. He watched, squirming against the ties around his wrists as Folex turned his head, glancing back at them. Merlin could feel his magic buzzing, rippling under his skin like static electricity. Instinctual and ready to burst into action, begging to be released - and it could be so easy. Just a pulsing blast of energy enough to knock them all out and for him to escape; only it was beyond that now. So far beyond it. There was someone else controlling everything, someone who was out for Arthur. Because it was really Arthur this was about. Merlin could escape but then it still came back to the fact these people were after Arthur and they were dangerous. They’d grown cocky, he’d gotten lax, been too caught up in those old jobs where it was just him and his goal and the rushing feel of adrenaline and magic. He’d invested too much in the fact that it could be just Arthur’s team who were after him. He’d forgotten about everyone else, enemies Arthur made working for the Knights.
Merlin watched as Folex grit his teeth and turned around completely, behind him Grunt took a step forward and Merlin tensed, wildly looking from one to the other - which is why he left his right side completely open to the stinging blow Balding dealt him as Folex gave the pair of them another short curt nod.
Merlin felt the heavy blow to the side of his head and the world blurred and tilted alarmingly quickly and he felt the chair tip on him once again and for the second time in an hour he fell backwards only this time he wasn’t conscious as he hit the floor.
Part Two