fic: like a badge of honour (merlin/arthur)
like a badge of honour
merlin/arthur
R
modern day AU. i was talking to fallsaddles about this picture, and about how there should be an AU where they're all at uni and merlin is an arty type with all his scarves and arthur goes and gets into illegal boxing matches a la fight club, and she told me i should write it. and so i did! lol most self indulgent.
~5000 words.
The clock on the VCR blinks 02:56 at Merlin, when he stumbles out of bed and into the front room to find out what the noise in the flat is. His guess is something to do with Will, that Will's got another midnight attack of the munchies and is wreaking havoc on the kitchen again, but as his eyes slowly adjust to the gloom, it's Arthur's outline he recognises standing over by the front door.
Merlin scrubs the palm of his hand over his face, and then frowns as he waits for Arthur to say something.
Arthur, it seems, doesn't intend to say a thing. He stands by the door for another few seconds, and then rocks backwards and then forwards once on the balls of his feet before walking in the direction of the kitchen. He has to walk right past Merlin to get there, and it's dark, but there's something not quite right about the situation; he can see it from the awkward set of Arthur's jaw, and the stiff way he's holding himself. Merlin wants to ask questions, ask him where he's been and why he's only just getting home now, but Arthur can be a stubborn bastard when he wants to be and Merlin gets the feeling that he's not just been hooking up with someone and will want to gloat about it.
The light in the kitchen flickers on, and Merlin stays where he is for a few moments. He thinks about the lure of his bed, warm and comfortable, and then looks at Arthur, moving about the kitchen with a strange jerkiness about his movements. Then Arthur turns on the tap, leaves it running for a few seconds and then holds his right hand under the stream of water, and Merlin's moving towards the kitchen without really thinking about it. The movement is driven largely by curiosity and a small amount of concern along with it.
Both the curiosity and the concern spike when he sees the reason for Arthur holding his hand under the water. There's blood on his index and middle finger, the beginning of scabs knotting over where the skin has split across the knuckles. “What happened to you?” Merlin asks. His voice sounds too loud in the quiet kitchen; he half expects to hear echoes of his words bouncing back to him from the fridge. There is no echo, although he can hear the fridge buzzing.
“Nothing,” Arthur says tightly. He sounds as though he's gritting his teeth, and when he turns his head slightly to face Merlin, Merlin can see a bruise slowly blooming across his cheekbone.
“Were you mugged or something?”
Arthur snorts incredulously, which is the first thing he's done since he got in that convinces Merlin he's probably okay. “No,” he says. He smiles, and Merlin realises that his lip has split as well. There's a pale red tint to a couple of the teeth Merlin can see. “I'm fine, Merlin. Go back to bed.”
“Are you sure?”
“Merlin.” Arthur smiles more widely, lips pulling across his teeth in a completely humourless grin. “I'm fine. Really. Stop worrying for once in your life, okay, just go back to bed.”
Merlin hovers around uselessly for another few minutes. He considers going to route through the medicine cabinet to find Arthur a plaster for his fingers, or grabbing a bag of frozen - frozen whatever they have in the freezer, anyway, for Arthur to hold on his face. Arthur turns off the tap then, though, and heads towards the bathroom without another word, and so Merlin follows his advice and goes back to bed, flicking the light off behind him.
-
Merlin wakes up the next morning with a slight headache. He wonders why he's so tired, and it takes him a few moments to remember Arthur's late night, bloody knuckled entrance. He rolls out of bed with the express intention of quizzing him about what the fuck had happened and perhaps making a few pointed remarks about appropriate times to get in, but then he realises he doesn't want to officially become the flat mother, which is something he's sometimes accused of, and that Arthur isn't in, anyway, so he can't. He's the only one moving around as he runs a hand through his hair on his way to the kitchen, fingers getting caught in knots, and Arthur doesn't emerge even as the smell of coffee permeates through the flat, so Merlin can tell he's already left.
Will makes it out of his room when Merlin has finished his slightly burnt toast and is cleaning his teeth. He walks right into the bathroom and takes a piss regardless, and Merlin rolls his eyes at himself in the mirror and forces out a fair approximation of, “Do you mind?” around his toothbrush. It comes out more like oo oo ind? Merlin knows full well that Will doesn't mind, of course, because Will does the same thing every morning if Merlin is already in the bathroom when he needs to go.
Will just pulls his boxers back up and yawns. “Mornin'. What're you doing today?”
Merlin spits toothpaste into the sink. “Nothing,” he says, because Arthur obviously doesn't want to hang out like they had vaguely planned, and turns the tap on full blast to rinse the sink clean.
Merlin ends up spending the day with Will. It's actually quite enjoyable, surprisingly so considering their whole plan for the day consists of kicking back in the grass around by the river, trying to avoid the particularly offensive piles of litter so Merlin can get some sketches done. Merlin sits on his scarf in an attempt to come into as little contact with the ground as possible, because he thinks the grass might be a little bit damp, but Will simply sprawls out next to him. They've been there for about twenty minutes before Will seems to get bored of simply watching Merlin prop his sketchbook awkwardly on his knees and draw. Merlin's oddly impressed that he lasted that long, and just smiles to himself as Will rolls.
“No thanks,” he says when Will offers him a toke of the joint, but after a while, when none of his drawings are turning out right and he's even ripped a page out, crumpled it up and tossed it half-heartedly towards the river, he takes a hit or two.
He doesn't think he smokes that much at all, not really, although he is judging that in comparison with Will after all. He tells himself he must have done without realising it, though, when he finds himself idly sketching in the corner of the page he's using while Will exhales smoke above them and bemoans not remembering how to blow smoke rings anymore. Will says, “Your drawings are like fucking magic, man,” in the half-wondering voice he gets every time he's high, and Merlin just ducks his head to hide a grin, wondering when he started drawing shapes that look like the dark of blood against Arthur's knuckles.
-
Arthur's in when they get back. He's sitting back on the couch with his feet propped up on the coffee table, watching a documentary about old English mythology. He doesn't look up when Merlin and Will clatter noisily through the door, and Merlin can only guess that he's not really paying attention at all, because when he walks past him and casts a glance in his direction, Arthur's eyes look glazed over and tired. The bruise on his cheek is dark and angry.
Merlin doesn't say anything about it. He just waves at Arthur, gesturing just slightly more widely than he intended to, and then follows Will into the kitchen and lets Will fix him up a snack while he drinks a couple of glasses of water to get rid of the dry mouth. Will even washes up afterwards, because sometimes he can get pretty fixated on their living space and the sort of state he wants it to be in, so Merlin can lean back against the table and concentrate in a vague way on the press of the edge of it against the small of his back.
Arthur goes out about an hour after that. It's a move that seems to please Will, because it means he can take over the couch and control what they watch on TV (between Will and Arthur, Merlin rarely gets control of the remote). He puts on Hollyoaks, and Merlin is pretty content to kick back and enjoy the pretty people and pick holes in the plot lines for a while until Will suddenly sits bolt upright and says, “Shit! I've got that fucking essay, bollocks,” and then abandons Merlin for the library.
Merlin alternates between channel hopping and trying to add to a few sketches and pretending he's planning the essay he knows he has hanging over his head while he eats Pringles, and before he knows it, it's steadily creeping towards midnight. He gets a text from Will telling him that he's crashing at Gwen and Lance's place for the night, so that explains his absence, but he doesn't know where Arthur is. Again. He flips his phone open to compose a message to him, but only types out half of it before deleting the lot and shoving his phone back in his pocket. Arthur told him to stop worrying, after all, and if Arthur wants to be a prat who goes about getting beaten up and not getting home until the early hours, that's Arthur's choice. It's nothing to do with Merlin.
He doesn't quite realise he's dozed off on the sofa with his scarf bundled up under his head like a pillow until he's woken up by the sound of the front door. He pushes himself into an upright position, blinking against the head rush, and there's Arthur, standing by the door again.
“What time do you call this?” Merlin asks. He says it with a grin, so Arthur can't accuse him of fussing again, but Arthur doesn't even counter with a smart comeback. He slumps against the door slightly, though. Merlin can see it as he exhales in a long, steady stream, a wince flashing briefly across his face. “Arthur?”
Arthur stumbles out into the kitchen and spits blood into the sink. The clock tells Merlin it's nearing two a.m.; he's inordinately glad that Will did the washing up earlier so Arthur's not bleeding over their plates.
He blinks a couple of times in quick succession, and then stands up and follows.
Arthur says, before Merlin can utter a word, “Don't.” He's putting all his weight on his arms, holding himself up above the sink, and his arms are shaking with it. “Don't ask. Just a fight.”
Merlin isn't the type of person to frequently get into fights himself. He's seen Arthur after a couple of fights before; he's lived with the bloke for about a year now, and been drunk with him countless times, and Arthur is just that kind of guy sometimes, too proud to back down when he should. Two nights in a row, though, and coming home like this, that's pretty strange. A bit fucked up, Merlin thinks, and he says, “Hey, here, sit down.”
“Merlin,” Arthur says warningly, but Merlin ignores him and takes hold of his elbows lightly, guiding him towards one of the chairs from around the kitchen table. Arthur doesn't put up much of a fight, mumbling a protest that Merlin can't make out anyway around a mouthful of blood, and he lets Merlin move him.
Merlin turns around and pours him out a drink of water, in a mug because it's the first thing he grabs. “Drink it,” he says, pressing it into Arthur's hands and not letting go until he's sure he's holding it, and he stands in front of him, watching expectantly until Arthur begins to sip, wincing as it goes down.
Then he goes into the bathroom and routes around the medicine cabinet for a while. He doesn't know exactly what he needs, because he's never been in a situation where he's needed to clean up injuries like Arthur's before, and he doesn't even know how Arthur got in such a mess in the first place. He grabs antiseptic wipes, but that's all he can find that looks remotely helpful; they don't even have plasters in there. Merlin decides they probably need to go shopping soon and pick up more than bread and junk food and beer.
Arthur has finished half of the mug by the time Merlin is back in the kitchen, antiseptic wipes in hand like a slightly lame offering. Merlin tries not to look at the way there's a smear of blood on the rim of the mug. Instead he asks, “What happened to you?” in an unconscious echo of himself the night before.
“A fight,” Arthur replies, after a few long beats of silence drag themselves out awkwardly. “It's nothing.”
“It kind of looks like something,” Merlin points out. Arthur's knuckles have split open again, and his shirt is torn. Merlin stares at the strip of skin he can see for a few seconds too long. The fabric's torn in a weirdly even way, and he itches to draw it for a second. “You're pretty messed up,” he adds. “Here.” He drops the wipes on the table next to Arthur's mug and then, for lack of anything else to do, picks it up and rinses it out in the sink. He doesn't turn back around until he hears Arthur hiss, sucking air in through his teeth.
Arthur is still sat down, wiping over his own knuckles awkwardly with his left hand. Merlin remembers the sting of his mother cleaning a cut on his knee when he was twelve, and he feels a distant sense of empathy. He watches as Arthur switches hands with the wipe to try to clean his lip, and Arthur hisses again as he curls his fingers and the skin at his knuckles tears a little more.
Merlin watches for another few seconds, and then steps a little closer and snatches the wipe off of Arthur. He doesn't mean to do it quite so suddenly, and Arthur blinks up at him, looking confused. “I'll do it,” Merlin says quickly. He feels weird and sort of awkward, and Arthur is still looking confused, so he adds, “Before your hand falls off or something,” and hitches a grin onto his face. It doesn't feel quite as steady as the expression usually does.
Arthur doesn't say anything, so Merlin just reaches towards him. He has to hold Arthur's cheek with his spare hand, fingers splayed uncertainly across his jaw so he can tilt his face at the right angle, and then he dabs at the corner of Arthur's mouth where the blood is drying in flaky little crusts. The dried blood makes Arthur's lip look worse than it actually is; once it's mostly cleaned up, he realises that it's stopped bleeding by now and that the cut isn't so bad. It looks as though it's just the cut from yesterday that got reopened.
Arthur's breathing is a little shallow. “Does it hurt?” Merlin asks curiously. Arthur just shrugs, which isn't particularly surprising, because it's Arthur, and of course he's never going to admit that something is painful, no matter how much it really might be. Merlin presses the antiseptic wipe against Arthur's mouth once more before tossing it aside on the table, and then he's just standing there, a lot closer than he'd normally be, one hand still resting on Arthur's cheek.
He blinks. Arthur blinks back at him, and then raises an eyebrow. “What?”
“Nothing,” Merlin says, and then grins again, because apparently it's his default reaction to everything, even pressing his thumb against the middle of Arthur's bottom lip so that if he moved it forward even a millimetre or two, he'd slide it right into Arthur's mouth. “Er,” he says, and then steps away quickly, snatching his arms back to himself. “What happened?” he asks again, mostly in an attempt to throw Arthur's attention away from him. Arthur's stare is pretty intense, especially with the bruise shadowing one side of his face, and it's fixed right on Merlin.
“There's a club,” Arthur says eventually. “There are a lot of fights. I got - I just wanted to. I'm good at it.” He grins, wide and humourless again, with just a spark of pride.
Merlin thinks about the frequent arguments Arthur has with his father on the phone, the dark look that passes across his face when he ever gets less than an A on anything, and nods. He doesn't understand it, exactly, but he's not surprised.
“No muggings then?” he says lightly, and Arthur gives him a brief, real smile at that.
-
Merlin dreams of Arthur and some nameless, faceless guy, Arthur pressing the guy against a brick wall, swinging his arm back and punching him, hard. He dreams of the crunch the guy's nose would make on impact with Arthur's fist, and the harsh grunt that would interrupt Arthur's frantic breathing when the guy elbowed him in the ribs, maybe got a hand in between them and grabbed at his shirt, playing dirty, ripping the material. He dreams about Arthur grabbing to fistfuls of the guy's shirt and pulling him away from the wall just to slam him back against it again. Then the guy gets a good hit in, splitting Arthur's lip, maybe; Arthur turns his head to the side then, and spits blood onto the pavement. He dreams of them struggling, up close and pressed against each other, breathing heavily with scrabbling hands.
Merlin dreams of kisses against dirty bricks and blood being smeared across pale skin from Arthur's mouth.
He wakes up hard and jerks off, and then again in the shower, and then spends the rest of the day working on a new series of sketches that he might use in the workbook of his next project. He spends two hours trying to recreate the pattern of blood from his dream, almost black against the grey of a pavement in the gloom.
-
When the drawing won't work and he actually starts to contemplate beginning the essay he's got, starting it a whole week before the first draft deadline, Merlin gives up and heads out. He gets home three hours later with a bag of new scarves, which Will mocks him for for about twenty minutes straight.
Then Will seems to notice Merlin's mood, probably because Merlin is frustrated in that odd restless way that stops him ever sitting quite still. He gives Merlin a long look, says, “You want to talk about something?” and just nods when Merlin shakes his head, and then he decides that the answer to shooting the blues away is clearly to take Merlin out and get him drunk.
“I don't think I have enough money right now,” Merlin points out. He really needs to find another part time job soon. He really needs to stop buying so many scarves.
“That's fine,” Will says, and pours them both several shots of the Tesco Value Vodka from the bottle that sits under the sink before they leave. There's a fine layer of dust coating it; they don't usually break open the vodka unless they come back drunk enough to think it's a good idea. It's the emergency, last resort bottle.
They wind up at some shady hipster bar simply called Camelot that looks more like something Merlin would expect to see in a foreign film than in real life. He wonders where Will finds these places; Will knows the girl behind the bar by name, and winks at her as he orders them a pint each. They get more adventurous as the night goes on, and the just before last order Merlin is drinking something suspiciously brightly coloured for how much alcohol he's sure it contains.
At least, he thinks brightly, he doesn't have an umbrella in his drink. Will had one, only now it's in Will's hand rather than his drink and almost jabbing Merlin's eye out as Will tries to tuck it behind Merlin's ear. It falls to the floor almost the second they're outside, and Merlin watches as it gets blown away in a particularly strong gust of wind. He feels that even though he's got a fairly effective alcohol blanket going on, and he shivers and adjusts his scarf as Will clumsily rests a hand on his arm and says, “You all right now?”
“Yeah,” Merlin says. He is, he decides even as he says it: he's just reached a level of drunk where he has to concentrate quite hard on making sure one foot goes in front of the other as they walk, and he's hardly dwelling on Arthur and his bloody knuckles and swollen mouth at all. “Yeah. I don't.” He has to stop talking as a curb suddenly looms in front of him and almost trips him up. Will laughs. “I don't want to go back yet,” Merlin finishes.
He glances over at Will just in time to see him pull an over-exaggerated thoughtful face. “Right. Right, okay. I know somewhere we can go.”
“I don't know where you find these places but I'm very glad you do,” Merlin tells him earnestly.
Will snorts.
-
“What the fuck is this place and how did you find it?” Merlin asks incredulously. He's not exactly sober, or particularly close to it really, but the cold air cleared his head a little bit, just enough to make him nervous about where they are. It's a pub called The Dragon that looks like it definitely shouldn't be open anymore; it should have closed at eleven like most nearby places, or perhaps several years ago before the grime got so ingrained in the walls. Merlin's shoes are sticking to the ground. It takes some effort to make each step into the place happen.
Merlin is slightly nervous that they might get beaten up here. It's full of burly, gruff looking men perched on bar stools and there's a strange energy about the place, something that makes Merlin uncomfortable even through the alcohol. It reminds him in a vague way of how he felt when he was cornered behind the bike sheds, aged twelve, as most situations he's not okay with tend to.
“Don't be a pussy and you'll be fine,” Will tells him. He grins at Merlin as Merlin shifts uncomfortably, and then takes Merlin's money and goes up to the bar to order them a couple of pints. Merlin imagines Will ordering cocktails with umbrellas in here, and bites his lip to stop himself from grinning too widely and drawing attention to himself. “There,” Will says when he gets back, pressing a plastic pint cup into Merlin's hands, “not so bad, is it?”
It's not, Merlin has to admit. At least, it's not until they leave and are walking past the alleyway that runs along down the side of the pub and witness a fight breaking out. The alley is wide, probably where the deliveries come through, and Merlin only chances a glance down it because Will is between him and the alley and almost trips up, and he's about to check if he's okay, or perhaps just mock him.
Will follows his gaze and says, just as one guy goes careering into the wall from the force of a punch, “Shit.” Merlin thinks that sums it up pretty well.
Merlin amends that thought to: well, that sums it up really well, when a familiar voice comes from the bloke doing the punching and says, “I told you, I'm not fighting tonight. Got too fucked up yesterday, it's nothing to do with being a pussy.”
The other guy leans against the wall and raises his hands up either side of him, like a cross between a surrender and a gesture to calm someone down, and Merlin blurts out, “Arthur?” as Will mutters, “What the fuck,” from his side.
“What are you two doing here?” Arthur asks as he emerges from the alleyway and into the main road. His bruises look nastier than they did earlier, as though they've had a chance to really come into themselves, but there are no fresh injuries. He doesn't look as though he's in any pain. He's just frowning, as though he's pissed off about them being here.
“Drinking.” The duh carries well in Will's voice.
Arthur runs a hand through his hair. He looks pale under the glow of a street light, and bruise looks garish. For one brief, ridiculous moment, he reminds Merlin of a clown. “Well,” he says.
“Coming home?” Merlin asks, and Arthur looks around them for a second or two before shrugging, then nodding, and then finally falling into step with them.
-
When they get home, Will goes straight to bed, muttering something about having to get up in the morning and how he's hoping to sleep the alcohol off before he has to go.
Merlin is in that weird, keyed-up stage where he's too buzzed to sleep but not drunk enough to just pass out where he's standing. He sits down on the sofa, props his feet up on the coffee table and fumbles with his scarf until he can pull it off. He leans forward precariously to throw it onto the table, and with the movement, his feet slide off and thud onto the floor.
Arthur sits down next to him, and Merlin elbows him lightly in the side. “So. That's where you go. To do your fighting. Be a hardarse. Joust for your honour.” He doesn't really know what he's saying.
A smirk picks up the corners of Arthur's mouth, and he says, “Yeah, I guess. Not all the time. I used to do this boxing club thing when I was a kid, and I'm good at it, so I wasn't going to back down. It's not a big thing.”
“Yeah, no, I get it,” Merlin says, even though he doesn't at all.
“No you don't.”
“No.” Merlin nods agreeably. “No, I don't, that is true.”
“You're kind of an idiot,” Arthur says with a smile. It's a nice smile, Merlin thinks; much better than the forced grins he sometimes puts on, or when he bared his teeth through the blood.
“I'm kind of drunk,” Merlin points out defensively, and Arthur laughs and actually ruffles his hair, like that's something people actually do in real life. Merlin ducks away and the room spins, and he grabs Arthur's arm in the hope that might help things restore themselves to the right place again. “Whoa,” he mutters, and blinks a few times.
Belatedly, he realises he hasn't let go of Arthur's wrist. He looks down at his hand, and watches as it moves slowly but steadily towards Arthur's hand. He feels like it might just be independent from the rest of his body, as he brushes his fingers across the scabs on Arthur's knuckles with a morbid kind of fascination, just like he felt last night when he touched Arthur's mouth for just a little too long.
“What're you doing, Merlin?” Arthur asks. Merlin can hear the amusement in his voice.
“Shut up,” Merlin says automatically. And then, truthfully, “I don't really know.”
He doesn't know what he's doing when he tilts forward and kisses Arthur a few moments later, either, when their eyes meet and Merlin still doesn't let go. He just knows that Arthur kisses back, and hisses when Merlin's teeth scrape over the cut on his lip, and that Arthur's voice dips down low enough to make heat seep through the pit of Merlin's stomach when he mutters, “Come on,” and tugs Merlin upright and into his room.
Arthur's bed is surprisingly well made when they fall onto it, and Arthur's breath pools hot in the dip of Merlin's collarbone.
Merlin's finding it hard to be coordinated, distracted by Arthur's mouth and Arthur's hands and the alcohol that hasn't worn off yet, but when Arthur presses the words, “You're drunk, we shouldn't,” into his neck, he just reaches out to tangle his hands in Arthur's hair and pull him back to his mouth, because Arthur's not the only one who can be stubborn and stupid if he wants to be. Arthur doesn't say anything again until afterwards, after they've both come, shaking and shuddering and still slowly moving together, and Merlin feels like he's sinking into the mattress beneath Arthur's weight.
Merlin doesn't really register when he starts to doze off, but next time he opens his eyes the covers are on top of him instead of the other way around, and Arthur is lying next to him. They're touching, but barely, just their arms pressing together. Arthur's arm feels tense against his own, as though Arthur is trying to hold himself as far away as possible.
Merlin thinks he might possibly still be drunk. “I should probably,” he begins, lamely, and doesn't even finish his own sentence. For a few seconds all he can hear is their breathing, just out of time in the dark.
After several seconds, Arthur says, “Yeah.”
He doesn't move as Merlin forces himself out of bed. When his feet hit the floor, it sounds too loud, even with the sound muffled by the carpet.
He glances across at the clock on the VCR when he's back in the living room: 03:07, and he feels a faint sense of the surreal, doing a slightly uneven, winding walk of shame through his own flat from Arthur's room to his own. His bed is inviting, though, and he just about manages to kick off his trousers and before crawling in and pulling the covers tight around him. He suddenly realises that his shirt is in Arthur's room somewhere, tossed carelessly on the floor.
“Well,” Merlin mutters to the dark of his own room, and he scrubs the palm of his hand over his face, trying to clear his head enough for him to catch some sleep before morning.
merlin/arthur
R
modern day AU. i was talking to fallsaddles about this picture, and about how there should be an AU where they're all at uni and merlin is an arty type with all his scarves and arthur goes and gets into illegal boxing matches a la fight club, and she told me i should write it. and so i did! lol most self indulgent.
~5000 words.
The clock on the VCR blinks 02:56 at Merlin, when he stumbles out of bed and into the front room to find out what the noise in the flat is. His guess is something to do with Will, that Will's got another midnight attack of the munchies and is wreaking havoc on the kitchen again, but as his eyes slowly adjust to the gloom, it's Arthur's outline he recognises standing over by the front door.
Merlin scrubs the palm of his hand over his face, and then frowns as he waits for Arthur to say something.
Arthur, it seems, doesn't intend to say a thing. He stands by the door for another few seconds, and then rocks backwards and then forwards once on the balls of his feet before walking in the direction of the kitchen. He has to walk right past Merlin to get there, and it's dark, but there's something not quite right about the situation; he can see it from the awkward set of Arthur's jaw, and the stiff way he's holding himself. Merlin wants to ask questions, ask him where he's been and why he's only just getting home now, but Arthur can be a stubborn bastard when he wants to be and Merlin gets the feeling that he's not just been hooking up with someone and will want to gloat about it.
The light in the kitchen flickers on, and Merlin stays where he is for a few moments. He thinks about the lure of his bed, warm and comfortable, and then looks at Arthur, moving about the kitchen with a strange jerkiness about his movements. Then Arthur turns on the tap, leaves it running for a few seconds and then holds his right hand under the stream of water, and Merlin's moving towards the kitchen without really thinking about it. The movement is driven largely by curiosity and a small amount of concern along with it.
Both the curiosity and the concern spike when he sees the reason for Arthur holding his hand under the water. There's blood on his index and middle finger, the beginning of scabs knotting over where the skin has split across the knuckles. “What happened to you?” Merlin asks. His voice sounds too loud in the quiet kitchen; he half expects to hear echoes of his words bouncing back to him from the fridge. There is no echo, although he can hear the fridge buzzing.
“Nothing,” Arthur says tightly. He sounds as though he's gritting his teeth, and when he turns his head slightly to face Merlin, Merlin can see a bruise slowly blooming across his cheekbone.
“Were you mugged or something?”
Arthur snorts incredulously, which is the first thing he's done since he got in that convinces Merlin he's probably okay. “No,” he says. He smiles, and Merlin realises that his lip has split as well. There's a pale red tint to a couple of the teeth Merlin can see. “I'm fine, Merlin. Go back to bed.”
“Are you sure?”
“Merlin.” Arthur smiles more widely, lips pulling across his teeth in a completely humourless grin. “I'm fine. Really. Stop worrying for once in your life, okay, just go back to bed.”
Merlin hovers around uselessly for another few minutes. He considers going to route through the medicine cabinet to find Arthur a plaster for his fingers, or grabbing a bag of frozen - frozen whatever they have in the freezer, anyway, for Arthur to hold on his face. Arthur turns off the tap then, though, and heads towards the bathroom without another word, and so Merlin follows his advice and goes back to bed, flicking the light off behind him.
-
Merlin wakes up the next morning with a slight headache. He wonders why he's so tired, and it takes him a few moments to remember Arthur's late night, bloody knuckled entrance. He rolls out of bed with the express intention of quizzing him about what the fuck had happened and perhaps making a few pointed remarks about appropriate times to get in, but then he realises he doesn't want to officially become the flat mother, which is something he's sometimes accused of, and that Arthur isn't in, anyway, so he can't. He's the only one moving around as he runs a hand through his hair on his way to the kitchen, fingers getting caught in knots, and Arthur doesn't emerge even as the smell of coffee permeates through the flat, so Merlin can tell he's already left.
Will makes it out of his room when Merlin has finished his slightly burnt toast and is cleaning his teeth. He walks right into the bathroom and takes a piss regardless, and Merlin rolls his eyes at himself in the mirror and forces out a fair approximation of, “Do you mind?” around his toothbrush. It comes out more like oo oo ind? Merlin knows full well that Will doesn't mind, of course, because Will does the same thing every morning if Merlin is already in the bathroom when he needs to go.
Will just pulls his boxers back up and yawns. “Mornin'. What're you doing today?”
Merlin spits toothpaste into the sink. “Nothing,” he says, because Arthur obviously doesn't want to hang out like they had vaguely planned, and turns the tap on full blast to rinse the sink clean.
Merlin ends up spending the day with Will. It's actually quite enjoyable, surprisingly so considering their whole plan for the day consists of kicking back in the grass around by the river, trying to avoid the particularly offensive piles of litter so Merlin can get some sketches done. Merlin sits on his scarf in an attempt to come into as little contact with the ground as possible, because he thinks the grass might be a little bit damp, but Will simply sprawls out next to him. They've been there for about twenty minutes before Will seems to get bored of simply watching Merlin prop his sketchbook awkwardly on his knees and draw. Merlin's oddly impressed that he lasted that long, and just smiles to himself as Will rolls.
“No thanks,” he says when Will offers him a toke of the joint, but after a while, when none of his drawings are turning out right and he's even ripped a page out, crumpled it up and tossed it half-heartedly towards the river, he takes a hit or two.
He doesn't think he smokes that much at all, not really, although he is judging that in comparison with Will after all. He tells himself he must have done without realising it, though, when he finds himself idly sketching in the corner of the page he's using while Will exhales smoke above them and bemoans not remembering how to blow smoke rings anymore. Will says, “Your drawings are like fucking magic, man,” in the half-wondering voice he gets every time he's high, and Merlin just ducks his head to hide a grin, wondering when he started drawing shapes that look like the dark of blood against Arthur's knuckles.
-
Arthur's in when they get back. He's sitting back on the couch with his feet propped up on the coffee table, watching a documentary about old English mythology. He doesn't look up when Merlin and Will clatter noisily through the door, and Merlin can only guess that he's not really paying attention at all, because when he walks past him and casts a glance in his direction, Arthur's eyes look glazed over and tired. The bruise on his cheek is dark and angry.
Merlin doesn't say anything about it. He just waves at Arthur, gesturing just slightly more widely than he intended to, and then follows Will into the kitchen and lets Will fix him up a snack while he drinks a couple of glasses of water to get rid of the dry mouth. Will even washes up afterwards, because sometimes he can get pretty fixated on their living space and the sort of state he wants it to be in, so Merlin can lean back against the table and concentrate in a vague way on the press of the edge of it against the small of his back.
Arthur goes out about an hour after that. It's a move that seems to please Will, because it means he can take over the couch and control what they watch on TV (between Will and Arthur, Merlin rarely gets control of the remote). He puts on Hollyoaks, and Merlin is pretty content to kick back and enjoy the pretty people and pick holes in the plot lines for a while until Will suddenly sits bolt upright and says, “Shit! I've got that fucking essay, bollocks,” and then abandons Merlin for the library.
Merlin alternates between channel hopping and trying to add to a few sketches and pretending he's planning the essay he knows he has hanging over his head while he eats Pringles, and before he knows it, it's steadily creeping towards midnight. He gets a text from Will telling him that he's crashing at Gwen and Lance's place for the night, so that explains his absence, but he doesn't know where Arthur is. Again. He flips his phone open to compose a message to him, but only types out half of it before deleting the lot and shoving his phone back in his pocket. Arthur told him to stop worrying, after all, and if Arthur wants to be a prat who goes about getting beaten up and not getting home until the early hours, that's Arthur's choice. It's nothing to do with Merlin.
He doesn't quite realise he's dozed off on the sofa with his scarf bundled up under his head like a pillow until he's woken up by the sound of the front door. He pushes himself into an upright position, blinking against the head rush, and there's Arthur, standing by the door again.
“What time do you call this?” Merlin asks. He says it with a grin, so Arthur can't accuse him of fussing again, but Arthur doesn't even counter with a smart comeback. He slumps against the door slightly, though. Merlin can see it as he exhales in a long, steady stream, a wince flashing briefly across his face. “Arthur?”
Arthur stumbles out into the kitchen and spits blood into the sink. The clock tells Merlin it's nearing two a.m.; he's inordinately glad that Will did the washing up earlier so Arthur's not bleeding over their plates.
He blinks a couple of times in quick succession, and then stands up and follows.
Arthur says, before Merlin can utter a word, “Don't.” He's putting all his weight on his arms, holding himself up above the sink, and his arms are shaking with it. “Don't ask. Just a fight.”
Merlin isn't the type of person to frequently get into fights himself. He's seen Arthur after a couple of fights before; he's lived with the bloke for about a year now, and been drunk with him countless times, and Arthur is just that kind of guy sometimes, too proud to back down when he should. Two nights in a row, though, and coming home like this, that's pretty strange. A bit fucked up, Merlin thinks, and he says, “Hey, here, sit down.”
“Merlin,” Arthur says warningly, but Merlin ignores him and takes hold of his elbows lightly, guiding him towards one of the chairs from around the kitchen table. Arthur doesn't put up much of a fight, mumbling a protest that Merlin can't make out anyway around a mouthful of blood, and he lets Merlin move him.
Merlin turns around and pours him out a drink of water, in a mug because it's the first thing he grabs. “Drink it,” he says, pressing it into Arthur's hands and not letting go until he's sure he's holding it, and he stands in front of him, watching expectantly until Arthur begins to sip, wincing as it goes down.
Then he goes into the bathroom and routes around the medicine cabinet for a while. He doesn't know exactly what he needs, because he's never been in a situation where he's needed to clean up injuries like Arthur's before, and he doesn't even know how Arthur got in such a mess in the first place. He grabs antiseptic wipes, but that's all he can find that looks remotely helpful; they don't even have plasters in there. Merlin decides they probably need to go shopping soon and pick up more than bread and junk food and beer.
Arthur has finished half of the mug by the time Merlin is back in the kitchen, antiseptic wipes in hand like a slightly lame offering. Merlin tries not to look at the way there's a smear of blood on the rim of the mug. Instead he asks, “What happened to you?” in an unconscious echo of himself the night before.
“A fight,” Arthur replies, after a few long beats of silence drag themselves out awkwardly. “It's nothing.”
“It kind of looks like something,” Merlin points out. Arthur's knuckles have split open again, and his shirt is torn. Merlin stares at the strip of skin he can see for a few seconds too long. The fabric's torn in a weirdly even way, and he itches to draw it for a second. “You're pretty messed up,” he adds. “Here.” He drops the wipes on the table next to Arthur's mug and then, for lack of anything else to do, picks it up and rinses it out in the sink. He doesn't turn back around until he hears Arthur hiss, sucking air in through his teeth.
Arthur is still sat down, wiping over his own knuckles awkwardly with his left hand. Merlin remembers the sting of his mother cleaning a cut on his knee when he was twelve, and he feels a distant sense of empathy. He watches as Arthur switches hands with the wipe to try to clean his lip, and Arthur hisses again as he curls his fingers and the skin at his knuckles tears a little more.
Merlin watches for another few seconds, and then steps a little closer and snatches the wipe off of Arthur. He doesn't mean to do it quite so suddenly, and Arthur blinks up at him, looking confused. “I'll do it,” Merlin says quickly. He feels weird and sort of awkward, and Arthur is still looking confused, so he adds, “Before your hand falls off or something,” and hitches a grin onto his face. It doesn't feel quite as steady as the expression usually does.
Arthur doesn't say anything, so Merlin just reaches towards him. He has to hold Arthur's cheek with his spare hand, fingers splayed uncertainly across his jaw so he can tilt his face at the right angle, and then he dabs at the corner of Arthur's mouth where the blood is drying in flaky little crusts. The dried blood makes Arthur's lip look worse than it actually is; once it's mostly cleaned up, he realises that it's stopped bleeding by now and that the cut isn't so bad. It looks as though it's just the cut from yesterday that got reopened.
Arthur's breathing is a little shallow. “Does it hurt?” Merlin asks curiously. Arthur just shrugs, which isn't particularly surprising, because it's Arthur, and of course he's never going to admit that something is painful, no matter how much it really might be. Merlin presses the antiseptic wipe against Arthur's mouth once more before tossing it aside on the table, and then he's just standing there, a lot closer than he'd normally be, one hand still resting on Arthur's cheek.
He blinks. Arthur blinks back at him, and then raises an eyebrow. “What?”
“Nothing,” Merlin says, and then grins again, because apparently it's his default reaction to everything, even pressing his thumb against the middle of Arthur's bottom lip so that if he moved it forward even a millimetre or two, he'd slide it right into Arthur's mouth. “Er,” he says, and then steps away quickly, snatching his arms back to himself. “What happened?” he asks again, mostly in an attempt to throw Arthur's attention away from him. Arthur's stare is pretty intense, especially with the bruise shadowing one side of his face, and it's fixed right on Merlin.
“There's a club,” Arthur says eventually. “There are a lot of fights. I got - I just wanted to. I'm good at it.” He grins, wide and humourless again, with just a spark of pride.
Merlin thinks about the frequent arguments Arthur has with his father on the phone, the dark look that passes across his face when he ever gets less than an A on anything, and nods. He doesn't understand it, exactly, but he's not surprised.
“No muggings then?” he says lightly, and Arthur gives him a brief, real smile at that.
-
Merlin dreams of Arthur and some nameless, faceless guy, Arthur pressing the guy against a brick wall, swinging his arm back and punching him, hard. He dreams of the crunch the guy's nose would make on impact with Arthur's fist, and the harsh grunt that would interrupt Arthur's frantic breathing when the guy elbowed him in the ribs, maybe got a hand in between them and grabbed at his shirt, playing dirty, ripping the material. He dreams about Arthur grabbing to fistfuls of the guy's shirt and pulling him away from the wall just to slam him back against it again. Then the guy gets a good hit in, splitting Arthur's lip, maybe; Arthur turns his head to the side then, and spits blood onto the pavement. He dreams of them struggling, up close and pressed against each other, breathing heavily with scrabbling hands.
Merlin dreams of kisses against dirty bricks and blood being smeared across pale skin from Arthur's mouth.
He wakes up hard and jerks off, and then again in the shower, and then spends the rest of the day working on a new series of sketches that he might use in the workbook of his next project. He spends two hours trying to recreate the pattern of blood from his dream, almost black against the grey of a pavement in the gloom.
-
When the drawing won't work and he actually starts to contemplate beginning the essay he's got, starting it a whole week before the first draft deadline, Merlin gives up and heads out. He gets home three hours later with a bag of new scarves, which Will mocks him for for about twenty minutes straight.
Then Will seems to notice Merlin's mood, probably because Merlin is frustrated in that odd restless way that stops him ever sitting quite still. He gives Merlin a long look, says, “You want to talk about something?” and just nods when Merlin shakes his head, and then he decides that the answer to shooting the blues away is clearly to take Merlin out and get him drunk.
“I don't think I have enough money right now,” Merlin points out. He really needs to find another part time job soon. He really needs to stop buying so many scarves.
“That's fine,” Will says, and pours them both several shots of the Tesco Value Vodka from the bottle that sits under the sink before they leave. There's a fine layer of dust coating it; they don't usually break open the vodka unless they come back drunk enough to think it's a good idea. It's the emergency, last resort bottle.
They wind up at some shady hipster bar simply called Camelot that looks more like something Merlin would expect to see in a foreign film than in real life. He wonders where Will finds these places; Will knows the girl behind the bar by name, and winks at her as he orders them a pint each. They get more adventurous as the night goes on, and the just before last order Merlin is drinking something suspiciously brightly coloured for how much alcohol he's sure it contains.
At least, he thinks brightly, he doesn't have an umbrella in his drink. Will had one, only now it's in Will's hand rather than his drink and almost jabbing Merlin's eye out as Will tries to tuck it behind Merlin's ear. It falls to the floor almost the second they're outside, and Merlin watches as it gets blown away in a particularly strong gust of wind. He feels that even though he's got a fairly effective alcohol blanket going on, and he shivers and adjusts his scarf as Will clumsily rests a hand on his arm and says, “You all right now?”
“Yeah,” Merlin says. He is, he decides even as he says it: he's just reached a level of drunk where he has to concentrate quite hard on making sure one foot goes in front of the other as they walk, and he's hardly dwelling on Arthur and his bloody knuckles and swollen mouth at all. “Yeah. I don't.” He has to stop talking as a curb suddenly looms in front of him and almost trips him up. Will laughs. “I don't want to go back yet,” Merlin finishes.
He glances over at Will just in time to see him pull an over-exaggerated thoughtful face. “Right. Right, okay. I know somewhere we can go.”
“I don't know where you find these places but I'm very glad you do,” Merlin tells him earnestly.
Will snorts.
-
“What the fuck is this place and how did you find it?” Merlin asks incredulously. He's not exactly sober, or particularly close to it really, but the cold air cleared his head a little bit, just enough to make him nervous about where they are. It's a pub called The Dragon that looks like it definitely shouldn't be open anymore; it should have closed at eleven like most nearby places, or perhaps several years ago before the grime got so ingrained in the walls. Merlin's shoes are sticking to the ground. It takes some effort to make each step into the place happen.
Merlin is slightly nervous that they might get beaten up here. It's full of burly, gruff looking men perched on bar stools and there's a strange energy about the place, something that makes Merlin uncomfortable even through the alcohol. It reminds him in a vague way of how he felt when he was cornered behind the bike sheds, aged twelve, as most situations he's not okay with tend to.
“Don't be a pussy and you'll be fine,” Will tells him. He grins at Merlin as Merlin shifts uncomfortably, and then takes Merlin's money and goes up to the bar to order them a couple of pints. Merlin imagines Will ordering cocktails with umbrellas in here, and bites his lip to stop himself from grinning too widely and drawing attention to himself. “There,” Will says when he gets back, pressing a plastic pint cup into Merlin's hands, “not so bad, is it?”
It's not, Merlin has to admit. At least, it's not until they leave and are walking past the alleyway that runs along down the side of the pub and witness a fight breaking out. The alley is wide, probably where the deliveries come through, and Merlin only chances a glance down it because Will is between him and the alley and almost trips up, and he's about to check if he's okay, or perhaps just mock him.
Will follows his gaze and says, just as one guy goes careering into the wall from the force of a punch, “Shit.” Merlin thinks that sums it up pretty well.
Merlin amends that thought to: well, that sums it up really well, when a familiar voice comes from the bloke doing the punching and says, “I told you, I'm not fighting tonight. Got too fucked up yesterday, it's nothing to do with being a pussy.”
The other guy leans against the wall and raises his hands up either side of him, like a cross between a surrender and a gesture to calm someone down, and Merlin blurts out, “Arthur?” as Will mutters, “What the fuck,” from his side.
“What are you two doing here?” Arthur asks as he emerges from the alleyway and into the main road. His bruises look nastier than they did earlier, as though they've had a chance to really come into themselves, but there are no fresh injuries. He doesn't look as though he's in any pain. He's just frowning, as though he's pissed off about them being here.
“Drinking.” The duh carries well in Will's voice.
Arthur runs a hand through his hair. He looks pale under the glow of a street light, and bruise looks garish. For one brief, ridiculous moment, he reminds Merlin of a clown. “Well,” he says.
“Coming home?” Merlin asks, and Arthur looks around them for a second or two before shrugging, then nodding, and then finally falling into step with them.
-
When they get home, Will goes straight to bed, muttering something about having to get up in the morning and how he's hoping to sleep the alcohol off before he has to go.
Merlin is in that weird, keyed-up stage where he's too buzzed to sleep but not drunk enough to just pass out where he's standing. He sits down on the sofa, props his feet up on the coffee table and fumbles with his scarf until he can pull it off. He leans forward precariously to throw it onto the table, and with the movement, his feet slide off and thud onto the floor.
Arthur sits down next to him, and Merlin elbows him lightly in the side. “So. That's where you go. To do your fighting. Be a hardarse. Joust for your honour.” He doesn't really know what he's saying.
A smirk picks up the corners of Arthur's mouth, and he says, “Yeah, I guess. Not all the time. I used to do this boxing club thing when I was a kid, and I'm good at it, so I wasn't going to back down. It's not a big thing.”
“Yeah, no, I get it,” Merlin says, even though he doesn't at all.
“No you don't.”
“No.” Merlin nods agreeably. “No, I don't, that is true.”
“You're kind of an idiot,” Arthur says with a smile. It's a nice smile, Merlin thinks; much better than the forced grins he sometimes puts on, or when he bared his teeth through the blood.
“I'm kind of drunk,” Merlin points out defensively, and Arthur laughs and actually ruffles his hair, like that's something people actually do in real life. Merlin ducks away and the room spins, and he grabs Arthur's arm in the hope that might help things restore themselves to the right place again. “Whoa,” he mutters, and blinks a few times.
Belatedly, he realises he hasn't let go of Arthur's wrist. He looks down at his hand, and watches as it moves slowly but steadily towards Arthur's hand. He feels like it might just be independent from the rest of his body, as he brushes his fingers across the scabs on Arthur's knuckles with a morbid kind of fascination, just like he felt last night when he touched Arthur's mouth for just a little too long.
“What're you doing, Merlin?” Arthur asks. Merlin can hear the amusement in his voice.
“Shut up,” Merlin says automatically. And then, truthfully, “I don't really know.”
He doesn't know what he's doing when he tilts forward and kisses Arthur a few moments later, either, when their eyes meet and Merlin still doesn't let go. He just knows that Arthur kisses back, and hisses when Merlin's teeth scrape over the cut on his lip, and that Arthur's voice dips down low enough to make heat seep through the pit of Merlin's stomach when he mutters, “Come on,” and tugs Merlin upright and into his room.
Arthur's bed is surprisingly well made when they fall onto it, and Arthur's breath pools hot in the dip of Merlin's collarbone.
Merlin's finding it hard to be coordinated, distracted by Arthur's mouth and Arthur's hands and the alcohol that hasn't worn off yet, but when Arthur presses the words, “You're drunk, we shouldn't,” into his neck, he just reaches out to tangle his hands in Arthur's hair and pull him back to his mouth, because Arthur's not the only one who can be stubborn and stupid if he wants to be. Arthur doesn't say anything again until afterwards, after they've both come, shaking and shuddering and still slowly moving together, and Merlin feels like he's sinking into the mattress beneath Arthur's weight.
Merlin doesn't really register when he starts to doze off, but next time he opens his eyes the covers are on top of him instead of the other way around, and Arthur is lying next to him. They're touching, but barely, just their arms pressing together. Arthur's arm feels tense against his own, as though Arthur is trying to hold himself as far away as possible.
Merlin thinks he might possibly still be drunk. “I should probably,” he begins, lamely, and doesn't even finish his own sentence. For a few seconds all he can hear is their breathing, just out of time in the dark.
After several seconds, Arthur says, “Yeah.”
He doesn't move as Merlin forces himself out of bed. When his feet hit the floor, it sounds too loud, even with the sound muffled by the carpet.
He glances across at the clock on the VCR when he's back in the living room: 03:07, and he feels a faint sense of the surreal, doing a slightly uneven, winding walk of shame through his own flat from Arthur's room to his own. His bed is inviting, though, and he just about manages to kick off his trousers and before crawling in and pulling the covers tight around him. He suddenly realises that his shirt is in Arthur's room somewhere, tossed carelessly on the floor.
“Well,” Merlin mutters to the dark of his own room, and he scrubs the palm of his hand over his face, trying to clear his head enough for him to catch some sleep before morning.