Chapter Text
“-and then I handed her the blasted thing, only for her third ex-husband to knock me out with half a cheese wheel!” The warlock rants, munching on a much-too-large slab of raw honeycomb. “Barbaric I tell ya.”
His audience stays still, captivated.
“And that,” He continues through thick sweetness on his teeth, "my friends, is how I caught the great frog-slayer of the 1350s.”
His audience stays still. Perhaps not captivated.
“Tough crowd,” He grumbles. “Although, arguably more calming than the geese.”
The three toadstools remain still.
“Oh, no need to be so bashful-”
“Oi! Lad!”
Merlin rolls his eyes at the voice. Humans. Too many of them for a Sunday mornin- oh. Oh.
“Kid, you’ve been sitting here talking to bloody mushrooms since the crack of dawn!”
Merlin gives a stink-eye to the now darkening sky. He really needs to give his CV to the sun.
“Kid-“
“Not, actually-“
“Parks closed. Twenty o’clock on the dot. Get out before I have you escorted.”
Merlin groans unrestrainedly. Gets up off the park bench and waltzes out the gates.
He decides, on his way back, after watching a man reverse park into a garage door thrice before realising the brakes exist, that he needs a fucking job.
Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore is an observer. He sees the things others do not.
He has done so since he was a child. He sees the scrubbed ink on nail cuticles, the hidden blushing of young lovers, crumbs under the table, hushed whistling of sinking lilies. The skeletons of wails on his mother’s cold lips.
He tries to prove fate is malleable, that his all-powerful voice and his all-powerful wand can mould the rock like clay. He proves it through grand gestures and mountains climbed and devils slain. He washes the clay off his hands at the end of every day with a smile on his face and a ticked box in his eye. He never looks to see if the water goes grey, because he’s afraid of what he’ll find if he does.
He proves he can sculpt clay through loving the boy with the lightning scar, whilst pretending he isn’t pouring honey on a pig before slaughter.
Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore, as much as he convinces himself and the world the opposite, is an observer. A witness to the boy who never got to be a child.
Knock.
Knock.
Knock.
Unhesitant, loud, certain.
Albus turns away from his reflection in the window. He walks to his desk and lowers himself into the chair, cloak untwisted and hair falling faultless. He makes sure his half-moon spectacles are straightened perfectly on his dorsum bridge.
“Enter.” He calls.
The door swings open, a figure walks in. Though their face is painted by the silhouette of morning shadows, Albus immediately identifies the gait of a man with confidence. The way he holds himself doesn’t command authority, per say, instead it’s the kind that whispers it and offers it and puts it on your bedside table as if it doesn’t care if it’s picked up or not.
The man walks closer, sun rays finally kissing his face.
Black untamed hair sits upon paper white skin, ink upon chalk. The skin stretches across angles and points, sharp features that should seem formidable but are not. There's a softness to his eyes and mouth that dilutes and spreads and breathes, gentleness captured and displayed unashamedly like butterflies in glass bottles.
There’s an empty spot in his lapis lazuli eyes where youth is meant to be. The youth that lets you believe the world can lap at your ankles, and you can just…walk unbothered.
And yet they hold something else – a playfulness, a child, one sculpted by wonder, sculpted by pain. The child leaks through the red neckerchief and the lopsided grin, and the crow feet at the corner of his eyes.
“Greetings!” The man exclaims in a voice that has no business being so bright on a Monday’s first breaths. “A wonderful morning! Or perhaps afternoon? I’d check the position of the sun, but it seems to have just moved past your window – rather annoying habit it has acquired really – I do have my reservations about the validity of its qualifications,”
“Qualifications?”
“Mm. Being the sun demands impeccable timing and flawless presentation, both of which I can do a much better job at.” The man brushes a pine leaf off his shoulder.
“And I, my dear Dumbledore, know a lot about qualifications.” The man says, the latter part being spoken with the voice of a child presenting their first crayon drawing collection. He waggles his eyebrows, hard.
Albus blinks. Checks his spectacles are straight. “You are interested in a teaching position?”
“Bingo.” The man clicks his fingers. “Got it in one.”
Albus’ eyes betray him as they flicker to the left. He catches the eye of Phyllida Spore’s portrait. She levels her gaze at him, as if testing. He fixes his spectacles again.
Nodding at the seat in front of him, Albus observes as the man obliges, the neckerchief twisting slightly as he sits. The man doesn’t bother to fix it.
“If I may enquire, “ Albus starts after a pause, “By which means did you arrive here? I am merely curious; I been watching the gateway since dawn’s break.”
“Firenze.” The man says, as if it were a statement and not a name. “And, if there’s one thing you must know about gargoyles, it's if you write gullible on the ceiling, they’ll refuse to ever look up.”
There's a pause. Then –
“Tea?”
The man grins like it’s the first and last time he’ll do so.
“Please.”
Albus pours the liquid from the kettle with a steady hand, passing the cup over. The man doesn’t make a move for the milk jug until it’s gestured at in a help yourself way. As if he’s establishing the reigns are in Albus’ hands.
Then, as Albus spoons the perfect amount of sugar into his own teacup, the man’s eyes flash gold, a split second where his pupil is an insect in amber. Old magic, ancient magic, extinct magic. Albus stills, waits. Nothing happens.
Then, he hears the subtle ting ting ting of silver against porcelain. He looks to the man’s teacup, where the spoon is stirring itself. It’s an interesting move from the man, so mundane and subtle, something startingly intentional about how unthreatening it is. A drip from the wall of a dam.
Albus’ spectacles slide slightly down his nose. The gold in the man’s eyes have been replaced with a warmth, a careful promise. A tiger showing his teeth are blunt and his claws are putty and his gaze is not meant for hunting.
Albus hands over the sugar. He does not adjust his spectacles.
He receives a smile of mirth and a strange sense of approval.
“The name’s Malcolm. Malcolm Emrys.”
The man, Malcolm apparently, throws his name out into the wind like discarded orange peel, like it’s a suggestion, a will you or won’t you. A ball thrown in Albus’ court.
“That is your true name?” Albus starts, blunt, but he dips his words in politeness and nonchalance as if asking about his grandmothers’ newest teacup. He decides it’s best to put an axe to the wood in this situation, rather than the painstaking shaves.
“Well, if you omit the first fifty or so percent.”
“So… Emrys?”
“Mm.”
Albus raises his eyebrows.
“Okay – so what if it’s not the name my mother gave me,” ‘Emrys’ says, rolling his eyes slightly, “It’s still sort of my name nonetheless.”
“…And I’m right to assume you won’t disclose the name given by your mother?”
“Bullseye, Dumbles!”
Albus inhales deeply through his nose, clasping his hands together in a prayer-like motion, pressing his two thumbs through his beard to under his chin. He looks out the window, making eye contact with his reflection. He sees the boy with the lightning scar and an axe hovering over his head.
He wonders if the tiger will hunt by the boy’s side.
“Well, Malcolm,” he speaks, and he lets trust bleed through his words and stand before Emrys like a deer. “Our professor Binns has understandably suffered far much too long amongst the wrath of teenage hormone imbalances. Alas, we have found ourselves with a History Professor position available.”
Albus takes a sip from his daily cup of tea, and it tastes like sun and gambles and half a teaspoon too much sugar.
Emrys grins.
“Oomph!”
“Sorry, sorry,”
Arthur clenches his screaming toes. That’s the fourth time in twenty minutes someone’s trolley has stubbed his foot.
“No harm done,” he grinds out to the woman waiting.
He shifts his basket in his hold, pride re-applied onto his skin. His eyes trace over the grocery isle, landing on a crateful of yellow criss-crossed blobs with green leafy bits spurting out of them. He picks one up for examination purposes, flipping it over and smelling it in the perfect picture of nonchalance. He touches the green leafy bits and gets a pricked finger in return. He puts it back down, offended.
His next target are the white blobs. Pale, strange things cradled in green that have no business being that knobbly. He pokes at the knobs.
Coral flower? Cranky flower? Cronky flower?
Ah, yes. He nods at the label. Cauliflower.
He moves onto the crate next to it. Ah, tomatoes! Finally, a familiar face. He puts the biggest, plumpest one in his basket and moves on.
A gasp from behind him.
“Young man!”
Arthur twirls around to come face to face with an old man with a frankly awful mustard top hat, a moustache that’s curled at the ends a little too much and a breath that smells entirely of coffee and baked beans. The man’s expression is spilling incredulity onto the floor at Arthur’s feet.
“Problem, sir?”
“Problem is too tame of a word for your actions, young man!” The old man violently grabs the tomato from the basket and shakes it in Arthur’s face. “Forgetting something, hmm?”
Arthur blinks.
“It’s decent, elementary etiquette,” the man spits out, taking a small cloth out his front pocket and throwing it at Arthurs chest. “Take a tomato, polish a tomato - for the next person. It’s basic manners, have your parents not taught you this?”
The man gestures at the tomato crate sharply, eyes filled with nothing but get on with it. Arthur reddens and grabs the cloth. He is on his third round of polishing the same damn tomato when he starts smelling lies.
“Disgraceful,” the old man is still muttering, “No hope for this generation,”
Arthur slowly turns to make eye contact.
Light blue meets dark blue.
“Though, I suppose you wouldn’t know,” The man continues, holding the gaze, “You’re much too toad-faced and snobby-nosed to be from around here.”
“What. The fuck.” Arthur says, deadly.
The old man’s breath hitches, his lips twitch. “Need I wash that mouth out with soap, young man?”
Arthur all but lurches at the stupid hat and the stupid moustache and the stupid grin.
“Merlin!” He growls out, shoving and elbowing and slapping the damn hat off that damn head.
Merlin laughs, evil and triumphant. “Young man! How dare you do this to an elderly-“
“You - bastard!”
Merlin chuckles, albeit a bit more warmly, and goes to pick up the hat. He hobbles a bit and rubs his back as he bends down to retrieve it. Arthur rolls his eyes and releases a loud agony and humiliation induced groan.
Two young children with doughnuts in their mouths scarper away from him.
“For the love of all the gods, Merlin, why?”
Merlin shrugs. “Can’t I talk to my favourite cabbage in the isle?”
Arthur guffaws with a straight face. “Okay, Merlin. Sure thing, Merlin,” he says, flat and dry as sandpaper. “Just, you know, let me know next time you find it so hard to walk two feet out your bedroom and into mine. I can help direct you, no need to be ashamed.”
“Effort required.”
Arthur chokes. “And this, Merlin,” He gestures harshly and theatrically at the whole ridiculous-old-man-disguise thing the lunatic has going on, “This isn’t effort?”
“Of course not.”
Suddenly the idea of slow and torturous self-disintegration appeals to Arthur. The annoying, ear-jabbing voice is still incessantly droning on through his self-wallowing thoughts.
“And since when do you ever set foot in supermarkets?” The voice continues.
“Newsflash Merlin, I do.”
Merlin releases an honest-to-gods giggle. A little-girl-with-pigtails-and-a-stolen-tart type giggle. His eyes flicker to the tomato crate simultaneously.
Arthur walks off. Goes to find the cheese. And his lost dignity. And to hopefully lose the idiot for enough time to figure out how the hell to pay in a twenty-first century supermarket.
Alas, bliss is not meant for the worthy. The annoying voice hovers over his shoulder again.
“One tomato,” It says, “a slab of ham and a packet of cheese-strings?!”
“Shove off.”
Merlin does not, in fact, shove off.
“I recall,” Arthur begins, long sufferingly, “Some idiot lecturing me that the constant consumption of chicken nuggets is not healthy.” He says, spitting the latter word out as if it left a bitter taste on his gums. “This, Merlin,” Arthur gestures with passion to his basket of three prideful items, “is called health.”
Merlin lets out a strangled sound. “This is why I need the job,” he mutters. “Can’t spend my years gallivanting around and looking after all the incompetent emotionally repressed manchildren.”
“…Emotionally repressed manchildren?
Merlin raises an eyebrow.
Wack!
“Hey!” Merlin rubs his bicep, murdering with his eyes.
“Oh, stop being dramatic, it’s only mozzarella.”
“Mozzarella is harder than it looks.”
“So, you stalked me to the supermarket to tell me you want a job and to defend the texture of mozzarella?”
“Aye aye cap.”
“Fine,” Arthur says, scooting past Merlin to walk to the payment area, praying to the gods he’s going in the right direction. He doesn’t check to see if Merlin follows. “Go scallivanting off somewhere-“
“-it’s gallivanting-“
“-whatever. Go gallivanting off, you hardly need my go-ahead to do anything, nice as that would be.”
“I’m not looking for your go-ahead,” Merlin snorts. “The job just requires me to stay over th –“ Merlin cuts off and smirks at Arthur, who is stood staring like an eagle at a roadside at the self-checkout machines.
Arthur surveys them subtly, arranging his face into the epitome of disinterest. He watches a woman hold a bag of pastries up to the box with fancy lights and fancy writing on it. It beeps. The lady does the same to her next item. And the next. And the next. And the ne-
“Just admiring the view, are we?” The voice is back again. “They do say inspiration strikes in the most unexpected of places,”
“Touché.”
“Oh, for fucks-“ Arthur releases a very manly sound of protest as his basket is yanked from his fingers. “You’re useless, Arthur, absolutely useless.”
Arthur does not pout, thankyou very much.
Operation don’t-make-a-fool-of-yourself-in-the-twenty-first-century has gone to pot before it’s even started.
“Tell me next time you decide on a whim to go to a supermarket for the first time.”
Arthur huffs. He decides staying silent has the least potential bruises to his pride in store.
“Go back to the house, Arthur,” Merlin says, already slotting into the queue, holding Arthur’s basket hostage. “I’ll take care of this, got a few more errands to tick off the list anyway.”
“No, I’m fi-“
Oomph.
Arthur glares daggers at the trolley that is being wheeled past, ignorant, without a care in the world. His toes are going to bloom into pretty aneurysms with petals at this point.
“Fine. I’ll go. You win this round, happy?”
“Elated.”
“And for Avalon’s sake,” Arthur says as he walks away, narrowly avoiding yet another foot-to-trolley collision, “Get rid of the hat and moustache before you come through the front door.”
Merlin keeps the moustache and turns it ginger.
He trudges through the garden gate, bags of groceries hanging off his fingers like sad helium-drained balloons. The front door opens before he even registers the thought of getting the keys from his pocket.
“You’ve already got the job, haven’t you.”
Merlin lets his eyes do the talking.
“A worry worm, Merlin, is what you are.”
Merlin sighs, dumping the bags on the kitchen counter. “I’m sorry, Arthur, I just-“
“I’ll be fine, Merlin.” Arthur says, fondness pooling in the grooves of his smile. “Believe it or not, I can actually function without your mother-henning,”
“I know. I just needed to get the job because my brain was just – well, antsy, and I can’t tell if it’s some push from the triple goddess because they’re annoyingly subtle like that, or if I genuinely just want to go out there and do something, but that’s not fair to you because you only came back not two years ago and you don’t know anything about modern society and you need some semblance of stability and leaving you here on your own is n-“
“Merlin,” Merlin feels himself being steered by the shoulders to the couch and shoved on the chest with just enough force to fall onto the cushion. Arthur sits next to him. “Three things. Then you can spiral, by all means.” Arthur turns to face him. “First, I cannot take anything you say seriously with that ridiculous moustache on.”
“I see.”
Arthur blinks.
A bird pecks at the window.
“Well, go on! Get rid of it then!”
“What?” Merlin huffs, pathetic. “As you wish, my lord,”
Poof!
“My upper lip feels naked now. Look what you’ve done.”
Arthur squints at Merlin like he’s trying to figure out whether he’s real or a figment of the imagination. Merlin is already concocting elaborate pranks he can pull if Arthur decides on the latter.
“The second thing,” Arthur continues to the very real warlock, and Merlin almost groans in disappointment. “Is my utter objection to your apparent assumption that I know nowt of the functions of modern society,”
Merlin raises his eyebrows and sends a rather pointed look at the grocery bags. If he hadn’t have added basic human supplements to Arthur’s slice of ham, plastic cheese and singular tomato, then they would have starved by next Wednesday.
“Thirdly,” Arthur continues, unfazed, “I’m not a hobbling helpless bald chick in a nest, Merlin, I ”
“Eh, not far off-”
“I’m fully capable-“
“I’m not saying you’re not capab-“
“Well, that’s what you’ve been insinuating-“
“I’m just wor-“
“Worried about me? That’s your permanent state of being, Merlin,”
“You would be too if some dude from 1500 years ago came trotting into your house one day-“
“Everything we’ve been through, only for you to call me some dude?!”
“Don’t click on links, you’ll be scammed,”
“Mer-“
“The water bill comes through on Tuesdays,”
“Merl-“
“If the carbon monoxide alarm goes off-“
“Merlin!”
“Yes, hello.”
Arthur pinches the bridge of his nose. Gets up to put the kettle on. It whistles.
Merlin realises, for once, Arthur has remembered to secure the lid.
“You’ll be fine.” Merlin says.
“I know.” Arthur opens up the tub of hot chocolate powder. “I’ll be fine.”
“I know.”
Silence breathes into the room, broken only by the hum of water being poured into porcelain. Merlin levitates the mug to himself, and it smells of sweetness and relief.
“It’s a school. Hogwarts, it’s called.”