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Fickle fate had taken Arthur’s life in her hand yet again. Each new day tested his mettle in ways he had never considered as a young, foolhardy knight.
And the sore thing of it was, well, he had considered so very much.
What man had not had a daydream or two about rescuing a fair princess? Arthur was prepared and ready for such a thing. Dangerous hunt? Not a worry. Magical quest? He’d done dozens. No man, nor foe nor beast could test Arthur's mettle and find him wanting.
Of late it was Merlin, mostly, who did the testing.
Annoying, yes, irreverent, yes, terrible at his job—well, also yes. Also, somehow, impossibly, dear.
And as dim as an unlit candle.
“But, but—he’s a prince,” Merlin insists to the innkeep. He’s outraged like he’s the prince, or like they’re going to be sent off to sleep under a hedge for the night. It’s only sharing a room.
Arthur surreptitiously sniffs himself. It’s not great, but it’s certainly not any worse than Merlin. They’d waded through the same bog, after all.
“And how does that help me make another room appear?” she challenged. She’s not quite as tall as Merlin or him, but she’s thrice as wide and has biceps bigger than Arthur’s head.
“It’s, he’s,” Merlin stutters, easily cowed. Infant. “We can’t.”
“You’re lucky to get one to yourselves at all,” she said, stepping closer. Her cheeks are red as apples, and she’s got a child slung under one arm like a sack of potatoes. Arthur considers that he may be hungry. “The way it’s pouring, every man who can rub two coppers together is knocking at my door!”
“Thank you,” Arthur says. He cannot believe that he’s being forced to be the polite one, here. Absurdity. Arthur should never have to be the polite one. “We’ll be glad to have it. Perhaps a bath?”
“Just go stand outside if you want to get wet,” she laughs, a deep thing from her chest. “Come on now, pay up and follow the lad.” Her head nods to a lanky youth who’s fighting his way through the crowd to heed his mother.
Arthur is as happy as he’s ever been to hand over coins—the idea of a quiet room, no rain, no monsters, no knights, just him, and Merlin, and…
Well, there will be a bed, what with seeing as how it’s an inn and all.
They’re both sodden down to their smalls. They’ll have to strip, lest they ruin the bedding. There’ll be nothing for it.
All these long, dark weeks past midwinter have left a freeze in the air. In truth, when Arthur thinks of it, a fire, no matter how well built, might not be enough. Winter’s dreadful touch may still find them through the poor thatch walls of the rickety inn. May creep in under the blankets, which, naturally, they would be forced to share.
Arthur follows the boy up the narrow stairs with a great spring in his step, taking them two at a time, even when one creaks like it might bring the whole place down around their ears. “Come on then, Merlin,” he calls joyfully over his shoulder. “Time waits for no man.”
“Yes, sire,” Merlin says, ears as red as ripe strawberries.
The bed, such as it is, is thin. Barely lifted off the ground, and packed with straw that was due changing a fortnight ago, should the smell be any indication. A cracked ewer and a basin, for washing, and a low, squat hearth. In front of it sits a rough-hewn wooden bench, a fine enough place to hang dry the worst of their things.
“Thank you,” Merlin says to the boy, who only scurries away like a mouse.
“Shame,” Arthur thinks aloud, as the dust settles. It’s hardly as fine as his chambers in the castle. They'd be warm, with a roaring fire, and an overstuffed woolen bed. A whole platter of those frilly little cakes Merlin always gets all moony over, and wine and fruit—and dozens of candles. They’d all be lit, like swimming through their own personal starlit sky, and it would be lovely and properly romantic. “Could do with some candles.”
“Candles?” Merlin peeps, and reaches out with soft, but sure, hands to help Arthur take off his surcoat. He leans in close, as is ever his way, swallowing thickly as he undoes one lace at a time. “My lord,” he breathes.
“Would be a bit, uhm.” Romantic, Arthur almost says. Of late the word is forever waiting, ready to spring off the tip of his tongue. “Nicer,” he lands on instead, his voice wobbling as he stands face to face with the most arduous ordeal of his entire life. Merlin blinks at him, looking up through damp eyelashes, spiked with rain, and Arthur’s heart turns over. “You know. A bit nicer is all. It’s dark.”
“It’s nighttime,” Merlin says, unhelpfully.
Merlin is extremely fortunate that the firelight looks very fetching on his pale skin and thus Arthur can ignore every fool thing he says, which is most of them.
All golden and pink like the first flush of spring. His hair is wet, and near-black with it, curling over his brow, his sharp cheeks. The fan of his eyelashes as well, stark against his eyes, so clear and blue. Yet more fascinating still is the curve of his mouth, the red of his lips.
The last lace is undone, and Merlin doesn’t step away like he ought. His fingers barely brush against Arthur’s shoulders as he settles them there, ready to dart away like a pair of frightened rabbits. They don’t though. Instead, they still, and his fingers curl in Arthur’s collar. “My lord,” he says again, and closes his eyes. Sways even closer, so that their breath mingles. “Arthur.”
Finally, is all Arthur can think, as he leans forwards—
Which is when the roof crashes down. A resounding crack like a timber falling. Which, Arthur dully supposes, is exactly what happened.
Merlin whips around to gape at it, and the mangled bed it landed on. A narrow miss.
“Not again,” Arthur complains, as the innkeeper’s shrieking carries up the staircase and into the storming sky.
They do sleep outdoors, in the end, but at least it’s not under a hedge.
The oak tree smells better than the smokey inn had, for a small mercy, and Merlin had argued so ferociously with the innkeeper that they even got their coins back. The great girl’s blouse had given a copper to the little lad, though, and Arthur couldn’t find it in him to begrudge it.
Poor boy would be pailing out the attic until he was a man grown.
“I’ve never seen a beam just crack like that,” Merlin says. “Do you think that happens a lot?”
They are huddled together for warmth, too, just as Arthur had hoped; but it’s not exactly romantic. Mostly it’s just freezing. “Nor I,” he admits. It’s hardly the first time something had gotten in the way of what is rapidly becoming Arthur’s bane. A river, a rockslide, a fairie, a Bwbach, and now a ceiling beam. “And I sure hope not, seeing as how I’m not ready to give up castle life to go and live in the woods.”
“Lots of timber, in the woods,” Merlin says mildly, and pokes at their dwindling fire, “not really sure that would be safer.”
“Fine,” Arthur heaves a sigh, and lets his head loll back. Above him stretch the bare branches of the oak, little dots of clinging ice sparking as such that he can almost trick himself into believing it’s starlight. “To go and live in a field, then.”
“I’d live in a cave, I think,” Merlin considers, “so that I might not get rained on.” He pauses. “Sire.”
“Shut up, Merlin,” Arthur says, and wonders why he bothers to be in love with this idiot at all.
***
“I still don’t see what you need me for,” Arthur insists, but still follows, since if Leon of all people says he needs Arthur’s opinion on something he probably does. He’s not a time waster like half of the rest of the knights. Well. Gwaine, mostly. Entirely.
What insights Arthur has to contribute to the linen storage situation remains beyond him, though.
“It’s a small matter,” Leon says, and looks away. “A discerning eye will sort things quickly, I’m sure. But you know how George can be, and then the new maid—”
“Alright, alright,” Arthur interrupts. He hears enough of the castle gossip from Merlin, he doesn’t need to hear it from Leon, too. Besides, Merlin loves to gossip, and he tends to forget himself a bit as he does so; and thus smile very freely at Arthur, and eat off of his plate, and sit himself on the edge of Arthur’s table and make any day just a great deal more generably agreeable.
When Leon gossips he mostly looks like he wants to tear his beard out.
Leon holds the door open, and it is quite dim, which Arthur supposes one should expect, out of linen closets. What he does not expect is the hard shove in the back.
“My apologies, sire!” Leon’s voice calls, barely heard over the slam of the door.
He crashes into a ragged bundle of rags, and whirls around, but it is too little too late. “Leon!” Arthur shouts, and rattles the door. Latched. He bangs a closed fist upon it, but it serves to do nothing rather than make him worry he’s bruised his sword hand. “Let me out or I’ll have you doing drills in the snow till your cock falls off!”
“They got you, too?” the bundle of rags asks, and Arthur does not shriek, but he does jolt hard enough that Merlin, for who else could a ragged bundle of rags be, stumbles.
Arthur catches him, of course, gripping him tight about the waist. He is still blinking the spots of daylight out of his eyes, but the cupboard remains black as pitch. Without his sight, everything feels heightened—the narrow curve of Merlin’s waist under Arthur’s sword-calloused palm. The feel of his breath, their chests pressed close together.
Even through all their winter layers, Arthur imagines he can feel their hearts beating next to one another in perfect time.
“Oh,” he says, calmer, all his ire fleeing him. He considers he won’t need to have Leon punished after all. "Merlin,” he goes on, but cannot think of anything clever to say after that, far too busy letting his hand inch slowly up the curve of Merlin's spine, mapping out each hill and valley. Every last fizzing bit of thought in his head is dedicated to the work.
To their great fortune, the linen cupboard just so happens to be filled with linens, and so when Arthur walks them a step further in, it is a soft landing. Merlin’s back is pressed against the tablecloths, and the gasp he lets out is music, Arthur thinks, more music than anything else he’s ever heard. Everything is more, with Merlin, and Arthur is hungry for it. He makes everything feel real, and true, and—
“We can’t,” Merlin says, but he’s also seized Arthur by the belt and is pulling so hard he can feel the pinch in the small of his back where the leather pulls taut.
“We can,” Arthur lets him know, in case there was any question about it. In the dark there is only instinct to guide him. He can feel the ends of Merlin’s hair tickle his nose, and Arthur breathes in, close enough that his lips brush against Merlin’s ear when he speaks. He smells of dried herbs and old books. “We can,” he says again, gentler, and he feels Merlin’s breath catch.
A basket of linens falls upon Arthur, then, and a terrible noise comes from outside the door, because he is not allowed any joy in life, or gladness or merriment of any sort. He’s beginning to wonder if this is an especially vindictive curse, and what he’d done to deserve it.
“What are you all doing here?” Gwen’s muffled voice chides, as if she had been summoned specifically to pour cold water over things. “Why are you blocking the hallway? I've had three complaints already this morning because you’ve scared off the maids!”
Arthur cannot make out the words of reply, but he’d know the cadence of Gwaine’s irreverence anywhere. Whatever he says doesn’t work, though, as he can hear Gwen bully past him to open the door. The sudden light is offensive to his royal person.
Merlin lets go of Arthur’s belt as if it’s burned him, which is more offensive still.
Forget Leon, Arthur’ll make Gwaine drill in the snow till his cock falls off, and the whole of Camelot will all be the better off for it.
He can’t punish Gwen, of course, seeing as how it’s Gwen.
***
In the beginning, Arthur had maintained a strict idea of how things would go.
He would, naturally, be dignified and princely.
Merlin, being a very emotional sort of creature, since he hadn’t had a father to teach him any differently, would have to do the confessing. Frequently he looked at Arthur as if he were the last untouched cake on the table at the end of Beltane; one that hadn’t even had anyone else’s sticky fingers on it or anything. A mysterious but precious gift. So Arthur figured it wouldn’t take very long.
He could be patient. Perhaps not historically, but he was sure enough he could manage it when the reward was worthy.
Merlin would be shy, because he did become shy at the oddest things—only he could shout in Arthur’s face one moment and stutter and blush the next if Arthur so much as looked at him too long.
Now, since Arthur didn’t mind when Merlin looked, he thought it was a perfectly fair exchange that he should be allowed to look back.
The bathing screen had seen its last use ages ago, so if anything Merlin owed him more looks—and there was a distracting thought. Merlin. Bathing. Hm.
Nevertheless, Merlin did look, was the thing. Without the courtly manners to even be subtle about it, either. In fact, he looked so much he had once stitched three shirts together because he was so busy with the looking and not so much with the stitching.
Arthur was getting very frustrated, with all of the looking and none of the doing anything about it.
Merlin never seemed to catch a clue.
Suffice to say, letting things play out naturally has not yet panned out. Nature would arrange a perfect opportunity for Merlin to confess his ardent love, or at least go in for a kiss and a clumsy grope behind a convenient tree, and then nature would turn around and laugh in Arthur’s face.
With either a river, a rockslide, a fairie, a Bwbach, a ceiling beam, or a Gwen. A half dozen almosts. Almost kisses. Almost confessions. Almost, almost, almost.
An almost love, which seemed, to Arthur, to be the most ruinous sort there was.
He could no longer bear the endless, aching, yearning—he would have to take this in his own hands.
Be proactive.
It was daunting, though. Merlin was so unlike anyone else Arthur had ever met. There was just so much Merlinness to him, an indefinable something that didn’t fit together quite right yet fit together perfectly with Arthur.
He was not a visiting noble lady looking for marriage to a prince, therefore making anything Arthur did or not do fairly superfluous, in the grand scheme of things, so long as he had a crown on his head. No, Merlin cared very much about what Arthur did. Far more than he cared about what Arthur was. In fact, being a prince, Arthur considers, might be part of the problem.
Merlin would look, and look, and look, and then, well…
‘We can’t,’ Arthur can still hear, echoing.
No matter what anyone else thought about his bullheadedness, though, Arthur did know when he wasn’t welcome. Merlin would hold on, was the thing, every time he said it.
With both hands, he would hold on.
***
Arthur thinks about it the next time he has Merlin crowded up against a tree, for it is far simpler to find a moment to themselves outside of the bustling castle.
“We can’t,” Merlin sighs dreamily, and pulls Arthur closer yet again. This time one hand is carding through the short hair at the nape of Arthur’s neck, and the other is clasped tight around his bicep. An appreciative squeeze is given, and Arthur finds himself less bitter about all those early mornings in the yard. It’s all worth it, he thinks, dizzy.
Above him, a branch cracks, and dumps a load and a half of tight-packed snow straight onto Arthur’s dizzy head. The shock of cold is unpleasant, and it knocks him both clean off his feet and all the air from his chest—but at least it wasn’t a whole tree. Well used to this, by now, he merely brushes off the worst of it, and stands.
“It’s never ‘we shouldn’t’, or ‘I don’t want to’,” Arthur says, as he shakes snow out of one of his ears. “It’s always ‘we can’t.’”
“I’m sure I don’t know what you mean,” Merlin lies, and is soft as he brushes Arthur’s shoulders clean. “Come on. We should go back to the fire. Warm you up.”
There are knights around the fire, though, and as much as Arthur carries love for them as his brother’s in arms, he doesn’t really want them to see what he wants to do with Merlin to warm up, as it involves quite a different sort of love.
Above him, the tree gives an ominous sounding creak, and Arthur weighs his odds. “Fine,” he begrudgingly agrees. Merlin pulls him forwards, and does not let go of Arthur’s hand for all the long walk back, as though he might otherwise get lost.
Merlin’s ears, where they peek out from his hair, are pink, and he is shy when he turns to look at Arthur over his shoulder.
Arthur has no choice but to hold on too.
He is, after all, already lost.
***
Arthur resolves not to try anything in the castle again, as one of the towers gets struck by lightning when he does. Thankfully nothing too terrible happened, but a fine new banner was ruined and Merlin was too spooked to so much as look Arthur in the eye for an entire fortnight, let alone anything else.
***
The meadow, if it were springtime, would be full of wildflowers and clover. If it were springtime they would be colourful and new, delicate life seeing the sun for the first time. If it were springtime, the air would be full of their lively scent, and the petals would dance on the breeze around them.
It is, of course, late winter, so the flowers are sleeping, the ground is muddy, and the snow is slushy.
“No trees,” Arthur points out, and takes a step closer to Merlin.
Merlin, who looks worryingly up at the sky even as he steps forward as well, a frown upon his face.
“No clouds,” Arthur points out, his voice low, and clasps their hands together.
“Not sure that would stop it,” Merlin mutters. “It was a clear day when—”
“That was fluke.” It had to have been. Arthur cannot keep living like this. It’s always a kiss, in the stories, that breaks the curse. And while he is not certain this is any real sort of curse at all, it feels an awful lot like one. But what is one to do when the curse is the cure and the cure is the curse?
“I…” Merlin says, and kicks at the slushy snow at their feet, exposing the wet grass below. It is more green than Arthur would have figured, a burst of colour in the white and grey. “I have something to tell you. And when I do, you might not want to kiss me at all.”
Arthur braces himself. Perhaps Merlin doesn’t think it’s worth the trouble. Perhaps there are a hundred other people he'd rather kiss, who don't attract ceiling beams and lighting bolts down onto their heads.
“I have magic,” Merlin says, and his hand is limp, resting in Arthur’s as if simply waiting to be let go. Thrown away.
Yet while Arthur cannot pretend he is not surprised, or that he might have an earful to say about it later, he also cannot let go—it’s too late, far, far too late. Merlin is already all tangled up through Arthur’s blood, and his veins, and his very heart. What are his hands for, if not for this?
“Well,” Arthur swallows, unsure. He thinks back on it with new eyes. “Wait, are you flooding rivers and dropping snow on me? The lightning?” Arthur feels his mouth drop open, unflatteringly agog. All along he has been utterly certain that Merlin felt the same. What with all the staring, and the sighing, and the fluttering eyelashes. The hand holding and the soft breaths against Arthur’s neck, and the naked hunger. Was that how sorcerers told people they weren’t interested?
It seemed quite backwards, to Arthur, but then again, he wasn’t a sorcerer.
“You know you could have just told me you didn’t want to kiss me,” Arthur says, injured in some place far, far more painful than his pride.
“I do want to!” Merlin exclaims, and two fat tears pour down his cheeks. His hand clenches painfully tight, still locked with Arthur’s. “It’s only—my magic. It’s, well, Albion’s magic, I suppose, really. One and the same.” One and the same? Arthur would need to return to that, later he thinks, stunned. “And it gets...” Merlin’s voice gets meeker. Embarrassed. “Jealous.”
The usual order of things, if the one you admire had a jealous lover they could not escape, would be to challenge them to a duel. “I’m not sure I know how to duel a landmass,” Arthur admits, thoroughly stumped, but nonetheless game for trying. He eyes the little patch of green grass at their feet.
Life, under it all. Hope.
Such a kinship stirs in him at the sight, the sort he had never known he could feel for a sad little patch of grass. Surrounded by the cold, still thriving and waiting for the sun. Reaching. Yearning. Yes, he thinks, I understand you perfectly well.
I love him, too.
And so, feeling entirely foolish, as he usually does, around Merlin, Arthur takes to his knee. He does not draw his sword, for this is not the sort of oath one makes with steel, he feels, deep down in some forgotten well inside of him that knows such things. Magic, and oaths, and sorcerers who the earth itself enviously guards.
“I’ll take good care of him,” he swears, and the foolish feeling withers away like it had never been, for something vast sprawls around him, that he cannot see, or touch. Only feel. It is wider than the sky and deeper than the ocean, suffusing through the very world. “On my honour. As a knight of Camelot and as a prince. It’s—he’s,” Arthur stumbles, now, on his words. Not because he doesn’t mean them, but only because he has never said them, not to anyone. Not once. “I love him.”
Merlin, the great petticoat that he is, cries.
That colossal, vast something, swells. Arthur is crushed under the weight of it, pressed in from all sides. Small, and fragile, tossed about in the waves as they churn around him. His ribs wrench tight, held in a giant fist—Arthur’s breath cuts short, all the air leaving him. Black crawls through the corners of his vision, closer and closer with each frantic beat of his heart. Even on his knees, he is dragged lower, the earth below ready to swallow him whole—
“Enough!” Merlin roars, and, with a single word, calls it to heel. He stomps his foot like an affronted maiden, and almost falls arse backwards in the doing of it. “Stop it! Can’t you see I love him too!” His voice cracks, and a flood of birds fly up from the forest in the distance, a murmuration like a cloud. Starlings.
And despite feeling like he’s been beaten black and blue, Arthur cannot help but smile up at him. A joy steals over any lingering pain, or coldness. The colour comes back into the world as he takes one shaking breath after another, lungs filling with air. He is still on his knees. “Do you?”
“Of course I do,” Merlin says, and Arthur knew it.
The ground quivers.
Petulant.
His legs are muddy and cold, but the good, clear sky does not throw a lightning bolt at him, and no cracks open up to drag him into the depths, and so that is enough for Arthur. Merlin reaches to drag him up to his feet, and he lets himself be lifted, even though he feels lighter than air. He could fly.
It is a step, or less than that, to close the distance. A dozen almost kisses. Arthur cups his hands around Merlin’s face, and strokes his thumbs to wipe away the last of the tears. His skin is warm, under Arthur’s hands, and his sigh is soft.
This time, there is nothing almost about it. Arthur tries to be gentle, he does, but the wait has been too long, and too harsh. A noise stutters out of Merlin’s mouth, gasping against Arthur’s lips. He is wanting, wanting, wanting. The world narrows away until there is nothing left but this.
The air is sharp with cold, but all he can feel is the ebb and pull of each shared breath, each frantic press closer. He is lightheaded, but he cannot tear himself away to breathe—it is Merlin who does, taking a heaving gasp of air.
“Arthur,” he rasps, worshipful, and kisses him again.
The embers that have smoldered within him all winter, and autumn, kept banked by a curse that was maybe not a curse at all. There is a reverence in each touch, that he should finally be allowed, that Merlin should finally kiss him back. That he should want this with the same fire and longing—and he does. Arthur wishes for nothing more than to learn every last thing that makes Merlin’s breath catch and his knees go weak.
Hands claw at his back, through his layers, frustrated and pulling so tight the seams strain. They are, regretfully, in a muddy field, though, and the thing about muddy fields is that they tend to be lacking in beds, or warm fires, or candles. Mostly they just have mud.
“We should go home,” Arthur pants, the heat of his breath fogging in the air between them. “To uh, to—”
“To bed,” Merlin finishes, bold as anything, and kisses Arthur again, because he is an imp who has to goad and push and prod in any way he can manage. Until their lips are red, kiss bitten and sore. “You have no idea how difficult this has been for me,” he says, and kisses Arthur on the cheek, the corner of his mouth, over and over.
“For you?” Arthur exclaims. It’s hard to be outraged, though, too stunned for much more than appreciating the way his lips tingle and his heart thunders.
Merlin leans back, and his grin is bright. His eyes sparkle and his hands are steady as he grabs Arthur by the collar and pulls him forwards, dragging him first one step and then another, back to Camelot. “Very,” Merlin confirms, turning and letting his hand fall between them, so Arthur may take it in his and they may walk side by side.
The winter seems less bitter, Arthur thinks, or perhaps it is only the heat coursing through him each time their shoulders brush. The sun peeks out from behind the hazy winter clouds, just a sliver of gold.
When a snowball whacks Arthur in the back of the head as they leave he cannot even mind it. “Was that you?” he asks, and swings Merlin around in a circle, like they are dancing at midsummer.
Merlin doesn’t answer, only throws his head back to laugh, bathed in sunshine.