Archive of Our Own

Tuesday morning begins like any other for Arthur Pendragon MBE, Doctor of Business and Economics, CEO of Pendragon, son of the infamous Uther Pendragon: the founder of Camelot, Master Swordsman, and recipient of zero (0) swimming certificates. His alarm goes off at a ridiculously early hour. He drags himself out of bed, dresses in the dark, grabs the bags his PA packed the day before, and drives to the office.

No one else is there before the sun has risen except security and a few members of the cleaning staff. He gives everyone he passes a nod, but otherwise keeps to himself. His PA says he is ‘antisocial’ and ‘rude’, but can he really be blamed for not wanting to make idle chatter at six am? As the lift rises to the top floor he stifles a yawn. The doors open slowly and Arthur drags his feet a little as he crosses the lobby to the gym. He taps his ID card to enter the glass walled space, puts in his earbuds, and cues up his playlist.

The rhythm of the songs he has chosen are perfect as he runs mindlessly on the treadmill or lifts weights, but they are interspersed with the most excessively cheesy pop hits that his PA has somehow managed to add. He doesn’t know how he managed it, and he’s given up removing them as yet more appear every time he does.

The sun rises, sending bright shafts of light into the glass room, as Arthur is practising his sword drills to the sound of Toxic and he wonders for the umpteenth time what had possessed him to hire his university room-mate as his PA.

Once he has finished his workout he heads into his private shower room, washes, and dries himself off as quickly as he can. Despite the still early hour, people will soon begin to arrive for the day, including his PA, and he needs to look presentable and ready to face whatever challenge the day throws at him. Although, it wasn’t likely to be as bad as the day several months ago when he found out that his father had cut and run from the business he’d founded to be with his new wife, the equally infamous Lady Catrina, with a huge quantity of their investors’ money. His eye gets twitchy whenever he thinks about that day. The company is slowly recovering, but there have been financial investigators in and out on a near daily basis ever since. Yesterday had brought him a new investigator in the form of the most annoying man he has ever met.

It is as he is doing up the cuffs on his shirt that Arthur first notices the dark mark on his wrist. At first, he foolishly thinks he somehow got ink on it, but then a drop of moisture from his hair falls onto his shirt and he remembers that he just had a shower that would surely have washed off any such stain. Slowly, he peels back the cuff to reveal the full extent of the deep purple wrapping around in two interlocked circles.

It looks like a soulmark.

It looks exactly like a soulmark. And a reciprocal one at that.

Except...

Arthur stares, uncomprehending, at the bands that now circle his previously unblemished wrist. This cannot be happening. It cannot. He can’t have a soulmate. Because, if he had somehow acquired a soulmate for the first time in his life at 30 years of age, he would know who they were.

Several minutes later, a rather dazed Arthur stumbles into his office. His shirt covers his wrists as efficiently as ever. He doesn’t like it when people base their opinion of people on whether or not they have a soulmark, and if it is reciprocal. That’s what he tells himself at least. It is definitely not because he’s jealous – not even a little bit.

From the sofa in the corner come loud snores. Arthur throws his damp towel at his sleeping PA who wakes with a start and grumbles incoherently at him.

“Good morning to you too Gwaine,” Arthur says, his voice just a touch sharper than it usually would be. “I take it this means you’ve not drunk my coffee?”

“I’d never drink your coffee,” Gwaine lies as he rolls up the wet towel to use as a pillow.

“Isn’t that a bit… wet?” Arthur says as he sits down at his desk and takes a sip of the lukewarm coffee that greets him there.

Gwaine prods the bundle and scrunches his face up in disgust. “You threw a wet towel at me?”

Arthur sighs and pours the revolting ‘coffee’ into the plant pot beside his desk. The plant is bizarrely thriving on a tepid caffeine diet. “Would you prefer I didn’t shower after my workout?”

“I’d prefer you didn’t bring me your wet towel,” Gwaine says as he holds up the offending item between his thumb and forefinger. “What am I supposed to do with this?”

Arthur tries to ignore Gwaine’s dramatics as he gets his computer started. “Send it to be laundered?”

“Don’t we have people to do that? Couldn’t you have left it in the shower for them?” Gwaine says as he slouches across the room and drops the towel in the bin.

“Uther and I used to have people for that. We had to let them go. So I figure it’s your problem now,” Arthur says.

A knock at the door interrupts their bickering.

“Good morning,” a man’s voice calls.

Arthur looks up to see the really annoying investigator from the day before. He’s tall in a way most people wouldn’t notice unless they stood right next to him, and the dark curls of his hair shine in the morning light. With his full lips and sharp cheekbones Arthur finds himself wondering how someone can look like this in real life. He looks like a fantasy character, something from the knights and magicians books he used to read in secret, brought to life. How can someone so perfect looking be so very irritating?

All these thoughts rush through his already overwhelmed mind and, as Merlin’s face creases into an expression of confusion, Arthur suddenly realises he’s been staring too long. He rushes to break the silence.

He means to say ‘good morning’. He means to be polite. He really does.

Instead, when Arthur finally opens his mouth to speak, what comes out is, “Oh. It’s you again.”

From the sofa a noise somewhere between a derisive snort and a sigh emanates from Gwaine.

“Er, yes? It’s me again,” Merlin says with a half smile and he ducks his head, almost looking shy. Then the frown returns. “Is that a towel in your paper bin?”

Arthur groans and lets his head fall to the desk. He has had enough of Tuesday already.

Merlin looks up at the imposing glass facade of Camelot that reflects the pale blue sky above and the dark shimmering waters of the river below. This is exactly the kind of company he had feared investigating when his uncle had got him a job. No one ever takes him seriously in these places – if they even notice him at all. Something he hates, but Uncle Gaius is insistent is an asset in this line of work. Still, a job is a job. And if he saves enough up he will be able to pay off the debts his mother has accumulated over the years she spent raising him alone.

He takes a deep breath, crosses the bridge, and walks through the automated doors – and straight into a tall blond and his coffee.

“Uhhhharrrk!” The man eloquently exclaims as the coffee hits his solid chest.

“OH! Shit! Sorry!” Merlin fumbles in his pockets and, failing to find anything, pulls off his scarf instead and begins ineffectually dabbing at the growing stain on the man’s suit. He’s momentarily distracted by the well defined muscles he can feel beneath, but comes back to his senses as the man begins trying to swat him away with the hand not holding the now empty mug.

“What the hell are you doing?” The man demands. “And what are you doing here?”

As the scene has been unfolding another man with curly hair and a beard has been making his way over to them from a back room somewhere behind the reception desk.

“Are you alright Sir?” The second man (Leon, Security, his name tag reads) asks the dripping man in the suit.

“Yes,” coffee man says, “thankfully Gwaine’s coffee was as cold as ever.”

Leon nods, face serious but for the slightest ghost of a smile on his lips. He turns to face Merlin. “I’m sorry, but I’m going to have to ask you to leave. No unauthorised personnel are permitted in the building.”

“I have a meeting?” Merlin says, not meaning for it to sound like a question. He clears his throat and tries again. “An appointment. I’m with G&B financial services.”

Coffee man groans. “Ughhh! Great! More bloody investigators. I thought your lot were finished last month?”

Merlin bristles at the tone the man takes and the dismissive way he turns from Merlin, as if he were nothing and nobody. “The initial investigation finished last month, yes, but given the scale of financial mismanagement and embezzlement from senior figures in Camelot a secondary investigation into the assets of all board members, current and previous, has been ordered.”

“And you think you’re the man for the job?” Coffee man asks sceptically as he looks Merlin up and down.

“I know I’m the man for the job,” Merlin snaps back.

Coffee man wrinkles his nose. “You’re – what – nineteen? twenty? And you can’t even walk in a door without covering someone in coffee?”

“I’m older than I look,” Merlin says, doing his best not to sound petulant, “and who stands in front of the main door to a busy office block holding a full cup?”

“The doors are keycard access only at this hour,” coffee man says waving a hand towards where Merlin can now see what he assumes must be a card reader, “so I wasn’t exactly expecting anyone to be going the other way.”

Merlin tries to think back to Gaius’ email from the day before. He was sure he hadn’t mentioned a keycard and he had definitely said he was to be here by 7am. It had been such a stupidly early time that Merlin had called Gaius to check it wasn’t a typo.

“OK, so I didn’t know that, and I was told to be here this early. Plus that doesn’t answer why you were going out the front door with a drink.”

Coffee man frowns in confusion. “What?”

“Most people go in with their morning coffee. Not out,” Merlin says slowly, enunciating each word.

“That’s- that’s none of your business,” coffee man splutters indignantly. “What are you – the caffeine inspector?”

Leon looks between the pair and shuffles from foot to foot uneasily. “Do you still need me?” He doesn’t wait for an answer before adding, “no, OK, you’re all good. I’ll just be…” Leon gestures vaguely to the security office, then flees with one last look over his shoulder as he scans his card and enters the security office. Was he laughing?

Merlin takes a steadying breath and mentally tries to start the encounter afresh. “I am here to see Arthur Pendragon,” he says with as much gravity as he can muster while holding a coffee soaked scarf. Merlin quickly shoves it into his bag and pulls out the official letter Gaius had sent him. “Once you’ve finished… whatever it was you were doing, I’d like you to take me to him. I trust he will be equally displeased as me at the way you’ve treated me since my arrival.”

A smile finally graces coffee man’s lips, but it looks more predatory than conciliatory or friendly. “Oh, I can certainly take you to him, but I promise you he won’t find the slightest problem with the way I’ve acted.”

Merlin feels a sense of creeping dread set in. “You’re Arthur Pendragon, aren’t you?”

Arthur Pendragon gives him an even darker smile and Merlin tries to ignore the twinge of attraction he feels at it. “And you are nothing but an administrator with a bit of paper who just ruined my morning.”

Merlin’s day goes from bad, to worse. First he’s subjected to an agonisingly long trip in the elevator to the top floor where they stand uncomfortably close in the small space, saying nothing, and breathing in coffee fumes. Then, as they sit in Arthur’s office and Merlin outlines the exact scope of the investigation, Arthur’s PA, Gwaine, enters with a fresh shirt. Arthur, for some inexplicable reason, decides to take his stained shirt off right in front of them both and mops his toned muscular chest with a wet cloth.

Where did the cloth come from? How does Arthur Pendragon get so muscular? Why does he think it is appropriate to be topless in front of a near total stranger that is investigating his finances? Would that chest feel even better without a shirt? Does Arthur have any clue about the effect he’s having on Merlin? Is he doing it deliberately?

…
…?

What was Merlin talking about?

Gwaine rolls his eyes and hands Arthur the fresh shirt. “Stop putting on a show Princess.”

Did Arthur Pendragon’s PA just call him Princess?!

Merlin overcompensates for the long pause in the most dramatic way possible. “Mr Pendragon, you do understand that should I find financial irregularities in your, or your board’s accounts then you will face criminal proceedings? If I find anything I will personally take you down.”

Arthur grins at him. He grins. “You think you could take me?”

Fuck. Is that a deliberate double entendre? Is he flirting? Or is he really clueless? Surely no one could be that clueless.

“Of course I could,” Merlin says.

“I think I’d need to teach you first,” Arthur cuts back.

What a fucking arsehole. Why is he so pretty?

Merlin proceeds to spend the rest of the day purposefully making Arthur Pendragon’s life hell. When he gets home and finds the new romantic soulmark, a reciprocal one for the first time in years, Merlin actually screams out loud.

On day two at Camelot Merlin expects to have a long and difficult talk with Arthur about their new soulmate status. The whole thing is utterly ridiculous. Yes, there was attraction on Merlin’s part, and flirting on Arthur’s, but there was also an awful lot of insulting each other and they’d only met a day ago. They couldn’t have formed that strong of a bond in that time. Except of course their wrists tell a different story. It is a ludicrous situation. Surely Arthur feels the same way.

Except Merlin walks in to find Arthur flirting with his PA, Arthur’s hair still wet, and Gwaine lounging on the sofa in what looks like yesterday’s rumpled clothes. Then, when he sees Merlin, Arthur throws him a look so full of disgust that Merlin’s whole world tilts on its axis.

Improbable becomes impossible in his head. Arthur Pendragon cannot be his soulmate. No. No way. He must have formed an attachment with one of his friends. One of his two friends that he has known and loved for many years and with both of whom he already has a platonic soulbond marking his wrist…

OK. Maybe not.

But surely it is more likely that he’s fallen in love with the pretty man at his local bakery (Lancelot, his brain supplies after a long moment) than with this stuck up, self-important, idiot. It had just taken meeting someone like him to appreciate how he felt. And co-incidence that Lancelot had realised his feelings at the exact same time even though they hadn’t seen each other in a week.

Arthur’s face contorts through a bizarre series of expressions, and then he finally says, “Oh. It’s you again.”

Merlin decides then and there to go to the bakery on his lunch break and see if Lancelot wants to go out sometime.

Gwaine, the world’s least likely PA, snorts. Although, based on what he saw when he walked in, the reason Gwaine got the job is becoming far clearer than it had been the day before. Oh gods. Had they even been home? Or did they just spend the night here? Gwaine looks like he belongs in a commercial, he’s that good looking. No wonder someone like Arthur would want to spend the night having sex in his office with him. Is that why he has wet cloths to hand?

“Er, yes? It’s me again,” Merlin says weakly with an awkward attempt at a smile, and he ducks his head, embarrassed. It takes him a moment to process what he’s seeing as he stares at the recycling beside him. “Is that a towel in your paper bin?”

“Gwaine is taking it to be laundered,” Arthur says, without the slightest hint in his voice that this is not normal.

“Hey!” Gwaine protests. “If you get it dirty then I think it’s your job to clean it.”

Merlin’s face is burning. Why is the towel dirty? If he called Gaius and asked to quit right here and now, would he let him?

“Oh,” he squeaks, “OK, I… right. Sure.”

“Let me guess,” Arthur drawls, “laundry and recycling are also part of your extremely important audit now too?”

“No?” Merlin says. “I mean. Not unless you’re misappropriating company funds for personal… things,” he adds, trying not to let his mind seize up completely as Gwaine sits up and stretches revealing just how toned he also is. Does everyone in the company spend all their time in the gym rather than doing their actual jobs? It makes for a very good view, but surely can’t be good for productivity.

A thought strikes him then. What if Gwaine is his mystery new soulmate? Or handsome Leon of the security team? Or… what was his name? The really tall guy from the IT team… Percival! That was it. He met, and admired, all of them yesterday too.

But no, it had to be Lancelot. He really had not spent enough time with anyone here to form a soulbond.

Arthur is saying something, and Merlin looks up to meet those beautiful blue eyes in that insufferably smug face but he cannot hear through the rushing in his ears.

“I’ve got to go- to go set up the, er, the thing in the- the other place,” he mumbles, and turns, tripping over his own feet in his haste to leave the office.

Ten minutes later, Merlin is hiding in a server cupboard and holding a crisis meeting via video call with his two best friends.

“Gwen,” he whines as Gwen tries and fails to hide her smile, “this is serious!”

Merlin holds up his wrist with its brand new sixth soulmark to emphasise his point.

“I’m sorry Merlin,” she says, “but it is a bit funny. Only you could gain a soulmate overnight and have no idea who it is.”

“I do have an idea who it isn’t,” Merlin says darkly.

Elyan laughs quietly at that. “Day two with THE Arthur Pendragon going just as well as the first then?”

“I have never met a more… more… impossible person in my life!”

Somehow, despite all being in separate locations, Gwen and Elyan share a look. Merlin knows and fears that look. Individually, the Smith siblings are forces to be reckoned with, but as a pair they are unstoppable. Merlin braces for whatever opinion they’re about to share as he knows from their expressions that he’s bound to hate it.

“Merlin,” Gwen begins gently, “don’t you think it’s possible that-”

“you’ve fallen truly madly deeply in love with Arthur Pendragon” Elyan finishes in a sing-song tone.

“No. No way,” Merlin says firmly and without a moment’s hesitation.

“Well, who else could it be then?” Gwen asks, softer now.

“I don’t know,” Merlin says. “Probably not anyone else here. There are some seriously beautiful people working here, but I doubt they even really noticed me. I thought about Lancelot from Dulac Coffee?” Merlin is going to elaborate on that theory until he notices Gwen’s face twist with an expression he can’t decipher.

“Oh,” Gwen says, twisting a strand of her hair in her telltale nervous way, “that’s, um, nice? Have you spoken to him about how you feel for him?”

Merlin looks between the faces of his platonic soulmate besties and tries to work out what he’s missing.

“No?” He says. “I was going to ask him out next time I saw him though.”

Elyan snorts with barely contained laughter. “You might not want to do that mate.”

“Why?” Merlin asks, frowning at his phone screen.

“Because the next time you’re likely to see him is at Gwen’s housewarming this weekend,” Elyan says with a wicked smile.

“Oh?” Merlin says, increasingly confused. “Is he coming too? How do you know him?”

There is a long silence as Merlin’s friends look at him with matching expressions of exasperation.

“OH!” Merlin says, far too loudly for the small cupboard he’s sitting in, as he suddenly realises what he’s being told. “Lancelot is- he’s the mystery guy you’ve been seeing?!”

Gwen smiles that radiant smile that Merlin loves so much and opens her mouth to say something, but Merlin doesn’t find out what, because at that very moment the door to the cupboard is wrenched open to reveal a very peeved looking Arthur. Merlin fumbles the end call button and throws his phone in his pocket.

“What the hell are you doing sitting in here of all places?!” Arthur demands.

“I was just, er, checking for data breaches,” Merlin lies.

“Data breaches?”

“Yes.”

“In here?”

“Mhmm.”

“Sitting on the floor?”

“Yep. Yeah. Best place to… assess the situation,” Merlin continues to lie.

His heart is racing, and he’s going to blame that on having to think quickly to make up a believable lie. But he’s not so blind as to fail to realise that having Arthur towering over him like this is also partly to blame. To hide his blush, he scrambles to one side and presses his ear to the nearest server tower.

“That… all sounds good,” he says with a familiar false cheeriness that Gwen once dubbed ‘strange and terrifying’.

Arthur’s face twists in utter bafflement. “You’re claiming you can hear if there’s a data breach?!”

Merlin’s eyes are wide, innocent, “Of course! There’s this specific buzz that you get when someone has hacked a system. Like a bee. But you’ve got to listen really closely.”

Arthur looks like he’s considering whether to call Merlin on his bullshit, but then he rolls his eyes, sighs, and says, “the sooner you come out of that closet and get on with your real job the sooner I can be rid of your nonsense. So, come on – out.”

“Oh I came out of the closet a loooong time ago,” Merlin can’t resist saying as he gets up, stretches, and strolls past a now frozen Arthur.

“That’s not what- that’s not-” Arthur splutters, a hint of a blush on his cheeks. “You know what I meant.”

Merlin obviously knows. But, hey, a man’s got to do something to get through the working day. And if teasing Arthur Pendragon is what he’s got available in the way of entertainment then he’s damn well going to make the most of it.

They go on like that for two weeks.

Merlin, by the end of the first, is at his wits end. Arthur is by turns the most entitled, spoiled, stuck-up insufferable prat Merlin has ever had the misfortune to encounter, and the softest, kindest, hottest man he has ever met.

He can’t even begin to reconcile these two very disparate sides of Arthur Pendragon.

One minute Arthur is blustering about the state of his suit, berating his PA, and throwing things at Merlin for walking into his office unannounced. The next he’s sitting and talking quietly with one of the cleaners, offering her his handkerchief, and giving her paid time off for a family emergency.

He blows hot and cold with Merlin too. He never knows if he’s going to get the Arthur that is endlessly complaining about his presence, or the one that sits beside him as he works and awkwardly, almost shyly, asks about Merlin’s family. He can be funny just as easily as he can be casually cruel. He will quietly tell Merlin some devastating thing that happened to him as a child one day, and the next will yell at him to get out for questioning him about an investment portfolio.

Merlin feels like he’s walking across a beautiful beach full of quicksand traps and he has no idea if the view on the horizon is worth the danger under foot.

Two things become clear in the second week.

Firstly, Merlin comes to see that Arthur is a man that has been shaped by a simultaneously privileged and warped upbringing, but he is fighting to become a good person in spite – or perhaps because – of that fact.

Secondly, Merlin is now completely, and hopelessly, certain that Arthur Pendragon is his new soulmate.

It is this second point that really is going to drive Merlin crazy. Because Arthur is either oblivious to their bond – an unlikely idea given that the soulmark shows their bond as reciprocal so he must have a matching mark – or wilfully ignoring it.

Merlin cannot begin to imagine knowing he was in love with someone to the point of having a soulbond with them and hiding that fact from absolutely everyone, including the object of his affections. Though maybe he is a bit of a hypocrite, because he hasn’t said anything to Arthur either. Just a bit of a hypocrite though. He has been showing his wrists off every day since he realised (or, more truthfully, accepted) that Arthur was his soulmate.

And Arthur hasn’t said a word.

The second weekend after the soulmark appears Arthur makes a big mistake.

Normally, Arthur is careful to an obsessive degree not to let anyone see his wrists. Normally, Arthur would know exactly how to deflect attention in the unlikely event of anyone seeing all the bare skin that has marked him out as different for as long as he can recall. But that day he is tired, and stressed, and very confused and so it is only natural that he slips up.

If only it could have been in front of anyone but Morgana.

“I’d say I’m sorry,” Morgana says, looking at the red wine soaking into Arthur’s shirt, “but I’m not. That is an ugly shirt.”

Arthur makes a futile effort to soak up the stain, but there is no way it won’t be noticed at the charity event they are set to leave for in less than twenty minutes.

“Morgana,” he sighs, “I don’t suppose your latest ex left any shirts here?

“He did,” she replies with a deadly smile, “but he was a totally different size to you.” Arthur is about to despair until Morgana continues. “Luckily for you the one before that is probably about right. You’ll owe me a favour for borrowing it though.”

“I’ll owe you a favour,” Arthur asks, incredulous, “for borrowing a shirt that your ex-ex-boyfriend left here – presumably because he was too terrified to try to get his belongings back after you broke up – a shirt I only need because you spilled red wine down the one I was wearing?”

Morgana waves a haughty hand to dismiss his argument and heads for her bedroom. Arthur follows behind her wondering, not for the first time why he’d agreed to attend this event with his secret sister.

Things have been weird between them since Arthur found Morgana’s birth certificate while going through some papers after Uther left. They had gone from thinking they were distant cousins, to half-siblings overnight. Arthur had been upset, naturally, that Uther had kept this from them, and that he had cheated on his mother. But he’d been raised with Morgana since they were young children, so to him they had always felt like brother and sister anyway. For Morgana it had been more complicated though. Arthur could see that. But it had hurt when she grew distant with him as though any of it were his fault.

So maybe all that was why he’d said yes. He wants them to go back to the easy bickering and unspoken loyalty he’s always depended upon. Still, he knows better than to ever attend an event with Morgana.

He startles out of his thoughts as Morgana pokes him in the ribs.

“Hey!” He complains, rubbing his side.

“I said, take your pick,” Morgana says, gesturing at a wardrobe half full of men’s shirts.

Arthur stares at the row of hangers with a mixture of wonder and horror.

“Why have you got so many shirts?” He asks, after a long moment. “Have you got a current boyfriend I don’t know about? Has he moved in and brought only his shirts? Or are you keeping mementos of every ex you’ve ever had so you can curse them if they ever cross you again?”

Morgana shoves him lightly. “Don’t be rude.” She rifles though the rail and pulls out a deep burgundy one. “I think this one would probably be the best with your suit.”

“It’ll definitely hide any more red wine you decide to throw at me,” Arthur says.

But he takes the shirt and holds it up, internally acknowledging that it really would look good, and probably fit. Without a second thought, Arthur unbuttons his stained shirt, pulls it off, and shrugs into the clean one. It is only when he looks up after finishing the front buttons that he realises that Morgana is frozen to the spot, her eyes fixed intently on his wrist. Why would she be…

Oh fuck.

“Morgana-”

“Since when do you have a soulmark?” She demands, voice sharp.

“It’s not-” He tries to lie, but Morgana grabs his hand and shoves the unfastened cuff back to reveal the interlocking purple rings.

“Yes. It is. It is a soulmark. Romantic. Reciprocal. Something I know you didn’t have when our sperm donor legged it with the troll because I saw you moping about in an old t-shirt.”

Arthur swallows around the lump in his throat at the mention of Uther. “I- it’s new.”

“Who is she?” She asks.

“I don’t know,” he says.

“You- you don’t-” Morgana begins, then breaks off, dropping his hand and giving an exasperated sigh. “How can you not know?”

“I haven’t really dated since, well, you know. And he tended to pick out all my dates before that. I just… can’t think of any women I want to be friends with, let alone anything else.”

“But surely there must be someone you know you like at least?”

Arthur, once again runs a mental inventory of all the women he knows and comes up blank. He’s been examining how he feels about every single woman he works with or knows socially or even just sees in passing for two weeks. Many of them are nice, or attractive or both, but he can’t imagine asking any of them out. He simply shrugs in reply to Morgana’s question.

“Arthur, I know that you are dense, but you can’t be that lacking in self-awareness,” Morgana says in her typical direct way. “I’ve seen the way you look at Gwaine and Leon when they’re together. I wasn’t just asking about the women in your life.”

That stops Arthur in his tracks.

His brain bluescreens.

Morgana closes her eyes and takes a deep breath. “Dear goddess. You really are that dense. OK, well, we need to head out now, so save your sexuality epiphany for when you get home.”

And with that she fastens his cufflinks and drags him out of the apartment.

The thing about Arthur Pendragon is that he isn’t really as dense as his sister would like to believe. He knows that it isn’t heteronormative to look at some men the way he does. He knows that there’s more to the way he has felt about some of his male friends. He knows that.

But the other thing about Arthur Pendragon, son of the famously ultra-conservative Uther Pendragon, is that he has never had the choice to be anything but straight.

He couldn’t even be with the women that he wanted, so why even look at anyone unless his father had chosen them, let alone risk his heart and his only apparent family on letting his gaze even linger on a man.

So he has spent years – a lifetime – not looking, not feeling, denying so deep that it became easy to be unnaturally straight in spite of his heart.

Somehow, despite all the change he had brought about for the company and those around him since Uther left, it had not occurred to him that he could he could change his own life until Morgana said it to him.

It should be liberating. He should be happy.

Arthur is terrified.

It’s like he’s lived his whole life in a glass box and now someone has come along and shattered it and told him to run free. And he can see all the things he’s never allowed himself to look at because he knew he’d never be able to touch them. But he’s surrounded by all the broken glass, and he’s simultaneously desperate to go back to the ease of the only life he’s ever known and scared of going out and living and then having to go back in a box with the knowledge of how it had all felt.

Uther could come back. Or ask for some way to be a part of Arthur’s life again. He’s the only family he knew he had until recently. He does love him in a complicated and painful way. And he is sure Uther loves him too, even if only conditionally. He’s still the only father Arthur will ever have. If he takes that step, if he takes the things he’s been denied until now, will he ever be able to get his father back?

How can he move forward if he’s looking back?

How can he forsake the chance to make the familial soulbond that has been so conspicuously absent since his childhood?

What would it mean to reach out and grasp the hand of whoever it is his heart has betrayed him to fall in love with – the hand of someone that truly loves him too?

If he looks, if he takes that step out, if he sees who it is that he has this bond with, would he be able to deny his heart what it wants in spite of him?

Arthur wishes, more than anything, that it didn’t have to be a choice.

Monday rolls around once more, and Arthur is dreading going in to work. He’s loved being in charge and making the company better, but this morning he’s exhausted both mentally and physically. He’s spent all weekend working himself up into a frenzy letting himself consider all his male friends to try and work out who he could have fallen for, all to no avail. He’s lost sleep imagining how it would feel if he loved Gwaine, or Leon, or even hot-IT-guy Percival. He’s realised he probably loves them all – but not in a romantic way.

On top of all that, today is the day that Merlin delivers his report about the board of Camelot. Arthur is fairly confident he’s rooted out and replaced all the people that had followed Uther’s example, but he can’t be one hundred percent certain as he’d had to keep on a few people with tenure for some stability through all the changes, and he hadn’t exactly known his father had been embezzling funds either.

Arthur tries to imagine day to day life in Camelot without all of Merlin’s idiosyncrasies and comes up blank. Maybe it’s just the timing – Merlin arriving around the time his soulmark did and throwing his life into chaos on more than one front – but it feels like Merlin has been there forever. He has to admit to himself, privately, that he quite enjoys Merlin’s easy and irreverent manner. It’s probably the same reason he hired Gwaine. Maybe, in another life, they could have been friends.

He’s going to miss Merlin.

The thought hits him at the exact same moment he loses his footing on his way to the office and stumbles inelegantly.

On another, kinder day fate would have simply had someone around to witness his clumsiness. This, however, is not a kind day. This is a dark and rainy morning at an hour before most people are even out of bed and the sun is yet to rise. It is a day when he takes a taxi rather than drives because his car is in for a service. So it is also a day where he enters the office through the imposing front entrance rather than through the car park in the basement. Which all adds up to him stumbling just as he comes up to the bridge over the river, slipping on the wet grass, and plunging down the steep drop into the river.

He thinks he hears a shout as he enters the river, but maybe it is just his own cry of panic. The water is shockingly cold and he can’t tell down from up. He should be panicking as he flails uselessly, tries to hold his breath, and laments how Uther had never let him take swimming lessons. Instead his mind is thinking about how he’s often said there ought to be railings or a fence or something in front of that steep bank, and how the laptop in his bag is going to be a complete write off, and coming to the startling realisation that he’s going to miss Merlin so much because he’s fallen in love with him.

Huh. So that’s who his soulmate is.

He can’t swim. His lungs are burning with the need to draw breath.

His heart is full, so full, because he loves, and is loved.

He’s going to miss them all.

The water swirls fiercely around him, and then there is a strong arm around his chest. Another throws off his bag, then joins the first in a tight grip, pulling him in close to someone’s chest. And then they’re rising, breaking the surface, gasping the fresh, cold air. Powerful legs kick out until they reach the edge of the river. Other hands are reaching, pulling, dragging him and his saviour up the bank.

He’s lying on the pavement beside another person – Merlin, he realises with a jolt – and they’re both soaked to the skin, chests heaving, and staring into one another’s eyes.

Gwaine is there too, he thinks distantly, and Leon, and some of the cleaning staff. They talk to him kindly, urgently, sit him up, press him tight in towels. But he can’t seem to answer their questions. He’s too lost in Merlin, Merlin, Merlin.

“You saved my life,” Arthur says. And it’s such a massive understatement, but he can’t think what else to say.

“I’m sure you’d have remembered to swim soon enough. I just got kind of worried when you didn’t surface right after going in,” Merlin says with a half shrug.

“I can’t swim.”

Merlin blinks, runs a nervous hand through his hair, clearly caught off guard. “Oh, right. Glad I jumped in after you then.”

An ambulance arrives, and normally he’d protest that he’s fine. He was only under a short while. He managed to hold his breath, so apart from that first shocked half inhale he’d only taken in a little water. But Merlin is going with the paramedics so he follows along meekly.

They’re both bundled into the back of the nice warm ambulance and one of the paramedics, a cheerful lady with frizzy blonde hair, takes the soaked towels and tells him to take off his shirt. He doesn’t really pay attention to why exactly that is necessary as he’s utterly focussed on Merlin’s arms.

Merlin has never hidden his wrists, but Arthur has never really taken the time to look before. Plus a work suit can only ever reveal so much even with the current trend for two thirds length sleeves. Arthur had caught a glimpse of Merlin’s multiple marks one day and familiar envy had stirred, so he has made sure to never look again. Until now.

There is only one red familial mark, reciprocal, so Merlin either only has one parent, or only has one who cares and who he cares for. A broken romantic mark is next on his left wrist, such a dark purple as to almost be black, only one ring – unrequited. Another broken mark of the same shade comes next, requited this time. Arthur’s heart aches at the thought of Merlin having two of his soulmates die so young.

On Merlin’s right wrist there are two bright ochre reciprocal platonic soulmarks, so close together they almost form a chain of four rings. And below them, a bright purple mark the twin on his own. Soulmarks don’t match, not perfectly, but somehow Arthur just knows this is the mark that ties them together. It’s been there for him to see for days now. He’d just needed to look.

Merlin is staring at Arthur’s wrists in turn. When he looks down at his own bare skin, Arthur gets the shock of his life. The paramedic wraps a foil blanket around him at that exact moment, but Arthur throws it right back off.

“What the-”

His wrists are covered in reciprocal marks. There’s one red – Morgana he thinks as he touches it gently – several ochre ones, and the one bright purple one he’d been expecting.

“Arthur?” Merlin asks, concern evident in his voice.

“Where did they all come from?” He says, bewildered by all the love he’s suddenly surrounded by.

The paramedic firmly, but gently, puts the blanket back on, and Arthur lets her this time.

“Where did what come from? Did you get a new mark?” Merlin says.

“I only had one,” he says, voice weak. “Where did all of these other ones come from?”

“Oh, right,” Merlin says, voice faltering, “that must have been a shock.”

“It happens sometimes,” says the second paramedic. “Near death experience. Makes you realise what you’ve got to live for.”

Arthur looks at Merlin, but he’s inspecting his wet shoes now, a frown creasing his brow, refusing to look at Arthur.

There’s something utterly wrong about it. Arthur feels as though he’s right back in the river.

Merlin was so sure. He had been so sure.

But then in the ambulance…

As he pulls on the clothes Arthur has lent him, he feels the sharp burn of unshed tears.

Arthur had said all his marks were new except for one. And that one must have been the red familial one he’d seen. So Arthur somehow wasn’t his soulmate.

The paramedics had signed them both off just a short time later – no need to go and sit in A&E for hours. Merlin had wanted to run – to get as far away from Arthur as possible – but Gwaine and Leon had urged them both back inside. Gwaine got them to the gym showers to wash off the river water and warm up some more, and brought them both clean dry clothes. Arthur had insisted Merlin went first. So now Merlin sits in Arthur’s office wondering how he’s supposed to escape when his shoes are gone.

Arthur enters the room and sits down next to him. Merlin cannot bring himself to look up. Arthur shoves his shoulder lightly, playfully almost. It’s such an incongruous act amidst his doom spiralling that Merlin instinctively looks up.

“What was that for?”

Arthur looks caught out by the question. “I… don’t know? I just thought… You looked so sad for a moment there.”

“And you thought shoving me would help? You know that isn’t going to help your position in my report.” Merlin says. It feels safe to slip back into their easy bickering. Like hiding.

“I’d kind of hoped that throwing myself in a river would have delayed that,” Arthur says with a lopsided grin.

“I knew you did that on purpose,” Merlin says. He means it as a joke but it falls flat. He will never forget the look of sheer terror he’d seen on Arthur’s face when he’d slipped and fallen.

Arthur shoots him one of those sly smiles that Merlin has come to crave, but then it slips, and his expression becomes serious.

“Were you really just going to leave without talking to me about it?” Arthur asks. Merlin doesn’t think he’s ever heard him so vulnerable.

“About what?”

“Our soulbond,” Arthur says quietly.

The floor drops out from beneath Merlin’s feet for the second time that day. “Our what?”

“Our- our soulbond?” Arthur says again, uncertainly.

Merlin recalls the new marks on Arthur’s wrists and puts two and two together to make five.

“Arthur,” he says as kindly as he can with a broken heart, “my platonic soulmarks are for my friends Gwen and Elyan, and I’ve had the romantic one for a couple of weeks already.”

“Yes, since the Tuesday after we met,” Arthur says.

It takes a moment, but Merlin eventually manages to get enough of his thoughts together to subtract the one. Hope surges, bright and golden in his chest.

“The romantic mark was your first?”

“You assumed it was the red?” Arthur says, with dawning realisation.

“Well… yes? I’d never seen your wrists before. I thought it must be you not long after my mark appeared. But then you didn’t say anything, and then in the ambulance you said-”

“That they were all new except one or something like that?” Arthur finishes for him.

“Yeah.”

“I didn’t know Morgana was my sister until recently,” Arthur says, “and apparently I didn’t really accept or let myself feel how much she and all my friends cared for me, and me for them, until today. So their marks all appeared only after I almost drowned. But apparently my heart decided it didn’t care what my head was telling me the day we met. Because our mark appeared right away. You are the most ridiculous, and annoying, and sweet, and kind man I’ve ever met. And I love you. Please don’t leave after you’ve given your report. Please don’t leave.”

Merlin could hear the unspoken ‘ever’ in the way Arthur was looking at him.

“I haven’t got any shoes,” he says.

Arthur’s face flips through a series of feelings that Merlin can’t decipher. “What?”

“I can’t exactly get the bus home in your suit and no shoes. I guess I’ll have to stay.”

Arthur closes his eyes and breathes in deeply. “You are truly the strangest person I’ve ever had the pleasure and misfortune to fall in love with.”

“I love you too,” Merlin says with a soft smile.

Arthur holds up his wrist, sleeves rolled back to show all his marks. “I know.”

Merlin closes the distance and presses his lips to Arthur’s for a brief, sweet kiss.

“Mr Pendragon,” he says, “you will be pleased to hear that all of the board of Camelot has passed the audit. However, I do believe I ought to make a more detailed investigation of you. Just to be sure.”

“And how long will this additional investigation take?” Arthur says as Merlin presses another kiss to his neck.

“Oh, a lifetime probably,” Merlin says, and is gratified to hear Arthur’s intake of breath at his confidence.

“It’ll be a hardship, but I guess I’ve got no choice but to submit,” Arthur says, voice teasing, but his eyes are bright with happy tears. Merlin has never seen him look so alive.

Merlin own smile is wide and untamed as he kisses Arthur again, and again, and again.