The Arduous Taming of A Difficult Prat - Saladscream (2024)

Five days into his glorious (and gruelling) tenure as Prince Arthur’s manservant, something was already becoming clear to Merlin. In spite of the abundance of observable evidence to the contrary, and despite Merlin’s own deep-seated diffidence where privileged pricks were concerned, he had to admit that he occasionally caught glimpses of something likeable about this particular privileged prick.

It wasn’t obvious, and in all honesty he initially thought it was only wishful thinking on his part, but the niggling intuition was there: under Arthur’s many confounding layers of prattishness, arrogance and arseholery, there seemed to be the promise of a rather tolerable chap worth Merlin’s time – a rather befuddling notion, given the rocky start to their acquaintance.

The hints were subtle but unmistakeable, in the way Arthur fondly scratched the stables' cats behind the ears when he thought no one was looking. In the way he’d casually grab Merlin by the elbow to prevent him from taking a tumble down a murderous flight of stairs. Or even in the uncomprehending but worried crease on his brow when it was brought to his attention that he’d wronged someone without meaning to.

Indeed, unlike his father, the prince seemed to be endowed with a conscience. King Uther, in subjecting his son to his harsh tutelage and stuffing his soft, blonde, pea-brained head with lofty ideals of the knights’ code, had unwittingly instilled not only notions of honour, justice and fairness, but also fostered a sense of accountability in Arthur, as well as that healthy ability to feel shame and remorse. For all his failings, Arthur was the sort of man who took responsibility for his actions, whether they were heroic, immature, or downright unsavoury, and all this seemed to indicate there was decency hiding under the layers of pretentious knobbery – and therefore room for improvement if not reformation.

The problem was… the layers. They were exquisitely thick and well-woven. And apparently Arthur gloried in them.

After several weeks of closer observation, though, Merlin refined this assessment. He realised that it wasn’t so much that Arthur enjoyed being a condescending git, it was that he seemed to need it, in the same way that some children needed to cling to a dirty old ragdoll wherever they went – for reassurance. For beneath those protective layers was an astonishingly anxious man, Merlin discovered. A man keen to do right by the people of Camelot and to make his father proud, which too often seemed to be mutually exclusive alternatives. A man increasingly gnawed by the crippling need to be worthy of the grand destiny that awaited him – a predicament that Merlin himself was becoming grudgingly familiar with. The prince would sometimes lean against the parapet, a quiet, thoughtful look about him as he simply watched life unfold down in the streets of the lower town on a market day. Far from being the co*cky master of all he surveyed, his lips would purse in grim contemplation of the future task that lay ahead of him. On those instances, Merlin felt a sort of fleeting kinship with the pensive prat.

The offhand putdowns and ludicrous chores were doled out gratuitously enough, but it sometimes seemed to be part of a long-winded campaign of pre-emptive insults and injuries to ensure that Merlin wouldn’t think too well of his lord and master (and so far, said tactic was rather successful). But even at the pinnacle of his prattish misbehaviour, Arthur remained oddly principled. All men, regardless of age or status, were fair game when it came to his bullish antics and snide ways, but women were utterly safe and even held at a remarkably polite distance, be they scullery maid or lady of the court, as though they were all members of a distinct, dangerous and unpredictable species to be treated with wary respect. Similarly, the weak and the sick were entitled to his awkward benevolence, though he would half blush, half deny any charitable act performed at his behest. And the number of fat cats, happy dogs and pudgy squirrels that trotted about the citadel was a testament to the prince’s partiality towards animals.

So all in all, Arthur was one of those men about whom it could be said that their heart was in the right place, although he did take great pains to hide it. Still, the core of decency made Merlin endure the thick layers of arrogance (and their thin crispy crust of arseholery) with more patience than he’d ever thought possible. There was indeed a promise of greatness about Arthur that Merlin was willing to believe in.

Even on the more trying days when the prince had been at his foulest and most insufferable, Merlin was able to find something to pin his hope onto. The pomp and ceremony of courtly life may have bored him to tears, but the prince was always alert when it mattered, when something could be learnt from the intricate diplomatic back-and-forth King Uther was engaging in with querulous monarchs, cranky lords and wily emissaries. More interestingly, several times Merlin thought he could detect twitches of expressions on the prince’s features – a frown of concern, a wince of embarrassment or a minute scowl of disapproval – betraying an amount of wholesome, independent thinking that his royal father might have found disquieting had he noticed it. If anything, it proved to Merlin that Arthur, while being an undeniable prat, was actually no fool. And that when something distracted the prince from his hideous need to be an overbearing knob, he was someone who might achieve great things and with whom Merlin might get along quite nicely some day.

Now it should not be inferred that any of these supposedly ‘happy’ discoveries made Merlin feel any better about his current circ*mstances. Quite the opposite, in fact. As the weeks went by, Merlin realised that Arthur’s obnoxiousness had its use. Prickly raillery and co*cky attitude, jarring as they were, actually did serve a salutary purpose, inasmuch as they helped keep some of Merlin’s pesky would-be stirrings in check.

Because contrary to what everyone in on the secret of his formidable Destiny was consistently telling him, Merlin was only human. Only human and susceptible to the charms of a young, stalwart build, a confident gaze and a carefree smile. And to be perfectly honest, it wasn’t just the uncontrolled bursts of his magical powers that had got him into trouble back in Ealdor – buggering the miller’s son (among others…) might have had something to do with it too.

And here he was now, catering to the needs and whims of a strapping young man, one of the finest knights in the Five Kingdoms and arguably one of the least ugly men he’d ever met. So Merlin found himself clinging to the layers of supercilious clotpolitude indeed, because otherwise his job consisted in being privy to an inordinate amount of noble heroism and athletic nudity, standing on the sidelines of the training grounds where every passing minute meant exposing his impressionable inclinations to Arthur’s sweaty, well-honed physique, superior fighting skills and exhausted sunny grins. And then drawing the man’s bath before scrubbing the unreachable bits of his broad back.

Yes, Prince Arthur was an insufferable, arrogant prat who clearly took impish pleasure in ordering Merlin to do an impossible amount of pointless chores for no discernible reason – but it was a most welcome turn-off when the mouth-watering perfection of the sculpted shoulders and callipygian rump could make Merlin forget his own name.

Therefore, Merlin was content with Arthur being an unpalatable knob – or at least content to bear it until the novelty of the man’s physical appeal wore off. If the Pendragons open-mindedness was anything to go by, it was best if Arthur never found out that his servant’s lower brain (the one with the death-wish) rather fancied the braies off him.

***

Arthur gazed quizzically at the singular crummy boot in his hand. The one he had found in his cupboard between his prized dark crimson crushed velvet doublet and a random assortment of tankards and cutlery. He was on the fence about how to feel about the new ghastly addition to his life and daily routine, also known as Merlin.

He had never had a manservant before. Obviously, all manners of underlings peopled his day-to-day existence, so being waited upon was nothing but normal and expected. There were squads of servants serving his meals and making his bed and washing his clothes. There were two squires taking care of his weapons, armours, equipment and as many stablehands tending to his horses. He didn’t even count all the random pages and aides running his small errands. But it had always been his implicit understanding that these people were in fact not his, but his father’s people.

A manservant of his own was a definite novelty. Something his father had probably meant as a mark of favour. Maybe even a reward for not being too much of a failure as a son. A sign that after spending years training the finest knights, fighting by their side and leading them victoriously into battle in the name of Camelot and King Uther, the prince had perhaps finally deserved to have his own lone servant to rule over.

Too bad the manservant in question was completely clueless about the basic duties inherent to his role or the immense honour that had been bestowed upon him. Just Arthur’s rotten luck really.

Because, not to put too fine a point on it, Merlin was a slovenly prat who didn’t have a respectful, orderly bone in his gangly body. Not only couldn’t the man tidy to save his life, but he actually had the gall to argue and backchat constantly and about pretty much everything. It was mind-boggling. As if he considered himself Arthur’s equal sometimes.

The only redeeming quality Arthur could see in the young man was his forthright fearlessness. Their very first encounters in the lower town had proven just how brashly outspoken Merlin could be. To be honest, and although he’d rather fall on his sword than have to admit it out loud, Arthur had been equally amused and impressed by the foolishly brave lad who had stood up to him regardless of his superior strength and status. He had found that quite admirable, if utterly stupid, at the time.

Even though Merlin had been delusional as to the outcome of the confrontation, he had been true and he had treated Arthur as an equal opponent. And while something in Arthur might have felt ever-so-slightly insulted by the familiarity displayed, in all honesty he had relished the frisson of challenge in the dark-haired man and thoroughly enjoyed his plucky attitude. He had felt a guilty spike of elation as Merlin had shaken off his jacket to fight more freely. There’d been something almost indecently thrilling to seeing the young man’s soft lips firm into a righteous, determined line. It had been no posturing and there had been no meanness or malice about him. Nothing but genuine outrage and wounded pride. Sadly, the scuffle itself had been rather inglorious, but the fact remained that for once, someone had been blithely unafraid of Arthur’s status and had been willing to push back, ready to draw princely blood if necessary. There was an honesty of intent there – one might be tempted to say a certain chivalry – that Arthur wasn’t given to experience very often, even among his fellow knights.

Merlin was indeed an attractive oddity. A green, opinionated, clumsy lad who at times seemed to see and understand things far better than one would expect.

However, now that he had to deal with Merlin’s big sharp candid mouth and dismal manners on a daily basis, Arthur wasn’t so sure about the admirableness of his manservant’s one valuable character trait. It had the possibility of being entertaining to a certain extent, but it bordered on grating most of the time.

When the man did him the honour of being in attendance, of course.

Arthur huffed an aggrieved sigh. What the hell was he supposed to do with this bloody disgusting boot, anyway? And more importantly, whose boot was it?!

“MER-LIN!”

Sometimes Arthur wondered if his father hadn’t found a new, underhanded way of testing his son’s fitness and ability to withstand hardships, by lumbering him with the worst servant in Camelot.

***

The problem with being a legendary warlock (the son of magic itself, it was even hastily scribbled in the margins of a prophecy on some crumbling parchment) was that Merlin had an instinctive gift for sorcery. A gift so powerful and so spontaneous that it had left Gaius not only gobsmacked but terribly alarmed upon first beholding it in involuntary action. And the problem with any innate talent was that, by essence, it wasn’t acquired from steady learning or patient exercise. So, to put it bluntly (and Gaius certainly had), in terms of magical knowledge, Merlin was a clever idiot who had no understanding and little control over his tremendous powers.

At the age of seven in Ealdor, the extraordinary feat of slowing down the course of time itself to a near standstill had been born from the child’s fear of breaking a pot and displeasing his mother. As a teenager, his mischievous turn of mind had allowed him to blindly develop his kinetic abilities by trial and error, mostly to ease his chores or cause mayhem, such as putting away crockery, twisting smoke into shapes, undoing belts, throwing cowpats and other such worthy pastimes. And then, oh then he’d become proficient at setting fire to things, which opened a whole new world of trouble for him.

Every magical trick Merlin had mastered before his arrival in Camelot had been the fruit of an immature prodigy’s idle and curious mind, but they were crude dog tricks compared to the awesome, intricate and skilful craft that was the genuine Art of Sorcery. Merlin had barely even heard of spells and had no idea how to go about casting one. The grimoire that Gaius had given him had been the most precious and most mysterious object he’d ever possessed, and during those very first nights in Camelot, Merlin had devoured it, marvelling at the infinite potential that lay within its pages.

But again, Merlin had always had an intuitive approach to magic. Learning it from a book, as one learns to read and write a new language, proved to be hard work for his untrained, undisciplined mind. There was an art and a way to casting a spell. There was more to it than just words to be mumbled in a serious voice. Each incantation, each enchantment, each potion had its own demanding set of requisites. Ingredients, amulets, hand gestures, frame of mind, breathing pattern, train of thoughts, heart rate, even the contents of one’s stomach… All could play a role in the practice of magic – and the uttered words were only the trigger, the final signal that set the power of magic free. At the ultimate stage of his development, a truly powerful magician didn’t even need the words anymore.

All these things, Merlin discovered for himself over months of frustrating work. To make matters worse, out of an abundance of caution, Gaius was careful not to give him too much guidance. It befell to Merlin to study the grimoire on his own in his bed until late, night after night. Deciphering rambling sentences of obscure and at times doubtful meaning, filled with unfamiliar words and foreign-sounding names. Trying to make sense of perplexing drawings and diagrams. His sharp, eager but ill-equipped mind butting against the harsh reality of his ignorance and the writing style of lazy, pompous and evasive sorcerers. Gaius did answer his questions, but it was slow work nonetheless, because he had so many of them, and there just weren’t enough hours in his day to do everything. Serving Arthur and assisting Gaius in his physician’s tasks (and occasionally saving the kingdom from raging mad warlocks and spiteful priestesses) was time-consuming on its own.

But Merlin was dedicated to improving his skills and getting a good grip on this sorcery thing. As weeks went by he would discover new spells, run into new techniques, stumble across opportune potions and useful enchantments, and he was eager to learn and avid for more. Magic finally had a use and purpose. He finally had a use and purpose. From being a constant liability, his powers suddenly became a life-saving, game-changing asset, and he was being given an incredible opportunity to not only channel them but also expand them.

One thing in particular that boggled his mind were warding spells. They were just about the most practical defensive pieces of magic ever. He found them a little tricky to master at first. A good, solid, long-lasting ward required concentration and method – two things that were not necessarily his forte. But his dedication to practice was unwavering and he would sometimes roam the citadel at night, placing innocuous wards on doors, cupboards and stairways, and then gauge their efficiency during daytime.

On one such night, he saw a mysterious figure wrapped in a dark blue cloak glide noiselessly at the end of a corridor. The cloak was one that he’d already seen carefully folded at the bottom of a chest in Arthur’s chambers. Once he got over the shock of the apparition, Merlin discreetly dogged the prince’s steps, terminally intrigued by his shifty behaviour. Arthur had a secret and it was nothing but a manservant’s elementary duty to uncover it. Through the maze of hallways and staircases, he followed the cloak, occasionally diving for shadows when its owner checked no one was on his tail. A hundred different explanations ran through Merlin’s fertile imagination, but most of them could be boiled down to two credible possibilities: a secret political mission or a mistress.

It turned out it was neither. Arthur entered the Royal Chapel where he remained for a few moments, then came out, looking awkward and guilty as he pulled the hood of his cloak to cover his head again before regaining his chambers. Merlin had stood perplexed at the rather anticlimactic turn of event.

“Who’s Jeanne of Bude?” Merlin asked Gaius the next day as the old man counted drops from a vial.

Arthur had deposited a flower (the prettiest from the bunch that had been placed in the prince’s quarters that morning) on her grave marker in the most obscure corner of the Chapel, and Merlin was itching to know who the lady could have been.

“Where did you hear that name?”

“Arthur mentioned it.”

Gaius paused, then gave Merlin the Eyebrow. “I very much doubt he did.”

Ah.

“Alright, he didn’t,” Merlin admitted. “Who was she?”

And since the Eyebrow wasn’t enough, Gaius gave him the Scowl. And when that proved useless too in the face of Merlin’s rabid curiosity and liberal use of dimples, the physician relented.

“She was Lady Igraine’s maid and confidante. She became the closest thing to a mother to Arthur after Igraine’s death, and remained so until her own passing eight years later. I believe yesterday was the anniversary of her birthday if memory serves me right,” he added. “But you already knew that.”

Merlin tried to look chastised, but he still had questions.

“Why would Arthur…”

“Uther didn’t like her much,” Gaius said quietly. “Now make yourself useful for a change and grind those herbs, my boy.”

Merlin meekly did as he was asked and pondered the secretive lengths to which the prat had gone to pay his loving respects to a woman long dead. His heart gave a soft, aching lurch in his chest, which he did his best to ignore.

***

Of all the natural attributes and physical traits Arthur wished he had inherited from his father, his stentorian voice was undeniably the most formidable. King Uther was gifted with a deep, resonant voice that could effortlessly command obedience and strike fear in the hearts of men. The true voice of an absolute monarch.

Arthur knew he had a firm and powerful voice himself – one that he had worked hard to perfect, as he had everything else. But he was also aware that he would never sound as impressive as his father.

“Bring in the witch,” the king ordered, shaking the dark, gloomy echoes from the four corners of the Great Hall.

“Alleged,” Merlin mumbled under his breath.

Arthur threw him a look over his shoulder and gave him his ‘Not now, Merlin’ frown. His manservant had made it very clear what he thought of these proceedings, at length and in treasonous, colourful details. Arthur would have to tell him one day just how many times he could be sentenced to death in the span of a single week just on the base of his impertinent, riotous talk.

But then the hapless girl was dragged in front of the council, and Arthur felt the cold knot of duty twist all too familiarly in his stomach. He tried to harden himself against his own weakness. Every week now seemed to bring a new instance of someone being accused of sorcery. Rarely anyone so innocuous, though. The young woman was no anonymous outcast or shady character, as she was known to sell flowers and the sort of scented pouches that most people had in their cupboards and chests to ward off moths and funky smells. Whether you lived in the Citadel or in the lower town, you had to have seen her amid her baskets on market days, peddling her wares with a cheerful smile and a catchphrase that would get more unserious as the day wore on. Her name was Abby. A bright, funny, hard-working girl, trying to make an honest living like so many. And yet, the small assembly looked upon her with chilly suspicion, ready to recoil from her and turn against her – ready to believe her a vile creature.

Someone, somewhere – some petty, jealous, ugly soul, no doubt – accused her of being an enchantress who dabbled in magic. In love potions and talismans to be exact. And ever since the infamous incident with the troll, Arthur’s father had been extremely sensitive to this particular type of allegation, bringing the full weight of Camelot’s justice system to bear down mercilessly on the accused party.

As everyone else in Camelot, Arthur viewed magic as a menace to order and peace. As something eminently foreign to average mankind and as such, evidently unnatural. Magic was a mysterious force that bent the laws of Nature and a powerful weapon too often used to hurt his family and his people. Arthur didn’t like magic and would fight it wherever it threatened innocents.

That being said, Arthur was also a soldier through and through. And as a soldier with a pragmatic mind, he could see his side was clearly at a disadvantage. By hunting and decimating all sorcerers indiscriminately, Camelot had made an enemy of a whole class of individuals, wherever they were and regardless of their intentions. An enemy who could summon supernatural forces against the House of Pendragon. And the strategist in him couldn’t help but be acutely aware of the glaring flaw in this untenable position. What could steel and sinew do against enchantments that summoned nightmare creatures and brought back the dead from the grave to turn against Camelot?

It was an unsolvable problem.

One that sometimes led Arthur to wonder if an alliance of some kind with the more reasonable fringe of the sorcerer population (for there had to be some; they couldn’t all be murderous zealots) wouldn’t be more profitable to all concerned than the current state of constant, latent war.

After all, it seemed only logical that sorcery be fought with sorcery.

It was an unorthodox opinion, he knew that. He wasn’t keen to share it with anyone just yet, but every day that passed convinced him a bit more that permanent, all-out conflict with magical forces was not a viable way forward for the kingdom.

“This is madness,” Merlin hissed, just loud enough for Arthur to hear.

“Be quiet, Merlin,” Arthur murmured, staring ahead.

“The girl is innocent.”

Something in Arthur, the same gut instinct that had kept him alive on countless battlefields, agreed with the sentiment, but he refrained from answering. He was too busy assessing the right angle to engage his father. He needed to step cautiously if he wanted to save the girl from the stake.

The clerk came to the end of the litany of grievances and so-called testimonies rather unemotionally and looked up from his parchment to wait for what the king would order. Arthur’s father had his fire-and-brimstone face on, which didn’t bode well.

“What do you have to say for yourself?” he rumbled at the tearful mess of a girl who could only choke out a pitiful sob. “Speak.”

Shifting in his seat, Arthur mumbled, “Father, this is absurd.”

“Is there something you wish to say, Arthur?” the king minced.

“She’s just a flower girl,” Arthur noted dismissively.

“A flower girl who’s being accused of sorcery.”

“For making scented sachets that supposedly bring good luck to prospective, flirtatious damsels in search of a husband?”

“Sorcery is not to be taken lightly. I will not tolerate it, no matter how benign a form it takes. And all accusations will be thoroughly looked into.”

“We’re talking trinkets and flower pouches,” Arthur scoffed, knowing the king’s weak spot was his fear of ridicule.

“Sorcery can hide even in the most unassuming objects,” his father grated warningly. “It corrupts everything it touches.”

“But there’s a difference between making a coin on the back of plain old superstitions and performing subversive acts of sorcery.”

“I am not sure we see eye to eye on this.”

“Father, all I’m saying is that most of us in this room put our left boot on first because some old folktale says it wards off toothache. That doesn’t mean the cobbler’s a dangerous warlock.”

A faint chuckle skittered through the assembly, and the anecdote hooked the corner of his father’s mouth into a cursory half-smile.

“What are you getting at, Son?”

“I mean that the evidence for this case is flimsy at best. If we start giving credence to disgruntled customers and thwarted ladies, then Heaven have mercy, because we’ll be sitting here all week judging seamstresses, hatters and glovemakers.” A few nods from distinguished elders rippled across the room. “I just think we have much more important affairs to see to. Such as the reports of bandit incursions threatening our trading routes through the eastern border.”

King Uther frowned. “I haven’t been informed of these reports,” he said, a growl of fresh displeasure darkening his tone.

“I know. We’ve only received news of them this morning. I was hoping to tell you myself before the council, but then… the flower sachets got in the way,” Arthur replied, repressing an eyeroll. “I have the patrol’s full account in my chambers. I can send my servant to get it this instant.”

“You do that,” Uther muttered.

Arthur nodded to Merlin, who scampered faster than he’d ever seen him and didn’t trip once.

The flower girl was dismissed and promptly forgotten, and Merlin was on his absolute best behaviour for the rest of the day.

***

“Hah! Did you see that?” Arthur exclaimed with an impossibly smug grin as he flicked the blood from his sword before sheathing it.

“Yeah, yeah.” Merlin dusted off the muck and dead leaves from his trousers.

“That crossbow literally splintered apart in the guy’s face! Stroke of luck! Did you see it?”

Merlin scowled.

See it? He’d done it. Did Arthur really think that sword handles abruptly slipped out of their opponents’ hands and crossbows unexpectedly exploded in their faces, all of their own accord? Did he honestly believe that huge and perfectly healthy tree limbs suddenly dropped off their trunk to clout the enemy over the head for no reason? “Yes, Sire. I saw,” he mumbled, shaking a hand through his short black mane to dislodge the leaves and twigs.

Arthur looked insufferably pleased with himself, his hair appealingly mussed by the fight and his gloved hand resting on the pommel of his sword with all the nonchalant insolence that his royal station seemed to require.

“Really? Are you going to tell me you were able to see it from all the way down there under that bush?”

Good god, Arthur could be an obnoxious ass sometimes – like when he thought he was being supremely witty and sarcastic.

“Well what did you want me to do?” Merlin muttered. “I was unarmed.” Apart from the almighty life-saving magic that he couldn’t wield out in the open, but that had saved Arthur’s pretty head yet again. “Besides, I figured I’d better give you a chance to do your thing and prance about and be… all… heroic,” Merlin tossed the word as randomly as he could, then sniffed and rubbed his nose on his sleeve. His toes were wet and cold, and he had it up to here with this stupid hunting party turned patrol turned ambush turned whatever the f*ck this was now.

“I don’t prance about.”

“Yeah, you do. But you do it very heroically if that’s any consolation,” Merlin supplied graciously as he went to fetch their horses.

“I don’t. Prance. About!”

“But it’s heroic prancing. At its finest, Sire.”

“Well at least I don’t cower in the brambles,” the royal git huffed as he took the reins of his mount from him and got himself into the saddle effortlessly. A part of Merlin resented that he was such a smooth horseman. And such a fine swordsman. And such an accomplished knight altogether, really. There was a lot to admire in Arthur beyond the breadth of his shoulders and the muscular pertness of his arse. He was a keen fighter in combat. Brave to a fault. Always ready to shield the innocent and the helpless. Merlin suspected he even felt protective of his servant.

Meanwhile, the aggravating prat prattled on.

“I mean, could you be anymore useless, Merlin?”

“Is that an order or a rhetorical question, Sire?”

Although Arthur was riding a few feet ahead, Merlin heard him roll his eyes.

“Do shut up.”

“Yes, Sire,” Merlin smirked, plucking a twig from his neckerchief and flicking it at the blonde head.

Arthur turned on his saddle and threw a dirty look at Merlin, who looked up and frowned convincingly at the forest canopy. He felt a tiny bit proud of himself when Arthur pursed his lips and looked up too.

It was the small victories.

Truth be told, he needed the nonsense one-upmanship a bit more than was strictly healthy. It was not easy being an unsung hero. It was in fact the hardest part of Merlin’s new ordeal of a life. This utter lack of recognition for the crucial support he brought Arthur in the heat of combat. It was a daily trickle of tiny slights that might one day wear his spirits down. He could feel it. How many times had he saved the prince’s shapely backside? How many times had he covered Arthur’s blind spot and swerved the course of an arrow, a bolt, or a dagger hurtling towards the prince’s valiant heart? How many times had Arthur crowed after a perceived victory when Merlin had in fact done a lot, if not most, of the heavy lifting with his magic?

And how many times had Arthur shown any sort of awareness or gratitude? How many thanks had Merlin ever received?

None.

All he ever got for his trouble were sarcasms, ribbings and dismissive eyerolls.

Merlin knew it couldn’t be helped, but the dumb unfairness of it stung. Worse, some days it rankled.

Had Gaius not been here to dole out praise and comfort and hugs and pottage (of very mediocre culinary quality, but made from the heart)… Merlin wasn’t sure that he would’ve had the selflessness and fortitude to remain Arthur’s overlooked slave.

Some days, he could almost understand why some sorcerers chose to walk a darker life path. Others, he simply settled for shrinking Arthur’s tunics just a little bit and watch the prince blush, pout and fret at his sudden and quite inexplicable weight gain.

***

A loud racket resounded in the hallway, complete with clatter of shattering earthenware, rolling goblet and wobbling metal plate, accompanied by the usual, rambling “Sorry… Sorry… It’s all right. Don’t worry, I’ll get another one. No harm done,” in the familiar, cheerfully apologetic voice. And Arthur in his chambers, looked up from the sheaf of parchment he was honestly trying to focus on and gave a long-suffering sigh.

Merlin was, as they say, something else. Never before had Arthur met such an unlikely blend of qualities and flaws in one single man. The former were few but remarkable, the latter were anecdotal but innumerable.

And from the point of view of the simple carrying out of his chores, the bumbling idiot was an absolute walking disaster. Never had Arthur met anyone with such inconsistent limb coordination and faulty orientation. Thank goodness no one was ever going to have to lead him into combat, because Merlin promised to be a liability to his own camp on a battlefield.

Arthur paused in his procrastinating musings for an instant and acknowledged that he was perhaps being a little harsh. It wasn’t that bad. It was hard to take exception at the dark-haired lad, but some days it was equally as hard to take him seriously in any way, and that chafed at Arthur’s sense of propriety. For instance, it bothered Arthur that his manservant was such a clod. There seemed to be no end to the embarrassment Merlin could effortlessly provide at any given moment. He was always dropping things, tripping over his own feet, or ruining Arthur’s clear shot, and he regularly managed to singe garments or furnishings – if not, on one particularly criminal instance, Arthur’s hair.

It irked him that Merlin could make a such an unrepentant fool of himself – and by association, of Arthur – so easily. At times, he felt the ineptitude of the servant inevitably tainted the prestige of his master.

The importance of allure and charisma in a ruler had been impressed upon Arthur from a very young age. His father had made sure that grace, posture and command had been drilled into him with the same exacting rigour as horsemanship or swordsmanship. Growing up, he’d been expected to display unwavering control and aplomb every second that he spent in the public eye, which was, in effect, every second he didn’t spend horizontal in his own curtained bed. Failing to meet King Uther’s standards of regal confidence and knightly competence meant incurring his withering stares, sharp remarks, and the occasional leather belt, all there to remind him of the unforgiving nature of a prince’s responsibilities.

And so, coming from this ruthless background, it was hard for Arthur to fathom why and how Merlin would continue bumbling through his workday so gormlessly at the ripe old age of… well, whatever his age was.

However, for all the man’s menial shortcomings and random idiocies, Arthur was growing rather fond of his company. There was something interestingly indecent and unusual about Merlin, insofar as he unknowingly resisted any attempt at being placed on the scale that Arthur had been taught to use when measuring the worth of men. His servant seemed outside of any system. He was different. And he quite clearly didn’t care that he was different. In his own way, he too displayed a form of self-assurance and independence of thought that Arthur had always felt attracted to.

Arthur was beginning to like that he could talk about pretty much anything with Merlin and the irreverent prat would give his honest sentiment on the matter, without fear or favour – or any sort of regard for Arthur’s own opinion. Similarly, the dose of tough ribbing his manservant could give (and take) was something he found bracingly pleasant and addictive.

And so yes, Merlin was a clod, but he was an endearing one and Arthur quite enjoyed the buzz of mischief he got from their interactions.

The only thing that truly worried him was Merlin’s seeming helplessness in combat. For all the man had been eager to trade blows with him upon their first meeting, Merlin was an untrained commoner and therefore alarmingly defenceless when it came to armed fights, as exemplified by yesterday’s skirmish in the woods.

Contrary to what he often liked to vocally express, Arthur knew that Merlin was no coward. The man followed wherever Arthur went, usually empty-handed, and he never fled the scene of a scuffle even when they were drastically outnumbered. Merlin was there, unfailingly loyal, by his side. Shouting words of warning or ineffectually mumbling obscure curses to himself. But he was there nonetheless, in the thick of the action, essentially a sitting target. And Arthur felt terribly uneasy at the idea that Merlin might get hurt – or worse – through no other fault than a lack of instruction in the rudiments of combat.

He decided that Merlin had to be saved from his own ignorance.

The first lesson took place on the training grounds as the knights trudged back to their quarters at the end of a long session on an unusually hot October day.

And as Arthur might have predicted, it went abysmally.

***

“Why?” Merlin questioned, not quite whining yet.

“Because I can’t always be around to save your cowering, quivering hide, Merlin. You need to be able to defend yourself, or even have my back in a fight,” Arthur said, pulling a training sword from the rack.

“I already have your back, and if you would put your keen sense of observation to good use, you’d notice that I’m not missing any body part.” Merlin extended both his arms and waved his hands to support his statement. What sort of harebrained idea had got into Arthur’s head now?

“Shrieking my name from the depths of a thicket is hardly what I’d call helpful, and how you haven’t lost a limb already is beyond me.”

Merlin had a sense of impending (and somewhat tingling) doom as the indomitable prince advanced upon him, blonde hair and steel mail sparkling under the sun as a gloved hand sent the battered, blunt sword into fancy cartwheels.

“But I’m not a soldier,” Merlin said, still not whining.

“Clearly.”

“And I don’t carry weapons.”

“That could change.”

Merlin sighed and planted his hands on his hips, shaking his head, hoping against hope that his body language might reach through Arthur’s obstinacy. “Look, this is pointless,” he argued as reasonably as he could. “I’ve seen you train the knights.” And truly, he had. For hours on end. Watching the demanding warrior in Arthur put the men through their paces. It was harsh and sweaty and fascinating and a taxing exercise in frustration management for Merlin’s lower carnal instincts, but that was not the point. “All you do is practice your sarcasm as you whack seven bells out of them.”

“Are you saying I’m a bad instructor?”

“I’m saying you just want a new excuse to shout at me and tell me I’m a hopeless clod.”

“Merlin.”

“What.”

“Shut up and pretend to indulge me,” Arthur ordered sweetly as he shoved the sword handle at Merlin’s chest.

Needless to say, Merlin put as much bad faith and bad grace into the exercise as he could get away with. It wasn’t that he was completely uninterested in learning how to hold his own with a blade, but Arthur’s brand of teaching didn’t quite agree with him, and was frankly akin to relentless badgering, no matter how attractive the tutor was. Thankfully, following half an hour of ineffectual thrashing about, ill-timed parries and studious efforts not to hack anyone’s extremities off, Merlin was pronounced not-quite-ready for the sword.

And so then came the mace, which was promptly abandoned in favour of the following weapon on the list after Merlin nearly took out the heir to the throne’s bollocks with an overly enthusiastic swipe of the spiked steel head.

Accordingly, it was deemed that simple target practice with a crossbow would be in order. A weapon that, in Arthur’s own words, “any fool could be taught to use with relative ease and accuracy.”

The key word here being ‘relative’.

After the seventh bolt to shoot widely past the target and lodge itself randomly into the mound of soft turf behind it, Merlin was ready to seriously debate the so-called merits of the dodgy device.

“I think there’s something wrong with this thing,” Merlin announced, turning to Arthur. Arthur who was standing several feet behind him with one hand over his mouth in dumbfounded dismay. Trust the knight prince to get all dramatic over Merlin’s slightly erratic aim. Which wasn’t his fault, by the way. “It doesn’t shoot straight.”

“It does, Merlin.” The princely instructor then reached to yank the weapon from his unresisting hands. “You’re just not holding it or your own self right. Now watch.” And with one swift well-practised move, he primed the crossbow and loaded it, then took position, aimed and shot the bolt. To no one’s surprise, he hit the target dead centre.

“Sorcery!” Merlin commented with an amused twitch of the lips.

“Noooo, my good man, it’s something you may have heard of before. It’s called skill.” The condescending prat handed the weapon back to him with an insufferable smirk and an insulting pat. “Come on, once again.”

Oh, Merlin knew that tone. And he knew those words. And he’d heard them used ad nauseam all afternoon, and in truth every day that he stood and watched the knights at their mind-numbing training. He had seen burly, full-grown men brought to the verge of tears and regicide after hearing those words uttered in just that infuriating tone for hours. They meant Arthur wouldn’t relent until he got what he wanted. And what he wanted was for Merlin to hit the stupid target apparently.

Fine.

With a determined scowl, Merlin primed and loaded the crossbow, then prepared himself to use a tiny bit of unobvious magic to get the meddlesome prince off his back. Hopefully…

“Wait.”

That was all the warning Merlin got for what followed. And what followed was something unwise, unchaste and entirely counterproductive. Something Merlin was not ready for.

Arthur put his hands on Merlin – but not for the usual impatient grabbing, yanking, flinging or shoving that Merlin had grown used to. No, it was a different kind of touch altogether.

Now obviously, in the course of his normal workday, Merlin had to come into contact with the prince. Far more than anyone else presumably. It was inevitable. You could not help dress and undress someone without the occasional brush of fingertips along their shapely arms and broad shoulders. You could not assist a man in taking off his boots without a firm grasp on the back of his calf or the crook of his knee. Nor could you provide support for your injured prince without your arm snug around his waist, his arm draped over your shoulders and his wrist safe and warm in your hand. The touches came with the job, they were inevitable and they were actually not an unwelcome part of Merlin’s duties for he had always been a tactile kind of person.

But here, Arthur was the one initiating the touch. A touch that some might have deemed somewhat… evitable.

And so, with patient authority, the Hands guided Merlin’s hips into the proper stance, then, with a troubling sense of ownership, the gloved offenders surrounded him, simultaneously gliding up his chest and sliding down his back to adjust the slant of his torso, then finally accompanied his elbows and shoulders into position with all the meticulous care of a loving dance partner.

The comprehensive assault conspired to render Merlin slightly dry-mouthed. And light-headed. And a little short of breath.

Then Arthur simply stood there – far too close and oblivious to the obscenity of his intervention – and murmured a low, raspy, “Now give it a try,” that sent a shiver of illicit lust whispering down the back of Merlin’s neck.

He couldn’t remember pulling the trigger and he couldn’t remember whether he’d used magic or not, but the bolt was somehow released and somehow ploughed into the target with a satisfying thwack. All Merlin knew was that, interestingly, he’d never noticed until then that Arthur smelled of forbidden desire and manly sunshine – and that this was not the right moment to get a rush of wildly inappropriate thoughts. But fancy just a minute what marvellous sensations those capable hands might provoke over Merlin’s bare skin, the callouses would feel…

“Fantastic!” Arthur exclaimed as Merlin’s shoulder was clapped heartily. “Looks like I’m not such a bad teacher after all, am I? Now do ten more of the same before you return the weapons to the armoury and put away the target.”

Merlin closed his eyes and finally drew a proper breath, repressing a curse.

“Oh and do get a move on, I need a bath,” the smart git added.

Merlin opened his eyes again and twisted his lips in order to contain the witty comment that might earn him a whack.

There truly was no rest for the wicked.

***

To say that Arthur disliked failure would have been the mother of all understatements. He didn’t merely dislike it. He loathed it and was in fact mortally afraid of it.

In his mind, Failure could only lead to Loss. Loss of his men’s respect. Loss of his father’s love. As well as more literal and terminal Loss of life for people who mattered to him. And nothing upset Arthur more than Loss, under any form. Deep in his heart of hearts, where no one could see and no one could judge, he half-acknowledged to himself that Loss terrified him. Loss was his archenemy – and Failure was its scheming squire.

Failure was thus unacceptable to him.

Therefore, and since Merlin mattered to him in a way he still had no proper explanation for, he persisted in his instruction and plagued his servant with lesson after lesson in swordsmanship. From being a mere helpless target, Merlin had to be hammered, tempered and whetted into a soldier – or at least into something soldier-adjacent. A prince’s manservant had to be capable of fending for his life and that of his master. Even though Arthur certainly didn’t count on Merlin’s assistance in combat, he needed the man to know how to hold a sword and parry the most basic of blows so he might stay alive long enough for Arthur to deal with the threat.

The fact that sword practice meant spending some time in physical exertion and laddish banter with his favourite underling was simply an added bonus that Arthur didn’t quite feel ready to look into.

And so it became a near-daily addition to his routine that Arthur would drag a whinging, uncooperative Merlin out to the training ground at whatever hour would fit into his otherwise busy day, and patiently natter him through a light but nourishing regimen of sword practice, even throwing in some footwork exercises on his more ambitious days. Merlin stumbled through it all in varying degrees of compliance, ineptness and foul language, which somehow made the otherwise thankless experience rather enjoyable to Arthur.

The sight of the eminent master ringingly imparting his martial knowledge to the unlikely novice didn’t fail to attract the notice of many a denizen of the citadel. There were always a few idle watchers, often of the female persuasion, with a basket propped on a hip, exchanging giggly murmurs as Arthur and Merlin were sweatily engaged in the educational simulacrum of combat. Arthur was used to being the focus of such admiring attention – one could even say he was born and raised for it. Merlin, however, kept getting distracted by the immodest fawning that some of the wenches bestowed upon him. He had this annoying habit of showing his dimples to just about anyone these days. It was rather bothersome and Arthur didn’t care for it. And honestly, he didn’t know what the fuss was about.

Merlin was broad-shouldered and long in the limbs, which should have made him a good sword fighter, but the lad was plagued with terrible coordination and a rather unhelpful attitude. He didn’t lack strength, Arthur was moderately surprised to note. He was somewhat endowed with lean muscles that would at times thicken the forearms, knot the shoulders and awaken sinuous ripples in the back, making it seem like their owner was momentarily and almost appealingly fit.

Still, Merlin was a little weedy despite the amount of food that he pilfered from Arthur’s table on a regular basis. He would have to put on a few stone, and stop smiling at girls if he wanted to impress his master. And he’d also have to learn to be gracious about getting thoroughly trounced. Not that roughing up a docile Merlin would have brought quite the same kind of satisfaction, of course. To be perfectly honest, Arthur loved to stoke the fire of rebellion in his servant’s eyes and delighted in trading taunts and mouthy repartees. He couldn’t quite get that kind of rise out of knights whose boisterousness had limits dictated by courtly education and respect for the future monarch in him – while Merlin clearly had no such qualms.

Eventually, Arthur was able to notice some marginal progress, in the sense that his servant, after several weeks of dedicated tutelage, was now able to carry and even wave a sword convincingly, and not trip over his own feet in doing so. Arthur, being a reasonable man and a clearsighted military leader, was obviously aware that Merlin would probably never make a proficient swordsman, but he still felt reassured, and in some respect proud, for every new move that his crotchety apprentice didn’t completely botch up.

Progress notwithstanding, the lessons slowly became part of the ordinary schedule. Merlin couldn’t be allowed to grow complacent, and Arthur did enjoy the fun distraction from his princely duties.

***

Merlin made a few mistakes over the course of that first year. Some were trifling, like when he tripped over that chamber pot and sent it twirling madly all over the freshly washed floor in Arthur’s chambers. Or like when he poured wine all over Arthur’s hand during a fancy banquet.

Some were a bit more consequential, such as when he very nearly set fire to Arthur. In his defence, it wasn’t exactly Merlin’s fault that it took him some time getting used to beeswax candles that didn’t stink at all. He’d been born and raised in a village at the backend of the world where those luxuries were scarce. Tallow candles were all he’d ever known. And you could just tell from the smell that a tallow candle was alight in a room somewhere, even in broad sunny daylight... But a beeswax candle, not so much. Those fancy suckers were invisible when the sun fell upon them.

And Arthur hadn’t noticed the candle was burning either – until the fizz and stench of burnt hair had rectified that.

And then there were the more private mistakes. Those that were more intimate and therefore more painful. Those that left him scarred in some way or another. One of those mistakes was called Findan.

Upon arriving in Camelot, Merlin had thought the happy mess that was his so-called love life was going to reach a zenith – in such a grand, bustling hive of activity, with so many new people to meet, to befriend and to… befriend. But instead, disaster had struck: Merlin had become the crown prince’s manservant. And while that turn of events should have done wonders for his credentials on the dalliance front, it had in fact sadly dampened Merlin’s amorous prospects. Most of his fellow servants and most of the people he consorted with on his own free time soon learnt who he was – and more specifically under whose orders and surveillance he operated. He wasn’t Merlin the son of Hunith anymore. He wasn’t Merlin the cheeky little devil who was up to no good with the lads of Ealdor. This bittersweet existence was no more. He was now Prince Arthur’s manservant and the Court’s Physician’s assistant, positions close to power in a city that lived and breathed for the House of Pendragon and its court.

This second-hand prestige tended to have one of two effects on the men Merlin might have wanted to pursue for however brief a bit of romp. It either daunted them or titillated them.

And Findan had definitely been titillated. And then a little inebriated. And then somehow naked and begging for it. Merlin had been quite taken with the fun-loving little tart. The lovely chap had been nothing but easy and accommodating in every sense, and Merlin had briefly thought he’d found someone who could make his loneliness a little more bearable. But what Merlin had failed to realise was that Findan’s interest had been… interested.

In other words, Findan had been eager for Citadel gossip and Merlin’s spare coins. And when Merlin had grown tired of providing both, lovely Findan had begun to sulk and make disquieting insinuations. What would the prince think if he was made aware that his manservant was an enthusiastic partaker in the unsavoury sin of buggery with drunken young lads? And that had brought into sharp relief just how appallingly naïve (or criminally stupid, in Gaius’ words) Merlin truly was.

In truth, Merlin didn’t know how Arthur might have reacted, but he doubted an instance of tawdry blackmail regarding such indiscreet and unpalatable behaviour would improve what was beginning to look like an inkling of promising friendly rapport between master and servant.

Findan was therefore kindly asked to be reasonable and leave Merlin alone – for old times’ sake and a couple of gold coins. The little schemer obliged for a time, then would probably have reiterated his veiled threats if he hadn’t apparently tried to pull the same trick on someone far less forgiving than Merlin. What happened to Findan will be left to the reader’s gruesome imagination. Suffice it to say that Merlin soon discovered that his erstwhile partner in buggery had met a sticky end in one of the disreputable establishments of the lower town, and that, being Merlin, he felt a little awful for the guilty relief that washed over him at the news.

This harrowing, ill-fated affair was a lesson learnt for Merlin, though. He who had been such an open-hearted lad prone to falling in lust at the drop of a hat, became far more wary of anyone who even hinted at a flirtatious interest in him. With all entanglements of heart and body becoming too fraught with danger and laced with gut-wrenching disappointments, Merlin felt he had no choice but to stay away from men – and women, in whom he’d always taken but a very passing interest anyway. At least for the time being. There were too many things at stake, and it was hard enough trying to make sense of his place in the world without having to compete with the stirrings of his hot young blood.

He toyed with the idea of numbing himself to sentimental advances through the use of a magic spell, but in the end he was too unsure of possible side-effects to go through with it. So Merlin smiled back when he was smiled at, clapped shoulders, played dice, raised his cup at the tavern and exchanged jokes and stories… and then consistently declined offers and made his lonely way back to his cot in the little room, feeling content but somewhat empty.

Better to be alone than in bad company, they said? Merlin believed in the saying’s wisdom, but couldn’t help finding the practice rather excruciating.

Masturbation was a poor lover and his lustful wanderings would always steer to forbidden yet all-too-helpful inspiration material, but they became the only tolerable companions of his self-enforced celibacy. A necessary evil – though at least this way the worst that could happen was sticky sheets.

Meanwhile, Arthur was still handsome and still perfectly built and still the owner of a pair of beautiful, laughing eyes, and to add insult to injury was now playing swords and trading laddish banter with Merlin like it was foreplay. And every morning, Merlin woke up with the vague but insistent feeling that something irresistible and ruinous was at work within him.

***

A strange noise dragged him out from a very deep, very cottony sleep. A noise that he recognised from falling unconscious on the training ground a good number of times in his younger years. It was a slow, dull hiss in his ears – the whisper of failure his father had called it – as he came round.

“Mughn?” Damn, his mouth didn’t work. Arthur tried again, “Murrhin?” But that one didn’t sound any better than the first one. Almost like his mouth couldn’t be bothered to do its job. His brain felt the same way as his mouth, incidentally: sluggish and too tired to care. Yet something had to be done. An unconscious prince wasn’t a very good look. Something had apparently gone very wrong and he wished to have a word with someone about it. In his blurry state, he could only think of one name to call.

“Merlin?”

Surely Merlin would know what was going on. Or at least provide some entertaining theory.

The garbled croak did eventually catch the attention of his friend. Well, his servant. But also his friend. It felt like Merlin was his friend sometimes. The kind of friend Arthur had never really had. But damn, why was it so difficult to breathe? And what was that new wretched sound?

“I’m here, Arthur,” Merlin finally murmured very gently from the darkness. Fingertips touched Arthur’s shoulder and then his neck very lightly. “It’s all right. Don’t move.”

And truly, he was flattered that Merlin seemed to think he’d be capable of movement, but his body clearly didn’t feel too keen on doing anything so helpful. Arthur gave what he hoped sounded like a thwarted grunt – not a pitiful whimper – and waited for Merlin to provide a much-needed explanation. Starting with their present circ*mstances. It was incredibly dark in here, wherever ‘here’ was. And Merlin sounded strange and tired and a little too subdued, which Arthur didn’t like. Oh and the odd wheezy sound seemed to be Arthur’s own respiration.

“Don’t move, you’re all right,” Merlin coaxed softly.

Arthur wished he had enough control over his lungs to bark a laugh at this, because he was really not feeling all right at all. He was simultaneously hot and cold and stiff and sweaty and achy and dizzy and his mouth tasted like some farmyard creature had crawled up inside it and had an attack of diarrhoea. And that was only what news he got from the bits of him that responded to his senses and his will. He had a suspicion that the numb and unreachable parts of him were numb and unreachable for some dreadful reason.

Merlin was here, though. And loathe as Arthur was to admit it, a tiny, secret part of him held the firm if misguided belief that things could not go entirely wrong when Merlin was by his side. He’d rather rip his own tongue out before acknowledging this out loud obviously, but there was no one else he felt more… well, safe around in the whole wide world. No one else whose presence brought him more peace and reassurance. Not even Morgana. Nor even Leon. And certainly not his father. It shouldn’t have felt right, but it did feel right.

A hand came to his forehead, and carefully dabbed a cold damp cloth over it, then down his temples till it reached the side of his neck, bringing a bit of coolness to Arthur who hadn’t realised until then how much he needed it. There was something worried and tender about the touch. Something loving. It made him terribly soft and weak with gratefulness, and it made him want to curl his whole being around that gentle hand and hold it close.

So few people touched him lovingly. No one ever touched him at all in fact, unless they were obliged to. Touching him was always perceived as part of a duty, not as a demonstration of true sentiment. Probably because laying a hand on a prince would get you the stocks at best, and the block at worst. And also maybe because Arthur himself was not exactly lovable, what with him being King Uther’s son and everything. But Merlin never seemed to care about that, thankfully. He touched when it was needed – as well as when it wasn’t. A pat on the arm, a slap on the hand, a nudge in the ribs. And once even a flick at the nape of his neck (“Chasing off a bug, Sire”). There seemed to be no end to the range of impromptu touches that Merlin inflicted upon him. And Arthur had found that very agreeable if a bit impertinent on the part of a servant. Which was probably why he had felt obligated, unbeknownst to everyone else and in the secrecy of his own heart, to promote Merlin to the current status of friend.

Cool fingertips pushed a little at his fringe, then strayed into his hair, caressing soothingly. Freely. For no other purpose than to express an intimate kind of sentiment that wedged the makings of a timid whimper of need in Arthur’s throat.

“I’ve given you something for the pain,” Merlin said quietly. “You’re probably feeling a little woozy from it.”

Yes. That had to be it. It had to be some potion making him feel all these things. Making him feel so pathetically grateful – just for one man’s caring presence and touch. Had to be the damn potion planting these fragile and very human thoughts into his confused and momentarily girly brain. Had to be an unnatural substance making him want to meekly hold and kiss the hand that touched him so gently.

“Don’t worry. You’re going to be all right. I’ve stemmed the bleeding and cleaned the wounds.”

Oh.

“Wounds…” His voice was but a faint, pitiful rasp. Yes, there had to be wounds, hadn’t there. But he was damned if he could remember how he’d got them. An unsettling fear seeped into his already wheezing chest. Try as he might, he couldn’t recall anything. It was a frightening thing to be so helpless and so needy.

To make matters worse, the hand was withdrawing from his hair and it made him feel a whole new level of lonely. And as he obviously could not ask for its return, he gritted his teeth and willed his composure back. He desperately needed to reassert control over everything. Over his faulty brain, over his maimed body, over his needy heart, over the whole bloody mess of his disappointing self.

“How?” he asked, firming up his voice.

“The usual,” Merlin sighed, with a jaded lightness reminiscent of gallows humour. “Fake bandits. Real mercenaries. Men dying, horses scattering, Prince Arthur doing a fine impression of a pincushion on the forest floor.”

“That bad?”

“Thought I was going to have to find another clotpole to work for.” The deceptively light words had a painfully brittle quality to them that made Arthur feel humbled. Merlin paused, then cleared his throat. “You’re going to need a new gambeson, by the way: this one’s shot full of holes.” There was a rustling of water as Merlin rinsed and wrung the piece of cloth that he’d been using on Arthur. A strip of tunic, presumably. “And don’t haggle over the price,” he went on, seemingly soothing his own anxiety with nonsense chatter. “Camelot’s craftsmen deserve every coin. I pulled three bolts from you and each one should have killed you.”

Arthur heard the soft droning voice. Three bolts. No one survived that many wounds. And then the hand was back. Caressing. Bringing coolness and comfort and affection. Arthur tilted his face up to it, very slightly. Ashamed of his neediness, yet unable to deny himself this rare solace. Fingertips trailed over his chin. So very intimate that Arthur thought he would sob. How was it that Merlin could love so unobtrusively?

The hand withdrew once again as Merlin kept up the idle nattering, and Arthur tried not to feel bereft from the loss. He then tried focusing on their surroundings.

“What is this place?”

“I don’t know. Some kind of abandoned little hut. I couldn’t risk taking you back to Camelot in your state, so I dragged you in here,” Merlin explained, sounding frayed. Arthur heard him take a tremulous breath and force some cheeriness into his words as he resumed the rambling. “The place isn’t so bad. The roof’s still mostly there, the walls seem sound, the fireplace is rather sturdy, and there’s a stream running not too far away. I could see myself retiring here someday, fixing up the place, reclaiming the little herb garden at the back…” And while it was true that Merlin’s smooth voice had curing properties all of its own, the subject of his digressions felt irksome to his patient.

“I feel rough,” Arthur said, fighting off a wave of nausea.

Immediately, the blessed hand returned to him, wonderfully generous with the cool, gentle touches around his face.

“You look rough, too.”

Not that Merlin looked any better than Arthur felt. There was a fire flickering shyly somewhere in the room and it was shedding just enough light for Arthur to make out one side of Merlin’s face and guess, more than see, his friend’s exhausted looks and the concerned, tight line of his mouth. In a brief flare of the sputtering fire, he saw something was off with the other side of Merlin’s face – the side that was steeped in shadows. Arthur suspected an injury of some kind and hoped it wasn’t too bad. Merlin was good-looking in his own cheeky, shaggy way. It would’ve been a shame if his face had been bashed in. Not that Arthur wouldn’t have loved him just the same.

“You fought,” Arthur murmured, feeling a sort of tingly pride in his chest.

“Yeah. Not that it did us much good.”

“We’re alive to tell the story.” And here – right here in the dark little hovel where Merlin had carried him, lying on the makeshift pallet Merlin had put together for him, comforted by the fire Merlin had lit, and alive through the care Merlin had provided – here was where Arthur should have expressed his thanks.

He counted more than three bandages fastened to his body. The wound that throbbed darkly at the top of his right thigh must’ve been particularly grievous. And while he probably did owe a debt of gratitude to the skilled craftsmen who had fashioned his equipment, Arthur also knew without a doubt that Merlin had singled-handedly pulled him from the brink of death, and that keeping this fact unacknowledged made him unworthy of his friend’s care and loyalty.

He could’ve said something of course to convey some form of praise, but to be perfectly honest, Arthur wasn’t used to complimenting anyone without resorting to a healthy clap on the shoulder, and his natural shyness made him wary of being too nice and genuine with people for fear it might lead them to think poorly of him. Similarly, he could’ve said something to convey his heartfelt thankfulness, but those words were even more fraught to him. In his experience, those kinds of momentous acknowledgements were marks of indebtedness that often had to be repaid at a later juncture by granting something appalling, such as freedom or permission to marry or some other ghastly favour. And what if Merlin asked to be dismissed from a position he had never sought nor even wanted in the first place? What if Merlin demanded to be allowed to leave his service and set up some absurd apothecary shop in this confounded hovel in return for having saved Arthur’s life several times over?

Arthur knew that he’d then be trapped. A prince’s word was his bond. He’d have no other choice but to let Merlin go on his merry path and lose their unlikely friendship altogether. Therefore, a childish part of him thought it would help keep Merlin by his side to withhold the thanks that his more adult self knew were long overdue. For where would Prince Arthur be without his low-born, mouthy best friend?

The matter was so vexatious that his stomach picked this moment to rebel and his mouth to fill with telltale saliva.

“I think I’m going to be sick…” Arthur groaned.

And ever the merciful attendant, Merlin rolled him gingerly onto his side and gave him something to vomit into. The experience was horrible. The vomiting in itself was bad enough, but the tearing pains, lancing through his body as the heaves contracted muscles that should have been left well alone, were excruciating. It almost felt like a direct retribution for his selfishness. And to add insult to injury, Merlin held him through the agonizing indignity of it all.

“Right… Let’s not do that again,” Arthur breathed shakily as he pushed away the pail of sick. “I don’t even remember ingesting anything so foul.”

“Yeah, sorry,” Merlin murmured. “That’s probably the remnants of the tincture I gave you. It was really strong and hastily prepared. I did the best I could with what I had.”

Arthur nodded wanly, “If you say so.”

“I bet you’re thinking my rat stew wasn’t so bad now.”

Arthur winced and shook through an ill-advised but irrepressible chuckle.

“Easy now,” Merlin admonished quietly, then acknowledged his fair share of responsibility. “Sorry.”

The gentle capable hand with the cold wet cloth made a welcome reappearance, tenderly wiping away Arthur’s icky misery, and the blissful touch was almost enough to reconcile him with the vomiting.

He was still cold and hot and stiff and achy and dizzy and nauseous. But under Merlin’s care and cocooned in the gentleness of his touch, he felt he could gladly stay like this, in the dark little hovel, for a little while longer.

***

Merlin left Arthur’s side to fetch more water outside, seeking a reprieve. His patient’s unusually vulnerable gaze was making his heart do alarming stumbles in his chest.

The forest was still steeped in darkness, the sunrise still hours away. His breath clouded the night air as he made his way down to the quiet stream, his magic enhancing the faint silvery moonlight for his weary eyes. He crouched by the water and looked at his trembling hands for a moment before closing them into fists that trembled slightly less.

The trees silently commiserated, serene and respectful.

He could feel them. Feel their solemn presence.

There had been one particular bolt that Merlin hadn’t told Arthur about. The one that would’ve ripped through Arthur’s skull if Merlin hadn’t pushed it off course. It was a dreadfully close call that had distracted Merlin from dodging a nasty hit to the side of his head, the butt of a crossbow catching him unawares. The blow had brought him to his knees on the forest floor, pain blooming like a white-hot flower down the side of his face.

And then he’d heard the impacts as Arthur got hit once, twice… stop! Icy horror seizing Merlin by the throat. The sight of Arthur lurching, teetering and then collapsing, bolts sticking out of him every which way, indecent and lethal. The agony stealing Merlin’s breath. Stopping his heart. Dimming his mind. With Arthur annihilated under his very eyes, it had felt like Merlin’s life, purpose and sanity were all grinding to an ominous halt. And much like a devastating flow was sure to follow an unnatural ebb, the silent stillness in him had suddenly given way to a crashing wave of inexpressible fury. On his knees in the dirt, with an enemy about to deal him the finishing blow, all he could see and feel was Arthur being taken away from him.

Merlin had become a roar.

He had screamed his searing, inhuman rage into the woods – and something had responded, there and then. Something unfathomable. Something dark and primal.

Hitherto a passive background of uninterested greenery, the forest had seemed to shiver to sentience at the call. Everything in that forest down to the last bit of dead leaf had been roused out of its impartial vegetal, mineral and animal unconcern. The ground, the stream, the bushes, the rocks, the trees and their residents had all shuddered at his roar and irresistibly responded to the wild, unwitting summoning. He had felt magic burn bright and pulse raw in his veins, and he’d felt it overrule his human frailty, directly invoking the forest, wordlessly commanding it into action in a way he never even knew was possible.

In a matter of moments, with all the dispassionate brutality that Nature was capable of, the enemy was mauled, smashed and scattered. He’d heard their screams. Five sturdy men, now mere broken puppets.

And while Merlin had crawled his way to Arthur, in horrified awe at the power of destruction that slumbered within him, most of the forest had returned to its peaceful state, seemingly pleased with itself. Only the trees of the clearing had lingered behind in their sentience, wanting to assure him of their benevolent support as he cradled his dying prince. Their soundless whispers had herded him towards the little hovel, then guided him to the plants required to treat Arthur’s wounds, so eager were they to be allies to the all-powerful warlock. Even now, he could feel them looking upon him with quiet, if quizzical, goodwill.

He had worked on Arthur’s injuries in a daze, providing care he had seen Gaius perform many times. Magic had still been ringing in his ears and thrumming in his bones, so everything had come easily to him. Almost too strongly. The bolts had been pulled out neatly despite the lack of tools at his disposal, the tincture he’d brewed on the spot with next to no implement was the purest and strongest he’d ever made, and the cataplasms of honey Merlin managed to put together from the salvaged contents of his satchel were flawless.

It was one thing to know he had boundless amounts of untapped power within him, but it was another to see it all pour out of him unasked. No spell had been necessary for their foes’ savage expediting. Not even a conscious thought. Only a flash of raw, instinctive need to make the attack cease, and if Merlin was to be honest with himself, to punish the arseholes for what they’d done. The shocking massacre had been driven by Merlin’s wrath and fear… as well as this other worrying feeling he had no choice but to acknowledge now.

The side of his face throbbed sickeningly where the crossbow had whacked him, so Merlin applied some cold water to soothe the angry, pulsing bruise. It had bled profusely where the skin had broken and the bone cracked. He had mended the worst of his fracture with magic, but he still had a blinding headache that the combined use of tincture and spells could only attenuate. He’d done some puking of his own, but he wasn’t worried about his physical state. Nor was he too concerned about Arthur’s recovery now. He had been slowly getting the hang of healing magic over the past year. It was laborious and subtle, and it required a patience and a stillness of mind that he was struggling to master, but living by Arthur’s side had brought haemorrhage-stemming, bone-mending, sinew-growing and poison-fighting spells to the top of his sorcerer’s curriculum. They were far less spectacular than freezing the course of time, but indisputably more essential to their survival. So, Arthur would live and so would Merlin.

The source of his worry was elsewhere. He forced himself to draw a few deep lungfuls of frigid night air. They helped a bit with the headache, but the knot in his chest didn’t loosen.

He’d known something wasn’t right with him for quite a few months now, to an extent that was both frightful and pathetic. The ambush and its deadly aftermath had brought it all to his attention with disturbing clarity, for no reason other than the fact that great scares tend to make one face the less palatable truths of one’s life. Watching Arthur losing blood so freely, the familiar, beloved face drained white with the promise of death, had forced him to stare at what he’d been trying to ignore for some time.

And that was… the depth and breadth of his feelings for Arthur.

Merlin was apparently a colossal idiot who, somewhere between pouring Arthur’s bathwater and saving Camelot from ruin on a weekly basis, had fallen in love with the handsome prat – and he didn’t know how to deal with this very embarrassing predicament because he’d never encountered it before.

Lusting after a man was one thing. He had done plenty of it – he was young and he couldn’t help being keen on the heat and thrill of carnal pursuits. He had been infatuated before. Bright flares of shallow emotions that had been as garish as they’d been foolish and short-lived. Brief instants of delusion where it felt like no one had ever been quite so charming as the lad panting in his arms. Where it felt like nothing had ever been quite as sultry as the way this other lad ran a deft tongue along his needy flesh.

But this was different. Here Merlin didn’t recognise the new, slow, bittersweet torment. This uneasy tension quivering hotly in the pit of his stomach and quickening the pace of his heart over nothing at all. Over the mundane and the insignificant. Over a silence, a huff, a gaze, an involuntary half-smile. Over the way Arthur worried at his ring when anxious. Over the way he took off his gloves at the end of a trying day. Over the way he murmured endearments to his horses when he thought there was no one around in the stables. These things made his gut tight with the sweetest ache, and his heart ring with the truest note. None of it made sense, though. It all left Merlin dumbfounded, and a helpless witness to his own downfall. There was simply no rhyme or reason to the strange, essential anguish that shifted everything inside him. Merlin felt poisoned and enraptured in the most ludicrous way. He could feel flecks of devotion in his eyes and particles of tenderness in his bloodstream, and ever-growing, this pointless longing. The pathetic, secret need to silently adore, serve, touch and admire. It was terrifying to lose control over one’s heart like that.

Merlin loved, and it was an unheard-of calamity – and not less calamitous for being hopeless.

Merlin’s sigh shuddered out of him into a pocket of cold, nervous fog. He washed his hands again. He’d washed them so many times tonight, they were raw by now. And yet, they still felt slippery with Arthur’s blood. He closed his eyes against the icy dread he had felt upon seeing Arthur lying prone and senseless on the ground, instruments of death sticking out of him… That dread would likely haunt him for many nights to come. Merlin could still feel a cold, cold hand wrapped around his heart. He could still hear his own stifled gasps of despair. Taste his own tears. He exhaled again, more steadily this time. Everything was fine. Disaster had been averted – mostly thanks to the titanic strength of this lovesick warlock – and Arthur lived on to keep on being a thankless prat.

Meanwhile, the Besottedness was duly acknowledged by its victim, and sadly, it seemed not only formidable but also incurable. Merlin might not understand love, but he certainly knew the sorry state of his own heart, and a shaky sense of the inevitable was stealing over him when he thought of what must lay ahead for himself – i.e. a life sentence of unrequited love. For what other choice did he have now, but a slow, abject existence, mutely longing for someone unattainable?

He wished he had the nerve to ask the Great Dragon whether this was part of his Destiny. Whether this was what the magical beast had meant when he’d said that Merlin and Arthur were two sides of the same coin. He knew he wouldn’t ask, though. He wasn’t sure he could stand it if he learnt that what he was feeling (the pain, the joy, the tiny thrills and the countless desires, and basically the whole piteous torture of it all…) was nothing more than what Destiny had engineered for him. Nothing more than some specious and artificial emotion that had been planted in him by Forces he still couldn’t identify and therefore wouldn’t trust.

And yet… For all these feelings were too new and too mystifying to be welcome, he still couldn’t see himself without them now. Arthur’s mere presence in a room invented new colours, for heaven’s sake. The sound of his voice felt like...

Merlin huffed, disgusted with himself and yet unapologetically protective of his condition in spite of all. What a f*cking joke, though. Was this mess actually meant to be his Destiny? What a cynical twist in Merlin’s tale. A lifetime of being a mere stepping stone, quietly pining in the shadows, while Arthur became king and then found and married his queen before siring a brood of awfully lovely heirs and heiresses that would, in the best of cases, eventually call him ‘Uncle Merlin’.

That was going to hurt a helluva lot more than a crossbow to the head.

Merlin walked back to the run-down little hut under the thin moonlight and the uncomprehending gaze of the watchful trees. His life sucked. Maybe he had unwittingly been on to something earlier. Maybe the hovel would be a nice place to hide when the frustrations of a life of loving servitude got too unbearable.

***

Winter was finally releasing its last hold on Spring, and it was now ‘strategic lady’ season in Camelot.

It must’ve been the third such visit since the equinox. The third time Arthur had to take a young lady out for a little horse ride while his father haggled the terms of a hypothetical alliance with the girl’s father. The cynicism of the whole process made his skin crawl.

Lady Yolanda was pretty, of course. They all were. Big brown eyes, flowing chestnut hair, lily complexion and enough carmine on her mouth to give her otherwise unremarkable lips a fighting chance. She even had a lone dimple on her left cheek. She was petite, almost a head shorter than him, and made passable conversation. She’d obviously been instructed to keep to easy non-political subjects that might appeal to him, such as horses and hawking.

Under the circ*mstances, the outing was a little more subdued than such affairs usually were. Arthur was still tender from his injuries and trying not to overexert himself so that he might be fully recovered and fighting fit for the next tourney.

So today was merely about a slow ride to the usual bucolic shallow in the stream for a simple picnic, with Arthur really trying his best to be as patient and as courtly as he could. It wasn’t Yolanda’s fault, after all. They were both collateral victims of their fathers’ schemes. She had it worse than him, probably. Since her family was of lower nobility compared to the House of Pendragon, she had to play the part of the irresistible bait. One which, unfortunately for her, Arthur felt pretty certain he would never take.

Therefore, he tried to be agreeable. Or as agreeable as it was safe to be. He certainly didn’t want to lead Yolanda to believe that he was good husband material.

It was a lovely day, and they were going at a leisurely pace, with Merlin in tow at a respectful distance. Lady Yolanda was on a not-so-secret mission to beguile and woo, and Arthur was unwilling but ready and able to let the charade follow its course. He couldn’t help noticing her expression was a little pinched, though.

“Is he going to follow us around all day?” she whispered at last.

“Who? Merlin?” Arthur asked, looking over his shoulder to a bored, sullen Merlin on his rouncey. “Well, he’s got the food, and he’s carrying all the blankets and everything.”

“It’s just… He is disfigured and I find it somewhat off-putting,” she said a little primly.

“Disfigured?!” Arthur glanced back at Merlin just in case he’d missed a horrific scar on his friend’s face. No, it was just regular Merlin, all jet black hair, phenomenal cheekbones and blue eyes. And also a bit of a shiner. “It’s just a leftover bruise. He was injured in the attack.” The bruise had taken its own sweet time to fade away, as these things do. It had gone through every shade of the rainbow and was now a glum greenish yellow.

“Well, I find him ugly and upsetting.” This being said at a volume that ensured that ‘him’ would hear.

“He’s not that ugly,” Arthur said. On any given day and with anyone else, he would probably have delighted in the opportunity to rib Merlin mercilessly, but this woman was a stranger and she wasn’t being a very gracious guest, nor a very smart one. Also, the feel of the soothing hand bringing Arthur love and comfort in the dark was still fresh in his mind, so he felt a little protective of its owner. “It’s not like he’s covered in boils. It’s a battle wound. A badge of honour.”

“How is getting clubbed about the head a badge of honour?” she argued like a fool. “I heard you were pierced by multiple arrows, and I believe those are true battle wounds.”

“They are, and I would likely have died from them, had he not taken care of me,” Arthur clipped, pulling up his placid mare to a stop. Annoyance was beginning to simmer in him and she must have finally perceived it, because she gave him a forced smile and swiftly changed her tune.

“Oh, well now I feel sorry we dragged him all the way out here when he should have been convalescing,” she simpered without any trace of shame.

Unfortunately for her, she had already sealed her fate and Arthur now felt on a mission to subtly thwart her every possible way.

“Merlin has seen worse. Haven’t you, Merlin?” he prompted without turning in his saddle.

Several feet behind, Merlin muttered something undetermined which sounded suspiciously like ‘I’m seeing worse right now.’

Still, Lady Yolanda pushed, fetchingly artful.

“It’s just that I was hoping we could be alone for a little while.”

The delivery was spot on, but this wasn’t his first ‘strategic girl’ season and Arthur had heard many iterations of the same sentiment from quite a few damsels. They all wanted their share of alone time with him, thinking they had something that might draw him into an improper, compromising folly. But they never had. Nor would they ever have. Arthur was too wary of them and too fond of his neck. He had the perfect reply.

“I am not sure your father would approve of…”

“My father thinks very highly of you,” she hastened to add.

“And I value your father’s regard, which is why I can’t, in all good conscience, be seen to…”

“Please send Merlin away,” she now wheedled with fluttering eyelids. “I’m sure the poor lad would like nothing better than to be miles away.”

And he’s not the only one, Arthur thought wryly as Merlin coughed suspiciously again.

“Never mind now, we’ve reached our destination,” he informed her. He dismounted slowly, careful not to put any undue strain on his injuries, then politely helped Yolanda off her horse. She seemed quite pleased with the chosen spot, but still wrinkled her nose slightly as Merlin approached to collect the bridle of her mount. Arthur, being already quite the consummate diplomat in these matters, knew he had to make some concessions or suffer the whinging consequences. He led her towards the edge of the stream, murmuring, “I’ll tell him to set everything up and then to stay with the horses all the way back in that meadow.” Then he let her walk on as he returned to give an unimpressed Merlin his marching orders.

“She seems nice,” Merlin scowled.

“Count your blessings. You don’t have to eat your lunch with her.”

“No, wouldn’t want to put her off her pastries with my disfigurement,” he muttered, emptying the saddlebags. “Is this because I have better lips than her, do you think?” he swiped irreverently.

Arthur snorted. “My horse has better lips than her.”

“Oh that is disgusting. I knew there was something suspicious about the amount of time you spend in the stables,” Merlin commented. He coaxed Arthur’s mare’s head towards him and looked at her with mock concern before whispering in her swivelling ear, “Llamrei, blink once if the big, bad prince is doing unspeakable things to you when no one’s watching.”

And as luck would have it, sweet Llamrei gave a slow blink at the ridiculous human. Merlin gasped dramatically, turning a righteous glare on Arthur.

“I shall tell the stable boys to be on the lookout from now on,” he vowed with a remarkably straight face.

“Very funny.”

“Well someone needs to protect the innocent.”

Arthur was about to make a derogatory comment about Merlin being involved in innocence, when reality reasserted itself mercilessly.

“Ar-thur,” Lady Yolanda called in a sing-song from the riverbank.

Arthur winced and rubbed a hand to his forehead. There was simply no escaping a prince’s fate sometimes.

“Come and get me in an hour to remind me of an appointment with Gaius,” he told Merlin in a tight mutter. “For my injuries.”

“You have an appointment with Gaius?”

“I… do.”

“Liar.”

“Merlin.”

“I am discovering a whole new side of you today,” Merlin mused, milking this for all it was worth.

“Arthur!” Lady Yolanda called again.

“Someone’s about to get into trouble,” Merlin grinned uncharitably.

“Make that half an hour,” Arthur ground out.

“Yes, Sire.”

As Arthur returned to Yolanda’s side, he reflected that there was definite truth to what Merlin had said. He did have much prettier lips than her. Some might even be tempted to say he had more beautiful lips than anyone Arthur had ever met.

***

Unfortunately for all concerned, Lady Yolanda and her father would not be dismissed so easily. A romantic supper in Arthur’s chambers was to be the final trial of fortitude and Merlin was conflicted about being in attendance. On the one hand, a ghoulish-hearted part of him looked forward to the grisly spectacle of Prince Arthur’s seduction, but on the other hand, there was the mutual and very bristly dislike between him and Lady Yolanda and he wasn’t sure he could withhold from impish (and probably non-magical) interference.

Upon further reflection, and after catching Lady Yolanda curling her lip at him yet again in the hallway, he decided he simply had to be present.

There were lit candelabras in every nook and cranny of Arthur’s room for the occasion, lending golden, burnished hues to every surface. The menu was as dainty as romance could dictate and the female half of the participants was dressed to capture the heart and roaming senses of an unsuspecting prince. Arthur, as the designated quarry, was dressed so as to evade notice and express his polite lack of interest in the whole proceedings, which unfortunately resulted in him being quite disinterestedly alluring.

In Merlin’s enlightened opinion, it was one of the great ironies of life that Arthur was never as appealing and irresistibly seductive as when he was actively trying to make himself unvarnished. Whereas if he got it into his head to prove that he was a ladies’ man, the unlucky recipient of his misguided ardour was in for some of the weirdest and most excruciating moments of her life. And provided there were witnesses to the unfolding tragedy, half the onlookers averted eyes in second-hand embarrassment while the other half couldn’t look away in morbid fascination. He was that bad.

And yet, because Arthur was crown prince of Camelot – and possibly also because he was a handsome prick – there was no lack of maids, ladies and princesses vying for a look or a smile from him. It was quite stupendous the amount of female attention Arthur was getting on a regular basis. It was a wonder he hadn’t already picked an eligible companion by now. Uther was certainly sparing no effort to find him one (a strategic one of course).

But the prince didn’t seem in any hurry to shackle himself in matrimony. He didn’t even seem all that keen on the company of women in general, which was a small mercy where Merlin was concerned. Ladies seemed to make Arthur ill at ease if nothing else. Banquets, balls, fayres and tourneys he seemed to delight in, but stick him in a low-lit, love nest of a chamber with a girl and Prince Arthur suddenly clammed up and got all brooding. And Merlin knew this because he had spied on him. Just on a couple of occasions. And only for his personal safety (Great Dragon’s orders and all that).

Any other man of his age and rank would’ve been chasing and bedding young women like it was a sport, but Arthur tended to behave around ladies as though he had absolutely no use for them. He was as urbane and as courteous as he could be; he made conversation, asked about family and common acquaintances, about horses and hounds and birds of prey; he’d even once asked about some exotic fur a lady was wearing. He could make small talk with the best of them if he had to, but he seemed wary of any sort of deeper interaction – unless magically enchanted of course (which had been known to happen).

Arthur’s reluctance to engage in the dalliances that were the prerogative of the noble class suited Merlin’s jealous little heart just fine, but it did leave the question open for Merlin’s inquiring little brain: where did the prince lust?

What started out as mere curiosity on Merlin’s part was becoming a more pressing question as his heart grew more involved, occasionally going as far as indulging in a gentle but intoxicating brand of wishful thinking. Because what if, and bear with Merlin here, but what if Arthur’s reticence with young women stemmed from a rather opportune preference for young men?

It was a compelling narrative that Merlin increasingly enjoyed torturing himself with. Most notably when daring amounts of cleavage from Lady Yolanda seemed to yield no more than brief and almost queasy sideways glances from the prince. Breasts were breasts after all. Even Merlin was easily fascinated by the deep evocative gorge, for the simple reason that the pale globes fondly hugging their cleft evoked a part of the anatomy of men that he had the most dedicated appreciation for. But Arthur remained staunchly impervious to Lady Yolanda’s well-rounded arguments, and she took leave at the end of the dinner ever-so-slightly miffed and probably ready to give credence to Merlin’s compelling narrative.

No sooner was the door closed on this frustrated lady than Arthur blew a sigh of heartfelt relief and dragged a scratching hand through his hair until it was all mussed. As Merlin went about tidying the table, he stretched his arms and groaned in tired frustration. He then dragged a footstool in front of the hearth and sat on it, seeking the warmth and comfort of the sedate fire after the traumatic ordeal.

Ever the commiserating attendant, Merlin filled his near-empty goblet. He had been serving the good wine tonight in honour of the guest. He made free to finish Lady Yolanda’s barely-touched cup as it seemed a shame to let it go to waste. The guileless gesture made Arthur snort softly. The prince gave a nod, indicating a piece of log that had been left unused by the fireplace, and Merlin sat on it, crossing his ankles as he would’ve done around a campfire.

“That went well,” Merlin noted, trying to keep his level of sarcasm to a minimum.

“As well as usual.”

The chambers were so much more peaceful and mellow without Lady Yolanda in them. It was just the two of them now – just two lads, a little blaze and a pitcher of very decent wine. Enjoying each other’s crabby company and dry wit. It felt right. If felt like things really ought to stay that way forever, although they obviously could not.

“Will you actually get a say in who you marry?” Merlin asked, looking idly into his cup.

“Hardly.”

The answer shouldn’t have come as any surprise, but Merlin still had a difficult time wrapping his mind around the grim cynicism of the nobility’s view of matrimony. He caught Arthur’s wryly resigned gaze and held it.

“That’s insane,” he said.

“It’s a prince’s life.” Then Arthur looked away, into the fire. “You think that I live a life of unchecked privilege, and it is true, but freedom of choice is certainly not one of them.”

There was the faint tinge of an old bitterness in his words, but mostly an acceptance that Merlin found hard to hear. Especially as it hit a little close to home.

“If you were free to choose…” Merlin began, then hesitated. Then went there anyway, “What sort of woman would catch your fancy?”

At first, he wasn’t sure he was going to get a reply, but then Arthur tilted his head to the side languidly, his eyes unfocused on the low nibbling flames.

“I don’t know, to be honest.” Arthur’s murmur sounded far away. “Someone…” Then a small frown creased his brow as he started to reflect properly on his answer. “Someone who would genuinely help me be a good king. Someone who’d have my people’s best interest at heart. Who’d always give me an honest opinion. Challenge me when necessary. And… Hopefully, someone I could have a good laugh with.”

Merlin nodded, quite taken with the scope and the humble wisdom in the answer. Sometimes, for the sake of his own heart, he wished the man were a bit of an unfeeling swine. It would’ve made things easier for him if Arthur had come up with a crude reply, replete with mentions of hefty breasts, soft white thighs and freakish flexibility.

“And as far as looks are concerned?”

Arthur blinked and his eyebrows reached for his fringe.

“Looks?”

“Yeah, what would she look like?” Merlin asked with a disinterested little shrug.

“I don’t know.” Arthur didn’t seem to have any particular thought on the matter. “Pleasing to the eye, I guess.”

“Pleasing to the eye,” Merlin echoed as he refilled Arthur’s goblet along with his own. “And with pretty lips,” he added in perverse afterthought. Damn, this wine was nice.

“And with pretty lips,” Arthur agreed affably, his eyes drifting to Merlin’s mouth for some reason. Merlin then watched him studiously peer into his cup and shift slightly on the footstool. He cleared his throat. “And what about you, Merlin? What sort of wench stirs your interest?”

Merlin, who had been half-expecting a question to this effect, gave Arthur his most winsome smile.

“I seem to have a soft spot for blue-eyed blondes,” he said. He briefly contemplated adding a flirty wink for effect, but apparently he was not inebriated enough to be so daring.

“Blue-eyed blondes,” Arthur mused. “That’s oddly specific. I somehow expected your tastes to be more… imprecise.”

“What, like any port in a storm?”

“More like beggars can’t be choosers,” Arthur smirked into his drink.

Merlin stripped a piece of bark from the log and flicked it at the prince in retaliation. The smug grin he got in return made the room look brighter and warmer. The wine was hot and spicy in Merlin’s throat, making him feel content with life in general and this rare moment of intimacy in particular. It put an indulgent smile on his face and a certain brazenness in his heart. He itched his nose and decided to push his luck.

“Can I ask you something personal, Arthur?”

“You can try.”

“You don’t… I mean, you don’t seem to go after girls much. I don’t see you sowing any wild oats. Is it because no one meets your standards?”

“Not all of us are crazed rabbits in heat like you, Merlin,” Arthur informed him, then took a small sip of his wine. “Besides, maybe I am more discreet than you realise.”

Merlin peered at Arthur for a moment, remembering the cloaked figure hugging the walls at night on his way to place a flower on the tomb of a loved one. Bloody hell, Merlin had it bad.

“You are not as discreet as you think,” he breathed, a fond smile warming his face.

“Because you know so much about discretion,” Arthur rolled his eyes. “I could have hordes of lascivious ladies frolicking about in my bed every night and you wouldn’t even notice.”

“Nah, I drag your royal arse out of bed every morning,” he scoffed with only a hint of a slur. “I think I’d know if you’d been entertaining. And for what it’s worth, I’ll have you know that I’m as chaste as a monk, to my great chagrin.”

Arthur snorted at that.

“Well, first, I’m not sure monks are such paragons of chastity. And second, I could be tiptoeing out of my room at night to visit my many mistresses and get back in bed before dawn without you being any the wiser,” he said, pointing a clever forefinger at Merlin around his goblet.

“Oh you could never be that smart,” Merlin drawled, shaking his head.

“Shut up. I’m a skilled hunter and a war strategist.”

“And possibly a virgin by the sound of it.”

“What?! I’m not a virgin.”

Arthur was so incensed at the notion that it made Merlin giddy with delight. “It’s all right, we’ve all been there... A long time ago.”

“I am NOT a virgin!”

“How old were you when you first did it?” Merlin challenged.

“Fif-teen,” Arthur ground out, trying to project an air of supreme confidence.

“Nice. I was fourteen,” Merlin countered easily.

“Molesting farm animals doesn’t count.”

“No, but shagging the farmer’s son does.” The words were out of his mouth before he could catch them. “Daughter. I meant daughter.”

Arthur’s lips twitched.

“Gaius was right about you. You really don’t hold your drink very well, do you Merlin?” the prince teased.

Merlin felt an icy heat bloom over his face. Thank God Arthur didn’t seem to be otherwise fazed by his lapse, attributing it to the wine presumably.

“Still lost my virginity before you did,” he mumbled, covering his embarrassment by draining his cup.

“Well, assuming I believe you, which remains to be seen, it’s not really about how early you started doing it, is it?” Arthur argued with a smidgeon of suspicious defensiveness. “And to answer your initial question, I’m the crown prince and heir to the throne of Camelot: I can’t be sowing wild oats. There’d be consequences. Messy, illegitimate consequences, if you get my drift. And I can’t have that happen. I have a responsibility towards the kingdom.”

“But you could at least flirt a little.”

“I flirt plenty.”

“Oh please, that awkward thing you do that makes everyone within ten feet cringe on behalf of the helpless lady?”

“Shut up! I am great at wooing.”

“You suck at wooing, Arthur.”

“I do NOT.”

“You do. And speaking of which… You could still have some fun without doing any actual sowing.”

“Merlin, that’s…” Arthur pulled a disgusted face. Like Merlin had just suggested he took a dive down the latrines.

“Wow, you truly are virginal if not an actual virgin.”

“Oh get off your high horse, you slag. When you’ve done it once, you’ve done it all.”

And the statement was so alarmingly wild, that Merlin lost control of his mouthful of wine.

“Merlin!”

“f*cking hell! Do you really believe that?!” he yelped and choked, utterly appalled.

Arthur didn’t reply, too irritated that he had wine and spit dripping all over his arm and knee, if the scowl was anything to go by.

***

“All right, I think that’s enough drink for you tonight,” Arthur muttered, flicking his hand. The tenor of this new turn in the conversation didn’t agree with him either. Merlin was making it sound like Arthur was an inexperienced clod – which he was not – and also like he had completely missed the point of congress – which he hadn’t.

“Sorry,” the offender said, wiping his wet chin on his sleeve. And to his credit, he did look sheepish. He even tried to use his cuff to wipe Arthur’s knee which had taken the brunt of the abuse.

“Never mind. We should retire to bed, really,” Arthur said.

Merlin froze and gave him a baffled look.

Good grief, the man was truly an appalling lightweight. “Not together,” Arthur clarified.

“Oh. No, of course not.”

“In our respective beds.”

“Yes, absolutely,” Merlin nodded, still a little dazed and contrite. “I’ll just…” He jabbed his thumb over his shoulder, indicating that he was going to turn down the sheets on Arthur’s bed, and got up on mostly steady legs.

Arthur finished his goblet, feeling a little out of sorts for having broken the companionable mood with his unpopular views on sex. He should’ve known better than to air them so inopportunely. He blamed their drinking.

It wasn’t Merlin’s fault that Arthur’s first time hadn’t been quite the stuff of legends. Merlin probably had very pleasant notions of what physical love was and should be, but they were the notions of a commoner. Merlin could have his fun with whomever he wanted and however he wanted, he would never be judged on his ability to produce an heir, nor would his sexual prowess and virility be the gossip of all the courts of the Five Kingdoms. Merlin was free to stumble and err. He was free to f*ck whoever took his fancy, including a farmer’s son apparently. He didn’t have his King of a father breathing down his neck or pushing a savvy thirty-year old woman into his teenage son’s bed for his express deflowering.

In the eye of the people, Merlin was no one, and no one cared that he did indiscreet or inadvisable things, not even his master and friend who already liked him a bit too much anyway. Merlin didn’t even seem to realise how ill-fitting it was for a prince to harbour such fond feelings for his manservant.

The very same manservant who had just showered him with wine. Arthur sighed and took off his stinking tunic, while, Merlin busied himself around the four-poster bed, retrieving the warming pan, undoing the hangings, turning down the sheets, arranging the bolsters and fluffing up the pillows. He startled when Arthur lobbed the tunic at him, but after some scrabbling caught it before it touched the floor.

“Erm…” Merlin stood there, eyes skimming along Arthur’s shoulders, seemingly unsure of what to do or say next and looking a tad flushed.

Arthur helped him by throwing his wine-infused trousers in his face.

“You’d better hope they can be saved from your ill manners.”

“I’m afraid nothing can, Sire,” Merlin finally replied in that facetious, breathless way of his.

He had a way of saying ‘Sire’ at times that didn’t seem to mean what other people put behind the term. It sounded more teasing than dutiful and Arthur quite liked it.

“Well, do your best,” he told him.

“As always.”

Arthur snorted. “I’m not even going to grace that comment with the retort it deserves.”

“Thanks,” Merlin nodded.

Arthur couldn’t hold back a half-smile. There was something terribly appealing in his impish grins and insolent ways sometimes. Almost achingly attractive, in fact. Beyond even the bright eyes, the chiselled cheekbones and the enticing lips. A perfect contrast of gormless innocence and knowledgeable mischief. Of gentle consideration for other people’s feelings and blunt irreverence for power. It was irritatingly endearing.

Arthur went to cuff the back of his head, but held the unkind gesture at the last moment and instead delivered a laddish ruffle to the mop of black hair. The tangle and slide of each strand through his fingers felt unexpectedly unchaste. He swallowed around the fleeting warm tightness in his throat, which was doubtlessly caused by that damn wine.

His mercy was rewarded with something of a coup de grace – one of Merlin’s luminous smiles, with dimples and all.

That farmer’s son hadn’t stood a chance, poor bugger.

Arthur suspected no red-blooded man or sensible woman would stand a chance when given the Merlin smile treatment. A tipsy Merlin was alluring enough. An amorous Merlin must be something to behold.

“There,” Merlin said, returning all of his attention to the bed. “All set.” He remained leaning over it and watching his fingertips move slowly over the sheets, smoothing them with near-sensual covetousness. “It’s a shame this is rather wasted on you,” he taunted.

Arthur contemplated not taking the bait for a brief instant, and then... “Is that so?”

“Well I mean… look at the size of this thing. The thickness of the mattress, the softness of the bedsheets, the plushness of the covers – the sturdiness of the posts. Bit wasted on someone who doesn’t even…” He made an expansive gesture that somehow encompassed the sum of Arthur’s celibate nights. “Given half a chance, I would definitely put it all to good use.”

“Is that why you’re so viciously eager to yank me out of it every morning?”

“No that’s just for the fun of it,” he grinned, slurring his words just a little bit. “But I would give anything to sleep in that bed.”

“Well, that’s not going to happen because I am not quite soused enough to find you to my taste.” And thankfully for Arthur, no one would think of doubting the veracity of that statement. Not even Merlin.

“Your loss!” Oh the bawdy twinkle in that blue eye. “That bed would see some proper action for once.”

Arthur repressed the smile that threatened to twist his lips, and clapped Merlin’s shoulder affectionately.

“Right. I think it’s time for all good Merlins to go to bed. No, not that bed,” Arthur groused as his menace of a friend – and servant, for Heaven’s sake – sat on the mattress.

“I could teach you a thing or two,” Merlin smiled deviously.

And the room felt just a little bit more… snug. And warm.

“Yes… well… I don’t doubt it. Whether they’d be things I’d want to learn is up for debate.”

Although, to be honest, there was promising, capable heat behind that smile… And Arthur shook his head to dispel the madness. They had both clearly drunk far too much of that surprisingly potent wine.

“Are you going to be all right going back to your room?” he asked.

“Yeah, yeah.”

“Don’t break your neck falling down the stairs.”

“No, I’m good. Just need to sleep it off.”

“Yes, you do that. I have loads of chores for you to do tomorrow.”

Loads.

“Don’t worry, I’ll be fine,” Merlin said as he trudged to the door. “A bit of willow bark tincture, a good wank and I’ll be all set.”

“What?!” Did he really say… Arthur blinked, trying very hard not to envision an inebriated Merlin trying to pre-emptively cure his hangover by happily molesting himself.

“Willow bark. S’good for headaches,” Merlin explained, blithely tapping a finger to his temple before letting himself out. The door closed and then sort of juddered on its hinges. “Goodnight, Arthur,” came his friend’s low velvety voice through the door – right against it, actually. As though his horny, intoxicated servant were embracing the unyielding oak.

“Goodnight… Merlin,” Arthur said to the now empty room.

There was a garbled groan from the other side of the door, and Arthur dearly hoped Merlin wasn’t going to get down to his wanking right there and then, because that would’ve been…

“Night, Arthur,” Merlin said again, the words reaching him soft and intimate.

Merlin had a warm, penetrating voice that always felt tangible to him, almost like a soothing caress. It was a voice that he generally associated with a lot of needling, bantering, complaining, and excuse making, and sometimes it was even a voice that gave sound counsel and genuine comfort. But every once in a while, the voice slipped into more controversial territory – and breach of protocol – by uttering Arthur’s name in a way that sent tendrils of warmth deep into the pit of his stomach.

Arthur got into bed with that warmth and nursed it. The delicate, fluttery sensation sent him back to the insouciant days of his early teenage years. Long gone but cherished days when a boy’s hand and kisses had felt just as exhilarating an adventure as all the exciting military training of young knights-in-the-making. Before Lady Matilda had ‘made him a man’ – to use his father’s own words – and taught him about a prince’s duty to his King and to the kingdom.

On the cusp of sleep, Arthur idly wondered what would’ve happened if he’d met Merlin back in those days. What would’ve happened if a young flirtatious Merlin had aimed those sparkling eyes at him and wrapped that voice around his name? In his belly, the sultry torment stirred sweetly – and no sooner was the question asked than answered.

***

For once, Merlin wasn’t at fault. He’d tried to warn everyone, but had they listened? No, of course they hadn’t.

This was never supposed to be a rescue mission. It was meant to be a mere visit of the crown prince to a strategically relevant mining settlement in the mountains at the back end of the kingdom. A simple meet and greet. A bit of regal waving and nodding at people who probably had better things to do than feed, lodge and entertain royalty – such as survive the tough working conditions and the tougher weather. Uther had sent his son and a handful of knights because he was too old and dignified to camp out in the damp and he must have known how thankless and derisory an affair the whole visit would be – and also because the ageing tyrant had no shame.

The princely train happened to arrive on the tail end of three weeks of punishing rains and storms. There had already been two deadly collapses in the mines, and ominous cracks had appeared in the castellum. Truth be told, the mountain itself had whispered its fears to Merlin. He could feel in his bones that it was uneasy and bloated and doing its best to hold very still, as if sensing that anything could upset it.

Merlin had repeatedly warned about the danger they were all in and in the end had even pleaded with Arthur, who’d dismissed his fears and spoken of duty and responsibilities and securing routes to critical resources and showing the people they weren’t forgotten and this wasn’t a leisure ride, Merlin, and where are my damn boots, Merlin?

Now, there were screams and panic and devastation as the castellum was beginning to crumble for good and the waters of the hitherto rather polite mountain stream were now turned into a wild, furiously tumbling liquid monster, relentlessly hammering the ancient stone bridge that linked the settlement to the rest of the world. The herculean force of the water was dissolving the banks, demolishing the tracks, ripping off massive boulders from their seating and hurling them at the rest of Creation, annihilating whatever stood in their path. Tons of water was barrelling down the mountain, gouging its way voraciously through whatever was in the way, as though the polite stream had reached the end of its patience and decided that it would be polite no more and that it would very much like to give berserk a try.

Only the bridge was resisting the assault. Quite miraculously, in the opinion of all bystanders. But the bridge was only still there through Merlin’s magic. Because he was holding it, shoring it up with something he had no ready-made spell for.

At first, he’d reacted on pure instinct, his magic unfurling in an instant and wrapping itself protectively around the rustic stone structure, with the same wild rush of power that had summoned the forest’s help a couple of months ago. Then he realised he was up against a whole other kind of opponent, and he was never going to be able to hold for long if he didn’t get a grip on himself and go about it with a semblance of method. First applying a few splits in the waters upstream of the bridge, then strengthening the anchors of the bridge into the crumbling banks, asking the trees to lend their roots that they may hold it, and finally binding the stones of the bridge together with his will. Merlin had rarely had to stretch his magic in so many different directions and through so many elements, with one of them unhinged.

Meanwhile, Arthur was being stupidly heroic, seeing to the evacuation himself and clawing someone from the tumultuous void back to the right side of the parapet, when all Merlin wanted to do was yell at him to get off the bloody bridge.

Then he heard it. Felt it. Something large and sinister had become untethered from somewhere high upstream and was charging down the slope, carried by fury and tempestuous waters. The trees shivered and urged him to run.

“Arthur! Arthur, get off the bridge now!”

He saw Arthur’s raise his head and was reassured that he’d heard the warning. Then Merlin mentally shoved forward the few stragglers on the bridge and braced his magic for the impact. His right hand went rigid with the strain of parting the waters as the left one tightened into a fist to hold the tree roots in place. Shoulders knotted and teeth gritted, the rest of his focus was on the man-made structure buffeted by the mad river, with Arthur still on it, being a f*cking pig-headed prat. Merlin was taut and drenched, but he was ready to hold for as long as necessary…

What he wasn’t ready for was the ground shifting under his feet. The trees tried to warn him, but it was too late. An entire chunk of the abused mountain gave up and liquified beneath him. Everything went. The grass, the soil, the rocks, the trees and the stupefied sorcerer. Everything went, in a great sickening rumble.

And in the midst of the thunderous crash, Merlin heard his name yelled, Arthur’s voice tearing it to fearful shreds.

He couldn’t see much of anything anymore, but he felt in his joints the large and sinister thing ram into the bridge and his mind juddered under the shock. He knew then that the bridge was done for – he had lost his focus as he had lost his footing.

As he went weightless, his last conscious act was to hurl Arthur to safety.

***

There and then gone.

One of the most terrifying things Arthur had ever beheld. The mountain gutted itself out from under Merlin. A share of the forest dissolving into a gargantuan jumble of fluid mud, torn turf and desultory trunks that looked no more consequent than twigs, carrying his friend away.

And all Arthur had been able to do was watch and scream his name helplessly.

As soon as his limbs could muster the coordination, he picked himself up from the ground and ran towards the chasm where Merlin had stood only an instant before.

There was nothing left of him but this sickening, gaping void, still oozing thick sludge and shedding lumps as it laboured to find stable edges.

Merlin was gone.

The shock of it left Arthur winded and dizzy.

He stared downstream at the remnants of the little corner of the woods that had poured itself into the manic river – now a greyish-brown mangled mess that contained his friend. He looked back at what was left of the track where the evacuees were stumbling away from the chaos, haggard and lost. The bridge was in tatters and the deck where he’d stood only moments ago had gone the same way as Merlin. There had been a warm blast of air that had propelled him a dozen feet through the rain to land in an ungainly heap on safe and solid ground, right before the structure had foundered. If it hadn’t been for that blast…

He shouted his orders to his knights, then turned in the other direction to retrieve his apprehensive Torrento and dash through the forest after the elusive greyish-brown mess.

Without any clear idea of where he was heading, or what he’d do once he got there, he pressed on and his horse seemed relieved to have found an outlet for his own fear and anxiety. Arthur knew the forest track espoused the course of the river on certain portions of it and he knew there was a little mountain lake about an hour’s ride downstream. It made sense that whatever the river swept away would inevitably end up there sooner or later.

He didn’t know exactly what he was after. He only knew he had to find Merlin. Something of Merlin. Anything. There would be no breathing until he’d found at least something of his friend.

He reached the lake as the afternoon was beginning to die, his horse blowing from the rider’s desperation. The body of water was full and muddy and littered with debris, and it was still mizzling. As the daylight waned, the landscape drained of colour and texture, and progress was made difficult by the welter of torn tree limbs that had drifted to the shores of the lake.

Arthur couldn’t really see more than twenty paces in front of him, but he held onto the belief that Merlin was somewhere here. Dead or alive. He strenuously admonished himself not to hope, and prepared himself for the grim discovery of a lifeless body. Nonetheless, he called Merlin’s name – and then felt strangely awful for doing so. How many times had he called this name in a self-righteous strop under vastly different circ*mstances? Only this morning, he’d bellowed it because Merlin had failed to locate his boots diligently enough. And so Arthur called Merlin’s name now, grief and anger and remorse and probably just a sliver of stupid hope breaking his voice. After all, the silly bumbling prat couldn’t be quite dead if Arthur called for him so vehemently.

It was a lonely and gutting task, looking for the mangled remains of a friend. Arthur had already done similar sorrowful searches on cooling battlefields, but his throat had never felt so tight nor his stomach so churned up. In the dreary dusk, Arthur eventually found a corpse lying prone, the colour of mud. Long slender limbs at unnatural angles. Dark hair soiled with silt. His breath went shallow in his cold lungs and his eyes stung as he turned the body over on its back, gritting his teeth against the overwhelming feeling of angry, impotent loss. But it was not Merlin. Appalling relief crammed a sob out of his throat and sent a few unworthy tears rolling down his cheeks, allowing him to breathe again. He dragged the body away from the water, laid it in repose, closed its glassy eyes and continued his search. Still calling for his friend, but with more impatience now. The mizzling rain had finally stopped, so he didn’t even have the pitter patter of minuscule raindrops to answer him anymore.

Soon it was getting too dark to see and it added a new layer of powerlessness to Arthur’s endeavour. He came to a halt in front of an impassable mound of tangled branches at least ten feet high. There was nothing more for him to do than to turn back. He called for Merlin again, one last time, his throat now raw and his voice hoarse. Cold, pain and sadness were setting in, weighing him down. He could feel himself slowly petrifying into a mess of anguish. He began to retrace his steps and threw one last look over his shoulder.

And it was there.

A surreal blue glow from within the mass of broken, mangled tree branches. And Arthur’s heart stumbled in his chest. Then the blue glow wavered, flickered and vanished. As if he’d only imagined it.

It was enough, though. Enough to revive him.

A few moments later he was heaving a cold, drenched and unresponsive body from the snarl of wood, feeling like he’d been given a new lease on life. Amazingly, Merlin didn’t seem to have suffered any grievous injury apart from the expected bruises, cuts and scrapes – although he did vomit half the lake as Arthur slung him over Torrento’s saddle. Which surely meant that he was alive, because corpses didn’t retch. And if he was alive, Arthur was going to make sure he stayed that way.

The rain made a reappearance, so he had to find refuge from the elements under an outcrop that arched over a cave-like space, bowed like a fish’s open mouth. Someone had already used the place as a shelter and there was comparatively dry firewood scattered about, so it was less of a hassle to get a fire going. It was unfortunately far less easy to warm up Merlin who remained unconscious and ice cold, even after Arthur removed the ripped remnants of soaked tunic, wrapped him in his cloak and gave him an energetic rub down that could have peeled the skin off of him.

He looked so damn white and fragile.

And so so f*cking silent.

There was nothing left for Arthur to do but to sit in front of the timid fire, with Merlin tucked between his outstretched legs and leaning back against his chest. Propped against a boulder, Arthur cradled his manservant and friend. He had painstakingly removed his hauberk so as to lend him what little body heat he had to offer. He knew that soon help would come. The families of the dead would be there in the morning, scouring the area, just like he’d done. The only difference was that he’d had a well-fed and sure-footed horse to carry him here before sunset.

His knights would be looking for him too.

Arthur brushed a hand over his face. It was utterly irresponsible for a crown prince to dash off on his own like he’d done, but he wasn’t going to pretend he was sorry. Merlin’s head was lying on his shoulder, safe and mostly sound, so his rash behaviour had been worth it and the knot in his chest could begin to unwind. The sum of his duties would have to be shouldered again at daybreak, but until then he was free to be Merlin’s bedwarmer, so to speak. Free to hold what was unmentionably dear to him and watch how exquisitely long and soft Merlin’s eyelashes seemed, standing out on the pale face. He ruffled the dark hair gently, pleased to feel it beginning to dry. Very gingerly, he brought his cheek into contact with Merlin’s forehead and was reassured that it didn’t feel as cold as before.

Alive. Definitely alive.

His cheek lingered against Merlin’s head.

Now that he felt Merlin’s life wasn’t at stake anymore, Arthur held on to him and pondered the meaning of what he had seen – and couldn’t unsee.

***

Merlin came to in the usual way. Going from soft pleasant void to sharp painful reality like a warm delicate bubble floating up to the surface of a cold, drab bog. He would’ve been hard pressed to say which sensation registered first – ache or cold. All he knew was that there was far too much of both.

On the upside, though, he was swathed in a whole lot of Arthur – of that he was certain without even having to open his eyes. There was the princely tunic beneath his cheek, the familiar feel of the scarlet cloak over his bare skin, and all around him the smell of damp, ripe, life-saving Arthur.

His recollection of the events that had been conducive to his present sorry state was still vague around the edges, but he suspected Arthur had likely done something heroic that entailed saving Merlin’s life at some point (while finally getting him half-naked). He also suspected he’d never hear the end of it.

And then Merlin remembered.

The bridge. The landslide. The never-ending tumble into icy water. Being tossed about like a ragdoll in the churning torrent while drowning a dozen times. And then the trees making one last ditch effort to save their favourite warlock by trapping him in a cage of broken, twisted roots and limbs. And then the sudden absence of being rolled about and the beginning of the gradual choking on his own water-logged lungs. The loss of sensation in his cold, numb extremities. Time stretching into slow gasping agony and what promised to be a harrowing and untimely demise.

Then he’d heard Arthur call his name, and he’d gathered an orb with what little strength he’d had left. A faint, desperate quiver of light, as a last resort.

And it must have worked, because now he was back.

It was a painful, soggy, frigid resurrection. Every bone, every muscle, every sinew in his body ached and complained about it – and he couldn’t even move his toes anymore where his feet were so cold. But one of Arthur’s arms was around him.

To Merlin’s muddled brain, the tender and protective hold almost made up for all the rest.

However, Merlin finally remembered what the rest was also made of. Namely, that Arthur had probably seen him in the midst of a couple of magical acts. Despite the fact that Merlin often called him a prat and a clotpole (especially to his face), he knew Arthur was no blind fool. Even he could put two and two together and come up with sorcerer.

The alarming realisation jogged Merlin’s heart rate and took care of his temperature issue. He could hear his own rattling breath quickening. He soon wouldn’t have the luxury of being able to pretend he was unconscious, and he did not look forward to the sort of conversation that awaited him. Maybe he could actually die of…

“You’re heavier than you look,” Arthur murmured hoarsely.

Lying as he was on the broad solid chest, the vibration of the familiar voice resonated deep inside Merlin, bringing a rush of instinctive relief along with the usual unmentionable thrills.

“You’re lumpier than I expected,” Merlin felt obliged to rasp in reply, then coughed so badly for such a length of time that they both thought he was going to croak there and then, in his saviour’s arms.

“Serves you right for implying that I’m out of shape,” the prat noted, once Merlin sounded like he was going to survive his coughing fit after all.

“My feet are freezing.”

“That’s because you’ve managed to lose your boots.”

“Where could they be?”

“Bottom of the lake, I reckon. Poisoning the fish.”

Merlin gave a sigh and closed his eyes.

“I told you the place wasn’t safe,” he mumbled, nestling shamelessly against Arthur’s warm chest.

“I’m never going to hear the end of this, am I?”

“Nope.”

Then Arthur complained that his bollocks were getting squished and Merlin told him in no uncertain terms that said royal bollocks were none of his concern and it was not like he had any reproductive use for them anyway.

And still, neither of them moved. By all rights, Prince Arthur Pendragon of Camelot might have objected to being used as a mattress by his irritating manservant. And Merlin might have had some scruples relishing the unexpected proximity with his fine strapping blonde hero’s bollocks. But neither of them did and so neither of them budged.

Merlin stood corrected. Either Arthur was a bit more of an oblivious man than he thought, or more probably, he didn’t wish to believe the account of his own eyes. In any case, no mention of sorcery was made and they remained casually entwined until first light brought a search party of worried knights.

***

A more heartbreaking dilemma, Arthur had never faced.

It was a matter of facts versus feelings.

The facts were solid and undeniable: he had the evidence of his own eyes. But the feelings were equally as real and undisputable: he knew them in his heart. The problem was that he had to make a choice – his safety depended on it, and beyond that, the stability of a kingdom that was destined to be his. Some things were simply unacceptable.

Arthur pressed his mouth against his steepled fingers and released a slow measured breath as he contemplated the unnatural ruin before him.

He didn’t like it, but he knew what reason dictated. Irrational superstition simply had to yield.

He would have to wear the new hauberk. The one that had never been used on a tourney before. The one that had never won him any match. The one that wasn’t broken in and was far too light and shiny and made him look like a damn novice. His good old lucky hauberk was in tatters, and sadly, even he had to admit that it looked quite beyond repair.

“Staring at it won’t do it any good,” Merlin mumbled in passing.

“You don’t understand, it’s my best hauberk.”

“Not anymore.”

Arthur pursed his lips and did his best impression of not sulking. What did the turnip-head know about chainmail and the importance of a reliable good luck charm in a high-class tourney?

“It can’t be mended,” Merlin persisted. “I took it to the best armourers and they all laughed in my face.”

“They know a good joke when they see it,” Arthur muttered.

“The joke is that bloody hauberk. You’ll get yourself filleted if you insist on wearing it!”

And once again, Arthur knew all that. But it didn’t mean he had to accept the situation with good grace.

“Look, Arthur, I know it’s your lucky chainmail, the one you use at all your important tourneys, but I’m telling you, you cannot use it today.”

“I’m not stupid.”

“Then why are you pretending to be?”

“Merlin!” Arthur finally snapped. “You do realise who you’re talking to, don’t you?”

“I do! I’m talking to fourteen stone of Camelot’s most formidable knight getting a wibbly lower lip because he can’t have his lucky chainmail!”

Arthur banged his fist on the table with a curse and got to his feet, drawing himself to his full towering height, intent on bringing this ridiculous conversation to an end the only way he could – through unsubtle, noisy petulance. He had the satisfaction of seeing Merlin jump but then realised it was in order to make a hurried pre-emptive grab for the tattered hauberk. There followed a short staring contest that his friend finally had the decency to feign to lose.

“Get me the new one,” Arthur ground out peevishly.

Thus, the heir to throne and favourite of the tournament was eventually helped into his new, too-shiny, too-light, non-lucky hauberk by his manservant who fought hard to keep a look of concentration on his infuriatingly smug face.

As Merlin went about the fastidious routine of fastening the various pieces of armour on him, Arthur watched him. He’d been doing a lot of that lately. Trying to understand. Trying to come to terms with what and who this man was to him – apart from an unmitigated nuisance.

It was the same Merlin. The same impudence, the same clumsiness, the same kindness, the same eyes, the same cheekbones, the same lips. The same smiles.

But what he had seen during the dramatic catastrophe at the mining settlement… There had been magic at play. He’d felt it. When he’d seen Merlin, mere instants before the landslide, there had been an expression of sheer determination on his face and an air of utter power and control in his taut stance – rather different from the Merlin Arthur was used to. And perhaps also more compelling. There had been something mighty about it and deeply enthralling, except for the fact that it had been somehow related to magic.

Arthur still couldn’t quite believe Merlin was a sorcerer. It defied too many of Arthur’s notions about his manservant and long-held beliefs about sorcery.

The belief that magic was vile and wrong.

The belief that magic was evil and harmful.

The belief that magic was used by the enemies of Camelot.

But here was the incoherence of it all: Merlin was neither vile nor evil nor an enemy of Camelot. He was the most decent, the most compassionate and the most loyal of men. Stupidly confrontational with the cook, inordinately rambunctious with the squires, and dotingly patient with Arthur’s horses – not to mention aggravatingly critical of, yet unfailingly dedicated to Arthur himself. Unique and absurdly lovable.

Merlin was simply Merlin, and that was not something that could be faked every single day for nigh on three years.

Arthur might not know everything there was to know about Merlin, but he felt he knew that much – that Merlin was his friend beyond the shadow of a doubt, and that there was a very real, deep, if uncanny bond between them.

And so, where did that leave Arthur?

He did not even have tangible proof that magic had been used. His eyes and his guts told him sorcery had been at work, but his heart told him that it probably didn’t matter as this was Merlin all the same. His loyal, bumbling, charming manservant. The faithful companion of his every waking moment – and some of his sleeping ones too after that night by the lake. Possibly the only man who ever made an actual genuine effort to understand Arthur for the sake of simply being a good friend. To the point where it sometimes felt that no one, in all Arthur’s life, had ever got closer to him than the irreverent low-born lad from Ealdor.

So Merlin had magic. It didn’t change anything about the way Arthur regarded him. But it might change the way he viewed magic. Because what did it say about magic that someone like Merlin would have it – and never use it against Camelot?

Head down and brow faintly knitted, Merlin was finishing preparing Arthur. He had this habit of pouting very slightly when concentrating, that made Arthur’s stomach shiver with the usual sweet, odd tingling. The long deft fingers had a very unique way of tying the fastenings of Arthur’s vembrace. The knots in themselves were just the regular ones, but the way Merlin went about doing them never failed to baffle Arthur, who only knew of the one way – the right way – of tying these knots. But then Merlin never did anything quite like other people. And maybe this also included magic.

Next, Merlin surveyed his own work, checking the various steel pieces one by one, tucking the gambeson in properly, tugging the chainmail back into place where it strayed. He rounded off the inspection with the usual pat – a brief swipe of his hand, really – on Arthur’s chest, over his heart. Then he looked up into Arthur’s eyes, and said what he always said at this point in the proceedings.

“There. All set.” The breathy words quiet and confident. Then, in an unusual move that strayed from their well-established ritual, Merlin gave him a little half-smile that did some uncertain things to Arthur’s belly. “I’ve made free to add some trimmings to your new hauberk,” he said, pointing out the single rows of darker rings that had been coarsely sewn at the cuffs and at the lower hem. Rings that belonged to his old lucky chainmail. “I shall make a better job of it tonight, but it should hold for today.”

Arthur nodded, a little confounded and speechless at the thoughtful gesture.

Merlin did understand the importance of lucky charms and other rituals of good fortune preceding a contest, Arthur realised. He did get him.

“Now you have no excuse not to win,” the cheeky prat smirked.

***

The bloody tournaments were the bane of Merlin’s existence. They were a compound of all that made his life difficult, including repetitive mortal danger to Arthur’s life and constant grievous prodding of Merlin’s lust. For several days, there were to be knights feverishly tangled in the noble entertainment of adroitly attempting to murder one another for king, for fame or for a lady’s favour. Such dubious endeavours entailed much sweating, grunting and showing off of physical attributes and fighting prowess, as well as the ever-present likelihood that something might go terribly wrong and Arthur might end up trampled to death under a horse’s hooves or with a lance tip lodged through his princely skull.

However one chose to look at it, the event was bound to put Merlin’s nerves to the test.

But he had to admit (grudgingly) that it was colossal fun too.

The fayre, the feasting, the colours, the music, the dancing, and even the brawling… Unholy excitement permeated the air and proved too contagious for Merlin to be a sourpuss about the unfortunate sides of the sporting competition.

Not least of the reasons why Merlin, in spite of his better judgement, enjoyed the tourneys, was the fact that Arthur in all his jousting glory was a wonder to behold. He was singularly skilled in all of the games, from tilting to quintain to riding at the ring to the various kinds of brutal melees. Arthur was one with his mount and it seemed he truly had been trained to kill from birth. There was no sight quite as magnificent as that of Arthur sharply riding Hengroen down the lists at full tilt in a moment of suspended grace, before witnessing the way he smashed his lance with merciless accuracy into his opponent, unseating the hapless knight more often than not.

His prince was ruthlessly good, and it never failed to make Merlin hot in the ears and weak at the knees to watch him win his matches with natural panache. The beauty of it was that Arthur enjoyed himself so much. He was never as radiant as when he received the cheers after a brilliant pass. It made him quite devastatingly attractive, though he may be sweat-soaked, caked in mud or covered in bruises and oozing blood from countless scratches. None of the pain and exhaustion seemed to matter anymore. The bearing was majestic, the smiles were blissful and the eyes carefree – and Merlin was dreadfully besotted.

But those rewards had to be earned, and a tournament represented a tremendous amount of hard toil and put the squires under a lot of strain. Beyond the lists, the meadow was turned into a hive of activity where everything had to be done swiftly and a lot had to be improvised on the fly. Things got broken, things got lost, horses and their riders got edgy and fractious, squires got into catfights; it was a small writhing world of barely organised chaos where patience was thin, tempers were raw and a man’s mettle was put to the trial, on the lists as well as outside of it.

Merlin had to admit that Arthur was not the worst in that respect. Some looks were unseeing, some orders were clipped, and he could read the prince’s nervousness in the jumping muscles of his jaw at times, but for once Merlin was endlessly indulgent where his champion was concerned. And the unadulterated joy on Arthur’s face at the end of a well-run match made up for any pre-match arseholitude.

“That wasn’t too shabby,” Merlin commented as Arthur, returning from his latest victorious pass, dropped his shattered lance into his waiting hands.

A child’s yelp of pain startled them both before Arthur could lob a reply. A few paces from them, an antiquated weapon rack had fallen over heavily on a very young squire. Merlin looked up at the dismounting prince who gave him a nod and his assent to attend the disturbance.

The boy couldn’t have been more than twelve, and probably closer to ten. He was now gritting his teeth in pain and scrunching his eyes shut so as not to cry as he cradled his right hand to his chest. A lonely knight, his master presumably, was on one knee by his side, half out of armour and clearly at a loss.

“May I assist?” Merlin enquired.

The knight looked up at him in mute relief from a pair of very blue eyes under a shock of very blonde slack curls. He helped get the boy seated on a barrel and then stood back to give Merlin space to work.

“Let me see your hand,” Merlin said to the boy.

The unnatural angle of his digits and the ashen face when Merlin began to manipulate the tender fingers left little doubt.

“What’s your name?” Merlin asked as he gingerly tested the wrist too.

“Tom,” said the young watery voice.

“Does anything else hurt, Tom?”

The shake of the head was dejected. The knight patted the shoulder gently, then turned his crystal gaze to Merlin in silent interrogation.

“Could be broken,” Merlin said, keeping the concern from his voice for the boy’s sake. “All right, here’s what we’re going to do,” Merlin announced, taking off his neckerchief and wrapping it gingerly around Tom’s assembled fingers. “I’m going to take you to the infirmary to see Gaius, the Court’s Physician. He will take good care of you and have this fixed in no time.”

“But my uncle’s match is next,” the youth blurted out, suddenly alarmed. “I’m a squire, I have duties!”

“Never mind that, Tom,” the knight replied. “I’d be very grateful if the Court Physician could have a look at it,” he told Merlin earnestly.

“But you can’t get ready on your own,” the boy protested.

“Your hand is more important,” the knight assured him kindly. “Your mother will have my hide if I bring her back a mangled son,” he half-smiled. “Besides, I’m sure I can gear up by myself,” he lied and searched for Merlin’s support.

No knight could really do that efficiently, given the unwieldy elaborateness of their accoutrement, no matter how deft they were. Merlin hesitated for a second, throwing a glance towards Arthur’s pavilion where he knew pages would be on hand to assist him.

“I’ll help your uncle prepare for his match,” he then told Tom. “If he’ll allow me to be your replacement.” He met the rather startled blue gaze.

“I… Of course. I’d be honoured,” the knight rushed to agree, with a slight bow of his very blonde head. “I am Alban. Of Uffculme,” he introduced himself, extending a hand.

“Merlin,” Merlin replied, then began to feel foolish as Sir Alban smiled as if he already knew him. “I am…”

“Prince Arthur’s devoted shadow,” Alban finished pleasantly, clasping his forearm. “I have seen you by his side.” His eyes seemed indeed to have long taken the measure of Merlin’s eminence and come to an admiring conclusion. Which made Merlin feel unsettled, though not in a bad way.

A great fracas of wood and metal erupted on the lists, greeted with cheers. The end of the ongoing match was near.

“We’d better get you ready,” Merlin said to the knight. “Go find Gaius, Tom. I’ll cover for you. The infirmary is the large pavilion to the west of the lists with the red and white posts. If anyone tries to stop you or steer you to someone else, just tell them Merlin sent you.” The child nodded.

And with that, Merlin set about kitting up a knight who wasn’t Arthur for the first time in his life.

Alban was as tall as Arthur, but slender in build – quite like Merlin himself in fact, and about his age too. He wore a thinly quilted tunic of coarse fabric as a gambeson under a battered hauberk that made Arthur’s old one look the height of efficiency, and his armour was a rickety old-fashioned mess, the fastenings of which Merlin had a hard time understanding. Fortunately, Alban guided him through the process and even apologised for it.

“I’m sorry, my equipment must seem appallingly crude to you,” he murmured as he watched with rapt attention Merlin’s fingers tie the first knots.

“I am no one to judge of such things,” Merlin smiled easily as he picked a very coarse breastplate from the table. “I belong to the school of ‘Whatever-gets-the-job-done’.”

“I inherited it from my father. I have better ones, but… well, one gets superstitious during tourneys.”

“Oh, I know allll about that.”

Alban gave a breathy grunt as Merlin tightened the fastening with more vigour than necessary.

“Sorry,” Merlin apologised sheepishly. “I’ve never equipped anyone but Prince Arthur.”

Alban’s gentle eyes caught Merlin’s and held them for several heartbeats.

“He is lucky to have you,” Alban said quietly.

Merlin, feeling tremulous, gave a self-conscious little snuff. “I think you have that sentence backwards.”

“No,” the knight insisted gently. “I stand by my statement. You are…” Alban hesitated, his brow furrowing briefly as he realised he couldn’t finish that sentence out loud without exposing them both to some form of mild embarrassment. “He relies so much on you,” he said instead, the words quickly uttered, as though patently inadequate.

“That, he does,” Merlin agreed, anxious to steer the conversation towards a lighter tone. “The man couldn’t find his way out of bed without me.” And then realised what he’d just said when Alban gave an amused chuckle. “Oh, that didn’t sound very good. Promise me you won’t tell him I said that.”

“You have my word of honour, Merlin. My lips are sealed.”

And they were rather pretty lips, too.

With a final pat to the knight’s chest that he immediately felt awkward about, Merlin said, “There. All set.”

“Thank you. Merlin.” The knight’s soft blue gaze lingered, making Merlin feel a little warm and shivery in his own skin.

Then, thankfully, the moment passed. Sir Alban was mounting his gutsy pommelled horse, and they made their way to the lists where Merlin handed him his lance with a few cheery words of encouragement.

Merlin stood by to watch the knight. He wasn’t terribly focused on the passes themselves, but rather on the warm and nervy feeling that was coiling in his belly. It was a chagrined little thing, paltry and unwanted, but it was there when other bigger, brighter, dearer and more tremendously desired things were otherwise engaged in utterly ignoring the very existence of Merlin’s needy little heart.

And Alban was nice. Respectful. Attractive, as many knights were. And… well, really nice. But more than anything else, he looked at Merlin in the way Merlin often longed to be looked at by a different pair of blue eyes. There was simply no denying that it felt desperately good to be so gently and so unassumingly wanted.

Alban won his match in two passes and was so elated by the unhoped-for result that he shook and hugged a delighted and somewhat blushing Merlin in celebration.

***

Arthur was all for being generous with his possessions and helping a knight in his time of need and all that, but this was pushing it. The grubby poacher was clinging to Merlin, for Heaven’s sake.

Thankfully, things soon resumed their natural course and his manservant returned to him without Arthur having to call for him too loudly. A page was dispatched to replace him by the unwashed interloper’s side, but Merlin remained a little distracted throughout the rest of the afternoon, at one point staring vacantly into nothingness while Arthur was explaining a rather subtle move that he intended to pull off against his next opponent. It was bothersome, this inattention. There was something different and new about it. It wasn’t the usual ‘Merlin being oblivious’ kind of heedlessness, it was rather an unwonted ‘Merlin daydreaming about something untoward’ kind of distraction. It made Arthur feel a diffuse sense of alarm that spoiled his so far mighty pleasant day.

The evening came with a challenge of its own, but one that Arthur brought about purposely. Ever the savvy strategist who believed in keeping one’s enemies close, he invited the grubby knight, a certain Alban of Uffculme, to sit at the prince’s table to share a light dinner with some of the finest knights of the Five Kingdoms.

Granted, it could not be said that such a man was an enemy. He was too low and too insignificant in the order of things for that to be the case. But he was comely, and he was blue-eyed and blonde, and the way he had touched Merlin (under the public eye, no less) did not agree with Arthur’s sense of propriety. Nor with his sense of property. Nor with the knot of warm, tender torment in his chest that his touching Merlin never failed to tug at. That knot was incensed at the liberty that had been taken, and it was determined to get to the bottom of this offense that had all the makings of lese-majesty. The offender was to be weighed and measured… and then loomed over until he understood his rightful place.

Sir Alban, for thus etiquette dictated that he be addressed, was a country knight of modest pedigree. Little better than a learned peasant, but nonetheless proficient in the noble arts of horsemanship and swordsmanship. To make matters worse, Arthur discovered that he was unpretentious, polite and rather likable.

At one point during the dinner, the man got to his feet and raised his cup to Arthur’s health, acknowledging his thankfulness for the assistance granted – and then, in a fit of sheer madness, he raised his cup to Merlin’s health, expressing his gratefulness for the assistance received. The knights not knowing any better, the damned fools, were happy to partake in the gallant toast, leaving Arthur no choice but to follow suit a little stiffly.

Upon seeing the smile on Merlin’s flushed face, Arthur suddenly doubted his own talents as a strategist.

He watched with a sense of doom as Alban then barely wetted his lips with the prince’s fine wine, before offering his cup to Merlin, who took it and drank from it with an embarrassed but pleased little grin. The whole gesture, reminiscent of some grotesque betrothal, gave Arthur a cold sweat. Sir Alban’s uncouth rural background finally appeared to him for what it was: the dangerous sharedness, the pernicious common grounds that might appeal to Merlin who had hailed from a similar world before Camelot’s influence had made him princely manservant material.

Arthur spent the rest of the meal watching the encroacher closely and feeling something fragile sink into his stomach. Alban’s tired doublet, a little slack at the elbows and a little worn at the shoulders, which had made Arthur almost pity him at first, was now reminding him of Merlin’s own attire when they’d first met. The good-natured smiles, the candid manners, the soft blue eyes… and the very blonde curls. The enemy was indeed within the walls.

But what could Arthur do about it? Merlin’s virtue was none of his business. Especially when said virtue was probably a very adventurous and welcoming saucy little tart after a cup of wine. The seat of Arthur’s reason told him that he ought to turn a blind eye to his manservant’s seduction if this was what it was – but the seat of his jealousy told him the interloper needed garrotting on the spot.

After the early dinner, once all sensible knights had retired to their pavilions for a hopefully restorative night before the morrow’s games, Merlin informed Arthur that Gaius had requested his help at the infirmary on the meadow, and Arthur could find no reason – though he really did try – not to grant Merlin the rest of his evening.

Which is why a few hours after sundown, a mysterious figure wrapped in a dark blue hooded cloak could be seen lurking among the tents, furtively following Merlin on his round as he distributed the little cures and unguents to the ailing knights that needed them. Said mysterious figure was particularly anxious to spy on this esteemed servant as he entered the ratty old tent of one Sir Alban of Uffculme. By the time the impatient figure had found a suitable rend in the canvas, Merlin was in amiable conversation with the knight while the little injured squire was already fast asleep.

“…thank you enough for this, Merlin,” Alban said, making fervent doe eyes at the young man.

“Gaius is confident your nephew will recover the use of his hand.”

“I’ll never forgive myself if he doesn’t.” Which the cloaked figure thought was only fair blame. But of course, Merlin was nothing if not abjectly supportive.

“Accidents happen. Just make sure he keeps it as still as possible for the next couple of weeks. Then slow, small and reasonable exercises with it to regain its range of closing and flexing moves.”

The knight nodded, quite fawningly. An offensive amount of lingering looks, nervous fidgeting and awkward smiles then occurred on both sides of the culpable encounter. Until the knight took a deeper breath and forged on.

“Tomorrow, I shall face Prince Arthur on the lists,” the man said, traces of what could only be justified concern in his voice. “Do you have any recommendations for me?”

The cloaked figure gritted his teeth in righteous indignation – and observed closely as Merlin gave an encouraging little shrug and a small smile.

“Just… give it your best try. Arthur is very good and perfectly ruthless.”

“Ruthless. Yes,” the miserable knave echoed. “I don’t think he likes me very much either.”

The would-be-mysterious figure gave a vindicated snort at that, almost betraying his position.

“It’s only the competition in him. He’s probably seen something in you that makes him wary. You should take it as a compliment.”

The figure was now close to apoplexy over this dreadful slander. He was not wary of this wretched nobody who could barely hold a lance! He could take him apart with one blow. Hell, he could take him apart with less than that.

“I think…” and then Alban mumbled something too low for the cloaked figure to hear. But the quiet intense look that he gave Merlin, and more importantly the self-conscious blush on Merlin’s face, immediately raised Arthur’s hackles.

His first instinct was to reach for his sword… except he’d gone without it so as to be more furtive in the camp. He looked down at his belt with thwarted irritation. All he had at his disposal was his faithful dagger – which admittedly would be more than enough to skewer the ruffian’s guts if he stepped out of line with his friend. But when Arthur put his eye to the unravelled seam in the tent’s canvas again, his heart stopped.

There, in the dim light of this ratty old stinking tent, Alban was now standing closer to Merlin. Close enough that he was presently within reach... And the wretch raised a hand to softly touch Merlin’s cheek. Thumb just brushing reverently over the graceful cheekbone. And Arthur felt his whole body turn to ice and something in his chest give a deafening banshee screech at the sight of Merlin’s passive acceptance of the caress.

Merlin didn’t seem disgusted or incensed by the contact. Just dreadfully, soul-crushingly expectant.

Imperceptibly, he leaned into the touch, with parted lips and soft longing eyes.

And Arthur’s already battered heart couldn’t take any more of it. He stepped back and fled.

He, Arthur Pendragon.

Fled.

In the face of this new, hitherto unknown kind of contest, he deserted the battlefield like a vile coward. Ran away to hide in his chambers where he braced himself over the stout, venerable table, panting and grimacing and feeling so grievously maimed that he half expected to cough up blood. For a few, long, ragged moments, he was nothing but fear and anger and dismay. A dish of fruit crashed against the wall, then a goblet, splattering its content sickeningly all over the stones. Arthur wished he could’ve done the same with the contents of his ribcage.

How?!

How could Merlin…

God, even thinking of his name was torment.

Arthur slammed his fists on the sturdy oak, and the pain shot up his arms and resonated right into their sockets.

“Sire?” a guard came to enquire meekly through the half-open door.

“I’m fine.”

Just fine.

The guard closed the door. And Arthur felt anything but fine.

Sometime later, someone else opened the door. And the way the latch moved told Arthur exactly who was here, so soon after the betrayal.

“Arthur?” the low penetrating voice asked gently. “Is something wrong?”

Arthur didn’t need to turn around. So attuned was he to the other man’s presence that he knew precisely what Merlin was doing behind him. Picking up the dish, collecting the scattered fruit and retrieving the goblet from under the bed where it had rolled. Sorting and cleaning what food could be salvaged, rinsing the goblet in the pail of clear water that always sat by the fireplace, then wiping it dry. He listened to it all. Wondering if Merlin had let Alban kiss him in the end. Wondering if they’d had time to do more. Wondering what his manservant was even doing here when Arthur had given him the evening off.

And so attuned was Merlin to him that he provided the answer to that last question without even being prompted.

“I was told you might need me,” Merlin said, his voice so beautifully, so jarringly steady and soothing. “Has something happened?”

Happened? No, nothing of any importance had happened. Nothing at all, save for the unplanned gouging out of Arthur’s heart with what felt like a very ill-sharpened kitchen implement.

“I don’t need you,” Arthur said very quietly – and with more layered meaning than could ever be suspected. “Get out.”

“Sire,” Merlin tried. So gentle. So well-meaning. So f*cking ready to give himself to any bloody passing knight of lowly extraction.

“Get out.” Arthur pushed from the table and turned around, to prove that he could stand on his own two feet without the assistance of his manservant. For some strange reason, Merlin looked the same as he’d looked this morning when he'd gifted Arthur with the rows of good luck rings sewn to his hauberk. He looked just the same.

Except for the notable absence of his ever-present neckerchief that finally registered on Arthur. Merlin’s throat was bared, all pale, smooth skin and enticing collar bones. Indecently on display and inviting dishonourable, predatory thoughts. The man might as well have paraded himself naked.

For an insane moment, Arthur thought he’d throw himself at Merlin and slam him against the wall to demand what was the meaning of it all. Demand to know why he was doing this to Arthur. Why he was sullying himself and turning his back on what they were, what they had, for…

But then Arthur realised.

How outrageously out of line he was to expect this level of control over a man who simply worked in his service. How utterly mad he was to think Merlin owed him any sort of faithful abstinence. They were nothing more than friends. No. In fact, they were less than that. They were master and servant who enjoyed a friendly rapport.

Meanwhile, Merlin watched in silence as Arthur’s anger subsided and deflated into carefully blank equanimity. Arthur felt the violence ebb from his tense frame, while his heart foundered into a numb torpor that was equally as frightening as the previous fit of blind powerless rage.

More than anything, Arthur feared he would hurt Merlin. Inflict wilful physical pain to match the emotional agony he’d just been unwittingly put through. So wild and unhinged was his response to the perceived betrayal, he was scared he might harm his friend – his servant, who he thought was also his dearest friend. It would’ve been the end of him.

“Go,” he said in a quiet, jagged order. “I need some sleep.”

He needed oblivion. He needed darkness. He needed to be sitting by that mountain lake again, with Merlin slowly coming back to life in his lap. In his arms. Rightfully his, beyond the shadow of a doubt.

Merlin obeyed his dismissal without a word. A small miracle in itself. A sign of the oncoming Apocalypse presumably.

The next day, Arthur waited for his mortal foe to enter the lists. He’d had next to no sleep of course, and what little he’d managed to get had been fitful and haunted. But he was ready. Every sense, every muscle, every fibre of his being felt perfectly whetted. His lance flawlessly balanced in his fist. Hengroen champing at the bit, raring to go. The crowd already clamouring for its beloved champion.

The first thing he noted when Sir Alban entered the lists to face him was the gait of his horse, nervous and edgy, betraying the mood of the rider. The second thing he noticed was Merlin’s neckerchief, tied just below Alban’s left knee as a discreet favour.

Arthur leaned in and imprinted the briefest clip of his spurs, and his trusted Hengroen immediately leapt up to speed.

The first pass saw Sir Alban flattened to the back of his mount under the impact of Arthur’s lance. The second pass saw him rammed clean off his saddle. The crowd gasped and cheered at the brutality of it, and Arthur looked on bitterly as Merlin rushed to the knight’s side to check on him and help him up. The crowd clapped politely when the knight raised a hand to signal that he was alright, and Arthur magnanimously tapped his tasset, scowling his frustration under the secrecy of his helmet. Merlin threw him a look, not fooled for one instant by the nonchalance of Arthur’s demeanour, and rather bewildered by the savagery of the attack.

Supporting himself on Merlin, Alban limped out of the lists – and hopefully, out of Arthur’s life.

***

Alban groaned as he slumped on his cot.

“I think that settles the question,” he wheezed.

Merlin, who was swiftly undoing the fastenings to rid the knight of his pretence of an armour, was anxious to make sure no gruesome injury hid under the flimsy layers of protection. Arthur had been unusually violent in his passes, exhibiting an unrestrained viciousness that he generally reserved for battlefields and life or death situations, rather than jousting games. There was no blood on Alban’s tunic, but Merlin knew a man could be crippled for life without a single drop of blood being shed.

“What question? Whether Arthur is a murderous prick?” Merlin muttered, carefully trying one joint after another, watching for any minute change in Alban’s pained facial expressions.

“You’re missing the point, Merlin,” the knight winced though the examination. “Prince Arthur hates my guts and it doesn’t take a soothsayer to understand why.”

Merlin’s heart sank at the words. Alban was only voicing the possibility of something he had been dreading in secret, although Arthur had never given him any reason to think he held such bigoted notions.

“He doesn’t hate you,” Merlin argued quietly. “Arthur is not a hateful man.” It would’ve killed the light in his soul to have to admit that Arthur might abhor men who loved and bedded other men. The dawning realisation threatened to shake him to his foundations. “At his heart, he is a fair, broad-minded man,” he insisted, as much to convince the knight as to reassure himself.

Alban leaned back on his cot, propped on his elbows, head tilted back as he panted through his aches.

“I’m not saying he’s unfair, only that he’s jealous,” he groaned as Merlin gingerly bent his knee, then slowly turned his ankle. “God, I feel like I’ve been run over by a mad bull.”

“I warned you he was ruthless,” Merlin mumbled, lost in his glum thoughts.

“You really shouldn’t be here, Merlin,” Alban then said, gently. “Every moment you spend by my side angers him a bit more.”

“I am the assistant to the Court’s Physician. And this is my rightful place.”

“Yes, but I’d really like to be allowed to leave Camelot alive, not feet first,” the knight half-smiled as he stilled Merlin’s hand with his own. “I’m bruised and battered but otherwise fine. Nothing broken. Not even a crack. Go back to him. You’re making this whole thing worse out of sheer pig-headedness.” Alban’s eyes were sweetly serious, and loathe as he was to admit it, Merlin knew there might be some tiny little inkling of truth to his words.

So, after much fussing and delaying, Merlin returned to Arthur’s grand pavilion, where he was greeted with the expected sour pleasantries.

“Merlin, how good of you to join us!” Arthur scoffed, every bit the conceited arsehole he was revealing himself to be today. “I trust our dear Sir Alban is still alive?” he said as Merlin took the place of the ill-at-ease squire who had been filling in for him.

“No thanks to your viciousness,” he muttered.

“If tilting is too harsh on him, he should try quintain. Or crochet.” And Merlin levelled a silent, stormy look at Arthur. “Have you got something to tell me, Merlin?” the prince goaded dryly.

“No, Sire.”

“Good.”

And so the matter was seemingly settled. With both parties feeling terribly wronged, and owed some apologies. But clearly, and to the understanding of all involved, it was only a question of time before they were at each other’s throats again. They managed to hold off and maintain the unsteady truce until after the tournament’s closing banquet, but no further.

As soon as they were back in his chambers, away from prying eyes and eavesdropping ears, the prince apparently couldn’t help himself.

“I see you’ve found your neckerchief again, Merlin. Has Sir Alban finally departed for the far reaches and verdant plains of Uffculme?” he asked with oily prattishness.

“I would advise you not to say a word about him,” Merlin warned grimly.

“I beg your pardon?”

“I won’t let you speak ill of him. Not after the dismal way you treated him.”

“And who are you to give me that sort of order?”

“I am the man who has to serve you even when you’re making an ass of yourself in front of the whole wide world.”

“Oh, I’m embarrassing you, am I?” Arthur marvelled, pressing dramatic fingertips to his chest.

“You certainly are when you’re being abjectly mean and prejudiced.”

“Mean and prejudiced,” Arthur echoed, rolling his eyes and clearly missing the magnitude of Merlin’s cold ire. “Well, let’s hear it. How was I mean and prejudiced towards you and your little friend?”

“Listen to yourself!”

“Well, isn’t he your friend?” Arthur questioned – then apparently couldn’t resist twisting the knife in. “Your… very good friend.”

“Is that what upset you so much that you just had to be a murderous arsehole?” Merlin challenged. “Do you hate the idea that I would have a very good friend? A very male good friend?” he pushed hotly, trampling the limits he had set for himself.

Arthur gave him an odd, appraising look, then shook his head.

“You’re being ridiculous getting yourself so worked up, Merlin,” he informed him in a more sober tone. The prince turned to the window and looked down into the torch-lit courtyard. Merlin could read a tension in his shoulders. A tension that Arthur was doing his best to control, even as he addressed the coloured windowpanes. “I couldn’t care less about you having male paramours. I have never been concerned by that sort of thing with my knights, and I don’t see why my servant should be treated differently. As long as it’s discreet and not causing a disruption in your workday, I really don’t give a damn.”

The words rang undeniably true, but tone was too flat. The pace too controlled. The voice too carefully casual. Merlin recognised that Arthur wasn’t being fully candid with him.

“Then why did you behave so cruelly to Sir Alban?”

“I didn’t…”

“Don’t serve me this horsesh*t, you almost killed him!” Merlin snapped, surprising even himself with his commanding dismissal.

It had the merit of making Arthur turn around and make amused eye contact with him.

“Merlin, he was bland little thing, much too dull for you,” he said, as though he was only stating the obvious. “You can do better than a fawning, impoverished country bumpkin.”

“And who the f*ck are you to wade in there and pass such judgement?!” Merlin suddenly erupted, feeling the blood boiling in his veins.

Meanwhile, Arthur clearly understood he was no one, because he turned to that bloody window again and refused to meet Merlin’s incensed gaze.

“He was beneath you,” the prince mumbled sullenly.

And Merlin had to bite his tongue not to blurt out the obvious rude reply.

“Who I choose to be with. On my own time. Is none of your business,” he ground out instead.

“Are you really so eager for a quick roll in the hay that you’ll settle for just about any random man?” Arthur asked coolly.

God, that question.

“Do you have any idea how lonely it is, being with you?” Merlin said, his throat almost too tight to let the words out. “How lonely it is, being your f*cking servant?” Arthur half-turned to him again, unable to ignore the echoes of distress he could hear in Merlin’s voice, and Merlin figured he might just as well embrace the pain and let all the shameful, ugly, poisonous misery ooze out freely. “I have no sentimental life to speak of because no one decent wants to get anywhere near me for fear of falling under your scrutiny, and the only people who do try to get it on with me are so disgustingly obvious in their self-serving motives that I could vomit. I am sick with the loneliness of having to stand in your shadow. And for once, for once, there was this one truly nice man who took a genuine interest in me and who wasn’t daunted by the fact that I’m Prince Arthur’s manservant.” And now that he had all of Arthur’s dismayed attention, Merlin pushed fiercely through the ache. “And guess what? You’re right. All I wanted was a roll in the hay. I’m very much aware he’s not my soulmate. I know he’s not the other side of my f*cking coin. If there was the slightest chance I could have that utter prick, do you think I would…” Merlin cut himself short, growing far too incautious in his angry desperation. He took a laboured breath, swallowed dryly, then steered his words towards safer waters. “Alban had the merit of being decent, and of being there. Thinking I might be worth the risk.” Ready, willing and able to have a quick tumble with Merlin. Probably nothing fancy. Just a bit of carnal foolishness and gentle comfort. Alban had been ready to be a little imprudent for Merlin. “And you humiliated him most brutally, because he wasn’t to your taste?!”

Still half turned, Arthur parted his lips to speak and stood suspended for a moment, as if weighing his next words with a world of caution, while Merlin waited for the consequences of his outburst.

Then the prince murmured quietly, “I wasn’t aware that you were feeling so…” He paused to look for a word that wouldn’t sound as horrid as ‘desperate’, though they both knew that was probably the best word for it. Then he found, “…unhappy. Or so unfulfilled.” Which were both also true. Arthur finally turned to fully face him, looking unusually discomfited. “I promise I won’t interfere anymore. I…” Arthur swallowed uneasily, the whole conversation turning visibly excruciating for him, unarmed as he was to tackle its far too intricate abundance of feelings. It made Merlin’s heart sink even deeper into the abyss of his love for this brave, possessive, well-meaning mess of a prince. “Maybe I can… Some of my knights… I’m sure they would fancy you immensely if they knew… that I won’t disapprove of…” the prat stammered through the unspeakable.

Oh dear god.

“No, Arthur, no. Please. Don’t,” Merlin hastened to kill that horrendous idea in the egg, his clammy fingers coming to push at his hairline. “It’s… I don’t… You can’t do that. You absolutely cannot do that.”

And Arthur seemed relieved that Merlin was putting his veto to it.

“Yes. Sorry. I just… I just don’t want you to be miserable in my service,” Arthur said with that meek gentleness that Merlin knew he was capable of but so rarely showed.

“I’m not… miserable,” Merlin promised, feeling the back of his eyes prickle ominously.

“But you’re not happy either.”

“It can’t be helped,” he said, making a conscious effort to let his hand run through his hair and settle at the back of his neck. Then pulling a smile across his lips, “I work for a clotpole,” he tried in a lighter tone.

But Arthur didn’t take the bait. Instead, he was looking at him unsurely, transparently pondering whether it was opportune to ask some dreadfully dumb question. And all Merlin could do was brace himself for what was sure to be further proof of his prince’s appalling gormlessness in matters of the heart.

“Is there anyone… anyone you desire?” Arthur eventually inquired very quietly. “Anyone you would… pursue, if you were free to do so?”

f*ck.

The question cut so close to the bone, that Merlin felt his composure flicker and sputter like a lone candle in a cold room.

“You said ‘soulmate’,” Arthur went on softly. “I thought… Maybe there’s someone special. Someone you’ve been longing for?”

Merlin shook his head very slightly. “No, Sire,” he said in a pale voice.

There was strange pain in Arthur’s eyes, but Merlin wasn’t sure where it stemmed from. Empathy for a lonely friend? Hurt at being lied to? For all Arthur was often oblivious to the delicate nuances of the human soul, he was also sometimes far too seeing, especially when Merlin least expected it.

Arthur’s eyes drifted away from Merlin. He nodded in quiet acceptance.

Awkward but clean silence descended on the room. Merlin felt that this confrontation hadn’t gone perfectly, but maybe it had been enough to clear the air between them. He hoped that now that his proclivity for men (admittedly, one of his lesser secrets) was out in the open, they could resume the course of their friendship where they’d left off.

He picked up Arthur’s dirty boots, wished him a good night and retired to his little room.

***

Arthur sat down. Crumpled into his seat, really.

So… Merlin was in love. And a terrible liar.

Arthur was already aware of the latter, but the former hit him like a twenty-pound mace.

Merlin. In love. And not merely in love, but positively pining.

Pining for some mysterious, unattainable man who was, of Merlin’s own damning admission, the other half of his heart and soul. How could it be? How could it be that Merlin was so terribly in love with someone and he, Arthur, his closest friend, had no idea? And how could this love be so impossible that Merlin had seemingly surrendered all hope and was ready to latch on to anyone brave or foolish enough to look his way – just to momentarily soothe his loneliness? It didn’t even make sense!

How could anyone live this way?

Arthur hated it. Hated everything about it. Hated the intensity and the passion that this love could wring out of Merlin. Hated feeling so utterly left out. Hated that this unnamed lucky son-of-a-whor* was apparently impervious to such formidable love and that Merlin was so resigned to his fate that he wouldn’t even try to woo the wretch. And last but not least, Arthur absolutely hated that Merlin was so desperate for intimacy with a man – any man! – that he was ready to sleep with anyone who showed him a bit of interest and affection.

But most gutting of all, when all the powerless hate was duly expended, Arthur was left to contemplate and bemoan the fact that he himself had never been approached or even considered for one such quick inconsequential tumble in the sheets, when he had in fact so much affection for Merlin that he didn’t know what to do with it.

And he was blonde – with perfectly good blue eyes, he’d been told.

Arthur groaned and buried his face in his hands, keenly aware that he was slowly going mad.

Merlin wouldn’t even admit to being in love with anyone. He had just stood there and lied to Arthur. Of course, to some extent the deception was justifiable. After the way Arthur had treated Sir Alban, it stood to reason that Merlin wasn’t going to risk identifying anyone as his love interest for fear that the jealous, rash, murderous prince might feel the need to do something about it. This was all on Arthur. He had indeed forfeited his friend’s trust with how callously he had torn into the grubby little poacher from Uffculme – yet even now he couldn’t regret doing so. It had felt far too satisfying ripping the knight apart in public with all his might and fury. It had felt too damn right. Because if the whole ordeal and its inglorious fallout had taught Arthur anything, it was that something frighteningly fierce and unrelenting in him considered Merlin as irrevocably his.

And now, here was the knot of the dilemma: he could not suffer to see or know Merlin unhappy. Yet somehow, he’d clearly been made to understand that he was the one standing in the way of his friend’s happiness. And so something had to give. Something had to shift to accommodate his friend’s needs. Arthur thought of the little run-down hovel in the forest, and how an unhappy, untethered Merlin might eventually leave his service and disappear for good. The man was resourceful and he had magic. He didn’t need Arthur to build a life for himself somewhere new. Many people did that, didn’t they? Uprooted themselves, travelled to the other end of the world, settled there, grew a family and never looked back.

So Arthur had to make sure Merlin found happiness right here by his side. In Camelot. At whatever cost. And he could only see one way out of this. Since Merlin himself had balked at the notion of Arthur discreetly encouraging his most amenable knights to court him – a notion that sickened him to the core but that seemed at the time was the only relief available – there only remained the option of the mysterious man.

This ‘utter prick’, as Merlin had dubbed him, had to be found, dragged out of the shadows and made to see the error of his unloving ways.

And then Arthur would decide if the anonymous wretch was good enough for his friend.

That night, while all decent people were fast asleep after a hard day of honest toil, Prince Arthur turned the quandary of the man’s identity over and over in his mind. Somewhere, roaming the kingdom, possibly even the Citadel itself, was a man who had somehow managed to capture his friend’s fancy and was now holding this most precious heart hostage. And Arthur simply had not the remotest idea who it might be, or how it had happened.

It had to have happened right under his nose and to his shame he had missed it. Missed the blushes and the faraway looks and the clammy hands and the heaving bosoms and all the other hints. Not that Arthur knew much about the accepted symptoms of lovesickness first hand, but he had read enough poems, ballads and sagas, listened to enough mindless chatter between Morgana and Gwen that he had a rough idea of what the telltale signs should have been. He racked his brain.

Had Merlin ever been distracted or had he ever behaved suspiciously? Yes, constantly. It couldn’t be considered significant as it was standard Merlin behaviour. Had Merlin ever been overtly jealous or possessive of anyone? Hard to tell. The only times he’d seen Merlin turn peevishly petty was when someone threatened or questioned his position as Arthur’s manservant. Had he lost his appetite? No, the man always shovelled his food in ravenously – and more often than not nicked Arthur’s. Had Merlin ever smiled flirtatiously at anyone in particular? God yes, all the damn time! And he probably didn’t even realise he was doing it.

Lost in the vast, desolate plain of his princely bed, Arthur rolled onto his back, knitted his fingers behind his head and scowled at the dark canopy above.

So who could that man be?

A fellow servant? No. Merlin could easily have had an idyll with any of the servants in the castle if he so wished. These things happened all the time. No one would have batted an eyelid over it.

A craftsman living in the lower town then? Or a travelling merchant passing through Camelot regularly? Somehow it seemed improbable. A tradesman would have been too tame a partner for his friend. Merlin was too much of a man of action, though it felt odd to think of him in those terms. But Arthur knew him to be a man driven by his intrepid instincts and his bravery and his sense of justice and fairness. In many ways, Merlin would have made a very decent knight had his birth and his abysmal footwork allowed for it. With a good bit of training, he would’ve been at his place by Arthur’s side on a battlefield. He would’ve been…

Arthur’s spine stiffened at the realisation.

A knight.

Arthur rose onto his elbows.

The man had to be a knight.

Why else would Merlin have reacted so badly at Arthur’s admittedly half-baked plan of throwing his most eligible knights at him? It was because Merlin’s man was one of them. Or someone who was aspiring to become one of them.

But which one? And how could the man have suffered to watch Merlin on the verge of succumbing to Alban without raising a finger to stop it?

This was where Arthur’s poor, tired, unromantic brain had to admit defeat. None of it made any sense to him. If Merlin was in love with one of his knights, why weren’t they already together, enjoying each other? What obstacle stood in their way? Surely it couldn’t be Arthur himself. Surely Merlin couldn’t love someone who feared Arthur more than he loved Merlin. That would be hideous.

Arthur heaved a sigh and dropped back to his pillow. The idiotic guesswork was getting him nowhere, further proof that he was absolutely useless when it came to matters of the heart. He simply didn’t get it. If he were a knight in love with Merlin… Or rather, if Merlin were in love with him, he wouldn’t let anything stand in their way. He would make it work no matter the personal cost. He would fight, steal, lie, hide, cheat, deceive – anything to be with Merlin and make him happy.

But then, maybe not everyone was as uncompromising in their affections as Arthur.

Maybe there were circ*mstances Arthur was unaware of. Maybe the man was already married or betrothed. Or maybe it was a mind-boggling case of unrequited love, as unlikely as that seemed. And maybe, just maybe, Arthur should indeed mind his own damn business and get some sleep.

Over the following days, though, he kept an eye peeled for clues as to who Merlin’s man could be. There were a number of blonde, blue-eyed knights who might be considered attractive to the likes of Merlin – i.e. argumentative servants with appalling manners but half-decent taste. His knights were the best and bravest sons of the kingdom’s most noble families, so it was understandable that they would steal the hearts and enflame the desires of all who beheld them. There were quite a few lookers among them if he was to be honest – though his own personal inclination tended to lean towards brunettes – so it might be said that he found himself with an embarrassment-of-riches situation.

He decided that if he wanted to ferret out the elusive man of Merlin’s dreams, he couldn’t rely on his own criteria of eligibility. He had to use hunting tactics and not only search for tracks but also hark for the sudden flight of birds that betrayed the game’s whereabouts. In other words, he needed to watch Merlin closely and wait for him to give away where his weakness lay. And with someone as rash and as expressive as his friend, it surely wouldn’t take Arthur long before he could figure out who among his men had enslaved Merlin’s impressionable heart.

Unfortunately, his manservant was a contrary little prat and, in typical Merlin fashion, thwarted Arthur’s plan by electing to behave with uncharacteristic restraint and perfect decorum for the rest of the week. Arthur’s chambers were spotless, his boots impeccable, his laundry pristine and his servant impossibly servile. It was like Merlin had a broom handle firmly ensconced up his backside: there was no getting an incautious word or unguarded look out of him, not even a proper sarcasm. Arthur could have defenestrated him for being so aggravatingly difficult.

Fortunately, a man’s true nature always shines through the cracks eventually, and after a few more days, Merlin couldn’t help but return to his charming, opinionated, slovenly ways. But even then, even after studiously observing his friend attending the knights’ practice, Arthur still couldn’t find the lucky recipient of his manservant’s devotion. Merlin remained his ordinary self, only concerned with providing assistance with weapons, giving a physician’s perspective on the performances of Arthur’s men and occasionally casting aspersions on Arthur’s level of fitness. No pining, no longing, no smouldering – at anyone at all. Only Merlin being a meddling turnip-head.

Arthur’s last hope now hinged on the return from mission of a contingent of knights led by Leon. Perhaps Merlin’s beloved was among them. Leon himself might be the potential love interest. Tall, handsome, virtuous and deeply honourable, Arthur’s righthand man was the sort of very principled knight whose sense of duty and loyalty to Arthur might have made Merlin’s position an insurmountable obstacle. But right now, Arthur was more tempted to pin his hopes on Sir Erwan, one of his younger knights. A sweet, soft-spoken lad built like the side of a barn with a punch that could stop a fight and a swing of the sword that could split a tree. Arthur had suspected the man of carrying a torch for his manservant for some time now. He had caught some nervous glances and some uneasy blushes. Not to mention the fact that Erwan developed a severe case of butter-fingers every time Merlin got close. He was also dark blonde with placid blue-grey eyes. He was therefore an excellent contender.

Arthur would have been favourable to the possibility of a relationship between Merlin and this most innocuous of men. Sir Erwan was brave, quiet, unthreatening to anyone but Camelot’s enemies and in complete awe of Arthur – which might explain why the hypothetical lovers had never acted on their hypothetical feelings – and that made him quite the sort of man the prince was ready to consider as a desirable match for his friend.

The problem was said friend. When the retinue of knights entered the courtyard in all their scarlet glory, welcomed by Arthur himself on the grand perron as though they were diplomatic envoys from a faraway land, Merlin, instead of being appropriately transported with joy by the return of his everlasting love, remained thoroughly unmoved, idly rocking on the balls of his feet and gazing absently at the pigeons as per usual. Either the inconvenient prat was far better at deception than Arthur was ready to believe or the prince’s matchmaking calculations were somewhat flawed.

***

The realisation came upon Merlin as he filled their waterskins at the spring. This day marked the third anniversary of his arrival in Camelot, and therefore tomorrow would be the third anniversary of his first meeting Arthur. The thought brought a smile to his lips as he remembered how they had locked horns from the moment they’d clapped eyes on each other. It felt like such a long time ago now. Almost a lifetime. They’d been such young and reckless fools back then. Not that they were that much older now of course, but they had been through a lot and hopefully had grown a little wiser for it.

He wondered if Arthur was aware of the date and its significance.

Had Merlin been sentimental, he might have been pleased that the lucky timing found them embarked on a quest (of sorts) together, just the two of them. But since he was not, he merely smiled and decided to add a few wild berries to their morning oatmeal.

The quest in itself hardly deserved the name: it was more of a herb garnering errand. One that required several days ride to some remote mountains in order to find a plant Gaius needed to put together a potion (and enchant an amulet, though Arthur was unaware of that of course) that would soothe Morgana’s fraught nights. Merlin had been getting ready to make the journey alone, but Arthur had inadvertently stumbled upon his and Gaius’ preparations.

At first, the overbearing prat had been adamant Merlin take with him a knight for escort. He had insisted heavily, encouraging Merlin to pick Sir Leon or Sir Erwan (some big blonde git who seemed to blush and drop things a lot). But since Merlin had been equally adamant he be left to go alone, Arthur, always the pig-headed prick, had decided to escort him himself.

To be honest, Merlin hadn’t been too happy about these travel arrangements to start with. Ever since the impromptu vivisection of Merlin’s love life, Arthur had adopted an irritating cautiousness when dealing with him. As though Merlin were a frail acquaintance suffering from a crippling and slightly shameful illness. It was unnerving and frankly Merlin would have much rather dealt with Arthur being an overbearing arsehole, than this abominably lenient, fussy and pitying version of his friend.

But something had to be said about the virtues of travelling. Perhaps it was that they were putting distance between them and the citadel, or perhaps it was that there was no resisting the natural companionship of a long horse ride, but whatever the case may be, it was doing them a lot of good and they had fallen back into their easy, dry bantering ways before the first day was through.

So Merlin chucked the last berries of the season into the porridge and just relished the present. The weather was holding its summery promises, the forest was lush and grand, the paths were clear, and the rabbits eager to get caught. The travellers kept to the wilderness as much as possible to avoid Arthur being recognised, on account of King Uther not having really given him sanction to travel to the borderlands to collect herbs like a serving boy. As regarded journey incidents, only one pair of misguided thieves and a bog hag had been encountered (and promptly dispatched) so far, so all in all, they were making easy progress and there was a light-hearted feeling in the air. Nothing to do all day but ride, hunt, get a little bit lost, camp out, and occasionally run some ill-intentioned men through with his sword, meant that Arthur was enjoying himself far more than was becoming for a fearsome warrior on a botanical expedition – which made Merlin feel rather warm and mellow in his own skin.

Alas, the best things do come to an end eventually, and they’d been riding side by side all morning, mostly in companionable silence, when disaster struck under the form of Arthur believing himself to be subtly clever.

“So, Merlin…” he began in a teasing tone that made the back of Merlin’s neck prickle in warning. “How about you tell me of that mystery man of yours?”

“That mystery man of mine…” Merlin echoed flatly.

“Yes. The one who tickles your fancy. Don’t think you can pull the wool over my eyes,” the prince admonished with all the self-confidence of the deluded prat. “Come on, you can tell me.”

Merlin glanced his way and pursed his lips, gauging how far he could take the charade.

“Oh well,” he said. “You know him better than I do.”

“How so?”

“Because he only dwells in your imagination.”

Arthur made a rude disparaging noise, then went on, “I don’t know why you’re being so secretive, Merlin. You know you can’t keep a secret for long. You’re a natural blabbermouth.”

“A blabbermouth?” Merlin said as he ducked a low branch. “Still better than being a dollophead.”

“Now see? That’s obfuscation. And it’s not working.”

“Damn, now you’re waving around the big words.”

To which Arthur only gave Merlin a side look and a smirk.

“He’s a knight,” the prick announced with perverse relish.

Merlin frowned, a bit nonplussed.

“What makes you think that?”

“Oh I just know,” Arthur said smugly. “A fine knight with blonde hair, blue-eyes, impeccable manners, big calloused hands…”

Merlin’s heart wedged itself just a tiny bit sideways in his throat.

“He sounds good, when do I meet him?” he asked without so much as a tremor in his voice.

“Well, he could’ve been travelling with you right this instant had you not been so damn difficult.”

And then everything began to slot horribly into place.

“What the… You tried to set me up with one of your bloody knights?!” Merlin blurted out in disbelief. “And you think I’m besotted with Leon? Or Erwan? What is wrong with you?!”

“They’re the finest knights in Camelot!” And Arthur had the gall to blush and look offended by his finding fault with his choice. “And they’re both blonde,” he added with a supreme pout.

“What the hell does that have to do with ANYTHING?!” The cry of utter outrage scared away the birds in the surrounding trees.

“You like blondes.”

“Less and less by the second!”

And thank goodness, at least Arthur had the intelligence to seem insulted by that.

“God…” Merlin shook his head. Just when he thought the man couldn’t be anymore of an idiot, he just had to outdo himself. “Seriously. Erwan?”

“The man worships the ground you walk on,” Arthur argued the most naturally in the world. “And he’s the most adorable killing machine I’ve ever met.”

“Oh because that’s obviously what makes me go weak at knees. An adorable killing machine.” Merlin rolled his eyes loudly, then cleared his throat a little when something in his chest gave a guilty wobble.

“Well, go on then, educate me if you will. What makes you go weak at the knees?” the cabbagehead scowled.

“That’s personal.”

“I’m beginning to think you have no idea yourself.”

“And I’m beginning to think a lifetime of strict abstinence is looking more and more like a desirable option if it saves me from the horrors of a matchmaking prince.”

Arthur huffed. “You’re the one who told me you were lonely.”

“I never said that,” Merlin countered swiftly, then watched his horse’s ears swivel accusingly.

“Yes you did.”

“Well, I never said you had to do something about it. I believe I distinctly asked you to stay away from my love life.”

“You don’t have one.”

“And whose bloody fault is that?!” Merlin snapped.

There was a miffed silence that stretched uncomfortably after that.

“I know there’s someone,” Arthur then mumbled quietly but with such an undertone of concern in his voice that Merlin couldn’t stay mad at him.

“And I told you there isn’t,” he murmured. “What makes you think otherwise?”

“The fact that you’re a terrible liar?” Arthur shuffled in his stirrups and adjusted his seat in the saddle. “I just wish you’d tell me who he is. So I know not to…” Then he worried at his lip.

“Not to what?”

“So I know not to send him into perilous situations.” Arthur gave him a side glance then quickly looked ahead. “If it can be avoided.”

Merlin didn’t know whether to thwack him behind the head or knock boots with him. The git was an adorable killing machine, damn him.

“You know you can’t do that,” Merlin finally said gently.

If only.

But Arthur was a born leader, innately proud and brave, and he led from the front. He would always put himself in perilous situations. With hundreds of experienced men under his orders, there was still no sensitive or treacherous mission he wouldn’t carry out himself if at all possible. And this was why Merlin knew he would never leave Arthur’s side. Why he would follow him to the mouth of Hell (with the requisite copious amounts of grumbling and cursing of course), and hopefully beat him to it and to protect him at whatever cost to his own life. Merlin’s existence would certainly have been easier and far less hazardous if he hadn’t fallen for Arthur, but now that he was there, his stupid heart devotedly compromised and pathetically enslaved, he wouldn’t dream of it being otherwise.

***

Arthur watched with a somewhat sinking heart as Merlin’s eyes grew soft and wistful. He had this dim, faraway look that men get when they dwell on the beloved ruler of their tender heart and soul. It gave Arthur chills of unease and pangs of something dangerously approaching jealousy.

“You are terribly fond of him,” he murmured to Merlin’s lovestruck profile.

Besotted. That was the word Merlin had used, quite inadvertently. Merlin was besotted with one of his knights, and the thought made Arthur sick with ignoble stirrings. ‘Besotted’ spoke of a helplessness of feelings, a weakness, an impossibility to resist. A blind devotion.

Merlin turned his head and held Arthur’s gaze for a moment, then briefly dimpled his cheeks.

“And he can never know,” he advised quietly, with an amount of restraint and acceptance that humbled Arthur into silence. Still wrapped in his bittersweet thoughts, his friend had forgotten to deny the man’s existence.

So this was it, then. Merlin was deeply in love yet entirely ready to sacrifice himself, and there was something both tragic and heroic to this situation that made Arthur’s soul hurt. To think that Arthur had among his knights and under his direct orders a man who could command such self-effacing loyalty, such enduring love from such a brave, strong, impulsive heart as Merlin’s. Arthur felt cheated. One had to be an exceptional man to have unwittingly conquered this exceptional heart. He hated that there was a man out there capable of making Merlin feel this way – and that it wasn’t him.

The only thing that gave Arthur some tenuous solace was the fact that, for some obscure reason, this anonymous criminal was keeping Merlin at arm’s length, either through ignorance or wilful denial. But Arthur didn’t know which was worst: that there was amongst his knights a mouth-breathing idiot who didn’t realise Merlin was in love with him, or that said idiot would know it and not return the invaluable feelings.

Although, if Arthur was fully honest with himself, he knew of a third possibility. Could it be that the man knew of these feelings, actually returned them, but chose not to act on them?

Arthur watched his travelling companion extend a hand to push away a branch, and he was intrusively reminded of the fact that Merlin had magic. He had never caught him using it red handed, but he had grown more observant and had noticed little things. Like the fact that his bathwater was always at the perfect temperature without Merlin seeming to put that much effort into it. Or the fact that some of his freshly ripped or stained garments looked as good as new on the very next day. Or, more worryingly, the fact that there had been several occasions on which enemies had taken a tumble or dropped their weapons at critical junctures in combat. Those instances had particularly troubled Arthur, for it now appeared that Merlin was intervening and had probably been intervening in his fights for some time. At first, he’d found it infuriatingly jarring, that anyone would think the prince needed that kind of unnatural nudge to win his fights – or that he needed protection at all for that matter. But then after the third such incident, Arthur realised that, had the help been coming from a fellow knight in armour, he’d have welcomed it and thanked the warrior. Which led him to consider the amount of humility and endurance that was needed to silently save a man’s life and never get any credit for it. Arthur had no choice but to grudgingly accept the interference – or face Merlin and force an admission of sorcery out of him. Something that could go very wrong, he was aware.

Was Merlin’s man aware that he had magical powers? Or was Merlin trying not to reveal himself? Was that what truly stood in the way of Merlin’s happiness?

A frisson of something not very glorious ran through Arthur as he basked in the satisfaction of knowing something about Merlin that the other man probably didn’t.

There were two men currently fighting for dominance in Arthur’s mind. Two Arthurs vying for precedence and eager to get the last word. The first one, noble and pure of heart, wanted Merlin to find happiness with the man of his dreams because he cared about his friend. This Arthur was a true hero for he knew that Merlin finding love meant him losing the only real best friend he’d ever had. The second Arthur, however, was a combative self-centred tyrant who couldn’t bear to come in second anywhere, and wildly believed there was nothing Merlin could want in a lover that he couldn’t provide himself to his friend. One of those Arthurs was right and the other was wrong of course, but they both had convincing arguments and made a mess of Arthur’s thinking space.

In the end, Arthur decided that it was probably wiser if he listened to Merlin and stopped trying to interfere with his friend’s love life. He wasn’t too sure of his motives anymore, and it might be better indeed that he never learnt of the man’s identity, for something unmentionable in him would hate the lucky wretch with a spiteful passion. The kind of passion that levelled cities and brought down empires – and very possibly might send a subordinate to a certain death.

It was with these grim, unworthy thoughts stewing in Arthur’s mind that they reached a desultory cluster of houses that one might have been inclined to call a village if they were feeling generous – a meagre hamlet if they were realistic. They dismounted upon seeing the first house so as not to bring attention to themselves. They were close enough to their final destination that Merlin needed to get some indications of where exactly they were most likely to find the precious but elusive plant, so Arthur led the mounts while his manservant gathered the information from a collection of increasingly sullen individuals.

“Yeah, they don’t know,” Merlin confirmed.

“What do you mean, they don’t know. They live here.”

“Well, it’s a rare plant, and even if some of them knew, I think they’re wary of us,” Merlin sighed. “They’ve told me to seek out a healer living in the forest on his own. Someone by the name of Erondrell. Knowledgeable man, apparently. They’ve given me directions to his home.”

“A healer. Living in the forest. On his own,” Arthur repeated drily. “Why do I get the impression that sorcery might be involved?”

“Because you have a suspicious turn of mind. There’s nothing wrong with wanting a bit of peace and quiet, far from the bustling crowd.”

“The bustling crowd?” Arthur scoffed, waving at what amounted to a deserted street – if one used that term very loosely – and the lone scruffy hen shabbily clucking her way across it.

“Oh you’ve clearly never lived in close proximity with fowl or their minders,” Merlin argued loftily.

“No, but I spend time with plenty of featherbrains.”

Merlin grinned. “Come on, I’d like to find that healer before we run out of daylight.”

Arthur scowled at being ordered about by his manservant.

“That had better not be a sorcerer, Merlin.”

“S’just a healer,” he promised, giving him an underhanded dose of dimples.

Which meant Arthur followed him, like the docile prince he wasn’t.

At first Merlin griped about having been given imprecise directions, but soon they realised something else was afoot. The forest itself seemed to want to get them lost. It was as though some enchantment was at work, and Arthur didn’t like it one bit. After much cursing and plenty of obscure mumbling that he now knew to be covert incantations, they eventually ended up finding the healer’s abode just after sunset. A delightful little thatched cottage nestled in a clearing and almost fully cloaked in the luxuriant rampant green of some exotic-looking ivy. Purple blooms peeked through the leaves here and there, like so many vivid jewels. There was a wooden bench by the front door with a flowerpot on it and a weathered wheelbarrow to the side of the house with an old hoe in it. It looked peaceful and charming, which Arthur didn’t buy for a second.

Arthur reflexively tightened his grip on the handle of his sword as Merlin knocked on the door.

The man who opened was… younger-looking than Arthur expected. Around thirty years old maybe. And smiling. Rather comely. With long wavy reddish blonde hair and crystal blue-green eyes. His features were pleasant yet otherwise unremarkable, but the combination of his winsome smile, his clear gaze and the lush flowing hair conspired to make him seem quite gorgeous, as hard as it was for Arthur to admit it.

“Ah,” the man said, leaning against the door with a crooked smile that half admitted being caught out.

“Hello,” Merlin began very politely. “We are looking for a man called Erondrell. Is this his house?”

The man looked from Merlin to Arthur’s hand to Arthur’s eyes and back again, seemed to weigh his options, undaunted, and finally replied, “Ye-ess, that would be me.”

“My name’s Merlin and this is… Sir Erwan,” Merlin continued, while Arthur had to choke back his outrage to keep up the pretence. “We are looking for someone who might help us find a specific medicinal plant for a friend.”

Erondrell seemed to ponder his visitors for a moment, then his smile broadened, and he welcomed them into his neat little home. The interior, much vaster than he’d imagined from outside, matched the exterior in terms of quaint aesthetics. It was a clean, well-loved house with rustic furniture that had been mended several times over, a large functional fireplace and an impressively garnished workbench that hugged most of the western wall. The many shelves that lined the walls were cluttered with a tidy assortment of books, pots and boxes of all sizes, and something fragrant was bubbling away in a little cauldron on the hearth. Merlin was completely in love with the place of course.

No sooner had they got the regular platitudes out of the way than he and Erondrell immediately launched into a long and boring conversation about herbs and potions that Arthur had very little interest in. But it did give him the time to walk round the main room, assessing every cupboard, peering into every doorway until he knew the overall layout of the house, spotted the backdoors and came to the conclusion that the cottage, while uncannily roomy, was as unthreatening as it seemed.

***

Erondrell (or Erond as he insisted on being called) was a fascinating character. Friendly, well-mannered, educated and knowledgeable without being patronising in any way, he didn’t look that much older than Arthur and Merlin, but there was a certain casual ease to his demeanour that hinted at competent experience beyond his apparent years.

As soon as Merlin began to explain the purpose of their quest, Erond was able to give him all the information he needed to find the plant, and even indicated another herb that might even be better suited for a tincture with similar properties. The book on medicinal flora that he showed Merlin was magnificent, with detailed and realistic coloured renderings of the various plants, flowers, roots, seeds and buds. A real work of art that Merlin itched to leaf through and maybe even copy if Erond allowed it. So many of these plants were unknown to him and he was dying to bring back copies of certain pages to Gaius. To tell the truth, Merlin was developing a very bad case of bookshelf envy. Hell, the man’s whole house was exactly the sort of place that Merlin would’ve loved to have for himself. It had everything he could ever want.

Erond was also quite a looker. Although barely average in height and of a densely muscular build, he had the most piercing aquamarine eyes Merlin had ever seen and his abundant mane of shoulder-length amber curls was sensual to a fault. Merlin liked him. There was a teasing but benevolent mischievousness about him that Merlin could relate to immediately. Arthur decided to hate him on sight, of course, for he was a jealous prick who didn’t like being made to feel that he might be the second most handsome man in the room.

To make matters worse, Erond was a wielder of magic. The faint, shimmery sensation Merlin could feel in his scalp when they stood close to one another made that clear to him, but he hoped it was rather less obvious to Arthur whose reaction he dared not predict. So far, the prince seemed to have taken a hearty, immature dislike to the man, but Merlin hoped it was merely a case of jealousy and nothing worse.

“Mer-lin?” the undercover prince asked as soon as Erond had his back turned.

“Yes, Erwan?”

“The man’s a sorcerer, isn’t he?”

Crap.

“I’m afraid so,” Merlin said, trying to look terribly sorry for this inconvenience.

“You know what I’m supposed to do to sorcerers, don’t you?”

“Allow them to live in peace as long as they don’t harm anyone?”

“Guess again,” Arthur prompted drily.

“With all due respect,” Merlin muttered as he glanced at the doorway where Eron had disappeared. “He is the local healer. The people we saw in that last village, they’re counting on him. He takes care of them, takes care of their children, their elderly, their livestock. You can’t take that away from them, just because you disapprove of the way he goes about doing things.”

“This is not about a mere method issue, Merlin. He’s a sorcerer.”

“A sorcerer who is probably powerful enough to give us grief, otherwise the villagers wouldn’t have pointed us in his direction.”

“We’ll see if he’s that powerful with my sword stuck in his throat,” the prince muttered darkly.

“But we need his help for Morgana’s sake,” Merlin whispered, then laid a hand on Arthur’s wrist. “We didn’t even know of his existence until today. That’s how discreet and effective he has been in leading a quiet life while helping others. Not all sorcerers are evil. Not all of them have a grudge against Camelot: some of them just want to live their life in peace and help their community where they can.”

The heartfelt words seemed to hit their mark with far more accuracy than Merlin had hoped. Arthur gazed at him with unnerving intensity for a moment, worrying at the inside of his cheek as he did it. And then, the small miracle happened. Arthur Pendragon relented and agreed not to run their host through with his sword.

The prince even went so far as to stay quietly out of everyone’s way, seated on a stool by the window, silently watching with his arms folded while Merlin and Erond pottered about and disserted on the properties of plants. He remained thus strangely subdued until sleeping arrangements were discussed.

“I do not receive many visits and therefore have unfortunately only one bed to spare,” Erond informed them apologetically. “It is usually reserved for the occasional patient, but it is all yours if you wish.”

“I can sleep on the floor,” Merlin said immediately, then turning to Arthur, “Sir Erwan can have the bed.”

“Oh, but surely that would be extremely uncomfortable,” Erond frowned, throwing a dry look at Arthur. “I would be happy to share my bed with you, Merlin. And I promise I do not snore,” he added teasingly.

“No we share the sick bed,” Arthur clipped.

“Really?” Merlin blinked.

“Of course. We’ve shared plenty of things before. We can share a bed,” Arthur said confidently, despite lying through his teeth.

“Perfect,” Eron beamed. “It is agreed then. I shall get the room all nice and ready for you.” The sorcerer then left them to finish their stew while he presumably chased the cobwebs out of the spare room.

Meanwhile, Merlin turned a critical eyebrow on Arthur.

“When have we ever shared anything?”

“Shut up. We share plenty of things all the time,” Arthur ground out.

“Name one,” Merlin challenged.

And to Arthur’s visible embarrassment it took him far too long to come up with something. “A sense of humour,” he finally offered with an accomplished flourish of his hand. “And we drank from the same waterskin that one time.”

Merlin snorted.

Arthur glowered.

“You are not sleeping in the same bed as a damn sorcerer,” the prince stated with great finality.

“We don’t really know that he’s a sorcerer.”

“You said so yourself!”

“But I don’t know for sure.”

“Oh please, have you looked at him? He’s weird… and pretty…”

“How is being pretty a mark of sorcery?!” Merlin spluttered.

“And he’s got a stupid name… And the whole place feels off and… sorcerly.”

Merlin snorted again in the face of so much bad faith.

“Are you sure you’re going to be all right sharing a bed with me, though?” he then asked, genuinely curious.

“Well, I’ve slept in all sorts of unpalatable places with all sorts of grubby, smelly companions after a battle. How much worse can this be?” Arthur muttered. “Besides, you once told me you were gagging to sleep with me, so I guess this is your chance.”

Merlin chortled at that, knowing immediately what Arthur was referring to.

“I said I wished I could sleep in your bed. I never said I wanted to share it with you.”

“Not how I recall it.”

“Well, you were three sheets to the wind,” Merlin conceded graciously.

“I was not!”

“It’s all right. Nothing wrong with enjoying one’s drink once in a while, Erwan.”

Arthur sucked on a tooth.

“Yeah, we’re going to have to address that too,” he promised ominously.

***

They eventually went to bed, and it turned out to be one of the more unexpectedly fraught and awkward moments of their so-called quest. Made even more excruciating by Merlin’s irritating propensity to make a nuisance of himself. The man truly didn’t seem to know anything about bed sharing etiquette.

“Stop wriggling,” Arthur hissed.

“I am not wriggling.”

“Yes you are. I feel like I’m sharing a bed with an otter.”

“Well I’m trying to find myself some vital space, and it’s not easy with your fat carcass taking pretty much all of the bed.”

“I am not fat.”

“Fine. You’re just selfishly hogging all the mattress while not being fat, then. That’s even worse.”

“It is not my fault this bed isn’t designed to hold two full-grown men.” He couldn’t even stretch his legs properly, for heaven’s sake.

“But it is your fault that there are two full-grown men in it now,” Merlin had the audacity to complain.

“Are you telling me you’d rather share sleeping quarters with that salacious sorcerer?”

“Salacious?”

“I’ve seen the way he looks at your mouth...”

“Everyone looks at people’s mouth when they’re speaking. Even you do it.”

“…And your backside.”

“You look at my backside? Ouch! What was that for?!” Merlin whinged, favouring his ribs.

“You are not sleeping with that sorcerer, Merlin. End of discussion,” Arthur ordered. “You should count yourself lucky you’re sharing a bed with royalty.”

Something indistinct and undoubtedly unflattering was mumbled in the dark.

Then more wriggling.

“For heaven’s sake, Merlin!”

“I need to take off my shirt. I get hot at night.”

Arthur bit back a curse.

“Couldn’t you have thought of that before lying down?” If Arthur had known, he wouldn’t have taken his shirt off. Now there was an alarming amount of nudity from the waist up on both sides of this bed partnership. And Merlin was plastered against him. “Are you good now?”

“No. You’re still filling all the space with your stupidly broad shoulders.”

“Well excuse me for being fighting fit.”

More dark mumbling, followed by more squirming.

“Merlin, I’m warning you.” There was only so much an honourable man could withstand before his tightly controlled urges broke loose. Merlin was being too close, too friendly, too titillating and far far far too unguarded where physical contact was concerned. And Arthur was weak. Weak and terribly susceptible to Merlin’s charms he realised rather belatedly, and sharing a bed with him had to be the worst idea he’d ever had. The man was pricking and prodding all of Arthur’s most secret sensitive spots, triggering disgraceful needs and thoughts. He felt like touchwood to Merlin’s flame. Just one flicker away from a wildfire.

“I think we should lie on our sides,” his friend finally declared. “You’ll take less space if you’re on your side.”

“What?”

“Come on,” Merlin prompted, patting Arthur’s upper arm. “Roll over.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Please? Just so that we can both fit in this bed and I don’t have to seek another man’s more welcoming mattress.”

Arthur rolled onto his side, grumbling.

“Erm… No, I think we should probably face away from each other,” his manservant amended after being nose to nose with him for all of a heartbeat. “Unless you want me to spoon up behind you?”

“Don’t push it, Merlin,” Arthur replied tightly. Because he was reaching the end of his patience, and doing something drastic and forceful to Merlin was beginning to seem more than a little appealing. Out of nowhere came a mental image of his friend’s hands being pinned to the bed and the beautiful, aggravating mouth being shut up by a very filthy kiss. And the simmer of animal need that bubbled in the pit of Arthur’s stomach at the notion took his breath away.

“There, see? That’s better,” Merlin sighed, his backside shimmying dangerously close to Arthur’s tense and very rigid buttocks.

“Merlin, if you ever dare bring your questionable arse into contact with mine…” Arthur warned.

“Yeah, yeah, I’ll make a wish,” his friend mumbled, sounding already half-asleep.

The likelihood of such a contact was very real and very worrying to him, but he felt he had expended all his recourse already. Anymore recriminations and he’d be accused of being a prude. There was no choice but to keep his fingers crossed and hope for the best.

“No farting allowed while the other’s awake,” Arthur sullenly informed his uncouth bed partner.

“Shut up, Erwan.”

“Stop calling me Erwan!”

“Right. Shut up, Arthur. Ooh you’re right, that’s much better.” Then after receiving a swift kick to his calf. “Ow!”

The line between fiery sensual passion and gruesome murder was thin and tenuous, Arthur mused to himself. Maybe that was the reason why Merlin’s mysterious man stayed well away from the hot menace that was his friend.

Little did he know that the worst was yet to come.

The traumatic encounter of bums occurred just as Arthur was beginning to drift off into slumber, letting his guard down after remaining alert and ramrod straight for what felt like a small uncomfortable eternity. There were of course two flimsy layers of fabric to technically save their modesty, but said layers of near-immaterial linen were unable to shield Arthur’s sanity from the round firmness of Merlin’s buttocks. The shock of contact rippled through him, alarming and sinful, jolting him back to full and unfortunate awareness. Merlin didn’t seem to notice, and simply snuffled on like the aggravating simpleton that he was.

The rest of the night was downhill from there for Arthur who was plagued with increasingly unsubtle dreams – from kneeling in front of Merlin and surrendering his sword to him, to sharing an apple with him, to holding his hand as they entered a dark and glistening cave. And because his mind was clearly a ruthless bastard of evil disposition, his night culminated in one ultimate dream where he made sweet, vivid, fevered and rather explicit love to Merlin.

He woke up hard, disoriented and sweaty with unfulfilled needs, but with a sleeping Merlin happily slobbering in his arms.

To say that Arthur immediately released his hold on his unsuspecting friend would be a bold-faced lie. Although his sense of propriety dictated that he let go of the innocent victim, his body wouldn’t move. The gentle reader will forgive a love-starved man for clinging desperately to such a wonderful – albeit stolen – moment of completeness and belonging. Merlin was warm and unbelievably cuddly in his arms and he smelled of something peaceful and right, like a lush meadow wrapped in early morning mist, or like the sun-soaked stones of the citadel’s battlements after a long summer day.

So his arms tightened a fraction, holding onto the forbidden, and he nuzzled the dark hair just a little bit as his throat already began to constrict with impending loss. If there was one thing Arthur had learnt very early on in his life, it was that the good things were only fleeting and never his to claim or to keep.

So Arthur stayed a few moments like this, with his arms around a slumbering Merlin and his lips almost brushing against a neck he longed to kiss. Torturing himself. Letting himself get a sense of a happiness that wasn’t his to ever taste. Merlin was in love with another man and Arthur was going to have to be fine with that.

Before he felt truly ready, he slowly unwound his embrace, rolled away and heaved himself out of the small bed, his noble heart in tatters and his ignoble erection in distress. In the semidarkness of the unfamiliar room, he had to go through the preposterous drudgery of getting dressed as silently as possible and without help, before letting himself out.

And since Arthur had nowhere to go, he sat on the little bench just outside the house and, as dawn regained colours, took refuge in the methodical, mind-soothing activity of the upset warrior in search of composure – he sharpened his sword.

His mind was in sad disarray, even though his hand worked in long, sure strokes. He felt very much as if his life was ending. Nay, as if it had already ended sometime during the night in fact, and he’d now woken up a slightly different man for the loss of his carefully constructed self-delusions.

Some old truths had to be faced. The first one being that while Merlin’s deep, tender and mysterious heart belonged to another man, it appeared Arthur’s own needy old bag of inadequate feelings was firmly in his manservant’s careless custody. The second truth, just as devastating in its implications, was that the balance of power between them had always been and would always be in Merlin’s favour. He needed his friend in every aspect of his daily life like a fish needed water, but his friend was the epitome of self-sufficient and therefore didn’t need him at all.

And no amount of studious blade whetting was going to change that.

“How very metaphoric of you to work out your frustration in such a way, Sir Erwan,” Erondrell said by way of greeting. “I take it you didn’t sleep very well?”

“That bed is cursed, isn’t it?” It wasn’t even a question. It was an accusation.

“Is it? Not to my knowledge. I’ve never had any complaints before.”

Arthur ground his teeth and kept rasping the stone along the now razor edge of his sword.

“Merlin is a fascinating young man, isn’t he?” the scoundrel then said.

Arthur huffed. There was so much he had to say on that matter that he thought it best not to engage – especially not with someone he still regarded as a meddling opponent.

“Truly beautiful, and with such extraordinary abilities at his command.”

“What are you getting at?” Arthur muttered, bristling in reaction to the perceived threat.

“Oh I was merely wondering… do you know if he is in any sort of relationship or something?” Erondrell asked.

The stone was dropped to the ground and the sword brought to lie across Arthur’s knees, his hand flexing around the handle.

“He is betrothed,” Arthur announced, firmly believing himself to be stating a form of truth. “To one of my fellow knights.”

“Betrothed? I wasn’t aware the heart of Camelot had become such a modern-thinking place.”

“As good as betrothed,” Arthur amended, his ears turning a bit hot.

“To a knight, you say?”

Arthur nodded, eyes ahead, watching a very young squirrel hop brashly across the clearing floor, unusually reckless.

“Lucky man,” Erondrell murmured.

“Undoubtedly, yes.”

“Is he worthy of Merlin’s affections?”

“I don’t… I guess,” Arthur said, then realised how unsure he sounded and tried to enlarge. “He must be. Merlin wouldn’t fall in love with an utter prat.”

Erondrell made a non-committal kind of noise in the back of his throat, then shrugged when Arthur scowled at him.

“Stranger things have been known to happen,” the redhead elaborated. Then suddenly straightening, “Look at that silly thing… Shoo! You’ll get yourself eaten by the fox,” he exclaimed, throwing a piece of twig at the immature squirrel still zigzagging thoughtlessly on the ground. “You don’t know who the man is, do you?” Erondrell said.

Arthur didn’t answer, but felt a muscle in his jaw jump tellingly.

“Did I ever mention I have an artifact that can show one what it is that one most wants to see?” the unrepentant sorcerer said very casually.

At first, Arthur was rather disgusted by the possibly spurious use of said artifact. Then, after having his self-righteous glare met with a dismissive eyeroll followed by an arched eyebrow, he eventually understood what his host was trying to tell him, namely that he could finally know who the knight was if he so wished it.

The thought smouldered in Arthur’s mind, like a hot ember, until it burnt a hole in his conscience. He got up, slipped the sword back into its scabbard. Erondrell watched him attentively, then held out his right hand for Arthur to take. Thinking the man wanted to be helped to his feet, Arthur took it then released it immediately upon feeling an unnaturally hot tingle in his fingertips.

“What the…!”

“Laboratory. Desk on your right. Second drawer on the left,” Erondrell merely said. “You have but a few moments before the activating spell I placed on your hand dissipates.”

Arthur hesitated, wavered, then gritted his teeth and walked inside.

The object in question was about the size of a spread hand, square, flat, thin and carefully wrapped in a piece of unremarkable green fabric. Arthur had no idea how it was supposed to work and couldn’t see himself walking back out to ask for directions now. He wondered if he had to speak his question out loud, or just think it. All he knew was that, more than anything else, he wanted to know who had captured Merlin’s heart. If only to know who he was up against. If only to torment himself with how much more deserving that man undoubtedly was.

His fingertips still tickling from the sorcerer’s touch, Arthur picked up the little bundle and unfolded the protective cloth… only to be met with a simple mirror, reflecting back his image and that of the room behind him. For a second there, he wondered what it meant – and then he realised Erondrell was every bit the prick he suspected him of being.

***

Merlin woke up feeling warm and deliciously sated from an incredibly nice dream. He couldn’t remember what it had been about precisely, but the feeling of bone-deep contentment remained with him, wrapped around him like a protective blanket of loving sweetness. Arthur was gone from the bed but his smell lingered on the sheets, and Merlin, indulging in the moment of weakness, burrowed into the bedlinen and just dozed for a few more minutes, trying to recapture the essence of what must have been the best dream he’d had in years. He suspected Arthur had been in it.

Arthur was a little quiet as they prepared to leave for the valley where they were to find the elusive plant. Erond’s directions were detailed and he had seen the secluded copse with the rocky outcrop and the stunning view down the gorge in the seer’s stone. It took them less than half a day to locate the exact spot, harvest the plant and collect a few seedlings.

The place was so pretty that they decided to settle down to eat a light lunch of bread, cheese and wine that their host had provided for them. Arthur of course, felt it his duty to glare at the victuals as though they were going to bite.

“How are we to know that it’s not poisoned? Or enchanted?” he mumbled suspiciously.

“It’s not,” Merlin assured him, chewing happily. “I’d know if it was.”

“How?”

Ah. How indeed.

“I’d know,” Merlin said, giving a vague shrug meant to be reassuring. “Just enjoy it. We’ve got clean mountain air, good hearty food, and the view is spectacular.” And truly it was. Merlin was determined not to let Arthur spoil the mood on this lovely special day. “Did you know that today’s a sort of anniversary for us?”

“How so?” Arthur asked, nibbling at his chunk of cheese after sadly losing his staring contest with it.

“On this day, three years ago, I called you a prat for the very first time,” Merlin announced, hoping his broad grin wasn’t as soppy as he felt.

And that seemed to drag a smile out of Arthur.

“Really? Has it already been three years?” he said, giving Merlin an awkwardly fond look.

“Mmmm-hmmm. Three years since you wanted to teach me how to walk on my knees.”

“Three years since you tried to punch me. Pitifully, might I add,” Arthur smirked.

“I slept in a cell that night,” Merlin remarked.

“And I had goose for dinner that night,” Arthur informed him.

Merlin couldn’t believe his ears. “Really? Do you actually remember what you had for dinner on that night three years ago?” he marvelled, a little flabbergasted by the notion.

“It was a very good goose,” Arthur promised, then couldn’t keep his countenance any longer and chuckled.

Merlin gave a self-deprecating smile and shook his head at his own gullibility, then shoved the snigg*ring prince in the shoulder until he fell back on the grass laughing.

“So I’m guessing you have no present for me to celebrate this anniversary,” Merlin lamented. “What with you being a thoughtless dollophead and all.”

“Neither do you!”

“But I’m just your manservant. Servants don’t give presents to their masters, it’s supposed to be the other way round. Munificence of our betters and all that.”

“I take you everywhere I go and let you bask in the sunshine of my presence. Hell, I let you share a bed with me and didn’t murder you in your sleep. That’s present enough,” the insufferable prat announced, lying on his back and playing with the gold in his fringe.

“I’ve had to put up with you for three years!” Merlin exclaimed, his smile enduring nonetheless.

“Likewise!”

“Oh poor little you, being watered, fed and waited upon every minute of the day. The agony!” Merlin rolled his eyes. “Would you like me to kiss it better?”

There was a pause. Barely a thrilled heartbeat. Then...

“I dare you,” Arthur purred, long, low and challenging.

And in that moment, carried away by their easy banter, the challenge was so much after Merlin’s own heart that he leaned over his prince and did consider planting the most devastating kiss on his lips.

“Bring it on,” Arthur goaded with an infuriating grin and a taunting flick of his fingers, the conceited flush of victory already on his cheeks.

And yet, one hand braced by Arthur’s shoulder, Merlin resisted. Too scared he wouldn’t know where to stop. Or how to stop. Because if he started kissing Arthur now, even in jest, he knew he would betray himself. It wouldn’t be just a dry playful peck on the lips. It would be everything. Everything he’d been feeling for those past three years. The longing, the anger, the devotion, the frustration, the tenderness, the hurt… It would be everything to him – and it would mean nothing to Arthur.

“Wouldn’t want you to fall in love with me,” Merlin eventually breathed, gazing down at the bane of his life.

“No chance of that ever happening,” the prince vowed, his eyes crinkling. “Though you would sound more credible if you stopped wetting your lips like that, you little co*cktease.”

Arthur’s move was as swift and as ruthless as could be expected from a warrior of his calibre – taking advantage of Merlin’s blushing and sputtering outrage at the accusation, he swiped at the crook of Merlin’s elbow, and the almighty warlock sprawled into the arms of the smirking prat.

The indignity wasn’t over, unfortunately. Merlin was then flipped onto his back and cradled like a princess.

“All mouth and no trousers,” Arthur taunted childishly.

And then Merlin was being kissed.

It wasn’t a rushed, garish, joking kind of kiss either. It was a surprisingly gauche and inexperienced little business. Very sweet despite being meant for ribbing. The very antithesis of insensitive blokeish horseplay. Which might explain why Merlin let it happen. And then let it go on for a little bit longer than was wise or appropriate.

Arthur’s breathing was shallow, his pupils huge and his lips all lush and shiny when he came up from the kiss. He had this tight, stony expression on his face – the one he got when he was scared but refused to let it show. He looked like he needed some help as Merlin was still reclining over his arm.

“Not bad,” Merlin croaked, his stomach full of crazed, lovestruck butterflies. God, why did he have to fall for such a sweet, rash imbecile? And what were they to do now that they were both embarrassingly hard through their own reckless ineptitude?

Merlin was still wrestling with the first question when Arthur found the answer to the second by simply rolling away from Merlin, sitting up and asking loudly, “Where’d that wine go?”

In an effort to do his share to reestablish normalcy – or what passed for normalcy between them these days – Merlin, still lying on his back and trying to will his bones back to their solid state (and that one other bone back to its unimpassioned state) resorted to dry self-deprecation.

“It is a sad reflection upon my life that this was actually the best kiss I’ve had all year,” he mused out loud.

From somewhere to his left, he heard Arthur’s slightly hoarse voice say, “Take that, Alban of Uffculme.”

Merlin couldn’t hold back a smile at the sky above. “Competitive git,” he murmured.

After this ill-advised interlude into which Merlin knew better than to read anything wishful, they gathered all their bits and pieces and rode back to Erondrell’s home. The companionable chatter was a little forced on Arthur’s part, but no more so than it usually was after a brush with death.

At Erond’s, they dropped off some of their seedlings and Merlin picked up some magically copied pages of the sorcerer’s best books for Gaius while Arthur pretended to look the other way. They were once again offered hospitality for the night, but this time Sir Erwan wouldn’t be swayed: he wanted to set off for Camelot immediately. That being said, for all the prat seemed so eager to start on their journey back, he didn’t seem to be in any hurry to actually get to the busy citadel. So it could be said that they took their own sweet time on the way back.

Arthur was being rather contemplative for some reason. Unusually quiet and observant. When his eyes weren’t wandering along the horizon or losing themselves in the canopy of trees, they were following Merlin’s every move, no matter how mundane and insignificant, from collecting firewood, to loosening the fastening on his satchel, to planting and securing the skewers for the rabbit or stirring their gruel.

Arthur was being on his best introspective behaviour and that was worrying in and of itself. Merlin began to fear their silly horsing around had shaken something loose in their friendship. Arthur wasn’t quite himself, and the passive watchfulness did nothing to put Merlin’s mind at ease.

On the final evening of their journey, just as they were only half a day’s ride from home, Arthur grew even quieter.

“Is something troubling you?” Merlin asked eventually.

“I’ve been struggling with a conversation I need to have,” the prince explained, his slow words carefully chosen. “With you.”

“Well that doesn’t sound ominous at all,” Merlin murmured with a lightness he absolutely did not feel.

“I know you have magic,” Arthur then said very quietly.

And the breath froze in Merlin’s lungs.

Arthur gazed into his eyes in silence, looking odd. A little resigned and apologetic.

Merlin felt a chill run down his spine, and in a reflex he couldn’t quite curb, his eyes darted around them into the gloom, checking for escape routes.

“It’s all right,” Arthur promised, reading his body language. “I have known for some time.”

Meaning, if he’d wanted to hurt Merlin he’d have done so a while ago.

“How long?”

“Since you saved my life on that bridge and then promptly went for a drown in the mountain torrent.”

Merlin winced. That had been months ago.

“Why are you telling me this now?”

“Because I think I’ve reached the point where I’m ready to ask some questions.” His voice was calm and poised, as though he had been rehearsing the words in his head for several days – which he probably had, come to think of it. “And I was hoping you might be willing to provide some answers.”

Merlin nodded and threw a bit of stick into the fire. He had been expecting some difficult exchange following their stupid kiss. Something along the lines of ‘This cannot be allowed to happen again, Merlin’ or ‘I really need you to stop being such a dallying idiot, Merlin’ or ‘It’s high time you started calling me Sire, Merlin’. But something he had most definitely not seen coming was the subject of magic. He had gravely underestimated Arthur’s clear-sightedness on the matter. He realised that he had grown terribly complacent over the years. Just because Arthur was prophesied to bring back magic to Camelot didn’t mean he would take kindly to being deceived and lied to.

Regardless of how this went, Gaius was going to have his hide once Arthur was done with him.

“All right then, let’s hear those questions,” he said with far more composure than he felt, painfully aware as he was that this could well be the very last conversation they ever had.

He watched as Arthur worried at a piece of twig, bending it, testing its pliancy to its limits.

“How did you come by those powers?” Arthur began.

“I was born with them.”

Arthur frowned, presumably sensing that this was not as commonplace as Merlin made it sound. “Why did you come to Camelot, of all places?” he then asked.

“Because I got into trouble in Ealdor and my mother thought I would fare better in a bigger place and under stronger supervision.”

“Gaius. He knows of course.”

Merlin met Arthur’s eyes, wary of incriminating his mentor.

“He wants to help me.”

“Help you with what?”

“With extending my control over my abilities,” Merlin provided.

“You seem quite adept from what I’ve seen.”

“Practice makes perfect, as you keep telling your knights.”

Arthur nodded, his lips pursed in agreement.

Merlin then heaved a sigh, his hand rubbing over his forehead. “I know what you must be thinking,” he ventured.

“Really?”

“You think I came to Camelot to undermine your father’s reign from within. You think I purposely engineered my presence at your side.”

A wry half-smile twisted Arthur’s mouth. “The thought has crossed my mind,” he admitted.

“But you do know that wasn’t the case. That it was your father who appointed me as your servant, and that I was as unhappy with this decision as you were at the time.”

“I do.” The soft seriousness in Arthur’s eyes confirmed the trite words. “I’m not accusing you of anything.”

“What are you doing, then?” Merlin asked genuinely.

“I’m trying to understand.” The words were careful but the sound of his dry swallow felt unduly loud. “I’m trying to reconcile what I know of my friend with what I know of sorcery. Trying to find a safe path forward for both of us.” The twig in his hands gave an uncomfortable creak. “As sorcerers go…” he went on awkwardly, “you are pretty powerful, aren’t you?”

Merlin shrugged. Some things were probably best left unsaid for now.

“You could kill me with a thought,” Arthur enlarged with chilling precision.

“No more so than you could kill me with your sword,” Merlin argued, feeling his heart sink. “Am I going to be the enemy now?”

Arthur had the decency to lower his eyes.

“I told you. I’ve known for some time,” he said. “And I’ve never stopped seeing you as my friend.”

A protracted silence stretched between them, leaving space for all the usual nighttime noises. It should have brought a bit of congeniality to the scene. This was just the two of them after all, Arthur and Merlin, sitting around a campfire, talking – like they’d done countless times before.

“Is that all you wanted to ask? Whether I was powerful enough to kill a friend with a thought?”

Arthur broke the piece of twig he’d been nervously playing with, a scowl of frustration registering on his features – the first unschooled expression he was showing since the start of this conversation.

“No, I want to know what makes you remain a servant,” Arthur said. “Why stay in my service? If I were as powerful as you, I’d never bow to another man, much less one who was born to become a tormentor to my kind.”

Merlin saw they had reached the knot of the problem. He pursed his lips.

“Is that what you want to become? A tormentor?”

“No,” Arthur replied strongly, instinctively.

“Then you have your answer,” Merlin said, gently poking at the tetchy fire with a stick. “I never asked to be your servant, but it did allow me to get to know you. And to see the ruler in you. The king you’re destined to be.” Merlin closed his eyes for a few heartbeats while he searched for the words to express what he’d known for some time but never truly acknowledged. Thoughts he’d never even articulated to himself. Over the years, the strength of his faith in Arthur had silently grown, fed not only by his partial feelings for him, but also by the very essence of who Arthur was. His voice was a little breathless when he continued, “You will be a great king, Arthur. The greatest king Albion has ever known. You will bring fairness and unity to the five kingdoms. And I serve you because I believe in that. I serve you because I believe in you.”

Arthur had gone very still during Merlin’s profession of faith. His eyes were unexpectedly vulnerable as he gave voice to a fear so old that it must’ve been with him since childhood.

“What if you’re mistaken? What if I’m not this great man you think I am? What if I miss my destiny and never become your great king? What then?”

“I’ll still serve you.”

“Why?”

Merlin felt his lips curve into a helpless smile and a blush creep over his cheeks. In the span of a few days, he had admitted to being pathetically in love and to being a sorcerer – he had even been kissed by his very own prince – but Merlin didn’t think he had the strength to surrender the final secret. It was a secret too fragile, too meaningless, too personal, and possibly one he was slightly ashamed of.

“Force of habit,” he shrugged. “Plus, you probably wouldn’t survive a week without me. And I’m not sure I’d have the patience to break in another clotpole.”

Arthur snorted, his crooked smile finally reaching his eyes. “I thought you said I was going to be a great king,” he challenged easily.

“Oh you will be: to your people. But to me you’ll always be a clotpole,” Merlin promised fondly.

***

The dimples twinkled in the gloom, just for him, making his heart do the stupid thing in his chest.

Merlin believed in him.

As they lay by the campfire for the night, he felt strangely lighter and worthier than he’d ever felt before. Strong as a mountain. Pure as a child. There was one less secret between them now, and he felt one step closer to Merlin. It was an exhilarating feeling to be so trusted and it emboldened him to venture into more intimate questions. Things that he burned to know.

They were lying on their side, face to face on either side of the campfire, encompassed within the same bubble of flickering light. Two pairs of eyes gleaming at one another in the dark.

“Does he know you have magic?” Arthur asked gently.

“Who?”

“Your man. The one you love. Does he know?”

Merlin snuffed and stared into the flames for a second.

“Well, you were capable of putting two and two together, so...”

“But I know you better than he does,” Arthur said with a slight edge of possessiveness.

Merlin merely gazed at him in comfortable silence, eyes a little soft and sleepy.

“Have you…?” Arthur hesitated.

“Go on. Ask away,” the low velvety voice mumbled on its way to slumber.

“Have you ever considered using your magic to… I don’t know, maybe ease things between you two? Make him see you?”

“You mean, make him fall for me,” Merlin elaborated, rather unimpressed with the query. “It’s very wrong to tamper with people’s minds or feelings.”

“Could you though? I mean, is it feasible? Could you bend a man to your will?”

“There are enchantments, as you well know, and there are magical creatures that can be used to alter an individual’s mind and priorities. People with little scruple resort to those things, but I don’t want to be one of them.” A troubled look came over Merlin for a moment. “I did briefly consider using an enchantment on myself, though. To make me forget my feelings for him.” Seeing the look of dumbstruck horror on Arthur’s face made Merlin give some reassurance. “I didn’t go through with it.”

“Well I should bloody hope so!” Arthur blurted out, appalled. Then, far more gingerly. “Doesn’t he love you?”

Merlin’s eyes fluttered, making Arthur regret having posed the unfeeling question.

“I think… I think he probably does, in his own way.”

“Don’t you want to know for sure?”

“No.”

The word sent an uneasy, wistful feeling through Arthur. Clearly, feelings were a raw and painful subject for Merlin, and if Arthur wanted to be a good friend he should give it a wide berth. He stirred a bit, adjusting the position of his folded arm under his head.

“Show me some magic,” he asked on a murmur. One boy to another.

Merlin smiled indulgently then reached out with his hand and whispered something in the guttural foreign language of magic spells. His eyes glowed incandescent in the night, which sent a thrill down the back of Arthur’s neck.

And tiny little flakes of light, like innumerable shards of gold, began to converge and assemble over the fire, until the shape of a dragon was created and the symbol of the House of Pendragon blazed in the darkness. Another wave of the hand and the golden pinpricks of light now dissolved the mythical creature to reassemble into the figure of an armoured knight wielding his sword in a series of practice passes that were so accurately rendered that Arthur couldn’t help but recognise them.

It was on the tip of his tongue to ask if the knight was Merlin’s love, when the little figure took his helmet off and Arthur’s own profile emerged in a cloud of sparks, perfectly portrayed, down to the way his hair stuck to his sweaty forehead.

The sheer wonder of the spectacle made him speechless.

Merlin then built the citadel under his very eyes and kept it floating over the little campfire for some time, its perfect towers gilded glitter in the night.

“When I’m king,” Arthur murmured quietly, so as not to break the enchantment, “I will make sure that you never have to hide or fear for your life again for simply being who you are. I want magic to find its place in Camelot.”

“That will be a blessed day,” Merlin replied, his eyes so full of pride and tenderness they seemed the eyes of a lover in the dark.

“Will you help me in making it come to pass?”

“I will.”

Arthur heard the softly spoken promise and drifted off to sleep.

They arrived in Camelot the next day after lunchtime, and immediately the routine of the prince’s life resumed its course. And it was dreadful. What had been perfectly well and good only a week ago was torture now that Arthur knew himself to be stupidly in love with his manservant and best friend.

Merlin’s presence became a delicious thorn in his side. It had always been the case to a certain extent, one might argue, but Arthur was now highly aware of… well, everything. Things that he’d always liked about him, such as the gentle warmth of Merlin’s voice, the subtle scent of Merlin’s hair, or the spark of mischief in Merlin’s eyes. And then the things that he’d usually tried not to pay too close attention to, such as the maddening shape of Merlin’s lips, the inviting swell of Merlin’s buttocks, or the surprising solidness of Merlin’s shoulders.

Everywhere, all the time, Merlin was with him. An itch. An intoxication. A need. Dwelling inside his mind as much as parading before his senses, until Arthur felt he would break down under the strain of remaining noble and keeping his hands to himself.

In the end he came to question not only his sanity but also his free will. He feared some magical meddling was at play and sought the counsel of the only person who could help.

“Merlin, I need you to tell me if I’m enchanted.”

“What? How?”

“It’s that sorcerer: Erondrell. I’m pretty sure he’s pulled a prank on me.”

“A prank? Why would he play a prank on you?”

“Because he’s a sorcering arsehole,” Arthur said, then took Merlin by the shoulders to give him a sense of the urgency of the situation. “I need to know what he’s done. Can you find out if I’m enchanted or not?” He then raised his hand for inspection, which made Merlin squint at it. “Well, can you?”

“Not like that,” Merlin huffed, batting the hand away. “Why do you think your hand’s been enchanted?”

“Because that’s where he touched me. That’s where it tingled.”

“He touched you?”

“And it tingled.”

“But when did that happen? Why didn’t you tell me sooner?”

“You were still asleep.”

“Alright, well I can’t tell if you’ve been enchanted just from looking at your hand. I’ve never done anything like this, actually. I’m going to need some books and maybe some other things.”

“Fine. I’ll wait.” Arthur folded his arms over his chest, and Merlin sighed because it was going to be another one of those nights.

“What sort of enchantment is it?”

“How would I know?!” One of them was a sorcerer and it sure as hell wasn’t Arthur.

“I mean, how do you even know you’ve been enchanted? Are you feeling weird? Are you seeing things? Hearing things? Has your body changed in any way?”

“I can’t concentrate.”

“And?”

“Well, that’s enough of a problem, don’t you think?”

“But… Just because you can’t concentrate doesn’t mean you’ve been enchanted.”

“I’m also having… thoughts.”

Merlin tried very hard to repress a snort, and then failed miserably. “Oh well, I can see how that would feel unfamiliar to you.”

“Merlin!” Arthur snapped. “I’m having unbecoming thoughts.”

“Unbecoming?” Merlin frowned.

“Voluptuous,” Arthur elaborated tightly.

Merlin frowned harder. It stood to reason that the irreverent prat wouldn’t know what the word meant.

“Lustful,” the prince ground out.

Merlin’s head tilted ever-so-slightly to the side and he peered at Arthur with an ever-so-slightly disbelieving look.

“You’re telling me… that you believe yourself to be enchanted… because you’re feeling horny and you can’t concentrate,” he said with the aggravating slowness one used when dealing with simpletons.

“Merlin, are you going to help me or do I have to ride all the way back to that place with my men and torch the whole bloody forest with the sorcerer in it?” Arthur snarled sweetly.

Merlin raised a ‘you-have-a-point’ forefinger and went to fetch his paraphernalia.

Several hours and a bleary-eyed sunrise later, complex squiggles had been drawn and redrawn on the floor, tinctured water had been poured on a mirror – and over toes – a mix of herbs had been burnt, several incantations had been mumbled, but no enchantment was detected.

“You haven’t been enchanted, Arthur,” Merlin promised as he tiredly contemplated the unholy mess that was strewn across the prince’s chambers and that he was soon going to have to clean up.

“Then how do you explain the way I’m feeling?”

“I don’t know, puberty?”

And if looks could kill, Merlin would’ve been gone in a puff of untidy ashes.

“Look, Arthur, I have tried everything in those books and all the outcomes indicate that you are under no spell of any sort. I don’t know what else to tell you.”

The terrible thing was that Arthur could see Merlin was sincere. And now, finally, just a little worried. He rubbed a hand to his forehead.

“Maybe there’s something we’re missing,” Merlin tried. “Explain to me in detail how and why Erondrell came to touch your hand.”

Arthur heaved a breath.

“He said he had an artifact that could show me what I most wanted to see,” he then said rather quietly.

“Yes, it’s a seer’s stone. I used it to find the plant we needed.”

“You’ve used it?”

“Yeah. It does require an activating spell to work, but it works very well. It saved us hours of searching.”

“Describe it to me.”

“Uh… A small, square black tile. Made of shale, I’d say. About the size of a hand mirror.”

“Wrapped in a piece of green cloth?”

“Yes. So you did use it. What did you see?”

“It was a mirror,” Arthur said, feeling a little unsteady on his feet. “When I picked it up, it was a mirror.”

“So all Erondrell did was somehow place the activating spell on your hand so that you could use the stone and see what it was you most wanted to see. And that, apparently, was your own reflection,” Merlin added, sounding vastly unimpressed. “Which should surprise no one.”

Arthur remained quiet. An odd kind of shock reverberating through his body.

Merlin slowly began to close and collect the books he’d spread all over the table. Sensing Arthur’s trouble, it was obvious he was refraining on the sarcasm.

“In any case, whatever you’re feeling isn’t the result of an enchantment,” he murmured more soberly. “Maybe you’re just… tired,” he offered. “Or in love?”

There was a tentative half-smile in Merlin’s voice at that last suggestion, but Arthur avoided eye contact and stared at the arcane magical squiggles drawn in chalk on his chamber’s floor instead.

“I’m going out for a ride,” he simply said. “Tidy up the place, will you?”

Merlin’s “Yes, Sire” was a little flat and dejected, but Arthur didn’t feel he could address that right now. Too many things crammed in his head, needling him.

He went down to the stables, met Hengroen ’s quizzical gaze and took him out for a saunter.

He loathed making a fool of himself and Merlin clearly thought he was a vain, self-absorbed prick.

***

“I wanted to know who he was,” Arthur snapped without preamble as he stormed back into his chambers, as though four hours hadn’t elapsed since the last words they’d exchanged.

Merlin looked up from the cushion he was painstakingly attempting to repair.

“Who was who?”

“I needed to know who you’re besotted with. That’s what I wanted the stone to show me, and it gave me my own reflection,” the prince accused. “How do you explain that?”

Merlin swallowed dryly.

It was one of Arthur’s aggravating qualities that he could take in some controversial advice or information with seeming contempt or disinterest, then secretly mull it over for hours if not days in the privacy of his contorted brain, letting Merlin think it forgotten, and then jump everyone with decisions based on said advice or information. It had its use, but it never failed to leave Merlin feeling unsure about the outcome of his conversations with Arthur.

In this particular instance, Merlin honestly thought he’d have a longer reprieve. But no such luck.

“What am I supposed to understand?” Arthur asked with dogged insistence.

“I think… There must be a misunderstanding,” Merlin tried weakly. Then looked at the exquisitely ornate, tasselled cushion in his hands, as though salvation could come from that part.

“Is there?” The bulky cushion was rudely snatched from his grip and flung across the room effortlessly, prompting Merlin to get to his feet. “Tell me the truth,” the prince ordered with more tenacity than actual vehemence.

“You may not like the truth,” Merlin noted, his eyes quietly taking in the exits.

“Try me.” Arthur got impossibly close. So close that he could breathe the same air as Merlin. Merlin tried to take a step back, but Arthur simply followed until they were almost chest to chest. “What am I supposed to understand?” Arthur asked once more, his voice now a hoarse murmur.

“Arthur, you…”

Merlin never got to finish that sentence because Arthur stopped it with a kiss.

Lips just pressing over his mouth, arresting his heart. Merlin couldn’t understand how they’d got there so suddenly. Merlin couldn’t understand much of anything at all in fact.

Arthur was kissing him again, but not in jest. Arthur was kissing him like he meant it. Not to shut him up, not to take the piss out of him, but with breathless urgency. And then there was a calloused hand to his cheek, and a stiff, hesitant arm winding around his waist, and Merlin still couldn’t quite bring himself to fully understand or believe what was happening.

And really, by this time Merlin should have been devouring Arthur – he wasn’t prim or demure by any stretch of the imagination – but there seemed to be a bit of a gap between the stuff of his solitary fantasies and the stark, nerve-racking reality of upending three years of the most precious and unlikely friendship he’d ever known. He did manage to sink his fingers into the soft blonde hair, but beyond that, all his habitual savvy ways abandoned him. It was all pathetic clinging and blundering kissing without an ounce of finesse or coordination. Noses bumped, teeth clashed, tongues got accidentally bitten and there was a little too much drool to make this a dignified merging of two immortal souls. They both liked it immensely, though, as the unrepentant hardening of their ardours could attest. An involuntary moan was wrenched out of a throat and the sound was so broken and startling that it brought them up for air. Slightly bemused cross-eyed gazes were exchanged, then embarrassed smiles.

“You idiot,” Arthur grunted softly, before fusing their spit-shiny lips together again.

Since there were strong hands at his hips and he was being walked backwards to the bed, Merlin was willing to cut him some slack on the name-calling just this once, but sadly he had to restore the natural order of things eventually.

“The door isn’t barred,” he reminded them both, proving beyond a doubt that he was the one with the practical mind and the functioning brain.

“Use your magic,” Arthur answered, nibbling at his jaw and proving he was just a lazy prat.

“You are supposed to attend the council meeting shortly.”

An element of schedule that the prince welcomed with an irritated groan.

“Why are you ruining the moment?” Arthur complained while doing pleasurable things to the lobe of Merlin’s left ear.

“Because there’s a citadel going about its day beyond the doors of your chambers, whether you like it or not.”

Which paused the pleasurable things, much to the left ear’s chagrin.

“You’re dismissing me,” Arthur noted, rather perplexed.

“I’m just trying to keep a clear head.”

“So you are lecturing me and dismissing me.”

“Well one of us has to think. With his upper brains. What do you think Uther would do if we were caught in the act?”

Arthur gave a sigh and tightened his arms around Merlin, enfolding him in a close embrace as he pressed his lips to his neck pensively.

“I am the one, though, right?” he murmured very low against sensitive skin. The question so sweetly unassuming and so charmingly needy that Merlin didn’t have the heart to be his usual sarcastic self.

“Of course you are,” he answered softly in his prince’s ear as he gently ruffled the blonde strands – a gesture so thrillingly intimate that he already suspected he would never get enough of doing it. “You need to get ready,” he advised, his other hand riding a broad shoulder in passing.

He absolutely hated being such a reasonable killjoy, but he knew there would be no escaping a prince’s duty so easily. It was by far the more rational option to get all the day’s chores out of the way, so they could have the evening to themselves. Because then the big boy stuff could begin. His heart quickened at the thought of it.

They broke apart, both bearing the bulging manifestations of their blunt needs. Merlin blushed to his ears and grinned. Arthur scratched the back of his neck self-consciously and smirked before hiding behind the screen so he could put on a fresh change of clothes.

“Loose trousers and flowing tunic, yeah?” Merlin taunted.

A thwarted mutter was the only answer.

Arthur was soon ready, looking dashing but somewhat ripe for murder.

“You might want to look a little less intense,” Merlin said. “Or your father will have questions.”

“I hate having to wait. And hide. And pretend I don’t have far more pressing matters to attend to,” the edgy prince mumbled as he made for the door.

“Welcome to my world.”

The words stopped Arthur in his tracks and he turned to Merlin, his impatient expression faltering into something a bit more contrite. He hesitated for a few heartbeats, visibly caught between his restless desires, his princely duties, the need to make amends to a friend, and the unfamiliar urge to commit an appallingly sweet act of love. Then his hand came to Merlin’s cheek, cupping it very gently, and he leaned his forehead against Merlin’s before pressing a tiny apologetic kiss to his lips.

“I will be worth it,” he promised.

“You better,” Merlin smiled, then patted his prince on the haunch to get him on his way.

And so, the day went on. Arthur attended the sluggish, boring council meeting while Merlin waited upon him, like they’d been doing almost every week for three years. Arthur a little crabbier than usual. Merlin a little more distracted. Both thinking of the unthinkable.

Truth be told, Merlin was not unhappy with the delay in the amorous escalation of their intimacy. He needed the pause. Had this been any other man he’d been pursuing, any other lad he’d been infatuated with, he’d have thrown caution to the wind and taken his chances on the unbarred door for quick and dazzling relief, and they’d both be covered in the guilty product of their reprehensible passion by now.

But this was Arthur. And as much as he had pined for the noble, arrogant prick for longer than seemed healthy or sensible, something in Merlin now seemingly flinched at the idea of getting what he most ardently wanted. It simply wasn’t natural for him to have his heart’s fondest wish granted. And the mere idea of finally having his blonde git, of doing all the sweet unmentionable things his night thoughts had been rife with, of giving Arthur all the timid and vulnerable bits of him that no one else knew about, and in other words, of becoming the other side of Arthur Pendragon’s secret coin… it was enough to give Merlin a terminal case of cold feet.

It was such a tremendous shift in their respective lives. How would they navigate such basic things as their feelings and their differences under the public eye? How would they make it work without betraying themselves? How would they stand the test of courtly life, its frustrations, its upsets and jealousies? And what would happen when Arthur was required to marry and produce heirs?

So many uncertainties, so many pitfalls. And then, the horrible thought. Were they even after the same thing?! Did Arthur really want a relationship or was he just after a bit of easy, sensual relief with his quirky friend? What if they had somehow misread each other and the whole situation?

Merlin felt himself waver. And sweat.

He was going to have his heart broken, wasn’t he?

***

Meanwhile, Arthur was doing his best impression of a gargoyle, stiffly seated, vacant-eyed and stony-looking. It was lucky for him that the council’s agenda dealt with nothing more important than the preparation for an upcoming festival, because his mind was quietly bubbling away with a ghastly mess of emotions and aspirations that had nothing to do with flowers and ribbons.

First and foremost, he wanted Merlin – that particular thought was front and centre in the confused, lustful swamp that was his brain. He wanted him blindly. Madly. Urgently.

He wanted him more clearly and more acutely than he’d ever wanted anyone or anything. He couldn’t think of anything else. Merlin filled his senses and his thoughts and yes, also that one particularly insistent body part. But the wanting wasn’t made any easier by the promise of the imminent having. Quite the reverse in fact.

Because if there was a domain in which Arthur felt not quite sure of his thing, it was the physical act of congress. He was sadly untrained in the art of ravishing. He was no blushing virgin, but he was no experienced stud either. And what little information he had gathered from their racier discussions was that Merlin was vastly more practised at intercourse than him, and would therefore undoubtedly have greater expectations and presumably a slew of uncommon, exotic needs when it came to sex and philandering.

With any other lad, Arthur felt that his status, his natural charisma and the awe he never failed to inspire would have compensated for any dodgy technique of his. But he was under no such illusion with Merlin. His friend was not – and had never been – in awe of Arthur for a single minute. If anything, the man delighted in teasing Arthur about the tiniest things.

Which meant Arthur was f*cked, so to speak.

His teenage fumblings with boys of his age were useless as points of reference. Merlin was a man, and a man who had well-documented urges and appetites that Arthur was supposed to satisfy. Yet he found himself woefully ill-equipped – or rather ill-informed (for the equipment was of prime quality) – to do any of these things. He had fooled around with lads but had early been discouraged from making it a habit, and he had lain with women but had never really developed a taste for it. So, beyond what he’d gathered from his laddish gropings and what he’d learnt from the lurid teachings of Lady Matilda, lay the vast, fraught and uncharted territory of his own largely untested sexuality.

And in his mad arrogance, he had promised Merlin that he’d be worth the wait! He could have punched himself with how utterly stupid he was. He was going to have to come clean about his miserable shortcomings sooner than later.

They were going to get naked, they were going to get into bed, and then Arthur was going to be ridiculous because he didn’t know where to start or what a man such as Merlin might like or even expect. As much as he desired Merlin in the ardent but abstract composure of his mind, tonight was going to be a disaster, and he was beginning to wonder if it wouldn’t be wiser to establish a rigorous range of exploration strictly limited to kisses, which he arguably felt more confident about. Anything more adventurous would set him on a course for failure, and he wasn’t sure he could survive disappointing Merlin in something as elementary and crucial as intimacy of the flesh.

And it was at this point – this point where the prince was ready to beg for Merlin’s mercy and tell him there’d been some terrible mistake and can we please call the whole thing off – that Arthur finally understood what was happening to him.

Tournament jitters.

The realisation came as both a shock and a relief. Shock that the prospect of taking someone to bed could get him in such a state, and relief because tourney jitters were blessedly familiar. They were actually healthy and helped to keep you sharp. They could even be mitigated with light meals, small beer, a bit of exercise and a lot of quiet.

And with this comforting knowledge, Arthur realised other aspects of his jousting experience could be used to provide informed support in his current predicament. For in many ways, as with armed confrontations, the secret to victory was to let your opponent show you his weakness and stick your lance where it grieved. Now, obviously Merlin wasn’t an enemy in need of a sound thrashing, but the advice still seemed to apply. He would only have to take his cues from his savvy manservant and just… stick his lance where he was told.

After this revelation, Arthur immediately felt better with himself. He was still nervous as all hell, but at least he now felt on firm, well-trodden ground. He decided he would resort to his tournament mental routine to get him through the rest of the day.

After the council meeting there was luncheon with some dignitary or other. And after luncheon there was escorting some ladies of the court on their weekly afternoon ride. Then a review of the patrols’ reports, and then dinner with his father and Morgana. And through it all, Arthur felt Merlin’s background presence by his side. Silent and somewhat guarded.

And then the time came to return to his chambers. Usually this was a time of idleness for him, spent reading or playing a game with Leon or Morgana or even Merlin while having a drink of some sweet strong wine. But tonight…

Tonight he had an achingly attractive and slightly tremulous-looking Merlin all to himself. He watched his manservant go about his chores very absently, almost knocking over a decanter and nearly stepping into that damn chamber pot again. And Arthur finally realised he wasn’t the only one anxious to get this right.

Merlin poured him a goblet of wine, as though this was any other night. Then Merlin watched as Arthur served him a goblet of wine in turn and handed it to him. Merlin took it wordlessly and looked slightly bewildered.

“It’s been a long day,” Arthur said inanely.

“Uh… yeah,” Merlin replied, taking a self-aware sip from his drink.

“It’s lovely wine, don’t you think?” Arthur laboured on.

“Right.” Merlin stared into his goblet, looking a bit red as he struggled to keep a straight face.

“Are you going to make fun of my wooing technique again?”

“Wouldn’t dream of it.” Merlin’s eyes glittered with ill-concealed mirth as he persisted in dipping his lips into Arthur’s best wine.

“Because once you’re done disparaging my brand of courtship, I should like to see how the great Merlin charms the braies off a lover,” Arthur scoffed.

“Sure, let me show you.” Merlin abruptly glugged the rest of his wine like a philistine, then slapped his goblet down on the table, roughly wiping his mouth on his sleeve. With dark velvet eyes and unembarrassed aplomb, he then simply grabbed Arthur’s face between strong warm hands and planted a heart-stopping kiss on him.

And Arthur had to admit, ruthless as it was, he far preferred Merlin’s wooing technique to his own. He promptly succumbed whole-heartedly.

It was outside of the ordinary for Arthur to find himself with a companion so hungry and so assertive. It was rather delightful, he decided… as Merlin began to loosen the laces on Arthur’s shirt. And how convenient that the person he most wanted to get naked with was also the one who knew exactly how to undress him with ruthless efficiency.

“Is the door barred this time?” Arthur asked in between returning Merlin’s voracious nips to his lips.

“Yes, my lord.”

It would be embarrassing to describe how swiftly his co*ck hardened at the underhanded use of those two words. He was instantly reminded of the challenging, smouldering gaze this young spunky lad had levelled at him in the street of the lower town. He had been doomed from the very start, hadn’t he?

“Of all the moments you finally decide to follow courtly etiquette,” Arthur grumbled, then sighed when Merlin’s hand covered his aching erection and fondled it expertly through his undergarment. He was suddenly reminded of the foolish boastful promise he’d made, and realised some assumptions on Merlin’s part might need to be dispelled, for his lover was in for a huge disappointment if he expected Arthur to know exactly what he was doing.

“Before we go any further…” Arthur began a little awkwardly, “I believe I should make a confession.” And Merlin froze ominously in his arms, and then carefully leaned back ever-so-slightly to give Arthur a strange wary look, as if expecting something sinister and unpalatable. “It’s nothing bad,” Arthur felt the need to reassure.

But the damage seemed to have been done as Merlin now nodded guardedly.

“All right. Let’s hear it,” he said, looking a little pinched already.

“I may… I may not be very… I mean, I may have unwittingly led you to believe that… but I might not actually be quite…”

“Not quite what?” Merlin snapped.

“As experienced as you.”

“What?” Merlin blinked, palpably lost.

“I’m not a virgin!” Arthur hastened to say, pre-emptively nipping that slanderous accusation in the bud. “Not a virgin by any means, but… not as diversely experienced as you.”

“Diversely experienced?”

“Well-practiced,” he offered. “Battle-hardened. Weather-seasoned.” Dear Lord, this was going abysmally.

“Are you calling me promiscuous?”

“Uh… no?” Although, to be fair, it was part of what Arthur was trying to imply. Politely. “No, I’m simply saying that, as a rural commoner, you’ve probably had more leeway to explore and…”

“Oh this is getting better and better by the second.”

Merlin was looking miffed and unimpressed, and Arthur was losing his footing in this misguided confession of his.

“Look, just… bear with me, all right?” he eventually said.

“Believe me, I’m doing all the bearing I can right now,” Merlin muttered.

Further proof that Arthur was more a man of action than words. He did feel this was an important disclosure to make, though – before his lover stumbled across the truth.

“Merlin, all I’m trying to say is that I have promised you that I would be worth your wait, but that may have been wishful bragging more than anything else. The truth is that I might turn out to be a disappointment to someone as savvy as you.” The words were excruciatingly painful to get out, but he felt better for being forthright. And to his relief, Merlin gave a dramatic eyeroll as his face relaxed into an indulgent smile.

“You can’t disappoint me, Arthur,” Merlin promised, cupping his cheek. “You really can’t.”

“You may be underestimating my ability to f*ck up.”

“Well, it can’t get worse than calling me a slu*tty peasant, can it?”

“That’s not what I said,” Arthur corrected.

“But that’s exactly what you meant.”

“It wasn’t in a bad way.”

Merlin brushed his thumb over Arthur’s babbling mouth.

“Please, do shut up,” he murmured compellingly before replacing his thumb with his irresistible lips.

And yes. Kissing was far better than faffing about over semantics. Kissing was something Arthur was good at. And hopefully, Merlin would agree with that assessment.

The kisses were slow and languorous at first, then grew increasingly jagged and urgent as hands began to roam and stroke and eventually grab long-coveted bits. This amorous scouting of the terrain allowed Arthur to finally latch onto an erection that wasn’t his own but seemed extremely friendly nonetheless, and the deep breathy moan that escaped Merlin at his touch was almost more than his fortitude could bear.

Very little needs to be written about the age-old mutual play of hands feverishly exchanged between them that hasn’t already been written at length about such occupations. Suffice it to say that pleasure defeated Merlin first, which was all the reassurance Arthur needed to believe himself worthy of his stallion of a lover. He kissed him through the aftershocks, his own need momentarily forgotten as very frightening words of love threatened to spill out of him. He held on to them – barely – as Merlin panted his mindless bliss into his neck. Of all the victories and triumphs Arthur had managed to wrest from life, he doubted he had ever felt so fulfilled as when Merlin opened blurry, contented eyes and smiled a shy smile at him.

It obviously goes without saying that the smile soon turned not-so-shy and Merlin went down on his knees to annihilate Arthur with that shameless mouth of his.

***

Merlin woke up groggily, feeling parched and unusually hot – and the reason for that was the fine hunk of a prince nakedly plastered all over his side. Athletic, gorgeous and snoring very cutely.

After years of steadily convincing oneself that such things never happened, it was unsettling to actually wake up to someone so cherished and so long desired, and to finally experience the sultry, sticky, snuffling reality of him. Years of watching his friend and idly wondering what sort of lover he might be. The answer to that was a hot one, temperature wise. Also a hot one in sensual terms. In bed, as in every other aspect of his life, Arthur did not hold back. But whereas he had this overbearing, self-assured, co*cky persona in the public arena, he was, in the hush of the bedroom, a more unassuming lover.

Merlin very lightly stroked the blonde head on his shoulder and wondered where they were at now. He knew his heart was every bit as compromised as it had been yesterday and the day before and the day before that (and all the way back to him telling Arthur he was a royal prat three years ago, to be perfectly honest). He was hopelessly in love. Maybe even more so now that he knew just how sweet a lover Arthur was. Now that he had tasted the charms and sampled the delights of the forbidden prince, he knew that his heart would never be his own again. He was well and truly the other side of that bloody coin – the bright, mindlessly infatuated side. However, life had taught Merlin to always expect something to go astray, and he couldn’t help but ask himself how they were going to bollocks this up.

“Finally got what you wanted, did you?” came the croaky rasp. And then a slightly calloused hand caressed its way up Merlin’s chest. “How do you like my bed now?”

“The bed’s great,” Merlin drawled, “it’s the company that leaves a lot to be desired... Ow!” he chuckled as rough fingers softly pinched his nipple in retaliation.

“That didn’t hurt,” Arthur chided, his eyes sleepy, beautiful and taunting. They made Merlin feel terribly weak and breathless, and like he had sweet, bubbly rosewater in his veins.

“It did hurt. I think you need to kiss it better.”

Which Arthur did, with much relish and just the right amount of teeth.

“How much time have we got?” the prince asked, his lips now grazing down Merlin’s ribs.

Lazily tilting his head to the window, Merlin gauged the approach of dawn in the gloom that filtered through the coloured panes. “Couple of hours. Why?”

“I’d like to try something.” The words were devious as they were whispered over the very ticklish skin of Merlin’s lower belly.

“You won’t need a couple of hours for that,” Merlin promised. The mere fact that Arthur would consider performing such an act on him – an act seen as eminently subservient by most men of any power – was enough to blow him away, as it were. “You’ll be lucky if I last more than a minute.”

And because his lover was a competitive overachiever, Merlin was put through the slow, agonising bliss of having his co*ck leisurely worshipped until he went cross-eyed and filled his prince’s mouth with his enamoured release.

There was something to be said for the sight of beautifully tousled Arthur letting Merlin’s spent co*ck slip from his plush, hard-working lips.

“Technique is still a little dodgy, but you’re a quick study,” Merlin wheezed once he managed to unstick his tongue from the roof of his mouth.

“There is nothing that you can do that I can’t do just as well,” Arthur announced co*ckily.

“With the exception of magic.”

“With the tiny exception of magic.”

“Now wipe my come from your chin because you look debauched and I could go again just looking at you,” Merlin rasped.

Arthur had the modesty to blush, but took his time wiping the obscene dribble of seed and deliberately kept eye contact as he licked his thumb clean. Which really did nothing to soothe Merlin’s howling predatory urges. There was a distinct ‘Go on, then’ in those daring blue eyes that had to be met and put to the test – if not brought to heel.

Merlin’s hand sank and twisted firmly into a fistful of ruffled blonde hair. Thus secured, the lascivious prince was drawn, crawling up Merlin’s body, until within proper range.

“Kiss me.” Merlin’s rumble of need sounded suspiciously like an order, but Arthur didn’t seem to mind. The prince, in fact, executed himself readily, sharing quite liberally the briny taste on his tongue, and then suffered himself to be pushed onto his back.

***

There was no denying that it was the most intoxicating of head rushes to be the focus of Merlin’s animal lust. Very much akin to leading a troop of battle-hardened knights into combat – or single-handedly baiting a bear. A similar thrill, knowing that one was commanding so much power and playing with forces that were beyond one’s actual control. Merlin’s passion was a thing of wonder. Watching desire flare in those eyes and extinguish everything else, every other trace of the smart, sarcastic, argumentative, bumbling young man, was an enthralling spectacle. It was like watching Merlin perform an arcane act of magic. Mysterious and awe-inspiring. And Arthur couldn’t get enough of it.

There was also an awful lot to be said for being a recipient and not the purveyor in this instance. Arthur’s whole life was about taking command and exerting control over everything and everyone. It was what he’d been trained to do from a very young age, it was what had always been expected of him, it was his duty. A responsibility that went with all the other trappings of power. It was a prerogative and a privilege, but it was also a job and oftentimes a burden that couldn’t be shrugged off – except here, away from prying eyes, and with the only man who had never had any problem with exerting his sweet, baffling and not-so-subtle dominion over Arthur. The man currently looming over him with smouldering eyes, parted lips and a fierce intent to ravish written all over his face. If this wasn’t what Heaven looked like…

Arthur wrapped a hand around the nape of Merlin’s neck, relishing the feel of his fingers threading into the short black hair, while the other hand grabbed the swell of a hard buttock and savoured the heavy grind against his needy flesh. All knotted shoulders, burning eyes and ravenous mouth, Merlin kissed him mindlessly, and Arthur returned every hungry touch, every loving muttering and biting caress with everything he had. An overthinking part of his brain wondered whether making love with Merlin would always feel so thrilling and desperate. The blood-deprived rest of it told it to shut up and enjoy.

Arthur managed not to complain when Merlin took a detour down his body. He surrendered barely a broken moan when Merlin’s scorching lips closed around the head of his co*ck, and soundlessly dug his head back deep into the pillow as the expert mouth wetly glided along, full of devious tongue. He endured the spine-melting torture rather nobly and with scant needy whimpers. But then the tongue decided to play dirty and took a greedy, sloppy lick at his bollocks and Arthur yelped, almost coming undone on the spot. He kept his mouth firmly shut so as not to betray how much said bollocks absolutely loved the slobbering attention. It seemed Merlin had a far better understanding of Arthur’s own body than Arthur himself, and the knowing man therefore spent an indecent amount of time feasting on his balls, rendering Arthur speechless, legless and wonderfully defiled. The prince thought he had reached the bottom of shameful wantonness when an adventurous lick delved where no tongue had ever delved – and he discovered there was an even higher, even more mind-boggling level of pleasure to be had in this world.

“Ffffuuuck… Oh fff*ck!” he mewled at the revelation.

“Do you like that?” Merlin murmured roughly.

Now what Arthur would have liked to say was something along the lines of ‘It does feel unexpectedly nice, Merlin. Quite delightful, in fact. Sorry for interrupting you. Please feel free to continue.’ But what came out was a groaned, breathless “Fff*ckyes, don’tstop don’tstop... Don’tstop!”

To which Merlin replied with a filthy animal growl that implied he had no intention of stopping whatsoever anyway.

And thus, Arthur was introduced to the unparallelled joy of getting his arsehole thoroughly tongue-f*cked. An activity whose existence he had never spared a thought for or even suspected. Couldn’t think of anything else now. Couldn’t even think of going on living without it. A fleeting hint of self-consciousness skirted the edge of his awareness as he grabbed the back of his knees to give Merlin all the room needed to work on turning the stalwart prince into a whimpering mess. Anything to make it last longer, to make it last forever. Merlin’s hands were hot and urgent over him, rough palms and agile fingers finding all these sensitive places on him, triggering all these perfect sensations while the tongue plundered and pleasured, and he suddenly knew why so many had succumbed to his lover’s charms before him. He knew exactly why and he wanted his rightful share of it too.

He breathed Merlin’s name, but the naughty ministrations only grew more ruthless in response, so he resorted to ragged pleading and that finally got Merlin’s attention.

“What do you want? What do you need?” his lover asked in between wet little licks.

And Arthur began to chuckle nervously at that, because how did you beg your manservant for co*ck?

“Tell me… What do you need?”

“Something…” God, how was he going to say this? “…Other than a tongue.”

“Other than… oh.” A gush of warm breath ghosted over Arthur’s nether regions. “f*ck…”

“Yes. That.”

“But you’ve never…”

“No.” Thanks for reminding him.

“And yet you want…”

“Yes. Now. Please.”

Merlin didn’t look too happy with that, surprisingly. The request put a frown on his brow as he crawled up between Arthur’s welcoming legs. But as far as the prince was concerned, it was quite the new and exhilarating experience to find himself with a full-grown man cradled between his thighs. He fully embraced it as he hooked a wanton leg over Merlin’s hip. The move had the unintended side-effect of bringing into complementary contact two wet and willing body parts – one hard, eager co*ck grazing and catching over one hopeful, slick opening. Merlin realised his miscalculation too late and squeezed his eyes shut again, his whole frame shuddering with the effort not to unravel there and then.

“sh*t…” he hissed pitifully, then withdrew. Shifted his hips away from Arthur.

“Don’t you f*cking dare,” Arthur snarled, digging a heel into the back of Merlin’s thigh.

“I don’t think you’re ready,” Merlin explained, panting with the strain of holding on to it.

“Stop thinking.”

“Someone has to. I don’t want to hurt you.”

“You won’t.” Barely a twinge, Arthur surmised.

“Arthur, I will hurt you and… And you will come to resent me for doing this to you.”

“Are you that terrible in bed?” the prince taunted as he reached for the bedstand and rummaged blindly for the vial of rubbing oil he kept in the drawer. Merlin gave a soft snort and shook his head, then reluctantly let himself be drawn down into a kiss that started out as innocuous but soon veered into languorous. And as Arthur busied himself behind his obfuscation, Merlin’s co*ck bumped and dragged promisingly over his hole.

“We’re not ready for this,” Merlin tried, his soft lips helplessly nipping at their counterparts.

“Feels like parts of you would beg to differ,” Arthur argued. He diligently stroked an oil-slick hand to his lover’s stiff co*ck, and watched Merlin close his eyes in what definitely looked like effective surrender. Pleased with the development, Arthur quickly lubricated his own length – gingerly, for he’d been holding off for some time now. “You asked me what I needed…” and surreptitiously swiped slippery fingertips over his opening. “And what I need from you is this.”

From above him, there was a defeated but very distinctly exasperated huff that boded very well indeed for Arthur’s unwanted anal virginity.

“It’s fingers first, you stupid prat,” Merlin muttered, batting his hand away and snatching the vial for his own knowledgeable use.

After a perfunctory scowl, Arthur did his best not to gloat while Merlin drenched his long, skilled fingers in enough oil to light seven lamps for two weeks. First, there was a bit of fooling around at his hole where fingertips emulated the delights that the tongue had so expertly wrought. And then there was a slick digit up his arse, and truly, Arthur didn’t know how to feel about it. It was a start – an odd and not entirely uncomfortable start – but he felt the real thing would have felt much better. He opened his mouth to let Merlin know.

“If we’re going to do this, we’re doing it my way. Understood?” Merlin said in a tone that brooked no arguments. The back of Arthur’s neck prickled with a lustful shiver at the command in the dark velvet voice.

“Yes, my lord,” he replied in jest, then wondered why the playful submission was making him feel shivery inside.

It did earn him a warmly chuckled “Clotpole…” and an indulgent kiss from Merlin, so he didn’t question it too much.

Meanwhile, fingers had been added and were now leisurely twisting and rubbing inside him, spreading slickness and pleasure-adjacent sensations with efficient care. And then the fingers withdrew and Merlin kissed him one last time before bracing himself on the back of Arthur’s knees.

And alright, that was a twinge and a half. But amidst the ache was the promise of something satisfying, he could sense it, just out of reach for now. Arthur clutched at those exquisite shoulders and purred his encouragements to Merlin, whose taut frame was trembling with the strain of being slow and considerate.

“Stop holding back,” Arthur admonished.

“Let me do this.” Merlin’s words were hushed and stubborn.

“I can’t feel a thing.” A statement that might have stretched the truth just a tad. Arthur then promptly choked on a moan when Merlin’s next aggravated thrust mashed into something that ignited a stunning new sensation inside him. “Ff*ck… Yess…” His grasp on the sweaty nape of Merlin’s neck tightened as he readied himself with canted hips to meet the next thrust, and it was Merlin who mewled this time when flesh slapped against unyielding flesh. Finally.

The combatants understood they’d found their marks, and the coupling, which had been laboured and gentle so far, turned fierce and fluid as their lower instincts were unleashed. It was a brief melee of course, for they’d both exhausted their respective stamina a while ago now, but it was brutally satisfying nonetheless. Formidably delicious blows were being dealt to that wonderous patch of needy flesh inside Arthur, and Merlin’s loving exasperation made him a perfect marksman and his co*ck a lethal weapon – something Arthur would have to remember when he stopped coming all over himself.

With soul-deep contentment he clung on to Merlin’s shoulders and kissed all that his lips could reach as his lover came inside him with choked gasps and forceful, tender jolts that drove him into the mattress.

And then they were nothing but a barely sentient heap of boneless, panting, sticky lads.

Merlin’s gaze was soft, dark and strangely vulnerable as he looked up from where he’d buried his face in Arthur’s neck. Unsure of its belonging. A sentiment Arthur himself had felt so often and so keenly – right until Merlin had barged into his life. At a loss for adequate words, Arthur brushed nose with him and made sure to kiss the uncertainty away.

Could he not feel they were one now?

***

Merlin held his breath as the love of his life – the prince he’d just blithely defiled – kissed him with poignant gentleness. It felt too good to be true. Merlin simply did not get to enjoy such unmitigated happiness for long. Ever.

“Are you all right?” Merlin murmured against his lips.

Arthur gave a theatrical sigh.

“Well, I am a little mortified by our lack of endurance, but nothing a bit of practice won’t remedy, I guess,” he smiled.

“Practice, eh?”

“Lots of practice,” Arthur promised deeply.

“I should’ve known you’d be a pushy bottom boy.”

“A what?”

“A bottom boy. A boy who likes it up his bottom.”

Arthur scrunched up his nose in distaste. “I’m not sure I like that term.”

“The term matters little if you’ve had a pleasant time,” Merlin argued deviously.

“Are you fishing for compliments now?” Arthur grinned in bemusem*nt.

“Maybe.” Then more soberly, “Are you not too sore?” he asked, pressing a meek kiss to Arthur’s chest.

“I am sore but I had a very pleasant time indeed,” the prince said as his fingers sifted through Merlin’s hair. “I’m looking forward to returning the favour.”

“Mmmm, ambitious, are we?”

“Always.”

“What if I told you that I am no bottom boy?”

“I’d say you don’t know what you’re missing out on, and that I’d love to have the opportunity to change your mind.”

Merlin snorted softly, blessed relief melting away his last misgivings. Arthur was too good to be true, but he seemed real enough.

“Well, I can occasionally be swayed if the right man comes along and asks nicely.”

And it was nothing but the truth, but a troubled cloud passed over his lover’s features.

“Occasionally,” Arthur echoed, looking a little thrown by the casualness implied in Merlin’s banter. “No more, though. I’m… I don’t… I don’t share my affections, Merlin.” He frowned. “We probably should have talked about this before, but… I won’t be just another notch in your bedpost. I couldn’t bear that.”

“It’s all right, Arthur,” Merlin soothed, a fluttery feeling tickling his heart. “I’ll never go looking for anyone else. You are all I need.” And though Arthur might not realise it, this was the greatest declaration of love Merlin had ever made to anyone in his whole life. “You’re it.”

The thundercloud began to lift, but in its place was now a brittleness in Arthur’s gaze.

“I’ll never want anyone else either,” he promised, rubbing a nervous thumb over the head of Merlin’s shoulder. “But life being an unfair business, there will come a day when I have to…”

“Take a wife and queen. Have children. Consolidate the bloodline.” All these things Merlin knew too well. “And you will still be all that I want.”

“I can’t expect this from you. I won’t deserve the faithfulness.” Arthur’s brow furrowed into lines of unhappy bleakness.

“Well, hopefully Sir Erwan will still be available at this juncture,” Merlin mused, then chuckled as he was promptly flipped on his back by his mighty knight of a lover who called him a tart. “I bet he’s a saucy little bottom boy at heart.”

“I’ll show you who’s a saucy little bottom boy,” Arthur purred as he settled between Merlin’s legs and stroked a promising hand down the back of one thigh.

“Alas, my Lord, I regret to say we don’t have time for this,” Merlin grinned.

Arthur grunted and the kiss that followed was slow and heated and rich with tempting accents of filth, but they were both well aware that they had indeed expended all their time for this morning. The kiss was allowed to run its sultry course and drift into soft tenderness until they were leaning their foreheads together like two lovestruck fools.

“You’re stuck with me now,” Arthur said. “I love you.”

The declaration was so genuine and straightforward, and so very much like Arthur himself that Merlin was shot through the heart.

“I am everything you should never get involved with,” he murmured.

“You are.”

“A sorcerer.”

“A servant,” Arthur added.

“A man.” Merlin’s wry smile quirked his lips

“Oh don’t I know that,” Arthur smirked.

“But we will make it work,” Merlin promised very gently.

Arthur smiled and brushed Merlin’s cheek with the back of his fingers, full of gentle worship.

“Yeah, we will,” Arthur vowed with calm certainty.

***

Epilogue

Merlin gritted his teeth through the maddening pleasure. He’d have to remember to put a ward on the door to block noise – if he ever regained full use of his brains. Brains that were currently being f*cked senseless by Arthur who was indeed a quick study, damn him.

Much to his own dismay, Merlin had to admit that he had never lain with anyone so f*cking talented at f*cking. He would never tell him of course, but Arthur had the uncanny ability to stumble upon exactly what Merlin liked and use it against him to earth-shaking, spine-melting, mind-blowing effect.

Merlin’s hands grappled the top Arthur’s thighs as his ankles tightened around Arthur’s neck, urging him on. White hot bliss was building up to the filthy rhythm of that ruthless ramming co*ck and he was slowly going out of his mind trying to decide what would bring more pleasure – to resist the irresistible and prolong the agony or to give in and let it shatter him. In the end it was a slick drag of his co*ck against Arthur’s hard-working abs that took the choice away and made his world explode into a blinding shower of brilliant sparks.

Arthur was a goner too, of course, which was only fair. They cursed and writhed together through their little death, until there was nothing left of them but a clinging, panting, quaking mass of sweaty muscles and twitching limbs, with a puddle of Merlin’s come in the middle. Never had such an undignified heap resulted from such a divine moment of unadulterated perfection.

Eyes shut, mouth open, brain dead, Merlin simply held on to Arthur’s shoulders, labouring to catch his breath with his heavy lover collapsed on top of him.

“f*ck…” Arthur wheezed in disbelief.

Merlin groaned his assent, feeling drowsiness already tugging at him.

“f*ck… is it always like that?” Arthur asked.

“Oh, yeah…” Merlin felt it wiser to reply.

He then felt Arthur go very still against him.

“Uh… Merlin?”

“What.” Merlin was post-coital and swimming in soft, mellow, sleep-inducing pleasure after one of the best org*sms of his life. He really didn’t want to have to talk right now.

“Is this normal?”

Merlin opened one eye. And then promptly opened both.

All around them, suspended in a still dance, a myriad of specks of incandescent light filled the room – the tiny shards of gold just placidly floating mid-air.

“Oh.” sh*t. Had he done that? “This has never happened before,” he defended himself.

Arthur raised his head further and craned his neck to better watch the stunning spectacle unfolding in his chambers. He blew gently on the nearest speck of light, to see if it would drift away, but it merely twirled where it was.

“Never happened before, eh?” he commented with a little smirk. “Well then, I’m flattered.”

“I think it’s just a coincidence,” Merlin said, wary of feeding Arthur’s conceit.

“And I think I was so good I made it rain stars for you,” Arthur countered smugly.

“Shut up.”

Merlin extinguished the stars.

He was never going to live this down, was he?

******