Archive of Our Own ^beta

i.

It’s been four days since Trinity term ended in Merlin’s second year, and Arthur is in New York. They’re on the phone together, Merlin wandering The Parks aimlessly, only purposeful in his direction when he has to skirt around some of the more aggressive swans. He’s staying at Oxford this summer for an internship, the same one that fell through last year when they lost funding. As glad as he is to have gotten this second chance, it’s regrettable that it doesn’t actually start for another three weeks. He could go home to Ealdor in the meantime, but his mum and Gaius are gone on a cruise down the French Riviera. He could go to London, but what would he even do? Will is visiting his girlfriend’s parents in Scotland, and Freya and Elena and all his other pre-uni friends are busy with their own lives. He’s not even sure Uther would be in residence at Buckingham, if for some reason Merlin wanted to drop in for a one-on-one visit—according to Hunith, he took such an interest in the details of the cruise that they half-expect the King of the United Kingdom and the Commonwealth Realms to be there when they arrive in Marseille.

The upshot of it all is that Merlin feels a little adrift in many small ways, which is maybe why he’s called Arthur, even though it’s a four hour time difference and Arthur is booked sunup to sundown with his two-week American tour and they last saw each other only four days ago. Arthur picked up right away, though, and didn’t question Merlin’s call at all; in fact, he immediately launched into a description about some moving statue person in Central Park who he was sure was a double agent for the CIA (or something like that, Merlin hadn’t quite followed), barely giving Merlin a chance to say hello, as though he’d been expecting him to call. Which is very Arthur, really.

(Once at the JCR, Gwen slammed down her third pint of beer and declared, “The thing with Arthur is—alright? Are you listening to me, Merlin? This is important. The thing with Arthur is, he just has this expectation that the world will bend to his will—that everyone will like him and do what he wants them to and give him the things he wants, because why wouldn’t they? And it’s literally the definition of privilege and it should be infuriating but it’s like—he’s right. Why wouldn’t anyone like him? Why wouldn’t anyone want to be his friend? He’s great. Why does he make incredible arrogance so damn charming?” and it was the most accurate summation of Arthur’s inexplicable appeal that Merlin had ever heard.)

Arthur finally moved on from his spies-masquerading-as-buskers-masquerading-as-statues theory (Merlin did manage to gather that part of Arthur’s tour will involve a visit to the Spy Museum in DC, the prospect of which has possibly inspired this Cold War-era paranoia) to the drizzly New York weather, the tragic lack of footie on any of the American TV channels, and the terrible date he witnessed at a high-end restaurant he attended with a few of his American cousins (the redheaded stepchildren of the royal family, as Gaius refers to them). Which prompts Merlin to tell the story of the worst date he ever went on, which happened only a few months ago, when Arthur was in Ibiza.

“It was a blind date set up by Elena, if that tells you anything,” he says, after he’s just got finished telling about how the guy had shown up forty minutes late, dressed in gym sweats, and greeted Merlin by saying “We’ll split the check, right?” with no hello.

“Why are you still letting her set you up? She should have lost her matchmaking privileges years ago. Remember when I had to rescue you from getting kidnapped by the Russian mob?”

“That was your interpretation of events, we don’t know that it’s true. And I’m beginning to worry about your tendency toward conspiracy. Anyway, so we were at this Italian place, and he told me he didn’t like pasta.”

“What, any pasta?”

“None. He’s against all pasta, no exceptions, and of course the menu was ninety percent pasta. And he chose that restaurant, I had nothing to do with it.”

“Well, that’s just poor planning.”

“Honestly, out of everything, it’s the complete dismissal of pasta that appalls me most. That’s when I knew it could never work.”

“So love of pasta is a must for you.”

Merlin sighs. “Elena says I’m picky, but it’s not a crime to have a few requirements, is it?”

“Of course not. I find that very reasonable. One of mine is they can’t be one of those people who refers to the loo as the little boys’ or little girls’ room. Drives me right up the wall.”

“Right, exactly. And one of mine is that he has to like the same foods I do.”

“That does explain one reason why you’ve never asked me out, then.”

“Does it?”

“Absolutely. Think of our oldest and deepest rift, which if I remember correctly was over coriander.”

“Ah, of course. I forgot. You’re right, that is the only thing keeping us apart.”

“The only thing?” Arthur says, amusement coloring his voice. “Is it really? That can’t be right. Surely there must be more, what with that long list of requirements you have.”

“I never said it was long,” Merlin says, then rethinks, remembering his last conversation with Elena, just before she’d set up the blind date, when he’d listed out his preferences and she slapped the picky label on him. Nice eyes, good hands, tall but not too tall, broad-shouldered, well-muscled but not the Hulk, nice to animals, good with kids, kind smile, sense of humor, not a murderer, doesn’t bloody vape, goes to museums, reads books, cares about people (including ones he hasn’t even met), not overly self-conscious, tips well, generous with friends, knows how to hold chopsticks. He didn’t realize he had so many until he started listing them off and just kept coming up with new ones. “Well. Maybe it is a bit long,” he admits.

“Go on then, tell me. What are my other disqualifications, besides coriander?”

“I mean, the coriander is mostly it.”

“Liar. I promise I won’t be hurt. At least not too much.”

“I don’t know what to tell you,” Merlin says, and he is actually mentally reviewing his list and…really and genuinely, can’t find any place where Arthur falls short. It should be a revelation, but it’s not really; he’s known for a while now, somewhere in the back of his mind, where his measuring stick comes from. He feels his ears warming and thinks it’s a good thing Arthur can’t see him.

“Merlin.” Arthur’s voice is—well, still tinged with amusement, but ever so slightly more serious, more urgent, like he’s having to constrain himself to stay in the realm of lighthearted teasing. “Really, tell me.”

Merlin’s heart is beating a little quicker. He can feel the same war within himself that he hears in Arthur’s voice, a possibility swimming to the surface that he could—they could—take this out of the realm of lighthearted teasing. If they so choose.

Or they could just keep going, laugh it off; that’s still an option, and if they do it now it would be fine. They’d move on, take the next bend in conversational road, easy. If that’s what they want.

It’s not what Merlin wants. It’s a heady rush of realization, a certainty about his own desires that surprises him with how little it surprises him. But what does Arthur want? He doesn’t know, and he can’t see Arthur’s face, and that makes things that much harder to judge.

“I’m telling you,” Merlin says, a tentative step away from the bend, fighting a quaver that wants to sneak into his voice, still not sure whether any of this is welcome. “It’s just the coriander, Arthur. I can’t think of—any other reason. Why we’re not together.”

He finds himself holding his breath. Can Arthur tell how honest Merlin is being, barely veiled in the flimsy pretense of some silliness about herbs? Within the last sixty seconds, one thought has taken hold of Merlin with frightening force, grabbing him by the throat and screaming: Why aren’t he and Arthur together? Why the fuck not? He can’t think of one single solitary good reason. (Not excluding the coriander.)

The pause on Arthur’s end lasts several long moments, too long, and for a panicked second Merlin thinks he’s fucked everything up, gone too far, and is just about to do some rapid backtracking when Arthur says, with a sudden urgency that has Merlin catching his breath again, “I could learn to like coriander.”

Another beat passes, quivering on a knife’s edge, a violin note held unbearably long. Merlin’s so afraid of breaking this moment, of saying the wrong thing, of putting his foot down on the tightrope and trusting his weight to it. He clutches the phone tighter to his face, closing his eyes. (He’s lost all sense of his surroundings; a homicidal swan could attack at any moment and he’d never see it coming.) “You think?” he says, barely a whisper.

“Yes. I could—” Arthur’s voice is unsteady too, Merlin notices, a razor-thin trembling balance between lightness and something more. He wants to crawl through the phone to where Arthur is and help him find solid ground. “I could go to the grocery store right now, actually. If that’s really all that’s standing between us.”

Merlin’s heart is a fucking jackhammer, speeding from fear to excitement in a dizzying blur. “Yeah. Yeah, okay.” Arthur makes a noise, one Merlin can’t quite make out, but he catches just enough—a hint of something like relief, a hitch of the breath, a smile spreading across Arthur’s face, hesitant but growing surer, and it’s barely enough, it could still all go terribly wrong, but fuck it. It’s time. Throw caution to the wind. “Actually,” Merlin says, his voice stronger, even if the tremor’s not completely gone, “I’ve changed my mind. I think I might actually hate coriander. No need to put yourself out. Fuck that herb. I’ll never eat it again.”

He feels exposed, vulnerable, raw, like he’s just made the grandest and most daring declaration of his life, rather than just disavowing the key ingredient in chimichurri. Somehow, he’s actually done both.

“No, Merlin,” Arthur says, and now Merlin is sure he’s smiling, and he is too, and he pictures them both, grinning into their mobiles on opposite sides of the Atlantic like a couple of complete sopping idiots. “Don’t go all Gift of the Magi on me. I said it first. I love coriander now. Can’t get enough of the stuff. Eat it daily. Meaning…you’re sure there’s nothing else?” Merlin hears it, that last little bit of insecurity, of uncertainty, one last double-check, and he loves Arthur for it, loves him so much it makes him dizzy, and he suddenly doesn’t know how he’s survived up to this moment. How were they just having a normal conversation, about weather and football and blind dates and all the stupid inconsequential things that comprise every other subject of conversation in the world? How has Merlin stood to be in Arthur’s company for thirteen years without everything pouring out, everything he feels and wants and hopes?

“There’s nothing else,” Merlin confirms, firm as he can, trying to make Arthur hear how much he means it. Then he has a thought, and adds, “Well, I mean—besides the Atlantic Ocean, that is.”

There’s a quick beat, and then Arthur bursts out laughing, a combination of relief and disbelief and perhaps slight hysteria. “Right. The ocean and ten more days in America.”

“Fuck,” Merlin says, with feeling.

“You imbecile.” Arthur’s voice is rich with affection, and Merlin doesn’t think he’s ever been so happy to be insulted in his life. “You couldn’t have waited ten days until I was back in the UK to confess how you felt about me?”

“Oi, not fair! You dragged it out of me with your pointed questioning! You’re the one who wouldn’t let things go.”

“Hell,” Arthur continues, gaining steam, ignoring him, “you couldn’t have done it before? We’ve spent the last three months constantly together, face to face on countless occasions, and it never occurred to you to mention that a fucking pesto recipe was the only thing keeping us apart? You could have snogged me at any time, Merlin.”

“Don’t put this all on me. You could have snogged me any time. For a while now.”

“How long?” Arthur says. (He can’t quite hide the keenness of his curiosity, the quickness with which he asks; Merlin wouldn’t want him to.)

“Er,” he says, trying to think. He casts his mind back, finds he has to keep going further. “Pretty much always? I mean, I suppose it wouldn’t have made much sense to me before about the age of ten. To either of us. But—the moment during puberty I took an interest in snogging, yeah. If you’d ever tried, I think you would have had me.” It’s another thing he wouldn’t have ever thought only five minutes before, but saying it, he knows it’s the most honest he’s ever been in his life.

“Jesus fuck, Merlin,” Arthur groans, and Merlin laughs, a little breathless.

“Yeah. I know.”

“We’ve got a lot of catching up to do,” Arthur says, slightly husky. Merlin’s breath catches.

“Yeah. Yeah. We do.”

“…Starting ten days from now.”

This time Merlin’s the one who groans. His endorphins are going crazy, caught on a rollercoaster ride that’s tumbled dizzyingly between fear and anticipation and relief and joy and is now pulling into frustration station, the worst he’s felt since he was a teenager and riddled with hormones—possibly even worse, still building. “Right.”

“You make me so fucking crazy, Merlin. I can’t—you need to—” Arthur growls. It goes straight to Merlin’s dick. “I will fucking see you in two weeks,” Arthur forces out, and hangs up.

Merlin looks at the phone in his hand. He blinks. The fingers of his empty hand curl and uncurl. He doesn’t know whether to laugh for the next hour or burst into tears or go have the most zealous wank of his life or all three, and in which order.

“FUCK,” he says, with feeling, and a family of tourists scuttles away in terror.

ii.

Merlin genuinely doesn’t expect to hear from Arthur at all for the next two weeks, so it’s a surprise when his phone rings less than twenty-four hours later.

“Well, you’ve done it, Merlin. You’ve succeeded in driving me straight off the deep end. I hope you’re proud.”

“Finally,” Merlin says, stepping out of the stream of people to catch a bit of privacy. “Talk about a long-term project. Not really sure what I’ll do with my life now that’s been accomplished.”

“I had a twenty-minute conversation with the Secretary-General of the UN and I can’t recall a single thing we said. I spilled tea all over our ambassador. I might have agreed to build a colony on the moon.”

“That doesn’t sound so bad. Maybe it’ll appease those far right nutjobs who want to bring back British imperialism. At least there aren’t any moonmen to oppress.”

“That’s what you think,” Arthur says, and Merlin makes a mental note not to let Arthur watch any more late-night History (well, “History”) channel programming, because Ancient Aliens has clearly gone to his head.

The PA system crackles with an announcement. Merlin cringes, cupping his hand around the phone in the hopes Arthur won’t hear.

“Where are you?” Arthur asks, but he sounds more pathetically missing than suspicious. “What are you doing? What are you wearing?”

“I’m in public, for one thing,” Merlin says. “So don’t go trying anything cheeky.”

He knows it’s the wrong thing to say as soon as he’s said it; on a sixpence, Arthur turns from pathetic to wicked. “What are you insinuating, Merlin? Worried I might get you all riled up?”

Just the low sultriness that’s entered Arthur’s voice is enough to get Merlin a little riled up already, but he’s not going to tell him that.

“I’m more worried you’ll get yourself riled up in front of the General Assembly,” he says primly, shooting a stern look at his libido.

“I don’t know, my new communication secretary’s trying to work on my branding. It’s all a matter of getting the right spin. Prince of Wales Sprouts Boner for Peacekeeping and Human Rights sounds pretty good.”

“Shut up,” Merlin says. It’s not his best banter by a long shot, but he had an extremely unsatisfying wank last night and got very little sleep, so he’s fragile enough that even Arthur saying the word boner in his plummy voice puts him in danger of sprouting one himself. “I’ve got to go,” he says.

“Okay,” Arthur says, sounding a little disappointed but like he’s trying to hide it, and Merlin winces. This new thing between them should be easy, a natural next step, practically (he sees now) an inevitability, but there’s still a bit of awkwardness to the transition, a bit of uncertainty, not helped by the fact that they’re 3,500 miles apart and doing this all by phone. (It’s enough to make Merlin want to videochat, but that would give him away.) Hell, he’s taking a flying fucking leap right now, just like he did yesterday in The Parks, and he wonders when it will stop feeling like that, when things will be settled, no more doubts or mysteries between them. (He wonders whether it will ever be safe to reveal to Arthur the full covetous depths of his feelings, the intensity that frightens him a little if he looks at it so long. He thinks it probably will be; he’s less sure that he’ll find words sufficient to say it.)

“I really do have to go,” he says, “and also you’re driving me crazy, too. Just so you know.”

“Merlin, we both know the boat on that sailed years ago,” Arthur says, but Merlin can hear the smile return to his voice, and that’s enough for him.

“Bye, Arthur,” he says, and hangs up, and then he gets on the plane.

He sleeps for most of the flight, and then he’s at LaGuardia, with his one hastily-packed duffel and no real plan and what’s left of his sanity, which is nothing. Acting on blind one-foot-in-front-of-the-other instinct, he calls Arthur’s PA.

“Hi Emma, it’s Merlin,” he says.

“Merlin!” She sounds a little pleased and a lot surprised, which is fair. “What’s up, darling?”

“Well, I’m in New York,” he says, and then hastily, in case she’s with Arthur now: “It’s kind of a last-minute thing, and I thought if he’s not too busy I might show up and surprise him. Just for fun, you know.” (For a moment he wonders what would happen if she said that was all very nice but Arthur actually is too busy, so sorry darling, do have fun in New York, and what he would do then. Probably he’d have to be one of the people crowding around for a look at the prince at a ribbon-cutting ceremony or something, hoping Arthur will catch sight of him behind the temporary barriers and bulky security guards, which he definitely wouldn’t. Arthur is unobservant at the best of times, and Merlin’s life is never that easy.)

“Oh, that does sound fun!” Emma says, delighted, and Merlin’s daydream (/nightmare) of playing royal groupie in America dissipates. “He’s doing a memorial visit at the moment, but there’s a cocktail reception tonight I could get you on the list for, if you’re interested.”

“Oh, er—I’m not sure I packed for that, to be honest.”

“Don’t worry, sweetheart, it’s nothing too terribly formal. Just a nice little get-together for British expats and the like, no official dress code. I mean, there’s an implicit one, of course, but nobody’s going to kick you out for not wearing a tie. The worst they’ll do is look at you funny.”

“I have had plenty of practice with that.”

“Do you have a place to stay? I could call the hotel and get you a key for the room next to Arthur’s, if you’d like. We always book it for security purposes, but no one’s staying there.”

“Yes, please, that would be wonderful,” Merlin says, fervently grateful for the absolute efficiency and almost divine talent for management demonstrated by those who do these jobs at the highest possible level. It reminds him of what his mum did for Ygraine when he was growing up, that sense of care and commitment, of ask-no-questions what-do-you-need-and-how-can-I-do-it-for-you ministration, and it warms his chest with a sense of nostalgia and security. He’s absurdly lucky, he knows, to have access to this. (Not to mention to Arthur.)

“I’ll get it done and text you all the information, easy-peasy, just head straight on to the hotel. Do you need me to send a car?”

“No no, that’s all right, I can call an Uber,” Merlin says, because he does have to draw the line somewhere.

He arrives at the address Emma gave him after dropping his stuff off at the hotel. (Arthur’s bodyguard Val was there to greet him, helping him carry his bag up to his room (which Merlin thought was going a little far, edging into the realm of we must help Merlin, that poor needy weakling; he only had the one duffel, and he’s not so incompetent as to get lost on the lift), which Val pointed out with a wink connected to Arthur’s via an adjoining door. Merlin’s ears went pink and he kept his expression as neutral as possible, trying not to give away that this spontaneous trip is exactly what it’s in danger of looking like.) There’s a dicey moment at the door when he wonders whether Emma was far too nice with him about the no dress code thing; the guy who checks Merlin’s name against the list looks at him, in his chinos and button-down with the sleeves pushed up (it’s a muggy day!), for a good thirty seconds before he lets him in.

On the flight over, Merlin had a lot of time to think about how Arthur might react to him showing up. He ran the gamut of possibilities from Spit-Take to That One Heart-Stopping Smile (the rarest and most beautiful of Arthur smiles) to a Big Damn Kiss (which quickly devolved into a fantasy wherein Arthur ravished him right there and then, which made that part of the flight simultaneously very enjoyable and quite uncomfortable, thanks to the sudden tightness of his trousers).

Now that he’s finally made it into the same room as Arthur, now that this is real, not some indulgent near-future romantic gesture that still lingered in the hypothetical, less pleasant possibilities are beginning to occur to him. What if Arthur just looks at him oddly? What if Emma, in her kindness and accommodation, misjudged how appropriate it would really be for Merlin to crash this party to which he wasn’t invited? (His hopes of fitting in take a massive nosedive upon spotting Sting engaged in conversation with Naomi Watts.) What if this is all too much too fast, and Arthur is far too busy to see him for more than thirty seconds at a time, and the ten days’ wait would have been exactly what they needed to adjust themselves to the shift in their relationship, and now he’s gone and fucked it all up by flying across the ocean in a spontaneous insane gesture of overconfidence and—

He sees Arthur.

His first, idiotic instinct is to duck and hide, as though he might just have come all this way and made it six feet from the net only to lose nerve at the last second and go back home. (He imagines trying to explain to customs why he took an expensive last-minute transatlantic round-trip flight to visit Manhattan for half an hour. Gwaine once flew to Australia because he heard of a great sushi place in Sydney, but Merlin knows he lacks the necessary swagger to claim a similar story.) But then Arthur turns his head, just enough to give Merlin a better view of him, and Merlin is struck immobile right where he is.

The degree to which seeing Arthur is a frequent—near-constant, the last two years at Oxford—feature of his life, and thus ought to be a fairly unremarkable one, is completely belied by this moment, by the headlong rush of emotion and longing that washes over him with the force of a six-foot wave. He sees Arthur, and he wants to close the distance between them, to stand by his side, to have Arthur’s ear by his lips ready to receive every inane or snarky thought that passes through Merlin’s mind. He sees Arthur, and he wants to brush his hair back from his forehead, frown a bit as he tugs on the ends and tell him he needs a haircut. He sees Arthur and wants to kiss him, to shove him back against the wall and press their lips together, mouth words of adoration into Arthur’s skin, trace patterns with his tongue. It astounds him that he could have seen Arthur mere days ago and not been hit with this same force of wanting—but maybe he did feel it and just wouldn’t look it in the eye.

The woman with whom Arthur has been speaking lays a hand on his arm, smiling and saying something Merlin can’t hear, and then she’s gone into the crowd. Arthur’s face—which up until this point has given every impression that he’s having a perfectly lovely time—dims ever so slightly, like those lights that automatically lower whenever someone leaves the room unoccupied. As Merlin watches—no longer thinking anything in particular, just captivated by watching Arthur while Arthur is yet unaware—he takes out his phone and taps something into it.

Merlin’s phone buzzes.

At a party. Miss you.

Merlin’s startled, just-on-the-verge-of-being-a-sob laugh makes the impeccably-dressed businessman next to him startle. Merlin can’t care right now if he’s making a spectacle of himself. He knows exactly how to announce his presence to Arthur.

He’s not sure when the tradition started, exactly—sometime in his early days at Oxford, definitely, but he doesn’t remember who came up with the idea. When one of them wants to let the other know where they are, they’ll send a picture of their surroundings, rather than using (more traditional) words or (more convenient) location-sharing. It started fairly straightforward: an image of the outside of Noodle Nation or the Bridge of Sighs, easy landmarks to locate. Gradually it became more esoteric: a picture of a deer in the Grove, a close-up of the ketchup bottles at Atomic Burger, challenges to which the other would have to rise if they wanted to join. (More than once Arthur ended up at the wrong Atomic Burger, which he claimed was a fault in Merlin’s subject selection and Merlin argued was a feature of the system.)

He takes a photo of the room, including Sting in the frame but not including Arthur, and sends it to Arthur as a response. Arthur—who had just slipped his phone back into his pocket, keenly aware of social etiquette as he is—takes it back out with gratifying quickness. Merlin watches his brow crease, watches him pinch and zoom, watches confusion give way to startlement, watches as Arthur looks up, looks around, looks at him—looking far more like the definition of shock than any deer of Magdalen College could ever hope to, headlights or no—and is just about to break into Merlin’s favorite heart-stopping smile when a man steps up and asks him to say a few words.

Obviously.

“Er, right,” Arthur says, flustered in a way Merlin has never seen him in any semi-public speaking situation. The room quiets, everyone turning toward Arthur, faces expectant. Merlin raises his eyebrow at Arthur, quirking his lips—go on, then—and Arthur ducks his head, comes back up with a rueful look in his eye—damn you, Merlin—and speaks.

It’s a very nice speech, especially given that Merlin can tell it’s largely improvised, and under among the most disconcerting conditions that have got to exist. Arthur tells the assembled British expats and dual British-American citizens gathered in the room how much he and Uther appreciate the ways in which their lives foster a stronger bond between Britain and America, how everyone’s mums have asked him to make sure they’re wearing their mittens and getting enough tea (that one gets a laugh), and how much Britain values its citizens and subjects wherever they may be.

“Whether you have family roots here, or you came for a new job opportunity, or you made the ultimate leap of love for someone special”—Arthur’s soft smile has Merlin reconsidering his ranking of favorite Arthur smiles; he might have to allow for a first-place tie—“thank you for strengthening the special bond between our two countries. And please know you are always welcome back home.”

There’s warm applause, and a toast, and then Arthur is making his way through the crowd toward Merlin, nodding and smiling at people, shaking hands, getting drawn into conversation—wait, shit—by some particularly forceful couple. For fuck’s sake.

Arthur looks like he’s going to be a while—something about the bloke gives Merlin a very Duke of Wessex vibe—so Merlin lets himself be drawn into a conversation of his own with a newly-emeritus Oxford don who (embarrassingly) is convinced Merlin is a Magdalen student, because “I’ve seen you around in college far too often for you to have attended any of the others.”

Merlin feels Arthur’s presence like an anchor, tethering him in the room, something he doesn’t have to look for to feel near him. It’s comforting and intoxicating at once, and he has to remind himself, during pauses in the professor’s words when he can hear himself think, that he has waited more than a dozen years for this; he should be able to wait another half hour.

Arthur draws nearer and nearer until he’s eventually at Merlin’s side, in the circle of conversation the professor has drawn around himself, closer to Merlin’s elbow than the requirements of space dictate.

“Ah, Prince Arthur,” says the don, “do you know Merlin? He’s a classmate of yours.”

“We’ve met,” Arthur says, lips twitching, but extends his hand anyway. Merlin takes it. The warm touch of Arthur’s skin alone makes him dizzy, or maybe it’s the wine, or maybe it’s both. Either way, he doesn’t want to let go; he only does when Arthur’s gaze holding his starts to make him too hot, might-faint-in-front-of-Sting hot.

They find more excuses to touch as the night goes on, each less justifiable than the last. Arthur plies Merlin with more glasses of wine so that their fingers will brush. Merlin pretends to want to know the time (and conveniently forgets he has a phone) every two minutes, which naturally means he needs to grab Arthur’s wrist to check his watch. An hour (and unknown number of glasses) later they’ve started drawing odd glances from those in whatever circle of conversation they’re in now, but Merlin is too intoxicated (in every sense) to care. You’ve waited thirteen years for this, he reminds himself sternly, plus the last thirty-six hours, plus forty-nine minutes, you should be able to wait another—

“Let’s get out of here,” Arthur mutters in his ear, having finally judged a departure time that, while early, won’t cause a major international incident, and Merlin nearly sobs in relief. One more minute and fainting would have been the best-case scenario.

Of course he nearly sobbed too soon. There’s another ten minutes of people telling Arthur goodbye, and then an agonizing thirty-second wait by the lift.

“Take the next one, will you, Owain?” Arthur asks his bodyguard, sounding perfectly casual to the outside observer; only Merlin can make out the clipped strain in his voice. “I should be safe going down a few floors, unless Merlin tries to stab me.”

“Wouldn’t be the first time,” Owain jokes, easy, and Merlin forces out a laugh. If Owain thinks it’s an odd request, he doesn’t show it. “I’ll take the stairs.”

The lift doors open, and Merlin and Arthur step in. Merlin’s hand is shaking; he clenches it. He doesn’t know if it’s nerves or adrenaline or lust or excitement or terror or everything crashing down at once—

The doors close, and Arthur kisses him.

Arthur lunges at him, really, shoving Merlin against the wall and kissing him hard enough to bruise. Merlin gasps into the kiss, arms wrapping around Arthur’s neck of their own accord. It’s rough and hot and perfect, and already Merlin feels himself surging beneath his skin, every nerve ending singing, on fire, lit up by Arthur’s touch.

“So you’re glad I came, then?” he asks, out of breath, when Arthur moves his lips down to suck a bruise into Merlin’s throat—like now that Merlin is finally, finally in his arms, he needs to brand him as his immediately—and Arthur growls. Merlin’s breath hitches.

“Shut up,” Arthur says, biting the love bite he’s just made, and Merlin winces, loving the flicker of pain. He yanks Arthur’s face back to his, back to the kissing, back to—

The lift doors ding open, and they spring apart.

Merlin can’t imagine what Owain thinks when he emerges into the lobby a few minutes later (they were on the penthouse level; it’s a lot of stairs), whether he notices that Merlin and Arthur are strangely winded for having taken the lift, whether the love bite on Merlin’s neck is still bright red or has faded to that eye-of-the-storm invisibility before it’ll turn purple. (He suspects the former; it’s what he gets for looking like a ghost that’s just received some bad news (as Arthur once put it).)

“Took you long enough,” Arthur says, a thin veneer of cheer over an impatience that’s got to be obvious to anyone paying attention now. He doesn’t even wait for a response before he’s striding to the door.

In the car, the door shuts, the divider goes up, and Arthur is on top of Merlin again, neither of them bothering with seatbelts. Merlin winds up on his back on the long bench seat, Arthur’s weight pressing down on him, blanketing him. It’s too much and not enough all at once: Merlin’s hands in Arthur’s hair, Arthurs tongue in his mouth, their legs slotted between each other. It reminds Merlin of the first day of a good and proper snow when he was a kid: the whole world so blank and untouched, and he could never decide where to step first, always had an urge to traipse his footprints over every last pure inch of it. There’s so many things he wants to do to Arthur that he hasn’t a clue where to start.

The brakes slam. Merlin nearly pitches off the seat but is stopped by Arthur’s arm barring his way. Something in Merlin’s chest flutters; he feels like a damsel who’s just been saved from being thrown from her horse by the dashing hero. He knows it’s a ridiculous comparison but he lets the feeling sweep him away anyway, drawing Arthur back down to give him the thorough kissing he deserves (far more thorough than would be appropriate for a damsel to bestow, really).

Then they’re at the hotel, and they have to get out of the car, and this time Owain volunteers to take the stairs on his own. It’s a good thing this is the last step before they’ll finally arrive someplace private, because Merlin’s already dangerously far gone, and this time lift snogging gets precipitously close to actual lift sex.

Finally—finally, finally, Merlin keeps thinking that word and keeps finding another finally to agonize for right after it—Arthur is keying them into his room and his hand is already on the nape of Merlin’s neck and Merlin’s lips are half an inch away from closing the distance between them—

“Oh!”

A maid straightens up from making the bed, blushing furiously.

“I’m so sorry, um—your majesty—I didn’t—they said you would be out—”

“No, no, please don’t apologize,” Arthur says, taking a hasty step away from Merlin, who casts around for a way to hide the fact that he’s hard without making it completely obvious that he’s trying to do exactly that. He steps behind a chair, like this is a natural and normal thing to do. “It’s my fault, I didn’t plan on coming back so early. You don’t”—he clears his throat—“that is, if you just want to leave the bed, er, as-is, I really don’t mind.”

“Okay,” the maid says uncertainly, eyes darting between the two of them and her cart. She bites her lip. “Is it all right if I just change out the towels in the bathroom? We’re really not supposed to skip that part—”

“Yes, yes, of course, don’t let us get in your way,” Arthur says, stepping aside to allow her to pass. “Please, whatever you need to do.”

“Do you need any help?” Merlin asks, idiotically.

“Oh, no, sir, I can do it,” the maid says, which is a relief, because Merlin’s still sporting wood, over here.

Arthur sits down on the bed once the maid disappears into the bathroom, head in hands, and lets out a soft groan. Merlin wants to go to him but can’t; the maid could come back out at any moment.

And suddenly it’s awkward again, or maybe it isn’t, or maybe it’s hilarious or farcical or tragic; Merlin has lost all ability to tell. All he knows is that they are alone-but-not-alone in a giant hotel suite, Arthur sitting on the bed and Merlin standing behind a chair, the sounds of the maid tidying in the bathroom both faint and deafening. Arthur lifts his head and levels a sardonic look at Merlin.

“What on earth have you done to me?” he says simply, and it’s that that (finally, not-so-finally) has a dam bursting in Merlin’s chest. He laughs, stepping out from behind the chair (he’ll risk it), warmth spreading through him, and sits sideways next to Arthur on the bed, puts a hand to his cheek to pull him in for a kiss, gentle and loving.

“Same thing you’ve done to me, I imagine,” he whispers when they part, not going more than a few inches. They keep kissing like that, soft and easy, pulling apart and fitting back together, not able to risk going further but not willing to do any less. It drives Merlin wild. He is perfectly serene. He is both, and he doesn’t know how to reconcile any of these contradictions except with the simple name Arthur.

When the maid comes out, she finds them side-by-side on the bed, looking perfectly innocent but for the rosiness in their cheeks. (Glancing sideways at Arthur as he stands and thanks the maid and goes to see her out, Merlin wonders whether he prefers Arthur like this, rosy-cheeked and kiss-happy, or whether he’ll like him more sweat-slicked and cock-happy, or afterwards, sex-sated and semen-stained, or how he’s seen him before, silly-drunk or laughter-breathless or even public-serious, and now that he thinks about it, Merlin may need to throw the entire idea of a favorite Arthur anything out the window, because he loves every single aspect and version in its own ineffable Arthur way. Rankings aren’t very useful when it’s an every-way tie for first.)

Arthur comes back into the room and stops in the doorway, looking at Merlin.

“What?” Merlin says. He forgets to be self-conscious in his appreciation of Arthur’s slow smile.

Arthur shakes his head. “Nothing,” he says, and strides forward.

Merlin goes back easy, yielding beneath Arthur’s touch in a way he’s rarely (if ever) yielded to his words.

“Merlin,” Arthur murmurs, hand sliding beneath Merlin’s shirt to run up and down his side.

“Mm?” Merlin tangles his fingers in Arthur’s hair, liking the way the strands slip and slide, the way he can tug or massage his scalp. He feels a little in danger of getting lost in the weeds, missing the forest for the trees, but equally in danger of missing the trees for the forest. He wants to focus on every little detail and to lose himself completely.

“Nothing,” Arthur says again, mouthing at the stubble on Merlin’s jaw, and Merlin grins, hooking a leg over Arthur’s, because he gets that nothing is another way of saying everything. They can figure out more precise words later.

“C’mere,” Merlin says instead, drawing Arthur’s mouth to his. It’s slower than they were in the lift—or the car—or the second lift. They take their time, exploring each other’s mouths, seeing what kinds of reactions they can provoke, all these new ways they can fit together. Merlin runs his tongue over the roof of Arthur’s mouth, and Arthur’s hand tightens on his hip. Arthur blows lightly in his ear, and Merlin full body shivers so violently it surprises even him. Arthur shifts his hips, and their cocks rub together through too many layers of fabric, and as nice as all this leisurely exploration has been Merlin’s suddenly back to thinking in terms of how many more seconds it will be before he can (finally) get his hands where he wants them.

Arthur seems to have the same thought; he sits up and starts unbuttoning his shirt, cursing under his breath at wearing a shirt that has buttons at all. (Merlin wonders how the public would react if the Prince of Wales started showing up to state events in a t-shirt, whether they’d guess it was all for ease of access.) Merlin sits up on his elbows, content just to watch.

“Don’t just lie there,” Arthur says, unbuttoning his cuffs (and what is it about that gesture that’s so particularly fucking hot? Merlin’s cock twitches for each sleeve). “Get your own shirt off.”

“Bossy,” Merlin grumbles, but does as he’s told. They’re both shirtless and just about to get reacquainted when Arthur suddenly pulls back, eyes wide.

“I don’t have condoms,” he says.

Merlin stares.

“Fuck.” He flops back, head bouncing against the mattress.

“You didn’t bring any?”

Merlin lifts his head to glare. “No, I didn’t bring any. I packed in five minutes in a fit of delirious passion. I’m pretty sure I brought two pairs of swim trunks and no socks. Why don’t you have anything?”

“Because despite what Gwaine said, I didn’t really plan to ‘fuck my way across America.’ I don’t even know where I’d have found the time—it’s a lucky thing the UK provides a delivery service, apparently.” Merlin hits him with a pillow.

“Right, I’m calling the concierge,” Arthur decides, reaching for the beside phone. Merlin squawks, grabbing his arm.

“You can’t do that!”

“It’s what they’re there for, Merlin.”

“Condoms and lube?! Which I’m assuming you don’t have either.”

“No,” Arthur says, but by the way his eyes go suddenly dark, Merlin can tell he’s adding it to the list.

“I can run out to a drugstore,” Merlin says, “or…” He stops himself from saying they don’t need condoms. He got tested less than a month ago—even got paid for it, thanks to the demand for uni students to be scientific study guinea pigs—but even if Arthur also happens to have a recent certificate of clean health, suggesting that he fuck him bare might be a little much for a first date. (Pre-first date, technically.) He briefly considers forgoing the lube and just sticking to blow and/or handjobs, but while those have their own undeniable charms, now the idea of anal is on the table (mattress?), he’s not quite willing to give it up.

“Don’t worry, concierges at places like this are very discreet,” Arthur says confidently, and dials. Merlin clamps the pillow over his face, pressing it against his ears so at least he won’t have to hear.

Which means he nearly jumps out of his skin when he feels Arthur’s palm rubbing against his erection.

“Somebody will be up soon,” he says into the pillow. It comes out as a series of muffled syllables, but somehow Arthur understands.

“And I’ll go to the door when they do,” he says, pulling Merlin’s trousers off, “looking perfectly respectable—”

“You’re shirtless,” Merlin tries to say, but the pillow swallows this very well-made point.

“—while you’ll be in here, thoroughly debauched, just waiting for me to come back and fuck you properly.”

Arthur licks a stripe up Merlin’s cock, and this time the pillow isn’t enough to stifle his groan. He’s torn between tossing the pillow aside to see Arthur—see him sucking Merlin’s cock—and keeping it right where it is, sensation narrowed down to nothing but the blind feel of Arthur’s touch. He keeps up the internal debate in increasingly abstract and distracted terms as Arthur takes him deeper and deeper, fondling his balls, humming around Merlin’s dick, and he’s just decided he’s got to see this (Arthur’s lips stretched around his cock, fuck), when someone knocks on the door.

Arthur pulls off; Merlin only catches the briefest glimpse of a trail of spit and precome stretching between the head of his dick and Arthur’s mouth.

“That was fast,” Arthur says, pleased, as though commenting on the speed of a pizza. “Back in a jiffy. No wanking while I’m gone.”

Merlin, who had been planning on doing just that—his hand was already inching toward his aching cock—grabs the pillow again instead, huffing. He tucks it under his head, then rethinks and moves it under his hips. Arthur didn’t forbid any kind of prep.

He hears low voices from the other room, what seems like a brief, polite exchange. (Merlin is going to die from either embarrassment or arousal within the next five minutes; it’ll take an expert coroner to figure out which.) And then Arthur is back, triumphant, bearing the spoils of victory. “Excellent service at this place. They even got the right brand.”

“You asked for a specific brand?”

“Now, where was I?” Arthur says instead of answering, kneeling between Merlin’s legs. “Ah, yes, right.”

Merlin squeaks.

“That is—ah—not where you were,” he says, arching off the bed as Arthur licks over his hole. Arthur pinches his bum in response.

It’s a slow—agonizingly slow—process, as Arthur’s tongue presses against the ring of muscle and then retreats, again and again. He finally pushes in only when Merlin makes some incoherent threat about how he’s going to come in Arthur’s hair if he doesn’t fucking hurry up already. (Merlin can’t say for sure whether Arthur picked up the pace because he was afraid of Merlin spurting semen into his precious golden hair or turned on.) Arthur’s tongue inside him feels out-of-this-world amazing, and Merlin always thought people were being twats when they said things like that, like sex is a Lisa Frank poster, but suddenly he gets what they mean.

And then Arthur is gone, and Merlin barely has the chance to feel bereft before two slicked-up fingers are pushing into him. He grips the base of his cock, just in case; it feels inconceivably possible that he could come untouched, just from this. Arthur works him open with two fingers, then three, and then he’s putting on a condom and slicking himself up, and—

“Kiss me,” Merlin blurts, unthinking. When his brain catches up it seems a silly request right when Arthur is about to enter him, like his mind should be focused more on the Restricted-18 portion of their activities than the PG side of things, but something about seeing Arthur bare-chested and focused, something about actually being able to kiss Arthur now and for some reason not having done it in minutes—

Arthur doesn’t hesitate, though; his mouth is on Merlin’s only a split-second after the absurdity registers, kissing him like it’s the most natural thing in the world, like they’ve been doing it for years. And then he pulls back and says, “So you really do like me?”

“Go fuck yourself,” Merlin says automatically. Arthur laughs. (Merlin would’ve had a different response if Arthur’s question had actually been about insecurity rather than smugness, but Merlin can tell one from the other with Arthur as easily as he can count to three.)

“I think you’ve got the wrong idea,” Arthur says, and then he’s sliding inside, just barely on right side of too big, and Merlin loses not only his train of thought but also the station.

“Fuck me,” Merlin breathes, a 180 from his last comment, and Arthur hitches Merlin’s legs higher around his waist and does as instructed.

“You’re so tight, Merlin, Jesus. So fucking perfect. Like you were made just for me.”

“Maybe I was,” Merlin gasps, arching off the bed, trying to take more, reveling in how the faint burn mingles with pleasure. He knows he shouldn’t feed Arthur’s ego, but he can’t quite help it; even before this, even before the watershed of these last few days, Arthur already felt like Merlin’s other half, like the second side to his coin. (He thinks he got that from a Hallmark card, and Arthur would probably insist he was the first side of the coin, but none of that matters just now.) It makes such exquisitely perfect sense that they should end up here. In fact, it feels impossible that they’ve never done this before, that he’s never had Arthur inside him like this, stretching him open, never felt the head of Arthur’s cock bump up against his prostate. He mews like a cat and lifts his hips, trying to get Arthur to do it again.

Arthur’s clearly been thinking along similar lines. “How did it take us this long?” he says, words coming out breathless and strained.

“We’re idiots.”

“Speak for yourself.” Arthur gets a hand around Merlin’s cock to stroke him in time to his thrusts. Merlin doesn’t know what to do with his hands—wants to get them on Arthur somehow, somewhere, but he’s afraid his grip will be hard enough to break bone. He squeezes Arthur’s shoulders anyway, and if Arthur dislikes the pressure, he doesn’t give any indication.

“No one else, Merlin, yeah? No one but me from now on,” Arthur breathes in Merlin’s ear, and Merlin shudders.

“What, are you—claiming—a reservation—on my arse?” (Merlin knows he should probably stop trying to banter when he’s literally having trouble forming words, but Arthur has always brought out the impossible in him.)

“Yes,” Arthur grinds out, pausing to unlock Merlin’s legs from his waist only to pull them up over his shoulders. He bottoms out on his next thrust, groaning in harmony with Merlin’s cry. “I want—like a reserved table—like my own parking spot—”

Merlin bursts out laughing, a giddy high building somewhere deep in his core, a wave bearing him up and up. “A parking spot—?”

“For my Ferrari, Merlin—fuck—God—”

Merlin comes first, whiting out as he clenches around Arthur’s cock, tripping over the edge and falling, falling, falling into mindless bliss. Arthur’s hips stutter against him, and then he’s following Merlin into the abyss.

Afterwards, when they’ve lazily cleaned up and Arthur is wrapped around him like an extremely cuddly jellyfish (who knew postcoital Arthur would be so tactile?), Merlin brings up an important point.

“Is Ferrari really the comparison you want to use? I’m not sure connotations of speed are your friend in this metaphor. Should have gone with limousine. Or a Range Rover, I suppose, although roving is also somewhat antithetical, assuming the exclusivity goes both ways, which obviously it does.”

“Shut up, Merlin,” Arthur says, arm tightening around Merlin’s middle. “We can work out the finer details of my reservation later. Sleep now.”

For once, Merlin does as he’s told.

He wakes up slowly the next morning, feeling pleasantly sore and fucked-out. He reaches back for Arthur, ready for the best kind of good morning greeting, but grasps only air. Frowning, he rolls over. The other side of the bed is empty.

He calls Arthur’s phone. “You’re not here,” he points out when Arthur answers.

“Excellent observational skills, Merlin,” Arthur says, dry but somehow affectionate, and Merlin stretches against the sheets, relishing the sound of Arthur’s voice low in his ear, wishing he were here in person so he could show him just how much.

“Did you go to get bagels or something? I’ve always wanted to try a New York bagel.”

Arthur hesitates, and Merlin’s eyes fly open. He sits up. The sheets are cold, and Arthur has never casually gone out to grab and bring back breakfast in his life. He looks around the room and sees that all of Arthur’s stuff is gone.

“I’m on a plane, actually. Headed to D.C.”

“…What?”

“I told you I’m all booked up, Merlin,” Arthur says, defensive. “This is an official tour. I’m to meet the Obamas and…other things.”

“Oh, sure,” Merlin says. “That makes sense. Thanks for the heads up.”

“Are you angry?”

“How long are you gone for?” Merlin asks, instead of answering.

“Just a couple days.”

Merlin doesn’t know what to say to that, so he says nothing. (Actually, he can think of several things to say to that, but they all end with you absolute fuckhead, so he keeps them in, just behind his teeth.)

“You are angry.”

Merlin huffs a short laugh. “No. What’s not to love about your extremely laissez-faire approach to communication?”

Arthur sighs. “Merlin, it’s nothing pers—” He catches himself. Apparently not even Arthur is completely lacking in self-awareness. “That’s not what I mean. I didn’t mean to upset you.”

“You could have woken me up.”

“I wanted to let you sleep! I was being nice.”

“You could have left a note!”

Arthur snorts. “Who actually leaves handwritten notes anymore? Why bother? We have phones, clearly you know how to get in touch with me.”

“Well aren’t you bloody romantic? All I’m saying is it would have been nice if, instead of leaving me alone like a fucking one-night-stand while you pack your bags to fly off to a different city, you’d just left a note that said got to go to Washington, thanks for the fantastic sex, love you, ta. Would that have been so fucking hard?”

“But I do love you,” Arthur says, all stubborn annoyance.

Silence descends as they both realize what just happened. Those words. I love you. Said like this.

Merlin starts laughing, and Arthur joins in.

“I’m sorry,” Arthur says, and he actually sounds like he means it, like he’s not just trying to defend himself from Merlin’s accusations. “I’m an ass.”

“At last you admit it.”

“I’ve admitted everything else, haven’t I?”

“And very sweet it was, too.”

“So…do you have anything you’d like to say to me?”

“No,” Merlin says, merciless. “Not over the phone, at least.”

Arthur groans. “I won’t be back for three days, Merlin. Don’t be cruel.”

Merlin snorts. “I think you’ll live. You’ll be nicely distracted, anyway, what with all those official duties that have you so booked up.”

“What will you do?”

“Oh, probably just lounge around in my PJs. I didn’t really bring enough clothes to go out on multiple days. Watch some bad TV. Wait. Well, maybe not wait.”

Arthur’s breath catches, and Merlin grins.

“You’d better not mean—” Arthur says, low and dangerous, and Merlin rolls his eyes, even though Arthur can’t see.

“I’ll try my best not to seduce any bellhops. No promises, though. Like I said, I don’t have a lot of clothing, and I’m going to be ordering a lot of room service.”

Arthur growls. The sound goes straight to Merlin’s dick. Again.

“I might just wind up enjoying some me time,” he says. “You know, order in some wine, cue up the porn, really get acquainted with my own body. They say that’s important.”

“Send pictures?” Arthur asks, hopeful.

“Nah, I don’t think so. Who takes pictures anymore? If you want to see you’ll have to do it in person.”

A thunk comes through the phone that Merlin guesses is the sound of Arthur’s head hitting something.

“I suppose I deserve that,” Arthur says, sounding muffled, like his hand is covering his face.

“You really should have left a note.”

“I will be right back,” Arthur promises. “As soon as possible. I won’t wait til Tuesday morning, I’ll fly back Monday night.”

“Whatever you want,” Merlin says, blasé. “Just be quiet when you get in. Like you said, it’s nice to let me sleep.”

“I have to go, we’re about to land. I love you.”

“Mhm,” Merlin says, not communicating the thrill that races up his spine when he hears Arthur say those words. (He doesn’t know how he could communicate it without repeating them right back, and he’s sticking to his guns on that.) “Have fun in D.C.”

Arthur texts him incessantly throughout the next two days, mostly about how much fun he’s not having in D.C. Beginning the first night, he starts handwriting notes, taking pictures, and sending those as texts. The notes say things like it’s so fucking muggy here and a bird pooped on Owain LOL and once send dick pics I’m dying. Merlin responds with close-ups of various hotel amenities, and when he gets bored of those, amuses himself by sending pictures of Richard Nixon and Dick Van Dyke and spotted dick pudding, all with the caption is this right? By the end of it he can physically feel Arthur’s frustration pushing through the phone, and to be perfectly honest he feels it too.

He doesn’t really expect Arthur to fly back late on Monday instead of early Tuesday, so he’s asleep when the lock beeps open and Arthur enters. He wakes up to the sound of Arthur tossing his phone and wallet onto the table, stepping forward with a dangerous glint in his eye.

“So,” he says, slow and deliberate; Merlin sits up, stretching and trying to keep his expression serious, fighting against the smile that wants to worm its way onto his face. “There was something you were going to say?”

“Not until you say it first.”

“I already have said it.”

“I want to hear it in person.”

Arthur crosses the room in two strides, arms bracketing Merlin, pushing him back onto the pillows without actually touching him, looming dangerously over him like a predator that’s caught its prey. “You are insufferable,” Arthur says. Merlin laughs, shifting beneath him. “You are without a doubt the most annoying person in my life and have been for the past dozen-odd years, and somehow you have successfully wormed your way into my psyche and convinced me that I like being constantly insulted and disrespected.”

“This isn’t sounding very—”

“Let me finish. As I said, insufferable—annoying—something about a worm—right. You’re an absolute git—”

“That’s my word.”

“And it suits you perfectly. And you’ve got nice eyes and you’re actually quite brilliant and I think you might be the bravest person I know. And I love you. Now do you—”

“I love you,” Merlin says, all in a rush, not able to hold it in anymore. Arthur seals the words into his mouth with a kiss, searing and immediate, and Merlin thinks they are finally, finally on the same page.

After, when they’re both sweat-slicked and sex-sated and semen-stained (and Merlin was right: he likes Arthur like this very much), Arthur says Merlin, and this time when Merlin says what? he doesn’t answer nothing.

Instead he props himself up on one elbow, eyes traveling Merlin’s face as though they can’t decide what to settle on, lips or eyes or ears or cheeks or chin. “I can’t believe you really came,” he says, sounding a little awed. Merlin grins, crooked (and magnanimously doesn’t make the obvious joke about how boys usually come, Arthur, what did you expect.)

“I think you’ve been vastly overestimating how important coriander is in my life,” he says. “I like it. I don’t love it.”

“I do,” Arthur says, and smiles.

iii.

Arthur “comes out” a few weeks later, in what the press calls the anti-Ellen and Sauntering Out of the Closet: The New Coming Out? What he does is give a speech at the opening of a new youth center, in which he talks about all of the different kinds of struggles children across the UK are facing—homelessness, abuse, neglect, poverty, racism, sexism, LGBTQ discrimination—and then starts the next sentence acknowledging his own privilege with “Even as a bisexual man,” which is pretty much all he needs to do. The footage is on Buzzfeed within an hour.

Merlin still has a year left at Oxford—just the one term for Arthur—and they never bother to keep their relationship secret, just private. Naturally the already-extant tendency of the press to speculate on Arthur’s love life kicks into overdrive, to the extent that nobody, not even his chauffer who’s nearing fifty, can escape being labeled his love interest if they’re caught in a photo together. (Tumblr spends two months convinced that Gwaine and Arthur are in love based on a blurry mobile video, which means Gwaine spends two months chasing Arthur around, trying to lick his cheek. Why he seems to think that’s the ultimate expression of true love, Merlin doesn’t ask.)

Their relationship might be an open secret at uni, but it stays a blessedly low-frequency rumor in the press until one night Arthur grabs Merlin’s hand on a night out in London. Merlin laces their fingers together and squeezes. By morning Tumblr has forgotten Gwaine completely. (Gwaine pouts for a week straight.)

It’s disconcerting to say the least, suddenly being the subject of worldwide attention. Merlin thought he might be prepared for it, having grown up so near the spotlight, having attended plenty of media events at the side of Arthur or Gaius or Hunith, but it turns out to be an entirely different thing when people are suddenly interested in him. He never fully appreciated before how easy it was to live unnoticed, and now he’s hardly able to step out of his flat for a Tesco run without being papped.

Merlin avoids checking the news himself, depending only on Gwen’s (definitely curated and probably heavily edited) summary of how things are going. Arthur says the worst will pass, and Merlin believes him. But the worst must be worse than he lets on, because a month in Arthur comes to him, tight-lipped, and says he wants to release a statement telling the press to fuck right off.

Arthur’s media advisers, under the direction of his new communications secretary, manage to talk him into something a little less hostile, more of an iron fist/velvet glove statement. After that, the communications secretary—Evelyn—wants to meet with them, to discuss their “branding” and “narrative direction,” which is all well and good until something comes up last-minute for Arthur and Merlin has to meet the secretary by himself. (He suggests they just reschedule but is told Arthur knows all this stuff anyway, it’ll be fine, just don’t let her rip your head off, and then the PA disappears before Merlin can ask what that means.)

“So,” says Evelyn, striding into the room where Merlin is nervously pushing his coffee cup around on the table, “my father was a hydraulic engineer.”

“Um,” Merlin says. “Okay.”

“And I like to think I’ve gone into the family business.”

“…Okay?”

“Think of the story—your story, as the press and the public see it—like a river. We can shape the river, redirect it. There are always going to be little offshoots and branches we can’t control, but we can make sure those don’t become the main path of the river. How do we do that? Through ‘leaks.’ Through ‘palace insiders who have requested not to be named.’ Do you see what I’m saying?”

“I think so?”

“Good. Now, Merlin, if this is going to work, you need to be honest with me. Is there anything I need to know? Any skeletons in your closet you might be afraid of getting out? Any debts? Nude pictures? Angry exes?”

“No!” Merlin squeaks. (A voice in his mind that sounds a lot like Arthur pipes up with Brian!, but Merlin shushes it. Brian may have seen them kiss in that sandwich shop a lifetime ago, sure, but even if he does still hold a grudge about it, which seems extremely unlikely, Merlin would quite honestly rather it came back to bite him viciously in the arse than rehash the details of his first teenage relationship with a team of media advisers.)

Evelyn turns out to be very good at her job, if terrifying, and Gwen’s reports on Merlin’s #brand grow ever rosier. She sends him one article—featuring one of those unnamed palace insiders Evelyn mentioned, who are just as mysterious to Merlin as they are to the rest of the world—that has him calling up Arthur, who is in Kenya, to make sure it’s not complete bullshit.

“Is your father really happy you’re with me?” he asks when Arthur picks up.

“Did Morgana send you that article too?”

“Gwen. Is Uther happy we’re dating? I mean, he’s never seemed angry with me or anything since we—well, you—told him, but—you know.”

What he means by you know is that while Uther, in his typically closed-mouthed way, has been more-or-less supportive, he hasn’t ceased in private to give off the general impression that Arthur’s bisexuality—and even given that, his choice not only to be in a relationship with a man, but to have admitted it to the world—is annoyingly inconvenient.

“I know,” Arthur says, sighing. “The thing is—I think he is. Or at least, I think he’s as happy as he can be, given the circumstances. It being you has made things easier on him.”

“It has?” Merlin says, disbelieving. He and Uther have always gotten on well enough, technically speaking, but he’s always felt like Uther regards him as too loud and annoying and awkward and uncouth, and probably still hasn’t forgiven him for that thing with the curtains when he was nine.

“He knows you. And he knows Hunith. So it’s not as scary for him as if I’d dragged in some bloke off the street. Plus, he knows Mum loved you, and I think that helps a lot, actually. It helps me too, you know. Not that I wouldn’t love you anyway, but…it is nice to know that she’d approve, even if she never got to see what we became. I didn’t think I’d ever have that, in a partner. Someone who knew and was loved by my mum.”

“Oh, Arthur,” Merlin says, wishing again he could crawl through the phone and give Arthur a hug. He doesn’t know why they always do this long-distance, have all the sappy important conversations. They either need to invent teleportation or go back to the Stone Age, before even letter writing was a thing, so they’ll be forced to do everything face-to-face.

Six months after going public, they go on their first public date, to the Invictus Games. Merlin brings his mum. (Tumblr winds up loving her almost more than they do him.) In January there’s a bit of a scandal when it gets leaked (actually leaked, not “leaked”) that Merlin spent Christmas at Balmoral with the royal family; traditionalists go on talk shows to moralize on the importance of the no ring, no bring policy. It dies down quickly enough, however, when someone points out that Merlin has been spending almost every Christmas at Balmoral since he was seven.

iv.

Sometime in late fall, four and a half years in, Arthur calls Merlin from a benefit dinner/concert/thing in London. They’ve been apart for nearly a week, Arthur busy in London and Merlin staying at Sandringham while attending a tech-and-local-enterprise conference in Norfolk.

“What are you up to?” Arthur asks, after he’s told Merlin about the success of the fundraising efforts and Merlin has filled him in on the last day of the conference. (More and more lately Merlin’s been focusing on the public service side of his job, which tech provides plenty of avenues for. Neither he nor Arthur has ever wanted him to give up his job entirely just to be with Arthur, so it’s fortunate Merlin’s skills can so easily traverse the divide between employment and avocation.)

“Not much,” Merlin says. “Just thinking what to do for dinner. You?”

“Well, Beyoncé’s just about to go on.”

“Work, work, work.”

“You have no idea. Adele’s set went on ten extra minutes because somebody had a sign asking to be invited onstage to propose. During Set Fire to the Rain. Which is not a song about a healthy relationship.”

“Ugh, I hate those kind of proposals,” Merlin says, opening the fridge to examine his options. (Leftover pizza or leftover Chinese. He really needs to be better about cooking.)

“They’re awful, right? The nerve of people. Excuse me, some of us are trying to enjoy a show here.”

“I didn’t mean that,” Merlin says, choosing the pizza and shouldering the door shut. “God, you’re heartless. Can’t you wait thirty seconds to let people express their love for each other? It’s sweet.”

“You just said you hate those kind of proposals! Why are you suddenly defending them?”

“I don’t hate them for inconveniencing me. I just hate that they’re so public. Who wants that? Getting engaged should be a personal, intimate thing. You don’t need to put on a spectacle.”

“They’re not putting on a spectacle, Merlin, they’re declaring their devotion to each other in front of the world. It’s beautiful.”

“So we both hate it, but for different reasons. Good to know,” Merlin says, sliding a pizza-laden tray into the oven to reheat.

“The artists probably agree with us. I’m sure it’s exciting the first time someone proposes at one of your concerts, but Adele’s got to be sick of it by now.”

“Have you heard of those fans who take it one step further and ask their favorite celebrity to officiate their wedding? A few have done it, too.”

“Interesting. I don’t hate that as much. Imagine if you could say you got married by Bono.”

“You’d choose Bono? Shit.” The last word is soft, under his breath so Arthur won’t hear and ask what’s wrong. Because then Merlin would have to tell him that he’s managed to get a paper cut while trying to recycle a pizza box, and he’d never hear the end of it.

“I didn’t say I would, I was just using Bono as an example. But I’m not opposed. I met him once and he was great. If you could choose any celebrity to marry you, who’d it be?”

“What, are you asking?” Merlin says absently, sucking his cut. He bends over to rummage through the lowest drawer next to the fridge, where they keep the plasters.

There’s a pause. Too long.

He straightens suddenly, smacking his head on the counter. The pain is strong enough to distract from the other pain, but really he barely notices either. Something much more deserving of urgent panic has just come up.

“Don’t you fucking dare.”

“Well,” Arthur says, and Merlin can hear the shit-eating grin in his voice, and this is all Merlin’s fault for not thinking before he opened his stupid mouth and giving Arthur this stupid idea, “now that you bring it up—”

“Arthur Pendragon, I swear to God. I will cut you into pieces. If you drop another life-changing declaration of romantic fucking intent on the phone, again, I’ll—”

“What? Say no?” Arthur’s tone is baiting, like Merlin refusing him is the most ridiculous, unlikely thing he can think of. It’s infuriating.

“Maybe I will,” Merlin says, trying to sound like he has conviction. It’s no use: they both know it’s a rotten lie. He tries another tactic. “Look, if you want to propose, why not wait and do it in person? Like normal people do?”

“I’m only two hours away this time. We’re practically face-to-face.”

“I’m in my pajamas!” Merlin protests, voice raising in pitch. “It’s not fair to make me get re-dressed and catch a one a.m. train to London for celebratory sex. And we can’t get engaged and not have celebratory sex, Arthur. It wouldn’t be right.” A note of pleading enters his tone.

“That’s all right, I can come to you,” Arthur says, dismissive. “The important part of this shindig is over, I can duck out any time.”

“Good! Great! Do that, drive up, and then you can propose properly. Down on one knee and everything. Which will conveniently put you in the perfect position for immediate engagement sex. I’m going to hang up.”

“No, you’re not,” Arthur says; Merlin almost presses the end button out of spite, just to prove him wrong. But despite his protests he doesn’t really want to leave this moment, which has gone from inconsequential to precious in the slow blink of an eye, edges gilding in front of his very eyes. His heart is hammering with excitement and expectation, his stomach awhirl with the goddamn butterflies Arthur still manages to elicit in him, after all this time. This might really be happening. Arthur might really do this. It’s giddy and ridiculous, so stupid and so right.

“Sorry, Merlin, but I’m a man of action. And romance. All that Billy Crystal When Harry Met Sally stuff, ‘When you know you want to spend the rest of your life with someone, blah blah’—hold on, let me just step away so I’m not proposing in front of the valet.”

Merlin can’t help a laugh; it’s barely even hysterical. He’s swinging wildly between wanting to hear what Arthur has to say next and not being able to bear it, not without Arthur right in front of him to touch and see and hold. He’s got to inject some sense into the proceedings. “You prat,” he says, fond. “Really. Really, Arthur, just wait til you get home, it’s much more sensible—”

“Merlin Emrys,” Arthur interrupts, voice gone lower, more deliberate, still a bit of teasing around the edges of his syllables but not nearly at the same level as it has been. Merlin’s breath catches. Fuck, it’s happening. He’d been kidding. “I have known you for over two-thirds of my life, and I have loved you for nearly as long.”

“You have not, you knob.” For some reason there’s a lump in Merlin’s throat; God, he is such a sap.

“Don’t contradict me while I’m proposing to you. I may not have acted much like I loved you as a boy—or even been aware of it myself—but starting around the time you showed me the cheat to catch Mew, you had me.”

“It’s like everyone says,” Merlin says, definitely not choked up already, “the way to a man’s heart is through Pokémon.”

“And as long as new Pokémon games continue to come out, I’ll continue to love you,” Arthur vows, then laughs. Merlin can hear in it just a bit of—a bit of relieving pressure, like Arthur, too, is resorting to the familiar-as-breathing pattern of jokes and needling partly to cope with the very deeply real feelings that have somehow emerged from a ridiculous situation (why is it always that way with them?), and it spreads warmth through Merlin’s chest, this realization that for all his posture, all his confident demeanor, of course Arthur isn’t immune to nerves while proposing. He’s winging this, hoping to navigate smoothly over uncharted waters. (It makes Merlin love him a little bit more, and some distant part of his brain wonders how that’s possible, how it continues to still be possible day after day, when years ago he already felt that he loved Arthur more than it should be possible to love anything or anybody, like a glitch in the system, a cheat he’d accidentally discovered in the cosmic code. Like you need to catch a Mew.) Merlin takes a deep breath, through tears he’s still (just) managing to hold back, and hears Arthur do the same on the other end of the line, a wordless little conversation within their conversation.

“Right,” Arthur says, voice a little huskier. “Stop interrupting, you tosser, I’m trying to get through this. Where was I? Right. I have loved you since catching Mew, and I’ve known I loved you since at least my mum’s funeral.”

Merlin’s breath hitches. Oh. He didn’t expect that. It’s not a day they’ve talked about, only because they haven’t needed to. He’s known they both remember, thanks to more wordless conversations: quiet, grateful looks, before they were together, when Merlin did what he could as a friend to support Arthur on occasions that recalled his mother’s death; after getting together, holding hands on the anniversary, twining their fingers in an explicit echo of the past; Arthur getting the stained-glass window from that bathroom where they sat and talked, smoothing a few hours’ worth of salve over a raw and hurting time, moved into their suite in Balmoral when that wing was remodeled. Merlin can’t help the small dry sob that escapes him, muffling it with a hand to his mouth.

Arthur clears his throat, soldiers on (as he always does, and always will). “I don’t know when precisely I realized that the way I loved you wasn’t as a friend—well, that’s not true, I love you as a friend, too. What I mean is—bugger. This must be why people think of what to say ahead of time.”

Merlin laughs (and sort of sobs again), clutching the phone tighter to his ear.

“What I mean is,” Arthur says, slower, “I eventually came to realize that I love you not just as a friend, but as—everything. Anything. Any way anyone has ever thought to love someone, I love you. I love you as a friend and a companion and a collaborator and a helpmeet and an ally and a role model and a subject, and I’d love you as my king or my employee or my sex slave or my dick puppet or—”

“You ass,” Merlin says, giving up entirely on disguising that his voice is thick with tears (and also giving up on not interrupting, but in fairness that one was a ticking clock). “You still bring that up—”

“—so I guess it’s a good thing you let me be your boyfriend, so we have something more appropriate we can tell people,” Arthur says, interrupting right back. “Boyfriend or partner or colleague or whatever you want to call it—sorry, I’ll put down the thesaurus now—Merlin, I want all of it. I want you every last way I can get you.”

“You have it,” Merlin whispers; there goes a tear rolling down his cheek. Maybe it’s a good thing Arthur isn’t here to see how far gone he is. Merlin makes sure he knows anyway. “You have me. All of me. Every way.”

“Not yet, I don’t,” Arthur says, voice rough, and fuck. Merlin swallows another sob. “Which is why I’m asking—over the phone, as seems most fitting—truly and genuinely, Merlin, will you marry me?”

“Yes.” The word slips out without any intervention, moving directly from lizard-brain to Merlin’s tongue to Arthur’s ear as easy as air. “Of course I’ll marry you, you absolute fucking prat.”

There’s a sound that’s part laugh, part sigh of relief, part something rougher, more tear-filled. Merlin echoes it. Arthur clears his throat again, then says, mostly steady, “You know we’ll have to do an interview with the BBC. They’ll ask about the proposal, and you’ll have to tell them you said that.”

“Good, then you can explain how you provoked me into it. By proposing on the phone. Jesus fucking Christ, get over here. Take the helicopter if you have to, I don’t give a shit about the environment.”

“Merlin,” Arthur says, sounding shocked but pleased, recovering from his attack of genuine emotion with the chance to (what else) needle Merlin. “The emissions! The wasted expense! The general pretentiousness! Have I covered all the things you say whenever I get on a helicopter? Things that never seem to come up when it’s us both getting on a helicopter.”

“I’m hanging up now,” Merlin says.

“That’s fine, I already called the car. If I speed like hell I’ll be there in less than two hours. Why’d we do this over the phone? It makes for such a long delay between the getting engaged and the engagement sex. You should have stopped me, Merlin.”

“I hate you so much.”

“So help me, Emrys, you’d better be naked when I get there. Less than two hours. You have your warning.”

“Fine, but before I strip I’m making a trip to the cellars to get us a bottle of champagne. I’ll need alcohol to dull the pain of everything you’ve put me through. Oh, and to celebrate, I suppose.”

“Save some for me.”

“One sip, I can’t promise more. Get here soon. I love you, prat.”

“That’s fiancé to you,” Arthur says. All Merlin can manage in response is a kind of strangled moan, a Venn diagram of arousal and annoyance that overlaps in frustration. “Love you too.”

“How was it?” Arthur murmurs later that night, lips against Merlin’s neck. Merlin twists in Arthur’s arms to look at him in disbelief.

“How was it? You’ve never asked before. I always thought I made it perfectly clear. Arthur, have you been worried I’ve been closing my eyes and thinking of England for nearly five years?”

Arthur rolls his eyes. “Not the sex. I was right here, I know how that was.” Just to be sure, Merlin drags a finger through the still-drying come on Arthur’s stomach, holding his gaze, and shifts his hips to slot a leg between Arthur’s, just in case he’s ready to go again. Arthur grins, fingers gripping Merlin’s arse, but doesn’t take the bait (yet). “I meant the proposal. What’d you think? Was it not sappy enough? Did I take all the romance out by taking the piss? I didn’t mean to.”

“Arthur,” Merlin says, not quite believing this line of questioning. It’s so rare for Arthur to show any insecurity, to do any second-guessing. He takes Arthur’s face in his hands. “It was perfect. Honestly, I was a dribbling mess on this end, you couldn’t tell? This is what happens when you propose over the phone. If you wanted to be sure you should have done it in person, you knob.”

“That’s a bit what I was afraid of,” Arthur says, quiet, and Merlin immediately regrets—well, taking the piss, even gently. “I know it started as me being an ass, but I really couldn’t help—I couldn’t not propose to you once I’d got going.”

Merlin kisses him, long and hard. “There’s a million different ways it could have gone,” he says when they part for air. “A million and one wildly different ways. And they all would have been perfect, all right? No matter how much you took the piss or how sappy it got or whether you’d proposed with goddamn smoke signals. I would have said yes to a text message. I just want to marry you.”

Arthur’s smile is brilliant, and Merlin has to kiss him again. It’s just starting to get interesting (hello, engagement sex round two) when Merlin pulls back, just to make sure they’re clear on one thing. “I am not marrying you over the phone, though. There’s no way that’s legal.”

(The next morning, after their third round of engagement sex (which: is all sex engagement sex until the wedding? Merlin is leaning toward yes), Arthur kisses Merlin on the forehead as he slips out of bed to get dressed. “By the way,” he says, faux-casual, as he pulls on his pants, “even if you have been closing your eyes and thinking of England, that still means you’re thinking about me. As heir to the throne and future embodiment of the very essence of England. Technically.”

“You’re so…” Merlin can’t decide what word to choose, self-obsessed or narcissistic or cocky, and they would all be true and right, things he’s called Arthur a million times before, but then Arthur gives him a dazzling grin (yep, definitely tied for first), and he decides to let this one slide.)

v.

“Let’s start with the proposal,” says the interviewer. “How did it happen?”

Merlin opens his mouth, then glances at Arthur, remembering what Alice said. Alice, one of Evelyn’s assistants, has been unofficially assigned as Merlin’s personal press secretary (so: handler), since marrying Arthur apparently means he requires one.

Merlin was nervous for this interview, naturally. He’s always been more familiar with the wings than the spotlight, and even when his relationship with Arthur first became public, he wasn’t expected to discuss and repackage the most intimate details of his personal life for international consumption. (Instead, reporters approached his friends and family and primary school teacher’s half-brother to do that on his behalf.) Evelyn’s typically hurricane-ish check-in while Merlin got dressed (in a suit, with a tie) was the opposite of reassuring, given that he could summarize the subtext of her instructions as look cozy but not like you have sex, and don’t be too effeminate but still make it clear Arthur’s the top. (He only hoped she didn’t give Arthur the same (inverse?) instructions, as Arthur does not take well to being told (or Merlin being told) to what degree he ought to modulate the “performance” of his sexuality in order to appear nonthreatening to the general public. Merlin doesn’t really either, but he’s got enough to worry about as it is.)

He’s spent enough of his life observing people who are in the spotlight—and has drunkenly watched enough Lifetime movies with Gwen where the protagonist is a disgraced [movie star/tv actor/singer/snowmobiler/tennis shoe mogul]—to anticipate what Alice would say, once Evelyn disappeared.

“Just be myself, yeah?” he asked, mustering up a smile while he adjusted his cuffs.

“Actually…” Alice said, and Merlin froze. He’d heard that same actually countless times, in that same P.R. tone of you’re not going to like this, but never before had it been addressed to him. “If you could not be yourselves for this one interview, that would be lovely.”

“What?”

“It’s only that,” Alice said, and Merlin could tell she’d been practicing saying this next part, “while those who know and love you understand your relationship for exactly what it is—two people very much in love, who often engage in harmless, playful teasing—for those who aren’t on such familiar terms, your dynamic can come off a bit…dysfunctional.”

“Dysfunctional?” Merlin looked around for someone with whom to share his indignant disbelief. Arthur was on the other side of the room, eating a sandwich while actually having his shoes shined, the posh prick. He had a spot of mayonnaise on his face, which Merlin found both adorable and deeply hilarious.

“Nice look, loser,” he called across the room. “But I hear mustard’s more ‘in’ this season.”

Arthur, taking another huge bite of his sandwich, flipped him off.

Smirking, Merlin turned back to Alice, not quite remembering what his point had been but sure he’d succeeded in making it.

Her raised eyebrows told him otherwise.

“That’s not fair,” Merlin said automatically. “We have a very loving relationship. I love him. I’m marrying him, aren’t I? God knows I’m not marrying him for his money. I mean, the fact that the taxpayers have to pay to keep the monarchy going is so archaic, practically feudal. It’s not like I like being a part of this system. I wouldn’t—”

“And none of that either, please,” Alice interrupted, clipping his mic on. The interview was about to start, which Merlin figured was just as well; he’d lost control of his second point even sooner than his first.

So now he’s faced with the prospect of answering honestly while also being himself as little as possible. One look at Arthur cinches the deal. He’s in full P.R. mode, and while his current incarnation of that isn’t nearly as stiff and angular as it was in the years just after his mother died—hell, he’s leaning back in the sofa, holding Merlin’s hand—it’s still a far cry from the Arthur Merlin is used to.

Merlin clears his throat and tries to pick his words carefully.

“It was very romantic,” he says, catching Arthur’s eye to watch for clues on how he’s doing. “Very…spontaneous. I was in my PJs. He referenced When Harry Met Sally.”

“‘When you know you want to spend the rest of your life with someone…?’” says the interviewer, smiling.

“Yes, exactly,” Merlin says, relieved he can stop searching for true-but-innocuous details.

“Did you know for a while you wanted to propose?” the interviewer asks Arthur. “Or are we talking completely spontaneous?”

“It was something I’d had in the back of my mind,” Arthur says, smiling that well-practiced charming-but-approachable smile. Merlin squeezes his hand. “I’d done some research, you know, looking at rings—”

“What? You never told me that,” Merlin says before he can stop himself, taken by surprise.

“You never asked.”

Merlin bites his tongue on any of several responses that come to mind. Functional relationship, he reminds himself sternly.

“Let’s talk about the rings. You say you were looking before you proposed, but obviously you’ve both elected not to wear engagement rings now. What was the thought process behind that?”

“I think we both decided it wasn’t necessary,” Arthur says, looking at Merlin, who smiles in encouragement. “Historically, it hasn’t been the case that royal men have even worn wedding bands—my father didn’t, and I don’t think anybody ever doubted his love and commitment to my mother. But wearing a wedding ring is something that’s important to me personally, and Merlin as well.”

“We just didn’t want to overdo it with the jewelry,” Merlin puts in, and the interviewer laughs. He feels Arthur relax somewhat beside him and suppresses a smile. It’s going well. Alice will be so proud.

“Let’s talk about your history together,” the interviewer says. “Obviously, you’ve known each other a long time.”

“Too long,” Merlin says automatically, then winces internally. He’s never had to do an interview, dammit; who knew it would be so difficult to flip a switch and turn himself off for half an hour?

“Far too long, and definitely too well,” Arthur says, so at least Merlin won’t be the only one getting in trouble. Hell, Arthur might get it worse: he doesn’t have an excuse, having been interviewing since before he could talk. Even as far back as the memorial service on the fifth anniversary of Ygraine’s death people have been commenting how much Merlin’s presence relaxes him; it was a good thing then, but Merlin’s pretty sure now he’s going to be called a bad influence.

The interviewer laughs, not betraying any discomfort. She is a pro, after all, and they haven’t said anything too bad (yet). “Was that an easy transition for you, moving from friends to something more?”

“For the most part,” Arthur says. “There’s always going to be a few bumps in the road, but I think it helped that we’d been through transitions in our relationship before. We weren’t always friends. Growing up, we were…”

“Mortal enemies?” Merlin suggests. Arthur grins.

“At times, certainly.”

“Really?” the interviewer says, sounding intrigued. “You didn’t start getting along until later on, then?”

“You could say that.”

Merlin feels the need to backtrack and explain. “We weren’t really mortal enemies, more like”—he casts around for a good comparison—“um, Betty and Veronica?”

“Frenemies?” the interviewer says, but Arthur doesn’t hear her, busy leveling Merlin a look.

“Betty and Veronica, seriously?” he says. “That’s your go-to?”

“What?” Merlin says, defensive. “Who would you have said, Iron Man and Captain America? The Doctor and the Master? Magneto and Professor X?”

“They’ve tried to kill each other on multiple occasions.”

“You dropped a flowerpot on my head once!”

“That wouldn’t have killed you, Merlin. The worst you would have gotten was a concussion.”

“I had a bump on my head for a month. The kids in school called me Professor Quirrell.”

“I would have gone with conehead myself.”

“That’s because you have the sense of humor of a twelve-year-old, and the kids at school were thirteen.”

“You’re calling me unsophisticated? That’s rich, coming from someone who watches Keeping Up with the Kardashians.”

“That was one time, and I was sick, and there was a marathon on and one of them—I want to say Khloe?—was actually very witty.”

“I don’t think any of them are named Khloe.”

“You also didn’t think shibboleth was a real word—”

“You were pronouncing it wrong.”

“—and you spent an hour once trying to convince me that Beyoncé and Beyoncé Knowles were two different people who just happened to look a lot alike—”

“I was ten! And you thought Einstein and Frankenstein were brothers.”

“You’re making that up.”

“Am not, idiot, you said—”

“Um, Prince Arthur?” says the interviewer. Arthur stops midsentence. They both turn to look at her slowly, like someone seeing a monster in a horror movie.

“…The proposal was very romantic,” Merlin says.

(The general public ends up loving the interview, even if a few more traditional news outlets (and people) do not. Merlin’s mum reminds him it wasn’t really his first interview, telling him the story of when he was seven and vowed to marry Prince Arthur someday, if that’s what it took to become a prince. When Arthur tries to accuse him of title-hunting, Merlin points out that he’s not even accepting the title Uther offered him as a wedding present, so Arthur can take his stupid titles and shove them right up his arse.

Luckily, there’s no cameras around to record that dysfunction playful, harmless teasing. And luckily Evelyn will never know what happens afterwards, inspired by the words Arthur and take and up and arse and completely disregarding both her cardinal rules, including the one about Arthur being the top.

The wedding itself goes swimmingly, even if the Archbishop of Canterbury seems a bit bemused when Arthur bursts into laughter when Merlin joins him at the altar. But in Arthur’s defense, what other appropriate reaction is there to seeing a carnation-and-coriander boutonnière?)